#under the same title

[melanatedkink]

Can I Wake Up First?

Need a story to comfort the chronic pain in my body. Anybody who can relate, I genuinely hope for the best for you. Not all suffering is a lesson. Sometimes, it's just bull.

Pairing: Y/N x Mirio, Bakugo, Tamaki, (individually)

Warnings: Ambiguous pain(insert illness if you like to self- insert), angst to comfort, gender neutral

You loved Mirio. You do. You really do. However, it was safe to say that the honeymoon phase was effectively dead. At least, when it came to his habits, it was nearly impossible to forgive. You remember the day his quirk was beginning to comeback. You insisted on taking him out that night to celebrate. You expected happy tears. You expected his motivation to skyrocket at this new information. What didn't come to forefront of your mind, was his 5 o'clock alarm.

While he was recovering, Mirio would give you grace, setting his alarm to wake you up just an hour before you had to be at work. You were not a morning person, even while he was being lenient with you, but he helped you get your mind ready for work. It wasn't your fault. Every morning was a struggle as you woke up with the shakes. You'd experience horrible, squeezing, spasming muscles just minutes into consciousness. It pretty much kept you in bed until you got some medicine in you.

And who was right there to administer that? The same guy who was switching up on you now. See, when he was a hero, you two hadn't met, yet. So you were unaware of his habit at waking up at 5 am. As soon as his feet hit the ground, his routine was in motion. He hit the shower, grabbed his duffel bag, left a quick kiss on your "sleeping" form, and headed straight to the gym. The only other contact you get for him is his text saying he finally made it to Suneater's agency three hours later, when you were limping your way to the kitchen for your savior in a bottle.

And this morning, you had enough as soon as your eyes opened to his stupid phone. As he came out of the shower, he stumbled to a halt. You were sitting straight up, despite how your muscles were beginning to scream at you. He flicked the light on, as if to comfirm that you were indeed up. Meanwhile, you were trying your hardest not take that gesture as an act of violence.

"Babe? Did I wake you?" Mirio whispered as he inched toward your side of the bed.

He took your hands in his as he sat next to you. You allowed yourself to find peace in his eyes. Maybe it was the pain, or maybe it was the loss of contact you'd been getting, but you were feeling yourself break right in front of him.

"Do you have to wake up so early?" you croaked, the sleep heavy in your voice.

His words caught in his throat. Technically, no, but he was a creature of habit, so...

"Yeah, I would like to,"

You figured he'd say that. You took a steady breath and squeezed his hands. But before you could find the words, his face lit up. He raced out the door without a word, leaving you completely dumbfounded. You scanned the room for his bag, just to ensure your man didn't straight up ditch you. The door swung open, again, and Mirio was right by your side with water, your meds, and your favorite juice.

"Thank you-" you were cut off with a pill pressed against your lips.

Amid his rearranging your bedside table and comforting you, Mirio managed to whisper an explanation.

"I was so excited about my quirk I... I wanted to hurry up and be someone people could rely on again, but my baby needs me the most, right now,"

It was always interesting seeing Mirio become so meek. Whether it was softening his voice, his kisses, or his hands to make it easier to keep from overstimulating you, he was always adhering to your needs. Which is also why it took you so damn long just to address this.

"Would you like anything else?" he asked.

"Would you let me take you out?" you replied, a flirty lilt in your tone.

He barked out a laugh," I should be taking you out for leaving you in pain this long,"

"That's exactly why," you admitted," Sweetheart, you do so much for me, all the time. Even if it's not helping me start my day, you're there throughout, and you're there when I get home. I just... I never want to stop doing things for you. So, please?"

He sighed through his nose, having a war with himself before kissing a gentle confirmation on your lips.

"Fine, but I'm buying you breakfast before I head out,"

"But I wanna go back to sleep~" you whined.

"You can," he pecked you again," when you're done eating,"

[lizzybeeee]

DATV Spoilers - The Handling of Previous Story/Lore In DATV

Quick PSA: If you’ve read my post on the lore/story threads dropped – it’s not a list of what I expected or even wanted to see addressed/answered in DATV.

It’s pretty much a given that Kieran and the Architect were never going to come back in any meaningful way, I understand that. Questions about what happened to Anora, Anders, Cullen’s clinic etc...never expected to get an answer about them – at all. The line of succession in Ferelden and Orlais? I expected that sometime down the line it would have to be streamlined into one option for both nations, not a problem – there’s so many choices it’s impossible to account for, and I understand that.

This is just a list of plot threads left unanswered that will, most likely, remain unanswered.

There’s no DLC planned – the team is working on Mass Effect 5 now. There’s no conclusion to the fate of the south of Thedas outside of some codex entries and some dialogue. They can patch the Executors cutscene out, maybe - perhaps they could even do the same to anything relating to the south of Thedas. Yes, these areas were not completely destroyed by the Blight – they can rebuild – but it comes across as being so meaningless that I ever cared for these places in the first place. To learn that after ten years of waiting all we cared for get devastated and left in limbo...it’s hard to put into words the bitterness I felt at that realization, and seeing that final cut-scene drove the nail into the coffin of how foolish I felt for even caring in the first place.

A codex entry or letter would have been nice – but my expectations for DATV was solely for a good story that added to the lore and world of Thedas. Instead, it felt entirely reductive – glaringly so when you account for the ‘Executives’ twist.

The world of Thedas has been watered down and its worldbuilding/lore diminished - slavery in Tevinter is non-existent, the Crows being an organization that indoctrinated children is never touched upon, any mystery of ancient Tevinter and the elves is answered (badly!), the Dalish have effectively disappeared and become the Veil Jumpers...it all feels so hollow, so shallow, that I ever cared about these things in the first place.

The issue is that the dev’s gave us only three choices, told us that as the story was contained to the north of Thedas – that our other choices weren’t relevant to the rest of the game with their intent being to not effect anyone's head-canons...before doing so with ‘the blight has devastated most of everywhere you went previously’.

These were story/plot threads that were woven throughout the narrative of the first three games – the things that made me care and become invested in the world of Thedas to begin with. In a game that was set-up to be a direct sequel to Inquisition and Trespasser I hoped that, at least, what was brought up in Inquisition would be mentioned.

Perhaps my list is a little too detailed with plot threads and issues – if anything that can be attributed to the incredible world-building done in the first three games! I love those games, I love the world of Thedas...which is why this game utterly baffles me with its choices.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard is a good game but not a good Dragon Age game.

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

Edit: DATV absolutely has a lot of problems outside of its handling of the lore and story of the previous games. I would not say its a good rpg in any sense, but as a weird 'action-adventure rpg lite' game I did have some fun moments and enjoy myself. Would I recommend it to anyone? Absolutely not.

I heard someone describe it as a 'junk food' game and I very much agree with that statement. I found enjoyment in it, but to do so I usually had to turn off my brain, which is not a compliment towards DATV.

The game released very well optimized (especially considering how most companies are content to release half-baked games and patch them later) and did create some really interesting visual set-pieces like the Battle of Weisshaupt. But those moments I enjoyed were few and far between, and far overwhelmed by the negatives of the game - such as story, lack of conversation/conflict/role-play options, bad character writing etc...

Calling the game 'good' is, perhaps, a stretch, and I totally get that. Calling it 'mediocre with some good parts' may be more accurate.

[ghost-bison]

the doctor and donna not being a couple for 2 minutes straight

@lookmomitsmytmblr i was totally inspired by your posts from yesterday to make this lmao

[sheliesshattered]

TWW fanfic: The Don't List

Josh/Donna, 9800 words, Rated T. Post s07e19: Transition. One airplane flight and one long conversation that was a long time coming, as Josh and Donna figure out what it is they want from each other.

So many thank yous and my deepest appreciation to @jessbakescakes and @jezunya for beta-reading this for me, your suggestions were the finishing touches this story needed for me to really be happy with it. And a big thank you to @bartletslesbians for cheering me on, and to my sweetheart Jack for reading this entire thing even though he's never seen a single episode of The West Wing.

Also available on AO3 under the same title and username.

The Don't List

Be still and listen to me. I don’t know what this is. And you don’t either, which is perfectly fine and understandable. Whatever the build up, it’s all happened amid absurdly heightened emotional circumstances — the election, Leo’s death — there’s been no moment to so much as take a breath, much less figure any of this out. And now this roller coaster’s plunging into the transition, with its time pressure demands, and then the Inauguration, and it’s hit-the-ground-running, and the first hundred days, and before you know it, the midterms and the new Congress, and then we’re running again, and four years becomes eight, and we’ve never had The Talk. And you can lose that look of panic in your eyes, we’re not going to have it now, we don’t ever have to have it. But there’s a window. I’d say four weeks. If we can’t get it together in that time to figure out what we want from each other, then clearly it’s not worth the trouble.

—The West Wing, season 7 episode 19: Transition

Josh waits until the captain has turned off the fasten seat belt sign before launching into his well-crafted opening line. He’s not nervous, exactly, but this seems like a cruising altitude, no-seat-belts-necessary kind of conversation. It’s an excruciating wait, but finally the garbled announcement from the cockpit ends, the little seat belt icon overhead goes ding! and Josh turns to look at Donna, who is at least pretending to be absorbed in the paperback spy thriller she bought in the airport.

“So I hear there’s a window,” he says, in that sort of conversational volume he’s honed over thousands of hours of plane flights, loud enough for Donna to hear above the ambient noise of the plane but not so loud as to invite everyone around them into the conversation.

She glances up at him out of the corner of her eye, her attention still primarily on the novel in her hands. “The window’s all yours, Josh,” she says easily, gaze sliding back to the book. “I’d rather have the aisle seat, because— you know.”

Because her leg still bothers her sometimes, as much as she tries to keep that fact hidden from everyone else. Which he did actually know, which is why he picked seats on the left side of the plane when he booked the tickets and why he took the window seat when he boarded, so that Donna would be able to stretch her right leg out into the aisle whenever she needed. He knew that, he actively thought about it, and he did the kind and caring thing for her, just because it was the kind and caring thing to do, and for half a moment he wants credit for that.

“No, I know, that’s why I— nevermind,” Josh says, quickly pulling himself away from that line of thinking. This no-seat-belts-necessary conversation isn’t about scoring little points with Donna, and he definitely doesn’t want to think about the injury she’s still recovering from, or that lonely flight to Germany when he’d been nearly out of his mind with worry about her. Wrenching his thoughts away from those particular memories, he shakes his head. “No, I meant the— you know, the time window.”

His delivery is all off, now, not at all how he’d imagined during his quick packing and frantic dash to the airport, when the words he wanted to say to her wouldn’t stop circling his mind. He was going to be smooth and romantic about this, and it’s not off to a great start.

But somehow he seems to have caught Donna’s attention with his clarification, at least, and she turns to look at him more fully, resting the paperback in her lap with one finger trapped between the pages to mark her place. “The time window,” she repeats. It isn’t a question, but she’s looking at him like she expects him to keep talking, so he does.

“Yeah, the four week window. Or, three weeks, five days, and,” he glances at his watch, “I don’t know, nine hours. Or whatever, it’s gonna be hard to keep track with the time zone change.”

“And you want to have that talk now?” she asks with gentle disbelief.

Josh shrugs, the motion somewhat muffled by the airplane seat. “I don’t want it hanging over us all week.”

He watches as she glances away, down at the paperback in her hands, then out at the narrow aisle just beyond her seat. He doesn’t think she’s contemplating ways to escape this conversation — Are you really going to try to convince me that I’m the one who finds this all awkward and hard to navigate? she’d said, and of course she was right, Donna is always right — but one of the benefits of doing this on the plane is that neither of them can walk away. There are no meetings to get to, no phone calls to interrupt them, nothing that needs read other than the mass-market novel in her hands.

“Josh, we don’t have to talk about it now,” she says, sad and soft under the steel determination she tries to clad her words in. “We don’t have to talk about it at all this week. We can just enjoy Hawaii and not worry about any of it. We don’t have to talk about it next week, either, or the week after. We don’t ever have to talk about it, if you don’t want to.”

“I do want to, though,” he says sincerely, smiling at her and taking her left hand, the hand that isn’t currently acting as a bookmark, and lacing their fingers together. It might be a no-seat-belts-necessary conversation, but he thinks it might also be a holding-hands kind of conversation. At least, he hopes it is. “That’s not why I was panicking when you brought it up the other day.”

“Really?” Donna asks in a sarcastic deadpan. But her hand is still in his, and Josh decides to take that as a good sign.

“Yes, really,” he says, grinning wider at her.

“I definitely detected panic.”

“I didn’t say I wasn’t panicking. Just not about that.”

“What, then?”

There was one particular thought that had stormed in to occupy his mind as soon as he understood what she was getting at with her four week window speech. One thought that wound him up beyond even his usual levels of stress, that kept him awake at night and distracted during the day, despite his best efforts. One thought that was so overwhelming, so life-altering, that he couldn’t hope to tackle it head-on, not even in the privacy of his own mind.

“The size of the question is too big, is the thing,” he says, managing not to stumble over his words this time, and that’s slightly better, closer to how he imagined this going. “And I don’t want to get it wrong.”

“It’s not an SAT question, Josh. There isn’t a magical right answer.”

“I know that. But still, you have to admit, it’s a pretty big question: what we want from each other.”

“It is,” she agrees hesitantly. She starts to move, pauses, then seems to think better of it and follows through with the action of stowing her paperback in the seatback pocket in front of her, no longer bookmarked. Another good sign, he hopes.

“So I figured,” Josh says once Donna settles back in her seat and turns her gaze to him again, “that maybe I’ve got to come at this from the other side. Figure out what I don’t want. Cut the question down to size a bit.” He’s very consciously not calling it a problem. It’s a big question, and the answer carries a lot of consequences regardless of how this shakes out, but it is absolutely not a problem.

“Like what?” Donna asks, seeming genuinely curious.

“Like how this morning, you said you can’t work for me again, if there’s something happening between us. So that’s an easy one: I don’t want to be your boss again, not ever.”

“Then what was the Deputy Press Secretary offer?”

“That was—” He cuts himself off with a laugh, because it was stupid is what it was, and he knew it at the time. “It was the best I could do off the top of my head. It was desperate, if I’m being honest. I just didn’t want you running off to accept a six-figure offer from some thinktank or NGO before I could find the right fit for you in the new administration.”

“I accepted Helen’s offer,” Donna says in a rush, as though it’s a secret she’s been keeping from him for months, rather than a possibility she already told him about not twelve hours earlier. “First Lady’s Chief of Staff.”

“Donna, that’s great!” he says, throwing all of his enthusiasm into it, making sure it shows on his face and in his voice. “We’re gonna be Chiefs of Staff together!”

“And you’re okay with that?” she asks, and it hits him that she’s genuinely worried about it, that she didn’t call him earlier in the day to tell him she’d accepted the job because she was worried he wouldn’t take it well.

“More than okay,” he assures her, squeezing her hand. “You’re going to be great at it.”

“Thanks,” she says, and it’s still more hesitant than he’d like. Donna has seemed so confident lately, ever since Lou shoved them into a room together with a demand to figure things out, really. Confident about the work she does and her place on the campaign, confident about winning the election, confident about this thing between them. He kissed her first, sure, but after that Donna was the one setting the tone and the pace for their relationship. She’s not the one who finds this all awkward and hard to navigate, she told him so herself.

But Josh starts to wonder, with that little word hanging in the air between them, just how confident Donna actually feels about where their relationship is going. And if, just maybe, she’s been projecting confidence and nonchalance as a shield, something to hide her hurt behind in case he somehow manages to get the answer to the big question wrong.

He can’t get it wrong. He won’t.

“You’re going to be great,” he murmurs again, running his thumb over her knuckles. “We’ll have to talk policy goals, once we’re back at work. Get the West Wing and the East Wing working in coordination, right from the start. We can go to the Hill and bully Senators together,” he says with a grin, and watches in relief as Donna smiles back at him, wide and genuine and not nearly as fragile as before.

“That could be fun,” she agrees, and he can hear the smile in her voice, too.

“But,” he sighs theatrically, “that does mean that if the President-Elect ever comes to his senses and fires me, I won’t be able to come crawling to the East Wing for a job. I don’t think you should be my boss, either,” he adds more seriously.

She narrows her eyes at him with a playful edge he feels like he hasn’t seen in years. “Why? You think I wouldn’t be a good boss?”

“I know you’re going to be a great boss. I haven’t been doing such a good job with the boss thing lately, hopefully I can get you and Sam and Lou to smack me upside the head if it gets bad again. But I just mean, in terms of answering the big ‘what do we want from each other’ question, I think we should take any combination of boss and employee off the table.”

“And when you sat down to come up with an answer to that big question, the first thing you thought of was our working relationship?” There’s a layer of snark over her question, but Josh suspects it’s just another part of her shield, another way to hide how much is riding on the answer to the big question, how much this means to her.

“Nah, that was just the easy stuff,” he says, waving it away with his free hand. “I don’t want our working relationship to get in the way of the rest of what we want. We’ve always been a great team, professionally, but I don’t want that to be a distraction or an excuse not to—” he makes the mistake of looking over at her, and finds her watching him with wide eyes, dark blue in the dim cabin lighting, “not to, you know,” he stumbles, unable to look away, “...have a life.” He’s not even sure if that was a coherent sentence by the end, but he has to stop talking, has to swallow hard and watch her watching him.

After a moment, she nods. “Alright,” she says seriously, and it feels more like she’s responding to something she read off his face than whatever words he managed to string together there. “I suppose,” she says slowly, the corners of her mouth starting to curl up in a smile she’s desperately fighting against, “for the good of our relationship, I can give up my long-held dream of being your boss.”

“You bossed me around plenty all those years when I was supposedly your boss!” he shoots back in mock indignation, and she grins at him properly, all teeth and laughing eyes. “I can’t imagine that’ll change now.”

“You wouldn’t want it to,” Donna replies, knocking her shoulder into his, and they’ve somehow slipped out of the shielding snark and into a flirtatious banter that he’s missed.

“No,” Josh agrees. “In fact, I can add that to my list of things I don’t want: I don’t want you to ever stop bossing me around.”

“Good,” she says, her smile nearly blinding. “Someone has to keep you in check.”

“I wouldn’t trust the job to anyone else,” he tells her, and raises their joined hands to kiss the back of her palm. Beside him, Donna stills, and he looks up to find her watching him seriously again, her smile fading and a worry he thought he’d banished creeping back into her eyes.

“What else don’t you want, Josh?” she asks, her voice low and even.

“I don’t want this to just be a campaign fling.” The words pour out of him before he can stop to think about it, but they’re the words that had been circling his mind as he packed, as he sat in the back of the cab on the way to the airport, as he paced at the gate waiting for boarding to start. “Or, well— a transition fling, I guess,” he amends a moment later. “I don’t want this to be just a weird thing that happened when we lost our minds between Election Day and Inauguration Day, something we laugh about later, or worse, never talk about. I didn’t lose my mind, Donna,” he tells her sincerely. “Not about this, at least.”

She cracks the faintest of smiles. “The jury’s still out on the rest of your sanity,” she says, clearly teasing, even though her voice doesn’t quite reach the playful tone he associates with her teasing him. “What else?” she asks again. “What else don’t you want, Josh?”

He takes a deep breath and leans his head back against his seat. That was the easy stuff, the low-hanging fruit, the parts of this it didn’t cost him much to admit. But he owes her an answer, and he knows that the only way to the things he really wants is to take the chance on honesty.

“I don’t want this to end,” he says, risking a glance at her. “I don’t want to wake up one day and realize this is over, that I screwed it up.” He pauses for another deep breath and then says the thing that had been ever-present in his mind since she confronted him with the time window: “I don’t ever want to be your ex.”

“That’s an awfully bold statement for someone with commitment issues.”

“I don’t have commitment issues!”

“Your dating history might imply otherwise,” she counters, voice dry.

“I have no interest in dating!” he says flippantly, before realizing how that sounds. “Wait, no, that’s not— that came out wrong. What I mean is, the whole concept of dating just doesn’t— It’s these little appointments, right? You set up a time to meet, and then for the next few hours you’re on your best behavior, trying to prove how charming and witty and romantic you can be. And then the date ends, and you go back to your regular life, and it’s not— That’s not real. It’s some fake version of yourself that you’re trying to sell. And I’m just, I’m done with that. I have no interest in that kind of dating. And besides, we know each other too well for any of that, anyway.”

“So you don’t want this to be a fling, you don’t want to date, and you don’t want to break up?” Donna says, like he just asked her to accomplish three contradictory tasks for the good of the country. Her tone feels wrong for the weight and importance of this conversation, but she’s looking at him with something like trepidation, so the words tumble out of him before he can stop them.

“Yeah,” he breathes. “If that’s— I mean, assuming we’re on the same page here? I swear to god, Donna, if you want this to just be a fling you’re going to have to tell me that right now, using very small words.”

“You think I want this to be a fling?”

“No! I don’t know! I hope not! I just kind of assumed we’d be on the same page!”

“We are, Josh,” she says, squeezing his hand and pulling him out of his spiral before it can really get going.

“Well, good,” he replies, too emphatically, his bluster taking a moment to dissipate. “Because I have a, you know, an actual list, and if we got derailed on ‘not a fling’, I’m not sure where that would leave us.”

“Having a fling in Hawaii, presumably.”

“I’m serious!”

Donna squeezes his hand again, keeping the pressure up until his heart rate begins to slow. “I know, Josh.”

“I just don’t want you to think that I don’t take this seriously.”

“You made an actual list?” she asks, some of that teasing, flirtatious tone working its way back into her voice. “Can I see it?”

“I didn’t write it down,” he scoffs.

“Is it an ‘actual’ list if you didn’t write it down?”

“It’s a mental list! I don’t need to write it down, I’m not going to forget what’s on it.”

“A mental list of things you don’t want.”

“I'm narrowing down the size of the big question!” he shoots back defensively.

“The ‘what we want from each other’ question,” she nods, like she wasn't the one to send him off on this tangent to begin with.

“I couldn’t just say I want everything with you, that’s not a good enough answer.”

He feels her go still beside him, where they’re pressed together valiantly trying to share the narrow armrest, and with a sudden panic he wonders if that was exactly the wrong thing to say.

“No, not everything,” she says softly, unfocused gaze on the seatback rather than on him. “Not boss-employee, not dating, not exes, not a fling.” She takes a deep breath and turns back to him, seeming to pull herself out of whatever contemplation his words threw her into. “What exactly does that leave, Josh?”

The words everything else are on the tip of his tongue, but he bites them back. There are more entries on his mental list, and they exist to give that everything else a more specific shape. That’s the whole point of the list. “I don’t think we should have separate apartments, after we get back to DC,” he says. Donna’s eyebrows furrow, like that was not at all what she expected him to say, so he hastens to add, “I just mean, we’re both going to have demanding jobs, with long hours and late nights. It would be nice to spend the time we do have outside of work together, rather than trying to coordinate when we can drop by the other person’s place for a few short hours.”

“Are you asking me to move in with you?” she asks, eyes wide and brow still furrowed.

Josh winces, realizing he probably should have done just that, but there are other complications to consider. “I think I need to find a new place, actually — CJ said something about the Secret Service taking over her guest bedroom, and I have a planning email from Ron Butterfield that I've been meaning to read. I don’t think my one bedroom, eight hundred square foot apartment is going to cut it, after January twentieth. But maybe we could find a new place together?”

“Oh, you’re really serious about this,” Donna says, more surprised than disbelieving, he thinks.

“Are we back around to ‘not a fling’?” he asks, squinting at her.

She shakes her head and turns towards him, pressing her left shoulder into her seat so she can look at him as straight on as the small space will allow. It’s somewhat hampered by her seat belt, which she deftly releases with her right hand without removing her left hand from his grasp. Josh is reminded that this is a no-seat-belts-necessary conversation, and undoes his in solidarity, if significantly less grace.

“You want to move in together,” she says slowly, like she’s still trying to wrap her head around the concept, “and you don’t ever want us to break up.”

“Yeah.”

“So,” Donna pauses, wets her lips with the tip of her tongue, and for a moment Josh thinks seriously about kissing her — but he wants to hear whatever thought she’s so clearly working up the nerve to say, so he keeps the impulse to himself and waits as patiently as he can. “Theoretically at least, we could buy a house together. Since we’re never going to break up.”

She looks up at him from under her lashes, a posture he associates with difficult questions, with answers she doesn’t want to hear but knows she needs to. Buying a house hadn’t even occurred to him, but shared property ownership fits in easily with everything else he imagines for their future, so the question doesn’t quite bowl him over the way he thinks she expected it to.

“Yeah,” he says with as much nonchalance as he can summon, and watches as her shoulders visibly relax. “Theoretically, sure. I’m not sure the transition is the best time to go house-hunting, but we could talk about it.”

“And you think we’re ready for that?” she asks, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear with her free hand. “Living together? We’re not rushing into things?”

“Nah, this feels like the furthest thing from rushing. I wanted to ask you to move in with me years ago, after all those months when you practically lived at my place. But the boss-employee thing kinda got in the way.” He flashes her a smile, the one with the dimples that he knows she likes.

“Josh...” she sighs, dropping her gaze to their joined hands, and with sudden horror he realizes it’s disappointment he hears in her voice.

“What?” he asks, stumbling over the words. “What did I—”

“You didn’t want to ask me to move in back then.” It’s not a question, just a statement of fact. A fact that she’s wrong about, but it’s her certainty that scares him.

“Yes I did,” he says in a rush, anxious to clear up whatever misunderstanding has led her to that incorrect assumption and get back to his list and the last few supremely important items on it.

“Then why didn’t you?” she asks, glancing up at him with her chin tucked low again. She asks it like it’s checkmate, like there is only one possible answer, like she’s caught him in a lie.

“Because I couldn’t,” he tells her honestly, the words falling out of him now that there’s finally nothing to hold them back. “Because I knew I wouldn’t be able to— to function, without you, at the White House. I didn’t last a week there after you left. If I’d told you how I felt, way back then, I would have lost you.”

“How you felt?” Donna prompts when he doesn’t go on, and oh, he can feel the weight in her words, the importance of her question, the dangerous territory he’s barrelling into. But there’s no sense in stopping now, nothing for it but to finally crash through this wall and see what’s on the other side.

“I’ve been in love with you for something like eight years now, Donnatella,” he says, the confession rolling off his tongue like he’s told her a hundred times before, like he hasn’t spent the better part of a decade carefully keeping those exact words in check. “This is just the first time I’ve been able to do anything about it.”

She turns and sits back in her seat so abruptly that the terror is instantly back, the fear that he’s said the wrong thing rushing through his veins and stealing his breath. “Donna,” he starts, clutching her hand so she can’t pull away any further.

“Shut up,” she commands in an undertone, looking straight ahead rather than at him.

“Donna.”

“Shush, I’m recalibrating.”

“Recalibrating?” he repeats. “What does that mean?” He finally tells her he loves her and she’s recalibrating??

She doesn’t answer, so he sits in silence, her hand still clasped in his, and tries valiantly to give her all the time she needs to process whatever is going on in her head. After the most tense thirty seconds he’s ever endured outside the White House or a hospital, he has to clamp his jaw shut to keep from saying something to try to hurry her along.

“You’re freaking out,” she says levelly, eyes fixed on the seatback in front of her.

“Well, yeah—”

“Stop freaking out, I’m just—”

“Donna—”

“Have you ever prepared for the wrong meeting?” she asks in a rush, still avoiding his gaze. “Just, one hundred percent ready for something that, as it turns out, isn’t happening right now?”

“I mean, yeah, but—”

“You were going to take Amy to Tahiti,” she says, finally turning to look at him.

The non sequitur throws him for a moment. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“You were going to take Amy to Tahiti, and when you couldn’t go you decorated your apartment like Tahiti just for her. And then you still ended up breaking up with her a few months later.”

The comparison between then and now is ridiculous, and he would’ve expected Donna to know that. “This isn’t anything like whatever I had with Amy!”

“How is it different?” she demands, and it occurs to him maybe she really doesn’t know.

“I wasn’t in love with Amy!” he says, throwing his free hand up in exasperation. How can she not see, how can she not know?

“Then why keep dating her?”

“Plausible deniability,” he bites out. “If anyone had ever found out—”

“Can I get you two any snacks?” an unfamiliar voice breaks into their illusion of privacy. “Anything to drink?”

Donna turns to the flight attendant who has suddenly appeared in the aisle beside her seat and rattles off their usual commercial flight order with easy poise, as if they haven’t just been interrupted in the middle of what might well be the most important conversation of either of their lives. Josh forces himself to take a deep breath, scrubbing his left hand across his face before mechanically putting down his seatback tray and accepting the soda and peanuts Donna hands him, moving on autopilot even though he has no real interest in the food.

“Plausible deniability,” Donna says quietly, once the drink cart has moved on past them, “...about me?” she asks. “Because of our jobs?” At his nod, she adds, “But we never— Nothing unethical ever happened between us.”

“Doesn’t matter,” he says, shaking his head. “The optics of it would have made anyone doubt our denials. Even just an allegation, or a particularly persistent rumor, could have exploded into a scandal and reflected badly on the whole administration, not to mention derailed our careers. But if I could say, ‘of course I’m not in love with Donna, I’m dating someone else!’ — even just for a little while — it helped to quiet some of those rumors.”

“And that’s why you— Eight years, Josh??” Her expression is back to that shuttered shock, like she’s questioning her every assumption. Recalibrating, he supposes, and he’s not quite sure how they ended up here, his very important list momentarily abandoned in the light of the fact that he apparently hid his feelings for Donna so well that it was a secret even from her.

“I really thought you knew,” he says, his voice a bit weak as his stomach flips over, imagining how it must have looked from Donna’s perspective.

“I really thought you didn’t know,” she fires back immediately. “You can’t just— You can’t say ‘eight years’ and expect me to leave it at that! When did you know, exactly?”

“Inauguration Day,” he says without having to think about it. “The first one.”

Her eyebrows crease as she considers his answer, probably going over her own memories of that day. “At the balls that night?’

Josh shakes his head without moving his gaze from her face. “No, earlier in the day, when we did that tour of the office and you were so excited about your desk, and that silly print-out with your name on it, taped to the wall of your cubicle.”

Her eyes are still distant, but she smiles like it’s a reflex, like she can’t help but smile when remembering that first day of the Bartlet administration. He smiles along with her, no choice but to smile when Donna smiles.

“And I realized, standing there watching you go on and on about your new desk in the White House, that I’d probably just made the best and worst decision of my entire life, bringing you with me into that job,” he says, running his thumb over her knuckles and thinking about the moment that’s been crystal clear in his memory for nearly eight years now. “Because we would get to do all of that together: get a good man elected President and then work to change the country under his leadership. What felt, at the time, like the most important jobs we’d ever have. And I’d get to see you every day, probably spend more time with you than with anyone else, strategy meetings and late nights and out of town trips and nearly every meal, for at least four years, eight if we were lucky and worked harder than we’d ever worked.

“But it also meant that I couldn’t tell you, couldn’t tell anybody, couldn’t do anything about those feelings until we were out of the White House. All I could do was try to keep a lid on it and focus on the work, and try to distract and misdirect whenever it started to get too obvious.” He meets Donna’s gaze to find her studying his face, that recalibrating look shifting into something more contemplative. “I really thought you knew,” he says again, his voice barely above a murmur. “That you, I don’t know, figured it out somewhere along the way, I guess. That we’d silently agreed to leave it unspoken.”

She shakes her head and looks away. “I always managed to convince myself that I was reading too much into every little thing you did,” she says wryly. “That I was letting my own feelings color my perception of reality. This... puts things into a slightly different perspective. Might even explain why you kept going back to Amy.”

“You dated plenty over the last eight years, too,” he says, but he manages to make it more curious than accusatory.

“Well, yeah, to try to get over you,” Donna says, flashing him a fragile smile. “Exactly the same as I was planning to do when the wheels inevitably came off this— whatever it is we’re doing.”

“Donna,” he says gently, and waits until she looks over at him, unable to stop the smile spreading across his face. “The wheels aren’t going to come off this.”

She traces her gaze over his face searchingly. “You’re sure?” she asks, her voice breaking on the last word.

He nods and kisses the back of her hand again, feeling her let out a shuddering sigh. “Turns out it’s hard to sustain a relationship when you’re in love with someone else,” he tells her against her skin. “Won’t be a problem this time,” he adds, and can’t help but grin up at her. “I’m all in on this. And there’s more left on my list, you know.”

“More?” she asks in disbelief. “Beyond— where are we at now? In love, living together, never breaking up? What else—?”

“No, hang on,” he interrupts her, sitting up a bit straighter in his seat and utterly unable to keep his grin from sliding towards smug. “We are in love, Donnatella? Are you really going to claim to be part of that we without making your own confession, or so much as admit to your feelings out loud?”

She blows out an unsteady huff of air. “You’re not the only one who got far too good at hiding their feelings, Joshua.”

It’s clearly a deflection, obvious that she’s not quite ready to talk about it, so rather than push her on it, he says, “That’s something else I can add to my list of things I don’t want: I don’t ever want to have to hide my feelings for you again. I’ve had enough of that for a lifetime. I’d rather run another Presidential campaign right now, on zero sleep and no access to caffeine, than ever have to do that again.”

Donna laughs and presses her forehead to his shoulder, but her voice sounds watery and quavering beneath the laughter. “I don’t want to hide any more, either.” She leans back only far enough to look him in the eye and says, “I love you, Josh. I’ve been in love with you for—” she cracks a smile, lopsided and genuine, even as her eyes glimmer with a hint of tears, “—something like eight years, now.”

He has to kiss her at that, twisting in his seat to try to find the best angle so he can show her just what it means to finally hear that from her.

“Something like eight years, huh?” he asks when they separate.

“Something like,” she confirms, leaning back into her seat and pressing her shoulder to his. “I couldn’t admit it to myself for a long time, but in hindsight, I know it’s one of the reasons I came back to the campaign that April.”

He turns that bit of information over in his mind, thinks back to how relieved he was when Donna walked back into the Nashua office in 1998, after he all but convinced himself he was never going to see her again — thinks about all the years he sent her flowers in April, how he couldn’t help but mark that anniversary. “When did you admit it to yourself?” he asks softly.

“When you were—” She stops abruptly, not meeting his gaze, her free hand idly toying with the cup of orange juice she’d requested from the flight attendant, balanced on her tray table. “When you were in surgery,” she says evenly, without any particular emotion, “and Toby told me it was critical.”

Toby once vaguely alluded to that conversation in the GW waiting room, and having lived through his own version of it in Germany, Josh can fill in the rest well enough on his own to understand what she means, how that would’ve been the moment when she couldn’t deny it anymore. He squeezes Donna’s hand, like he did when he woke up in a hospital bed, like he did when she woke up in hers. All those years keeping his love for her a secret, she was doing the same. She had been his all along, even when neither of them could acknowledge it.

“And you’re really going to try to tell me,” he says in that same soft tone, fighting to keep the growing sense of victory out of his voice, “that I didn’t want to ask you to move in with me, way back then?”

“Josh,” she scoffs, in a tone that means she absolutely can hear his smugness anyway.

“Only, I couldn’t, ‘cause that would have been inappropriate,” he says, smiling at her. “So I’m asking you now. Move in with me? Or, you know— help me pick out a place where we can live together?”

It should be an easy yes from her, given that they seem to be on the same page, given that she just admitted to being in love with him for almost as long as he’s been in love with her — but instead Donna hesitates, opening her mouth to reply before apparently thinking better of it and clicking her jaw shut again, and Josh abruptly realizes that she isn’t smiling back at him.

“Donna,” he says, leaning forward to try to catch her eye. “I thought we were—”

“No, it’s not—” she starts, holding up her free hand to stop him, then huffs out a breath and tries again. “I want to live together, Josh, I do. It’s just— I’m still not convinced we’re not moving too fast.”

“Moving too fast after eight years?”

“Eight years of not actually talking about any of this!”

“Because we couldn’t!”

“And then this last year of hardly talking at all, until suddenly we’re doing this—”

“Can we not,” he demands, cutting her off, “invoke all those months when I was convinced that you hated me?”

“You want to talk about moving in together, but you don’t want to talk about the misunderstanding that—”

“It was a pretty big misunderstanding!”

“Yes, because I didn’t know you were in love with me!” she snaps, bringing him up short. “Because I was nursing a broken heart and what I thought were unrequited feelings, for nearly a decade, and dating hadn’t helped me get over you! Casual flings hadn’t helped, trying to throw myself into serious relationships hadn’t helped, and trying to do more in my job in the West Wing hadn’t helped. Nothing helped, Josh! I couldn’t get over you. So I did the only thing I could think to do: I left. And that still didn’t help.”

“Donna,” he starts, when she pauses to swat away a tear rolling down her cheek, but before he can say anything else, she shakes her head.

“I never hated you, Josh. Not even when we were barely talking. But then you kissed me, and then you apologized for it, and I— I didn’t know what to think! Except that maybe none of this means as much to you as it does to me.”

“Of course it does! Why would you think—”

“I thought you were going to break up with me!”

“What?” he says, utterly baffled. “When?”

“When you called me on your way back from California, after going to see Sam, and you said we needed to talk. Except I wasn’t sure if I could even really think of it as a break up, since I didn’t know if this actually qualified as a relationship in the first place!”

“And yet you apparently checked my schedule or tracked my flight or whatever, and came over the moment I got home, very intent on not talking!”

“I wanted to enjoy it while it lasted, Josh! And then I woke up alone in your bed, and all I could think to do was give you a graceful way out of this that might not completely ruin our friendship!”

“That’s what the time window thing was about??”

“Yes! And I could tell you were panicking about it, and then this morning you said there was no way you could possibly meet my four week deadline, and somehow now you have it all figured out??”

“I had it all figured out this morning!”

“Then why didn’t you say so?”

“Because a random hallway at the OEOB didn't seem like the right place to propose!” Josh snaps, the words flying out of him before he can think about what he's saying. “Because I couldn’t even start to get my head around where the right place would be or all the things we needed to talk about first, until Sam all but fired me from my own transition team!”

“You were going to propose?” Donna asks, the disbelief in her voice cutting through his tirade.

“Not this morning, no!”

“And now?”

“No! Wait, no— that is objectively the wrong answer— I just mean, I was thinking something more like— like a walk on the beach at sunset, or a romantic restaurant or, or, I don’t know, standing on the lip of a volcano or something! Not at thirty-eight thousand feet somewhere above the flyover states!”

“I'm from a flyover state, Josh.”

“I’m pretty sure we’re not over Wisconsin right now!”

“And that’s what’s stopping you from proposing??”

“Nothing’s stopping me!”

A familiar noise of frustration escapes her. “Josh! I love you, I really do, but we have to be honest with ourselves about this! We don’t need to set a new world speed record for jumping through every stage of a relationship in a week!”

“I am being honest!”

“Then let's focus on the living together topic and not throw around words like propose when you don’t really mean it!”

“Who says I don’t—!” He stops talking abruptly, too frustrated to continue. This argument is patently ridiculous and he can prove it to her. He frees his hand from hers with the intention of putting up his seatback tray, only to realize that the tray is still holding the bag of peanuts and little plastic cup of soda that Donna got for him. Without pausing, he tosses back all the liquid in the cup without really tasting it, then puts the empty cup and the peanuts on Donna’s tray table and snaps his tray back into place.

“Josh, I didn’t mean—” she starts.

“Apparently I’ve given you a whole lot of reasons to underestimate my commitment here, and I don’t want to do that anymore,” he says, leaning forward to pull his duffle bag out from under the seat in front of him. He unzips it on muscle memory, reaches in and finds the internal zipper pocket, quickly opening it without needing to see it, and pulls out the sole object from inside. It’s small, fitting into the curve of his palm naturally, but even now it doesn’t feel like his, it never really did — it always belonged to Donna, even when she didn’t know it. In one motion he pulls it free of the bag and plunks it down on the corner of her tray table, vaguely registering movement out of the corner of his eye as she quickly snatches up her orange juice to keep it from sloshing over the edge of her cup, while he zips his duffle bag closed again and kicks it back under the seat.

“I don’t have to pretend that I’m ready for a long-term relationship,” he says, leaning back in his seat and looking at Donna, “or whatever nonsense Amy was spouting the other day after the wake. Not with you. I am done pretending when it comes to you. The longest term you’ve got, baby, that’s what I want from you. That’s what I want us to want from each other.”

Donna is sitting stock still, her cup curled protectively toward her chest as she stares, pale and unblinking, at the small black velvet box he placed in the corner of her tray table. “Josh,” she manages after a moment, her voice choked and barely audible.

He sighs and runs a hand through his hair, trying to calm his galloping heartbeat, and it occurs to him that he let go of Donna’s hand in his rush to produce the one thing that might serve as adequate evidence of the depth of his feelings for her. Moving slowly, cautiously, he gently laces their fingers together again, relieved when she grips his hand firmly, even as her gaze remains fixed on the black velvet box.

“Listen,” he says carefully, “I know I’ve been rushing Sam, trying to get him to say yes to the DCoS position, but that’s just because we literally do not have the time for him to dither around on this, especially when it seems so completely impossible that he’d say no, that we could possibly run this administration without him— But anyway, that’s not the point. My point is: this isn’t me rushing you. I’m not trying to set a world speed record, or make your feelings fit into my calendar, or give you any sort of ultimatum, or anything like that. I just— I need you to know that I am serious about this. The absolute maximum amount of serious possible, when it comes to us. And I knew I was exactly this level of serious about it the moment you brought up the time window. I just couldn’t think clearly enough to figure out what to do about it until I was out of the transition office and packing to go on this trip with you.”

He can see Donna’s hand shaking as she tips up her orange juice and drinks it quickly, her gaze immediately returning to the little velvet box. Without taking her eyes off it, she stacks her empty cup inside his and then curls the fingers of her right hand around the edge of the tray table, not quite touching the proof he’s presented to her.

“Is that—?” she asks in a small voice.

“Yeah.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really.”

“And it’s for me?”

He smiles, sad and fond, at the incredulity in her voice. “It was always yours, Donna. It was always meant for you. There’s never been anyone else I could have possibly given it to.”

She looks over at him, her gaze tracing across his face even as her expression remains fixed in that look of shocked disbelief. “So this isn’t a fling in Hawaii?”

“No,” he agrees, shaking his head.

“And you’re not going to break up with me?”

“Never,” he assures her, squeezing her hand.

“And you don’t want me to, I don’t know— quit my job? Not work in the White House?”

The idea is ridiculous, and he suspects that deep down Donna knows that. But this moment seems to be about reassuring her, and so he answers with a simple and honest, “Of course not.”

“And you were going to— You brought this with you to propose?” she asks, her gaze sliding back to the little box.

“I didn’t have some grand plan I was going to ambush you with,” he admits ruefully. “But I knew I wanted to have the conversation, so it seemed like a good idea to bring it along.”

“When did you know?”

“Inauguration Day 1999,” Josh replies, and grins at her when she looks up at him again, then adds, unable to stop himself: “And when you took me to the emergency room to get my hand stitched up. And then again on Inauguration Day 2003. When you were going into surgery in Germany and asked to see me, and when you woke up from surgery and said my name. When you kissed me back after that national polling, and then like five separate times on election day. When you told me we had a four week window to figure this out, and all I could think was I never want to be your ex. Earlier today, when Sam told me in no uncertain terms that I needed to get a life. After I called you and asked you to come with me to Hawaii, and part of me was convinced that this was the only thing I actually needed to pack—”

Donna leans over the armrest and kisses him, ending his impromptu list in the best way possible. When they part, he presses his forehead to hers, not yet ready to put any space between them.

“If you think we’re moving too fast,” he murmurs quietly, “or if you’ve, I don’t know, developed a distaste for marriage as an institution or something — we don’t have to do this. But that ring is yours, Donna. It’s been yours for a long time now.”

She leans back only far enough to look him in the eye, that considering, recalibrating expression resolving little by little. “Can I see it?” she asks in a matching tone.

With the fingers of her left hand still laced with his right, it ends up taking both of them to open the hinged lid of the black velvet box, Josh holding the base of the box while Donna lifts the top. He doesn’t need to look down at the ring, he’s seen it more times than he can count, so he watches her face instead, watches a parade of emotions tick past in each little twitch of her eyebrows and curl of her mouth.

“Josh,” she says after a moment, still staring down at the box. “Josh, this is your mother’s ring.”

“Yeah,” he breathes out, weirdly relieved that she recognized it without him having to explain. “She gave it to me, to give to you.”

Donna glances from the ring to him and back. “I... When?”

“That Thanksgiving after she moved to Florida. She sat me down and told me that she wanted me to have her wedding ring, that she wanted me to give it to someone who would make me as happy as my dad had made her. And she said it with such a— a heavy implication that she knew that person was you, that I... kind of ended up telling her everything.”

“Josh, that was five years ago.”

“Yeah.”

“So every time I’ve talked to your mom in the last five years—??”

“...Yeah.” His mother knew how he felt about Donna, but she also understood all the reasons he couldn’t act on it. She’d kept his secret, but that hadn’t stopped her from privately considering Donna to be family, the last five years.

Donna hesitates, then runs the pad of one finger over the platinum setting, the square center diamond flanked by smaller matching stones. “You’ve had this for five years, and you were just... waiting?”

He nods. “And I’ll keep waiting, if that’s what you want,” he says quietly. It’s absolutely not what he wants, but he’ll wait the rest of his life for Donna to be ready, if that’s what it takes.

What he wants from her, what he wants for this relationship, can’t be so simply contained in a word like marriage. It’s not about the labels, or the legal standing, or any sort of societal expectation, and as much as he loves the idea of being married to Donna, he would happily give it up if it meant he got to keep her in his life. He would give up pretty much anything to keep his promise to never be her ex. Whatever it takes, so long as he never has to be separated from her. He doesn’t want another misunderstanding to ever come between them because he kept his feelings from her. He never wants her to doubt how strong his feelings are for her, not ever again.

“No,” Donna says, raising her eyes to his. It takes him a moment to catch up with what she’s saying, but before he can voice his confusion, she clarifies, “I don’t want to keep waiting. I think we’ve made each other wait long enough. I think...” She bites her lip, a smile starting to spread across her face. “I think you should ask me.”

“Yeah?” he breathes, dumbstruck.

She nods, smiling properly. “Definitely.”

And then she gently untangles their hands and turns to face him, raising her eyebrows expectantly.

“...Wait, now?” Josh demands when he finally realizes what she’s implying. “You wouldn’t rather wait until we actually get to Hawaii? Do this someplace, I don’t know, more romantic?”

“This is plenty romantic!”

“Coach seats on a red-eye flight is your definition of romantic?”

“Well not when you put it that way,” she huffs. “But just, look out that window, Josh.” She gestures behind him, and he turns to look, genuinely trying to understand the way she sees the world, the way she sees this moment. “We’ve got a sky full of stars and all those twinkling lights down below. And the old-school romanticism of winging our way silently through the night while the world sleeps, knowing that in the morning, we’ll step off the plane and into somewhere completely new.”

“You know planes aren’t actually silent, right?” he teases, turning away from the — admittedly — beautiful sight out the window and back to the even better one sitting beside him.

Donna waves away his interjection. “And just think about how often we’ve been here before, the two of us. Late night cross-country flights, huddled together working under our little reading lights until I fall asleep on your shoulder? That’s romantic, Josh, all of it. Besides, it could be years before we’re able to get away to Hawaii again, but we know we’ll be right back here, at thirty-eight thousand feet, plenty of times in the future. And every time, I’ll be able to say: this is where you proposed.”

He has to take a moment to just look at her, to memorize the way she looks right now, glowing under the dim cabin lighting, to memorize the way she’s looking at him, without a hint of recalibrating, without any of her confidence-as-a-shield, with nothing but love in her eyes as she gazes back at him, unhurried and unafraid.

“God, I love you,” he says, the words tumbling out of him without conscious thought.

Her smile turns a little mischievous. “I know.”

That isn’t just an acknowledgement of his feelings, Josh realizes with stark clarity. She really knows now, finally. After eight long years of keeping his feelings for her secret, eight long years of Donna convincing herself that he couldn’t possibly love her in return, she finally knows what this means to him. She’s stopped questioning it, stopped doubting him, stopped wondering where this thing between them is headed. She knows. And she loves him back. She doesn’t want to wait anymore, and Josh is gripped with the sudden conviction that this can’t possibly happen soon enough.

Tearing his eyes away from her, he looks down at the little velvet box still clutched in his hand, trying to come up with the right words, with any words, to voice the most important question of his life. But he was never a speech writer, he’s never been any good at that kind of planned eloquence, only the kind that just sort of spontaneously happens sometimes when he opens his mouth and says exactly what he means. The nervousness that ripples through him is incongruous with the current moment, and yet he can’t help the way his heart rate kicks up. He knows she’s going to say yes, and she’s already declared the circumstances to be plenty romantic, all he has to do now is open his mouth and say what he means.

Sure. No pressure.

But first: this was always a holding-hands conversation, so he scoops Donna’s left hand up with his right again, cradling her palm against his rather than lacing their fingers together this time, and takes courage from the way she clings to him. “Donnatella Moss,” he says, looking up and meeting her gaze. “I’ve been in love with you for a really long time now, and I don’t want to keep it a secret anymore. I don’t want you to ever doubt how much I love you, and I don’t ever want to face a future without you in it.” Across the armrest from him, Donna is watching him with rapt attention, her eyes starting to fill with tears — which makes his throat tighten in response, nearly overwhelmed by the realization that this is actually happening, right now. And yet he still hasn’t managed to ask the all-important question, his brain having decided to take a rambling and circuitous route to the point. “I don’t want to wait anymore,” he says before his emotions can get the best of him. “Marry me? Please?”

Donna holds his gaze for a long moment, then takes a breath and blinks her tears away. “Yes, Josh,” she says, nodding enthusiastically. “I would really, very much, like to marry you.”

Josh grins at her, because he can’t not, and kisses her swiftly before maneuvering his mother’s ring out of the box it’s lived in for the past five years and onto Donna’s left ring finger, where it was always meant to be. She turns her hand, watching the way her ring catches the light, and he can feel her breath hitch in her chest.

“I really am going to cry now,” she tells him, turning towards him and away from the sight of the engagement ring on her finger, where he’s dreamed of it being for so long, “so you better kiss me again, quick.”

He does as she asks, laughing with a lightheaded sort of joy even as he brushes her tears away with his thumbs. He hadn’t envisioned this, when he was packing and riding in the cab and waiting at the gate, hadn’t been able to think further than telling Donna that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. But somehow this is exactly right, exactly what he didn’t know he was longing for in all those years when he couldn’t tell her how he felt. It was always going to be like this: the two of them on the move together, bantering and arguing and finally finding a way to be honest with each other. Nearly a decade of knowing her, of quietly loving her, and it was all always leading to this.

Not that this is any sort of ending, he knows. It’s just the next step. It’s what’s next.

And he couldn’t be happier.

--

To be continued in The Calendar's End

[planandexecution]

sonic 4 having metal sonic + metal sonic debuting in sonic cd + sonic cd having time travel + leaked storyboard version of the ark blowing up in sonic 3 called space station time travel……. i don’t know what this means but some dots are connecting in some kind of way

[morninkim]

d&d tomberly... save me..

d&d tomberly

save me d&d tomberly

[weallpartyatybcpatricksfuneral]

ngl smile for the paparazzi is a genius song and I'm tired of pretending that cobra starship wasn't a genius band at times

[reborrowing]

Pocket Guides to Zombie Survival, Ch 1

next a couple ghoulish little scavengers discover actual ghoul, unaware that the apocalypse began several months back. ~2k words, horror g/t but the horror isn’t coming from the gt (yet). cw for gore, death, zombies and associated horrors

There was a body at the human campground. 

It was the first human to show up in the woods for months, several weeks past the giants' usual spring return to the woods, and it was dead. There should have been human hikers tromping through their wide, winding trails months ago. There should be families making temporary homes out of the neatly divided lots. There was just the one body, lying in front of its RV for nearly a week.

Bell missed the annual parade of giants and all the bright colors and chaos and treasure they hauled in with them. She was tired of the random, menial tasks around the warren she kept getting assigned in lieu of borrowing and volunteered herself to go investigate the body. She figured a dead giant couldn’t be much more dangerous than a sleeping one. 

Her stomach shifted now that they were actually approaching the body. It was disgusting, yes, a landscape of raw meat and gore, but there was something else too. Something she couldn't quite identify that urged to get away. 

Whatever it was she sensed, Pepper didn't seem to notice it at all. She bounced through the clearing towards the sickening heap. She'd invited herself along and Bell couldn’t complain. Her sister was always itching to do something stupid and Bell had learned early in life that it was best to indulge her before she found worse trouble on her own. It was a bonus that the warren-keepers felt more comfortable giving her investigation their blessing. Borrowers like herself might train to evade humans and navigate their turf, but Pepper was a guard. They trusted her to be able to evade or defend against anything else that might be out here.

"Ew,” Pepper said, “I thought that scout was exaggerating, but ghosts, that's nasty!”

She pointed to the looming mess ahead, as if Bell might otherwise miss it. The giant’s shoulder looked like it had exploded. The top of their flannel was in shreds. Rotting meat sloughed off its shoulder and the left half of its face had been ripped off of the cadaver’s head, hanging on by just a few stringy bits.

Bell edged closer. There were no clean cuts. It was pulpy, a bit like when a crow ripped apart a squirrel, although it looked like most of the meat had been only shoved to the side, not carried off or eaten. What was left was a jagged, bloody horror with piles of rotting slurry that all stank worse than a sewer.

It wasn’t all bad. The body's lower half was perfectly intact, including its jeans. Bell had been hoping to bring back some denim. She would just have to hold her breath for the harvest.

She stepped over a lost clump of hair to have a look at what was left of the poor giant’s face. The half resting on the ground was gray and bloated but otherwise still human. A rough, reddish outline of teeth marred the corpse's forehead, where it still had enough skin to mar. Bell bristled, her fur suddenly standing up on end as if she were being watched. That same urge to get away got louder.

The body had been bit by something big, at least dog-sized. But there was no way it was a dog that had made that mark, or any kind of predator she’d seen. It had wide, flat teeth in front and was made of two nearly even parentheses. She licked her lips. It was a lot like the shape of her own bite, if her canines were duller. And huge.

Her gaze slid across the gory remains to look at the corpse’s exposed jaw, feeling ill. It was supposed to be a ghost story that humans ate people. But she looked at the teeth lurking behind the shredded tissue, she saw that they were close to the same size as the indentations on the forehead. There was at least one other giant nearby, one that had managed to go unnoticed by a half dozen different scouts. One that was crazy enough to try and eat another human.

Her thoughts were interrupted by her sister shouting.

"Hey, Bell! Do you know if humans are poisonous? I mean, if you ate it, could you eat it or would it make you—"

"Do not! Gross!” Bell snapped.

"Not me! No, Ew! It’s just, we’re not the only scavengers out here. He’s been out here for days, how come nothing else is eating him? I don’t even hear any maggots.”

Bell turned as Pepper’s blonde head appeared over the body’s forearm. She had its watch proudly slung over her shoulder. But her quizzical expression suddenly popped into wide-eyed, bared-fangs fear. The dead face shifted with a loud, wet noise. She froze as a rush of air blew over her, sucking at her hair, as the corpse inhaled through its empty cavity of a nose.

Bell ran for the cover of the nearest bush. Behind her, Pepper squealed as the corpse shuddered around her and began to get up. It was clumsy, maybe because so many of its muscles were missing or rotten, or maybe because it was dead, but that was hardly important when it was a few hundred times heavier than the two of them combined.

Bell ducked into the foliage and turned to wait for Coop. She watched in terror as her sister jammed a needle through its palm to no effect.

Anyone knew a needle couldn’t stop a human, hardly anything could, but it was supposed to at least give them pause. But the body didn’t flinch. It didn’t even seem to notice the metal now lodged in its flesh. Its hand slid backwards, knocking Coop along with it. There was a nasty snap as it pushed itself to its feet, back up to its towering height. Coop lay crumpled beside it. 

It swayed for a moment and sniffed at the air like an animal before turning to where Bell was hiding. It was unsteady, with wide and unpredictable steps. Bell hunkered back further into the bramble. It crashed carelessly through the thorny growth, only missing her by chance.

Her heart hammered as she wove through the branches. She pushed herself off the side of the not-so-dead body’s sneaker and back into the clearing for Pepper. The giant stumbled around in the undergrowth for a few seconds before huffing in another breath and turning straight towards her. Bell paled and ran ran faster.

Pepper was curled up with pain. At a glance, her leg was broken and her shoulder was messed up, any other injuries could be assessed later. The important point was that she wouldn’t be able to make her own way back to the warren or some other safe haven. Bell was going to have to carry her, which meant they weren’t going to be able to run.

And if that thing was using smell to see them, ghosts only knew how far it could track them from anyways. She couldn’t leave it a trail back to the whole warren. She swallowed nervously and dragged Pepper under the nearby RV before it caught up to them. It slammed against the side but, for whatever reason, didn’t think to get down on its knees and crawl after them. It shook the whole structure, stubbornly banging against the wall, but Bell and Pepper were able to pick their way up to a gap leading into the RV’s interior.

They would just have to hope it gave up quick.

--

There was a lone human left hiding out at the campgrounds.

There had been four of them when their RV had pulled into the lot last week.

The first, they’d known was sick before they had even parked the camper and set up camp. Markus swore up and down and over and over that it wasn’t the sickness, even stripped down to his boxers to show off that now zombies had caught him. It was just his lungs acting up again, he insisted. They’d been bad for years, and now he was going without any kind of treatment. His brother said he ought to be in the hospital. No one argued. Nick was right about Markus needing professional help, his prescriptions, and bed rest. His old life.

But that was all gone now. Everyone had an “old life” that they’d lost. Survivors lived in a harsher world that lacked all the other essentials of modern civilization. The best, most qualified help Markus could get was Nick’s wife.

She had been a dental hygienist, before. There wasn’t much she could’ve done then and there certainly wasn’t anything for her to have done now.

She was gone too, she and her husband. Kayla didn’t know which kind of ‘gone.’ In the hours between Markus’ death and sunrise, the other virus took his body without anyone noticing. She and Nick went out to deal with the corpse been caught off guard when it rose up to deal with them instead.

Tasha might be dead, undead, or just lost in the woods. She had taken the shotgun. Kayla had heard it fire once in the distance. She could still be alive out there.

Nick was not.

Nick was dead and waiting to kill her, lying right on the other side of the RV’s walls. He’d stay dormant until something got too close or just too loud. As far as Kayla knew, he could wait like that forever. She might be able to sneak out the side if she wanted to find some other way to go. Maybe.

She stared at the door, the thin barrier between her and him. Between her and the rest of the world. She was safe here, so long as her supplies lasted. Kayla imagined she had a while before she starved, since they had been intended to sustain four people. Instead, she had doubts about how long her mind could last, but, well, that had already broken, hadn’t it?

Nothing made sense anymore. 

And then she wasn’t staring at the door at all, she was watching time unwind back to Markus’ dead body. He’d died on the sofa after hours of wheezing and bleeding and coughing and crying. It hadn’t looked like the zombifying fever, he’d been lucid for the whole miserable experience. He’d died. He’d gone stiff, as death intended. She hadn’t heard of that before, someone keeping their mind intact only for it to blossom into rotten undeath once the soul was gone. 

What if she was sick too? How could she know?

She could feel herself pulling the latch closed again. The lock clicked. The door rattled as Tasha tried to pry it open. Kayla’s stomach sank with the horror of what she was doing. Coward. Tasha screamed and her gun clicked uselessly. The door stopped rattling. Tasha had run, pursued by her undead brother-in-law. 

Kayla used to like being alone, but now the thoughts that she was left with included fears much worse than a growing sense of personal failure. She shivered and reached for the little emergency radio. She fiddled with the controls, scanning for any signs of life—or so she hoped, the radio had been Nick’s and she wasn’t really confident in her ability to use it. This whole setup was Nick’s.

Eventually, she turned the radio to the only station she knew still had a voice at all and wished it would play something else.

This NOAA weather station is temporarily off the air. Please tune to an alternate weather broadcast or visit weather dot gov for the latest weather information. 

But there was no new information. There was no one left to send it. No one left to research this plague pulled out of a horror movie. Civilization was over and Kayla was alone with death lying in wait just outside.

Until it started banging on the walls.

taglist - @whumpsday @da3dm

[starkaabii]

They're lesbiabs your honor.

[mademoisellekalopsia]

A Heart-to-Hurk! Talk

"Hurk…hmk!-uh. Hnnrk! Mmm, this is quite-hip! a workout, these things." A groaned.

"Make that two of us." B replied, huffing puffs of their warm breath and panted after a mature session in the comfort of their shared quarters. The lights are dimmed and the cold air would graze the skin of the both of them.

A recently had quite an on-and-off case this week. It's nothing to worry about as it lasts for almost an hour then it becomes resolved through letting it course on its own or applicable and suitable remedies. Despite what has been aforementioned, B can't help but think this is something to be serious about, pushing their excitement aside. Ooh, but those waves and symphony are sure captivating.

B would let out a long sigh, it sounded like they are holding back something. Their long face etched, gazing rather from the opposite direction.

"Darling, why the lo-HOCK!-mmm-long face?" A softly questioned, a hand on their beloved's locks, brushing their fingertips in a soothing sense of graze.

They waited. They gave a good kind of silence with a few sudden hiccups echoing the once quiet room. If their beloved refrains to answer, given that this matter is already talked about before, yet not so thoroughly, that's valid, it just means to show that they are not fully ready to tell it yet.

"All of this…" Nevermind, looks like they are.

"…I know we have given a talk about this, you acknowledging and unbelievably understanding this side of me." B paused longingly. Giving a soft pat of A's tummy as it popped waves thrice, tending and giving comfort for a moment.

"Well, ahem, I just…I want to really ensure ourselves about this side of me. As you are aware of. B felt A's comforting hand, offering calmness and genuine ease. "I always wonder if you're truly alright with this. Me with this…very thing that gets me so weak in the knees just seeing you getting all…hiccupy…gosh." B paused once more to gather their thoughts, looking away. "I thought you would think less of me. I must be such a-"

A took their breath away, softly gasping when they lifted their hand ever so gently, bringing it up to their lips for a soft press on top. As expected, A noticed their gaze shifting back to their cup, the hint of guilt still evident in their expression.

They stayed there, their body jostling occasionally, quietly watching B for a moment. A's hand still gently resting on their arm. Then, they spoke, a voice so soft and sincere.

"Hey. Mmk! Look at me, no force though." A said gently, their touch on their arm all light, yet comforting. "Are you-urk!-mmm…sure about talking-HUP!Mmrk!-this matter?"

Reluctant, but they listened. B, now looking up to them which almost felt was impossible at the moment.

B considered their question, a firm nod received from them. "I am up for it, dearest. Its a different zone, a whole new zone for me to step out, but, if it could help me understand myself and how…you would feel…think about it, since I confessed it to you. So far."

A would listen in return. It takes time for B to gather themselves up to talk about such personal, secretive thing about them. It almost aches B that they have to hide this, for the sake of being seen as one who can control their stimulation and that the source was quite silly and different. At least that is what B thinks and perhaps what they think others may think of. Ooh, the unending list of thoughts is like a rolling bill of receipt. Anyway…

"Okay. Just to-hmrk!-to make su-hurk!-sure we're both-hmk!-uh…get on the same page. Excuse me-hnrk!Hig-kuh'lp!Mmlk!"

B, out of sympathy, rubbed A's chest to bring comfort as the pace got too quick for a hot second. A felt cared for in the end, until B can't help but tease a moment.

"Calm down in there, Froggie."

"Oh, harr-harr-UURK!" B promptly patted their chest, "How humorous of you." A smirked back as they gesture A to sit beside them.

"Listen, hmk!-mmm…if these will let me have-huck! your focus." A said in feign annoyance. "You don't need to feel guilty about you-Hmk! yourself being into this. Hmrk!Guhk!-mmm…for I don't hold it against you, not at all."

They paused, trying to find the right words. "The way you are also-Hnk!-con-Nk'lp!-scious about it, whenever they come in bouts-Huck!-when the days are just ordinary yet unexpectedly they show up, it all leads me back to thi-HIRNNK'!-guh…thinking about you…"

"Why?" they both said. Looks like A knows B for such a long time to know what they'll say next, specifically in particular situations they both know. A couldn't help but chuckle at what happened.

"Because-HMK!-you resort to caring for me, feel concern-HUCK'LP!-and sympathy, consider my feelings about them-mmk!, despite your stimulated-self. I hope that's appropriate to say. HIRK!"

"How could I not? You'd course through them, and it would hurt you whenever they escalate." B sighed at those thoughts. Crossing their arms as their spoke firmly. "You're my beloved, mind you, an important person in my life. So, you should expect how much I would put concern to this on you."

Then, they felt their hand lifted, A holding it over their own as they spoke once again.

"You're still you. And-Hnnk! you just proved me that. And you'll still be at the end of it all. HMMP!-I think that is inspiring, a lot of-Hgrk!-lot of gut to control and express, endearing…" A stopped on their words to let the silent hiccup pop up on their middle torso. "…and "quite"-HOCK!-hot-oof."

B flushed at their words. If they flushed even more, there must be steam coming out of their ears. "Ooh, you, shut it."

B huffed, pushing A on the chest gently. Deep inside, B felt validated, realized of the thing they have as a source of arousal. B, longingly looking down as they reflect on what A has said, it took their attention off as A leaned to embrace their beloved. It was so warm, so needed. It is what they needed for the time being.

"I do mean e-VHIK'lp!-every bit of word, by the way."

"I know. I know you do. It says a lot about the one I am happily with." B let out a shivering sigh, a bit overwhelmed by this discussion, not because it made them uncomfortable, but because how much their significant other understood the aspects of them. If that is not genuine compassion, they don't know what is.

With that, B spoke in a soft tone, "Thank you."

"I got you." A manage to say, with a deep hiccup that rocked their body, it spasmed against B's own body. That was electrifying for a moment, but the hug and after-TLC session first. Moving the attention to their darling Shih Tzu currently laying down on its back on the floor. Its tummy exposed, a leg twitching, and its "teefs," as B calls them, are out by its underbite of a maw. It was deaf...or is it because its eyes are just bulging a bit, dilated, as if it saw and possibly heard everything. But its ears are safe from the prior noises, completely oblivious about the whole heart-talk shebang. This is quite random, but the dog deserves some screentime.

[knightzp]

and he starts singing my sunshine youre moonlight

[fear-no-mort]

im getting increasingly nervous for every episode that doesn’t have the gorilla appear because its presence in the season poster implies that it’s connected to another major thing happening

[razzle-zazzle]

Anyway. Now that both halves of Cleaved are out I can talk about the alternate version where instead of being split across the realms the Rift of Return just spits Cole wholesale into Movieverse. Just yeets him at a building in the middle of the night and he lies there unconscious with possible head trauma until the Secret Ninja Force go out to investigate the "meteor" that fell from a hole in the sky. And the story would focus on Show Cole having to readjust to being human again while also searching for a way home. He's 20ish but he couldn't tell you that because ghosts experience time differently. He doesn't drink any water and doesn't shower at all for the first week he's there. He forgets that he actually needs to eat food again for three whole days, then gorges himself on all the foods he's missed while he was a ghost. He keeps forgetting that he's not intangible anymore and keeps walking into walls expecting to phase through them. He teaches the movie ninja spinjitsu and how to fight hand to hand (he's not the best teacher). He's broken several cups and other things because trying to maintain corporeality in his already corporeal hand translates to gripping too hard. M!Cole invited S!Cole to try driving the Earth Mech but because S!Cole keeps forgetting he's fully corporeal and doesn't need to use all of his strength just to interact with the world he accidentally smashes the record player controls. He's a mess and he's homesick and M!Cole, the chillest guy around, is inexplicably infuriated just by S!Cole's presence for no reason that either of them can place. S!Cole's strong and kind and it's impossible to not like him at least a little, unless you're M!Cole in which case there are actual fistfights every week after the first two weeks. He's a big brother and a weird uncle and a divorced dad and a hero and a disaster. He's S!Cole, and neither Ninjago is ever going to be the same after he and the movie ninja find a way to travel between the two.

[unproduciblesmackdown]

5 years later ghost posting from jason sweettooth williams: "In honor of Halloween and all things ghostly, here is the picture I took of a ghost from the stage of the Lyceum Theater on Broadway. I was on stage in the middle of tech and looked up and spotted this. I think about her often but especially tonight on Halloween! #happyhalloween #ghost #theater #bemorechill #broadway"

[sheliesshattered]

Sylki fic: When She Sings She Sings Come Home

Loki/Sylvie, 3200 words. Post s02e06 fix-it, angst with a happy ending. Also available on AO3 under the same title and username.

--

When She Sings She Sings Come Home

Sylvie wakes with Loki’s voice in her ears.

It’s been months since she last saw him, striding out to the Loom to save the timelines. Winter has come and gone, here in this little corner of a branch that she’s made her home. Every day that’s passed, she’s half expected to turn around and see him standing there, like that night he appeared in the parking lot next to her truck. But for months, there’s been nothing but the absence of him, growing larger and more crystalline every day.

She wakes with his voice in her ears, singing that ridiculous song from the train on Lamentis.

To Sylvie, everybody! he’d said, grinning at her, not drunk only too full. She would give anything to see him smile like that again. She would give anything to see him again.

And it isn’t that she hasn’t looked. Of course she had. She’d barely gotten through a single shift at McDonald’s after leaving Mobius standing outside his variant’s house before she’d used He Who Remain’s TemPad to try to find Loki.

He wasn’t dead. She knows he isn’t dead. But he also isn’t anywhere. There are an infinite number of branches now, layers of reality twisting around each other into something larger, a shape she can almost see, almost recognize. But Loki isn’t on any of them. No matter where she searches, he remains just outside her grasp.

Sylvie goes to work, she drives her truck home, she listens to music at the record store, she checks in on Mobius, she tries to sleep. But everywhere is marked by Loki’s absence, and every moment is overlaid with the sound of him singing.

She can’t find Loki, but that song is a thread she can pull at. Where did he learn it? The words were almost Asgardian, but not quite. Something similar, a branch of the original. A variant. Because of course it was.

It’s not until she thinks to quietly spy on the New Asgard settlement in Norway, forty years on from her quiet life in Oklahoma, that she hears the language again. Norwegian.

Remember this place, she hears Odin say, in a memory that is not hers, rippling through the interwoven timelines because it is what she needs in this moment. Home.

She turns her back on New Asgard, on the man who is almost but not quite her brother, on the Valkyrie who will come to lead their people like the hero out of a saga that Sylvie had once wished she could become. She turns her back, and walks into this strange, beautiful land. Norway. One tiny place on one tiny planet in one insignificant branch of the ever-growing tree of time, where the syllables are shaped into words that resonate with Loki’s voice from so long ago.

Sylvie wanders into pubs, into taverns, into bars, into concerts. She hums the few notes that never leave her head, and hopes to find someone who knows the song.

Until, miraculously, one day, she does.

“It’s an old drinking song,” the bearded man at the bar tells her, gesturing with his beer. “It’s about taking the long way home, but knowing you’ll get there in the end.”

“Can you teach it to me?” Sylvie asks, unblinking, gaze trained on the stranger’s face.

“For that, I will need a lot more beer.”

So she buys him beers. She coaxes the song out of him. She buys rounds for the whole bar, until they are all singing it. They teach her the words in Norwegian, teach her to shape the vowels as carefully as any incantation, and then teach her the meaning behind the words.

In storm-black mountains, I wander alone

Over the glacier I make my way

In the apple garden stands the maiden fair

and sings, “When will you come home?”

“You, I think,” her drunk bearded acquaintance says to her, “you are the maiden fair.”

“And what if I am?” Sylvie asks, raising her chin, still dead-sober despite the bourbon clutched in her hand.

“Then you must sing for him to come home!”

“From an apple orchard, if you can manage it,” leers his friend next to him.

“Will it work?” she hears herself say.

“Of course it will work! Music is magic. Galdr, they used to call it, in the old religion. The power of your voice to shape reality.” The man is drunk, but his words tug at something in Sylvie’s memory, long buried. “Sing, and he will come home.”

“As simple as that?”

The bearded man laughs uproariously. “When has love ever been simple?” he demands jovially. “When has magic ever been easy? But that does not mean it is not worth trying. There is beauty in the trying. There is love in the longing.” He’s slurring his words, barely managing to stay atop his barstool.

But he’s not wrong.

I know what kind of god I need to be, Loki had said, tears shining in his eyes. For you. For all of us.

But Sylvie is a god, too, she reminds herself, as she tosses back her bourbon and turns her back on the little Norwegian town, with the northern lights rippling over head. She’s not the goddess of chaos anymore, and she hasn’t felt mischievous since she was a child.

But the goddess of galdr, yes, that perhaps is something she could be.

She returns to her little Oklahoma town, cloud cover obliterating the stars, and drives her truck to the record store. There’s only one song she wants to hear, only one voice to sing it, but music has been her comfort since she came to this place, and she cannot simply become the goddess of music-turned-into-magic because she wishes it to be so. Music has been her shield, her cocoon, her comfort these long lonely months. Now she must learn to form it into other shapes, into weapons and tools. Into a lighthouse, shining out into the vast dark of the multiverse.

She taught herself enchantment, while running for her life from one apocalypse to the next. She can teach herself galdr in this quiet little record shop in this quiet little town.

Sylvie slides the headphones into place, and lets the music move through her.

Oh, sweet nothin'

She ain't got nothin' at all

Oh, sweet nothin'

She ain't got nothin' at all

But what if she had something? What if she had the one person who would make all of this worth it?

I know what kind of god I need to be, she tells herself. For you, Loki.

She murmurs the words along with the music, infusing them with intent, with magic.

And for one fraction of an instant, she can see him.

He’s alone, on the throne he never wanted, surrounded by the threads of the multiverse, pulsing green as they grow and twist. There is nothing, nothing else, only Loki alone in that vast emptiness, in that expanse of everything that ever was or ever could be.

His eyes are dull, unfocused, far away. And then— a flicker of recognition, a spark of life—

Sylvie loses the connection.

She’s alone on the sofa in the back of the record shop, with Lou Reed singing in her ears.

He ain’t got nothing at all

She drives home. She tries to sleep. She keeps hearing Loki’s voice, keeps seeing him alone in that emptiness. She murmurs into the darkness— not quite a song, not quite a spell—

But trees dance and waterfalls stop

When she sings, she sings “come home”

There is a shape to the enormity of what Loki has done. There is an order to the way the branches of the multiverse wrap around each other. It is just outside her grasp, but Sylvie feels that if she could just see the shape of it, she might understand.

She might be able to reach him.

In storm-black mountains, I wander alone she whispers to the emptiness of her tiny apartment, in this tiny town, in this little branch of a timeline, one miniscule part of a greater whole, and falls asleep dreaming of trees dancing, of waterfalls stopping, of Loki taking her outside the flow of time to tell her that there was no other way to keep her safe.

Sylvie wakes with her own voice in her ears.

The song is coursing through her, jeg saler min ganger, and she can feel the magic at her fingertips, on the tip of her tongue, pushing at the insides of her ribs, swelling her lungs and begging to be released.

I know what kind of god I need to be.

She gets into her truck and drives. North and east, away from everything she knows, vaguely towards those northern lights dancing over the fjords, too far away to reach on roads such as these.

But once upon a time, when she was very young, there was another road. A rainbow road, the Bifrost, that could take her anywhere just like magic.

Every bit of magic she has now she has taught herself. And this, too, this song swelling in her chest, is magic of her own making.

There is beauty in the trying. There is love in the longing.

She drives past fields of wheat and fields of corn, through days and nights, with the glare of the sun or the pattering of the rain against the windshield. Sylvie drives and drives and drives, and keeps the song tucked away inside her, growing in fury like a hurricane in a bottle, like the storm that had raged outside the night they met.

She drives until the scent of apples wafts through the open windows of the truck, and then she pulls over, knowing this was her destination all along.

Iðunn, a childhood memory whispers, too long ago now to have any meaning at all. The apples of eternity.

Home she thinks, and then hears, from a memory not her own:

Asgard’s not a place, it’s a people.

This could be Asgard. Asgard is where our people stand.

Her brother’s voice. The voice of the man who had once raised her as his daughter. The family she lost and can never regain, no matter what shape the multiverse twists itself into. Words reaching across time, across branching timelines, to reach her here and now, because it is what she needs to hear.

Sylvie climbs out of her truck and walks into the apple orchard and doesn’t look back.

She walks until she can no longer see the road from between the trunks and branches. She walks until there is nothing but the smell of apples, the soil under foot, and the sky over head. She walks until the song finally bursts out of her, all of her desperation and loneliness flooding out of her lungs to shake the very air around her, in the shape of words that are his but also hers, now.

But trees dance and waterfalls stop

When she sings, she sings “come home”

In storm-black mountains, I wander alone

Over the glacier I make my way

In the apple garden stands the maiden fair

and sings, “When will you come home?”

But trees dance and waterfalls stop

When she sings, she sings “come home”

When she sings, she sings “come home”

When she sings, she sings “come home”

When she sings, she sings “come home!”

And then he is there, standing beside her in the sunshine and the scent of the apple orchard. Loki glances around at the trees dancing in the wind, his eyes bright, before his gaze snaps to hers.

“You’re here,” Sylvie croaks, her voice burned through with the force of the magic that poured out of her, the magic that’s brought Loki to her.

“No, not really,” he says, his eyes never still as they trace over her face. “I’m still there too. I’m sort of everywhere, really. It’s hard to explain.”

“Help me to understand,” she says before the words even have the chance to fade away. “You said you knew what kind of god you needed to be. You saved us, you saved everything, and then you disappeared. Make me understand.”

“I can’t, Sylvie,” Loki says gently, and there is a sorrow in his eyes deeper than oceans, more boundless than the vastness of space. “It’s been centuries for me. Lifetimes. I wouldn’t know where to start.”

Enchant me, he had begged her once, standing in the McDonald’s parking lot in his ridiculous TVA uniform. You can see what I saw.

“You don’t have to say anything,” she tells him, raising her hands slowly towards his face, green magic flickering between her fingers. “Just let me see what you saw.”

“Sylvie,” he starts, and there are tears in his eyes again, like there were in that last moment before he turned his back on her to destroy the Loom.

“We’re the same, remember?” she says, and if her voice cracks it is only because of the abuse it’s suffered, only because of the magic that poured out through her vocal chords to shape reality to her desires. “You shouldn’t have to bear this burden alone, Loki,” she tells him, with as much tenderness as she can force into her ruined voice. “Let me understand.”

“It was the only way,” he says, as if in warning, but Sylvie cups his face in her hands before the tears can fall from his eyes.

Centuries. Lifetimes. The same day, over and over again. Reality unspooling, starting with Victor Timely and ending with her, again and again. Their fight in the Citadel at the end of time, relived hundreds of times, always with the same ending. Always the death of He Who Remains, and the unraveling of everything, failure after failure after failure.

And yet in all of them, she does not kiss him. And he cannot bring himself to kill her. Until only one choice remains.

I know what kind of god I need to be. For you.

Sylvie watches in Loki’s memory as the temporal radiation burns away his TVA uniform, as his magic replaces it with something older, something primal, something true. She watches as he grasps the decaying branches of the multiverse and breathes life into them, wills them to live, to be whole and part of a whole.

She watches as the branches twist around each other, each variation of the timeline finding support in its neighbors, building into something greater than the sum of every moment of every timeline that has ever existed.

She sees the shape of what Loki has done, the enormous, infinite tree dancing in the nothingness outside of time. Yggdrasil, the worldstree, green and glowing, alive and growing, all because Loki willed it so. To restore freewill and safeguard it forever. For all of us.

His hands cover hers and Loki gently pries her fingers away from his face. “Enough, Sylvie. Enough. I know what I’ve done.”

There are tears on her face, the apple-scented wind plucking at the wetness as she stands there, staring at Loki. Even without the enchantment, she can see him sitting on his throne, alone but for the infinite tree he tends.

“It was the only way?” she asks in the ruins of her voice. It is only when he folds his hands around hers that she realizes she is shaking, trembling like a leaf in the wind. Not like dancing. Like shattering, collapsing in on herself with the weight of what he’s done.

“No,” Loki admits. “There was one other way. I could have left He Who Remains in charge. I could have let the TVA go back to pruning the timelines. But I would have had to kill you. I would have had to kill you with my own hands, and watch as you died, and then betray everything you ever believed in. I lived every variation of every action I could possibly change, but not that one. Not that.”

“You don’t even know me,” Sylvie blurts out before the words have fully formed in her mind. All of this, to save her? She cannot, she cannot—

Loki’s expressive face twists, stung by her words, hurt in this moment even beyond the deep sorrow that he wears like a cloak. “Of course I know you,” he says, wounded, his gaze searching her face. “Like I’ve never known anyone. Sylvie, I lov—”

She surges up onto her toes and kisses him, there among the apple trees. She kisses him for what he’s done, for what he refused to do. She kisses him for the loneliness they have both known far too much of, she kisses him for coming when she sang for him to come home. She kisses him because there is nothing else she can do, because there was never any other way for her, either.

And Loki kisses her in return, with a desperation borne of years, centuries, lifetimes of facing this alone. He kisses her in the apple garden, as the trees dance and the waterfalls stand still. He is there, kissing her, but also somewhere else, far away and outside time, tending to the tree that he gave his life to save.

“I can’t stay,” he says when they finally part, pressing his forehead to hers, his hands cupping her jaw in an echo of how she had enchanted him moments before. “I want to stay, more than anything, Sylvie, but I can’t, I can’t.”

“I know,” she assures him, even as she clutches at his robes for fear he will disappear at any moment. “I know you can’t stay here with me,” she says, then takes a deep breath to steady her ragged voice, her thundering heart. “But you don’t have to be alone.”

Loki pulls away abruptly, only far enough to see her face, confusion pinching his features.

“We’re gods, you said,” Sylvie explains, tripping over her words, her voice trembling with the weight of what she has already done, the weight of what she plans to do. “We have a responsibility. That’s what you told me, in that ridiculous room full of pie. We can’t just give everyone freewill and then walk away.” She offers him a small smile, the best she can summon at the current moment. “You have to sustain Yggdrasil. But you don’t have to do it alone.”

“I did this for you,” he says, holding on to her as desperately as she is clutching at him. “So you could have a life. That’s what you said you wanted, to live.”

“It’s freewill, Loki,” she says, shaking her head. “You can’t just give it to everyone and then be surprised when I use it to choose to be with you. I know what kind of god I need to be. You taught me that. I won’t let you bear this burden alone. That’s the kind of god I choose to be.”

“I can’t let you sacrifice yourself for me—”

“The only sacrifice would be giving you up.”

He gazes at her for a long moment, his uncertainty slowly transforming, then sings softly, “I stormsvarte fjell, jeg vandrer alene,” and this time Sylvie understands the words. “Over isbreen tar jeg meg frem. I eplehagen står møyen den vene, og synger: ‘når kommer du hjem?’”

The apple orchard dissolves around them, replaced by the rippling greens and blues and purples of Yggdrasil, shimmering in the darkness outside of time.

“Home,” Sylvie says, and kisses him again.

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