#where I woke recalling the feeling of the monster cutting my wrist open with a razor but no actual pain

[basingstokemercury]

okay

wow

that was a messed up dream

and I say as a perennial weird-dream-haver

might need to lay off mikado and yeomen for a while?

[lixie-lovie]

{ Mysterious Stranger | skz }

h.hyunjin x reader

Chapter 5: De la lumière des ténèbres naît

Genre: Dark!au, Thriller-ish, Fantasy!au

Warnings: Some cursing, mention of weapons/blood/demons, fighting occurs, mentions of kidnapping, nightmares

((if anything else needs to be tagged/warned about please send me a message..i’ll fix it asap))

Word Count: 3k (ish)

Note: I AM ONCE AGAIN SO SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONG. Life made my brain shut down for a while, but this chapter is here! finally!! This chapter is a littleee short, but more will come soon and its ab to get s p i c y. Hope y’all enjoy! 

Chapter Song: You Can Run - Adam Jones

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“It’s time”

I woke with a start in an unfamiliar bed. My hands grasped at the scratchy covers feeling as though I was suffocating. I took note of how cold it must have been by the mist of my breath blurring my vision as I struggled to crawl out of the bed. My body ached and my lungs burned with each heavy, rasping breath that rattled my chest. 

My eyes searched the room frantically even through my brain’s panicked haze. I found myself crawling on my hands and knees, dragging my body towards a window at the corner of the small, door-less barren room. As my numb, shaking hands grasped the edge of the windowsill I gasped, looking out into swirling inky blackness. I staggered back as quickly as possible, fearing that the longer I would look, the more I would see, and the less I would want to. 

I took deep breaths, steadying my aching palms on my knees before shutting my heavy eyelids for a moment of reprieve. When I finally felt calm I slowly peeled my now sticky with exhaustion eyelids apart and tried to take in my surroundings. As I looked toward the area I knew I had been lying in bed before, I realized I was somewhere completely new to me. 

Somehow, this place felt familiar, as if the taste of it’s name had once graced my tongue with its syllables, yet I got a sense that it was different. As I stood straight I compared these feelings of a wistful familiarity to leaving home for college and coming back home to a city overrun with distasteful gentrification. A childhood stolen and sold while one was away. 

I could almost hear symphonies and see golden halls filled with people I did not know and music I had never heard, but now as I breathed in air permeated thickly with tar-like smoke, it felt as though those scenes of paradise were in the past or possibly had yet to come at all. 

My brow furrowed as my fingers, still tingling with numbness, curled inwards into fists at the discomfort settling in my gut. I sighed, taking in the asphalt covering the ground and the barren trees sparsely creaking in the seemingly unending wasteland before me. Though normally I would question this strange situation I felt as though I knew all of the answers.

Perhaps in this strange land I may have not even been myself, but I found no time to inquire about this revelation as I looked forward, determined and began to run. My feet pounded against the ground beneath my feet as I ran towards the abyss staring back at me as if maybe, if I could find it in myself to run fast enough, I would be able to reach those symphonic halls and find the everlasting peace I longed for so much. Maybe I would find my mother. 

I woke up gasping, cold and alone in a dark and damp room. The room itself smelt of smoke and wax, as if only ever lit by candles. Taking into consideration how little I could see at the moment, I presumed it must have been a while ago those candles had held flame. My eyes tried to scan my surrounding area, but through the thick veil of inky blackness, I could see nothing but the colored spots that often danced behind my eyelids.

I took a deep breath, sitting up from my uncomfortable position on the floor and soon, as I became more alert and aware of my situation, I realized that both of my hands had been bound tightly by thick coils of rope. I wasn’t sure how long I had been here, but judging by the warm, slick feeling of blood beginning to slip down my wrists from the compressed tension of the rope, I assumed it had been a while. 

My head was pounding with a dull, throbbing headache and my stomach rolled as I made a move to get on my feet. I tried to determine what way to walk, eventually finding my way to one of the walls, but by the time I felt as though I had walked around the same cold and hard concrete four walls one to many times to count, my legs gave out. I wasn’t any more sure of my surroundings and with my knees now surely bruising and bleeding I sighed heavily, trying to recall what had occurred to land me in this situation.

I racked my brain but the ache in my head was making my thoughts hazy. Just as I began to come to a clearer conclusion of what had occurred there was a sudden clang reverberating from somewhere nearby on the other side of one of these four walls. My head whipped around swiftly to try and stare into the direction the sound had come from. My lips moved to form words of inquiry, but the tone died at my strained vocal chords as I thought of what could possibly be the source of such a strange and ominous noise.

I stood again, slower this time, making sure not to make too much of a sound and my eyes darted to a small crack emitting a flickering orange light. My steps were loud in the silence, my eyes adjusting too slow to the dim lighting. Soon, as I approached the source, a loud creaking sound could be heard from the wall adjacent to me. I flinched, spots dancing in front of my eyes at the sudden light coming from in front of me, and I began backing up at the back-lit figure now moving in my direction.

As my eyes began to adjust, my brow furrowed deeply at the hooded figure staying by the only exit to the strange room I had found myself in. My feet shuffled backwards, the noise of the scraping alerted the shape in front of me as they began their slow creep towards my now cowering figure. I readied myself, squaring my shoulders and holding my breath as they approached, prepared to run or comply, whatever would allow me to make some kind of an escape. I knew, however, that I knew nothing here. I was in their domain now, like some kind of caged animal, and I was antsy to learn all that I could about this strange situation.

A feeling akin to panic rose in my chest and it became hard to quell the sounds of my harshly beating heart as the figure let out a low hum, looking over me and slowly rounding my silhouette, seemingly assessing my state of being. I let out a breath as they took a small number of steps away from my shivering form and dug my nails into my palms, so tightly I was sure they’d bleed, to compose myself as they began to turn back towards the still open doorway to this strange room. I watched their figure, taking small quiet steps behind them to question what I could see beyond this enclosure.

“Follow me.” A deep, gravely voice uttered, not turning back to face me. I nearly gasped, but bit my tongue as I was still in shock behind them. Their footsteps stilled suddenly, as they turned their head in my direction, humming out a noise I was sure meant I had no room to not comply with their wishes. I silently scanned their profile for a glimpse at their features. 

However, even with the light protruding from the outside of this room The hood over their head blocked any recognizable feature from view. Their robes that hid their build were eerily familiar and I noticed my thoughts drifting to the interaction between myself and the robed figures before. The royal purple shone with the man’s movement like swirling liquid of entrancement, the gold thread lining the outsides of the glistened threateningly even in the low light surrounding us.

I noticed my brow furrowing as I took place behind the man, nodding my head softly in confirmation that I was willing to listen. Every idea of escape began to swirl in the background of my mind as the forefront was overruled with thoughts of finding the truth. Finding my mother. 

As my feet shuffled tiredly, slowly copying the movements of the man guiding me and my eyes adjusted painfully to the brighter lights I found myself faintly wondering where I was located and how far I was from the men who had only recently taken me in. My thoughts came to a stop soon however as I took in the corridor now in front of me.

My feet stumbled, my once tightly set jaw going limp as I looked around these ornate concrete catacombs surrounding me. It felt surreal as I stared up, the high ceilings lined with carved statues of heroes and monsters catching my eyes. 

There were sections cut out of the smooth, grey stone that held flames of a more red color than I had ever seen before. The man continued forwards, his footsteps echoing loudly in the silent hall, but my feet were still as I tried to snap out of my shock, hearing the shuffling sound of others nearby. I assumed at first they must be the other robed figures I presumed he was taking me to, but as my eyes scanned the walls inquisitively I noticed other cell like rooms containing more people bound and miserable.

 My brow furrowed in thought as I rushed to catch up with the figure now leaving me behind and I vowed under my breath to figure out what was happening around me currently.

The walk down the corridor felt as though it had taken years, but I blamed that on the tight feeling of anxiety rising in my chest and the dry desert that was my throat due to seemingly hours of dehydration. The turns made my stomach churn as I tried counting the amount of times we were turning and in what direction, memorizing the patterns. The man suddenly stopped as my thoughts were far from what was occurring and his hand shot out to clasp my shoulder, the feeling shaking me out of the swirling thoughts in my mind and forcing my head to snap upwards to notice the large, dark wooden doors now residing in front of me.

“The elders will meet with you soon. Don’t stray too far and don’t go poking your nose where it doesn’t belong. I’ll be back to bring you back to your quarters.” The deep voice said to me. The tone made me eye him suspiciously, the anxiety rising through my chest and claiming my throat now at the implications behind his words. I sighed softly and nodded my head as confirmation as he turned and began walking back the way we had come moments before. As his footsteps receded I replayed his words in my head while turning my hands in their ropes trying to test how hard it would be to get out of my restraints.

His words felt oddly familiar and I tried racking my brain for any means I would have to help me out of this uncomfortable situation, but just as I began muttering the words spoken to me out loud the doors in front of me slowly began creaking and shuttering as they were pushed open, revealing their contents to my eyes. The room itself was large, much larger than I expected, and I was almost unable to make out the shape or size in its entirety due to the darkness shrouding every inch currently. I tried whipping my head around, searching for who had opened the door or any other sign of an “elder” around me, but I was left longing, confusing, and panicked as I was left in eerie silence and solitude. I inhaled sharply, the air burning my lungs in a refreshing manner, squaring my shoulders once again and determinedly taking a few steps inside.

I held my breath as I used all the senses I could still rely on to assess my situation. My footsteps resonated loudly throughout the echoing room. I jumped as a voice suddenly boomed from in front of me, stating my name loudly. Stumbling backwards slightly my eyes darted back and forth, searching for some kind of figure to settle upon. My eyes could faintly make out the shape of large figures towering above me. 

Candles were settled at the edge of the platform in front of them, allowing me to see that there were six of them, all of which were wearing matching robes to the other’s I had seen before. 

I muttered a prayer to any god I could think of before taking a deep breath in and trying to pay as much attention to the minute details as my foggy, dehydrated brain would allow. I noticed each of them had a glowing pendant that looked well crafted and eerily similar to the ornate designs of the dagger I had been given before. 

I gasped as they spoke to each other quietly in a language I was sure I had never heard before. I listened intently, searching for some kind of meaning in the way their tongues were curling around the foreign words. Finally, the large one stood towards the middle of the group spoke up, in a language I could understand this time. 

I couldn’t catch every word, my consciousness feeling as though it was sand slipping through an hourglass, but there were a few words that stuck out to me. My senses perked up at the implications each had and I racked my brain for what they could have been connected to, coming up with nothing but questions and dizzy confusion. 

“the one blinded”

“vengeance” 

“the full moon”

“duty”

“sacrifice”

Their words were making less and less sense as my face contorted at the last word and sweat began to bead at my brow. I blinked harshly, feeling my face become wet with tears that I couldn’t remember crying. I could hear voices, footsteps, but my legs felt like lead and my head felt heavy. 

There were gaps of time that felt impossibly thick and suddenly I was alert, staring at the large man’s face that was now riddled with unbridled shock. A rough, calloused gasp left his lips and suddenly he took a step forward, his hood shifting with the sudden stumble. My eyes went wide as the other hooded figures’ voices went silent. 

I couldn’t tear my eyes from his pale, wrinkled face as I watched his eyes gather wet, thick tears and suddenly he coughed, once and then twice, before slick red blood began gathering at his pink, chapped lips. It formed a trail down his chin before a hooded figure, now visible to me as the man slumped to the ground with a dull and heavy thud, stood tall with a blade now visible in their hand. The blade itself I recognized instantly, but I was startled by the blood now coating its blade. 

The murderous hooded figure made a turn so impossibly graceful it seemed as though it was practiced and almost playful before the other figures, the elders, made a panicked dash, blades in hand to exit and scatter. The treacherous man made daring moves after them, but only for a moment before he looked my way, his hood falling slightly allowing me a subtle glimpse at his impossibly golden eyes, before they darkened and darted towards something behind me. 

I yelped loudly, thrashing around as someone grasped my sore, scabbed wrists until I heard a voice that filled me with relief. I nearly smiled or laughed at the impossible situation I was in when I heard him speak into my ear, his breath making me shiver. 

“You need to run.” Hyunjin said, his hands gentle as he tore through the ropes binding my wrists. He made a quick motion with his hands and spoke words I feared I would never know the meaning of to the other traitor before making a move to run in the direction opposite to where I was being pointed to run. Just as I took a shaky breath in, rubbing the sorest part of my wrists softly and wincing at the pain it caused, he turned back, his hood now down and his golden hair sweaty and stuck to his face in patterns that made my head spin. 

His eyes twinkled even in the dim light of the candles and a mischievous smirk played at the corners of his lips as he stared back at me. He took two steps back in my direction, something I never expected, and reached his hand out towards me slowly, as not to startle me. 

“You know, I said I really don’t like babysitting.” He said, speaking softly, as if almost hoping I wouldn’t hear him as he pushed a strand of my hair back so that it wouldn’t fall out of its original resting place. His hand drifted down, barely touching my arm as it ran its course causing my skin to break out in goosebumps. “And I am real sick of having to keep giving this back to you.” He laughed out, placing my blade back into my open palms gently. 

I looked at it shocked, feeling its weight sink into my palm as if it belonged there, like an extension of myself. Then, my eyes darted back up to his face, softer than I had ever seen it before if only for a brief moment before his features hardened again. 

“Now. Get out of here and don’t look back. Someone’s waiting on you.” He whispered to me, his voice gruff with an emotion I couldn’t quite place and wouldn’t dare question. He then turned on his heel, decidedly making his way towards a future I wasn’t sure of and I found myself wishing I would have found the strength to say something as I listened to his advice and began to run. 

I recalled my dream, my feet pounding against the ground, my hands numb, and a scene unfolding before my eyes, all around me. It was encompassing and terrifying, but full of promise from the past and for the future if only I could run fast enough through the suffocating darkness of the present.

[miracvlovs]

✗✗✗   you see [ kaleb yıldırım ] around lately? yeah i heard that the [ cis male ] is up to no good. [ he / him ] has been here for [ five years ] now but they’re still pretty [ abrasive ] which is fine because they’re also [ debonair ] so it balances out. the [ twenty-eight ] year old [ hitman for hire ] actually looks like a lot like [ alperen duymaz ], don’t you think? it’s best to watch out, though, because it’s been said that they’re really into [ strong cigarettes & even stronger whiskey ].

hey, hello, hi, bonjour! s’up buttercups? ‘tis i, your friendly neighbourhood loser chrissie ( a.k.a an irish doofus who is utter plot trash and the actual WORST at keeping track with discord messages, oops ) and i’m super duper excited to be here among you fab human beings! anywho, this is my first kiddo kaleb and he is … how do you say … morally grey. basically his morals are very questionable in every aspect. but! on the plus side, he’s very talented and good at his job even if he is ruthless and callous, oop. he is … the worst and also lowkey messed up inside tbh so pls excuse his blunt and sarcastic nature. plot-wise i’m open to literally anything and everything so come at me with any ideas ya got! i’m always diggity down to spit ball ideas and form some dope connections so pls feel free to invade my ims or hmu on le cord ( chrissie.#9606 ) and we can brainstorm until our heart’s content! if ya wanna, go ahead and light that lil grey heart up red and i’ll shimmy my butt your way for all of the good stuff. anywho, let’s get down to the nitty-gritty, shall we?

fundamentals.

KALEB EMER YILDIRIM     —     twenty-eight, hitman for hire,   +   one snarky son of a gun   /   troubled dude with daddy issues   /   all issues tbh ! 

aesthetics   ➤   dried blood caked into the grooves of cut knuckles, the lingering scent of smoke and gasoline, silver slivers of past scarring, five o’clock shadow peppering a blunt jawline, discolourations of blue and purple decorating battered hands, a subtle smirk etched upon a devious countenance, calloused fingertips riddled with small paper cuts, dark circles under almost-black eyes, the noise of screeching tires in the middle of the night, a tall stature adorned in all-black attire, ghosts of bruises staining calloused skin green, a scuffed zippo lighter in a pack of marlboros containing only one cigarette, white shirts with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows, a sly grin under stormy dark eyes, a sniper on the roof of a deserted building, the roar of a car engine, & clenched, white-knuckled fists.

nicknames. kal.

date of birth. november third.

gender. cis male.

pronouns. he + him.

birthplace. manhattan, nyc.

orientation. bisexual + aromantic.

education. bachelor of music degree obtained from manhattan school of music.

spoken languages. can speak fluent english, turkish, spanish, & french.

negative traits. haughty, abrasive, enigmatic, cynical, temperamental, calculating, hedonistic, distant, sarcastic, & volatile.

positive traits. adept, diligent, charming, resilient, candid, adept, charming, audacious, determined, & resourceful.

strengths. efficient, energetic, self-confident, strong-willed, strategic thinker, charismatic, & inspiring.

weaknesses. stubborn, dominant, intolerant, impatient, arrogant, poor handling of emotions, cold, & ruthless.

talents. piano, retaining information, memory recall, lock-picking, carjacking, hand-to-hand combat, automobile knowledge, tracking people down, & excellent problem-solving abilities. 

physiology. dark brown eyes. dark brown hair. six feet, one inch tall. of a lean, broad stature with a straight posture and evident height. has a few silvery scars littered across his skin. has a few tattoos in a few less visible places. is ambidextrous.

psychology. scorpio zodiac. water element. slytherin house. entj-a. chaotic neutral. type eight enneagram. choleric temperament. interpersonal intelligence type. addicted to alcohol, tobacco, prescription drugs, cocaine, and cannabis. suffers from addiction and insomnia. his vices are lust, wrath and pride. his virtues are ... honestly, probably just diligence tbh.

background.

possible triggers   :   infidelity, divorce, alcoholism, drug abuse, cancer, death, car crash, funeral, blood, murder, suicide mention, gun mention, & various references to death and murder. 

a synopsis.   ah, here he is—my tol, troubled, grouchy son : ' ) don't u just adore ur resident trashy, snarky, but precious and sad fuckboi muse? bc i know I DO! anyways, before i digress, i'll cut to the chase. so, waaay before he blessed the universe with his presence, his mother ( who was originally from turkey ) moved to the states where she met one alexander hale. you can probably guess the rest: the pair married, they had children, everything seemed to be going swimmingly, yada yada. here’s a lil background: the hale family—a line of manhattan-born businessmen / lawyers / diplomats etc. they're dripping in wealth, not always as squeaky clean as they portray themselves as to be. kaleb’s dad was a douche, expected both of his sons to follow in his shadow and become lawyers, ran around behind his wife's back: the whole shoot and shebang of a classic a-hole. he always kind of ignored kaleb in favour of his eldest son joshua so kaleb kinda became hard-hearted and resentful due to the lack of his father's attention. skip a few years and he spied his dad cheating on his mother with his secretary though he refused to tell another soul for fear of any potential backlash. soon enough, his mother found this out for herself, their argument ruined his thirteenth birthday party then they divorced soon after. his mother fell off the wagon, became terminally ill—all while his father was remarrying and expecting a daughter with his secretary. it was a hella rough two years for kaleb. it got even worse. eventually, his mother passed away and his step-mother divorced his father to breeze off into the sunset with her new lover; leaving her daughter with her piss-poor excuse of a dad. at this point, kaleb was lonely and angry but adopted the role of his step-sister's protector, shielding her from their father's increasing substance abuse induced violence. just before his seventeenth birthday, his father died in a car crash. of course, he didn't entirely mourn the loss. almost immediately, he and his younger sister moved in with their elder brother who helped kaleb get into university. with dear ole dad out of the picture, he could finally pursue his interest and flair for music. after he graduated, he moved to santa ysabel with his brother and brother's family. in the beginning, things were going fine. yeah, sure, he was struggling for work and felt bad that his brother had to keep him afloat. normal stuff. then, one day, things quickly turned sour in his world. [ TRIGGER FOR GORE, BLOOD, SUICIDE MENTION, GUN MENTION, MURDER, DEATH ] he’d came home to find the locks on the doors busted, advancing into the house carefully only to find his brother’s lifeless corpse crumbled on the kitchen tiles: his throat and wrists slashed, posed as a suicide. of course, kaleb knew better. he knew his brother; knew he would never leave him or his family. upon further inspection of the house, he’d discovered the body of his wife upstairs: a bullet hole between her eyes. [ TRIGGER OVER ] the whole ordeal was enough to turn his stomach but once the sickness had subsided, all kaleb felt was a strong thirst for blood. sure, it was pretty damn stupid to try and seek revenge or whatnot ... but kaleb had always been one to let his heart guide his brain. anyways, time skip now to the moment he’d uncovered his brother’s entanglement with some dodgy loan shark, drug dealing criminals who were responsible for his murder. in the end, he’d hunted them down and eradicated them one by one, over a span of weeks. at first, he hated himself and what his desire for vengeance had turned him into but he kept going until he’d got them all: until he’d grown numb. truthfully, how he wound up taking lives for a living is beyond him. he woke up one day, found himself hired by some big-wig businessman who wanted rid of his business partner and et voilà, he was tangled up in the dark side of existence. i mean, was he blackmailed into doing his first paid hit? yes. but who can blame him? especially when they claimed to have intel regarding the sudden demise of a prominent figure in the criminal underbelly of the city, a.k.a his brother’s killer. it was a risk kaleb simply couldn’t take. he prefers to keep himself anonymous, hidden behind shadows, unsuspecting. death has become a job. nothing more. nothing less. it’s simply the algorithm of his existence: receive a dossier, take care of the target, get paid a hefty lump sum. and all just for enacting a stranger’s revenge in the blood of another. he moves like a deadly phantom, his footsteps light as a feather, whipping through the night like a bullet through a target’s skull. sartre claims that hell is other people. and if you were to stare into kaleb’s eyes—eyes eerily similar to having been cut from coal—you might just see hell and everyone in it staring right back at you. as nietzsche wrote: “ he who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. and if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee. ”

random extras.

he has a lot of small scars over his body, most of which he can’t account for or has forgotten about.

owns and drives a black 1969 boss 429 mustang which he loves arguably more than he loves himself.

speaking of, he actually is full of self-hatred so don’t let the haughtiness fool you.

trusts nobody but himself and is loyal to nobody but himself.

has a lot of anger issues so often ends up taking part in underground fights.

he rates around a solid three on the kinsey scale.

is a distant person; closed-off emotionally and prefers to keep himself to himself.

when it comes to whether or not he is morally decent or an extremely bad person, he is somewhere in the middle of that spectrum.

he isn’t heartless but he isn’t exactly compassionate either.

kind of shady but knows how to pass himself as charming. 

has been thru sum shit n seen sum shit so he’s v messed up inside.

though he does have a soft spot for animals and children.

his marksmanship is impeccable.

he’s naturally gifted with firearms and his shot is always on point.

dark eyes and bruised knuckles are his ultimate aesthetic tbh.

actually really appreciates classical music, though he’ll never tell. blame it on his piano lessons from childhood.

speaking of piano, he’s low key gifted at playing although he rarely does these days.

has a very short fuse and can lose his temper quite easily.

he has a good heart and good intentions when it comes to those he actually cares about although he’ll never let this show.

favourite coping mechanism? isolation.

a bit of a lone wolf. he keeps people at arm’s length but acts in a way where people are under the illusion he’s their friend.

basically the tall, dark and handsome trope: ( most of the tall, dark and handsome men display aloof, cold and distant personality but they do have a gentle and caring side. )

is a little snarky and grumpy but if you manage to break this exterior, you’ll find he’s quite witty and easy going.

he got into fighting at a young age. it was the only way to try and learn how to defend himself against his father.

sleep?? he doesn’t know her.

tends to repress his emotions until he explodes.

healthy coping mechanisms?? he doesn’t know them either.

is prone to pushing the self destruct button.

you can find a pinterest board for him by clicking anywhere here.

[manlyquail]

Nerdy Lucid Dreaming

So I figured for no reason whatsoever that I’d share the small story about how I started to learn how to lucid dream as a kid without even realizing what I was doing.

For some brief context, I’m (and always have been) a big gamer. My dad had me playing video games ever since I was young (looking at you Blizzard games), and needless to say I became a bit of an addict. So anyway, with video games ingrained in my brain, there was a day where I suddenly just learned a new skill in my dreams, and it was sort’ve the first step of learning to lucid dream.

See, what would happen is I was a kid that got nightmares quite a bit. Waking up from the cold sweat all scared of whatever happened to be going on (I also grew up on movies like Alien, Friday the 13th, etc. I even saw the opening scene to Fullmetal Alchemist when I was a kid, the scene where they try to ressurect their mom? Yeah, lots of nightmare fuel for my tiny little brain to process). Anyways, it really gave my brain a lot to process, and I don’t really remember any of the dreams because I was so young, except one.

I remember this particular dream because it was the first time I’d ever been aware of my dreaming state, and I was so scared I basically took control almost in a state of panic. In the dream, I was in a really thick hedge maze, above me was all black so no stars or anything, kind’ve like there was just a thick black ceiling above me that was so dark it didn’t even seem like there was anything there. In this maze I was being chased by monsters, in particular I remember Predator being there, a xenomorph from Alien too, and a few other baddies all teamed up chasing me through this maze. As hedge mazes do of course, I eventually found a dead end in the chase and got cornered. So, for dream me it was basically the end, but then the weirdest thing happened. I was so desperate to get out of the dream, to get away from this moment, that a “PAUSE” menu appeared.

Think any game with a pause menu. The screen sorta darkens around the edges, a bright menu in the middle with a list of options and “PAUSE” at the top. It showed up just before things were at their worst, and I was so desperate to wake up from the nightmare that a cursor started to move its way across the image of my dream. It made its way to the pause menu, scrolled down to an EXIT button, and when it clicked it BAM, I woke up. It was so weird to me, and internally I realized how absolutely dorky it was that a video-game style pause menu is what I somehow used to get out of my dream.

After that happened I guess I internalized that ability because I was so thankful to be able to wake up from dreams that it ended up becoming a sort’ve default setting to nightmares at that point. I gained some foresight into when a dream was going to be a nightmare and could simply just ‘exit’ the dream, wake myself up, and then just try another dream. 

Since then I’ve learned more to be able to lucid dream, but in my own way I suppose. I haven’t looked too much into what its like for others with the ability, but for me I’m almost just actively ‘watching’ a show at this point. I’m well aware I could change things around, intervene at any time to wake myself up or change the course of the dream, but I’ve become essentially my own checkpoint system. My curiosity to see how a dream plays out before me makes me eager to simply let dreams play out, but if something bad happens to me in the dream, or something happens that would prevent the dream from continuing or finishing in a way I’m satisfied with, I briefly rewind in a sense and let it play out once more but with the knowledge of what went wrong to avoid it.

I have a few other unique quirks about the way I dream, but some of them are honestly a little horrifying to describe, so I’ll put like a TW and a cut right now for descriptions of extreme gore, and like, loss of limb stuff below really quick just in case before I continue on, mostly because I’m enjoying sharing this and figure why not put all my dream stuff in one place?

So something else kind’ve messed up about the way I dream is how vivid everything is. Because of the self awareness I have that everything is a dream, I no longer panic or freak out when something horrible goes wrong. I’ve been eaten by cannibals, had my limbs ripped off, been cut in half, and so on in my dreams before, but because I realize that they’re dreams I don’t get super freaked out by the events. Usually I just roll with the punches, and in most cases, quite literally try to put myself back together.

I remember one dream in particular, I was in a Halo Warthog in the dream and I don’t quite recall where we were going (group of just sorta faceless people I suppose, and it was a four seater without the turret), but there was a crash and an accident and I ended up getting cut in half right at the waist. Horrifying yes, I remember the feeling of that dismemberment followed by desperately crawling across the ground to a set of legs I thought were mind. Through dream logic I just sort’ve planted my torso on the set of legs and after a couple second was able to use them. Joke was on me because I found out they weren’t actually my legs but someone else’s from the accident, but they were already attached so what was I to do?

The freakiest part of it all though wasn’t the dream, but when I woke up I still felt ‘separated’. I’ve described it to some people in the past as almost like a reverse-phantom limb situation, where I have the body parts but it doesn’t feel like they’re actually attached to me. I was so scared that if I lifted myself up in bed my torso would just pop off from my legs.

It’s not the first time a situation like this has happened, though most of the time it involves my hand. Somehow I frequently get my hand lopped off in various ways, usually not at the wrist but somewhere along the palm or even a few fingers. I always ‘reattach’ it in my dream (usually with something silly, like glue, tape, etc.), and the logic in the dream is as long as I don’t move it around too much it’ll naturally just ‘heal’ itself back connected. I think I get that logic from the idea of sewing limbs back on in emergency situations to save the limb, my brain just equates that to “Well if I just find a way to keep the two pieces lined up long enough it’ll all work out!” Then, when I wake up, than translates to me being utterly terrified to so much as flex my hand or move my fingers around too much lest it just fall apart.

It’s the same sensation as the cut in half one as well. Despite the fact I can see my hand, I can move it and wiggle it around, there’s a lengthy period of time where it feels like a cold fog is there instead. Like, I can feel the warmth of my body up to the part where the limb was lost, but then its like this cold sensation where its as if it isn’t really there even though I know it is. It’s a spooky sensation, almost like a part of my soul was just cut off or something. Eventually the sensation goes away with time, but my imagination and memory are vivid enough that if I think really hard about the scenarios I can recall that feeling pretty distinctly. Spooky stuff.

Anyways, that’s about the end of my weird dream rant. I love sharing nonsense like this but it mostly feels like me rambling some of the time, so thank you for indulging me if you’ve read this far at all and I hope it was the least bit interesting!

[lesdemonium]

I’d Be the Choiceless Hope Chapter 15

Ship: Geraskier Word count: 43347 (total) Chapter: 15/16 Summary:  

“Such a nice, beautiful sound,” the fae crooned. “If only he were this way always.”

Julian’s mother stood up. She claimed she was prepared to stop the fae, to protect her baby, but in Julian’s darkest moments he doubted this part of the story. His mother loved him, of that he had no doubt, but she had been young and weary, and even years later, she couldn’t quite get the twinge of exhaustion out of her eyes when she recalled Julian’s infancy. Even if she had been keen on protecting him, the fae was too close, too fast, too set on his plan.

“A gift, for the new mother,” the fae continued. He leaned a hand in to stroke Julian’s cheek. “I give you the gift of obedience.”

As a baby, Jaskier was visited by a fae, who gifted Jaskier’s mother with Jaskier’s obedience. As Jaskier grew older, the “gift” became more of a curse.

Additional tags: AngstAngst with a Happy EndingHeavy AngstUnrequited LoveNot Actually Unrequited LoveAlternate Universe - Canon DivergenceCanon EraNot Canon CompliantCursed Jaskier | DandelionAlternate Universe - Ella Enchanted FusionCurse of ObedienceRape/Non-con ElementsImplied/Referenced Rape/Non-conJaskier | Dandelion Whump

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read chapter 1 on tumblr

Something was different.

When Jaskier woke, his body stiff and his joints aching, the dungeon was quiet. In the days--had it only been days?--since he had been imprisoned, the dungeon was constantly alive with noise. Guards everywhere, chatting as loud as they pleased, at all hours. Jaskier had been unable to sleep soundly, not that he would have, being bound to the wall.

Now, though, when Jaskier craned his neck to see beyond his small field of vision, he couldn’t see a single guard. No one was talking, there were no footsteps echoing, Jaskier couldn’t even hear breathing other than his own. He sagged in relief for a moment, only a moment, before he noticed other sounds. Far away sounds. A struggle happening, elsewhere. There was distant yelling and every so often a clattering of metal on stone.

What was happening? Where was everyone? He blinked as he glanced around his cell, as if that would give him any hints, but inevitably he found nothing. All he could do was wait.

No sooner than he had decided that, did the door to the dungeon slam open. Footsteps approached him, and Jaskier braced himself. Cahir came into view, a mage beside him with rich dark skin and a long, sweeping cloak. If she hadn’t come with Cahir, and hadn’t snarled at Jaskier disdainfully, he might have called her beautiful.

“He finally came for you,” Cahir said, sounding pleased.

Cahir unlocked Jaskier’s cell and stepped close to him, as Jaskier stared at him bewildered. Surely he didn’t mean Geralt. But, the barely restrained glee in his eyes, he must have meant Geralt. Cahir grabbed Jaskier by his jaw, pulling him close and wrenching it open despite Jaskier’s sudden vigor in trying to get away from him. He revealed a glass vial, and poured the contents down Jaskier’s throat before he had a chance to struggle away. It tasted like sludge, and Jaskier sputtered as Cahir released him.

“You’ll sleep now, long enough for him to get you away and trust he rescued you. Don’t forget our plan, Jaskier. Get the witcher out of my way, and bring the princess back here for me.”

He tried to resist the pull of the draught, but Jaskier’s limbs soon grew heavy and he collapsed against the cold stone wall. Beyond the dungeon, the struggle grew closer. Jaskier stayed conscious just long enough to watch Cahir and the mage disappear into a portal, before Jaskier fell into darkness.

When Jaskier woke again, he found a pair of blue eyes staring intently down at him. He shot up, just narrowly colliding with the young girl hovering above him, and looked around wildly. Something in his abdomen pulled, and he winced, smoothing over one of his wounds with the palm of his hand.

He was surrounded by trees. The sun shone brightly through the leaves, and though the foliage shielded him from the worst of the bright rays, Jaskier’s eyes still twinged as he struggled to adjust. The girl to his right was unfamiliar to him, but as Jaskier examined her, the knot of dread in his stomach grew. If Cahir was right, if Geralt really had saved Jaskier, then this had to be--

“Jaskier,” a familiar voice said from behind him.

Geralt stepped closer, until he was finally illuminated by the sun, and Jaskier could have wept. He had so longed to see Geralt again, but now all he wanted was to run away. His curse would not let him. Instead, he sat, frozen, staring up at the man who was simultaneously the only and the last person Jaskier wanted to see. To his mortification, tears pricked at the corners of his eyes.

“Geralt, you have to--I can’t--” Jaskier tried feebly, but the words died in his throat. He couldn’t tell Geralt about Cahir’s plan, and what Jaskier had to do. Jaskier tried, though. He tried as hard as he could to push back the blockage in his throat, but all that came out was a high-pitched, keening sound, and Geralt reached out to touch Jaskier’s arm.

“It’s okay, you’re safe now,” Geralt soothed him, or tried to, but Jaskier’s pounding heart would not calm.

Jaskier watched, stunned, as Geralt looked over his wounds. Several were bandaged, and he removed the dressings that had bled through and applied new ones. Jaskier couldn’t speak, his mouth gone completely dry, as Geralt rubbed a salve into the cuts on his wrists from his shackles.

“You’re Jaskier,” the girl cut in, and Jaskier turned to look at her, feeling a bit sheepish for forgetting about her so quickly. He chalked that up to being in a delicate state. “I’ve heard so much about you.”

Jaskier sniffed, trying to quickly pull himself together, and managed a smile. “I am,” he answered, nodding. “And who might you be?”

“I’m… Fiona,” she said, glancing at Geralt. Geralt shook his head, briefly, and she looked back at Jaskier with a small smile. “I mean Cirilla. But you can call me Ciri.”

Jaskier nodded, though his smile faded into a grimace. This was who they were after, who Jaskier was to deliver right into the jaws of the monster. Jaskier’s heart was leaden in his chest as he catalogued her face. She looked so much like Pavetta, and as a result this child felt so familiar to Jaskier. She felt dear to him, and Jaskier couldn’t betray her. He had to get out of this. He had to fix this.

Jaskier wheeled on Geralt, snatching his wrist away from the witcher’s nimble fingers, and cradling it against his chest instead.

“Geralt, you have to go--you have to leave, now. Leave me behind,” Jaskier insisted, his eyes filling with unbidden tears.

“Jaskier, no,” Geralt answered, shaking his head as his eyes furrowed. “I’m not going to just leave you again. Not without--Not after--”

He cut himself off, abruptly standing. Geralt’s gaze fell on Cirilla for a moment before he looked back at Jaskier, and bent down to pull Jaskier to his feet. Jaskier went willingly, though once he stood steadily, he pushed Geralt away.

“No, I don’t--” Jaskier tried, but it was getting harder to speak. He couldn’t find a way to even dance around the truth, around what Cahir had forbidden him to tell Geralt. He also couldn’t find the words to convince Geralt to leave him. “I don’t want--”

“We--We need to go to town. We’re far enough away, we’ll be safe there, and we can get you a healer.” Geralt held out a hand for Ciri, and pulled her up as well. Jaskier looked between the two, shaking his head, but no words would come out. “We can talk there.”

Geralt reached for Jaskier’s hand, but Jaskier snatched it away again. He tried to walk away from Geralt, but all Jaskier succeeded in doing was stumbling wildly, pacing back and forth as if he had gone mad or was having a conniption of some kind. Geralt’s features knitted together, looking so guilty, and every time he chanced a step forward, Jaskier let out a high pitched noise, so anguished and panicked even Jaskier didn’t know how it could have come from his own body.

Cirilla looked terrified, but still Jaskier couldn’t stop. His body wouldn’t let him run away and put as much distance between them, but still he tried. It was like he was back in that forest with Geralt so long ago, his traitorous body conflicting with his own mind, and he was powerless.

“Jaskier, you need to calm down,” Geralt said, stepping forward slowly, his hands out before him. Jaskier tried to get away from him to no avail, and felt hot tears stream down his face. His whole body hurt, and he could feel the fight leaving him. “You’re panicking, but we have to keep moving.”

Geralt stepped closer, and Jaskier tried to shove him away, but Geralt did not yield. Instead, he swooped down and picked Jaskier up, slinging him over his shoulder. Jaskier thrashed, trying to dislodge himself, and finally stopped when he pulled at a wound hard enough to make himself gasp.

“Geralt, I don’t want to go! You need to leave me here. I have to--” The words caught in his throat again and he let out a frustrated groan. Jaskier looked up and saw Ciri staring at him, her eyes wide. She was following them now, as Geralt stomped his way through the forest, but she kept a safe distance between them, as if she was afraid Jaskier would swing at her . “Ciri, please, tell him. Tell him to leave me.”

Ciri shook her head. “We’re trying to help you. Why are you fighting him?” she asked.

Jaskier slumped, all the fight finally gone, and he pressed the heel of his hands into his eyes. “Geralt, please . For once in your life, just listen to me.”

Geralt shook his head. “I can’t, Jaskier. I have to make sure you’re safe. And then I’ll--I’ll go however far you tell me to. Just let me get you safe, first.”

Jaskier bit the inside of his cheek hard enough to make it bleed. The indignity of this all was truly disheartening. He had no choice in Cahir’s plan, and now he had to go wherever Geralt moved him. For all the times Jaskier had followed after the witcher as he was told, repeatedly, to get lost, and now the tables had finally turned. Of course Geralt had to be a contrarian bastard.

“You sure call a lot of shots,” Jaskier spat, though his ferocity was greatly diminished by the fact that he was, more or less, having this conversation with Geralt’s ass. “ Now you want to stay with me? You’ve finally finished running away, after evading me in city after city? What, did you hear me coming? Smell me? And you just ran off . But now that it’s your idea, oh, Jaskier can stay! Even if Jaskier doesn’t want to! All that matters is what Geralt wants!”

Geralt sighed, but he kept marching on. He didn’t even bother to give Jaskier any answers. Jaskier tried, with great effort, to needle Geralt into some sort of response, but his walls were back up. No matter what tactic Jaskier used, Geralt would not be moved.

“You’re very angry,” Ciri finally chimed in, after Jaskier had gone on a particularly poetic tirade about the not-so-pure speculated lineage of Geralt’s mother.

It took a considerable amount of effort for Jaskier to raise himself enough to look Ciri in the eye. She looked less terrified now, at least, but no less interested. Her head was tilted just slightly and her eyebrows sat high on her face.

“Well,” Jaskier said, giving in to gravity--and his aching, not-at-all-healed wounds from being beaten for days--and allowed himself to flop back against Geralt’s body. “There’s very little dignity in being thrown like a sack of potatoes over someone’s shoulder and carted off to wherever they want you to go.”

“I have to make sure you’re safe, Jaskier,” Geralt finally chimed in. Jaskier could have hit him, if he’d had better leverage.

“Did we all forget the fact that I’ve been injured? In more ways than one?” Jaskier rolled his eyes, to the benefit of no one but himself.

“Your worst injuries are on your back and legs. I could carry you bridal style, or make you ride Roach, but those options would hurt more.”

“You could let me walk.”

“You’d run,” Geralt said, with a great deal of finality.

“Haven’t I earned that? Haven’t I earned the chance to make my own decisions about where I go in regards to you?” Jaskier spat back.

Geralt was quiet for a long moment. Jaskier was sure he wouldn’t respond at all, when Geralt softly uttered, “I’m sorry, Jaskier. Let me be selfish a little longer.” So softly Jaskier almost didn’t hear him.

Jaskier didn’t struggle again until they made their way to a town. Which town, Jaskier had no idea. He struggled anyway, with enough ferocity that Geralt had to wrap both arms around his legs to keep Jaskier from kicking the people they passed by.

“Let me go ! We’re in town, I can find the healer on my own!” Jaskier insisted. Geralt ignored him, and instead negotiated with an innkeeper for a room and to fetch a healer.

When Geralt laid him down in the bed, Jaskier bolted upright and tried to scramble away, but Geralt’s hands caught his wrists with ease, and he forced Jaskier back down. At least he managed to look pained as he did it, though it did nothing to sway Jaskier’s feelings. Instead, he struggled harder, trying ineffectually to escape Geralt’s grip.

“Ciri, stand outside the door,” Geralt finally said, his voice laced with exasperation. Jaskier, foolishly, felt a great deal of pride that at least he was grating on Geralt. “Jaskier and I need to talk”

“No!” Jaskier cried, finally freezing underneath Geralt’s hands. “No, don’t go. Geralt, you have to listen to me, no .”

Geralt, eyeing Jaskier warily, let go of Jaskier’s wrists. Jaskier didn’t move, not even a little, as he silently pleaded with Geralt to listen to him, just this once . Instead, Jaskier was horrified as Geralt turned to Ciri and nodded once, and she stepped outside, closing the door behind her.

They were alone. They were alone, and Jaskier’s body reacted instantly. Geralt was still turned toward the door, and Jaskier grabbed the dagger Geralt kept hidden in his belt. Jaskier freed the blade and, blessedly, that was as far as he got before Geralt caught on to what he was doing. Geralt’s hand caught Jaskier’s wrist midair, the tip of the blade poised to sink its way into Geralt’s heart.

The shock was clear on Geralt’s face as he found Jaskier’s eyes, and his grip turned almost crushing as Jaskier’s hand continued to press forward with all the strength Jaskier could muster. Geralt could have actually crushed Jaskier’s wrist, but he didn’t. He was still holding back. Jaskier wasn’t even surprised by the tears pricking the corner of his eyes as he, too, tried futilely to fight against his own body.

“Geralt, you have to go,” Jaskier begged. He pressed further still, almost lifting off the bed, and Geralt clambered over him, straddling Jaskier’s hips and pinning him into the mattress. “I can’t--I have to--”

“Jaskier, what are you doing ?” Geralt demanded, his face scrunched into a grimace, as if he was actually in pain.

He caught Jaskier’s other wrist as Jaskier tried to push him away with a hand on Geralt’s face. Despite the pain Jaskier felt and the fact that every muscle in his body cried out for him to stop , Jaskier pushed forward. The curse would not let him stop, and he seemed to be growing even stronger. Geralt was beginning to struggle to hold Jaskier’s hands back, their arms shaking with the effort they were both exuding.

He was going to kill Geralt. Jaskier had no control now, could do nothing to stop the way his body twisted and fought against Geralt. The only saving grace was Geralt’s superior strength. But how long would that hold? Jaskier had never been able to move his witcher unless Geralt willed it, and now even Geralt was starting to realize that Jaskier would not be stopped, perhaps could not be stopped.

Jaskier’s eyes squeezed shut, pressing hot tears out the corners, and his teeth clenched painfully. He had to stop. He could not, would not, hurt Geralt. No matter how angry or hurt Jaskier was, he could not hurt Geralt. He could not hurt Ciri, who was innocent in all this, and yet would be used as a pawn in whatever political game Nilfgaard was playing. Used like a pawn like Jaskier had been all his life.

“Geralt, Geralt, I can’t,” Jaskier tried, his breath beginning to come in loud gasps as he tried to stop his muscles. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I don’t want to--I have no choice--”

Geralt shook his head. Jaskier’s hips bucked, trying to knock Geralt off, and Geralt’s thighs tightened around him as he struggled to keep his hold.

“I lied to you!” Jaskier cried. “I lied so many times. All the time. I know--I know what Lazuli meant. He wanted me to tell my truth, and I’ve told so many lies, all I tell are lies and half truths. I told you you’re the only one I’m honest with, but it wasn’t true, it was never true.”

His bucking finally prevailed, and Geralt was thrown to the side. Jaskier’s body pressed forward, throwing the witcher more off-balance, until Geralt was stumbling off the bed to the ground. His hands released Jaskier’s wrists as he fell, but Jaskier followed after him, until he was the one straddling Geralt. The hand holding the dagger flung toward Geralt’s neck, and Geralt grabbed Jaskier’s wrist and his forearm, pushing Jaskier’s arm back with as much strength as Geralt could muster. Jaskier’s free arm braced itself on the hilt of the dagger, pressing his inhuman, cursed strength to push the dagger forward.

“Lazuli told me to tell my truth.” Tears fell from Jaskier’s face into Geralt’s hair. He was panicked, breathless, trying to get the words out as quickly as he could. “I love you, Geralt. That’s my truth. I love you .”

All fight left Jaskier suddenly, and he collapsed forward for a terrifying second before he caught himself. His fingers unwound from the dagger and it clattered to the floor beside Geralt’s head just a moment before Geralt shoved Jaskier back. Jaskier’s head collided with the post of the bedframe with a loud thunk and Jaskier crumpled against it as Geralt leapt to his feet.

“You tried to--”

Geralt was interrupted by the door flying open. Cirilla stood in the doorway, her eyes open as wide as her mouth as she took in the scene.

“I was--I was downstairs asking after the healer, then I heard fighting and--and-- what happened ?” Ciri sounded panicked and confused, her eyes fixed on Jaskier.

Jaskier pushed himself up, using the bed frame as support as he stared at his own hands, now moving of their own accord. He had only just gotten to his feet when Geralt turned on his heel and rushed out the room, grabbing Ciri by the wrist and dragging her out of the doorway and, presumably, out of the inn.

Jaskier could only stare dumbly at his hands, then at the dagger on the ground.

“I’m free,” he whispered, though no one was there to hear him.

read chapter 16

[bubonickitten]

Summary: Jon goes back to before the world ended and tries to forge a different path.

Previous chapter: tumblr // AO3

Chapter 7 full text & content warnings below the cut.

      CWs for Chapter 7: panic attack/shutdown; hospital/ICU imagery. Jon meets his apparent quota of one (1) allowed swear per chapter. SPOILERS through S5.

      Chapter 7: Zombie, Redux

     There are hushed voices coming from somewhere deep below the unbroken whine of static filling his ears. Nearer, Georgie is saying something, but her words are too garbled for Jon to wring any meaning out of them. He isn’t sure exactly how long it’s been since he woke up, but he can feel his muscles cramping from holding the same position for awhile now, curled tight and taut and small.

  …catatonia: a state of…

  Fuck off, Jon thinks dully.

  At least he’s not crying anymore. That stopped some time ago, all of a sudden between one moment and the next, and now he just feels hollow and raw. He knows what he would see if he looked in the mirror: puffy, reddened eyes, so reminiscent of a human – but with a glint of something hungry and monstrous behind them. Any sympathy or concern that anyone might feel at first glance would be quashed with one long look into those eyes, leaving only fear and revulsion and hostility in their wake. And they would be right to flee or freeze or fight, just as they might when confronted with any other predator. 

  Jon keeps his eyes closed.

  “– a sedative,” comes an unfamiliar voice, finally reaching him through the haze.

  “Does he look like he needs a sedative?”

  Basira, Jon recognizes.

  “We – we should really do some – some tests…” The first voice trails off uncertainly. A nurse, Jon assumes. He can feel the apprehension coming off them in waves. 

  No one knows what to do with him. There is no standard of care for a patient who spent the last six months as a seeming corpse with frantic brain activity as its only signs of life.

  A zombie, Jon recalls wryly. The statement calls to him from within Basira’s bag: a taunt, a balm, and a poison all at once. He pushes the thought of it away.

  None of the hospital staff like entering his room, he Knows. They certainly don’t want to deal with him now he’s awake. His circumstances present a medical marvel – the kind of mystery that most researchers would kill for a chance to study – but their curiosity was tempered by that overpowering sense of wrongness emanating from him. They were wisely dissuaded by the sheer dread of coming close to something so unquestionably inhuman. 

  Most people aren’t so curious that they would run headlong towards an ominous fate like the first person to die in a horror film, he supposes. It’s just one more way in which Jon was – is – such an easy target for someone like Jonah Magnus.   

  Distantly, Jon can feel himself start to shiver.

  There’s movement to his right as Georgie sits on the edge of the bed, within arm’s reach but careful to leave a buffer of empty space between them. She tells him that he’s safe – he’s not, and neither is anyone else while he still exists in the world – and that she’s here – for now, but once she realizes how far gone he is, she’ll leave again – and that they’ll sort it all out – yes, and when they do, they’ll never stop looking at him like he’s a monster, and isn’t he?

  The door closes behind the nurse, but the fear lingers for several minutes afterwards, like blood diffusing through water.  

  “Jon,” Basira begins, her tone resolute and impersonal.

  “Give him a minute,” Georgie says.

  “He’s had a minute. He’s had six months.” There is no malice in her voice, only a bone-deep exhaustion. Basira has been carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders since the Unknowing. She’s barely had a chance to mourn Daisy; she’s wound tight from hypervigilance, made worse by the Flesh’s attack; she’s had to put practicality above all else, because sentimentality is a luxury that has long since been stolen from her. “He needs to answer some questions.” 

  Georgie huffs and turns back to Jon.

  “Jon, can you hear me?”

  He nods without looking up.

  “Are you nonverbal?”

  Jon can feel a faraway part of himself balk at the clinical flavor of the word. Georgie was always direct like this. Intellectually, Jon can appreciate having a term to summarize nebulous human experiences like this. Emotionally, he still has difficulty tolerating how exposed the practical application of those terms makes him feel.

  Besides, the word doesn’t really apply to this situation, does it? Not in the traditional sense, at least. Not completely. So he shakes his head no.

  He takes a deep breath and reluctantly looks inward to the Archive. There’s a spark of excitement, or relief, or maybe smug vindication from that alien part of himself when he finally gives in to the need, and he tries his best to ignore it and get it over with. He doesn’t delve too deeply, instead settling on the first thing that might work.

  “I’m sorry, it won’t let me say the words,” he says, voice strained and raspy with months of neglect.

  “O…kay,” Georgie says. “I guess that’s a no?”

  “Hmm.” Basira doesn’t say anything else.

  Jon starts picking through his library again, but nothing jumps out at him. His thoughts still feel sluggish, his mind packed with cotton. Or cobweb. Usually he’d shudder at that thought, but right now, he’s just too tired for that familiar fear to actually reach him through all the fog. He’s just spent months literally sleeping like the dead; why is he so tired?

  When a full minute passes without a reply, Basira turns to Georgie. 

  “Could you give us some time alone?”

  “No.” The immediacy of the refusal surprises him. He feels Georgie’s eyes on him, and he tenses. “I’m staying, Jon.”

  “I need to talk to him.”

  “Then talk to him.”

  “I thought you didn’t want to be involved in Institute business.”

  Georgie hesitates, and Jon finally looks up at her. He’s careful not to make eye contact. It’s alright, he wants to say, you don’t have to stay – but he can’t.

  “…anyone who doesn’t want to be a part of it, they can…” Jon says instead, faltering when he can’t find a good way to express the rest.

  Back to the charades, I suppose, he thinks sullenly. He holds one hand out and walks the middle and index finger of his other hand across his upturned palm.

  “Jon, why are you –” Georgie cuts herself off with a short exhale. “Do you want me to stay?”

  Jon bites his lip. “Probably putting you in danger.”  

  “Yeah, probably, but that’s not the question I asked.” She sighs when she sees Jon’s puzzled expression. “Look, the only way I can think to approach all of… this is to break it into smaller pieces. It doesn’t mean I’m committing to anything else, it doesn’t mean that I can’t change my mind, it doesn’t mean that I can’t walk away later or set more boundaries. I’m not asking whether I should stay, and I’m not offering to get involved indefinitely or unconditionally. Right this moment, all I’m asking is whether you want me to physically leave this room for now and come back later.”

  For a few minutes, Jon says nothing. If the question had been whether it’s safe to be near him, she already knows that his answer would be an emphatic no. Unlike him, Georgie knows when to cut her losses and leave. It would be condescending to assume that she needs him to protect her from her own choices, especially considering how, of the two of them, she’s the one who actually has a self-preservation instinct. She doesn’t have a choice, really. She can’t feel fear – one of the most basic survival tools – and as a result, she has to evaluate her circumstances much more constantly and painstakingly than others.

  It must be exhausting, Jon thinks to himself. He knows what hypervigilance is like. Even if Georgie can’t experience the fear that goes along with it, it probably still saps her energy in much the same way.

  He tries to force himself back on track. The question: Does he want her to physically leave in this moment? 

  No. He really, really doesn’t.

  Jon closes his eyes, and Naomi’s statement is the first thing his mind touches: “Could you stay please?”  

  “Okay.” Georgie looks at Basira. “I’m staying.”

  Jon feels some of the tension leave his shoulders, but he can’t help feeling selfish.

  “Are you really okay with that?” Basira says, eyeing Jon. He can detect the unspoken question: You know what I’m going to ask. Do you really want her to hear the answer?

  He does. Georgie deserves to know. They all do. What he doesn’t want is to hear what she has to say to him after the truth comes out.

  But he nods anyway.

  “Fine. What are you?” Basira says without preamble.

  “’Are you secretly a monster?’ probably would have been a great opener,” Jon says acidly.

  He flinches as the words leave his mouth. They were Sasha’s once – the real Sasha – said with a hint of playfulness, but now they just sound bitter. He’s fully aware that he has an overflowing stock of resentment bottled up inside him, hidden somewhere deep underneath all the layers of guilt and grief and self-loathing, but he wasn’t expecting the vitriol to slip out quite so easily. And he really, really can’t afford to start burning bridges, especially so early on.   

  But Basira seems unruffled.

  “Alright,” she says with a shrug. “Are you?”

  It’s complicated, he does not say.

  When he reaches up to run a hand through his hair, the movement jostles the hospital bracelet affixed to it, catching his eye. He brings his hand back down and stares at it, hanging loosely from his wrist. He’s always been scrawny, but his arms look thinner than usual. Fragile. With a pang, he notices the scarring on his wrists, left there from where the ropes cut into him during his month in captivity with the Circus. By the time the world ended, they had faded somewhat. As they are now, they’re impossible to miss.

  SIMS, JONATHAN, the wristband reads. Date of birth. Sex. Blood type. Patient identification number. Barcode. An allergy alert: amoxicillin.

  Is he even still human enough for an allergic reaction to pose a threat? He could Know, he supposes, but –

  “Jon?” Basira prompts.

  He sighs, closes his eyes, and consults the Archive once again. 

  “It seemed almost human, from a distance, but as it got closer, I saw that it was –”  

  Jon quickly skims through statements looking for an appropriate fragment.

  “…some newly-birthed monster,” he settles on. It’s blunt, and a bit petulant, but he may as well be honest. He resigns himself to whatever comes next.

  Martin would have hated to hear him think like this.

  Martin’s not here, some destructive, cruel part of his mind supplies.

  “Why are you talking like that?” There’s the faintest tinge of aggravation in Basira’s tone now. 

  Before Jon can answer, Georgie gives him a skeptical, almost chiding look. “I doubt it's that simple, Jon. Why don’t you try that again?”

  “I could see myself becoming one of those people and I fought very hard against the feeling of wrongness that seemed to be trying to worm itself into my mind,” he amends. Better. Probably more accurate, if he’s being kind to himself. (He’s rarely kind to himself.)

  “That sounds more constructive than just giving up and deciding you’re a monster,” Georgie says.

  She still seems baffled by the unusual quality of his speech, but he can tell she’s trying not to draw attention to it. Probably thinks it’s some neurological aftereffect of the coma. Not-coma. Whatever.

  Who is he kidding? Georgie is sharp. She knows this is some supernatural nonsense – and there’s a simple, straightforward way to confirm it for her.

  “I don’t think I’ll ever be the same person I was before.”  

  “I think that could be said of anyone. We all change from moment to moment, and – wait.” Georgie gives him a shrewd look as she registers the cadence with which he speaks. It’s undeniably familiar, but it’s not him. It’s his voice, but those aren’t his words. “Jon, was that my…”

  “Statement – regarding the last words of a possible corpse,” Jon says wearily.

  “Jon,” Basira says, her eyes widening just barely, “are you quoting statements?”  

  “The words repeated, as though on a recorded loop.”  He gives an affirmative nod, just in case the words are unclear – which is often the case. 

  “Care to explain why?”

  “I started to say something – but my voice died in my throat,” he says.

  Then, changing tack: “…but it – it didn’t seem to be working right; all I could hear from it was the – faint noise of static, and…”  

  They probably don’t care how it feels, though, do they? They just want to know what it makes him now. His hands flutter in agitation as he tries to redirect, mind racing to find another statement.  

  “Okay, alright, I get the gist,” Basira says. There is a long, considering pause. “Can you just… write it down?”

  The simple answer is no, but the easiest way to make them understand is with a demonstration. He holds one palm flat and with the other hand mimics writing on it. 

  Reaching into her bag, Basira produces a small notepad with a pen stuffed into the wire spiral binding. Jon pulls the pen out, rips the cap off with his teeth, and –

  “Seriously, Jon?” Basira complains.

  “Honestly, Basira, what did you expect?” Georgie snorts. “You can’t tell me Jon’s desk isn’t a graveyard of gnawed-up pens.”

  Jon manages a tiny smirk at that. Most people were well-acquainted with his treatment of writing utensils after the first week of working alongside him. It had quickly become an office joke. About a month into his tenure as Head Archivist, he’d managed to chomp down on an exploded ballpoint pen. Tim had found him at the bathroom sink twenty minutes later, still trying to get the ink off his face and hands – and, of course, never let him live it down.

  Well, until Jon burned the bridge between them, anyway. The good-humored ribbing and inside jokes gradually dwindled away, only to be replaced with corrosive distrust and resentment.

  Jon’s smile fades just as rapidly as it had appeared. He flips to an empty page of the notebook.

  He sets out with the intention to write a sentence of his own: Regardless of the mode of communication – verbal, written, sign – I can only borrow from statements.

  It sounds too stiff, too academic, but it doesn’t matter. The moment the tip of the pen touches paper, Jon’s hand seizes. The tape recorder underneath the bed emits a brief crackle. When Jon tries to press down and begin writing, his fingers and wrist start convulsively twitching. A scalding pain starts to seep through his fingers and crawl up his arm, the recorder’s static oscillating along in time with the throbbing. When it upsweeps into a shrill screech, Georgie starts.

  “Jon –”

  Picking the pen up off the page, Jon holds up one trembling finger: Wait.

  With a pained hiss, he shakes his hand out until the ache recedes. When he starts writing this time, it’s with the intention of reproducing a verbatim line from the statement of Jane Prentiss, regarding a wasps’ nest in her attic: I have tried to write it down, to put it into terms and words you could understand.  

  The words flow easily. The handwriting is a nearly illegible scrawl, but that has nothing to do with the Archive. Jon has always had poor handwriting, and it’s only gotten worse since his encounter with Jude. While his dominant hand is still usable, the burn scar contracture still affects his mobility and coordination to some extent.

  He’s tried grabbing individual words from statements to piece together a novel sentence before, but just like speaking a single word in isolation replays every instance of it recorded in the Archive and leaves him reeling in the aftermath, trying to write a standalone word is risky. When he writes a word with the express intention of removing it from the context of a statement, every occurrence of the word floods him all at once. The force of it always overwhelms him before he can even start on the next word in his intended sentence. Usually he ends up dropping his writing utensil. Sometimes he passes out. Always it’s unpleasant. 

  It’s as if whatever power is enforcing the rules knows when he’s trying to bend them. Or Knows, more likely. Assuming he can assign self-awareness to the Ceaseless Watcher, that is.

  Stop, he tells his wayward brain. Stay on task.   

  He shoves the pen back into the notebook’s spiral binding and hands it back to Basira, who returns it to her bag. The cap he keeps for himself, rolling it between his fingers now.

  “What about BSL?” Georgie suggests.

  Jon shakes his head no.

  “How do you know?” Basira asks.

  There are two answers to that. The first is that he just Knows. The second is that he’s tried. Martin knows a limited amount of signs, but Jon’s hands never cooperated when he tried to copy Martin’s motions. His fingers never wanted to curl into the correct shapes, his joints would lock up, and subtle movements would turn into violent tremors. Once, in a fit of stubborn frustration, he kept pushing back against the thing controlling his body. His arms went limp and numb, and he couldn’t use them for hours after.

  Simple nonverbal signals – nodding, shaking his head, giving a thumbs up – seem to be, for the most part, whitelisted. Most charades and expressionistic gestures will also pass through the Archive’s filter. Formalized signing, though, is usually blocked.

  The deciding factors seem to be intentionality and whether or not an attempt at communication is deemed to fit the definition of formal language. Sign languages, systems of writing, spoken words – all off-limits unless being used to reproduce the Archive’s existing records. The more imprecise and abstract the attempted communication, though, the more likely it is to escape the Archive’s strict conceptualization of language.

  He and Martin experimented a bit with illustration and found mixed success. It was difficult to ascertain any concrete limits. The more abstract the intended drawing, the more likely Jon was to be able to produce it – though it tended to leave him drained and with a splitting headache regardless of how successful the attempt was.  It did seem as though the intent mattered more than the result – which was probably for the best. Jon was no more of an artist than he was a poet, and it showed.  

  Any time Jon tried to ask the Beholding for clarification on the rules governing his new-and-impaired communication abilities, it gave him nothing but static in return. They had to find things out mostly by trial-and-error.

  Luckily for Jon, Martin is observant and intuitive when it comes to reading people, and he’s a poet with a mind for the abstract. He was usually able to interpret Jon’s meaning with alarming speed and precision, and whenever Jon grew frustrated with his inability to express himself in a way that felt right, Martin would pose yes-or-no questions to try to help him narrow it down. He would always keep going until Jon was satisfied that he was understood. Even when they were in disagreement. 

  But Martin isn’t here, Jon’s treacherous brain reminds him again.

  “Let me guess,” Basira sighs. “You just know.”

  Jon gives a tired shrug. Even if he could use his own words, he may have had the same response. He’s never managed to have a conversation about his ability to Know that didn’t leave him feeling defeated. Sometimes it doesn’t seem worth trying to explain.

  “Alright,” Basira mutters to herself, rubbing her temples now. “This makes things more complicated.”

  You think? Jon wants to snap, and he’s thankful that he can’t. It isn’t Basira’s fault; she doesn’t deserve his ire.

  “So, what does this mean?”  she continues.

  “I often find myself locked in a sense of esoteric paralysis on how to proceed,” Jon quips, borrowing from Adelard Dekker this time. He wonders if Dekker would have tried to kill him on the spot. He wonders whether he would have been right to do so.

  Georgie stifles a laugh. Jon can hear the relief coloring it, and one corner of his mouth twitches into a smile again. She’s intimately familiar with his ill-timed gallows humor, and the fact that he can still draw on it so readily is a good sign. Another small piece of evidence added to the Jonathan-Sims-isn’t-too-far-gone column. She wants to believe it’s still him, he Knows, and wants to believe that he can get better – but there’s still a tiny, nagging ghost of doubt somewhere deep in her mind. He doesn’t blame her for that. 

  Basira isn’t as amused.

  “Jon,” she groans, “please be serious.”

  “It was definitely human once I could see, as it grasped desperately” – a skip ahead – “it was trying to say: ‘I’m sorry.’”  

  “It’s fine, just…” She sighs. “Try to answer the question.”

  Jon closes his eyes again, brow furrowing in concentration.

  “…so aware of the position I’m in, and keen to use that power to actually help people.” Referencing Tova McHugh’s statement makes him nauseous – the hatred and disgust he felt the first time he read it was directed at himself as much as it was at her. But it’s a fair comparison, considering what he was doing back then. “I’m trying to do good,” he adds, and hopes it sounds more sincere than Tova’s flimsy rationalizations ever did. 

  As expected, Basira looks unconvinced.

  “Look, Jon, a lot has happened –”

  “He already knows,” Georgie interrupts. “We talked – in the dreams, you know.” Basira does know. “About Tim and Daisy and Martin. And… and Melanie. He’s the one who told me about the bullet.”

  “I thought Melanie figured it out on her own.” Basira’s eyes narrow as she looks at Jon. “How did you –”

  “He said he knows things because of the Eye.” Georgie gives him a look that he can’t quite parse. Sympathetic, maybe? An undercurrent of disappointment, but without accusation. Frustration, but not directed at him – rather, it’s for him, on his behalf. “And he said that when he woke up, he would explain everything where Elias couldn’t overhear, but…”

  “Maybe somewhere in your library are the words to explain what happened,” Jon says, unable to mask his dejection. “I suppose I’ll just have to try.”  

  “Still want to wait and do it in the tunnels?” Georgie waits for Jon’s affirmative. “Fair enough. I brought you a change of clothes.” Jon gives her a questioning look. “I’ve, ah, been bringing a bag each time I visit for the last couple weeks, in case you woke up. Just some things you left at my flat. I couldn’t find any trousers, so I just grabbed a pair of my joggers – which are definitely too big for you, but it should be better than a hospital gown, at least.”

  Jon feels a grateful smile tug at his lips. He didn’t expect this level of consideration, doesn’t deserve –

  “We should probably wait until a doctor signs off on your release, though.” Georgie stands and starts to move towards the door. “I’ll go to the nurse’s station, and –”

  Jon shakes his head. “I cannot imagine what they would have thought of a person who could not die.”  

  “Well, you can’t just walk out of here. I don’t care how inhuman you think you are, you still need to be cleared for discharge.”

  “I’ve no interest in becoming a resident medical marvel.”  

  It’s a hollow excuse. The first time around, the hospital staff couldn’t wait to rush him out the door. He doubts they’d ever processed a discharge so quickly before or since.

  “Just stay here.” He’s halfway to ripping off his ECG sensors when she shoots him a stern warning glare. “Leave them.”

  Jon responds with a peevish huff. Those sensors haven’t been connected to anything since the first week he was here. No one wanted to hear the incessant flatline, and –

  Suddenly, he Knows all about the heated argument that was had regarding his DNR status. He had no next-of-kin to consult, so they were hesitant to mark him as DNR in advance. That meant that, since he was unresponsive – and his case was so unprecedented as to make any speculation regarding an outcome impossible – they should have been trying to resuscitate him. But they’d already tried that, and the consensus was that he should have been declared dead by the first responders. (Rumor was that his boss of all people had managed to convince them to bring him to the hospital for treatment instead.)

Under normal circumstances they would have declared time of death several times over by now and moved him to the morgue – except that brain death hadn’t occurred, and it didn’t seem like the absence of a pulse or respiration was having any effect on that in the slightest. Didn’t that render the entire discussion altogether moot?

  And then Jon Knows how the only reason he was admitted in the first place is because Elias had a brief chat with the director of the hospital. He was, as always, very persuasive.    

  “I don’t want to hear it,” Georgie says when she hears Jon sigh. She stops at the threshold and looks back at him again just as he starts fiddling with IV cannula in the crook of his arm. He freezes and folds his hands in his lap, like a toddler caught reaching for the cookie jar. “Jonathan Sims, you’d better still be in bed when I come back.”

  Jon rolls his eyes, but stays put. As Georgie leaves the room, Basira lets out a soft chuckle.

  “No wonder she and Melanie get along so well.”

  Jon refocuses at the mention of Melanie’s name. He makes a circular motion with one hand: Go on. When Basira gives him a blank look, he has a quick rummage through his catalog.

  “– see any obvious signs of previous slaughter.” Trevor Herbert’s statement leaves a nasty taste in his mouth, but given Basira’s expression, it seems to have gotten his point across.  

  “Oh, the bullet?” Jon gives an enthusiastic nod. “Yeah, we, uh… we removed it. Melanie was reluctant at first, but I guess Georgie won her over. She’s… recovering. Physically, at least. She’s still angry, but not like before. Mostly, she just seems lost. And…”

  Basira hesitates.

  “…whatever protection it might have afforded you is severed.”  

  “Don’t read my mind, Jon,” Basira snaps.

  Jon shakes his head: I didn’t.  

  “Whatever.” She drops into the chair next to his bed. He can see the fatigue in the way her shoulders slump. Basira has always had excellent posture, but right now, she looks ready to crumple. “Brought you a statement, by the way. If you want a fix before we leave.”

  Something famished and greedy rears up inside him. It’s only with some difficulty that he manages to force it back. He can feel Basira watching him intently, and he avoids meeting her gaze.

  “Well? Do you want it or not? You have that hungry look to you.”

  Involuntarily, Jon’s eyes flick to Basira’s bag. He squeezes them shut again, shaking his head.

  “Hm.”

  Jon opens one eye and chances a glimpse of Basira. Her poker face is as flawless as always.

  It’s stale anyway, he tells the persistent thing inside him. You’ve already got that one. Just pull it up and reread it if you want it so badly.  

  It continues scratching at the door.

  Can’t you just be satisfied with Oliver’s statement and go back to lurking?

  He isn’t sure why he’s acting like the craving belongs to something other. The Archivist, the Archive – they’re both him, even if they feel distinct from the human he used to be. It just helps sometimes, to talk to those parts of himself as if they’re backseat drivers. He used to do the same thing to his intrusive thoughts, back when he was still his own person. It wasn’t difficult to adapt his inner monologue to apply it to the Eye’s influence, even if it is ultimately a self-delusion.

  The door opens and Georgie is back. The nurse trailing behind her looks like she would rather be literally anywhere else.  

  Here we go, Jon thinks sourly.

      The hospital staff are clearly out of their depth. As it turns out, a rotating cast of specialists have been overseeing his case through the months, but it seems each of them did so for only as long as it took to hand him off to the next unlucky person in line.

  Once he’s disconnected from all the (mostly inoperative) sensors and monitors, a nurse – he drew the short straw, Jon Knows – goes through the motions of taking his vitals a final time. Jon does him the courtesy of keeping his eyes lowered and tries to ignore the way the man avoids turning his back. He does not speak except to give short instructions – sit up, lay back, hold your arm out straight, take a deep breath – and Jon obeys without saying anything in return.

  The current attending physician on duty makes only a cursory show of evaluating his condition. During the brief neurological assessment, she makes no comment on the fact that Jon hasn’t verbally answered any questions or even said a word. She’s barely there for twenty minutes before announcing that she should go work on his discharge papers. 

  “Shouldn’t he have a treatment plan?” Georgie tries. “Or – or referrals for follow-up, or something?”

  “I, ah, have to discuss things with his treatment team,” the doctor says, already halfway out the door.

  She doesn’t, Jon Knows. He hasn’t had a treatment team since the first month he was admitted.

  “This is ridiculous,” Georgie mutters as the door closes.

  Jon reaches out to touch her arm, and shakes his head when she looks at him.

  “It is. It’s unprofessional.”

  “Understandably, I think – it was entirely my own fault.”  

  “Stop that. You’re still a patient, you deserve some sort of – continuity of care.” When Jon chuckles, Georgie shoots him an indignant look. “What? You do.”

  Now that there are no lines restricting his movement, he’s finally able to stretch properly. Doing so yields a series of devastating cracks and pops from his joints, and Georgie gives him a horrified look. He just raises his eyebrows at her: What?

  When he sidles to the edge of the bed and puts his feet on the floor, Georgie stops him with a hand on his shoulder. “Are you sure you’re going to be able to stand?”

  No, he’s not, but if he has to sit here a moment longer he’s going to lose his goddamn mind.

  Predictably enough, he does have trouble standing on his own at first, but Georgie has no problem supporting his weight. Even when they were dating, she probably could have picked him up if he’d let her, and he weighs even less now. The bathroom is small, and he waves her off when she offers to help him dress. She hasn’t seen the extent of the scarring on his body, and he’d rather her not. Once he demonstrates his ability to stand using the handrail, she agrees to wait outside, but she stands near the door just in case.

  Jon shouldn’t be able to stand at all, this soon after waking up from a six-month coma. He should have more muscle atrophy. He should need extensive physical rehab. He should still be in bed. Hell, he should probably be in some research facility somewhere, being poked and prodded and tested every which way.

  He keeps waiting for the moment Georgie decides it’s all too much, tells him to take care of himself, and leaves.   

  Although he’s been here before and he knows what to expect, he still has to brace himself before looking at his reflection in the mirror. He’s haggard. Gaunt. His hair isn’t as long as it was where – when – he came from, only barely touching his shoulders now. It needs a wash. The burn on his hand is mostly but not yet fully healed. Same familiar dark circles under his eyes, same familiar speckling of shiny, pockmarked worm scars. His ribs are visible, and – he’s hit with a bolt of panic in the split second before he remembers that, yes, twelve pairs of ribs is the normal amount that he should have. Hopefully this time he can keep all of them.   

  The eyes staring back at him – only two – are still his own for now, back to the deep brown they’d been for most of his life before the Archive claimed its place. But he can see something sinister skulking behind them even now, and he knows that everyone else will be able to see it, too.

  When he emerges from the bathroom dressed in a What the Ghost hoodie two sizes too big and practically swimming in a pair of Georgie’s joggers, he’s surprised to see that she’s still here. That she hasn’t changed her mind and written him off yet.

  “Better?” she asks, and he nods appreciatively, if a bit timidly. “Sorry it’s not more your size.”

  Jon doesn’t care. He hasn’t been this comfortable in… well, he doesn’t feel like calculating the time frame of the apocalypse. He doesn’t wait for the Beholding’s disapproval to hit him before he sends it a silent rebuff. At this point, it’s just reflex.

  “I found you a wheelchair,” Basira says from across the room. “Just in case you need it.”

  As she gives him a measured look, he feels like he’s being tested. It makes sense. The speedier his recovery, the less human he seems. But he isn’t going to feign infirmity. They deserve the truth from him.

  There is a familiar dull ache in his bad leg, though. He could do with a cane, but his should be in his office about this time, and he doesn’t want Georgie to have to support half his weight until he has a chance to retrieve it. 

  “Well?”

  He wavers a moment longer, then nods an affirmative and has a seat.

  Just then, the door opens and a nurse enters, a new one this time. Jon makes the mistake of looking up, and when their eyes meet, he Knows that she has a statement for him.

  The sound he makes as he claps his hands over his eyes is something like a strangled, panicked whimper.

  “Jon?” Georgie places a hand on his shoulder.

  “Oh, um… sorry if I startled you, uh – Mr. Sims. I have some paperwork here, we just need some signatures before you –”

  When she was nine years old, she was playing with friends in a drainage ditch. It was nearly dusk when they dared her to enter the tunnel, but she always was the bravest of them. She –

  Jon digs the heels of his palms into his eyes until he sees sparks, rocking back and forth slightly to distract himself from the compulsion snaking its roots through his thoughts.

  – spent days wandering the gloom, and all the while, the frantic calls of the search parties echoed off the walls. Whenever she tried to call out a response, it would tighten its grip on her ankle: that warbling, mangled, broken-jawed thing with the –

  “Leave them here,” Basira says curtly, crossing the room in a few long strides. “I’ll bring them to you when we’re finished.”

  Jon can see the shape of the statement in her thoughts, but it’s not enough. He needs her story. She needs to tell it in her own words. She has to walk through that tunnel again, relive every twist and turn and shade of terror, and he has to experience it alongside her, all eyes –

  “O-okay,” the nurse stammers, “I just – I thought I saw –”

  – a second shadow, starkly visible even in the deepest dark, all dislocated joints and distorted –

  Basira shuts the door on her mid-sentence and turns to face Jon.

  “Jon. What was that?”

  “…you’re not going to give the Watcher a statement,” he says, panting shallowly, hands still pressed to his eyelids. “You’re better than that.”  

  He isn’t sure whether he’s saying it for himself or for Basira. Both, maybe.

  “She… has a statement?” Jon nods. “And you could tell just by looking at her?” Another nod. “That’s… hmm.”

  “I could hear in her voice that she was afraid of him.” His elbows dig bruises into his thighs as he leans forward and draws his shoulders in tighter. “I was, too.”  

  “Does covering your eyes actually help?” Georgie asks, giving his shoulder a light squeeze. An attempt at grounding him. It helps.

  “…it was enough to ease the relentless pressure,” he says, “if only a little bit.”  

  Jon pauses for a moment as he selects another statement.

  “…wear a cloth across his face – hold my hand in front of my eyes –”

  “Oh,” Georgie says, understanding. “Hang on.”

  She withdraws her hand, but Jon can still feel her standing over him. A few moments later something is being lowered over his face and he goes rigid.

  “It’s just my scarf, Jon. I thought we could use it as a blindfold.” Jon signals assent. “Okay. You can put your hands down now. Just keep your eyes closed.”

  He waits patiently while she ties the scarf off at the back of his head and adjusts it, ensuring that it covers his eyes completely.

  “Better?”

  Jon lets out a shaky breath and nods. It’s a lengthy scarf and one end sits in his lap. He takes it in his hands and runs his fingers over the fabric: a nice texture, soft and warm and comforting. He wonders if – no, Knows now – Georgie knitted it herself.

  For a few moments the room is quiet but for the scratching of pen on paper as Basira forges Jon’s signature on the paperwork.      

  “I’ll go hand this over and then we can get out of here,” she says brusquely. “Don’t take off the blindfold until we’re back in the Archives.”  

  Jon wasn’t planning on it.

      End Notes:

Finished this chapter earlier than I expected. Not sure when the next one will be ready, hopefully sometime next weekend.

SO. A lot of exposition in this one, but I wanted to try to give a general outline of how Jon's statement-speak works, what limitations he's working with, and what loopholes he's already tried (and failed) to exploit.

Jon's verbal dialogue in this chapter was taken from statements in the following episodes, in order: MAG 019; 141; 112; 013; 026; 047; 115; 054; 094 (x2); 036; 054; 125; 032 (written not verbal); 156; 123; 155; 021; 064; 029; 010; 139; 042; 151; 125; 097; 099.

I realize that's... a lot of citations, so if you don't feel like scrolling and counting but you want to know what episode a specific line comes from, feel free to ask and I can tell you, lol.

[misc-headcanons]

C-can I request some angst please? 🥺🙏🏻 Sanji, Law, and Zoro finding a severely injured girl drifting out at sea and they save them and eventually become their s/o scenario or headcanons please? 🤩✨ I love your angst!!!

(These got kind of specific as I tried to come up with something angsty, haha. The content warnings on this one are a really weird combo, just a heads-up)

CW: References to slavery (Sanji and Zoro’s), cannibalism (Zoro), and medical experimentation (Law). Nothing explicit, but I’m adding this just in case!

Sanji

The Thousand Sunny had come across the wreckage of a ship and from the smell of cannon smoke in the air, it had likely only happened a few hours or so at most. The ship that had attacked was nowhere to be found, and there were several bodies floating in the water.

Sanji had noticed that among the corpses floating in the water, there was one that seemed to be alive. A young woman was clinging to a piece of driftwood, and the top of her head was covered with blood; as she bobbed in the ocean, her head barely lifted up to look up at the ship in front of her. Immediately, Sanji dove into the water after her and yelled up to Chopper. “Chopper, one of them is alive! Here, once we’re up on deck, take her to the clinic!”

Sanji carried her to the clinic, not minding the blood and seawater that was staining his clothes. The woman’s eyes were glassy and unfocused, but she was still alive. Chopper examined her and cleaned her head wound. By some miracle, the only injury she had received during her ship’s destruction was a concussion.

Chopper set up a small cot for her in the clinic so he could watch her overnight. Sanji immediately volunteered to watch over her as well, and he and Chopper worked in shifts (Sanji would leave to cook meals for the crew, and Chopper would sleep whenever Sanji got back).

At one point during the night, the woman stirred and realized that she was in a strange place. Sanji reassured her that she was safe, and tried to ask her who she was (Chopper had mentioned that testing her memory and cognitive skills would be a good idea when she woke up). She struggled to recall her memories, saying that she could only see fuzzy bits and pieces. What she did remember made a pit of unease form in Sanji’s chest: Cold chains on her wrists and feet that were too tight, seeing a glowing piece of metal and watching in horror as it burned into her friend’s skin, screaming and pleading not to be branded, the pain of having her head slammed against a pillar, and the deafening sound of splintering wood as some monster in the water bit into the ship before she fell into the icy water.

Strangely enough, she didn’t have a brand on her body; the ship had been attacked just as she was about to be burned. Sanji felt an urge to wrap his arms around her and comfort her, but he worried that it might make her uncomfortable and scared given what she’d been through. He offered to make her something to eat instead, and she nodded. When he started to get up, the young woman grabbed his hand. “Could…Could you stay with me for a little bit longer?” Her voice broke as she squeezed his hand. “I don’t want to be alone.”

Sanji’s eyes temporarily turned into hearts at the sudden physical contact, but he quickly controlled himself. He smiled and sat on the foot of her bed, still holding her hand. “Of course, my lady; as long as I’m able to draw breath, you won’t ever be alone again.”

Sanji took every opportunity to treat ____ like a princess, serving her gourmet meals, escorting her around the ship and on different islands the ship arrived at, buying all sorts of gifts, decorating her bed with all sorts of flowers, etc. Every time he did something, he noticed how taken aback she was by the kind gesture and she would protest. “There’s no need to fuss over me,” she said with wide eyes, “This is just…so much!”

Sanji would always reply that someone like her deserved everything good in this world, and that he was actually disappointed that he could only give her a fraction of that with his meager abilities. She’d always be flustered by his kindness and chivalry, but she started to warm up to being treated so well. He’d always comfort her when she would start to recover another memory of her prior life; some of them were happy, some of them…weren’t. They were always overwhelming, and ____ would find herself feeling a sudden rush of strong emotions that made her heart and head feel like they were about to burst. But no matter what, Sanji was always there to hold her and bring her back to reality.

One night, he had brought her a piece of cake and a cup of her favorite type of tea to her room. The two of them chatted together, and when she finished she gently brushed her fingers on his cheek. “You know,” she remarked quietly, “Whatever my past was, sometimes I think it doesn’t matter.” Sanji raised an eyebrow; ____ had spent so much time contemplating what her life was life before, trying to put together the “missing pieces” as she called it. What changed? She smiled and kissed his cheek. “Because whatever it was, I’m glad that in the here-and-now…I’m with you.”

Zoro

Of all the things for a shipwrecked cargo vessel to be carrying, it had to be meat. Crates and crates of meat, refrigerated in specially-made crates, bobbing up and down in the water. As he watched the wreckage float on the water, Zoro thought that if the ship’s builder had spent more time reinforcing the actual ship instead of making some special meat-preserving crates, then maybe the entire crew wouldn’t have died like idiots. The logos on the crates were hand-painted: Miss Terry’s Butchery. “Our meat is to DIE for!”

His thoughts were interrupted when Luffy cannonballed over the side of the Sunny with stars in his eyes. “FREE MEEEEEEEEAT!” He landed in the water, and Zoro dove after him. “Oi, you can’t swim, idiot!”

Zoro managed to grab Luffy by the collar before he sank like a stone, and he noticed another person in the water with them clinging to one of the crates that was half-flooded and starting to sink. He grabbed them as well and hauled them both up onto the deck of the Sunny.

It was a young woman, and even though she had been submerged there were visible tearstains on her cheeks. As Chopper attended to her and Luffy, Zoro noticed a small brand burned onto her right arm: Prop. of MTB. Chopper gave her mouth-to-mouth, and she coughed up a bit of seawater as her eyes fluttered open. Immediately, she saw Zoro’s swords and screamed in terror as she tried to scramble away from him. “D-Don’t harvest me, please,” she sobbed, burying her face in her knees. “I’ll do anything, I’ll…” She looked up and saw that she wasn’t on the cargo ship anymore. “Where…where am I?”

Zoro cocked his head at what she had first said. “What do you mean, ‘harvest’?” The young woman looked at him suspiciously. “Look, your ship wrecked. Looks like you’re the only one who made it.” He pointed out to the ruins of the cargo ship, and she slowly rose up to look out over the side of the Sunny.

She stared at the boxes of meat, her eyes filling with tears. Her knuckles tightened as she gripped the railing, and she tried to take deep breaths. “So…I’m safe,” she breathed. “I’m not gonna be…” Her eyes drifted to the floating boxes of meat, and she trembled. Zoro stepped forward, worried that she might pass out and fall over the side of the ship.

Luffy pouted and crossed his arms. “Man, all that meat’s gonna go to waste if it sinks,” he whined. “Hmmm, maybe Sanji can get the seawater off the ones that are wet.” He cupped his hands and called out to Sanji. “Oi, Sanji, come out here! Can you cook–”

“NO!” The young woman cut him off sharply. “You…don’t, don’t eat that meat! It’s…” She absentmindedly touched the brand on her arm, and Zoro realized why she was so terrified.

Zoro awkwardly put a hand on her shoulder. “We won’t,” he promised. “You’re safe now, alright?” Luffy protested, asking why they couldn’t eat so much meat ripe for the taking, but Zoro cut him off with a glare.

The young woman spent the next few weeks with the crew, getting to know everyone but revealing little about what had happened to her on the ship. Zoro was the only one who didn’t ask questions about her (or, well…any questions really. He wasn’t much of a conversationalist), and so she preferred spending time with him. One night they were sharing a bottle of sake in the dining room, and Zoro asked why she always preferred being around him compared to everyone else in the crew.

“Honestly? I dunno,” she replied, her voice slurring a bit. “I mean, Nami and Usopp and the others are really kind, all of you have been…really kind.” She took another swig. “But you were the one who saved me that day. I’d been born and raised in the pens, and I wasn’t even treated like a person by the butchers.” She stared off. “I only learned to talk because the other livestock–um, people–taught me. Even though it was pointless, haha.” She sniffled a bit. “Even if you say ‘no, please,’ when it’s your time, the butchers ignore every word you say. It’s just easier to pretend you’re a cow mooing, or a chicken clucking. Not a person.” She looked over at Zoro. “You were the first person outside of the pens to treat me like a human being. You talked to me. You listened to me.” She leaned her head against him. “You saved me.”

Zoro stiffened at the sudden contact, and he awkwardly wondered if he should put his arm around her; from how she was leaning, his arm would be touching her brand. Still, he didn’t want her to think he was being intentionally callous by not doing anything to return her gesture of affection. He decided to just rest his hand on top of hers, and she leaned closer onto his shoulder. They both fell asleep together in the dining hall, and it was the first time in years that ____ slept without a single nightmare. Seemed like Zoro was her guardian even in her dreams.

Law

The Heart Pirates were out on open waters, headed towards the island of Punk Hazard when they came across the splintered ruins of another ship floating in the water. Oddly enough, it wasn’t a large ship at all; from how little wood there was in the water, it almost seemed like a one-person raft instead of a proper ship.

From how the wooden planks were charred at specific points, it seemed as though a flurry of lightning strikes had hit the ship during a particularly strong storm. The Heart Pirates had seen a few lightning strikes in the area a few minutes earlier, so they had gone underwater to avoid any potential hits to the ship. A young woman was slumped over on the largest piece of wood, shaking and trembling. The smell of nitrogen was sharp in the air, and it seemed like she could sink under the waves at any moment.

“Bepo, bring her up,” Law ordered. She was a stranger, but as a doctor he felt some obligation to treat her wounds. Besides, she might have information on this area of the New World and Punk Hazard specifically.

Bepo quickly swam out to grab her, and he and Law took her to the medical bay. The rest of the crew was surprised to see Law with a new patient, considering they were in the middle of nowhere. They knew better than to ask questions when someone needed treatment, so they did what they could to assist their captain.

She appeared to be in cardiac arrest from the lightning strike, and thankfully the crew had arrived when they did. After a few minutes of resuscitation, her heartbeat returned (though it was strangely erratic– quickening, slowing down, and occasionally appearing to stop again despite her ability to breathe) She wasn’t able to talk coherently, occasionally mumbling and moaning out random phrases: “Had to leave,” “Kodō-Kodō no Mi,” “No more experiments, please,” “I’ll kill you, Caesar Clown…”

The crew examined her while she was sleeping, and they got a clearer picture as to where this woman came from. She was wearing a jumpsuit with three logos on the back: A Marine logo on the left, the World Government insignia on the right, and the personal symbol of Caesar Clown in the middle below the other two. There were various syringe marks and scars from surgical cuts and other signs that she’d been experimented on for a while. Most of the surgeries seemed to be near her heart, and when Law removed it with his Devil Fruit to examine it, it glowed with bright, swirling colors inside its cube. It seemed like this woman was a test subject of Caesar Clown’s, and that somehow she’d managed to escape.

Over the next few days, Law would record some of her mumbled phrases. When she came to, she recoiled in fear at the sight of so much medical equipment and a stranger looking down at her. She flinched and she formed a heart symbol with her hands; her chest began to glow a deep red. “St-Stenosis Beam–”

Law quickly stopped her from attacking him, and he explained that he had rescued her from the wreckage of the ship. He knew she was from Punk Hazard, and he assured her that he wasn’t allied with Caesar. She relaxed a little bit, and asked why he had saved her. Surely he wanted to use her and her ability, just like Caesar…

Law simply replied that as a doctor, he had an obligation to treat her injuries. If he had ignored her, it would be violating his own moral principle. ____ was shocked; the only doctor she’d ever known since birth was Caesar Clown, and the idea of one with a moral code seemed unbelievable.

She spent the next few weeks recovering in bed, and Law spent every day with her. They started to grow close, and she explained that her Devil Fruit could manipulate her heartbeat and the heartbeats of others. She’d been fed the fruit at a very young age, and that Caesar had been experimenting on her since she had eaten it. It had been a long period of torture, but she finally found the courage to escape during Akainu and Aokiji’s fight on the island. A lightning storm had left her stranded… ”Until you came along,” she said with a small smile.

She was exhausted, but she managed to find the strength to reach out and touch Law’s hand as she sank into the pillows propping her up. She gently squeezed him and stared up at him, tears brimming her eyes. “Thank you,” she whispered hoarsely. Her eyes fluttered, and she fell asleep with her fingers still intertwined with his. Law felt his heart flutter a bit, and he was confused at the sensation. ____ was just a patient, after all–Surely, ____was using her Devil Fruit to tamper with his heartbeat…right?

[pris-writing-blog]

Blank Slates

Summary: She remembers nothing, not even her own name. She woke up in the middle of a war, chaos raining down upon her. Amid all this, she struggles to bring order while also seeking her lost memories. She does not know if she is innocent or guilty, or if she will succeed or fail. But she will try, and she will survive. Fandom: Dragon Age Inquisition

Pairing: Solas and Nadiya, an original character not related to any of the canon Inquisitors’ backgrounds.

Word Count: 11.8k

Warnings: Manipulation, amnesia, past abuse.

A/N: So this... this is fun. I can’t say a lot about this work yet, besides that it’s core idea is “what if the Inquisitor had full-on amnesia from the explosion at the Conclave?” There’s some other stuff in the works with this, and I promise you it’ll be one hell of a ride.

An explosion, then darkness, until she awoke to find herself in a strange place, veiled in shadow and smoke. An eerie green light was cast over her surroundings, similar to the light coming from a mark on her palm. The woman sat up first, glancing at her surroundings, before standing and looking around to see a blinding golden light coming from a woman’s figure atop a hill.

Slowly, she made her way up the hill, pausing when she heard noises behind her. Looking back, she saw shadows of men in armor, their eyes glowing a sickly green from the slits in their helmets, running after her. She took off then, struggling up the steep incline of the hill. Looking up, she saw the woman of light hold out a hand to her, and reaching out, she took it.

Darkness, once more. Later she awoke, her hands chained and the mark of green light sparking and shooting off small bolts of energy that caused her to gasp and shout out in surprise and pain. She only got a brief, glancing look at the room around her- some sort of dungeon perhaps, with guards brandishing swords at her- before a door slammed open in front of her slammed open and two human women walked in.

The first, dressed in a breastplate with an image of an eye embellished upon it, approached her first, circling around her like a lioness stalking her prey. The second, a hooded woman dressed in chainmail and leathers, stopped in front of her to glare down at her while the armored woman leaned down to say to her, “Tell me why we shouldn’t kill you now.”

She walked around her, continuing on, “The Conclave is destroyed. Everyone who attended is dead. Except for you.”

Conclave? What conclave? And what- what was going on here? The woman felt her mind race suddenly, coming upon the slow realization that she lacked any memories of a conclave… or anything at all. Before she could voice her questions, the armored woman snatched her hands up and demanded as her mark sparked with energy, “Explain this.”

“I… I can’t. I don’t know what this is, what happened to the conclave, or even… or even who I am. Please, I don’t-” She started to explain, when the woman suddenly pounced on her, grabbing her roughly by the shoulders as she exclaimed, “You’re lying! ”

The hooded woman quickly stepped in quickly, pulling the woman away as she said, “We need her, Cassandra.”

She thought then, having a second to, trying to remember anything. What had happened, how she had acquired this mark, who she was. But nothing came to her; no memories at all, not even a name. The hooded woman turned to her and asked her, “Do you truly remember nothing? Not even who you are, or what happened at the Conclave?”

“No, no I don’t. I swear to you, it’s the truth.” She explained, then a thought came to her, a memory.

“Wait. Wait, I do remember something. I was… I was running. There were things chasing me, men made of shadows, and then… a woman? Yes, a woman was holding her hand out to me, and then… nothing. That’s all I remember, I swear.” The woman insisted. The hooded woman seemed fascinated by that, questioning, “A woman?”

But the other woman, Cassandra, ushered her away from their prisoner and told her, “Go to the forward camp Leliana. I will take her to the rift.”

After Leliana left, Cassandra came to kneel in front of her, unlocking her chains and replacing them with ropes instead. As she did, the woman asked, “What did happen?”

“It will… be easier to show you.” Cassandra answered as she helped her up, before leading her through the dungeon or basement of a building and up into the ground floor, then outside. There, blinking in the sudden harsh light, she looked up at the sky and saw a massive tear in the sky, green light and comets pouring out of it. Even with no memories of the world, she was fairly sure that wasn’t normal.

“We call it “The Breach.” It is a massive rift into the world of demons that grows larger with each passing hour.” Cassandra explained to her, having seen her shocked expression. She blinked a bit, then asked, confused, “The world of demons?”

“Yes, the Fade,” Cassandra said with a scowl that suggested she still didn’t believe the whole amnesia thing, then continued, “The Breach is not the only such rift, just the largest. All were caused by the explosion at the Conclave.”

“An explosion can do that?” She asked, incredulous. Cassandra turned from where she had been looking up at the Breach and replied, “This one did. Unless we act, the Breach may grow until it swallows the world.”

Before she could continue, the Breach crackled, an impossibly loud boom rumbling across the valley as arcs of light or energy lit up the sky. Simultaneously, the mark sparked and intense pain shot up her arm, white-hot and agonizing. Letting out a shout of pain, the woman dropped to her knees against the snow and dirt, grasping her arm tightly. Cassandra knelt down beside her, explaining calmly, “Each time the Breach expands, your mark spreads… and it is killing you. It may be the key to stopping this, but there isn’t much time.”

“No memories, a hole in the sky, and a glowing mark on my hand that’s killing me. All in all, not the best day I think.” The woman responded sarcastically. It appeared she had a bit of a morbid humor. Cassandra glared more at her- she didn’t even know it was possible for her to look even meaner- so she quickly added, “I-I’m more than willing to help. A hole into the world of demons doesn’t sound very good for one’s health after all. I’m just not sure what I can do, what this can do.”

She gestured with the mark, and Cassandra responded, looking slightly less mad, “It may be able to close the Breach, and the rifts like it. Whether that is true or not is something we will discover shortly. It is our only chance, however. And yours.”

With that, she helped her up, and together they started to head out of the village. As they went, she saw dozens of angry and frightened men and women, all staring at her with either rage or fear. Cassandra explained as they walked, “They have decided your guilt. They need it. The people mourn our Most Holy, Divine Justinia, head of the Chantry. The Conclave was hers. It was a chance for peace between mages and templars. She brought their leaders together. Now, they are dead.”

Mages? Templars? Chantry? The words seemed foreign and familiar all at once like her ears and tongue were used to hearing or saying them, but her mind could not recall what they were. It was a strange feeling, to say the least. But instead of voicing these things to Cassandra, the woman stayed silent, seeing as she didn’t believe her anyway.

They eventually reached a gatehouse, and a guard pushed open the gates as soon as Cassandra and she approached, revealing a bridge leading out to the rest of the mountain. As they walked through, Cassandra continued, “We lash out, like the sky. But we must beyond ourselves, as she did, until the Breach is sealed.”

Suddenly she raised her arm in front of the woman, stopping her as she drew a knife from her belt. She became worried until Cassandra cut the ropes binding her wrists, freeing her as she said, “There will be a trial. I can promise no more. Come, it is not far.”

“What’s not far?” She asked as she rubbed her wrists where the rope had been, confused. Cassandra turned away to face forward, then replied, “Your mark must be tested on something smaller than the Breach.”

“Right…” She murmured as they walked across the bridge, full of soldiers and panicking villagers, as well as… corpses. Many corpses. As they passed the gates, the woman asked Cassandra, “So… you mentioned a trial? Does that mean that everyone thinks I caused the explosion?”

“Most likely. The ones who do not have likely not heard yet.” Cassandra answered tersely. Well, that was just wonderful, wasn’t it?

“Does that mean you think I’m guilty too?” She questioned. Cassandra shot her a glare over her shoulder, then responded, “I do, yes. Why? Have I not made that perfectly clear?”

Gulping quietly, she murmured, “No, no, you have. Just… checking.”

They remained silent for the rest of the way mostly, apart from the occasional comment about the Breach or the fight up ahead, until they reached another bridge. Just as they stepped on it, a comet from the Breach came rocketing down, destroying the bridge and sending Cassandra and her prisoner falling onto the frozen lake below. As she began to regain her senses, she looked up to see another comet fall, and from where it dissipated, some… thing emerged. It was hideous, a monstrous thing with an unnatural frame and hood that seemed connected to its flesh, it’s one eye burning with malice as it clawed the air.

Cassandra immediately lept into action, attacking the monster with her sword while simultaneously keeping it back with her shield. The woman, meanwhile, was content to let her fight, but saw the ground near her start to glow, like before the first monster appeared. Frantically, she looked around for some kind of weapon, and upon spotting a long, wooden staff with a curved blade on the end, something clicked inside her mind. Acting on instincts alone, she leaped to grab the staff as a monster appeared before her, twirling the staff just in time to produce a ball of flame that knocked the creature back. After a few more bursts of fire, the creature died, falling to the ground as it evaporated into smoke.

Right as her opponent fell, Cassandra’s did as well, and she started to approach when Cassandra suddenly turned on her, aiming her blade at her chest as she ordered, “Drop your weapon. Now.”

Frightened and unsure of what else to do, she quickly dropped the staff, saying, “I-I’m sorry, I didn’t- something in me just knew to grab it. I-I didn’t know it could shoot fire, I swear!”

Cassandra looked confused for a second, then frowned and huffed quietly as she sheaved her sword, saying, “It did not shoot fire. You did. You merely cast your mana through the staff to focus it into a specific attack. Something all mages can do.”

“I… I’m a mage?” She asked, shocked. She was learning more and more about herself with every passing moment. Cassandra made a disgusted noise, then exclaimed, “Yes, you are! Stop acting like a fool! You know who and what you are, so act like it!”

“I-I don’t, really! I swear, before now I had no idea I could do any of that! I don’t know who I am, or what happened at the Conclave, or if I’m actually innocent or not!” She shouted. She stopped, then, processing what she said. She… she really wasn’t sure if she was innocent or not. For all she knew, she planned this all and all of this chaos… the deaths… they were her fault. As her mind reeled with this new information, Cassandra seemed to see what she was saying was true, at least somewhat. After hesitating for a moment, she said, “Pick up the staff. You’re going to need it if we’re to survive the hike up the mountain.”

She was surprised and hesitated for a moment before picking up the staff. It felt… odd, but right at the same time. With a slight smile and a nod to Cassandra, they continued on, fighting a number of different creatures. Cassandra explained that the more solid ones were demons, while the ones made of light were wisps of spirits. After trekking up a large hill, the duo came upon a larger fight up ahead, with several soldiers fighting off a host of demons surrounding a crystalline structure floating in the air, the sunlight glinting off its dark green surface. She and Cassandra quickly joined the fray, with the warrior rushing in while she stayed back, providing support from afar. Soon the demons fell, and a bald elf- she wasn’t sure how her brain knew what he was- suddenly ran up to her and shouted, “Quickly, before more come through!”

With that, he grabbed her wrist and thrust it upwards towards the crystal, which shattered and produced a shimmering portal of light. Then, the mark shot out an arc of green lightning, connecting with the portal and somehow sealing it. Amazed, she blinked in shock as the elf released her hand and she asked, “What did you do?”

“I did nothing. The credit is yours.” The elf said simply. Glancing down at the mark, she said, “... Huh. Well, at least it’s good for something.”

“Whatever magic opened the Breach in the sky also placed that mark upon your hand. I theorized the mark might be able to close the rifts that have opened in the Breach’s wake- and it seems I was correct.” The elf explained. Cassandra approached them and said, “Meaning it could also close the Breach itself.”

“Possibly,” the elf said, then looked to the woman and said, “It seems you hold the key to our salvation.”

Oh great. No pressure at all, nope. Before she could dive into an existential crisis, another voice spoke up from behind them, “Good to know!”

Turning, she saw the voice belonged to a dwarf- seriously, how does she know these things- wielding a crossbow who approached as he continued, “I thought we’d be ass-deep in demons forever. Varric Tethras: rogue, storyteller, and occasional unwelcome tagalong.”

He winked at Cassandra after that last bit, and out of the corner of her eye, she saw her sneer at the dwarf, who simply smiled charmingly.

“Um- pleased to meet you, Tethras. I’m uh… well, I don’t actually know.” He said with an awkward shrug. Varric raised an eyebrow and asked with an incredulous chuckle, “I’m sorry, what?”

The elf, as well, seemed surprised, then frowned a bit as he asked, “Could you clarify, please?”

“The prisoner claims to have no memories. At all. Nothing before she woke up in the dungeon of Haven.” Cassandra explained for her as she looked away, holding her staff tightly while rubbing a worry groove into the wood. Varric whistled lowly and said, “Well… shit. Is that true kid?”

“Yeah, yeah it is. I really don’t remember anything, honest. So I, uh, don’t really have a name you can call me by.” She said with a shrug. The elf seemed to think for a moment, then said, “Well, perhaps we could… name you, I suppose. Give you a temporary name until your memories return. Would you like that?”

Before she could respond, Cassandra interrupted, “We can do this later, can’t we? The Breach-”

“The Breach can wait, Seeker, this kid needs a name! Now, I’ve got a few ones. How about something like Joyce, or Rose? How about Violet, you seem like a Violet sort of girl.” Varric supplied. While Cassandra glared daggers at Varric, the elf suggested, “If you will, Master Tethras, perhaps she would prefer an elven name? She is an elf after all.”

“I’m an elf?” She blurted out suddenly in surprise. The group went silent for a moment, staring at her in shock before Varric burst out in laughter he tried and failed to keep in.

“Andraste's dimpled buttcheeks- shit, sorry- oh Maker that’s not funny at all but holy nugshit-” Varric coughed out in between his laughs. She felt her cheeks reddened, as well as her pointed ears- ah, well there they are.

“I-in my defense, I thought I was short and it’s so cold I can’t feel my ears.” She explained, which only made Varric laugh harder until Cassandra swung a fist at him, which he dodged quickly. As they bickered, the other elf got her attention and said, “If I may, Lethallan, I believe you may like the name Varla. In elvhen, it means, “our hope.” Or perhaps Ashara, “she who is on a great journey,””

He trailed off, frowning for a moment with an unreadable expression in his eyes. Before she could ask, he spoke up again, “Nadiya. It… well, it does not mean anything in elven, but it is a fairly common name in alienages, I’ve heard.”

Nadiya… Na-di-ya… Nadiya. Something about the name… it seemed right. After a moment, she- Nadiya nodded and said, “Yes, yes I think that will do. Thank you…?”

“Solas. You may call me Solas.” He supplied with an easy smile.

“Thank you, Solas.” Nadiya said, smiling back at Solas. She turned to look at Cassandra and Varric, who were still bickering, and said, “I’ve picked a name now. You can call me Nadiya.”

Varric stopped mid snark and turned to smile at Nadiya, saying, “Well that’s great, right Seeker? Means we can get going now.”

Casting one last glare at Varric, Cassandra let out a sigh and said, “Yes, it does. Come, we still have a ways until the temple.”

Find the rest of the story on my ao3 here!

[writing-ro]

Fictober 19-4: “I know you didn’t ask for this.”

@fictober-event //  Set in a Multi-fandom Fantasy AU where most if not all kinds of fantasy creatures exist alongside humans, though the two cultures stay fairly separate, with many humans being afraid or prejudice against creatures.

Rating: T Fandom: Star Wars, Characters: Ahsoka Tano, Arista Amara (OFC), Oren Revik (OMC),  Additional Tags: Magical blood powerups, Mentions of Merrill (Dragon Age), Sequel to Day 3, elf!Ahsoka, dragon!Oren, Oren is a bit of an ass, Ahsoka is a proto-tsundare, 

When Ahsoka woke, she saw a tent canopy above her head. One she knew well, after staring at it every night for the last two weeks. 

She tried to push herself up, but a soft hand on her chest stopped her. “Slowly,” Arista said. “You’ve been out for a whole day. Here.” She grabbed a bedroll and tucked it behind Ahsoka as she pushed herself into a half sitting position. Arista helped her sip a cup of water, and then about half a bowl of broth before she let Ahsoka push her arm away. 

“Merida and Tamlen, are they?...”

“Nearly die and your first question is about others.” Arista shook her head, first fondly, then sadly. “We’ve seen no trace of them. Merrill’s set wards around the mirror, so no one else can touch it. And she tuned it to their possessions, so if they show up, they should be able to get out without any more of those monsters following them.”

Ahsoka nodded. “Good.” She looked down at herself and saw she was in one of her training tunics, and she could see bandages wrapped around her chest through the opening of the collar. She remembered the arrow, and the horde on their heels, and then fire, then black. 

“How did we escape?”

Arista’s cheeks actually pinked a little. “First, you have to promise not to aggravate your injury by going after him.”

Ahsoka raised a brow. “Him?” She thought she remembered a man, but it could have been a hallucination, right?

“Promise first.” Arista raised a brow back, and adopted her “I am your healer and you will do what I say” face. Much like her “I really really really want to do this thing please” face, Ahsoka couldn’t go against it.

“Alright, I promise not to aggravate my injury. Who was it.”

Arista took a deep breath. “His name is Oren Revik. He was the dragon who spied on us a few months ago.”

Ahsoka blinked once, twice, then moved to toss the covers off her, only to be pressed back down by Arista. 

“No! You just promised you wouldn’t aggravate your injury.”

“I’m not going to. I’ll use my left hand to slap him in the face.”

“Oh really?” a man’s voice sounded from the tent flap and she looked past Arista to see the dragon standing there. He was wearing similar clothes to the night they had met, except his shirt was slightly scorched in some places, which told of the intensity of the flames he had to be in, since dragoncloth was renown for being nearly completely fireproof. “Is that anyway to treat the man who saved your life?”

“It’s the way to treat the man who spied on a private evening with me and my lover,” Ahsoka retorted. 

The dragon - Oren - scoffed. “Okay, but did you encounter an arachne pack on the way back to your village?”

Ahsoka’s shoulders slumped slightly. “Yes. It’s still not an excuse for being a pervert.”

Oren shrugged. “What can I say, I was bored, and you were providing such a lovely show.” He came in and knelt by Arista, his wings tucked as close to his back as possible. “Now, let me check your arm.” He reached for it, but Ahsoka snatched it away, biting her tongue to keep a hiss of pain from escaping. 

She looked down at it, and found a bandaged wrapped around it. She started to unwrap it, only for Arista’s hands to take over for her. On the underside of her arm was a long scar, from her wrist to halfway up her forearm. She did not recall getting injured there in the battle.

“How did this happen?”

“Well, you see, by the time I got to you-”

“Wait, how did you even know we were here in the first place?” Ahsoka asked. “Our clan hasn’t done trade with the dragons in centuries, and we certainly never contacted you.”

“Again, bored, so I decided to take a flight and see what I could find. Found you guys about five days ago and decided to hang around, see what you find. When I saw seven go in and three come out looking like they ran through a death course, I had to find out what happened. I gave your mages lyria potions and they managed to make a barrier strong enough to keep the ra’zac horde in and-”

“Ra’zac?”

“Merrill found an old reference,” Arista said. “They’re creatures of decay and blight, who were fought by the ancient elves of long ago. But she still can’t find out anything about the mirror. We don’t know if it was meant to trap them, or if they somehow corrupted it or what.”

“As I was saying,” Oren said with a slight drawl that he was getting irritated at the interruptions, “I hit them with firepower and burned all the ones in the room to ashes, then I saw them fleeing down the passageway you opened. I came up on their rear and burned as many as I could, though a lot disappeared down the side passages. When I reached you two, you had passed out in Arista’s arms, and were starting to turn grey. I carried you out and had your healer look you over.” He grimaced. 

Arista took over. “Turns out the Ra’zac coat their weapons in their own - not blood, but closest we can determine. It was thinning out your blood so it ran out faster, and then poisoning the rest as passed over. With how hard we were running, it was… bad. Possibly not even Marethari could have healed you and you’d be long dead before we got home to try.” 

“The only way to save you was to transfer blood compatible to your own that could burn out the poison.” Oren rolled up his sleeve and showed a similar cut on his own wrist, though the scar was much less obvious. “You’re welcome, by the way.”

Ahsoka stared at the cut. “That can’t have worked. Dragonblood burns out almost everyone who tries to use it, even given freely.”

“Well you seem to fall in that gap between ‘almost’ and ‘everyone’,” Oren said. “It saved your life, and now you get a few little bonuses to go with it.”

Ahsoka clenched her fist. It was the reason a Dragonslayers’ Guild had existed a century ago, before the Dragon King destroyed their Hall and a Kings’ Conclave banned such a guild from forming again. For those few who could survive the ingestion of the blood, they were given special powers, based on the dragon who gave it. An old legend told of an elven sorceress who had been given the blood of the Dragon King and his Consort, and she became the most powerful sorceress in the world, with the ability to command very powerful fire and ice magics at the same time, and in some versions even sprout wings and fly. One version of the tale said she became the leader of a collation of clans and ruled as a Queen for years, until the Dragon King and his Consort asked her to marry them and took her to their mountain home. Another was that she grew corrupt on power, and attempted to subjugate the entire continent, only to lose in battle to the Demon King. The Dragon King and his Consort retrieved her body and took it to be laid to rest in some secret location, so none might try to use her body for evil. 

“So what effects am I likely to get?”

“Your body temperature is already starting to rise,” Oren said. “It will settle out in a few weeks to about halfway between your old standard and my own. Basically, you’ll constantly feel like you’re having a fever. On the plus side, you’ll never get those again, you’ll just burn the sickness out. But you’re also now susceptible to dragon sicknesses, though that’s no matter as long as you stay away from the mountains until you built up an immunity. You’ll have an affinity for fire magic now, so we’ll have to work with you on taming it. Advanced healing - well, advanced for your people. You can see in the dark much easier now, and possibly your vision spectrum will shift a bit. Maybe you’ll get physically stronger. That’s all I can think off the top of my head, I’ll write to Parthanax for a full list of possibilities. Of course, it’s gonna take a few weeks for these changes to happen, plenty of time to get me settled.”

“Settled?” Ahsoka’s brow went up again.

“Oh, right, we didn’t say it yet.” Oren grinned. “Since you need a teacher to help you handle your new dragon abilities, I’ll be going back with you.”

Her eyes widened, then narrowed. “No. Absolutely not. I won’t be learning a thing from you.”

“Too late, already sent a message informing the King of my decision, and your mage sent a message to your clan leader last night.”

“Send another saying I refuse you and want another teacher, if I have to learn anything.” Her hands clenched the blankets. “I can get by, I always have.”

“Ahsoka!” Arista spoke for the first time in a while. She unwrapped Ahsoka’s hand from the blankets and and held it in hers. “I know you didn’t ask for this, but this is what happened. And even if Oren didn’t want to teach you, he’d have to. Dragon Law says that the dragon who caused the change has to train their charge for at least a half year before they can hand them off to anyone else.”

“Yup, helps teach us responsibility or something like that,” Oren said, then held up his hands in surrender when she shot her “Healer’s Look” at him. 

“So, please, don’t fight this.” She turned back to Ahsoka. “I know it’s not your first choice, but is it really that much of a price to pay?”

Ahsoka rolled it over in her head. Arista was right, Oren did save her and Arista’s lives, putting up with a pompous ass of a dragon would be adequate repayment of the debt. 

She shot Oren a glare. “If you spy on us again, I’m running you through, training or no training.”

Oren just smiled. “I’ve survived worse, fledgling.”

[bamby0304]

Dangerous Dance- Ch.13

Series Masterlist

Summary: When you first saw him, you knew he wasn’t like any other man that walked through the doors. There was a gleam in his eyes that screamed mischief. A gleam you would come to crave just as much as he craved you, if not more. When you first saw him, you had no idea what you were in for.

A/N: Thank you @sculptorofbeginnings for betaing!! Also, this is about 1k words longer than usual… I’m not even sorry.

Warnings: Explicit language. Angst. Fluff. Smut. Dirty talk. Praise kink. Fingering. Unprotected sex. Breath play. Bondage. Knife play. Blood play (just tryna cover me ass here). Squirting. Nude photos.

Bamby

After you’d stopped crying, Sam had taken you to the bathroom to clean and bandage the cut on your arm. You barely flinched as he dressed the wound, silence enveloping the two of you. Then he’d taken you to the living room, set you on the couch so your back was facing the walkway, and go to work.

You’d sat there and listened, refusing to give into your curiosity that was begging you to turn. You didn’t have to look to know what was happening.

Sam was dealing with the body.

It took about an hour… maybe more, maybe less, time meant nothing to your catatonic brain. When he finally finished, Sam lifted you off the couch and took you to your room. He assured you he wasn’t going anywhere, and then left you to get dressed.

Pulling on a pair of panties and simple tank top was harder than you’d anticipated. Every time you had your back to the rest of the room, you froze as an image of Sam laying on the ground flashed in your mind. All bloodied and lifeless… you were one hundred percent sure you’d picked the right Sam, but that didn’t make things any easier.

Once you were done you opened your door and found him waiting in the hallway, leaning against the wall. One look at you and that’ all it took before he walked in and followed you to your bed.

Nothing happened between the two of you. All you wanted, all you needed, was for him to be there. You didn’t want to wake up in the middle of the night and not know if he was okay. You needed the reassurance that he was okay.

Rolling onto your side, you settled into bed as Sam slipped in behind you. His arms wrapped around your waist and pulled you to his chest, which is where you stayed all night. Any nightmare that might’ve come if he hadn’t been there, was scared away by his strong and comforting hold.

You woke with a groan, rolling over to find Sam sitting up in bed, leaning against the headboard. He’d been on his phone, probably texting someone, but as you moved he put the phone away and looked down at you.

“Hi…”

“Hey.” He watched you carefully. “You’ve got questions.”

“Do you blame me?” you asked, pulling yourself up and over to sit in the middle of the bed so you could face him. “I mean… you killed someone, in my bedroom, just last night. Someone, might I add, that looked exactly like you.”

He nodded. “I told you, it was a siren.”

“A siren? How am I supposed to believe that?”

“You saw it with your own eyes,” he noted. “Monsters are real, Y/N. Tough pill to swallow, I know, but they are.”

“And, what, you kill them?”

Again, he nodded. “I hunt them, yes.”

“That’s your job?”

“I don’t get paid, but that’s what I do.”

This was all so insane… “For how long?”

“My whole life,” he answered, causing you to scoff. “I’m serious. My dad was a hunter before me.”

Shaking your head, you were just about to tell him he was nuts, when your eyes locked on to his. In the moment, you saw nothing but sincerity. Sam wasn’t lying… every word coming out of his mouth was one hundred percent true.

“Holy fuck… I need a drink.” Unfolded your legs, you pulled yourself out of bed and walk out of your room.

Sam wasn’t too far behind as he followed you to your kitchen where you pulled out the bottle of vodka that lived at the back of your tallest cupboard.

As you unscrewed the bottle and poured yourself a drink, he leaned against the bench and watched. “You gonna pour me one?”

“You didn’t just learn there’s monsters out there, and that one was going to kill you.”

“No, but I did save your ass,” he countered.

Rolling your eyes, you grabbed another glass and poured him some. Sliding his cup along the counter, you didn’t bother looking his way as you took a drink from your own.

He watched you, rolling the glass in his hand. “So… what did you two do?”

Tensing, you froze as memories of last night flooded you. Before Sam had broken in and saved you, the siren and you had done things that made you shiver and want to vomit.

“That bad, huh?” you swear you could hear a grin in his voice.

“I thought it was you. Plus there was something else. Like, I had to give it everything it wanted.”

“I know.” When you turned to him he shrugged. “You were willing to give me anything, too.”

“What was up with that?”

“The siren must have gotten to you somehow, ‘cause the only way you get that devoted to them is if some of their venom gets into your system. Which means somewhere down the line you’ve either kissed someone or shared a drink. So…” he pushed off the counter, “am I about to get pissed that you’ve been making out with someone else? Or am I about to teach you the dangers of sharing drinks?”

Frowning up at him, you opened your mouth to explain that you hadn’t kissed anyone other than him in months, and that even if you had it was none of his business. But then you recalled that one night at work…

Your jaw snapped shut.

Sam glared. “Who was it?”

“A customer… that guy that tried asking me out after work the night you and I… in the parking lot. I danced for him the other night and afterwards he… he kissed me.”

Before you knew what was happening, Sam grabbed your arm and tugged. You were pressed between him and the counter, bending back in an almost painful angle as he loomed over you.

“You’re mine.”

“Sam… I didn’t know.”

Searching your eyes, his glare only grew more intense. “You did. Somewhere, somehow, you knew it wasn’t me.” He lifted his chin. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

Your mouth remained closed, swallowing a lump in your throat.

Lips tugging into a grin, he quirked an eyebrow. “I’m not an idiot, Y/N, and neither are you. So… what should I do with you now?” His darkening eyes dragged over your body, taking in your pale pink tank.

Heat rose to your cheeks as you stared up at him, feeling both a thrill of fear and arousal wash over you.

“Last night you would’ve let me do anything I want… will you let me now?”

Staring into his eyes, finding your mouth watering at the thoughts whirling in your mind, you nodded slowly. “Yes.”

Leaning in closer, he brushed his lips against yours as he spoke, “Good girl.”

Fisting your hair in his hand, he pulled you close and smashed your lips against his. As he kissed the air right out of your lungs, he let your head go and slid his hands down your body until he could grab your hips. You were hoisted up and off the floor, your thighs quickly wrapping around him before he started to leave the kitchen.

Groaning against his lips, you didn’t question where he might be taking you or what might happen once you got there. You just let him take control as you enjoyed the head rush that came from his touch.

Suddenly you were dropped, unceremoniously, onto your bed. Bouncing on the mattress, you watched and licked your lips as Sam began to unbuckle his belt.

“Take your shirt off,” he ordered, pulling the belt through his jeans’ hoops.

Doing as he said, you sat yourself up and made quick work of your tank top, tugging it over your head and throwing it out of the way before his patience could run out.

“Hands,” was all he said as he step up to the edge of the bed.

Understanding the demand, you lifted your hands in front of you, holding your wrists together. Using his belt, he bound your wrists, making sure it was tight enough that you couldn’t get out, but loose enough not to cause serious harm.

Leaving you sitting there, watching him, he reached over and grabbed his jacket from where it lay at the foot of the bed. His hand disappeared into the jacket before he pulled it back out… along with the knife from last night.

“Do you trust me?”

Eyes snapping up to meet his, you couldn’t help but hesitate.

Seeing your slight fear, he tried again, “Have I ever hurt you before?”

“Last night-”

“Last night I had to cut you because the only way to kill a siren is with a bronze dagger coated in the blood of one of their victims,” he explained, knowing where your thoughts had gone. “But before that, have I ever hurt you? Have I ever done anything you don’t like?”

“No.”

“So… do you trust me?”

Looking down at the bronze knife again, you swallowed hard as you gave a few short and quick nods. “Yes.” You met his gaze one more time. “Yes, I trust you.”

“Get on your knees.”

Without missing a beat, you turned over to kneel on the bed. He stepped closer, pressing a hand against your back before guiding you down. Your forearms pressed against the mattress as you leaned forward with your behind in the air.

Sam groaned, running his hand down your back and then over the curve of your ass. “I like seeing you in white,” he admitted. “Makes you look innocent. But you’re not, are you?”

“No,” you breathed, shaking your head against your arms.

He chuckled. “No, you’re not, and that’s what I like about you. From the moment I saw you, I knew the truth. You love all those eyes on you, love the attention, love knowing they can’t touch you but they want to. Always had control… until I came along.” The tip of the knife dragged along the back of your thigh.

You jumped at the touch, but Sam was right there, holding you in place.

“That night you danced for me, I could see the control slipping. I wasn’t like the others, was I? I wasn’t drooling like some dog.” He hooked the knife under the lining of your panties. “You couldn’t get to me like the others, and that enticed you. From that moment, you were mine, you just didn’t know it.” With a flick of his wrist, he cut through one side of your panties.

Moaning, you rolled your hips as the cool metal of the blade dragged over to your other cheek.

“You are mine, and yet you let someone else kiss you. And look what happened… you were almost killed.” He pressed the tip of the blade into the meat of your ass. You hissed as your skin broke and a bead of blood formed. “You let that thing touch you.”

“Sam,” you groaned, turning your head to look at him with pleading eyes.

Keeping his gaze locked on yours, he gave his wrist one more flick and cut the rest of your panties.

The cool air against your warm pussy had you groaning as your walls clenched around nothing. Dropping your head to the bed, you waited with anticipation, desperate for Sam’s touch.

Your desperation wasn’t like last night’s. That had been artificial, brought on by tricks and lies. This was real, a need that was so deep it was engraved in your DNA.

Sam ran the tip of the blade along your slit, delicately and carefully. He watched as you fluttered and jumped at the touch. His lips quirked into a grin as he moved the knife again, only to replace it with his fingers. The first brush had you whining into the mattress.

Teasing you, Sam barely pressed into your waiting pussy before he’d pull back to trace your slit. Over and over, he played this torturous game. As he continued to drive you insane, barely giving you anything while simultaneously giving you so much, you felt yourself grow wetter.

“You’re practically dripping,” he noted, dipping his fingers into you a little more than before.

His fingers were gone before you could really enjoy them.

The sound of clothes rustling had you turning your head to watch as Sam quickly undressed. He pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it over his shoulder, before reaching for his jeans. They fell to the ground effortlessly, followed by his underwear. Stepping up to the bed, getting as close as possible, he fisted his cock and lined it up.

Again, your head fell to the bed as you groaned. He began to press into you, dragging against your walls, giving you inch by slow inch. It was agonizing and incredible, making your claw at the sheets.

When he was pressed against your cervix, filling you completely, you let out a long breath you didn’t realise you’d been holding.

“I’m gonna fuck you… and I’m gonna mark you. Need you to remember you’re mine,” he grunted, holding back from hammering into you. “What do you say if you need me to stop?”

“Red.”

“Good girl.”

He didn’t give you a moment to brace yourself before he pulled out and slammed back in. He set a pace, fucking into you recklessly, thrusting in on an angle that made you see stars.

Your grip on the sheets was so tight your knuckles were going white. Sucking in a breath of air was practically impossible as you laid there, helpless as he fucked you hard and fast. All you could do was moan and whine as he brought you to a quick orgasm.

The force of his thrusts had you collapsing, your knees unable to keep you up as his hips snapped against your ass. He didn’t seem to care that you’d moved, though. He just groaned and shifted closer. If you thought the angle he was thrusting in on before was incredible, this one was intense.

A hand pressed on your back, pushing you into the mattress as he made sounds that resembled an animal. Reaching over you, he used his free hand to loosen his belt and free your wrists before he pulled back and started thrusting again. The added pressure from your stomach pressing into the bed, and this new angle, you quickly felt the urge to pee.

“Sam…”

Giving a short grunt, he thrust in a little harder than before. “I know. I feel you squeezing me. Practically choking my cock.”

His words and the pressure were too much, and before you knew what was happening, you gushed around his cock.

Before you could catch your breath, you felt the tip of the knife on the small of your back. You flinched, but Sam simply stroked your hip with his other hand in an attempt to calm you.

“I’m gonna mark you, now. Make sure you and everyone else knows you’re mine,” he told you, pressing the knife into your skin a little more. “Ready?”

Biting your lip, you hesitated a moment before giving a quick nod. The first cut had you screaming.

Sam’s grip held you in place as he moved the knife along your skin. White hot pain flashed through you, throbbing and stinging where he was working away. You cried against your arm, tears streaming down your face. Then something strange happened… as the white hot pain flushed through you, you felt something else.

Pleasure.

Your walls clenched around his cock as moans mixed in with your cries. Fisting the sheets again, you pressed up into the knife, seeking out more of the pain.

It took a few minutes before the blade was gone. Sam dropped it onto the bed beside you as he looked down at his handy work. His fingers curled around your hip as he pulled out of you slowly, and then thrust back in, slamming into your cervix.

He didn’t rush as he fucked you this time. Each time he pulled out it was slow and dragging, only to then thrust in with a force that pushed the air from your lungs. His grip on your hips grew tighter with each passing second as his eyes stayed glued to the cuts he’d made on your back.

“Touch yourself,” he ordered on a grunt.

Shoving your arm between you and the bed, you quickly found your clit and began to rub. It took next to no time at all before you were crying out through another orgasm. Sam was right behind you, thrusting in deep as he could before he let out a long groan and spilled inside you.

A moment passed before he pulled out. He moved about behind you before the sound of a camera went off.

Your head snapped around to see him standing there, holding his phone up. “Did you just-”

Before you could finish your question, you were cut off by the sound of a message going through your phone.

“You can check that later,” he told you as he set his phone down on your bedside table and offered you his other hand. “Come on. Let’s get you cleaned up.”

There was no resistance as you let him pull you from the bed. You didn’t get the chance to try and walk before he picked you up and walked out of your room and into the bathroom.

He was quick to clean up the cuts on your back, making sure they wouldn’t get infected. He didn’t let you see them, making sure you couldn’t see your reflection in the mirror as you cleaned and then dressed them. Then you were back in his arms.

When he took you to bed you curled up and waited. As soon as he slid under the sheets you crept up closer to him and rested your head on his chest. His arm wrapped around you, fingers stroking your arm as you fell into a deep sleep.

You woke alone. Sam and his clothes were gone. Getting up, you headed out into the kitchen to find him, but he was gone. There was no sign he’d even been there.

The sound of your phone beeping a reminder had you dragging your feet back to your bedroom to turn the alarm off. But as you clicked the screen you spotted the message from last night.

A gasp left your lips as soon as you opened the message. It was an image, sent by Sam, of you collapsed on your bed, with his cum dripping from your pussy… and the cuts on your back.

Dropping your phone on the bed, you hurried over to the mirror and pulled off your dressing. You had to see it with your own eyes. You had to make sure the picture wasn’t some joke. You needed to it in real life.

Once the dressing peeled away to reveal  the cut, you let out another gasp. Sitting there, carved into your back, were the initials S.W.

Bamby

[lokis-lady-death]

Interview with a God Pt 9

Tom Hiddleston/Loki x reader

Prompt: I have always heard  people joke that Tom Hiddleston is actually Loki playing Tom playing Loki. So, let’s write about it XD

Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3 , Part 4 , Part 5 , Part 6 , Part 7, Part 8

Interview with a God Part 9 Warning: violence

You were confused but you didn't know why. You were standing in your apartment, just in from work. But what was this feeling that something was wrong, that the world had gone from color to gray all of the sudden?

Loki stood in front of you. As he stepped towards you, you remembered calling him, begging to come. Reaching out for him, you quickly knew something was the matter. His jaw was tight, his normal playful smile gone. His brow was furrowed while his eyes were dark and filled with rage.

“Loki?” you said, pulling back. What was this? Why was he so angry?

He grabbed hold of your wrist and slung you onto the bed.

You lifted yourself off the bed, only to be shoved hard in the chest back down. “I'm a monster, am I?”

“What?” More confusion, your mind hazy as he watched you try again to get up. “I don't think you're a monster?”

“Then what is this?” He asked, holding up a People magazine. It was an article with your name, detailing how Tom Hiddleston was, in fact, Loki, a deranged monster that was cast from Asgard for killing his mother.

You gasped and went to move towards Loki, explaining, “I didn't write that!”

The back of his hand cut through the air so hard it rolled you onto your stomach. You were crying now, realizing he was too angry to listen to reason. You knew you hadn't written anything of the sort. Knew you'd never betray his trust. Knew you didn't see him as a monster.

Before you could move again, Loki’s hand's were on your waist, pulling you backwards to him. Your nails dragged into the bed, desperately trying to get away. His hand caught your hair and brought you to a standing position in front of him.

“Please, Loki!” you begged, “I didn't write that,it had to of been Elliot!”

“Ah, yes,” he mused,  not loosening his grip on your head. “The editor that likes to play with your underwear.” He threw you to the ground, brought his foot back and kicked you in the side. “GET UP, Y/N!” And you did, unable to fight it. He reared back and backhanded you again, sending you face first against the footboard of your bed. The wood split your lip and you tasted your blood. “Get.Up.” You were sobbing when you managed to stand up.

“Loki…” you whimpered in between sobs

“Look at me!” he commanded. Your body was convulsing as you tried to fight the tears from falling. You met his hateful eyes and braced for another hit. Instead, he instructed, “Remove your clothes.” Your hands were shaking as you undid your blouse, now looking him in the eyes.

“Loki, I didn't…”

“Do not speak, do not make a sound or I will make you remove your tongue.” The threat was unnecessary, the words themselves enough to ensure you never opened your mouth to him. When you were completely nude, he led you to the balcony. “Climb onto the rail.” and you did. You heard a small crack in his tone, the words now coming out hurtful. “I thought you saw past it, y/n. I thought that you truly understood me how no one else could. But in the end, while I was falling in love with you, you only saw a monster.” Tears silently falling down your cheeks, you heard him give the final order. “Jump.”

*****

You were screaming, your stomach leaving you like you were on a roller coaster. Something wrapped around you, holding your arms down, keeping you from failing.

“Shhhh, y/n, you’re alright!”

You couldn’t wake up or hear the person calling out. You saw him again. Loki. Accusing you of betraying him, of calling him a monster, of hurting you, all before having you jump off the balcony. And every time you jumped, you screamed until you hit the ground. As soon as your body should have met with pavement, you woke back up to Loki, his hateful eyes piercing into you.

Finally, in the middle of the vision, right before Loki had you climb the railing, he stopped. He looked around, confused, looked down at your naked and bruised body more confused. You were crying. “Y/n,” he whispered while he reached for you. You hung your head down, but didn’t shy away from him.

“I’m so sorry, I swear didn’t do it Loki, please believe me….” you sobbed into his chest.

He pet your head and you felt a shift in the room. When you opened your eyes you were back in your apartment, slunk against a wall, fully dressed like you had just come in from your dinner date.

And in front of you sat Tom. 

“You’re alright, y/n. Breathe.” His arms wrapped around you and pulled you into his arms. His lips brushed the top of your head, trying to process what it was he had just seen you living through. He gave you another minute, rocking you slightly, calming you down.

Finally he couldn’t wait any longer. He moved to look at you. “I need to know what happened,” he stressed. “Who came here after I dropped you off?”

You hadn’t stopped crying, still trying to make yourself believe that it was all an illusion and this was real life. He reached up and wiped the tears away, holding your face. “Y/n, this is very important. Do you remember what happened?”

“I only remember you,” you whimpered, unwilling to meet his gaze. “You were so angry with me. You wouldn’t listen... “ Bringing your knees to your chest, you couldn’t stop trembling. You were trying to remember everything, what could possibly have happened before Tom arrived in the vision, but you couldn’t. It felt like you have relived that moment for an eternity and you couldn’t remember anything that happened before. “Oh my god, Tom, what was that?” You met his eyes this time, tears falling, body shaking.

Tom didn't answer, only held you tighter. “Can you tell me what happened in the vision then? You were…” He cleared his throat. “Naked. And bleeding.”

Your busted lip quivered as you tried to explain it. “You showed up. Mad, you were so mad. Something about an article about you being Loki printed in People with my name on it.” Your eyes widened and you looked up to him, exclaiming, “But I didn’t, Loki, I would never write….”

“Shhh,” he soothed, bringing you into his arms. “Shhh, it was a dream. Tell me what else.”

You sniffled and went on, telling him all the way to the part where he had you jump. “And then I just kept repeating the cycle. It was like seeing my death over and over and over.” You swallowed hard and tried to reaffirm that it was a dream. That this was real. That you weren’t about to jump off a balcony.

Tom took a deep breath before pulling you both up to stand. “I need you to pack a bag of anything you could possibly need in the next few days,” he instructed, straightening his jacket.

“What for?”

“You’re coming with me to my hotel, y/n. I am absolutely not letting you stay alone.”

You didn’t know if you were relieved or more on edge. You knew it was a dream but seeing Tom so collected, it made your nerves shake. Running on autopilot you packed your things and followed him down to the car.

When the door of the escalade closed, something curious crossed your mind. “How did you know to come save me?”

Tom was typing away on his phone, the first time you had ever seen him on it. As soon as your words resonated with him, his eyes fell on you like a ton of bricks. “I didn't. Your bag was left in my car. I thought as much as you worked that you would be upset without it.”

“Even after our fight you brought it back….”

Tom leaned closer to you, lifting your chin to look at him. There was something hinting at a warning when he told you, “That wasn’t a fight. That was a minor disagreement. If I were angry with you, I promise, you would know. Do you understand?” You nodded. He sat back, still watching you. “Good. Now. A better question, darling, is why on earth didn't you call for me?”

You stared up onto his eyes, trying to recall what happened. You couldn't swear with certainty but you really thought you had tried to call him to you.

When you didn’t answer, Tom frowned and grabbed hold of your shoulder. “Y/n. That's twice today you have been in trouble and I just happened to show up. What if I didn't?”

You didn't want to imagine replaying the balcony incident or dealing with Elliott, but you had no answer for him.

“I need to know you will call for me if you're in trouble.”

“Why?” The question was so simple yet incredulous at the same time.

“Because you’re mine.”

The car came to a stop and the door opened. Tom got out and reached in for you, but you didn’t take his hand. In fact you didn’t move. You realized you weren’t at the hotel you ate lunch at. “Where are we?”

“I booked a suite just a moment ago,” he told you. “Too many people know where I’m staying and we don't’ know who possibly attacked you. I’m not taking any chances. Now,” he held his hand to you again. “Come.”

And you did. You were aware of his command, knowing it wasn’t even meant to be such, but it was enough to set a fire in you.

The driver retrieved the room keycard before Tom took your bags up to the room. “Sir,” the driver said, “What about your things?”

“I have my overnight bag, I should be alright for now. I’ll call you to let you know what I need in the morning. You’ve done more than enough for me today, Dave.” They shook hands and Tom led you to the room. After the door shut behind you, you let out a breath you hadn't realized you were holding.

Tom set your things on the bed. “Would you like to take a shower?”

“Is that a suggestion or invitation?” Your tone wasn’t flirty and he recognized it right away.

His brow quirked at the comment and asked, “What if it was an invitation? Are you saying you would refuse it?” Tom stepped towards you now, his half cocked grin leering at you.

“It’s not like refusing it matters, does it, Loki?” The sharpness in your voice was evident, even the way you spat out Loki.

Tom’s smile didn’t fade but his brow did furrow. “I don’t recall asking you to do anything of that nature against your will. Have I?”

“But you could.”

“I could also have made your editor friend jump out a window today,” he said, his voice just above a whisper as he leaned closer to you. “But I didn’t. Because I listened to you when you asked me to stop.” The breath escaped you and you stared up, seeing his eyes flash green.

You waited a moment longer before grabbing your bag and walking to the bathroom. When you saw your reflection in the mirror, you had to do a double take. Your hair was disheveled, your eyes red and swollen from the crying. And even a cut on your lip that you thought was faked in the vision of Loki attacking you. When you brushed your finger against it, you flinched. It was definitely real. As you began shrugging off your clothes, you saw a few dark bruises along your shoulders, even one large one along your side where you had felt the kick.

Whatever that vision was, it reflected some truth. Your body was proof of that.

Silently, you went into the shower and cleaned off the day, repeated over and over that whatever happened wasn’t Loki’s fault.

You were startled when the door opened and Tom stepped in, his expression softer than before. You reached for a towel but he had already taken a full sight of you, his eyes widening at the marks.

“I…” He swallowed, utterly speechless.

“Please,” you said quietly, slipping on an oversized t-shirt. “Leave me alone.”

“That’s the last thing I want to do,” Tom declared as he wrapped his arms around you. “I’m sorry…”

“Why are you apologizing, you didn’t do anything.”

“But you’re treating me like I have,” he said, his voice halfway cracking. The sentiment surprised you after his comment before. “I’m afraid that mortal sentiments are somewhat lost on me, y/n. I most social constructs and behavior, but I don’t have any training in this.” He looked up at you, again with green eyes. “I have been trying, I swear I have. I don’t want you to be afraid of me, y/n.”

“I’m not,” you said quickly. His hand came up to your face, his thumb lightly grazing over your busted lip.

“Then why do I feel like you’re looking at me different now?”

You didn’t have an answer. Instead, you kissed him. You couldn’t help how you looked at him, but you knew you weren’t afraid of this god. You could tell it took him by surprise, but his hands quickly found your hair and held you in place while his tongue swept into your mouth. Following his lead, your arms went around his shoulders, letting him lift you up on the bathroom counter. You pulled back just a moment, enough to see his black hair in a mess around his face. He had transformed and you hadn’t even noticed. You were both breathing hard, his grip on your hair not faltering. You realized he was hesitating.

“What is it?”

“You’re really not afraid of me?” he asked.

“I’m not afraid of you, Loki,” you admitted. “I’m afraid of your powers. It's all so unknown to me and it just…”

“Is that all?” Loki’s eyes searched your face, waiting for you to finish. “Y/n,” running his hand down your back. “Do you remember what I said about a god not being able to break a promise?” You nodded. “I, Loki of Asgard, son of the Allfather, promise to never cause you harm. I promise to never use my powers against you in any way. I promise I will protect you. That I will never allow any harm to come to you.” His hand came around to your face. “I swear it.”

He lightly wiped away a single tear from your face as he smiled at you, the most sincere smile you had ever seen in his true form. “I believe you are overdue for some rest, darling.” He leaned down to kiss you again, lifting you up in his arms and toting you to the bed.

You had never felt as safe and content as you did wrapped in Loki’s arms, your head on his chest, listening to the steady rhythm of his heart. You breathed him in slowly, committing it to memory. After the day you had, you deserved something good out of all this and as much of a surprise as it was, Loki was that something good.

*****

The next morning you woke to your usual phone alarm. Loki was still beneath you, only slightly stirring when the beeping began. It was surreal, seeing the god like this. Pure, simple, vulnerable. Something he had never allowed you to see of him before. Without thinking, your hand went to trace over his cheekbone and then down to his chin. Down his neck. His chest.

“This is a lovely way to wake up,” Loki spoke softly, but still managed to startle you. He let out a short laugh and kissed your forehead. “Good morning, y/n.”

You smiled. “Good morning, Loki.”

Despite his protests, you got ready for work.”You should stay with me, at least today,” he had reasoned.

“The article posts tomorrow, I have to make sure everything is perfect,” you told him as you gave him a kiss.

“Alright, but I would like lunch with you.”

“What an uncommonly nice way for you to ask me on a date,” you had to laugh. “Okay. Lunch is good.”

*****

You were surprised to see the driver, Dave, downstairs waiting to take you to your office. It felt awkward, but you went along, thanking him for his time when you got out. You squeezed into the elevator with a few others and let out a sigh of relief. Loki had made you feel so much better after his promise, as silly as it was. You held your head a little higher, feeling a flutter in your stomach as you thought about Loki sleeping in bed. He looked so peaceful.

“Oh, excuse me, hold the door, would you?”

You snapped back to reality and held the elevator door open despite it already being cramped. A woman squeezed in, passing you a sideways grin. She stood beside you, much taller than you in her all black ensemble of kneehigh boots, trench coat, and sunhat. She looked like someone going to a funeral.

She looked down at you, her smile still plastered on her face like a china doll. “Everyone but you should get off the elevator.”

The doors opened on the second floor and you quirked a brow and as everyone deboarded.

Alone, the stranger continued staring at you, like some kind of oddity. Or like a car she was deciding the value of.

“Do I…” you squinted, trying to see past her exaggerated outfit. “Know you?”

“You do, sweet girl. But I’m going to need you to forget you saw me. Work and such, you know. Busy busy.” She held a finger to your lip, specifically on your cut.. “Shhh. Secrets make friends, darling.” She flashed you one last grin as the elevator stopped at the eighth floor and she stepped off.

Tilting her head to flash her black eyes at you, she laughed, “Just…. Utterly ordinary.”

And again you forgot your encounter with the goddess of death.

Like my garbage? Read more of it! Master List

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[raevenlywrites]

Excerpt Tag

Thanks for the tag @converginglives I like this idea of expanding the last line tag, since we all kinda bend the rules on it anyways :P I’m tagging back @cirianne @oceanwriter and @silvertalonwriteblr

I’m also tagging my update list, cause this is a pretty lengthy bit: @chaos-reign  @ageekyreader @merigreenleaf @a-sundeen

In honor of Seth’s birthday, I’m posting my favorite chapter from Asylum’s first draft. I did a series of dreams/memories of Seth’s while trying to figure out who he was a character vs. who Naj was, how they interacted in the past, and so on. It’s a loooooong one, so I’m tossing it under a cut, and I don’t remember if it’s spoilery or not, so read at your own risk if you care about that sort of thing.

He scowled at the figured curled up on the sand before him. He couldn't be mad at him, but he was still so full of anger and hurt, even after giving everything he had in the whispering dark. Why were the negative emotions always the first to return? Why couldn't he recall his mother's face, his cousin's laughter, a kind word, a sunny day? It was always the things he tried to keep buried that rose to the surface first. He sat down in the white sand, hurling a handful of sparks to call a fire into life before him. He watched the shadows play across his sleeping companion, wondering if he should wake him. He never rested, never slept, and something about watching the other man lay there made him want to shake him. He didn't feel like himself at all. He was usually so much better at keeping his calm. He turned his gaze to the waxing moon, days away from zenith. The desert always seemed so haunted beneath the silvery light, but it was preferable to the empty stretches of darkness left when il'li Dareiya turned her face away. Balance. Where was his balance? He searched the goddess's face for answers, but she was as empty and silent as he.

He turned back to the crackling fire, willing the heat to seep into him, to chase away the chill from his bones. Funny, but he never seemed to feel the cold of the Whispering Dark before. Numb, yes, empty, yes, but never the cold. Could it be the hawk?

And what was he going to do with her? She was clearly not the devious raptor spell caster she might have seemed—no, it appeared she knew just enough to be a danger to herself and those around her. And he'd shown her how to add more fuel to the fire. What a mess. With a sigh, Naj pushed himself to his feet, deliberately divorcing himself from the tangle of thoughts and memories he should be putting to order. Let Seth do it, when he finally woke. The man never slept, and Naj didn't have it in his heart to wake him, no matter how angry with him he was. But he wasn't of a mind to Seth's work for him, either. He turned away and walked out of the desert without a backward glance.

–

The earth pressed close and cold around them. The smell of an extinguished torch was an acrid tickle at the edge of the shadows. He longed for a fire, but he knew why Aezir held their magic closed tight against them. Just a little longer, a few more days in the darkness, and the danger would be past. He hoped. They'd already gone so deep into the tunnels, flushed out of every corner they'd found to hide in...

A stern cough brought Seth from his fear, and he wrapped himself tighter around Naj, even as Aezir shifted his foot to brush against Seth's leg. The long hours without contact from his nest was taking its toll. Not to mention the eerily silent dark.

He knew they were dead. Anyone who had not fled like they had were certainly smoldering in the remains of the temple above. How ironic that the Ahn'Ki Dai had been burned out of their stronghold. Perhaps that biting smell was more than just the torch.

Seth tossed in his sleep as the fire popped on the sand beside him. One memory of flames gave way to another, a long line of unbroken pain smoldering in his mind.

-

They were coming, and Master isn't here. Why had he left him behind?

The Dai was fallen, there was nothing left to protect, nothing left to fear. So why had he been left with the nest, when Master marched off to war? Because there was still a war to fight, even with the temple razed. Their enemies would not stop until everything was s'Era, lost to the shadows.

This nest was nothing but shadows. Children of the gods, left to scrabble and fend for themselves in the ruins of a broken world. There had been power here, once. It had never been paradise, but it had been ours, and we will have it again...

A mind brushed over his, and he shrunk away, pulling deeper into himself as he went serpent still, willing himself to be silent, unnoticed.

-

Why were the raptors always so agitated?

Or, more importantly, why were they the ones sent to tend the ill? He was certain he'd fare much better with quiet, a serpent nursemaid, and the chance to simply sleep.

But rough arms were around him, forcing him to sit up and drink. The herbs were suspended in what felt like raw power, and he sputtered and gagged on the strength of the spirit.

The falcon swore at him, called him an ignorant hatchling as she rushed to clean the mess from her skin. What could they possibly fear from touching something they expected him to drink? But it was true, under all the prickly agitation and the hot anger, there was a thread of fear.

He took what little energy he had and wrapped the remains of the potion in a venom crystal. He spat the little pearly lump out onto the bed and covered it with his hand.

-

He gritted his teeth in an attempt to stifle his growing agitation as Sioban calmly batted his spell away, again. They'd been at it for what felt like days, and the only thing he'd set on fire was the room around him. The smothering heat surely was not helping his mood.

But they could not leave until burned away the spelled rope that bound her, proving him an acceptable student and her a capable teacher.

“It's still lacking substance, naja. Just get angry already and try to burn me, will you? I assure you, your little fireballs will have no effect on me.”

The golden hawk met his gaze with an almost bored nonchalance, but he could tell she was losing her patience. Had she never worked with serpent-kin before? If so, she was failing this test as surely as he. Her emotions were plastered across her aura, digging and niggling at him every time he tried to hold a thought. She angry, aggravated, impatient, haughty—everything he'd come to expect from raptor-kin. But laying over it all like a slick mildew was fear. He never seen that in a raptor's aura. Never. It was the first thing they learned to hide as children, and the last thing they'd ever admit to feeling. How precarious was her position that the clearly high-born hawk hen was all but sweating her fear?

It wasn't him—most of the raptors had hardly given him any notice when he'd traveled with his father to the h'somu of the D'ahnkkhna priesthood to establish peaceful intent. Only the serpent-kin of the mixed group would speak to them, after the initial presentation, and Seth was certain it was only their constant guard that had granted them entrance to towering mountain stronghold at all. No, none of the feathered folk he'd encountered then or now had paid him any mind—so what was Sioban afraid of?

He couldn't attack her, not like this. He couldn't strike at anyone resonating so strongly with fear. With a tired sigh, he pushed himself up from the cross-legged position he'd been instructed to sit in and climbed down from his raised dais. As he approached hers, the hawk froze, not even a hissed breath marring her perfect stillness.

“Wh-what are you doing?”

Seth stilled, not the motionless terror that she was caught in, but the quiet emptiness that all serpents could assume. He counted heartbeats, one, two, three, until taking another step forward. Her wrists surged against the bonds pinning her to the altar, eyes growing to show whites all the way around, but still she did not breathe. Was she drawing power?

Still, Seth could not raise a hand against her, even if she claimed it was the only route to free them both. He could not, and would not do it, so instead of sending another ungrounded surge of flame to lick uselessly at the walls, he'd resolved to try something different.

“Don't touch me!”

The desperate shriek that pierced the silence send prickles racing along Seth's skin to tighten in painful gooseflesh. She was terrified, and not even trying to hide it any longer as she writhed against the bonds she knew she could not break. Her breath returned to her in ragged, rapid gasps, and her wild eyes now squeezed tightly shut against the coming inevitability.

What inevitability? What does she know that I do not?

He drew a long breath, willing it to be steady and strong against the bitter tang of her panic. He took another,and another, trying to drain the room of her desperation, trying to impose his calm over it, trying to find balance in his soul against the terrified pounding of her heart.

“What are you so afraid of?”

It was a question never asked of any avian, and it was barely asked now. Seth could not bring his voice to anything louder than the brush of a whisper, but her eyes flew open and locked on him just the same. They stared at each other for a moment, his confusion and her fear both wore open and naked between them, then her words came in a babbling rush as the dam of her resolve broke.

“Don't you know what they want to do with us? Don't you know why we're here? Monsters, they're all monsters, and they want to make more of the same. What they want—it's madness, nothing but madness! They'll take us back to the burning times, to those savage wars—there won't be a single feather or scale left unsigned—they can't be allowed to do this!”

Her babbling broke off into a cascade of prayer, a rush of words in the old tongue that Seth could barely understand. They'd been forbidden to speak it outside of a set circle, didn't she know that, for fear the power they could accidentally call. But the words of flight and grace and mercy she summoned never came, despite the desperation in her pleas. The only answer was a falling of darkness complete, the sound of steel on stone, and the wet gurgle as her prayer broke off and winged its way to the heavens.

-

Music drifted over the white sand, a tinkling of sound as faint and distant as the starlight. It came on a small wind, gentle and warm as a mother's kiss. Seth's hair ruffled in the breeze, air cooling the sweat on his brow. The tension in his face eased, and the campfire beside him quieted to a bed of banked coals.

-

There was always fire burning in the big pit in the middle of the long house, no matter how hot it was outside. Even if it was a simple bed of coals, buried under a fine layer of ash, the fire was never allowed to completely burn out.

He sat before the pit, little face screwed up in concentration. He could feel the fire beneath the ashes, but he had no idea how to call it. It was fire. It didn't listen. It didn't come bounding gleefully into the room when you whistled, didn't alight on an arm held out to the sky, didn't beg for fish scraps when it followed you to the river. It was fire.

And yet, his mother said this was his lesson for the day. Call the fire. She sat at the far end of the long room, calmly working at her loom, seeming to ignore him. He knew better—den'Shelena saw everything. Like the great eye of Dareiya herself, mother's namesake, the moon saw day and night alike, in darkness and light. Nothing was hidden from her.

But the fire remained hidden from him. He wanted to cry. Wanted to yell at the fire, to kick and rage and command it to rise, as he'd learned to command his scales. Was that the trick to it? Did he need to touch his serpent self?

Tentatively, he let a ripple of pale scales slide over his hand. His mother coughed, and he jerked back, tucking his hand guiltily behind him. But she kept weaving, picking up a shuttle of crimson thread, and he turned back to the fire. His hand was sheathed in red scales now, and when his mother remained silent, he reached out and brushed the ashes from the coals.

-

Mother had taught him to be very, very careful of his manners.

All growing up, hours in the long house had been spent practicing greetings and gestures, the languages of their neighbors, along with the dances and magics and stories of their own people. He felt confident he could handle anything, even with his adult's wrappings still unfinished on his mother's loom. Surely it was long enough by now?

But even without the ceremonial garment, his parents had agreed that he should travel with his father's group to the h'somu Danhkkhna. It was probably better this way, actually, because dressed in the wrappings of a child, his mistakes could be more easily forgiven—Oh yes, overhearing that little bit of conversation had done wonders for his meditation, practicing to clamp his aura down tight so as not to offend their avian neighbors with his emotions.

And what of their offense to him, hmm? Why should he have to pretend to be something he was not, cut away a part of him so precious, so as not to be seen as improper? What exactly was proper about pretending not to be moved by the world around him? Mother said it would be a different story if they were coming to the longhouse—but of course, that would never happen. If a leh'Danhkkhna'ra came here, it would be a serpent member of their ranks. And even that was unlikely—why visit a small village on the borders of leshkan and lefu holdings, instead of visiting their respective strongholds?

And yet lah'Seth was expected to make the journey to the h'somu. And his son was expected to come with him.

But we don't even want to be a kingdom, he'd complained to this mother. Why do we have to act like one?

Because we want the right not to be a kingdom, she'd answered, and left the longhouse without another word.

She wouldn't return for another three days. And by then, he was finally emptied of everything.

-

Hannah was a piece of the sunlight itself.

Her mother, h'eija of the priesthood was even more radiant, shining with a light that came from within, but Hannah was still young enough that she merely glowed with power, rather than blazed.

Her golden wings had been the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.

Standing behind her mother's seat, an intricately carved stool with no back that let her wings spread wide behind her, Hannah was almost lost in the golden haze. She held herself so perfectly straight and still, he had wondered if she were part of the carvings. Though, honestly, he'd wondered that about everyone in the room. They could be standing in audience before an assembly of statues, cold jewels and precious metals wrought into the image of living beings, but completely devoid of life.

Then Hannah had shifted, ever so slightly, to get a better look at their party.

He wouldn't have noticed it, except for the small flash of light as her mother's blaze reflected off a razor-edged feather in Hannah's wing. He told her this as they lunched on the balcony, after the formal introductions were over. She'd been dying to know what had draw his attention to her, over all the glittering throng of the priesthood. She'd stood perfectly patient throughout the rest of the audience, and even kept up the image of polite but detached interest through most of lunch. But finally, her curiosity got the better of her, and it had colored her aura with the slightest of tint. In a serpent, it would have gone completely unnoticed. But it was the first inkling of emotion he'd gotten off of any of these cold, beautiful people, and he'd pounced on it without a thought.

He'd apologized profusely, but that slip had allowed Hannah to finally breathe, and for the rest of the afternoon, they'd talked quietly and still politely about each others peoples, but he had finally felt like he was talking to another living person, and it had done much to put him at ease.

He thought of the little golden girl for weeks afterwards, a million questions he'd wished he'd been brave enough ask niggling at him in the night. Don't you get lonely, locked in your own skin like that? What's it like, being groomed to rule but not knowing for a certainty that it will be your duty? How do you work so closely with serpents and not laugh or cry or yell like they do? Why had our parents talked of allegiances, and fealties, and duties?

Are we going to be enemies some day?

-

Bird passed him another stone, and he hurled it violently into the river. It didn't skip lightly, as all of Bird's had, and he didn't care. He hadn't wanted to play this stupid game in the first place. Bird sighed and heaved to his feet, popping his back with a stretch.

“Alright, rei'shkan, let's have it. You've taken enough of your rage out on the river. Time to talk.”

He scowled and thought about throwing himself in the river, but he knew Bird would never let him hear the end of it if he had to half-drown himself saving his best friend.

“I don't want any of it, Bird. You know that.”

“Aaand?”

That man had no sympathy. And he had to admit, Bird was fully a man now. Sometime over the summer, when he had been in the mountains, his friend had grown up without him. Why he had had to go and Bird had been allowed to stay, he didn't understand. Bird's second form actually bore the mark of the king cobra. Who cared that he himself was technically closer to the royal line? Who cared about royalty this far out into the woods anyways? The fact that Bird still called him simply rei'shkan, cobra, was probably the only reason he hadn't slipped his guard and cousin and went off to brood on his own. reijye Xane Kismeron lah'Seth'ra felt less like an actual name than it ever had, and more and more like the ropes he knew it to be. Whether harness or noose, he hadn't yet decided.

Bird poked him in the back with the butt of his spear, earning his lanky cousin a growl. Bird only met it with a snort.

“Brooding's done now, unless you want to go to be the h'somu and join the priesthood. I'm sure they could use another savage to watch over their little hatchlings.”

With the fluid grace and alarming speed of his animal form, he sprang from the ground and punched Bird firmly in the face.

“Don't talk about Hannah!”

Bird looked up the dirt, crooked grin on his face, blood trickling down his chin.

“Finally, he speaks.”

He didn't answer, fine tremors running through his limbs. If he spoke now, he would burn his cousin alive. Or pound his head into the dirt until his brains spilled out. Or both. His cobra temper had finally had enough.

Bird pushed himself into a sitting position, but otherwise didn't move. He wouldn't be the one to start this fight. Any more than he'd already done with his words.

“If she's that important to you, do something about it.”

Apparently, Bird didn't feel he'd said his piece yet. It was all he could do to calm his own anger, so he remained silent. Bird took that for an invitation to continue.

“You're of royal blood, lah'Seth'ra. It may not count for much among our fathers, but the h'somu thought enough of it to invite you over me. You're eligible for the priesthood, the real priesthood, and not just some glorified baby sitting job.” After a slight pause to taste the air, he added, “You could work together, as equals. H'il'li.”

Finally, he was calmed enough to speak.

“You know I can't, Bird. I don't have a twin, like my father. The line is completely dependent on me. My threads haven't been on Fate's shuttle for a long time. I'm already locked by weave and weft. And what has been woven can't be unthreaded without tearing apart all else, the good and the bad.”

“And why must they be unraveled?” Bird said immediately, giving him no quarter. “It is you that hold to them, not the other way around. Let them go, and dance.”

It was so easy for his cousin. Bird would never be expected to lead, never be called on to sit on any serpent throne—the real one in Obsidian Castle or the just as heavy but never acknowledged one of his father's people. Bird was the person who understood him the most, and even he couldn't grasp the impossibility of his suggestion, his devil-may-care dare to dance freely. He couldn't. He could not, so that his people could have the choice to. He gave the freedom they held so very dear, so that at least someone could dance. So that they could take that freedom for granted.

Suddenly, he was very, very angry. His rage flickered across his skin, lines of fire racing up and down his bare limbs and middle, his face. The fire burned all along his body, because it had no where else to go. He couldn't direct it outward, at any effigy of his imprisonment. He couldn't flame and rage at the cage that held him. So he burned, brighter and brighter like a falling star, spending its all in one last desperate dive to the earth.

When he'd burned himself out, Bird covered him with a blanket against the growing chill of the night, and climbed a tree to keep watch over their camp.

--

The fire raged across the white desert, re-charring trees that had already stood empty and black. Only the large dark rock by the lake, and the man sleeping in the hollow of it's lee, remained untouched. The little campfire at Seth's side went out, starved for oxygen as the larger inferno blazed on, razing the already desolate landscape.

Seth's lips dried and cracked in the heat, and whatever other words he'd been about to say died. What tenuous grasp on wakefulness he'd had was stolen away, as the fire stole his breath, and he collapsed again into unconsciousness.

–

Llorinda's fingers on the laces at his hips tickled. He wanted to bat her away, but he understood her need to make sure everything looked just so. He'd asked her to do it, out of the same fastidious need. And because she was the only female who's eye he trusted that he actually could ask such things of.

“You'll be fine, Meron,” she said lightly, eyes still on her work.

He wanted to scowl or give some curt reply, but the annoyance in his aura, and the anxiety underneath, were clear enough. Though he held his aura more closely than his neighbors—especially after visiting the h'somu in the mountains—skin to skin contact would tell her almost his every thought. It didn't help that she was one of his oldest friends.

Or rather, it did help. Llorinda's presence, her support by extension, did much to soothe his frazzled nerves. She didn't say, “I know,” didn't give the laces a firmer tug than necessary to drive the point home. She just quietly went about her work, sitting back on her heels occasionally to judge their evenness, and let him stew in his own dread.

It's just a dance, he told himself. Just one stupid little dance you've practiced a hundred times. With his nerves this ramped up, he was just as likely to call the fire on accident as with the ceremonial dance. Either way, the central fire would be lit for the year, and his people's prosperity would be assured.

The only real question was whether or not his dignity would survive the winter.

“Up or down?”

He started from his thoughts at Llorinda's question, and stared stupidly down at her until she asked again.

“U-up, of course,” he said.

She nodded and began to lace the pants just under his knees. Her lack of comment prompted him to continue. “It's traditional, isn't it? Cuffs are worn high for any fire dances.”

Llorinda nodded again, holding one end of the cord in her teeth as she worked. Once free of the burden she answered. “I know how to dress a leh'shcarmn for a ki'ramn. I was asking you how you'd prefer to be dressed.”

He paused and mulled over her words, knowing she'd made the distinction for a reason. Was it belittling his skills, calling his footwork into question? If he wore them down, his calves wouldn't be painted with the gold markings that would glint in the firelight, showing off the steps.

No, that wasn't it. Llorinda would tease him about just about anything, but not things of real importance. He was truly nervous about this, and she would know it, and wouldn't undermine his confidence.

So what was she asking? She hadn't stopped lacing the cuff up around his knee, like he'd asked, so why even say anything? Would she be willing to take them back down if he changed his mind? He wouldn't want to make her redo the all over again—

And it wouldn't be like her to waste the effort, if she thought he really might. So she knew he wanted them up, but wanted him to think about why.

Was he wearing them this way, simply because of tradition? What was he trying to prove? Yes, the night was about proving their reijye was a capable areta, able to call the magic of his birthright and fit to lead them. But most of them had seen him call fire at one time or another before, albeit informally. So what was this evening really about?

How would you prefer to be dressed?

She was asking him to present his real face to the people, he realized. His friend was challenging him to be more than icon and leader to the people he lived and loved with. To stop holding himself back, to truly dance when he called the fire.

But could he do it? Could he let his people in, let them see the pain that hovered just behind his smile, darted in the shadows at the corners of his eyes, sighed out with his every laugh and joke?

“I prefer them laced down.”

“I know.”

Still she laced them above the knee, moving on to fix the next cuff.

–

“Your cakes taste like dirt.”

Raith made a face as Llorinda passed him a bun, frosted in honey paste. That self-pleased smile touched at the edge of her lips, and he always wondered what she was thinking when she wore that look. It couldn't be pride in her work. Raith was right. They did taste like dirt.

Marl stumbled forward, helped along by Bird's knee, and blushed furiously. Llorinda smiled prettily, batting her eyes and turning a little rosy herself. He wondered when the two of them were finally going to get together. Marl had fancied her all growing up, and the feeling only seemed to be deepening.

“G-good morning, Miss Llorinda.”

The other baker apprentices surfaced in a flurry of giggles, trying to look busy setting out the morning's ware, but they were almost as gossipy as dancers. One stuck her thumb right in the middle of a fruit tart. She'd been too busy watching their group to notice.

He was never sure what drew their attention. The infamous Four Winds, his band of closest friends, or the strangely reserved romance between Marl and Llorinda. Both sights were sure to yield excellent gossip.

Bird mimicked Marl's greeting in a high falsetto, tossing his head and looking for all the world like the stork he was nicknamed for. He wanted to throw a fish at him and see if he'd catch it with his teeth or his face.

Raith elbowed him, coming to Marl's defense. “Manners are just as important to have as to hear,” he chided him, pushing him away from Marl and Llorinda. Bird stammered, “But you just said they taste like dirt!”, struggling to get around Raith's corralling.

“That I did, and they do, but there's no call to make fun of them. Good morning, Miss Llorinda.” He never looked back as he literally pushed Bird to another stall.

He walked away himself, shaking his head. He heard Marl behind him declaring that he loved Llorinda's baking, and thought this year's h'Cheres cakes would be the best year, echoed by another twitting of giggles from the other bakers.

He just smiled and ate his breakfast, chewing on the grit.

–

A hot wind blew across the desert, but it was a gentle warmth compared to the blaze from before. It carried the smell of sun and spices, a bustling marketplace somewhere far, far away. The heat wrapped around Seth, chasing away the chill that been trying to settle on him after the campfire had gone out.

For the first time since falling asleep, the creases in Seth's forehead eased. He didn't quite smile, but he was finally resting easily.

-?-

Seth woke in an instant, feeling the sudden press of so much earth above him. He was deep in a cave, warm and close like a mother, and it terrified him. He should be in the desert, if he were anywhere other than Naj's side, and this much earth made him feel suffocated.

He drew a harsh zig zag in the air above his chest—zt, the symbol of negating. It would hide his presence and calm his panic until he could figure out what was going on. It was just an ignorant gesture, an old wives' charm to ward off the evil eye, unlikely to do anything more than soothe him.

He certainly hadn't expected it to tear a jagged line in the darkness.

Where his hand had moved, the cool white sand of the desert night glowed like a lightning strike, harsh against the darkness. Seth began methodically wiping it away, using proper banishing circles to chase away the darkness, like he would the remains of any other spell gone awry. The darkness didn't dissipate easily, more phantom earth falling in to fill whatever he had banished. He worked slowly and carefully, cutting the darkness with a frantic zt when his window to the outside world vanished in the darkness again. He would not panic. He would not let this rising feeling of dread overcome him.

Not even when the view outside his prison changed.

No longer did the zt cut the darkness to reveal the white desert. Now it opened up to a view of the stage, dark except for one harsh spotlight. He couldn't see much, didn't dare waste his concentration on making sense of it, because every moment he wasn't actively pushing away the darkness, it caved back in on him. Somewhere, after hours or minutes in the long, false night, the cave had gone from earthly to sinister. Feelings of movement flashed behind him—always behind him—and the impression of eyes and teeth in the dark. He felt hunted, stalked, trapped, and it ate away at his calm, urging him toward the madness of fight or flight. So far, he was still in command of his senses, but for how long? How long until his panic made him forget something, made him slip? Until the image of the dark stage no longer soothed him with the promise of freedom. The white desert was his home, his safe place. The slice of stage in the spotlight was almost as dark as the press around him.

In a way, Seth was lucky this darkness was so foreboding. If it had called to him, soothed him in the way of the whispering dark... Things did call to him, groping in the darkness for him as if knowing he was there, but he pushed it all away with a banishing zt. Whatever wanted him in this darkness, it couldn't have him.

Of course, his gesture had only opened a larger window onto the stage.

A woman in the center of the spotlight. Dark streaks marred her flesh, but he couldn't make out if they were wounds, or...

Another figure stepped between them, icy shadows radiating off of him, spilling in through the window. Seth drew back with a hiss, but it made no sound. He clutched at his throat, panic clawing at his chest, and the darkness closed back in around him.

The same icy shadows that had been rolling off the man on stage.

“I trust you understand what's happening?”

It wasn't a question—it was so thick with promise and seduction, it was almost more foreplay than anything else. And it made Seth's stomach roil. He began to sing, knowing it would make no sound but hoping that if he focused on his own words, it would block out that other voice. He'd spent many a long hours in his first training with the Dai, singing and singing until his throat cracked and bled, unless his instructor had broken his jaw before that point. And even still, he'd sing in his mind, drawing strength from the one thing that had kept him sane as a serpent who hadn't been allowed to freely dance.

Song was his savior now.

He sang poems and ballads of ancient heroes, sang love songs and tragedies and children's ditties—anything and everything he could think of. He filled the darkness with silent music and desperate tears as he wiped and wiped at the darkness, not daring to draw another window. Still, the occasional sound broke through. Screaming. Laughing. Moaning, not all of it in pain. Each sound spurred him to sing louder, until eventually, even his trial-hardened determination gave out, and he was swallowed up by the darkness.

-

When he woke again, he was still wrapped in darkness. But it was the warm and welcoming darkness of before, the press of the earth. It still panicked him, but the place in his brain where fear lived was empty and cold. He was glad for that.

All around him, threads of that otherness, that icy darkness still lingered. He reached for one and tried to follow it, hoping it would lead to something other than darkness, but it vanished the instant he touched it.

Not without leaving its mark.

The ghostly memories of pain and sick laughter pierced through his mind, searing an image into his brain like a brand. Nica, hanging limp and lifeless, dark marks covering her flesh. Blood or magic, he couldn't tell, and it didn't matter. Her head fell back in a wordless scream, but he could still feel the sound of it through the emotion that poured off of her. She was breaking, and she knew it. Soon, Azriel would grow bored of her and search for new playthings among her nestmates. She had to hold out, had to endure until he was finished, had to keep her nest safe—

Another scream, and a sense of violation Seth had never before felt. Rape had been just another tool in the Dai trainers' arsenal, another way to break their captives down into tools, but it had never been like this. It didn't have a damned thing to do with the disconnect between their bodies—Azriel was violating their soul. The things he did with their flesh were mere echoes of the things he did with their minds, and Seth nearly feel unconscious against it.

But Nica had held strong, and that kept the memory alive and burning in his mind. Even when he was too weak, she remained, and did what it took to keep her nest safe. How she'd forged such mettle in herself, in so few years compared to his own, he'd never fathom. But she was strong, stronger than him, and she would protect what was hers.

In that moment, Seth was determined to stand at her back. This woman would hold against all the nightmares that might rise from Naj's past. This woman was strong enough to see him through terrors, remembered and resurfaced, and she would protect him with her all. He didn't know yet how he could help, but he would pledge his all to upholding Nica, and in doing so fulfill his promise to Naj, and Aezir.

Finally, the memory ended, and Seth fell mercifully into the black. His last thought was an almost amused realization that the whispering dark would never hold sway over him again.

-

He awoke again and again in the darkness, surrounding him with gentle warmth. Each time, he reached for a thread, bracing as it unraveled and pressed upon him a new memory. They danced and blurred together in a long line of torture, release, blackness. He was beginning to wonder if he'd died, and this was his eternal punishment, for the perversion of Li'Daea's gifts he'd allowed himself to become. He should have found a way to kill himself in those first days as a Dai captive, to escape with his magic pure and untainted, never bent against his fellow man. But the time for such things was past. And so, with another waking in the dark behind him, he reached for a thread.

Seth almost didn't understand what was happening, this change from the endless litany. The thread had wrapped around him, racing up his wrist, coiling around his chest, splitting off into many, many strands to wrap around his legs and neck, to cover his mouth. He was too bewildered to untangle the idea that he was being pulled, drawn inexorably toward...somewhere?

The blackness was changing, losing its thickness and morphing into black smoke. Endless upon endless billows of black, inky smoke. All being drawn Somewhere.

Not drawn. Pushed. Something was pushing the darkness away, willing it to be Elsewhere, anywhere else, so long as it didn't settle on her.

But it had to go to her. It had been meant for her. He had drawn shares of it into himself, and it hadn't been intended to happen that way. So now that she was near, or he was nearer her, the spell wrapped in on itself, on the pieces of itself that he carried, and tried to drag him back home.

The motion was stop and go. The pulling was insistent, constant, but whatever was allowing them to bridge the gap to her was intermittent. As his wits gathered, Seth remembered that the her was Nica, and the spell was a demon's, and he had sworn to himself to her. He dug his will in deep, anchoring it to the darkness that was warm and safe, and pull the smoke around himself.

Memories beat at him, bits of the spell trying to wear him down. He would not yield. If the spell wanted Nica, then he would keep it here with himself with his dying breath. He drew the smoke inside him, dragging it down, down, willing it to become his. Each vision of Nica's torment only made him stronger, showing him the determination radiating from her bruised and broken body. If she could endure, he would endure, and give her whatever strength he had. Nica would lead this nest, would keep Naj safe, and Seth could rest. Even if it meant resting in this endless darkness.

[kuromantic]

Whumptober: Self-Sacrifice

This centres around Goshiki and Ushijima! 

“I won’t do it again! I- I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

Scream after scream echoed in the empty classroom, followed by a crack of solid hitting solid. The Shiratorizawa dorm students anxiously waited for the smacks and cries of pain to stop, but the punishment was going on for an unnervingly long amount of time. They bit their lips, chewed on their nails and tapped their foot to distract themselves from the anger and sympathy that twisted their guts.

“The kid won’t be able to write for a week, at this stage.” Tendou murmured worriedly. It was a rite of passage that every child in the school had to go through at some stage, but even then, it had been a while since he’d seen something so merciless. The last time someone had received so many lashings, it was because they had shattered the glass panes in the dormitories.

Semi rubbed his temples, longing for the child to come out of the room already. “How many canings has it been? I’ve lost count after the first fifty. He’s been in there for so long.” He kept pacing around the room, sitting down on the bed briefly to stretch his legs, only to get back up and repeat the steps all over again.

“No point counting. Doubt the kiddo knows, either.” Tendou had stolen ice packs from the nurse’s office for the boy when his punishment was over, but he could still hear him whimpering weakly while receiving another round of merciless flaying. Tendou had often faced punishment when he was the same age as the boy, and the only thing he remembered was pain and resentment. “What matters is that he’s hurting, and he probably doesn’t deserve it.”

“He is only eight years old, or so I recall.” Ushijima spoke up, joining the worried students’ hushed conversation. “What did he do to receive such a punishment?”

Shirabu hopped onto the bed, laying his head on Semi’s lap. “He’s a rich kid,” he explained, and a hum came from the third years. “Well, was a rich kid. His parents died, some say they were killed. But obviously, the kid doesn’t understand life outside his own little secluded world just yet.”

“So that’s why he asked about breakfast in bed.” Yamagata nodded, connecting the dots together. “He probably said something implying that, then. The teachers hate rich kids.” They all knew the boy wasn’t trying to spite the teacher, or annoy them on purpose. He was just confused. His parents being taken from him in a matter of minutes, and getting thrown into an environment that was less than welcoming.

“Is he okay?” Kawanishi peered through the crack of the door, that was supposed to be shut all the way. “I can’t really see anything from here, except for the cane moving. How long is this even gonna last?” He moved away and shut the door, realising that there was no point in trying to spy on the unfortunate child.

“Kawanishi and Shirabu, get into bed. If either of you are seen up right now, they can punish you.” Reon ushered the two younger students into their beds, pulling their covers up to their necks. Bedtimes depended on age; half nine for eight years and under, half ten for nine to thirteen. The older ones could have a lamp on until midnight, but they were rarely punished for staying up past that. Their reactions weren’t entertaining for them. The children were hit the most often, because they would scream and cry.

The clock’s hands moved towards ten minutes to eleven, and the noises finally stopped. Uneven footsteps made their way to Shiratorizawa dorm, and all of the students swallowed thickly, waiting for the sight that would greet their eyes. The door opened with a click, and the oldest students lifted themselves off the bed to make their way towards the boy.

An audible “Shit,” escaped Tendou’s lips as he lay his eyes on the terrified boy. His face was a mess of tears and snot, and blood had seeped into his sleeves from where he had been struck repeatedly. “He’s so hurt, what do we do?” The boy was shivering violently, still muttering apologies unstoppably.

“Hey, you’re Goshiki Tsutomu, right?” Reon crouched down to Goshiki’s level, slowly extending a hand towards him. Goshiki let out a short gasp, curling away from Reon. “We won’t hurt you, I promise. Can you show me your arms?” Goshiki was apprehensive, but unsure. After a moment of hesitation, he nodded. He winced as he pulled back his sleeves, skin sticking to the fabric with blood. His arms were covered in welts, in every grotesque colour imaginable. The skin was struck so hard that it broke and started to bleed.

Tendou pressed an ice pack to his arms and Goshiki winced, letting out a pained hiss. “Those bastards. He didn’t deserve any of this.” Tendou was fuming, stroking Goshiki’s hair as he struggled to hold back his tears. His bowl cut was disheveled, and his eyes were puffy from bawling uncontrollably. “Hey, Tsutomu. You’re gonna be okay. It wasn’t your fault, they’re just horrible people.”

“Why,” Goshiki sobbed, nestling in Tendou’s lap, “Then why did they hurt me so much?” The eight-year-old’s life had been thrusted into hell from the moment his parents died. The transition between being treated like a little treasure and a horrible vermin was too much for him, and it had severely impacted his mental wellbeing. “I just wanted a goodnight kiss.”

Goshiki slept in Tendou’s bed, whimpering and squirming as he tried to find a position that didn’t leave him crying out in agony. No matter how many times Tendou shushed him gently and whispered to him, that he was safe with them, Goshiki didn’t stop panicking and crying that they would get him again and hit him until his arms had no skin left on them.

The next morning, Ushijima woke up to Goshiki attempting to lift himself up with his injured arms, his lips pressed into a tight frown. After a few futile attempts, he seemingly gave up and swung his body up after gathering momentum and using his legs to push himself up. The boy wasn’t sobbing anymore, but his eyes were filled with unexpressed pain as he undid the buttons of his clothes and put on his uniform.

“Come on, let’s get breakfast. I’m starving!”

Yamagata led the way for the students to get their morning meal, ushering the young ones to line up in an orderly manner as they received their food in the hall. It wasn’t anything delicious, and mainly consisted of thin rice gruel and picked radish. He sat down beside Semi, playing with his watered-down gruel before reluctantly starting to eat the tasteless food.

Goshiki’s wrist trembled continuously as he attempted to spoon the gruel into his mouth. With each attempt to move his arm up, he winced and lowered it again. With a defeated sigh, he turned to Semi’s and tapped his side. “Um, can you help me eat?” He muttered, looking around for anyone that could punish him. “I can’t lift my arm.”

Semi’s gaze shifted to Goshiki’s arms, bruised and painful beneath the sleeves. “Sure. You can’t help that you’re hurt.” He moved beside the boy, scooping up some rice and bringing it to his mouth. Goshiki eagerly devoured the thin gruel, gratified to get something to eat. He was hungry and desperate, and was willing to eat anything.

“Thank you very much.” Goshiki bowed his head. The shine had returned to his eyes, and he would have some of the energy an eight-year-old needed to function throughout the day. The breakfast wasn’t filling, but it was much better than being starved.

When Goshiki stumbled back into the dormitory after the school hours, everyone could instantly tell that something was wrong. He was sniffling in a way that gave away the fact that he had just been crying. He backed up against the bed, slumping down and resting his forehead on his knees.

“Tsutomu~?” Tendou tapped Goshiki’s shoulder gently, approaching him with an air of friendliness. “Hey, what happened? Are you hurt?”

Goshiki twitched, lifting his head up to see Tendou. “They slammed my head into the blackboard,” he whispered, anxious that somebody would hear him and punish him again. “I couldn’t write properly, and my handwriting was too messy.” He didn’t talk above a hiss, as if the walls had ears and the ceilings had eyes.

“They make me sick. That’s so horrible.” Tendou stroked Goshiki’s cheek, cursing whoever hurt the sensitive child. He may have been called a monster by his teachers and classmates, but the real monsters were the ones who beat children in their single digits and blamed them for expressing pain and emotion.

“My mama told me that I was a good kid,” Goshiki said in a hushed voice, as if he was telling a forbidden secret to Tendou. “But they told me I was hit because I was a bad kid. Am I really a bad kid, after all? Do they think I did something terrible? Am I not allowed to have hugs and kisses anymore?”

Tendou wrapped his arms around Goshiki’s body, lifting him up and sitting him down on his thighs. “If you want a hug or a kiss, just ask anyone in this room. But never anyone else, especially the adults, got that?” Goshiki nodded, and Tendou ruffled his bowl cut. “Try not to show pain or sadness in front of them. They’re horrible people, and they might try to do bad things, even if you did nothing wrong.”

“But… But my parents told me I should always express myself. Is that wrong too?” Goshiki murmured fearfully, and Tendou let out a defeated sigh. “What am I meant to do? I don’t understand. I don’t understand why.”

Nobody could say anything against him. Besides being slightly sheltered, Goshiki had been given almost perfect parenting and discipline. Having to undo that just to make him fit into an unpleasant mould was something none of them wanted to do. But they knew Goshiki wouldn’t survive with the same mentality he had in his former home.

Just as Tendou and the others thought Goshiki had adjusted well enough to stop being caned, disaster struck. Goshiki hadn’t been feeling well that day, swaying on his feet as he walked and almost choking while trying to muffle his chesty coughs. Semi and Reon had urged him to rest, but couldn’t force him to stay in bed. There was always the possibility of teachers feeling like punishing ill students.

“Now, come on. Classes are over. Let’s get you to bed.”

Tendou and Kawanishi held Goshiki’s warm hands as they ushered him back to the Shiratorizawa dorm, making sure that he didn’t topple over to one side. “Bed..?” Goshiki mumbled deliriously. “I won’t- I won’t be punished?”

“No, you won’t.”

Kawanishi let go of Goshiki’s hand for a split second to touch his forehead, but the child started to walk towards the window, his eyes fixated on a point in the wall. “Mama? You- you’re here?” His arms waved around frantically, attempting to grasp the figure of his mother that was no more. “Mama?”

“He’s completely delirious,” Tendou rubbed his forehead with his knuckles, gesturing for Kawanishi to help him pick Goshiki up. But they were too late. When Goshiki’s hand knocked against a lone, flowerless vase, Tendou and Kawanishi realised that there was no saving it.

A sharp crash echoed, and Goshiki pulled back from the shattered remains of the glass in pure mortification. “I broke it,” his voice barely above a whisper, he started shaking violently as he realised exactly what he had done. “Oh no. No, no, no.” The students from his dorm started gathering in the hallway to see what had caused the noise, and other pupils joined them shortly after.

“Please don’t tell me my assumptions are right.” Semi’s question was met with a grim nod from Tendou. “What do we do? He’s going to really have it this time, if they find out it was him.” Although it was unclear whether Semi’s words reached Goshiki’s ears, the boy started to panic even worse, working himself up to the point of hyperventilation.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry! Please, don’t hit me anymore! Please!” Goshiki’s eyes started to lose its spark, tears glistening on his fever-flushed cheeks. His breathing came in panicked gasps, slowly constricting his throat. “I don’t want to be hurt again! I’ll be good!”

“Hey, Tsutomu, it’s me. Look at me, okay?” Tendou approached Goshiki carefully, his hand brushing against his arm. The innocent touch caused Goshiki to scream and scuttle away, although not much distance was between them as the fever slowed him down. Before Tendou could come any closer, Goshiki let out a terrified hiccup, bringing up a mess of sick down his front and onto the floor.

He retched over and over again until there was nothing left, and his breathing started to slow down after he finished throwing up. Tears, snot and drool trailed down his face miserably, dripping onto the wooden floor beneath him. Semi extended a hand towards him, making sure that he was calm enough to register him as non-violent. “It’s okay. We won’t let anything happen to you.” He lay a cautious hand on his shoulder, whispering to him in a steady tone.

“Why is that vermin crying?”

Goshiki tensed up at the all-too-familiar abrasive voice, gripping Semi’s shoulders until his knuckles turned white. Semi wrapped his arms around his middle protectively, noticing the abnormal amount of heat radiating off it. “He heard the vase breaking, and it set off a flashback. He’ll be okay soon.” Semi knew he wasn’t lying, and held Goshiki tighter to ensure that he wouldn’t be handed over to be punished.

“Well, who broke the glass?”

Both Semi and Goshiki froze, but before they could plan something to avoid Goshiki getting in trouble, a voice swiftly cut off their thoughts.

“I broke it. I am responsible for the whole incident.”

Ushijima’s face remained unchanging as he stated his explanation flatly, making it seem like he was unaware of what planting the blame on himself meant. Shirabu, Tendou and the other students fought to keep a neutral face, not knowing what else to do besides keep their mouths shut.

“Are you, now? What a surprise. Well, in that case, I hope you’re prepared for an appropriate punishment.”

“I am.”

Semi could feel the intense aura between the two, without even looking. Intense fear pounded in his veins as Ushijima upheld his unyielding attitude, and he had an urge to laugh and cry at the spectacle. “Get over here, then.” The teacher grabbed Ushijima’s arm, failing to drag his large frame off as he did with the little children.

Ushijima didn’t speak or move a muscle in his face as he was taken to an empty office, standing in the middle of the room without a sound. “That vase was expensive, Ushijima. Property damage results in severe punishment, I’m sure you know that.” Ushijima made a noise of agreement, which only infuriated the teacher further.

“Fucking bastard!”

Without prior warning, a stick of bamboo struck Ushijima on the shoulder, causing him to sway to one side. Hot pain shot down his arm, and he instinctively gripped his injured shoulder with his other hand protectively. Attacks rained down on him again and again, leaving painful marks on every inch of his body.

He curled into himself, forced to take the beatings with nothing to defend himself with. His arms and legs throbbed the most, having taken the majority of the damage. Books were thrown into his face, one hitting his eyelid that wasn’t quite protected by his bruised arms. A part of his heart wanted to cry, but he refused to let that happen.

When the torrent of violence finally ceased, Ushijima realised just how much he was bleeding. His nose was caked with dried blood, and the fabric of his shirt stuck to his stomach with blood. He exited the room almost mechanically, limping to the right side and dragging his palm against the wall to prop himself up.

“Ushijima-san?”

A voice laced with fear greeted him as he stepped into the dormitory, followed by hushed whispers from the older students. “Are you very hurt?” Shirabu asked immediately, looking around for something that could help Ushijima. “Semi-san, get him something to wipe the blood!”

Tendou, Yamagata and Reon assessed Ushijima’s injuries, cleaning them and applying cold packs where the bruises were. Ushijima remained stoic, thanking them politely and letting Tendou dote all over him and letting him kiss his bruised cheeks. “I’m so glad you’re here right now,” Tendou hugged Ushijima tightly, and Ushijima returned the embrace despite his bruises aching all over.

“Um, Ushijima-san?” A small voice piped up below Ushijima, attracting his attention. “Thank you, for saving me. I’m sorry you got hurt because of me.” Goshiki used his two hands to cup Ushijima’s palm, rubbing it gently and comfortingly. “I want to make it up to you.”

“There is no need,” Ushijima said plainly, patting Goshiki’s head. “Hearing your gratitude is enough.” A ghost of a smile appeared on his lips. Nothing relieved him more than seeing Goshiki well and safe, especially after he had witnessed his broken, panicked state.

Goshiki pointed to the beds, waving his hand at Ushijima to signal him to come. “I want to sleep beside you tonight,” he said, rolling himself onto Ushijima’s bed.

“Hey, Goshiki! No fair! I wanna sleep with Wakatoshi-kun too!” Tendou piped up, puffing his cheeks out.

“Then we can all share the one bed,” Ushijima suggested, laying beside Goshiki with a fond smile. “I’m sure we can fit. Goshiki is of smaller stature than the two of us.”

Tendou cackled, tickling Goshiki’s ribs. “You’re small, he said!” He translated Ushijima’s words jokingly, poking fun at Goshiki lovingly. “Now, come on. Let’s go to sleep, does that sound good?”

“Uh-huh!” Goshiki nodded, holding Ushijima’s arm as he pulled up the covers and nestled into him. “You’re my hero! When I get older and my voice goes deeper, I wanna be like you!” Ushijima wrapped an arm around the sweet child, his heart warming as he became surrounded by the family he loved.

“Ah! Wakatoshi-kun, are you crying?” Tendou pointed out, wiping the tears with his thumbs. “It’s okay, it’s okay! We’re here for you!”

“Mhm,” Ushijima rubbed his cheeks against Tendou’s, enjoying the warmth that it brought him. He was crying, but he wasn’t upset at all. It was a strange feeling, but he liked the company around him, easing his pain. Comfort sank into him, and he was with a family he would sacrifice everything to care for.

[kazosa]

French(ish) Mistake - Part 3

Summary: lots of mixed emotions and confusion. Sam pushes Dean and the reader to talk things out.

A/N: sorry if I ramble a little in this one, but they NEED to talk about things.

Tags: @coffee-obsessed-writer   @lefthologramdeer   @sorenmarie87   @deafeningnerdcat   @earinafae

Warnings: language, implied smut

    The whole wall that separated the dining from the living room was floor to ceiling book shelves. Dean scanned the spines of the books. Silently, he scoffed at the titles, most of the books were about sports, autobiographies of actors, acting techniques, fiction novels, and… looked like (Y|N) had made a special section of what he assumed were for supernatural research.

      Pictures and decorative glass pieces filled the empty spaces on the bookshelves. Dean’s gaze landed on a picture frame that held 3 photos of both (Y|N) and Jensen. They looked happy, especially Jensen. It was more than a little strange to be jealous of a guy who pretended to be him.

      He was still having a tough time wrapping his head around everything that happened. Almost 5 years had passed since he’d watched her body burn. There were a lot of questions that needed answers.

      You saw Dean holding the frame with the 3 pictures in it. One was of you and Jensen at the beach, Jensen showing off a cake he made and decorated for you, and one where you’d visited set and he was in costume. That last picture was your favorite. 

    Excusing yourself from talking with Sam, you got up from the couch and crossed the space to Dean. You touched his arm with one hand, and the picture frame he was still holding, with the other. 

    “He took me to Hawaii between seasons,” you touched the picture of you two on the beach. “That’s the birthday cake he made for me on my birthday last year. It tasted terrible, but he tried so hard. That top one is my favorite. Jensen really knows how to play… you. 

    You let Dean put the frame back on the bookshelf where he found it. He’d gotten “that look” on his face. His features had gone hard, almost angry, then settling into sadness.

    His house, Jensen’s house, was big. It wasn’t as ostentatious as Jared’s, by any means. Despite the enormity of the home, it was surprisingly comfortable, almost cozy. Dean could tell it wasn’t your house first. The furnishings were not her style, but he could see her touch scattered around. It looked like the guy she married was taking care of her, at least.

    “Dean…” you looked up at him.

    “Got anything to eat?” he cut you off. He didn’t want to hear what he was sure she was going to say next. “I’m starving.”

    You could see Dean was uncomfortable. For him, you had been dead. Seeing you alive and married to someone who looked exactly like him had to have been both insane and gut-wrenching. You decided not to press the issue just yet, but you guessed Dean would start comping at the bit soon enough.

    “Sure, I can make you guys something, let’s go in the kitchen,” you suggested.

    Sam didn’t miss much of the exchange. The look on Dean’s face mirrored his own feelings. (Y|N)’d been part of the family, and her loss had his him almost as hard. As he got up from the couch, he struggled to put the pieces together.

    “Tell me about the ring,” Sam asked as he entered the kitchen behind them.

    “It was just a simple silver band,” Dean said.

    “C’mon, Dean, obviously it wasn’t just a simple band. What did you do, exactly?” Sam persisted.

    “I had the jeweler inscribe it, but that’s it. No magic. It was purely sentimental,” you added.

    Dean rolled his eyes so hard you could almost hear him. He always hated how you and Sam could so easily speak the same clinical language.

    “It was NOT purely sentimental,” Dean said. “I put it on your body because I couldn’t stand to look at it every day, knowing you were dead.”

    “But there had to be something else,” you said. “I didn’t get here out of luck and good deeds. This definitely isn’t Heaven.”

    “Look, can we talk about this later?” Dean asked. His eyes were focused on the beer bottle in his fingers, before briefly flashing to the “Always” tattooed on your finger.

    “Dean, we need to figure out what happened, so we can get back to where we belong,” Sam tried to prod him into telling them more.

    “I said I don’t want to talk about it,” Dean’s voice boomed in the kitchen. He glared at Sam and took his beer out of the kitchen.

      You had seen that look on Jensen’s face before. It showed up on his face when he was hiding something. Unfortunately, you’d been seeing that look on his face a lot lately. Sam was going to go talk to him, but you convinced him to stay put. The Dean you remembered would need time to calm down a little.

    “So,” Sam began, “as I recall, you were like a bloodhound on a scent when it came to research. What’d you find?”

    You laughed. He wasn’t wrong. When there was something you were after, nothing would stop you.

    “I may or may not have hunted down Balthazar,” you told him, uncertainty in your voice.

   “What? Balthazar is here? Where is he? How do we talk to him? He should have the juice to get us back.”

    “Sam!” if you let him continue, he wouldn’t stop, either. “I HUNTED him down. He didn’t like it too much. I can’t get close to him anymore.”

      A few of the pieces fell into place for Sam. She’d tried, and tried hard, to get back to their world. You watched as the realization of what you had done wash over his face, going from solemn to amused. 

    “Restraining order?” he laughed.

    You were getting out the dishes and feeling defensive.

    “Dude, I woke up here. You guys were no where to be found. Jensen found me and took care of me. People thought I was crazy, and I thought I might be, too. I got a little…overzealous. I… I had to stop looking, for my own sanity. I didn’t know what world was real. I had to accept that this one was what was real.”

   Sam’s face turned solemn again.

   “I’m sorry, (Y|N), it must have been hard for you, too.”

    “Wasn’t all bad. Great house, good -looking husband, no monsters trying to eat me.”

    You pulled out the chicken from the oven and told Sam where the serving dishes were for the sides, so you could go look for Dean. You found him in your favorite room. It was a small den near Jensen’s office. It was your space completely. The room was like Bobby’s cabin. The floors were wood, worn leather furniture, TV on the wall, built-in bookshelves filled with all things you.

    He knew he would have to tell her, eventually. Things had gone from weird to complicated in a big damned hurry. He hadn’t even had to look around much to know he would never be able to give her what this Jensen guy already had. By the look of things, she had everything, and more.

    By the time he finished his beer, he found a room that looked more his speed. It was in a part of the house that was away from the main rooms. It was quiet, comfortable and reminded him of Bobby’s cabin. After a little nosing around, he found a stashed bottle of bourbon that was already half-empty. He grabbed one of the tumblers that were stashed with the bottle and poured himself a tall one.

    Dean grabbed a photo album from the coffee table and got comfortable on the plush leather couch and started leafing through the pages. It was full of (Y|N) and Jensen’s life. After the tenth page of nauseating happiness, he got irritated again. He closed the album and unceremoniously tossed it back on the coffee table. Finding the remote, he turned on the TV.

    “Good bourbon, at least,” he said, pouring himself another.

    Halfway through his second glass, he started getting drowsy.

       On thing Dean had always been exceptional at doing was sleeping anywhere, anytime. In your bare feet, you moved silently across the wood floor to the couch where he’d fallen asleep. You sat on the corner of the coffee table and studied him. It was so strange. Jensen looked exactly like Dean, and yet, even sleeping, you could tell that the man in front of you was not your husband. Dean carried the unrelenting weight of the world on him and it was obvious, even when sleeping. Jensen slept without a care in the world. 

    You knelt on the floor in front of him, your hand gently resting on top of his, lightly clasping his wrist. He breathed in sharply but didn’t jerk away.

    “Dean?” you kept your voice low and soothing.

    His eyes opened slowly.

    He sighed, “I’ve missed you.” He shifted in his spot on the couch, the leather groaning under his weight, reaching out an arm to pull you to his chest. “Nobody wakes me up like you.”

    “Hey handsome,” you smiled into his drowsy eyes. You’d always liked how Dean felt when pressed against you. He wasn’t muscle bound, but the power he held within his body was exhilarating. You’d seen what he could do, what he could withstand, while terrifying to witness in battle, he always had a gentle, caring hand for you. He made you feel safe and you realized you’d been missing that feeling.

    Dean watched your expression change from that of warmth and content, to something else completely.

   “You alright?” he asked, his frown making a deep crease between his brows.

    You were feeling guilty. You loved Jensen as much as you could for someone in love with another man. In all the years you’d been with Jensen, the best he could get out of you paled in comparison to the way Dean made you feel. Jensen tried hard, but he could only get close.

    Nodding and pushing up off his chest, you told him why you were there. “Time to eat. Better hurry, I left Sam in charge of serving the food.”

   He sat up quickly, “Don’t have to tell me twice.”

      Over dinner, you recounted your story about how you persistently pursued “Sebastian Roche,” the man you had known as the angel Balthazar, for Dean’s benefit.

    “Hit you with a restraining order, did he?” Dean chuckled.

    You sighed remembering, “You know… I just wanted to go home, and I was sure that salty bastard was hiding something, almost certain of it.” You paused wishing your ears and cheeks didn’t betray you so easily. You mustered the primmest tone you could manage, “I regret nothing.”

    The twinkle appeared in Dean’s green eyes. He couldn’t hide the bit of pride and humor he felt from his voice, “Ok, stalker, where is he now?”

    “Why do you think I know? 

    Sam did little to hide the smile on his face.

    “You never give up when you want an answer. Always on the case until the job is done,” he said, clearly enjoying the pink hue on your skin. He waggled his eyebrows at you, “Come onnnnn.”

    “Fine. London. Okay? He’s in London. Wanna fly there, smartass, or want to wait for him to come back?” Effectively shutting down the ribbing he was giving you, you smirked, “That’s what I thought, tough guy.”

    “You got mean,” he grumbled.

    “And you got soft,” you whispered.

    Dean was going to take the bait until Sam cut him off, “There’s one thing that’s been bothering me, if Dean and I are here, where are Jared and Jensen?”

    You’d had actual years to think on that very subject. It had broken your heart to think that Dean and Sam might no longer exist. You’d been quite alive in the other universe and were now alive and kicking in this one.

    “Oh… poor Jensen…” you felt genuine concern for the man you married. “I hope he’s holed up somewhere.”

    “What’s the matter? Can’t he handle a little demon hunting?” Dean jabbed.

    “He’s an actor, Dean, not a hunter like us,” you defended him.

    “Like us, huh?” Dean mused, suddenly feeling a pang of jealousy again. He took another drink, “Yeah, nobody can hunt as good as me and Sammy.”

   “Dean,” Sam scolded.

    “You’re a dick,” you said, getting up from your seat. “There’s a few spare rooms upstairs, pick one. I’m done for the night.”

    “(Y|N)!” Sam called after you.

    “Nope! Goodnight, boys,” you said back, resisting the urge to fly the bird.

      Sam watched as (Y|N) went to the stairs in the foyer. She reached out to touch the locks on the door before heading up the stairs. Sam’s attention snapped back to Dean as soon as she was out of sight. Dean was leaned back in his chair finishing off a dinner roll.

    Sam stared at his brother, still shocked by his remark.

    “Dude.”

    Dean was chewing a mouthful of roll, “What?”

    “You just said she wasn’t a hunter. 

    “She’s not,” he said. “She’s been here 5 years, not hunting. There’s no magic here. No monsters. No hoodoo. Not hunting.”

    “You know damn well that’s not how it works,” Sam said. “You never stopped, even when you should have.”

    “She knows I didn’t mean it,” Dean reasoned.

    They both knew better. 

    “You need to talk to her,” instructed Sam. “Tell her you’re an ass, apologize. If you have any hope for her to comeback with us, or help us get back, you need to talk to her. Get over whatever it is going on with you.

    Dean sat back in his seat considering Sam’s words. It had been one hell of a day. If that Jensen dude had suddenly appeared right in front of him, he couldn’t say on way or another if he would deck the guy, or if would wish him well. One thing he did know, he still loved (Y|N) and wanted her to come back. He’d wished for her to come back to him…

    “How’s she gonna help, Sam? She’s been here a long time. Maybe she doesn’t want to come back,” he looked around at the house, “Can’t say I’d blame her. I can’t give here all of this.”

    “Talk. To. Her.”

    He found you in your room at the end of the hall. He didn’t knock, but carefully opened the door to see you pacing the floor and cussing him.

    “(Y|N)?” he ventured.

    You picked up the nearest object and whipped it in the direction of the voice, purely reacting to the unexpected sound in your room.

    “Whoa! Easy!” Dean said from the door.

    You stalked over to him, your rage fueling you.

    “You’re lucky I didn’t take your dumb head off. You know you shouldn’t sneak up on me!” you were pacing back and forth again. “How dare you suggest I’m not a good hunter! I saved your ass more than once, goddamnit. Who had your back when Sam was in college, because it sure as shit wasn’t your dad!” You went back to stand in front of him, your rage making the tears start to well up, “And… and… I tried for years, YEARS to find a way back. I had to hide it from Jensen, even after we got married.”

    “And just how long did you wait before you married a stranger?” he asked.

    It took all you had to resist the urge to punch him right in the face. Instead, you back handed his stomach hard enough to make your wrist ache. He let out a satisfying “oof!” and you were back pacing. Slower this time.

    “We’ve only been married two years, jerk, and I was with him for the time before that, too. I care about him and sometimes, he brings YOU home and I don’t feel so alone. When I first got here, I hung around with him, so I could stay close to the show, to maybe figure out how I got here.”

    “Would you stop with the pacing? Come here,” he said, holding his hand out to you. “I’m sorry, okay? I was outta line. It’s been a long time. I don’t like the thought of you with him, even if it’s sorta me.”

    You stopped in front of him, your arms folded over your stomach. He was walking a fine line and you were not going to listen to any more bullshit.

    Dean rubbed his chin. He supposed it was as good a time as any to open discussion about (Y|N) go to be in bizarro world.

    “Can we sit?” he asked.

    “No, tell me what you did. Please say you didn’t make a deal with Crowley,” you could never really stay mad at Dean for too long, there was always something more pressing that needed to be dealt with.

    “I didn’t. I, ah, I went the other way,” he hemmed. He saw your patience was very thin. He reached out, his fingers sliding down your left arm to pull your hand out. “You died in my arms, sweetheart. I knew you were dead, Sam knew you were dead.” He swallowed hard, the lump in his throat making it hard to breathe. “I should have been there to have your back. I should have gone with you when you asked. No matter what I did, I couldn’t get to you fast enough. You died because of me.” His hand tightened around yours, “I put the ring on your finger. I couldn’t look at it without you around I…” he paused, “Geeze, why is this so hard? I asked God to bring you back to me, to make you whole. I promised I would keep you safe as long as it wasn’t the end.”

    “No deals?”

    He shook his head, “I didn’t think he heard me.”

    “How in the hell did I get here? Does God get confused?”

    “You know, I don’t really care why you’re here. I’m just glad you’re alive and you’re with me. I’m good with…however it happened. What do you say we figure out how to get back home?”

    His arm slipped around your waist and you didn’t push him away. You needed him, always had. Jensen was a decent substitute, but he never made you feel the way Dean did. Your arms went up over his and he pulled you in tight to his body. He felt like home, a place you hadn’t realized you were missing, and that it was the only place you should be.

    You knew in your gut that Sebastian Roche either had the information you needed or was Balthazar and could send you back to your world. You had questions you thought only he could answer.

    What would happen to Jensen? Would you be erased from this timeline? Where was he? Would he even care if you left? You knew he loved you in his way, but not the way you deserved. If he was really in love with you, he wouldn’t do some of the things he did.

    “You wanna fly to London? …or do you and Sam want to hang out here until Sebastian comes back?” you asked, not impervious to Dean and how firmly he was holding you to his body. 

    “I really want to get home, but… I mean, I really would like to say here, get… reacquainted,” Dean smiled slightly, the two have you had been anything but acquainted. 

    “Sounds really good,” you admitted.

   “I’m sorry I was such a jerk, earlier,” he said.

    You crooked your arm around his neck, “I’ll let you make it up to me.”

    “I’ll make it up to you,” his lips were so close, but not touching you yet, “all night long. 

    Smiling at him, he finally closed the minimal space between you. You breathed deeply, relishing his kiss this time. His teeth scraped at your bottom lip. Parting your lips, he kissed you with all the pent-up passion he still carried for you. Eager to taste you, his tongue played at yours. Soft, rough, languid, urgent. He could barely contain himself. You were smiling when he finally broke the kiss, your eyes slow to open.

    “Do you still remember how to do that thing I like?” you asked. 

    He thought for a few seconds, a big grin forming on his handsome face, “The one where I…”

   You nodded.

   He kissed you again, “Yes, ma’am.”

    “Close the door.”

[ao3porcelainstorm]

poison ivy & stinging nettles 18

On Ao3

Pairing: Sherlock/OFC

Rated: M

Warnings: eventual violence, torture, swears, adult themes (no explicit smut)

Chapter 17 - Chapter 19

Chapter 18- Monster

~~~

“That night he caged her, bruised and broke her. 

He struggled closer, then he stole her.

Violet wrists and then her ankles, silent pain. 

Then he slowly saw their nightmares were his dreams.

Monster- how should I feel? 

Creatures lie here, looking through the windows.

Monster- how should I feel? 

Turn the sheets down, let her ears be pillow lace.

There's bathtubs full of glow flies.

 Bathe in kerosene. Their words tattooed in his veins.”

-Monster (by Meg & Dia)

~~~

Needless to say, Amelia was puzzled when she woke up in the softest bed she’d ever been in, to the sound of frantic knocking on a door.

Blinking into the unfamiliar space, she stood up, rubbing at her eyes, locating the source of the noise without too much trouble.

It was rather obnoxious, after all.

She opened the door slightly, peeking through the crack into an ornate hallway.

A hotel? Amelia looked over her shoulder into the room she’d trekked through.

When had she checked into a hotel?

The door was thrown open violently, a barrage of armed men barreling into the space. A hand caught her arm and pulled her into the hallway.

Spinning into the hall, a pair of hands clasped her shoulders and held her firmly in place.

“You’re safe,” Sherlock’s voice promised her.

“What?” Amelia wasn’t sure she’d heard him right.

Of course, she was safe. Why wouldn’t she have been safe?

Everything was dizzying. She didn’t understand what was going on. Why was everyone moving around so quickly? Why did her friends look so exhausted?

“Are you okay?” John’s voice was next. Fingers prodded her face, grey eyes glanced her over.

This felt overkill.

Her hands strayed to her sides, running down high-quality silk. Pajamas?

More armed agents, more voices joining the chorus in the hall, scouring the premises.

She voiced her thoughts to Sherlock, whose expression soured when he asked her to repeat herself.

“Mia,” John‘s tone was gentler. He guided her to a quieter section of the hallway, Sherlock hovering over his shoulder, that pained expression etched into his face. “What’s the date today?”

That was a silly question, she mused, pausing to consider her answer.

It was winter, wasn’t it? Christmas.

She relayed as much to the pair, and the men exchanged an uneasy look.

“It’s mid-January,” Sherlock croaked out.

“What?” a laugh was on her lips. “That’s what... off a month? You’re messing with me, right?”

“We didn’t celebrate Christmas,” John continued, watching her carefully. He was waiting for something that Amelia didn’t quite understand. He looked worried. Tense.

“Did I drink too much and ruin something last night? This has to be a trick,” she paused, watching one of the armed agents walk back into the hall and mutter something into a walkie-talkie.

“Sherlock.” Someone peered out of the room and gestured for Sherlock to come inside.

Mycroft? Amelia’s brain registered hazily. She did feel a bit out of sorts like she’d been at some party all night and was in the middle of sleeping off a hangover.

Sherlock studied at her briefly, then joined his brother without a second glance.

What was his deal? Why the sudden chill?

Something was wrong. Something was wrong. Her mind screamed in warning, over and over, there was another chirp of walkie-talkies and it felt like the room was closing in on her.

“John,” Amelia looked to him with wide eyes, her hand moving to grab his desperately. “Please tell me what the hell is going on.”

She clutched onto his hand, squeezing it until his fingers were white, listening to him slowly explain.

“That’s-,” her voice cracked. “That’s impossible…?”

She felt sick.

Her fingers went to nervous pick at the edge of her clothes, when she realized that someone had changed her out of the festive sweater and pea coat she’d been wearing on Christmas Eve.

Into silk pajamas.

“Oh my god,” she whispered, sliding down the wall and burying her face in her knees. “Oh my god.”

She kept repeating those three words, shaking her head in disbelief.

John set his jacket around her shoulders and sat with her, pulling her against his shoulder and muttering assurances until Sherlock returned.

“Hospital,” the detective grunted, his face a little more flushed than it’d been when he left.

It was a literal nightmare.

Question after question. First from Lestrade, then Sherlock, then Mycroft.

Over and over. Always the same answer.

She didn’t know.

Nurses floated around, sterile equipment and beeping machines in her peripheral; the soundtrack to her rising madness.

For her part, Amelia had done pretty well until the nurse helped her change into a hospital gown.

Written in thick black marker on her stomach was the word: “Surprise”.

Fortunately, the nurse had a bucket in hand before Amelia could vomit into her lap.

She stared at her reflection for what felt like an eternity, waiting for everyone to have their turn looking at the words, taking pictures, asking more pointless questions.

There were a few healing bruises near her rib cage. A few cuts, nothing too serious.

No physical signs of sexual assault. Thank god.

The primary focus fell on the violent cuts and bruises around her wrists and ankles.

Those were fresh. Indicative of a struggle. Bindings against her will.

The whole time, between interrogations or examinations, Amelia lay in her hospital bed and tried to will any explanation of her lost time.

Jim Moriarty. Sherlock had hissed his name like a curse a few times that day.

John tried to avoid saying it when he talked to her.

He’d done something. He did something to her mind and she hated herself for not knowing what. She’d never felt more violated.

Her skin crawled as if he had manifested into some parasite that was waiting to strike.

She was discharged after nearly six hours of tests and observation. Largely she was healthy.

No present drugs in her system, though the blood work would be analyzed by the next morning to determine any long term exposure. No broken bones. No malnourishment. Aside from instructions to keep her wrists clean and bandaged, she was given a clean bill of physical health.

Returning to Baker Street felt like a dream.

Her room was exactly as she’d left it- wrapped gifts scattered throughout the room. Piles of clothes kicked to the side, her bed unmade.

Sherlock disappeared upstairs while John helped her settle in, tiding the space while she changed into a pair of sweats and an old shirt. He offered to stay with her, but Amelia needed to listen to the thoughts she’d been shoving back.

When she finally convinced John to leave her be, she stood in the center of the room, just staring at everything around her, trying to collect her bearings.

She could recall Christmas Eve.

Mrs. Hudson sending her off to the store for an onion. She remembered the queue and the email from her friend in New York, the excited voicemail… and then nothing until that morning.

Dizzy, Amelia moved to her bed, grabbing a pillow and screaming as loud as she could into the fluff. She screamed and screamed until her body shook and she couldn’t breathe. Dropping the pillow to the floor, the breathing turned into sobs where she buried her face in her hand.

Choked up sobs turned to dry heaving, with her using to her hang her head over a trash can.

She sat pathetically on the floor of her basement room, her body completely numb to the chill setting into her bones.

This was a cumulation of every terrible anxiety that had ever passed her mind.

Every nervous glance over her shoulder, every time she jumped when a door closed or a car honked. All built up into some horrible monstrosity that she couldn’t even remember.

She didn’t hear the tentative knock on her door or the soft footfalls that stopped next to her.

“I suppose you don’t want any tea?” Sherlock asked sheepishly. When she didn’t answer, he set the mug he’d brought on her desk and moved onto the floor next to her.

He pulled his legs up, being careful not to touch her.

There was a pause, both Amelia and Sherlock froze, uncertain of what to say.

What was there to say? This was the cruelest form of torture.

She opened her mouth and closed it a few times, desperate to fill the air with some idle chatter, but the words wouldn’t come up. What was the point? Eyes searching the room, they fell on one of the delicately wrapped gifts by her feet.

Amelia leaned forward and plucked it out of the discard pile on the floor. Something else to talk about.

Heavens, she had no idea how much she needed that right now.

“This one was yours,” she stated, handing him the small parcel. “You can open it, if you want.”

It was a small box, no larger than the palm of his hand. When he hesitated, Amelia did her best to give him a reassuring smile but ended up just reaching forward and pulling the ribbon off of the top for him.

He pulled the wrapping paper free, revealing a small brown leather case.

“Go on,” she urged impatiently, her voice still raspy from her outburst. If she couldn’t be happy, dammit someone else would be.

Opening the box, Sherlock found a pair of cuff links, his initials S and H engraved on each one.

“The edges are the really cool part,” she explained, lifting one of the pieces with shaky fingers. “I managed to track down a collector who had some of Mozart’s broken violin strings.”

His eyes widened.

“His father kept a number of mementos,” she ran a finger over the thin material lining the cuff link. “Most of the major museums have what they need, this was something extra from a private collection... he sold me a few centimeters of a particularly worn one, but it worked.”

“This is...” Sherlock Holmes was at a loss for words. A rare phenomenon.

Amelia felt her chest tighten again. Stupid idea. She was an idiot. This wasn’t going to work.

She still felt terrible.

“Awful timing, I’m sorry-,” she wiped at her eyes.

“Stop apologizing,” he scolded, taking the hand with the cuff link into his. “This is one of the most thoughtful gifts anyone has ever given me. Thank you.”

“I wish we could have done this on Christmas,” she mumbled, pulling her hand free. She replaced the link into the box. “Nothing feels real anymore. I feel like I’m just floating.”

“Shall I find the Santa hat?” he offered, earning a small chuckle from his companion. “We can have a do-over. I’ll have Mrs. Hudson find the boxes with the decorations again.”

“Maybe someone tucked the last few weeks of memories into the boxes as well,” she muttered, leaning her head against the wall with a sigh. “Can you find those for me?”

It was meant as a joke, a little dry humor to try and cheer herself up, but Sherlock looked to her with the utmost seriousness.

“I have every intention to do so,” he assured her earnestly.

There was something about it that sent Amelia's heart hammering against her chest. She couldn’t figure out if it was his tone or the way he so openly wore his feelings in front of her, a rare sight indeed.

Something had changed within him during the last month, and it was abundantly clear to her at that moment that something had everything to do with her.

“It’s late,” she found herself saying. Old routines. Old habits. Lecture him to bed.

Safe habits. Safe routines.

“You should get some sleep,” she continued, standing up and offering her hand to him.

“I’m not sleeping tonight,” he replied quietly.

“And why not?” she tried to look firm, but fell short, instead deciding to cross her arms over her chest in an attempt to look stern.

“Are you?” he challenged back.

“That doesn’t matter,” she dismissed him. “You’re the super detective who needs to figure this out. You need your brain at full capacity.”

“I will,” he brushed past her, shaking out the covers on her bed and fluffing a few pillows. He dropped down at the far side, looking up at her expectantly. “Sit.”

Rolling her eyes, Amelia plodded over, make a show of crawling under the covers.

“Shall I read you a bedtime story?” he offered and Amelia wasn’t sure if he was being serious or not. The small smirk that emerged at her bewildered look had her roll her eyes.

“Oh shut up,” she snorted, turning to her side. “Do you plan to sit there all night?”

He shrugged, lifting the blankets and sliding his feet under.

“If need be,” he replied, looking to her side table stack of novels. “Have you any good books?”

It was so surreal. Sherlock so easily falling into place in her little corner of the universe.

He plucked Pride and Prejudice out of the stack, gently tucking his gift next to the pile. Flipping through the first few pages, he looked down at her and smirked.

“It is a truth universally acknowledged-,” he started before Amelia swatted at his hand.

“You’re not actually going to do this, are you?” she asked through a giggle.

“Depends, will it cheer you up?” he asked.

“Exponentially,” she grinned. “It’s always been a dream of mine to have the book read by an eloquent British gentleman.”

“Just call me Mr. Darcy,” he teased, returning his focus on the book. “Now, shush.”

~~~

Sherlock didn’t have a word for it, not yet, at least.

That feeling in his chest when Amelia curled up against him in her sleep.

The overwhelming wave he’d felt when she’d opened the door to the hotel room, after a full day of tricks and fake outs.

It wasn’t just relief at her being home. He’d been relieved when he’d saved John on numerous occasions. He’d been relieved when Irene confirmed she was still alive.

This was something else.

Something that penetrated far deeper than anything he’d felt for a platonic friend. John would call it something sentimental and sappy; love.

Sherlock held his breath when Amelia stirred. She repositioned, her back tucked against him, humming contentedly back to sleep.

It also didn’t help that he was decidedly attracted to her on a physical level.

Adjusting his pajama bottoms, he fell back into his thoughts.

He knew that Moriarty had an end game with all of this.

The madman had tried to distract him from solving the case by abducting Amelia, but when that hadn’t worked... he just gave her back?

No. It didn’t make sense. Not with the video and photograph he’d sent.

This was intentional. Moriarty intended to strike and whatever he put in her mind would inevitably rear its ugly head.

He leaned forward, wrapping a tentative arm around her torso, his face pressed in her hair.

It smelled all wrong. Sterile and not at all like the floral soaps she liked to use. Plus it’d been straightened and pulled into a braid, not the unruly mess of auburn curls that framed her face like a halo. All wrong.

It also implied that someone had taken the time to ensure she’d been washed.

He just hoped it was of her own doing.

God, for her sake he hoped a lot of things hadn’t happened to her.

Sherlock had promised to try and find the lost memories for her, but what if the truth was uglier than anyone could handle? Could he reveal what he found at the risk of hurting her again?

She had such a soft heart. He thought about the cuff links she’d taken the time to have customized. Mozart’s string. Of course, there was no proof, though Amelia was the type to try and track down someone reputable, the thought alone was enough to send Sherlock’s heart hammering against his sternum.  

No one looked at him the way she did or listened intently as he rambled through theories on cases out loud. She always made sure he was safe after an altercation with a suspect, lecturing him to sit down and wait while she cleaned his wounds.

He couldn’t imagine a life without her smile and bright-eyed excitement. She saw so much beauty in the ordinary- ordinary people, ordinary places. Hell, she could take a flower and turn it into a masterpiece.

Perhaps that’s what she’d done to him? Pulled the most beautiful colors from him forward.

Oh.

Oh.

He did love her, didn’t he?

And not that cliché, over the top, romantic movie love- no- this was something fuller, brighter, deeper. This was- intimate secrets whispered over tea in the middle of the night- love.

This was- holding her through the night to scare off the demons- love.

Sherlock had never felt this way before. He’d never been attached to another person like this.

It was terrifying. It was exciting. Part of him wanted to run upstairs and ask John all about it, and pretend to be annoyed when the doctor smirked and said “I told you so”.

Even so, there was a voice that reminded him to keep his head straight. That he didn’t get to enjoy this like someone normal.

Moriarty knew and wanted to exploit this vulnerability for fun.

Amelia rolled to face him. His arm was still hanging over her waist when she opened her eyes and smiled sleepily up at him.

Tilting toward her, he pressed a soft kiss to her forehead, sending her back to a peaceful sleep.

Closing his eyes briefly, the message Mycroft had shown him on the bathroom mirror of the hotel flashed before him.

Written in what Mycroft later confirmed was Amelia's blood.

"Wear your rue with a difference, Sherlock Holmes."

To hell with that.

Sherlock would burn the city down before letting Moriarty have his way.

Chapter 19

[wulfies-corner]

Fallen Angels (Angel!BTS x Reader) AU 3

The lone mansion atop the hill was the topic of many conversations and was the target of prejudice and fear. “Don’t go up there, it’s dangerous.” However, curiosity often gets the upper hand.

                                               TW: Parental Abuse

In the morning, you woke up to the sun filling the room with bright light. It seemed like you had forgotten to close the window’s blinds before you went to bed. You sighed, you could blame it on Nikkie later. Opening your eyes, you quickly realised that you weren't in your own room.

‘That’s right,’ you thought. ‘I'm not at home.’ You shuffled to turn with the covers, soon facing the open part of Namjoon's room instead of the wall. You rubbed your eyes, becoming startled at the fact that you weren't alone. Standing at the antique dresser was a very shirtless Namjoon.

Your eyes widened as you observed him, His back was facing toward you, and you could plainly see the scarred stubs of white wings protruding from his shoulder blades. Strangely, the scar tissue was black. So everything he told you last night was true. It wasn't like you didn't believe him, but it all seemed like some sort of fairytale.

You froze when Namjoon stood up straight. The right wing stub twitched as he slid on a white undershirt, and the proceeded to dress in a black overcoat. You found yourself only focusing on Namjoon as he buttoned his overcoat, not noticing the time. It was only when Namjoon turned around did you fully wake up.

“Oh, you’re awake,” he commented. “Good morning.”

It didn't seem like he noticed that you were staring at him just now. You cleared your throat and hid your cheeks under the covers to hide your blush. “Um, good morning.”

“Did you sleep alright?” He asked as you sat up, chuckling faintly at your shyness. You ran your fingers through your hair, thankful that it wasn't prone to tangling.

“Yeah, I slept great. Thanks again,” you reply, leaning over the side of the bed, expecting to find your clothes where you left them. To your surprise, they were gone.

“Where are my clothes?” You wonder aloud, throwing back the covers and stepping down, searching the floor for the garments.

“Don't worry,” Namjoon called from behind you, grinning at how frantic you got so quickly. “Jin took them so he could wash them. I can get something for you to wear when you go back to your friends if you’d like.”

You pondered his offer. Would your friends be suspicious if you came back in different clothes? What would your parents say?

“Um, sure. That would be nice if it’s not too much trouble.” You decided that you would risk it.

Namjoon nodded at you, smiling brightly. “It’s no trouble at all. The bathroom is just down the hall on the right. I'll be right back, you can go freshen up.” He quickly departed from the room, leaving you alone again. That was when you really felt the urge to pee, and so you headed out on your own journey to find the bathroom.

‘Down the hall on the right,’ you think to yourself, adjusting the collar of your pyjama shirt. Out of all the confidence issues you’ve come to accumulate, directions was one of the worst. Peeking out the door, you took in a deep breath. You were going to find it eventually, so at least there was that. You then moved down the hallway, grasping your wrist nervously.

‘Maybe this is it,’ you thought as you approached one of the doors on the right side of the hallway. It was a little smaller than the others you had seen so far, so you decided to try opening it. Just as you grasped the handle, it turned and opened without any force from you, startling both parties as the person on the other side nearly collided with you. You stepped backwards in surprise, your sock causing you to slip on the hardwood flooring. You nearly fell until the boy grabbed at the small of your back and steadied you.

“I'm so sorry,” he chimed, making sure you were standing upright before brushing your shoulders gently.

“It’s alright,” you whisper as you observe him. He had a similar face shape to Jin’s, but he didn't have a proper cupid’s bow. His hair was a faded orange and his eye contacts were a reddish brown, yet he had no freckles. He wore green button up pyjamas, and you noticed that his teeth were recently whitened. His eyes widened in surprise at the sound of your voice, and he looked you up and down. He must have assumed that he nearly bumped into one of his brothers, only recognising you just now.

“(Y/N)!” He exclaimed, walking around you so that you could stand in the doorway to the bathroom. “Aish, I heard through the grapevine that you were here, but I didn't believe them! Plus, Namjoon didn't let me in his room,” he huffed.

You smiled tiredly at him. “Word travels fast, huh? Namjoon did promise me that none of you would bother me while I was sleeping,” you converse, gripping at your wrist again and glancing at the floor.

“Well, no time like the present,” he said. He seemed incredibly optimistic for someone who almost crashed into another person. “My name’s Hoseok.”

That name sounded familiar. He was the one that Taehyung mentioned last night.

“It's nice to meet you, but I really need to pee.”

“Oh. Oh!!! Sorry! I’ll let you get to that! Come find me later!!! I’ll be in the dance studio.” Hoseok engulfed you in a short-lived hug before he bounded down the hallway. That encounter left you stunned for a moment, but it brightened your spirits.

Once you had freshened up, you exited the bathroom, thankfully not almost colliding with another person. You also counted the doors on the way back to Namjoon’s room, recalling each one so you wouldn’t get lost. When you peeked back into the room, you noticed that Namjoon had just returned himself, unfolding a fancy dress.

“Is that for me?” You ask, walking in to observe the garment fully. You were unconvinced that something as beautiful as that dress would be meant for someone like you. It was black in colour, made with a soft matte material, accompanied by a silk bow at the hip, with long sleeves and rounded cuffs. Along the bust were large embroidered buttons and strips of gold cloth, resembling a Napoleonic military uniform, perfectly matching the overcoat Namjoon was wearing.

“Of course. None of us would wear this,” Namjoon commented with an amused smile. “Do you like it?” When you approached him, he handed you the dress.

You nod enthusiastically. “I love it, it’s very pretty,” you comment, but Namjoon heard the insecurity in your voice.

“Are you alright?”

You sigh. “I just… I just don’t think that I’m worth all this. I mean,” you turned the dress over in your hands observing the seams. They were much more skilful than in any other dress you’ve ever worn, and you could tell the dress was hand made. “You’ve waited so long, and I’m about to leave. I haven’t even met the last three of you yet.”

“How much time do you have left?” Namjoon inquired. He turned around once more so that you could change out of your pyjamas.

“Technically, I’m already late. Everyone’s probably incredibly tired or have recently woken up uncomfortably in their sleeping bags.” You pulled on the dress, fluffing out the skirt as much as you could, and it only reached your lower thigh. This was by far the shortest dress you’ve ever worn. “Could you please help me with the zipper?”

You started to feel guilty when you felt Namjoon’s hands on your back. You felt the tingles that rippled across your skin as he brought the delicate zipper upwards, and you felt as if you were cutting everything much too short. You didn’t want to leave, but you also didn’t want your friends to think something went wrong, and your mother to think you were missing. You had come to feel incredibly torn over going back and staying where you were, and the feeling wasn’t without reason. You didn’t notice that you had teared up and started snivelling until Namjoon gently turned you around to look you in the eye.

“Hey, it’s alright. Don’t cry now,” Namjoon brought a thumb up to brush a tear away from your cheek. “We’ll always be here. You’re welcome to return anytime you’d like.”

You snivelled again. “I just… I’ve taken so much, and I have nothing to give in return. You’re all doing so much for me after I broke in and I… I’m just taking it for granted. I’m not worth all this trouble.”

“(Y/N).” Namjoon’s tone of voice changed. He leant down to make sure that he was at eye level with you. “Don’t ever think that you’re not worth anything. You are the reason we’re not lonely. We’ve been up here on our own for over two centuries, and have been looking for a reason to stay the way we are. Everyone has always been afraid of this place except for you, even the people who have come before you were scared of us. You’ve been looking our way for your whole life, and when you got here, you didn’t run away. You saw us for who we are, and not mangled monsters. You are worth it.”

All you could do was hug him. You couldn’t think of anything to say, and no matter how uplifting Namjoon’s words were, it couldn’t stop you from crying. You had only known him for maybe twelve hours, but you felt almost as attached to him as you did with any of your friends. Soon after Namjoon finally returned your hug, hesitating as if he didn’t know what to do.

The instant he touched you, you knew that there was no way that last night and morning alone would dispel your mind of the obsession over this house. Even now, you were willing to risk everything to come back. You stepped backwards, clearing your cheeks of tears. You looked up at Namjoon, who was looking between you and the floor with a sombre smile.

You smoothed out the skirt of your dress and twirled. “Do I look pretty?” You ask, grinning at him. You weren’t going to let him feel bad.

“You look absolutely beautiful.”

You blushed even though you knew he was going to say it. “Thank you so much for this, I was only ever allowed to wear stuffy Sunday dresses… did you make it?”

Namjoon rubbed a hand at his neck bashfully. “Yeah. Jungkook says sewing is girly, but I’ve always liked it. Even…” He trailed off. “Even what?” You ask curiously, stepping back to slip on your shoes. Namjoon pointed upwards briefly. “Oh.”

He nodded. “I’m glad you like it.” “When I come back,” you start, causing him to raise his eyebrows at you. “I’ll bring something for you.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I want to. But for now, I think that I should go and let everyone know I’m okay.” Both of you walked from his room and made your way back through the halls to the main foyer. He didn’t reply, and you could understand why he wouldn’t. The two of you walked past the kneeling statue towards the front door, where Jin was waiting with your backpack.

“I forgot I even brought this,” you think aloud when the two of you approached Jin.

“It’s a good thing I managed to find it, then,” Jin commented. “I packed your clothes and a snack inside.” He seemed quite thoughtful and happy compared to the sombre expression Namjoon had been showing since the two of you left his room.

“Thank you, Jin,” you approached him, slinging the bag over your shoulder once again. You walked farther toward the front door, pausing with your hand on the doorknob. It was time to leave, and everything had flown by so fast. Then something clicked in your head.

“Oh no!” You exclaim, turning around to the surprise of both Jin and Namjoon. “I forgot to go to the dance studio!”

Both boys smiled at you knowingly. “We’ll tell Hoseok everything, don’t worry. You did say you’d come back, right? He can wait a little while longer,” Namjoon reassured you, approaching you to pat your shoulder gently. You nod somberly.

“Thank you for everything,” you express your gratitude for the umpteenth time, grasping him into a hug once more and planting a soft kiss on his cheek. You became flustered at your own bold move. “I’ll come back, I promise.”

“We’ll be here, waiting.”

You were still reluctant to grasp the doorknob once more, this time actually opening the door to step through.

“One more thing, (Y/N),” Jin called after you as your shoes touched the gravel path outside.

You turned once more. “What’s that?”

“Please knock next time,” Jin smiled amusedly at you, causing you to giggle.

“Okay, I will.”

You had bolted down the hill after closing the mansion doors behind you. If you had walked at a reasonable pace, you would have changed your mind and gone back in. You promised yourself that you would only look back when you reached the bottom of the hill. Even then, you felt the urge to go back when you turned around and saw Namjoon waving at you from the study window. You waved back, feeling a pang of longing in your stomach.

~~

“(Y/N)! You came back!” Ravi exclaimed as you made your way out of the treeline toward your friends. “We were afraid that you weren’t going to!” He ran up to you, taking both your hands in his.

“Why? What time is it?” You realised that you had forgotten to check your watch completely.

“It’s almost 10 a.m,” Ravi replied. “You’re nearly 4 hours late.” He led you back to the fire pit which was now full of charred wood.

“I’m sorry, I, um, I slept in,” you say bashfully. Your friends had stood up, Rhiannon running to join Ravi.

“How did it go?” She asked. She looked you over, her eyebrows furrowing over your choice of attire. “Where did you get this dress?”

'Crap'. You knew that the question would come up. ‘Think of a lie,’ you thought to yourself.

“I was looking for new clothes to wear today and I found this in the dresser of the room I was in,” you say, biting your lip and hoping that they would buy the fib.

“It’s very pretty,” Ravi commented. You smiled bashfully at that. “Thank you, Rav.”

“Okay, cut the small talk,” Jessica announced as you took your seats again. “It’s time to talk about (Y/N)’s trial.” She turned to you. “What did you find?”

You pursed your lips. You had to lie to protect Namjoon and his brothers. “The place was full of cobwebs and dust. There were statues everywhere, and all the architecture was very old, most of it looked straight out of a historical movie. I almost ran out of flashlight battery because it was so dark inside once night fell. I slept in the cleanest bed, but most of them were covered in layers upon layers of dust. I had to do a lot of fluffing out to not sneeze to death.”

“Was anyone there?” Leo questioned.

“No, it was just me.” You shook your head. “I’m sorry that I was late,” you apologise.

“It’s alright. We still have half an hour until our parents think we’re supposed to come back. We just have to walk out to the car now and drive back as if we’ve been away,” Mary said.

“How far out did you take it?” You ask curiously.

“Not far, just far enough that everyone thinks we’re gone still. But we need to get going now so we can make it for church.”

Ravi, Leo, Jacob and Rhiannon grabbed their things and headed home while you followed Jessica and Mary to their car just past the city outskirts. They dropped you off at your home and waved goodbye.

With your suitcase in hand, you sighed at the door to your home. The muffled sound of your parent's yelling made you frown as you put your key in the lock. Another reason you spent most of your life daydreaming about the mansion. You open the door and pull your suitcase in behind you, shutting the door loudly. Your parents fell silent, but you heard a sharply pitched *smack* coming from the kitchen.

“I'm home,” you call. A few seconds later your mother appeared from the kitchen, left eye already nearly blackened. Not soon after, you heard the garage door open and slam shut harshly.

“Hi sweetie, how was your trip?” She asked as she approached you, smiling brightly as if she hadn't just been in another fight with your father. Well, not really so much a fight...

“It was a lot of fun,” you comment, kicking off your shoes. “It was really busy, though. I'm glad I'm home.” That was a lie.

Your mother looked you over. “Where did you get this… thing?” She pulled at the skirt of your dress, trying to make it reach further down your legs.

“It was a gift,” you say vaguely. “I really like it.”

“Well, I don't,” your mother countered. “It makes you look like a whore.”

“What?” Even though you were expecting that comment, it still hurt to hear.

“It’s so short! A good girl like you shouldn't be wearing something like this. I hope you're not planning to wear this to church!” She spat.

“What if I was?” You ask in irritation, pushing past her and entering the living room.

“You want to disgrace your father and I by wearing such a horrid dress to church? People will talk!” She followed you, gripping at the shoulder fabric of the dress harshly.

‘Please don't,’ your thought screams. “Fine, I'll put on something different, just... please, don't rip it.” You made your way into the laundry room, shrugging off your mother’s grip and grabbing the old and overstuffed Sunday dress that was resting on the rack across from the dryer.

Heading up the stairs to your room, you entered without knocking and pulled the covers clean off of Nikkie, who was still asleep. He groaned and rolled over, covering his face with an extra pillow.

“Get up, lazybones. It's almost time for church.”

“But I don't want to,” he whined, his voice slightly muffled by the fabric of his pillow. “That place is so boring, and I feel like I'll be set ablaze every time I walk in!”

“I know, sometimes I do too, but you don't see me complaining.” You pulled your room splitter across the floor and undid your black dress, gently placing it over the top of the divider. You wished you could continue to wear it, but people did already look down upon your family.

“Did you meet any cute guys on your trip?” Nikkie asked as you heard him stand up and walk to his dresser.

“Maybe I did, but you're still too young to start dating, Nik.”

“That's not fair! You kissed Ravi when you were 13, and I'm turning 15 next month!”

“Don't bring Ravi into this! Besides, I'm the only one that knows. If you talked like this in public let alone have me set you up with someone, they'd put you in therapy.”

You heard Nikkie’s disappointed sigh. “I know.”

You sighed along with him. “Nik, I...  It'll be ok, eventually. One day I'll get us out. We’ll go somewhere where everything is okay,”

“You always say that,” Nikkie interrupted. “It'll never happen.”

You couldn't argue with him. You pulled on the heavy ankle-length dress and pulled back the divider. “Zip me up?” You ask, and Nikkie moved to drag the zipper up your back.

“I don't want to bum you out the day after your birthday, but when have things ever gone right for us? We live in this deadbeat town full of rednecks and religious extremists that turn the other way when dad hits us. I'm gay and you're the daughter of a hateful drunk who only wanted sons.”

You couldn't look your brother in the eye after that speech. You moved to your nightstand and slipped your purity ring onto the ring finger of your left hand. That was where a wedding ring or an engagement ring was supposed to go, but you had no say in the matter.

“I hate this,” you whisper. You glanced at Nikkie, who was now buttoning up the cuffs of his suit.

“I hate it too.”

The church service was boring as ever. When you entered the building, usher Pete had the unmarried girls line up, as usual, checking to see if their purity rings were on. Then he would question their faith and determine if they were lying or not about being abstinent.

Pastor James rambled on for most of the service about how the town you lived in was one of the last true Christian communities, which you highly doubted. You tightly held Nikkie’s hand when the pastor spoke about the abominations called homosexuals and women who had sex before marriage. You, of course, hadn't done that as you were forced into abstinence like all the young girls, but you couldn't do anything about the pain you knew Nikkie was going through.

You kept glancing up at the mansion through the windows whenever you could. Perhaps tonight you would sneak out to go back. You've had too much of this town, too much of your parents. You also exchanged glances with Ravi and Rhiannon, who were seated by the window you kept looking out of.

By some miracle, your family had gone the whole day without explicitly angering your father, a usually rare feat. At dinner, you lost the game of Rock Paper Scissors to Nikkie, so you had to sit the closest to your father. You spent it mostly with your mouth shut, eating your beef and mashed potatoes, hoping that nothing would happen.

“So, Trevor, how was your trip?” Your father asked, feigning interest. He only ever called you Trevor, the name you were supposed to get when you were born. However, you came out as (Y/N), something your father wasn’t too happy about.

“It was nice, but I don't want to bore you with the details, dad.”

“I want to hear about it,” your father quickly said after. “Your mother said that you received something while you were there.”

You glanced over at your mother in irritation. She was avoiding eye contact with you. She sold you out whenever she came anywhere near to getting his fists. She would rather have you beaten instead.

“Um, yeah. I was given a really pretty black dress.”

“How much money did you pay for it?” He asked.

You poked at your meat with your fork nervously. “I didn't pay any money.”

“How did you pay for it, then?”

“I didn't have to pay for it,” you answer. “It was a gift.”

“Nothing comes for free, Trevor. What did you do?”

“Nothing!” You exclaim. You felt Nikkie take your hand underneath the table. He squeezed it nervously. ‘This is wrong,’ you thought. ‘He’s looking to get worked up.’

“You fucked someone, didn't you?!” Your father stood, towering over you.

“No, I didn't! Just leave me alone! People are allowed to be nice!” You stood, letting go of Nikkie’s hand. You took your plate and stormed to the sink, placing the plate inside, moving to run to your room. You knew what you said was reckless and you were in for it unless you escaped from the room in time. However, your father grabbed your wrist, diminishing any hope you had.

“You aren't going anywhere. Own up to your crime!”

You felt meek and powerless. You knew you were innocent. So did Nikkie, but he couldn't do anything about it. You never let him. You decided to stay silent, but it only made things worse.

“Say that you fucked someone! I always knew you’d be a whore!” He lifted your right arm so far above you that you had to step on your tiptoes so your shoulder wouldn’t dislocate.

“I swear I didn’t!”

“Stop lying!”

“STOP HITTING US!”

You blacked out as soon as you hit the floor.

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