#and it does strange things? like swoops and a big chunk at the back is standing up? | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

neonponders · 3 years ago

Text

I already have a 007!Billy x Q!Steve one shot but here’s another with a bonus layer of omegaverse ~

[ This got very long so the full is on ao3, but you can read a big chunk of it below the cut ~]

• • • • • • •

Secret agent work was surprisingly inclusive. When young, alpha Billy had first been recruited and promoted, he’d expected the place to be a sausage fest of alphas. He was gratefully wrong.

He now sat next to a pretty woman omega, and one of the most dangerous people in the world. Because of both of her genders, she often had to be the one to infiltrate corporate fraternities. The skills to do so were...unique.

Now, though, she just nibbled on a candy bar and flipped through the case file for which they had to sit in this meeting. An alpha returning to their seat in the row ahead of them reached back to hand her a cup of water. It was just an unspoken thing, how alphas were a little extra soft on the omega field agents. They had it worse, after all.

Billy was known for being, well, and asshole. Prickly to everyone in equal measure unless someone proved right in front of his eyes that they were worth his respect. The omega next to him could claim that title, but not many others.

The issue was that Billy was a wild card. He charmed a room with ease and then spit in someone’s face on just a whim.

There was another wild card in the room, however. Billy knew their superiors were eerily good at observing their colleagues behavior, because a specific person from Q branch always seemed to show up for whatever meetings Billy had to attend.

Everyone who worked in Q branch went by that letter. Q. It pissed Billy off. How did anyone address each other efficiently? The only trick he’d seen was having no more than 2 of them in a room at one time.

Billy knew this Q very well, though. Thick brown hair. Antiquity bone structure with expressive, low hanging brows, huge doe eyes, and prominent lips. His thick forest of hair grew straight out of his head before its own weight made it fall into princely, curvaceous swoops.

Someone got highlights, Billy mused to himself. They looked good. Made the tech geek seem almost sun kissed, even though those poor bastards were the office workers compared to the double zeros.

However every 00 had a Q, and whatever quiet observation the bosses were doing between this one and Billy, he wanted it to be over with.

Billy’s phone vibrated on his thigh. He read on the screen: Look alive dip shit.

The corner of his mouth lifted in a smirk and then his lashes swept up for Caribbean irises to meet Q’s whiskey ones. The latter held his gaze but discretely did something with the device in his hands before sliding it into his pocket. Billy looked down at his screen: Stop staring at me and pay attention.

He typed back, You washed your hair.

Q visibly sighed as he reached for his phone again. Just in time for Billy to also send, I can smell it from here.

His smile twitched again as he watched the muscle in Q’s jaw tense. He typed silently on his device, I already have eleven sexual harassment complaints written out. Don’t make me send them

Only 11?

Stop it. Pay attention.

A new message appeared on his phone, from the omega right next to him. You’re starting to smell. Chill out.

He rolled his eyes, appearing more bored than bothered as he finally turned his phone over to avoid being distracted.

Yes, he liked Q.

No, it wasn’t a secret.

It was some strange irony that no one else seemed to care so long as they got their jobs done - except Q, himself. He was Billy’s biggest obstacle.

Then again, they were both obstacles. This line of work required dedication to their jobs, and Billy placed his above all other priorities. Usually.

His eyes kept deviating to Q. The way he shoved his glasses up to rub his eyes. The way he seemed to focusing on everything but the presentation happening.

When said presentation finally ended, the room began to clear out. Billy knew the drill: get your things from Q branch and leave asap.

So, everyone left to consult their Q’s, while he strolled right up to this one, who stood at his long work table typing something important. As Billy got close, entered the aura of that fresh smell. He couldn’t help himself, leaning right in so his nose tickled those silken tresses...

“Billy.” A complaint. A warning.

He didn’t move an inch. Neither did Q. “How come you get to know my name but I don’t know yours?”

“Because you officially died when you were eighteen. I’m still something of a citizen.”

“Officially,” Billy crooned, a smirk in his voice. Not for the first time, he wondered if he liked Q so much because he was an unconventional omega. Q stood a solid inch or so taller than himself, and smelled like fresh rain and spicy-sweet like blood oranges or some other citrus. There was something else there; something Billy wanted to put a name to that wasn’t just a letter.

“What would the head bosses do if you submitted those complaints?”

“They would make it so you never see me again.”

Billy’s features flattened like Q’s tone. He did not appreciate how the man could just cut him down like that. Regardless, he placed a hand on the table and the other on his hip - to avoid touching Q’s waist. “What toys do I get this time?”

“You mean disposables?” Q sighed with a shake of his head. “The only things you care about are the cars.”

Billy peered at him. “You’re sighing a lot today.”

“It’s a human condition to be exhausted by alphas.”

A laugh huffed through Billy’s nose before his mirth caught. “Plural?”

Q exhaled heavily, “Do you want your gadgets or not?”

Billy’s brows reached for the loose curls of his dark blond hairline. “Testy. I’m all ears.”

Q reached for a small briefcase. As Billy opened it, he narrated, “Your phone, key fob, ear pieces, and secure wifi hotspot.”

Billy frowned over all of it. “This is rather domestic.”

“Weapons will be provided to you upon arrival. You’re flying economy.”

That jerked his attention right up. “I really messed up that last one, huh?”

“You crashed a plane into a children’s soccer match.”

“No one was killed.”

“Because it was the private two-seater we’d loaned you. You’re not piloting any planes for a long while. And here.”

Billy accepted the envelope and started looking through the tri-folded papers immediately. His voiced dropped into a growl, “What is this?”

“Your Q assignment.”

“I see that. Who the hell is this?”

“The person who will be taking care of you since I’m due for a vacation.” Q paused his typing to look at him. “We can’t all have espionage trips in the luxurious Mediterranean.”

Billy ground his teeth. Only his training kept him from becoming a sour air freshener. “And then what?”

“I’m sure they’ll take good care of you, so long as you try not to die. That’s usually how I describe your field report activity: miraculous death defiances sprinkled with self medication.”

Billy threw the envelope onto the table, where it landed with a loud slap. “For how long?”

Q glanced at him. “What?”

“Tell me this is temporary.”

Billy couldn’t believe that Q actually looked confused. He finally turned away from his laptop. “I don’t know if it’s temporary but I need a break.”

“From me?”

Q took his glasses off and blinked while his eyes adjusted. “In a strange turn of events, this has nothing to do with you.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Because you’re a narcissist.”

“Because you’ve been my Q for over a year.”

“Which means you’ve had others. You’ve been 007 for longer than you’ve known me.”

Billy scoffed, “How long is this vacation you’re taking?”

“Long enough that I can finally take a break from policy blockers and fuck myself as much as I want to!” He slammed his computer shut, unplugged it, and started out of the bunker office space. “Break a leg, or whatever the hell you do.”

He left Billy standing there, thoroughly taken by surprise. But he also left him with two pieces of information: Q had civilian paperwork, and he was single.

• • •

Why wasn’t I invited?

Shut up and get on your plane.

Billy chuckled, already in his seat, which he’d paid out of pocket to have upgraded well above economy. He would have wifi for his entire flight. If Q was as good as he was supposed to be, he already knew this.

You gave me a different Q but didn’t hotwire your number out of my phone.

Don’t tempt me.

How’s your vacation starting out?

It isn’t. You have two guardian angels while your new Q gets settled in.

Well. Billy liked that a whole bunch.

How will it start out then? Paint me a picture.

You’re asking me to sext you.

You’re the one who shared that you’re due for a heat.

Sexual Harassment page #13...

Billy smiled, which got swept up by a stewardess asking him to turn his phone off for the take-off. “Sure thing,” he schmoozed, and then replied, I seem to recall you being the one who stared at me first.

It had been a while since I saw blue eyes. That’s all.

Is that the best you can do?

I’m busy.

To busy to flirt with me? I’m insulted.

Sorry I just have millions of people to keep safe. Didn’t the lady tell you to turn off your phone?

You spying on me?

The answer came in the form of Billy’s phone turning off on its own. Billy rolled his eyes, crossed his arms, and watched out the window as the plane took off.

• • •

All I’m saying is that I could’ve helped with your vacation.

I’ve never seen anyone so openly eager to sleep with a colleague.

Billy paused to answer the door with his dinner delivery, but afterward responded, Don’t call me a colleague. That’s weird.

Sorry. The person who enables high profile murder.

That’s better.

He chowed down on his 5-star hotel pizza and checked the time. I g2g but I’ll be back around 3am, your time. Phone sex?

If you wake me up at 3am I’m personally murdering you myself. Text your actual Q, for once.

You are my actual Q.

I’m about to be offline.

Billy frowned. Q branch was awake when 00s were awake, regardless of timezones. Communication was only severed if necessary for the missions.

What? Why?

You have another Q. Use them. And get this job done.

Another knock on the door, this one with the delivery of a pressed suit. Billy didn’t have time to harangue his Q into being his Q.

• • •

He did get the job done. It was one of the cleaner assignments despite returning to his hotel room with a limp, torn suit, and a bleeding shoulder. Just a scratch, but it was deep enough that he’d be getting stitches once the sun was up.

He messaged his temporary Q with the details and readied the massive shower for a lengthy bathing session. While he carefully peeled off his dress shirt, he realized that a phone which he did not recognize sat on the vanity counter. A sticky-note of all things fluttered on the screen: abort prior devices.

As if someone knew he was looking at it, a message came through saying, Check email for updated return details.

It wasn’t the first time details changed, especially travel information. Billy took a sip from his tumblr of whisky and opened up his email to skim through...

MI6 Q BRANCH COMPROMISED

All agent communications have been re-encrypted.

He wasted no time in smashing the screens of his personal phone as well as the one Q had given him for the mission. He threw them into one of the sinks, plugged the drain, and let them soak.

Billy showered quickly, bandaged up his shoulder, and read through a secondary email informing him that he had a plane to catch in an hour. He sighed, because this meant that he had to stitch his knife wound himself.

For some reason, it didn’t occur to him that his Q would be in danger until he was snipping the thread off the last stitch. Q had pulled some impressive maneuvers from thousands of miles away, saving his life many times. It just didn’t seem possible that any member of Q branch would be in danger, especially if his temporary one was still working with him.

Now, though, Billy texted the temporary one, What’s happened with my Q?

You will be debriefed upon arrival.

Tell me now.

Debriefing in person.

Billy grit his teeth and carefully pushed his arms into his jacket. He much preferred his Q with personality.

• • •

He certainly got the news. Right on the tarmac when the private plane sent for him landed. A large man with a mustache, who simply went by M shook his hand. Billy knew his real name, and liked to remind him of it every so often. Like poking a muscle spasm.

Today was not that day.

“A bio-weapon was delivered and exploded in the bunker,” he informed under the noise of the little plane. “We’ve managed to detain the delivery person and they’re being questioned.”

That was a polite way of putting it.

“What happened to my Q?”

“Q Branch was conveniently evacuated a quarter of an hour before the deliverer arrived.”

“What. Happened. To mine?” Billy growled.

M rolled his lips and took a deep breath. “He figured it out. He caught the attack, but only had enough time to evacuate the bunker and put the encryptions in to protect everyone else.”

Billy stood very still, which was something of a fete given the wind out here. “Is he dead?” he asked coldly. He needed to know. To get this over with.

M shook his head. “No, he’s alive. Stable, even, but this bomb...it was meant for at least a couple dozen people. It was a concentrated heat inducer. The goal was meant to cause chaos. To turn alphas, omegas, even betas against one another. Instead he took the brunt of it alone.”

Billy absorbed that but shook his head. “What does that mean? Is that just an intense heat?”

“No, kid. That’s an overdose on a highly volatile prescription medicine, and then a whole lot more. Because he caught it in time, he was able to warn others. We got there in time to find him and the delivery man comatose, on the verge of organ failure. Now, his coma is medially induced to keep the stress off his body, but he’s fine.”

“I want to see him.”

M sighed and pulled a phone out of his pocket. “Thought you might.”

• • •

Q had a private room with a nice view. It was a rude irony that he was asleep and the bed was too far from the windows for him to appreciate it.

Billy stood by the bed, arms tightly crossed. A lot of fluid bags were hooked up to him, helping him flush out the toxins from his body while Billy otherwise listened to the finer details from the nurse.

“Because of his strictly regulated hormone blockers, he had a paper wall’s defense against the attack, but it was still better than nothing.”

Billy didn’t want to hear about the attack anymore. When M dropped him off here, he’d said casually, “Everyone else is on this assignment. You’re not allowed within fifty miles of that delivery guy.”

So instead he asked, “What will happen when his system is clear?”

“We’re not sure yet. He may fall into an intense heat and need medical assistance through it. He may not have a heat at all, but if this happens he will be tested for infertility.”

Billy couldn’t rightfully respond to that since he didn’t know if Q wanted children. For 00s, that goal was pretty much nonexistent. If he had civilian paperwork, though...

He looked up at a woman appearing in the doorway like she’d sprinted down the hallway. Her light brown hair was chopped above her shoulders, and neither the nurse, nor any security outside made any movements to stop her. Billy frowned as he watched her pant through, “Holy Jesus...I came back as soon as I could.”

“Nothing’s changed,” the nurse reassured.

“Okay,” she nodded raggedly, taking her bags off her shoulders. “Okay, okay, okay...”

“Who are you?”

She looked up at him, affronted by his tone as she pointed at the bed. “I’m his emergency contact. Who are you?”

Billy turned his head toward the windows, breathing for control. Her statement should not affect him this much. He spent more time out of the country than in it. If anything, Q was his emergency contact, not the other way around.

“Just a colleague.”

“You don’t smell like just a colleague,” she said carelessly, otherwise preoccupied with digging for a few DVD cases. She propped them on Q’s torso. “Okay, dingus, I got some of your favorites. Although, it’s my choice which ones filter through that brain fog first. How about...”

Billy didn’t care about a movie. It was hard to take his eyes off of Q in the bed, to stop watching the drip of the bags into the IV tube. The way those bags emptied remarkably fast so nurses had to pop by every so often to replace them and check all of the machinery for his vitals reports. How one side of his face had the slightest blush of inflammation, like he'd been sprayed by a chemical -

“Robin.”

Billy wasn’t sure when he sat down, but he looked up from his seat on the other side of Q’s bed. “What?”

“Robin. Since you’re going to be here a while. You have something to call me.”

You officially died when you were eighteen.

“Billy,” he provided. Not like she could do anything with it anyways.

“You’re the alpha he likes, huh?”

Billy became instantly aware of how little sleep he had. “What?”

Robin smiled a little and nodded toward Q. “If you’re the one he works with, then it’s definitely you. He talks about you.”

“That’s not allowed,” he blurted, but it sounded childish in his own ears.

She snorted. “Relax, I know. Sort of. In a...I know but don’t know, sort of way,” she winked melodramatically. It turned into a really awful blink. “It’s a perk of being an emergency contact.”

“What are you, then? His beta sister?”

She shrugged. “Close enough.”

After some silence passed, she offered, “Do you wanna know what he says about you?”

“Do you always talk during movies?”

“Yes. But neither of you are really watching it.”

Billy exhaled with a raise of his chin. “I’ll let him tell me when he wakes up.”

#harringrove #omegaverse #007!au #007 x Q au #neonponders #alpha!billy #omega!steve

107 notes · View notes

amiedala · 4 years ago

Text

SOMETHING DEEPER (a mandalorian story)

CHAPTER 1: There's Always Three Things

RATING: Explicit (18+ ONLY!!!)

WARNINGS: sexual content, hints of voyeurism

SUMMARY: HELLLOOOOOOOOOOO AND HAPPY SOMETHING DEEPER SATURDAY MY LOVES!!! this is the first chapter in Something Deeper, the

second installment in the Something More series. in this one, Nova is her established character, they're still trying to save the galaxy, and the spice is racketed up even hotter ;) more notes at the end, as always, and until then, ENJOY!!!

If you're a newcomer, my fic "Something More" is the first installment of this story! <3

AUTHOR’S NOTE: HELLO MY LOVES HAPPY SOMETHING MORE SATURDAY!!!! this chapter is quite the whirlwind, i hope you love it! more notes at the end as always <3

Novalise Djarin is absolutely certain of three things. One, that the strongest thing in this galaxy is the green alien baby she calls her son; two, that her gorgeous, commanding bounty hunter husband is an excellent leader but a fantastically horrible diplomat; and three, that she is by far the most skilled person she knows at getting out of a particularly sticky situation.

Nova is excellent at getting out of things, period—her husband would argue that she’s an expert at getting the both of them out of their clothes and Mandalorian armor, respectively—but she excels at somehow, miraculously, wriggling herself free from between a rock and a hard place. And, right now, the asteroid belt that makes up Polis Massa is the abundance of rock, and the TIE fighters right on the tail of Kicker’s infamously sporadic power is the hard place.

They’re relentless. Nova squints her eyes, making the starry backdrop of the Outer Rim split and fractal into a thousand more glittering balls of light. There’s only three of them, this time, but this is the closest they’ve ever dared to follow her to Mandalore, and there’s something dangerous and electric kicking around somewhere inside of her chest. They keep shooting, jarring bolts of blasts that do their best to try and knock down Kicker’s very stubborn shields.

“Stupid,” Nova whispers, her breath low, the ghost of a smile stretching across her face, even in the crush of space. A year ago, she wouldn’t have recognized herself—this fearless, feisty pilot, the fully-formed reconstruction of the girl she used to be. On the ground, even with the Force on her side, she’s clumsy, an amateur. But up here? This is where Novalise shines. She has the upper hand out in the stars, and, besides, even if she were being chased by an artillery of a hundred more, there’s reinforcements on her old, lovable beater of a starship.

“Surrender,” one of the mechanical, ordered voices comes over the comm, and Nova giggles to herself in the darkness.

“Does that ever work?” she asks, flipping the right switches to make Kicker drop down and over itself, sending one of the fighters careening into the nearest asteroid. It doesn’t deter whoever’s in the cockpit for long, but it’s enough to utilize her infamous barrel roll to twist up and away from the other two fighters close in tow. “You know, asking impolitely for whoever you’re chasing to surrender?”

Silence. Nova smiles again, biting her teeth down against the fullness of her bottom lip. Her stomach grumbles. It was a sleepless night and a long day she spent back on Hoth before making the short trek back home—Mandalore, which isn’t the kindest of planets to call your own but is undoubtably better than some of the other alternatives—and the broth-based soups and dried legumes that frequent the base there are not nearly as filling or delicious as the feasts that being Mandalorian royalty entail. Still nothing from the other fighters, which is perfectly fine, because she’s about to feign dropping into warp and leading through a wormhole that’ll lead nowhere but the barrenness of the Mid Rim, but usually, they’re much more demanding.

“Surrender,” comes the voice again, and Nova sighs, cracking her neck, readjusting the familiar, worn helmet still stamped with the orange Rebel insignia. Kicker beeps angrily, and she lends a soft hand to the worn metal of her beloved ship’s dashboard, coaxing the metal to just go a tiny bit further.

“I’m just saying, you might have a stroke more of luck if you’re a little bit nicer. Less demanding, more asking. Who am I surrendering to?” she asks, and even though the TIE fighters are still volleying an array of blasts at the back end of the starfighter, they’re not quick to identify themselves. Nova squints again, catching a glimpse of one of them as she swoops to avoid a larger chunk of asteroid. It was stupid to come here, she admits internally to herself, even though it makes her heart drop a tiny bit inside of her chest. All she wanted for the hours she spent on Hoth was to get back to Din, to hold Grogu against her heartbeat for as long as she could before she reluctantly had to relinquish him to the one and only Luke Skywalker, but when Wedge called, it seemed urgent. “Hello?” she whispers, only to dare the strange, affected voice on the commlink to rattle back across the stars.

“Andromeda Maluev,” the comm blurts, and the sound of her name—her birth name, still heavy and pearlescent with the weight of losing her parents—makes Nova’s heart drop even further. Everyone left in this galaxy that Nova associates with—Din Djarin, Luke Skywalker, Wedge Antilles, Bo-Katan Kryze, Boba Fett, Cara Dune, Greef Karga, and every person she met along her trip with Din through the galaxy and back—knows that Andromeda Maluev is dead, and that Novalise Djarin rose from her ashes. But every single bounty Nova’s had on her head has slammed that full weight of her first identity back into her bones, like a brand, like something she can’t escape. It makes the force of people after her—the shadowy legion of the obscured First Order, and all of their cronies—feel just a bit more insidious.

“Not my name,” she volleys back, but the brace in Nova’s voice doesn’t sound like anything dangerous, anything sharp enough scare them off. “I’ve ran into enough of you by now for you to get it right.”

“We’ve got you surrounded. Surrender or be killed.”

Nova snorts. There’s three fighters on her tail, and they’re nowhere close to surrounding her. It’s so ludicrous, so unexpected, that the laugh catapults out of her mouth and echoes in the small hull of Kicker. She wishes Din and Grogu were here to equally share in her utter disbelief—she can practically see the helmet cocking and the baby’s giant, intuitive eyes crinkling—but she dodges another set of shots, which are almost completely aimless and hardly land on the tail end of the ship. “Be killed?” she repeats, swerving and ducking through another large chunk of asteroid, seamlessly, barely paying any attention to the terrain around her. She doesn’t need to. Even in a field this littered, space is Nova’s strongest suit. She could do this with her eyes closed. “As far as I can see, you’ve landed what, three shots? I don’t think you’ll be getting anywhere near close enough to even do damage to my ship. You’re three fighters strong, and one of you has a wounded wing. And you still haven’t answered my question.”

“The First Order demands your services.”

Nova’s blood runs ice-cold. It’s a familiar request at this point, but still, the name sends a very real shiver all the way down her spine, rocking and rattling her vertebrae. She swallows, blinking furiously, avoiding the tailspin of a smaller asteroid as she lurches out of the chase. That wasn’t the lowly voice of some sorry stormtrooper that got the shitty job of trying to wrangle her out of the skies. It sounds evil. Dark. Mirthless. It wasn’t Moff Gideon’s voice, but it was something close to the memory of the dark timbre of it. Fear forms wet and cold on the back of her neck, curling up through the bottom of her hairline, seeping underneath the warmth of her standard, Rebel-orange jumpsuit. She swallows, but the air feels like it’s evaporating out of her mouth.

“The First Order,” she manages, finally, trying to detach the nervousness from her voice, “will not be getting my services. Not now, not ever.”

It’s only been two weeks since Din’s coronation. Two hectic, packed weeks in which her big, brave bounty hunter boyfriend got forcibly turned into a very reluctant diplomat under the watchful—and perhaps slightly resentful—eye of Bo-Katan Kryze. Din never seemed to really need sleep the way a normal human being did, but Nova watched as the bags under his eyes darkened and grew as he spent long hours in the war rooms, buried somewhere in the giant, stark palace they’d moved into, eyelids pressed into the warm hollow of her neck in the early hours of the morning when he made it to bed at all. In the meantime, Nova was spending every single precious second of her waking hours with Grogu, who she knows is on the verge of needing to go back to Jedi training, trying to absorb as much of his small, green light as she possibly can. When Wedge called the other day, though, he sounded desperate, which didn’t happen often, and she had wrenched herself away from her family on Mandalore to try and stop the impending doom of the First Order on Hoth, but it had been yet another dead end. Polis Massa was a pit stop—an impulsive, foolish one—because Nova ran furiously out of the library archives the last time she was here, and she wanted to pick up books on the history of Mandalore for Din and herself, and a small star of yearning in her chest was to spend a little more time in the shelves like her father used to before the Empire killed him.

And as much as Nova wants to put Andromeda Maluev to rest, longing for the days when she was tiny and growing up on Yavin with her parents alive and happy beside her outweighs the alternative. She swallows through the lump in her throat and closes her eyes to shake the starshine of her past lives away. The time to focus on getting the hell out of here is now, all yearning and ache can blossom fully formed when she’s away from the reaches of the First Order, safely back on Mandalore.

“Surrender,” the voice says again, only this time it is the timbre of some sorry stormtrooper and not the one that still haunts her nightmares, and Nova sighs, flipping all of the switches on Kicker’s dashboard to feint left and fake drop into hyperspace.

“I’ll ask you again. When,” she exhales, straightening up in the pilot’s chair, “has that line ever worked?”

“We are granted permission to obliterate your starfighter under Order Number—”

“Obliterate?” Nova interrupts, stifling another giggle. “Is the Order giving you vocabulary lessons? I’m impressed, trooper—”

“Andromeda Maluev,” the voice comes again, and Nova tries her absolute hardest to ignore the pulsing and aching in her heart that comes with the punch of her previous identity, “you are to surrender to the First Order. Failure to comply will result in termination. This is your final warning.”

Nova sighs, pulling Kicker to a temporary halt. If she stares, the ghostly outline of Mandalore, embedded forever in her memory, will flash in front of her vision, even out here in Polis Massa’s gigantic asteroid belt. She knows that the troopers, whoever they are, whoever they’re working for, will understand that she’s intending to go straight back to the strange palace she’s started calling home, but she also knows that any force in this galaxy, no matter how dark, no matter how strong, is smart enough to know they can’t take on a planet full of Mandalorian warriors without all the strength they’ve got. From the way Kicker is paused in the middle of space, she knows it looks like she’s about to surrender, or at least like she’s weighing her options heavily, and the satisfied, smug silence of the trooper on the other end of the commlink is enough to assure herself that her plan—hasty and rash as it may be—is working.

“Okay,” she whispers, feigning resignation, into the comm. “I understand I’m dealing with forces a lot stronger than I am. I don’t surrender, but I’ll come with you. But first,” she whispers, silencing the clicking that the switches to go into hyperdrive with the muffler of her right hand, “I need to tell you something.”

There’s a pause. “So be it. Reeling you in via tractor beam now.”

The unmistakable whirring of a ship forcibly being dragged onto another’s power starts up, and Nova swallows, pushing the second to last toggle into place, keeping a steady eye on the rocketing meter on her dashboard that indicates the ship is fully charged. Under the noise of Kicker being pulled into the largest TIE fighter’s proximity, the beeping goes unnoticed by the other party. Nova slips her hand off the switch and finds the necklace Din gifted her back before he accepted his role of Mand’alor, pressing hard enough that the symbol embosses itself into her thumbprint. “First of all,” she starts, trying her hardest to keep her voice level and even and not reveal a single ounce of the glee that she’s concealing, “my name hasn’t been Andromeda Maluev in a decade. You want me to answer to you, to answer to the Order? You’ll call me Novalise.”

The sigh from the trooper is short, clipped. “Noted.”

“Second,” Nova continues, leveling her jaw with the center of the dashboard, watching every single thruster lock itself into gear, “I am married to the galaxy’s most ruthless bounty hunter. It’s going to take a hell of a lot more than the word surrender to scare me into submission.”

Kicker grinds to a halt in midair. Nova straps herself in tighter, just enough to ensure that she won’t be sent reeling across the perfectly aligned dashboard when she breaks free of the tractor beam and shoots Kicker straight into the stars, back to Mandalore, back to Din, back home, and steels herself.

“Stop,” another voice says, tinny and nervous over the speaker. “She’s—she’s screwing with us, sir—”

“I’m assuming,” the original trooper speaks, trying to intimidate Nova with the ice in his voice, “that there’s a third thing?”

“Oh, there’s always a third thing,” Nova volleys back, eyes catching the light of what’s been powering up the entire time the troopers thought she was weighing her options and deciding the First Order’s clutches sounded warm and delightful, after all. “Not only am I a commander in the New Rogue Squadron, not only am I the wife of the reigning Mand’alor, I contain multitudes.” She grins, her teeth bared and gleeful in the low light of space, knowing this is by far the most badass exit she’s ever attempted. “And do you know what that means?”

The trooper in the largest fighter sounds defeated. This was barely even a scratch compared to the narrow scrapes Nova’s been entangled with before. She bites down on her bottom lip, cracking her neck, taking advantage of Kicker’s stationary position to break free of the tractor beam, and as the angry clamor of the three troopers in the fighters trying to reel the ship in starts to filter across the commlink, Nova does what she does best.

She barrel rolls the entirety of Kicker, flipping downward and over so that she’s facing the three fighters, staring through her Rebel helmet at the floodlights drenching her whole ship in florescence that shouldn’t be possible in space, and shows every single one of her teeth, smile stretched so far across her face that it hurts, “My starfighter is Rebel-made, sure, but it’s gotten a few upgrades in the past few weeks. The only reason you got this far was because I was waiting to unload the artillery loaded up in the guns that are pointed at you right now. And you know what they’re made of?”

“All aim to kill—”

Nova can’t resist. She tries, but this whole royalty thing, the whole leading the New Rogue Squadron thing, this whole being a Jedi thing—well, all of it has been tallied up enough to recognize she can stand to be the tiniest bit cocky to the people trying to kill her or bring her in as a slave. She raises a single middle finger, making sure that the pilot of the largest fighter catches her elongated, elegant bird with the floodlights. “Same thing as my resolve is. Beskar, bitch.” And with that, she punches all the thrusters, Kicker dazzling and evaporating through hyperspace, gone before the first trigger even pulls.

Mandalore is quiet. There’s a strange serenity that lives on the horizon, pulsing and shifting, but never quite tangible from the planet’s surface. It’s hard to look at the place where the greatest warriors in the galaxy are born and bred and not see anything but a whetted, sharp arena, but so much of this planet is soft around the edges. The blue architecture in the capital, for one—something Nova knows is much newer than the ancient history of the land here—and there’s a silence here that teeters on eerie but mostly stays in a strange sense of tranquility.

It doesn’t hold the feeling of abandonment, like so many other planets do these days, but it seems like the rest of the world around the city is disconnected. Inhabitable. Nova parks Kicker in the nearest landing bay, watching the strange haze that hangs over the atmosphere, trying to find other places where lights are lit, where people live, but so much of the planet is quiet. It’s the same sort of stark contrast that Yavin had when her and Din got engaged all those months ago, or Hoth’s anesthetic brutality, but Mandalore’s environment feels different.

And, Nova reasons, as she disembarks off Kicker’s gangplank, running the tips of her fingers over the Rebel insignia hidden under the outermost coat of white and silver detailing, it’s likely because this isn’t home. Not yet, anyway, and it might never have that feeling of belonging that the Crest did, that Kicker does, that her and Din found on Naator and Kashyyyk and Nevarro. Nova climbs the marble steps to the palace, smiling at the stoic Mandalorians stationed outside as she slips up the stairs and through the main entrance, immediately cutting sideways up the hallways to the left, watching as her shadow traipses behind her in the blue dusk, trying to not stake stock of the silence that most of the building holds. In true Mandalorian fashion, their holding cells are built into the palace itself, alongside training arenas and the war room where Din spends most of his time. Nova moves as quietly as she can through the halls, up the other marble staircase, and when she bursts into the chambers twice the size of the starship that she and Din usually call home, a gurgle from Grogu on the floor makes the entire day turn around.

Nova grins, dropping to her knees. Grogu beams up at her, his big bug eyes full of nothing but love, and she scoops him up, pressing his tiny, warm body against her chest. It chases away all the chill of Hoth and the crush of space, and for a second, she just runs her fingers over the top of his fuzzy head, pressing kisses to his green skin, soaking in every second she can.

“I missed you, lovey,” she murmurs, and Grogu’s giant green ears perk up. “What did you do in your day here?”

Grogu pulls away from her chest, pressing a three-fingered hand against Nova’s temple. The visions that used to terrify her, the ones Grogu put into her head, filled with screaming and loss and desperation, fall away as he shows her the bath he took, the feast he got for dinner, sitting on Din’s lap while in the war room. As he drops his touch, Nova grins down at him, all teeth and excitement, all of the panic and isolation of the last few hours melting away.

“He terrorized Bo-Katan,” a familiar voice rings out from behind her, and Nova pushes herself up on the heels of her hands, her heart flipping over with the same butterfly menagerie Din’s always given her. “I didn’t have the heart to tell him to stop.”

“Hi,” Nova whispers, giddy, watching as Din steps forward out of the shadows. It doesn’t matter how many times she’s been lucky enough to gaze over his handsome face, it doesn’t matter that he’s been spending more time helmetless here on Mandalore, every time she sees him, it’s like the first time. In the moonlight, obscured by the permafrost of Mandalore’s blue twilight, Nova’s eyes roam over the valleys and mountains of her husband’s face. His hair is the length it was when he proposed, long enough for the ends to curl up gently. His mouth, even in the near darkness, is pink and gorgeous, his lips slightly parted in the unconscious way they do when Nova’s the only thing in his eyeline. His scruff is there, long enough to scratch her chin—or her thighs—up something terrible, and the ghost of the mustache she used to feel in the dark is strong, dark, manicured. His eyelashes are longer than the length of her thumbnails, and his eyes, his gorgeous brown eyes, soften around the edges the second Nova smiles.

“Hi,” Din echoes, bridging the gap between the two of them with two quick strides, and Nova feels her breath catch in her throat. Din’s hands, gloved in black and twice the size of her own, balance on the curve of her hips, his fingers digging into the loops of her orange jumpsuit, pulling Nova over her own feet, anchoring her body right up against hers. The way he kisses after only being separated overnight is desperate, longing, filled with words he doesn’t always know how to say. Nova leans into his embrace, head fuzzy, waterlogged, like everything else fades away. It does. She loses track of time, how many minutes pass, the stars behind her eyes dazzling, supernovae, regenerated.

When they break apart, Nova’s hand trails over the regalia Din’s wearing. It’s his familiar beskar, the armor he’s worn since they first met, but it’s been cleaned, and underneath, where his typical black undergarments used to cling to his build, he’s wearing Mandalore blue. It’s the color of the skyline at dusk, a faded azure that signals something more than warrior, something a shade closer to royalty. The material is lightweight, practical. It’s the same kind that every single one of her matching outfits are made out of—Mandalorians don’t have much use for aesthetic, it just gets in the way of practicality—but it seems more vibrant on Din. “How was today?” she whispers into the hollow of his mouth, and Din exhales, low and slow, tipping his bare forehead against hers.

“Long without you,” he admits, his voice barely anything. Nova’s eyes search his deep brown ones, trying to figure out where his exhaustion is hiding. “Come with me. I—I want to show you something.”

Nova nods, catching sight of the dirty orange jumpsuit stretched over her tan trousers, the black tank top she’d spent the past year replacing every time Din tore it off of her body. “I should change.”

Din’s eyes flick hungrily over her silhouette, and when he speaks again, his voice is husky. “No,” he says, finally, digging his thumb slightly into the flesh on her hip, “you shouldn’t.”

The trek downstairs is quiet. Both of them move in the shadows, lulled into an easy silence, their hands knitted together in between their two bodies. Nova watches as the low light of the corridor flickers as they cross over another staircase and down a side hallway, entering through the war room by the back entrance instead of the front, even though there’s no one left in here to try to hide from.

Nova’s been in here at least ten times, but the decoration steals the breath straight out of her mouth every time. A glittering holotable, top of the line, at least twenty years more advanced than the one on Hoth, sits in the direct center. The ceiling looks more like a cathedral than it does anything else, which is perfectly fitting for a group of people who treat fighting as their religion. Nova looks up through the sheer domed ceiling, watching as the moody dusk falls into a silent, quiet night. Stars dazzle and shine from above, and even though they’re not nearly as poignant and powerful down here as they are out in space, the direct line to the cosmos is bright enough to make her throat ache. “Wow,” Nova whispers, voice barely anything at all, staring straight upward, mapping constellations under her breath. Eventually, her eyes slide off of the ceiling, traveling over the careful architecture, the shrines in the corners, the murals painstakingly hand-painted across the circular walls, all of beskar and helmets and Mandalorian history. It feels so ancient, even though the palace was recently rebuilt, reconstructed from nothing during both of their lifetimes. She’s been in here a handful of times before, but never as night is on the horizon. There’s something transcendent about this place, this holy center of Mandalorian worship. Something deeper, something divine enough to make a Jedi believe in them, too.

Din’s standing across the other end of the holotable, fidgeting with the controls until a map of the galaxy sparkles to life in front of them. Through the light, Nova watches the peaks of her husband’s face getting caught in the reflections, letting everything except his face blur out to stardust. “Did you get anything from Wedge?” he asks, and Nova blinks her eyes to refocus on the map. “Anything new? Anything…useful?”

Quietly, Nova shakes her head. “He thought—he called me back to Hoth because of a prison break in one of the sectors Cara doesn’t have jurisdiction in, or I’d suspect she’d have already taken care of it. It was small, just a few criminals with nothing more than petty charges breaking out of a hold somewhere, but he thought it might be related to—”

“The First Order?”

“Me,” Nova finishes, quietly. Her eyes narrow just a fraction, refocusing on Din’s silhouette through the glitter of the galaxy between them. “Yeah, the Order. We couldn’t prove anything, but I—”

“You feel something is coming,” Din interrupts gently, stealing the words right out of her mouth, bracing his strong, gloved hands on the side of the holotable, and Nova nods, watching his grip, starting to get a little dizzy, with lust or with the reflections above them or both. “Don’t you?”

“I do,” she echoes, confirming his theory. “I—I took a detour coming back here. I went to Polis Massa, to try and return to the library archives so I could learn more about Mandalore and bring you back something other than a dead end.”

Din stares at her, his face partially hidden in the glow of the rotating image of the holotable. “You brought yourself back here,” he says, finally, and Nova’s knees buckle a little under the husk of his voice. “It’s hard to care about much else.”

Nova bites down on her lip, butterflies swirling up a storm inside her tummy. “Din,” she whispers, leaning forward on the table, cocking her head in the signature way he always does, lifting her chin slightly with the tilt, “we are tasked with the incredible privilege of saving the galaxy, you know—”

“Fuck the galaxy,” Din breathes, and despite the fact that what he’s wanting to shirk is their top priority, and really has been for months, it buzzes inside Nova, wet and hot. “Let someone else handle it for once. I don’t care.”

“You do care,” she protests, weakly, but his tongue slides out from the hollow of his mouth, and everything else seems to evaporate. “I know—fuck, I don’t know, I know you missed me when I left overnight, I know we’ve been apart more than we’ve been together, but it’s for good reason, and when we save, y’know, the whole galaxy and everything, it…it’ll be all the time in the world for the two of us.”

“I’m impatient,” Din counters, roughly, and then he’s around the table in three quick, determined strides. Nova sighs, letting her body crumple a little as Din moves forward, his hands on her hips, anchoring her pelvis against his. “Don’t make me wait any more for you, cyar’ika, I won’t be able to stand it.”

Nova inhales sharply, feeling him harden against her leg, and she lifts her chin a touch more, enough for their lips to only be an inch apart, enough to make eye contact, enough for all of this to let the rest of the world fade right out. “You know,” she whispers, finally, blood pumping furiously, “you’re the leader of this planet. You could order me to do anything, and I’d be helpless to do anything but comply.”

Din lets out a groan, low and desperate, a choked off, guttural one. “And if I told you I wanted you right here on this table?”

Nova grins, her teeth glittering against the quickening darkness, pulling away only to drape herself over the holotable, face down, letting the spots where her body occupies the space filter out of the reflection. The glow of the lights is disrupted by her figure, and she hears Din’s voice catch in the dark behind her as she arches her back, still fully clothed, an invitation for him to come closer, to take what’s rightfully his. “Then you’d have me right here on this table, Mand’alor.”

She feels Din press up against her, hard against the soft, voluptuous curve of her ass. He inhales, heavily, she can hear it whine through the darkness, not hidden under the evenness of the modulator built into his helmet. Nova knows she’s an expert at getting out of things—sticky situations, clothes, everything in between—but right now, she wants to make Din wait beg for it before she complies. Something to prove that even while he’s the one on the throne, her neck is holding up the crown. At least here. Especially here.

“And if I told you I wanted to fuck you on the floor?”

“Then you’d take me on the floor, Mand’alor. I quite like the floor, you know.”

“You—” Din’s breath cuts off again, and Nova lets the timbre of his voice soak into her. It turns her heart over, first, that excitement tangling up with the knowledge that she’ll let him do anything. It’s been over a week since the last time they fucked, because he’s been spending most of his time in this room, trying to prove to the rest of the planet that he’s worthy enough to hold the throne, and she’s been splitting her time between Grogu and saving the galaxy. All of them necessary evils, deserving distractions, but it’s nearly impossible to think about anything other than the feel of Din up against Nova, his mouth on her neck, his hands on her hips, concerned only with burying himself as deep into her as he possibly can. “I brought you down here to show you the stars. You’re distracting me.”

Nova smiles, then braces her palms on top of the holotable, pushing herself up, gliding her body backwards up against her husband’s. “What an honor,” she purrs, quiet, low, the same kind of voice Din always uses when he wants her so badly it hurts to breathe, “that the king of Mandalore thinks I am a suitable distraction.”

“Novalise.”

“Use me as a distraction, then,” Nova continues, taking hold of one of Din’s gloved hands, guiding them against the curve of her chest, making sure he feels how her nipples harden under his touch, a soft, mewling sound with her mouth completely indicative of the flush of warmth rushing between her legs. “Show me anything you want, oh worthy Mand’alor, please—”

Her breath is cut off as Din whirls her around by her throat. It’s sudden, desperate, the kind of electricity he used to greet her with whenever he finally tracked down the bounty he was hunting and could let loose with her on the Crest.

“Get on,” Din starts, voice raggedly, both hands clenching against Nova’s cheeks, puckering her lips, “the fucking throne, cyar’ika.”

“The—throne?” Nova repeats, breathless. “You want—”

“I want to fuck you on my throne,” Din interrupts, and stars above, she can feel the way that his cock is throbbing in his pants, through the regalia, through the beskar, all of it. “You said anything I want. I want to make you scream my name on the planet we rule while I’m seven inches inside of you. That work for you?”

Nothing but a strangled moan comes out.

Din nods. “Good. Get over there.”

Nova reels back as he releases her. It takes more than a few seconds to collect herself enough to move, and when she does, her legs feel like they’re made out of rubber, elastic and wobbly. She can feel his heavy gaze on her as she makes her way around the holotable, and when she takes the few steps that lead to the ironclad, menacing chair that sits atop the highest point in the room, Din’s voice rings out.

“Stop,” he commands, and she does, feeling her heart hammer. “Face me.”

Nova turns, her breath caught in her throat, staring down at Din. The few steps she’s scaled make her just a tad taller than Din is, and she watches as he slowly moves forward, crossing the tile of the floor with quiet, intentional steps.

“Take your clothes off,” Din manages, and Nova’s almost a hundred percent sure that he’s whispering, even though it might just be that she can’t hear anything over how loud her blood is pumping, over how hard her heart is hammering.

“Now?”

He raises a single dark eyebrow, and Nova nods, trying to peel off her shirt and her trousers as fast as she can. She kicks off her shoes, and they land at the bottom of the steps with a very incriminating thud, but Din just kicks them out of the way as he presses the soles of his beskar boots deliberately against the tile. Everything in here is blue and reflective, even after night has fallen on Mandalore, and Nova catches sight of her silhouette in the floor. Her breath stutters in her throat, suddenly very aware that she’s completely naked and Din, save for his forgotten helmet, is fully clothed, but with the way his eyes are roving over her body like he’s starving and she’s the only thing in this galaxy or the next that can satiate it, she forgets how to care.

“You,” he starts, trailing a single gloved finger down the curve of her body, “are so beautiful.”

“Stop,” she whispers, smiling, everything burning and in flames. It’s the opposite of what she means—she never wants Din to stop calling her beautiful, stop revering her, stop treating her like something holy—but when they’re in a public room that just about anyone left on this planet can walk on, and she’s the only one naked, the risk burns hotter than her desire. “Din, I—”

His finger is on her lips before Nova even realizes he’s moved. “Do you believe me?”

Nova blinks, stuttering over the dying words hidden somewhere between her teeth and the back of her throat. The answer is yes, because Din Djarin never utters a single word that he doesn’t mean, because he uses so few of them to begin with, and also because he’s seen every single inch of her body and worshipped it, but in this reflective room, usually full of figures so much more athletic, razor-sharp, warrior-grade, a tiny bead of insecurity spools down the back of her neck. Nervously, Nova’s gaze filters off of Din’s, flicking over to the ornate door on the other side of the room, and when she looks back, he’s staring at her.

“Nova?” he repeats, gently, and something about the way he’s saying it makes tears spring up in her eyes. “Here. Come here. Look at yourself.”

She lets him guide her over to the throne, which is made out of the shiniest, most reflective beskar she’s ever seen, polished so effortlessly it doubles as a mirror, and Din pulls curls of her dark hair away from her collarbone, fingers grazing the new necklace he gifted her, one hand curling around her jaw, the other sliding down the side of her body.

“Look at yourself,” Din repeats, his touch still so light, and when Nova doesn’t immediately obey, his grip tightens. Not hard, just filled with enough desire to snap her back to her senses—that he took her into this room to fuck her senseless, that his eyes don’t meet anyone else’s, that Din Djarin isn’t a pious man in any other capacity than his Creed and all the rules he broke to worship Nova instead. She relaxes under his touch, her eyes glazing as they travel over the valleys of her naked body. Her skin doesn’t glow in the darkness like it does during the daylight, but it’s a rich brown, three or so shades darker than Din’s. Her eyes, a deep sage green that dips into brown in the darkness, glitter as they flash against the beskar. Her eyelashes, dark and tangled up in the corners from where her laughter lines are. Her nose, not as prominent as Din’s hooked, curved one, but big, slightly upturned, and anchored in the center of her face. Her mouth, plump and perma-stained deep pink from where she bites hard on it in concentration. Her hair, so long now that it trails down to where her curved hipbones protrude, woven into a deeper curl than the natural wave of her hair from the braids it’s always tied back in. Din’s hand on her hip clenches gently at his knuckles, and she lets her gaze shift off of her face, down the stocky muscles of her upper arms, slightly sore from twirling Grogu around and from flying out of her skirmish with the TIE fighters. Her hands are long and elegant, princess fingers, her mother used to call them, dainty and slender, nails kept short to flip all the necessary switches on whatever vessel she’s flying, thumbs worn down with callouses from fighting and twirling Luke’s lightsaber around for the last two weeks, trying to conjure the power he radiates on her own. Down the left side of her tummy, which is rounded and collects weight around her bellybutton, is the scar that Jacterr Calican left in an attempt to rip her soul out of her body, and Din’s finger traces over the bump of it, gentle, endearing, protective. Her hips, which are wide, the curves of her upper legs, the muscles that pack on more weight in her calves. Nova looks at herself and sees, just for a glimpse, just for a split second, that sure, she’s not shaped like a Mandalorian, but she’s certainly desired by one. Din pulls her hair back from where it’s settled against her throat, pressing his lips to her skin.

“What do you see?” he murmurs, his voice deep and electric.

“The girl you love,” Nova whispers, grinning at him in their reflections. Din spins her back around, much gentler than he did a minute ago, all the fire gone, his eyes gentle like the oceans on Yavin.

“Damn right,” Din affirms, the timbre of his voice in her ear making goosebumps spark up across Nova’s bare arms. “Now get on the throne.”

She’s giddy. Her heart is, as usual, racing a thousand beats per minute, threatening to hammer right out of her chest. It’s cold—the throne—cool to the touch. As Nova slowly slides down onto the beskar, she watches Din’s brown eyes flash with lust and longing, and his look alone is enough to take away the chill against her bare skin. The beskar warms to her touch, and she crosses one thick thigh over the other, trying to quell the nervousness that’s still whining at the back of her mind.

“Don’t look at the door,” Din orders, his head cocked to the side. It’s been a few months now since Nova’s seen every single contour of his face, but every new expression not hidden behind the helmet makes her stomach lurch up into her throat. Right now, she can see the tenseness of his command in his clenched jaw, but his eyes soften as they roam over her body. “Look at me.”

“Din—”

“Look at me.”

Nervously, she does. The second her eyes meet his, everything else fades away. In the back of her mind, she’s aware that she’s completely naked, her skin up and against something divine, something not meant for her, this throne that she’s about to be desecrated on.

And sweet Maker above, she doesn’t even care. Din slowly canvasses the distance between the two of them, the intensity of his gaze never once wavering off of Nova’s face. The pure look of animalistic desire on his unmasked face makes her whimper under her breath. If she were weaker, she would cower away, avert her eyes, but by this point, she’s earned her brazenness. There are exactly two things in this galaxy that the ruler of Mandalore, the most ruthless bounty hunter, and the man in front of her would do anything for. Grogu and Nova.

He doesn’t make a noise. Everything is an electric wire as he finds his secure, silent footing on the first step, and Nova’s heart catches in her throat. She wants to say something, to make a silly comment, to cut through the tension, but she knows that whatever’s about to follow Din’s ascent will be worth her quiet. Instead, Nova bites down on her trembling lip, watching the rest of the throne room disappear as Din steps closer, still not making a single noise, pulling his body weight up the lip of each step, staring at her.

“What?” she manages, finally, the word all air.

Din moves closer. Nova’s seated against the throne, the beskar suddenly warm against her bare skin. Everything in her is burning. “What do you want?” Din asks, his voice deep, rumbling through her like a honeyed thunderstorm. He doesn’t even have the modulator to filter his words, and even though the deepness of his voice through the helmet runs rivers through her, Nova’s suddenly glad for the bareness of all of this. It makes it easier, dirtier, better.

“I want you,” Nova manages, hollowly, the words surrender out of her parted lips. “Just you.”

“You want me?” Din repeats, and a flash of lust sparks up behind his beautiful brown eyes. There’s something dangerous in his tone, something deeper, something electric. She stares at him, unwilling to break his gaze. If it were anyone else, Nova would think that the timbre of Din’s voice was teasing, but the edge to it suggests towards pleading.

“Yes,” Nova echoes, and Din moves forward, towering over her. She stares up at him as one gloved hand easily notches against her right cheek, eyelashes fluttering as the pad of Din’s fabric-laden thumb traces over the mountain of her cheekbone. “I want you, Mand’alor—”

“I’m not Mand’alor right now, cyar’ika,” Din interrupts, his voice low and ragged, sparking somewhere in his throat. “Look at who’s on the throne.”

Nova gulps. Air is suddenly impossible to come by. Everything in her is electric, alive. Everything else fades out except for Din’s touch. Her doubt, her insecurity—it’s all been chased away and zapped into obliteration by the way Din’s speaking, touching, breathing. “I—”

“Say my name,” Din says, hooking his free hand under Nova’s chin. She swallows, letting the roughness of his gesture manipulate her body in any way that he wants, pliable against Din’s weathered hands. “Say you want me.”

“Din,” Nova squeaks out, and a single one of his dark eyebrows quirks up against the celestial darkness of the throne room, daring her to speak. “Din Djarin,” Nova rectifies, her voice suddenly loud and clear. It booms out, fills the throne room with sound. For once, the buzzing in her head completely drowns out her fear of being discovered. This palace doesn’t exist. Anyone walking the strange, ornate, blue halls doesn’t exist. Stars above, Mandalore itself doesn’t exist at this point. She’s emboldened, as if her will has flooded back, full-force. “Three things. There’s always three things included in how I want you. I want you without armor. I want you without titles. I want you like I had you back on Dagobah.”

“And how,” Din whispers, his voice running through Nova like heat, “is that?”

She gasps as Din’s hand slowly slips down to her throat, bracing itself there. He barely squeezes, and without all of her senses screaming at her that Din’s hand is against her, she thinks his touch would feel like a ghost, like nothing there at all. “Like we belong to each other,” Nova manages, and Din’s grip intensifies. It’s a slip. She can tell, with the way that his eyes roll back, with the way that a moan slips out from the hollow of his open mouth. Stars blur through her vision—some refracted from the open sky up above, and some from the restriction to her airflow, and she leans into the pressure just as Din retracts his grip.

“Cyar’ika—”

“I belong to you,” Nova whispers, the words sounding like a confessional, deeper and darker than she intended. Her hands find Din’s, wordlessly pulling his hand back to rest like a vice against her throat. “Everything in me is yours. Remember?”

Din squeezes again, and the grin that was hiding slowly spreads across Nova’s face. She knows that in the darkness, her teeth glow white, framed by the plump pinkness of her mouth. Din’s standing, still fully clothed, but she can tell by the way his grip tightens against her throat that he’s rock hard under all that beskar.

“Din,” she manages, her voice high and thready through the pressure of his hand, “what do you want?”

“I want you,” he chokes out, guttural and dangerous, his voice coming from somewhere beyond the horizon. Immediately, he pulls Nova to her feet by her throat, eyes flickering carefully over her own gaze to double-check that what he’s doing isn’t too far. She smiles back at him, and when she’s fully standing, smile still plastered across her starstruck face, she drops her grip on Din’s wrist and immediately moves to unhook his armor. She could do it in the dark. She could do it blind. By now, Nova’s memorized every single inch of Din’s body, whether he’s armored in all of his beskar or not. Even the new additions to his regalia since becoming Mand’alor are burned into Nova’s memory, bright and gleaming. She doesn’t break Din’s gaze as she undresses him, pulling the pauldrons off, the chest plates, the silver V of covering that protects his lower stomach and his crotch. It’s over in what feels like seconds, and then the only thing covering Din is the soft fabric of his underclothes. Nova tugs at his trousers first, pulling them down to reveal the silky feeling of his boxers. She positions herself in between Din’s legs, grabbing his right hip to anchor his hardness against her, and he groans out again, the desperate, wet sound filling up the throne room. It's loud. Too loud. The kind of loud that Din never reaches, not unless they’re the only two people on a planet, not unless they’re lost out there in the crush of space. If his cheeks redden at the sound, though, Nova doesn’t catch it, because her touch is too focused, her vision still spinning off starry, impassioned, loud. Slowly, she reaches up through Din’s weakening grip to pull the shirt off of his torso, breath catching in her throat as she takes the King of Mandalore without armor, without clothes, without anything. Nova smiles up at Din, blinking away the small tears of pleasure that gathered in the corners of her eyes, and then she sinks back down on the throne, squaring her shoulders, tossing her loose hair out of her face, eyes full of allure and desire.

“I want you,” she echoes, and then her mouth is on his stomach. Din gasps out, the sound of it ringing out like infernal bells, and Nova hides her teeth as she grins against his stomach, tongue swirling up and down his belly, fingers grazing like butterfly wings across the bones of his hips. She can feel him growing harder and harder as she teases, parting some of the faint hair that trails down his stomach with the wetness of her mouth. Din’s hands find her shoulders, and his fingers clench down, leaving small half-moons imprinted on either side of her neck. “Can I taste you?”

“W—want you,” Din chokes out, his voice demanding and desperate, but the rocking of his hips against her chest betrays him, and before he can make good on his command, Nova’s already slid every inch of him down her throat. She moans in rhythm with him, as Din’s hands leave her shoulders in a frenzy and instead tangle in her hair, wanting. Quietly, Nova swirls her tongue around the base before she pulls off of his cock with a loud, slurping, sucking noise, and she doesn’t even have time to be embarrassed before she’s sinking her mouth all the way down over Din again, the tears that have returned at the corners of her eyes springing back to life. They feel like satisfaction. She can feel him trembling, and when she drops one of her hands between his legs, lightly cupping his balls, Din cries out again. “Nova—”

“Shh,” she interrupts, which is truly a feat, considering her mouth is full of him and her saliva and not much else, “let me finish you here.”

“No,” Din interrupts, and his voice is strangled, muddled. Immediately, Nova does, pulling her mouth off of him regrettably, blinking up at him, lower lip slowly jutted out. “I k—fuck, I know you wanted to finish me like this, but—but I need you to break in my throne.”

A jolt of lightning strikes through Nova’s body, and she shudders as Din’s shaking grip finds the small of her back and pulls her to her trembling feet. For a moment, everything else evaporates, just the two of them breathing and holding each other, Din’s forehead stooped low to press against hers, and then he whirls her around.

Nova’s used to Din’s manhandling, the expert way he spins and lifts her, like she’s made of nothing but air. This is much clumsier than his usual vigor, and when she’s done a complete 180 and is facing her husband, Mand’alor, the big brave bounty hunter, he’s seated on his throne like he owns it, and his hands are on Nova’s hips in the same place where she was sitting a second ago. There’s something deeper and more intense in his gaze right now, something beyond just lust. It’s power, Nova recognizes as Din pulls her hips down, her knees splaying to the sides of the beskar throne. The metal is unyielding against her bones, but still, she doesn’t feel the impact. Din has collapsed her on top of him, the only thing keeping her upward is his grip and her knees trying desperately to cling onto the straddling position that Din’s holding her in.

For a moment, she just stares at him. He looks like divinity, here, something deeper than just another human being in front of him. Nova doesn’t know if it’s the starry sky spinning through the throne room, or because this feels like a holy place of worship, or if it’s just been weeks since they’ve had longer than a handful of minutes at the end of the day before they both fall asleep, too exhausted and dizzied by their work to touch each other relentlessly, but she feels like she’s spinning. Like this has been months in the making, even though it’s only been a handful of days since Din pulled her down over his lap and anchored her hips to his. Her eyes are on his, desperate, searching. When a single hand trails up to brush against her throat, she eagerly leans into his touch, nodding before his outstretched hand makes contact with her neck, skin on skin.

“You want this?” Din breathes, eyes fixed on her open mouth, and Nova nods against his question, his touch, everything.

“More than anything,” she manages, voice throaty and high, stars spinning beyond her eyes. Din nods in assent, and then his hand is gone, a claw rounded around her hipbones, his fingernails sinking into the plushy flesh. The way he holds her as he grinds her down on top of him is enough to make the rest of the world—and every insecurity—trickle out of Nova. When he pushes inside her, slick and warm and so big from this position, she gasps, the sound of it wet and obscene, too loud for the silent room.

“Fuck,” Din hisses, and then Nova starts moving of her accord. She can’t really feel her knees as they dig into the smooth, impenetrable surface of the beskar throne, but it doesn’t even matter. This is worth never feeling either patella ever again. There’s something humming low and urgent in Din’s throat, his scratchy face buried in Nova’s neck, tongue licking and snapping at her most sensitive pulse point. She groans. “You—you’re perfect, cyar’ika.”

“Not perfect,” she murmurs, hands wrapping around Din’s neck and tangling in his dark hair, eyes fluttering open enough to catch a glimpse at it, her fingers long and beautiful as they tug at his hair.

“Listento yourself,” Din pleads, one of his strong, toned arms wrapping around her waist, pulling her down over and over. In any other situation it would be embarrassing, the sucking noise coming ceaselessly between her thighs, but she’s so wet and so close to the edge that she doesn’t try to obscure it, and doesn’t try to fight Din’s insistent, guttural words. “You’re perfect. Everything about you. Your hips, the—the way they move. Your eyes, rolling back into your skull as I fuck you. Shit, Nova, everything about your pussy, I—”

She can feel her cheeks burning. It’s not often that Din is this vocal, this unhinged, especially not in this situation. It’s dirty and forbidden, and as she bounces up and down on his cock, eyes rolled back like he loves, everything wet and slippery between her legs, she forgets all about the fact that they’re naked and desecrating the throne of Mandalore. It’s everything. It’s so much, and when she’s right on the edge of orgasm, Din grinds his hips up into her.

“Din—”

“I want to show you off,” he grits out, and before she can ask him what he means, he’s lifting her off of him like she weighs fucking nothing, pushing himself down to the hilt inside her as she watches the empty throne room, the empty seats around the holotable, watched by the lifeless warriors painted on the wall. She doesn’t try to hide any part of her body. Din’s still whispering every dirty sound he can think of in her ear, one broad arm wrapped around her waist, the other hand tangled up in Nova’s hair.

“To whom?” she asks, the words barely even air. She’s on the edge still, eyes blinking, torso trembling. She wants Din to let her cum so bad, she can barely hear what he’s saying over the pumping rush of blood in her ears.

Din lifts up a lock of hair, the same stubborn wave that always falls in her face, tucking it gently behind her year. For a second, she sees red, legs shaking, completely subject to whatever Din’s doing. “Everyone,” he whispers, and the shock of how guttural and feral his voice sounds sends Nova right over the edge she’d been teetering on. He makes her cum so hard that everything explodes out into the same number of stars shimmering above, divine and dangerous, white-hot, so, so alive. And before she has a chance to gain her senses back, Din’s dragging and rushing as deep into her as he can, every inch of him warm and desirable, and when he lets go to follow Nova over the edge of the cliff they’re both standing on, she gasps as he fills her, hot and thick. It’s so much harder than the last time they fucked, both of them devastated, exhausted, fulfilled.

Nova leans back against Din’s chest, heaving, spinning, trying to catch her breath. They’re both inhaling and exhaling intently, trying to return back to the planet they rule, to the throne they just fucked on. “Well,” she starts, pulling the long waves off her back, looking over her bare shoulder at Din, “wow.”

He laughs, and he’s still inside her, slowly softening as he comes back down from the high of it, pressing his pink lips against her exposed skin. “High praise.”

“It’s the truth,” she whispers, giggling, suddenly remembering where they are. “I—I can’t believe we just did that—”

“We’re newlyweds,” Din interrupts, his voice still rough from the aftermath of sex, and something sparks up low in Nova’s belly as he talks, “plus I’m the ruler of this planet, remember?”

She grins, tipping her shoulder back into his bare chest, trailing her fingers over his tan skin, tracing fault lines she’s never seen but knows are there. “I like power on you.”

“Nova—”

“No, seriously,” she continues. “It’s hot. Do you get a crown, maybe? Do I?”

“I think one of us will have to duel Bo-Katan for that one,” Din groans, and Nova laughs again, sliding off of his lap, slowly pulling together the pieces of armor she discarded earlier, tossing them through the dark air for Din to collect. The mention of Bo-Katan, though, sends a shiver of a reminder down Nova’s very exposed spine. She pulls her own underclothes on, quickly whipping her tank top back over her head, suddenly remembering how cold it is in here when she’s not writhing between the proverbial sheets with her husband. She bites down on her lip, hastily zipping her trousers up, the noise loud and discordant. “Nova,” Din continues, squinting at her, “what’s wrong?”

“Oh,” she says, dazed, tossing the last piece of armor back over to him, “you know, we—we just desecrated a holy part of Mandalore, we don’t know how the hell to fight off the First Order, and Bo-Katan is probably standing right outside that door, ready to kick both of our asses.”

“She,” Din answers, pushing against the heavy beskar doors, “is not here. We’re working on how to stop the Order. And this holy part of Mandalore,” he breathes, walking back towards her, one eyebrow raised, as if he’s questioning the way his face is displaying expression, “is ours to desecrate.”

“When you said,” Nova breathes, staring back at him, everything else fading out, “that you wanted to show me off to everyone—”

Din suddenly looks sheepish, and she giggles. “Nova, I didn’t—I was just into the moment, if you don’t want to—you never have to, I—”

She grins, smile glittering in the dark, sliding past him and into the empty hall, drifting in the general direction of their bedroom. “I didn’t say,” she whispers coyly, holding out one hand for Din’s gloved one, “that I didn’t want to.” She winks, pulling a still-stammering Din behind her. “I just can’t believe you want to share me with anyone.”

They’re up the stairs and back to the entrance to the master bedroom, and Din finally finds his words—or his grip—and grabs her, twirling Nova back into his arms with the force of the bounty hunter that he used to be. “You’re mine,” he whispers. “I won’t let a single person in this galaxy forget it.”

Nova grins, heart doing backflips in her chest. By the time they finally make their way into the suite, it’s dark across the whole wide expanse of sky, and Grogu is asleep in their bed, comically small compared to the king-size that takes up most of the room. “I know,” she whispers, looking back and forth from her husband to their son, a smile etched into her lips. “We should get to bed,” she murmurs, after a second, and Din nods, pulling off the armor and his underclothes in his silent Mandalorian way, Nova weaving her hair back into her usual braid, feeling the bruises from her knees banging forcefully into the beskar throne.

“What’s on your schedule for tomorrow?” Din asks, both of them gently pulling the pillows that line the bed onto the ground, until it’s empty except for their usual spread and the baby’s tiny body. His eyes drift down to Grogu, and so do Nova’s. He knows. She knows. Neither of them want to say it aloud. It’s time for Grogu to go back with Luke and resume his Jedi training, even though none of them want him gone. Nova swallows.

“You know,” she tries, halfheartedly trying to lift her voice into excitement, “Back to business.”

Din rolls over, facing Nova in the darkness. “You don’t have to,” he whispers, and she knows losing Grogu again, even though it’s to Luke Skywalker, even though they’ll be able to fix it, is wreaking havoc on him too. Nova settles down next to him, ears focused only on the miniscule snores of Grogu’s open mouth, her hand finding Din’s, her eyes falling over where Luke’s lightsaber is hanging ceremoniously by the door.

“But I do,” she answers, finally, closing her tired eyes. “We have a galaxy to save. And I,” she breathes, snuggling in closer to the baby, “have a Jedi to see.”

if you would like to be taken off the taglist or put on it, send me a message/ask/comment!! <3

I HOPE YOU LOVED IT!!!! whether you're a returning reader or a longtime lover, i m so happy you're here with Din, Nova, Grogu, and me. i just simply could not stay away from this story, and i cannot wait to go across the stars and back with the second fic in the series!! leave all your thoughts in the comments here, or find me over at tumblr @ amiedala, or scroll through my tiktok @ padmeamydala

CHAPTER 2 WILL BE UP SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 11TH, @ 7:30 PM EST!

xoxo, amelie

77 notes · View notes

sparklyicecube · 4 years ago

Text

Papa the falcon

A Genshin Impact parody of Pokemon 3: The movie

Starring (loosely equivalent to):

Diluc as Molly

Master Crepus as Papa

Falcon as Entei

Kaeya as Delia

Disclaimer: This storyline was curated and fanfic made based on my understanding and own headcannons of things from both the Pokemon movie and Genshin Impact that were never confirmed in canon.��

The main character is also Kaeya, though it had quite a bit of emphasis on Diluc, this is a Kaeya-fic and a lot of it is in his point of view.

Prologue

Diluc lay in bed as he and his father looked through an expansive picture book. This book was about the divine beings of the world, immortal creatures who watched over Teyvat.

“This section shows the archons. Of course, it is a bit old so the ones we see are the original Seven from all those years ago.”

“Woah!” Diluc cried, “Murata looks scary.”

Crepus laughed, “Indeed she does. But this is a Monstadt book so maybe the illustrator was biased.”

They flipped through the pages, where flashes of sea serpents and old gods, befallen in the archon wars went by, DIluc being more and more interested.

“What’s this one called?” Diluc asked, pointing to one that sprouted pristine but deadly crystals all over the battlefield.

“I don’t know, son. There are many things we don’t know about the archon wars, this book is only speculation.”

As the page flipped to Diluc’s favourite section, on the four winds and most importantly, Lady Vanessa, the Falcon of the West. Diluc’s eyes lit up.

“Lady Vanessa!” Diluc ecstatically pointed to the drawing, as though his papa didn’t already have a knowing smile and gazed down at him with utter fondness. “You know papa, you’re a lot like Lady Vanessa.”

“Oh am I?” Crepus asked with a chuckle, “That is praise of the highest order.” Diluc giggled as Crepus picked him up, “Well, the best part of being a falcon, is that you can fly!” With the small child on his back, Crepus stuck him arms out both sides and ‘flew’ his son around the room, throwing him into the air and catching him with utmost dramaticsm.

A knock came at the door.

The two paused, Master Crepus went over to answer it, while Diluc had depressed into himself.

“Master Crepus, Elliot is here to see you.” With a bow, their butler stood aside and another man came into view.

“We have a lead, we found an entrance into the Thousand Winds Temple.” Crepus looked back at his son with a pained look in his eyes, Diluc already knew what was about to happen.

“I have to go, son.”

“But when will you get back, papa?” Diluc asked, as Master Crepus picked up the child and placed him in bed, tucking him in as apple-tucked as he could.

“As soon as I can. Be good for me okay?”

Diluc watched as his papa kissed him goodnight, walked towards the doorway, turned off the lights and closed the door.

Chapter 1 - Papa

Diluc watched from his window out of the Dawn Winery, as a carriage pulled up into the driveway. As his small legs pitter-pattered down the steps he raced out into the doorway.

“Papa!” He yelled, coming to a stop when the carriage door opened and Elliot gave him a sympathetic look. “Where’s Papa?” Diluc demanded, a bit desperately.

“I’m sorry Diluc.”

Diluc sat with his back on the railing, listening to the adults talk downstairs. They talked about how sad it was that they couldn’t even retrieve the body and that poor Master Diluc was now completely alone.

Diluc heard everything. He had a handle on some of the things his papa was researching, ancient gods in ruins with mechanisms too complicated to understand, except Papa was able to understand it.

As night fell and Diluc found himself unable to sleep, he found himself going over to his dad’s notebook and flipping through the pages.

“Where are you papa?” Diluc muttered to himself, determined not to cry. “What happened?”

Scanning through the scribbled handwriting, he stumbled upon a page with copied texts, ancient ones. He had learned some ancient writing out of curiosity, which his dad was more than happy to teach, and when turning to the next page a green slip of paper with a curious shape slipped out. The paper also had ancient words on it, and Diluc supposed it was a sigil of sorts.

Diluc took out a pencil and paper out of the notebook, he began copying the sigil.

“I want papa back. And mama. I want my family back.” Diluc felt tears roll down his cheek, plopping onto the pages with his own little writing.

The sigil started glowing, with its strokes lighting in a gold light and basking the room in a bright white.

Suddenly, there was a strange creature that poured out of the sigil, rising above the small child who was looking up in wonder.

“I know you! You’re a god, aren’t you?” Diluc watched as the large, golden entity swirled around him, assessing the small child. “You resided over geo, and can make entire crystalline structures right?”

The creature continued assessing the child, seeming to fill to occupy the large space that was the main hall of the winery with a dark, golden fog that seemed to get heavier and thicker by the second.

Diluc considered something, then asked in a more ‘dominant’ voice, “You’re powerful right? I want my papa. Can you do that?”

The entity grumbled. Diluc was unsure of whether it had a face, but amidst the now darkening room, Diluc saw a flash of light, and a large falcon swooped through the room, landing on his waiting arm.

“Papa?” Diluc had shiny eyes and a hopeful face. “Papa! It’s really you!”

“Papa?” Asked the falcon in a low, grumbling voice.

“Yeah, you’re my papa!”

The falcon looked down at the red-haired boy, whose long hair currently fell down freely around his shoulders and whose eyes looked at him with the happiest expression a few-second old falcon had seen.

“If that is what you wish.”

The floor then gilded with a crystal lacquer, spreading out from where Diluc was at an alarming pace to reach the walls and crystallising in large, translucent chunks as they grew upwards.

Diluc heard a thump, then another, then another as his butler and other staff burst through the door, shocked by seeing their young master sitting on the ground with a large, hostile ancient being swirling around.

“Everything’s fine Butler, I have papa with me. You can go.”

The butler was highly concerned by this point, “Master Diluc, your father is dead.”

Diluc’s eyes filled with tears, “I have papa with me, you can leave.”

“Master Diluc-” “LEAVE!” Diluc shrieked, and as if the entity was attached to him, the thing howled in the faces of the staff, blowing them right out the door then crystalling the door shut.

The maids tripped over their nightgowns and the winery staff stumbled as they hurried out of the mansion as fast as they could, with the crystals nipping at their feet. Once outside in the open air, they still could not stop as the crystalline structure seemed to engulf the building’s outside as well, covering the windwheel asters and eternalising them, freezing their movement making them look like carved, delicate figurines. The expansion did not stop there, covering the grapes that decorated the outside and creating such a bubble around the place that one could only imagine how much space the actual mansion occupied.

Diluc, in the meantime, had brought his papa to his room, where he laughed and giggled at the falcon’s swoops and swirls in the skies.

“It’s a shame you’re so small. I’d love to ride on your back as you fly.”

The falcon flapped in mid-air, staring down at Diluc’s face. “If that is what you wish.”

The falcon then started growing in size, until it became big enough for Diluc to happily jump onto its back and fly around his large room, with squeals of glee and happiness.

Diluc leaned his head onto the falcon’s feathered back, “I love you papa, I want this to last forever.”

Chapter 2 - What do we do?

“You said what was surrounding the child?” Elliot was a bit stressed. Afterall, if his thoughts were correct then the young boy might have just summoned one of the most destructive gods of the archon wars.

“Calm, Elliot, what is that being?” Asked the Grand Master in his low voice.

“Well, it is a divine being whose wrath the ancient god of Sumeru had incurred. It had power over the element geo, as obvious from the crystals growing around the winery. Though not much info remains on them, the god is said to grow powerful on the imagination, and used the fears of the people to create their greatest nightmares.”

“Imagination? That is concerning.” The others looked over at the Grand Master, not understanding his statement.

“What do you mean, Grand Master?”

“Well, whose imagination is stronger or more powerful than that of a child?” The room went quiet, as this revelation settled.

“What are we to do?”

---

With shovels and visions in hand they smashed through the crystals, destroying the pristine flowers and making a pathway towards the winery.

“What are they doing?” Asked young Diluc, watching from his window. They crushed the pretty space that the mysterious god had made for him, and he felt tears bubble up into his eyes. “Leave us alone!” He yelled.

Just the wish was the command of the entity, for the shovels were snatched up by the crystals, as though conscious, and the tendrils of geo grew more and more hostile, making the people fear for their lives, running in the opposite direction. The geo crystals grew to cover the damage but not quite replacing it, for, to repair required much more precise power.

The Favonius knights huffed, scared from nearly losing their lives, reporting to the Grand Master immediately.

“This is bad, this is oh so very bad. I believe that young Master Diluc had only awakened but a part of the being, for it was destroyed many millenia back, but it seems that even the mere fragment is powerful yet.” Elliot fretted.

“Could we ask Sumeru for help?” Asked another high-ranking officer. “Sumeru’s god is the youngest out of everyone, the war we are referencing is not one that the country would be able to help us with. No. If I am to understand correctly,” the Grand Master had stood up and walked towards the window, where the crystals looked far away but painfully visible. “The entity seems to follow the will of young Master Diluc, in which case the solution is clear, though we only have one chance.” The Grand Master looked up, eyes dark, “We must convince the young master himself.”

Chapter 3 - Endless crystal

Kaeya felt his heart thumping in his chest, he never liked tight spaces and yet, here he was. The Ragnvindr butler was leading him through a secret passage, a well of sorts into the manor. The running water seemed to be untouched by the crystals, and with some effort, the door to the cellar burst open.

“Now Kaeya, you know what you have to do?” The butler asked, glancing at the open door as if it would screw shut instantly, which it could.

Kaeya nodded his head, his face trying not to betray his nervousness. He had memorised the floor plan and knew how to get to the hall and to Diluc’s room, whichever he might be in.

“Good.” The butler hesitated slightly as Kaeya stepped through into the cellar, this child was the same age as Master Diluc, it was hard not to feel sympathy, “Good luck.” He said eventually.

Kaeya heard the door close behind him, and the dreaded feeling of being alone hit him. The room was almost pitch black, which made Kaeya feel as uneasy as possible. The floor felt hard and smooth, undoubtedly lined with crystal. His slow and careful steps trod across to where he was told the door was.

Bump.

He hit something.

Kaeya carefully put his arms over and around where the object was, it was also crystal covered so it could range from a bottle with a lot of crystal surrounding it to a wooden box to a wine barrel. Stepping around it as carefully as he could, a thought crossed his mind that his direction might have gotten mixed up and he could not be going in the direction of the door anymore, and might be stuck here forever. Gulping an anxious lump down his throat he kept moving slowly and steadily.

Bump.

Kaeya slowly felt along this object. It was taller than him, and very wide. Could it be the door? Kaeya slowly took the knife out of his pocket and tried to find a crystal that was more doorknob-like than the rest.

Chink. Chink. Chink.

Kaeya worked away at the crystal, hating how the echoes carried in the small, shrinking room that seemed to close in on him the longer he tried to sense it.

Kaeya was getting desperate, he could feel the engraved metal of the door handle, but the majority was sewn shut. He was now not so worried about the noise he was making, slamming his tiny body into the door. The crystal cracked, worn by his chinks from his knife, and slowly, it was budging.

When the first crack of light shone through, Kaeya felt as though he could keep going. Not like he had a choice. He continued slamming his body into the door, his left side now, he was sure his right side was completely bruised. When it got to a state that the door was open just enough for Kaeya to just squeeze through, Kaeya collapsed onto the floor and breathed heavily.

His heart felt like they were going to pound out of his chest, closing his eye as he tried to regain composure and his bearings. He looked around. He seemed to be in the main hallway, and if that was so, then those stairs led to Diluc’s bedroom. Kaeya froze, the hallway seemed to host a swirling vortex, a large whirl of some muttering entity. With his eye widening, he realised that this must be the powerful being that the adults warned him about. Though he knew nothing about the being, he understood that it could kill him easily, though that held true for most people and things he met.

After calming down again, Kaeya made his way up, carefully walking up the slippery stairs to where Diluc’s bedroom was, the entity seemed not to notice him at all. When he made it, Kaeya felt a wave of nausea wash over him as he realised that Diluc’s bedroom door too, had crystals gluing it shut.

Kaeya straightened up, if he had not been picked up by the Grand Master, then he would have died. With that logic, he was already living on borrowed time. Kaeya brought one hand up to the crystal and knocked.

Chapter 4 - Brother

Diluc looked up. There was someone knocking on the door. He slipped off of papa and walked over to it.

“Do you wish to get rid of him?” Asked the falcon.

Diluc stormed angrily towards the door.

“Who is it?” He asked angrily.

Kaeya, nursing his bruised knuckles, bit his lip.

“It’s Kaeya.” A small voice came. Diluc’s forehead scrunched in confusion.

“I don’t know a Kaeya.” Diluc replied.

“How do you know? You’ve not seen me yet.” Diluc considered this, then turned to ‘Papa’.

“Papa, I wish to let him in.”

Kaeya felt confusion, who was this ‘Papa’? Wasn’t Diluc’s dad dead? And who was this strange man inside that he was talking to? Before he could address any of these questions, the crystals at the door melted away and the door swung open,

Diluc and Kaeya locked eyes. Being about the same height, the two boys stared at each other with the same wonder and curiosity.

Diluc gave Kaeya a once-over. “Hello Kaeya.”

“Hi.” Replied Kaeya, with a small smile. “I heard you got your dad back.”

“Yeah!” Diluc ran over to the alarmingly large falcon sitting in the middle of the room. “This is my papa.”

Kaeya cautiously took a step inside the room. “He’s a really cool papa.”

“Isn’t he?” Diluc looked up at the falcon with bright eyes, Kaeya watched very closely.

“If he’s your papa, then I’m your brother.” Kaeya said, wondering if he was too bold.

Diluc paused, scrutinising him. “But you don’t look anything like me.”

Kaeya gestured to the falcon, “And papa is a falcon.”

Diluc considered this, then beamed. “Yes! You are my brother.” Diluc came over to Kaeya and took him by the hands, dragging him over to the bed. “There is soooooo much you need to learn, afterall, the Ragnvindr name is an important one.” Kaeya smiled in relief.

The two boys sat on Diluc’s bed, leaning on the falcon as though it was a pillow. As Diluc flipped through the picture book with Kaeya staring in awe, Diluc explained all about the legendary divinity shown in it.

“The anemo archon, lord Barbatos, who presides over Monstadt, with his trusted four winds who together, ensures the country is safe and happy.” Read Diluc. Kaeya stared at the pictures, with characters of nobility and power.

“This one’s papa.” Kaeya said, pointing at the falcon.

“No, it says here that this is Lady Vanessa, who led the rebellion against the aristocracy and was the hero of Monstadt. Papa is just another falcon.”

Kaeya ‘oohed’ and pointed at the words next to the wolf, “What does this say?”

“This says ‘Wolf of the North, otherwise known as Boreas or Andrius’. Do you not know how to read?” Suddenly, Kaeya became very self-conscious.

“No. Most children our age don’t know how to read. You’re special because you got to learn so young.” Diluc stared at him, Kaeya gave a look of sincerity.

“Well you should learn how to read. Afterall, you’re my brother. So learning these things are important. Right papa?” The falcon gave a sagely look and nodded.

“Papa doesn’t speak very much, does he.”

“Falcon’s don’t speak very much, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t saying anything.” Diluc leaned over to hug the falcon, “Right now he’s saying, ‘I’m not going anywhere. I love you two.’” Kaeya felt a lump in his throat.

“Really?” Kaeya asked, looking towards the falcon with unease. Diluc pulled Kaeya into the hug and Kaeya felt the warm body of the falcon press into his.

“Of course!”

Kaeya closed his eye as he sank into the hug. He could see why Diluc would want this. He really did.

Chapter 5 - The eye of the storm

An entire day had passed, the crystals were growing to cover an even larger portion of Monstadt and the Grand Master was concerned. There were several things that could have happened: Kaeya could have been rejected by Diluc, Kaeya could have not managed to get to Diluc to begin with, Kaeya could have offended Diluc, or Kaeya was still working on it. He sighed, for the fate of the country to ride on the back of such a young child was a huge risk, but one that they had to take.

Kaeya, who was teaching Diluc how to braid hair, was considering what his next step should be. He had succeeded in bonding with Diluc and establishing his place in this ‘family’ and next he should work on removing that entity. So far, a few things seemed clear:

Diluc knew that Kaeya wasn’t actually his brother and the falcon wasn’t actually his papa. But considering the fact that there have been people who could turn into falcons that is taken as truth in Monstadtian folklore, Diluc might consider it a possibility that this is actually his papa.

“Do you miss papa Diluc?” Kaeya asked, as the two were half-asleep in the bed.

“So much.” Diluc replied.

‘Papa’ has a warm body uses the term ‘if that is what you wish’ several times. Diluc is then able to order him around and even the crystals around based on that.

“What’s a windblume?” Kaeya asked, after Diluc had mentioned it several times.

“That’s the fun of it, no one knows what a windblume is. It is a mystical flower that thrives in the harshest of weather and in the strongest of winds. Some people say it’s a dandelion or windwheel aster, but I think it’s small lamp grass.”

Kaeya cocked his head, “Lamp grass?”

Diluc studied him, “Papa, could you get us some lamp grass?”

The falcon nodded, “If that is what you wish.”

Just a bit later, Diluc had gotten the falcon to collect a variety of flowers, from dandelions to calla lilies, where Diluc was explaining all about them.

Diluc can create “dream-worlds” that Kaeya is very unsure about.

As Diluc fell asleep to Kaeya softly stroking his head, Diluc muttered, “I gotta teach you sword fighting.” As Diluc’s consciousness drifted away, a new Diluc manifested.

“Who are you?” Asked Kaeya, a bit unsure.

“I’m your brother, silly. Now come on.” Dream Diluc (at least, that’s what Kaeya thought he was) pulled on his arm and Kaeya ended up being dragged onto the Falcon.

The Falcon leaped up and flew, with Kaeya bracing for an impact that never came as it sped down through the floor and into an entirely new landscape.

There was a floating island that was decked out with bright green grass and a bright blue sky that looked like it came out of a picture book. They alighted on the island where Diluc turned to face Kaeya.

“Today, we learn sword fighting.” Kaeya was confused but then quickly put a confident smile on his face.

“Okay brother. But one problem, we have no swords.”

Diluc smiled, “Well that’s not a problem at all.” Diluc stretched his arm out and with a glow, a long, pretty sword manifested in his hand. He stretched the other one out to achieve a similar effect and tossed it over to Kaeya.

Kaeya caught it easily with a laugh. “I forgot, this is your world and you can do anything you want. Where do we start?”

Chapter 6 - The hard truth

Kaeya sparred with Diluc for a while, finding the sword to be light and easy in his hand. He found he could manipulate it quite well, actually, and quickly got the hang of these techniques that Diluc was teaching him. Just then, the falcon came over, in small form now, like an actual falcon.

“I have spotted intruders trying to get in.”

Diluc wrinkled his nose. “Those guys are so annoying. Make them leave.” The falcon nodded.

“Wait,” Kaeya grabbed Diluc’s arm. Diluc looked at him, “What did the intruders look like? Do they have swords? And spears?” The falcon paused and turned to him.

“Yes.”

“They might be Knights of Favonius!”

Diluc’s eyes lit up. “That’s perfect! Let’s go meet them and we can spar with them!”

Diluc grabbed Kaeya’s arm and the two got onto the expanding falcon, sitting on its now giant form comfortably.

The three bounded down from the floating island, which Kaeya noted is actually a collection of floating islands with golden bridges connecting them. As they bounded downwards, Kaeya looked up and noticed that the island they were on before also had a golden bridge that seemed to connect to higher in the sky. Perhaps to the bedroom, Kaeya considered, curious.

As they alighted onto the lowermost island, Kaeya could see that there were indeed four Knights of Favonius soldiers who were here.

Kaeya felt uncomfortable, he only recognised one person, that one being the ‘Grand Master’.

“Master Diluc!” One of the soldiers cried, as the two got down from the falcon.

“That’s me. Who here can sword fight?” Diluc and Kaeya’s sword’s re-manifested in their hands. Kaeya was unsure of when the swords had disappeared to begin with but wasn’t about to question it. Instead, he stood tall and confident with a smirk to match Diluc.

Kaeya watched as the knights whispered amongst themselves and one of them stepped forward.

“I can. Are you sure you want to duel me Master Diluc? I wield a greatsword and it deals much more damage.” Diluc’s eyes twinkled.

“A greatsword! Well then, I’ll use a greatsword too.”

Diluc’s sword disappeared in favor of a majestic greatsword, which Diluc wielded easily as if it weighed no more than his last one.

“Understood. It will be one on one, when one is disarmed or held at vulnerable swordpoint, the duel ends.”

Kaeya watched as the grass ground hardened into a duel ground, with markings on the ground to establish a sense of space. He also noted that the other three knights were sneaking off to hurry their way up the golden bridge up the islands. He didn’t say anything.

Diluc and the knight’s match was interesting. Diluc wielded his sword with much skill and power, with every blow being so overpowered that Kaeya abruptly was reminded that this was ‘dream’ Diluc. Just then, the knight’s sword came down with a crackle of electricity.

Diluc startled. “You have a vision!” Looking over at the falcon, he then declared. “I wish to have a vision too!” Just then, a shiny red glass orb descended into his hands, with gold metal work already welded onto it.

From that point on, the fight was practically over. Kaeya was surprised by how easily Diluc used his vision, as if he had worked with it for years.

“You’re pretty good, your father taught you well.” Said the knight, whom Kaeya admired for being able to stay composed despite his panting.

“He did. Come on Kaeya, we have more matches to get through.” Kaeya didn’t spare a glance at the knight, lest it give him away, and joined Diluc on the falcon.

“That was so cool!” Kaeya exclaimed, with them reaching the next island by the time he was done uttering just that sentence.

“Wasn’t it?” Diluc grinned. They got off of the falcon to intercept the next batch of knights. “I hope you guys are more challenging than that guy, he was pretty easy.”

The knight’s seemed to come to another agreement.

“I will duel you next, for I am the captain of the 4th order.”

“A captain?” Diluc asked excitedly, clearly hooked. “Well captain, we’re not duelling. It’s going to be two on two!”

Kaeya felt a cold, glass orb appear in his hand. Giving it a closer look, this vision had a light frost with the cryo symbol and the metalwork had cute little wings on them, which he supposed was the Monstadt style.

The second knight stepped up, Kaeya noted that the Grand Master was conveniently slipping past.

Kaeya readied his sword as they began the battle.

The battle was fairly easy, Diluc and Kaeya’s visions being opposite accounted for any weak spots there could be, with Diluc burning through the dendro of one knight and Kaeya freezing the hydro of the other. Kaeya noted that he was having a harder time than Diluc was, who was clearly finding this too easy and only taking this long to test out his pyro moves. The knight Kaeya was fighting then tried to talk to him.

“Any progress?”

Kaeya felt his head swirl, yes he was having progress but, did that really count as progress? Kaeya felt his balance get shifted off and a small ‘ah’ was let out as he fell backwards onto his bum with a small thump.

“Kaeya!” Diluc was right next to him in a heartbeat, though Kaeya was completely unhurt, Diluc seemed furious.

Without any words being spoken Kaeya was picked up by the falcon gently and lifted up, the falcon’s wings beating as it carried him higher. Kaeya just managed to find the time to look down at the battle happening where he just managed to see a flaming falcon and Diluc’s bright red hair before he was carried through the floor of the bedroom.

Kaeya felt a strange anti-climax, as the noise and liveliness of before became the peace and quiet of the bedroom. The falcon gently lay him onto the bed where Diluc was still sleeping.

“Are you okay?” Asked the falcon, staring into him with black beady eyes. Kaeya gave a big, childish smile.

“I am. Thank you, papa.” Then he threw his arms around the falcon.

Was Kaeya okay? His head was spinning with trying to grasp how this world worked. More than that, which Kaeya was unsure whether to admit, he felt so conflicted about being loved. He had never been loved before and to have two people (well the falcon was iffy) that cared about him was very overwhelming.

Kaeya stared at the cool, cryo vision in his hand. Was it real? His sword was gone. Kaeya placed the vision on the bedside table and looked over at Diluc, who seemed to not be having a very good dream. Was that because of him?

“Diluc, Diluc wake up.” Diluc’s red eyes blinked slowly.

“Kaeya?” He asked. “Good morning.” Diluc yawned. Kaeya felt a pang of fondness go through him. If he was born in this family, well, Diluc had many troubles as well, but maybe he might not be as broken as he already was.

Just then, the Grand Master came into the room, ascending from a hole in the floor that Kaeya was sure wasn’t there the first time he had come in. Kaeya peered over and saw the tint of gold that probably came from the golden bridges over those floating islands.

Diluc looked over at the Grand Master.

“Hello Diluc,” He said, kneeling down to match the height that Diluc was, sitting at the side of the bed. “How are you feeling?”

Diluc shifted uncomfortably, Kaeya scooted slightly closer to Diluc, which seemed to make him feel more at ease.

“I’m fine, thank you. And you?”

The Grand Master laughed easily, with a warm smile. “I’m fine, thank you. You don’t have to be that formal Master Diluc. I’m here to help you after all.”

Diluc, whose arm seemed to be twisting its way around Kaeya protectively, replied with “We’re happy here. We don’t need your help.”

“Is that so?” Asked the Grand Master, a twinkle in his eye. “What about the big, scary, entity in your hallway? Do you know about that?”

“Yea! They gave me my papa and my brother.”

“Hmm. And do you know what it is?”

Diluc narrowed his eyes. “It’s an ancient god that was present in the archon wars. Papa was researching it. We don’t even know its name.”

“Very good! Your papa taught you very well.” The Grand Master gave a sad smile, “I miss him very much.”

Diluc seemed to respond to that, Kaeya got the sense that he might have been trying to hold back tears.

“What do you want?” Diluc asked in a smaller voice.

“Well,” the Grand Master started, “Let’s start with removing that entity from your house.”

“NO!” Diluc yelled, in a hostile voice. He now had a vice-grip on Kaeya. “You just want to take my family away!”

“I don’t want to take your family away.” The Grand Master soothed in a calm but slightly rushed voice. “It’s just harder for people to take care of you while it’s here.”

The falcon had now come over and put itself between the Grand Master and them.

“You are making Diluc upset. Leave.”

The Grand Master had stood up now, trying his best to stand his ground.

“Diluc, that thing is dangerous. You must know about how it almost destroyed Sumeru. We need to deal with it before it destroys all of Monstadt too.”

Diluc quieted.

“That thing, will destroy all of Monstadt?” Asked Kaeya in a small voice, making sure to inject some fear into his tone.

The Grand Master turned to him, “Yes. But not if we fight and subdue it now.”

Diluc turned to look at Kaeya. “I don’t want you to go.”

Kaeya clasped Diluc’s hands. “I’m not going anywhere. I promise.” Kaeya bit his lip. “Diluc, think about your real papa.”

As Diluc’s face softened and sniffles started, a BANG made everyone in the room flinch, as Diluc’s bedroom door crashed open, revealing a dark, brown vortex of what used to be the hallway with some wisps of smoke starting to pour in.

The Grand Master did not hesitate in pulling out his bow and arrow, letting one fly resulting in a low rumble that Kaeya likened to a cry.

The two kids were scared now, as the Grand Master ran toward the thing, arrows flying.

The falcon took one look at the two boys and also set off, engaging in the battle as well.

The bedroom was huge, so the ancient god would take awhile at this speed to reach the far end of the bed that the boys were sitting on, but the fear that paralysed them was petrifying nonetheless.

Kaeya broke out of it first. “Diluc, Diluc look at me.”

Diluc looked at Kaeya, which was hard to do as sounds of bloody murder kept enticing the two to look at the battle.

“You’re going to be the one to win this battle.”

“Me?”

Kaeya nodded. “That thing needs you to wish. It needs your imagination and your wishes to win. So the more you think that it’s scary the more it is.”

Diluc nodded slowly. “What should I do?”

“You need to wish that it will go away. You need to believe that papa is strong.”

“But isn’t that counterintuitive?”

Kaeya shook his head. “Papa is made from that thing right? But papa is on our side. So if you think that papa is super strong and that god is super weak, then that is what will happen.”

They two locked eyes, and Diluc stared at the determined look in Kaeya’s eye and nodded.

“Yeah! Papa is super strong! You know once, he managed to defeat five ruin guards allll by himself.”

Kaeya nodded fervently. “And he’s really fast too!”

“Yeah! He always races me, and let’s me win, but he can run at super speed. He knows everything too! He can beat archons as easily as-” Diluc snapped his fingers, “That!”

Kaeya forced himself not to look at the fight, doing that will only tempt Diluc and may break this streak of belief and hope.

BOOM!

Kaeya and Diluc flinched, though neither of them got hurt. The two looked up to see the entity hissing and recoiling as the swirling dust seemed to just instantaneously clear. Diluc’s toys and books which were previously strewn across the floor were blown haphazardly to the far ends of the room.

“Are you two okay?” Asked the Grand Master, rushing over to them.

“Yeah.” Diluc said, with a shuddering breath.

Then there was a light.

“Diluc, Kaeya.” It was the falcon. In its huge, glowing form.

“Papa.” Diluc whispered, staring up at the bird. “Are you going now?”

The falcon nodded its head. “That will be what is best for you two. But don’t worry, I will always be watching over you.”

The light that made up the falcon seemed to disperse, with the crystals fading along with it. The crystals seemed to retreat from the room, with the entire house being more or less unscathed except for where the last battle took place. Kaeya breathed a sigh of relief.

He turned to Diluc, “Diluc-”

“Kaeya!” Kaeya found himself in a tight hug.

“It’s okay! Everything’s fine now.”

Diluc sniffed, “I’m so glad you’re not gone too. You didn’t leave me.”

It hit Kaeya that Diluc might have thought that he was a ‘dream’ or ‘made up’ brother similar to his ‘papa’. Kaeya wrapped his arms around Diluc.

“I’m not going anywhere. If-if you’ll have me that is.” Diluc pulled away from him. “I mean, I’m not your real brother I’m just,” Kaeya took a breath, “I’m just some orphan off the street.”

Diluc shook his head. “You’re my real brother. Some people have different versions of what family is, but if you’re not my family, no one is.” Kaeya felt his heart throb. Maybe they could get through this together.

“Also, to make everything absolutely clear, I was well alive and existed looong before that god came in. So yeah.”

Chapter 7 - Things get better

Kaeya was at first unsure of whether he was accepted here. Afterall, he had only been Diluc’s brother for a total of two days technically, and now that everything was ‘over’ he was scared that he’d have to leave. It seemed that Diluc too, had that exact fear, and was very defensive and protective of Kaeya when the adults talked to them.

The two became inseparable, and though Kaeya got his ‘own room’ he continued to sleep in Diluc’s bed.

They enjoyed playing around the winery where Diluc continued his quest to integrate Kaeya and get him up to speed with the ways of the Ragnvindr. He taught him how the wine is made and brought him all around the house. Kaeya felt pretty happy. Afterall, this felt like a sweet, peaceful life. Could he have this?

A week on, and the two are sparring with practice swords near the lake, when Diluc freezes (not literally) and Kaeya easily disarms him.

“Is something wrong?” Asks Kaeya, looking back.

There are two adults, walking towards them. A lady with flaming red hair and a man with a warm smile. Kaeya sees Diluc, with teary eyes, run towards them, it was Kaeya’s turn to freeze up now.

Kaeya broke through the shock and started walking towards them, dropping his shoulders and arranging himself to look as childlike and small as possible.

“I can’t believe you’re back!” Diluc beamed at them, then grabbed Kaeya who was standing at the side, looking awkward. “Also, mama, papa, here’s your new son.”

Kaeya stared up at the parents with a sheepish smile. Was he out of place? He had somewhat bonded with falcon-papa, not actual-papa!

Diluc narrowed his eyes, “When everyone left me, Kaeya was the only one who was here for me. So he’s my new brother.”

“Hi~” Kaeya greeted, his face betraying his nervousness.

“Hi Kaeya. Now child, where did you come from? Is Diluc holding you hostage? Where are your parents?”

Kaeya shifted uncomfortably, “It’s a long story.”

“He’s an orphan.” Diluc supplied helpfully.

The parents gave each other a look that clearly said: “We should talk to the Grand Master.”

As the family made their way back inside, Diluc grabbed Kaeya’s arm and beamed at him. Maybe everything does get better, eventually.

AN: I recently watched the Pokemon Movie after becoming addicted to Genshin, and this setup fit Kaeya and Diluc far too well to not be written down. They cured my writer’s block (for this fic anyways) and I had a lot of fun with adapting the world to fit. Hope you guys enjoyed it!

(Also the chapter’s are unneccessary but make me feel like I’ve written a lot so let me get away with it please)

#Genshin #kaeya alberich #kaeya #diluc ragnvindr #pokemon #diluc #crossover #pokemon 3: the movie #genshin impact

2 notes · View notes

crashdevlin · 6 years ago

Text

Pale Rust- Ch. 3

Author’s Note: This is an idea I’ve been trying to write as an original but I have converted it into an AU because I really want to get it out into the world, lol.

Summary: Syeira Calderas, her brother, mother and cousin get kicked out of their Romani Caravan and end up stuck in the small town of Deep Well, Alabama, where ‘gypsy’ is a dirty word. She doesn’t want to make friends with the townspeople but there’s something she can’t quite resist about a green-eyed boy named Dean, but will that matter when the absolute worst happens?

Pairing: eventual Dean x Syeira (OFC)

Chapter Word Count: 1645

Chapter Warnings: a little bit of angst, little bit of flirting

Story Warnings: angst, violence, death, teens flirting, eventual smut (after 18th birthdays happen)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Something Mother said stuck with me. She said, ‘Be careful that your passion doesn’t turn into anger’. I realized that it had. I wasn’t angry at the gadjes for being gadje. No, I was angry at Father for making me gadje. I was angry at Papa Pietro for allowing him to throw us away like refuse, for facilitating it. I was angry at Milosh and Aishe for being so easily changed that they could put away the things that we had been for our entire lives and just pick up as something completely new.

Recognizing my anger seemed to make it easier to deal with and I was able to direct it toward the one person I could hate without damaging my current relationships. The relationships with the only family I had. I shifted my anger away from Milosh and Aishe and gave it a laser focus at Father. I couldn’t hurt him with my anger, but it afforded me the opportunity to keep it and that seemed important.

I started walking to school with Milosh and Aishe. It seemed like they were nicer when I was nicer. Strange how that works, that I stopped judging them aloud and they warmed to me. “We should introduce her to Sam and Dean,” Aishe said on Wednesday of the third week of school.

“Oh. I don’t know,” Milosh responded, looking a bit nervous. “She might scare Sam away. He’s...awkward.”

“Who?” I asked.

“Sam Winchester. He’s in my Math and Bio classes. We’ve become friends,” my brother answered.

“Winchester, huh? I think I have his brother in my first two periods. Dean, right?” I shook my head. “He’s a bit creepy. Stares.”

“Well, he doesn’t seem that creepy to me. Sam can get a little creepy, ‘cause he always wants to touch my hair...and he pokes me a lot,” Aishe responded as we walked onto campus. “Come on. They hang out on the side of the school in the mornings.”

I followed them to the left side of the building where the boys were sitting on top of a picnic table together. Sam had lighter, longer, fluffier hair than Dean and he was about a foot shorter, but they were dressed almost identically in shades of plaid flannel. It was obvious that they were brothers. Sam’s eyes were a hazel contrast to Dean’s greens and they zoomed over my body in a way that made me uncomfortable in a completely different way than his brother’s staring did. As soon as he was finished with his inspection of me, he jumped down from the picnic table to clasp Milosh’s hand in his.

“Miles! Did you finish that Bio homework?” he asked.

Milosh nodded and gave a shy smile. “Of course I did. Parts of a cell. How many times are we going to learn that?”

Sam, this is Sarah, Miles’ sister,” Aishe said, jumping up to sit on the table next to Dean, where Sam had been sitting.

“Thought it was ‘Syeira’?” Dean mumbled to himself, but Aishe caught it.

“It is, but most people can’t pronounce it,” Aishe responded.

“Most people don’t even try,” I grumbled.

Dean caught my eyes and smiled. “Not too hard,” he said, quietly.

I found myself starting to smile back, almost subconsciously, when Sam stepped in between us and grabbed my hand. “Sam Winchester. I take it you’ve met my big brother.”

Dean’s smile became a smirk. “She’s the troublemaker in my first two classes, the one that Mr. Singer hates so much. She schooled him on the Pledge on the first day.”

“I’m just realizing you don’t have an accent,” I said, pulling my hand away from Sam’s grip and moving to stand next to Dean by the table. “You don’t talk in class very much, so...are your family from somewhere else?”

“Oh, no. Born right here in the middle of nowhere, but our parents were from Kansas and California so the country hick thing, it doesn’t fly in my house.”

“Yeah. We start speaking with a Southern accent and they threaten us with speech therapy. That clears that up real fast,” Sam said, suddenly beside me, slipping an arm around my shoulders.

I pulled away from him, trying not to cringe at the uninvited touch. I took a deep breath and hummed. “Perhaps I should try speech therapy, get the Romanian out of my voice.”

“Not the Czech?” Dean asked, pulling a string cheese out of his backpack and ripping it open.

I blinked at him a few times. “You pay far more attention in class than one would assume, Dean.”

“Just to the things that interest me,” he answered before he bit a chunk out of the cheese.

Sam lightly tapped my shoulder. “You see this craziness. It’s string cheese. You’re eating it wrong,” he complained.

“And you bitching about it never stops me, does it?” Dean raised an eyebrow at his brother and shook the rest of the snack in his face. “I want easily accessible cheese that I can carry around. If I wanted something to play with, I’d buy a toy.” He shoved the rest of the stick of mozzarella into his mouth and chewed it as obnoxiously as he could.

I laughed but it was drowned out by the first bell ringing, so I turned and started to walk across the courtyard toward the doors. “So, have you started reading Beowulf yet?” Dean caught up with me before I’d even turned the corner at the front of the school.

“Oh, yeah. I finished that a few days ago,” I answered.

“The whole thing?” Dean asked, obviously shocked. I nodded. “Well, did the language confuse you? ‘Cause I’m thinkin’ of buyin’ the CliffsNotes.”

“You don’t need the CliffsNotes,” I said, shaking my head. “Save your money. Use the footnotes.”

“The footnotes?” Dean rushed ahead of me a few feet so that he could hold the door open for me. He let go of it, slamming the door right in his brother’s face. “The bits at the bottom? Those are as hard as the actual content sometimes! And they don’t help if I don’t have a single clue what the hell is going on.”

“Well…” I started, walking a bit slower than necessary so that Dean and I could talk. “Grendel hates Hrothgar’s people because they’re too loud and happy. He’s like the Grinch who Stole Christmas, except instead of stealing everything that he thinks makes the Scyldings happy, Grendel attacks in the night and kills thirty of them in one fell swoop, then comes back the next night and runs everybody out of the town.”

“Wow. You really do understand this Anglo-Saxon shit. Wait, your scarf,” Dean said, stopping me as we were about to enter Miss Donna’s classroom, gently pulling the scarf from my head. “Gimme your arm.”

I extended my left arm as he rolled the scarf down to the coins. He tied it tightly around my forearm and tucked the ends under. I smiled and blushed. “Thanks,” I said, walking up to the door as Aishe and Milosh walked by. They were staring and that made me blush harder for some reason. I held the door for Dean this time, taking my seat near the back of the Seniors section. I can’t remember what Miss Donna taught that day, but I doubt Dean Winchester remembers, either. He spent most of the class turned around in his seat, staring at me. He didn’t even try to hide it and, for some reason, Miss Donna didn’t make him turn around.

“So I’ve been thinking-” Dean was waiting for me by the door after class and followed me toward our second period Math class.

“That’s dangerous,” I teased.

“Yeah, uh, anyway.” He cleared his throat. “I’ve been thinking that since you know this Beowulf stuff and I know Deep Well, I could find us a peaceful place around town for you to tell me all about How Grendel Stole Christmas.”

I stopped in the middle of the hallway, looking up at Dean as other kids pushed past us. “You want the gypsy to help you study?” I asked.

“No. I want you to help me,” he denied. “I honestly don’t even know what a gypsy is or why all these assholes around town care so damn much. I just know that you’re smart as hell and you don’t take any shit and I think more girls should be like you.”

I blinked at him. It was so weird for a gadje to not hate me, it was infinitely weirder to have one complimenting me. “They think we’re liars and thieves and con-men,” I explained. “I mean, there are plenty of gadje con-men, but no one raises a stink about them.”

“What’s that mean?” he asked, as we walked into Mr. Singer’s class.

“What? ‘Gadje’?” I dropped my backpack next to my desk as Dean dropped himself into the usually empty desk next to mine. I pointed at him. “You. You are gadje. Anyone who isn’t Roma is.”

“Oh. But what’s it even mean? Like, the translation from R-Romani.”

“It means ‘outsider’.” I shrugged. “‘Different’. ‘Not Romani’.”

“Well, I mean, bein’ an outsider isn’t so horrible. I’m okay being called that.”

“You really shouldn’t be. Not the way I say it,” I mumbled before trying to explain. “In Romani society, if you aren’t one of us, you’re not worth time. We...house and help each other. We are our Family, for worse or better.”

Dean nodded, humming a little. “Well, that sounds lonely.”

“It is now,” I agreed. The bell rang and Mr. Singer went to the front of the class, asking for our homework, so the conversation was over.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

KITCHEN SINK TAGS @thefaithfulwriter @heyitscam99 @wonderlandfandomkingdom @unlikelysamwinchesteronahunt @mrs-meghan-winchester @henrymorganme @lonely-skys @allykat2108 @mogaruke @flamencodiva @team-free-will-you-idjits-67 @pisces-cutie @paintballkid711 @natura1phenomenon @rainbowkisses31 @atc74 @alagalaska @coffee-obsessed-writer @bamby0304 @ilovefanfic86 @sculptorofbeginnings @rainflowermoon @bunnybaby121115 @imperiusimpala @mariekoukie6661 @wittysunflower @that-weird-asian-gorl @divadinag @keymology @sweetness47 @racewife2004 @markofdean79 @emilyshurley

HUNTER TAGS @letsby @mrswhozeewhatsis @spnskinnyballs @deansenwackles @gayspacenerd @thewhiterabbit42 @dolphincliffs @sandlee44 @screechingartisancashbailiff @maddiepants @closetspngirl @cocklesbelli @winchesterprincessbride

GAGA FOR GREEN EYES TAGS @akshi8278 @adoptdontshoppets @deans-baby-momma

#cassie writes stuff #spn fanfic #Dean x OFC #high school au

18 notes · View notes

zdbztumble · 6 years ago

Text

So About That Roxas…

Well, it’s that time - time to invite unholy disdain upon myself for my blasphemous views on fan favorite Roxas!

OK, that’s an exaggeration. I don’t know how unpopular what I’m about to say really is. And to make this perfectly clear up-front - I don’t dislike Roxas. I think he’s a fine character, and his (very) long prologue is one of the strongest parts of KH II. But I do find Roxas more valuable and compelling in how he relates to other characters, and in the fact that he is an aspect of Sora, than in his own right. All on his own, I don’t find Roxas to be particularly active or interesting.

And that isn’t a flaw. Given what Nobodies are (prior to DDD, at least), I would expect that from Roxas. Almost every member of Organization XIII isn’t terribly dynamic or dimensional on their own merits - their personalities are one-note (if that), which can be by turns tragic, obnoxious, or an effective foil for the protagonists. When Roxas draws jealousy from Hayner, general confusion from his friend group, some amount of pathos from Axel, mixed emotions from Riku and disdain from DiZ, and attraction from Namine, he’s a great example of the latter. I never find him obnoxious, and when he is on his own, there is a sense of tragedy with him. Because while Roxas may have agency, and does display a curiosity - almost an obsession, after a while - with gaining answers for the strange things happening to him, he’s ultimately empty. None of his joys, none of his curiosity - and not even his rages and despairs - last. He ends up defaulting, always, into a quiet, resigned, and hollow state, and he doesn’t seem happy about that.

This is true of the Twilight Town prologue, at least. In the brief flashbacks we’re given in KH II, and at the beginning of the Sora/Roxas fight, a different Roxas appears. He’s still empty at the core, but his front to the world is crueler, dismissive even of the words of his supposed best friend Axel, and predatory. We learn later in the game that DiZ altered Roxas’s personality when he dropped him into the digital Twilight Town, and it’s not hard to see why. Even with the altered personality, the strongest display of feeling Roxas can manage is anger. It’s only when Roxas confronts Sora, accepts him as “a good other,” and fully rejoins with him, that Roxas appears genuinely happy and alive in KH II.

But I do have problems with how Roxas is used, in KH II and especially in 358/2 Days. To start with II - there are some pretty big missed opportunities. Roxas was a member of Organization XIII, presumably working toward their goals (to go just on what we see in KH II), and every member of the Organization who sees Sora recognizes Roxas within him. Wouldn’t it have been nice to have someone else do the same? If, when visiting one of the Disney worlds that Sora hasn’t been to before, there was a character who had a negative encounter with Roxas, and therefore fears Sora and the Keyblade?

The lack of any such scene speaks to a larger problem with Roxas in KH II: his limited relevance once the prologue ends. He does come up here and there throughout the play time, which I do appreciate, but he doesn’t really have an impact on Sora before their clash other than as a source of mild confusion. Sora’s reactions to being called by Roxas’s name never progress much past “huh? Cut that out!” and he has no real reaction to learning that his own Nobody was a member of Organization XIII. Had Roxas’s activities over the past year created a negative consequence that Sora had to deal with, that might have invited some internal conflict within Sora’s heart, culminating in a much more emotionally charged clash with Organizers like Xibar and Saix. Hell, even without such a scene, the knowledge that a part of him was a member of the bad guys could have, and should have, made Sora feel at least a little upset. That’s not to say that the absence of such a mini-arc is a dealbreaker for KH II; what we did get works well enough. But, much like Roxas himself, something seems to be missing.

A future game might have been able to address this issue...had it not been for 358/2 Days.

This isn’t a revisit of Days; I can’t very well revisit a game I only ever played the first few minutes of, years ago, before losing touch with the friend who had the DS card for it. You’ll get no views of the gameplay here. But I am familiar with Days; I’ve read the breakdowns, researched its writing, and watched the movie multiple times. And I gotta tell ya - I know the game has its fans, and it may have some strengths and concepts missing from other titles, but I really don’t care for its story. And that has a lot to do with how it mishandles Roxas.

I’ll start with a caveat - I am not the audience for Days. At no point while playing KH II did I ever want to know any more about Roxas or the Organization than that game saw fit to reveal. What we got was enough for them to work as the villains in that story, and that’s all I ever needed them to be. This was always going to be an easy title for me to skip, or at least not take any real interest in. But that’s a matter of taste. Plenty of people take more interest in the backstories of Roxas and the Organization than I do, and this was perfectly acceptable as a subject for a midquel game. But the execution, IMO, is a complete mess. It ignores or retcons several of the snippets we get about the Organization in KH II, to poor effect, and fails to expand on any of the villainous Organizers in a way that might turn them from one-note video game bosses and elements of a hive mind into fleshed-out characters. Axel is given several coats of whitewash, and his history with Saix lacks any resonance when Saix is left as such a hollow villain. There’s no playing alongside Disney characters in a game so given over to original KH lore, and that lore is rewritten in ways I don’t like. The trends of mystery for its own sake and teasing histories and future events at the expense of the story at hand continue, the same few points of lore and logistics are over-stressed, and the dialogue and voice acting just isn’t good (and can anyone tell me why they re-dubbed Christopher Lee in the HD movie version? I mean...it’s Christopher Lee!)

But as I said, the real problem is with Roxas. For a character meant to be the protagonist, Roxas cedes a lot of narrative real estate to new character Xion. Like Days itself, I know Xion has fans - ardent fans. I can’t argue with that, nor would I want to; you can like what you like, and I won’t assess and critique her as a character here. But all I can say about Xion is that, as a writer, she strikes me as redundant. A member of Organization XIII, unusually lacking in knowledge about their life beforehand, wielding the Keyblade, inducted into the Organization within this game, derived from Sora through unusual means, with a connection to Kairi and whose existence arrests Sora’s full restoration from the events of CoM; setting her character aside, Xion’s narrative function is exactly what Roxas’s was established to be by KH II.

One could say that the game makes a point of this, turning it into an orchestrated conflict between the two by Xemnas, but practically speaking, this means that Roxas spends a key chunk of the story displaced. He becomes a friend on the sidelines as the real meat of the story concerns a character who, from the very beginning, anyone who played KH II would know isn’t going to matter past this game. This ends up making Xion more important, and more interesting, than Roxas within Days itself. But almost everything that Xion goes through could have easily been given to him by dint of what we see in KH II. That Sora’s restoration is upset because his memories of Kairi are being absorbed into another being would have been especially appropriate for Roxas, since Kairi’s very name is always fractured in the restoration process during II’s prologue at first, and the process itself is at such a low number despite a year having passed until Roxas is in DiZ’s hands. Those character elements unique to Xion herself, and the conflict between her and Roxas engineered by Xemnas, aren’t enough to justify her presence in the larger KH story IMO, and end up confusing elements of the lore (replicas, memories, etc.) If she had been cut, and those aspects of her story relating to Sora’s restoration given to Roxas, the story and lore integrity would’ve been better for it.

But that wouldn’t have solved everything wrong with Roxas in Days. Let’s look back at what KH II shows us of a pre-DiZ Roxas again. A cold and predatory figure; the Dusks who first come for him in Twilight Town address him as their “liege,” implying that they served him the way other Nobodies serve the Organizers; the Organizers themselves seem to have been quite close to Roxas, taking his betrayal hard and referring to him as “brother.” And Organization XIII, as we see it in KH II vanilla, is a collective, with no real secret about its motives within the ranks - that motive being, in so many words, to let the remaining Heartless continue their genocide across the worlds just so that they can swoop in with the Keyblade, harvest the captive hearts, and offer them up to their Kingdom Hearts in a mad bid to gain hearts of their own.

So why is Roxas so innocent in Days?

That cold exterior, the flashes of temper - that’s not what we get from Roxas here. What we get is a blank slate who becomes a puppy as he strikes up a buddy-buddy relationship with Axel, and who later performs the same function for Xion. He talks about fighting the darkness and asks hopefully if he’s performing “good” deeds. His interactions with his friends show him to be cheerful and open. The Samurai are supposedly under his command, but that’s a detail relegated to the reports. His relationships with anyone in the Organization other than Axel and Xion don’t even warrant scenes in the movie, and nothing suggests that they would deem him “brother;” Saix and Xemnas regard him as no more than a tool . And even though he’s destroying Heartless with the Keyblade, and those hearts are becoming part of the Organization’s Kingdom Hearts...somehow this is a point he needs explained several times? And he and Xion openly doubt why they need hearts at all - a point presented as one to be sympathetic toward, despite everything from KH II and a good chunk of this very game stressing that it is in fact a problem that Nobodies lack hearts?

This is not what was indicated in KH II. What’s worse, it’s boring. A far more effective choice IMO would have been to let Roxas be villainous. Go the dark protagonist route; give us a cold hunter of a character, with the impulsive anger and fractured psyche Sora showed in CoM, fully aware of what the Organization is up to and the price that others will pay for it and still committed to the cause. Then, when the events of CoM play out in the background, and fragments of Sora’s memories find their way to Roxas (assuming we still cut Xion in this scenario), that’s the turning point. That’s when Roxas can doubt the Organization’s cause, when he can begin to question his lack of memories and his true identity, and betray the Organization by setting out to find Sora. Give him two separate fights with Riku, to justify the dialogue claiming such in KH II. Let him develop some awareness of Namine after he gets Sora’s memories; Namine’s dialogue in KH II indicates that they’ve never met before, but a connection at a distance could serve to give more substance to their relationship, and supply Namine with opportunities to develop as a character. Depict the scenes where she first comes into contact with DiZ and Riku, agrees to take on their help in restoring Sora’s memories, and feels conflicted about the moral gray area their harsh but necessary actions occupy. Let her be ultimately responsible for setting Riku on the right trail that ends up bringing Roxas into their hands.

Of course, one reason why they may have opted not to do this is because having a dark protagonist complicit in an evil scheme involving the deaths of countless people may have been difficult to pull off while still earning an E10 rating at most. And honestly, the story told by Days doesn’t strike me as necessarily the best fit for a video game even as-is. They might have been better off with planning it as a proper movie from the get-go, instead of a string of cutscenes divorced from the gameplay as they ultimately presented it in the HD collections.

And another objection to this approach might have been that a villainous Roxas and morally ambiguous Namine might have been less “likable,” and therefore less usable in future titles. To that I say - so what? I didn’t want Roxas and Namine as characters in any titles past KH II anyway - not because they were bad characters, or because I didn’t like them, but because their stories concluded. Concluded on terms they chose, and were at peace with. It was tinged with a bittersweet quality, but they did get a “happy” ending. If a midquel story complicated their morality, that wouldn’t negate the events of KH II or the resolution they received; it would have created a journey to get them to that point, starting from a much darker place, and given more weight to the idea that it was necessary for them to rejoin with Sora and Kairi. I’d argue that would enrich what we see in KH II, whereas the actual route they took in titles like DDD and KH III disregards or undermines everything that made the ending of KH II work.

#z's crits #kingdom hearts #roxas #namine #kingdom hearts 2 #critique #commentary #358/2 days #xion

22 notes · View notes

atheistj · 6 years ago

Text

Finn: The Protagonist

I’ve wanted to write about this for a while, and with The Rise of Skywalker now being the big topic of conversation, now seemed to be a good time to do it. So I want to revisit Finn in The Force Awakens.

As I’ve said before, I consider Finn to be the protagonist of this movie, whether Lucasfilm wanted him to be or not (they clearly didn’t). Based on the script, that is what he is. For this, I’m going to compare The Force Awakens to Mad Max: Fury Road, and Finn to Furiosa. Finn is the protagonist in the same way Furiosa is the protagonist. What do they have in common? They are the driving forces of the movie. Their decisions move the plot forward and have the greatest consequences. Similarly, I’ll argue that Rey and Max play similar roles in their movies as secondary protagonists. So let’s get into it.

Finn and Furiosa both set the plot in motion in their respective movies. Finn when he makes the decision to defect and escape the First Order with Poe, Furiosa when she helps Immortan Joe’s wives escape. The beginnings of both movies actually follow quite similar story beats. As Finn and Poe are escaping, the First Order realizes what’s happening and they try to stop them. Joe realizes Furiosa has taken his wives and he and all his men go after her to stop her. Without Finn and Furiosa, the action never kicks off. Both of them had to make these decisions for these movies to happen at all. Had they not made these decisions, Rey likely would have been killed when the First Order found BB-8 with her, and Max would have been stuck a blood bag, and probably ultimately killed.

So next we have Finn and Furiosa meeting Rey and Max. In both cases, these meetings start out confrontational and violent. There is distrust between both of these pairings that lasts, for both, until the bad guys chase them. I think both of these sequences are key to Finn and Furiosa’s places as the protagonists of their stories, because in both cases, they pull the secondary protagonist along with them in their journey. The First Order is on Jakku for Finn (and BB-8). Rey is a bystander that gets stuck with him when the First Order sees her with him. Max also doesn’t particularly want to go with Furiosa, he just does when he realizes he would probably get killed if he didn’t go with her. This matters because Rey and Max are both pulled into Finn and Furiosa’s journeys, a clear sign that we’re watching THEIR story unfold here.

The next chunk of both movies is our protagonist spending more time with other characters, building trust, some exposition, and the usual stuff that happens in the first half of a movie. We also have our mid-movie battle scene, the Takodona battle scene in TFA and the nighttime chase in Mad Max.

Finn and Furiosa make their next very important decisions before the climax of the movie, as is typical. Finn chooses to go to Starkiller base with the Resistance to save Rey, Furiosa chooses to go back to the Citadel to take it from Joe. Finn’s decision here is important because the Resistance’s plan probably would not have gone forward had he not lied about being able to lower the shields on the base to get on the mission. Despite the lie, he does figure out a way for them to do it so the plan will work.

So we have the battle scene on Starkiller base with everyone working together to win. Again, similar to the final chase scene in Mad Max. Han Solo gets killed and we’re left with Finn and Rey to confront Kylo Ren in the woods. Kylo attacks Rey, knocking her out, leaving Finn to fight him. This is similar to the Joe and Furiosa confrontation because Kylo, like Joe, had a hand in Finn’s abuse at the hands of the First Order. So both scenes are the protagonists facing down the man who abused them and robbed them of their agency. One of the best shots in the movie is when Kylo has Finn up against the tree and they’re just staring at each other. It’s an incredible hero/villain shot.

Obviously here is where we get to the clear difference between Finn and Furiosa in their movies, as Finn loses the fight and is seriously hurt. Rey gets the lightsaber and finishes the fight. This is when the movie lets us know that Rey was apparently the protagonist all along, and this is where I take issue with the movie.

I think it was a strange choice to have a character that was pretty passive and didn’t do much to push the plot forward, come in at the end and fill that role. I know they wanted to do a bait and switch. Make us all think Finn was the protagonist when “Psych! It was Rey all along!” and like…fine. It’s one thing to do that in marketing, but when the writing of the movie makes one character the protagonist, and then we’re asked to see another character as the protagonist at the end, just so you can pull a “Gotcha!” that’s really not very good writing. To me, this is like if Max had killed Joe at the end instead of Furiosa.

It’s actually not even debatable that Finn makes more important plot decisions than Rey. I would say the most important decision Rey makes in the movie is to take in BB-8 at the beginning. But even that is somewhat mitigated by the fact that if Finn hadn’t defected, her decision there wouldn’t have mattered. Finn had to defect for the plot to start. Finn had to choose to go back to Starkiller for the Resistance’s plan to work.

Interestingly, Finn and Furiosa end their movies in similar ways, same with Rey and Max. Finn and Furiosa both get seriously injured at the end and almost die. Rey and Max bring them back and then go off by themselves. It is funny how similar Finn and Furiosa’s narrative journeys are.

I didn’t write this as Rey hate. This is just my usual critique of The Force Awakens, a movie that I think has a number of problems, this just being one of them. Narratively, I think Finn is the protagonist of this movie because he fits the definition of protagonist to a T, minus Rey defeating the villain at the end. Since Rey was apparently supposed to be the protagonist all along, I wish they had made her more of an active participate in her own story, because what we got felt like her swooping in at the end of Finn’s story to steal the spotlight.

#sometimes I write things #I thought about getting into tlj with this #but then it would have gotten obnoxiously long #anywhere here you go #no one asked for this but I wrote it #finn #furiosa #mad max #mad max fury road #the force awakens #star wars meta

95 notes · View notes

tsukkibigbitchenergykei · 6 years ago

Text

Rust

Battle Angel AU, Cyborg Bounty Hunter Bokuto

Rating: T

Pairing: Bokuto Koutarou/Kuroo Tetsurou

Summary:

Kuroo shrugs, grabbing hold of Bokuto’s ruined hand. It’s still hanging on to the wrist like an errant grape and Kuroo plucks it off with a small tug. He pats Bokuto’s cheek with his own fingers. “Someone is always maimed or dying around here, it’s not like this is anything new.” he says matter-of-factly.

In their lines of work, they know that better than anyone but still, Bokuto’s eyes drop down to his lap, the line of his mouth flattening out into a solemn line. It’s been almost a year now, almost a year since Bokuto came to the city, a stranger delivered to a strange place, too violent and cruel. Kuroo tamps down a smile as he thinks back to salvaging that wreck of a body from the scrap yard, finding the brain inside still alive and perfectly preserved by the most advanced core he’d ever seen in a cyborg and then shortly after, wondering how a heart powered by an antimatter micro reactor can be as delicate as glass.

================================

Kenma finds him in the morning, half buried in strays and yesterday’s garbage. Bokuto wakes to the clicking of his tongue, calling to the cats nosing at the piles of trash and prodding for scraps. Kenma doesn’t notice him at first, tired eyes skimming over the top half of a face peeking out at him from under a pile of black bags before doing a double take and squinting, as if trying to make sure if Bokuto is real or just a fresh, post-dawn hallucination.

Bokuto manages a weak grin. He tries for a wave too, managing after a lot of effort to lift one mangled hand. It barely manages a twitch, warped metal and fried circuits giving a wheezing, alarming creak before what’s left of his palm breaks off at the wrist and almost falls off, barely hanging on to his arm by a few sturdy cables.

Kenma looks rumpled and exhausted, pale gray scrubs still stained with blood. Going by the level of disarray his hair is in and the dark circles under his eyes, he hasn’t slept. Again. Still though, one look at Bokuto’s arm has the light of fresh annoyance flooding into his face. He gives Bokuto a quick once over, tawny eyes instantly sharp and alert. He isn’t wearing a shirt so it’s easy for Kenma to zero in on Bokuto’s shoulder, assessing the torn wires poking out of the chasm between his shoulder socket and his arm with a deep frown. The joint is technically not snapped in two but just barely. He heaves out a sigh.

“Rough night?”

“The worst.” Bokuto says with an exaggerated nod, nudging a kitten away with his other hand when it started to nibble curiously at some exposed wires on his shoulder. It isn’t deterred, mewling in protest. It sniffs curiously at the synthetic skin hanging in tatters around the gouge it was exploring earlier before sticking its entire head in it.

Bokuto yelps and tries to shake the kitten off, sending startled cats and random pieces of garbage flying. His flailing only succeeds in pushing the kitten into his shoulder socket and Kenma smacks him squarely on the head, swooping in and extricating the tiny kitten from Bokuto’s shoulder before it can slip further.

“Stop that, you could’ve hurt the cat.”

“I was trying not to!” Bokuto protested. “I was trying to get it out, there’s probably broken glass in there.”

Kenma quirks an eyebrow. “Probably?”

Bokuto shrugs as best he could with only one shoulder attached to his body and gestures impassively at the very broken cybernetic one. He knows he fell through someone’s window and got stabbed with some broken glass at least once but if its still there, “I can’t feel it.”

Kenma hums. “I hope the bounty was worth the patch up job you’ve probably bought us this morning.” he says, bending down to set the kitten and the bowl of leftovers down on the curb.

He extends one hand to Bokuto when he’s done and maybe someone should’ve recognized that it’s a bad idea, but since Kenma is too tired to think and Bokuto rarely does, it’s truly inevitable that they both go tumbling back into the trash when Bokuto, all 200 pounds of metal and muscle of him, grabs Kenma’s hand and tries to heave himself up.

They knock over a garbage can and the loud clanging it makes as it hits the ground and rolls around in a half circle before crashing against the building behind them is loud enough to send someone barrelling through the front door in alarm, a wrench clutched in one hand.

“Kenma, what in the hell-??”

Kuroo stops when he sees them, blinking in surprise.

“The garbage is aggressive this morning Kuroo.” Kenma mumbles, face half squished against Bokuto’s chest.

Kuroo looks like he hasn’t slept either, wild hair barely contained by the red bandana tied over it and rumpled overalls stained with blood and scorch marks. Looks like Bokuto isn’t the only one who had a rough night.

“So it is.” Kuroo smirks, hooking his wrench back to his belt and crossing his arms over his chest. “Leave it there, it’s hideous.”

“Hey!” Bokuto starts but before he can say anything else, Kenma climbs to his feet, dislodging everything that’s been shielding Bokuto from view and uncovering the full scope of the damage. His torso is mostly in one piece although big chunks of skin have been ripped off, leaving sparking wires and ruined cybernetics exposed. The mechanical carnage spans from Bokuto’s shoulder to almost all the way down to his waist.

Kuroo’s eyebrows slowly climb up to his forehead and nods down at the mess Bokuto’s made of himself. “Hideous. Did you fight a garbage disposal?”

“Close.” Bokuto says, sitting up and planting his flesh hand on the ground. “He had a shreddy thingie in his chest. Bunch of those circle...ish blades, the spiky ones?”

He manages to push himself up to a crouch with just one side of his body and when he wobbles dangerously, he grabs on to Kenma’s leg.

“Mmm.” Kuroo hums thoughtfully. “Buzzsaw Boobs.”

Bokuto lights up with a grin and points at him. “Buzzsaw Boobs!” He agrees. He tries to snap his fingers too for emphasis, forgetting that his dominant hand is barely attached to his body. The metal joints somehow manage to still move and even barely slide together but still, his middle finger breaks off completely and drops to the floor with a clang. The three of them just stare at it for a moment before Kuroo sighs and bends down to hoist him up.

“Alright shreddy, let’s get you inside before you lose any more parts.”

With some effort on everyone’s part, they manage to get Bokuto inside without causing any further damage. A metallic clicking snaps through the air every time he takes a step so the process was slow going and a little nerve-wracking but with an arm around Kenma and Kuroo’s shoulders, they get him to Kuroo’s workstation and safely down onto the examination table.

The clinic is empty save for the three of them. The cot near the front door is conspicuously stripped of bedding, thin grey mattress marked with fresh stains. As dirty as it is, they still stand out; dark and blotchy, the color of wet rust. Bokuto finds himself staring at them in morbid fascination as Kuroo and Kenma bustle around him, murmuring to each other as they go. He wonders how long it took for the red to fade, wonders if he knew the answer to that once upon a time.

“We got a live one yesterday. He’s still live, just in case you were wondering.”

Kuroo tells him, settling down beside the table and immediately getting to work on Bukuto’s shoulder. Bokuto looks away from the cot to tilt his head at him curiously.

“What happened?”

“Good’ole black market theft.” Kuroo says, reaching into Bokuto’s shoulder with one hand. “Some snatchers cut open the poor kid’s legs and stole a bunch of bones. He was lucky they weren’t after his spine.” Kuroo grunts as he twists something loose and pops Bokuto’s ruined arm out from his shoulder socket with his bare hands. He whistles.

“Please tell me you collected at least. I’m surprised this was still on there.” Kuroo says, tapping the arm against Bokuto’s shoulder. “So many things are missing here I probably could’ve taken it off if I just pulled hard enough.”

“What happened to the kid? Is he alright?” Bokuto asks, brows furrowed in a deep frown. He barely seems to have heard what Kuroo said about his arm. Kuroo stares at him before shaking his head with a soft chuckle.

“You’re scrap metal and you’re more worried about someone you don’t even know.”

“I’m a hunter-warrior, isn’t it kind my job to worry about people?”

Kuroo wants to tell him that it really isn’t but he opts to simply raise his brows in silence. Still though, Bokuto huffs at the non-answer and frowns at him when Kuroo reaches down and slides out the drawer of temporary spares he keeps under the table.

“I got enough credits to pay for the patch up and maybe even take you out to a nice date after, to answer your question.” Bokuto says, frown temporarily forgotten as he puffs up his chest and looks very proud for someone who barely dragged himself to their door and passed out in the garbage.

Kuroo gives him an indulgent smile anyway, withholding comment once again. He leans in close to get a good, long look at Bokuto’s damaged torso and hums thoughtfully. “You’d have to let me sleep first. Your torso’s pretty fucked up but fixable but we’re probably looking at a total rebuild for the arm.”

Bokuto winces. “Sorry.”

“The kid is fine, pumped to the eyeballs with painkillers and high as a fucking kite but he’s stable, was even conscious when we got him settled down in the infirmary. To answer your question.” Kuroo parrots, leaning over to strap the prosthetic arm to Bokuto’s shoulder.

“Kenma’s checking on him right now. I think.” He continues, looking over his own shoulder at the door leading to their small isolation ward for their more sensitive cases. “Either that or he’s passed out in a corner somewhere.”

As if summoned, Kenma walks through the door looking still exhausted, a little harried but ultimately awake.

“Did the shrimp die while we weren’t looking?” Kuroo asks.

“Fading in and out. ” Kenma says. “He asked me if I was an angel.” Only after the words are out of his mouth does he look bewildered. The frown on his face says he’s wondering if maybe he hallucinated what he just said.

If the kid had died, Kuroo’s laugh would’ve been loud enough to wake him up. It’s a testament to how tired he is that Kenma leaps at the sound, dropping the bowl of bloodied rags and used syringes he was holding. He glares.

Kuroo has the decency to look sorry, even if his brand of sorry looks really smirk-y.

“That kid’s going to be just fine, I can feel it. Go to bed, I’ll finish up here.”

Kenma looks unsure. He lingers for a second, unmoving until Kuroo shoo-s him, complete with two handed flick of his fingers and sound effect. Appropriately, Kenma looks like an unimpressed cat but he doesn’t argue. He glances between them meaningfully and without another word, turns and disappears to the back of the clinic, presumably to very quickly clean up and pass out on the closest available surface.

After he’s gone, Kuroo turns back to him with a grin. “Right then, time to get you naked and wet.”

============================

Ten minutes later, Bokuto finds himself sitting buck-ass nude on cold tile, being sprayed down with a power hose strong enough to strip skin off of human flesh. He’s curled up in the smallest ball he can fold himself into with Kuroo’s long, pointy limbs caging him in on all sides. Something that, even with half his nerve receptors fried, is far from comfortable.

There’s barely any space in the stall wedged in the back corner of Kuroo’s workstation. The thing is barely two walls put up around the smallest corner of the room. Kuroo usually uses it to hose down parts so that being said, Kuroo basically has to be right on top of him in a very un-sexy way to wash the extra dirt and stench he accumulated in the trash.

“This is way less fun than it sounded.” he mumbles as Kuroo upends a bucket of lukewarm soap water over his shoulders and immediately follows it up with another blast from the power hose.

“I mean, I could’ve just taken out the bleach and dumped it all over you. So this is slightly more sexy, I would argue.” Kuroo replies easily. “If you just made it a few more feet and avoided the garbage, you wouldn’t be in this situation. Duck.”

Bokuto’s reply is muffled into his knees as Kuroo rinses off the back of his neck. “What can I say? The garbage is my home.”

That earns him a chortle and Bokuto smiles in turn, turning his head a little to try and peek back at Kuroo from his knees.

“Hey, Tetsurou?”

At the mention of his first name, Kuroo pauses in picking out the smaller bits of debris out of the tears along Bokuto’s side and looks to him curiously.

“Why did you pull me out of the scrapyard?”

Kuroo just stares at him for a bit, face carefully blank. He seems to be thoroughly considering the question, trying to parse it down to the last shred of meaning. Then, as if remembering it’s Bokuto he’s talking to, he smiles, shrugs.

“Isn’t it kind of my job to worry about people?” he reaches over to push Bokuto’s soaked bangs back from his eyes. “Also, Iwaizumi was pushing three years with Oikawa at that point. I figured if he can find a quality relationship in the garbage, so can I.”

They both giggle as Kuroo straightens up to his full height and Bokuto waits until he backs up halfway out of the stall to unfurl and pull himself up to his feet before speaking.

“I’m glad you did. Pull me from the scraps and find a quality boyfriend, I mean.”

Kuroo tilts his head at him curiously. “Me too obviously but what brought this on all of a sudden?”

Knowing how awkwardly Kuroo handles impromptu sappy declarations of emotion, no matter how sincere, Bokuto is pretty sure saying things like “Your face is the first thing I remember seeing but I doubt that has anything to do with the fact that you were the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen and I feel like I should always tell you” wouldn’t be received as well as he would like it to be so he just shrugs.

“I was just a brain without anything in it. Everything I have now is because of you.”

Kuroo almost manages to suppress his reaction to that. Almost.

“I mean, you didn’t even know me. Hell, I didn’t even know me and you built me a whole body and gave me a place to stay. I could’ve been a psycho for all we knew...I don’t know, just. It was scary not knowing anything but I knew that you were kind and that’s pretty awesome. Thank you... and I love you, is I guess what I’m trying to say.”

Kuroo doesn’t say anything for several long seconds.

“Are you dying?”

“Wh- no?? Wouldn’t you know that better than me?”

“Am I dying?”

Bokuto tries not to deflate. “Kurooooo, come on. I was trying to be romantic here.”

“How is the pressure feedback and texture sensors on your face?”

“Fine? I can definitely feel the water and-”

-and he can definitely feel Kuroo’s mouth on his, Kuroo’s rough fingers cradling the back of his neck. Bokuto’s eyes close of their own accord and his hands come up to pull Kuroo closer, sighing into the kiss as he tilts his head to slide their lips together more firmly.

Kuroo pulls away first with a low breathless chuckle. “You’re so weird. Cute, but weird.”

“You’re weird.” Bokuto shoots back eloquently, reaching up to wind his arms around Kuroo’s neck and pressing closer so they’re standing chest to chest with barely any space between their bodies.

“It’s fine, I had to change out of these anyway.” Kuroo says, glancing down at all the water seeping into his clothes and making absolutely no move to pull away.

“Does it bother you? That I don’t know who I was?”

Kuroo’s eyes slowly make their way back up to Bokuto’s face at the somber question. He doesn’t ask about it this time, used to Bokuto’s sudden mood swings and especially familiar with this mood in particular. He wonders what snippets he remembered this time, if they were as violent and grim as what little else he’s managed to get back.

“No. It doesn’t.”

Whoever Bokuto was is lost to the literal centuries, possibly more. He may never be that person again. He doesn’t tell Bokuto this, what he does say is what matters.

“I only know you now and I’ll only know who you’ll be from here. That’s more than enough for me.” he murmurs, pressing their foreheads together. “You’re the best thing I ever pulled out of the trash.”

Bokuto snorts and rears back a bit to butt their heads together. “You’re awful.”

Kuroo knows that this isn’t the last time they’re going to have this conversation but for now, Bokuto seems content to let the subject drop.

“I saw someone die yesterday.” Bokuto offers and whether he meant in real life or in the dark, murky corners of his own mind, Kuroo doesn’t know nor does he ask.

“I saw someone live yesterday.” Kuroo rests a hand on Bokuto’s chest. “And maybe you didn’t see them but a lot of other people lived yesterday too.” He smirks. “You took Buzzsaw Boobs to the chest so they don’t have to.”

Bokuto laughs but though the sound isn’t as jubilant as it usually is, the sigh he buries muffles into Kuroo’s neck sounds relieved.

“I’m tired. Lets go to bed.”

Kuroo kisses his temple. “Yeah. Let’s.”

#bokuto koutarou #kuroo tetsurou #bokuroo #haikyuu!!#battle angel au #au

8 notes · View notes

thunderthevoltwing · 4 years ago

Text

The 11th Tribe- Chapter 7: Moth

Moth awoke to the sound of hushed whispers and bird calls. He could only make out a couple of words that were being spoken, such as "What is he doing here?" and "Is this related to the odd blue one?". The barrage of comments was starting to pull him back to consciousness, and he flickered an eye open. The whispering dragons went quiet and stared, observing the new visitor.

As Moth was regaining his senses, a panicked thought seized him. Where's Bumblebee? The last thing I saw was the two of them bickering. Wait, who was the other dragon? Moth asked himself.

Moth sat up groggily, rubbing his neck and sides where something must've been digging into his sides. Now that he could recall the last thing he remembered feeling was the confusion that followed the sharp pang of pain in his neck.

Moth fully sat up and observed his environment. He was surrounded by trees and tree huts, hammocks slung across two trees everywhere. He was sitting on a wooden platform, high above the forest floor. Tropical birds, monkeys and sloths dotted the trees around them, and what was especially noticeable was the many pairs of eyes that were watching him.

Moth felt uncomfortable, nervously rubbing the spot on his neck that the dart had hit. When he turned his head to his left he spotted Bumblebee, still asleep on her side. Bumblebee looked tranquil in her sleep, as if nothing else mattered in the world besides from a good rest.

After a couple minutes of eye blinking and rubbing, Moth finally had his head level with his body. The Rainwings were still watching, almost waiting for something interesting to happen.

Bumblebee finally stirred, giving a low groan and rubbing to sore spots just like Moth did. The Rainwings turned their eyes to Bumblebee, hoping she would do something much more entertaining than sit there awkwardly.

It was another couple minutes as Bumblebee recovered before something finally happened. All the curious Rainwings all of a sudden turned their attention behind them, then parted way for someone. From the dragon-made corridor a Rainwing approached, but she had an air of authority. Behind the Rainwing followed a Nightwing, who seemed to obviously have a connection with the regal Rainwing.

"I'm going to take a great guess that you two are the fugitives from Jade Mountain Academy?" The Rainwing asked. Moth all of a sudden realized that this dragon was important, in fact she was queen of the Rainwings and Nightwings. How could I be so foolish? This is Queen Glory for goodness sake! Moth chided to himself. Queen Glory walked up to Moth and stared at him, expecting an answer.

"Oh, Umm, yeah I suppose we are" Moth mumbled nervously.

"Y'know Moth, I am very good friends with the Dragonets of Destiny. Although I don't know why they're called that, because clearly 1) They're not dragonets anymore and 2) The prophecy was fake anyway" Glory stated then observed. Moth nervously twined his claws, expecting Tsunami to burst out from behind the Nightwing any second to chastise him and Bumblebee. Ah! That's right! The Nightwing's name is Deathbringer, King of the Rainwings and Nightwings! Moth suddenly remembered.

"I'm so sorry! I dragged Moth into this because I wanted a friend to come with me to see the new dragon!" Bumblebee apologized beside Moth.

"Wait, how do you know about Bolt?" Glory questioned.

"I overheard my mother, Cricket, and Blue talking about a strange new arrival in the rainforest one night. Sorry Moth for saying that they told me" Bumblebee explained and apologized.

"Well I believe two runaway dragonets really scared the crap out of my friends" Glory said. Moth gulped in fear, knowing he should've listened to his instincts and stayed at school. Bumblebee glanced at him, an apologetic look on her face.

"Well then! I believe these two need to see what they came here for" Glory announced. When Moth heard this his first response was disbelief then shock, trying to interpret what Queen Glory had just said.

"Did you say we're going to see the new dragon anyway?" Bumblebee asked, just as stunned as Moth.

"Did I just say that, Deathbringer?" Glory said

"With my own two ears I can confirm that was what you said, my dear" Deathbringer confirmed.

"Thankyou my most dear husband and assassin" Glory said with mock courtesy. "Shall we proceed?"

Moth, Bumblebee, Queen Glory and Deathbringer continued on through the Rainwing village, then abruptly stopped at a secure yet comfortable-looking hut.

"This is where Bolt is held for the moment, until we can find out more about him" Glory stated.

"More like if we know whether he's safe or not" Deathbringer grumbled. Glory ignored his comment, as the Rainwing way is the non-hostile way.

"Speak to him behind this window, and we shall be back after a good arguing with Tsunami to convince her not to thwart you both" Glory said with exhaustion. With that, her and Deathbringer flew off, higher into the forest canopy.

After their departure, an awkward silence fell over, Moth sensing that Bumblebee was too embarrassed to speak.

"Sooo what happened while you were trying to get food for us to end up in this situation?" Moth asked.

"Well an old grumpy Rainwing full on smashed me into a tree because I was about to eat a monkey, then I asked about going to the Rainwing village, which followed by him darting both you and me" Bumblebee explained. Another silence followed, as Moth didn't know what to say after that. He decided it would be best to finally meet Bolt, as time was running out before Tsunami would come rampaging over and drag them back to Jade Mountain Academy.

Moth wondered over to the window Glory had pointed out, and stared into the hut. In the middle sat a very large, muscular, yet bored dragonet, who was scratching something into the wood. Moth tapped on the window sill to grab his attention, and Bolt all of a sudden looked up. His eyes were a stormy blue, the rest of his body a shade of blue that you would find in the sky during a dark storm. His wings were massive and looked powerful, clearly adapted to flying in strong winds for extended amounts of time. Bolt had a central spinal flap, in which the shape of it was similar to that of a zig-zag bolt pattern. The underside of his wings had white, crackly streaks that resembled lightning, and dotted all over his body were little flecks of silver. His teeth and claws were almost straight, both serrated like an Icewing's.

"Oh wow, would you look at that, more visitors" Bolt said with exasperation in his voice. "Although, you two look much different to the same old Rainwings I've kept on having to answer questions for. Such as 'how are you so blue?' or 'why do you seem to have scales that are dead?' Hello! I'm a Voltwing, the 'dead' scales are actually traces of silver so we can attract and conduct electricity for food and defense! Those dragons are just sooo annoying with those stupid questions" Bolt involuntarily explained with annoyance.

"Er, we came from a mountain that's a ways away to come see you" Moth responded in short. "My friend here is just curious about you"

"Hrm, I guess you can ask away" Bolt said slowly.

"Of course I'm going to ask the obvious questions like 'where did you come from' and 'what exactly can you do', so you might as well explain it in a big chunk" Bumblebee said.

"Actually, none of the dragons here have asked me that question, besides from their queen and king, in which it's strange that on this continent the queen is the main ruler" Bolt pointed out.

"Then I guess that's our first question: what is your tribe name and what do you guys do?" Bumblebee quizzed.

"Whelp here starts the explaining" Bolt sighed. "Our main ruler is a king, and his name is Zeus. I used to live on the same mountain the royal family does, but on the lowest tiers because my mother was a servant in the palace. The entire continent is dotted with mountains, each one a different Voltwing town with it's own hierarchy, members of the royal family or highly regarded nobles being on top. The continent is also under a consistent heavy storm, which provides us lightning therefore energy. The silver flecks on our body is pure silver, and it's used to absorb the energy from lightning that is attracted to us. That's our main source of food. Just incase though if we do have a low storm activity day we can eat fish to fuel our bodies. Buuut our continent is both starting lose storm activity and fish, causing my entire tribe to deplete in numbers and starve. We don't know what's causing it, and I was hoping to solve it. Which, by the way, where is my fish that I asked for? I'm starving"

Along with Bumblebee, Moth had listened to the whole explanation intently, and it sounded though as if he had well rehearsed it.

"So is that why you're here, to seek our help?" Bumblebee asked.

"Oh no, I ran away from my mother who was beating me" Bolt shrugged. He leaned over and whispered loudly "She's not a very good mother"

Bumblebee looked shocked when he said this, obviously expecting that Bolt had come to save his tribe, not escape a violent mother. Just as Bumblebee was about to question Bolt further, a shadow swooped down and aimed itself at Bumblebee. Moth looked up and spotted a very furious Tsunami, along with a very exhausted Glory, a very tired Sunny and very amused Deathbringer.

"You two are in SOOO much trouble!" Tsunami said angrily.

0 notes

deadlybeautydbz · 8 years ago

Text

Sniffles

After seeing that adorable little sneeze in the latest Super episode, and then seeing poor 18 being stuck out in the rain after that, I was inspired to write this little piece about 18 coming down with a cold and Krillin looking after her.

It’s so sweet I almost got diabetes writing it! I hope you all enjoy it! Lemme know!

Find it under the cut!

Title: Sniffles

Ah-choo.

“Bless you.” “Thank you.”

Sniff. Sniff.

Sniff sniff.

“Babe?” Krillin tipped his head to look towards 18. She was stretched out on the sofa, Marron curled up against her chest, sound asleep, and there was a warm blanket tossed over them both. It was a heartwarming sight to the young father. “Are you coming down with something?”

“No,” 18 scoffed. “Don’t be ridiculous, I don’t get-” Aaaaaah-choooo. 18 was cut off from the end of her sentence by another sneeze.

“Uh-huh.” Krillin grinned, feeling rather pleased with himself. He swooped across the living room, grabbing the tissue box on the way, and plonked himself down on the sofa beside 18. Without a word, or even defeat-admitting eye contact, 18 snatched a tissue and blew her nose. She didn’t argue when Krillin pressed the back of his hand against her forehead. “You’re a little bit warm,” he said, his brow furrowing in sudden concern.

“I’m fine,” 18 brushed him off while trying desperately not to sniff again.

“You’re not,” Krillin pushed back. While it was true that it was extremely unusual for his wife to get sick, it was by no means impossible. She had been unwell during her pregnancy with Marron, and had suffered a bout of food poisoning after a dodgy dinner cooked by Yamcha a few years back. Sure, she may have never picked up the common cold before, but up until a few years ago, they had lived on a very remote island, far away from people and their germs, in the middle of a warm tropical ocean. Of course she wasn’t going to catch anything all the way out there.

“Why have you always got to make everything so difficult?” Krillin smiled warmly at his wife and kissed her on her clammy forehead. “You’re sick,” he tucked some hair back behind 18’s ear. “Admit defeat.”

“I will do no such thing.” 18 sniffed loudly again, which she had to admit, considerably weakened her rebuttal. But still, she wasn’t ready to concede just yet. “How on earth would I even catch a cold? That makes no sense, Krillin.”

Krillin frowned. “Now you’re just being stubborn,” he said. “We we’re out in the freezing rain all afternoon. Or have you already forgotten about that in your fever induced delirium?”

It had been one of those days today, with one strange turn of events after another. First, Goku and Gohan had shown up while Krillin was at work, then they managed to convince both himself and 18 to enter into the mysterious ‘tournament-of-power’. From there, Krillin had managed to ring-out Gohan in a practice spar, and teach Goku a lesson about the power of teamwork. Krillin’s body wasn’t as young, or as forgiving, as it used to be though, and the aches and pains were beginning to set in now, but he was still floating on Cloud Nine after the fights. He’d never imagined that a day would come where he’d be able to say that he had been victorious against a Saiyan! Now, though, to end this unusual day on a sour note, it really did appear as though 18 was starting to come down with something.

Marron stirred in 18’s lap and Krillin gently ran his hand over her soft blonde hair. Hopefully none of 18’s germs would be passed along to Marron, because she was absolutely her mothers’ daughter and the only thing Krillin wanted to be dealing with less than one sick and stubborn Chestnut woman right now, was two sick and stubborn Chestnut women. “I’m going to go and run you a warm bath ok? And don’t even bother trying to argue with me, because I will pick you up and carry you in there myself if I have to.” Krillin smiled and trotted off towards the bathroom.

18 sighed and kissed the top of Marron’s head. She was starting to feel a little congested, not that she was going to admit it.

“Bath’s ready.”

18’s eyes fluttered open, although she was 100 percent positive that she hadn’t fallen asleep. The first thing she saw was Krillin’s face hovering above her own. He looked properly concerned now. “18,” he knelt down beside the couch and gave his wife a quick once over. It was highly unlike her to doze off like that. “I’m fine,” 18 answered his question before Krillin could even ask it. “Stop fussing over me.”

“Never.” Krillin smiled. He stood up and lifted Marron out of 18’s lap, placing her down gently on a big, soft armchair and tucking the blanket around her. She never even stirred. Turning back to his wife, Krillin didn’t give her a chance to protest before scooping her up into his arms.

“What are you doing?” 18 asked, but she didn’t complain. Instead she draped her arms around Krillin, nuzzled her face into the crook of his neck and sighed contently.

The bathroom was warm and steamy. Krillin had spared no expense for his wife’s comfort. Candlelight gave the room a soft orange glow, and there was a stick of incense burning. It was eucalyptus, Krillin explained, as he placed 18 down on a stool and lifted her shirt up over her head, apparently it would help to clear her sinuses. He had set up his phone to play relaxing rainforest sounds. Birds singing, a crashing waterfall and the roll of distance thunder echoed through the room.

“I hope it’s not too warm.” Krillin said, and reached around 18, expertly unclipping her bra and dropping it into the clothes hamper. He tilted her chin up toward him and gently kissed her.

“You didn’t have to do this, you know,” 18 said, but there was no stubbornness in her tone. She didn’t protest any further as Krillin helped her shimmy out of her jeans, leaving her sitting naked on the bathroom stool. It was probably the warm, dark bathroom that was making her feel so sleepy all of a sudden, not her budding illness. Nevertheless though, she let Krillin lift her into the warm bath, and did have to admit that the warm water, the incense and the calming ambiance of the rainforest sounds was making her feel very relaxed. She closed her eyes and let herself enjoy the feeling of weightlessness.

Krillin squatted down to sit on his heels, and rested his forearms against the rim of the bath. For a moment, he just watched 18, she looked so peaceful in the flickering glow of the candles. So perfect. If this were any other day, he would’ve been fighting back the urge to climb in there with her.

“I’m going to go and lay out some pyjamas for you, soak in here for as long as you want, and then hop straight into bed. I’ll bring you some medicine when you’re ready.”

“Alright,” 18 was feeling worse by the minute, and she no longer had the mental energy, nor the desire to pretend to argue with Krillin.

“How’s this one, Papa?” Marron held a blob of chicken mince in her hand, proudly showing it to her daddy.

“It’s great, firefly,” Krillin took the lump of chicken from her and quickly finished rolling it into a smooth, round ball. “You’re sleeves are getting all dirty though, here” he leaned over and rolled the sleeves of Marron’s jumper up to her elbows. “All better. Now where were we?”

“Makin’ feel better dinner for Mama!” Marron chirped and picked up another chunk of chicken, which she attempted to roll into a ball. Meanwhile, Krillin was busy chopping up vegetables, and pressing out dough to make noodles. “That’s right,” he said with a smile. “Thank goodness I’ve got you to help me!”

A happy smile beamed across Marron’s face. She surveyed her handiwork. A dozen or so meatballs that varied in size from tiny to enormous, but which were each full of love. “I hope Mama feels better soon,” she said, her little voice brimming with concern, “so she can play hide and go peep with me.”

Krillin chuckled. Trunks and Goten and taught her that game, and it had become somewhat of an obsession since then. It wasn’t unusual for him to have to seek out his daughter from her favourite hiding spots thirty times a day. “I’m sure Mama will play with you when she’s feeling better, firefly.”

Seemingly content with that answer, Marron let it go. “What are you doing now, Papa?” she asked, changing the subject.

“I’m making mama’s soup,” Krillin replied as he slid the meatballs, vegetables and noodles into a pot of broth. “Wanna help me stir it?”

Marron jumped up and down on the chair she was standing on, hardly able to contain her glee at being charged with such an important task. “Yes!” she exclaimed.

“Alright,” Krillin hoisted Marron up onto his hip and handed her the spoon to stir the soup that was starting to simmer on the stovetop. “But you gotta be careful okay? It’s hot.”

“Alright, Papa.”

Aaah-choo

Surprised by the sudden noise, both Krillin and Marron turned to look over their shoulders to see 18 standing in the doorway, quietly watching them. She was dressed in her warm pyjamas and slippers, and her hair, still damp from the bath was tied up in a knot on top of her head.

Marron’s face fell into a frown. “Mama,” she began, her voice stern, “why aren’t you in bed?”

Krillin had to turn his face away to hide his snickering as Marron gave 18 a thorough telling off. She was a funny kid, obviously she got that from her dad. He turned back toward 18 just in time to see her expression change from shocked amusement into faux disappointment. “I’m sorry, Marron,” she said, “but whatever you’re cooking out here smells so good, that I just had to come and investigate.” It did indeed smell delicious, which 18 found surprising to say the least, considering both her chefs this evening had no noses and therefore very limited senses of both smell and taste.

“Mama doesn’t listen does she?” Krillin said to Marron, shaking his head. Her put the small girl down and sent her into the lounge to watch cartoons for a little while, before turning his focus back to his ailing wife. “Why don’t you listen?”

“I feel better after the bath.”

“No you don’t.”

18 didn’t fight back as Krillin pushed her down the hallway towards their bedroom. He pulled back the covers and dutifully, she hoped into bed. Krillin disappeared for a moment, and when he returned he had the tissue box, a big glass of water and a packet of cold medicine with him. He popped two capsules from the packet and along with the water, handed them to 18 who swallowed them down like the good patient she was, or at least was trying to be.

“How do you feel?” Krillin sat down on the edge of the bed and took 18’s hand in his own. “Really?”

“Tired and stuffy,” 18 admitted.

“Please, promise me you’re going to rest.” The look in Krillin’s eyes was one of genuine concern for his beloved wife. But there was more to it than that. “The tournament starts the day after tomorrow and I know you didn’t believe that nonsense Goku was spouting about it being just for fun.”

18 sniffed and Krillin handed her the tissue box. She blew her nose before replying. “Not for a second,” she said. “Something bad is about to happen. Why would he want to invite 17, someone he’s never met, if the stakes are as low as he says? Something is definitely going on.”

“I agree,” Krillin’s voice dropped to a whisper, he didn’t want Marron to accidently overhear their conversation and start to worry. “That’s why I need you to rest, okay. Please,” he almost begged. “I don’t know what’s going on exactly, but I think we’re about to walk into something big and I need you at full strength. If anything were to happen to you…” he let the end of the sentence hang between them. It was to awful a thought to put into words. “I just…. I couldn’t….”

“I promise I’m going to rest,” 18 squeezed Krillin’s hand firmly. “And you know these things never affect me for very long. I’m sure I’ll be fine by the morning.”

That was true, Krillin had to concede. Her morning sickness with Marron had lasted a week at most, and that food poisoning had been and gone within a matter of hours, unlike the days it had wreaked havoc on Krillin’s digestive system for. It did seem as though when it came down to it, 18’s body was quite good at getting rid of things that weren’t meant to be there. But still, Krillin wasn’t taking any chances. There was too much on the line.

“Alright,” he said, and leaned in and kissed 18. A shiver ran down his spine when he felt her smile against his lips. He couldn’t even begin to put into words how much he loved this woman. “Let me fuss over you tonight, even though I know how much you hate it,” he smiled. “And we’ll reassess in the morning.”

“Ok,” 18 sighed. She couldn’t say no to her husband. He was kind and sweet and caring and his concern for her welfare came from a love that was so deep and pure. 18 knew how lucky she was to have him. Krillin was the best husband and father in the world and she loved him more than she had even been aware that it was possible to love someone. She was grateful to have someone like him looking after her when she wasn’t feeling well.

Plus she really wanted some of that soup.

The End.

I hope you guys enjoyed this! please let me know! Likes and reblogs are always appreciated, I’ll probably upload this to the FFN prompt collection tonight so keep an eye out if you’d like to review it over there.

Until then, Much Love,

#krillin #android 18 #dbz #DBS #Dragonball Z #dragon ball super #K18 #k18 fanfic #otp #Otp fanfic #fanfiction #fanfic #dbz fanfic #deadlybeautyfanfiction

34 notes · View notes

ashensoul1995 · 8 years ago

Text

Sunken ships not meant to sail

If a relationship feels like a thorny noose around your throat, chances are it is NOT a relationship but something you need to get rid of as soon as possible. I say this after sacrificing a good chunk of my mental health and what feels like most of my teenage years to a relationship that knocked over everything I believed I was and erected the strangest things in place of it. If I could I would walk back to old me and slap her, hard, across the face for being ok with any of it. I was young and suddenly he was intent on this crazy passion and clinginess I had never experienced before. We were only a few months apart in age and both of us were artists and writers. Within a day he had swooped over me and I found myself slightly bright eyed and giddy. I wanted to introduce him to all my friends and my parental unit, in a sense that consisted of a person the rest of the world seemed to both hate and adore equally. I still remember that very first meeting and the completely blank and uninterested look on his face as he seemed to stare straight through Jamie and everything that he was for me when I expected him to manage to somehow turn him away like he had so many other young men. Instead I got a long and hard look afterwards and a firm 'be careful with him.' I do wish I had listened and picked up on the undertone of wariness but I was too giddy with the cloyingly sweet realisation that someone actually loved me enough to want to be part of my life. And then came the contract. Yes I had to sign a friendship contract. A contract that detailed what I could and could not do. A contract that detailed everything I was and was meant to dictate my entire existence. And I agreed. I agreed to not talking to anyone but him, not sharing anything with anyone but him, not interacting with anyone but him, calling him for at least four hours every day, meeting up with him at least once a week outside of school for at least ten hours. He did ask me to write up a contract of what I expected from him. I was too confused to actually think of anything and came up with 'please be happy and know that I need you.' And yes I want to go back and throttle myself today but I was young and he seemed to love me like crazy and that was the only thing that mattered. He loved me too much it seemed, and somehow we seemed to look good together. Two awkwardly skinny, tall and gangly raven haired teens who liked art and would always be somehow interlocked; he either had a hand around mine, a hand on my shoulder, an arm around my shoulders. He was just there. Everywhere. And he would often turn up at my 'home' after hours or else I would end up at his where we giggled and talked and discussed all kinds of things while his younger brother did strange things next door. My (I use this term lightly here) parental unit seemed strangely ok with me having a boyfriend in my room for hours on end with the door closed and would often try to get to know him, or so it seemed but most of the time just seemed to be almost anxiously watching me as though trying to figure something out that made no sense to him. The contract became matching outfits and then eventually I felt like we were one rather strange two headed creature. I was so tired of it though, worn out by this human who for whatever reason loved me so much and had pretty much crawled under my skin and was doing strange things I did not even understand. Everyone found us to be adorable; teachers, his parents, anyone who saw us together and who experienced me laughing and him saying stupid things and then his..love for animals. I have a vague memory of watching Twilight with him at home with my parental unit staying far away on the other side of pointedly closed doors but his gorgeous black cat Scar decided to come in and use Jamie's leg as a scratching post. I realise now that he must have tried to send Scar in himself to make me realise that Jamie was in fact incapable of talking to animals and was making it all up. I do get annoyed, but I paid no mind to it and decided Jamie and Scar could bond later. Jamie liked buying me gifts. And once he went as far as buying me something that I subsequently lost. I write this with the painful cold creeping in under my bones that day brought about because the gift was lost. And he refused to talk to me and to stop cold shouldering me. I remember the fear and the despair and worry that Jamie would never talk to me again and how I was found by my 'parental unit' (who I will refer to as Moon Man) sitting broken outside the school gate with a flushed face and a heavy heart. He tried to ask me what happened, and I lied and told him I lost the gift but Jamie didn't know and would be upset when he found out. He sat with me for hours, kits us two humans on the dusty pavement for hours and hours because he somehow knew I had to stay put as he assured me that Jamie loved me, and though my loss of the gift was a bad thing he would understand it was just a gift and I shouldn't worry because everyone loses something and Jamie would understand. I never told him I cried later on because I was so confused about why Jamie was angry over a gift but decided it would make sense over time, maybe. The next part of this sits heavy in my core as I realise it will probably become a reason for open mockery of me and maybe even a cause for a lot of people judging me. Funnily I don't care anymore. Sometimes you just need to talk about certain things to stop them hurting you and making everything taste and smell funny. Obviously sexuality is a big thing, especially as a teenager. I found myself writing up highly detailed sexual scenes for Jamie because he wanted the, and seemed to need them...or he threatened to tell everyone that I was a lesbian? Actually now that I think of it that would have been a really cool way of being, unfortunately I was young and dumb and scared so I wrote these things for him. And he seemed to like them. And that became a thing. There was some parental meeting thing held by his mother at his house. And his mother decided she wanted to invite me and Moon Man despite me not being a parent and him not being a parent or even a mother either. I remember actually feeling excited at how Moon Man agreed to making the trip with me and how he volunteered to bake them macarons and how happy I was that he was supporting me. I remember how Jamie's mother visibly flushed upon seeing him and led him in before sweetly cooing that Jamie was waiting for me. I remember the two hours of Jamie and how weirdly good it felt to be against him and with him and just the stupid things like him telling me how his brother seemed to have reached that awkward stage of puberty where he was doing strange things. And that he thought I was the prettiest person ever and that I was his muse and he was so happy and honoured to know me. When it was time to go Moon Man seemed weirdly calm about everything and kept looking at me amusedly but never really said anything. I remember that has to be the day he decided he wanted to invite his sister over and how they cut my hair and he took her aside to say something and then she made me feel pretty by trying to teach me how to not make my eyeliner so severe. Afterwards she left for a bit and Moon Man decided to order pizza, which was weird for me seeing as he was a fanatic about fitness and though that could have been because of his bulimia he was always intent on never going near fast food and always eating healthy. I made the normal excuse that I was not hungry and had eaten with Jamie. It always worked anyway and he was too busy drowning in his own struggle to realise what I was doing, but he suddenly went strangely quiet and I still remember that day when we found ourselves side by side on the sofa while he tried to figure out why I was starving myself ("do you see something that asks you to starve yourself?" "Have you actually been eating anything at all?" "What are the first thoughts that come to your mind?" And the agonised "did I do this to you? How long has this been going on?" ) I have vague memory of the realisation that Jamie must have told his mother who asked him to confront me. It does hurt now realising that I was the only person who made Moon Man cry, much later apparently when he was on his own and thought I was asleep I overhead him being comforted by a friend while he seemed to either be snuffling or crying and now that really hurt me. However maybe it was a good thing because it changed things and was what made him really aware of everything I was doing so I didn't quite starve. Jamie started hating Moon Man. I never understood when that happened but it did. He started telling me things about him I already knew (he sleeps around/he does drugs/he doesn't care about anyone/he's too sarcastic/he's too skinny and the only muscle definition he has is because he has no body fat...) And I just laughed it off because I did not care as long as Jamie and Moon Man did NOT fight. Jamie showed me pictures or I think told me of instances before when Moon Man was just into fitness about how he had 'the perfect lean physique' and said that it had gotten to his head which was why he had turned out how he had. I do wonder if Jamie knew about the schizophrenia or if he even actually cared that sometimes Moon Man would go out of his way to try to adhere to what Jamie's mother seemed to expect of me, even when he was so sick he was close to passing out. I realise how much he wanted me to be happy now and maybe he felt Jamie would make me happy and he let that happen like he had refused to let me see so many people before Jamie. There was a dance and I was called upon as Jamie and I were the dream couple. And we were expected to attend and look gorgeous together. Everyone was going to dress up and wear strapless booby dresses and tuxedos. I owned no dress and eventually ended up telling Moon Man who, without a question looked through books and magazines and vanished inside his room far under the rest of the house and somehow managed to create a stunning black and green dress that I was overwhelmed by the beauty of. I still have it today and take it out on special occasions. I have pictures in it because everyone who saw me in it said I looked incredible. Moon Man just smiled amusedly and told me he just wanted me to go out with my head up and look beautiful. Jamie didn't like the dress. He saw it and decided he wanted a proper couture wearing partner. It broke my heart hearing him say that and yet I decided that I would skip the fancy occasion. I told Moon Man I had fallen sick and he accepted that despite saying he felt bad I was missing such an important moment for myself maybe because I looked so rattled. He let me hide in bed all day and I cried until my eyes hurt too much. For those people who know me, they probably know maths is far from my strength. Maybe I am very dumb but maths never fails to confuse me. In fact I only fully taught myself long division two summers ago because I had to tutor someone else about it. At some point it seemed my maths teacher started calling me out on how slow and simple and dumb I was. I didn't actually suspect anything at all and decided maybe I really was dumb and stupid and incapable..and now I realise how much she liked Jamie and it all lurches into perspective. If you know me maybe you know that I am scared senseless of being accused of lying? Everything I say and do I get paranoid that it will be seen as lies. That is because Jamie would accuse me of lying all the time though I was always honest, I am used to being told I am lying. In fact I will always read between the lines and worry that I am considered a liar. It puts me in the messiest, stickiest situation... Moon Man decided to kill himself and that left a pretty big hole in my existence. A hole that only grew bigger and bigger. And somehow that whole catalysed a lot of agony inflicted on me from Jamie. I expected support and maybe even love. I have more scars to my heart and soul and sanity that I feel anyone should have. So many painful memories and moments of fear and horror and of being in tears and crying helplessly but keeping up the 'perfect' pretence around everyone else. And often wishing I had been entirely honest with Moon Man and he had stopped me from whatever I had done that had ended up like this. Of course rumours about me had been spread through school and everyone was whispering about me all the time. It hurt to try to do much of anything and I swung along with it. I remember the way my friend Luke (no name change here as I can not bring myself to it, almost) mused aloud that I loved Jamie with so much purity and passion he was lucky for having me, and how I just smiled and laughed at him and told him Jamie was the best thing that has ever happened to me. I still remember the day it all ended. I remember how I stumbled away blinded by my own tears and tried to do stupid things to cope. I spent a very long time in bed. The only thought running through my head was Jamie's number. I was scared of phones, I was scared of doorbells, I was scared of people, I was scared of talking to anyone and I had lost myself completely. The friends I had tried to support me while I kept on falling apart. I have memories of a few ER trips and Luke's anxious face looking down at me in confusion... I share 2,608 words about Jamie after a rough start to the year but not because I want someone to call me attention seeking or because I need a lot of attention or sympathy. I do it because I want to warn people of what true love is not. True love does NOT hurt. It would never make you cry. It would never tear you to pieces, it would never chew your heart up and throw it aside. It would support and love you unconditionally. If it makes you feel uncomfortable it is NOT love. If it leaves bruises or scars then it can never be love. If it leaves you with severe anxiety and depression and body dysmorphic disorder please do not tell me it is love. Be free and refuse to let anyone tear you apart and open. No one should tell you what to do or how to be and if they do then they need to fuck a flaming cactus. Please love and love well, properly and in all the right and proper ways. Understand WHAT love really is and walk away from anything that hurts. It is never worth the pain because it is not meant to bruise and scar and burn you for life.

1 note · View note

samuelcrobinsononlinearchive · 7 years ago

Text

island .1

I don't remember a lot about my first day, I remember the feeling of the sand in my toes. My body was shaking from what I can only still assume was being washed to shore. The sudden exposer to light burning my vision, a cool but warm breeze swooping over the island’s sandy landscape slapping into me. I didn’t panic, I stayed collected like a proper lady. That was until I stood up, I looked down the beach over the sand bump and saw a pile of wooden shacks and caravans decorated in light bulbs. In the center of the islands black sandy landscape my mother’s run-down house, it sat proud in the middle like the island was welcoming me. Then towering over them all a tall city sky scraper on the right. I hadn’t seen the tower before, but I could imagen the tall building sharing space in a tight city somewhere. Nothing made sense, it was terrifying but seeing my mothers house in the center of it all made me sick to my stomach.

A thick rusted metal bracelet was locked around my wrist, it let out a shock every time I tried to make a step closer to the buildings. My body fell to the ground with every attempted, my legs fell numb and my Bladder felt weak. I drew a line in the sand with my fingers and collapsed onto my knees, dipping the bracelets I to the cooling sea water. I short hiss let out as the bracelet cooled off, my shorts filled with water with every invading wave. I felt violated as I fleeted my hands over my body checking for scars, if the tide comes in I will have to make a choice. Burn or drown. The moon soon replaced the sun with what felt like a blink of the eye.

light bulbs looped around the shacks in a decorative manner then straight across to my mother’s house. They finally led all the way up to one of the scrapers balcony's. Large metal plates of some kind that let off a strange humming sound were fixed on two sides of the sky scraper. It looked as if it had been ripped from the ground it was once fixated to and dropped on the island by mistake. This was no mistake, someone has gone through a lot of effort to put me here, to put my mother’s house here, something was going to happen and I knew that it was meant for me. I laid on my back looking directly at the stars, not a single cloud had past since I woke up. The stars and the ocean waves were calming, if it wasn't for the shocking metal bracelet and the fact I was starving this could have been a lucid dream.

why me? I'm an average boring teenager with no hobbies or much sex appeal. I left school last year and started working in an office, I still live my neurotic mother who insists that we all sit down to dinner every weekend. The tide finally went out and my body could dry a little, it was warm but nothing too extreme. I don't know how long I can last laying here with out anything to eat or drink? I don't remember the last time I ate, in fact I don't remember anything about the last few days. I remember work but it felt like so long ago, how long have I been on this island? How long did I spend traveling unknowingly to the island? Am I older now? I guess I must be right? I'm at least one day older than when I woke up here.

The moon moved slowly behind the cliffs next to the skyscraper, the island seemed almost still, voided of life. The only man-made noise came from the humming of the metal plates, maybe I should have called for help? I figu the more attention I drew to myself the more I'm likely to get the attention I'm not looking for. My hair was frizzy and dry from the oceans embrace and my eyes felt run down from all the drama and silent tears. They started to feel heavy until I finally gave into the forth coming sleep, the last thing I remembered about my first day on the island was thinking. "I hope I wake up tomorrow"

Day two.

“Who are you” a little boy, I guess around eight or nine was standing over me.

“Who are you?” I was never very good at conversing in the morning.

“I asked first, who are you?” He stepped back as I started to sit up.

“Hey! You have a bracelet too?” I pointed at his wrist.

“We all do” he turned his head towards my mother’s house.

As I stood up I could see people of all ages starting to stand up, a man laid on the beach no more than ten feet away from me.

“Is he okay?” The little boy grabbed my hand and pulled me towards him.

“ I can't it will shock me!” I yelled at him, you shouldn't yell at kids unless you have a shocking chunk of metal on your wrist.

“Mine shocks me too” he looked down at his wrist.

It was only now I could see the burn marks on his arm. The metal had singed into his skin, it was red and full of puss.

“It didn't stop until the sun came back” he pulled me towards the man who still laid motionless. I could see at least ten people gathering just outside my mum’s house, some were crying and others were shouting. The man must have been in his early twenties, maybe even my age. He was wearing a black suit with an expensive looking tie, his shock bracelet was different to ours, it was slim and red.

“Is he okay?” The little boy let go of my hand and begun to search through the mans pockets.

“You shouldn't touch him kid” I couldn't help but sound condescending and old.

"What's your name?" The little boy looked up at me with his big brown eyes.

"Phillip" he pulled out the mans wallet and begun to look through it.

"His name is Luke Thomas Ryan and he's nineteen yea-"

"I'm almost twenty actually" Ryan sat up and put his hand out towards Phillip.

"You shouldn't be taking things that don't belong to you already Philip" Ryan took the wallet shoved it into his pocket and stood up. He looked at me for a while, as if I was the first women he had seen in days.

"What do you mean already?" I mean that would imply he's been here for a while and that he was aware of his being here?

"I mean this is only day two on the island" He looked as if he was startled by a woman speaking openly to him.

"So, you know where we are?" I felt like Sherlock himself deducting words and taking in every inch of him with my eyes. He was tall, almost seven feet with daft looking blonde hair that fell in front of his eyes. His suit was perfect, no wrinkles or sand patches.

"I woke up last night, I'm guessing like both of you?" He flashed me a quick smile showing off his perfectly white teeth. He must have bleached them, nobody has teeth like that. "Who are you anyway?" Great how do I answer that one?

"I guess I'm Julie and that's Phillip" burgh why did I say that.

"Well Julie and Phillip, let's go find out why we are here"

Phillip grabbed my hand as we walked towards my mother’s house, a group of at least twelve people were gathering. Ryan walked ahead of us and shouted for everyone to calm down.

"does anyone have any water?" He took control of the situation but I'm not sure that was a good thing. Everyone looked no older than twenty with the youngest two being Phillip and a girl his age called Phebe. There was seven boys and seven girls totalling to fourteen of us, we all sat on my mother’s wooden porch waiting for something to happen. Ryan kept asking people to raise their hands to stupid questions he was asking, I guess he thought he was Sherlock too.

"Has anyone been to this island before" Nobody raised their hand.

"Is anyone here a member or was a member or a terrorist organisation" What does he think this is? Political kidnappings.

"Did everyone wake up outside" Everyone but Phillip raised his hand.

"I woke up inside a cave" Phillip sounded scared, like the cave had somehow hurt him.

"I nudged him a little and asked him where the cave was.

" I can't tell you Julie" He looked down at his wrist.

"It hurt me"

"Not this time Phillip I promise"

I didn't think It was a good idea to tell anyone this was my house, I mean they could think I had something to do with it. I'm not even sure this is my house. A boy just a bit young than me told everyone that all the doors were somehow locked, he had tried to kick them down but they were too hard for just him.

"Does anyone recognise these houses?" A ginger girl in an oversized yellow jumper raised her hand.

"Well actually, that's my house" She pointed to the tower.

"It's mine too" a boy no older than me raised his hand. Soon almost everyone concluded that they knew or had stayed in one the buildings on the island. I still didn't think it was a good idea to own up to the fact that this was my mother’s porch we were sitting on. The fact my house was in the centre of the island had to mean something.

"We should at least investigate the tower" Ryan couldn't help but sound like a leader. The leader of what I have no idea. I finally spoke up and said I would come with him. Phillip stayed with Phebe on the porch of my mother’s house with another girl called Jane. She said that she would make sure they didn't get too scared, another boy called Charles asked if he could some with us. See if his apartment door would unlock with his card key.

Soon there was five of us, marching towards the tower. It had looked close than I thought, each step I took the tower looked no closer. My body was aching with exhaustion, I felt not a day older but decades older. The black sand was deep, my feet sunk a couple of inches like a snow day back home. The size of the building makes it appear closer than it is, it has shiny tinted windows with steel looking fixtures. Sloppy welding and rusty frames, it was as if the building was revealing its age and imperfections to us. The humming grew louder as we started to close in on it, almost unbearable. Who could live here like this?

"Hey, you look worried" Ryan dropped back from the group to walk beside me.

"I'm okay, just thirsty that’s all"

"Yeah, we really need to find something to eat or drink soon before we start eating each other" Ryan nudged into me.

"I'm afraid I don't eat meat" I couldn't help but wonder if he already knew that.

Waking up on a strange island somehow makes you paranoid about everything and everyone.

"Have you noticed yet?"

"noticed what exactly?"

" Well now Julie, I thought you had more whit about you" He laughed at me. Jerk

" There are how many people on this island so far?" He slowed his pace down so that the distance between us and the others grew.

"Seven girls and seven boys?" I did that thing where you heighten your voice at the end of a sentence so that it sounds like a question.

"Good now, have you noticed that my bracelet and yours are different colours?" He looked smug.

"well, actually it was the first thing I noticed"

" So there are exactly seven silver bracelets and seven red" he stopped walking and faced me.

"Julie, what if that's because there are supposed to be two groups?" I laughed at his ridiculous question and carried on walking.

The doors to the tower were grand, expensive looking but dirty from the sand. The black tinted doors had a beautiful 30's art deco pattern around them.

"The key doesn't work" Charles was getting annoyed.

"wait, that's new" He said.

Next to the beautiful doors was a black techno looking thing. Like one of those eye scanners you see in spy movies. I walked through the group and put my metal bracelet against it, it beeped a few times and then flashed red.

"Charles try yours" He pushed his red bracelet against the door scanner. It beeped again then flashed red.

"Okay someone else try" Ryan being the born leader called each of us up one by one until finally he pushed his bracelet next to the scanner. Nothing happened for a while until a few seconds later it flashed green. The door unlocked with a mechanical clunking noise. "Access granted".

"Sorry did the door just talk to you?" I couldn't help but laugh at how stupid that would be. Ryan pulled open the door first and made a heroic declaration about how he would be the first to see if it's safe. My hero. Charles followed him and then returned to inform us unheroic folk that it was safe to come in. Tyrone and Joanne went in next follow by myself. The hallway was a grand room, filled with smart looking furniture. Typical rich English décor, with a beautiful white marble floor and a large front desk. I could imagine the smart dressed receptionist denying people access for not being presentable enough. The elevator was already at the ground floor when we arrived. The lights were out but somehow the elevator had power. We didn't question it for too long because Charles had mentioned that he was on floor seventeen. 17 flights of stairs in wet knickers. I went in first followed by Ryan and then Charles, Tyrone and finally Joanne who wasn't a small girl. Ryan had his back to me when Joanne pushed backwards to avoid the closing doors. His hand crashed into mine causing our bracelets to connect. They let off a short but hard shock knocking both of us to floor. I could hear Joanne screaming and tyrone hovering over me asking if I was dead, I was still conscious but barely breathing from the shock. In the panic and cramped elevator someone must have pushed the buttons because the speaker announced our arrival at the penthouse top floor.

***

My mind and body started to reconnect, adjusting to the pain. I snapped out of REM and my body flung up, mouth wide open letting out sharp gasp.

"Oh my god, we for sure thought you was both dead" Tyrone wasn't the most optimistic. "I'm okay, I think" Again I did the body pat down, checking for any cuts or burns. My mother worked in a hospital, she always talked about people who had no access to medicines and that even a paper cut could be life threatening.

"I'm all here" why did I have to say that out loud.

"Sorry, what?" Tyrone looked confused.

"Don't worry, is Ryan okay" I asked.

"He's fine, we put him in his bed" Joanne was stuffing her face with some strange looking mush.

"What do you mean his bed?" I asked.

"yeah, look" tyrone pointed to the wall. A painting the size of my bath hung above the marble fire place, in the centre of the painting a grey-haired man sat with authority. Next to him stood a beautiful young wife and on the left, was Ryan, he looked just as unhappy about the painting as I was.

"Why didn't he tell us?" I was angry, somehow it felt like he had lied to me. Jerk face

"well it's obvious, isn't it?" Charles walked out of what I can assume from the flush was a bathroom.

"Why?"

"Because Julie, his family own this building." Charles sounded resentful. That would make sense, his bracelet was the only one that worked.

"Can I see him?" I asked nicely.

"It's not my house, you don't need my permission" Charles was a snappy boy. I got up from the sofa I had awoken from and past the stacks of metal boxes that Joanne was helping herself to. The pent house looked over the entire island, the left side of the living room was made from perfectly clear glass. I took a moment to take it all in, the ocean’s tide had come back in. I could see mountains made of black sand for as far as I could see. It was almost the perfect view, you know. If we weren’t stuck here and all. The living room felt tense, like the others had already decided they didn't want to go back outside or share food with me. Ryan was laying under the covers with his suit still perfectly crease free, I looked around his bedroom at all his books. The classics like, Moby dick, the catcher in the rye and of course Bridget jones. His CD collection was small but sweet, some strokes and a six-disc set of driving music. I assume this was a present from his probably very beautiful girlfriend. Nobody would voluntary purchase a cd set that's over twelve hours long.

"Julie come here" he whispered.

"You're awake" He looked pale but still beautiful.

"Quickly, before they hear me" He snapped.

I walked over to his modern looking bed, it had a silver chrome base with a thick memory foam mattress and black silk sheets.

"Is this bed supposed to levitate" I laughed at him

"Like is this one of those NASA beds?" I'm too funny sometimes.

He grabbed my arm and pulled me closer.

"They know" He said.

"They being and know what?" I'm so confused.

"I heard them talking" He said in a serious tone.

"They know about the bracelets" He looked at my wrist.

"What about them?" I'm not catching on.

"You're the only silver one here" He pointed at the door.

"help me up, I need to change and we need to get out of here" He sounded so urgent.

What had they been talking about? Was I going to become subject to a fashion war? So, what if mine is silver and they all had red ones.

Ryan flung his jacket on the bed and pulled off his white shirt over his head, his body wasn't crease free like the suit. His body is so toned, each part of him covered in muscle and perfection. It was wrong to look but who knows if I will live long enough to see another mans body. He tapped the wall and flung open a hidden wardrobe.

"How come you never told me that you lived here?" I asked.

"I don't, well not really."

"This is my dad's tower"

"I just stay here, every other weekend, that's the deal anyways" He pulled on some skinny black jeans and a black t-shirt.

"We need to get you out of here" He said with such urgency again.

"I don't get why?" I asked him again.

"They've figured out that you and Phillip and the others have silver." He sounded concerned still.

"That doesn't mean anything Ryan?!"

"Hey, we should take some food and water to the others” Ryan walked into the living room like what he had just said was nothing.

“If you want to call this food” Joanna lifted her head up out of one of the metal boxes.

“We should take this one” Charles closed shut the box Joanne was stuffing her face with. “Just the one? There is fourteen of us” I couldn't help myself.

“Yes, but they will eat it all” Charles snapped back at me.

“Some of them are just kids Charlie” by the face he pulled he didn't like being called Charlie. “Yes, they are kids Julie” he picked up the case and headed for the door.

“If we give them all the food, they will eat it leaving nothing for me” Charlie slammed the door shut behind him.

“for us” I snapped back.

“I guess I'll get the water then” Tyrone tried to move a barrel, tried being the key word there. I skipped out on the crowded lift and decided to take the stairs, each floor was beautifully decorated with marble flooring and exotic plants. Floor after floor drowning with unbearable silence, not even the humming of the plates. I couldn't stop trying to decipher what Ryan had meant by ‘they know about the bracelets’. who cares? I don't care. To my surprise only Ryan was waiting in the lobby with his perfectly good-looking hair, he was slumped over a Victorian looking sofa looking all droopy.

“Hey are you okay?” He shot up into what I guess he thought was a more appropriate posture.

“Sure, I didn't hear you come down”

“I will announce myself next time, like the front door”

“the others didn't want to wait around, I tried to get them to but-”

“you don’t need to explain”

The lobby was fun, it had tons of sofas and arm chairs with little candy bowls. The lights were out and the tinted glass almost made it dark, but it felt a hundred times safer than outside. I couldn’t tell if it was Ryan or the building but I feel better.

“What did you mean upstairs, about them knowing?”

“Listen, this is going to sound insane but when I woke up I felt something” his eyes avoided me like the plague.

“You felt something for me?” weird.

“No Julie, I felt something” he stood up walked over to me and whispered into my ear

“not here Julie”

Time felt so still, I don't know if it was the way he said it or the fact his face was so close to mine.

“We should go find Phillip, he's probably worried” I walked towards the door.

Ryan looked confused as if somehow, I was supposed to breakdown or beg him to talk. Not me. I know boys, they love a helpless girl.

Charles was halfway through my mother’s window when we got back to her house. He had smashed it with a part of the wooden porch. I half expect my mother to smack him over the head with something and march him out the front door. The windows where covered in dirt from the sandy landscape and gushing winds, it felt safe before but now everyone could see into my home. Charlie was trying to unlock the door from the inside, banging into it with his stupid body. I pushed through the Crowd and put my wrist up to the scanner, the door unlocked with the same computer like sound. “Access Granted” I could hear people talking about me but I'm too angry to care.

“Charlie, get out of my house!!!”

“Get out you idiot”

“now”

I was too angry to see it at first. This wasn't my house.

“You live here?” Ryan had followed me through the door.

The living room looked the same but not the same, the walls white, the furniture missing. No photos, no sofas even the rug was gone. In its place was a stack of TVs, I counted almost twenty of them. They all faced towards the front door, different sizes and generations. A mint green 1930’s TV sat next to a high tech flat screen, TVs all in a row facing the door. Some were stacked on top of each other, somewhere slightly behind others. Charlie started to walk around the back of them, checking for any cables.

“you said you lived here Julie?” Charles stopped and started at me, as if implying the TV’s had something to do with me.

“yes and no” I turned to look at Ryan just as the back row of televisions turned on. A black screen with basic white text flickered on, each one saying welcome. The front row turned on next with a sinister powering up sound, displaying the same black screen with the same basic white text saying HOME. I could hear people starting to panic on the porch, peering through the broken window. Phillip pushed his way through and gripped my hand. Ryan ordered that everyone should leave the area but me, Tyrone, Charles, Connor and Jess. Three reds and three silvers.

Ryan closed the door and walked straight up to the TV in the center of them all, it had four brown legs with a matching TV frame. On the front was another bracelet scanner, he pushed his wrist against it but nothing happened.

“You next” he pointed at Charles. Nothing happened.

“Now you” he pointed at me. I pushed my wrist up against the scanner and started to walk back in line. Suddenly the screens turned red, then black then even blacker until they were all off.

“Welcome Megan” the TV in the center stayed on.

“Who is Megan” Jess looked at me. I shrugged it off, I didn't want to tell them my real name. I had no motive to lie but even Ryan didn't admit to owning the scraper straight away.

A symbol faded onto the televisions.

“what is it?” Charlie looked at me.

“why would I know” the screens were old, not shabby chic but old. They flicked making the symbol almost impossible to understand.

It could have been an animal of some kind, a man’s voice started to talk. “Welcome, I wanted to start by saying this will be your new home” he paused for a while. “Let me start with the rules, there are fourteen of you but only seven can survive” his voice didn't flinch, no sound of concern or empathy. A cold man. “Not six, or eight, only seven” Ryan grabbed my hand, I looked round at him and everyone else. We were all stunned by his words.

Ryan doesn’t look surprised; does he know who the man is?

Ryan's grip tightened. “you cannot leave the island, you cannot hide from the island and you cannot defeat the island” the man’s voice stopped and the screens shut off almost Instantly.

The screens powered on one at a time, they all displayed the black screen with white letters spelling out i-l-d-n-s-a. island.

I knew what this meant and I knew that Ryan knew what this meant. Seven. Seven only.

They want us to kill, Kill children.

Without a flicker of hesitation, I walked past the televisions and run up the stairs towards my bedroom. The floor boards were bare and creaky, my bedroom door was locked.

“Ryan” I screamed down to him.

“Ryan” he came stomping up the stairs towards me.

“what's wrong?” He looked genuinely panicked.

“kick down this door?” He titled his head a little.

“I would do it myself but I'm not in the mood” I slipped him a half smile and turn to watch his foot clammed into the door.

I need to play the game, if he thinks I am weak I have the element of surprise later. No children are going to die on this island.

The wood cracks slightly with every kick, someone from the called up the stairs and asked if he needed any help. It almost sounded sinister like he was going to take me out. The door finally gave way and swung open, Ryan grabbed my hand and pulled me in slamming the door shut behind us. The room was full of metal cases and one silver bag, it was all foreign to me. Ryan walked over to the window and looked down at the children playing.

"They want us to fight each other?" he said.

"who exactly are they?" He laughed.

“The people, the ones doing this”

Why is he so calm? I need food.

"We should find somewhere to sleep" he said.

“I’m not leaving until you tell me what’s going on” I pulled him away from the window and looked directly I into his deep eyes.

“listen to me” he held my arm.

“I don’t know what is going on, but what I do know if Charles had already figured out that half of us are red and the other silver” he paused.

“after that show, or whatever it is he will make a divide”

“seven reds or seven silvers” I thought out loud again

“me, you, Philip and that little girl Phebe I think. We will stay at my house tonight, tomorrow we can work start a search group” he smiled and walked out if the door. I peered out of the window and saw Ryan starting to address the group, he was telling everyone to ration the food in the case they had taken from the tower and find someone where to sleep. He suggested that they sleep at least in pairs of two and in the shacks or caravans. Charles and Joannea volunteered to start handing out the food and water. No surprise, keeping the best for themselves. I’ll search the rest of the house and then grab Phebe and Phillip. Just as I was about to walk away from the window Ryan shot me a glare, I caught his eye and gave him a half-hearted smirk.

The trunks in my room were filled with dried food packets, they were white paper like squares with black writing in the centre. They mostly read things like pasta and mash, an occasional pudding packet. I pulled out two puddings and a bottle of water, I noticed the silver bag on the floor again. It felt heavy, like a bag of blankets. The zip had been broken off, like someone clumsy had packed it in a hurry. Without another thought I grabbed he bag and headed for the front door, I slammed the door shut. “door locked” people turned to look at me on the porch, I had hoped that I could slip out unnoticed.

“why did you look the door” Charles shouted.

“it was an accident” I tried to shake the comment off and walked down towards the caravans.

“Phillip” he must be in one of them.

“they are in my cabin at the end” Jane caught up behind me.

“listen Jane, can you get Phillip and Phebe to tower”

“The tower?” she stopped walking.

“it’s not safe, I will tell you everything later”

“erm” Jane paused for a moment her brown short hair waving in the cool breeze.

“just bring the kids to the tower in ten minutes, try not to let them see yo-”

“let who see us” her face dropped

“everyone”

I slipped through a gap between two caravans and walked behind the row of shacks and cabins, I could hear people starting to walk down on the other side. Chatting about who’s place they were going to stay at tonight. How can everyone be acting to calm about the situation? We will most likely die here, who knows what they will do if we don’t kill each other? I got to the last house in the row, my house. I could hear Joanne, Charles and Ryan talking. Ryan told them to stay together tonight and stay alert, Charles wanted to stay in the tower, he wanted to go to floor 17 and find out if his clothes were their but Ryan suggested that he stayed at Joanne’s caravan because it was getting dark quickly.

Jo and Charlie started to walk away and giggle, she was clearly into him.

All Charlie is into is himself love.

“you can come out now” Ryan shut the metal case and turned around to face my house.

“how did you know” I moved around the side if the house slowly to check we were alone.

“my dad used to take us hunting”

“hunting, that’s awful” I sat on my porch and fiddled with one of the planks on the floor.

“what you don’t eat animals?” he laughed.

“nope”

“even in all of this?” he waved his hands around as if introducing a scene at a theatre

“have you looked at the food?”

“no” he looked confused

“meat free baby” I flipped up a peace sign and laughed at him

The wooden plank finally gave way and one of the nails fell out, I slipped the nail into my pocket whilst Ryan was preoccupied with checking the food packets.

“you’re right” he slammed the case shut.

“even in all of this, you’re upset about going vegan?” I laughed and mimicked his hand gestures.

“why are you pulling up the porch?” Ryan walked over the help me with another plank.

“curious, help me with another one”

After we had removed three planks, I laid flat and stuck my head under the porch floor.

“what is it?” Ryan shouted, despite being only inches away from me.

“more sand” I pulled my head up and covered the hole with the planks again.

“what was the point then?” Ryan stamped down on the planks.

“wires, the house has power; wires would lead us back to the source of the power”

Just as Ryan sat down Jane and the kids came running around the corner of my house.

“we should go quickly” Ryan said as he pulled me up from the floor.

The walk felt even longer this time, with only a string of white bulbs to guide us to the tower we shuffled along in blinding darkness. My mind going into overdrive. Ryan knows more than he is letting on, what if he wants us to come back to the tower because he thinks we are weak? Kill us off whilst we sleep in his own home. Ryan wouldn’t do that would he? He wouldn’t. He can’t, I won’t let him. Me, Phillip, Jane, Jess, Skyler, Tyrone and Amy are silver. That means Ryan, Charlie, Jo, Connor, Rex, Claire and Phebe are Red. Whoever is doing this wants two children to fight until death. I won’t let it happen, I must act weak in front of Ryan, Connor, Charlie and Jo. They are my only challenge here, but Ryan. How could I kill him? Tomorrow I’ll find that cave, take Jane and the kids. If we wait things out until the other fight it out, then they should let us go, right? Seven no more or less, that’s what the man said but he wouldn’t leave us here to die. Would he?

Ryan opened the door, although it was loud we were far enough to not have to worry about the others hearing us. The ground floor was in complete darkness, only the elevator buttons were visceral.

“everyone to the light, I’m going to shut the doors” Ryan was last in. The realisation that we were strangers forced onto an island set in, my hands started the shake uncontrollably. Each step towards the elevator in total darkness, avoiding my urge to cry. Scream.

“why did you lie to me?” Phillip grabbed my hand out of the darkness

“I haven’t?”

“you said your name was Julie” the boy stopped

“I’m sorry Phillip”

“it’s okay, my name isn’t actually Phillip” he smiled

“what?”

“it’s Pip”

“well pip, do you want to press the button?” the boy raced to the elevator and slapped into the control panel.

“Door locked”

We made it to Ryan’s Pent house floor, Phebe had fallen asleep in Janes arms; her mouth wide open. “you two can take my parents room” Ryan pointed across the living room.

“Megan, help me keep the doors open whilst I get something to wedge them” Ryan pushed the door back.

“why, you shut the doors didn’t you?”

“let’s just take extra care tonight” Ryan dragged over a small sofa, he pushed it through the doors so that the light doors were forced open. I climbed over the sofa and scooped up Pip, I didn’t really take in how grand and spacious Ryan’s house was before. A modern electric fire burned in the centre with three grey sofas surrounding it, small bronze and glass side tables beside each one with rustic looking lamps.

“Why are the lights on?” Pip looked around the room

“it’s a timer, don’t worry guys” Ryan walk over to the open plan kitchen area.

“anyone hungry?” he started to unpack some of the packets from the metal boxes.

“let’s go find you a bath and some clothes” I carried pip through Ryan’s bedroom into his on suit,

0 notes