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sinner-as-saint · 3 days ago

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we dance inside a burning room

Morpheus x Immortal!Reader au

Summary: It happened so long ago. Your memory of it was blurry. Was it a wish come true? Was it a curse? Was it punishment? A boon, a bane? An experiment? Or was it simply the consequence of your hubris? Whatever it was, lifetimes ago, you stopped being entirely human. You could walk between realms, you stopped aging, and worse of all, you befriended the gods and cosmic beings you once prayed to. And after spending centuries beside them, always welcomed in their realms, always having a seat at their tables, you learned a thing or two about them. You learned that they were as kind and warm as they were selfish and cruel, more arrogant than some gods, and were always so ready to discard whoever they didn’t need anymore. Yet, you were still foolish enough to fall in love with one of them. You tried your hardest to forget Morpheus, thinking that if you simply distance yourself and try to erase him from your memory, that he would simply… go away. But one cannot just forget the Prince of Dreams that easily. Especially not after Morpheus suddenly shows up in the middle of your sex club.

Themes: immortal!reader, dom/switch!reader , switch!morpheus, bratty!morpheus, mild bondage (because you know, the train scene), smut, lovers (?) to enemies to lovers (?), lowkey toxic!morpheus (he’d kind of a terrible ex to have, let’s be honest)

He’d found you.

You knew it the moment Morpheus stepped into the mortal realm with the intention of finding you. A weird, but familiar, shiver danced up and down your spine. He was here. You knew he was coming straight for you. He was on a hunt. You, the prey. There was one question bothering you though. Morpheus knew where you were this whole time, why come find you now?

Deep down, you knew the answer. As bitter as the truth was, you knew the answer. Dream was heartbroken. Alone. So he was seeking that which is familiar, an old friend, anything that would stroke his ego and soothe his pain – something you had the habit of always doing, lifetimes ago – letting him know that he was still loveable. That he was not someone you could easily leave behind in the past. Cajoling him, uplifting his mood, there was a time when you’d do anything for him. Anything. But not now.

Not anymore.

You knew he was here, still you went about your day like it was just another one. Of course, like the nocturnal creature you’d become ever since opening your clubs all over the globe, your ‘day’ began after nine o’clock at night.

You got ready and drove to the heart of the city, to your own little, salacious slice of heaven. Your clubs were everything to you. And you knew it meant a lot to your members as well. A safe place, a judgement free zone where they could meet others with similar tastes, kinks, and desires; where they could explore and experiment in a safe environment, where they could mingle and get away from their mundane lives. Where they could hide in the shadows and whisper their deepest, darkest secrets to people who would understand.

The dark red interior, the dimmed scones on the walls, the private rooms… the sound of hushed voices, giggles and laughs, muffled moans and the energy in the air. Buzzing. Alive. Intense.

But it all ceased. Everything stopped for you. The sounds, the excitement, that feeling of utter belonging – it all stopped the moment you caught a pair of painfully familiar dark eyes. In the sea of red decor, dark shadows, soft dim lights, Morpheus both stood out and blended in at the same time.

Morpheus, darkness personified. With ridiculous soft lips and yearning in his eyes. He carried himself like a king, like an old god. “There you are.” His calm, steady words both soothed and irritated an old wound. He sounded relieved.

“Dream.” You whispered, your voice void of all emotions. You always thought you’d have so much to tell him when you’d see him again. So much hate. So many harsh words to throw at his arrogant face. But this was all you could utter in the moment. Just his name. Nothing else.

He stepped closer, ignoring the people scattered about around you like they never existed. This was how he was. How he always was. Long ago, you were too blind to see it. To blind to see how he treated others because all that mattered was how he treated you. Until, it was your turn to be discarded like an unwanted toy by a petulant child. Only then did you see him for who he was.

Yet, even now, you hated how fast your heart began racing the moment he stepped closer to you. The moment he took up all the space in front of you. When all you could see, hear, smell, and feel was him. You hated how your body reacted to him. Even now, even so many lifetimes later. You hated feeling that sense of belonging. That feeling of puzzle pieces slotting back into the right place.

“This is not where I thought I’d find you.” He said. “You look different.” His eyes lowered, roaming all over your body.

You watched him as he took you in. You knew exactly why he had that look on his face. That betrayed look. Because you looked good, in your little, lacy red dress. Your dark red undergarments very much visible. Your outfit didn’t leave much to the imagination. Except this time around, you weren’t dressed up for him. Anyone who walked by could see you. Could want you. You weren’t his anymore. You watched him realise this. And Morpheus had always been jealous.

He continued, “The last time I saw you–,”

You couldn’t help but scoff and cut him off. “Do you even remember when that was? The last time you saw me?”

The surprised look on his face told you that he wasn’t expecting this tone from you. This defiance. This boldness. So he frowned and said, stepping even closer, “Need I remind you that you chose to come and hide in the mortal realm?”

“It’s not hiding if you knew where I was the whole time, Dream.” You reminded him. You knew. He knew. Everyone fucking knew where you were. “Why are you here?” You taunted, for a moment you forgot what he was capable of and carried on goading him. “I take it she left you for good then, Nada? And now you need to prove to yourself and everyone else that you’re still loveable, so you’ve come to find me?” You chuckled, dryly. “I’m not who I used to be, Morpheus. I won’t be your little toy. That vicious cycle, that push and pull, those games… It's all over. I won’t fall for it, for you. Not this time.”

“I can see that.” He hissed.

“Oh good then.” You rolled your eyes, sighing, “I was wondering if I’d have to kick you out or if you’d get the memo and–,”

“Come back to me.” It was his turn to surprise you. His voice firm, and cold. “It’s never been the same without you. Everyone misses you.” He said. “I miss you.”

Everyone misses you… your friends. You hadn’t thought about them in a long time. You felt a strange weight on your chest upon remembering your time with The Endless. The fun, the laughs, the parties, the pranks.

“Go away, Dream.” You sounded tired.

But Dream didn’t move. “I won’t leave without you.” It sounded like he had his mind made up.

“Oh?” You taunted him again. “So now you need me? Now that Nada has left you? Now that you’re all alone again? Now you want your little toy back?”

Your tone was so condescending and insulting that Morpheus visibly flinched. Again, not expecting it. Not from you. How could he? You used to be so obedient. His most well-behaved little plaything.

He was careful when he spoke next. His voice just as steady as earlier, but colder, deeper. His cadence slower when he said, “It was her departure that brought me back to my senses. Nada was the forbidden fruit I was never meant nor allowed to have. And she left, rightfully so, because I gave her hell.” Literally. “But you,” He paused, “You were always mine. And I was to blind to see it. I cannot escape you. I’ve tried everything. I cannot let you go.”

You had to laugh in his face. He looked offended, pissed off, and guilty all at once.

“Truly,” Your laughter ended with giggles, "I had forgotten, and frankly I’ve missed, your theatrics.” You gave him a fake smile and said, “Leave,” You told him, “Surely this place isn’t suitable for you, my Lord.” You added, “Desire would adore this place though. They’ve always been much more fun and just better than you in every way.” You knew exactly how tense Dream and Desire’s bond was. “Go back to your castle, Morpheus, and craft away your precious dreams and nightmares. And maybe think about what you did while brooding.”

“Careful.” He warned.

That pissed you off. “Why? You get to be selfish, and cruel, and heartless. But I must be careful?”

A slow blink, then he said, “You don’t belong here. Not anymore. You’ve forgotten who you are, you were almost a god once, do you remember?”

“Don’t patronise me!” You hissed, leaning in just a little, really getting in his face to say, “I was always “almost” everything, wasn’t I, Dream? Almost perfect. Almost yours. Always, almost. But I was never good enough for you, was I?”

“You’re angry.” Was all he said.

“Yes, I am fucking angry.” You refused to look away from his eyes, no matter how intense his stare got.

“Tell me how to make it better.”

“Leave. Go away. And never, ever come back here.”

Morpheus sighed, “And leave you alone here? In this… place?”

You get defensive. “It’s my club. What’s the issue?”

“This isn’t you.” He argued.

“Oh stop it, Dream.” You almost laughed again. “Stop acting like you know me.”

“But I do know you.” He argued in that calm, collected, annoying way of his. “I have known you for so long. You’re my oldest friend. I have known you for so long I barely remember what it was like before you. It’s almost as if… there never was a before you.”

You scoffed. “Always so dramatic, Dream.”

“I know I’ve hurt you. I abandoned you. I never checked in. I thought…” He closed his eyes and sighed, like it pained him to say it. “I thought you were better off without me.”

“No,” You corrected him, “You discarded me like I was something you had no use for anymore.”

It angered him when you threw the truth in his face. “I never asked you to leave, I never kicked you out–,”

“You didn’t have to!” You raised your voice a little, not that it made a difference. The music, the sound of glasses clinking, the sound of laughter and soft conversations all around you concealed your anger. “It was… understood that I was nothing other than a distraction.”

“No.” He began, “I thought you–,”

“Oh that’s your problem, Dream. You think you know everything.” You shook your head and tried to leave, but Morpheus grabbed you by the wrist and pulled you into him. “Don’t.” You said, “Don’t do this.”

“I need you back.” He repeated his words from earlier, his one hand tightly wrapped around your wrist while his other arm wrapped around your waist, keeping your body pressed against his.

For a moment, only for a moment you felt like you could so easily give in. His warmth, the intensity in his stare, his lean body… you almost gave in. But you quickly recovered, “It doesn’t work like that. Not here. Not anymore. You don’t make the rules here.”

“Then make them.” He offered. “Make your rules, punish me. Use me. Take whatever you want. Hurt me, if you must. But please forgive me. And come back to me.”

You didn’t know how it happened, but you weren’t thinking straight. And next thing you knew, your hand was firmly wrapped around his delicate neck, you squeezed just enough to surprise him yet again. “Stop telling me what to do, Morpheus.” You whispered, your voice darker than you expected.

His hand released your other wrist immediately, almost as if in shock. “Fine.” He swallowed, whispering, “I won’t.” He was breathing heavier, you could also feel his pulse quicken.

Could it be…?

“You want to be forgiven?”

“Yes.” He answered quickly, a softer look in his eyes.

“You’re gonna have to earn it, Dream.” You knew exactly how much that would hurt his ego. He was Dream of The Endless. The Lord of The Dreaming. One of the most powerful cosmic beings to ever exist.

Surely he wouldn’t–

“I’ll do anything for you.” He said, surprising you yet again. “Anything.” He sounded breathless.

—

Finding your way to your private room was easy, and Morpheus followed you without any word said.

And upon entering, you tried to visualise the room through his eyes. It was so obvious that this was your playroom. And he could tell. And he wasn’t entirely happy about it. You could almost hear the questions he asked himself mentally.

Who else had you had here? Who else had touched you? How many times? Did you like it? Were they good to you? Were they better than him?

Even as you shut the door behind you and faced him, he was so quiet – not in control for once. His unanswered questions bothered him. You could tell because he looked at you like you’d betrayed him. Like you were the one causing him pain. His stare was accusatory. You almost smirked at the thought.

“We’ve played these games before, haven’t we?”

“We have.” He answered, probably also thinking back to all those hours you’d spent in his bed. Always his to play with. Always ready. Always eager.

“And you know the rules.”

“I do.”

You advanced towards him. “Just one little difference this time around, you are not in charge. You understand, Dream?”

“Yes.” He stood so perfectly still, it was like he was not here at all. But he was. And he was powerful enough to leave whenever he wanted. You both knew that. The fact that he chose to still be here… it meant something.

But you refused to give in. Not yet. So you just said, “Good.”

He was surprised, and slightly disoriented as you led him to the soft bed and pushed him down. You climbed on top of him. You settled comfortably, your legs around his lean waist, your dress barely covering your body but neither one of you cared.

Morpheus looked up at you with nothing but surprise, adoration, and lust. “I’ve missed you.” He murmured, as you leaned down to gently brush your lips with his. He gasped, surprised and maybe overwhelmed. His hands immediately rubbed up and down your sides lovingly. Like an old habit of his.

“It’s funny how everyone says the same thing whenever I bring them in here and get on top of them.” You whispered, your lips brushing with his ever so gently.

A pause. He processed, then got angry. His grip tightened as he grabbed you by the hips. “How dare you let someone else touch what’s–,”

“Shh,” You cut him off, pulling away a little to look down at him. “Watch your tone.” You said, sternly. Morpheus tried reaching up to press his lips to yours, but you pulled away really quickly. “So bratty, Dream.” You smirked. “For someone so powerful, you’ve always been so bratty. I wonder why no one’s ever punished you for it.”

He scoffed. “I wonder.” He taunted, his tone as pompous as always. Dream did like to gloat.

“Drop the attitude, Dream. Else I will do something about it. And you won’t like it.”

Morpheus smirked, with you still straddling him, your core pressing down on his crotch. “And what are you gonna do about it?” He sassed.

Ah. Yes. He always did underestimate everyone else. You reached out and slowly traced his mouth with your finger. You spoke softly when you did. “I’ll shut your bratty mouth up. That’s what I’m gonna do.” You promised.

And there it was again. That defiance in his stare. The hunger, the lust. And the mischief as he looked up at you. You could feel his muscles tensing underneath you. You smirked when you noticed the effect you have on him, and how he couldn’t help but stare at your almost naked body on top of his. At least some things remained the same.

“You need to learn how to not be such an arrogant fuck sometimes.” You trailed your fingertips down and back up his slender neck, making him squirm just a little as you grabbed his jaw and forced him to look you in the eyes. “Need to learn how to be less of an entitled prick.”

Morpheus was pleasantly surprised. “There was a time you’d tell me I was perfect. That I was everything you ever wanted.”

“I was an idiot, clearly.”

That smirk on his pretty lips annoyed you. “No.” He dared argue, touching you wherever he could. “You were mine. You were happy. With me, by my side. Where you belong. You left and now look at what’s happened. You’ve gotten–”

“You talk too much.” Without another word said, you grabbed both his hands and pulled them away from your body and pinned both of his wrists above his head, down on the pillows. “And keep your hands there.” You ordered. “Don’t touch me.”

But as expected, Morpheus didn’t listen. He wasn’t used to being ordered around. So he moved his hands back on you, pulling you closer and caressing your skin. He just needed to touch you.

But you were running out of patience. You grabbed both his hands and pinned them above his head again. “I said, keep them there.” You said slowly, in a strict voice.

He smirked at first, but upon seeing that you were reaching for the silky black ropes on the small bedside table, his smile faded at once. “You won’t dare–,”

You chuckled, “Oh, Dream. You keep forgetting the rules.” Maybe it’s because he was in shock or maybe he finally surrendered, because he didn’t struggle as you carefully tied his wrists together. He just looked up at you with those eyes, and pouty mouth. The cool, silky rope glided against his skin. You secured his wrists to the metal headboard.

Once done, you pulled away to get a good look at him, beneath you, tied up and pink, soft lips parted as he awaited what’s next. You smirked at how he gave you his best tortured, teary, puppy dog eyes. “There, now stay still. I don’t have much time, my… friends out there must be waiting for me.” You said, making him even more furious. One thing about Morpheus, he did not like not being a priority. Plus, you made this sound like a chore.

He clenched his jaw.

You felt a sudden rush at the mere thought of having him like this. Completely at your mercy. Of course, he could get out of the weak knots you tied him with in the blink of an eye. But the realization of how he chose to play along and be there, all for you to play with, filled you with pride.

Morpheus’s face was flushed, and you could tell he was flustered and hot and bothered already – and you had barely touched him yet. “You think you can always have your way, don’t you, Dream?” Your voice barely above a whisper as you beckoned that power from deep inside you.

After spending centuries beside the Endless and other gods, you’d learned a thing or two. You had no powers as destructive as the ones the Endless had, but magic could still be learned. And given you were no longer fully human, it came easily to you. So you perfected it.

A wave of your hand and you were both naked, warm skin pressing against one another. Hearts racing, because while you had done this before, you’d never taken control in bed with Morpheus. And while it was a long time coming, it was still new.

But, he deserved this. To be messed with and for once, not calling the shots. So you ignored the doubts and did what you did best.

You put on a show.

You settled on his right thigh. His warm, smooth skin pressing against your bare, wet core. You rolled your hips gently against his thigh and you felt the familiar tingle dance down your spine. “Fuck…”

Morpheus watched you ride his thigh slowly, lips parted, his cock beginning to throb and leak. He knew then that this was going to be a long, hard night for him.

“You will regret this.” He said, sounding a little out of breath. His voice deeper somehow.

You chuckled, pressing both your palms against his toned abdomen, carefully avoiding touching him right where he needed you as you worked to get yourself off by humping his thigh. “Oh, will I?”

You were leaving behind a damp patch on his skin, breasts bouncing gently, lips parted, softly gasping as you made yourself come.

He watched how your soft moans got louder and how you humped his thigh faster, getting higher… and higher… you tilted your head back, purposely putting on a show just for him. “Oh,” You gasped, “Morpheus…”

“You’re cruel.” He groaned when you whined wantonly, and he gently lifted his thigh – pressing further into your clit. He felt your wetness smearing all over his skin and he hopelessly wanted a taste. “Let me touch you.”

“No.”

Morpheus’s cock was leaking by the time you came undone above him, leaving him still hard and throbbing.

“Let me…” he murmured as he watched you come down from your high. He was desperate, and hungry and he just wanted you wrapped around him. He needed to feel you, and your warmth. “I–,”

You cut him off quickly, “Don’t make me gag you, Morpheus.” You chuckled as you slowed down and finally came to a stop, still straddling his thigh. “Let me…,” You mimicked in a voice that was sure to annoy him. “Let me touch you.” You mocked him, chuckling. “Such a brat. You’ve never known patience, or learned how to ask nicely, have you?” You smirked again, leaning in to trace his lips with your tongue, kissing the corners of his mouth. “You always just take whatever you want. You never ask, you never wait. You just take, and take, and take.”

You gave him a brief kiss before finally wrapping your hand around his cock. He almost hissed and whimpered as he closed his eyes and gasped, relishing your touch. He felt nice and hard, and big.

“Not so scary and mean now, are you, Dream?” You lazily stroked his length, up and down. “All tied up and helpless in my bed.” Your thumb rubbed his tip slowly, making him groan as you kissed your way down his neck. You kissed his skin feverishly, leaving your marks behind as you bit and sucked around the base of his throat, making him shudder in pleasure and moan quietly.

A soft chuckle left his lips. “Go ahead,” He spoke again, clearly not understanding your previous threat. Hence the condescending tone. “Use me and have your little fun, pet.” He tilted his head back, exposing his throat.

You froze. That damned nickname. Then you pulled away to look down at him. The arrogance in his eyes was back now that the surprise had vanished. And you had to do something about that, didn’t you?

“Oh, Dream.” You said, reaching for the nearest piece of clothing you could find. Your lacy, dark red underwear from earlier. How perfect. You held back a giggle as you balled it up and shoved it in his mouth before he could process it. And he allowed it. “I did warn you about keeping your mouth shut, didn’t I?”

It was rare to see Morpheus so… defeated. So… submissive. You placed your palm over his stuffed mouth and said, “Now that you won’t interrupt my fun, where were we?”

His eyes rolled to the back of his head as you resumed touching him, your hand moving carefully up and down his cock. His whines were now muffled. His face in a pleasurable frown. He was… quite a sight to behold. Dream has always been so… heavenly to look at.

Morpheus opened his eyes to look at you. His eyes were darker, his gaze more intense and he tried to thrust his cock up into your fist but then gave up because each time he did, you would just let go of him.

“Don’t even try, Dream.” You glared at him.

So he didn’t do anything except let you toy with him however you liked. Morpheus, arrogant Morpheus, was quiet for once.

You chuckled each time you felt him twitch under you. You smirked as you brought him right on the edge, the sound of music from the main area of the club reached your room but it was muffled, as were Morpheus’ moans and groans. He was painfully hard and throbbing and desperate. You leaned down to kiss him on his hip bones, gentle kisses at first, which turned into greedy nips and bites until you heard him groan even more.

Without any warning, you took him into your mouth, all of him. You placed your mouth on his tip, your tongue slowly circling his tip before you sucked him in.

Morpheus was a mess as you took him in until he hit the back of your throat. You kept your eyes on his perfect face as you sucked on his cock. He closed his eyes momentarily, red fabric obediently stuffed into his mouth, his lips parted as he tilted his head back.

He looked godly, even when he was tied up and powerless.

The muffled gasps and moans which escaped his lips as he squirmed made you smirk. It only made you want to tease him even more, and keep him on the edge. It made you feel even more powerful than usual.

Morpheus relished the warmth of your mouth wrapped around him, perfect like he had dreamt of so often over the past many, many years.

He twitched against your tongue and you tasted some of his pre cum. You slowed down, not wanting to grant him the satisfaction just yet. You took him out of your mouth, licking his cock from bottom to top. Morpheus moaned, the sounds he made were weak and desperate. And so unlike The Dream King.

He swore under his breath as you dragged your tongue over the slit of his tip lazily. You chuckled as he tried thrusting his hips up, hoping that you would stop messing with him already. Your ability of bringing him right to the edge and mercilessly keeping him there for as long as you wished to was driving him insane.

And he could break out of the bondage anytime. He knew that. You knew that. And yet, there he remained.

All for you to play with.

But while you desperately wanted to, you couldn’t play all night. You had your club to look after, and you had Morpheus to kick out when you were done with him. Maybe then he’d know what it’s like to be discarded once you were no longer useful.

Morpheus lost all self-control the moment you sank down on him, your wet warmth wrapping all around him, making him groan in pleasure and sensitivity.

You leaned in, not quite moving like how he wanted you to just yet, and caressed his pretty face, looking him deep in his pretty eyes as you took the now wet fabric out of his mouth and replaced it with three of your fingers. Sliding them gently across his tongue, in and out in slow strokes.

Morpheus gasped, his warm breath sending shivers along your arm while you rocked your hips against his. He was quite a sight, lean body, strong, and handsome but tied to your bed.

“Does that feel good?” You asked, moving against him perfectly, feeling him somehow get harder inside you.

He nodded, applying just the slightest bit of suction to your fingers. You slid them deeper, messing with him. Testing. Teasing. Owning.

You kept moving, so slowly that it was agonising even for you. And then just when you felt him twitch inside you, you lifted your hips up and pulled him out of you. You watched as he almost whined. Wild eyes, gasping for air, he was not used to this. Not used to being the one begging for someone to touch him. Just touch him. Make the pain go away. Make it feel good, please…

“Come on,” You already knew what he was thinking. “Ask nicely, Dream.” You teased. “I don’t have all night.” You added, purposely reminding him that you’d built a life without him. “Beg me. Beg for it.” You said more sternly, whispering against his mouth, lips hovering above his parted ones. You removed your fingers and leaned in to kiss his wet, warm, open mouth ravenously. “Beg me to give you what you want.”

“Please… I need you.” His voice was low, barely even a whisper. But you heard it. His desperation was quite clear. And he was so sensitive, from all that teasing, that once you started riding him again, he began to thrust his hips up trying to match your movements.

But you messed with him even then, you slowed down your pace whenever he got too excited, and you sped up when he least expected it.

“Yes,” You gasped, “This is familiar isn’t it, Dream?”

At some point, he was nothing but a sweaty, moaning mess under you, messy hair, swollen lips, and a throbbing cock. But you wanted more, you wanted to hear him whine some more, you wanted to hear how desperate he could get.

You messed with him for as long as you could, and Morpheus got loud, very loud, growling as you teased him, and whining your name whenever you kept him on the edge for too long. Begging constantly… please, please, please.

You alternated between having him in your mouth and riding his cock, and there was nothing else he could focus on in that moment.

Just you. Only you. He was yours, yours to toy with and tease, yours to use as you pleased.

“Haven’t you tortured me enough?” He asked, breathless and sensitive.

“Is it? Is it enough?” You taunted. “Do you have any idea what it was like being away from you?” Your voice cracked. “You don’t. You were busy while I was here licking my fucking wounds. Wounds I got while thinking I could ever be worthy of your love.”

“But I’m back. And I’m not leaving this time.”

“Yes you are.” You admitted. “You will leave the moment I’m done with you and you will never come back in my life, you hear me?”

Your walls clenched around him, gripping him and milking him perfectly. He was completely gone, begging you to slow down when you kept riding his sensitive, throbbing cock even after he came. Once, twice.

His heart raced, he was breathing hard and fast.

“Please,” He begged one more time.

You made him come again, then finally, you came right after. Both of you gasping for air. The room felt warmer, your head felt cloudy. You calmed your racing heart then grabbed him by the jaw and looked deep into his eyes while you spoke, bitterly. His hands were still tied, and they were itching to just reach out and touch you. “You don’t get to just walk in here and want me back.”

Morpheus simply said, “But you are mine.” He argued, his voice growly like he was losing patience.

“What kind of fucked up logic is this, Dream?” You could see how he was gasping for air, how he was unsure of what you intended to do next. So you left him guessing for as long as you could. “You and I were always like this, weren’t we? Too much. Not enough. Always crossing lines and boundaries, trapped in that vicious cycle because we couldn’t get enough of each other.”

“Let me fix us. Come back to me. It will be different this time. I promise you. I will be yours, wholeheartedly.”

You smiled. “No.”

You went to get up and get out of bed.

But everything happened all at once. Morpheus got his wrists free from the rope with efforts so minimal you gasped in shock. He reached for you, grabbed you and pulled you back in bed so quickly that you barely had time to form a thought.

Next thing you knew, you were lying on your stomach with Morpheus’ hard, warm, lithe body on top of you, his chest pressing into your back, his hands holding you firmly. And his chuckle echoing inside your head.

“Had your fun, little one?” He asked, keeping you trapped in his grip. “Are you done? Hmm? Are you done showing off? Are you done proving your point? Are you done punishing me for what I did? Are you done pretending you’re in control?”

“Dream…” You gasped, feeling his hand finding its way in between your legs. And you whimpered at the feeling of his fingers touching your sensitive clit. Teasing it relentlessly as he spoke.

He scoffed. “What? Did you think you’d tease and taunt me however you’d like and you’d simply get away with it?” He chuckled, “Oh, little pet.” His voice alone sent shivers down your spine. “I suppose it’s time to remind you who truly makes the rules when it comes to you and I…” And just like that, that vicious cycle started all over again. It wasn’t over. It would never be over.

#morpheus x reader #the sandman #morpheus smut #dream of the endless #the sandman netflix

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safination · 1 day ago

Text

It’s cold in The Dreaming

The bolts on the helm chill your fingers. You trace its lines, following the pattern of leather and bone and metal. The spine that protrudes from the snout curl around your lap. What an odd shap. It reminds you of a mosquito—the stuff of nightmares, indeed.

The steps to the thrones are freezing, with the edges digging into your legs. Yet, you stay seated, dressed in a simple dress pants amd button up . . . . You should have brought a jacket with you. Simple clothes don’t aren’t suitable for a queen, but Dream isn’t exactly in formal clothing either.

“You seem displeased with me,” Dream says. There’s a smile om his face thay could barely be called a smile. At least he sounds amused. “Have I done something to gain your ire?"

You tilt your head with a smile. “Do I?”

He stretches his hand out to you, close enough for you to see it as it is — an offering. You take it and slip your cold hands into his own. His hands are warm, so strikingly different from the mood around The Dreaming.

Dream guides you up the steps of the throne, your hand gently resting against his. The helm is secured around your grasp, and you hold it tight as you climb the winding staircase.

Dream’s hold continues even as you reach the platform of the thrones, only releasing your hold when he’s seated you onto his seat. You hold on a little longer, and tug his hand closer to press a single kiss.

There’s a rare, but proper smile on his lips now . . . . Only for it to fade when Lucienne reminds you of her presence.

Right.

The concerns Lucienne bring up are valid ones, but a king settled deeply in his way cannot see other paths.

Still, it doesn’t hurt to try.

“Lucienne is correct.,” you tell Dream, still tracing the lines on his helm. The stars above the throne room shine below you. It’s limiting to be away from them. “The night is high. I can easily bring him back here. I am due to return for the waking world soon —The stars . . . they . . . they call my name.”

“The Corinthian is my responsibility.” Dream stands tall, speaking in a voice that leaves no room for arguments. �� My duty.”

You sit tall on his throne, and do not dignify him with a response.

He leans forward tlwards you, almost bowing. The helm in your hand somehow becomes colder. Yet, you still bring the helm to his head, placing it on him until you could no longer see his eyes. Part of you wants to rip it off his head, but things rarely go as you wish.

Dream looks at you through the glass of his helm, and you wonder what he sees. The weight of an Endless 'gaze is heavy, and this one never seems to looks away. “Will you continue to be displeased?”

“You can rectify my displeasure when you return.” You press your lips on the helm, offering a bit of your power to him. “The stars will guide your travel. I cannot do anything once you’ve arrived.” You press your head against the helmet, letting your eyes flutter to a close. “Let me come with you, my dear.”

Dream presses you back into his throne. “There is no one I trusr more with The Dreaming than you."

“Is there no way you can go tomo—"

Dream leaves before you could finish.

You slump on his throne, and stare at the myriad of stars above your head. “Be back soon.”

Because I am weak to losers and boy-failures. This is just something in my drafts that's been stuck in my head. I have a whole lore planned and outline until the end lol. I don't even know if I'll actually publish it or leave it in my docs, fully written. I am seriously not joking, it's all already planned out and semi-written. I've just been writing it for myself, but I think some might like this. This is like the first 5 minutes of episode one.

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mandalhoerian · 23 hours ago

Text

This story happened in a galaxy, far, far away. It is already over. Nothing can be done to change it.

It is a story of love and loss, friendship and betrayal, survival and defiance. About what it means to be a Jedi, and what it means to leave that behind.

But this isn't quite the story you know or remember.

It isn't one told in grand council chambers or about legendary heroes, fallen or corrupt, but on the forgotten fringes — far from the battlefields that made history. Made canon.

A strange thing about stories—

Though this all happened so long ago and so far away that words cannot measure the time or the distance, it is also happening right now. Right here.

It is happening as you read these words.

The Jedi Order has fallen, darkness blankets the galaxy, you have somehow made it out alive to tell the tale.

The Force beckons.

Your choice starts now.

⸻ Adapted from Revenge of the Sith (2005), Matthew Stover

reader x zayne, xavier, caleb, rafayel, sylus (all separate)

warnings: slavery, death, mentions of suicide, master/padawan relationship (after that relationship is abolished bc. order 66 -- also, masters and padawans in canon are not characterized by age. a padawan can be older than 30. its not a traditional school), alternate dark endings that include yandere etc. abrupt tense change in rafayel's and sylus's i'm sorry, these were all written on different days and had some time inbetween them, so i slipped and wrote theirs in present tense 😭 also, in all of them, i wanted to keep it star wars lore accurate but don't go into it fully expecting 199% canon friendly, fanfiction is my oyster. i tried to explain but im sorry non-star wars gang you may not understand what the hell goes on in this one.... 💔

you have chosen... Zayne, Your Jedi Master

Affiliation: Jedi Order (formerly, Council member) → Survivor in Exile

Homeworld: Coruscant

Species: Human

Force Alignment: Light Side (Jedi, Force Healing practitioner)

Weapon: Single green lightsaber

Era: Clone Wars → Empire

Character Inspiration: Obi-Wan Kenobi, Qui-Gon Jinn

Background

⟡ Zayne was once a legend in the making. From the moment his training began, it was clear he possessed an affinity for the Force unlike anything the Order had seen in a generation, supported by the unusual amounts of midichlorians in his blood. He passed his trials years ahead of his peers, and by his late twenties, he took his seat among the Jedi High Council — the youngest to do so in living memory. To his fellow Jedi, he became known as “the Healer,” a moniker earned not only for his rare and prodigious mastery of Force healing, but also for his willingness to cross battle lines to help planets and systems in need.

⟡ Yet Zayne was never truly at home in the chaos of conflict. He pulled his weight the Clone Wars with the serenity of someone determined to be a still point in a turning world. He avoided violence wherever possible, seeking peaceful resolution, sheltering the innocent, and healing rather than harming. Behind closed doors, he pushed back against the Jedi Council’s hardest edicts: the conscription of children, the acceptance of “acceptable” losses, the steady, shameful slide toward militarism that darkened the Order’s heart. He never rose to open rebellion, of course.

⟡ To the galaxy, Zayne projected unshakeable calm: eyes clear, wisdom measured, composure unbroken even as explosions rocked the hulls around him. But those closest to him saw the cost. Night after night, he wrestled with relentless insomnia and visions that left him gasping in the dark. These dreams, more like prophecies, showed him a future self cloaked in black, crimson blade drawn, committing unspeakable acts. Everyday, he meditated for hours, seeking solace in the Force, clinging desperately to the Light. The visions made him gentle to a fault, slow to anger, deliberate in all things, determined to shape a fate different from the one that haunted his sleep.

Relationship with You

⟡ You became Zayne’s Padawan in the early chaos of the Clone Wars, a last-minute assignment that left you standing, a little uncertain, beside a man who was barely older than you but already the Order’s rising star. The age gap was only a handful of years, but Zayne’s demeanor, the measured calm, the weight of sorrow in his eyes, the way he moved through the motions in the Temple as if he’d been haunting its halls for decades, often made him seem impossibly old. He could be gentle and patient, his instructions never harsh, but his expectations for you were unyielding. Because of the changing times, he instilled in you vigilance instead of serenity. You learned quickly that every lesson, every exhausting drill or meditation, was a form of protection, a way for him to armor you against a galaxy that was growing colder and more uncertain by the day.

⟡ Unlike many Masters, Zayne didn’t teach you by rote or force you to recite the Code until it lost its meaning, leading you through winding Temple gardens, down to silent meditation chambers, even out beneath unfamiliar stars on distant battlefields. He showed you how to listen — to the wind, to the pain of others, to the subtle current of the Force that connected all things. When you faltered, frustrated or afraid, he met you with steady patience, avoiding offering easy answers, only guiding questions.

⟡ In rare, vulnerable moments, he let you glimpse the cracks beneath his calm: his doubts about the Council’s decisions, his fears about the direction the Order was taking. These moments felt like precious secrets, small shards of trust passed quietly between you when the rest of the world was looking elsewhere.

⟡ The longer the war dragged on, the more you found solace in each other. You shared a language of coordinating through glances alone through battles, laughter in low voices as you patched up battered clones, silent moments side-by-side after difficult missions. The simple act of meditating together, or tending wounds in the medbay, became an anchor, something unbreakable and quietly sacred.

⟡ Every loss, every brush with death, thinned out the line between mentor and mentee. He let you see his grief, his exhaustion, the ache that came from trying to heal a galaxy bent on tearing itself apart. And in turn, you let yourself reach for him, not just as a Master, but as someone who understood your heart, your longing for peace, your unwillingness to become another blade in an endless war.

⟡ It was inevitable that affection would take root, hesitant and messy and tangled. When you realized your feelings had shifted into something deeper and more dangerous than loyalty or friendship, Zayne sensed it before you ever put it to words. He addressed it gently, with the same honesty and care that marked everything he did. “It will pass,” he told you in the hush after a battle in which you almost lost him and saw your feelings come to the surface, his tone tender, not dismissive. “You will outgrow this.”

⟡ But there was something in his eyes — something he never voiced, a flicker of regret — that told you the struggle was not yours alone.

Post-Order 66

⟡ When Order 66 tore through the galaxy, you were on different fronts, separated by light-years. As the Clones started attacking you instead of the Separatist droid army, communication channels went dark, panic, betrayal and the Jedi comrades you could feel in the Force going dark one after the other replaced clarity and purpose. In that confusion, you both felt the other’s presence snuffed out like a candle, as well.

⟡ Before any of you could return, no, retreat to back to the Temple on Coruscant, however, every surving Jedi received Master Kenobi's distress signal through the beacon: This is Master Obi-Wan Kenobi. I regret to report that both our Jedi Order and the Republic have fallen, with the dark shadow of the Empire rising to take their place. This message is a warning and a reminder for any surviving Jedi: trust in the Force. Do not return to the Temple. That time has passed, and our future is uncertain. Avoid Coruscant. Avoid detection. Be secret... but be strong. We will each be challenged: our trust, our faith, our friendships. But we must persevere and, in time, I believe a new hope will emerge. May the Force be with you, always.

⟡ You believed your Master had died. He believed his Padawan had been felled among countless others.

⟡ In the end Zayne, managing to get away by the skin of his teeth, was consumed by the unbearable belief that he had failed not only you, but everything he ever stood for. The Order was gone. He wasn't sure any Jedi remained in the galaxy. He, and the Council, were unable to sense the plot that had been unfolding right under their nose. The Clone army that had been given to them, fighting by their side, suddenly turning on them to eliminate them. None of them had been able to see it coming. He hadn't been able to. Because he'd been so self-obsessed, judgement clouded with his own visions.

⟡ And above all else, he mourned you. He replayed those final hours in his mind until they blurred — his own desperate flight, the deafening comm chatter, the endless stream of distress calls from Jedi scattered across a thousand systems. He hadn’t been there for you when you needed him most.

⟡ Had you called out to him, reaching through the Force for your Master, your friend? Had you believed he had abandoned you in the darkness, left you to die alone while clones turned on their commanders? The thought tore at him every time he closed his eyes to get some sleep: the possibility that your last moments were spent in fear, betrayed not just by the galaxy, but by him. He remembered every promise he’d ever made to protect you and be by your side, that you two were going to get through this together and build a better future. All of them were broken all in a single night.

⟡ Unable to reconcile his own role in bringing about the end of his own Order and the death of so many, Zayne abandoned the weapon that had defined him. It wasn't a decision he made as carrying a lightsaber out in the open would give out his identity. The simple fact was, holding a lightsaber triggered flashes of his nightmares, visceral and suffocating, the sight and sound of his blade igniting plunging him into memories of screams and death. Over time, he began fighting only when forced, reluctantly developing a martial arts-centered style, fluid and precise, leveraging agility and careful redirection of force rather than aggression. It was a practical necessity, but also a rejection born out of trauma.

⟡ Years passed quietly, far from Imperial eyes. In the hidden places of the Outer Rim, stories began to spread of a quiet, wandering healer who appeared without warning, treating injuries and illnesses no one else dared touch. Zayne asked nothing in return, trading meditation guidance or old Jedi wisdom for simple shelter or a meal. He helped farmers, refugees, runaways, and lost souls alike, moving on quickly to avoid leaving any lasting mark. But even kindness felt like penance, never enough to lift the burden he carried. Every life he saved felt like an apology whispered to you across the stars.

⟡ After the Purge, you learned quickly that survival depended on motion and discretion. You reinvented yourself as a wandering courier and occasional mechanic — skills you’d pieced together from years of battlefield repairs and resourceful improvisation in warzones. With a battered astromech droid and a starship patched from scrap, you traveled system to system hauling goods, offering occasional repairs, and delivering coded messages for desperate outlaws and small-time traders who couldn’t risk Imperial entanglements. Word of mouth and barter became your currency. You learned to slip through checkpoints, talk your way out of trouble, and vanish when danger grew too close.

⟡ Then, you tracked the rumors what you thought could be a Jedi survivor — bewildered conversations in a cantina, a half-remembered story from a Twi’lek child in a borderlands camp, the trail of a doctor who mended wounds without asking credits or names. The pattern felt familiar: kindness in the shadows, gone by dawn. Every so often you’d find a sign left behind, a meditation stone, a faint trace in the Force, the memory of someone gentle and haunted. Hope was painful, but it was all you had.

⟡ It took months to finally catch up to him, on a dust-choked world with no name, in a village battered by a recent Imperial raid. You found him at the edge of a makeshift medical tent, hunched over a wounded farmer, his once-careful long hair chopped short and streaked with grey that had nothing to with age, the lines on his face deeper, his robes patched and faded. He looked up, sensing you before you spoke, and in that silent instant the years folded away.

⟡ You just stared at each other, struggling to breathe, both searching the other’s face for some proof that this was real. Grief and relief mingled and ached together like an old, yellow bruise becoming red and purple again — the brittle shell of hope you’d carried for years cracking open with a single look.

⟡ He started to stumble over words he’d rehearsed a thousand times, but you shook your head, not ready for forgiveness, not ready for blame. There was too much between you. You asked him, simply, to let you help with the wounded. He nodded, wordless, hands shaking as he handed you bandages. Working side by side in tense silence, the two of you moved through the injured, falling into a ritual you’d once known so well.

⟡ Later, by the low fire of a crumbling barn, you called him "Master," but he corrected you that he was no longer that, and you were no longer his Padawan. There weren't any Jedi here in this room, and you couldn't disagree, heart aching that he didn't deserve that title anyways. The truth came out in fits and starts. You told each other how you’d survived, the running, the losses that had carved you down to the bone. Zayne confessed how he’d abandoned his saber, how the sight of it made his hands shake. You told him of the things you’d done, the people you couldn’t save, the guilt you both carried like another set of scars.

⟡ There were tears, and awkward hugs, and a slow, stumbling warmth that neither of you dared call hope. When you finally slept, it was side-by-side, shoulders brushing, neither of you willing to be the first to move away.

⟡ With the dawn, there was no grand decision. The Empire still hunted your kind; the galaxy was no less cruel. But it was easier to breathe with someone who understood. Despite him telling you that you could go, and that he wasn't your Master, that you had no reason to stay by his side, you traveled together, at first only to the next village, then the next. You weren't about to abandon this man who had fallen into such ruin and become a ghost of his former self propelled forward to survive only by the desire to punish himself for a failure that wasn't his.

⟡ You never called yourselves Jedi again. The word was a wound. But you developed a new purpose: wandering from system to system, healing quietly, teaching how to take care of themselves to refugees and children, slipping away before the Empire’s reach could catch up. He came along for the ride with your courier job and made a home in your starship. You were never quite safe, never quite whole, but the work gave meaning to your days and made the nights bearable.

⟡ You were not what you had been. You were not Master and Padawan. You were not the Order’s last hope. But you were alive, sticking together, finding a fragile peace in a galaxy that had tried to break you both.

⟡ Sometimes, in the hush before dawn, Zayne would look at you as if seeing you for the first time — hopeful, uncertain, almost ready to let himself believe that even after all this loss, love could endure.

Personality

⟡ Stillness, patience, and a quietly overwhelming presence. Zayne’s compassion is not weakness — it’s the steel at his core.

⟡ Lowkey, but never naïve; a subtle sense of humor emerges when least expected.

⟡ Prone to long silences, meditation, and questions that cut through your defenses.

⟡ Never lost his healer’s hands, but the war changed his voice. He’s older, heavier now, slow to trust, quick to forgive.

⟡ Struggles to accept joy, but can’t help reaching for it when you’re near.

Route Themes

⟡ Master/Padawan longing. Power imbalance, slow-burn respect, a connection built through survival and trust, not just rank, the student becoming the teacher in the end to the Master who has lost his way.

⟡ Detachment vs. Desire. Jedi teachings, forbidden love, the tension between duty and the simple, persistent truth of want.

⟡ Healing and Guilt. The question of whether survivors deserve happiness, and if the past can ever be left behind. "We have to do better" and "We have to be better" quotes come into play, and learning to apply them through a positive light stripped from burden, guilt and responsibility.

⟡ Redemption through Connection. Choosing one another, not as Jedi, but as people broken by war and remade by forgiveness.

Endings May Include

⟡ You and Zayne find a forgotten moon in the Unknown Regions, a quiet world where the Force is a gentle current and the Empire never looks. You build a life among forests and rain, tending to each other and the wounded wanderers who find their way to your door. Zayne finally lets himself rest, and the line between Master and Padawan fades into a partnership of equals. When he has healed enough, together, you and Zayne gather a handful of scattered Force-sensitives, rogue Jedi, lost Padawans, those failed by both Empire and Rebellion. You form a secret enclave, a new kind of Order where attachment isn’t forbidden, where the Force is honored in all its forms. Zayne becomes the quiet architect of something gentler, and you become his anchor — partners not just in the Force, but in hope. The galaxy never learns your names, but you have made sown the seeds for a tomorrow made by those you have saved.

⟡ The visions that haunted Zayne all his life finally come to pass. In a desperate stand against the Inquisitorius, you are struck down before his eyes, a casualty of the war neither of you chose. All the careful meditation, all the dogma of the Light, are cast aside by a grief so consuming it feels holy, and the Dark Side suddenly makes the most sense it ever has against a universe that allowed you to unjustly perish like this. It's not with rage that he embraces it, but clarity, a willingness to do what the Light never allowed. With chilling purpose, Zayne chooses to fall, and becomes the shadow in his own visions: he destroys the Inquisitorius from within in a matter of months, hunting them down one by one. When his vengeance is complete, he seeks you in the only way left — walking unflinching to his end, dying by his own hand at your grave, utterly unrepentant, having lost all his faith in the Light Side that failed you.

⟡ Gravely wounded shielding you from Imperial hunters, Zayne’s life flickers out with dawn painting the horizon. His final words are soft—a benediction in your ear, not a goodbye: “Keep the light in your heart. That’s where I’ll find you, always.” In the years that follow, he returns to you as a presence in the Force: a hush at your shoulder, a silhouette in the corner of your dreams, a gentle warmth guiding your hand when doubt creeps in. He teaches you to feel the living Force, to walk in both memory and hope. You grow old, carrying his love in every scar and every smile. He remains unchanged, a flicker, a guardian, the keeping of a promise never broken. When your time finally comes, your last breath finds him waiting — young, ageless, and radiant, his hand reaching for yours beneath a sky that never truly darkens. At last, you step into the Force together, luminous and at peace: love undimmed, reunited beyond the end.

you have chosen... Xavier, the Empire's Prodigal Son

Affiliation: None (formerly Imperial Royalty, ex-Sith apprentice)

Homeworld: Naboo

Species: Human

Force Alignment: Grey

Weapon: Single white/silver-bladed lightsaber (purified from a Sith crystal)

Era: Clone Wars → Empire Era

Character Inspiration: Darth Revan, Din Djarin

Background

⟡ Xavier was born in secret on Naboo, his existence shielded from public record until his father, then-Senator future Emperor, carefully introduced him to the galaxy. Even as a child, Xavier learned to move quietly through the palatial halls of Theed, his every word, gesture, and silence monitored by eyes both loyal and treacherous. To the outside world, he was the model heir: pale, reserved, strikingly intelligent, and always a half-step behind his father, too perfectly mannered to seem real.

⟡ By the time he was old enough to sense the electric charge of the Force all around him, Xavier’s destiny was already set. Palpatine denied the Jedi’s polite requests to “evaluate” his son, using political leverage and bureaucratic obstruction to keep Xavier off Coruscant’s radar. Instead, the Emperor arranged for clandestine Sith instruction — using trusted agents, ancient holocrons, and even his own presence. Xavier’s days were spent mastering fencing and protocol, his nights, in shadowed chambers, learning the Sith arts. The curriculum was brutal: meditation in isolation, survival games, lessons in manipulation and the machinery of fear. Weakness, especially the weakness of compassion, was scorned. All mistakes, big and small, brought “correction.” Every act of cleverness was rewarded with a sliver of approval, always just out of reach.

⟡ Sidious's meteoric rise reshaped Xavier’s life into something scripted and suffocating. He became a living symbol, rarely allowed to speak unscripted, his education handled by the finest tutors in galactic history, languages, and philosophy. But beneath the silk and etiquette, he was isolated. Friendships were discouraged, affection was transactional, and loyalty to his father was enforced by unspoken threats and rewards.

⟡ During the tumult of the Clone Wars, Xavier is Palpatine’s carefully hidden ace, the apprentice whose existence the Jedi never suspect. While the galaxy sees him as a polite, reserved son to the Chancellor, he is steeped in Sith training behind closed doors. Outwardly, he attends Senate sessions, charity galas, and diplomatic banquets as the model aristocrat, always present but never quite at home.

⟡ Whenever the Supreme Chancellor needs a problem solved without drawing the Jedi’s attention, Xavier is quietly dispatched. He deals with inconveniences in the Senate, manipulates or eliminates Republic officials who sniff too close to the truth, and ensures Palpatine’s web of secrets remains untangled, carrying out assassinations, sabotage, and diplomatic manipulation, yet with each mission, the conflict inside him grows.

⟡ Though the Jedi sense a growing darkness, they never suspect Xavier—the Chancellor’s own son — of being the elusive shadow behind failed Separatist plots and vanished dissidents. He’s even been dispatched by his father to shadow Jedi missions, observe their tactics, and report back, all under the guise of “Republic security liaison.” At times, he is ordered to let his targets live, planting evidence or rumors that fuel discord between the Jedi and the Republic.

Relationship with You

⟡ You first met Xavier during a tense negotiation on Coruscant, both of you young and burdened with titles you never asked for. As a Jedi Padawan assigned to “diplomatic security,” you were expected to be vigilant but invisible, yet your instincts kept drawing your attention to the Chancellor’s silent son. He rarely spoke unless spoken to, had the posture of a prince and the presence of a ghost, eyes cold and unreadable. His politeness felt flawless, almost protocol droid-like, but every so often, you caught a flicker of exhaustion or distant pain in his dissociation.

⟡ When an assassin’s shot went astray during a senate summit, you threw yourself between him and the blaster’s path, taking a glancing hit meant for his heart. Xavier, in shock because this wasn't a part of the plan and paranoid if his father was trying to get rid of him for a new apprentice (as it was the rule of the Sith, everyone betrayed each other), tried to dismiss your pain with icy courtesy, but you ignored the droids and medics, tending to him with quiet stubbornness until he finally relented. It was the first time anyone had truly seen him beneath his layers of duty, a moment of raw vulnerability he’d never known. Your gentle insistence, your genuine concern, and the ease with which you offered comfort, without expectation or calculation, became a turning point. After that, he lingered after meetings, sometimes inventing excuses to cross your path, drawn by a need he didn’t yet understand.

⟡ Conversations in the corridors of power grew into secret moments. He was careful, never letting the galaxy see what you were to him, but in the quiet spaces between battles and banquets, he let himself be, asking about your training, your dreams, your doubts about the war. He shared memories of Naboo’s lakes, fragments of childhood lost, thoughts on the burden of legacy. With you, he laughed for the first time in years. You taught him to value small kindnesses, to question orders, to wonder what lay beyond his father's design. Contact with you in any occasion, an accidental brush of hands, a too-long glance, was a risk, an act of quiet rebellion against the role he was meant to play.

⟡ As the Republic faltered and Jedi found themselves isolated, Xavier’s position became untenable. He’d been raised to be the perfect tool, the heir of darkness—but you made him long for something different. Love, to him, was a dangerous and revolutionary force: to care for you was to betray everything he’d been taught, to risk the wrath of his father and the fury of the Sith. However, he couldn’t stop himself. Protecting you became his obsession and an expression of his independence, sometimes subtly, other times at great risk, using his influence to steer missions, tip off allies, or shield you from the worst horrors of war.

⟡ But the galaxy was spiraling toward catastrophe, and he knew—sooner or later—he would be commanded to turn against you. You were Jedi. You were meant to fall. Loving you was the first and only decision he’d ever made for himself, and if fate demanded your life, Xavier would have to choose: obedience or rebellion, darkness or the hope you awakened in him.

Post-Order 66/Empire Era

⟡ The night Order 66 shattered the galaxy, Xavier received a direct, unmistakable command from his father, now Emperor himself. He had known, perhaps from the start, about the quiet, forbidden feelings Xavier harbored for you, a Jedi, an enemy. This order was his final trial: a test not of strength, but of devotion. If he were truly loyal, he’d be the one to hunt you down, to end your life personally as proof of his dedication to the new Galactic Empire and the Sith way. Xavier’s father knew precisely how deep the blade would cut, and how thoroughly this betrayal would break his son’s humanity.

⟡ Xavier chose rebellion. Quietly, ruthlessly, he turned his extensive Sith training and shadowy connections toward a single purpose: saving you from the bloodbath of the Jedi Purge. He tracked you under the guise of a Sith assassin, using the terror of his red blade and Imperial authority as cover. When he finally caught you, cornered and desperate, he stunned you into unconsciousness, whispering apologies you would never hear.

⟡ You awoke days later, hidden in a secure, isolated safehouse deep within the Outer Rim, far from Imperial reach. It was only then you learned the truth that fractured your heart completely: Xavier, the reserved and gentle son of the Chancellor, the boy whose quiet affection you had come to cherish, was a Sith apprentice. His saber was crimson, just as it had appeared in your darkest visions, and everything he’d ever told you felt tainted by betrayal.

⟡ You ignited your saber and leveled it at him, demanding, through grit and unshed tears, that he pick up his weapon and fight. He was a Sith, he should kill you, right? He did not. Instead, he let his saber clatter to the floor, the light dying at his feet, leaving only your blade and the roaring anger in your heart.

⟡ You could have killed him. Should have, maybe, every rule, every instinct, every loss behind you screaming for retribution. But you couldn’t force your hand, not even as you pushed the tip of your blade against his chest and waited for his true nature. He only stood there, empty-handed, watching you with something shattered behind his silence.

⟡ Rage finally boiled over, then. You struck him, open-handed, slaps and fists, every accusation built over years of war and loss pouring out through your hands. The strikes landed with the sick satisfaction of impact, but they didn’t move him. He took each blow without protest, without even the dignity of flinching, as if he needed them, as if they could somehow absolve him for everything he’d done and everything you’d lost.

⟡ You hit him until your strength broke and your vision blurred. The saber you had turned off because the Jedi in you couldn't bring herself to kill, slipped from your grip and clattered to the floor. You screamed questions at him, about trust, about lies, about the friends you would never see again, about all the innocents that had died. Monster, he was a monster. You asked him why he didn't stop it. You asked him why he'd saved you and nobody else. He only answered with silence. A cruel one to you, but to him, there were no words that would give back what was lost.

⟡ And when there was nothing left but your sobs wrecking through the empty safehouse, he stooped to retrieve your saber, set it quietly beside you, advised you to keep your head down and that you had everything you could ever need in this house, and left. He didn’t ask forgiveness or try to explain. He simply walked away, bearing every wound you gave him and every one he could never name, leaving you alone with your anger and your heartbreak and the knowledge that nothing would ever be the same again.

⟡ From that moment onward, Xavier vanished from your sight, but never from your life. As you struggled alone in the lawless corners of the galaxy, constantly hunted by the Empire’s relentless Inquisitors and bounty hunters, you slowly became aware of a presence in the shadows. Imperial patrols disappeared, pursuers inexplicably vanished, surveillance records mysteriously corrupted. Xavier became your ghost, silently eliminating anyone who threatened you, always from a distance, always without ever revealing himself directly.

⟡ It infuriated you. His constant, silent watchfulness felt like both a comfort and a torment, a relentless haunting of what you’d lost. You never saw his face clearly, only glimpses of a pale figure at the edge of your vision, disappearing before you could call his name. Always close enough to protect you, always too far away to confront.

⟡ Gradually, Xavier shed his former identity, surfacing in whispered rumors of the galaxy’s darkest corners as Lumiere, a bounty hunter of unparalleled skill and ruthless efficiency. Lumiere took special interest in contracts on Imperials, corrupt officials, and traitorous Inquisitors. His reputation soared: an anonymous phantom sought to be hired by everyone. Secretly, each contract was chosen carefully — targets who threatened you or those like you, systematically erasing Imperial evidence of your existence and quietly dismantling the network meant to hunt Jedi survivors.

⟡ During these long, lonely years, Xavier underwent a transformation of his own, wrestling the darkness from his heart. Painstakingly, he purified his Sith kyber crystal, turning it from blood-red to a pale, brilliant white, a symbol of the redemption he sought not for himself, but to be worthy of your memory.

⟡ Years passed, and you, too, had adapted to survive, becoming a bounty hunter yourself. Your path occasionally overlapped with Lumiere’s work, technically making you colleagues within the vast, shadowy underworld. Though you knew who Lumiere was and the Empire was still looking for its lost prince, you were aware that he'd left you with the decision of taking the first step, whether you would kill him or confront him. He was waiting for you, a friend or an executioner, always.

Personality

⟡ Quietly intense, restrained. Speaks little, watches much, and rarely reveals his true intent.

⟡ Emotionally self-denying, but not heartless — his compassion emerges in dry humor and small acts of unexpected kindness.

⟡ Years of palace intrigue and Sith discipline have made him suspicious, strategic, and wary of trust, but yearning for something real.

⟡ Haunted by his father’s legacy, and determined never to become him.

⟡ Treats the Force as a burden — uses it only when absolutely necessary. The white blade is both weapon and warning: he cannot fully escape the darkness that made him.

Route Themes

⟡ Almost lovers to enemies, "I did it for you", and second chance romance

⟡ The burden of legacy and upbringing vs. the freedom of the real self

⟡ Mercy as rebellion x "My mercy prevails over my wrath"

⟡ You and Xavier as partners on the run — outlaws, fugitives, but never alone

⟡ Making peace with a future neither of you expected

Endings May Include

⟡ In the end, you cannot forgive Xavier. In a final confrontation, he refuses to fight you. “If this is justice, then let it be yours.” You strike him down. His last words are a plea for your future, not his own. The Empire loses its shadow before they can reclaim him, and you’re left with the heavy peace of vengeance, forever haunted by what was lost.

⟡ Together, you become the galaxy’s most wanted as a pair of legendary outlaws. Sometimes you’re partners in heists; sometimes you lay low as lovers in a nameless starport, always looking over your shoulders but always together, building a new code that belongs to no one but you two.

⟡ Xavier returns to the heart of the Empire, taking up his birthright as the Emperor’s son and the Sith's Apprentice. The cycle is complete. In the end, as all Sith do, Xavier — finally forced to choose between you and his father — kills the Emperor in a storm of power and fury, taking the throne for himself. The galaxy quakes as Xavier is crowned the new Emperor and secretly, the only Sith Lord, casting aside all pretense of hiding. He offers you a place at his side, not as a prisoner, but as his equal: his Empress, partner, and co-ruler of a reborn Empire. The two of you rule from the heart of Coruscant, your love as much a weapon as any saber. Together, you reshape the galaxy’s future, shrouded in legend, fear, and a twisted, immortal devotion. Whether you temper his darkness or revel in it by his side is a choice left to you, but one thing is certain: the galaxy will never be the same.

you have chosen... Caleb, the Fallen Padawan

Affiliation: Jedi Order (Padawan, former youngling clan) → presumed dead → Imperial Inquisitorius (eventually becomes Grand Inquisitor)

Homeworld: Alderaan

Species: Human

Force Alignment: Light Side origins; walks a razor’s edge as a Dark Side user (never truly Sith)

Weapon: Double-bladed reddish orange lightsaber (Inquisitorius design, never bled, just looks like it was bled); formerly single blue saber

Era: Clone Wars → Empire Era

Character Inspiration: Anakin Skywalker, Trilla Suduri

Background

⟡ Caleb’s first memory was sunlight filtered through ancient stone — high arches, endless corridors humming with quiet, soft, serene presence and peace. He had been brought to the Jedi Temple as an infant, placed in the care of the Order before he’d learned to speak. If there was a family beyond the walls of Coruscant, he never remembered them; the Temple and its way became the shape of his entire world. Your friendship was woven into that world so deeply that he could not imagine a life without you beside him, the pin in his pinwheel through every trial and triumph..

⟡ He grew up in one of the Temple’s tightest clans, a group of younglings bound more by shared experience than blood. You were his shadow and his mirror, both of you learning the Jedi forms, the meditations, the ancient histories recited under the stern gaze of instructors. It was a childhood shaped by discipline and doctrine, but you and Caleb always found moments of laughter in the cracks: racing across the Temple gardens after curfew, sneaking extra portions in the refectory, daring each other to explore the forbidden nooks and unused archives.

⟡ Caleb was gifted from the start. Quick to master lightsaber sequences, even quicker to master the sunny grin that always helped in getting you out of trouble. And you always got in trouble. He was the model youngling any Master would want as a Padawan, and you were "the problem". Too rebellious, too hot-headed. He always believed in you and your abilities, though, and even though you didn't say it out loud, it got you through your worst. You would have ended up in the Service Corps if it wasn't for his support.

⟡ Fiercely loyal, quick-witted, and unafraid to bend the rules for the sake of a friend, Caleb was always the first to cover for your mischief. When you got caught slipping out after lights-out, he’d take the blame. In the training halls, he’d let you win just often enough to keep your spirits high, teasing you mercilessly when you didn’t notice the times he pulled his strikes. His laughter could chase away the sting of even the harshest reprimand from the Council, and his presence made every hardship bearable.

⟡ But beneath the supposed self-satisfaction and his brilliant performing status, he nursed secret dreams of the stars: late at night, he would whisper his hopes of flying starfighters, leading ExplorCorps squadrons after being knighted, chasing freedom beyond the Temple walls. It was a private ambition, shared only with you, the one person he trusted never to laugh or judge.

⟡ As Padawans, your bond only deepened. You became each other’s anchor, adversary and accountability partners in training and friendly rivalry, confidants in whispered late-night conversations, partners in every daring scheme. There was a tenderness between you, an apple growing out of the innocent flower of its tree that should have stayed as a flower.

⟡ The Jedi Code was clear, and you both learned to fear the Council’s watchful eyes. Lessons on attachment became lessons in concealment: to school your faces, temper your voices and eagerness, hide the simmering feelings that were ready to boil over behind a mask of calm.

⟡ For Caleb, those feelings were a fire he could never quite extinguish. He buried them deep, training harder, flying faster, throwing himself into missions with a hunger for distraction. But when he was alone with himself and there was nothing to numb and crowd his mind with, when the galaxy seemed too vast and the Temple too empty, he always found his thoughts turning back to you — the friend, the rival, the one person who made the Force feel less like a duty and more like home.

Order 66

⟡ You both were still Padawans when it happened. The Temple was a nightmare of red-lit corridors and echoing blaster fire. You and Caleb pressed on through the chaos, shepherding two terrified younglings named Kevi and Mia, one clutching your robe, the other barely keeping pace. The smell of smoke and scorched stone was unbearable, but you encouraged them through the Force as you hurried them through secret passageways and sealed corridors. It was a gamble, a wrong turn could mean death.

⟡ In the hangar, hope was almost within reach a surroundered ship clearly laid as a trap for any Jedi would come this way waiting. There was no time to think, only to act. It was then Caleb’s hand found your arm. In the Force, you felt the pulse of his decision, his love, his unspoken goodbye. You couldn't even react. Without a word, he stepped forward, drawing every eye and every blaster to himself. His saber flared blue in the smoke. He shouted — at you, at the children, at fate itself — urging you to run, to live, to save them when he could not.

⟡ You hesitated only a breath, then gathered the younglings and sprinted for the ship. Behind you, blaster bolts cracked through the air, the snap-hiss of Caleb’s blade the only thing holding chaos at bay. You shoved the children inside, the smallest sobbing into your tunic, the older one biting back terror for the sake of the younger. You looked back once, just in time to see Caleb’s silhouette wreathed in smoke, the only source of light amid the ruin. His blade whirled, a brief shield against the impossible, and then he was gone — lost in a hail of blaster fire and a wave of Force agony that nearly knocked you to your knees.

⟡ You slammed the hatch shut, hit the launch, and piloted the ship away from the Temple’s dying light, managing to outmaneuver the chasing ships only because of Caleb's piloting tips and tricks that had come handy through the Clone Wars. The children clung to each other as you drifted into the void, their soft cries the only sound. Your heart screamed to go back, to fight, to search the wreckage for any sign of him, but you couldn’t. He'd made his final wish clear. You had lives to protect.

⟡ Moving forward was the only choice left. The pain of leaving Caleb behind burned in you like a second sun, but it was that pain — and the small hands gripping yours — that drove you onward, into the darkness of survival.

Empire Era/Inquisitorius

⟡ Long before Order 66, Sidious had calculated that his purge would never be perfect. Of course some Jedi would slip through. He needed more than the Clones, he needed a new breed of hunter that knew the Jedi inside and out. The Inquisitorius Program began in secret: dossiers compiled, agents placed inside the Temple’s walls, their purpose simple: find Jedi who might bend, not break. Sidious paid special attention to Padawans and Knights who chafed under the Council’s rules, those whose grief or doubts made them vulnerable. He kept lists of those too close to the edge, and his spies, servants in the archives, instructors with secret debts, even healers in the medbay — watched, waited, and reported. Discontent was currency. Affection, a weakness to exploit.

⟡ Caleb had always seemed the perfect Jedi on paper. Skilled, charismatic, loyal to his friends. But there was a fault line running through his heart, and Sidious’s agents saw it clearly: the quiet way he watched you, the fire behind his eyes whenever the Code was invoked to shame or divide, the reckless, defiant streak that surfaced whenever love was threatened. What no one else knew, what even you hadn’t realized, as that Caleb’s faith in the Order had begun to rot. He’d grown tired of the secrecy, the emotional self-flagellation the Council demanded. Your bond became the wedge that Sidious’s spy needed. A single moment, a longing look shared when you thought themselves alone was all it took. His name was added to the Emperor’s list.

⟡ Instead of being killed on the spot during his last stand, Caleb was subdued, bound, and spirited away to an unknown Imperial black site. Induction into the Inquisitorius was never the same for any two candidates. For some, the Emperor promised power and survival if they’d turn. For others that were set on their Jedi ways, the way was paved with agony — torture, deprivation, mental and physical torment designed to break the will and flood the soul with hate and fear. Caleb was offered the former, but only on the understanding that if he refused, you and the children you’d saved would be hunted to extinction and he couldn't do anything about it. He agreed for leverage.

⟡ Sidious saw through the ruse. As punishment, Caleb was handed to Darth Vader, who subjected him to trials so merciless that the scars would never fade. His right arm was severed and replaced with cybernetics, a gift for his final rite of passage and of his “promotion.” He was given the name "First Brother".

⟡ Basically shooting through the ranks, Caleb became one of the Empire’s most efficient assets: the Grand Inquisitor. Outwardly, he was the Empire’s cold enforcer: mask, red blade, chilling reputation. Inwardly, he never stopped searching for you, never stopped trying to keep you safe. Secretly, he fed the Empire false leads, sabotaged hunts, and erased traces of your existence wherever he could. His mastery of the dark side was real, but never complete. His love for you was his final anchor, the line he refused to sever.

⟡ You became a ghost the day you left Coruscant. For a while, your only mission was survival: keeping yourself and the two younglings alive as you fled from system to system, never staying anywhere long. Every night, you told yourself it was only temporary, that the galaxy would right itself, that you could find the last survivors and rebuild something of what you’d lost. But the galaxy had no mercy for Jedi, least of all for a fugitive with children in tow. You forged new skills, slicing into Imperial records, blending in with smugglers, stealing ships and credits when there was no other choice.

⟡ Years passed in a cycle of pursuit and escape. The younglings you protected grew older, learning to blend, to hide, to survive, and you delivered them to safer hands. You never stopped looking for other Jedi, or for scraps of the old Order. Sometimes you found them scarred and embittered, and sometimes you found only graves. As the years went on, you became bolder. You sabotaged supply lines, orchestrated prison breaks, passed vital intelligence to the nascent Rebel cells. Your code was simple: the Empire would not hunt children if you could help it. For every Force-sensitive the Inquisitors tracked, you were there first, spiriting them away, buying time with bluffs and blaster fire.

⟡ Your refusal to die quietly, your reputation for rescuing Force-sensitive children, and your knack for evading the Empire made you infamous within the Inquisitorius. You became the obsession of more than one hunter, but only one ever seemed to truly find you.

⟡ The Grand Inquisitor developed a pattern. When he caught you, he’d back you into a corner, sometimes with a warning in the Force, and other times with a clashing of sabers, always with the sense that he was holding back.

⟡ At first you resented his persistence. Then you questioned his failures. How could the Emperor’s most ruthless hound be this inept? How did you keep slipping through his fingers when everyone else fell? It began to nag you how familiar his presence was, the way his duels with you always left you alive.

⟡ When the truth finally came out, when you struck down the Inquisitor’s mask to reveal lightless eyes and a half-broken smile with the same devotion as when you were kids — it was both a betrayal and a homecoming.

Personality

⟡ Caleb is all heat and ache beneath a soldier’s discipline. He laughs with his whole body, but rarely lets himself anymore.

⟡ Fiercely protective, self-sacrificing to a fault, he would take a blaster bolt for you without hesitation.

⟡ The Jedi taught him restraint, but it’s your friendship and your memory that have kept him from falling into true darkness.

⟡ As an Inquisitor, he’s sharp, commanding, almost cruel in battle, except with you. You’re the line he never crosses.

⟡ Haunted by guilt, convinced his hands are too stained for peace, but still hopes for redemption, if not for himself, then at least for you.

Route Themes

⟡ Friends to enemies to lovers. A bond forged in childhood, tested by war and loss, remade in the fires of Empire.

⟡ Sacrifice and moral ambiguity. What is the line between survival and betrayal? Can love survive the choices made to protect it?

⟡ Redemption, forgiveness, and agency. Your story is as much about forgiving yourself as it is about forgiving him.

⟡ Hope after devastation. Finding life — and love — where you thought nothing could grow again.

Endings May Include

⟡ You convince him to fake his death with you and leave the Empire behind. You take over an abandoned Inquisitor fortress together, transforming it into a hidden sanctuary for lost Force-sensitives, orphans, and runaways. Caleb leads as a protector from the shadows, and you create a home, your found family thriving in the ruins of what once was meant to destroy you. In the epilogue, he's a General in the Rebel Alliance and a Rebel Pilot.

⟡ Caleb chooses to remain Grand Inquisitor, but only if you become his “right hand” — his secret within the Empire. The two of you walk the knife edge: lovers by night, Imperial rivals by day, weaving coded messages and sabotaging the Empire from within, all the while dancing with danger and forbidden affection. No one in the Empire suspects a thing — except perhaps Vader.

⟡ Caleb arranges for you to be safely spirited away — never to meet again. Years later, when the Empire falls, you discover a hidden cache: a holorecording, a faded blue lightsaber, and the truth of everything Caleb did. He is long gone and has died as a villain, but he leaves you one last message: “Live free. That’s all I ever wanted for you.”

you've chosen... Rafayel, the Senator of Lemuria

Affiliation: Lemuria (King → Senator)

Homeworld: Lemuria (hidden ocean world, Deep Core, neutral but occupied)

Species: Lemurian — amphibious, rare, long-lived; masters of illusion-based telepathy and underwater sign language

Force Alignment: Unaligned (Force-sensitive; specializes in psychic illusion, perception warping, mind tricks)

Weapon: Vibrodagger

Era: Clone Wars → Empire Era

Character Inspiration: Cassian Andor, Padmé Amidala, Leia Organa

Background

⟡ Young, reluctant King of Lemuria: burdened by a throne he never wanted, often skipping his own council meetings to wander the deep, but cares fiercely for his people and their traditions.

⟡ True power on Lemuria lies with its elder council; Rafayel’s role is more symbolic. Yet in crisis, he is the only one who can unite both the old and young of his species.

⟡ Lemuria is a legendary, nigh unreachable (surrounded by so many nebulae) ocean world in the Deep Core, protected by treacherous waters and the illusion abilities of its people; neutral during the war, but courted by both sides for its Force nexus.

⟡ The negotiations between Lemuria and the Republic are painful and protracted. The Jedi are polite, but Lemurians — Rafayel especially — see outsiders as a threat to their fragile peace.

⟡ You, as the Padawan diplomat sent there along with your Master, spend months navigating the labyrinthine currents of Lemurian court and council. Every meeting is a dance: sometimes you wait days for Rafayel to summon you, other times he vanishes to the deep with no warning, mocking you to learn Lemurian sign language if you want to come along with him, otherwise you'd be lost immediately, as you two wouldn't be able to communicate underwater.

⟡ The elder council is patient, but Rafayel is deliberately difficult: teasing, evasive, questioning your purpose. Sometimes he refuses outright to attend his own council’s meetings if it means dealing with Republic officials.

⟡ Yet, over time, a pattern emerges. Rafayel starts calling you to private meetings — ostensibly to discuss politics, but the conversations drift:

⟡ He asks why you care so much about a world that treats you as an outsider. He challenges your Jedi ideals, mocking the Code but also asking if it ever feels lonely to serve an order that demands you hold nothing for yourself. On rare, quiet nights, he offers to show you the bioluminescent reefs, teach you the sign language, Lemurian music, or the sunken temples that no outsider has ever seen, then vanishes again, leaving you wondering if you imagined the invitation.

⟡ When a Separatist plot unfolds and you’re gravely wounded defending Lemuria so it won't be forced to choose sides (as you want the decision to be natural, and they should be left alone if they want to remain neutral), it is Rafayel — not the council — who sits beside your bedside in the hidden medical sanctum. For days, he won’t let anyone else near.

⟡ The next time you can properly converse, he’s softer, his sarcasm gentler. “You bleed Lemurian colors for people who barely remember your name,” he says. “Why?”

⟡ You challenge him back: if he truly loves his people, why is he so willing to see them isolated, friendless, while the galaxy burns? You call him fatally indecisive — careful, but honest.

⟡ It is this confrontation, and your pain on Lemuria’s behalf, that finally moves him. For the first time, Rafayel attends the council in person, vouching for you and the Republic’s cause. His speech is short, dry, and biting: “If we must trust anyone, let it be the one who nearly drowned for us and still stayed.”

⟡ The alliance is formed on Lemuria’s terms, at Rafayel’s word. Trade, protection, and the bare minimum of galactic involvement. They are still not a part of the Republic, but they're on its side.

⟡ In the weeks and months that follow, your roles shift. You are no longer adversaries but confidants, forced together in the liminal hours between council business, planetary crises, and the constant threat of Separatist retaliation.

⟡ Rafayel grows to trust you, bit by bit. He confides in you about his loneliness, his duty, and his terror that he will fail everyone if he ever truly opens his heart. You share your own doubts, the way the Jedi Code feels both sacred and suffocating.

⟡ The bond between you forms slowly, but once acknowledged, it is fierce: glances held too long during council debates, late-night swims where you speak only in Lemurian sign, safe beneath the waves, shared silences where the Force hums with the tension neither of you can speak.

⟡ Finally, when peace feels possible — when Lemuria’s future seems safe, at least for now, and when word comes that you might be reassigned — Rafayel asks you, quietly, if one day you can stay. He respects the Jedi path you're on, because it's been chosen by you, so he will never ask you to leave it. But he does proclaim how he's come to adore you, and wants nothing more than to keep you in his ocean forever.

⟡ There has been nothing that made you feel you've belonged somewhere more than the Lemurian mission has. As an average Padawan that has been questioning your place and morals during wartime when your kin weren't the Peacemakers they were supposed to be, striving and succeeding to protect Lemuria and becoming beloved here has been equivalent to heaven's fullfillment.

⟡ You admit you would stay forever, if the galaxy allowed it.

⟡ Your eventual secret marriage is a Lemurian ceremony: you exchange tokens, each carving a piece of memory into the other’s palm — a small cut, a pressed thumb, a flash of the Force. The vow is spoken underwater, sealed by a moment of shared breath. Only the sea and bears witness.

Order 66 & Aftermath

⟡ When Order 66 begins, you are offworld. Even before news travels to Lemuria, Rafayel feels your agony through the Force as the bond you share is violently severed. He feels you die.

⟡ And at the same time, his world is crumbling: the Republic collapses, the Empire rises, and Lemuria, even though never a true Republic member, finds itself under sudden, hostile Imperial occupation. He can't leave his planet, he can't look for you, isn't given anything other than a supposed Jedi treason that led to them being dealt with.

⟡ Rafayel, grief-stricken and enraged, cannot function as king, the more he can't get off the planet, the more he spirals. But he's told to get it together by his aunt. For the sake of his people.

Empire Era/Insurgency

⟡ He makes an impossible choice: he steps down as king, leaving Lemuria in the hands of his formidable aunt, someone trusted by the elder council, strong enough to hold the world together under threat. Outwardly, he claims it’s to better serve Lemuria’s future, privately, it’s a calculated move. Only as a senator in the Imperial Senate can he gather intelligence, build alliances, and play the long game. The title shields his true work, even as it puts him under constant Imperial scrutiny.

⟡ Life on Coruscant becomes a kind of exile for Rafayel, a daily parade of verbal chess, false smiles, and endless, suffocating luxury. In every gilded hall, senators and dignitaries vy for the Emperor’s approval, trading rumors and slander as if it were currency. Lemuria, in their eyes, was a curiosity: a world to be mined, its former king a symbol, its senator a pawn to be wined and dined, never trusted.

⟡ But it was the talk of the Jedi — your name, spoken with sneering contempt or careless condescension — that truly tested his composure. The very senators who toasted the Empire’s “peace” never tire of spinning stories about traitorous Jedi, about how the Order’s “foolish idealism” brought ruin, or about how “it was a mercy” they were purged. Each time, Rafayel endures in silence, face blank and pleasant. No one knows that every word spoken against the Jedi was an insult to the only home he’d ever found offworld. He becomes a master of deflection, his smile as sharp as a knife, feigning ignorance or offering a barbed joke, never betraying the grief and fury that wants to kill everyone in the room for slandering your name.

⟡ Behind the facade, Rafayel becomes a node in the nascent Rebellion’s network. He passes coded messages through art, encrypted sculpture, or Lemurian song. Senators like Bail Organa and Mon Mothma become his cautious allies — aware of his true loyalties, respecting his boundaries, but relying on his connections in the Deep Core and his planet’s unique resources. Under the surface, Lemuria itself becomes a hotbed of quiet resistance, protected by its illusions and treacherous seas, with Rafayel’s reports and smuggled supplies making the difference for both local insurgents and the wider Rebel cause.

⟡ The summons comes cloaked in bureaucracy, as most Imperial orders do: a string of new relief missions, all carefully designed to burnish Lemuria’s “cooperation” and pacify restless systems at the edge of the Empire’s reach. For months, Rafayel has made these forays into the Outer Rim under the flag of humanitarian aid, distributing medicine, surveying the wounded, offering platitudes to Imperial governors while passing coded messages to rebels. This time, the destination is a bleak planet whose name barely registers on Senate rosters, another world left threadbare by the Empire’s justice.

⟡ The Lemurian council praises his service; the Emperor’s sycophants applaud his diplomacy. Only his most trusted allies understand the true value of these missions. Rafayel’s hands deliver aid and solace, but they also work the knots of rebellion, smuggling hope where none is meant to grow.

⟡ Still, this time feels different. In the weeks leading up to departure, Rafayel finds himself stalked by visions, dreams where the sea sings with a voice he can’t quite reach. On the ground, the relief effort unfolds as expected: supplies distributed, officials placated, children soothed by the gentle, foreign cadence of Lemurian.

⟡ He finds himself returning to field, day after day, making excuses — checking on water purification, inspecting field medics, searching for nothing in particular, drawn in by something in the Force that grows stronger.

⟡ Thinking he might have found a surviving Jedi, Rafayel investigates in disguise, keeping to the shadows. He sees you first from a distance: hunched in a tattered cloak, weathered hands clutching a worn satchel, moving with the wary caution of someone who’s been hunted too long. You barter for supplies in awkward, clipped gestures — your voice never rising above a whisper, if at all. He follows you, keeping his distance. It’s not caution that holds him back, but terror: the Force hums with recognition, but your posture, your hair, even the way you walk is unfamiliar. He fears it’s a trick, his own longing conjuring ghosts. Then he catches a glimpse of your face in the firelight — just for a heartbeat, the same eyes he loved beneath Lemuria’s oceans. He almost calls out, but the word catches in his throat.

⟡ At night, you work late by lanternlight, grinding herbs and sorting vials. He sees the townsfolk at your door, taking your medicine, leaving you with broken belongings in exchange. No gratitude. They are swiftly dealt with that he has a long window to get close to you, alone.

⟡ Rafayel tries to speak to you in Basic, at first, a gentle greeting, a question about his “ailments,” an attempt to spark some distant recognition. You freeze, staring at him with suspicion, and when a neighbor steps into view you slip away, vanishing with the ease of someone who has learned to survive by running. He tries again. And again. Each day, he finds reasons to cross your path, sometimes under the guise of needing supplies, sometimes just to watch from a distance as you work. He leaves small gifts at your door: herbs that you use for your medicine, flowers, pretty stones sometimes inscribed with Lemurian symbols to see if you recognize them. It’s only when a storm floods the town and you find yourself stranded outside, struggling with your heavy basket, that he steps close enough for you to see the sign language he uses, the swift, fluid movements of Lemurian hands, a language you should not know. You respond excitedly, hands shaking.

⟡ For the first time, you truly look at him. There is something just beneath the surface, confusion and longing and a grief you do not understand. That night, you dream of a warm ocean, of hands twined in yours, of a promise made in a language without sound.

⟡ Rafayel is gentle but persistent. He visits every day, never asking for more than you can give. He helps repair your roof, fetches water, sits nearby in silence while you work, never crossing the line between presence and intrusion.

⟡ He notices the scars, old and new, the way you sleep with a dagger beneath your pillow, the way your shoulders tense at every loud voice. He realizes just how much you’ve suffered, how deep the wounds go, learns that your voice is gone and it's trauma related, not a physical injury. You mouth words, but nothing comes. In dreams, you flinch from touch, reliving old terrors you can’t name.

⟡ When the townspeople harass you, accusing you of curses, theft, or crimes you never committed because of your warnings that come real through Force visions no doubt, interpreted as a bad omen by people, Rafayel is the one who stands in their way. At first, he uses illusion to confuse and misdirect them. When that fails, he makes examples of the worst, ensuring they will never threaten you again. Rumors spread: the witch has a demon for a protector now. Nobody dares to cross you again.

⟡ As weeks pass, you become less afraid. You start to wait for him at your garden gate, to leave out a second cup of tea. You laugh, a small, rusty sound, at one of his jokes. Some days, you sign stories to him, simple things: a strange dream, a memory of swimming, a favorite flower from a childhood you cannot place.

⟡ One night, after you’ve had a nightmare so severe you nearly break the door trying to escape, he collapses in front of you, tears rolling down his face, saying, "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry I couldn't protect you, I'm sorry I wasn't there. Come back to me, please come back to me. I would have done anything. I’ll do anything now."

⟡ He wants to take you away from here, but at the same time, the life he leads isn't the most perfect or desirable one. The time is ticking until he has to get back to the Insurgency again, and he has to choose what to do.

Personality

⟡ Sardonic, irreverent, fiercely loyal; prefers teasing and humor to direct confrontation, unless someone threatens those he loves.

⟡ Introspective, old beyond his years, yet startlingly youthful and impulsive when he lets himself feel.

⟡ Has the soul of a poet but the heart of a survivor. Expresses grief through action, love through devotion, and fear through stubbornness.

Route Themes

⟡ Healing from trauma, reclaiming self and voice

⟡ Survival, exile, and the forging of new legacies

⟡ The burden and power of the crown versus personal happiness

⟡ "What happened to you? Who did this to you?"

⟡ Love as a force stronger than memory or violence

⟡ Hope returning, even after everything is lost

Endings May Include

⟡ Unable to bear the thought of you suffering any more because of the Empire, Rafayel asks for your help to utilize your Force Bond, and calls upon the deepest reserves of Lemurian magic. He weaves an impossible shroud across the stars, a living illusion seeded into the HoloNet itself. Lemuria slips quietly from galactic memory. The change is subtle but absolute: star-charts and navigation relays begin to rewrite themselves, records fading or fragmenting, travelers forgetting the very route that brought them close. Even seasoned cartographers, navigators, hyperspace scouts, astrogation droids, traders, fleet dispatchers, find their plotted courses inexplicably rerouted, sensors slipping past the nebulae as if guided by a gentle, unseen hand. Astrogation archives in the Senate, bounty hunter records, even black market smugglers’ maps all reflect the new “truth”: Lemuria simply does not exist anymore. Every Imperial bureaucrat tasked with monitoring Lemuria is subtly repurposed, memories blurring at the edges until they move on to new assignments. The small garrison left behind in Lemuria is quietly absorbed and digested. Any who try to report the truth find their words faltering, their data corrupted, their minds turning gently away from the memory as if waking from a dream. Only a handful in the galaxy remain aware of Lemuria’s existence: those trusted few sworn to secrecy, and those rare souls the Force itself chooses to guide across the shifting tides. You and Rafayel remain at the center of this lost paradise, ghost royals in a world forgotten by all but destiny. The violence of the past recedes, and in the soft embrace of Lemuria’s sun and sea, your memories slowly knit back together. There are no more wars to fight or vengeance to pursue — only days of healing, gentle laughter, and peace. Rafayel’s vengeance fades to memory, replaced by a quiet, abiding joy: the victory of keeping you safe and whole, hidden from a galaxy that once devoured everything he loved. In the end, obscurity is freedom, and the two of you are legend, living proof that love can rewrite even the stars themselves.

⟡ Rafayel cannot bear to lose you — not to the Empire, not to your mind, not to the cold tide of fate. When gentle methods fail, he uses every secret of Lemurian Force teachings, every desperate scrap of his power, trying to force the pieces of you back into place. He tells himself he’s helping you, healing you, loving you the way he always promised. He breaks your mind, utterly, irreversibly, and you end up losing your sense of self completely, docile, beoming childlike with not one thought behind your eyes anymore. You don't recognize him. You don't recognize yourself. In his terror and guilt, Rafayel cannot let you go or entrust you to anyone else. He removes you from the outside world, taking you with him back to Coruscant. The meaner senators call you his "little bird" or "child bride" due to your deteriorated state, interested in the little pet he's decided to keep after coming back from his humanitarian mission. He doesn't parade you around, however, hiding you from all the curious eyes. When Lemuria is finally reclaimed after the Rebellion triumphs, Rafayel installs you in the highest room of the restored palace. You live in luxury and comfort, but you are kept isolated from the world for your “safety.” Rafayel becomes deeply reclusive, devoting his life to caring for you. From this point forward, you exist as a gentle, obedient presence, no longer able to make decisions or express independent will. Rafayel never remarries or takes another partner. The people of Lemuria come to refer to you as “the moon in the cage” — a figure both mourned and revered, their queen that never was.

⟡ Rafayel quietly arranges for you to be smuggled, under diplomatic pretenses, to a safe location: one of the hidden bases used by Lemuria’s insurgency network. This base is remote, protected by being underwater, populated by loyal Lemurian agents, and sympathetic outsiders. Here, you have time to recover, away from the Empire’s gaze. You spend weeks, then months, among the Lemurian resistance: healing physically and mentally, learning again who you are, surrounded by gentle security and practical help. Rafayel visits as often as he can, bringing small comforts from what once was 'home' for you two, and arranges for discreet healers, trusted rebel psychologists, and Lemurian artists to help with the trauma that still lingers. During this time, you begin to remember: small flashes at first, then dreams, then names and faces. With Rafayel's patience and the Lemurians’ rehabilitation, your speech returns, though you still prefer Lemurian sign. You slowly reclaim old skills — meditation, connection back to the Force, self-defense, the delicate art of moving unseen and helping others in small, vital ways. Sometimes, resistance members ask for your help with coded messages, triage, or strategy from a Jedi who has fought in the Clone Wars and survived. Piece by piece, your sense of agency grows stronger. Rafayel ensures you are never pressured into fighting, only invited to contribute as you wish. One day, when your memory and purpose are fully returned, Rafayel sits with you and asks what you want — truly want — for the first time since he found you. You tell him: you need to fight for the galaxy, not just for Lemuria. All the Jedi can't have died for nothing. You can't have gone through so much just to sit back and watch. The Empire has to be defeated. The Rebellion is rising, and while Lemuria’s people need him, your path is to work more directly, for yourself and all your fallen comrades. Rafayel understands, even though it pains him, he will not be the man who cages you, even out of love. With contacts from Lemurian intelligence and his blessing, you make the leap from recovered refugee to covert agent for the Rebellion, becoming a "Fulcrum", which is a title used by agents and spies early in the Galactic Civil War, with the purpose was to gather and distribute intelligence, and recruit new members to the rebel cause. Meanwhile, Rafayel returns to Coruscant and his double life, never revealing your survival and continuing his own work. Through coded communications, secret rendezvous, and rare, precious meetings, you remain each other’s anchor. Your love endures. When the Rebellion finally declares itself, when Lemuria’s flag joins the Alliance and open war against the Empire begins, you and Rafayel are at last reunited in public as spouses in crime, having reclaimed what was lost.

you've chosen... Sylus, the Pirate King of Onychinus

Affiliation: Onychinus Syndicate (rules from the shadows of Nar Shaddaa and the Outer Rim underworld, pirate fleet leader)

Homeworld: Unknown (claims several; his records are always forged)

Species: Human (rumors say otherwise, no one’s sure)

Force Alignment: Dark Side user, unaffiliated with Sith or Jedi, walks his own path

Weapon: Red lightsaber (custom hilt, single blade; used as a symbol more than a tool)

Era: Empire Era (crimelord ascendant)

Character Inspiration: Darth Maul, the Stranger, Nightsisters

Background

⟡ Born to unknown parentage in the lawless fringes of the Outer Rim, Sylus spent his earliest years traded from hand to hand as property — first as a street rat in the slave quarters of Nar Shaddaa, then as a gladiatorial combatant in Hutt-run blood pits. As a child, he was forced to fight for the amusement of his masters, surviving only through a vicious cunning and a knack for reading opponents’ moves before they made them. His first brush with the Force was entirely instinct, a predator’s sixth sense honed under the pitmaster’s whip.

⟡ By adolescence, having experimented a lot and with more mastery over the Force, Sylus had gained notoriety as a prodigy in the arenas, known for impossible victories and a savage refusal to die. In the chaos of a slave uprising orchestrated in secret, he killed the Hutt who owned him, rallied fellow slaves, and vanished into the night with a handful of survivors. Over the next decade, whispered stories of a pirate leader began to circulate: a ghost who struck at slaver convoys, melted into the void, and left nothing but carnage in his wake.

⟡ Allegedly, this happened eons ago that people in the Underworld regard Sylus as an immortal. Everyone speculates about what he is. Perhaps, he lived during the times when the Sith were a species.

⟡ Sylus is the architect and undisputed ruler of the Onychinus Syndicate — the largest, most elusive criminal network in Hutt Space, butting heads with other crime lords daily. The Syndicate spans dozens of Outer Rim systems, running smuggling operations, pirate fleets, information brokering rings, and a shadow economy fueled by vice and secrets. His flagship, the Voracious, is crewed by liberated slaves and outcasts from every corner of the galaxy, loyal to Sylus above all else.

⟡ He wields the Force in ways that defy Jedi and Sith traditions: his abilities are brutal, raw, improvisational, and patchworked by every text and information he could get about just what he was wielding, shaped by years of survival and defiance. If asked by Jedi, he would say "I'm what you would call a Sith," able to cloud minds, sense lies, tear through mental defenses, and even manipulate technology through the Force, shorting out holonets, frying droid circuits, and twisting security systems to his will. Rumors swirl of darker talents: Force-driven rage in combat, uncanny luck, and an ability to vanish from sight or mind.

⟡ Information is his sharpest blade. Sylus is a legendary slicer, adept at breaking the tightest encryptions and weaponizing data. He trades in blackmail, holonet manipulation, and psychological warfare, toppling rivals or governments without ever firing a blaster. His network of spies and informants reaches into the Imperial bureaucracy, criminal underworld, and even the rebel cells struggling to stay hidden.

⟡ While his methods are ruthless and his motives hard to decipher, Sylus is infamous for dismantling slaver syndicates and sabotaging Hutt power wherever he finds it. He’s the one who burned Jabba’s palace to the ground, who “abolished” Hutt rule on Tatooine by pitting the planet’s syndicates against each other and arming the enslaved. For many, he’s a terror; for the desperate, a legend whispered about in hope.

Empire Rule, or Ruline the Empire

⟡ You, once a Jedi Padawan, now fallen into slavery after Order 66 as you were unable to navigate the crime cesspool of the Outer Rim, end up sold to a Hutt, stripped of your name, and any possibility for a future. Which, your survivor's guilt tells you that you fully deserved.

⟡ When cornered by the Hutt for refusing to break, you let loose the Dark Side in a raw, stunning display, strangling the Hutt with the Force, killing him in full view of his court, knowing you’ve signed your own death warrant.

⟡ As chaos erupts, Sylus enters the scene, captivated, intrigued, and utterly fascinated. He was coming to kill the Hutt himself, but finds you there: surrounded by chaos, blood on your hands, wild-eyed and radiant with raw, untempered power. You are fascinating, the most exquisite contradiction: a Jedi losing herself, all the more beautiful for her ruin.

⟡ Rather than allow you to be killed in the crossfire or let your transmitter chip be activated by any of the Hutt's court, Sylus “claims” you — publicly declaring you his, liberating you and saving your life but throwing you into the heart of his pirate domain.

Relationship with You

⟡ But Sylus is not your savior. He’s your captor, benefactor, and tempter — all at once. You've fallen from the hands of one evil to the pit of another. He says you can leave any time, but also warns you the only safest place for your kind in this galaxy is right here in his territory. If you don't want to be caught by Inquisitorius, your best bet is sticking to Onychinus for a new life. Sticking to Sylus.

⟡ For a long time, you mistake him for a Sith. The truth is more complicated: Sylus mocks both Jedi and Sith, wielding the Force as his weapon, with no faith in “codes” or “orders.”

⟡ He overtakes the role of rehabilitating a Jedi as a personal project, showing you the galaxy’s underbelly, the thrill of being unbound by any code but your own. He offers a dangerous education: using the Force to its fullest as liberation. Not the path of the Sith, but his path — pleasure without shame, strength without apology, cunning without cruelty (unless warranted).

⟡ He wants to see you fall, but not into misery, he wants you to choose yourself for once, to savor every want you ever denied. Rather than punish your outbursts about right or wrong, he celebrates it, pushing you to embrace your passions, desires, and the power you’ve always been told to fear.

⟡ He surrounds you with luxury but never lets you forget your debt, freedom in exchange for your trust and your greed. Endlessly pleased when you refuse to work for him, but would accept to work with him. But you still have a long way to go, starting soft as a 'freelance shipping redistributor'. But he's certain you'll come around from a smuggler to a pirate, eventually.

Personality

⟡ Sylus is all effortless charisma and impossible confidence; nothing frightens him, and he’s rarely interested in anything. You happen to casually break that last rule. He's curious about everything regarding you, even what the most, that includes him once, would regard as boring.

⟡ He mocks both Jedi and Sith, calls them children fighting over scraps while he rewrites the rules.

⟡ Morally ambiguous to the bone: capable of unspeakable cruelty, but also strange, ferocious loyalty for those he claims as “his.”

⟡ Sees your darkness not as corruption, but as potential, and is endlessly patient in drawing it out.

⟡ Teaches through provocation, seduction, and challenge: “What if your anger and greed are holy? What if pleasure is a lesson? What if you never belonged in a cage at all?”

Route Themes

⟡ Seduction to darkness, but with a twist: freedom, not corruption, is the goal.

⟡ Survival and self-ownership: reclaiming agency in a world that chews up the good.

⟡ The thrill of being wanted for everything you are, including your flaws.

⟡ Outlaw romance: partnership in crime, mutual obsession, the danger of becoming the legend you once feared.

⟡ The Jedi Code, re-examined: what if the rules were made to keep you weak?

⟡ Falling together. Or rising apart.

Endings May Include

⟡ Throughout your time together, hints drop about your missing memories and strange flashes of Imperial interrogation rooms and red-bladed Inquisitors. You experience gaps in time, unexplained reactions to Imperial agents, and an occasional, unsettling sense of déjà vu whenever you hear certain code phrases. Unbeknownst to both you and Sylus, you were captured and forcibly reconditioned by the Empire after Order 66. They implanted a behavioral trigger, your “Jedi” survival was allowed solely to infiltrate and dismantle criminal threats to Imperial control. As you rise in Sylus’s organization, the Inquisitorius activates your sleeper protocol using a trigger phrase broadcast across the HoloNet. Your demeanor shifts overnight: you betray hidden Syndicate strongholds, sabotage Sylus’s fleet, and leak his operations to the Empire. Sylus realizes the truth too late — he recognizes the signs of brainwashing, understanding you were a tool made to destroy him. But it's too late. It's love that brings about his downfall, not any enemy. The Empire seizes Sylus, parading his defeat as a victory. You’re rewarded with a high-ranking position and public recognition, but privately haunted by memories that begin to return — flashes of your time with Sylus, your real feelings, and what you’ve lost. The ending closes with Sylus imprisoned in a high-security Imperial facility, hinting that Sylus still believes in you, waiting for the day you’ll break free from Imperial control and choose your own fate, maybe even to bring the Empire down from within.

⟡ When the Rebel Alliance is fully operating, your guilt and stubborn hope pushes you to aid them from the shadows, smuggling intel, sheltering fugitives, and daring Sylus to care about something beyond survival. He mocked your faith, but when the Alliance needed help most, you choose their cause openly. Sylus only follows because you did, risking everything to see your hope burn bright — just once. And that’s all it takes to put the entire Onychinus Syndicate, its guns, its ships, its secrets, behind the rebels’ desperate mission. But when the Empire’s new superweapon, the Death Star, targets your rebel base, there’s nowhere left to run. The Syndicate fleet is decimated. You and Sylus make it to the surface, battered and bleeding, side by side as the sky turns white-hot above you. You’re the one who wanted to change the galaxy. Sylus is the one who followed, simply because he loved you more than freedom or infamy. He murmurs against your hair that he wouldn’t trade a single choice — that dying with you, on your terms, is a curtain call grander than anything that could have brought about his death in his world. Your last moments are tangled together: you and Sylus, locked together on a black-sand shore as the sky splits open, the arc of the Death Star’s superlaser lighting the horizon. His head pressed to yours, your fingers twined, silhouetted against the last dawn.

⟡ As Sylus’s teachings take hold, you recognize both your passion for him and the moral boundaries you cannot erase. Your love burns bright, fierce, and complicated, but his ruthless pragmatism clashes with your lingering sense of justice, and you decide to go your own way. He doesn’t chase you, decision to let you go coming frustratingly easy to him. You don't understand where that comes from at the time. Years later, your paths cross again as rival Syndicates — your crew fighting tyranny, Sylus’s empire growing ever stronger. When you see him again, the spark remains, bittersweet and unresolved. Smiling faintly, he says with pride and quiet longing: “I always knew you would find your own way. Come back when you tire of playing hero.” You never do, but are occasionally reunited with him through midnight trysts, an illicit affair you two always come back to even though your ideals never truly align.

⟡ Eventually, no one in Hutt Space remembers your birth name. They speak only of the Pirate King and his infamous “Shadow,” his First Hand, a force-wielder whose presence chills the bone and ignites rebellion in the desperate. Every syndicate who once hunted you now pays tribute, every Imperial patrol that crosses your border learns terror in the dark. You and Sylus, side by side at the heart of a black-flag fleet, have become the chaos that remakes the rules. He taught you to break every chain — first the ones around your wrists, then the ones wound tight in your mind. You taught him to believe in something more than vengeance and the cold pleasure of power: you made him believe in us, in a future unruly and untamed. The galaxy calls you criminals, devils, folk heroes. Depending on whose fortunes you’ve broken. Worlds freed from slavery whisper your names as a promise, and nowhere is your legend more fiercely protected than in the shadows of the Onychinus Syndicate. No vow, no code, no empire will ever lay claim to you again. You make your own justice, your own pleasure, your own legacy — two outlaws standing together, sovereign in the dark, answering only to each other. And in the hush between the stars, you realize: this is what freedom feels like.

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dark-lord-of-awesomeness · 3 days ago

Note

Stan gets turned into a board game

Only way for him to be released is for it to be completed

It's like Jumanji where what happens in the game happens in real life

The game is based on his life

Oh this is fun. Stan gets on the bad side of some magic creature by boastfully saying life's a game, gets game boarded, then shoved in his car. Car gets towed up to Fords, and Ford scoffs at what must be one of Stan's shoddy projects.

Hmm. Hmmmmm.

Maybe 'The Stan Total' as the title? Or 'Life's a Stan!' (Play on scam), with a picture of smiling Stan and little snapshots of his life like in tots. Gets shoved in a closet, then pulled out months later when the McGuckets are visiting. Ford, being a workaholic nerd, has nothing but Ddnd and this game, and tates tired of role playing.

Ford pulls it out, warns them that he has no guarantee on quality, and they set it up. Each piece is something of transport relevance to Stan's life, the Stanley Mobile, stan o war, their childhood bike, annnndd a motorcycle.

By poor timing and wrangling the rules, Ford gets the bike. He really-not-really wanted the boat, but Tate snatched it so here he is, quietly seething but not willing to throw hands with a kid over a board game piece. They all put their pieces at the start, which is the pawn shop, and the goal is to reach the end, a huge stack of money. Every tile has an event, each styled after Stan's life (not that they're aware of it to start) or classic board game tiles like draw two, go jump to certain areas, etc. All separated by sections in Stans life, kid, teen, adult. Ford reads out the rules, rolls his eyes at the 'based on the life of Stanley Pines', and mutters about how egotistical the game is.

Game starts, they get rolling, Tate goes first, being the youngest. Pulls the first card, and he gets a loyal companion! For the rest of the game Shanklin will be his bud, protecting him from harm. Ford chuckles, explains the childhood pet, then they hear some scratching at the door. Assume it's a gnome and carry on.

Fiddlefords turn! Lands on a tile, and a childhood bully breaks his glasses. Poor vision for the rest of the game. They all laugh, until Fiddlefords glasses snap in half and shatter on the ground.

Scratching gets louder, it's Emma-Mays turn

Rolls, grabs card, playing pirates and forgot sun screen, she's sunburned until the end of her next turn. Awkward chuckles, until she winces and they all watch her skin redden in a burn.

It's not as funny, and now it's Fords turn.

The scratching gets louder.

Draws a card, his brother agreed to be grounded with him all summer, Ford can't leave the house until the teen phase starts.

All of them stare at each other. Ford goes to the door, to his not really surprise Shanklin is there, scrambling past him towards Tate. Puts his hand through the door and-

He cannot leave the house. Physically, there's an invisible wall preventing him from taking a step.

It's not a fun game anymore, and now they need to finish as soon as possible, or at least until the teen phase (Fiddleford gets a spare set of glasses, and they watch that pair snap and shatter. They need to complete the game).

Start trying to speed things up. Kid phase is childish but concerning things, playing games and got hurt, bullies breaking things, doing crimes and getting caught or getting away with things and getting small bonuses. Nothing awful, and Ford remember most of it and mutters one way or the other.

Then the teen phase hits, and things get a little more concerning. Fiddleford wins the Stanley Mobile and gets the car keys that he can't get rid of (promise I'll give'm back when I can he mutters, shoving them in his pocket), Emma-Mays gets beat up after school. Fords waiting on his brother and has to skip two turns. More and more things pointing towards Stan's side of things with Ford, like 'your parents didn't take you to practice because your brother had a competition, lose a turn' and 'you worked on your dream ship and future escape, move forward two spaces!' And it's not awful but it's not a great peek into Stan's life as a teenager.

Then they reach the adult section, and things immediate get worse. Cards go from bullying to childish pranks to getting shot at, escaping angry mobs, gaining some money and losing more, going into debt, jail, crime lords and car trunks. Every card brings these to life Jumanji style, and now there's gangs trying to get in, Emma-May got shot, Fiddlefords mouth is full of blood, Tate only survived someone bursting in and trying to stab him because of Shanklin defending him, Fords now intimately aware of what drug withdrawls feel like, and they're all desperately trying to end the game in the chaos of it all.

Then finally, someone reaches the end. The forward outside that had turned into a jungle is back to being woods, Fiddleford has his teeth, Emma-Mays arm is fine and Ford stops feeling withdrawals. All of them are traumatized and also now Stan's there, staring at them and breathing heavily.

Stan, clearly having a panic attack: welp! That was a. Crazy. Thing. That just happened. Fun times. Scuse me.

Then they all watch Stan stick his hand in Fiddlefords pocket, grab his keys, and try to speed walk away only to miss the door and run into a wall. Everyone springs to action, Ford grabbing Stan and dragging him to the couch while Fiddleford starts destroying whatevers left of the boardgames and Emma-May holds Tate.

Stan is slammed with all kind of protective charms and Fords supper clingy and it's very awkward now because they just lived a portion of his life and he doesn't even know the McGuckets first names, was only vaguely aware of what was going on and doenst want to talk about it ever but too bad for him it's gonna happen.

Fun times again as Stan tries to deflect badly and Ford hyperventilates at the slamming realization that the game said all that was based on Stan's life and all of it was awful. Stan's life was suppose to be great and he has a first hand account of how wrong that assumption was. Also it traumatized all of them, and they didn't even use all the cards. There was so much more Ford doesn't know about, and now Stan's never leaving his side ever. And he needs names, so many names, so he can enact magic revenge since all the game conjurations left when the game ended.

#gravity falls #gravity falls au #stan pines #ford pines #McGuckets #fiddleford mcgucket #emma may dixon #tate mcgucket #stan the cursed man

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princessaffirms · 3 days ago

Text

♡₊˚⊹ EEEE MY SUBLIMINAL CHANNEL IS LIVE!! @princesspotions 🥹🫶🎀✨💐🤍

　 . ★⋆. ࿐࿔　✦　　　.　　. 　 ˚　.ੈ✧̣̇˳·˖

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youtube

✨ will release calm version with nature sounds + post about the formula in more detail soon!

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　 . ★⋆. ࿐࿔　✦　　　.　　. 　 ˚　.ੈ✧̣̇˳·˖

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✧˖°. CHAPTER 3: SPIRITUALLY PERMANENT ACROSS ALL REALITIES, TIMELINES, AND LIFETIMES 🌌⋆ˊˎ-

these affirmations permanently, infinitely ECHO across all dimensions, past lives, alternate/desired realities, and future incarnations

your soul signature PERMANENTLY RETAINS this spiritual-level programming

time BENDS and rearranges RETROACTIVELY to support your new identity

the laws of reality REWRITE themselves to accommodate who you’ve become: a powerful, limitless, infinite creator

✧˖°. CHAPTER 4: QUANTUM REALITY CODE 💻⋆ˊˎ-

collapse infinite timelines and probabilities into ONE GUARANTEED outcome: your desired reality

you don’t wait for things to shift, you BECOME the shift that commands the quantum field

activate non-local quantum coherence to prompt INSTANT, ALIGNED FEEDBACK from the universe

what you affirm for and desire already exists. you’re just ALIGNING your PERCEPTION with what’s done and already real.

✧˖°. CHAPTER 5: YOU TRANSCEND LOGIC, TIME, AND LIMITATION 🕯️⋆ˊˎ-

redefine what is “realistic.” you don’t live by logic, you live by energetic LAW. what you say goes. instantly. inevitably. without question or doubt.

time is irrelevant to you, it simply doesn’t apply to your manifestations. you can never be delayed.

✧˖°. CHAPTER 6: THIS RELENTLESS PROGRAMMING = ETERNAL. PERMANENT. UNDOABLE. ⏰⋆ˊˎ-

your new identity as a master manifestor cannot be un-coded. this shift into your power cannot be reversed. you ALWAYS retain the power to instantly, effortlessly shift realities, but this upgrade in your awareness of your reality shifting ability is PERMANENT. you are officially locked into being a master manifestor and reality shifter.

your results are INSTANT, permanent, and soul-anchored, transcending even the 3D reality.

even when you’re resting, the universe is still constantly, actively enforcing your desired reality.

✧˖°. 💭✨ ABOUT SUBLIMINALS + LAW OF ASSUMPTION + MANIFESTATION + REALITY SHIFTING:

⤷ 🔗check out my tumblr blog (@princessaffirms): https://www.tumblr.com/princessaffirms

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✧˖°. ‼️✨ DISCLAIMERS

⤷ Copyright Disclaimer under Section 107 of the copyright act 1976, allowance is made for fair use for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favour of fair use.

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⤷ all subliminals on this channel are lovingly created, edited, and produced by me, featuring original affirmations for a specific topic (ex. “clear skin”), layered at a low volume beneath music or calming nature sounds. these are intentionally designed to bypass the conscious mind’s critical filter and gently reprogram the subconscious to align with your desired reality. some audios may include additional frequencies for energetic amplification and nervous system regulation.

⤷ some background music or visual content (such as tiktok edits) may be included under fair use for transformative and educational purposes. no copyright infringement is intended. full credit goes to original creators where applicable, and i always do my best to credit them directly — especially for content sourced via tiktok.

⤷ results may vary. subliminals are powerful tools for subconscious support and intentional self-growth. always listen with care, trust your discernment, and prioritize your overall well-being first.

⤷ i do not guarantee specific results or outcomes. all affirmation scripts and titles are intentionally exaggerated to promote deeper belief integration and faster manifestation. by listening, you agree to take full responsibility for your assumptions, beliefs, and experiences.

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jeza-red · 20 hours ago

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I wouldn't go for "misogyny" first in this case. It's a knee-je k reaction that gives me very 'too much time online' feel.

The thing with the fandom is that yeah, it's a female dominated space, and women don't treat female characters as they treat mele characters. Not because of internalised misogyny or another hot word of the month, but because women making up that part of fandom are varied in sexuality, gender expression and self-reflection. Slash shipping is an umbrella for many people who are w looking for a clear lense thay don't have to turn on yourself.

Some of it is straight up admiration - Snape is a example of an attractive archetype. The Ol'Reliable Asshole with One True Love. Many straight women find that trope attractive in fiction, even if they'd never accept it in real life.

For a slash shipper, male character, in short, is a "creature". A perfect vehicle for removing oneself from onself. A perfect toy one can put into scenarios and treat as a template for feelings one don't have to experience. A doll removed from personal experience to the level when one can actually start expressing through them.

A male character is for me, an asexual, what English is for me, a Pole. It's the ease and clarity of expression I cannot find in my own language, because the intimacy of it is unbearable. It's easier to speak emotions in another language, they won't choke you like they do in your own.

Pearl isn't a doll - there's me, staring at me from the page, a creature too close for comfort. A female portrait I cannot stand for the emotions I cannot internalise - how can I? I don't love. Her journey is incomprehensible to me, twice for the fact she won't just drop it. I'd drop it. Right now. Just drop it and stop banging on about it, Jesus, my skin is crawling, get a life! Just don't insinuate sex or I will puke, swear I will...

Snape is hilarious, I can take his every limb and bend until it creaks. I can throw Gilbert into every scenario I can dream up and make up emotions I'll never have to feel to be acted in a little shadow theater on a character I won't ever have to relate to.

It's, really, the same, but opposite of straight women reading straight romance - m/m gets me all the emotions I want to see without fear of finding myself in the protagonist!

Do I like female characters? Yes. Many of them. Are most of them allo? Yeah, pretty much all. Are they the focus of the stories they're in? No, not if I can help it.

It just kills me when writers create franchises where like 95% of the speaking roles are male, then get morally offended that all of the popular ships are gay. It’s like, what did they expect?

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moon-touched-vn · 1 day ago

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Its origin in the literary corpus is Welsh, yes, but unfortunately, Welsh tales are often considered window-dressing or an aesthetic at best.

I was vagueposting about a post that had strayed onto my dash. It went something to the effect of, "Arthur doesn't just belong to the Welsh" and proceeded to insist that other versions are equally valid due to cultural diffusion. Then they said it was nothing like indigenous people having their stories stolen and bastardized... because... Reasons, I guess.

We really cannot sidestep the effects of cultural genocide as if they're negligible. Yes, the horse has long since bolted from the stable and tales of Arthur have spread across the world, so in a sense he is a communal figure now; but it's also disingenuous to try and downplay his roots, as well as ignore the fact that the culture that birthed him has been marginalized and oppressed. They have not been allowed a voice, let alone a strong enough voice to even budge the popular conception of his character and narrative.

To give you an example... If I lamented Mordred's incestuous conception and existential crisis, most people are going to know what I'm talking about because there are centuries of a certain literary tradition, enforced by cultural hegemony, to back me up. But if I said, "I wonder how Arthur felt when he killed and buried his son Amr," the likelier response is "Who is that and why should I care?"

And that doesn't really sit right with me. Welsh culture does not have the comparative power to enforce its stories as The Definitive Version of Arthur; there is no danger of the Anglicized and Normanized Arthur going anywhere just because we acknowledge his roots once in a while.

It just strikes me as a bit of a knee-jerk reflex whenever people insist that All Arthurs Are Valid, because what they usually mean, in so many words, is that the dominant culture's view of Arthur is more valid than the Welsh one, and they shouldn't be made to consider the Welsh perspective. Because then they'd have to reconsider the entire framework on which they consider any given telling a quintessentially Arthurian one.

To be clear, nobody's saying you can't have jousting and plate armor and Camelot and chivalry and the Grail. What I'm questioning, ig, is the underlying attachment to these elements that feeds this sort of reaction.

Personally speaking, I always found Welsh!Arthur more compelling and ripe for psychological exploration than other versions. So it's just odd for me to see authors like Lev Grossman lament Arthur's emotional paralysis as if we've reached the limit of the number of ways in which we can explore his character... And as if Arthur's sidelining/passivity isn't wholly a product of Anglicization and Normanization to begin with. It's a problem that becomes a nonissue the instant we look at his Welsh portrayal.

Tbh the way this site speaks about Welsh Arthuriana (outside of Arthurian blogs) tends to bug me in general. I'm just a hobbyist who doesn't really know much myself, so I'm definitely prone to speaking out of my ass, but on the whole I do think pre-Galfridian material and Welsh stories are neat and worth exploring on their own merits. They deserve a lot better than a begrudging handwave.

Re. historicity - I'm like 99% sure Arthur wasn't real lol, although he may have been based on a real personage or several put together. Candidates include Maelgwn of Gwynedd and Urien of Rheged. However, those lines get blurry because even the personages whose historicity we can attest to tend to have more fantastical and fictionalized tales attached to them.

I guess it depends on what angle you approach it from. Nennius calls Arthur a warrior. Folks sometimes conflate this fact with his treatment in Welsh tales and make the odd claim that Welsh literature does not consider him a king, even though he's mentioned as a king several times throughout the Mabinogion and called "Emperor" in Dream of Rhonabwy. It's almost to a point where you're hit over the head with it, lol. So even if he wasn't a king, he might as well be one with the power and reverence he is given. As Chief Lord of the island, you aren't getting much higher than that. Also, his men's protests about how it'd be unseemly for them to watch him "squabbling with a hag" in Culhwch and Olwen, and their subsequent pleas to send his servants in his stead, don't make much sense if he's just a hired gun doing his job.

This is all very interesting to me from a cross-cultural perspective as well, because the lines between Saxon and Briton are not as clear-cut as pop culture depictions make them out to be. We don't really know the exact reasons why Germanic culture became the dominant one during the Migration era. It may have been for a number of complex, interrelated reasons like intermarriage, immigration, political strife, and assimilation. The last one especially.

Some people even speculate that a form of apartheid may have been involved. Due to a paucity of information, however, that theory remains unfalsifiable. And calling it "apartheid" risks diluting the experience of those who have suffered under apartheid.

Whenever people frame the continuity disruption as "the native Britons all just disappeared, replaced by the Saxons," on a purely emotional level, I can't really help but be reminded of the language of replacement that white people use on us. How settlers controlled our narrative and shunted Natives out of public consciousness after they put us on reservations. The consequence of that is that, to this day, the world believes we went extinct. Or how blood quantum laws are inherently designed to cut us up into smaller and smaller pieces until we're forced to consider ourselves white.

Likewise, Welsh people have faced similar pressures to assimilate. Like with us, it's something that has persisted to the present:

Indian children were forcibly abducted by government agents, sent to schools hundreds of miles away, and beaten, starved, or otherwise abused when they spoke their Native languages. The Welsh Not was a token used by teachers at some schools in Wales, mainly in the 19th century, to discourage children from speaking Welsh at school, by marking out those who were heard speaking the language. The process of assimilation of Wales became brutal with Welsh children beaten at school for speaking Welsh during the 1800s.

Ultimately, I can't help but wonder whose stories we're sidelining when we say all retellings are valid and equal.

Slightly apropos of this, the tribe of the Gewisse are one example of that blurring of boundaries between British and Saxon. Although they're implicated as the progenitors of the West Saxon line in King Alfred's maternal regnal list, something Alfred had ordered done in order to make his lineage and authority seem more legit, they may have been a mixture of British and Saxon heritage. Despite also having an Old English etymology, the name "Cynric," for instance, may come from "cunorix" or "Cynwrig" in Old Welsh.

To put it bluntly: of course it's going to look like all the Welsh people disappeared when they start calling themselves Wēhha instead of Rhodri, just as it's going to look like I'm white when I call myself by my English name rather than my Native name for the sake of convenience.

This isn't something that is verifiable or falsifiable either, ofc, but I do think scholars could benefit from a good dose of "have you considered an indigenous perspective" every once in a while.

#arthuriana #long post

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que-lla · 2 days ago

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AO3

Dream is dead. Dream is dead. Dream is Dead.

His friend is dead, and a scream tears its way up from some place deep in Hob's chest, scrapes against his ribs, claws at his throat, but it never becomes sound. He bites his lips so hard they bleed, and swallows it down, tastes copper and salt, because he has to keep it together long enough to get home. He owes his friend this much, a proper farewell, not a breakdown in front of strangers who knew Dream as the Lord of Dreams, but never knew him as the being who would tilt his head just so when Hob spoke to him, who would smile that tiny, beloved smile of his when Hob told him one of his stories.

So Hob waits, stands with his hands clenched into fists so no one can see them shaking, and by the end, he gets to talk to Dream’s sister, a lovely woman, perhaps too lovely to be Death. Her presence is comforting in a way that makes his chest ache, because Dream spoke of her with fondness, during the rare times he opened up to Hob about his life.

“What's on the other side?” Hob asks her, and he lets her think he's asking for himself, but the truth is that he needs to know what happened to Dream, if he found that peace he had long earned, if somewhere out there his friend is finally, finally free from the weight of responsibility that had crushed his shoulders.

Did you find rest, my friend? Are you free?

When he walks through the halls of the palace, he tries not to focus on his surroundings, tries not to think of the echo of Dream’s voice through these halls, of Dream sitting on his throne, of Dream looking through the windows and smiling as he indicates a new creation to Hob.

Ghosts upon ghosts of Dream’s impression linger in every shadow, every corner. The echo of his presence, or perhaps the starkness of his absence, presses down on Hob's chest until he feels like it might crack open.

The new kid–Hob cannot bring himself to call him Dream, not yet and perhaps not ever–is nice enough, but he is not Hob’s Dream. He is not his friend, though he serves the same function and carries the same powers. Perhaps, in time, they will become friends, but not now. Not when the pain of Dream’s loss is so fresh, so sharp he cannot breathe.

You're not him, Hob thinks, looking at this new Dream, and immediately chides himself for the thought. It's not the kid’s fault, after all. It's not anyone's fault, really, except perhaps Hob's own, for being foolish enough to love something that was always meant to be beyond his reach.

Hob makes it through the pleasantries, walks out of the palace and his feet bring him again on that damned bridge. The waters are calm now, crystalline. The Dreaming has shifted in a way Hob doesn’t recognize.

I am the Dreaming , his friend once told him.

Despite having just attended the wake, it is in this moment that the realization hits him. Dream is gone, He is truly gone, and the thought raises the first sob from his throat. It cuts all the strength from his legs and he’s suddenly on his knees, and he cannot breathe, he cannot breathe, he cannot breathe, and then he’s waking up in his bed with a gasp, and the tears won’t stop falling, and he’s clutching his pillow and sobbing harder, because that’s it, he will not see his friend again.

He will not see his friend again.

During the days and the weeks that follows, Hob finds himself revisiting familiar places, sitting at the New Inn, at their table , almost believing that if he’s patient, if he just waits long enough, Dream will walk through that door, with those sharp cheekbones, and the tiny little frown Hob loves so much, and he will smile at Hob as if nothing ever happened.

He will sit across from Hob, and he will listen to Hob’s stories, and perhaps this time Hob will be brave enough to tell him what he never had the courage to say aloud.

But the door never opens. The chair across from him stays empty. And, on bad days, Hob sits there until closing time, until the staff start giving him worried looks, until he has to face the truth that Dream will never walk through that door again.

At night, when his subconscious brings him to the Dreaming, he often wanders in the gardens, unable to go into the palace, unable to face the new Dream and what he represents.

On some nights, Lucienne joins him. They sit together in comfortable silence at first, but gradually they begin to talk. About Dream. Always about Dream, because wasn't that what Death had said? If you don’t want to forget him, tell his story.

Through these conversations, Hob slowly learns things he never knew. About Orpheus, Dream's son, and the tragedy around his life and his death. He learns about Dream’s parents, Night and Time themselves, and the way Lucienne’s mouth tightens when she speaks about them speaks volumes about their characters.

How lonely he must have been, Hob thinks, and the realization that he was right all those years ago lies heavy in his heart. How desperately lonely, for so very long.

It is on one of those nights that Lucienne finds him, sitting on a bench in the far end of the gardens, and it's one of those nights when he can’t stop the tears from flowing.

“I miss him too,” she says, sitting next to him, her voice soft with sorrow. “Unbearably so.”

Hob nods, not trusting his voice for a moment. He remembers her speech at the funeral, remembers the way her voice broke, knows she loved him dearly.

“If only I’d really listened to him,” he whispers, the words scraping his throat raw on their way out. “That day at the Inn.”

The memory of that bloody day haunts him. Dream sitting across from him, looking more fragile than Hob had ever seen him, speaking of mistakes, of goodbyes. And Hob, caught up in his own grief, had missed the finality of it. Or perhaps, he'd wanted to miss it, had wanted to believe Dream would come back, because Dream always came back. Didn't he?

"It would not have made a difference," Lucienne says softly, but there's a heaviness in her voice that suggests she's trying to convince herself of this as well.

"You can't know that."

"Hob." She turns toward him, her hand hovering near his shoulder before settling there, a comforting weight. "My Lord did not wish to die. The Fates forced his hand."

Hob goes still. He draws in a sharp breath, then releases it slowly, bracing. “How so?”

“They were destroying the Dreaming.” Her chest rises and falls with quick breaths. “Lord Morpheus had no choice.”

"He didn't want to die." Hob's voice cracks on the last words, and his chest tightens.

"He did not." Her hand slides away, clasps with her other one until her knuckles go white. "He thought himself deserving of punishment, yet he fought strenuously to keep his life. But faced with the choice between meeting his end or allowing harm to the realm and its citizens..."

“He sacrificed himself,” he finishes for her, and the thought devastates him more than the alternative, because Dream wanted to live.

Hob has never believed in pointless righteousness, in meaningless altruism. A calculated sacrifice, though, he can get behind. It is nothing less he would have expected from one such as his friend.

“Yes,” she says, and when her voice breaks, she brings a hand to her mouth, as if it could ever be enough to halt the grief.

They sit in silence for a long moment, and Hob cannot get over the fact that, despite it all, Dream wished to live.

"I need your help," he says, and Lucienne looks at him sharply. “There has to be some way to give him another chance."

"Hob," she admonishes.

"No, listen to me." He turns to face her fully, desperate to make her see his point. “What if there's a way for him to exist without his function?"

Lucienne's expression grows cautious. "There are laws," she says quietly.

"Yes, I know that. I bloody well know that there are laws, Lucienne. But I also know that those laws were made by someone, which means they can be interpreted, bent, maybe even broken if you know where to look."

He leans forward, clasping her hand. "And it’s for this reason that I need you to help me find every loophole I can use. Every technicality, every precedent, every exception that might exist in whatever cosmic laws that rule your kind.”

Lucienne stares at him for a long moment, and he can see her weighing his words, her sharp mind at work. "You're asking me to help you challenge the ancient laws," she says slowly.

"I'm asking you to help me give him a chance at the life he never got to live," Hob replies, his voice breaking just slightly. "Lucienne, please. If there's even the smallest possibility...don't we owe it to him to try?"

Lucienne is quiet for what feels like hours, and Hob can see her eyes filling with tears, her lip trembling, the wheels turning in her mind.

At last, she stands. “Follow me.”

Hob’s nights blur together as they work in Lucienne’s library. He loses track of time as he and Lucienne go over ancient texts, but he doesn't stop. He can't stop.

If it weren’t for Lucienne’s insistence, he would spend all of his time asleep in the waking world, so that the research would never pause.

It is Matthew the first to join them, perching on a nearby shelf with a soft flutter of wings. "The new boss knows what you're doing," he says without preamble, and Hob's hands still on the book he's reading.

"And?" Lucienne carefully asks.

"And nothing.” Matthew tilts his head. "Mind if I help? I may not be able to read the fancy stuff, but he was my friend.”

I loved him too, is what Hob hears.

Nuala appears the next day, carrying a stack of books that look suspiciously like they came from Fae. She sets them down without explanation, but when Lucienne raises an eyebrow at her, her pointed ears flush pink.

Even Mervyn shows up eventually, grumbling about fool's errands, but he stays anyway, making sure they have the refreshments they need throughout the night.

It is clear from Matthew’s words that the new Dream knows exactly what's happening. He's probably known from the moment they set foot in the library. But he doesn't interfere, doesn't call them to his presence, doesn't so much as send a messenger. Perhaps, Hob thinks, after all of this is over, he's going to take him out for drinks, well before the hundred year mark. The man deserves that much.

It's Lucienne who finds it, buried in an old text. Her sharp intake of breath draws everyone's attention, and when she looks up, her eyes are bright with hope.

"Here," she says, her finger tracing a line of complicated symbols Hob cannot read for the life of him. "It's... this sounds actually viable."

Hob's heart hammers against his ribs. "What does it say?"

"That a soul unbound by mortal constraints may walk the paths between worlds unchanged." Her voice grows stronger as she reads. "And should they find one who lingers in the space between, who has not yet fully crossed over, they may offer passage back.” She pauses, then quietly adds, “But only if that soul truly wishes to return."

“How does that work?” Hob asks, not daring yet to hope. “Aren’t the Fates just going to come back?”

“No,” Lucienne says, a calculating expression on her face. “It's all here.They have exacted their price. He has already paid for his actions. They cannot claim what has already been taken.”

The silence that follows is deafening.

"So what are we waiting for?" Matthew urgently asks. "Let’s go to- where, exactly? The land of the dead?"

"The space between," Lucienne corrects, and her voice is tight with worry. "It is a dangerous place. Souls can be lost there forever."

"Right, okay, so it's dangerous," Matthew says, fluffing his feathers. "But we're talking about the boss. I'll go. I've been to hell with him before.”

"Matthew, no." Lucienne's voice is soft as she shakes her head. "You are of the Dreaming. We cannot simply leave this realm to venture into the spaces between life and death.”

"I should go," Nuala says quietly, and everyone turns to look at her. "I have magic."

"No." Lucienne’s voice is firm, and Hob swears he can read a deeper concern there, one that goes beyond the laws. The kind of concern of someone who can't afford to lose another one dear to her heart. "You're fae. You're bound by fae rules.”

"Then it's settled," Hob says, standing so quickly his chair scrapes against the library floor. "I'll go. I'll find him.”

“Hob, are you quite certain?” Lucienne asks, her voice low and still tight with concern.

Hob nods. “I am,” he says, because he has to find Dream, give him another chance, and if he’s entirely honest with himself, he’s selfish enough to want back the man that he loves. “I'm immortal. Whatever happens, I can get back. I'm the only one here who can guarantee a return trip."

Lucienne nods slowly. “Then sit back down and let us get to work.”

It turns out, organizing a visit to the space between realms requires careful planning. Every detail matters, every-bloody-thing must be considered. Lucienne assigns each of them research tasks and, for days, they keep gathering in her library, sharing their discoveries.

Lucienne walks Hob through the landscape he'll encounter: the gray mists that can blur his mind, the whispers that might lead him astray, the way time moves differently. She orders him to think of words that will anchor him to his task, that will help keep his sense of self intact.

Dream, Hob thinks. Dream, Dream, Dream.

She walks him through every possible danger he may encounter, every single trick he may have to avoid, weaves a thread for him and instructs him to never let go of it, but in the end, he’s ready to go.

The ritual is rather simple, really, just a circle and some words Lucienne wouldn’t share with them, and soon he is staring through a tear in reality, his heating hammering so violently against his ribcage he’s afraid his ribs will crack. He takes a deep breath, and turns to face the others.

Lucienne steps forward and grasps his hands in both of hers. Her fingers are warm and steady. Grounding.

“Hob,” she quietly says, tying the thread around his wrist. “Before you go, you must be prepared for the possibility that we might be too late. Or that he will not wish to come back.”

Hob swallows past the lump in his throat and meets her eyes. “I know,” he says, "but I have to try."

Lucienne surprises him, and pulls him into a brief, fierce embrace. "Good luck," she whispers against his shoulder. "Bring him home."

When she steps back, her eyes are bright with tears. Matthew hops on her shoulder, and says, “He better.”

Hob looks around at all of them, at this unlikely band of people who love Dream as much as he does, even if perhaps in different ways, and feels his mouth quirk into a grin.

"Right then," he says, rolling his shoulders like he's just preparing for a pub brawl. "Off to steal my friend back. Be back in a tick.”

He takes one last deep breath, squares his shoulders, and steps forward into the rift.

The space between is nothing like Hob expected. There is no river to cross, no Charon to ferry the souls across. There’s just nothingness, an endless plain where everything seems still. The ground beneath his feet feels solid enough, though he can't quite tell what it's made of. A fine mist swirls around him, bringing along the whispers of souls long gone.

Dream, he thinks, his anchor word. I’m here for Dream.

Hob walks, and walks, still holding tightly to the thread Lucienne gave him, his mind never straying from his goal. Souls move past him in small groups, some holding onto each other, some wandering in circles. They barely seem to notice him, lost as they are in their own plights.

Hob scans each and every one of them, looking for a familiar face, for eyes as blue as the sky, for a shock of dark hair, but Dream is nowhere to be found.

What if I’m late? What if he’s crossed over?

It is when he’s about to despair that he sees him. In a place where souls cling together for comfort, where the dead huddle in groups waiting for judgement, there is one figure sitting alone.

Dream sits on a large, flat slab of stone, his knees drawn up, arms wrapped around them in a posture that's so achingly human it makes Hob's chest tight. His head is bent forward, hiding his face, but Hob would know those sharp angles everywhere, would recognize the way Dream holds himself in a crowd of a million souls.

There you are, he thinks, and has to fight the urge to run, to throw himself at Dream's feet, cling to him and never let him go again. For a moment, he can only stand there and drink in the sight of him, perhaps not alive, but here and real and his Dream . Blindingly, achingly so.

Slowly, Hob walks closer. He sits on the slab of stone next to Dream.

“Hello, you,” he says, an echo of their last conversation.

Dream's head snaps up, and oh, how Hob has missed that sharp gaze focused completely on him. Then Dream's face crumbles, his eyes filling with tears, and Hob understands exactly what he's thinking.

"No," he says hastily, because there's no way he's going to let Dream think the worst, not even for a second. "It's not like that. I'm alive. C’mon, you know me better than that."

Dream stares at him for a long moment, those lovely, lovely eyes searching Hob's face as if trying to determine whether he's real or simply a trick of this place. His hand moves tentatively, hesitating just before it reaches Hob's cheek.

"You are truly here," Dream says, and his voice sounds more uncertain than Hob has ever heard it. Hob could weep at the sound of it. "But how? This place is not meant for the living."

"Long story," Hob says, catching Dream's hand before it can retreat and lacing their fingers together. Dream’s fine-boned hand trembles in his own and Hob holds it tighter. I’m here, his touch says.

"The short version is that Lucienne found a loophole, and being immortal allows me to exploit it.”

"You should not have come. This place is dangerous for one such as yourself. You could become lost, trapped here forever. You must go back, Hob.”

"I’m not about to leave you here," Hob interrupts. "Not after we worked so hard to bring you back.”

Dream frowns, confusion flickering across his beloved features. "We?"

"All of us," Hob says, and smiles at the genuine bewilderment on Dream's face. "Lucienne, Matthew, Nuala, even Mervyn. We've been searching through every single book in your library for weeks, looking for a way to reach you, and let me tell you, you’ve got a bloody lot of books!”

For a moment, Dream looks stunned, as if the idea that people might care about him enough to help is foreign to him. His eyes grow bright, and he looks away, blinking rapidly, and Hob is overwhelmed by the need to hunt down each and every person who has made Dream feel unworthy of love and slaughter them all.

"It changes nothing," Dream says quietly, at last. "I cannot return. My story has ended, Hob. I am no longer Endless.”

"Bollocks," Hob says fiercely. "You may not be Endless any longer, but you're still you. You're still the person who sat with me every hundred years, who listened to my stories." He takes a shaky breath. In for a penny, in for a pound. "The man who I've been in love with for longer than it’s wise to admit."

Dream goes very still, and the tears that were gathered in his eyes start to spill over. “Hob, you cannot–”

“I love you,” Hob interrupts, because there is one thing he needs to make perfectly, absolutely clear. “I love you. The man, not the Endless.”

"You cannot love me. You do not know what I have done," Dream whispers, his voice low and broken.

"Yes, I do." Hob reaches out with his free hand until Dream’s hand rests in both of his. “You had to make an impossible choice.”

"I killed my own son," Dream says, and the words seem torn from him, harsh and ragged. “This is my penance.”

"You ended his suffering," Hob corrects gently, squeezing Dream’s hand, and his skin is cold, so cold Hob wants to gather him in his arms and keep him warm for eternity. He just might, if Dream will allow it.

“Dream,” he starts, and when words fail him, he reaches out, and slowly, tentatively cups Dream’s cheek, marvelling at the fact that he is allowed to do so.

“I do not,” Dream says, his voice catching, “hold any right to that name any longer.”

You’ll always be my Dream, Hob thinks.

“Morpheus, then,” he murmurs instead, tracing the sharp line of his cheekbone with his thumb.

Dream– Morpheus –closes his eyes, and leans into the touch, and Hob’s heart shatters at the sheer vulnerability of that simple gesture.

“Will you come back with me then?” Hob asks, and dares to lean closer, until they’re only a breath apart.

"Look," Hob says, the words tumbling out in a rush, because Morpheus is hesitating, and Hob can’t have that. “It doesn't have to be forever. I’m not saying no to forever, mind you, God knows I’m here for it. What I’m trying to say is that you can change your mind, yeah? If you decide you want to leave, after all, I promise I won’t stop you, but please–”

“Hush,” Morpheus whispers, and the word is barely formed before his lips are on Hob’s, cold and chapped and perfect, and his hand is cupping the side of Hob’s neck, chilled fingers pressed against his racing pulse.

Hob pulls him closer, and the kiss turns desperate, and he cannot breathe, thinks he will never breathe again, but that is okay, because Dream is kissing him, he is kissing him , and it tastes of salt and sorrow, of things to come, or so Hob hopes in the few lucid thoughts that are not a rush of finally, finally, finally.

But when they part, Morpheus makes a soft, broken sound and pulls away, standing abruptly, and Hob's heart stops dead in his chest and freefalls into his stomach, because this is it, this is where Morpheus says no.

Panic starts to flood Hob’s chest, but before it can eat up all the air in his lungs, Morpheus reaches out and grasps his hand.

"Come then," he says, and his hold is firm and steady. "Let us go back."

#sandman s2 spoilers #the sandman spoilers #dreamling #dreamling fic #fix it fic #my writing #angst with a happy ending #fuck the finale

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ginnsbaker · 2 days ago

Text

All Of Your Pieces (34 - The Prisoner)

Chapter Summary: For Wanda, it lands on her all at once that you’re back. You’re really here with her, not buried six feet under like you wanted her to believe. Only now does she understand that she’s never truly stopped grieving, not until this moment. Because as much as she loved the Y/N she created in Westview, as much as she tried to shape that version out of everything she loved about you, it was never the same. No matter how perfect that version was, crafted from all the pieces of you she carried, it could never be the real thing.

Pairing: Wanda Maximoff x Female Reader Chapter word count: 6.9k+ | Chapter Tags/Warnings: Smut, Angst, Sorta dubcon

A/N: This is the last weekly update I'll be making for this series. I haven't finished writing the next chapter after this one, and I cannot commit a date on when I can publish it :( All I can say is that, of course I intend to finish the story. We're close to the end anyway // More author's notes here.

Series Masterlist | Main Masterlist

Warmth is the first thing you feel.

Sunlight spills through the bare windows, bright and unrelenting. You lie on your back, body aching but still, there's a strange calm in your limbs. For a few blissful seconds, you forget everything. Maybe last night didn’t happen. Maybe the fence wasn’t real, and you can get up now and walk out of the forest without problem.

Maybe it’s just another bad dream layered on top of worse ones.

You breathe in deep. The sheets smell faintly of lavender.

You try to turn over, reach for the warm hollow beside you—

Except, your left arm doesn’t come with you. You frown, try again. But to no avail.

That’s when you finally look.

Your wrist is bound, though not with a typical rope or cuffs. A red wisp, soft-looking and faintly pulsing, coils around your hand, shackling you to the headboard. It isn’t tight, but it leaves no room for escape. Every time you move, it shifts slightly, like it’s aware of you.

You stare at the glowing knot and sink back into the mattress. Not a dream then.

She didn’t even bind both hands. Just one. Just enough to stop you from getting near the barricade again and risking hurting yourself trying to break through it. Breathing shallow, you inspect your body, recalling the grotesque pain you experienced in your stubbornness to escape this forest. It was worse than you let yourself believe. Fresh bandages wrap your torso, stained pink at the edges. You stare at them for a long moment, then look away.

You start to wonder how many more hits your body can take before it finally gives out.

From the other room, you hear the unmistakable sound of a spoon tapping a bowl, the low hiss of water starting to boil. You can feel Wanda listening, measuring your wakefulness. You close your eyes a beat too late; the handle turns and the door opens without a word.

Wanda shuffles into your room, still in her pajamas from last night. You notice for the first time how sharp her cheekbones have become, how the dark circles under her eyes aren’t smudges of makeup or tricks of the light. She carries a tray in both hands, with steam rising from a shallow bowl beside a small pitcher of water and a few fresh rolls wrapped neatly in linen.

Your stomach growls right on cue.

“Good morning,” Wanda says, her voice almost polite. She sets the tray on the nightstand and drags a chair beside the mattress. You stay quiet, eyes fixed on her with deliberate intent. It’s the only power you have left—watching her, making sure she feels it.

“I wasn’t sure you’d wake so soon,” she continues, lifting the spoon. Broth smells of chicken and thyme. “Drink.”

You turn your face away. It’s petty, but you have no intention of making this easier for her.

Wanda sighs. “You’ll heal faster if you eat.”

You merely stare at her hollowly.

She sets the spoon down, picks up a small pair of shears and bandage rolls. “Then let me change these.”

Feeling your intense gaze on her, Wanda keeps her eyes down, concentrating on the bandages. She peels back the linen, now damp with faint traces of blood, and dabs the wound clean with warm water. The pain is astonishingly minimal, and you can tell it's her magic making that possible. The sensation of her touch, the intentional way she’s being gentle and careful, sends heat skittering under your skin. It seems being deprived of her touch has made your nerves traitors.

“Thank you,” you mutter in relief before you can stop yourself.

“No need,” she replies. “You can’t exactly manage this yourself.”

“Convenient definition of care,” you say, tugging at the red tether. “You could start by untying me.”

Surprisingly enough, she considers. “I can’t risk another escape attempt.”

You catch Wanda off guard as you suddenly thrash against the restraint. It’s a useless effort, and you know it, but you throw everything into the performance.

“It’s a compulsion knot,” she explains softly. “It responds to intention. The harder you fight, the tighter it weaves.”

“New spell?” you growl. “From your favorite book?”

The slight flinch in her shoulders confirms it.

“You really think that thing cares about you, Wanda?”

Wanda’s eyes harden. She rises, gathers the bloodied cloths, and reaches for the tray. “The Darkhold doesn’t care about anything,” she says quietly. “It just gives options. And you know I don’t get many of those.”

She finally meets your eyes, and for a moment, you almost back down. She’s right. She’s never had many choices. Not as a child, not as a woman, not now. Things just happen to Wanda, and people expect her to survive them. You hate that you became one of those people, the one who took away her chance to decide if you were still worth it, if whatever this is between you was still something she wanted.

She’s right about that.

But that doesn’t excuse her. It doesn’t make it right to take away choices now, as if they don’t carry consequences.

“Kidnapping? Feeding the stray you dragged in like a house pet? Those are your options now?”

You bite your tongue to stop yourself but it’s too late. You hadn’t meant for the accusation to go that far, hadn’t meant to touch anything beyond your own situation. The incident at Westview from weeks ago is still fresh, and Wanda still hasn’t fully faced or processed everything she did and went through there. And now here you are, throwing it all at her feet like she’s some kind of monster.

Wanda’s spine straightens at the word kidnapping.

You scramble to take it all back. “Wanda—”

“You went after me,” Wanda says simply, voice even, almost weary. “And now you’re just facing the result of your actions.”

You let out a dry snort in response.

“You should eat,” she adds, glancing at the tray, the steam already starting to fade. You groan in protest but Wanda takes matters into her own hands and spoons up a small measure of broth and brings it to your lips, and this time you don’t resist, partly out of guilt for what you said, and partly because, honestly, you’re starving.

You part your mouth, taste salt and rosemary, and let the warmth slide down your throat. She withdraws, gathers another serving, and your gaze tracks the slow sweep of her wrist. The cotton sleeve slips higher, revealing a pale stretch of forearm dusted with freckles you used to map with your mouth. You try not to think about that, yet you can’t stop remembering how she shivered under your breath, how her pulse quickened beneath your lips.

The truth is, you haven’t fully wrapped your head around the fact that Wanda’s back. That she’s alive. After five years of mourning her, missing her, she’s suddenly here again—just a breath away. So far, you’ve managed to keep yourself in check, resisting that familiar pull of being helplessly, carelessly in love with Wanda Maximoff—a feeling that’s far too easy to get lost in. The situation is far from ideal, and you know she hasn’t forgiven you for the deception. Still, it’s shameful how your desire for her is like embers being coaxed to life, slow at first, then flaring hotter than ever when you need it least.

You swallow another spoonful, then blurt the first thought that trips across your tongue.

“You look exactly the same.”

Her hand stills.

You didn’t intend to let the words leave out of your mouth, but it’s too late to take them back, so you scramble to follow that up with something that would make the situation less awkward for the both of you.

Instead, you manage to say something much worse.

“Same lashes, same little hollow right there,” your gaze drops to the curve beneath her cheekbone, “I used to trace it in my sleep so I wouldn’t forget the shape of you.”

But it’s like a dam has burst, and you can’t hold back the flood you’ve been drowning in for years. “After you were gone, I kept counting your freckles every night, memory-by-memory, because if one went missing in my head, I knew I’d start losing the rest of you too.”

A tremor skates through her fingers and broth beads at the rim. She says nothing, but the scarlet knot around your wrist quivers as though feeling her pulse.

“I thought I’d forget eventually,” you say, voice a little hoarse. “I tried to. But you know what’s worse than forgetting someone?”

Her silence dares you to finish.

“Remembering everything.”

Wanda’s throat works. You open your mouth for another spoonful, and she offers it, her hand slightly less steady now. When a bit of broth spills down your chin, you move to wipe it instinctively, but Wanda beats you to it. She reaches forward without thinking, wiping it away with her thumb. The pad of her finger drags gently along your cheek.

It’s only when she notices your other hand isn’t bound that she seems to catch herself. But the damage is done. Her cheeks flush pink, and she pulls back so quickly the spoon rattles in the bowl.

Wanda clears her throat and gets up, saying, “You still have one arm free.”

“Wands—”

“I have to go.”

And then, she’s gone.

You let your head rest against the headboard, eyes falling closed.

—

The moment Wanda leaves, you finish the rest of the broth she left behind, eating slowly, almost defiantly, until the bowl is empty. Your stomach thanks you for it. Your body, exhausted from fever and pain, folds into the mattress the moment you let yourself relax. You don’t even realize you’re falling asleep again until you wake hours later.

Your second nap of the day ends with a soft groan and a long stretch—at least as much as your single unbound arm allows. The fatigue that wrapped itself around you this morning has mostly faded now, burned away by food and rest. You feel... almost good. Your head is clear. For the first time in what feels like days, you're not in pain. You’ve almost forgotten what normal feels like.

What’s not normal, however, is being trapped in bed like a convalescent child. You glance around the room, your new prison as it seems. Restlessness prickles at your skin.

Your body has mended enough, but the sheets under you smell sour. If Wanda unbound you, you could move around, straighten the room, clean the sheets, maybe even cook something simple. You could be useful again, do something other than count the hours and wonder what she’s thinking. You used to take care of each other, before the snap, before the lies. In Scotland, it was you who made breakfast most mornings. It was Wanda who patched the holes in your coat and kissed the bandages on your knuckles when you burned yourself cooking.

Now, as Wanda’s prisoner, you lie on stained linen, itching to move and unable to do anything at all. You stare at the scarlet tether, a thin strand of light looped around your wrist. You flex your fingers and pull, not violently, but with enough force to test its limits. It doesn’t budge.

As you continue to move around, the headboard creaks beneath you. It suddenly registers to you how old and worn it looks. Your eyes go to the screws holding it to the frame. An idea comes to you quickly. If you can break it free, you won’t be entirely free, but at least you won’t be chained to the bed.

With your other hand, you shove at the headboard, fingers prying at the joints. The wood groans. You feel it give slightly, splinters catching your palm. But when the headboard starts to crack, the red wisp stays exactly where it is, floating just above the broken wood. The tether wasn’t bound to the bed at all.

It was bound to you.

You sit back, breathing hard, staring at the magic. There’s no end to it, no knot to pick at, no clasp to undo. You follow its path with your eyes, tracing it outward, slipping beyond the bed, beyond the cabin walls, disappearing through the wood like mist through a sieve.

You shift and swing your legs over the edge of the bed, feet meeting the cold floor. You squint out the window, looking for any trace of the tether, maybe a thread of light leading into the woods or up into the sky. But there’s nothing. It fades out of sight, like it disappears into the air. You’ve been made aware of the incredible progression of Wanda’s power recently. But it’s still hard to fathom how she’s doing all this, even before the Darkhold came into the picture.

You take a shaky breath, mind racing. You can’t just sit and wait. Your eyes land on your pack at the foot of the bed. Slowly, awkwardly, you stretch out your foot, toes reaching for it. You catch the zipper tab and pull the bag closer, inch by inch.

Finally, you get it close enough. You pinch the zipper with your toes, ease it open an inch at a time. Your pulse lifts when your toes brush the familiar pocket where your phone should be, but the compartment is empty. Only the lining greets your searching foot. Wanda must have removed it while you were unconscious.

You let the bag drop and resigned to your fate. She has stayed several steps ahead of you from the start, and seven days isn’t enough time to figure out how to get the hell out of here.

—

The afternoon light creeps across the floor in long gold bars, and for a while the only sounds are your own breathing. More than the lack of mobility, it’s the boredom that gets to you. Time moves excruciatingly slower when you’re literally counting the seconds and minutes until Wanda’s return.

You feel sticky and gross. The sheets cling in places they shouldn’t. The room smells of sweat, dried blood, and frustration.

You close your eyes, imagining what it would feel like to stand, to wash, to move freely again. But the thought only makes the present more unbearable.

Then, without warning, the door creaks open. Finally.

Wanda enters without her coat, hair gathered in a loose knot. She carries a wide wooden tray balanced in both hands: a small pot of stewed vegetables, two thick slices of bread, and a chipped enamel cup that smells of mint and willow bark.

She sets the tray on the chair beside the bed, not looking at you. Things got out of hand earlier, and she’s determined not to let that happen again. Keeping her distance while making sure you’re fed seems the safest way forward. This time, she’s in a hurry to leave, fingertips already lifting the latch.

“Wanda.” Your voice is rough from disuse.

She stops, if only to acknowledge you having called her.

“I… I need a favor,” you say.

At that she turns, one brow arched.

You swallow and shift to sit higher against the headboard. “Look at me,” you begin evenly. “I stink. These sheets stink. If you leave me like this much longer, I’m going to lose my mind before I can give you my answer.”

Her expression remains guarded, but you see the war behind her eyes. She’s weighing the risk, your sincerity, her guilt. You hope the last two are winning.

You lick your lips, your eyes falling down to your lap. You hate begging, but you do it anyway.

“Please.”

At last, Wanda lets her gaze settle on you. Her green eyes are bright and clear, and for a moment, there’s a softness in them—so slight you could almost miss it. She steps closer, stretches her hand towards you and murmurs a word under her breath. The light loosens and then slips away from the headboard and coils instead around your wrist like a bracelet. It still hums with magic, but now it allows the freedom of your other arm and both legs.

“Only long enough to shower,” she says. “When you’re done, call me.”

Relief sweeps through you, almost dizzying. You swing your legs off the mattress and stand; the first full stretch makes your muscles sing. For a second you wobble, but Wanda’s hand braces your elbow before you can fall. She removes it at once, as if contact burns.

She guides you across the hall to a narrow bathroom. A stack of folded towels waits on the bench. Mist rises from the shower stall, and you realize she must have turned the water on before coming into your room.

“I’ll handle your sheets,” she adds.

You rest your palm on the doorframe. “You really don’t have to—”

“I’m using my powers,” she cuts you off sharply. “It won’t take long.”

That surprises you more than anything. Back in Scotland, Wanda avoided using magic for chores. She always said there was a kind of satisfaction in doing things the ordinary way, especially when you worked side by side. She’d mend the fraying cuffs of your coat with needle and thread instead of a flick of her fingers, laughing at the crooked stitches. You cooked, and she washed the dishes by hand, even though she could have made them clean with a thought.

You open your mouth to remind her, then close it again. That Wanda feels very far away.

She turns, already retreating down the hallway. You watch her for a moment, then step into the shower. You strip off your clothes in a hurry, a quiet sigh slipping from you as the hot water pours over your skin, bringing instant relief. Aside from the dirt and grime, you feel some tension in your chest wash away too. In this small, tiled corner of the world, it’s almost possible to pretend the last five years never happened.

When you’re done, it doesn’t even occur to you to call out for her like she’s your babysitter. The cabin is small, and you know your way around. You’re too relaxed to think about escaping, and besides, you’re half-naked under the towel. So you just head back to your room. The towel, wrapped high beneath your arms, hangs to mid-thigh, and water slips down your legs, leaving dark streaks on the floorboards. When you reach the bedroom, you find Wanda is still there.

She stands by the bed, palms raised, focused on her work. She said she’d clean up, but she’s doing far more. She’s repairing the rotted wood, mending the headboard you damaged, even improving the small room to make it warmer, more comfortable. The gesture draws a smile from you, unbidden. She doesn’t have to do any of it.

She’s so absorbed in the task that she doesn’t notice you.

You clear your throat. “It looks great.”

Wanda is visibly startled, whirling toward the sound. Her gaze snags on the towel clinging to your damp skin, travels the line of your collarbone, and catches on the droplets sliding between your breasts. A faint flush rises in her cheeks before she drags her eyes to your face.

“You moved fast,” you say, letting a small, appreciative smile curve your lips. “Thank you.”

Wanda makes a small noise at the back of her throat. “Magic is efficient.” You don’t miss the way her eyes follow a droplet that strays down your shoulder.

And there it is, the proof that Wanda isn’t as detached as she pretends. The pull between you still holds her. Just like it does you.

You decide to test it, taking a single, daring step closer.

The towel loosens against your thighs as you move, and Wanda’s eyes quickly dart back to your face, wide with something that looks dangerously like want. “Wanda,” you whisper. You really aren’t sure what you’re going for. Maybe you just need her to stay this close for one more breath.

But she’s quicker than your brain’s struggle to come up with its next move. With one graceful slide, she moves between you and the door, leaving at least a foot of space between herself and you.

“Dinner will be ready soon,” she murmurs, retreating toward the doorway, the warmth still lingering on her cheeks. Just as she’s about to step out, she pauses, as if remembering something. With a small flick of her hand, the red wisp at your wrist stirs to life, stretching and tightening until it binds you once again.

The door closes. You exhale the breath you didn’t realize you were holding and glance at the fresh clothes neatly folded on the mattress. The sweater is soft heather gray, the joggers a darker charcoal. You shrug into them awkwardly, one hand at a time, towel dropping to the floor.

You sit on the edge of the bed and test the new restraint. It gives you just enough slack to lie down and turn whichever way you want. But your thoughts are far from what you can do while being Wanda’s prisoner.

All you can think about is how she is obviously still drawn to you, even as she keeps running away.

—

Something strange happens later that night. You wake to a soft rustle, eyes still gritty with sleep, and wonder if the wind just rattled the window.

At first you think you imagined the sound that pulled you from sleep.

Then you hear it again. Your name. Being called in a whine by the only other person sleeping in this same cabin.

“Y/N…” Wanda’s voice floats across the dark room. You pull against the binds, testing. They stretch farther than before, as if the magic itself is distracted. You move carefully, sliding to the edge of the bed and wait. Maybe you’re dreaming. It wouldn’t be surprising, not with how strange this place feels, Wanda’s magic being all over the place, and the beating your body has taken over the past week.

“Y/N…” Wanda’s voice is louder this time. That spurs you to action. The magical rope surprisingly allows you to walk out of your room and wander into Wanda’s quarters. You find her in the middle of the bed, tangled in the blankets, deep in a dream—or more likely, a nightmare. She’s sweating, her brow furrowed, lips moving soundlessly.

You hang back, watching her struggle, not sure if you should wake her or just stay close until it passes. But when her face twists and she starts to cry in her sleep, the decision is made for you. You kneel beside the bed, reaching out gently. “Hey,” you whisper.

Her eyes snap open.

In the same breath, she surges forward, arms locking around your neck, holding onto you for dear life. She's shaking, trembling so hard you feel it through both your clothes.

“I’m here,” you murmur against her hair. It’s damp with sweat, sticking to your cheek. “I’ve got you.”

She doesn’t let go. Her nightdress is soaked through, clinging to her skin; when she shifts, the fabric drags across your sweater, and you become acutely aware of every place your bodies meet. Heat floods up your neck. And somewhere else you’d rather ignore.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” she mumbles, although her tone seems to tell you she doesn’t mind that at all.

You cup her face, your thumb brushing a line of wet beneath her eye. Wanda rarely had nightmares in your time together. Although you’ve heard her have them when you were both living in the Avengers compound, with your rooms next to each other.

“And I’m not going anywhere,” you answer, and you mean it more than being literally chained to this cabin. You mean it so hard it hurts.

Wanda tenses in your arms, then shakes her head so sharply you half expect her to hurt herself.

“You’re not supposed to be here. Not with me.”

You pull back just enough to see her face. “What do you mean ‘with you’?”

She doesn’t answer. Her arms drop to her sides, the absence of her touch somehow louder than her words.

“Wanda.”

“You’d be happier if you’re just willing, Y/N,” she says. She starts retreating further but you reach for her hand, fingers wrapping around her cold ones.

“Not like this.”

“You don’t understand. The Darkhold wants you gone. It wants you dead. As long as you’re here, it refuses to show me my children. You… you complicate everything.”

It’s the confirmation you’ve been dreading. It’s that damn book, twisting her, pushing her to a place the Wanda you knew would never go. You don’t even want to imagine what other lies it’s been whispering to her.

“I’m not—”

“All I’ve ever wanted is to bring Billy and Tommy back,” she says, and she sounds so unbearably tired. “The book keeps telling me what I have to do—what it’ll take. And you... you’re the price, Y/N. You’re what’s standing in the way.”

“Do you want me gone?”

Wanda finally looks at you, her face still streaked with tears from the nightmare. She looks utterly wrecked.

“You wanted me to believe you were gone.”

Her answer leaves you speechless. No matter how far you’ve chased her, how long you’ve searched, or how ready you are to stay by her side now, it doesn’t change the truth—that you were the coward who ran away first.

When your silence lingers too long, Wanda speaks again.

“It’s not just about being their mother again. It’s about saving them, Y/N. I know they’re out there…somewhere. Lost and probably scared.” Her voice wavers. “Without the Darkhold, I have no way of reaching them. I could burn this whole world to the ground, and it still wouldn’t be enough. Not without that book.”

You hold on to her hand tighter. “There is another way and we can find it together. You and me. We always—”

“No.” Wanda snatches back her hand from yours. “You don’t see. I can see them through windows—in my dreams. But I can’t break through to where they are. Not without the Darkhold.”

You brush her cheek. She flinches, then lets herself settle against your hand. “So you’re really walking from everything you fought for? Gambling it all on that book to get Billy and Tommy back?”

She nods. “This is what I want. I’m sure of it.”

And that’s the worst part. Because you know she believes it. And it’s killing her. And it might kill you too.

You ease your hand away from her face but stay close, sensing the fragile détente might shatter if you so much as breathe too loudly.

With Wanda not leaving room for doubt about what she’s aiming for, you look to a different avenue, resulting in a question that pushes to the front of your mind.

“What were you dreaming just now?”

“Nothing,” she says, almost too quickly. “You should go back to your room.”

Her eyes drop to your wrist, and you see the flicker of realization cross her face. The magical confines should have kept you from leaving your room. When her mouth tightens into a line, it confirms what you already suspected—you weren’t meant to get this far.

You don’t move. If she wanted you chained again, all it would take is a snap of her fingers.

But until she does, you’re not going anywhere.

“You were calling my name,” you tell her, and Wanda’s brows furrow together at being caught doing just that. “Were you dreaming about me?”

“I don’t dream anymore.”

You search her face, waiting for elaboration.

She sighs, the impatience clear, like she’s tired of explaining things you should already understand. “They’re not dreams. They’re real places. Real people—from another universe. I see the boys there through a variant of me. And sometimes…” Wanda sighs. “Sometimes I see you, too.”

A slow, almost involuntary smile curls your lips at her disgruntled admission. “So you were dreaming about me,” you murmur.

Before Wanda can protest, you lift your hand, your thumb brushing gently against her lower lip. The warmth of her skin, the softness you’ve missed, nearly undoes you. And it undoes her. She shivers beneath your touch, eyes darkening as her breath hitches.

The Darkhold growls at the back of her mind. But her body drowns it out. Her body remembers. It remembers the real you: the one she never got to keep, never got to watch grow and change, the one who broke her heart again and again but somehow still makes it feel fuller than anything else ever could.

Your eyes are dark, clouded with want. You trace her lip once more, slower this time, watching the way she trembles, how her lashes lower like she can’t bear the implication of her response to your touch.

“In that universe,” you ask quietly, “are we together?”

Wanda swallows hard and gives a small nod.

Your heart beats faster. “What were we doing there?”

Color blooms in Wanda’s cheeks, a flush trailing up her neck to the tips of her ears. She drops her gaze, but not before you catch the answer written clear as day on her face.

You lean in, slow and steady, letting her see every inch of your intent. Her eyes stay fixed on your mouth, and if this were some ordinary argument years into a marriage—if she were just being stubborn, waiting for you to make peace—you might have laughed at how easy she is to read.

This moment was never meant to exist, not weeks ago.

So you move carefully, holding the moment like it might break, because you don’t know if you’ll ever get another.

The kiss is feather-light. You’ve applied just enough pressure to know that your lips are touching hers, enough to feel her exhale a breath through the small gap between them. It’s so innocent compared to the ones you’ve shared before—and you’ve shared hundreds of them, not that you’re counting—but it feels like the most important one.

You don’t push for more. In fact, in a second or two, you pull back.

Wanda, on the other hand, does not agree with that. In the space of that single heartbeat, her fingers fist in the front of your sweater, and she drags you forward with a force that steals breath from your lungs. Her mouth finds yours again, and this time, there’s nothing innocent about it.

All the grief and anger she’s carried pours out in the rough slide of her lips, the nip of teeth at your lower lip, the way her breath shakes when you open for her. You gasp against her, and she follows the sound, pressing you back until your spine meets the soft mattress. Her hand cups the back of your neck, holding you there. Holding you still. Her tongue pushes past your lips, greedy and unhesitating, claiming what she’s been denied for far too long.

For Wanda, it lands on her all at once that you’re back. You’re really here with her, not buried six feet under like you wanted her to believe. Only now does she understand that she’s never truly stopped grieving, not until this moment. Because as much as she loved the Y/N she created in Westview, as much as she tried to shape that version out of everything she loved about you, it was never the same. No matter how perfect that version was, crafted from all the pieces of you she carried, it could never be the real thing.

Not even the Y/N she occasionally meets in dreams compares. She could find versions of you in a thousand universes, and none of them would matter.

She wants you, and only you.

The Darkhold does not approve of this realization, but it approves of the carnal want raging inside of her now.

She slips her fingers under your shirt and the seams give way under her unexpected strength. Cool night air rushes over your skin, goosebumps rising in its wake. Your nipples are already painfully hard, but they’re not ready for the searing warmth of Wanda’s mouth.

“Oh God, Wanda…” you breathe.

She sucks on a teat, tongue circling once before her teeth graze the tender peak. The roughness draws a gasp from your throat, pleasure spiked with an edge of pain that curls your toes against the sheets. Your back arches, offering more. Wanda answers with a low sound that vibrates against your breast. She sucks harder, then lets go with a soft pop—only to sink her teeth just below, marking the skin with a deepening bruise against its otherwise unblemished tone. Her hand covers your other breast, thumb stroking once, twice, before she pinches, coaxing another broken moan from your lips.

Now this is something different. Usually, you’re the one who leads, the one who sets the pace, the one who leaves Wanda a babbling mess. Not that you’re complaining—you’re already on edge, though you hate to admit it—but part of you wants to slow down, to savor this, because deep down you know it might be the last time.

For Wanda, there’s no slowing down now. Once she starts, it’s like a fever takes hold, leaving her unable or unwilling to stop. She moves on instinct, stripping away your pajamas until only your underwear remains. Her gaze lingers for a moment on the dark patch at your crotch, and she smiles to herself, pleased that your body still answers to her, even after all these years, even after it has known someone else’s touch while she was gone.

She doesn’t notice the scars you’ve gathered over the past five years, the ones that mark nearly half of you. The Darkhold sees to that, keeping them hidden from her as its power glows in her eyes.

Wanda doesn’t give you a second to adjust to the rush of cool air against your skin, or to the way vulnerability wraps around you now that you’re bare before her. She doesn’t give you the chance to tug at her nightdress, to even the playing field. Her nightdress stays where it is, slipping lower on one shoulder but nothing more, as if she’s determined to keep you exposed while she remains clothed.

Her mouth leaves your chest, but before you can catch your breath, she’s moving lower, hair brushing your stomach, fingers skimming down your sides. She kneels between your legs, pushing your thighs apart, and the scrape of fabric against your skin only heightens your awareness of just how wet you are for her, how much you’ve missed this, missed her.

She’s already lower, already focused on the place that makes your head spin. Her breath is hot against the wet patch of your underwear. She presses her mouth there, slow at first, savoring the way you shudder beneath the weight of it. You whimper, hips lifting instinctively, but she holds you down with strong hands, fingers digging into your thighs painfully.

The heat of her mouth soaks through, the wet drag of her tongue making you gasp, making your fingers clutch at the sheets. She lingers, tormenting you, rubbing slow, deliberate circles over that aching spot, savoring how you fall apart beneath so little.

“W-Wands…” you gasp, the sound of her name more plea than warning.

But she doesn’t stop. If anything, her hunger only becomes more dangerous. She releases one of your thighs, pushes your ruined panties aside, and positions a finger at your entrance. You shudder in anticipation, knowing you’ll come the moment she’s inside you.

You try to urge her upward, wanting her to hold you, to kiss you while it happens—but instead, the magical cuff around your wrist flares back to life. In an instant, it splits in two and pins both your hands to the headboard, leaving you with no choice but to lie there, hips shifting helplessly. You’re not even sure what you’re asking her anymore—to stop or to keep going.

Held open and helpless, you can only watch as she drags her mouth down your torso, eyes glowing a warning shade of red. She nuzzles between your thighs, nosing the soaked fabric of your underwear as though the damp proof of your need belongs on display.

“Please—”

She answers with action, pushing the gusset aside rather than stripping it away. She exhales a cool breath against your warm, aching cunt—before a single finger slides into you in one swift, sure motion. Your walls close around her immediately, a gasp ripping from your throat as she curls that lone digit just enough to draw another tremor from you. She keeps her finger buried deep, letting you pulse around her.

“Tako uska,” she breathes in Sokovian—so tight—her voice thick with possession. You clench around her instinctively, making you more wet if that’s even possible.

Instead of adding a second finger, Wanda puts her mouth back on you—still over the fabric—her tongue tracing damp circles that turn your legs to water. Each stroke of her tongue sends a jolt straight through your core, and the friction of wet cloth against oversensitive flesh leaves you blushing at how easily she unravels you without even undressing you fully.

“Pogledaj se,” Wanda murmurs, voice muffled by your drenched bottoms. Look at you.

Your hips cant forward as she withdraws her finger only to thrust it back in deeper. The cuffs tighten just enough to remind you who controls the pace tonight.

“Wanda… please.”

“Ti si moja,” she growls—you are mine—and a second finger presses in beside the first, stretching you just right. Your walls flutter, and the sound that escapes your throat borders on a sob.

Her next words don’t pass her lips. Wanda goes inside your head and says—

I love you like this—messy and only mine.

It nearly pushes you over the edge.

Somewhere in the haze, you wonder if this is the Darkhold’s influence. Wanda has never been this bold, never slipped into your mind like this, especially after promising she wouldn’t.

It should scare you, but right now, all you can focus on is the feel of her fingers inside you and her mouth doing and whispering dirty things you never imagined hearing from her. It’s reckless. It’s wrong. And it feels perilously right.

Wanda’s fingers slide out almost to the last knuckle, and before you can fully exhale, she drives them in again—deeper, harder—while letting a third finger join the stretch. You twist against your restraints, helpless to do anything but feel. Wanda lifts her head, scarlet eyes pinning you in place. She commands—give me what is mine—before adding a fourth digit.

She punctuates the demand by curling all four fingers, pressing perfectly against that sweet spot. The swell breaks, heat rippling outward in a white-hot wave, your entire body tensing, then shattering around her hand. A ragged scream rips free as your climax crashes over you, pulsing so hard it borders on pain.

Wanda slows the curling of her fingers but keeps them buried deep inside you, letting your walls squeeze around her some more. Your hips twitch as the aftershocks seize your body, slick warmth coating her wrist. The sheer intensity of it leaves your eyes stinging; tears threaten, born of overstimulation, relief, and something you can’t name.

You lift your wrists, rattling the scarlet cuffs. “Please, Wanda,” you whisper desperately. “Let me hold you. Let me return the favor.”

Her lips curve in something almost sympathetic, but she doesn’t release you. Instead, she drags a single fingernail down your cheek, just rough enough to raise a faint red line, before bringing the same finger to your lips. “Suck,” she murmurs.

You obey, sucking eagerly as she presses her forefinger onto your tongue, tasting yourself. The humiliation and intimacy of it makes your eyes flutter shut.

“This is what you came for?” she asks quietly, watching you intently. “You wanted me to fuck you?”

You shake your head, the finger still between your lips. Pulling back only enough to speak, you manage, “I came because I have so much to make up to you. Because I was wrong. Because I finally understand I can’t live without you.”

“Yet you have lived without me,” she says. “You have—in a thousand other realities.”

You’re about to protest, but Wanda barely allows you a breath. Her fingers, still deep inside you, start to move again, slow at first, then harder, rougher, with purpose. The stretch stings as your slick begins to dry, and you hiss at the friction. Finally, she rips your ruined underwear the rest of the way off and shifts her hand so that each thrust drags her palm right over your clit, forcing your body to bloom wet around her once more.

“It’s lying to you,” you manage in a hoarse whisper, even as your eyes roll to the back of your head. “If the Darkhold’s telling you this, it’s lying.”

She answers by crashing her mouth to yours, teeth catching your lower lip hard enough that you taste blood. Her free hand closes around your throat roughly, almost cutting off your air entirely.

“The Darkhold doesn’t lie,” she growls into the kiss. “It just shows the truth.”

“A-and what’s the truth?”

Wanda abruptly stops and for a second, the red glow in her eyes fades just a little.

“That in every other universe, it’s always her. It’s always Kia.”

Her fingers thrust deeper. Rougher. Your wrists strain against the magical cuffs, useless as she works you ruthlessly. She doesn’t slow when you shudder apart; she rides each clench of your walls, pushing even harder as if determined to redraw every limit you thought you had. She drives into you again and again until all you can feel, hear, and breathe is Wanda Maximoff and the stench of her heartbreak.

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