#how a legacy blooms

[peachypiichi]

this is slowly turning into a pixel cats blog.......

[kikitrait]

[colouredbyd]

Soleil

Regulus Black x fem!reader

summary:  When Regulus overhears a whispered confession never meant for him—soft words tucked between laughter and loyalty, unraveling the quiet truth beneath your friendship. In the hush that follows, the line between almost and everything begins to blur.

warnings: the most fluffiest fluff to ever fluff in any au, friends in love but in denial, childhood friends to lovers, lowkey grumpy x sunshine trope, reg being insecure, love confessions, self doubt, swearing. i love this sm.

word count: 7.3k ( im sorry ☹️)

authors note: reggie is quite literally the loml so here u go guys 🌷 

masterlist

“I just don’t get it. You two are close, sure, but how can someone like you stand someone so… frostbitten?”

Regulus Black had never been fond of listening in.

Not because he held some high regard for personal boundaries—though he might feign such principles if questioned—but because idle whispers had always struck him as painfully dull. His ears had never itched for gossip, nor had curiosity ever coaxed him into shadowed corners. If people had something to say, they’d say it. And if they didn’t, he preferred the quiet.

In truth, silence had always been kinder to him than most people ever were.

It was a habit he’d mastered long before Hogwarts—back when the walls of Grimmauld Place echoed with slurred legacies and scornful lectures. In those days, slipping away unnoticed had been a form of survival. At school, it was simply routine.

But tonight… something felt different.

Maybe it was the fact that his name had slipped past someone else’s lips.

Maybe it was the company—James Potter, Marlene McKinnon, and you—tucked just around the corridor outside the Gryffindor common room.

Or maybe it was something subtler, something aching and ancient, when Marlene’s voice laced his name with ice.

He hadn’t meant to linger. He’d only returned to fetch the worn book he’d abandoned on the windowsill that morning. He hadn’t expected anyone to be there—let alone you, laughter softening your voice like candlelight.

He could’ve kept walking. He should have.

But then—

“I think there’s kindness in him,” James said, uncertain. His voice faltered like a lantern in fog.

“I mean… we’ve barely spoken, really.” He rubbed the back of his neck—nervous, boyish. Always more heart than caution.

“Maybe he’s just not great with people?”

You hummed softly, nodding in agreement, though your gaze had grown distant, pulled by the threads of memory. You understood him far better than the others did—better, perhaps, than anyone else dared to try. That’s why Marlene and Dorcas had turned to you, curious about the boy who walked the castle halls like a ghost no one could quite touch.

You had known Regulus Black long before you shared the same classes at Hogwarts. Growing up among pureblood circles had made your paths cross more than once, though back then, he barely acknowledged your presence. It wasn’t until your fifth year that a quiet camaraderie started to bloom—quiet, not because it was secret, but because it had no need for loud declarations. A glance. A shared silence. A wordless understanding. All of it wove together like a private constellation only you two could see.

You smiled faintly at the memory, a soft huff of laughter escaping you. It was absurd, really, to think you’d somehow become the unofficial Regulus Black Expert of Gryffindor Tower. The idea would have made your younger self laugh out loud.

Because back then—when you’d first been introduced to him by a smug Sirius Black with a wicked grin and a mischievous, “Reggie, this one won’t bite unless you ask”—you never would have imagined this strange little bond forming.

“Regulus has always been… closed off,” you murmured at last, agreeing with Marlene’s earlier observation, though your tone drifted somewhere far away. Your words were less a reply and more a wandering thought, drifting like parchment on the wind.

It hadn’t been easy, not at first. Regulus had no interest in friendship—especially not the kind that came packaged with Sirius’s teasing introductions. He had been all cold stares and clipped replies, a boy carved from silence and family pressure. And you? You had simply been the unfortunate soul swept into the current of Black family drama, doomed to be one more casualty in Go-to-hell, Sirius’s grand matchmaking schemes.

Time after time, you found yourself at 12 Grimmauld Place under the excuse of “study sessions” or “family dinners” orchestrated by Sirius’s sheer willpower. And time after time, Regulus kept his distance, each glance sharpened like a dagger, each word a carefully measured offering. He didn’t need friends. He didn’t want them. And you? You were just a name on a list he hadn’t asked for.

And truthfully, you never quite knew when it shifted—or why. When, between wary glances and measured silences, something real began to stir between you. You chewed gently at your bottom lip as the thought unfurled, trying to follow the winding trail back to the precise moment when your distant acquaintance melted into something gentler, more sincere. Something you could, without hesitation, call a friendship now.

“Do you think he ever lets anyone in?” Marlene asked, a touch of disbelief in her voice—not meant to wound, only to confess her own discomfort. She never knew how to fill the silences Regulus left behind, not the way Dorcas or you somehow managed to. “It just doesn’t add up to me.”

Unseen just around the corner, Regulus leaned his weight against the stone wall, the cold of it pressing into his back as he stood completely still. This was the part where he should have left. Disengaged. Forgotten he’d heard anything at all. He should have reminded himself that he didn’t care what people thought—because he didn’t. Or at least, he hadn’t.

But something invisible tethered him to that moment. Curiosity, perhaps. Or the soft echo of his own name on your lips.

“I get that you’re close,” Marlene went on, “but how does someone like you end up friends with someone so…”

He didn’t want to hear the rest of the sentence. And yet, he couldn’t stop listening.

Her voice faltered for a second, and Regulus felt it like a fist around his ribs. He could guess what came next.

“So… cold?”

The word landed like frost beneath his skin.

Cold?

His mind latched onto it, dissecting it like a puzzle he didn’t ask to solve. Is that truly how they saw him? Was that what he looked like through other people’s eyes? He supposed he wasn’t the easiest person to read. He wasn’t known for kindness or warmth—but cold? The word clung to the back of his throat, sharp and stinging.

He should’ve walked away. Brushed it off like he had with everything else. He’d built his world out of walls for a reason. He didn’t let himself care. He never had.

So why, then, did his chest feel like it had been split open?

He was turning to leave, to forget the book he came for and the crack this moment left behind—

Until he heard your voice.

“Cold?” you echoed, and Regulus froze mid-step. There was something in your voice—an edge he couldn’t quite name. Anger? Disbelief? Something that made his heart stutter painfully in his chest.

He found himself leaning into the shadows again, listening, caught in your words like a boy drowning in a storm.

“Regulus Black is anything but cold,” you said, your voice like silk woven through fire. A laugh escaped you next, quiet and bitter. “He’s the warmest person I’ve ever known.”

His breath caught. He almost laughed—almost—but stopped himself. He was supposed to be hidden, after all.

Still, that one sentence echoed louder than the rest.

“Truly?” Marlene blinked at you, surprise tugging at her brows like she hadn’t expected the warmth in your voice.

You nodded with the kind of certainty that didn’t waver.

“Absolutely,” you said, your voice soft but steady, like morning light through a window. “There’s no one quite like him. He’s… kind. Deeply so. He just doesn’t wear it on his sleeve like most do. You have to look closer to see it.”

Around the corner, hidden behind the curve of ancient stone, Regulus stood still as the marble beneath his feet. Your voice was like a tether, pulling him back every time he considered walking away.

“Regulus doesn’t move like everyone else,” you continued gently, a smile curling at the corners of your lips. “He’s quiet, sure. Always has been. But cold?” You let out the softest laugh, the kind that sounded like wind through lavender fields. “No… not cold. Never that. He’s warm in ways most people don’t know how to be.”

Warm? Regulus nearly scoffed, but the heat that rushed to his face betrayed him. If only you knew the darkness he buried his heart beneath. If only you saw the shadows he called home. And still—still—your voice made him believe, just for a second, that maybe you did see. And maybe… you didn’t mind.

“He wouldn’t believe me if I told him,” you said with a small laugh, like you could hear his thoughts. “But it’s true. He cares in ways that matter—in quiet gestures and steady presence, in showing up without ever announcing that he’s there.”

“Ohhh…” Dorcas and Marlene echoed, their tones laced with newfound understanding.

You giggled then, all bright and unbothered, and it struck Regulus like starlight—sudden and impossible to ignore.

“He grows on you,” you promised, voice turning soft again. “Little by little. And when he does… you realize just how lucky you are to be close to someone like him.”

Regulus ducked his head, hiding the sudden flush crawling up his neck, thankful there were no mirrors nearby to betray him. He’d never been lucky a day in his life—but if you thought being near him was some kind of gift, then maybe, just maybe…

“Merlin’s beard, (Y/N), that was kind of adorable,” Dorcas teased. “How long have you known him, then? You two sound like old souls.”

“A while,” you said, tilting your head as you thought it over. “Slughorn once invited us to the same dinner—years ago. Said we were both too serious for our own good. I don’t think either of us said more than three words that night,” you laughed softly. “But… over time, I think we just started understanding each other. Quietly. Comfortably. And now… he’s someone I look up to. A lot.”

A good person? Regulus nearly rolled his eyes. You always saw the best in him—even the parts he tried hardest to bury.

“He’s always helping me,” you added, a smile blooming on your lips. “Especially when I’m struggling with Dueling, or studying late into the night. He says he does it because I ask too many questions—but I know he stays because he wants me to do well.”

Well. He couldn’t exactly argue with that one.

“And he’s a bit of a secret gentleman,” you said, your voice dipping low, like a delicate confession passed between old stone walls. A soft smile ghosted your lips. “Even when we weren’t close, he’d carry my books without asking, hold open the doors with barely a glance, pull out my chair in the Great Hall like it was second nature…”

Your words trailed off as the memories rose like stardust behind your eyes—small, quiet gestures that had once seemed incidental, but now shimmered with meaning.

Just around the corner, half-shrouded by flickering torchlight, Regulus leaned back against the cold stone, eyes half-lidded, breath caught. He’d forgotten about some of those moments—at least on the surface—but hearing them from your lips made them pulse to life again. You noticed. Merlin, you noticed.

He’d never thought of himself as kind. His mother had taught him manners, not softness. His brother had taught him rebellion, not care. But you… You brought something different out of him. With you, gentleness had become instinct.

And now, hearing you speak of it with such warmth, he found himself wondering if you saw something in him he hadn’t dared to believe existed.

Your smile deepened. “There was one time, years ago…” You laughed under your breath, as if it were still a secret.

“We’d snuck into the kitchens when the elves weren’t looking—he nabbed a chocolate biscuit from the tin. Broke it in half.” You looked toward Marlene and Dorcas, your voice softening like candlelight.

“And he gave me the bigger piece.”

The girls exchanged a glance, both catching the distant look in your eyes—the way your gaze flickered not to the past, but to a version of it you carried close, cherished. You hadn’t even been friends yet. Just two children on opposite sides of a too-large world, momentarily brought together in the dim glow of the kitchen hearth.

You’d spent the rest of that evening curled beside Tilly Toke’s Magical Mishaps, Regulus sat across the table, not saying much. But the half-cookie had meant something, hadn’t it?

The memory wrapped around you like a charm.

And somewhere behind the wall, Regulus closed his eyes for a moment, pressing his thumb into his palm—grounding himself. Because yes. He remembered it exactly that way.

“Aww!” Marlene let out a dramatic gasp, pressing her hands to her heart as if the memory had physically struck her. “He must’ve had a tiny little crush on you, darling,” she teased, her voice lilting like a melody as she batted her lashes.

You laughed under your breath, but Regulus, hidden just around the stone corner of the corridor, felt like his heart had been flung into a freezing lake.

A crush?

Was that how he came across?

His pulse thundered in his ears as panic curled tight in his chest. Surely not. All the little things he’d done—carrying your books when you complained about the weight, offering you his scarf on cold mornings, brewing tea when you stayed up too late studying—all of that was just… friendship. Wasn’t it? Politeness. Chivalry, even. Raised by Walburga or not, he did have some decency.

He tried to believe that.

But the longer he stood there, the more tangled his thoughts became.

None of it was just about kindness. Not really.

You were the only one who made the castle feel less like a cage and more like a dream. The way you laughed when he muttered sarcastic remarks under his breath. The way you hummed when concentrating. The warmth you gave off without even trying.

You were sunlight—unapologetic and golden. And him? He was the boy who lived in the shadows of dark family tapestries and colder expectations.

He didn’t mean to care for you the way he did.

But he thought of you constantly. In between potions ingredients, in the flutter of owl wings across the morning sky, in every flower you ever paused to admire. Even the Black family crest seemed to dim in your presence. His own reflection was easier to face when he imagined you smiling at him.

Gods, he was utterly doomed.

fuck. 

Regulus pressed the heel of his hand to his temple, trying to steady himself—anchor his mind back to the cold stone floor beneath his shoes and not the warmth blooming beneath his ribs. None of that meant anything, did it? All those quiet favors, the lingering glances, the moments where his hand brushed yours without needing to—none of it had to suggest something deeper.

He could care for you platonically. Couldn’t he?

He nearly scoffed at himself.

How utterly cliché. The proud, brooding boy spiraling the second he felt something tender for the girl who glowed like she’d been carved from starlight. Maybe he was just being ridiculous. Maybe you really were just friends. Friends could look after each other. Friends could think the other was breathtaking and luminous and—

Merlin help him.

Because if you were to lean in one day, maybe on the edge of a courtyard or under a soft-spoken sky, and confess you wanted something more—he wouldn’t push you away, would he?

His chest tightened. No. He wouldn’t. And that answer, so simple, nearly unravelled him. His thoughts tangled like spellwork gone wrong, and for a moment he swore the castle spun slightly beneath his feet.

“I don’t know about that…” your voice broke through the air, softer than parchment under fingertips.

And Regulus felt it—something unfamiliar and ferocious rising in his chest. Like swallowing honey and fire at the same time. It bubbled with sweetness, with something terrifyingly hopeful. His fingertips tingled, his lips twitched with the start of a smile he didn’t know he could make. He wasn’t sure whether to dread it or chase it.

“Well, you should ask him out!” Marlene said cheerfully, breaking the moment like glass on stone.

“Wh-what?” you stammered, blinking rapidly.

“I’m serious!” she grinned, nudging Dorcas playfully. “He’d say yes. You’re definitely his favorite, and have you seen the way he stares at you?”

I do? Regulus froze where he stood, blood rushing in his ears.

“He does?” your voice slipped out, barely more than a breath, tinged with disbelief and the faintest hope.

Regulus could feel it now—magic surging beneath his skin like it wanted to rise just for you.

Were you surprised? Mortified? Regulus couldn’t tell. From his shadowed post behind the half-open door, he was practically vibrating with the urge to peek out, to catch even a flicker of your expression.

If he could just see your face, he’d know exactly how you were processing all of this—whether you were laughing him off or secretly hoping it might be true.

“Oh yeah, I’ve seen him looking at you loads of times,” James said casually, like he was stating the weather.

“Same,” chimed in Marlene, lounging across the common room couch. “Honestly, I thought you two were already together when I first transferred.”

He did?

“You did?” your voice fluttered out, laced with disbelief—and something else Regulus couldn’t name, something soft and glowing.

“Yeah,” James shrugged like it was obvious. “He always sits close to you. And when he speaks—which isn’t often—it’s usually just to you. I thought it was some kind of intense, brooding flirting.”

No, you imbecile, I just don’t want anyone overhearing—

Regulus dragged a palm down his face, lips twitching with frustration. This was disastrous. He rolled his eyes and tugged slightly at the skin under them, as if it might yank him back into reality. But no—there it was, pulsing like an inconvenient truth just behind his ribs.

Of course he fancied you. Merlin, how hadn’t he seen it?

Or maybe… maybe it had always been there. Dormant. Waiting. Quietly thriving in shared glances, in the way you beamed when he walked into the room, in how his mornings never felt quite right until he heard your laugh.

That laugh drifted out now, pulling him violently from his spiraling thoughts. Light and bright, it danced in the air like the flicker of fairy lights during winter.

“No, no—you’ve got it all wrong,” you said, laughing again as you tried to dismiss the idea, but there was something dangerous in your tone. Something syrupy sweet and hesitant, like you weren’t entirely sure if you wanted it to be wrong. “We’ve known each other forever. If something was going to happen, it probably would’ve by now.”

The pause that followed was heavy. Not uncomfortable—but thick. Charged. Like the castle itself was holding its breath.

Regulus swallowed hard. His heartbeat roared in his ears like crashing waves, deafening and all-consuming. He knew he should walk away, that eavesdropping this long was borderline shameful.

But he couldn’t. 

“You say that like you want something to happen,” Marlene teased, her voice laced with playful suspicion. “Are you the one with the crush?”

Regulus felt the breath knock out of him. Every passing second that she didn’t answer made his head spin, made the walls feel closer. If he didn’t move soon, he was going to collapse right here in this hidden corridor, fully exposed in the most humiliating way possible.

“I…” your voice broke through the silence, soft and unsteady.

Regulus clenched his jaw, fighting every instinct not to lean just a little farther around the corner. If he could just see you—if he could catch the twitch of your fingers or the tilt of your lips—he might finally have his answer.

If you were fidgeting, surely it meant you did like him.

If you stood still, frozen in disbelief, then the idea of the two of you must’ve been laughable to you. An impossibility.

“I haven’t thought about it,” you murmured at last, so quietly he barely caught it.

There was a shuffle of feet. Marlene let out a thoughtful hmm, unreadable in tone, and James called out his goodbyes as he bounded off toward the courtyard to meet Sirius and Peter.

Marlene followed not long after, muttering something about borrowing Lily’s notes or charming Professor Slughorn into letting her redo a potion.

You gave a breathy laugh and waved them off with a smile in your voice. And then, once their footsteps faded into silence, you exhaled.

It trembled at the edges.

“Merlin,” you whispered to yourself, pressing a hand to your chest as you dropped onto the worn couch in front of the common room fire. “That was way too close.”

Regulus, hidden in the shadows just beyond the entrance, let his back fall against the cold stone wall.

He’d never known it was possible to be both relieved and utterly destroyed in the same moment.

Your heart was still rattling in your chest, refusing to slow after the teasing from James and Marlene. You needed to get away—away from their knowing eyes, their smug grins, their pointed little looks that made you feel like your thoughts were written across your forehead. You were certain they knew. Certain they’d seen through every flimsy deflection and quiet denial you’d offered.

Just as you were about to flop onto the couch and sink into a well-earned nap by the fire, something caught your eye: a thick hardcover left resting on the arm of the chair beside you. A neat, velvet-green ribbon was caught between the pages, and all the sections before it were practically bursting with parchment scraps and scribbled notes.

You recognized it instantly. If you didn’t already know Regulus had been buried in that book all week, the sheer intensity of the annotations would’ve given it away. No one else read like that. Not in your year, at least.

A smile tugged at your lips as you picked it up. He must’ve left it behind in a hurry. Knowing him, he’d want it back the moment he realized it was gone. You figured he had the afternoon free, so it wouldn’t take long to find him. Besides, your nap could wait.

Cracking it open to the first page marked by a slim pink tab, you let your eyes flit across the topmost note stuck inside—only to immediately become absorbed, not in the book itself, but in the way his handwriting crawled into the margins like vines. You didn’t even notice him until you were practically on top of him.

“Oh—sorry!” you gasped, stepping back from the broad figure you’d nearly barreled into.

When your gaze lifted and locked onto familiar grey eyes, your surprise dissolved into a gentle smile.

“Reg! I was just coming to find you,” you added, brightening with a soft laugh. You held up the book like a prize. “This is yours, right?”

He nodded, slowly, almost as if startled into silence. His hand brushed against yours as he took the book, and for a second he couldn’t seem to find his voice.

“…Thanks, soleil,” he managed finally, quieter than he intended.

“No problem,” you replied easily. “It was in my nap spot,” you added with a sheepish little shrug.

That made Regulus laugh, low and amused. The sound startled even him, but the grin it brought to his face was unstoppable. You tilted your head slightly at the sudden warmth in his expression, your fingers twisting together, the flutter in your chest growing louder by the second.

“Hey, I was wondering…” you began, brows knitting slightly as your courage wrestled with uncertainty.

Regulus, ever so composed, tucked the book under his arm and gave you his full attention.

“Yes, amour?” he asked, voice soft and clear, like he was ready to listen to anything—anything at all—from you.

He watched your fingers begin to fidget again—an old habit of yours—and his heart thudded heavily in his chest. That small, familiar gesture pulled at something deep inside him, something tender and terrifying all at once. You were fidgeting. You were nervous.

“Uh, ah—it’s silly—” you began, your voice hitching as you almost backed out of it. But Regulus shook his head quickly, the usual cool in his features melting into a rare softness. He didn’t want you to stop. Not now. Not when it felt like your words might change something between you.

“I’m sure it’s not,” he said, more firmly than he expected. You glanced up at him in surprise, caught off guard by the seriousness in his voice. “What is it?” he asked again, quieter this time. Earnest.

You blushed.

Actually blushed.

And Regulus felt something in him collapse at the sight. How had he not realized sooner? The way he cared about you—it was more than careful friendship. More than routine familiarity. It was this. That look. That moment. This feeling swelling in his chest like an uncontrollable storm.

“Do you remember when we were little, and my mum always made us have those awkward little tea visits?” you asked, laughing under your breath. The sound was light but edged with nerves. “She’d dress you up like a little heir to the empire.”

Regulus chuckled, his eyes crinkling at the memory. “How could I forget, soleil? You were the only thing making them bearable.”

You opened your mouth as if to explain yourself further, then stopped short. Your gaze dropped to your hands again, which were still twisting in your lap, and your smile grew quiet.

“I don’t know, I guess I…” you stumbled, your words catching on emotion you hadn’t quite figured out yet. Merlin, you hated how your voice trembled. How silly it made you feel. “Do you remember when we became friends?”

You rushed the question out, afraid of losing the courage altogether.

Regulus nodded, his expression unreadable—but not cold. There was something still behind his eyes. Watching you closely. Listening like he always did, but with his heart too, now.

“I do,” he said gently. “You spilled ink on my essay, and I didn’t hex you for it.”

You laughed at that, your eyes glinting. “That was the moment, huh?”

“I think it always had been,” he replied, voice almost too quiet to catch.

“I do,” he replied without hesitation.

“Like, actual friends,” you clarified, raising a brow, not convinced he’d thought that through. “Not just two kids being dropped off at some posh tea party and expected to get along. I mean—real friends.”

Regulus nodded again, a little smile tugging at his lips.

“I do,” he repeated, softer this time, a hint of amusement in his tone. “You don’t?”

You pressed your lips together thoughtfully, chewing at the corner of one as you shook your head slowly. Your brow furrowed as you tried to remember, and Regulus gave a low chuckle at the sight, eyes glinting with fondness.

“Well?” you asked, voice tinged with impatience. “What changed?”

“I can’t believe you don’t remember,” he said with mock hurt, tilting his head and placing a dramatic hand on his chest. “That wounds me amour, you know.”

“I didn’t think you had feelings, Black,” you shot back playfully, a teasing lilt to your voice. “But come on, tell me.”

You looked at him expectantly, eyes wide and gleaming with curiosity. Regulus found himself caught in your gaze, helpless to look away.

You always did that—held his attention like no one else ever had. But this time, there was something different. Something unspoken between the words, resting in the stillness of the air between you.

He swallowed thickly. If you asked anything of him like this, he would give it without pause. It hit him like a charm straight to the chest. That soft glint in your eyes—he wondered if he’d always missed it, or if it had only just begun to appear.

“It was right before we came to Hogwarts,” he said finally, voice quieter now, like he was unearthing something sacred. “The weekend before the train. Do you remember?”

You nodded, the memory vague but there. You’d spent a late summer afternoon at Grimmauld Place while your parents caught up with his.

You vaguely recalled teasing him for organizing his trunk with meticulous precision and muttering something about the Weird Sisters under his breath.

“I remember you sorting your books by spine colour like some cursed Ravenclaw,” you teased, grinning.

Regulus huffed a laugh. “You were sitting on the floor in my room,” he continued, tone suddenly gentler. “You brought every sweet from Honeydukes you could carry and made me try all the ones I said I hated.”

Your grin softened into a warm smile.

“And then you told me,” he said, eyes flicking to yours, “that if Hogwarts was awful, and I hated every second of it, at least I’d have someone to sit with on the train ride back.”

The memory bloomed in your chest like an old Polaroid, blurry around the edges but warm all the same.

“You meant it,” he added. “And I think… that’s when I knew.”

“When we became friends?” you asked.

He looked at you for a long moment, then gave a slight nod, lips curling into a smile that didn’t reach his eyes—not out of sadness, but because there was more to it than he could say.

“Yeah,” he murmured. “That’s when everything changed.”

“Professor let us move in a night early,” Regulus recalled, a small smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Probably so the castle staff could have one last evening of peace before the school year started.”

You laughed under your breath at the realization, nodding. “At the time it felt like freedom. Our own space for the first time.”

“Exactly,” he agreed, eyes soft with the memory. “Feels strange thinking back now. It was just you and me in this massive castle… for a while at least.”

“I almost forgot that,” you admitted, the corners of your mouth curling up as you thought of it. The quiet corridors. The chill of stone floors under your socks. The thrill of choosing your own bedtime, your own space. “It feels like it’s always been this way.”

“But you don’t remember the first night?” he asked, tilting his head.

You squinted, trying to trace the memory like it was hidden in fog. There were flashes—wandering the halls, fiddling with enchanted portraits, a failed attempt at brewing hot cocoa with a half-working kettle you’d found in one of the old kitchens…

“You woke me up,” Regulus said, chuckling softly.

Your eyes lit up in recognition. “Oh—Merlin. Right. I couldn’t sleep and—”

“You were bored,” he supplied, shaking his head fondly. “You dragged me out of bed and made me sit with you in the common room. And then you made me watch that ridiculous enchanted Muggle film projection your dad enchanted for you.”

You snorted. “The Princess Bride is a classic, I don’t care what you say Reggie.”

“It’s too long,” he shot back without missing a beat. “And you didn’t even stay awake. I sat there like an idiot while you snored on my shoulder.”

You covered your face with your hands, laughing with secondhand embarrassment. “Okay, okay—”

“You talked through half of it,” he went on, grinning. “You said you were scared.”

The laughter softened on your lips, surprise flickering in your gaze.

“I did?” you asked, quieter now.

Regulus nodded, watching you intently.

“You said you didn’t know what Hogwarts would be like,” he continued, voice gentler. “You were afraid you’d mess everything up. But then you said as long as I was around, maybe it’d be alright.”

Your breath caught in your throat. The memory settled over you like a forgotten charm being reawakened.

“And it was,” he added softly. “Alright, I mean.”

Your eyes met his again, and there was something about the way he looked at you then—like you were the only thing anchoring him to this moment. Like he’d never forgotten that night for a reason.

“You said you were scared of failing,” Regulus’ voice dipped low again, quieter than before—almost reverent. “That… you were afraid of never becoming powerful enough to protect the people you cared about.”

Despite the memory being so old, embarrassment flickered through you now like a lit match to dry parchment. You couldn’t believe this was the moment he’d held onto all this time. Of all things, this one?

“I almost wish I hadn’t asked,” you muttered, cheeks burning, “I can’t believe I said that to you.”

But Regulus didn’t tease. In fact, his smile turned almost fond.

“Then you told me you thought I was strong,” he continued, and for the first time, there was the faintest trace of pink brushing the tops of his cheeks. “You asked if I’d help you… get strong too. Like me.”

Your eyes widened slightly. The image of little you, curled in a blanket in the Slytherin common room, whispering fears into the dim glow of floating candles, was something hazy and far away.

But Regulus? He remembered it like it had just happened.

“And then,” he added with a snort, “you passed out mid-sentence, head on my shoulder. I was stuck watching the rest of that bloody Muggle film just so you wouldn’t wake up and yell at me for skipping to the end.”

“You watched the rest of the movie?” you asked, your voice soft with wonder.

He laughed. “Every last minute.”

You blinked, stunned. “I can’t believe I don’t remember any of that.”

“You were exhausted,” Regulus shrugged like it didn’t matter, even though it clearly had. “And it was a long time ago. I never expected you to remember it… I just never forgot.”

You chewed on your lip, falling quiet as warmth coiled in your chest. That kind of memory… someone keeping it for you when you hadn’t even known to treasure it—it meant more than you could say.

But then he stepped forward.

Just a single pace, barely anything. And yet your whole body felt it—the sudden closeness, the silence that wrapped around you both like a breath held too long.

“And by the way…” he murmured, pulling your gaze up to his with ease. “I do kind of stare at you, a lot.”

Your face went red so fast you thought your ears might start steaming.

“You—you heard that?” you squeaked, mortified.

“And then some,” Regulus replied smoothly, and despite the flush still tinting his cheekbones, he was smiling. Really smiling

For once, he didn’t feel like hiding.

“Did you mean all of that, soleil?” he asked.

And this time, the air between you was electric.

Your mouth opened once. Closed. Opened again.

The conversation from earlier came crashing down on you all at once, each word echoing in your head with horrifying clarity. He’d heard it. All of it. Your rambling. Your clumsy affection disguised as hypothetical questions. And—Merlin—had he heard that last part?

“I mean, y—yeah. Yeah,” you stammered, nodding just a little too fast. “Of course I did.”

But your voice had gone breathless, barely even sound.

Regulus tilted his head slightly, gaze fixed so firmly on you you thought he might see through you completely.

“Even that last part?” he asked, stepping forward again. The hem of his robes brushed yours now, but you didn’t move back. You couldn’t.

“Last part?” you echoed stupidly, throat dry.

“Yeah,” he nodded, and this time his hand lifted—not hesitantly, but reverently—as though you might vanish if he rushed the moment. His thumb ghosted beneath your jaw, the faintest brush of contact that left you aching for more.

“You know,” he murmured, voice deep and velvet-smooth, “that bit where you said you hadn’t really thought about me like that.”

You remembered. Of course you did. It was the one part of the conversation that had clanged in your mind like a bell since it left your lips.

“You meant that too?”

You swallowed hard. His fingers were still at your chin, gently anchoring you in place, and the look in his eyes—

You couldn’t look away if you tried.

“No,” you breathed, and it was so soft it nearly disappeared into the silence between you. But Regulus heard it. He saw it form on your lips, caught the tremble behind it.

“No, I didn’t mean that.”

A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth—small, private, and impossibly warm. You watched it unfold, saw the way his eyes softened as he noticed your hands fidgeting again.

He knew.

You felt it too.

“And what did you mean to say?” he asked, and there was a raw sort of need in the question, like it had lived in him for ages, waiting to be unburdened.

Like if you said the words now, it might change everything.

Your gaze lingered on his lips.

You hadn’t meant to stare, but he was close now—closer than you ever imagined he’d dare to be. And yet he was still waiting. Still asking for the truth with a calm so controlled it nearly masked the ache in his eyes.

He wanted to hear it. And you wanted to say it. But wanting and doing were not the same.

“I meant…” you began, eyes flicking up to meet his when you realized how long you’d been caught staring. “I meant I have thought about… something more…”

The words came out in pieces, light and thin like cobwebs, hardly brave or poetic. Nothing like the declarations you’d imagined in your head a hundred times. But it was real. And yours. And when you cleared your throat and added, “But they didn’t need to know that,” with a sheepish little laugh, something cracked wide open in his chest.

“No, I suppose not,” Regulus murmured, and the faintest smile tugged at his lips—one of those rare, real ones that reached his eyes and made them glow softer than moonlight.

You didn’t feel so nervous anymore. Not around him.

“So…” you tilted your head, teasing gently. “Spying on your friends these days, is that your new hobby, Black?” Your voice was quiet, but there was laughter behind it, light and fluttering. “Bit off-brand for you, Regulus.”

He chuckled lowly, and your heart stumbled at the sound—low, smooth, and entirely unguarded.

“When else was I going to hear you say all those nice things about me?” he replied, his voice rich with warmth and something sweeter. His thumb still rested beneath your chin, brushing idly along your skin like he hadn’t even realized he was doing it.

Regulus Black had never been the touchy type. He was all self-restraint and deliberate space. But now? His touch was gentle, steady, and intentional. Like he had finally decided not to pull away anymore.

“I quite liked the part where you said I was a gentleman,” he added, the corners of his mouth quirking with quiet amusement.

You bit the inside of your cheek to keep from grinning too wildly.

And then he leaned in. Not rushed, not hesitant—just certain. Your eyes widened, nearly burning from how long you kept them fixed on his. Everything about him in this moment—his steady breath, the warmth of his hand, the tender curve of his mouth—made the world shrink until it was just him and you in this quiet corridor that smelled faintly of old parchment and lavender.

“But for the record,” he whispered, and you swore you could feel every word land against your lips, “I’m lucky to have you, too.”

Your chest swelled, and your smile came freely now, radiant and soft as your fingers curled slightly in the fabric of his sleeve.

Yes. Just as you thought.

He was the warmest person you knew.

Regulus Black was the warmest person in this wide universe.

"And," he continued, his voice a shade softer, more reverent now, "you are my favorite."

You let out a breath of laughter, quiet and a little stunned, before you rolled your eyes at him. There was no real exasperation behind it. Only a fondness so deep it practically glowed from you.

"I know," you murmured, narrowing your eyes with playful suspicion. The smile you wore, though, that was sincere. Sweet and sincere and so unguarded it made Regulus feel like you had just handed him your entire heart without even realizing it.

"Must be a side effect of your staring problem."

He tilted his head slightly, guiding your chin up with the faintest tug of his thumb. His nose brushed yours.

You could feel the warmth of his breath as it mingled with yours, and just as you leaned into it, just as the world started to tilt, he paused. Of course he did. Always the gentleman, no matter how undone he felt inside.

"May I?" he murmured. His lashes dipped as his gaze flicked between your eyes and your lips, every syllable spoken like a secret. "Kiss you?"

You almost laughed from how impossibly soft he could be. You wanted to throw caution to the wind, wrap your fingers in the collar of his uniform and pull him in like you were in the climax of a dramatic novel. But your voice was trapped in your throat, and your limbs would not obey you.

So you closed your eyes.

And nodded.

Just barely.

It was enough.

His lips found yours with a grace that felt practiced, like he had been dreaming of this for far too long. And he kissed you like he was afraid you might slip through his fingers. Gentle, tentative, almost reverent.

Your body softened completely. Every piece of tension unraveled in his arms. Your hands, which had been stiff by your sides, slowly lifted and curled gently over his shoulders.

His lips deepened against yours in return, not forcefully, just sure, like he had found something precious and had finally been allowed to hold it.

His free hand, no longer gripping the book he always carried like armor, settled against your cheek. His fingers trembled ever so slightly before the tip of his index ghosted along the shell of your ear, down the line of your jaw, and back up again. Slow. Slow. Slow. Like he wanted to memorize you.

You felt like you might float away. Your heart swelled so high in your chest you were almost afraid of what would happen if you stopped.

And when you did part, it was not with loss, but with a quiet sort of awe.

Your lips still tingled. Your fingers still trembled slightly on his shoulders. Yet all you could do was smile. A real one. Warm and quiet and deeply content. And Regulus? He wore the same smile. Mirrored and soft. As if kissing you had rewired something inside him.

You did not even open your eyes for a moment, basking in it. And that made him chuckle.

"Next time," you murmured, dazed and dreamy, "I’ll let them know you are a good kisser too."

He smiled—genuinely, boyishly, almost bashfully—and leaned in to press a featherlight kiss to the corner of her mouth.

"Don’t," he whispered. "I like that being just yours."

"Will you?" he murmured with a tease laced beneath the softness of his voice.

You nodded, leaning your cheek into his hand like it was the most natural thing in the world. The warmth of his palm made you glow, even as a blush crept up your cheeks and your nose crinkled with hesitation.

"Well, maybe not right away," you mumbled, your tone sheepish now.

Regulus laughed, actually laughed. And it was the kind that made you feel like you had just discovered a hidden treasure.

His smile was wide, unguarded, and it lit up every inch of his face. The pink hue blooming across his cheeks was proof enough that whatever mask he usually wore had fallen completely away for you.

"Maybe not right away," he echoed. His voice dipped low again. Softer now and more tender.

His thumb stroked along the curve of your cheekbone, so carefully, like you were something fragile and precious that only he got to hold.

The sound of his voice, husky and warm against your lips, was enough to pull you under.

Your eyes fluttered closed instinctively. And when his lips brushed over yours once again, it was with all the careful affection of a boy who had never believed himself worthy of softness until now.

You kissed him back just as sweetly. Your fingers traced along the sharp edge of his jaw, hesitating for only a second before settling there. You wanted to pull him closer, wanted to let passion take over, but you did not, not yet. There would be time for that. You could feel it.

He would make time for you.

And for the first time in a very long while, Regulus believed in what you saw in him. He believed he could be kind, gentle, and loved.

But only because you had seen it first. Had named it. Had handed it to him freely, without condition.

He thought he should tell you, one day. That everything good he was becoming had started with you. But that could wait.

You had time now.

Time enough for him to return the favor. Time enough to tell you again and again just how extraordinary you were, until his lungs gave out and your cheeks stayed permanently pink.

Because that was the kind of future he wanted.

One where he never stopped reminding you that you were his favorite, too.

The words left his lips in a breath, a quiet confession. "Tu es le soleil qui me réchauffe."

 You are the sun that warms me up.

[sailornymph]

is there any way you could please do the founders with a wife from the other clan? (Madara with a Senju wife, Hashirama and Tobirama with an uchiha wife) Is like it to be smutty but if not I completely get it

closer; founders

synopsis — hashirama and tobirama with a uchiha wife & madara with a senju wife

content warning — exhibitionism, edging, tobirama lowkey being prejudice

♡︎ hashirama senju

— you’re very involved with the uchiha children when you catch his attention, you spend your time helping them learn how to properly use their sharingan and jutsu

— many have questions for him about the new village and his position as hokage, but you caught his attention, amongst all the men, being worried about the well-being of the uchiha children

— despite the dirty looks the men give you, you ignore them, waiting for hashirama to answer

— he can’t deny his gravitation to you, your intelligence, your love and hope for a better future for the children, you were like him

— you end up working very closely with him to make sure the uchiha aren’t excluded, he promised repeatedly he wouldn’t allow it to happen, but you didn’t trust his words

— before izuna’s death, a relationship bloomed between the two of you. it becomes important to you to integrate the uchiha clan with the others, to become one village

— however, with izuna dead and tobirama to be the blame, madara advises that you stay away from the clan, if you are choosing to love a senju

— shortly after, konoha is established and you have an extravagant wedding, only a few uchiha showing up secretly

— although you become an outcast to your clan, when madara disappears, they embrace you again, due to your constant activism for the people

— hashirama is the most doting husband and is completely in love with everything about you, your beauty, brains, body, and personality, you were a complete catch

— so in love that you will have more than four children because he can’t get off of you and he has a lot of love to give

— he will not only leave a legacy of being the god of shinobi, but many will remember him for his beautiful marriage and how he and his wife were constantly advocating for a change

“hashi, are you not exhausted?” you moaned, as he traced his hand down your back arch.

“how could i be? you promised we would have all night, the boys will be back in the morning and we agreed to try for a girl,” he said, leaning down, kissing along your spine. he had an unnatural libido, he could keep going all night and still wake up, energized.

“are you really sure you want another kid, i mean four boys aren't enough?”

“i want an army of children, if i’m having them with you”

“after all those rounds, you don't think it worked,” you asked, as he moaned lowly in your ear.

“do you want to stop? we can stop, if you're tired,” his smile dropped.

“just one more, i can only take one more,” you said, as he nodded, kissing your neck.

“one more,” he repeated, pushing his cock deeper into your pussy.

moaning loudly, you pressed your face into your shared futon. lifting your hips, he slightly pushed down on your back, deepening your arch. moving your dark hair, he groaned, at the clear view of your body.

“look at me, fuck, you're so beautiful,” he moaned, as you looked back, slowly fucking him back.

“it feels so good, hashi, feeling me up with your seed,” you panted, gripping the fluffy blanket, as he held your hips, bringing you back onto his cock over and over.

“yeah, you want this last load, take it sunshine, it's yours,” he groaned, throwing his head back, a lazy smile on his face. you were taking his cock like a good girl, the determination mixed with lust in those dark eyes, biting your soft bottom lip, as you repeatedly brought your hips back onto him. he wanted to make this round last, but you were fucking him too good, he didn't know how much more he could take.

clenching around his cock, you bit the pillow, muffling your moans, as he kept thrusting, before he grunted, cumming inside.

“how was that?” you asked, tiredly smiling.

“perfect, absolutely perfect, come closer, let me hold you before our children steal you away in the morning,” he grinned, pulling you into his arms, and kissing your lips.

♡︎ madara uchiha

— along with hashirama, you are one of the only senju clan members who isn’t treating the uchiha people like monsters

— as your older cousin, hashirama shares his plans to make a village and allow everyone to integrate, you take it upon yourself to begin to teach others your jutsu, it didn’t matter where they were from

— which is how you met, defending one of your uchiha students from a man, madara happened to be passing by, and while he intended to intervene. he didn’t expect to see you kick the man to the point where he would fly

— he finds himself sitting afar, watching as you trained the group of inexperienced people. people walked past speaking to him, but his eyes were focused on you

— too many people are becoming distracted, some scared, some amazed, seeing madara uchiha sitting in the grass, you stump over, asking him what he is doing and he’ll say something annoyingly sweet like, watching you, you’re a beautifully strong woman

— this becomes a part of his routine, squeezing in activities like getting lunch together, or walking you home before he boldly asks you to be his girlfriend. he is a man who knows what he wants, so it won’t be long before an engagement.

— during the planning of your wedding, you manage to convince both clans to get along for the wedding, since you have are very kind to both clans and likable to nearly everyone, you end up having a large wedding

— however, after the death of izuna, you become isolated. hashirama wants you to continue being the face of integration, tobirama hates you for ruining your bloodline, and madara is hot and cold, worried that you will betray him for the senju clan and you can't take the stress

— you only have one child, and madara only becomes more power hungry with time, before he is suddenly gone, said to be dead, leaving you to raise your son alone

— you are reanimated alongside hashirama and tobirama and when madara is defeated, he apologizes for how he treated you in your final year together and reassures you that he has always loved you and constantly watched you and your shared son, from the shadows, up until then both of you passed away

“oh my god, madara,” you cried, as he pounded into your pussy.

“keep your leg up, angel,” he kissed your ankle, as it sat on his shoulder

“oh my-it’s so big,” you arched your back on the soft grass. you were supposed to only have a picnic, but you didn’t expect him to look so handsome today.

“do you like this cock, don’t you?”

“yes, you’re fucking me so good,” you whined

“you want me to cum in this pretty pussy, use your words?” he asked, increasing his speeding of thrusts.

“yesyes- wait, madara, i think i need to pe-

“no you don’t,” he interrupted, grabbing your hands, stopping you from pushing him away, while he continued his thrusting.

with your legs shaking, you moaned louder, your legs spreading as you squirted all over his cock. before you could apologize, he was hungrily slipping back into your eager hole.

“you’re such a slutty girl, i love you,” madara said, his hands tracing down your body, you were perfect.

“i’m cumming,” you whined, as he kept a steady pace, until he finally let out a grunt, filling you up with his cum.

“i didn’t expect you to be so wild this time, you must have really missed me,” you teased.

“come closer, you’re too far away, tell me why hashirama needed my wife for nearly three days,” he said, nearly sitting you in his lap.

“it was so stupid, madara, it started with him using wood release in his house, he’s such an idiot-

you began to explain to madara, he had a small grin on his face, his hands caressing your back. you could see in his eyes alone just how in love he was.

♡︎ tobirama senju

— you met when he was being rude to a uchiha, leading to you screaming at him

— he stared with wide eyes, confused by who dared to talk to him in such a disrespectful way and he was surprised to see a beautiful woman

— from this moment forward, he noticed you much more than ever, you were a decent shinobi, but an excellent voice for the clan, oftentimes speaking against the injustices they'd felt

— he eventually asks you for to be brought to his office, he thinks you're beautiful, but he will not allow another madara to arise from the clan

— you are more intelligent than he gave you credit for, degrading him with grace, he couldn't deny your words cut like a knife. although, once you start to share your ideas, he stops listening, observing you, you're rather pretty to be fully uchiha, the dark hair and nice eyes, and your figure

— he straightforwardly asks you to join him for dinner, under the pretense of you sharing more of your beliefs and ideas

— this becomes regular and soon enough you find yourself accepting his advances because you can't deny the second hokage is a bit charming and handsome

— drama will occur during the wedding when you want to incorporate your clan, but he doesn't. he ends up having to swallow his pride when you threaten to end your engagement if he doesn't welcome the uchiha with open arms

— he doesn't see you as a uchiha, you're a senju now after all, but he kind of blocks out where you come from and looks at you as an individual

— despite his dislike for the clan, he is a very attentive husband and amazing father, having two children with you

— while you don't give up on your clan, or the entirety of your marriage, tobirama doesn't lessen his dislike for the clan, he just doesn't see his family as a part of those people

“y/n, stop with the games,” he grumbled. sitting in his chair, his legs spread as you stroked his cock. every time he was close to finally releasing, you stopped.

“games? i’m being unfair, like you, how you're being strict on those uchiha boys, how are you such a hypocrite? you hate them, but you have no problem fucking one, so cruel,” you spat, spitting on your hand, before continuing to pump. feeling his cock twitch, you slowed down, stopping.

“oh? you need to cum? that's too bad, isn't it?”

“please, y/n, baby, let me c-

“if only you could release those boys to their families, can't you do it for me? i would reward you so much, you could fuck me as much as you wanted, i might even think about another child, like you've been asking,” you said, slowly massaging his shaft.

“okay, okay, anything, just please, suck it, anything,” he begged, this was nice for a change to see him being so vocal, sweat beads dripping down his neck as he groaned and whimpered.

“you're getting closer, i feel how stiff your poor cock is, but if you promise to keep your word, then i will make it go away”

“i promise,” he nodded, groaning as you stroked his base, your tongue going to twirl around his pink tip. his semen squirted all over your tongue, as you swallowed it all.

once the high came down, he helped you into his lap, his large hand caressing your ass, holding you close.

“will you please keep your promise?” you asked, making him roll his eyes.

“only for you, i don't get why you insist on helping them, you are no longer a uchiha-

“mom, we were only playing and tashi fell and now her eyes are red,” your son, suzuki knocked on the door worriedly.

“i’m coming,” you answered, getting dressed.

“i may be a senju by marriage, but your children are half uchiha, it is time you act like it,” you continued, rushing out of the room.

[valeisaslut]

⭒࿐COLLIDE - epilogue

credits for the fanart: nramvv - edited by me

𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐋𝐎𝐆𝐔𝐄 - 𝐅𝐈𝐍𝐀𝐋𝐄

𝐘𝐎𝐔'𝐋𝐋 𝐍𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐑 𝐆𝐄𝐓 𝐀𝐖𝐀𝐘

𝐅𝐑𝐎𝐌 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐃 𝐎𝐅 𝐓𝐇𝐄

𝐖𝐎𝐌𝐀𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄𝐒 𝐘𝐎𝐔.

𝐏𝐓. 𝟑 : 𝐖𝐄 𝐁𝐄𝐆𝐈𝐍 𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐑𝐒

𝐎𝐍𝐂𝐄 𝐂𝐎𝐋𝐋𝐈𝐃𝐄𝐃.

← 𝑒𝑝𝑖𝑙𝑜𝑔𝑢𝑒 𝑝𝑡. 𝟸 | 𝑚𝑎𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑙𝑖𝑠𝑡 →

⚢ pairing: Rockstar!Ellie Williams x Popstar!Reader 𖥔 ݁ ˖

⭒ synopsis: After watching them lose and bloom, shatter and survive, fate exhales—and answers the question that has haunted every stage, every verse, every sleepless night: will it finally loosen its grip and let them have what was always theirs? Maybe it doesn’t tie things clean. Maybe the red string coils into knots, frays with time, tangles itself around distance and silence and years that almost swallowed them whole. But it never breaks. And now—at last—it pulls tight. Not to strangle, but to lead. This is not the end. This is what happens when stars remember where they belong—and finally, collide 𖥔 ݁ ˖

⭒ word count: 16,6k 𖥔 ݁ ˖

⭒ content: JUST READ BABE. JUST READ. TRUST. AFAB!Reader, modern AU setting, multi-part series. MEN AND MINORS DNI. Likes and reblogs are deeply appreciated — thank you for supporting! 𖥔 ݁ ˖

For the full experience, I recommend clicking on the songs linked to Spotify as you read!

But now, take my hand—let’s walk into the end of this story together <3

Two weeks.

That’s all that remained before Ellie Williams stepped back into the spotlight.

Not for an interview. Not for an apology.

For a stage. For a reckoning. For her.

She wasn’t coming back with headlines or handshakes. She was coming back the only way Ellie Williams ever knew how—burning. No warning, no press run, no apology tour. Just a guitar in her hands and one hundred thousand people at Michigan Stadium.

The same stage you opened your tour.

But now, it was her turn.

People flew in from every corner of the world. Slept in tents outside the gates. Painted her name on their cheeks like war paint. Wore her lyrics on their jackets like armor. Some hadn’t heard her voice since the Louder Than Fate tour, when she was still burning and hadn’t yet turned to ash. Others had never heard her live at all—just in headphones, in bedrooms, through car radios. Some came because they loved her. Others because they missed her. But most came because they needed to see her.

Needed to know if she was still real, still standing, still capable of singing through the wreckage she crawled out of.

Ellie got the offer from the label just days after she dropped the album.

She could’ve said no. She could’ve let the legacy speak for itself. But she didn’t.

Because she was hungry again.

Hungry for the stage, for the sweat, the sound, the roar of something louder than memory and pain. Hungry for the sting of light in her eyes, for the weight of the guitar against her chest, for the noise that could drown out everything she used to be.

Hungry to prove to the world—and herself—that she could step back into the spotlight that once shattered her and not just survive it, but reclaim it.

And the moment it was announced, the news spread like gospel.

Ellie Williams. Live. One night only.

It sold out in seconds.

The world was watching—eyes glued to screens, hearts clenched in anticipation, waiting to witness history.

But when the day finally came, none of them knew what she felt backstage.

She was sitting in front of a vanity mirror that didn’t feel like hers. Harsh yellow lights beat down on her face. The reflection staring back at her looked familiar in the way a childhood home does after a hurricane. Same bones, different air.

Her hair was pulled back into a low bun—not styled, just practical. She wore a white ribbed tank that clung to her shoulders, old jeans and a leather belt that still held the shape of her past, and those battered boots she’d once played entire tours in.

Her tattoos looked darker somehow, more defined, every line sharpened. Her face was clearer, stripped of eyeliner and pretense, scattered with freckles the world hadn’t seen in years.

She didn’t look older. Or younger. Just… still. Like everything that once raged inside her had burned to the ground—and something stronger had chosen to stay behind.

And for a moment—one long, breathless, soul-splitting moment—Ellie didn’t think she could do it.

She then stood beneath the humming lights of the corridor, the roar of one hundred thousand people pulsing through the concrete like a second heartbeat, and felt the weight of her own body like it was something foreign. Her chest was tight. Her hands trembled at her sides. Her mouth was dry, like even her voice had curled away from her in fear. 

There were no rails to cling to. No coke to jolt her heart into rhythm, no pills to anchor her breath, no needles to blur the sharp edges. No easy lie to armor herself with, no persona to slip into like a stage costume, no mask to make the trembling feel like performance. No Jesse cracking jokes beside her. No Dina tugging her sleeve, telling her to breathe. 

No you waiting in the wings to kiss her good luck, to squeeze her hand and tell her she was born for this. No soft smile to ground her. No voice whispering in her ear that she could do it, that she’d be okay, that she was already more than enough.

Just her. Raw and unfiltered. Barefaced. Bare-souled. Skin-to-bone vulnerable. Walking willingly into the same blaze that once swallowed her whole, but this time with no promise she'd come out the other side.

She felt the full, awful presence of her own unmedicated nerves. Her unedited grief. Her unmuted past. She didn’t know if her knees would carry her forward or buckle beneath the weight. She didn’t know if her voice would hold, or if it would crack and betray her in front of everyone. 

She had never felt smaller. Never felt more real. Never felt more alive.

But then—Joel appeared.

He didn’t knock. Didn’t clear his throat. Didn’t ask if she needed anything.

He just walked in.

The same way he had stepped into that hotel suite three years ago, when she was dying beneath taped-up curtains and cold bathroom tiles, when the air reeked of confinement and something worse, when her hands shook for a million different reasons and her soul felt like a ghost trapped somewhere deep in her chest, pounding to get out. 

And now, in this dressing room, on the edge of everything she’d become, he stood the same way, like time had folded in on itself to remind her: you are not alone this time, either.

He stood behind her in the mirror, silent and solid, a figure made of earth and time. That familiar weight in his shoulders—the kind of strength that doesn’t announce itself, but holds up the roof when everything else comes crashing down. 

He wore denim. Flannel. His boots were dusted from the road. His hair was streaked with more grey than she remembered. 

But his eyes—his eyes were steady. Unmoving. They had been holding still for years, just waiting for her to look up.

“…Y’know,” he said, voice low and rough around the edges, worn like gravel and truth, “first time I saw you hold a guitar, you were what—six?”

Ellie blinked, almost smiled. “Five.”

“Five.” He nodded. “Right. And your hands were so damn small I thought you were gonna snap the neck clean off just tryin’ to tune it.”

A breath escaped her. It was half a laugh, half a sob. That sound she only made around him. It meant she remembered, too.

“But you didn’t,” he went on. “You figured it out. I taught you how to play, sure—but you taught yourself how to make it sing. You took wood and wire and turned it into something unforgettable. And that something made you the greatest.”

He then stepped forward, slow and sure, and rested his hands on her shoulders. He looked at her like she was made of light and grit and second chances.

“I know you’re scared,” he said. “Hell, if it were me, I’d be scared too. But what’s in you, kiddo… that don’t get killed by fear. It don’t quit when it hurts. You’ve already walked through hell and came out the other side, and you’re still standing. Still breathing. Still singing.”

She looked down, breath catching, throat tight.

His hand moved to her cheek—rough thumb brushing just beneath her eye, the way only a father could touch someone and make them feel safer by standing still.

“You’re not what broke you,” he said quietly. “You’re what survived it. And you don’t gotta go up there alone—not ever again.”

He held out his hand.

She took it.

And in their in-ears, a voice crackled to life: Showtime in five seconds.

She closed her eyes. Breathed once. Twice.

The stadium lights dimmed.

A single spotlight cut through the dark like a blade through velvet.

And two silhouettes stepped into it. Side by side. Unshaken. Unafraid.

Ready.

The crowd saw Joel first—and the sound that erupted wasn’t a cheer. It was a detonation.

A seismic, full-body scream that tore out of a hundred thousand throats at once, rising from the depths of Michigan Stadium like the earth itself was howling. People weren’t just applauding. They were sobbing. Collapsing. Grabbing strangers. Shaking.

Joel Miller’s return to the stage after a decade was already legendary on it's own.

But then Ellie stepped into the light.

And the world broke open.

The noise became inhuman. It was the loudest thing she’d ever heard, even with her in-ear monitor trying to block it out. A sound so raw it blurred into static—like every heart in the stadium had burst at once. People dropped to their knees. Clutched their chests. Stared like they’d seen God materialize in front of them.

Because in a way, they had.

Not the myth. Not the scandal. Not the ghost they’d whispered about for three years in every corner of the earth.

Just Ellie fucking Williams.

Stripped of costume and spectacle. Her jaw set. Her eyes full. Her spine straight. Boots grounded on the edge that once shattered her. Her first acoustic guitar strapped across her chest like a shield made of memory.

And when the noise dimmed by the smallest fraction—her voice came through.

A voice that had once disappeared into silence now rose like a phoenix from ash.

“I’m just a poor wayfaring stranger…”

The way it moved through the stadium felt ancient. It came from something bigger than music.

Then Joel’s voice slipped into the harmony like it had always belonged there, effortless, worn in, achingly right.

The way their voices braided together felt less like a performance and more like a memory being rewritten in real time. 

And the crowd felt it. You could see it in the way people started crying and didn’t stop. Not polite tears, not glossy-eyed admiration, but full, collapsed sobs. As if hearing something they didn’t know they’d been starving for. Fathers held daughters like lifelines. Lovers clutched hands, some of them sobbing into each other’s shoulders. Fans leaned on strangers, weeping like confessionals. 

Because it wasn’t just Ellie up there. And it wasn’t just Joel. It was both of them, together—alive. Not as the fractured pieces of the people they used to be, but as something whole and rebuilt.

They stood side by side, boots grounded. Their playing wasn’t polished, and it didn’t need to be. It was raw and imperfect and so incredible it can barely be described. 

The scrape of strings, the breath between verses, the unfiltered ache in their voices—it all bled into something more honest than perfection could ever offer.

And somehow, that stripped-down moment, with no band behind them and no noise to hide inside, was more powerful than any anthem ever could’ve been.

When the final note rang out, it didn’t end with applause. It ended with stillness. The kind that makes you feel like the world has stopped spinning. For a heartbeat, it was silent enough to hear the breath of the person beside you. 

And then the sobbing started again—quieter now, reverent, as if no one wanted to break what had just happened.

Ellie turned to look at Joel.

Joel was already looking at Ellie.

And in that look, she saw something she had never seen before. Not the complicated, unspoken weight of a father who didn’t know how to hold a daughter made of fire.  She saw pride. Pure, earned, bone-deep pride. It didn’t need to be said aloud to be known.

And Joel saw her, too. Not the haunted. Not the addict. Not the one who ran. Not just the artist who rose from her own ashes, turning them into songs that brought the world to its knees—all over again.

But the daughter he thought he’d lost forever, standing beside him with her chin lifted and her voice unshaking. The saw the woman who clawed her way back from the dead.

The song ended, but something far more important ended with it.

The wound Joel had left in Ellie—the old, unspoken fracture of absence and disappointment—closed. Quietly. Completely. 

And the one Ellie left in Joel—the guilt, the helplessness, the deep, clawing ache of a man who feared he’d failed—finally softened into something like peace.

There were no apologies spoken.

Only a father and daughter, once torn apart by silence, who found each other again in the only language they never forgot how to speak—music.

The days had passed like mist through your fingers—formless, slow, devoid of shape or meaning, as if time itself had been grieving with you. Since the moment you pressed play on Ellie’s album, something inside you had cracked so quietly it didn’t even echo. Just a shattering, inward. A collapse you didn’t notice until you were already buried beneath it.

You moved through your days like a version of yourself caught between radio static and a memory—doing what you were supposed to do, but never quite arriving.

On stage, you sang the notes like a ghost of yourself. You moved the way you always had—fluid, rehearsed, divine—but something underneath had ruptured all over again. You smiled when the cameras were on, told stories on late-night couches with perfectly timed laughs. But every step offstage felt like unraveling. Every green room felt like a tomb.

And after, you went home, to this apartment high above the city. No press. No afterparties. The kitchen untouched. The bedroom too big. The pillows still smelling faintly like lavender and someone you didn’t name anymore.

You didn’t answer Abby. Not when she sent a long paragraph apology, somewhere between remorse and confusion. Not when she called three times in a row. And not when she finally gave up subtlety and said, “We can try again. If you want.”

You didn’t even open it.

Not because you wanted to be cruel. Not because you didn’t appreciate the softness you’d been offered, or the effort it took to stay at your side while you were halfway somewhere else. But because the truth had already bloomed inside your chest like a bruise you couldn’t ignore. It wasn’t Abby. It was never Abby. And no amount of stability or warm hands could quiet the voice you heard again.

Because that voice—her voice—had broken through the silence of your carefully reconstructed life like a blade. And in that moment, with every lyric, with every breath she sang into the dark, you knew.

Your heart had never moved on. Your soul had never made the journey. You had been surviving, yes. But you hadn’t really lived since her.

And in the aftermath of that album—raw, confessional, impossible to misinterpret—you finally let yourself accept what you’d been running from in the quietest, most painful kind of surrender.

That maybe you were destined to haunted by the ghost of Ellie Williams forever.

A shadow stitched into your ribcage. A presence that time could blur but never erase. A love that refused to die, even when you begged it to.

You’d walked into the studio the next morning after hearing it with your makeup already done and a smile pinned so tightly to your lips you were sure it would scar. Not even your stylist said a word. Not the lighting guy. Not your publicist, who usually couldn’t shut up about viral angles and fan engagement. You were handled like something breakable, a crystal vase perched too close to the edge of a windowsill. Everyone knew. No one dared to name it.

You got through the first hour of recording. Barely. Your voice cracked once, then again, and again—until it was no longer convincing. You stepped out mid-take, blamed it on exhaustion, waved off concern with a perfectly practiced flick of the wrist. My voice is shot, you said, and they nodded.

You didn’t check headlines. Couldn’t. The internet was drenched in her name—suffocating in it. Every push notification felt like a gut punch. Every flick of your thumb opened a trap. Ellie Williams Breaks Her Silence. Ellie’s New Album: A Love Letter or a Confession? “Lover, You Should’ve Come Over”: A Song No One Was Ready For.

Your inbox overflowed. Interview requests. Podcast pitches. Brand deals—each one clawing for your reaction. All of them starved to know what you thought, desperate for a paparazzi shot of you crying. If they could catch you unraveling in real time, they’d rake in the numbers.

You hadn’t posted since.

You couldn’t care less about engagement, PR, or damage control. You hadn’t even posted the breakup statement with Abby—it still sat in your drafts, unsent and untouched.

Because knowing the media, of course they’d link it to Ellie’s return.

The worst part? They’d be completely right.

So now, you were in the penthouse.

In a second, you swore the whole place inhaled with you. The walls themselves paused, the air tensed, the silence had shape and sound and a pulse. Moonlight spilled across the hardwood in a long, silver exhale. You didn’t know what was coming. Only that something was.

You were lying in bed minutes later, barely breathing, when your phone lit up.

Rachel.

Your body didn’t jolt or freeze. It just… stilled. Like it recognized this moment before your brain did. You blinked, slow. Blank ceiling. Heavy air. You didn’t move. Didn’t answer right away. Just watched the screen light up with the name of the only person who might understand, the one who had always been there on the edge of everything, never pushing, always waiting.

You could have let it ring. You almost did. Let it vanish into missed call silence, another unopened door you couldn’t walk through.

But something deep inside you twitched—sharp and certain. A low, humming knowing that said respond.

So you reached quietly on the fifth ring, dragging the phone to your ear like it weighed your entire life.

“What.”

Your voice was flat, but your pulse had already spiked.

“RUN TO YOUR TV. First channel you can find—national, local, WHATEVER—just turn it on. RIGHT NOW. GO—”

Rachel’s breath was erratic on the other end, like she was sprinting through adrenaline.

“What? Rachel, what’s going on?” you sat up, “Why? What happened?”

“I—I can’t—OH MY GOD—JUST DO IT!” she half-laughed, half-screamed. “YOU’RE GONNA DIE. GO. NOW.”

Your heart lurched in your chest like it had been yanked by a string. Then raced.

Something electric ignited then—wild, primal, terrifying—the kind of feeling that didn’t come with warning. The kind of feeling that only meant one thing: Her.

You bolted barefoot across the hardwood, phone clutched in one hand, the other fumbling wildly for the remote. It was like your body already knew what your mind couldn’t yet process.

You clicked the remote on with trembling fingers.

The screen blinked to life.

One second of black.

And then—

Michigan Stadium.

Night sky overhead.

Lights flooding the stage.

And there.

There she was.

The one you thought you’d never see again.

Ellie.

You dropped the phone. It hit the floor hard. You heard Rachel screaming through the speaker, but her voice was a distant echo, swallowed by the roar in your ears.

Because she was there.

You stumbled back like the image itself had struck you in the chest. The air left your lungs all at once, sharp and violent, like you’d been punched by a ghost. Your knees caught the edge of the couch and buckled, and you sank down without grace or thought, eyes locked to the screen, unblinking, unmoving, undone.

Ellie stood in the center of Michigan Stadium like the world had tilted just to make room for her. White ribbed tank. Old jeans. Those battered black boots you once tripped over in the hallway of a hotel room you both refused to leave. Her hair was pulled back, out of her face. Her tattoos sat dark beneath the lights, inked relics of a war she survived. Her guitar rested across her chest like it belonged to her ribcage.

But it wasn’t the outfit. It wasn’t the set. It wasn’t the crowd.

It was her.

She looked radiant.

Not in a polished, made-for-press kind of way. Not only because she was already perfect. But because she looked holy. There was a quiet power in her posture, a stillness that rang louder than any scream. The kind of beauty that had nothing to prove. Her skin glowed under the lights, untouched by highlighter or stage makeup. Her arms were fuller now. Her face softer. Her body no longer carved by tension, but by healing. There was more weight to her, more color, more breath.

She looked more beautiful than your memory had dared to keep.

Changed in all the ways time demands, but still, so unmistakably her.

Because under it all, that Ellie the world and you fell in love with remained—that wild, impossible gravity only she had ever carried. The quiet danger curled beneath her stillness. The glint in her eye that dared every soul to look away. That fire in her blood, reckless and unrelenting, that burned you down and still made you crawl back, aching to be scorched again. It was the way she held a room without even speaking. The way her presence felt like prophecy.

No matter how much she changed—no matter how much softer, fuller, steadier she became—that raw, untamed pulse inside her still called to you like it always had.

But this woman, this Ellie, was alive in a way that made your throat close. Not because the pain was gone, but because she had walked through it. Burned, broke, and rebuilt every shattered piece.

You could feel it, pouring off of her in waves. This sacred knowing that she had faced death in all its quiet forms and chosen, somehow, to live.

And then—

Joel.

You pressed a hand to your mouth as the tears came fast—silent, unrelenting. They streamed down your face like they’d been waiting for this moment longer than you had. You weren’t only crying because it was beautiful. You were crying because it was real.

Because for the first time, you saw Ellie not just standing—but held.

The stadium around them was thunder, rising like a hurricane of disbelief and devotion. People wept. People screamed. People collapsed into each other in the stands.

Ellie’s voice was raw silk; Joel’s was gravel and time. Their voices braided together, weathered and warm. The song lifted into the night like smoke from an old fire. The commentators were speechless. And you—

You were wrecked.

The tears came freely now, tracing slow, aching paths down your cheeks, slipping over the curve of your jaw, soaking into the collar of your shirt. You folded over your knees, one hand clutching the center of your chest like you could physically hold your heart together, the other trembling in your lap.

And through the storm of breathless, silent sobs, you whispered—thank you.

Again and again. You thanked whatever had listened. The stars. God. Fate. The wind. That unnamed force that had heard you in your quietest agony and, at last, answered back.

It didn’t matter that she never called, not anymore. Didn’t matter that her name never lit up your phone, that she hadn’t texted or knocked your door or whispered your name back into the silence.

Because Joel was beside her. And he wasn’t hiding either. Not from her, not from you, not from the past that had nearly torn them apart. 

Because you knew, even without needing to be told, he had been with her this whole time. You could see it in the way she looked steadier. She had finally let someone love her without pushing them away.

And you knew why.

Because you had made that call.

You never got a thank you. You never needed one.

This—this moment, this breath, this proof of life—was enough.

Every night you cried for her. Every scream into your pillow. Every time you shouted into the dark, begging the universe not to take her from you.

All of it had been worth it. The pain. The silence. The years. The songs you wrote just to survive.

Because she was there, glowing. Standing with her chin held high, the stage catching her in that impossible kind of light. A light she wore like truth. No longer flinching at the crowd. No longer hiding from the name that came before her. No longer hiding from her own name.

And you sat there, tears streaming, broken open, watching from thousands of miles away. And your heart—after three long years of beating wrong—finally remembered the rhythm it was made for. 

The moment Wayfaring Stranger ended and that final chord rang out—slow and aching and holy—the stadium held its breath. The sound hung in the air like a ghost refusing to leave. Ellie stood still for a second, her head bowed, breath heaving gently in her chest.

Then she turned to Joel.

In unspoken sync, they each reached for their guitars, slinging them over their shoulders with practiced ease. The weight settled against their backs, familiar and grounding, old promises they never dared to break.

And then, without a word, they stepped forward and wrapped their arms around each other.

It was real hug—reverent, both arms around his shoulders like she was closing a loop neither of them ever truly believed would close. He held her back just as tightly, eyes shut, face buried in her shoulder like he was anchoring himself to her heartbeat. 

The crowd erupted. Not just in applause, but in something deeper. Gratitude. Relief. As if they had waited years not just for her return, but for this. For the proof that some stories do find their way back.

Ellie pulled away first, her smile faint but real. She stepped towards the mic and the light found her eyes—glassier than before, brighter than they had ever been.

“Everyone,” she said, breath catching on the word, voice rough from the weight of the moment, “A round of applause for Joel Miller. My dad.”

The response was thunder. The crowd roared like it was gospel, a wave of noise so massive it nearly lifted the stadium off its foundations. Joel shifted under it, awkward and quiet, rubbing the back of his neck like the sound might crawl down his spine. It had been over a decade since he’d stood this close to a stage, even longer since the roar of a crowd had been meant for anything he touched.

It hit him like muscle memory and whiplash at once—how the sound swelled in your chest before it ever reached your ears, how it made your ribs rattle, how it made your past feel like it never really left.

He gave a half-nod, like a man trying to stay small and humble beneath worship.

Ellie turned and looked at him—and the tenderness in her gaze made something in your own chest twist, ache, break. She held up a hand, waiting for the noise to dim, her fingers steady.

“In the past,” she said, “I was afraid I’d never be enough to step out from under his shadow. I thought I had to run from it. Outgrow it. Beat it.”

She glanced at Joel again, that crooked half-smile of hers spreading like sunrise.

“But now I get it. He’s not a shadow. He’s not a name I have to live up to. He’s my father. And I’m grateful every single day for who he is—for the fact that he’s still here. And for the fact that he still believed in me… even when I didn’t believe in myself.”

Joel stepped forward slowly, clearing his throat as he leaned toward the mic. The stadium went quiet. As if everyone knew this moment wasn’t to be missed.

“Ellie. My daughter,” he began, and even those words felt like a benediction, a prayer finally spoken out loud. “The one who made it out. And is still standin'.”

He paused. The lights caught the tears in his eyes. His voice cracked, just a little.

“The strongest and most brilliant person I’ve ever met… and ever will meet. I couldn’t possibly be prouder of her.”

He exhaled, eyes wet, the pride in him so loud it didn’t even need music.

"Everyone—a round of applause for Ellie Williams.”

The crowd didn’t cheer. They roared—with the force of something seismic, soul-deep.

Joel took a step back from the mic, gave a short wave, and began to turn. His role complete, the chapter closed.

But she blinked, tilted her head, and leaned into her mic.

“Ellie Miller.”

The crowd gasped, then rose again—like they hadn’t just been hit with the most personal, quiet bombshell of the night.

Joel froze mid-step. Slowly turned. Squinted at her with an exaggerated dad face so full of mock-scandal and affection it drew laughter through tears across the entire stadium.

“Oh, that’s how it is?” he said, feigning offense. “Changing your stage name without tellin' me?”

Ellie shrugged, expression sly and soft all at once.

“Figured I earned it.”

And then—Joel laughed. Really laughed. A deep, unfiltered sound.

He didn’t say another word. He just stepped back to her and hugged her again.

This time, longer. This time, tighter. This time, with every apology they had never said, every word they’d both gone without, every year lost that now didn’t matter anymore.

Ellie leaned into it, buried her face in his shoulder. Her mouth moved against his shirt, barely audible over the applause.

“I love you, Dad.”

And Joel, without pause, without blinking, held her closer still.

“I love you too, kiddo.”

And after the crowd finally settled, when Joel let her go and stepped backstage, someone from the wings came forward and placed it in her hands.

Her guitar.

The black Les Paul. The same one she’d played since the beginning—since cramped clubs and broken strings and dive bars that smelled like vodka and regret. It had followed her through every tour, every groupie, every breakdown, every rebirth. It had always been there, waiting.

But tonight, as she curled her fingers around the neck, it felt different.

It didn’t sit in her hands like a weapon anymore. It didn’t tremble like it was afraid of her. It rested there like it belonged.

Ellie adjusted the strap slowly, her movements precise. She stepped forward, boots echoing against the stage, and stopped just behind the mic. Her eyes swept across the crowd—one hundred thousand held breaths—and then back to the band behind her.

She nodded once. They nodded back.

Babe, I'm Gonna Leave You.

And when she started playing, everyone understood. This wasn’t a comeback. It wasn’t a redemption arc.

This was a resurrection.

Ellie had always carried something inside her—molten and unnamable, twisting in her chest like starlight caught in barbed wire. It wasn’t polish. It wasn’t performance. It was presence. That rare fire no one could teach and no label could manufacture.

And now, she didn’t just glow, she burned. She lit up that stage like she’d been born with a crowd already roaring for her. But the truth was, she didn’t need one.

Because Ellie had that thing. That impossible, untouchable thing artists spend their whole lives chasing.

She had always been her own spotlight.

And tonight, she only needed four things: a mic, a guitar, her voice and you.

From your penthouse window, even LA pulsed with the sound of her. The echo of her voice bled through televisions, car radios, rooftop speakers. A storm rolling in from the horizon, crawling towards your shore with one specific purpose.

But it wasn’t until the broadcast returned, the camera cutting back to her face—those unmistakable green eyes locked and unflinching, burning straight through the screen—that you felt it in your bones.

She had one hundred thousand people screaming her lyrics into the sky like scripture. Fans sobbing, collapsing, gripping each other like they were witnessing something divine only she could summon. The moment felt too big for sound, too holy for explanation.

But Ellie didn’t want their eyes on her. Not really.

She only wanted one specific pair.

Yours.

She stared into the camera like it was a portal, like if she looked hard enough, deep enough, it might carry her back to you. Might pull you through space and silence and time.

And somehow, it did.

Because you were there.

Watching.

You couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t blink. You were on the floor now—knees pulled tight to your chest, forehead resting against the crook of your arm, trying to stay anchored as your whole body threatened to come undone. Your mouth open, tears flowing. Your heart thudded against your ribs in perfect time with every chord she struck, every note she gave away striking like a bullet.

Because they were yours.

She wasn’t just singing the songs—she was ripping them out of herself. Tearing them from some raw, unspoken place deep within, where grief and longing and love had grown too vast to stay hidden any longer.

These were songs that had your name buried between the syllables, hidden in the breath between verses, stitched into final notes that lingered just a second too long.

Her voice wasn’t polished. It wasn’t pristine. It was a wound, sharp and aching and raw. A voice that bled. A voice that sliced the air open and somehow managed to stitch it closed again in the same breath.

She didn’t perform. She confessed.

Every lyric was a letter she never sent. Every chord was a memory she couldn’t bear to forget. Every time her fingers moved across the guitar, it felt like prayer.

And the crowd, the cameras, the stadium, the roar of one hundred thousand, none of it mattered.

Because she only cared about you.

She didn’t care where you were—whether you were alone in some quiet corner of the world, laughing with friends, tangled up in Rachel’s orbit, or with...Abby. All she wanted was to reach you.

But God, please not with Abby.

She didn’t care how the sound found you—through the static of a car radio, from the corner speaker of a bar you didn’t mean to walk into, or echoing faintly from someone else’s phone across the room. She just needed her voice to brush against your world, land somewhere near you ears and slip in your chest.

And she didn’t care how you saw her—on a screen, in the blur of clip gone viral, in a reflection that caught you off guard, made you look twice, made you remember. She just needed you to look long enough to recognize her, not as a star on stage, but her.

The girl who had loved you. Who still did.

Because what she was doing now wasn’t just for the world. Wasn't just for herself. It was for you.

She stared into the camera like it was a window she could reach through. Like maybe the songs would travel across the signal, across the air, and find the only heart they were meant for. The melody a key sliding into the lock of your chest.

And it did.

Sitting on the floor of your living room, lips parted, eyes blurred with tears, arms wrapped around yourself like you might fall apart if you didn’t hold tight—it did.

The way she looked into the lens when she sang the bridge of Iris—like she was standing at the edge of a cliff, and the only thing keeping her from falling was the thought of you. The way her voice cracked—just barely, but undeniably—on the second verse of Not, like the memory lodged in her throat finally fought its way out. The extra, aching strum before the outro of Twilight, a pause that wasn’t in the studio version, but lived only in this performance.

And then there was Black—that velvet, bruised wail of a song, the way she leaned into it like confession, like penance. The way Lilac Wine and Grace made her close her eyes, guitar cradled to her chest like a heartbeat, the melody unspooling as if it had been fermenting inside her for years. And in Francesca, when the lights dimmed and turned into a cold blue-purple haze, she looked up—not at the crowd, not at the band, but straight into the camera. Straight through it. Into the silence where you lived.

And the cameras caught her in it—that impossibly magnetic, sharp-browed and sharp-tongued beauty. The defiance in her jaw. The crease that lived between her eyes like a scar she never tried to erase. The green of her gaze, luminous even under the relentless blaze of stadium lights, cutting through like it had been sharpened for you.

She played, sang, and performed like she was starting a war and making peace in the same breath—every note a battle cry, every word a surrender.

Backstage, someone whispered, "She’s a fucking legend."

Another voice, awed: "This is history in the making."

Someone else, "She’s not human."

And maybe they were right.

Maybe she never was human, at least not in the way the rest of humans were.

Because Ellie on that stage wasn’t the girl who vanished three years ago, shaking and hollow, disappearing into a silence so deep it swallowed her. She wasn't the daughter of. She wasn't the ex-frontwoman of the Fireflies. She wasn’t the heartbreak you wrote an entire album about. She wasn’t even just the girl you loved.

Standing at the center of the biggest stadium in the country, with her Les Paul slung low against her hip, sweat glistening down the line of her throat, breath catching from the weight of her own voice, she was all of them at once.

She looked out into the dark, into the crowd, into the camera, and didn’t flinch.

She reached.

And somehow—so impossibly—you reached back.

And when the lights dimmed again, it felt like the air had been sucked from the world.

No music. Just a breathless, crushing stillness—like the universe was holding something behind its teeth. The stadium buzzed in the dark, bodies charged with static, hearts beating out of sync, phones lifted like trembling offerings.

But the band was gone. The monitors had gone dark.

And Ellie was nowhere in sight.

A few minutes passed. Maybe more. It was hard to tell. Time had folded into itself.

Then—movement.

Far stage left, barely illuminated, a silhouette appeared.

At first, it was just shape and shadow. The camera didn’t zoom. The lights didn’t rise. No cues. Just the slow reveal of a presence.

The stadium held its collective breath.

It was her.

You could tell by the weight of her walk—the deliberate thunder of boots hitting the stage like war drums. A now clean black tank clung to her shoulders, her jeans darker, still stiff from the quick change backstage. The Les Paul still strapped across her body like shield. Her stance was familiar, yet different. She wasn’t reemerging.

She was summoning something.

And then—

A second figure stepped into the low light beside her.

A woman. Lean. Curly hair catching the stage glow like a halo of fire. A bass hung low across her hips, hands already poised, one foot forward, like she’d never stopped playing. Like the time apart had only sharpened her.

The audience froze.

Then—A third figure appeared in the back.

A man. Seated. Shadowed. Hands spinning a pair of drumsticks like magic, like memory. His shoulders wide, head bowed as if in prayer, coiled with precision.

The crowd didn’t scream. Couldn’t.

Because no one dared to speak into what was happening.

The Fireflies.

The screen finally zoomed in, not all at once, but slowly. Like even the broadcast crew understood they were capturing something mythical. A resurrection not just of a band, but of legends.

Ellie stepped up to the microphone, backlit by fire and myth, sweat still shining across her collarbone, guitar strapped tight like her ribs might break without it.

The crowd still hadn’t broken their silence. They waited. Breathless.

Then her voice came—low, serrated, full of that old venom, aged like the finest wine.

She leaned into the mic, the corners of her mouth lifting between a smirk and a warning.

“Guess what, fuckers—turns out fire doesn’t die. It just waits.”

The crowd erupted.

A scream so violent it shook the camera feed, sent tremors through the floorboards, nearly knocked people to their knees. It wasn’t just cheering. It was release. It was reverence.

Because the impossible had just happened.

Screams tore through the stadium so loud, seismic sensors in three counties thought it was an earthquake. Security guards were crying. A paramedic fainted. One hundred people passed out instantly. At least five breakups and one proposal happened mid-scream. The cameras struggled to focus through the chaos. Hands reached towards the stage like the second coming had arrived.

If Ellie thought she’d already heard the loudest sound of the night—this made it feel like a whisper.

And just like that, she ripped the first note from her guitar like it had been waiting three years to scream.

Her voice cut through the sound system like a beast unleashed. 

“WE'RE BACK FROM THE DEAD!”

And behind her, Jesse slammed into the drums with a grin so wild it made three thousand headlines the next day.

Dina’s bass rumbled in, low and unrelenting, the kind of sound you felt in your ribs before you heard it.

In those hidden weeks in New York, Ellie, without warning, showed up at Jesse’s door.

No text. No heads-up. Just a knock, long past midnight.

He opened it, groggy and confused, rubbing sleep from his eyes—and froze.

Dina was on the couch behind him. She stood. They stared at Ellie like they'd seen a ghost.

Five full seconds passed. No one spoke.

Then—just like that—they broke.

They collapsed into each other in the hallway, tears wetting shoulders, hands clutching sleeves like they might disappear again if they didn’t hold tight enough. There were no apologies. No screaming matches. No grand speeches. Just the kind of crying that sounds like relief. The kind that only happens when someone you thought might lose forever walks through your door.

They didn’t try to fix everything all at once. They didn’t need to.

Instead, they talked.

For hours. Cross-legged on the floor. Curled up on the couch with knees tucked into their chests like kids. They passed a joint back and forth, laughed until they couldn’t breathe, ate chips from the bag. They talked about nothing. About everything. The silence between them softened into something like trust again.

At some point, Ellie played The Shape of What I Lost on Jesse’s living room speakers.

None of them moved while it played. No one spoke when it ended.

Five full minutes of silence.

And then Dina looked up, eyes glassy but clear, and said,

“So… when are we getting the band back together?”

It was never a maybe.

It was always a yes.

They planned it like a heist. In secret. No press. No leaks. No teams. Just the three of them in borrowed rehearsal spaces, writing new arrangements with old muscle memory and fresh scars. They rebuilt everything from the bones—new sound, new fire, same soul. Rehearsing like their lives depended on it.

Because maybe they did.

They started with a Fireflies version of Black Vultures. They stripped it raw, loaded it with grit, sharpened every verse until it sounded like vengeance. It was thunder. It was blood. It was the kind of opening track that let the world know—this wasn’t nostalgia. This was now.

Then came Back from the Dead.

Their first new song in years.

Written together. One night. In the middle of that too-small studio with too-warm beer and half-empty notebooks, Ellie had looked up from her guitar, her voice hoarse, and said, “This isn’t about being back. It’s about surviving it.”

And now—here they were.

After Ellie strummed one of the most powerful, soul-baring solos of her entire career—fingers blistering, guitar wailing—the final verse rang out into the night. It didn’t just echo through the stadium. It resounded across the entire city, flooding rooftops, trembling windows, bleeding into alleyways and high-rises and hearts that had been waiting for their return.

Black Vultures came.

They weren't just performing it. They were reinventing it.

The Fireflies version was heavier. Filthier. Sharper. It was blood-slick and golden, packed with harmonies and breakdowns and that wild, reckless chemistry that only the three of them could create.

Jesse’s drum kit pounded like an earthquake. Dina’s bassline and backing vocals hit like a fist through glass. And Ellie—center stage, mouth on the mic, eyes burning like flames in hell—howled.

Her voice was louder now, stronger than it had ever been, even in her prime. She sang like she wanted the whole universe to know:

The Fireflies weren’t just back.

They had never sounded better.

The bridge crashed in like a wave of fire, and Ellie dropped to her knees at the edge of the stage, her guitar howling beneath her fingers like it had waited years for this exact moment.

And with auburn strands plastered to her face, sweat slicking her arms, voice burning from the inside out—

She screamed the bridge.

She didn’t just sing it—she hurled it from her chest like it had been clawing at her ribs for years. The sound tore through the stadium, ripped through amplifiers, cracked across the sky like thunder made of bone.

Louder than anything she’d ever screamed before.

Louder than pain. Louder than addiction. Louder than guilt.

“I’M STILL ALIVE.” (2:46)

Her voice broke—sharp, guttural, glorious—and for a split second, it sounded like her soul was breaking with it.

Because she was still alive.

Against all odds. Against every headline. Against everything that tried to kill her.

And the world shook around her like it understood.

And you?

You were mess of sound—crying, laughing, screaming—all at once. Your hands clutched your chest like you were afraid your heart might actually tear itself free. You shook your head like you couldn't believe what you were witnessing, because how the hell could your body contain that much awe, that much history, all crashing back to life in front of you?

The Fireflies.

Your brain couldn’t make sense of it, but your soul did. Your soul was already on its knees.

And when the last guttural notes of Black Vultures shattered into silence, there was no formal send-off. No staged goodbye. No polished encore.

Just darkness.

Just three shadows—collapsing into each other, disappearing as one.

A constellation folding inward. Stars returning to the sky.

People didn’t clap. They screamed. They sobbed. They shouted things they couldn’t put into words. Strangers held each other. Generations wept side by side.

And the Fireflies stood at the center of it all, wrapped in a hug so tight, so chaotic, it looked like a home they had built out of each other. Ellie’s arms around Jesse and Dina. Their heads pressed together. Faces red with sweat and tears.

Nothing had ever broke them—not distance, not silence, not time.

They had found each other.

The image was already going viral. Captured from a thousand shaking phones. Every corner of the internet was drowning in real-time sobbing posts, reaction videos, screen recordings, blurry zoom-ins of that one perfect second.

Dina stepped forward, snatched the mic with shaking fingers, and through laughter and tears, said what everyone had been praying to hear for three years:

“THE FIREFLIES ARE FUCKING BACK!”

The stadium erupted like a match to gasoline.

Jesse stumbled forward next, still breathless, drenched in adrenaline, drumsticks half tucked into his back pocket.

“Y’all thought we were done?” He grabbed the mic from Dina and grinned. “Nah. The hiatus is OVER. Burned. Buried. Signed, sealed, fuckin’ obliterated. Lock your doors, hide your stages.”

Dina laughed, wiping her face, tugging Ellie between them. “And your girlfriends.”

Jesse barked a laugh. “Especially your girlfriends.”

Ellie, standing in the center, boots planted, face flushed, soaked in sweat and disbelief, waited until the crowd went quiet again, hanging on every breath.

She looked at Jesse. Then Dina. Then at the crowd. Her voice low, serrated, sure: “We’re the Fireflies. We're back.”

Ellie’s grin was feral. Her eyes gleamed.

“And we’re never fucking leaving again.”

And in that moment, three people who nearly didn’t survive it—did. Together. Loudly. Permanently.

And the Fireflies walked off together—shoulders touching, arms around each other’s backs, bathed in gold, glowing with something larger than life. A moment carved into music history like it had been written in blood.

Immortal.

But Ellie didn’t follow them.

She stayed.

The band had returned, melting into the shadows.

Ellie walked to the very edge of the stage. Not with power. Not with purpose. Just quietly. Like the weight in her bones had finally stilled. The stadium lights softened to a single warm glow that haloed around her like dusk.

She held only her acoustic now—no distortion pedals, no echo, no fire. Just six strings and silence.

The crowd fell into an eerie, reverent stillness.

And then—

She looked up.

Right into the camera.

Her face was calm, but her jaw was tight. You could see the pulse in her throat. The muscle flickering in her cheek. Her eyes—God, those eyes—shone like green of forests on fire.

She exhaled slowly.

And the chords of Lover, You Should’ve Come Over started ringing out behind her.

“I... I wasn’t gonna say anything,” she said, her voice low—frayed at the edges like old denim, worn from being bitten back too many times.“I thought the songs would do it for me. That they’d be enough. That maybe if I screamed it into a chorus, someone would understand what I meant.”

She paused, eyes flicking out over the sea of lights, breath catching like the words were scraping their way up her throat.

“But—fuck it. If I never get to say this again, I need to say it now.”

Her fingers tightened around the neck of the guitar like she was anchoring herself, grounding against the tremble in her chest. Her shoulders lifted, then sank.

“This was the first song I wrote after everything. And I wasn’t even gonna play it tonight. I was scared it would ruin me.”

She swallowed. Blinked hard. Her voice dropped to something raw, unvarnished.

“But not playing it… felt like lying.”

A hush swept over the stadium like fog. Even the air seemed to stop moving.

“I wrote it for someone who saved my life. Not by pulling me out of a fire. Not with some grand gesture. Just… by being herself. By existing. By letting me love her.”

She blinked hard. Her gaze didn’t leave the camera.

“I don’t know if she’s watching. I don’t know if she hates me. I don’t know if she ever wants to see my face again. But if she is… if you are out there, I need you to hear this.”

She leaned forward, the mic catching every breath, every break. 

“I will love you until the day I die. Always.” 

Her voice trembled on the last word.

“In every lifetime. In every version of me. In every fucking universe where I come back right or I don’t fall apart or I don’t ruin it. I have never stopped—not for one goddamn second.”

The crowd didn’t move. Couldn’t.

“I don’t need you to forgive me. I don’t need you to call. I don’t even need you to come back. I just needed you to know it.”

Her lips parted, trembling.

“I hope you’re happy. I really, really do. Even if it’s not with me. I hope they treat you the way you always deserved. I hope they see you the way I did.”

She drew in one last breath, as if steadying the part of herself she’d just cracked wide open.

“And I’m proud of you. For surviving. For growing. For still being here. Even if I was never meant to stay… you were always meant to be loved right.”

She then adjusted the mic, fingers trembling slightly as they brushed the stand. She strummed once—gentle, unsure. Then again. 

And she began to sing.

No introduction. No theatrics.

Just her voice, bare and hoarse and open, stripped down. It stretched out across the cavernous hush of the stadium and threaded itself through satellites and static and signals, leaking into living rooms and bedrooms and car radios and headphones like smoke under a door. Her voice crawled into the cracks of the world. It didn’t ask for permission. It just filled the silence, turned it into something alive.

You didn’t cry at first. You couldn’t. Your body didn’t know how to respond to all of it.

You sat motionless, bones locked, eyes burning. Her face took up the screen and everything ceased to exist. The city below you vanished. The walls melted. The clock stopped.

All that remained was that voice—fractured but somehow steady—and the impossible way it made you feel like she was in the room.

Her eyes didn’t flicker from the camera, and for a moment you weren’t watching a broadcast. You were reliving it—every version of her you ever loved staring back at you, woven into this one moment.

And something inside you cracked. Just a hairline fracture, somewhere deep in your chest. But it spread—slow and certain, like it had been waiting for this exact moment to give way.

Then the tears came. Hot, blurred, relentless. You didn’t even feel them at first. Only realized when her face on the screen shimmered at the edges and dissolved into color and light.

You found yourself crawling closer to the TV, like a child chasing a ghost. Your hands touched the glass when her face appeared again, fingertips pressed to the image like they could somehow reach her. As if maybe—just maybe—she’d feel it. As if you could hold her the way you once did.

And the song wasn’t a performance. It was an undoing. Her voice stumbled, broke open mid-line, trembled in places where it roared minutes before. But she kept going. You could hear the exact breath where she almost couldn’t. You could feel how much it cost her. How much she meant it. Every note sounded torn from scar tissue and sewn together with your name.

You could hear the devotion behind it. The guilt. The grief. The quiet, impossible hope.

She wasn’t asking for forgiveness. She wasn’t trying to rewrite the past.

She was offering you what remained.

And you let it wash over you. Let it dig its hands into the wreckage of your heart and do what only she could ever do—make something beautiful out of it.

Because this—this was what it looked like to crawl back from the grave of who you used to be and still reach for the same hand.

One tear slid down her cheek during the final chorus. She didn’t wipe it away. Didn’t flinch. Just let it fall.

She didn’t know where you were, or who you were with. But she sang to you anyway, and her voice was still yours. Still filled with the shape of you, the shape of what she lost. Still aching with all the things she never got to say.

She sang like she could tear the world apart just to rebuild it in the shape of your silhouette. 

And you just watched the woman who once destroyed you sing herself back into your hands.

When the lights dimmed for the last time, there were no pyrotechnics. No encore. No choreographed goodbye.

Only Ellie. Alone at the center of the world. Her chest still rising like she hadn’t come down yet. Her guitar silent. Her body shaking. Her voice lingering in the air like it didn’t want to leave. Her hands hung loose at her sides, like she had given everything. 

Because she had.

The crowd—one hundred thousand strong—stood frozen. Reverence had swallowed them whole. They had just watched someone confess in a language more powerful than apology.

Ellie stepped forward.

Her face was flushed. Her lips parted. Her eyes glassy. Her voice was rough now, worn down from thirty songs delivered like confessions, like penance, like a prayer with no promise of an answer. She leaned into the mic.

And when she spoke, she didn’t pretend. She didn’t perform. She just told the truth.

“I wasn’t supposed to be here.”

The words landed with a hush, like snowfall.

“Three years ago, I walked off a stage and I didn’t know if I’d ever walk back onto one. I didn’t know if I’d ever sing again. Or write again. Or even want to.”

She paused. The crowd didn’t make a sound.

“I disappeared because I hit the lowest point in my life. I became someone I didn’t recognize. Someone I didn’t want to be. And instead of asking for help, I—”

She inhaled, steadying herself.

“I numbed it. I ran. I used.”

The silence deepened. All those years of rumors, headlines, speculation. And she was saying it now, for the first time. Out loud. Unafraid.

“I was an addict.”

Gasps, yes. Tears, yes. But not judgment. 

“And I’m not saying that because I want sympathy, or because my PR team finally let me say it. I’m saying it because I don’t want to hide anymore. I don’t want to lie. I don’t want to be ashamed of something I survived.”

Her voice cracked beautifully.

“I’m not proud of my past. But I’m proud of what I made out of it. I’m proud that I made it here. That I’m clean and still here.”

The stadium roared, not in chaos, but in agreement. Applause like thunder, cheers like an exhale the world had been holding for three years.

“And I don’t give a fuck what the media says about it. I don’t care what the headlines are tomorrow, if they call me ‘broken’ or ‘damaged’ or ‘a scandal.’ I’m alive. And that’s enough.”

She gripped the mic stand—not to steady herself, but to ground the moment. 

“And if you’re listening to me right now—” she began, her voice quiet but unshaking, “—if you’re where I was… if you feel like you’re drowning, if your hands are shaking, if you’ve convinced yourself it’s too late—it’s not.”

She scanned the crowd. She wasn’t looking for applause. She was looking for the people who needed to hear it.

“I swear to you, it’s never too late. I thought I was beyond saving. And then someone made a call. And I lived.” Her voice caught. She closed her eyes, breathed through it. “If I made it out, so can you. And I will keep saying that until my voice gives out.”

The stadium had gone quiet again. Every word she said felt like it mattered more than anything they’d heard in years.

“Every single cent from this concert is going to addiction centers across the country. Because people saved me. And now, I’m gonna spend the rest of my life trying to return that favor.”

She paused. Swallowed hard. Her lips curled, just faintly, into something like awe.

“Thank you, Michigan. I will never forget this.”

And then—without spectacle, without sound to carry her away—Ellie stepped back from the mic.

The silence that followed held its breath. It was the kind of silence that happens after birth, after death, after the truth has been spoken out loud for the first time. No one cheered. No one screamed. It was reverent.. A hush draped over one hundred thousand hearts, like the world itself needed a moment to process what had just passed through it.

Joel Miller came back.

The Fireflies came back.

Ellie came back.

She had cracked her chest open and stitched a cathedral out of light and sound. She had unburied herself with her voice and her guitar—splintered, guttural, alive, carrying the weight of every unsaid thing.

It became the kind of night people would name their children after. The kind of night that would live forever in documentaries and tattoos and the back corners of minds that knew they had witnessed something unrepeatable.

The night the girl the world thought it had lost opened her mouth and dragged the sky back into color, like she’d never stopped painting it with her music.

And the second she stepped out of the spotlight, Rolling Stone pressed send on a headline. No debate. No discussion. The entire world already knew in their bones.

The Queen of Rock Has Risen.

Backstage, the light was dimmer, but somehow still glowing. The kind of golden warmth that comes after miracles.

The noise of the crowd—the screaming, the applause, the frenzy—felt a thousand miles away. Her legs were trembling beneath her, but she walked anyway. She didn’t feel triumphant.

She felt hollowed and filled all at once.

Jesse was already there.

He instantly pulled her into a hug like gravity had brought him forward and his body didn’t know how to do anything else. His arms were tight around her, his chin pressed into her shoulder, and it took half a breath before she melted into it—arms around his ribs, forehead buried in his neck, shaking.

“I missed you, bro,” he murmured.

“I missed you too,” she croaked, already crying.

Dina crashed into them next, wrapping around both of them with that reckless kind of love only she knew how to give. She was sobbing and laughing at the same time, kissing Ellie’s temple, whispering, “We came back. You came back.”

Joel stood off to the side for a moment, letting them have it. Watching them like he’d never seen anything so beautiful. Then he walked forward, slow and steady, and wrapped his arms around all three of them like he was pulling the broken pieces of the universe into one.

It was the kind of hug people spend lifetimes waiting for.

They cried, all four of them. Jesse muttering, “You’re a legend, you hear me?” Dina swearing through tears, “You just rewrote history, oh my fucking god Ellie—” Joel whispering, “You did good, kiddo. You did so good.”

It wasn’t just an embrace. It was a reckoning. A forgiveness. A coming home.

Eventually, Dina pulled back first. She wiped her cheeks with the sleeve of her black jacket and looked at Ellie with a spark in her eye. “Okay. Everyone’s waiting. The press is foaming at the mouth.”

Jesse nodded, still grinning. “A thousand celebrities are waiting just to breathe the same air as you. You should probably change your shirt.”

Ellie let out a laugh that felt like it had taken three years to reach the surface.

“I’ll be out in a second,” she said softly.

Dina paused, searched her face, then nodded. “We’ll be at the end of the hallway. Take your time.”

And they left.

The crew, the band, the stagehands, the roar of one hundred thousand people still vibrating through the concrete—it all drifted away, like the echo of a dream.

Leaving just her.

Joel.

And the silence behind the storm.

Ellie sat down slowly, her movements heavy with the weight of what she’d just done. The Les Paul still hung across her like a cross she hadn’t yet set down. Her fingers trembled in her lap, twitching with phantom chords. The adrenaline was still thick in her bloodstream, but the ache in her chest was different. Older. Deeper. Familiar.

Joel leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed. He watched her for a long moment—not as a legend, not as a miracle, but as his kid.

And then, gently—so gently it almost broke her—he spoke.

“You still something feel like something's missin'."

It wasn’t a question.

It was the truth. A soft, unshakable bell rung into the space between them.

Ellie didn’t answer.

What could she say? That she had screamed her love into thirty songs and one stadium and still felt it tearing through her ribcage like wildfire? That every note had been a plea she couldn’t say aloud? That the only moment she almost lost her footing was the one where she swore she could feel you watching, even from halfway across the world?

Didn’t have to.

Joel moved towards her and sat down—carefully, like a man approaching a wild animal he knew well enough to fear. 

Ellie stared at her hands. The calluses on her fingertips. The faint tremor that hadn’t stopped. Her jaw flexed. She blinked hard.

“I thought maybe the music and saying those things out loud would be enough.”

Joel tilted his head, eyes never leaving her. “Was it?”

“No,” she said. Voice cracking. “Not even close.”

He looked at her for a long, quiet moment.

“Then why didn’t you reach for her?”

Ellie’s jaw tightened. Her voice, when it came, was so small it barely sounded like her.

“She’s with someone else, Dad. I already said it. She moved on.”

Joel’s eyes didn’t move.

“She deserves to live her life.” she whispered, throat thick. “ I already took too much of it. I already hurt her enough. I don’t get to ask for anything more.”

Joel exhaled through his nose.

His voice came slower than usual—like he was peeling something loose from a part of himself that had long been sealed shut.

“You know…” he began, quiet. Measured. “I never told you this. Not until I knew you were truly ready to hear it.”

Ellie didn’t move, but her eyes, dulled and distant from everything she’d left on that stage, flicked up just enough to meet his.

“That night,” he said. “When I found you—”

His voice cracked. He cleared his throat and kept going.

“When I said someone called me… that someone begged me to come. Said they didn’t know where you were, only that you were close to the edge…”

His gaze finally lifted, locked onto hers. Nothing in it but the weight of truth. No buffer. No armor.

“It was her.”

Ellie didn’t react. Not at first. But she could feel the shift in her body, her breath leaving like a bullet had torn through it.

“She called me,” Joel continued. “Sobbing. Could barely get the words out. She told me everything that happened between you. Said she’d tried everything. Said she couldn’t reach you, couldn’t save you… and if she didn’t tell someone who could, she’d never forgive herself.”

Ellie’s breath left her body like it had been shot out of her. Her shoulders caved inward, like a second wave had hit—and this time she hadn’t braced.

“She didn’t just save you once,” Joel said, voice shaking. “She saved you twice. She called me, and you’re alive because of it.”

Ellie’s lips parted. But nothing came out. Her face contorted—silent, cracking open. One tear fell. Then another. Her hands, limp in her lap, trembled as she tried to hold herself still.

“That girl…” Joel said, softer now. So soft, like the words were breakable. “That girl still loves you, Ellie.”

He swallowed hard.

“I don’t care where she is, or how much time has passed, or who the hell she’s with. It’s written all over her. And it’s written all over you.”

He reached for her hand. Held it. Gentle, but firm.

“That kind of love,” he said, “isn’t normal. It’s bone-deep. You two—whether you’re together or not, whether the world likes it or not—you’re soulmates, Ellie. And I know that word gets thrown around, but I mean it. I’ve seen it. I’ve felt it.”

Ellie shook her head, barely, but he tightened his grip—not to argue, but to anchor.

“Listen to me,” he said. “I’m not telling you to beg, or fall at her feet or throw yourself into some story that already broke you. I’m just telling you this—”

“You owe it to both of you to reach out. To find out if there's still something waiting on the other side of all that silence.”

Ellie sat in it. The weight. The unbearable truth of it all.

Then—barely audible, like a child trying not to cry—she said:

“…What if she doesn’t want to hear from me?”

Joel smiled.

Not wide. Not triumphant. That other kind of smile. The sad, knowing kind.

“Then at least you’ll know,” he said gently. “At least you’ll know you tried. And that’s more than most people ever get to say.”

He brushed his thumb once across the back of her hand.

“You already came back from the dead tonight, kiddo. You stood in front of the whole world and told the truth. That was the hard part. One more step?”

His eyes softened.

“It won’t kill you.”

Ellie let out a sound—a half-laugh, half-sob, ragged and real. Her hand went to her face, wiping her eyes with the heel of her palm.

She looked down. Then back at him.

And nodded.

“Yeah,” she whispered. “Okay.”

And in that small, broken, brave words—fate shifted.

Joel stood, squeezing her shoulder. 

Ellie didn’t wait another second.

The minute he left the room, her body moved before her brain could catch up, before fear could creep in, before she could second guess the string that had already gripped her by the throat and yanked. She didn’t speak. Didn’t think. Didn’t let herself feel anything but urgency—pure, breathless, blood-hot urgency.

She stripped the sweat-drenched black tank from her chest with shaking hands, heart pounding so hard she could hear it in her ears. Reached for the nearest thing that felt like armor and found it—a grey hoodie at the back of a chair, long abandoned, still smelling faintly of woodsmoke and rosemary and something safe.

Her fingers trembled as she zipped it up all the way to her collarbone. She didn’t tie her boots. Her legs were already moving before the zipper clicked shut.

She skipped the afterparty. Skipped the press. Skipped the team waiting backstage with champagne and glittering tears and a thousand wide-eyed congratulations and documentary cameras itching to catch her.

She had somewhere else to be.

No one could stop her, and no one tried. There was something in her face—hollowed out and bright, wild-eyed and burning—that told them all: this wasn’t about them.

She passed Joel in the hallway. He was waiting there, leaned against the wall like he’d known she’d come flying past. He didn’t ask where she was going. Didn’t need to. Their eyes met for a second, and the entire weight of everything passed between them.

He nodded once. Slow. Certain.

“Go get your girl.”

Out of the venue. Into the car. The night air hit her like a second wind—cold against her skin, slicing straight into her lungs. Her hands were shaking so hard she could barely book the flight on her phone, her thumb smashing the screen like she could break through it.

Private. Direct. L.A.

At the airport, people recognized her. Of course they did. It was her night. The world was still reeling from her resurrection. Her name was everywhere, her voice still echoing off satellite feeds and breathless news anchors trying to define the undefinable.

But she wasn’t theirs. Not anymore.

She walked through security like a ghost. Like a girl in a dream she refused to wake up from. The guards didn’t stop her. Didn’t dare.

She boarded the jet like it might fall out of the sky but she didn’t care. Sat by the window with her hoodie pulled tight over her hair, hands clenched in her lap like if she let go of herself, she’d come undone.

She didn’t know what she was going to say. Didn’t know what you’d say. Didn’t know what she’d find.

She didn’t need a map. Or a message. Or a pin drop on a location app. She didn’t need confirmation. Didn’t need a green dot under your name or a picture posted or a text from someone who might’ve known.

She felt it.

The way she had always felt you—quietly, fiercely, impossibly—like gravity. Like a thread humming between her ribs, always pulling taut when you got too far away. The same strange, unshakable force that had made you crash into each other in the first place.

Ellie could feel you in her teeth.

She couldn’t explain it. There was no logic to it. She didn’t believe in fate. But something ancient inside her did. Some part of her that had been waiting since the beginning. Since that night that was supposed to mean nothing and ended up meaning everything.

She didn’t know what time it was. Didn’t know what you were doing. If you were asleep. Awake. Alone.

She just knew—

It was pulling her for a reason.

And across the country, you were mid-breath. Mid-cry. Somewhere between shaking and unraveling, curled in on yourself in the corner of your living room, your face wet from the tidal wreckage Ellie had sent crashing through your chest. Her voice had faded, but the echo hadn’t. You were still hearing her in your bloodstream.

Then—something hit you.

Not thought. Not reason. Not logic.

A pull.

You sat up so fast your neck cracked. The air in the room shifted. It felt like pressure building in your ears before a storm. You couldn’t explain it, couldn’t name it, couldn’t pin it to anything real. But it gripped you by the spine and yanked.

And without thinking—without blinking—you opened your laptop.

Your fingers moved faster than your mind.

Private. Direct. Michigan.

No planning. No second-guessing. You didn’t care if it was reckless. You didn’t care what time it was. You just booked it.

You were already moving. Already on your feet. Already grabbing the suitcase from the back of your closet, tossing in the essentials—half-folded, half-thrown, hands trembling with sudden and strong urgency. You didn’t care what you wore. You didn’t care what would happen. All you knew was that you had to see her.

Not through a screen. Not from the crowd of a hundred thousand people. Not in a song.

You needed her.

You couldn’t take it anymore. The waiting. The wandering. The silence. The unbearable thought that she still believed you were with someone else. That she thought you’d moved on. That she thought you didn’t love her anymore.

You couldn’t let her keep believing that.

Not when every cell in your body had been screaming her name for years.

You paced your apartment barefoot, floor cool beneath your soles, heartbeat louder than your footsteps. The windows glowed with the soft pulse of the L.A. skyline—silent, unmoving, unaware. But something in the air had shifted. It felt charged. Unnatural.

Your chest buzzed with electricity. With instinct. With truth.

You didn’t know what would happen when you saw her. 

You only knew that you would step off that plane because the earth owed you something holy. The universe owed you an answer. The girl who used to kiss your shoulder while the sun rose still lived somewhere in the body of the woman who’d just sung her soul back to you.

You would find her.

And you would tell her everything.

That you never stopped loving her. That you tried to. That you wanted to. That you failed, gloriously and repeatedly. That loving her was the most alive you had ever felt. That breathing without her had felt like holding your head underwater. That even when you were in other arms, your heart was still bleeding in her hands.

And above you—somewhere between coasts, between midnight and morning—Ellie Williams was flying through the sky in the opposite direction.

Back to the city she swore she’d never return to. Back to the girl she hadn’t dared to call. With hope clutched in her fists and need bleeding like a pulse in her chest.

The city was still wrapped in silence, the kind that only lives between 5:00 and 6:00 a.m.—when night hasn’t fully gone and morning hasn’t fully arrived. The streets were washed in blue light. The horizon glowed like a secret waiting to be revealed.

She stood on the sidewalk, staring up at the building like it had been waiting for her.

Same glass. Same frame. Same quiet ache sitting behind every window like the memory of you.

She hadn’t slept. Her eyes burned. Her limbs ached. But none of it mattered.

There was something—something—that had pulled her across the country like a thread made of gravity and hope. A blind, relentless force that told her she had to be here, and she had to be here now.

She walked toward the door like she was stepping into the ocean.

And somehow—after all these years, after everything she’d done to forget—her hands remembered everything.

The code to your private elevator. Four digits. Punched in without hesitation. Muscle memory forged in a different lifetime. The screen blinked green, and the hum of the mechanism stirred like an old song. The doors slid closed behind her, and suddenly she was rising—slow, steady, silent.

Each floor ticked by like a pulse.

20.

21.

22.

She didn’t breathe the entire way up.

Her heart had been loud for hours, but now, in the stillness of the ascent, it quieted. Like it, too, was waiting. Like it knew the next breath might change everything.

Outside, your SUV was already idling on the curb.

Inside your penthouse, your suitcase sat zipped by the door. Passport tucked into the side pocket. Phone in your hand. Charger in your bag. You were dressed. Ready. 

Ellie found herself standing in front of your door like she had been summoned by the ache in your chest.

She hadn’t knocked yet.

Her fingers were frozen mid-air, inches from the surface. Her eyes traced the curve of the wood. The faint scuff mark near the bottom corner—she put it there once, with the toe of her boot accidentally.

She stared at it like it might open up and swallow her whole.

Her other hand was clenched at her side, white-knuckled. She’d spent the entire flight and ride up rehearsing what she’d say, but now couldn't remember a single thing.

You reached for the handle, breath shallow, some mix of fear and instinct surging through your veins like storm water. You didn’t know what you were expecting—maybe a delayed flight, maybe a burst of courage, maybe nothing.

And then—

You opened it.

Just as her hand was about to knock.

There you were.

And there she was.

Ellie's hair was still knotted in a messy bun, cheeks flushed from wind and disbelief, breath hitching in her chest like she hadn’t stopped running since the stage lights dimmed. The hoodie you once stole—faded gray, fraying at the cuffs—hung from her shoulders like a flag she didn’t know she’d still carry. Her sleeves were shoved up to her palms, hands trembling faintly. 

She looked different and exactly the same—like time had passed through her, not around her. Her jaw had sharpened, her shoulders squared, but her eyes—those wild, unholy green eyes—still held the same storm that ruined you the first time. Beautiful in a way that knocked the breath out of your chest. 

And you—

Suitcase behind you, coat halfway off your shoulder, lips parted in a breathless, disbelieving oh—stood like the earth had just cracked open and revealed something holy inside it. There was more grace in your shoulders now. More armor in your spine. You looked stronger. Beautiful in a way that hurt to look at. 

Your hands still shook from the moment you decided you couldn’t live one more second without seeing her again. You were halfway out the door to chase her across the country—and there she was.

Like fate had been watching both of you run in opposite directions and decided it was finally enough. 

And suddenly, the entire world narrowed to the space between your bodies.

Her hand was still hovering in the air, just inches from the door. 

Your fingers were still on the handle, knuckles white.

In one impossible second, everything aligned.

One divine collision.

The only sound was the pounding of your hearts—wild, breathless, almost violent. As if they might tear out of your chests, racing to reunite before your bodies had the stepped closer.

You opened your mouths, as if words might tumble out, but none came.

Just breath. Just silence. Just awe.

Just you standing in front of her. Just her standing in front of you.

Because what started in that club—that single, electric night, a hookup meant to burn fast and disappear—became the axis your whole world tilted on. It should’ve ended there, a forgettable blur of sweat and strobe lights. But it didn’t. It spiraled. It bloomed into something reckless and unplanned. A fake relationship born of convenience, publicity, and chaos.

And what started as a lie—a shared performance for the cameras, for your teams, for the world—became a love so blistering, so consuming, it remade both of you. A love neither of you could name without trembling. A love that burned in silence. That bruised in secret. That shattered you from the inside out and still, remained the purest thing you had ever felt.

And now here you were.

Three years of silence. Three years of wreckage. Three years of bleeding into microphones, of screaming each other’s names into the void and pretending not to hear the echo. Of becoming ghosts in each other’s lives, but never quite exorcising the love. Of dreams that ended in a jolt, in a sob, in a name bitten back before waking. Of lyrics more honest than phone calls, more vulnerable than voicemails. Of entire confessions wrapped in agony and mailed to the stars because it was the only place that felt far enough, safe enough, to hold them.

You both had your own catastrophes—different storms, same devastation. You broke in private, rebuilt in silence. You clawed your way out of grief with nothing but your fingernails and rage. You both carried the weight of what you lost like it was sacred.

And somehow, you both healed. Slowly. Ugly. Miraculously. Not perfectly. Never perfectly. But enough to stand again.

You both died and were born again—more than once. You had grown out of your fears.

You walked through fire barefoot, bleeding and blistered, and survived.

And now you were standing at the doorway of a home you thought you’d never return to.

Each other.

You looked at her and saw every version of her at once.

The girl who loved you like it was the last thing she would ever do. The one who broke your heart. The one who tried to die. The one who didn’t.

She looked at you and saw every version of you at once.

The girl who held her in that green room like her hands could stop time. The one who screamed at her in songs that set the world on fire. The one who still waited—through heartbreak, through silence, through everything.

You had found yourselves—even if you had to lose each other to do it.

And the only thing that hadn’t changed, the one thing that never even flinched—

Was the love.

And now, it stepped into the hallway between you and wrapped its arms around your chests, breathed back into your lungs, and said: “You found each other again.”

You stepped forward.

And she did too.

At the exact same moment.

Like you’d rehearsed it in a dream.

And your bodies collided with a gentleness so raw, so wide open, it knocked the breath out of you.

Her arms went around your waist, yours around her neck, and it wasn’t a hug—it was a memory. A heartbeat. A return.

You buried your face into the crook of her shoulder, nose brushing the fabric—faint lavender and something uniquely Ellie: warmth, sweat, a hint of old smoke, guitar strings, rain. She smelled the same. She smelled like you remembered. She smelled like love. Her face pressed against your neck, breath shaky, lashes damp against your skin. You felt her exhale and it sounded like something sacred breaking.

And then—

A sound she thought was lost forever, echoing now like a miracle she didn’t dare hope for.

Ellie giggled.

Just a little. Disbelieving. Like she was overwhelmed, like her body didn’t know if it should cry or laugh or both. It made your eyes sting harder.

You made a choked little noise in return, part sob, part joy, part something you didn’t know how to name. Your fingers dug into the back of her hoodie like if you didn’t hold tight enough, she might vanish again.

She squeezed you back just as fiercely. Her hands fisting into the back of your coat. Her whole body was shaking. You felt it in your ribs. Her grief. Her awe. Her relief.

There were no words. There didn’t need to be.

Only the echo of your breathing. The trembling of your hands.

You only melted into each other like this was the only place you’d ever belonged.

In that hallway, as the sun bled over the skyline and the city below began to wake, you held each other for so long, time dissolved.

You weren’t in the doorway. You weren’t in the penthouse. You weren’t in LA or Michigan or Earth at all.

You were somewhere else entirely, suspended in a place made of heartbeats and fingertips, breaths and silence, forgiveness and love. You held each other like gravity had reversed, like if you let go, the sky itself might fall apart.

After what felt like hours and seconds at the same time, Ellie pulled back just enough to look at you, her hands rose to cup your face, thumbs softly tracing your cheekbones as if she was trying to relearn a face she had seen a thousand times in her dreams. Her eyes were red-rimmed, shining like the first break of dawn, fierce and gentle all at once.

The sun had risen, painting gold and rose across her face, illuminating every freckle, every scar, every tear-stained line.

“I came here for you,”

She whispered, her voice shaking.

“I—I couldn’t celebrate, I couldn’t wait another minute, another second. I couldn’t breathe until I found you.”

Your breath caught, tangled itself in your chest as you smiled softly, almost disbelieving.

“Ellie, I was about to leave for the airport. I had a flight booked to Michigan,”

You whispered, your forehead tipping forward to rest against hers. 

“I couldn’t wait either. I was going to find you, no matter what it took.”

She laughed softly, a beautiful, broken sound. Her eyes widened a fraction in disbelief, her thumbs tracing your face, afraid to stop touching you.

“Of course you were,” she breathed, shaking her head. “Of course you fucking were.”

She swallowed hard, blinking fast, and you saw a shadow cross her face.

She took a breath, then softly—painfully—began, 

“I—I know you’re with someone else—”

But before she could finish, you brought your hands to her face, gently cupping her cheeks and tilting her gaze back up to you.

Your voice was clear, sure, gentle, as you interrupted:

“Not anymore.”

Her breath caught sharply, lips parting in surprise.

You stepped even closer, chest to chest, heart to heart, and let your thumbs stroke softly along the edge of her jaw. 

“Ellie, it’s a long story, but… the short version is—I never loved anyone or anything that wasn’t you. Not once. Not even for a second.”

She stilled, breath hitching audibly. Her eyes widened slightly, disbelief and relief flooding her gaze like light chasing out darkness. “You—”

“I never stopped loving you. I couldn’t.” you said fiercely, your voice shaking now, your throat raw with emotion, your hearts laid bare between you. 

“You were always there. Every song. Every breath. Every heartbeat. It’s always been you, and only you.”

Ellie’s expression shattered beautifully. 

Her chest rose and fell quickly, her hands trembling slightly as they cradled your face, her gaze melting deeper into yours. Tears spilled freely down her face as she pressed her forehead to yours, holding you desperately close. 

“You're the reason I’m breathing right now.” she whispered, voice breaking. 

“The reason I woke up, the reason I tried again. You’re my everything—everything good about me is because of you. I never stopped loving you, I never even tried to stop.”

You smiled softly, your tears mixing with hers, your breaths warm and shared in the narrow space between your mouths. 

“Ellie, I know,” you said gently, so sure, so steady it almost broke you both.

“I promised you always, and I kept it. I held onto that promise every second we were apart. Even when it hurt like hell. Even when I thought you were gone forever. I still loved you—always.”

She nodded softly, pressing her forehead deeper against yours, her voice dropping to a whisper, a confession, a prayer. “When I promised you always, I meant it. I always did. And I still do.”

You drew back, just enough to look clearly into her eyes. Just enough to see the girl you met in a dim-lit club, who wore a cocky smile and bruises like badges, who took your heart away and never gave it back.

Just enough to see the woman who survived it all—who fought addiction, fame, silence, grief, and still came back to you.

The woman you never stopped loving.

“Then kiss me.” 

You whispered, your voice so quiet, so vulnerable, that it was almost lost in the air between you.

And then, with all the gentle bravery of someone stepping into daylight after a lifetime of darkness, she leaned in. Impossibly gently, she closed the distance like it was holy ground.

Your eyes fluttered shut, your lips parted softly in anticipation, your heart pounding wildly in your chest.

And then—finally—

Your lips met hers.

And it wasn’t just a kiss.

It was fate and destiny and that invisible thread everyone spoke of, wrapping tightly around your souls, binding you back together. 

Her mouth tasted like tears and truth and the same undeniable hunger that had brought you together that first night. Your fingers tangled in her hair, pulled her closer, needing more. Her hands went south and tightened around your waist, gripping you like you were the only thing left holding her to the earth.

It was desperate, yet gentle.

Furious, yet forgiving.

You kissed like you were breathing each other’s air. Like you were finally letting yourselves live again.

Ellie’s hands held you tightly, securely. It was a reunion of your broken pieces, a reclaiming of everything you lost, a quiet vow that said: never again.

Because what had always held you both together wasn’t fate, or luck, or even destiny.

It was simply love—wild, endless, patient, fierce love. The kind that rewrote stars and healed wounds and bridged chasms so wide the world had called them impossible.

A love that refused to let go, that waited patiently.

And as you finally broke apart, just enough to rest your foreheads together, chests rising and falling in rhythm, Ellie whispered softly, voice thick with love and relief and awe and a small and sweet smile curling the edges of her mouth.

“I’m never letting go again,” 

You smiled softly, pecking her lips and holding her even tighter, knowing you were exactly where you belonged, exactly where you'd always meant to be.

“Good,” you whispered back. “Because I wasn’t planning on letting you.”

The world outside your door began to wake fully now, sunrise bleeding through the window, bathing both of you in gold.

Unaware it had just witnessed a miracle—two souls, once lost, finally finding their way back home.

And there, in the doorway, you kissed her again.

The end and the beginning. The hush after the storm’s last scream. The first note after a symphony of silence.

A moment that bent time—where everything broken came back to life.

The impossible reunion of two hearts that never truly said goodbye—only paused, mid-sentence, until the universe was ready to let them finish the song.

Time, once the cruel god of your story, has softened. 

It no longer roars through your chapters like a thief, no longer dares to take. It lingers now, lacing your hours with light. It lives in the steam curling from mugs at sunrise, in the shadow of windchimes flickering across your porch, in the breath that passes between when neither of you are saying a word, but everything is understood.

It moves slow now. Gentle. Forgiving.

There are still stages, but now balanced with the lull of domestic quiet. 

Ellie still sings. Still performs. Still fills stadiums like they were built just for her. But not to prove anything Not for the charts, not for the noise, not because the world is watching. She does it because the stage is the only place where her soul stretches out its arms and exhales. Where the fire inside her flickers steady, not wild. Where she can be everything at once—loud and soft, broken and healed, gone and home.

And you still fill stadiums too. Still write songs that echo down city blocks and through the hearts of strangers. Still pile up golden awards. But it’s different now. Less frantic. Less like bleeding. More like breathing. More like living with the wound instead of trying to cauterize it.

What once felt like survival now feels like grace.

But now, both of your music live in quieter places too. In the kitchen, where her low, rasping hum drifts through morning light as she makes you coffee, barefoot and half-asleep. In the bathtub, where your voice softens, half-lost beneath the rhythm of water, singing just for her.

Somewhere along the road, after the world gave you every crown and award, after your names were stitched into history with gold thread, you realized the only place you ever wanted to be legendary was in each other’s eyes.

And you are. 

Even when your bodies ache and your hair has changed and your voices go softer by evening. You look at each other and see the full truth. Every version. Every bruise, every resurrection. You both see a girl who wrote an album to survive. The one who stood in front of thousands and broke herself open just to be seen. Who wouldn’t let go. Who stayed. Who held grief in one hand and love in the other and refused to put either down. You both see all of it. You always have.

You don’t talk much about those years anymore. The dark ones. The bloody ones. The ones where you vanished from earth and from each other in different directions and came back new. 

But sometimes, when the night is quiet and the dishes are put away and the cat has found its usual place curled at the end of the bed—you sit with your backs against the headboard, and you remember. You talk about the club. The pretending. The songs. The silence. And you press your hands together, and you say thank you. Not to each other.

But to whatever thread in the universe refused to snap.

And you both remember the day you stood—beneath a sky that felt too small to hold the weight of what you were about to vow—and promised. Not perfection. But to choose each other. Loudly. Publicly. Eternally. Again. Again. And again.

The event of the decade. Cameras lined the coast, desperate for a glimpse. Celebrities and icons flew in from every corner of the world, but none of them mattered. You wore white. She wore black. She cried the second she saw you—before you’d even made it to the altar. You kissed her before the officiant could finish the words. And when the crowd threw roses into the air like prayers, Ellie looked at you like she always had.

Like you were the only person the universe had ever made. Like all the noise, all the years, all the fire had only ever been a road back to you.

Dina, Jesse, and Rachel wept like widows—shoulders shaking, faces buried in trembling hands. Even Joel couldn’t hold it in. Especially Joel. He cried the hardest, in a way only fathers understand.

And now, years later, you still look down at your hand all the time—at the ring that catches the light like it was carved from stardust itself. A massive diamond nestled in platinum like it belongs in a museum, but the band worn smooth from years of sleeping with her hand curled in yours. 

And then, there’s Melody.

Born in the late hours of a stormless night, in that suspended breath between yesterday and tomorrow, she arrived—howling and perfect and wrapped in light. And Ellie was there, holding your hand—the one she’d slipped the ring onto beneath a sky full of stars, the same hand she hadn’t let go of once that night. Her fingers trembled. Her cheeks were damp with awe. And when the doctor whispered she’s here, Ellie looked at you like the world had cracked wide open all over again—only this time, it wasn’t just you standing in the light. It was you. And her. And the little life you wished for together.

A new beginning, wrapped in warmth and wonder, weeping softly between you.

Her name chosen into the hush like it had always been waiting—on your tongue, in her bones. She came into the world with a freckled face and eyes the same shade of green that made you write entire albums, that made you bleed onstage, that made you believe in fate. Her hair was yours—soft, wild, unbrushable—and when she sings, which she does constantly, you swear it’s your own voice coming back to you, bright and velvety like she’s sharing a secret in the most intimate way.

She doesn’t walk. She bursts. She doesn’t ask. She declares. She runs through the house like it belongs to her—because it does. She fills every room before her feet even cross the threshold. Her laugh shakes the walls. Her tantrums are operatic. She stomps when she wants something, yells for both of you like the universe itself should answer. She has Ellie’s recklessness, your fire, and the defiant tilt of a girl born of storm and song. She performs in the living room with a wooden spoon as a guitar and insists on an encore every night before bed.

The little princess of the queen of rock and the queen of pop came into the world like she already knew who she was: the daughter of two legends. Born not just into a family, but into music royalty. Into myth. And not in the headline sense—not in the Rolling Stone profiles or the Grammy speeches—but in the real way. In the spilled coffee on sheet music. In the quiet harmonies hummed over pancakes. In the fierce, unwavering love that has become the pulse of her home.

Born of the greatest love story the industry ever knew. One written not just in verses and hooks, but in survival. In forgiveness. In the choosing—over and over—of each other. Her mothers burned the world down and built it back again just for each other. They laid the foundation in heartache and climbed out of the rubble hand in hand. 

Now she runs barefoot through hallways lined with platinum records and crayon drawings, her voice echoing between trophies and guitars, her tiny shoes lost somewhere under the couch where your first demo still sleeps. She sings lyrics that were written years before she was even imagined. She wears your old Supernova tour shirts like royal capes. She calls Ellie Mama and you Mommy, and her favorite place is between the two of you—wrapped in the kind of adoration most people spend their lives dreaming about, a love she’ll never have to search for.

Because she was born into music. Into magic. Into something rare and real and unspeakably beautiful. She was born into love that didn't just survive the fire. It composed a symphony from the ashes.

You are not at war anymore.

You have lived. You have stayed. You have kept the promises that mattered. 

And every day since that door opened, since you stood face to face and didn’t have to say a word, you have loved each other without apology or pause.

Because this is what the end of a love story looks like when it refuses to end.

And when you close your eyes and breathe, you feel it everywhere—in the warmth between the sheets, in the quiet laughter down the hall, in the pulse beneath your skin.

This is the life you bled for.

This is what it looks like when people don’t just survive, but bloom.

This is what it means to collide,

and never let go.

← 𝑒𝑝𝑖𝑙𝑜𝑔𝑢𝑒 𝑝𝑡. 𝟸 | 𝑚𝑎𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑙𝑖𝑠𝑡 →

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࿐♡ ˚.*ೃ Goosebumps. Just… goosebumps. I don’t even know what to say.

This story holds a piece of my soul—one I gave willingly, one I’ll never get back. Collide has been more than a fic to me. It’s been a home, a storm, a love letter, a scream into the void. And now it’s done.

And I’m mourning in the corner like the most dramatic widow you’ve ever seen.

Thank you—for reading, for screaming, for holding Ellie and the reader the way I did. Thank you for feeling with me.

They loved each other like the world was ending.

And maybe, somehow, that’s exactly how it had to begin.

THANK YOU, FOREVER.

♡

[yuechihua]

your love is the greatest sin.

summary: As a humble librarian, you're only interested in stories. Anaxa promises to give you the grandest story of them all.

notes: 8.9k words, author's notes, spoilers for 3.2, chest cavity and organ touching, ambiguous relationships

You were eighteen the first time you heard about Anaxa, though you didn’t think much of him at first.

“Watch out for that mad alchemist. If you’re going to survive here, then avoid Anaxagoras,” someone joked to you, and you nodded numbly.

Back then, in those first few days of your arrival at the Grove of Epiphany, you had little time for anything outside of survival. You had nothing save the clothes on your back and the torn edges of a few slim books you managed to save before the black tide swallowed your home and your family.

If you weren’t staying up late each night reading the books your father cherished, then you were disoriented by the swaying whispers of divine branches that woke you every morning, the eternal night that shadowed your window, the internal politics of a people entrenched deeply in academia. 

Still, you couldn’t escape Anaxa even then, infamy blooming with his every odd experiment and reckless movement. His name was always on the tips of everyone’s tongues, accompanied by admiration or reprobation. 

He was mad, people said. A heretic, using the intelligence Ceres blessed him with for all the wrong reasons. The sages should kick him out for the ideas he held, ones that seemed more intended to outrage than to produce any meaningful discourse.

“It’s better to stay out of his way,” one of your gossipy classmates advised you. You had decent enough relationships with your peers, but you primarily kept to yourself and took internal notes of the various topics that fascinated them. “He’s so rude, and he doesn’t care about anything but his experiments!”

“He’s very smart, though,” someone else chimed in. “If you can stomach the way he talks, you can ask him for his notes. Best ones I’ve ever seen.”

Anaxagoras, Anaxa, the Great Performer. What an odd man. You kept his name tucked away in the corner of your mind to turn over like a golden coin, spied his fluttering hair out of the corner of your eye, saw the sheen of black fabric covering his eye, and heard the echo of his brisk steps passing you in the halls. 

He was an oddity that sparked your interest, even if he never seemed to notice you. That was fair enough; you were only another pair of eyes in a crowd of them, and he must have grown used to the attention by the time you arrived.

Still, you had little time to worry over Anaxa outside of those stray moments when your paths collided, heretic or not. You had fled to the Grove of Epiphany for a particular reason, out of all the other city-states you could have taken refuge in.

You were here for the library, which housed the largest collection of stories Amphoreus had ever seen. Its wealth of knowledge would have fed a starving man for centuries, and you were a supplicant begging for even a morsel.

You were weaned on stories from your very first memories. Your father read you books from his private collection, and your mother spun stories from her own imagination or that she remembered from the words of others. Even your older brother took you out to see travelling storytellers or the nearby temple to hear about the myths of gods.

“Stories are the most beautiful things in the world,” your father told you. “They can house a world’s memories, a culture’s legacy.”

Stories were the only ways for things to survive, and it was how people could outlive their limited lifespans. After all, if you didn’t tell your family’s story to yourself, then you would have killed them twice. You poured over your memories, even when it was a story that could only end in the same way every time: your mother, pushing you out the backdoor and telling you to run as she gripped a rusty knife in hand. You father, handing you a few cherished books from his private collection, your only inheritance. Your older brother, biding you to hide with shaking hands as he ran out to distract the monsters.

People were finite. Stories were not

In a few more months at the Grove, you wormed your way into an assistant librarian position, content for now with the jobs of shelving books and organizing the catalogue, cocooned in your world of ink and paper, getting to touch the face of every new scroll or book that passed its way into the archives.

For all intended purposes, your life was going according to plan. You were surrounded by stories, and you were certain that after studying library sciences and dedicating all your time here, you could take the role of head librarian one day. Yet, why did it feel like you were still missing something?

That was when you first met Anaxa as he glided into the library with a relaxed arrogance that drew ire and admiration from all of your classmates, robes fluttering behind him.

“I need these books,” he told you curtly, without looking at your face. He slid a sheet of parchment across your desk, scrawled with the names of tedious-sounding titles. His handwriting, you were surprised to find, was an elegant, looping scrawl.

“Some of these books have restricted access,” you said, scanning the list. He was a man you had heard so much about, and yet, he was still just that: a man. Still, there was a gravitas to his bearing. This was someone who would truly do something remarkable in his lifetime. “You need permission from a professor or a librarian before you can check them out. Some of these books are quite controversial.”

“Controversial only because people were unwilling to acknowledge anything that didn’t reinforce their limited worldview,” Anaxa said. 

“Well, in a world ruled by the Titans, it’s controversial to posit that they could ever be similar to us.”

“The boundary between divinity and humanity is a false one,” he said. “But you can’t access these books?”

“It’s not within my authority,” you acknowledged. “These books are especially rare because their production was stopped early, or people burned so many copies we only have these few left. So they’re kept under tight supervision.”

Anaxa turned, his interest in you gone now that you couldn’t give him what he wanted.

Your heartbeat quickened at the loss of attention, of how easily this strange man was going to slip through your fingers. Maybe that was why you couldn’t stop yourself from saying, “But I could, technically, find a way. If you made it worth my time.”

Anaxa turned back around, finally looking you in the eyes, observing you in the same way he looked at a lab specimen on a dissecting table, keen gaze intent on flaying you open. “What do you mean by that?” 

“Nothing that would inconvenience you much, really. Something simple. You’re an alchemist, right? Consider it an act of equivalent exchange.” The idea spun itself into existence as you voiced it, an answer to your tedium you hadn’t realized you were considering until now. “I want to witness your story.”

“A story? You’re surrounded by books.”

“I’m curious,” you said, “about a story only you can tell me. They call you a heretic, you know. The things you’ve told me are things most people wouldn’t even dare voice. So I want to see where your path leads.”

Anaxa still watched you, as if the dissection he thought would be simple had suddenly unearthed a new complication. “If you’re going to bring up an equivalent exchange, what am I getting out of this? You’re the only one who benefits from such an arrangement.”

“I know this place better than anyone else. It’s easier to get your hands on something when you have someone on the inside, don’t you think? There’s a chance if you ask for permission from someone else, they’ll refuse your request.”

“And if someone catches and punishes you for misconduct? You would risk your position for a story?”

“Not just any story,” you corrected. “Your story. This is beneficial for both of us. Besides, you’re a performer, right? Don’t you want an audience who’s going to watch you attentively until the very end?”

“That’s a bold proposition, librarian,” he said. 

“Are you going to refuse?”

“No. I think it’s an interesting idea. I’ll agree to your terms.”

“It’ll be a pleasure to work with you,” you said. 

You held out your hand, and after a beat, Anaxa slid his into your grip. His hand was papery soft and cool, thin, elegant fingers wrapping around yours. They didn’t seem like the hands of a heretic.

“Now. My books?” Anaxa prompted, withdrawing his hand immediately. 

“I’ll get them for you.”

Basking in the afterglow of your unexpected meeting and his ready agreement, you relished in the chance to observe him up close. Anaxa was a bizarre character who challenged everything that was determined as an immutable fact, and he would change the Grove.

You would watch him until he didn’t find you useful, or you grew bored. Fate might spin its wheels, and tangle you helplessly in its threads as it wrenched you along, but this relationship, at least, was clear.

In a matter of weeks, you came to recognize Anaxa’s presence in the library by the sound of his light and decisive footsteps and the scent of ink, chemicals, and paper that trailed him wherever he went. He showed up at a similar time every day, and his appearance became so embedded in your routine you didn’t even have to raise your head to acknowledge his presence; he only announced himself by sliding a paper of all his various requested books across your desk. 

“I need these books,” he said.

You scanned the list. “This one hasn’t been mentioned in our records in several decades. I’d have to dig through our archives to find it.”

“Well? Is it too hard for you, then?” Anaxa raised an eyebrow in silent challenge. 

Asshole. You stood with a clatter of your chair. “Not at all.”

He was one of your most frequent patrons, and easily the most annoying. Every day it seemed he came with new demands and a list of obscure books that you had to dig through the shelves to find. As soon as you brought out his staggering collections of tomes, he perched on the edge of your desk, flipping through them and remarking on their contents.

It didn’t bother you too much as you were always flitting between shelving new returns, sorting through the catalogues, and helping students with their various requests. But no matter how long it took you to accomplish all of your tasks, Anaxa was always waiting when you came back, posture still neat and legs crossed, one over the other. Privately, you’d begun to think of him as the library’s resident cat in the way he lounged in places that most inconvenienced you.

“It took you twenty minutes to assist the student this time, librarian,” he said, without looking up from his book. “Perhaps you aren’t as familiar with the library’s layouts as you claim.”

“It’s still faster than you would be. There are centuries of books to sort through, and sometimes these students only have a general idea of what they want and not a specific title,” you replied. “Wouldn’t it be more comfortable for you to sit in my chair or find somewhere else to read?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Anaxa said. “What do you think about the soul?”

“Immaterial, difficult to work with, and the basis of an overwhelming amount of philosophy books in the library.”

“And the gods?”

“I don’t care much for them, though I am familiar with all of their stories. They only matter to me insofar as they relate to the books housed here.”

Anaxa laughed. “Why, that sounds borderline blasphemous.”

You sighed, slouching back in your chair. Your desk was a curve of polished wood located near the center of the room, in perfect view of every student who wandered the library so they knew exactly where to go for help. Though with Anaxa’s presence, they only approached you when you wandered the stacks, or he was absent for the day.

There were already rumors springing up about your relationship and how much time the two of you spent together. You warded off your classmates’ inquiries with a practiced smile, as you were the more approachable of the two. Even if you wanted to answer them, there wasn’t one you could give. You barely knew what to call the two of you yourself.

Were you close to him? You wouldn’t say that. You hadn’t really let yourself grow close to anyone here on principle. What word described the two of you best? Friend felt too kind of a word. Lover was irrefutably wrong. Partner was at least somewhat correct, but lacked context. If nothing else, then the best explanation was that Anaxa was a planet and you were a moon, drawn into his orbit for no other reason than the natural rules of gravity. 

“I believe your only god is memory,” Anaxa said.

You didn’t spare him a glance as you idly picked at the supplies lining your desk, lining the stacks of papers and colorful pots of ink in neat formation. “Then your god is truth, though I’d like to say your god is also yourself.”

“Then we’re not so different.”

“Are you going to keep needling at me, or are you going to fulfill your end of the bargain?”

Anaxa tilted his head. With his hands braced on the edge of the desk, he leaned closer to you, an insufferable smile playing on his lips. “I already am, librarian. A story can only be defined in the retrospective, once it comes to an end. Right now, you’re in the process of witnessing mine, aren’t you?”

“I just hope for more from the person they call the great performer,” you said evenly. 

“And what are you hoping for, precisely?”

“A good story.”

Anaxa placed a hand on his chest in mock sincerity. “Then you won’t be disappointed. Have some patience! Good stories require proper build-up.”

He was an infuriating man, through and through. But he was an infuriating man you had decided to tie yourself to, and you would see where his road would lead him in the end.

In the next several years that passed, Anaxa devoted himself to the pursuit of higher knowledge, working as the assistant of professors and pursuing his doctorate, and you pulled yourself up one tedious position at a time until you were working full-time at the library, losing yourself in documentation and categorization. There were always new books being brought in that had to be labeled, sorted, and registered in the library’s catalogue, more stories for you to devour.

No one had a complaint about you as you cared for nothing but your stories, it seemed Anaxa always found a way to needle those in charge, and he never tired of their outrage and indignation. His dreams were lofty, his inspirations grander than anyone could understand. And through it all, you watched him, taking note of all his movements: how he slept little and mumbled to himself, scribbled alchemical equations on any available surface, and the way manic light suffused his eyes when he came to a supposed breakthrough.

Anaxa slid into the framework of your life without any preamble or fuss, as natural as the air you breathed or the blood in your veins. His presence by your side was natural, and you only paused to acknowledge him when someone brought him to your attention. Your strange little relationship eventually expanded beyond the confines of the library. Anaxa still visited you there, but now, the two of you were prone to meeting in courtyards or various classrooms, wherever it was convenient to steal a moment to converse.

Your classmates no longer commented on your relationship, though you did still get the odd stare here and there. The two of you existed in your own little bubble, uninterested in other people outside of what they could offer you.

“Is it true that the two of you are dating?” New students were prone to asking you that question, with all the boldness and innocence that youth commanded. This one was no different, and she watched you with curious eyes.

“I can’t date Anaxa because he’s already in a committed relationship with his research. I can’t ask him to cheat,” you replied dryly.

“I didn’t give you permission to call me Anaxa,” he sniped.

“That’s because I gave myself permission.”

However, the closeness you semi-enjoyed with Anaxa came with one major detriment: a lack of respect for your personal space. 

“Librarian, wake up.”

You grumbled, emerging from your fragmented sleep, the cobweb of dreams still clinging to your mind. With sunlight warming your face and a nest of blankets wrapped around your body, you were loath to wake. And yet you did to Anaxa staring unsmiling down at you, arms crossed.

You swore viciously, scrambling upright and drawing your blankets closer to yourself. You launched a pillow at him, which Anaxa promptly side-stepped.

“Good morning,” he said.

“How did you get in here?”

“You left your door unlocked.”

“And you didn’t knock?”

“You didn’t answer, and I needed your assistance. I’ll give you ten minutes to get ready.”

“Make it thirty! And get out of here!” You threw another pillow at his retreating back. 

It really was like you had become close to a cat. Without a care in the world, he flounced into your life and took your lack of rejection as an invitation to make himself comfortable. It was simply more effort to chase him away than to let him in.

After making yourself as presentable as you could, you were out the door five minutes earlier than expected. Anaxa waited just outside, and the two of you took off side by side at a leisurely pace.

“So? What do you want?” you prompted.

“I have an invitation from Okhema. One of the Chrysos Heirs came directly to speak with me.”

“And…?”

“They were extending me an invitation to become a Chrysos Heir and join them on their journey.”

It was impossible to exist anywhere in Amphoreus and not hear of the Chrysos Heirs. They always felt more like distant legends than anything tangible, but it was a story you had some vested interest in. “You? A Chrysos Heir? What did you say?”

“Of course, I rejected their offer,” he said. “I have no interest in the Flame-Chase Journey, or going to Okhema for some grand destiny laid out for me by the gods.”

“But once you’re chosen, even if you don’t go to Okhema and you reject their path, you’re a Chrysos Heir for good.”

“So what? Other people can call me whatever title they like, but it has no influence on who I am or what I intend to accomplish,” Anaxa said.

“And what is it that you intend to do?”

“I plan to start my own school of knowledge here, and then I will become one of the seven sages.”

You couldn’t help the laugh that bubbled out of your throat. “Arrogant as always, but I expect no less.”

The two of you had been winding through the various gardens and courtyards that interspersed the Grove. Soft light filtered playfully through the grove, branches and plants twining around marble patios and columns. It was beautiful, and this was the closest place you could call home.

“And you?” Anaxa said. “What do you plan to do?”

“Stay here and work in the library,” you said. “Someone has to manage it. You should know this.”

“And the Chrysos Heirs?”

“They only interest me insofar as they relate to you and whatever you plan to do,” you said. You skim a hand along one of the branches closest to you, an outshooting of the Sacred Tree, the manifestation of Ceres, the Titan of Reason. The wood is full of delicate whorls like the tight folds of a brain, emanating its own heat and humming under your touch.

“You have the capacity to be one yourself. The messenger they sent hinted as much. If you were interested, you could talk to them.”

You laughed again. “Well, I only have the capacity to be one, right? I wasn’t chosen, not like you, and that’s for good reason. I have no interest in being a saviour for other people.”

The two of you come to a stop in a secluded garden. Everywhere you gazed, you saw the soft, verdant green that announced Ceres’s continued presence and blessing. There must have been irony somewhere that Ceres accepted everyone in the pursuit of knowledge, even those who didn’t believe in them, or loathed them.

“You really don’t believe in the gods,” Anaxa mused.

“I don’t believe in anything but my stories,” you said. You couldn’t stop the bitterness that creeps into your voice. “If the gods were truly omnipotent and omnipresent, they would have stopped the black tide.”

A breeze rustled Anaxa’s hair. He watched you in silent contemplation. “You’re angry.”

“Isn’t everyone? I’ve lost my family, Anaxa. They sacrificed themselves so I could escape, but for what? There’s no safety. There’s not even a guaranteed future I can look forward to.”

“You doubt humanity’s ability to succeed, librarian, even after all the stories you’ve read.” There’s a rare note of intense emotion in Anaxa’s voice, like you’re a stubborn student in one of the classes he assisted in. “You should understand more than anyone else humanity’s potential. If the gods can fail, then that means they are no different from us, and we can succeed where they can’t.”

Despite what everyone thought of Anaxa, his mania and arrogance, what you couldn’t stand the most was his unrelenting faith in humanity’s future. It was a clear belief, one you didn’t understand. You strode closer to him until you were only a breath apart. His single eye stared down impassively at you, a brilliant, jeweled shard that you could cut yourself on. “Then show me something I can believe in.”

Before you could pull away, Anaxa gripped your wrist, using your momentary shock to guide your hand to his eyepatch. Your fingers rested gingerly on the fabric, though you had an inkling that if you were to slide them under, Anaxa would let you. It was a dangerous sort of permission, a line crossed in your relationship that hadn’t been breached before.

Neither of you moved. In a conversational tone, as if this was another one of your light-hearted spats, Anaxa said, “I lost this eye when I tried to bring my sister back from death. Like a fool, I had failed to consider that an eye was not an equivalent enough sacrifice for one life.”

“Your sister?”

“Lost to the black tide, like your family.”

You brushed a finger down the fabric covering his lost eye, as gentle as a butterfly’s kiss. “So we’ve both lost people we loved. How do you find it to keep going?”

“Simple. The gods are false shackles, binding us to our uncertainty and passivity. I intend to break those shackles. Isn’t it the same for how you live for your stories? Because you want something more than the pitiful narrative that’s been penned for humanity?”

“So I live for my stories, and you live for your goals. But that does make me wonder. What else would you sacrifice, Anaxa?”

He burned with an unnatural fervor, a pale flame that would never extinguish. “Everything. So if you can’t believe in anything, believe in me. Don’t look away. Watch me.”

His hand on your wrist seared into your skin, the proximity to his body too intense, too much. You wrenched your hand back, rubbing your wrist, and Anaxa let you go.

“I can’t believe someone like you is a Chrysos Heir. Maybe they’ve finally lost their minds,” you muttered. “Either way, you don’t need to tell me to watch you. I couldn’t look away, even if I wanted to.”

You could never let your past go. It was a simple truth you were forced to acknowledge. Anger and pain rotted in your soul, carving out a home in the same way termites burrowed into healthy wood, destroying it from the inside out. It was easier to cling to apathy, to watch people from afar rather than risk destruction from attachment. 

You still dreamed of your family, though their faces were starting to fade from your memory. Even your father’s tomes were beginning to disintegrate, no matter how careful you were when handling them. The gods could save nothing, not your family, not your people, not this world, so how could you believe in them?

You were set on being alone, on burying yourself alive in your library. Not much moved you.

That was why it was frightening that Anaxa stirred your heart in ways you dared not dwell on for too long, like the ripples from a stone thrown into a placid pond, spreading farther and farther still.

It didn’t take more than a few years after that for Anaxa to achieve the lofty goals he had presented to you, though you suspected he laid the groundwork for his plans much earlier than he admitted and was simply watching them come to fruition. Despite the opposition, he established his own burgeoning school, and students flocked from afar to study concepts of the soul. He was one of the youngest people to become a professor and a sage, an impressive achievement. 

You became the head of the library, and when you weren’t buried among mountains of books and tomes retrieved from the farthest corner of Amphoreus, you still made time to watch Anaxa. You visited his classrooms, shepherded his confused students to the correct materials he required, and chased him down when he returned rare books far past the due date. 

Research was always his first priority. You never doubted that he would choose his alchemical experiments over you. It never bothered you, because if you had to choose between the library and Anaxa, you would have sacrificed him in a heartbeat. The way he threw himself into his research with a vicious mania wasn’t new or unexpected.

But the way his clothes hung so much more loosely on him, the sharp bones jutting beneath his waxy skin like outcroppings of rocks in a murky sea, his drawn, pale face: that was all new. His body couldn’t keep up with the strain of what he was doing. 

He had told you as much, that he would sacrifice anything for his goals, but it disconcerted you to watch it happen in person. Nothing was sacred, not even his body or his soul.

You knew Anaxa’s schedule as well as your own. When his final class of the day ended, you made your way to his office, where the occasional student milled about in the hallway, chatting with their friends or grumbling about course assignments. It was a familiar sight from your own student days.

“Professor,” you greeted, shutting the door behind you when you entered his office.

“Librarian,” he said. Anaxa flipped through his notes, frowning. He was leaning against his desk, as if the mere act of sitting properly on his chair pained him. “What is it?”

“You’ve been using your body as materials for your alchemy experiments,” you said. Blunt and straight to the point, just as he enjoyed.

“Is that all you came here to say?”

“If you push yourself too much, you’ll die. You’re still only human.”

“I know my limits. There can’t be advancements made without sacrifices.”

“What have you used so far? Your blood? Your organs? Are you going to rip pieces of your soul apart next?”

You’re close to him now, close enough to pin him against the desk, your arms placed on either side of him like bars. Though it didn’t seem as if Anaxa had any intention to; he only watched you with that same curious stare he leveled everyone. It was always a chess game with him, the way he sizes up your next movement, readying his pieces in hand.

“I don’t want a premature end to your story,” you said, “I want to see what you’ll do next. How far you go. You still haven’t given me an impressive performance yet.”

“Oh, librarian,” Anaxa said. “It seems as if you’ve grown soft. Why do you sound so worried? Would you like to check for yourself how I’m doing?”

Coyly, he grasped one of your hands, bringing them to rest against his chest, right above his heart. Your fingers curled over the fabric separating you from him. You laid your hand flat enough against him, and felt the slow, steady pace of his heart, like a story marching toward an inevitable end.

Anaxa barely gave you enough time to settle into the soothing rhythm before he brought your hand to the center of his chest. Instead of solid flesh, there was nothing there but empty space, barely covered by his flimsy robes; you bit back a sharp gasp, driving your teeth hard into your lip.

“Well?” he said. The word fell like a taunt. 

This was an invitation, a provocation, really. Anaxa let you go as you pulled back the buttons of his shirt, almost ripping it in your haste. You were met with a milky galaxy, swirls of blue-green and bright stars, the infinite cosmos unfurling in his chest. His skin broke into a jagged scar shaped like a star, all sharp angles made from soft flesh.

“That was quite bold of you,” Anaxa mused. “We’re still in public, you know.”

“No one is going to come in,” you snapped. “And I locked the door.”

“Were you planning on jumping on me?”

“Were you planning on letting me?” You could do nothing but breathe in tandem to the rise and fall of his chest, to the ripple of the galaxy held within him. This foolish, infuriating man. “How did this happen?”

“Consequences from an experiment,” Anaxa said cryptically. You weren’t going to get any more out of him, if the stubborn silence he fell into was any indication. 

Instead, you brought one hand to the cracks, feeling the edges of skin. Warm, and smooth. It still felt like his human body, and you let one finger drag along his flesh, tracing the outline of the cracks.

You glanced at him, and met an eye that was watching you with palatable intensity, like you were another equation he was trying to solve. There was nothing else for you to do except gently dip your fingers into the hollow of his chest. It was a warm, smooth liquid consistency, like ocean waters from a sun-warmed beach, inviting you to draw your hand further in. 

You noted the way Anaxa tried to hold back a shudder at the first contact. This was affecting him more than he wanted to let on, and you wanted to see his insufferable composure break. He was always so poised, so above everything. You dipped your hand further in, up to your wrist, to your elbow, further than you should have been able to touch. 

Perhaps you could fit your entire body in here. It was a strange thought, unbidden, the idea of letting yourself be swallowed up by him forever, nestled close to his heart, so every time it beat he would be reminded of your presence. 

“Librarian,” Anaxa said in a strained voice. His eye was unfocused now, his breathing shallow. 

“If you’re going to give pieces of yourself away,” you said, swirling your fingers in absent loops in the space inside him. Every part of you felt weightless, like you weren’t really there. “Why not give something to me?”

“And what would you do with it?”

“What do you think?” 

Anaxa’s head dipped slightly. “Something untoward.”

“I think you would like it, though. Is your heart still here?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Can I touch it?”

“Only if I let you.”

“Will you?”

You were met with silence, so you spread your arm through the hollow space, bracing your other hand on the desk behind Anaxa. Everything was disorientingly expansive, like the hole in his chest has pushed the pieces of his body apart, a trick room where the space inside was larger than the space outside. You angled your hand sideways experimentally, towards where his heart should be, and brushed the edge of his rib. Clean, hard bone that you held tenderly, gliding your fingers along the length of it. 

It was this provocation that proved too much for Anaxa. His head fell on your shoulder, and his hands moved to grip your waist, as if he would fall apart without you to anchor. His hands were still slender and elegant, the sort of beautiful hands built for creation.

This sight, the great Anaxa brought so low at your touch, was reserved just for you. As was his body, the tender caverns of it. You took your time to ghost along his bones, relishing in every shudder that wracked his body, and then you found it. A wet muscle, pulsing ever so gently, the center of Anaxa’s body.

You caressed his heart, squeezing it slightly, feeling it contract in your hands. Anaxa’s hands tightened around your waist, his nails digging into clothed flesh. Still, you did nothing more but hold it gently, feeling it quicken alongside Anaxa’s shallow breathing. Soft, warm, inviting. You stroked a thumb along the tender muscle.

“If you want it, you’ll need to give something else to me,” Anaxa said, his voice a low, hot murmur in your ear. “As is the manner of equivalent exchange.”

Before you could respond, a knock resounded on the door. “Professor? I had some questions about the material covered in the lecture today.”

At the sound, you jerked your hand back, your arm emerging pristine and untouched. It felt heavy, gravity weighing you down, unlike the inviting, weightless expanse within Anaxa. In a few seconds, you straightened your clothing as Anaxa buttoned his shirt back and smoothed his robes, leaning heavily against the desk, hand curled around his mouth. You were across the room and pushing open the door, revealing a surprised student, curled fist raised mid-knock.

You schooled your face into a neutral expression, and threw a quick shout over your shoulder. “You aren’t excluded from the rules of the library just because you’re a sage now, professor! Turn your books in on time.”

And then you hurried on, keeping your eyes straight ahead, flexing and unflexing your hand as you walked. The two of you would never speak of that moment again, though you noticed Anaxa looking unbearably smug in the weeks that followed, and you found a new habit of touching his shoulder when you talked.

In the following years that passed, more Chrysos Heirs came to study at the Grove, working under Anaxa’s strict tutelage and wandering the rows of your library. Your favorite was Castorice, who kept a respectful distance back and asked you numerous questions about the books in your archives. Your least favorite was Phainon, who had a habit of being a little more clumsy with the books than you liked.

“Do you enjoy teaching them?” you asked, hand cupped in your cheek. Anaxa retained the habit of perching on your desk, still preferring to claim your space as his rather than find one of his own.

In turn, however, you had grown bolder with his body. If he wasn’t going to take care of it, you might as well put it to use. His arm lay stretched across your desk, and you scribbled notes on the creamy, smooth skin of his inner arm: alchemical equations he taught you, or reminders of what books he had to return, or doodles of dromases. 

“If they’re going to embark on the Flame-Chase Journey, it’s prudent for them to find their own path, instead of blindly believing what they’re told,” he remarked. You put down your pen, and Anaxa glanced at the fresh ink still shining on his skin. “Librarian, what is this?”

“A dromas,” you said.

He examined the inked doodle, eye borrowed. “The proportions of its facial features are off and too close together.”

“How picky, professor. I’ll draw a better one next time.”

It was easy, so easy being with Anaxa that it frightened you. New students of Anaxa’s assumed the two of you were “together,” and it wasn’t right, but it wasn’t wrong, either. The two of you were a pair, and it felt wrong to be away from him, like you were being denied part of who you were.

Did you love him? Did you need him? Your desire took on confusing forms, eluding categorization and convention. Maybe you were simply greedy: like the day he let you touch the galaxy in his chest, you wanted more of Anaxa, to shelter within him forever.

How to understand this? Was there even a way to understand it, or were you helpless to desire’s whims? It was an unsolvable equation. 

The years could have passed so sweetly and comfortably, until you heard news of Titankin flooding Okhema and strange new warriors appearing. As Hyacine made to venture into the holy city to treat the wounded, Anaxa approached you one evening while you were in your bedroom, flinging it open without a knock, another habit he retained.

“Go with Hyacine to Okhema,” Anaxa said.

“Excuse me?”

“You’re curious about the new strangers in the city, and what happened with Strife, aren’t you? Go with her and learn.”

“Are you kicking me out of the Grove, professor?” you asked.

“I’m telling you to seek new knowledge, and see the center of a new, great story. Or have you grown complacent here, tending to your dusty scrolls?”

“Aren’t you going to miss me?”

Anaxa leaned against the door of your bedroom. “Why should I?”

“You want to know about those strangers and the status of Okhema,” you guessed. “Don’t you?”

“If that’s how you chose to see my words, I don’t see any need to refute you.”

“You’re as frustrating as ever, professor,” you said. You stood, making your way over to him. Idly, you started playing with the hair that fell over his shoulders, silky strands slipping through your fingers. “Why don’t you say you’re also worried about me? Shuffling me, a poor librarian off to the holy city, when there’s so much turbulence in Amphoreus right now… It doesn’t feel coincidental.”

Anaxa dipped his head, chin lowered to his chest. “Will you admit that that sort of concern makes you happy, then?”

“Do you have any evidence to support that?”

“Do you?” he challenged.

“Well, since my expertise doesn’t lie in debating, so I’ll refrain from answering.” You withdrew your hand, reached down, and pulled Anaxa’s hand up by the wrist, placing it over your heart. His fingers rested lightly against your chest, as if he could cage your heartbeat. “I’ll see you in a few weeks, then. Goodbye for now, professor.”

“Goodbye, librarian.”

The road to Okhema was relatively pleasant. Hyacine was cheerful and made for good company, perceptive enough to know when you tired of talking. Still, you couldn’t help but feel a little disoriented. You weren’t attached at the hip to Anaxa, as your duties took up most of your time, and he had his spells where he forgot the rest of the world existed when he was buried in research. But you weren’t used to being far enough away where if you called his name, he wouldn’t be able to hear.

Okhema was still vibrant and bustling when you and your retinue of exhausted scholars approached, shining with a ferocity that denied any rumors of defeat and downfall. Kephale rose grandly above the city in the distance, arms outstretched as if ready to take on your burdens. 

“I need to go look at some of the soldiers now,” Hyacine said. “Why don’t you go greet Lady Aglaea first? I’ll follow you as soon as you can!”

It was as solid a plan as any. You trudged through the city, making your way to where Aglaea waited. As you walked through sunlight and vapor from the local baths, through laughter and the splash of carefree citizens: it seemed humanity would prevail no matter what.

When you found Aglaea, she was waiting, patient as ever, an enigmatic smile on her lips and hands folded in front of her, as pristine and flawless as a god carved from marble.

“Hello, librarian.”

“Hello, Lady Aglaea. I’m here from the Grove of Epiphany along with a few of my companions. Hyacine will likely come greet you soon,” you said. There was no need to go through any formalities with her; her golden threads had likely picked up on the vibration of your conversation with Hyacine. It cut down on any need for pleasantries and explanations.

“And I’m sure you’ll be reporting everything we say back to that man?” Her smile was still cool, unruffled; you admired her composure. You had no quarrel with Aglaea, and you could not grudge her need for control and protection of all her citizens. Still, it was a daunting task to stand in front of someone like her.

“Reporting is a strong word,” you said. “I would prefer something more like observation. I’m not here to make trouble, only to note what I see.”

“They say you’re a recluse, a librarian who’s only fond of stories and barely has the time to give to anyone outside of a certain professor,” Aglaea said. “You would have made a good candidate for the Coreflame of Time.”

“Ah, but I’m too selfish to sacrifice myself for humanity,” you said, filling in the gaps of her words. “I know my flaws.”

“Indeed. You’re too caught up in your own stories, narrating everything you see as if it has nothing to do with you.”

“And is that so wrong? It’s simply the most interesting thing for me to do,” you said. 

“You and that man are alike in that way,” Aglaea mused. “Caught up in your respective research and acts. You’re a narrator and a performer on the same stage together, though I wonder. It seems as if that man is eager to perform great feats for the distant narrator to watch, so they won’t turn their attention away from him.”

You settled your gaze somewhere over her shoulder, your hands grasped tightly in the folds of your clothing. “Lady Aglaea, I apologize for my bluntness, but I daresay you’re wrong. We both know Anaxa is the sort of man who would only stir to action for the sake of his own goals. Anything else that happens is incidental to what he achieves.”

“Do we both know that?”

“You’ve seen how he acts.”

“Regardless, I only wanted to extend a word of caution to you, librarian. You’ve long refused the invitation to step on the stage, and so your chance to take the spotlight has passed. Are you truly prepared to witness the story playing out in front of you without being able to raise a hand to stop a single event from transpiring?”

“Is this advice from you personally, Lady Aglaea, or is it advice from a demigod?”

She smiled. “What do you think? I’m sure you’ll come to a conclusion all on your own. I only find it a shame we couldn’t work together more.”

That was the end of your conversation with her. But throughout your stay in Okhema, Aglaea’s words rang in your head, like a burr stuck to the folds of your thoughts, even as you found yourself preoccupied by greater worries. The Grove being overtaken by the black tide. Political unrest in Okhema. And Anaxa, who, from all accounts, had seemingly escaped the fate that befell your coworkers and peers.

Once more, your home was lost, but this time, at least one person had survived. Yet, to your growing ire and confusion, Anaxa did not approach you once when he came to the city. You only received reports from Hyacine in the temporary room you took refuge in, provided by Aglaea. 

You thought nothing of it at first, certain he would seek you out on his own time. It wasn’t uncommon for Anaxa to rush headlong into whatever project or scheme caught his attention. He would make his way back to you eventually.

As the hours passed, malaise and discontent settled on you like a heavy veil. You were not a Chrysos Heir, so you were not privy to the inner politics of their number. You were nothing more than a civilian. But this was the first time you had to hear about Anaxa’s movements from other people instead of relaying them to others. 

His silence was a purposeful message: Anaxa was not going to involve you in whatever he had planned. You were to sit and wait and watch on the sidelines, as you always had.

You could guess at his motivations: he was playing risky games, getting involved with the Council of Elders. He had done something outrageous, brushed right up against the divine, and had to undertake his trials alone. You were not useful to him in these games, and it would be dangerous for him to openly associate with you and alert people of your presence in his life.

People were lost so easily, but stories lived forever. You had believed this all your life, and yet, as you melted in your chaise, stacks of half-finished books piling around you, all your beloved stories felt stale and tasteless. 

Someone flung open your door, and you jerked upright as Anaxa strode into the room with the same arrogance as if this was your home back in the Grove. You barely had time to smooth your rumpled clothing and pull your legs to the side before Anaxa was settling at the end of your seat, legs folded.

“Where have you been, you ass?” you snapped, kicking him with your foot.

He didn’t move, taking your kick with stoicism. “I’ve been researching,” he said.

“Well? Are you going to tell me what you’ve been working on?”

“These theories are still being worked on.”

“That hasn’t stopped you from telling me before. Honestly, what have you been doing? The Chrysos Heirs are all over the place, and there’s been talk that you’ve joined the Council of Elders. Not to mention what happened with the Grove. How did you get out? What happened? Why–” You choked on your words, all your nameless frustration and fear surging out. “Why couldn’t I be there with you?”

Anaxa’s eye was focused on you, but his gaze was distant and foggy. His lips moved, as if he was speaking to himself, and you could only wait in impatient silence before he said, “I’m dead, librarian.”

With a furious burst of energy, you lunged at Anaxa, pinning him down to the chaise. His green hair fanned across the cushions, as your hands shook.

“Anaxa, I don’t have time for your games. For once in your life, just tell me the truth.”

“I haven’t lied to you.���

“You’re still here,” you pressed. “If you were truly dead, you wouldn’t be moving like this.”

“That’s simply because I bound my soul to a Titan. I don’t have that much time left.”

“Titan…? You can’t mean… You bound yourself to a god? Are you mad?”

“Only in the eyes of fools,” he said. 

“Anaxa. How long do you have left?”

He called your name, said in such a soft tone, as if you were still teenagers in the Grove of Epiphany, still young and foolish with your entire lives in front of you. “Only until the end of today. You know the black tide takes all, and you know the principles of equivalent exchange. A life for a life. It’s fitting.”

“But it wasn’t supposed to be like this,” you whispered. “You were going to show me a grand story. Things I haven’t seen before. A brilliant conclusion.”

“I will.” Anaxa brought his hand to the back of your head, pulling you down to rest on his chest. You closed your eyes, burying your face in the fabric of his clothing. You sought desperately for his heartbeat, but it wasn’t there. “But all performers must leave the stage eventually.”

“I don’t want you to,” you said. It was a childish, petulant protest, the likes of which you hadn’t made in years, not after your family died. “You’re supposed to live forever, Anaxa.”

“I will. I will live forever in your stories, librarian. You should understand this.”

“You infuriating man.”

“You meddlesome librarian.”

“Are you telling me goodbye? Is this what this is?”

“It doesn’t have to be something permanent,” he said cryptically.

“And I’m sure you won’t explain what that means, either, will you?”

“All will be revealed in due time. Have patience, librarian. That’s one of your strong suits.”

“Anaxa!” Your shout came out to a strangled whisper as you fisted your hands in his robes as if in some vain attempt, you could bind him to this earth forever, as if he wasn’t already lost to you. “You’re a wretched, blasphemous fool. But you’ve forgotten something.”

“And what have I forgotten? Enlighten me, dear librarian.”

“You let me touch your heart,” you murmured into the hollow of his chest. “Remember? That day in the classroom?”

“Well, it’s difficult to forget the liberties you took with my body. What about it?”

“You asked me what I would give in exchange for your heart. I never answered you, and as per the laws of equivalent exchange, as you so like to espouse, I’d like to give you something now,” you persisted. 

“Oh? And what are you planning on offering?”

“My heart,” you persisted. “If you give me a part of you, then I’ll give you a part of me.”

“Do you plan on ripping your heart out for me?”

“If you asked, then it’s yours, to do with as you please.”

Anaxa did not speak. He only stroked the back of your head, as if he was tracing alchemical equations. “What an audacious claim.”

“You don’t dislike it, though.”

“I told you I don’t lie, librarian.”

“Then you need to understand this,” you confessed, a supplicant before a god, the words tumbling out in a way they never have before. Your heartache, laid raw and bare, the weave of your soul exposed. “I’ve kept myself distance from everything. The Grove. The other scholars. Even Amphoreus itself. But you, Anaxa. You make me act so foolishly, want irrational and unattainable things. I can’t keep myself apart from you.”

“Well, well,” Anaxa said. “The reclusive librarian has finally shown me a bit of what lies in their heart.”

You hit him lightly with your fist, the action carrying no anger or weight to it. “Come on. Is that all you have to say to me?”

“I don’t need to say anything. All you need to do is to keep watching me, like we once promised,” he said. “Come, librarian. If you’ve laid claim to my heart, you should understand it by now. What I do, I do while thinking of you and of the best way to keep you entertained.”

You wrapped your arms around Anaxa. He was still touching you ever so gently, stroking your back in a way that belied the harshness of his words. Neither of you spoke. You closed your eyes, imagining what it would be like to fall asleep in his arms. 

“I’ll see you again,” you mumbled. “If not in this life, then in the next. Don’t think you can get away from me so easily.”

You thought you could feel him smile. “I’ll be waiting for you.”

This was the last time you ever saw him. When you did drift off to sleep, you awoke on your chaise, a blanket pulled up to your shoulders, with nothing left of Anaxa but the cooling spot he once occupied.

—

After his death, you dream of him. His body cracking, flaking away to reveal a cosmos birthed beneath his skin. His smile and unfocused eyes, looking at some grand scheme beyond you. The hard, red crystal of heart, the white lines of his ribs.

One day, you will return to your library in the Grove, to your archives and books and your catalogues. But for now, you reside in the holy city, recording what you see, marking history in your own words. The narrator to a play you could not change, as Aglaea called you, in love with a performer who left the stage of his own accord.

Anaxa does not lie, so you know his theories to be true, even if others decry them as blasphemy. You will find him again, in the next life, in the next world. You will find a way to keep his memory alive, weave it into the fabric of the universe itself, so not even the gods could rip him from you even if Amphoreus as you knew it fell to pieces. 

You imagine what it would be like, in the next world. You would pull him close, your dear professor, and tell him every story that happened in his absence. This time, you would not let him go.

[theskywithin]

Birth Chart Breakdown - Mars Through The Houses

We speak of Mars as drive, desire, action, but beneath every spark is a story. A reason we move the way we do. A part of ourselves we’re trying to protect, prove, or reclaim.

First House

Your strength is seen, but rarely softened. You lead. You assert. You enter every room like it owes you space. But even warriors long to rest. You’ve learned to carry your identity like a shield, but who are you when you’re not proving you belong? Even fire needs a place to burn safely, without burning through everything.

Second House

You chase security like it owes you proof. As if having more will finally make you enough. You work hard. You hold tight. You protect what’s yours. But self-worth isn’t earned, it’s remembered. Let your value rise from within, not from what you build to be seen as valuable.

Third House

You speak like it’s survival. Sharp, fast, relentless. Your mind is wired for action, always reaching for understanding, but sometimes, silence speaks louder. Not every truth needs defending. Not every thought needs to be said to be known.

Fourth House

You protect your inner world like a soldier on sacred ground. There’s a storm in your ribcage that only you know how to navigate. You want peace, but sometimes peace feels unsafe. Not every memory needs to be rewritten. Some things can simply be witnessed, without turning them into wars.

Fifth House

You love loudly. Create fiercely. Every emotion becomes a firework, quick, bright, unforgettable. You chase the thrill because it reminds you you’re alive. But your joy doesn’t have to be earned through fire. Let passion be a home, not a chase. Stay long enough for it to bloom.

Sixth House

You work like your worth depends on it. You keep moving, fixing, improving, hoping the inner chaos might finally go quiet. You measure love in usefulness. But rest is also a form of service. You’re allowed to slow down. You’re allowed to just be.

Seventh House

You don’t just want love, you enter battle for it. Your passion in partnership is unmatched, but sometimes you fight because connection feels vulnerable. Not every relationship needs saving. Not every bond is proof of your power. Let yourself be met, not just pursued.

Eighth House

Intensity lives in your bones. You crave the kind of connection that consumes and remakes. Power, trust, surrender, they’re never simple for you. But transformation doesn’t always require destruction. You can release without disappearing. You can love without losing the parts you’ve fought so hard to reclaim.

Ninth House

You move like there’s something to outrun. You chase freedom with holy fire, as if motion itself can offer meaning. But freedom without reflection can leave you ungrounded. Let your beliefs evolve as you do. The horizon will always be there, but truth lives in how you carry it with you.

Tenth House

You climb. You conquer. You build. You measure yourself by impact, by progress, by proof. But legacy without soul is just performance. You are more than your public self. Let your ambition serve your inner world too. True success is showing up in both.

Eleventh House

You fight for the future. For the group. For the cause. You dream big, act fast, and pull others toward the vision, but even visionaries get lonely. When you’re always leading, it’s easy to forget to belong. Your power multiplies when you trust others to walk beside you.

Twelfth House

Your fire moves inward. A quiet battle. A sacred undoing. You’re not always sure why you act, or where the emotion is coming from, only that it demands release. Your anger speaks in symbols. Your passion hides in dreams. But what grows in the dark is not weak, it’s ancient, holy, and learning to rise in its own way.

[my-castles-crumbling]

graduation - may 22 - black brothers - background jegulus - @black-brothers-microfic - word count: 429

“I’ve got a present for you,” Sirius said smugly, walking up to Regulus, still clutching his Hogwarts diploma.

“Isn’t it supposed to be the other way around? I’m supposed to get something for you for graduation?” Regulus replied, a bit more snarkily than he intended. He was trying his best not to be bitter about the fact that half his support system wasn’t going to be in school with him next year, but it was proving to be a bit difficult.

“Well, since when’s our relationship conventional?” Sirius chuckled, holding out a piece of slightly-torn paper.

“Erm…thanks?” Regulus said, blinking in confusion, flipping the parchment over and over in his hand. Was this Sirius’s idea of a joke, or was he truly just being an arse?

“James wanted to be the one to give it to you, but I pulled the big brother card,” the taller boy said proudly, oblivious to Regulus’s annoyance. 

“James also wanted to give me a random piece of parchment?” Regulus asked, still trying to be patient.

“Spare–? Oh! I forgot, I have to show you!” Sirius smirked, tapping his wand on the paper. 

All at once, ink spread out on the page, blooming into words and detailed illustrations. It didn’t take very long for Regulus to figure it out: “A map?” he gasped.

“We made it,” Sirius said, obviously trying to be modest, but pride ringing in his words. “Shows everyone in the castle, secret passages, hidden rooms, what have you. We figured you’ll get much more use out of it than we will, now, even if you’ll never pull of the legendary pranks we have. But you have to pass it on to someone else, once you graduate. That’s the deal,” Sirius said somberly.

Regulus was, admittedly, very impressed. “So this is how Potter kept finding me at the beginning of this year,” he murmured, remembering how his boyfriend used to show up at the most convenient times.

“Yeah, we had to ban him from having it by himself once he got borderline-stalkerish,” Sirius said cheerfully. “Dunno how he managed to make that seem romantic, to be honest.”

“All of you are equally odd,” Regulus shrugged, “and I’ve long-ago accepted that my taste in men is illogical. You really want me to have it?”

“Yeah. I trust you. Plus, you have to keep on the true family legacy, you know?” 

Sirius winked jokingly, but the idea actually made Regulus feel a bit warm. “Thanks, Sirius,” he murmured. With this reminder of his favorite people, he suddenly felt a bit better about next year.

[peachypiichi]

not very cool beans to pay bills :(

[noirscript]

of moss and memory

Pairing: Yandere Elf x Reader Description: Held captive beneath the mountain, you are worshipped by the obsessive elf Elarion, who tends to you like a sacred bloom, whispering promises of love, legacy, and the life growing he swears will soon take root inside you. Warning/s: Yandere | Kidnapping | Possessive Behavior | Captivity | Obsession | Emotional Manipulation | Isolation | Implied Breeding kink | Drugging (sort of?) Note/s: Apologies for the inactivity! Since you guys seemed to like fantasy men, here's a yandere elf. By the way, commissions are still open and Dark Roast is also available for half it's og price. Enjoy reading!

Masterlist | Commission | Tip Jar | Dark Roast

You hadn’t seen the sun in weeks.

Or was it months?

Time meant little beneath the mountain where Elarion Vaelthir kept you, folded into a garden spun from nightmares and dreams. This place wasn’t built of stone and walls. No, it breathed. It grew. The halls were vines fused with crystal. The floors glowed faintly underfoot, pulsing like veins. The ceiling shimmered with false starlight, shifting endlessly above a lush, otherworldly paradise.

Elarion called it your sanctuary.

You called it your cage.

It was easy to forget the surface world here. The air was thick with the scent of night-blooming flowers, soft as a lover’s sigh, and every inch of the space had been molded to soothe your senses—or drown them. The water you bathed in was warm and still, always drawn before you woke. The meals were delicate and fey, infused with sweetness that lingered on your tongue like sleep. And then, of course, there was him.

Always him.

Elarion moved like something ancient pretending to be beautiful—and succeeding too well. He was tall and lithe, built not like a man, but like a bowstring held in perfect tension. His skin was pale and radiant, kissed with the faint shimmer of moonlight on fresh snow. Long white hair spilled in silken waves down his back, often tied in loose braids with obsidian clasps etched in runes that pulsed when he touched you. His ears swept high and elegant, twitching imperceptibly when you cried. But it was his eyes that undid you: silver-blue like frozen fire, luminous and unblinking, set beneath a brow too refined for anything human.

You used to fear them.

Now… you tried not to look at them at all.

He came to you each morning with flowers in his hand and scripture on his tongue. "You must eat, little flower," he would say, setting a delicate silver tray on the moss-carpeted bench beside your bed. “You’re too thin. You must nourish the body I love so dearly.”

He said it so gently, you almost forgot what he’d done to you.

You hadn’t been brought here. You’d been taken.

That night in the woods came back to you in pieces—petals of memory scattered in wind. The festival. The lanterns. The music. You’d stepped away to catch your breath, heart fluttering with excitement and wine, when the trees hushed and the shadows thickened. And then he appeared, without warning. Just appeared—silver and black and sharp with desire, like something summoned from a forbidden tale. You hadn’t screamed. He didn’t let you.

“I have been watching,” he whispered, fingers trailing down your cheek as vines coiled around your wrists. “You are the perfect match. The one the stars wrote into my blood.”

Your struggling had meant nothing. He didn’t bind you with ropes. He used enchantment—words older than language, slipped into your thoughts like lullabies. He whispered promises, curses, futures. And you believed them, even when your voice told you not to.

That was the most terrifying part: how much of you wanted to believe him.

Now, beneath the mountain, with your memories fading like dust, you sometimes did.

You’d tried to escape once—ran down a passage lined with glowing fungi, your bare feet burning with cold—but the path shifted. The plants rearranged themselves. Vines grew where none had been. You ran in circles for hours, sobbing, until the walls parted and Elarion stood there, watching you with something close to pity.

“You will only hurt yourself,” he murmured, cradling your body when your knees gave out. “You are not meant for the cruel world above. That place was killing you slowly. Let me show you what it is to live.”

And you wanted to fight. You did. But he held you so tenderly, and for just one moment—one long, agonizing moment—you melted into him.

That was when the real battle began.

He never raised his voice. Never touched you in anger. His cruelty was care. His obsession was dressed in silk and offered in petals and warmth. He washed your hair with his own hands, combed it slowly, humming songs from a time before your people had learned to write. He built a garden around your bed—midnight lilies, glowing thorns, sleeping vines that curled when he breathed near them.

Every gesture said: You are mine.

Every whisper promised: I will never let you go.

And then there were the nights.

At first, he let you sleep alone. Then he took to sitting at the edge of the bed, watching you as if you were a statue in a temple. Then came the touches—featherlight caresses along your arm, your collarbone, your waist.

"You were made for this," he told you once, voice a husky purr as he traced your navel with reverent fingers. “You carry within you the last hope of my line. Our children will be divine, born of man and immortal blood. The first of a new age. Our legacy.”

You trembled. “I never agreed to—”

“You were chosen,” he said, gently pressing a kiss to your stomach. “The bond is older than you. I feel it in your skin, your scent… the way your heart stumbles when I’m near. Even now, your womb listens to me, craves me. Do not be afraid. You will bloom beautifully beneath me.”

There was magic in his voice. Not cast—woven. Laid like chains in your spine, until you shivered and closed your eyes, praying to a god who no longer heard you.

He never forced you. That would break the illusion he so lovingly curated.

No. Elarion was too patient for that. He wanted you willing. Bent, not shattered. Molded until you asked for him.

And the longer you stayed in his world, the harder it became to remember the life you once led. Your name felt like someone else’s. Your face in the mirror—a stranger. There were days you woke with aching need between your thighs, and you knew he’d been near in your dreams, whispering things you couldn’t remember but your body did.

Then came the silk gowns—sheer things that clung to your form, whisper-thin. He dressed you in them himself, brushing his knuckles over your thighs, hips, breasts. Never quite taking you. Always almost.

"You are ripening," he said once, eyes dark with hunger as he laid you down upon the moss and placed his ear against your belly. “The time draws near.”

And your heart stuttered.

Because some part of you wanted it.

Not just the attention, the softness, the slow unfurling of touch—but the idea of becoming something sacred. Chosen. Worshipped. Loved.

Even if it was twisted.

Even if it meant never leaving.

You no longer flinched when he kissed you. You no longer turned away when he whispered, “My queen. My mate. My love.” You let him hold you as you slept, his arm tight across your waist, hand splayed possessively over the place he wanted filled.

And the worst part? It felt good.

It felt safe.

He’d stolen everything from you—family, name, freedom—and replaced it with himself.

And now, as he entered the garden chamber, bearing a wreath of pale flowers and a cup of glowing wine, you didn’t shrink away. You rose to meet him, your sheer gown falling in soft waves around your legs. His smile was slow and bright and deeply, dangerously satisfied.

“You’re ready,” he said, lifting the cup to your lips. “Drink, my love. Let the stars bless this night. Let the forest bear witness.”

You hesitated—not from fear, but from the aching weight of what came next.

He cupped your cheek. His touch was fire and frost. “You were always meant to carry me,” he whispered, lowering his mouth to your neck, fangs brushing your skin. “And now, I will plant myself in you. Again. And again. Until the bond is sealed. Until you forget you were ever anything but mine.”

You drank.

And the garden trembled as if the mountain itself held its breath.

TBC.

noirscript © 2025

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[folksyswift]

I'm just a girl… I'm alone, on my own. No one wanted to play with me as a little kid, nobody ever lets me in. Something different bloomed writing in my room. I see the great escape, I play my songs in the parking lot just to learn that my dreams aren't rare. Maybe I'm just a girl on a mission but I'm ready to fly in the angel's city, chasing fortune and fame. No one in my small town thought I'd meet these suits in L.A. and the camera flashes make it look like a dream. The kind of radiance you only have at 17, making my own name, chasing that fame. The crown is stained, but you're the real queen selling dreams, selling make up and magazines and your secrets end up splashed on the news front page. No cameras catch my pageant smile and my cheeks are growing tired from turning red and faking smiles. They said, "Babe, you gotta fake it till you make it" and I did. Cause ladies always rise above, so I became the butt of the joke. Talk your talk and go viral 'cause, baby, I could build a castle out of all the bricks they threw at me. Crowd goes wild at her fingertips but there's robbers to the east, clowns to the west. I tried to pick my battles 'til the battle picked me. I was in the alley surrounded on all sides. Brought a knife to a gunfight. I looked around in a blood-soaked gown and tried to tell the town. You said the gun was mine, so they filled my cell with snakes. They say I did something bad then tell me I'm despicable. People look at me like I'm a monster. Now they're screaming that they hate me. I can feel the flames on my skin, and you find something to wrap your noose around. They're burning all the witches even if you aren’t one. So light me, and if I'm on fire, you'll be made of ashes too. So I leap from the gallows, and I levitate down your street. I didn't want to have to haunt you but I've got a list of names and yours is in red, underlined. They say, "move on", but all I think about is karma. I've come too far to watch some namedropping sleaze tell me what are my words worth. My pennies made your crown. You had to kill me, but it killed you just the same. The knife cuts both ways, look at how my tears ricochet. Them's the breaks, they don't come gently. It still hurts underneath my scars from when they pulled me apart, and I can go anywhere I want just not home. He's got my past frozen behind glass but I've got me. I’m still on that trapeze. I'm still trying everything to keep you looking at me. Lights, camera, bitch smile. I can still make the whole place shimmer. I pushed each boulder up the hill, climbed right back up the cliff 'cause there were pages turned with the bridges burned. Ask me why so many fade, but I'm still here. Always risin' from the ashes 'cause I'm a real tough kid, I can handle my shit. I gave my blood, sweat, and tears for this. And at last she knew what the agony had been for. I built a legacy that you can't undo. Long story short, I survived. You're on your own, kid. You always have been.

[epsilonblack]

Sirius found the letter buried in a drawer beneath old birth certificates and pure blood family trees. It was crinkled and yellowed, not meant to be read. Not by him.

"Male, by parental choice," it said. Words clinical. Detached.

He read it three times before the words lost shape, swimming behind the sting in his eyes. His hands trembled, the paper fluttering like wings caught in a storm.

He had always known something didn’t fit quite right. The mirror never felt like a truth teller. His body, his voice, his bones, none of it quite belonged the way it seemed to for James, or Remus, or even Regulus.

But this? This was a decision. A fork in the road taken without him.

“They chose for me,” he whispered into the silence of the room. “They looked at me and decided what I’d be.”

Anger bloomed like fire in his chest. How could they? How could they hold that power and never think to let him hold it too?

It wasn’t that he didn’t love being Sirius. It was that Sirius should have had the choice to become himself. Not be sculpted by parents who only saw heirs and legacies.

He stood at the mirror now, shirt lifted, fingers tracing the lines of his body, not hating it, but questioning for the first time what it could have been. What it might still be.

Later, when he told Remus, voice cracking around the edges, he braced for confusion. Or worse, pity.

But Remus just listened. Quiet, steady.

“That was never their choice to make,” he said, voice like a grounding spell. “But it’s yours now. Whatever you want. However you feel. You’re still Sirius. And I love all the versions you’ve ever been or will ever be.”

Sirius breathed out. Shaky. Relieved.

James found Sirius on the Astronomy Tower. Legs pulled up, arms wrapped around his knees, hair tangled from the wind. It was too late for him to be up there alone, too cold not to have cast a warming charm. But Sirius hadn’t. He just sat there, eyes locked on the stars like they owed him answers.

James didn’t speak right away. Just sat beside him, shoulder to shoulder.

Sirius didn’t look at him. “You ever feel like your body isn’t really yours?” he asked softly.

James blinked, thrown by the quiet vulnerability. “Not… not really. Why?”

Sirius pulled a folded parchment from his coat pocket, crumpled from being read too many times. He handed it to James without a word.

James read it once. Twice. And slowly, his throat tightened. “Sirius—”

“I didn’t know,” Sirius interrupted, voice shaking. “They made the decision before I could even speak. Before I could be anything.”

He laughed, bitter and wet. “I always thought there was something wrong with me. That I wasn’t man enough. That maybe I was just broken.”

James looked at him, really looked. Sirius’ face was red, jaw clenched like he was holding back a scream. But the tears still slipped free, traitorous, and aching. He wiped at them harshly.

James put the paper down and wrapped an arm around him.

“You’re not broken,” he said. “You’re Sirius. You’re my brother. You’re the best person I know.”

Sirius choked on a sob and leaned into him, burying his face in James’ shoulder.

“I didn’t get to choose who I was supposed to be,” he whispered.

“But you do now,” James murmured. “And no matter what you choose, I’m not going anywhere. Alright?”

Sirius nodded, clinging a little tighter, as if he’d finally allowed himself to be held. The stars above kept shining, but for once, Sirius didn’t need them to light his way. He had James.

The next few weeks passed in subtle shifts. Nothing dramatic. Sirius didn’t burst out in the common room with a declaration or change his name overnight. But something in him loosened, like a thread finally freed from a too tight knot.

He started experimenting. Borrowed eyeliner from Marlene. Let Lily charm his hair into waves. Wore his shirts a little more open. Painted his nails black one day and didn’t say a word when someone asked. When Remus told him he looked cool, Sirius smiled like it actually reached somewhere deep.

The Marauders noticed, of course. James was the first to start referring to Sirius as “our hot mess of chaos and beauty.” Remus started calling him “love” instead of “mate” without missing a beat. Peter was awkward for about a week, then shyly asked if he could learn to braid Sirius’ hair for him.

Sirius didn’t always know what he wanted to be called. Some days, he was fine with “he.” Some days, “they” fit better. Once, when Remus called him “gorgeous girl” as a joke, Sirius surprised himself by not flinching.

But the important thing was that no one made him pick. Not right away. Not at all.

One evening, when they were sprawled out in the Gryffindor common room like always, Remus reading, James practicing wand twirls, Peter sketching something chaotic, Sirius spoke without warning.

“I think I might be both,” he said. “A boy and a girl. Or neither. Or something… in between.”

Remus looked up. “Okay,” he said, like it was the simplest thing in the world.

James grinned. “Mate, you could tell me you were a sentient cloud and I’d still throw hands for you.”

Peter blinked. “Do we still call you Sirius?”

“For now,” they said. Then smirked. “Unless you want to call me Empress Black.”

James clutched his heart. “I kneel, my liege.”

Remus rolled his eyes but leaned over to kiss Sirius’ temple. “Whoever you are,” he said quietly, “you’re ours.”

Sirius, for the first time in a long time, felt like maybe that body, however complicated it was, was finally starting to feel like theirs.

[colouredbyd]

Grimmauld: The House That Buried Its Children & The Ones Who Stay

brother!sirius black x fem!black!reader (centered) , james potter x fem!reader

synopsis: within the ancient and noble House of Black, where shadows cling like whispered memories, the story of its heirs unfolds — bound by blood, silence, and a past that never lets go. this is the quiet tragedy of a family built on legacy and expectation, the tale of three siblings — Sirius, Regulus, and you — whose lives were shaped by the name Black and forever haunted by the weight it bore.

cw: grief, trauma, loss of family, sibling conflict, secret romance, emotional and psychological distress, neglect, abuse, war, death, sacrifice, PTSD, intense emotional themes, bittersweet romance, legacy burdens, depression, death, very minor brief hints of suicide, forced marriages, and mourning. (timelines aren't canon compliant)

w/c: 13k (what can i say, the Black trauma is very detailed and long)

a/n: this is probably the best thing i’ve written — maybe the best i ever will — and i won’t apologize for the angst <3

masterlist

1978

It is raining the night Sirius leaves.

Not the kind of rain that arrives with spectacle and fury. Not the dramatic sort that rips through the clouds like a wound or makes the house tremble with thunder’s weight.

But a quieter sorrow. A gentle and ceaseless drizzle that feels older than memory, as if it began long before the sky turned grey and will linger long after the world forgets what it means to be dry, to be warm, to be whole.

Grimmauld Place breathes in that rain like it knows what’s coming, like it has always known, and the halls are colder than they’ve ever been. Not because the hearth has gone dark or the embers have died, but because something unseen is curling into ash in the walls. Something made of shared secrets and childhood echoes and the paper-thin thread of love that once bound a family, now fraying with every breath, every step, every silence.

There is no shouting now. Not anymore. Not since the voices collapsed into exhaustion, into finality.

And even though it might have been an hour ago or maybe two, or maybe longer than that, the house still hums with it, still remembers the shape of the words, the violence of the vowels, your mother’s voice cutting through the air like something sacred and profane all at once—a blade you’ve heard so many times your bones flinch on instinct, and your ears have begun to confuse cruelty with comfort, with home, with love.

You sit on the stairs, knees drawn up and head pressed to the banister, half-swallowed by shadows like the house is trying to hide you or keep you from breaking, and you listen even though it hurts. Listen because it’s the only way you know how to say goodbye without saying it, without naming it.

And down the corridor, your mother’s voice rises again, shrill and bitter and full of rot. But Sirius does not raise his voice in return. Not tonight. Not this time. And that silence is worse than any screaming. That silence is a goodbye carved in stone. It is a decision made in a place too deep for you to reach.

You do not know where Regulus is. Only that he is not here. Not in this moment that has changed everything. And maybe that’s his gift—to disappear when it matters most, to tuck himself into corners and shadows and silences so precisely that not even grief can find him.

Maybe he is in the library with the door shut and the curtains drawn, pretending that thunder doesn’t exist and neither does rain. Maybe he is curled so tightly into himself that to unfold him would be to shatter him completely.

But you are not Regulus. You never were. And silence does not fit in your mouth the way it fits in his—soft and seamless and sharp. You are not good at pretending you don’t feel the world falling apart around you. You are not good at swallowing the scream that’s lodged in your throat or the ache that is blooming beneath your ribs like something alive and vengeful and unspoken.

You are not good at pretending you don’t care.

And tonight, as the rain keeps falling and the house holds its breath and Sirius walks away without looking back, you feel something in you break in the exact shape of him.

You rise when you hear the trunk click shut. You move before you think, your bare feet slipping across the floor as if your body already knows it has to chase him before your mind catches up.

You don’t remember crossing the corridor, only the way your breath falters when you see him at the door—one hand on the handle, the other curled tight around the strap of his bag.

His hair is damp with sweat or maybe rain, eyes bright with something that is not joy, not quite sorrow either, more like finality, like he’s standing on the edge of something and has already decided to jump.

“Sirius,” you breathe, and the name comes out small and frightened, like it used to when you were six and couldn’t fall asleep without his hand wrapped around yours.

He turns, and for a moment you almost forget how to speak.

“Don’t,” you say, and your voice cracks halfway through. “Please don’t go.”

“I have to,” he says, gentle but firm, like he’s already rehearsed it, like he’s already said goodbye to you in his head.

“No you don’t,” you say, stepping closer, arms trembling now. “You don’t have to leave me, Sirius, please. You can stay. We can fix it, I’ll talk to her, I’ll try harder, I swear I’ll—”

“You can’t fix this,” he interrupts, and his voice is rough around the edges, like it’s been scraping against his own ribs. “You shouldn’t even be trying. None of this is your fault.”

Your hands are shaking now, reaching out without permission, fingers grasping for something to hold on to, something steady in a world that’s coming undone.

“But you’re my brother,” you whisper, and your voice breaks entirely, like it’s never learned how to carry this kind of goodbye. “You’re my favourite person in the world. You always were.”

“I know,” he says, and this time his voice shakes too. He drops his bag. Takes a step toward you. “You were mine too. You never had to earn that.”

You want to laugh, or fall to your knees. “So don’t go.”

“I have to,” he murmurs, but softer now, like he’s hoping you won’t shatter if he says it gently enough. “I’ve stayed for as long as I could. But staying... it’s not living anymore.”

“But I need you,” you say, almost like a child, almost like a prayer. “You’re the one who made it bearable. You’re the reason I could stay. If you go—Sirius, if you go, I don’t know who I’ll be without you.”

He’s closer now, so close you can see the shine in his eyes and the way he’s biting the inside of his cheek, like he’s trying not to fall apart.

Then he’s kneeling in front of you, as if to make the leaving softer. As if to make sure you remember his face from this angle too.

“You’ll still be you,” he says, and his hands come up to cradle your face, as if he could hold all the years you’ve shared between his palms.

His thumbs brush the tears from your cheeks, slow and reverent. “You’ll still have the stars in you. You’ll still sing in the morning when you think no one’s listening. You’ll still make Regulus eat when he forgets. You’ll still be light, even here.”

Your lip trembles. “I don’t want to be light. I just want you.”

“I know,” he says again, and this time it sounds like it hurts. “I want you too. But I can’t stay. Not when staying is killing me.”

You press your forehead to his, tears dripping between you, breath shared like it used to be when the world was smaller and kinder.

Sirius’s breath hitches. He leans in and presses his forehead to yours, just like he used to when you were children afraid of thunder.

For a moment, you are six again, hiding under blankets while he told you stories about stars and carved tiny moons into the wood of the headboard. For a moment, there is no family name, no blood purity, no war waiting at the doorstep. Only the brother you loved first.

“Take care of Regulus,” he whispers, voice like wind through a dying tree. “He’s going to need you. Even if he doesn’t know how to ask for it. Even if he pretends he doesn’t want you near.”

“He hates me,” you say, and it stings because part of you believes it. “We don’t talk anymore. We’re twins but we’re strangers.”

“Then love him anyway,” Sirius says, pulling back just enough to look at you again. “Because this house is going to eat him alive. And you’re the only one left who can remind him what a soul is.”

“No,” you say, stepping forward. “No. You can stay. Please. I’ll—I’ll talk to Mother. I’ll make her stop. You don’t have to leave me, Sirius. Not you. Not you too.”

He shakes his head, and for a moment something in his eyes breaks, softens, just slightly, but then it’s gone again and his mouth sets into that line you’ve come to dread—the one that means he’s already decided.

“She’s never going to stop,” he says, voice low and bitter. “She doesn’t know how. This house will never stop. And you—you don’t understand, you think this is just noise, but it’s not, it’s poison, and it’s been inside us since the day we were born.”

You don’t realize you’re crying until he lifts a hand to brush your tears away, gentle like always, like you’re still little and he’s still the one who could fix things just by being there. “I want you to stay,” you whisper. “You’re my brother. You’re the one person I—”

Your voice breaks, and you fold forward, hands fisting in the fabric of his shirt like if you hold tight enough, he won’t go.

“You’re the one person I feel safe with.”

Sirius exhales sharply, and for a second you think maybe—maybe—he’s going to change his mind. That he’ll sit down, put the bag away, crawl back into the twin bed down the hall and wait for morning. But instead he presses a kiss to the top of your head, slow and lingering.

“You were my home long before I knew what that meant,” he says quietly. “But I can’t live in a place that only wants to break me.”

“I don’t care about the house,” you cry. “I just care about you.”

“I know,” he says, and his hands are trembling now too. “That’s why I have to go. Before I forget who I am. Before I become what they want.”

You look at him and realize this is the last time he’ll ever be your brother here. The last time he’ll be Sirius Black of Number Twelve Grimmauld Place. After this, he’ll belong to somewhere else. To someone else.

And still—still—you whisper, “Don’t go.”

He closes his eyes. And this time, he doesn’t say anything at all.

He just reaches for the trunk, fingers curling around the handle like it’s an anchor, like if he doesn’t hold on he might shatter entirely. And then he turns, and he walks. Like he’s already gone.

You stumble after him, barefoot and unraveling, your voice rising into something feral, something half-child, half-grief.

“Sirius, please—don’t do this. Don’t go. You can’t leave me here. Not with them. Not alone.” The words come out wrong, cracked and too loud, but you don’t care.

You’d burn yourself down to keep him in this hallway if it meant he’d stay. You reach for him — just his sleeve, his hand, anything — but the world shifts.

You don’t know if it’s the mist curling under the door or your own shaking limbs, but your feet slide out from under you. The marble rushes up and meets you with no softness at all.

Your knees hit first, a dull, ugly sound echoing through the corridor. Then your palms, scraping raw against the cold. A flare of pain licks up your legs and into your chest, sharp and immediate — but not worse than the ache already blooming beneath your ribs.

Blood beads along your skin, tiny red betrayals of how fragile you are. You cry out before you can stop it, a startled, broken sound. Not for the fall, but for what’s walking away.

That’s when he turns. When he finally looks.

His eyes find you — crumpled on the floor, bloodied and shaking, your face wet with tears you can’t seem to stop. For the space of a single breath, he doesn’t move. And you see it then — the boy he used to be. The boy who held your hand through thunderstorms. The boy who carved moons into your bedframe because you were scared of the dark. The boy who always came back for you.

For a moment, just one, he looks like he might come back again. Like he might run to you, drop everything, fall to his knees and pull you into his arms and promise you the world won’t win. That he won’t let it. That he won’t let them.

But he doesn’t move. He doesn’t run back. He doesn’t kneel beside you and press his forehead to yours. He doesn’t reach for your hands or wipe the blood from your knees. He only stands there, soaked in silence, the storm rising behind him like the breath of something ancient and cruel. His mouth opens, just barely, and the words come soft and weightless, as if he already knows they won’t be enough.

“I’m sorry.”

Then the door yawns wide and swallows him whole.

Rain pours in, cold and relentless. It soaks the marble, the hem of your nightclothes, the trembling shell of your body. You don’t rise. You don’t call his name again. You crawl. Fingertips dragging against the stone, knees splitting open with every inch, the sting lost beneath the throb of something deeper. You reach the threshold on hands and knees, soaked and shaking, and watch the place where he used to be.

You wait for him to turn back. To look over his shoulder. To see you the way he always used to, like you were the only part of this house worth saving. You wait for the sound of footsteps, for the thud of the trunk being dropped, for the whisper of his voice promising that he didn’t mean it.

That he’s still your brother. That he’ll stay.

But the silence is complete. And he is already gone.

You kneel there as the blood from your knees stains the rainwater pink, as the storm creeps into the house, into your lungs, into your bones.

You stay until the cold makes you numb and your arms are too tired to hold you upright. You stay because you do not know where else to go. Because nothing feels real anymore, except for the way your chest keeps breaking open in slow, quiet pieces.

You are thirteen years old, and you have never known this kind of silence. Not even in the dead of night. Not even in your mother’s shadow. You will remember this silence for the rest of your life. You will carry it like a second skin, like a wound that never quite closes.

That night, you will wash the blood from your knees in water gone lukewarm.

You will not cry again. Not then. Not in front of the mirror. Not where anyone can see. But the ache will settle into your spine, deep and wordless, and it will never let you go.

You will grow into silence like it’s the only thing that ever wanted you. You will wear it like a second skin, learn its contours, let it fill the spaces where love used to live.

You will master the art of stillness, of holding your breath when you want to scream, of smiling when your throat burns with grief. You will stop reaching for people who walk away. You will become so good at pretending you don’t need anyone that even you begin to believe it.

You will teach yourself to cry only behind locked doors. You will carry sorrow in your ribs like a splinter, sharp and invisible, a secret that hums when it rains. You will speak softly and laugh rarely and wonder, always, if you are too much or not enough.

You will look for Sirius in the curve of strangers’ hands, in the way someone tilts their head when they listen, in every boy who calls you brave without knowing why. But no one will ever be quite him. No one will ever hold your name like it’s sacred.

You never spoke to Sirius again.

Not after that night. Not after the front door of Grimmauld Place slammed like the end of the world. Not after your knees stopped bleeding and your voice forgot how to say his name without splintering.

Not after you wrote that letter two weeks later, alone in the dark, words trembling like a heartbeat you couldn’t hold still. You didn’t send it. You couldn’t. So you folded it and slipped it into the lining of your trunk, where it still waits.

1981

You are sixteen now.

You wear Slytherin green like silk-wrapped steel and walk the halls like the castle owes you something. Your mother calls you her softer one, the quiet twin, but there is nothing soft left in you. Not really.

Not after everything you’ve learned about silence and what it costs. You’ve mastered the art of holding your breath, of keeping your voice still, of curling your fingers into fists behind your back. Regulus watches you sometimes like he almost remembers who you used to be. But you don’t look back.

And yet here you are — beneath the Quidditch stands at midnight, with your tie crooked and your shirt coming undone, with James Potter’s hands at your waist and his mouth pressed to your throat like it’s the only thing keeping him alive.

You shouldn’t be here. Not with him. Not with someone who makes the world feel brighter than you know how to bear. But your hands won’t listen. They tangle in his hair, slide over his jaw, trace the freckles across his shoulder where his sleeves are rolled, where his skin is warm and golden and too much.

“Someone will see us,” you whisper, the words barely formed, lost against the breath between you.

James just smiles, that crooked, reckless smile that should not feel like safety. “Let them.”

Your heart stutters. He always does this. Knocks the wind out of you with nothing but his grin and the impossible tenderness in his eyes.

“You Gryffindors are all the same,” you murmur, but the words are an echo, stripped of bite.

“And you Blacks are all trouble,” he says, and it doesn’t sound like a warning. It sounds like a promise. Like worship.

His fingers brush your hair behind your ear, soft, reverent, and you freeze for half a second. Not because you want to pull away. Because you don’t. Because when he touches you like that, something in you splinters. Something buried and locked.

You look at him, and he’s still there — real, impossibly real — and you don’t know how this happened. How someone like him ended up here, with someone like you. How he looks at you like you’re not something broken.

And still, you stay. Still, you let him touch you. Because no one else knows you like this. Because with him, you are not a name or a legacy or a weapon in the making.

James doesn’t ask why. He never asks. Maybe that’s why you keep coming back — because he touches you like you’re not broken, like you’re not a Black, like your blood isn’t dripping with secrets that could ruin everything it touches.

He doesn’t flinch when you go quiet. Doesn’t fill the silence with questions or pity. He just waits. Steady. Warm. Like he has all the time in the world to watch you come undone and still choose you after.

“Do you ever think about what would happen if your brother found out?” he asks, his voice low, careful. Not a threat. Not a warning. Just a wondering.

You scoff, sharp and breathless. “Which one?”

He looks at you then, really looks — the way he always does when you try to be cruel and fail. His eyes never waver. “Both.”

You don’t answer.

Because the truth is, you do think about it. You think about it more than you want to. You think about Sirius finding out and looking at you like you’ve become someone else, someone dangerous, someone he can’t save. You think about Regulus finding out and looking at James like he’s something to destroy. A danger. A betrayal. A boy who dared to love the wrong part of you.

Sometimes you think about dying before they ever find out. That would be easier. Cleaner. You could keep this — this secret softness, this impossible thing — untouched by consequence.

James shifts closer, and when he speaks again, it’s not words, not really. It’s warmth. It’s the space between heartbeats. “You’re not your family, you know.”

The sentence cracks something open. You swallow around it. The air tastes like smoke. Like ash.

“Yes, I am,” you say. Quiet. Final. “That’s the problem.”

But you kiss him anyway.

You kiss him like it’s a prayer with no god left to hear it, like it’s the last thing keeping you tethered to the world.

Because here, under the stands, in the dark, with his mouth on yours and his hands at your waist, you are not a name or a legacy or a shadow waiting to fall. You are not a sister, not a secret, not a danger.

You are a girl. Wanting. Wanted.

His fingers thread through your hair, and you let him. You let him touch you like you’re real. Like you matter. Like he doesn’t see the ruin clinging to your bones or the storm sitting in your chest waiting to tear everything down.

And that’s enough. It’s not safe. It’s not smart. It’s not forever.

You always know when he is near.

The air changes first — grows thin, almost reverent, like the world itself remembers. Like the stone corridors remember. Like the dust in the windowpanes and the cracks in the floor still carry his name beneath them.

The sound softens, dims around him. Laughter hushes. Footsteps falter. It’s the kind of silence that used to fall over you both when you stayed up too late, whispering stories by the fire, your shadows dancing on the walls like they had lives of their own.

There was a time when his presence meant warmth. Hearth-smoke and moth-eaten blankets. Winter pressed against the glass while you curled into each other like the last two embers in the world. He would talk about stars — draw them with his voice, sketch them in the dark with words that made you believe escape was possible, that the night sky could make you brave. You would fall asleep to the rhythm of his breathing and wake to find his hand still wrapped around yours.

But all of that is gone now.

Now there is only stone beneath your feet and a bone-deep cold that doesn’t leave you. You are ruins, both of you. You are the silence after a song. You are what’s left when the fire goes out.

You see them just as you’re turning the corner out of the library, a book held tight to your chest like it can keep your ribs from cracking open. Defensive Magical Theory, something dense and forgettable, a shield made of ink and false comfort.

Your knuckles are white. Your fingers ache. Your robes are perfectly pressed, every pleat a performance. Because since he left, you have had to become flawless. You have had to become iron.

And there he is.

In the center of them like a flame, Sirius with his head tilted back in laughter. It is the same laugh that once made you believe the world could be beautiful. The same laugh that stitched broken hours into joy. And now it’s a blade.

Now it cuts. Because he laughs like nothing was lost. Like he didn’t tear himself out of your life and leave you to bleed in the quiet. Like he doesn’t remember the night you screamed his name until your throat gave out and your knees went red on the marble.

He laughs, and you want to tear the sound out of the air.

You remember it all too clearly — the way the front door slammed like a gunshot, the way you chased after him with shaking hands and a voice that couldn’t carry the weight of your grief. You begged him not to go. You begged like a child, raw and ragged and terrified. And he looked back, once, with something like pity.

Now you are ghosts in the same castle. Passing shadows. No nods. No glances. No names.

You walk past each other like graves being dug on opposite sides of the world. And you do not look back. And he does not turn around.

But your heart still breaks in your chest, quietly, every single time.

They round the corner and time thickens, slow as honey spilled on cold stone. His eyes find yours first—piercing through the crowd, through the clatter of footsteps and whispered names.

For a breath, the corridor dissolves. No James, no Remus, no ticking clocks or careless breezes—just you and him, two children once again, sharing a room heavy with secrets and the soft crackle of an old record player spinning lullabies.

But this time, he does not smile. He does not speak your name. He only looks at you as if trying to recall a face buried beneath years of silence, like the memory itself has fractured and turned to glass too sharp to hold.

Your heart clenches, a sudden, fierce knot, because you remember everything—the way his fingers braided tiny plaits into your hair when exhaustion pulled at your lids, the way your small hand reached for his in the dark before Regulus could even string words together, the way he whispered that you were his favorite, that he would never leave you behind.

But he did.

He burned the letters you wrote, one after another—long, trembling confessions stitched with apologies you never owed. Letters full of Regulus, school, a house growing colder and quieter, a mother retreating into silence, and a brother who refused to eat. You signed each with love, fierce and stubborn, because even after the cracks, even after the distance, you loved him still.

Regulus told you he saw the letters in the fire, unopened. Your handwriting curled into ash like a voice that never mattered. And you cried—not in front of Regulus, but later, submerged in the bathwater, where no one could hear.

You cried as if something sacred had been ripped from your chest, as if your brother had died and left only a hollow shell behind, wandering with someone else’s heart inside.

Now he passes you in the hall, silent and cold. Your fingers twitch, aching with memory, yearning for the ghost of his palm that once cradled your cheek—the night he left, trembling breath promising strength, begging you to protect Regulus when he could no longer do it himself.

You nodded through your sobs, because you were always the older twin by a single minute, and he said it meant something—that you were meant to keep him safe.

You have tried. But Regulus does not want your protection anymore.

You pass him in the corridors too—your twin, your mirror just slightly cracked, a shard drifting farther with every passing year. His eyes have grown colder, sharper, his mouth set like a blade forged from quiet bitterness.

Sometimes he speaks, brief and clipped, syllables sliced thin—news, reminders, fragments of a life you once shared but now only touch through echoes. There is no laughter, no whispered confessions in the dark, only the vast, cold distance measured in the space where hurt has settled deep and unmoving.

And still, you ache for the warmth you once knew. You ache when you see Sirius throw his arm around James like it costs him nothing, when he leans in close and laughs against his shoulder, calling him brother with a light that never shone for you.

You hate yourself for it, for the ugly bloom of envy rising in your chest, a bitter flower twisting through your ribs, because James gets to have him.

James gets to be near him every day, to tease him, to bicker with him, to follow him into trouble and hold a place beside him like it was always meant to be that way.

You used to be that person. You used to be the one Sirius reached for first.

Now you walk past them with your chin lifted, your stomach hollow, wondering if he ever thinks about that night.

Does he remember your hands clutching his sleeve? Your voice cracking as you called after him? Does he think of the blood staining your knees and how long you sat on the steps of Grimmauld Place, shivering long after he was gone?

He does not look back now.

But James does.

His eyes find yours and hold you there, a quiet tenderness breaking beneath the weight of unspoken things. He sees the ghosts too, the empty spaces where love was stolen. Maybe he even feels the ache when Sirius talks about his sister as if she never existed, or only existed in shadows and silence.

James tries to reach for your hand beneath the table, tries to make you laugh in the soft places where the world feels less heavy—but it is not the same. It will never be the same.

Because you are no longer the girl you were when Sirius left. You have spent too many nights wondering why love was not enough to make him stay.

And he is not the brother you remember.

The wind moves gently through the willow branches, like fingers combing through hair. The sunlight glimmers through the gaps in its leaves, casting thin golden lines across your cheek as you lie curled against James beneath the canopy of green.

You should not be here. You both know it. This is not the kind of softness your life has been shaped to allow. But here, in this sliver of stolen time, you forget the weight of your name and the way your chest has ached since you were old enough to know that in the Black family, love always came with locks and keys.

His arm is wrapped around your waist, and your head rests just below his chin. Your fingers are loosely entangled on the warm grass. His heartbeat is steady against your back, a rhythm you are slowly teaching yourself to trust.

You don't speak at first. Just listen—to the breeze, the rustle of willow limbs, the distant laughter from the Quidditch pitch.

And you try not to think about how long it’s been since you laughed like that with someone, without feeling like you were stealing it from a world that was never meant for you.

He shifts slightly, runs a hand through your hair, and you feel his lips brush the top of your head. There is something so gentle about him tonight, and it makes your ribs ache.

You know he is about to ask you something. You always know when James is thinking too much.

“Hey, baby,” he murmurs, voice barely more than a breath, hesitant and fragile, like he’s afraid the sound might shatter the space between you. “Can I ask you something?”

You nod, your head heavy against his chest, eyes shut tight as if the darkness behind your lids might keep the world at bay. You already know what’s coming.

“Have you ever thought about talking to Sirius again?”

The words hit you like ice water spilled over skin. Your whole body stiffens, every nerve on fire, the warmth of his arms suddenly burning too bright, too close.

You sit up with a sharp movement, pulling away like his question has scorched you, like it’s a wound you thought had scabbed over but still bleeds when touched.

His brows knit together in confusion he reaches out, as if to catch you before you fall apart, but you shake your head fiercely, as if to say don’t. Don’t reach for me here.

Your voice comes out sharp, brittle, colder than you expected, words clawing their way from a place you’d hoped was buried deep beyond reach.

“Why would I do that?!”

James blinks slowly, the calm in his gaze unwavering, gentle but not naive.

“Because he’s your brother.”

You laugh then, a sound bitter and quiet, like broken glass scraping against old stone. It catches in your throat and leaves a raw ache in its wake. You stand abruptly, arms crossing over your chest as if to hold yourself together, and you turn away, facing the shimmering lake instead, the silver-blue water reflecting back a fractured version of your own haunted eyes.

“I don’t want to talk about him.”

The silence that follows is thick, heavy with all the things left unsaid. You feel the weight of his gaze burning into your back, soft but relentless.

And somewhere deep inside, the fight inside you trembles—part pain, part stubborn hope—that maybe if you don’t speak his name, you can keep the memory from unraveling completely.

But the truth is a jagged stone lodged in your throat. You’ve thought of him every day since he left—the brother who once braided your hair and whispered promises like a sacred lullaby. The brother who vanished like smoke, leaving only echoes and cold silence behind.

You want to believe that love could have held him here, that if you’d been enough, he wouldn’t have slipped away. But love in your world is never simple.

James sighs deeply, sitting up beside you with a careful softness that somehow feels like it might break under the weight of your silence. “I just think maybe it would help. You’re hurting, and he’s—”

“Don’t.”

The word cuts through the air sharper than you meant it to, like glass breaking in a quiet room. Your voice trembles, but the edge is there, raw and fierce. “Don’t defend him. Don’t pretend you understand.”

James’s brow furrows, confusion and hurt flickering in his eyes. “I’m not pretending. I just know Sirius. He didn’t mean to hurt you. He was hurting too. You know what that house did to him.”

You laugh, but it’s not a laugh. It’s a bitter crack, like a blade scraping bone. “Do I? Do I know what it did to him? Because last I checked—” Your voice catches, then steadies, voice sharp and jagged — “I was there too. I lived it. I breathed the same suffocating air. I walked those same cold hallways. I heard the same poisonous words about blood and duty and silence that built a prison around us all.”

You turn slightly, hands clutching the grass beneath you until your nails dig into dirt. “I watched those cursed portraits scream their curses night and day, felt the walls shrink closer, trapping my breath. I watched my brother—the only one who stayed—fade, twist into someone I barely recognized, someone swallowed by shadows and cold.”

You swallow hard, the memory like a stone lodged in your throat. “And yet, somehow, he’s the one who gets to hurt? The one you all rush to protect? The only one whose pain matters?”

James shifts uncomfortably, voice quiet but earnest. “That’s not what I meant. Not at all.”

But you shake your head, bitter tears burning the edges of your eyes. “No, James. That’s exactly what you meant.”

Your voice cracks, ragged and breaking, revealing the wounds you’ve fought to hide. “You all look at him like he’s some kind of hero. Brave Sirius Black—the runaway, the rebel who escaped the nightmare of that cursed house. The one who got to find Gryffindor, friendship, love. The one who got to build a new life from the ashes.”

Your chest heaves with the weight of everything left unsaid. “And what did I get? What did Regulus get? We got left behind.”

Your hands ball into fists, digging deeper into the earth, grounding yourself to the pain you can still touch. “I begged him to stay. I cried until I had no tears left. I chased after him on bleeding knees, desperate and small, and he left anyway. Left like I was nothing. Like we were nothing.”

You swallow, voice raw, “He never looked back. Never answered a single letter. Never came home. Not for me. Not for Regulus. And I waited. I waited years, hoping maybe one day he would come back. And you want me to just… talk to him now?”

Your breath catches, broken by the shuddering ache in your chest. The world feels hollow, cruel, and empty around you, and the distance between you and Sirius stretches wider than any words could ever cross.

James’s voice drops, soft and cautious, like stepping on fragile glass. “He was just a kid. He was doing what he had to do.”

You laugh, bitter and broken, the sound splitting the silence like a wound. “And I wasn’t?” The words shatter on your cracked lips, voice cracking with the weight you’ve carried far too long. “I was a kid too. Barely thirteen. And I had to stay. Had to sit at that cursed table and swallow every poisonous word Mother spat about the purity of our name. Had to learn to bite my tongue until it bled, lower my eyes until they almost forgot how to look. Had to be perfect — or at least pretend.”

Your hands tremble as you clutch your knees, the ache raw and alive beneath your skin. “I had to watch Regulus vanish into silence, buried under pressure and cold that no one—not one soul—asked if I was okay. No one ever tried to save me.”

James’s hand reaches for you, slow and hesitant, but you recoil like his touch burns you.

You fall back against the tree, the rough bark pressing into your spine, your palms clutching your eyes as if the darkness can swallow the ache whole. The tears come harder now, hot and unrelenting.

“You think he hurts? You think he cries?” Your voice breaks, raw and ragged like a shattered song.

“Because I do. I do every time I see him walk the halls like nothing happened. Every time I watch you two laugh like you’ve known each other forever, and I wonder if he ever laughs like that for me. If he ever remembered me.”

You choke back a sob, voice barely more than a cracked whisper, “I sit in a common room full of snakes and secrets, keeping my head down, swallowing my pride and my pain, because I’m still there. I never left. I never got out.”

“You don’t get it,” you whisper, but the whisper breaks halfway, splintering like thin glass. You’re shaking now, fists curled into the grass as though it can hold you together. “You never will.”

James doesn’t speak. He watches you the way someone watches a dying star—helpless, reverent, a little afraid.

“You were always allowed to be human.” Your voice wavers, rough with disbelief and years of swallowed words. “You were allowed to get angry, to mess up, to fall apart and still be loved. You don’t know what it’s like to live in a house where love is a chain. Where affection only comes after obedience. Where silence is survival.”

You laugh, but it’s not really laughter—it’s the sound a wound might make if it could scream.

“You have people. People who would tear the world apart if you broke. You have a mother who kisses your cheek and a father who’s proud of your name. You have friends who call you home, James. You’re the sun, don’t you see that? You’re the sun and everyone else just gets to grow around you.”

You’re crying harder now, tears streaking down your cheeks in thick, aching lines. You try to wipe them away, but they keep coming.

“You got to love Sirius without bleeding for it! You got to become his brother in the safety of a dormitory, with warmth and laughter and stolen butterbeer. You didn’t have to earn it in that house. You didn’t have to survive it!”

Your voice rises now, shrill with grief. “You got the best parts of him. The jokes, the loyalty, the fire. I got the version who left. The one who didn’t even look back.”

You gasp for breath between sobs, pressing your palms against your eyes until you see stars.

“Do you know what it feels like to scream for someone as they walk away? I begged him. I begged him not to go. I ran after him barefoot in the cold, my voice going hoarse. And he left anyway. He left me there.”

You pull your knees to your chest, rocking slightly. “He chose to leave. And then he chose you. He chose you over me. Over Regulus. Over every piece of his old life. You’re his brother now. You’re his family. And I—”

You look up at James then, face soaked, lips trembling. “I’m just a ghost he doesn’t talk about.”

The words fall out of you like stones from your mouth, one by one, and each one seems to hurt more than the last.

“You sit around the fire with him and laugh about pranks and broomsticks and I sit alone in the dark, wondering if he remembers the sound of my voice. If he ever thinks about the way I cried that night. If he ever sees my handwriting and feels guilt. Or if it’s just... easier. Easier to forget I existed.”

James moves again, slowly, like approaching a wounded animal. He doesn’t touch you this time. He just listens.

You curl tighter around yourself. “You want me to forgive him. You want me to reach out. But you don’t know what it costs to touch someone who let you rot. You don’t know what it’s like to scream for someone and never hear your name again.”

Your voice drops to a whisper—ruined, splintered, soft.

“He’s your brother now.”

And then, the softest, most broken truth:

“But he was mine first.”

You fold in on yourself completely, hands trembling, heart heaving with grief too old for your bones, and the only sound left in the world is your breath—shattered, uneven—echoing in the hush beneath the willow branches.

James looks at you then like he finally sees the wound beneath your skin. Not something angry. Something abandoned. Something small and bleeding and still waiting on the floor of a house that swallowed you whole.

-

The year slips through your fingers like water, and you try to hold it tight, but it’s already gone.

It’s strange how time moves differently when you’re pretending everything is fine, the days bleeding at the edges into one another with a quiet rhythm of routine that softens sharp edges but never heals the cracks beneath.

You go to class, you study, you sit beside James under the willow tree and pretend not to ache when Sirius walks by laughing with Remus, a sound that feels like a sun you cannot touch anymore.

You watch Regulus drift further away, his shoulders straighter, his eyes colder, his voice a careful blade you no longer recognize—once a warmth you could finish, now a silence you cannot breach.

You used to finish each other’s sentences; now he barely finishes his own. He doesn’t talk to you much anymore, not really. At the long, silent dinner table, he sits across from you, nodding when spoken to, answering questions like they’re lines from a script he’s been forced to memorize but doesn’t want to perform.

He disappears into his room, each time returning quieter, more distant, as if someone has reached inside him and hollowed him out with a spoon, leaving only a shell that reflects nothing back but shadows.

You want to scream at him, to shake him until he remembers how to breathe, to pull him back by the collar like Sirius did when you were children and Regulus was about to climb too high in the trees, but you don’t.

Because you don’t know if he would let you catch him, and you don’t know if you still have the strength to hold on to what’s already slipping through your fingers.

So you keep your head down, your voice soft, your secrets close, like fragile embers you cannot risk exposing to the wind. And still the year ends.

There’s something about the last few weeks of school that tastes like dread, like metal pressed cold against your tongue, like the low rumble of a storm you know is coming but cannot stop. You walk the corridors counting how many times Sirius glances your way and how many times Regulus doesn’t, memorizing James’s grin like it might be the last warmth you touch for months.

You stop sending letters home because there is no one waiting to read them.

Because summer means going back. Not home. Back.

Grimmauld Place isn’t a home. It is a mausoleum, a cold, echoing archive of all the things you never got to say, the silence between your words etched deep into the walls.

It smells of wax and dust and something darker, something ancient and unforgiving beneath the surface. The portraits still scream behind their frames. The silver still gleams with a sharpness that cuts through the gloom. The curtains block out the sun like heavy lids refusing to open.

Your room remains untouched, waiting in suspended breath for you to return and pretend you don’t hate it.

You dread the silence most. The way it wraps itself around the furniture like cobwebs spun from forgotten sorrow, the way the house watches you with a patient, waiting hunger, as if it expects you to fold back into its cold embrace and fall in line with the shadows that have claimed it.

Regulus is already there. He has been slipping for a while now. You have seen it in the way he avoids certain topics, in the sharp flinch when someone utters the word “Mudblood,” in the way his fists clench so tightly at insults to the Dark Lord that his knuckles whiten, before he tries to play it off as nothing.

His robes darken with every passing day. His smiles become rarer, like a flame too weak to chase away the night. His wand is never far from his grasp, a silent threat held close, as if waiting for the moment he must become someone else—someone you barely recognize anymore.

So you pack your trunk slowly, each movement deliberate as if by folding your robes with care you might fold yourself back into a place that no longer holds you. You close your books with trembling fingers, the pages whispering secrets you cannot bear to carry anymore.

You don’t say goodbye to Sirius because his eyes no longer meet yours, and you don’t say goodbye to James because you know the pain would only unravel tighter if words were spoken.

You watch as Sirius swings his arm around James’s shoulders, already grinning at the thought of staying with the Potters for the summer, and something inside you twists — not anger, not sadness, but a sharp, aching envy that claws at your ribs like a hungry bird.

Because he gets to escape.

He gets to walk into a house that smells like sugar and laughter and freedom, a sanctuary where love is worn openly like a second skin.

He gets to sleep in a room where nothing screams at him in the dark, where the walls cradle him instead of closing in. He gets to sit at a table where voices rise and fall like music, where people eat too much and ask about your day as if it matters, where family is not a story told in fragments but a living breath around you.

And you get the house.

The house with your name carved deeply into the bannister, a cold reminder of roots that bind you to shadows. The house where every unspoken word drips from the ceiling like damp, settling into the cracks until the silence itself weighs heavy and thick.

The house where your mother waits, her eyes colder than winter and expectations sharper than knives, where portraits hiss and leer from their frames like silent witnesses to your undoing. The house where Regulus drifts through the halls like a ghost caught between worlds, already halfway gone, already fading into something you cannot hold.

The house where no one speaks Sirius’s name aloud, where you are still the older twin, and yet each day you feel smaller, as if your own shadow is shrinking beneath the weight of everything unsaid.

You step off the train, and the air already feels colder, a thin frost settling on your skin even though the season has only just begun.

The night tastes bitter with regret, heavy and metallic on your tongue, and Grimmauld Place waits like a patient predator, breathing you in as though you never left, as though it has been holding its breath for your return. It closes the door behind you with the hush of finality, a sound like a tomb sealing shut.

The silence settles on your shoulders like dust, thick and suffocating, a reminder that you belong here — even if you wish with every trembling heartbeat that you did not.

You try not to flinch when the wards hum around you. When the doorknob bites your palm. When the portraits blink awake at the scent of your return. They watch you with knowing, disapproving eyes, oil-painted mouths already ready to spit something cruel.

This house was never a home, but once it breathed — not warmth, not safety, but noise, presence, life. It used to echo with slammed doors and uneven footsteps racing up the stairs, with Sirius shouting something reckless and defiant down the corridor just to make someone angry enough to shout back.

It used to be full of Regulus’s low hum when he thought no one could hear him, that quiet little song he’d hum while reading in corners, while brushing his hair, while stitching up the tear in your sleeve when you’d come back from a duel pretending you weren’t crying.

It used to be full of voices, arguing and demanding and laughing and hurting and always, always living.

Now it is quiet in the way that makes your chest ache, the kind of silence that feels like a punishment rather than a peace. The air tastes like dust, like something lost and forgotten and left to rot behind velvet curtains and locked doors. The carpets still muffle your steps, but there's no one left to hear them anyway.

This is the first summer without Regulus.

Not the shadow version that’s lingered these past few years, the one who walks too quietly and listens too carefully and parrots the words of your parents with a voice that isn’t his. Not the stranger in dark robes who stops humming and starts watching. Not the version who still existed in some half-form, drifting down corridors without speaking, but still there.

No, this is the first summer without him, without the boy who used to read beside you in the library, his knee bumping yours under the table. The one who used to steal sweets from the kitchen and then blame you with an innocent blink. The one who tied your shoelaces together under the table at family dinners and bit back a grin when you tripped on your way out.

That Regulus faded the way ink fades in water — slowly, gently, irreversibly. You didn’t notice at first, only that he laughed less, and then not at all. That his hands stopped reaching for yours. That his voice grew thinner and his silences heavier. You lost him the way you lose something to illness, slowly and with a thousand tiny betrayals of the body before the final breath.

But this time is different.

This time, he did not come back.

No warning, no owl, no quiet knock on your door, no hurried explanation in a whisper only you would understand. Just silence. Just your mother’s lips pressed into a thin line when you asked, and your father’s eyes skimming past you like your question was a speck on his glasses.

You sit in his empty room. It smells like dust and lavender and something that aches in your teeth. The bed is still made. The books are still in their careful order, spines aligned like soldiers. His desk is untouched. His quill still leans in the inkwell.

The window is cracked just slightly, letting in the faintest breath of air, like the room itself hasn’t quite decided if it should keep holding on. There’s dust on the windowsill now — and there never used to be — and that tells you more than anything else. That the room has been waiting. That no one has come back.

This time, he is truly gone.

And you are alone.

You try to shrink yourself into corners. You keep your footsteps light, your voice quieter still. You tie your hair the way your mother prefers it and fold your napkin just so and tuck your wand out of sight at the table.

You speak only when spoken to. You say nothing when the family says things that hurt. You keep your grief compact and clean and buried deep in your chest like a well-folded shirt, like something shameful.

You make yourself smaller every day, and still, somehow, it is never enough.

But this summer — it’s different. This summer, they hand you your fate like a gift wrapped in silver and blood, gleaming like something sacred, rotting like something buried.

You sit at the long dining table, the one with claw-footed legs and too much silence, and you hear the words spill from your mother’s mouth like prophecy. Your father folds his hands, watching you without warmth, without softness, only the calm expectation of obedience.

They tell you the name.

He is a man older than both of them, old enough to have stood beside your grandfather, old enough to know better, but still willing. He is loyal. He is powerful. He will honor the purity of your blood.

He will preserve the name of the House of Black.

You are seventeen. He is not young. You do not need to ask his age. You already feel it sinking into your skin like ice.

Your stomach coils, tight and bitter.

“No,” you say. Soft at first. Like a breath you’re trying to swallow.

Your mother doesn’t even blink. “You will.”

“No.” Again, louder this time. Sharper. The air around you stills.

She lifts her chin, unbothered. “You are a daughter of this house. This is your duty.”

“Duty?” The word tastes like ash in your mouth. “You want me to marry a man three times my age so you can keep the family name alive like it’s something holy. You want me quiet and obedient and grateful.” You’re trembling, but you don’t care.

“I am not a vessel for your legacy.”

Your father rises. His voice cuts across the room like steel. “You will not speak to your mother with such—”

“You don’t get to speak for me,” you snap, voice breaking at the edges. “You don’t get to decide who I am just because you raised me to be afraid of you!”

Silence floods the room, thick and bitter.

“You want to talk about duty?” you say, your voice low, shaking with fury. “Let’s talk about Sirius. You pushed him out like he was nothing. You wrote him off, erased him, like he never belonged to you in the first place. And Regulus—”

You choke, just for a second. But it’s enough to taste the grief under your rage.

“Regulus is gone. And you didn’t even flinch.”

Your mother’s gaze turns to ice. “Sirius was a disgrace,” she says. “Regulus was loyal. We will not lose the last child we have left.”

You laugh. It sounds wrong. Crooked. Cracked open.

“You already did.”

You stare at them — these people who gave you their name and called it love.

“I’m not your child,” you say, the words leaving your mouth like a final spell. “I’m what’s left. After the screaming. After the silence. After all the sons you burned through.”

You do not cry in front of them. You never cry in front of them.

The house taught you early that tears are weakness, that silence is survival, that emotion is something to be buried beneath polished shoes and perfect posture.

But the moment the door shuts behind you, the weight drops. You press your back to the cold wood and slide down until you are curled on the floor, your body folding into itself like it’s trying to vanish. And you cry. Not the gentle kind. Not the cinematic kind.

You cry until your throat burns and your face is damp and your chest feels like it’s being carved open from the inside. You cry the way the walls might, if they could. With all the grief they’ve soaked up over the years spilling out through the cracks.

You cry for every year you were quiet. For every word you never said. For every version of yourself you buried to stay alive in this house.

You feel seventeen and seven and seventy all at once. You feel like a ghost of your own girlhood, flickering between doorframes. You feel the house watching. Breathing. Remembering.

The floor beneath you is cold and unkind, and still you cling to it because it's the only thing solid left. You think of Sirius, and the way he used to laugh so loudly it shook the curtains. You think of him sleeping now in a house full of warmth and sugar and safety, a house where love isn't earned but given, where no one flinches when he reaches for joy.

You think of Regulus, not the boy they mourn in stiff silence, but the boy who once left crooked notes in your textbooks and stared out windows like he was already halfway elsewhere.

You think of the way he disappeared — not all at once, but slowly, like a tide pulling further and further out until you could no longer see where he ended and the darkness began.

And you think of James.

James with his easy smile and his steady hands, who never asks for more than you can give, who touches your shoulder like it means something, who holds your gaze when the room is too loud.

James, who looks at you like there is still something worth saving, like you are not the ruin this house has made of you, like you are more than a name etched into silver and expectation.

You wonder what he would say if he saw you now, curled like a child, broken open in the hallway like a spell gone wrong. You wonder if he would still look at you like you matter. If he would still believe you could be more than this.

But the truth is: you are not Sirius, brave enough to run and let it all burn behind him. You are not Regulus, quiet enough to disappear without a sound. You are not even James, bright enough to belong to a world that doesn’t hurt like this.

You are just you — the one who stayed.

The one who held her breath while the house tore itself apart. The one who learned how to fold pain into politeness, how to wear duty like perfume, how to live without taking up too much space.

You stayed because someone had to. Because someone had to carry the name. Because someone had to keep the silence from swallowing everything.

And now, you are the last one. A girl with no room left to run, with a dress being stitched by house-elves who won’t meet your eyes, with a fate wrapped in silver and blood and sealed with your mother’s satisfaction. A girl being handed over like an heirloom. A girl they call duty. A girl they call legacy. A girl they will call wife.

And you cry not because you are weak — but because you were strong for too long. Because this house eats daughters and calls it honor.

Because deep down, you are still waiting for someone to come back. Or take you away. Or give you a reason to leave. But no one comes. And so you cry.

So you give in. Not to the marriage — no, that would be too clean, too final — but to something slower, heavier, something like gravity or grief.

You give in to the house. To the quiet. To the truth you’ve always known but never dared to say aloud. You let it wrap around you like ivy, creeping in through the cracks in the walls and the bruises you keep hidden under your sleeves. It isn’t sudden. It isn’t cinematic. It’s the kind of surrender that looks like silence.

Each day becomes a ritual of forgetting. You wake late, eyes heavy with sleep you never earned. You push food around your plate until it cools and congeals and no one bothers to tell you to eat. You wander from room to room like a ghost, dragging your fingertips along the wallpaper as if it might remember you.

You reread the same book, the same page, five times, and the words never stick — they slide through your brain like oil through a sieve. You braid your hair tighter and tighter each morning until your scalp stings, until the ache becomes something solid you can carry. You stop speaking at meals.

You stop asking where Regulus went. You stop writing letters to Sirius, because no one writes back and ghosts don’t send owls.

And then one night, when the wind wails like a child outside your window and the rain lashes against the glass with the fury of everything you’ve swallowed, your feet carry you where your mind dares not go.

Up the stairs. Down the hallway. To the door you haven’t touched since he left. Sirius’s room.

You shouldn’t go in. The house groans like it’s warning you. But your hand is already on the handle.

The room is a battlefield.

The bed is splintered, cracked in the middle like a snapped spine. The posters are slashed, half-hanging like open wounds. The wallpaper is clawed down to the plaster. His name, once spelled in bold ink across the wall, is a black smear now — a wound too scorched to read. The air smells like old fire and bitter memory. You step inside.

You lower yourself to the floor with slow, trembling hands, and that’s when it breaks.

The scream tears from you before you can stop it — low and ragged and real.

You cry for Sirius, who ran and burned and somehow found something close to freedom. You cry for Regulus, who disappeared into silence and shadows and never looked back. You cry for James, whose laughter doesn’t belong in this house, whose kindness is a bruise you keep pressing. But mostly, you cry for yourself.

And when there are no more tears left to cry, your eyes catch something under the bed — a soft flicker of gray, tucked away like a shy secret waiting patiently.

Eventually, with trembling fingers, you take up your quill and smooth a sheet of parchment across your desk.

You’ve written to him a hundred times before—maybe more. None of them ever came back. None of them were ever answered.

And this one, you know, will be the last.

Dear Sirius, I do not know if this will ever reach you. I imagine it will not. And even if it did, I cannot picture you reading it. Perhaps you would glance at the ink, then turn away, pretending not to know the hand it came from. Perhaps you have already taught yourself to forget. Still, I write. I write because I do not know what else to do with my hands, now that they have nothing left to hold. Regulus is gone. They will not say how or where or why, only that he vanished, and everyone speaks of him now in the same tone they used when they stopped saying your name. He is gone, and I feel something in me beginning to follow. This summer has been long. There is sun in the air and dust in the curtains and no one speaks above a whisper. They say I am to be betrothed by autumn. He is pure of blood and proper of name and perfectly forgettable. I have already begun practicing how to look content beside him. Everyone tells me how lucky I am. No one asks if I am well. The house is colder than I remember. I think you were the last warm thing in it. Since you left, it has not once felt like home. The corridors are quieter now. The portraits turn their eyes away. Today I found your old toy — Buttons, the little grey dog with the floppy ear. He was under your bed, asleep in dust, but still whole. I pressed him to my face and thought I might fall apart from the scent of him. Smoke and summer and boyhood. I found Honeybell too. Her stitches are split and her eye is gone. But I held her anyway, the way you hold something that remembers what you cannot say aloud. Regulus’s was still in his room. Mister Wisp. The black raven. He was soaked through with rain. His wings sagged. His thread was fraying. He looked like something abandoned. He looked like someone who had waited too long. I placed them on your bedroom floor. Buttons. Honeybell. Mister Wisp. The three of us, in our own way. I sat with them until the sun went down and the house forgot me again. I hope you are safe. I hope there is laughter where you are. I hope someone brushes the hair from your eyes with tenderness. I hope you never once feel as forgotten as we did when you vanished. I want to hate you, but I never could. This is the last letter. Not because I have stopped loving you. That would be easier. No, I am stopping because love should not be sent into silence forever. And I have been silent for too long.

Ta Sœur, Pour Toujours

You fold the letter and press it to your heart, feeling the weight of every word settle deep inside you.

You sit there in the broken room, cradling the worn plushes as the first pale light of morning spills through the cracked window, soft and hesitant, like forgiveness that always comes too late.

The summer stretches endlessly, longer than any before, a slow and quiet rot rather than rest—a soft unraveling that steals breath and hope alike. Time does not move but lingers, thick and suffocating, pressing down on your bones like a heavy secret.

Outside, the war no longer whispers but rumbles beyond the horizon. Names vanish like ghosts, smiles falter under the weight of dread, and the sun mourns openly, bleeding orange into clouds as if the sky itself knew the darkness to come.

Grimmauld Place waits in silence. Its walls have always been cold, but now they hold a quiet deeper than stillness, a silence like held breath, like a house on the edge of swallowing you whole.

And then Sirius returns.

He had never meant to come back, not truly.

But something pulls him through the shadows, not duty, not family in the way you understood it. Perhaps it was memory, haunting and relentless. Perhaps regret, bitter and sharp. Perhaps it was you—the echo of your voice that chased him through sleepless nights, the image of you at thirteen, trembling and begging him to stay, a scar etched deep across his ribs. 

So he came back.

By the end of summer, Sirius Black stood before the house he had sworn never to return to, and this time he did not knock. This time he did not wait. The door groaned open as if it had been waiting for him all along. Dust hung heavy in the air, the stench of magic—old, burnt, and wrong—clinging like smoke caught deep in his lungs.

Something had happened here. Something violent. The house was not quiet. It was hollow. Empty. Ruined.

And that was when he found you.

Not sitting in the drawing room, not wrapped in a blanket with a book and tea, not curled in the window seat staring out at a life that had never been yours.

But lying on the marble floor, exactly where he had left you.

You did not die screaming. There was no flash of rage, no final incantation on your tongue, no defiant end befitting the fire that once lived inside you.

You were simply still. Folded into yourself, as if the world had leaned too hard on your ribs and you forgot how to fight it. Blood pooled around you like petals from a ruined bloom, soft and red and blooming in silence.

Your hair fanned around your face like something sacred — a fallen halo, a crown undone — and your limbs lay slack in a kind of surrender that spoke not of weakness but of exhaustion. Like the house had finally exhaled, and you let it take you with the breath.

Sirius dropped the moment he saw you. Not with ceremony, not with noise — just gravity doing what grief always does.

The way your knees once buckled when he walked away.

The way your voice had cracked, trying to stretch the word “stay” into something that could bind him.

The way your chest must have caved in, not from a curse, but from absence. He fell in the way people fall when something inside them has been waiting to shatter for years.

He reached for you. What else was there left to reach for, if not the girl who once braided red ribbons through his coat sleeves, who lined his pockets with honey drops and letters that smelled of ink and lavender, who sat beside him on staircases and said nothing, simply stayed.

He had run for so long — from this house, from this name, from everything that shaped him — but no one ever told him that ghosts have longer arms than memory. That your voice, the soft echo of it, would find him across every burning bridge.

And now you were here. Not thirteen anymore, not crying in the hallway where he left you. But also, not gone from that moment either.

You had never truly moved past the marble floor. He saw it in the way your fingers still curled inward, as if clinging to something invisible. In the tilt of your head, angled just like the night you begged him not to go.

He saw the years between then and now, every one of them, stretched like threads between your ribs — unravelled, fragile, frayed.

He saw the waiting. The tea that went cold on windowsills. The letters that never found their way past trembling hands. The summers that rotted slowly around you while everyone else grew up.

The stuffed animals lined like offerings beneath dust-heavy light. Buttons. Honeybell. Mister Wisp. Childhood turned reliquary.

He saw it all and understood too late that grief does not knock — it carves its name into your skin and waits. It waited for him here.

He pressed his forehead to yours and whispered your name like a prayer never answered. He had lived, but not really. Not in any way that mattered.

You had stayed, but not whole. You had waited so long for someone who was always running, and now that he was still, you were gone.

The sun began to rise, golden and slow, creeping through the cracks like a forgiveness that had missed its hour. It lit the marble floor like a chapel.

But it could not touch you. It could only fall across your shoulder, warm and useless. The kind of light that arrives after the room has already emptied.

And Sirius stayed there. Not as the rebel or the Black heir or the boy who broke free. But as a brother.

A brother who came home too late. A brother who looked at the cost and could not look away.

Time passed for him. He found love. Friends. A family not built of blood, but of choice. He laughed again. He dreamed. He lived. The world opened for him, and he stepped through — a boy turned man, a soul scraped raw but mending, slowly, beautifully. There were hands that held him.

Voices that called him home. Places where the sky was wide enough to forget. And he let himself forget.

And you stayed.

You stayed in the house that swallowed your name like a secret. In halls that knew only how to echo orders and lock away softness. With a father who spoke in sharp edges. A mother who carved obedience into you like scripture.

A twin who disappeared — not all at once, but in whispers and footsteps and doors that no longer opened. You stayed among portraits that scowled at your breath. Among books that weighed more than comfort. Among silences that wrapped around your throat until you mistook them for lullabies.

You stayed. Right where he left you. And the world, as it always did, looked away.

Except this time, the blood wasn’t from scraped knees or childish scuffles.

It was from the war that bloomed like rot through every crack in your home. From the letters you weren’t allowed to send. From the screams you weren’t allowed to make. From the spells you learned not to cast. From the hope you were forced to smother before it ever took its first breath.

And Sirius wept.

Not the kind of weeping that shatters in public. Not the kind that can be soothed by arms or words or tea gone cold.

This was the kind of weeping that hollowed. That stripped him to the marrow. That made him reach for a version of you that no longer breathed.

He wept for the sister whose hands once clutched his in the dark, when the storms rattled the windows and the world felt too big.

He wept for the girl who tucked notes into his pocket when Mother screamed. He wept for the ghost of you still sitting on the staircase, waiting for a brother who never turned back.

He wept for the birthdays you spent alone. For the letters he never wrote. For the words he never said. For the child you were — bright-eyed and bruised and so full of belief.

For the woman you could have been — fierce and aching and free.

For the way you died in the exact place he left you.

And for the way he only came back when there was no breath left to forgive him.

Time seemed to pass, though slower now — not measured in calendars or seasons, but in aches. In absences. In the small betrayals of memory.

For Sirius, time lost its rhythm. It did not tick or toll. It bled. It staggered. It sighed through floorboards and doorways and walls that still remembered the sound of your footsteps.

Time became the color of mourning — the dull grey of ash, the deep bruise of regret, the cold white of hospital sheets that never warmed beneath your weight.

It moved in the dust he could not bear to sweep, in the scent of your perfume fading soft on a pillowcase, in the broken music box that no longer turned, in the echo of your laughter — not in reality, but in the cruel trick of dreams.

He searched for you in everything, in the corners of rooms, in the backs of crowds, in the shadowed silence of the old stairwell where you once sang lullabies to the dark.

And when he found the letter — the one you never sent, crumpled at the back of a drawer, ink smeared as though you’d tried to erase your own voice — he pressed it to his lips and sobbed like a boy again. Like the child who promised he’d take you with him. Who swore you’d never be left behind.

Three plushes laid neatly beside each other, like a shrine to what was once whole. Not toys anymore, but gravestones — soft and worn and sacred.

They should have meant nothing. Just fabric, stuffing, thread. But Sirius could barely look at them without his chest caving in.

His own — hadn’t moved in years. You must’ve thought he’d come back for it. That if you left it untouched, just as he left it, maybe it would bring him home.

Yours was different. It was torn down the middle, the seam split like a scar, like a scream frozen in time. The stuffing spilled out like spilled insides, like something wounded and left to rot. It looked like it had tried to hold itself together for too long, and finally failed.

And Regulus’ — pale blue-grey, delicate in a way only he had been — soaked through and warped from rain. It lay slumped over, waterlogged and forgotten, as if the storm outside had wept it into surrender. The window above had cracked open, and the sky had poured in for hours. Sirius liked to think the heavens had mourned with him that day. That even the sky had broken, just a little.

You never knew, but Sirius never let them go.

Not once.

Even when the world fell apart. Even when the Order returned and war carved new hollows into their lives.

Even when Azkaban loomed like a ghost at his shoulder. He kept them — hidden, at first, under floorboards and false bottoms of trunks. Then folded into boxes labeled with things like “storage” or “old keepsakes,” as if a name could make them matter less.

But they always came back out. Back to his bedside. Back into his hands on sleepless nights. Because they weren’t just toys. They were the last soft things left. The only parts of his childhood that hadn’t turned to ash.

They were what remained of the real family he had chosen — not the one etched into tapestries or carved into rings, but the one built in whispers and quiet dreams.

You, Regulus, and him. Three children clinging to hope like a secret. Three hearts hoping that if they held each other tightly enough, they could outrun their legacy. They could be something else. Someone else. Someone free.

But grief is not kind. It is greedy. It takes and takes and keeps on taking.

So it took Regulus, too.

No goodbye. No body. Just whispers in the dark — that he had gone beneath the water, chasing a kind of redemption Sirius hadn’t known his brother still believed in. That he had died trying to undo what he never had the power to fix. A boy with the name of a star, drowning in a sea too vast to name.

And Sirius had hated him, once — for his silence, for his compliance, for surviving the home that killed you. But when Regulus vanished, Sirius understood he’d been wrong. Regulus hadn’t survived. He’d only delayed the dying. Now it was just him, and the plushes — three relics, three ghosts, three pieces of a family no one ever thought to grieve.

Because what were children like them, if not warnings? What were Black children, if not cautionary tales?

1994

Years later, Sirius will stand before a boy with too-bright eyes and a scar that speaks of wars no child should remember. And in the boy’s grin — wide, reckless, full of sun — Sirius will see James, not as memory, but as marrow, as instinct.

But it's not James that makes him ache, not really.

It’s the quiet moments, the in-between ones — when the boy furrows his brow in thought, or stares too long at the stars, or speaks with a gentleness he doesn’t even know he carries.

That’s when Sirius sees Regulus, not in likeness but in the ache of being too young for so much weight.

And most of all, he sees you.

He sees you in the boy’s stubborn defiance, in the way he fights for others before himself, in the way he loves — fiercely, awkwardly, with every unguarded part of him. He sees you in the boy’s eyes when he reaches for Sirius without hesitation. He sees the child you once were, all scraped knees and wild dreams, asking impossible questions and believing in things too big to name.

And it undoes him. Every single time.

Because this boy, this Harry, carries all the pieces of the ones he lost — but he carries you most of all.

Sirius will not know how to name that kind of grace. Only that it feels like standing in the past and being forgiven by it. 

And in that child, in the fragile miracle of his existence, Sirius will understand that love does not end. It threads itself into blood and bone and story. It survives. Even when nothing else does.

And that understanding — that impossible, aching recognition — will be the cruelest grace of all. Because by then, the war will have come and gone, carving its tally marks into the bones of everyone left standing.

He will have buried too many. James, Lily, and names he once spoke with laughter now spoken in silence, in dreams. The fire will have gone out, and Sirius will have learned to live in the smoke. A man half-built from memory, half-held together by loss. He will carry it all, quietly.

The old house on Grimmauld Place will still stand, but he will not return. Some ghosts are too sacred to disturb, and some rooms still remember how to bleed.

Yours will remain untouched — the air thick with dust and song, the bed still hiding three plush toys like relics of a time when the world had not yet shattered. The scent of childhood still clinging to the curtains, as if waiting for someone to come home.

And though the world will move forward without him — blooming and burning and beginning again — Sirius will remain quietly stitched into the edges of it, in every reckless laugh, every act of love carved in defiance, every child who believes that family is something you choose.

Because what he lost cannot be measured in names or battles or years. It is deeper than that. It is a wound shaped like a sister’s lullaby, a brother’s silence, a best friend’s grin. It is the kind of grief that builds a home inside your ribs and dares you to live with it.

And even when there is no one left to speak your name aloud, Sirius will. Not out of duty, but because somewhere within him, the boy who once held your hand still waits in the dark.

He still listens for the echo of your laughter through silent halls, still glances at the doorway like you might walk through, still dreams of a world where everything broken might find a way to mend.

There is a quiet place in him that never grew older than sixteen, still caught in the house where you stayed behind, still curled beside you in the dark, still whispering stories of escape to the ceiling.

That part of him hears your voice when the world forgets how to be kind. 

It sees your eyes in every child who refuses to stop hoping, every child with bright eyes and a scar on their forehead — especially the one who looks at him like he is something good.

It believes, even now, that the love you gave was too bright to vanish, too true to ever fade. 

Sirius Black remained — not because he survived, but because love, once given, does not know how to leave, and grief, once born, does not know how to die.

And then, years later, it was his cousin who ended him — blood of his blood, born of the same ruin, raised on the same silken lies, sipping from the same poisoned cup. Bellatrix did not strike like chance, but like prophecy, like the final breath of a story written long before they ever lived it.

It was not kindness that undid them, nor mercy. It was inheritance — a name carved too deep, a legacy that devoured its own.

In the end, nothing could tear down the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black.

Except itself.

For those whose fate was never their own,

for the one who bore the weight alone,

for the one who stayed,

so ends the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black.

-

a/n: um..hi? is this too angsty? :(

[untitlzd]

rich boys don't get dirty

top!park sunghoon x btm!male reader smut

After a strange blog post makes its rounds, Y/n is already on edge. While rushing down the hallway, he accidentally bumps into Sunghoon, spilling tea all over his pristine white shirt. It could’ve ended there—but Sunghoon doesn’t let things slide.

a continuation of ''silence doesn’t stop rich boys.'' & continued in "rich boys don't lose."

warnings: elitism, power dynamics, possessiveness, semi-public sex, rough sex (kinda?), some praising and degrading, unprotected sex, no prep, lowkey inspired by gossip girl.

Y/n was still dizzy from that night at Jake’s penthouse. The memories flickered behind his eyes like the afterimage of a camera flash—bright, disorienting, and impossible to ignore. Every glance, every whispered word, every brush of skin lingered in his mind like a wine stain on silk: impossible to clean, even if you tried. He’d hoped that time might dilute the tension, bring clarity, or at least let the city’s rhythm carry him past it. But Manhattan didn’t pause for introspection—and neither did Jake Sim.

Jake still moved through the polished corridors of St. Augustine’s with that signature ease: every step calculated, every smile polished to perfection. Nothing about him had shifted. Not his posture. Not his expression. Not the untouchable air of someone born with secrets and taught never to drop them. It was unsettling how well he wore the mask. Unsettling... and, in some twisted way, comforting.

Because despite everything, Y/n couldn’t say things had changed between them—not outwardly. Their connection still lived in stolen glances and wordless tension, the quiet understanding that bloomed in shared silences. But something had cracked beneath the surface. 

Jake’s touch lingered now. His fingers brushed just a second too long across Y/n’s wrist. A palm hovered at the base of his spine. A thigh pressed under a desk—deliberate and slow. There was a new weight to it all, something close to possession, and far from accidental. In their world, nothing was meaningless. Especially not touch.

Y/n didn’t lean in, but he didn’t pull away either. He watched. He waited. Stillness was a skill here, and patience was armor.

But even a perfect performance could be ruptured by one thing: the blog.

It was gospel in their world. Not just read—followed, worshipped. The kind of institution that could break a trust fund kid faster than a scandalous divorce or a dropped IPO. It didn’t matter how careful you were. When that notification hit—sharp and distinct as a gavel—it cut through everything.

Conversations stopped. Phones lit up. Eyes flicked to screens with the urgency of addicts chasing a fix.

This time, the post was simple.

A grainy photo. Blurry hallway. Shadows. A figure entering a guest bedroom.

Jake.

Y/n’s blood turned to ice.

The image was just vague enough to be deniable—but to him, it may as well have been high-definition. He recognized the hallway. The moment. The angle. And the caption?

“guest list was private. so who’s slipping into places they don’t belong?”

Fuck.

Y/n’s hands tightened around the edges of his school uniform blazer. He pulled the fabric closer, as if it might shield him from the wave of cold crawling up his back. His steps echoed down the corridor—too loud, too fast. His mind reeled. Should he call his father? The man whose firm name protected their family’s reputation like armor? Or should he confront Jake? Demand answers? Apologies? Or maybe he just needed to walk. To not stand still long enough to panic.

Because in this city, names like his could be scrubbed from history in a single rumor. 

He wasn’t born into whispered legacies and summer homes in Tuscany. His power came from crafted strategy. From effort. And effort didn’t impress anyone here.

Which is why, when he turned the corner—distracted, anxious—he didn’t notice the figure in his path until it was too late.

The impact was jarring. A sharp slap of shoulder against chest, a splash of liquid, the hollow thunk of a paper cup hitting the floor. Silence followed, stretched taut like a pulled wire.

And then Y/n looked up.

Park Sunghoon.

Sunghoon was one of those people who seemed immune to chaos. His posture never broke. His tone rarely wavered. But his eyes always said enough. He was elegance without effort, manners without warmth. Y/n had never figured out exactly where the Park family fortune came from—only that it had existed for so long it felt like the bloodline itself bled gold. He, Jake, Y/n and others stood at the top of the social food chain at St. Augustine’s, but Sunghoon was the most enigmatic. Reserved. Impossibly polished. A ghost at charity galas, a blur on Monaco racetracks. His entire existence whispered wealth and control—not loud, not bragging. Just... undeniable.

He wasn’t intimidating because of what he had. He was intimidating because he never had to explain it.

Now, standing in front of Y/n, a half-empty cup of tea dangling from his fingertips and his pristine white uniform shirt soaked clean through, he looked like something carved out of old money and diamond-cut confidence. The tea had turned the fabric translucent—almost clinging—making the faint outlines of his toned torso suddenly, undeniably visible.

Y/n’s gaze caught on the defined lines of his chest, the subtle curve of his waist, the elegant slope of his collarbone. He didn’t mean to look. It just... happened. A second too long. A beat too still. And when he tore his gaze away, he felt the warmth bloom across his cheeks, betraying him in a way words never could.

But Sunghoon didn’t speak.

Not at first.

His eyes raked over Y/n with practiced disinterest, jaw locked, expression unreadable. His silence was heavier than yelling.

Y/n swallowed, carefully. “I didn’t see you, I—”

“Obviously,” Sunghoon snapped, interrupting. His voice was low, but edged like a knife. “You never do. You walk around here like it’s all yours. Like the uniform gives you permission to forget who you are.”

Y/n’s heart stammered in his chest, but his face remained composed. “I said I’m sorry. I can—”

He didn’t get to finish.

Sunghoon stepped forward, grabbed Y/n by the wrist with cool, firm fingers, and yanked him down the corridor without another word. No room for protest. No explanation. The door to the marble-floored bathroom swung open and slammed shut behind them with a resonant echo.

He let go only to strip the soaked shirt from his body in a single smooth motion. Then, he tossed the wet fabric at Y/n with precise contempt. It hit his chest, heavy and damp.

“Wash it,” Sunghoon said, voice like silk threaded with steel. “Old-school. With your hands. You do know how to clean something that doesn’t come with instructions, don’t you?”

Y/n stared at him. His fingers clenched slightly around the fabric, but he didn’t rise to it. He didn’t have to.

Sunghoon turned away, retrieving a second shirt—crisp, folded, untouched by scandal—from his bag. He slipped into it effortlessly, movements meticulous.

He didn’t face Y/n when he spoke again.

“You pretend like you’re one of us,” he murmured, tone almost idle. “But this place wasn’t made for people who think money is something you earn.”

Y/n looked up, voice calm but clear. “And yet I’m here.”

Sunghoon paused. A twitch at the corner of his mouth. Then he moved to the door.

“88 Fifth Avenue,” he said without turning. “Penthouse three.”

There was a beat of silence before he added, more quietly—

“Try not to spill anything this time.”

And with that, he was gone.

For the next two days, Sunghoon didn’t speak to Y/n. He didn’t look at him in the hallway, didn’t nod in acknowledgment when they passed in the courtyard, didn’t even breathe in his direction during the late-morning economics seminar they both sat in—the only shared class that tethered their routines.

It wasn’t a cold shoulder. It was worse. It was complete, surgical dismissal.

And it drove Y/n insane in a way he couldn’t quite articulate. Because he didn’t crave attention—not in the loud, performative sense of it. But he despised being underestimated, overlooked, or worse—forgotten. And Park Sunghoon knew that. Knew it so well he didn’t even need to weaponize words. He could reduce someone like Y/n to silence with a glance withheld.

Y/n wasn’t used to chasing the current. He was used to directing its flow.

So when he finally reached for his phone one Thursday night—long after the campus had dimmed and the skyline outside his window melted into velvet black—he didn’t think twice. The text was short. Barely more than an address and a time.

Tomorrow. Midnight. Don’t be late.

He deleted the thread after sending it.

When he arrived at the penthouse the following night, the doorman didn’t blink before letting him in. The elevator climbed in total silence, numbers glowing gold as the city fell away beneath him.

By the time he stepped out into the sleek, dim hallway of 88 Fifth, his nerves were a live wire. He wasn’t sure what version of Sunghoon he’d find tonight—apathetic, aggressive, elegantly cruel—but he wasn’t turning back. Pride wouldn’t let him.

The door opened before he could knock.

Sunghoon stood in the doorway barefoot, dressed down in a crisp navy sweater and slacks that looked casual only to the untrained eye. His gaze swept over Y/n like a scan—impersonal, slow, deliberate. There was no greeting. Just a silent nod toward the interior.

The penthouse was exactly what Y/n expected—clean lines, a museum-level art piece above the fireplace, everything curated to whisper generational wealth and architectural precision. He followed Sunghoon past the living room and into a study that smelled faintly of cedarwood and leather-bound books.

It was almost too quiet.

Then Sunghoon finally spoke. “You’re late.”

“I’m two minutes early.”

“And yet, I’ve already waited.”

Y/n didn’t answer. He just stepped further inside, letting his eyes skim the rows of antique shelves, the single crystal glass of something amber resting untouched on a marble tray. His voice, when it came, was low. Unapologetic.

“You don’t call people here without a reason.”

Sunghoon tilted his head slightly. “And you came anyway.”

A beat. Silence stretched between them, fine and fragile as thread.

“I wanted to return your shirt,” Y/n said evenly. “It’s clean. Hand-washed, like you so condescendingly instructed.”

Sunghoon’s lips curved, just barely. “I wasn’t expecting you to actually do it.”

“I didn’t do it for you,” Y/n replied, stepping forward until only a foot of space remained between them. “I did it to prove a point.”

“And what point was that?”

“That I’m not afraid of you.”

The room stilled. Sunghoon didn’t blink. But something shifted in his expression—something minute and dangerous, like the first tilt of a chess piece.

“You should be,” he murmured. “You don’t even know what you’re playing with.”

Y/n’s chin lifted. “No, Sunghoon. You’re the one pretending this is a game.”

A pause. The air between them grew heavy.

Then, without warning, Sunghoon moved.

He didn’t kiss him. That would’ve been too easy. Instead, he raised a hand and let his knuckles trail lightly down Y/n’s jawline—just enough to set every nerve alight without granting the satisfaction of contact.

Y/n didn’t flinch. Didn’t lean in. He just breathed—and it was shaky, goddammit.

Sunghoon’s voice was quiet, intimate in a way that didn’t ask for permission. “You’re still trying to figure out who I am.”

“I’m not interested,” Y/n lied, pulse racing.

“You are,” Sunghoon said, stepping even closer, their breath almost mingling now. “You’re just not sure if you want to understand me... or unravel me.”

Y/n’s throat went dry. He swallowed, but his voice remained intact. “And which would you prefer?”

That almost-smile returned, sharper now. “Surprise me.”

Then he stepped back.

As quickly as he’d closed the distance, it was gone—like heat leaving a room. The moment snapped.

Y/n exhaled, blinking once, twice. He felt simultaneously dismissed and pulled deeper, like being handed the first clue in a puzzle that wasn’t meant to be solved.

He didn’t stay long. Fifteen minutes, maybe. Just long enough to return the shirt, leave a verbal landmine or two, and let the echo of their proximity hang between them like perfume on collarbones.

But by the time the elevator doors shut behind him, Y/n knew two things for certain:

One — Sunghoon had never invited anyone to that penthouse without intention.

Two — whatever this was, it wasn’t over.

It didn’t happen all at once.

It started subtly, like fog creeping through cracks in the morning. A brush of eye contact across the quad that lasted a breath too long. A half-second delay when their shoulders passed in the hallway, neither boy quite moving out of the other’s way. No apologies. No acknowledgment. Just proximity that buzzed like a live wire under skin.

By Monday, the silence between them had transformed. It wasn’t avoidance anymore—it was anticipation. A taut string stretched between two points, daring someone to tug.

And it was chance that snapped it.

Lunch hour. The bathroom down the south hallway—less trafficked, tucked behind the library’s east wing. Y/n wasn’t planning to wait there. He just needed a moment. Away from the cafeteria noise, from the orbit of too many eyes. But when he pushed the door open, already mid-thought, he froze.

Sunghoon was at the sink.

The sleeves of his uniform were rolled just once, exposing clean veiny wrists. His posture was textbook-perfect. He didn’t look up, but something shifted—like he’d sensed Y/n’s arrival before the door even clicked shut.

Y/n lingered, hand still on the handle.

“You’ve been quiet,” he said.

Sunghoon met his gaze in the mirror. That reflection made it worse—elevated it into something cinematic, deliberate.

“You broke into my Saturday night and now my lunch hour?” he replied coolly. “You’re persistent.”

He turned off the faucet slowly, water dripping from his fingers in neat, measured taps, reaching for a paper towel with that unbearable Park-level precision.

“Persistent,” he repeated, tone dipping. “Or desperate.”

The words lingered in the citrus-scented air.

Y/n stepped forward, not even sure why. Instinct, maybe. Or something harder to name.

“Curious,” he corrected. “You’ve been watching me like I’m a puzzle you can’t quite solve.”

Sunghoon turned then, leaning back against the sink. Water darkened the back of his shirt, but he didn’t care. He looked almost amused.

“Maybe I’m waiting to see how long it takes you to realize you’re playing a game you can’t win.”

A distant bell rang beyond the bathroom walls. Lunch ending. Classes waiting.

Neither moved.

Y/n stepped closer, until there was barely a breath between them. “Funny. I was thinking the same thing about you.”

That was the trigger.

Sunghoon moved fast—no warning, no hesitation. His fingers wrapped around Y/n’s wrist with a sharp snap of contact, firm enough to anchor him in place. Y/n didn’t get a word out before Sunghoon pulled, dragging him past the sinks, past the mirror, into one of the stalls. The metal door slammed shut behind them.

He locked it. Quick. Mechanical.

Y/n’s back hit the tile with a dull thud. Not rough—just sudden. The air between them was tight and breath-warm.

Sunghoon didn’t step back.

His hand lingered, fingers still curled around Y/n’s wrist. The tips of them were flushed pink from the water—that soft, almost tender pink that made Y/n’s breath falter. The image stuck. Something involuntary twisted low in his gut.

“You really don’t know when to stop,” Sunghoon said. His voice was low, nearly flat—but the kind of flat that vibrates with warning.

And then—

BAM.

The bathroom door flew open. Loud. Careless. Footsteps echoed in—quick, sharp.

A pause.

Whoever it was had just stepped inside. The shuffle of a shoe scuffing tile followed. Then—

“Occupied,” Sunghoon called out. Crisp. Cold. Like a blade.

Silence. The footsteps hesitated… then turned. A retreat. The door swung shut again with a huff of finality.

They were alone.

Y/n's pulse roared in his ears. He hadn't moved. Couldn't.

Sunghoon's breath ghosted against his cheek, infuriatingly steady. Though his grip loosened, he didn't step back. His gaze dropped to Y/n's mouth—just for a heartbeat—before snapping back up with predatory focus.

The bathroom air grew thicker, the stall walls closing in around them. Just as Y/n opened his mouth to respond, Sunghoon's fingers dug into his waist, drawing a sharp gasp that echoed off the tiles.

"You want to play this game looking so pathetic?" Sunghoon's whisper was velvet-wrapped steel. "Tell me, has anyone ever touched you properly? Or do you just pretend to know what you're doing?"

Before Y/n could retort, long fingers tangled in his hair, yanking his head back against the stall door with a loud bang. The impact rattled the metal frame—a stark contrast to Sunghoon's careful whispers.

Y/n's nerves sparked as his body arched instinctively, his backside pressing flush against Sunghoon's growing hardness. The expensive fabric of Sunghoon's slacks did nothing to disguise the thick outline straining against him.

"You've wanted this," Sunghoon breathed against his ear, each word a brand. "All that arrogance, that superiority—just an act. Isn't it?" A deliberate grind drew another gasp from Y/n. "You're just a stray puppy begging for attention. Tell me—do you even deserve what you're asking for?"

The filthy promises in that cultured voice—usually so measured at galas and board meetings—sent heat coiling low in Y/n's belly. His own erection strained painfully against his zipper, the friction of fabric nearly unbearable.

"Someone could—ah—catch us," Y/n managed, rolling his hips back despite himself as Sunghoon's palm slid down to grip his thigh.

"Then shut the fuck up," Sunghoon commanded, his cultured whisper sharpening. "Unless you'd like to explain to the entire student body why you can't finish what you started."

His hips pressed forward with deliberate force, the thick outline of his arousal grinding against Y/n's backside through layers of expensive fabric. The risk of discovery hung heavy in the air—Sunghoon's breath remained perfectly even while Y/n's came in shallow gasps, his body taut with equal parts anticipation and apprehension.

With practiced efficiency, Sunghoon’s fingers made quick work of Y/n’s uniform trousers, pushing both pants and underwear down in one fluid motion. Then, in a gesture both clinical and devastatingly intimate, he loosened his tie and pulled it from around his neck. The silk slithered between his fingers like a living thing before he brought it to Y/n’s mouth.

A soft, involuntary sound escaped Y/n's throat as long fingers wrapped around his leaking erection, the slow drag of Sunghoon's palm sending electric currents up his spine.

"Pathetic," Sunghoon murmured against the shell of Y/n's ear, his aristocratic diction at odds with the filthy words. "You haven't even been touched properly and you're already this desperate?"

His thumb swiped across the glistening head, spreading precum with cruel precision.

"Tell me—do you always make such a mess when someone finally pays attention to you?"

Y/n's hips jerked forward into that maddening grip, his fingers clawing for purchase against the stall wall.

The sharp sound of his nails against metal seemed dangerously loud—

A firm slap landed across Y/n's cheek—not hard enough to bruise, but enough to make his eyes water.

"Disgusting, how you fall apart at the first touch. Like you were made for this." Sunghoon's hand never stopped moving, his pace brutal and perfect, twisting just the way that made Y/n's thighs shake. "You should be thanking me for even handling you. Though I suppose stray dogs need to be put in their place sometimes."

Somewhere beyond the stall, a faucet turned on. Sunghoon’s hand stilled instantly, his entire body going preternaturally still against Y/n’s back. The sudden absence of friction was its own kind of torture.

“Quiet now,” he breathed, his lips brushing the reddened shell of Y/n’s ear. “Unless you’d like our audience to hear exactly what happens to spoiled brats who can’t control themselves.”

The threat hung in the humid air between them, more intoxicating than any touch. The sound of running water from the faucet outside the stall seemed deafening in the charged silence.

Y/n felt the last shreds of composure unravel as Sunghoon’s belt buckle clinked softly in the confined space—a quiet, dangerous sound that sent his pulse skyrocketing. Before he could even process what was happening, the cool press of Sunghoon’s zipper against his exposed skin made him stiffen, the reality of their situation crashing over him in waves.

Sunghoon didn’t ask. Didn’t warn.

The first breach was brutal in its efficiency—his thick cockhead pressing against Y/n’s unprepared entrance with a single-minded determination that stole the breath from his lungs. Y/n’s fingers scrabbled against the stall wall, knuckles whitening as he fought to stay quiet, to stay still, to not give them away.

“Shhh,” Sunghoon murmured against the damp skin behind Y/n’s ear, his voice a velvet-wrapped threat. His hands gripped Y/n’s hips with bruising precision, holding him in place as he pushed forward with deliberate, controlled pressure. “You don’t want them to hear how tight you’re clenching around me, do you? Be a good boy. Take it.”

Y/n bit down hard on the silk of Sunghoon’s tie, the fabric muffling his ragged gasp as Sunghoon’s cock stretched him open with relentless intent. It was too much—the stretch, the heat, the way Sunghoon’s breath hitched ever so slightly when Y/n’s body finally yielded to him. The obscene slick of precum easing the way shouldn’t have been as filthy as it felt, but the wet sound of it, the way Sunghoon groaned low in his throat at the sensation—it unraveled something primal in Y/n’s chest.

Outside, the faucet still ran.

Sunghoon didn’t wait for Y/n to adjust. The first thrust was slow—agonizingly so—a deep, rolling push that dragged every inch of his cock against oversensitive nerves. Y/n’s entire body jerked, his teeth sinking deeper into the tie as Sunghoon set a punishing rhythm, each movement calculated to wring the most reaction from his trembling frame.

“Look at you,” Sunghoon breathed, his lips brushing the shell of Y/n’s ear with every word. “Biting down like some feral thing. Do you even know how pretty you are like this? Desperate. Messy. Mine.”

The water shut off abruptly.

Sunghoon stilled, his grip tightening imperceptibly on Y/n’s hips. The sudden silence was heavier than any touch, any word—a suspended moment where the only sound was Y/n’s ragged breathing through the gag of Sunghoon’s tie.

Footsteps faded, swallowed by the heavy thud of the bathroom door closing.

Y/n’s body went slack with relief—a fatal mistake. The momentary relaxation allowed Sunghoon’s cock to slide deeper, brushing against that devastating spot that made Y/n’s vision whiten at the edges. A filthy chuckle vibrated against his back as Sunghoon tightened his grip on the tie still stretched between Y/n’s teeth, the silk biting into the corners of his mouth.

“So dumb…” Sunghoon murmured again, his voice dripping with aristocratic condescension even as his hips snapped forward with brutal precision. The sharp slap of skin against skin echoed off the tiles, each thrust perfectly timed to wring another choked sound from Y/n’s throat. “Taking it so well…”

Y/n could feel his thighs trembling, his cock leaking against the stall wall as Sunghoon’s free hand wrapped around him, stroking in time with each punishing thrust. The air thickened with the scent of sweat, sex and expensive cologne, their movements increasingly erratic despite Sunghoon’s composed exterior.

“Not yet,” Sunghoon commanded, his breath hot against Y/n’s ear as he deliberately slowed his pace. The sudden denial drew a broken sound from Y/n’s chest, his body arching desperately into the touch. “Such a greedy thing. Do you really think you deserve to come?” His fingers tightened just shy of painful around Y/n’s cock. “Prove you can take it.”

The words sent a fresh wave of heat curling through Y/n’s stomach, his nails scraping helplessly against the stall door as Sunghoon resumed his relentless rhythm. Every drag of skin against oversensitive nerves pushed him closer to the edge, his body strung tight as a bowstring.

Y/n came with a silent scream, his body clamping down around Sunghoon as stripes of cum painted the stall door.

Sunghoon’s laugh was dark with triumph when Y/n’s hips began stuttering uncontrollably. “There it is,” he purred, voice rough around the edges despite his composure. “That desperate little tremor. I wonder—” A particularly sharp thrust stole what breath remained. “—how long you’ve fantasized about this. About being bent over and fucked dumb by someone who actually knows what to do with you.”

He buried himself to the hilt, groaning low as he emptied thick, hot ropes deep inside Y/n, fucking him through it until their mixed release began to leak out around his cock.

For several heartbeats, the only sound was their ragged breathing and the distant drip of a faulty faucet.

Then—

Sunghoon sighed with all the grace of someone who hadn’t just wrecked Y/n against a bathroom stall, adjusting his cuffs with practiced ease. His gaze raked over Y/n’s disheveled form, lingering on the bite marks blooming across his shoulders.

“Clean yourself up,” he said coolly, as though discussing the weather. “You look obscene.”

He didn’t pull out immediately. Instead, he pressed a possessive bite to the juncture of Y/n’s neck, the sharp pain blooming into a perfect purple claim beneath his lips.

“Remember,” Sunghoon murmured, finally stepping back with infuriating nonchalance, “this doesn’t make you special. Just convenient.”

The dismissal should have stung. Instead, Y/n’s lips curled into a slow, satisfied smile as he watched Sunghoon stride toward the door—his perfect posture the only tell of how affected he truly was.

note: hey everyone! popping in a bit earlier than i thought hehe. but you were all so sweet about what i wrote that i got super motivated to keep going! first of all — thank you so so much for all the love and kind words. seriously, it warmed my heart more than i can say t.t and second — good news! this little universe is getting a continuation, yay! maybe four chapters? i don’t know yet! i don’t wanna promise too much too soon, hehe. either way, i’m really happy and excited to keep writing for you all. thank you for being here, really. sending a big tight hug — take care and see you soon!

[juricel]

Headcanon request for Beast Cookies x reader who gets convinced by them to join them so he won't have to suffer the pain of their life and had became an entity so they will be together with them forever?

a/n: I didn't include silent salt, for this is heavily centered around their character, and they have yet come out, I hope you don't mind but then again, I have stated it before that I do not write for them.

— mystic flour cookie x reader, burning spice cookie x reader, shadow milk cookie x reader, eternal sugar cookie x reader.

໒꒰՞ ܸ. .ܸ՞꒱ა ۪ ׂ CONTENT WARNING: themes of nihilism as per usual mystic flour cookie, emotional despair, existential dread, self-harm imagery, manipulation, love bombing, coercion, and potential ooc.

pointless. MYSTIC FLOUR COOKIE could not comprehend the rationality of your persistence—your endless prattling, your stubborn resolve; it was all for naught, a futile exertion in the face of the inevitable. did you not understand? all of it would fade—irrelevant, unnoticed, as if it had never been. there would be no mark upon history, no legacy to preserve the fight. every effort, every defiance, would dissolve into nothingness. and yet, still, you fought. why? the path to salvation lay not in this endless struggle, but in surrender. take her hand, and step into the void, where all things had long since ceased, and in that stillness, grace would bestow eternal peace.

no matter how fiercely cookies flourish, how far they reach, how deeply they love, it all drifts to dust—soft and weightless, like flour borne on the wind. the cycle endures: rise, fall, forget. she cannot unmake it, cannot wipe the slate clean. but she can offer something else. not erasure, no—eternity. come with her, step beyond the world’s decay, and become untouchable. transcend, not vanish. remain, always.

oh, you poor little crumpled cherub! look at you—covered in your own crimson jam, eyes like broken glass, heart swollen with pain and heavy with sorrow. if you persist—if you drag those feet another inch along the jagged path—you shall diverge irreparably from that divine avenue, the gilded promenade of happiness! no, no, no. that would be a blasphemy—a sacrilege against delight itself! ETERNAL SUGAR COOKIE cannot—will not—permit such a tragic misfolding of fate. you were meant to glisten, not to grieve.

come, won’t you, to her garden? that clandestine eden where sorrow dares not tread, where even the ghosts hush their moans and the air shimmers with a perfume too ancient to name. you shall not be alone there—no, never alone. if a tear escapes your eye, the vines will lean in and weep with you, green tendrils coiling gently, whispering leaf-lullabies. if your soul is fractured, fret not—the garden, with its blooms and murmuring roots, will stitch it whole with the deftness of an old dream. ah, but if you hesitate, if some last flicker of will resists—fear not. she will find a way. she always finds a way. you see, she adores the broken ones, the little cookies crumbling at the edges. so tired, so terribly tired—tormented by those gnawing, spidery thoughts. let her help. let her hush them. let her do the thinking for you. why strain, sweet wafer of woe, when she can cradle you forever in petals and shadow, in silk and silence?

hope; a pitiful paper crown worn by the naïve, the desperate, the deluded. a banquet of baloney, stuffed with saccharine dreams and stale promises, paraded about as if it were virtue incarnate. rubbish—glittered, gift-wrapped, and passed down like heirloom poison from one wide-eyed generation to the next. a trick of the psyche. a sparkling hallucination meant to distract from the gnashing teeth just beyond the velvet proscenium. and the world? oh, don’t make him laugh. the world is no stage—it is a pitiless cabaret, a carnival of grotesques. the curtains are stitched from flayed dreams, the spotlights are slow-burning gas fires. every act ends in collapse, every round of applause is but a dirge. the audience has long since abandoned their seats, but the performers—poor, wretched things—still stagger through their routines. mouthing the words. hitting their marks. bleeding on cue. and you—you dear, fluttering marionette—you still believe! you still prattle! still tie ribbons around your grief and call it poetry. still sing lullabies to your pain, mistaking it for a wounded bird rather than the vulture it truly is. you cling to hope like a drunk to his last coin, spinning it in the gutter and whispering, “maybe this time.” ah, such dainty noise—like spoons chiming in a dollhouse—will perish, in time. it must. the fools, ever enamored with their toybox paradise, will cradle it like something sacred, mistaking the humdrum balm of ignorance for grace. but fret not, fret not! his sweet little dear, do not despair—applaud, even! for SHADOW MILK COOKIE has not just one, but many dazzling entrances prepared for you. each one a doorway, each one a revelation. not with force—how vulgar—but with flair, with wonder! so come, his darling—step through the curtain, shed your skin of sorrow, and be reborn in the only truth that matters: to be his.

cookies. they rose, they cracked, they rose again, and cracked. same old story. he’d seen it too many times—dough stretching like blind roots toward some fake sun, puffing up with hot little dreams, then sinking, splitting, crumbling into nothing. always the same end. always that brittle, pathetic hope. there was something sickly sweet about it all, like a smile left out too long. the cycle droned on, dull as dust and just as stubborn. life, with its sugar-coated promises, never gave him anything new—just the same tired tune, the same broken record, spinning in the dark. he’d tried to fix it, patch the cracks, hold the thing together with floury hands and good intentions. useless. it always fell apart. everything. even the trying. in the end, he searched and strained and still found nothing that fit, nothing that stayed—until you. you were the only thing that didn’t flicker out, the only one he could hold onto without bracing for the break. the one thing he could care for without fear of it crumbling. the one thing that didn’t wilt. and BURNING SPICE COOKIE intends to keep it till the end.

those pathetic cookies—faint, crumbly grotesques of valor—cracked and disintegrated at the mere suggestion of his axe. not a whisper of resistance, not a flicker of defiance. they vanished like brittle dreams at daybreak, a thwart species... you mustn’t consort with such ornamental failures; their loyalty is as shallow as the sugar crust they flake beneath. you ought, instead, to come to him—yes, you, as though drawn by some perfumed gravity stitched into the hem of dusk—for he alone knows what is deserved for you.

a/n: it's me and my dearest em dash (including my extremely complicated imagery) against the world, also isn't it obvious I struggled with shadow milk cookie's part?

[sunnami]

the (poly) marauders + lily as reversed tropes.

a/n: i tried moving to a new blog.. possibly got shadowbanned... that other blog is now my dump blog, LMAO. pls enjoy this drabble!

i. academic rivals except it’s two teachers who compete to have the best class.

“It’s driving me mad, Prongs,” says a frazzled Remus Lupin, pacing back and forth in his nearly-empty classroom. Sirius watches from where he sits backwards on a wooden chair—not at all concerned with the woes of his lover, rather preoccupied with the derriere of the DADA professor, hugged beautifully by his trousers. (He makes a mental note to thank Lily and her shopping sprees in Muggle London later. And, thoroughly.) Lily eyes Remus warily, ignoring the way James is tugging at her newly-trimmed hair like a lovesick fourth-year. 

“I’ve fought in the bloody war, what do you mean my ‘pronunciation could do with some work’?” Remus scoffs, a bewildered expression on his flushed cheeks. Then, he points to the basket of lemon poppy-seed muffins, “And, the gall to send me that. Can you believe it?”

“No way,” Lily widens her eyes in mock outrage, gasping for melodramatic effect. “How dare anyone send our sweet, darling Remus homemade muffins?”

Remus dangles the swing handle of the wicker basket by his hand, nose scrunched in disgust as though it could turn him into a werewolf for the second time. “It’s not about the baskets, Lily! It’s a fear-mongering tactic—a threat, if you will. If Gryffindor doesn’t win the house cup, I might as well resign from my post.” 

James chortles, leaning back against his seat to fully stare at Remus. (And what a lovely face he has.) “Don’t you think you’re going overboard there, Moony? We’ve won the bloody thing every year—and if we’re running behind Hufflepuff, I can always give ickle Harry a hundred points for being our son. Quite a feat, wouldn’t you agree?”

Lily smacks him on the arm. “Don’t you dare, James Fleamont Potter!” 

Sirius whistles. “Full name. Yikes. You’re on your own there, mate.” 

James glares at him. “I’ve had my tongue down your throat, don’t call me ‘mate’.” 

Grinning, Sirius diverts his attention back to the pouting werewolf, struck by whatever magical spell you’ve cast on him—and their happy little wedded bunch. (He particularly likes the way you raise your voice when the Weasley twins charm your greenhouse with the colors of maroon and yellow. The upturn of your nose and raw fury in your eyes does something funny to his heart.) “Be honest, Moony, you’re just frustrated because our favorite professor is wearing those bell-bottom jeans that make their legs look just utterly delectable,” he grins salaciously. 

“Can confirm,” replies Lily with a chirpy nod. “The back view is even better.” 

“Well, yes, but that’s beside the point, my love,” Remus splutters with a cough. “It’s a matter of legacy and pride now. If—”

“While I appreciate being the topic of conversation, I’ve come to collect my students’ papers on Hinkypunks and Dugbogs,” you enter the fray with a knock on the door, startling them from their conversation; a wide smile on your face and a yellow scarf around your neck. “You see, I like to give them points myself when they score above a hundred percent. It really motivates them for the end-of-year exams.” 

James beams at your arrival, like a sunflower blooming under sunlight on a summer day. He stretches his arms wide, a space perfectly carved for you. “Come here, darling,” he calls out for his spouse, quickly affirming that the jeans you’re wearing is a blessing to the wizard kind. (He wonders if you’d let him peel it off you tonight.) As you perch yourself atop his lap, James nuzzles the crook of your neck, pressing soft, butterfly kisses to your skin. “How was your day?”

He captures your lips and you eagerly lean into his warmth. “Perfect now that I’ve found you all. Why were you hiding here, anyway?” you ask innocently, fluttering your lashes at Remus. “Did you get my gift, Moony? The elves helped me with it last night.”

“He’s just cross because you’ve become the entire castle’s favorite teacher in your first year,” Lily points out treacherously, flashing her doe eyes at Remus. (Great, now he’s got two pairs of the prettiest eyes on earth staring into his soul. He’s so beyond in love with everyone in this room.) “Not even the Malfoy kid complains about you, and he still grumbles when I have to do my yearly check-ups.”

You laugh knavishly, beckoning him over. “Is it my fault that I’m so lovable?” 

Remus scoffs, yet finds his feet drawn towards you in long, impatient strides. He leans down until the scent of ambrarome and coconut overwhelms your senses. You tug on his duck-printed tie, smiling as he grumbles lightheartedly into your lips, “Not at all, darling.”

“Shall I lock the doors now?” Sirius offers mischievously. “I’ve always wanted to do it in a classroom.”

ii. it’s too hot to cuddle!

“Mmmrgh, Lily, get off, you fiend,” you groan into the sweat-soaked pillow, suffering from one of the worst heat waves Godric’s Hollow has ever seen—swatting your wife away as she throws her leg over your thigh, impishly nibbling on your neck. On any other day, you’d relish the feel of her skin on yours, the tendrils of her flaming red hair tickling your bare arms—or the times you’d wake up to a tangled mess of crimson in your mouth. But today is just not that day.

Lily sniffles. “Ah, woe is me. My own son doesn’t want to hug me anymore, and none of the people I married want to cuddle me on this dreadful—what ever happened to ‘til death do us part’, you traitors?” 

You roll over on the bed to face her with an incredulous glare—the pretty witch has the nerve to smile at you. “Don’t be so dramatic, Lily. Just cast another cooling charm, or something.”

Lily flops onto her side of the king-sized bed, breathless and flushed, arms splayed out like an octopus—wincing apologetically when she hits you in the face by accident. “I already did. We might just have to get naked to put up with this heat.”

James pokes his head through the door, glasses forgone and black hair messily strewn over his eyes; the damp fabric of his white shirt clinging to chiseled, dark skin. (Ah, the joys of marrying an active Auror and former Quidditch prodigy.) “Did someone say get naked?”

“Way ahead of everyone,” says Sirius as he steps out of the bathroom, having taken his fourth shower today, and wearing nothing but his birthday suit, face towel strung over his shoulder and toothbrush in the side of his mouth. 

“Oh Gods, Sirius!” Lily squeals as she throws a pillow at him. “Get back in there and put some clothes on!” 

“What?” he retorts quizzically, swirling around to give everyone a show—and a generous view of his abs and firm backside. And, well, the other thing, too. “It’s not like you haven’t seen any of this before.”

Last to join the party is Remus, who barely spares a second glance to the naked Sirius Orion Black. “Pack your things, I got us a room at a Muggle inn for an hour. Harry’s downstairs waiting for everyone. He says he’ll rip off the stuffed Padfoot’s head if no one accompanies him to the pool later.” 

That is all he says before swiftly exiting the room.

You stare at the spot where he had been standing previously, whispering in awe, “God bless the Remus Lupins of the world.” 

iii. too much communication.

“—and the thing is,” you say through your weepy blubbering, nose swollen and eyes stinging from crying for the last thirty minutes. “When you guys get all secret-ey and start avoiding me, it really makes me feel like shite. And. . . and then—!” you pause to hiccup, breaking down into sobs once more when Sirius gathers you into his arms, laying his love all over your skin, kissing your tears away as he coos into your ear. “And then, Gilderoy Lockhart comes and says that you all hide away in this h-house, or shack, or whatever and meet your secret girlfriend there! I know you said it was just us and you’d never, ever cheat—and I trust you all more than life itself! But I have to know why you disappear from me every month on a particular night. A-Are you tired of me or something?”

Sirius hushes you with his lips, brows contorted—as though he’s in pain because you are in pain. He cradles the back of your neck, placating your worries with whispers of devotion. “Oh, darling, I’m sorry. We didn’t mean for it to get this far. We just wanted to keep you from harm. You’re our world, our entire heart. If you’re hurt, it hurts worse for us, little love.” 

Remus kneels by your feet, grabbing your hands in his; eyes dripping with fondness and warmth. The gold flecks in his eyes glimmering like stars in the night sky. “There’s something you have to know about me, love. We should have told you this long ago—but I was afraid you would look at me differently.”

You end up in another crying fit, overwhelmed by his kindness and sincerity. “I’ve seen you when you had food poisoning, Remus Lupin, I was the one who cleaned your vomit on the floors—nothing on this earth can make me look at you differently.”

Remus chokes, before gathering his bearings, hiding wet chuckles in your lap. “I’m a werewolf, my darling. That’s why we avoid you during full moons. To keep you safe. Your safety is always going to be one of my highest priorities. I’d die before I would let Moony harm a pretty hair on your head.” 

“Is that it?” you croak, whimpers subsiding as relief floods through your veins. “Truly?”

Remus nods. “Truly.”

“Oh, our poor love,” Lily murmurs, delicately running her hand through your hair, a worried knit in her brows. “I’m sorry we let it get to this point. Look at you—you’ll cry yourself sick.” She procures a daintily-embroidered handkerchief from her skirt pockets, gently dabbing at your damp eyes, eyes creased with love. “I’m sorry,” she says once more, pressing her lips to yours until all you feel is her instead of hurt. “No more secrets, I promise.”

James scratches the back of his head with a crooked grin. “Well. . . there is one more. Remember that time you saw a stag in the corridors? That was me. And, the dog trying to get a look under your skirt was Sirius.”

You blink. “What?”

iv. child hero has very involved parents.

Harry James Potter is known as the Boy-Who-Lived, the beloved Chosen One of the wizarding society, if you will. He has a destiny to follow and all that—well, if he could actually do anything heroic.

“What do you mean there’s a basilisk in the castle!” you shriek, a poor vase in Dumbledore’s office shattering to a million pieces. Harry drags a hand down his face—this is going to be a very long night. Suddenly, he regrets writing a letter to home about the happenings in the castle. (How was he supposed to know that all five of his parents would march into Dumbledore’s quarters the moment they heard about the blood on the walls and the petrified students?) “Why haven’t you shut down the school yet? Are you waiting for more students to get hurt?” you press on heatedly, James and Sirius flanking your sides like protective bodyguards. 

“Have you taken any protective measures?” Lily asks worriedly, holding onto Remus’s hand that’s resting on her shoulder. (Honestly, Harry thinks, rolling his eyes inwardly. The lot of you are worse than Molly Weasley at this point.) She turns to Harry, “What about Hermione? Is she safe? Oh, her parents must be worried.”

“You know what,” you say standing up, pivoting on your heel as your flock of lovers follow in suit. “We’re leaving, Harry dear, let’s go.” 

“Go?” the twelve-year-old echoes dumbfoundedly. “Go, where?”

“Home,” you reply with no room for arguments. “Until the matter is resolved, you are staying home. And tell Hermione she’s welcome to stay with us, too. And, Ginny. Ronald, as well. Actually, darling, why don’t you just tell all your friends the Potter manor is open to them whenever.”

Harry thinks you’ve just decided that on a whim, but he knows that Lily and his fathers will go along with whatever you want, regardless.

Your gaze slices to Dumbledore with a low hiss, venomous enough to rival a Slytherin’s taunt. “Fix this or I shall hunt down that basilisk myself.” 

Harry’s shoulders slump. 

So much for fulfilling prophecies and defeating dark lords.

a/n: drabbles are so fun!! this was so fun to write (but not trying to set up another blog.. NEVER AGAIN, I AM STAYING HERE!) i might do some more drabbles since my brain is fried after my last few fics which were long as heck.