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klunkcat · 4 months ago

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blackholes and other parables

read on ao3

Fandom: in stars and time

Relationships: loop & siffrin, everyone & siffrin, isabeau & siffrin (can be read as romantic also)

TW's: self-harm, canon typical violence, depersonalization and dissociation, blood and injury, this ones rated M for a lot of heavier suicidal topics as per yanno, canon., It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better,

Spoilers for two hats ending!

Summary: It starts with the stage, as it always does. A boulder, and a slapstick comedian missing his queue.

It gets much worse from there.

Word Count: 18k

___

Another day, that’s all this is. Another day, you remind yourself with hands gripping at countertops and dagger hilts: just one more. If it’s the same one, wrapped up in a myriad of lines and lists, it’s still here and yours. Just yours, no one else needs to know. And there will be another one after, even if it looks just like this, so you can try again.

You��re fine. You are, it’s just that your leg is just a leg attached to the mess of strings that make up your heart and its use in what it can do, never in what it already is. You know this, it’s why you grab the glass every time, why the prick on your finger vanishes like it was never there to begin with. You’re just the blank canvas, just the actor under the spotlight. You’re playing your part and you’re fine with it, you’re fine.

You’re also careless.

One would think, after fifty or so odd trips, of walking through the same exact room to follow the same exact steps, that you’d learn. But you’re useless, bad at your job, and there’s another day for you to try and not fuck up, so of course you don’t.

That’s why you’re still. Here.

You walk a little too far into the room because you’re thinking about finding books and reading more and what the King said last time, and—

Loud noises, crashing. All the air compressed out of your lungs at once, then blissfully, nothing at all.

It’s dark. You think you must be dreaming again; eating a tear straight down to the center of yourself and floating off into the vague inbetweens the way you’re used to by now.

The vague thoughts like slow syrup swim past you— a door in front of you; a lock; a key. Masks that are laughing and crying and you don’t know which one fits best, but you know you’re meant to have them. There is a hallway behind the door that stretches back and back and back and you know where it goes, where all the doors lead, but you can’t take a single step. You’re alone here, it’s dark, danger is coming but danger’s already here, inside you, twisting and warping away at everything you ever had.

You had something, you lost it, you found something new, and it’s being taken away. It’s you, and it’s you, and that never means anything good at all.

Then: you wake up.

You look up again to Isa’s face looming over yours. Did you have a nap? Did the loop change? It’s usually Mira, it’s always Mira, or you alone in the field, but there’s no sky over the bulk of his shoulders, it’s all just gray dark and dark and—

You’re not sure what happened, actually. The trap was sprung, you didn’t find the switch, and the rock fell. You’re not in the field. The loops kick in when you die most often, and you always die when the rock falls. But you’re here still, and it hurts, still.

Something twisted in you lights up with glee. It’s different, something different, you say to yourself, and you have to concentrate to not let the giggles bubble straight out into the open exposed air. Only, there’s no sun above you, just old dark stone, echoing breathing in circles following you everywhere you go. Oh, you’re in the House. You didn’t think about where to loop, maybe you need to—

Sitting up makes the strings in your chest catch lightning, a wall of pain and a hot sticky fire so distant and all encompassing that it makes you nauseous. You can’t even really feel it, just this wet feeling of hurt poking through a wall at you. A knowing of what should be, maybe.

You wished to take hits harder, this loop, didn’t you. Not faster, like usual. Huh. Noise, there’s so much noise around you your thoughts scramble straight up into nothing and land back down uselessly. You think it might be words.

“--frin! Just, lay down, okay? Hold still, ‘Dile and Belle went to find more stuff, but you’re not s’pposed to move!”

“Shh, hey– hey buddy, can you hear me? Can you do the breathing thing with me? I know— I know it hurts, I know, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, j–just breathe, okay? With me?”

You know this, it’s your thing. You breathe in, and out. The pain drifts somewhere farther away, enough that your words can rush back into your head behind the static. You force your eye open— that’s, oh Bonnie’s here too. They’re safe, they look worried but whole.

You close your eye again, breathing as slow as you can manage. Your leg, you think. Not so fast now, are we.

“No going to sleep, Frin! Belle said so!”

You’re not, you try to say. It comes out like wet paper, unfurling on the cold ground. Can’t sleep anymore, anyways.

“... Yeah, you do look tired, I know, but we need you to stay awake just. Just until they get back, alright?”

You make a concerted effort to blink. Anything for Isa, really.

“That’s good,” Isa smiles, it’s wobbly. “Good, yeah, eyes on me, okay? Stay with us here.” You frown, and lick your lips.

Your whole self feels funny, floating right off the page in front of you without you having any say in it at all; you don’t even really hurt, just a thought that you shouldn’t look at whatever’s become of your leg. No burnt sugar, though. You’re somewhere, you’re still here. You don’t know what loop this is. You’d been– The picnic happened, it always happens now and you’d gone through the door— you don’t know this part.

It’s rare to have new scripts. So rare, you’re almost greedy for it. You hope Bonnie isn’t looking at your leg either.

Isa looks devastated, that’s not allowed. You can do this. “...eye’ve… got nowhere. Left to. Be.” You huff. Isa blinks.

You wait for the loud laughter. Isa is your most reliable scene partner, he laughs every time.

“Sif, did you just—” Isa starts, eyes wide. And promptly bursts into tears. Oh, oh stars. You can’t. Move, to help.

Bonnie leans closer, eyes watery and face red. “Not funny! You can’t— you’re so stupid! You scared us!”

“S’rry.”

“No, no it’s— don’t apologize,” Isa wobbles. Something warm falling on your forehead distracts you for a moment. “ — just want you to stay here, right? You can make jokes, I love it when you make jokes.”

Where are… “Mira?” You manage. Isa presses a thumb across your brow, smoothing gently as he sniffles. It feels nice, you don’t feel yourself enough to know if you flinch.

“They— they just went to find a tonic. They’ll be back. They’re both fine, Sif, I promise.” Isa says, a nervous little nod to go with it. Isa doesn’t lie, so you have to believe him.

“Craft?” You ask. Words are always hard. This is more like a bag of marbles you’re struggling to sort through.

Bonnie’s fists clench on their lap, right there by your limp hand. There’s a lot of dark all over, you notice— on your clothes, on the floor. Smudges of it on Bonnie’s hands and right there on their cheek that they don’t seem to notice. “The death hallway! The big rock fell and— you were under it, only a little. I knew you were fast but it was like I blinked! You just moved, it was—”

Ah, you think. Stupid. Scared them with how fast you side stepped. Not enough to get out of the way completely, but, you’d have to reset anyways if you had. Wouldn’t be like clumsy Siffrin to dodge an impossibly sudden trap like that, they’d be scared worse.

Your leg groans at you through the static of everything. What did it matter if you were faster than them anyways, you’d always been the fastest. Not fast enough to not get stuck under it, and look where that got you? Wasting time, Mira and Odile wandering off alone. Stars, but that’s a terrifying thought. You should loop back. You should loop back right now so you don’t have to be such a burden every single time, such a massive fuck up who can’t even remember the first way that you fucked up and you need to loop back, loop back–

The tug doesn’t come. You, and the parts that stick to you stay planted on the cold dark floor. An amalgamation of shapes and noises pass through you. Figures.

“You got hurt pretty bad, buddy,” Isa says, thumb still petting at your face. You maybe lean into it, the vague press of warmth, you’re not sure of anything. “Mira healed you but—” He winces.

It makes sense, you’re still at the beginning; Mira’s healing isn’t strong enough, she doesn’t have those more useful skills. It makes her more tired like this, to heal, and she’d probably tried too much at once knowing how worried she gets. It’s sweet, you love her for it. You’re not sure if she knows that. It would probably be too much if she did anyways, you always love too much.

“It’s okay though,” Bonnie chimes in. “Right? It’s okay, because. Dile is going to find a big tonic, and Belle will use her healing again when she rests up, and— and you’ll be okay.”

Isa keeps petting your head. He’s never touched you before, not in any of the loops. You can’t help the way you freeze when you realize.

“Hey,” Isa coos, soft as anything. Big dark eyes peering down at you with so much worry it makes you sick. “I— I know it hurts, I’m sorry. Just stay here with us, okay? You can hold my hand, squeeze as hard as you want. I’m strong enough to take it, okay? Breathe through it with me, Sif, I’m not going anywhere on you.”

You remember thinking Isa was the strongest person you’d ever met, once. How he made you want to be more of a person, just so he’d laugh. Now, it’s like you’re an oil spill on this open lake and you’re stretching out everywhere and everywhere but he can’t touch you. They never touch you, except for when you do everything right on purpose to make them all love you. When you’re dying, too.

Well, that’s a thought.

He puts his hand in yours, though, and you squeeze it. Pretend that the pain in your leg even registers beyond the ache in your stomach and the split of your head.

“Maybe, um. Frin, would you wanna hear a joke?”

“That’s— yeah, sure thing, Bonbon. They’d love one, right Sif?”

Bonbon, the sweetest kid you’ve ever met in all the ways they’ve also been endlessly prickly, all the ways that you fucked up and made them hate you also. You’d said once that they’d been distant from you— had that still happened this loop? You manage a nod anyway. Anything for your kid.

Bonnie looks nervous, there’s tears in their eyes as they lean closer, hands balled on their knees. You should smile, you try to smile. It feels far away.

They bite their lip, glancing over at Isa and back. “Okay. Um. I could make a skeleton joke, but. I don’t think you’d find it very humber-oos.”

You blink.

“That’s humorous, Bon,” Isa says. “I don’t uh–”

“Humorous,” Bonnie repeats, stone faced. “What. Wait. Was that a bad joke? Because his leg is—”

A laugh rips through you— it hurts it hurts it feels like nothing at all, but you’re smiling, you think you’re smiling. “S’okay, Isa. I can take it,” you manage through wheezing. “In stride.”

A pause. “You–” Isa stares at you. You wait. “That’s—” A wobbly smile cracks across his face, and a surprised burst of snickers. Success.

“No,” Bonnie pouts. “Hey. I made a joke, and you didn’t laugh, Za!”

“Sorry, Bonbon, I’ll laugh next time, I promise.”

This is so all outside of script, the words keep sticking to your skin and your lips. Or maybe you’re just transparent and fading, somewhere in between the lines out there, watching. You can see yourself almost; head cradled in Isa’s lap, his warm hand on your brow. Bonnie nervously leaning forward, careful not to look.

They love you, now, like this, don’t they. They’re holding you, now and they never did before.

It didn’t work before, but maybe you hadn’t loved them back enough. Maybe Mira will make it back and heal you up, and somehow your blood on the stone will be a sacrifice big enough to let you out.

As soon as you let the thought coagulate in your mouth, there’s burnt sugar on your tongue. Hah. It always happens when you think love will matter, doesn’t it? Stupid of you.

Your eye flutters closed.

“Hey, no Siffrin, you can’t— buddy, please, no, no. Sif keep your eyes open, hey? For me? Sif? Siffrin!”

Too late. End scene.

There’s something wrong with you. Well, obviously there is. You run through a script on purpose every day of your friends bearing their deepest secrets and fears to you just so that they’ll care about you the way you care about them. You don’t think nice people do that. Probably only the rotting ones, the ones who’s rot is so big it can stretch all the way up into the world and fester like an open wound.

Beyond that, though; there might be something else.

Waking up in the field this go around, you feel… you think it might be called giddy, the name for the popping stars in your fingertips. You’d gotten half crushed by a boulder and bled out on the floor in your friend's arms while they begged you to stay, and you’re what. Happy about it?

That’s probably not normal, realistically.

Loop looks uneasily at you under the dappled light of the tree. “So.”

“So,” You echo.

Their eyes shift away and back.

You’re still giddy, you have to fight to look as tired as you normally do. You know Loop can see it vibrating in your core as easy as anything, as easy as they always see everything about you. The twitching yearning need, coiled and barbed right there under your fingernails.

“Pretty silly of you to forget the switch again,” Loop lands on. It’s maybe supposed to be snarky, but falls just outside of it.

You shrug. “I’ll do better next time.”

“Sure you will.”

The barest wind shuffles at the leaves and they rustle around you for a moment.

Loop sighs. “It would be good, I think, if you didn’t make me watch that again.”

Then don’t watch, you think, viciously, and tuck it away again.

“I did try to move out of the way, you know,” you sulk back.

“Not fast enough!” They sing-song back at you.

They’re prodding at you, the way they always are for reasons you never understand, but you’re immune for this go around. The fizzing in your hands makes you want to end this as soon as possible. Whatever way will get them to ask less questions. “I’ll just remember the blinding switch next time. Or not move, whatever.”

Loop frowns slightly. “Contrary to what you may think, I don’t actually enjoy seeing you in pain.”

You’re not sure you even were in pain though, or that it existed beyond your thoughts. You’re not sure at all why Loop cares.

“Oh, Stardust! I can’t stay mad at you. Look at you, naive and stupid, bumbling around. Missing switches you already know about. It’s so endearing, really!” Their laugh twinkles through them, sharp and high pitched. You sink into your coat.

“I just forgot.”

“My little darling clown. We should get you a collar, face paint. Slapstick really seems to be your specialty.”

Annoyed, you’re annoyed. Your brain unhelpfully spins off to play books you’ve read, laughing masks and all. Bumbling foot archetype, yeah, fine, you fit the bill. It seems like someone must enjoy a good comedy, anyways.

“It’s not on purpose,” you grouse, for the sake of having said it.

Loop giggles. “And doesn’t that just make it all the sweeter. Stardust, I do think it would be in your best interest to loop forward next time! Just forget the whole business with the hallway, no?”

“Yeah,” you agree, because it’s easier than arguing. Why do you even want to argue, anyways? Because it was new, you think. You’re desperate for something new. Maybe you want to run it all from the first act curtain opening to the closing, just to know if something else would be new, too.

This part wouldn’t be new again, though, would it. You’d know the lines already, so: no boulder, that’s fine. More room for improvising.

Is it good that you’re thinking of ways to break your bones again? Just to see what else might be new? You think it must not be at all, because you want it, and most things you want are already gone and you forgot them anyways. You pause, sitting on your usual branch with the bark biting into the backs of your legs. Maybe… Loop would know. Maybe they’d be able to explain this, whatever went wrong inside you.

You open your mouth.

Loop claps their hands together loudly. “Well! I think you have quite a bit of reading still to do, no? Best get back to it!”

Well. Maybe next time. You nod, and hop off the tree. Maybe the wrong in you won’t stick at all, or you can bleed it out horrifically somewhere until it’s right again. Normal things.

“Stardust?” They call, tone hesitant. Strange. Loop stares at you, a flicker of something in their eyes you don’t recognize. Or maybe you know it too well.

“If there’s an end to this, you’ll find it. You know that, don’t you?”

You don’t know that, but you have to believe it anyway. “There’s gotta be something to that wish craft thing he mentioned,” You agree. “I’ll find it.”

You try to remember to force yourself to stumble at least once as you stalk through the halls, playing the part the way you’re supposed to. Poor laughing clown, less a pierrot more a harlequin. You remember not to comment on the Universe, to avoid the stack of checked out books in the hidden library. You’ll get this one right, and something will change.

You will mold yourself into a loveable shape, and they’ll reach out and love you like they did when you were bleeding. Won’t they?

Nothing happens. It’s the same. It’s always, blindingly, infuriatingly, the same.

You enter the room with the broken vials, and— the fizz takes over, maybe. Or you move without thinking. Some part of your mind is lost in the dark, dark, covering your clothes and the floor and that far away floating feeling of warmth. You stab your hand a little too hard, rather than just brushing the edge, and there’s blood. Too much blood. Shit.

“Siffrin!” Odile admonishes, immediately scooping your hand in hers. “For goodness sake, let's not go around playing with glass, shall we?”

She’s touching you. Your brain skips.

Odile fusses with your hand, ripping a piece of her shirt apart to clot tightly at your palm where your pale skin shines through your glove. Bonnie doesn’t have to sneak the glass from your pocket this time, because Odile stomps on it where it falls from your hand. New, you think. New, new again. This is all new.

“Sif,” Isa pouts, crouching closer, too. “That looks pretty deep.”

“I can heal it!” Mira offers, “Or, we have tonics, too right?”

Bonnie nods, pulling out a vial from their pockets and dumping it all over your palm eagerly.

They hold your pinky as they do, angling your hand more towards their eye level. Isa pats your back as a strange wheeze leaves your lips. He’s touching you. Odile’s touching you.

You’re warm, you hadn’t realized you’d felt cold at all.

They all seem to realize at the same moment, though, and back away with embarrassed looks.

“Are you okay, Siffrin?” Mirabelle’s wide eyes meet yours, brows pinched together and serious.

No, you think, strangely untethered. No, I’m not.

“Of course, sorry. Clumsy,” You offer, thinking of masks and plays, and you wait for them to all relax when they remember your role.

Slapstick comedy. You’re always laughing.

The usual lines take too long. Yes, Mirabelle I know what the papers are. Yes, Bonnie, I do pay attention to you. Of course I know where to find the family tale, Odile. Maybe you’ve stopped caring about the words they’re saying at all, maybe it’s all rote and it’s a shame because to them it’s their very first time sharing but you’ve. Heard it all. Before.

You want to talk to Isa again.

Something changed, that last loop. Again, it changed again. He’d touched you, even though he always stops. Maybe this will change too.

“Isa,” you say, brighter than you can remember speaking in a while.

“Sif, hey!” He smiles at you, crosses his arms. The most northern point in your universe, keeping himself carefully away from you.

You say the joke perfectly, you always say the joke. You need him to laugh the way he does with you, or something in you really will snap apart entirely. You think of words, big floating ones you knew once because someone taught you but the how and why goes somewhere else. Aphelion, the part of orbit farthest from the sun.

He laughs, the world carries onward, and you watch.

As. His hand.

Reaches out.

Please, you think, shooting stars and fizzing bubbles and endless, deep, painful aching, wanting. Wanting.

Wanting.

“Oh, hey, Sif, you okay?”

You blink. His face has shifted, worry more than mirth, and he’s looking at your hands, which are balled up so tight you’re biting right into the meat of your palms in perfect dark crescent jagged tears. Isa’s hand is hovering just there, in the air between you.

Shit. Stars. You forgot.

Isa’s staring. “You looked really—” He cuts himself off, you watch his hand as he visibly thinks about grabbing yours and stops himself. That’s. That’s more than you’ve gotten, he shifted closer this time.

He won’t touch you, he never does, you wait and wait and it doesn’t happen, it might never happen, but he’d thought about it. Does that count?

“Sif, you’re… uh. Kinda worrying me here? Having a quiet day, or?”

Right; the lines. Your mask. “Sorry,” you smile at him, ashamed and sheepish at yourself. Fit the bill and the play carries on. “Did you need help with anything?”

Isa’s frown smoothes out, you relax your hands. The sting of it sends something to your brain that you don’t think about.

Nobody touches you for the rest of that loop.

You beat the king, you don’t ask any questions about wishes even though you’re supposed to, even though you should. Another thought has slid neatly in between, like a glass in a telescope. A lens to sharpen impossibly far away thoughts, pull them right into the space before your eye.

You’re… curious, is the kinder way to phrase it. The itch in your palms, in your skin, is loud. You feel real when they’re touching you, when he is. You feel like you can stay.

Is it okay to want? It can’t be, because you want it in the wrong ways.

You’re distracted, stupid. Useless, fucking stupid idiot, blindingly bad at their job constantly and yet constantly in the front, the role of the clown etched into your blinding hands:

A sadness gets too close. Mira’s healing is on cooldown and you're out of tonics. Slapstick, right?

The slide of its attack right against your rib cage knocks your breath from you, rolling silently out into the open. The floor jumps up to cradle you, and the battle slides somewhere sideways around you. It sounds like someone is calling your name.

Isa’s face blurs in front of yours, pale and terrified, and instantly pulling you into his arms. You’re smiling, you shouldn’t be smiling. You can’t make yourself stop.

“---Sif, are you— M’dame! It’s—”

“We got it, it’s done. Quick, pull them into this room over here.”

Something shifts, your midsection howls with some distant memory.

You’re still. Smiling.

You must have made a noise, Isa’s face crumples. “Sorry, sorry, Sif, I — hang on, okay? Here.” He lifts you up. Holding you in his arms, your head tilting to press just there against the rabbit quick thrum of his heart. Isa’s holding you, cradling you carefully and bundling all the aching parts of you close. You feel so warm, so.

Warm.

Mira appears in your field of vision. “Hang in there, Siffrin! I’m so sorry, I should be able to heal again in a minute, oh… I should have paced it out better!” She slides her hand into yours, giving you a reassuring, wobbly squeeze. You make yourself squeeze back and see the flicker of surprise and joy pass through under her worry.

You’re stealing these moments from them all, even now, aren’t you?

Does it have to be like this? With you, broken on the outside as much as you are on the inside, before Isa’ll be brave enough to reach out first, before Mira will believe you over her own brain? You’d do it, you think sickly. Dark as night. You’d break all your bones a thousand times again and suck all the joy right out of this moment too, if it means you can have it now. Because you’re greed and you’re envy and you’d dig your greasy claws into all of them and take every good thing they can give you– you’re already cataloging it, aren’t you? How to get this ending again? How to say your parts right?

Sick. Disgusting.

Freak.

“Hush, hey? Eyes on me, Sif. We’re just gunna— can you clear the— yeah, thanks Mira. Okay, shh. Okay, just putting you down here.” No, you think with all your twisted sick parts, let me stay right here. If I loop, it’ll be warm, at least. I’ll die right here like this, and it’ll be the warmest I’ve felt in years. Wouldn’t that be nice?

There’s no burnt sugar on your lips yet, no tug in your stomach, though. You can have this, for more greedy vile seconds, and you’ll take them all.

Odile swims into focus. “Siffrin, I need you to listen, alright? This is going to hurt, but we need to apply pressure. Can you nod?”

You think you do. Odile seems content enough.

“On the count of three then. One, two—”

A fire blooms in swirling constellations at your side, fiery comets and collapsing stars all in one. It doesn’t feel like anything, but why would it? Silly, really. You’re not a star, you’re a blackhole. You’re what’s left behind when the star gets too tired to burn.

“ — I know, oh, sweetheart, I know. Okay, yeah, you can squeeze my hand here, okay? As much as you need to. Crab, I’m so sorry, Sif.” Isa’s hand is in yours, he called you— you’re still warm. The pain feels like it’s siphoning itself away into a dark tunnel, a thousand miles away.

“I should have blocked it, oh… why didn’t I think to block it?”

“Let’s not play the blaming game, shall we?”

“Yeah! Frin’s hurt, and—and he’s crying a lot, so. We have to be nice, right? That’s what Nille did when I was sick, said you have to be quiet and nice.”

“Oh, Bonnie, don’t look, okay? Can we—”

“Boniface, let's give them room here, just give me one second.”

You’re… crying? You can’t feel your cheeks at all, just the hand in yours. Just the sparking lightning, stars in your ribs. Oh, you think you’re still smiling.

Bonnie puts their hand on your ankle, you can see them peeking up at you over the lip of the table they’ve placed you on. Frowning and worried, thumb brushing back and forth across your leg in some practiced, unthinking movement. Odile is staring intently at your side, but has a gentle palm on your stomach like a balm. Mira’s brushing your hair from your face, and Isa—

They’re all touching you. You fit this once inside the confines of your own outlines, and it doesn’t hurt at all.

The hands leave, Bonnie and Odile floating out of sight. Isa’s squeezes at your shoulder, knuckle brushing at your cheek.

“Mira…” he says, he sounds grave. Heavier and lower than you know him as.

Her hands shake as they move to your stomach, there’s a horrible noise around you like the time before you’d met them, you’d found an animal caught in a trap. Left out in the winter. You’d forgotten that, somehow.

“I— I know, I know… I’m.” Mira sniffs, watery and shattering apart in a hundred ways. “I don’t… I don’t know if we have enough, why don’t we have enough?”

Because you didn’t stop by the room on the first floor, probably. Because you lead and they follow and you hadn’t cared about tonics at all.

“M’bad,” you say. Think about saying, it’s the same. She doesn’t seem to notice.

The hand on your shoulder tightens more, and Isa bends closer. “Hey, hey… it’s okay, it’s— I’m here, okay? We’re here, Mira’s here. I— why’d you take that hit, Sif? I could have handled it.”

I’m the comedian, you think. I take the falls. You promised you’d never do it again, sit in the tree tops and be left behind; it’s okay if you go, though. Someone has to go first, right?

“Don’t go at all,” Isa says, a hard whisper that sounds like it hurts. He presses his forehead into yours, eyes squeezed shut and upside down. “Don’t go, Sif. Please, don’t go.”

You think about telling him that it doesn’t hurt, that you’re warm. That you feel here, and held, and staying for once. You can’t feel your lips to tell if you speak.

You want to cry, stars stuck right in your throat like boulders. You already know it won’t feel as warm the second time around.

There’s something wrong with you; slapstick, laughing, you’re smiling and hollow behind it all. You touch a tear to get back to Dormont faster and your dreams slide sideways and rancid on your tongue. Rotting fissures of disgust that are shapeless, nameless. And you, floating out into the Universe. Cold, empty. Eating the stars up for the warmth they hold inside.

You dream that you’re on a stage, and you’re watching the play, and you know your parts in all the ways you don’t know what line is next at all. You dream that there’s another version of you, standing across in the hot lights.

Isa walks out in costume, shadows heavy on him in capes and harsh angles; he has a mask with a long nose that just barely hides the dimples when he smiles. He puts his hand on the other Siffrin’s shoulder.

You don’t feel it, it’s not yours. You’re overwhelmed with envy and greed and rage and wake before your hand can meet your own doppelgangers face.

And, the sickness at the center of you grows.

You’re already thinking of it before your eye even opens in the field: how to get them to worry, to get them to hold you, how to make it slower, last longer. You could misthrow the bomb, but, no. There’s too much risk. Everyone stands too close for you to allow it, it might do too much at once, you’d loop before anyone could pull your rubble out from your skin. Getting frozen just means dreams, it just means Mira unsticking you. The blindingly infuriating option in town happens before anyone can see you.

You catch yourself fantasizing about rivers of dark sticky nothing, pouring out of your side like the night sky itself.

Normal people don’t do this, do they? Think of ways to manipulate their friends to pretend to care for them. Calculate how slow they can die, how much worry they can swallow up and hold inside themselves. Your insides are nothing, poison-noxious-empty-nothing, maybe they always have been.

You start thinking of caskets, of open funerals. The grass under your hands feels like maggots.

“I couldn’t find it,” you say to Loop, because it at least looked like an accident this time. They’re still giving you a sideways glance but, it’s nothing neither of you can comment on out loud. “Do you know where I should be looking?”

“Hm,” Loop says, flexing out their hands like they’re inspecting their nails. You have a sudden pang of intense envy for the way their skin pulses under their outlines, like magma under stone. At least they’re warm, you think vaguely, but— no. They’re stuck here too. Any warmth is just what’s left, right? That’s why you’re stardust, you’re what’s left.

They tilt their head at you. “If I was a book on a subject no one had thought of in who knows how long, I probably wouldn’t be sitting out in the open.”

True, and there are all those ones you can’t read. Where can you learn more about the patterns and the stars?

If you tore yourself open. You shake your head.

“I should ask the King, right?” You sigh. You make sure to make it look like you care about this, still. Like you’re trying and you’re tired, and that’s why you messed up. You’re not sure how Loop knows you so well, but you’re fairly certain they can’t read your mind at least.

“...Yes,” Loop says, squinting.

You stare back, thinking nothing.

“Hm. Well, it must get tiring having to walk back to all those tears to restart, no?”

Are they… trying to get on your nerves? Slapstick, right? They want you to find something creative, surely.

“No,” they wave a hand, “not antagonizing you on purpose of course!”

Hm. Mind reading is back on the table.

They snort. “No tricks required, silly. I just know you so well!”

“It. Is annoying to walk back,” You agree, squinting back. You’re not sure what Loop would be implying, unless– they called you the director once, maybe they know this play, too. Less the harlequin more the leading role. “Well, I do have a dagger.”

Loop giggles. “That’s true, you—” Suddenly, the mirth drops from their shoulders, a blank wide eyed stare takes over instead. “What do you mean you have a dagger.”

You shrug, you know what the play demands. Separated lovers, hamartia, the you across the stage that gets everything he wants. Surely, they’ve seen you leaning in and taking more, right? Surely that’s damned you already, hasn’t it? Your fatal flaw, greed and indecision, like the brightest touch of sunlight streaming across a windowsill.

“Stardust, you can’t be serious! Stabbing yourself isn’t like a tear, you know! It’ll hurt! A lot!”

Yes, you think. You know. And it’ll pour out of you somewhere else behind the warmth, and you’ll feel real. You’ll feel like you exist.

“I’ve died multiple times already, Loop,” you roll your eye, playing at nonchalance just like every other mask you wear. “I know. It wouldn’t be any different.”

Loop just. Stares.

“It wouldn’t be any—” their voice cuts off, splinters. They don’t blink. “I don’t want you to!”

Their light flares, fractals spinning off into the swaying trees. You don’t think you’ve ever seen them react like this. “Since when are you in charge of me?”

“Since I chose to be here to help you, obviously!”

You scoff, tucking your face further into your cloak. “You said you didn’t choose me. You said that. So why does it matter? It’s faster, I’m dying all the time.” You think, you pick open the scab wound of the dark oil slick inside yourself and say: “I’ll just use the glass, then. It’ll be messier, won’t it?”

Dark ultimatums and threats behind painted lips, is that what you are now?

Loop’s glaring now, fists balled up at their sides. “You’re an idiot. You’re— I don’t want you to, because it should hurt, because you should care. Because you are the only thing you get to keep across all these blinding restarts, don’t you understand tha—”

Something happens.

The air goes still, clicks. Resets, fizzes out. Burnt sugar, but you don’t feel a tug.

Loop stares back at you, eyes white and unseeing. “You can use your dagger whenever you want. It’ll end the loop if you choose. Whenever you want.”

“Um,” you say.

“You can use the dagger. It will end the loop.” they say, voice stretched out and blank.

You don’t move. The sugar taste goes acrid around the edges.

Loop blinks back with another fizz before you can manage to think further. They won’t look at you.

“You should probably leave,” Loop says, tone flat in a way that reminds you of harp strings tightening. “I don’t want to see your face again, this loop.”

You run.

You’re scissors type, you know what that means: Cold, calculating. Unfeeling. Callous, sometimes. You’ve tried to live the opposite, ever since you— since you woke up. Since you met Isa, really, and decided to make yourself the one who jokes and leads and checks for traps.

You’re starting to think of other words, now. Void, maybe. Trapped, is another one. Harlequin, pierrot.

“Hey, Sif? You feeling okay?” Isa asks, in the safe room, you forget which floor you’re on. You haven’t touched your madelines at all, and you need to, or Bonnie will get upset. You know this, you just— you spaced out for a moment is all. Your thumb is on your dagger unthinkingly, inside your pocket where nobody can see at all.

It feels like you’re on a cliffside, waiting for someone to care enough to call you back from the ledge. Waiting for the wind to blow either direction and make a decision for you.

You give him a thumbs up, and cram the whole fistful of food into your mouth at once.

He blinks, snorts. “Hungry as ever, huh? Don’t choke on it!”

Yeah. Hungry. That’s another word you’d use. Gnawing. Constantly ravenously hungry and greedy for everything and nothing at all.

You wear gloves most of the time, just because it’s easier. Because it means less splinters and road rash when you trip and less likely to nick yourself when you were training before. They have a pointed tip, just a little from when your nails grew out longer.

You see your hands and you see claws. Something to dig in, to hold in place. Something to bleed.

For the first time in a long time, the thought scares you.

You think about running back Dormont and to Loop and begging. About throwing your dagger across the room, about fighting with your fists and claws. Loop, you think, please. I don’t want to be the leading role, or the director anymore. Don’t let me have this, say no. Take it back.

Take it back.

You can’t keep the doll or the bell or the four leafed plant, but you can keep your hands, and those can stay yours, can’t they? If you’re good, if you play the clown right? They’re your hands and your mask isn’t your face yet, it isn’t, and you could find the way out Loop is so sure exists, and you could keep all of you right here and yours, couldn’t you?

Except.

The skin of your hands is smooth. No scar to remember the last time they touched you at all.

The pain didn’t even matter to you then, either. It should, Loop said. It should hurt. Like the hurt is a benediction, an earned punishment. Or maybe a reward. Maybe Loop was too late already. Maybe if you cut yourself apart, there’d be absolutely nothing at all inside to fall out.

You can’t trust yourself with anything anymore.

Isa watches you funny, as you eat all the food Bonnie will give you. You find yourself smiling without meaning to.

You play with your dagger at the picnic with the stars lighting up the curve of your blade.

The King won again, you were distracted. Fighting him isn’t even hard now, usually, but you didn’t tell Mirabelle to prepare the shield at the right time again, and you didn’t ask him anything about wishes at all. Stupid mistakes, forgetful ones, and everyone died. Loop would laugh at you, probably, if you’d been brave enough to see them.

The dagger sits at home in your hands, light and quick as always. Flipping it up, around. A flourish between your fingers. You’re not sure if someone taught you this, long before like guided lessons or well worn family tradition. Maybe your mother taught you, or your father, and all that’s left of either of them is just muscle memory. Maybe you should feel guilt for your hunger, for what you want as some kind of sullying or a defacing of this last memento.

“You’re good with your dagger,” Odile speaks up, soft in the night ambience. “Practicing this late, are we?”

Performance is practice, you think someone once said. “Want to be ready for tomorrow.”

Odile leans back on her hands, Mirabelle and Isa are swinging Bonnie around between their linked arms in the field— giggles pouring up into the open air as easy as anything. Fireflies chase along with them, like stars pulled straight from the sky.

“I think you’ll do just fine, Siffrin,” Odile says without looking at you. She sighs. “Though I appreciate your focus on preparedness. I can’t say I’m not nervous myself.”

Odile? Nervous? You’d never have guessed. Her mask is better than yours, even. She must read it in your face as she glances over, she chuckles to herself as she pushes up her glasses. “Oh come now, it can’t be so surprising that I have nerves. We are facing the end all be all subject of our quest, are we not?”

You think about all the times you’ve won, the times you haven’t even come close. You think of a massive fist, tightening, someone calling for help— of being in the trees and thinking: they made it there without you. You swallow. “We are.”

You flip your blade around your fingers again; this is new in itself, having a quiet side conversation with Odile isn’t in the usual script. Normally, you sit in silence, smiling at the antics of everyone else until the stars are fully out and bright and no one knows the name for them except for you, but it’s time for bed.

You would be excited, usually. Differences are so hard to come by anymore, you should be excited. You’re somewhere beside yourself, watching from across the stage though, mask in place and empty as always.

You remember to smile at her though, and give a tiny shrug. “He’s also facing us, too.”

Odile snickers. “You know, somehow I hadn’t quite thought of it like that.”

You don’t know what her point is, or why she’s even speaking to you; it feels like you’re lying in a thousand directions all at once. You flip the blade, and balance the tip on your finger until your tremors shake it to the ground. Odile raises an eyebrow.

“Is… something the matter, Siffrin?”

Stars. You don’t even have it in you to be afraid either. Your smile is bland and stretched thin, a veneer of paint, a shitty thin nothing of cheap fabric. “Nervous, too. I guess.”

She breathes out. Bonnie shrieks with giggles a few feet away, sending another spark of fire flies bursting into the sky. “Well, never let it be said that I’m one for emotions, but. I have faith in you completely. If there’s a way through, we’ll follow.”

“Yeah,” you say, because you lie more than you breathe these days.

Blackholes and sinking ships, you realize you’ll just drown them all with you.

To give yourself credit, you try to make it all the way to the King. You commit yourself to trying to read the books and look for an answer, the way through that Loop promised, you even pretend you believe it. There’s something wild in your chest that sounds like a clock ticking even as you skim pages, a counting down of hands— the clock tower, six o’clock, dinner and food and your friends laughing around a meal that fills absolutely nothing at all in you, it’s all irrelevant. It shouldn’t be, though.

It should be the only thing that matters, shouldn’t it?

If you can break out, this loop, this time, then— you won’t think about it anymore, you tell yourself. If this is it, you’ll stop. You’ll leave your dagger and glass shards and sharp edges alone. You’ll find warmth somewhere else.

If you let me out, I’ll stop, you think, pacing alongside the stage.

Please, you think, aimlessly.

The Universe stays silent.

You linger, at the end after winning once more, saving the world like it’s the first time and it’s real. You spend too much time talking to everyone as many times as you can even though Bonnie calls you stupid and Mira gives you a nervous smile and Odile pretends to read while watching you. There’s a biting tearing thing in your heart that wants out, that’s caged behind the teeth in your throat: notice, it says. Pay attention. Stop me. Keep me here.

“It’ll hurt,” Loop had said, and you know this. You know. Your heart already hurts.

“Siffrin?” Odile’s voice rings through the static in your head. You’re standing in front of the Head Housemaiden, and she’s looking at you with a strange half-smile, full of concern and confusion. She hasn’t started speaking yet.

Move, you tell yourself. You’re not sure what your face is doing at all, frozen in time right before the plunge.

Isa perks up. “What’s wrong? Did something happen?”

The Head Housemaiden tilts her head at you, hands clasped together. Her mouth opens and— no, you think, please. I’ll be good. I’ll stop thinking about black holes. Promise me my insides are good. Tell me there’s something at all inside, it’s not just empty, I’ll believe you this time. I swear.

“Frin?” Bonnie steps forward, frowning. You can’t. Turn your head. Watching the slow parting of her lips, the death sentence waiting beyond it.

I didn’t even kill myself this time.

Isa reaches for you, face alarmed and serious like it rarely is. He looks sheet white, concerned beyond measure. Terrified for you, even as the world turns sickly sweet and burnt around you.

“-- You’ll be going back,” she says, of course she says. Fat droplets of tears pouring from her face like she’s sorry. She won’t even try to listen, she’s wearing a mask, too.

“Siffrin!”

He’s reaching for you. You can’t reach back, you don’t try to.

It’s not like he’d touch you anyways, you’re not even bleeding.

There’s a dream waiting for you. It might be a memory, the way it shifts and grows like paint on a page, but you don’t remember. You never remember any of the things that you want to.

“Hey Sif?” Isa says, because you’re sitting together on a bench in another city, far before you had all the orbs to unlock the first door, before you’d lost your eye. The stars are twice as bright but you don’t think about them, that hasn’t happened yet.

Adventure was fresh on your lips, then, wasn’t it? It still felt like a page being written. This thing that existed in the in betweens of Isa’s words wasn’t so thick and cloistering, you hadn’t seen it at all yet.

You tilt your head towards him, kicking your feet. You don’t remember where Mira and Odile had taken Bonnie— maybe some supplies shop, or for ingredients. Maybe they’d forgotten you entirely, you wouldn’t know.

He rubs the back of his neck, looking down at the grooves in the cobblestone road below you. “I was just thinking. Not to be morbid, but… what if. What if we don’t win?”

You’d smiled at him before. You’re not sure if you’re smiling here, if the mask is already part of you before you walked into the play. “We will,” you say, because that’s what the wish wants, or thinks it wants, and you wouldn’t leave where you were without it.

He gives you a tiny lopsided smile back. “Right, love the confidence, really. I shouldn’t be talking about this, I just. Do you think he’d—” He swallows, glances around. “We’re really the last hope, is all, huh.”

The last hope, the only one. The combined fueled up image of hope at all, and it’s all stuck in the fading crumpled up photograph that is you, faking a grin. Sorry, everyone. Show’s lost its sparkle. You don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here.

You pretend to contemplate this. “I think that means something,” you say, not knowing that it’s because of the Universe yet, because you’re following and it’s leading, yet. Because you don’t remember who told you the bedtime stories or your own language, or all the words that don’t stick because you learned them differently.

Isa looks at you, absorbing every word like it’s scripture. You shrug. “Doesn’t it? If it’s just us here, then. That means it’s supposed to be us.”

“Huh,” Isa says. You forget the next part. The dream fades between two planes of glass, Isa’s voice melting and pulling itself across dimensions in front of you.

“I guess it has to be you then, too.”

Spotlight. On.

You… wake up, in the field. You think you wake up. It’s hard to believe there’s differences between when you sleep and when you’re on stage. It’s all motions, even your dreams are repeating.

There’s the static in your hands again, tiny electric jumping stars trying to burst straight out through your skin, making them shake and tremble. It itches. You can barely think about anything else— enter Mira, say the method, find the book for Odile, check the blinding change god statue, talk to Isa and waitwaitwait. You let Bonnie hug you and try to hug them back as tightly as you can.

They’ll hug you when you’re seemingly fine, they’re the only one that will. Is that enough?

Of course it isn’t. You’re made of greed and gnawing hungry things, nothing is ever enough.

It should hurt, you think. And: It will.

The giddy feeling is back, distant and layered but it’s enough to make your grins come easier and spread wider. Some of your usual monotone affect is missing, you’re not sure if that’s the version they’d remember anymore. Did you talk more often? Were you happy? You think you’re happy now, knowing that you can bend everything again to your needs. That you can play the part right, that you can only follow and make them join you the ways that make you warm.

Sick, disgusting. Manipulative. You’re too full of thick lightning bolts and storm clouds to mean it the usual way.

You get past the trap easily, forgetting to seem surprised at all with this constant thrum of go, move, next, pushing at your outlines, but no one questions you at least. Not that you’d have the ability to play it off, really. Maybe you’d just stab yourself the moment they asked, rewrite the whole scene mid word, wouldn’t that be funny.

Odile gives you a strange long look as you navigate around a corner easily. Your hand hovers over the hilt of your dagger, is it now?

Should it be now?

The moment passes, no one speaks. You don’t look at yourself in the mirror. You close your eyes and smile as big as you can and look everywhere except for yourself when Odile hands it to you. You ignore the way she stares at the photo slightly too long, also.

Whatever she’s seeing, you already know.

And then: there’s wishes, made by everyone at the Favor Tree. Involving you somehow, you’re sure of it. And you need to— logic says you need to ask them, to figure out what the wishes were specifically, how it’s keeping you here. Logic says: this is the next step.

You have to go back to the start, walking to a tear would take too long. Isn’t that annoying?

“Oh, I should have asked everyone in Dormont,” you say out loud, not for your family because they’re just characters on a page, they’re the Il Dottore and the Franceschina and Il Capitano and you’re erasing them even as you speak, but for Loop. To keep up appearances on a thing they shouldn’t be watching anyways. Here, Loop, an offering. A reason for what I’m doing, isn’t that nice? You can look away, now. We don’t have to talk about it, you don’t have to watch. There’s a purpose to it, it’s efficiency, isn’t it? Scissors type means efficient.

“Ask them what?” Mirabelle says, with a head tilt. You’re in the secret side library and it’s cramped in here with old paper smells and mildew and the not-real sense of should-be warmth. Her voice echoes off the stone walls, wrapped in the candlelight Odile had kindly set.

“What they wished for,” you say. “Maybe if enough people wished it, even though the steps were wrong, it could do something.” Even though there was nothing to hold it, maybe you would have. You’re a blank canvas, and you could fold right around anyone's wishes just to steal the warmth, you’d eat straight through the stars themselves.

Bonnie perks up. “Like beating the King?”

Isa glances between the kid and you, a small divot forming on his face. “I guess so, but we can just find out when we beat him, no?”

You smile. You smile and you smile. “Sure, yeah. Let’s go then.” And you make your way towards the door.

Isa doesn’t move, hands on his hips and staring at you funny.

“Sif? You look weird.”

Do you? Your face is somewhere far below the swimming static, you wouldn’t know what you’re doing with it. You’re just. Moving. Fingers dancing across the hilt in your pockets, feeling cramped even though there’s a perfect bubble of distance around you and everyone. Oil and water, they’d kill themselves to get away from you. The thought makes a bubble of laughter crack at your teeth.

“Tired,” you say. Think you say. Isa nods, slowly, crossing his arms warily.

“Well. You didn’t get a nap today.”

Bonnie gasps. “Cranky Frin!”

“Perhaps we can make it to the next floor quickly, then. Stop for a breather?” Odile suggests.

Bonnie throws a hand up. “I’ll get him snacks!”

You hate when they talk around you like this, more distance, more separation. Talking behind your back, making eyes, side conversations they can’t have with you. Their roles are to deceive, are they not? To doublespeak to be the Pantalone and Dottore and all the other masks. It’s all just space and space and cold empty nothing. Your hand is on the hilt now.

“Right,” you say. “Let’s leave then.”

Isa stares at you for another long second. Do it, you think viciously. Cold, calculating. Manipulative. You’re a coward. You won’t push it, you won’t touch me. You won’t say it. Do it.

He breathes out, he lets you pass.

You step out into the hallway first, they can’t see the way your palms bite into the grooves of your dagger’s hilt, or the way your eyes close. They can’t see the hitch to your breath as you think. This will hurt. Then: it should hurt.

You hold the blade out, dark and smooth like a stone in the river before you. This is thy sheath.

It’s surprisingly not hard at all to push, like butter really. You try to give them time to notice, because you’re a sick wanting thing. You treat your blood like an offering. See? See, it’s dark inside, it’s nothing. Does that scare you? Do you want it?

“Siffrin, what are you— shit! Stop that, Isa, grab him!”

“What— oh, fuck, Sif, why—”

It does hurt, worse than almost anything, but you’ve died slower. Isa knocks your dagger out of your hand, you hear Mira’s ragged gunshot of a gasp as she pulls Bonnie close and tucks their face into her side as they fight to know what’s happening. Isa’s grip on your wrist is hard, it hurts, too; the good hurt, the kind that sinks all the way into your bone, swims farther and worms into your heart like a confirmation.

“Sif, why would you—” Isa chokes, face crumbling blearily above you and— oh, you’re on your back again. He’s holding you upright with an arm behind you, you can feel the heat of him through your shirt because— your cloak is in a pile across from you. Dark, dark stains like ink blots across the front.

Fire burning like dry kindling runs through you. Your eye crosses, fades out and back in. Odile is pressing her shirt against your side and speaking quickly to Mirabelle in a tone you haven’t heard from her before. She could heal you, you realize with some amount of dread. Then you’d have to— you’d have to explain.

That can’t happen, they wouldn’t want you at all. You bite your tongue, waiting for the taste of sugar.

It’s funny, really. You want to drag out the seconds long enough to know, not enough to be known. Greedy, selfish. You can’t have it all.

You trip over into the sweet empty warmth anyways before you can be dragged farther back into the night, and feel relieved.

Avoiding Loop is normal, it’s fine. You’re fine. You crave warmth and dream of rivers of nothing at all, cascading ink spills of night sky, of eating a star whole and burning through the paper of your skin. But you’re fine. You feel nothing, so that’s fine.

They said it should hurt, and it did. You did it right. You can do it again, if you need to.

Want and need are funny words aren’t they. Words that crawl up into each other and rust and break apart into nothing when you pull at the seams. Your needs are like that: a hangnail that bleeds and bleeds, a word that’s lost all its meaning and can’t be spoken.

(You try to speak it anyways, once. Twice, alone in the field. The tinge of copper in your mouth that rips you open isn’t even anything special anyways, like you’ve grabbed hold of the singularity and pulled the gravity back outwards. Just means the blackhole is you.)

Acting doesn’t require feeling, at least. It requires knowing lines. No one asks, no one says anything. No one touches you.

You wake up in the middle of the night holding your dagger, the tip pressed against your chin, and you think: this, too, is a play. These are my lines: the next scene beyond the intermission. Maybe that’s what this is all for.

But then you’d be sitting here, all the blood in you lined up against your spine and the backs of your legs, pooling and still. And you’d still be cold.

You put the dagger down, it stabs your finger and for a moment it barely feels like anything.

There’s something to what Loop said. The broken doll will never see the end, you’re not sure if you’re the mask or the actor. You pour and you pour everything out that lives in you and it goes nowhere. Just you and the space and no sound reaching through.

Stabbing yourself isn’t even hard the second time. You mess it up and do it too fast though, so all you can see is the rounding of Isa’s scared eyes before you’re yanked to the stage. The third time, there’s not even anyone around to see.

A long time ago, someone told you a story.

Look up at the night sky, all the way up to the moon, they said. Do you see how brightly it shines? That is made of love, you know. The sun is long past its time for rest, and the world went dark, and she rose to give us light to walk by.

You’re walking on a rock hewn path, you’re jumping from stone to stone carefully. Someone waits patiently, holding your hand as you contemplate how to jump and how to land. You don’t know where this is, but it doesn’t matter because a hand is in yours and the moon shines bright because it is love.

The sun's light made her vanish, so they could never meet. The moon asked for love as a messenger, just for her, so the sun could hear her in the day. The messenger went up to the clouds and pressed them together, and made time slow. You see the sun, just there?

The sky is something, another shade. Not light or dark. A vibrant thing that pours out of the inbetweens of night, the way your eyes have forgotten how to see.

That’s for them. The dawn, so they could meet. So they can say ‘I love you’, and know they are loved too. Them, reaching across time to hold each other for a moment every new day. When you meet, you can see the love, because it looks like yours in the shape of their eyes and their lips and their smile pouring the sun right back into you. Do you know this, Siffrin?

When you think of this, you imagine a smile and creased eyes and dimples and the sun, pouring love into you, too. You don’t think of it. The world has never let you think of it.

You carry touch and love in you like an illness. Yours is not a love that looks like anyones. It pins down everything in its path like butterfly wings under glass, and keeps the dawn stretching out and out forever. And you are made wrong for it.

“Hi Frin,” Bonnie waves their hand at you, making a show of slowly inching towards you until they poke you lightly in the stomach. “You saw that, right? You didn’t even flinch that time! Good kid, good kid!”

You didn’t flinch because you didn’t feel it. All of this for a touch you don’t feel anyways. Your arm is just an arm attached to the messy strings that make up your center; it’s not yours anyways. You don’t exist there.

Bonnie squints at you and tilts their head, hands on their hips with a pout. “You didn’t eat your food, you know. Did you not like it? I have other food.”

The samosa is in your hands, or— no. It’s not a samosa. It’s plantain chips. You think of rocks and bleeding to death and cracking your head open so hard all of you runs out onto the grass like egg yolks. You think of Bonnie, skipping along and finding the empty shell of you and saying silly stupid Frin, napping out here all day long, and propping you up and taking you along inside the castle anyways. It would be the same, wouldn’t it? They’d made it to the King without you.

Dead weight, and sinking ships.

Bonnie pokes you again. “Frin? Are you even listening? Are you doing something stupid like sleeping with your eye open? Your back will get all crunched up like that, you know, Dile said so.”

Are you sleeping? The maschere would know. Your palm is splitting itself open and sewing itself up over and over again and never leaving a mark. Do you know this, Siffrin? It should hurt.

The maschere blinks at you. “Um. Frin? I know we— I mean. I was angry at you, and I didn’t talk to you and stuff, but you know I… I was just worried, right? Za said I should say it to you when I asked so, in case you didn’t know somehow. I didn’t mean it, Frin, and— and this is pretty serious in here and we’re gonna get Nille back, but. I don’t want you to go away, not really.”

The actor playing you isn’t moving. Puppet strings cut, limp and still on the stage floor. There’s an exit line they should say, it’s the same one for every show because it’s repeatable and inoffensive. He should say it now, you think, if he’s done. He can’t leave the stage without saying it.

“Frin? …. Is it a quiet day? You— normally you nod or something, I— are you ignoring me?”

Maybe he can pull the strings from inside himself right out, through their fingertips or their mouth. String themselves back up the right way, the kind that has a smile.

“Frin, you’re scaring me. It’s not. It’s not funny, stupid! Your face is scary!”

Say goodnight, leave the stage. If you’re tired of shining, let the moon burn instead, come on. Say the line. Leave the stage.

“Dile! I think… I think something’s wrong with Frin! Belle? Za!! Can anyone—”

“It’s fine,” the actor says. “It should hurt.”

“It should– what?”

There’s no dawn here. No weights to hold you inside yourself. The actor flourishes his blade with gusto, and the crowd ooh’s and ahh’s with the quick flash of steel. He can find the strings, if he looks. Look, maschere, love will win out in the end, we just have to keep the play moving! You could help string them up, too, you know. Il Dottore would know how to make it neat.

I can show you my strings, you think, and this maschere’s mask is changing right before your eyes. You wait for it to match yours, but you’re already pouring your love out all over the stage floor and it’s not light at all, is it? Lightless, as black as the night; taking all the stars and spitting them up, used and dark, too.

You think you see other masks, rounded eyes and stiff mouths, and theirs aren’t like yours either. Maybe if you. Dig in. Deeper.

Visceral— something bright but not darkless. A great big splash of it. There we go, the actor laughs. There is something inside after all.

“Siffrin!”

Well, that one had been an accident, you think. Your brain had tripped and fallen outside the lines, and you hadn’t caught it in time, easy mistake really. You don’t even know if anyone had held you, if you bled out too quickly onto the stone. Why Bonnie had been left alone with you at all, it’s just blurs and noise.

You’re glad Bonnie won’t remember your last burden at least.

(Some maggot filled corpse in your mind wonders if they’d get the joke of it, the slapstick at the center. If they’d look in and see you laughing. Didn’t get hurt for you, Bonbon! That was for me! Selfish selfish Siffrin, good kid good kid.)

It’s almost funny, really, how little of your sanity you have left. Do you even know what loop it is, anymore? Do you remember all the times you killed yourself? Maybe you forgot. You don’t remember anything anymore beyond this field and the dagger and this hunger in you gnawing at every thought.

You look at your palm being smooth and whole and want to tear it wide open. You do, with the sharp points and your nails to dig in wider, and you reset because no one would find you here in the grass because you sent Mira away and your skin is smooth again. Over and over again, smooth glassy palms like nothing ever happened.

Giant gaping messy holes digging down into the center of everything. Perfect, smooth black leather and pale skin. Someone once said you had a long love line. You slice right down along it just to be sure your love can’t hurt anyone else.

Maybe it hasn’t, right? If you find a way out and through, you’ll be the only one left to hold all these shredded versions of yourself. You’ll have bit and chewed your way through a hellish cocoon and emerged as some fucked up mirrored version of everything you hate, and they’ll all say you’re the same.

Loop won’t though. Loop will know, Loop always knows.

You don’t know how long you sit there.

“Siffrin! Are you napp–”

Oh.

You tilt your head back. You’re sitting in the middle of the field, trees swaying with blank audience faces around. Cheering and clapping in the breeze.

Act Five

Scene Nine

Harlequin is sat in the open field, tossing about their favorite dagger. The field is empty as it always is. Harlequin has been having some fun to himself. The grass is dewy and dark beneath him.

Franceschina enters. Stage left.

Franceschina: [Siffrin] what— (immediately, stunned into silence)

She is coming to fetch the Harlequin from a nap in the fields. They are gathering all the maschere for a feast! Their big day begins tomorrow, and she freezes mid stride, taking in the scene before her.

Franceschina: Is that. (faltering) Oh my—

Her hands come to cover her mouth. Her mask remains beautiful and pristine, her skirts sway.

Harlequin: (loud laughter) My nap went too long again.

Franceschina: (struggling to speak, hand over mouth) I’ll… I’ll get someone, or. No, I— you’re bleeding, [Siffrin], what— What happened!

She shuffles forward, pausing. Hands outstretched as if to assist, but too afraid to dare to come close to the Harlequin. They must never touch of course.

Harlequin: (through laughter) I’m just napping. Just a nap, silly. I might nap some more.

The Harlequin flourishes his blade, smiling wide.

Franceschina: (lurching forward) W–wait! I– what if we just talk? Can we talk, please?

Harlequin pauses.

Harlequin: (perplexed) What is there to say?

Franceschina: You— (visibly gathering herself) you’re hurt.

Harlequin: It doesn’t hurt.

Franceschina pales.

Franceschina: It—

Harlequin: (tilting their head, thoughtful) It should though, shouldn’t it? Maybe there’s nothing left to hurt.

Harlequin flips the blade, grips it hard by the handle. Pointed in at themselves, smiling.

Franceschina: (lunging forward) Wait!

And pushes it. Directly into.

His heart.

Scene end.

The pages are blank, they’re blank they’re blank and you grab at your handle but it won’t stick. You wake up and your hand slips right through the back of it, right through into the dirt itself and nothing at all can keep you here.

I need it, you think, maybe you say. Mirabelle might stare, the Franceschina can never touch the Zinna here, she might leave instead with the knowing of it. Doesn’t matter, the script restarts. But it can’t restart because you can’t find your props.

You practically run to the tree, blurting out some rote shit to Il Capitano Isa that won’t blindingly matter just to make him leave. If he says anything, if he looks at you with that concerned mask, you have teeth and you can tear, what does it matter. Isn’t that funny, Loop? You said they wouldn’t be mine anymore, and you were right! Stage props, a puppet you were given to play your part better. Any part is reattachable!

Loop can find your props, the benefactor knows. They’ll set your strings right.

“I thought I might just stay out of it, far be it from me to judge how you handle being trapped after all, but this is getting too pathetic even for me,” Loop is saying. Loop isn’t a mask, they have no expression at all and the mask is the maschere. It’s what the play demands, Loop isn’t playing the right part.

“No, Stardust,” Loop frowns. It’s funny that they don’t have a nose or lips— maybe they are a mask, just a blank one. A nothing emotion, not laughing or crying. The thought makes some forgotten panic shift around in your throat.

“Siffrin. Stay here, listen to me. Just— feel the bark under your hands? The wind? That’s all real, you know it is. You’re real. Don’t go down that road.”

Your mouth moves, you don’t hear any of your own words. Puppets can’t speak. You think about wanting to stay, that it’s what you’ve always wanted, but now you’ve lost everything else but the staying and it’s leaving you too. Time is fluttering right past you without you being part of it at all, that doesn’t seem fair.

“It’s not. It’s not fair, you’re right, and you can be mad all you want, Stardust. Be mad at me, if you must. Or— or the stars, or the Universe for leading you here. But feel something, at least, it’s better that way. It is.”

It should hurt, you remember. But it didn’t, it didn’t even hurt that first time. You can’t remember the last time it hurt at all.

“Your friends! You did this for them, didn’t you? That matters. Are they even people to you anymore? Stars, you spent all that blindingly useless time running through their problems because of what. Because the only thing you think you’re worth is keeping them safe. It’ll hurt if you stop seeing them! It’ll hurt more than anything.”

That’s. Specific. You think that might be true, you miss them. The masks taking up their face and their names aren't the same, and they don’t touch you and you don’t feel it anyways. Pierrot, the sad clown; somewhere an audience is laughing as your misfortune catches you sideways over and over because you’re meant for this.

“For stars sake, it is adorable really, how completely inept to anything in The Universe—”

Leads. You can only—

“ — Follow? My voice, at least? I know, Stardust. You can’t— this isn’t what I came back here to witness either, you know!”

You bite your tongue, it pulls the focus back in. Planets, stars. You’re here in these hands and this skin, for now. For now.

“How blindingly stupid can you– oh! You’re back. Well, that was painful. Let’s never make me watch that again, hm? Have your existential meltdowns somewhere else, yes?”

You… blink, feel around the backs of your teeth. Stretch your claws hands and relax. Okay. Okay.

“... sorry,” you manage, it scratches at your throat.

Loop stares at you, brows pressed tight and firm together, like a current on a blank sea.

You breathe in. And out. “I’m back. I think.”

“You think?”

“It’s not like I meant to–”

“No,” Loop stands up abruptly. You realize that they’re as tall as you, it seems funny. You’d thought they’d stretch up taller, like their shooting star parts would brush against the bottom of the leaves, but they stay at your eye height instead. “You didn’t mean to, but you did. You took the dagger, and you used it more times than you should have, and you’ve gone all… desperately pathetic and charmingly stupid with the remainder. Like I said you would.”

“It would have happened anyways.”

“I guess we won’t know that now, will we! So desperate to throw yourself into a gorey tragedy, hm?”

Not a tragedy. There’s too much laughing.

“Oh no, I know you know your play structures, Stardust. We call this pile of dead bodies a tragic waste, don’t we? Can’t have the catharsis without the death of the villain, and you seem awfully primed to just let him win up there.”

Him? Oh, the King. You’d forgotten he existed, isn’t that funny? He’d be furious to know. You’ve forgotten your land and where you were born and you’ve forgotten the only other person who has the shape of it somewhere in them. Maybe that’s what you need. They’d held you when you’d tried to say it, hadn’t they? Like biting clean through your own tongue.

Loop glares. “Now, Stardust, I know you’re not thinking about that directly in front of me. I know you wouldn’t do that to me.”

You would, you are. You shouldn’t, but you are.

There’s a flicker of something in their face, an unreadable other. You think about when they went blank, the strained monotone like the palest shade of grey to their voice. There’s no sugar though.

“I’m here to help, remember that. Regardless of what you believe, I asked for that much. You make it rather hard, you know.”

It’s fine, you think. It’s me. It’s how I was made.

“I should go,” you say. You want to remember the name, bleed out through your eyes and nose but having known that you held it for a second at all. Maybe it would be warm then, too. To remember anyone at all like that, maybe it would matter.

“And do what?” Loop sounds angry.

You shrug. “There’s… I have to ask everyone about what they wished.”

“You did that already, did you forget?”

You. Did?

Loop stares at you, hands balled on their knees. “Yes. You asked everyone, and then you went through the House and you found the list in the Head Housemaiden’s quarters, and honestly Stardust, do you think this act is fooling anyone?”

What act, what at all. The mask is the character, they are the same. If there’s no curtain call the play never ends.

“The act where you pretend you care about any of this.”

You blink. “I…”

Loop crosses their arms impatiently. “You’re not trying to get out, to follow the clues. That desperate thread of hope you adorably keep clinging to is just hanging there all sad in the middle of nothing while you prance around in the background trying to control how everyone cares for you.”

“I’m not controlling them,” you frown. You are, and you aren’t. You’re following the lines, you didn’t make the masks.

“Pfft.” Loop giggles that sharp pointed way. “Sure, you’re only controlling how you hurt yourself in front of them to make them react how you need.”

Selfish. Disgusting, you know this, you’ve heard all of this before from yourself.

You’re not angry, you’re nothing at all. But your palms itch and Loop won’t let you tear them open here. “I don’t have to sit here,” you remind them. You avoided them for however many loops, if they want that again.

“You don’t,” Loop agrees. “But you’re the most yourself right now than you have been. And I’m tired of watching this stupid exercise.”

“Then don’t watch!” You think, but your mouth moves and with it, the whole cage you bar the worst parts of yourself with. It bursts out of you, the worms, the maggots, all of it. Dead on the floor.

Your chest heaves. “Just. Look away, then. I’m fucked up, manipulative; you think I can’t see the blinding shitty reality of me? I know, alright? It doesn’t— I don’t feel it! Nothing. Not this, right now. Not you. It’s just. A big black hole, right there.” Your hand is on your chest, the pit that yawns. “Pulling every fucking thing with it. Doesn’t matter.” When it’s on the outside, it’s warm. It exists. Loop can’t take that from you, they can’t.

You won’t let them.

They stare. It’s not shock on their face. “I said I wouldn’t tell you how to deal with your prison, but I am here to help you. You wouldn’t believe how annoying it is to know those aren’t the same.”

You feel… something shift. A small rewind, like sugar cubes melting in a cup of tea. No. You reach inside your cloak, hand on your dagger. Everything in your mind says ‘it’s not the time for that’, like it’s locked up tight in its sheath somehow, no matter how hard you pull. Your hand slips right through. Your prop is—

Your hands scrabble at the hilt, clawing at it, the belt, the leather. Nothing shifts. You stare up at Loop, sitting impassively. That small furrow in their brows.

“You can’t— what did you do?”

Loop has the audacity to shrug, inspecting their nails instead of you. Legs crossed and poised as ever, like the missing control over anything going on with you means so little. Maybe you are angry, maybe the gravity well will let you keep this.

“I’ll just bite myself apart then,” you snarl, leaping to your feet. The world sways around you, spinning in orbit around the star in front of you. “I’ll leave and I’ll find the. The glass shard and, my teeth.” Fangs, they’re fangs and claws on the outside, you’ll make it all outside. Loop wants to see a tragic waste? Okay. Fine. Gauntlet set. “I did it before. I’ll just do it again. I’ll loop right now.”

“Do it,” Loop meets them, evenly. “I’ll keep pulling it from you any time you try. If you so desperately need the child safety lock, I’ll give you it.”

You stalk away, and back. Caged in a bigger prison. A stage within a stage. “What’s the point? You said it was faster. Anything to make a loop faster, you said.”

“I said I might make the same choice, not that I wanted you to,” Loop matches. That strange expression is still annoyingly floating in front of you. You hate it, you hate seeing it.

“So let me make my choice!”

Loop stands, slow and slinking as always. “I did, Stardust. You were stupid with it. Contrary to your charming and adorably stupid self destructive desires, this is for your best interest.”

You— their face is the only thing in focus, that unaffected heavy stare. You’re pinned under it, a bug under a magnifying glass. Slowly being heated by the sun, burning apart from the inside. You’re neither the moon nor the sun at all, are you, just some insignificant creature trying to pretend to be big enough to be part of it. But—

It matches, you realize. Their eyes, their frowning steady brows. Standing there across from you, they’re matching everything that you’re pouring out, just like you were told.

You can’t look at them.

“Leave me the fuck alone,” you bite out, and force yourself to move as fast as possible out of the clearing before anything else reflects back at you, too.

You find the open field. You dig right into the heavy meat of your hand and wait for the pain to hit.

Breathe in, breathe out. Copper on your tongue and on your teeth. Metallic and sharp. Dark greys shifting on the lighter grass below, seeping right into the ground like it’s drinking you down all the same.

It’s not. Helping.

The field is empty, the birds in the trees across the stage don’t care to join you. There’s no audience. There’s just you.

“I don’t want this,” you confess. Your palms still itch underneath, all the way down to the bone.

Nothing speaks. The Universe shifts on without you.

After a while, you shove your gloves back on the wounded gaping holes of you. Black and fingerless, leather and thick enough to hide all of it away. Your nail beds are cracked through with dark, dark nothing.

Somehow, you make it to the third floor again, just by walking. No loops, no bleeding out. Just the shakey, weary, empty husk of you. You know Odile is whispering to Isa when you charge out ahead, you know Mira is keeping Bonnie close and away from the amalgamating horror behind your eyes. You know none of them know, but they feel it anyways, and you can’t bring yourself to try any harder.

Your friends, Loop had said, you did this for them. Did you? Did you do this somehow? Did you look at yourself and see the infestation of rot and the dead star burning out and decide you had to be quarantined from everything else?

There’s a thought buried inside you haven’t let yourself have before. You hate the taste of it, you stop digging.

The King is on the next floor. And then more of the same. Maybe you’ll let him kill you again, it feels deserved. Loop’s only ever tried to help you and you yelled at them, and you scared Bonnie, and you did something unforgivable over and over again because you could. And now you’re mad that you can’t.

And your palms itch.

“Well, time for one more snack break?” Odile says, surveying the last safe room. Mirabelle is quiet— did you talk to her before you set out? You don’t remember. It’s fine anyways, you always say the CARROT method by autopilot, you don’t have to think.

The itch on your hands grows, now on your wrist. You pull at your gloves distractedly, under your cape.

“I have some snacks! Not a lot left, though,” Bonnie bites their cheek, rustling over to their bag and fussing with it. Burnt samosas, you think. “The leftover samosas! These are the burnt ones, though.”

“Hold on just a second, Bonbon,” Isa interrupts. You— you blink. That’s. Not the script.

He’s looking at you with a twist to his mouth. “Siffrin and I are gunna take a walk, okay? We won’t go far. We’ll eat when we get back.”

Odile raises a brow, but nods and holds back Bonnie as they pout. Mira looks surprised, then curious but nods cheerfully enough. So, not something they’d talked about then. You’re not sure if that’s a good thing.

“Sif?” Isa asks, gesturing with their chin towards the empty corridor you’d come from. You follow wordlessly.

He never says what his secret is, he never will you’re sure. You know what it is anyways, but it isn’t real if it’s not spoken, and you don’t have to worry about why it shouldn’t be real so long as he doesn’t say it. He’s never done this before, though. You don’t know what this means, you’re not sure you have anything in you to care what it means at all.

The hallway is dark, flickering candles still pin pricking the walls in a long winding stretch. When you dream about being here you’re always alone and it’s always longer than it should be.

“So, you wanna tell me what’s going on?” Isa’s voice startles you. You look up at him, mouth opening. Closing.

What?

Isa snorts, more a sharp exhale than anything. And gestures at your side. “I covered for you by taking you out of there, but. Buddy, I— you gotta know that doesn’t look good.”

You glance down. There’s the rug, it’s dark grey plump like the fruits outside, and— oh. A small spattering like ink right there, and another.

“You’re bleeding, Sif.”

You pull your hand free from your cape. There’s dark, trailing out the top of your glove, it feels sticky and peels on your skin, the leather has gone stiff in patches with blood.

Isa kneels down, gesturing for you to hold your hand out. Cradling it carefully in his big palms. See, you think, tired and as weighted as the thing in your chest. He’ll touch you now. You’re bleeding again.

He peels the glove off, it pulls and makes more rivulets of dark spill out and you see him wincing. You see him glancing up at you, too, but you don’t bother making your face move. What’s the point to this at all, really. Let me bleed out in this room and be done with it.

You forget that the marks won’t look like an ill dodged attack or accident until Isa’s choking off his own breath. You haven’t looked at it, just felt the itch and wanted to widen it more than you’d be allowed to without resetting. Some part of you had wanted it to stay, the wound and the warm all on the outside for as long as you were allowed to, just once. Look where that got you.

“Sif, this is—” He glances up at you again, eyes shining in the candlelight. Back at your hand, and sets his jaw firmly before squeezing your fingers. “They were right, weren’t they.”

“Who was,” you manage, almost a whisper.

“Your… friend. They came running out of the woods so fast I wasn’t sure if they were just… I don’t know, telling me a tall tale to scare me but—” Isa closes his eyes, brings your hand to his forehead. Your knuckles press against his skin. He runs warm, he told you so but you feel.

Nothing.

Hah, you think. Lost its sparkle already, too.

“Sif, did you. Did you do this to yourself?”

His voice shakes, warbles completely. A fat tear rolls down his cheek and you think: rotting, something’s wrong, it’s rotting, you’ll be going back. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, one day I hope you’ll forgive—

You pull your hand back. Hold it close to your chest. Your breaths are heaving, are they heaving? “Why would I do that,” you think you say. There’s an edge to it, a hysterical note that cracks through the air embarrassingly. “That would be—”

Isa stands, you don’t know the look in his eyes. You don’t know it, because it looks like pity and you can’t possibly—

“You did, didn’t you.”

“No. No! I—”

“Siffrin, those are teeth marks.”

You know, you know because you find yourself licking your gums like you can bite again harder and keep the taste of it longer. Keep the warmth longer. Because there’s something rotten in you, but it was supposed to be yours and not his. Never any of theirs.

“They’re not,” you try. “It’s— I cut my hand on a rock, I didn’t notice.”

Your voice is too loud, Odile’s going to hear and then. And then you don’t know, you don’t know any of this. You don’t feel warm at all, even though his hand was on yours. Isa’s face twists in front of you, smoothing out with the blank nothing of a mask in its place.

Loop was right, this was never a comedy. You were never the leading role. You’re the ghost haunting a story that should have moved on without you, and you’re making this a tragedy.

Sugar. A pull in your stomach.

You’re running for the Favor Tree before you can think.

“You told him!” You’re yelling, that’s your voice. Your thoughts won’t connect, there’s metal in your teeth and copper on your tongue, and dying rotting citrus fruits you’ve never tasted. Loop dangles in your grasp, hands held up palm side, because your hands are fisted in the strange give of their center.

“Stardust—”

“No!” You shake harder. “You told. You said— you took it from me! Why are you taking them, too?”

You didn’t even feel anything, you were bleeding and it didn’t do anything. Loop did something, didn’t they? They pulled that right out, too. They were never here to help, only to trap you more, judge you for the thing under your skin. Give and take away.

“I’m not.” They spit back. “You’re doing that just fine on your own.”

“I need this,” your voice sounds like broken glass. It’s not yours, it’s across the field and mirrored backwards. Some other Siffrin with sharp, frightening edges and bags so deep under their eye they can’t even see.

“No, you don’t. You and I both know that’s an excuse.”

You shake your head wildly, a laugh punching through your chest like a cannonball. Exploding behind your lips and into your brain with just, sound. Noise.

“Fine! It’s not real, none of this is real. It’s an excuse, or it’s a need. A want, whatever you’re trying to get at. Fine. You wanted this, didn’t you? Maybe— maybe you’re the audience, not the benefactor at all. Right? Watching me— How’s your little show? Having fun yet?”

Loop watches you. “...no,” they say, quietly. “No, I don’t think this is fun at all.” They place one hand carefully on your fisted ones without blinking. “I guess I was simply. Waiting for the dawn, too.”

You. Blink. “No,” you hiss. “No, that’s not...” Rage spinning out and away and cresting with some other feral wild thing. You’re floating right out into the thick nothing of space and the Universe isn’t leading anywhere you can see, at all here, you don’t know— you need—

Another hand lands on your shoulder. “Siffrin? Who— who’s this?”

Isa. Right, you’d. You ran past him, you hadn’t asked him to leave. He saw the whole thing. Stars, how stupid can you possibly be.

“It’s okay, buddy. Easy,” Isa says, squeezing lightly. Your hands go limp immediately, call and response. You always end up shaping yourself in the ways that make Isa the happiest, don’t you?

Isa’s voice continues on, over your shoulder. It’s not at you, you don’t have to listen, you can think about the fact your nothing is pushing all the way out to your skin and your nails and he can probably see it already. You can try with every failing thing in you to lock it back up under your strings and your mask and be what he likes, the way you always want to.

You’re. Fine. You need your dagger, the hilt, the bite in your palm, anything at all.

Your hand is— your holding his hand. Isa nods at you, his smile a watery and timid thing and squeezes back. “Good, hey, that’s good. Breathe in and out, like you always do, right?”

You… try. Your lungs feel far away, your breaths escaping faster than you can find them. He demonstrates nice and slow, and his hand is on your shoulder. You’re not— you’re whole, now, and his hand is on your shoulder, your hand is in his. It’s enough to push you back to the ground and into your skin.

Isa’s smile widens, eyes on yours and earnest, even as they flicker over your shoulder and back. His other hand pushes against yours, uncurling your nails and sliding your fingers together. You bend.

“I don’t. Know what’s happening, but. Can you look at me? You were saying something, just now. Can you say it again? I couldn’t hear it.”

Your lips are forming soundless words. You can’t give them air, you can’t speak them.

“Okay, that’s okay, um,” He blows out a long shaky breath, hand still in yours. “Can you, um. Can we drop the dagger?” The– oh. You’re not supposed to have that. Loop made it so you couldn’t have that, but. You let go and there it is. Blade shining up at you in the sway of the longer grass.

Isa smiles, that’s what you want, isn’t it. You’d do anything to keep that. “Good, that’s good,” he says. He kicks it further with his foot and keeps your eyes on his. “Sif? What… was…” He stops, licks his lips.

He looks pale and shaky, behind the smile. He glances over behind you again. “Um, who’s this?”

You can’t possibly speak, there’s no air in you anywhere at all. Soundless, shapeless, nothing. There’s a rustle behind you.

“I’m a friend,” Loop says. “We were. Having a disagreement.”

Isa frowns, glancing back at you. You don’t react. “Okay. It looked like Sif was pretty mad at you though, mind explaining that super quick for me?”

Loop hums. It’s not as twinkly as you’re used to. “I could try, but I think he’d be more mad if I did.”

Isa’s face twists further. “Normally, I’d be all for keeping my friends' secrets their own and not prying, but.” He pauses, looks at you apologetically. There’s nothing here, yet. Your palms still itch, but there’s nothing— “I just had to pry a dagger out of his skin. I think we’re passed that.”

Silence. You think very quietly about shooting stars, burning up on entry. The air displacement at the front that makes them glow. You think once you had another name for that, the glow. You think it used to be more than just white.

There’s a laugh, a tragic sort of thing. “We may just be. It’s true, Stardust here was less than thrilled that I caught them, I suppose.”

Your words return, shaky and weak. “That’s not—”

Isa’s face is hard, blank. The light in his eyes is luminous, though. He grits his teeth, the bolt of his jaw harsh and steady for a long pause of nothing, not looking at you but at Loop. Harsher and more serious than you’ve ever seen him. The moment passes, and you know he’s understood.

You freeze. That wasn’t— you don’t—

Isa’s eyes are on yours, he’s leaning down again. His hand slips out of yours, but he’s right there, radiating sun out at you from all directions. The harshness falls entirely away leaving only soft, worried, tender edges the way you know him.

“Is that. Is that true, Sif?”

You can’t. There’s nothing. Nothing nothing nothing.

His expression falls. A horrific crest of heartbreak washing over him that makes you panic, makes your hands reach up to— to what. To nothing! You can’t stop this, he knows. He knows. And Loop is, what? Just going to keep ruining this? Keep telling him?

But this is you, it was all you here. You forgot again, like the trap and the tears and the shields. You’re the one ruining this last thing, this time.

Isa looks down at his hands, they’re trembling. “If… if your friend here is concerned, I… maybe that means I missed something, and I’m sorry, is all. I’m really, really sorry.”

No, no, it’s never been Isa’s fault. You didn’t want him to know. He wasn’t supposed to ever know, you don’t know what to do with him knowing.

“You wouldn’t—” he tries, helplessly and lost.

“I think it’s less a matter of if they would,” Loop adds in, sourly. “And rather more if they should continue.”

Isa looks punched clean through, off kilter. Your heart is snapping in half and plunging into the cold dark center of yourself and freezing over all at once. Loop back, you think. Loop back.

Loop gives you a sideways look, like they know. Stars, but they’ll just tell him again, won’t they. There’s nowhere to run.

Isa sighs again, shaky and wet. “If you um. If you felt you couldn’t talk to me about it, that’s on me. I will do whatever I need to do, to make sure you trust me next time.” His eyes shoot up to yours, pinning you all the way through and then some with the weight. “But I’m here, okay? And I don’t want you to be upset or hurting and not tell me. I want you here with us, the way M’dame and Bonbon and Mira all do, too. There’s no one I’d trust more at the end of the world, you got that? There’s no world to save without you in it.”

There’s no possible way this is happening, you think you must be dreaming but all of your dreams have gone sour, too.

“Isa,” you try.

You’re not spinning off, you’re heavy and layered and stuck tight right under all the hurt but it’s surrounding you all at once with noise. You feel weak under it all. Impossibly pressed by gravity beyond yourself, like the black hole has left you and moved right into the open air between you both.

Touch me, you think. Because his hand has left yours and he’s keeping his distance, and you’ve never actually thought to ask before, but your words keep getting pulled right along with the stars into the pit beside you.

You shake your head helplessly. You’ll be lost again, pulled right back under with the waves, if he doesn’t—

A hand circles your wrist gingerly. Your lungs expand, contract.

Oh, you breathe.

Loop stands beside you, looking away angrily. Hand perfectly looped around your wrist. This is real, then, because. Someone is here with you. Someone’s always been here with you.

“Yeah, it’s real, Sif. Okay? It’s real. You’re with me, and your friend here. And we’ve got you, right? You don’t have to hurt on your own, I promise. We can take it from you, bud.”

It should hurt, you think. But then— Isa isn’t touching you. And you still feel so warm. And the warm is loud, and it’s heavy and overwhelming and it does hurt, but it’s. Yours. Your palms don’t itch, the masks fade.

Loop isn’t looking at you, their hand doesn’t move. A perfect circle, right there, around the rapid thrum of your heart beat. Nowhere to run at all, only to go forward through it.

It hurts, but you think you might be tired of it hurting for once.

“I think.” You swallow. Roughly. “I think I need some help.”

EPILOGUE

You stare at your hand. Curling your fingers in until you make a fist, until the light of your bones shows through your pale skin, and: release. Faint imprints like dark moons, a neat row of dark where your nails pressed in.

Long lifeline, someone once told you. You no longer remember their face.

There’s a scar, just there. A faint sliver of something across the thick of your thumb. You’d gotten that somewhere lost in the House apparently, although you’re not sure when. Things had gotten a little… fuzzy, for a while. You think you must have grabbed for the glass again, more instinct than anything, when you stopped being able to tell where your hands and teeth were.

It’s been a while since everything happened. You’re managed to furl your edges back inside yourself at least, after laying everything out in the most painful and agonizing series of conversations you’ve ever been forced to sit through. There’d been a lot of crying, hugging, reassuring careful touches, but— you made it through. Defeated the King, broke the loops, came out of it with more instead of less.

Mira had been especially helpful at the end. Her hands gently in yours and her lips pressed flat and nervous across from you, just as stressed about the concept of being honest as you were. “Feelings are. Hard to say, or. Know? I don’t know mine very well. We can practice together, okay?”

In the face of everyone else’s gungho forward words heavy approach, maybe it was good to know you weren’t the only one with a clawing wild need to be seen and not known. Maybe it’s helpful to find out that someone as kind and lovely as Mira doesn’t see the stars in her own words either.

Isa had also been a rock in ways you always knew he was. Picking up on all the meaning between your words, carefully assessing and listening. Sometimes when he looks at you, you feel the names and places of forgotten homes springing up out of the dark in your heart like they’re waiting to be shared. You’re not sure what it means yet, but he tells you that you have time.

“Sif!”

You look up. Sunlight bounces off the water in front of you, a dark roll of ripples and fluttering light that makes you squint. You lift a hand to cover your eyes, the other one still buried in the dirt beneath you.

Isa bounds over, grinning wildly and hair in disarray, holding a squirming Bonnie under one arm. “Sif, Bonnie has something to say to you.”

Bonnie stops squirming, falls limp and flat in Isa’s hold. “Sorry I filled your hat with beans because I was mad at your pun.”

“And?”

Bonnie scrunches up their face. “And. I’ll make you fritters as much as you want for a week.”

Isa looks at you hopefully. You hum for a second playfully, hovering your hand in the air before tilting it into a thumbs up. Isa plops Bonnie upright on the ground between you both and pats their head. “See! Nice words, good job BonBon.”

They cross their arms, kicking at a tuft of grass. You lean over conspiratorially, stage whispering. “It was pretty un-bean-lievable.”

“No!” Bonnie yells, outraged, lurching forward and stopping. Even in the pits of rage, they’re the sweetest, always checking. You give them a slow nod.

Bonnie tackles you, all rocket no finesse. “No, no no! No more words from you! You use them for evil!”

Your vision is entirely flailing limbs for a moment until you can scoop your hands under Bonnie’s armpits and tickle them back. Which involves more flailing and screaming.

“Jeeze, you guys,” Isa laughs.

“Is siblicide being considered?” You hear Odile ask dryly.

“On my watch, M’dame? You wound me!”

“You are quite literally just standing here, watching, Isabeau.”

“Got me there.”

Neither of them move in to save Bonnie at all, and Bonbon shrieks with rage at the betrayal. Or would, if you were not poking them repeatedly in the sides and turning their outrage into a round of giggling.

“No!” Bonnie squeaks, slapping at you ineffectively. You decide to let them up, purely out of the kindness of your heart rather than because they’ve earned their freedom. You pat them on the head. Bonnie scrambles up to their feet instantly, leaning down with their hands on their feet and a pout on their face. Something in their eyes still looks vaguely worried, though, which isn’t allowed.

You wink at them. “Fritters sound great, Bonbon.”

They huff, and poke you once in the chest. “Good! I’ll make so much you’ll barf!”

“Okay!” Mira calls, “The picnic is ready everyone!”

Isa reaches his hand out towards you, smiling widely. The sun streams across the side of his face, making his eyes twinkle at you— stars, it’s all stars. For once, thinking of them doesn’t make you yearn for anything more than being right here.

You take his hand, and let him pull you to your feet.

“Do you think they got those cheeses again?” Isa asks.

You shrug. Odile pauses the book she’s reading to hum thoughtfully. “Well, our dear Mirabelle did say she was ‘pulling out all the stops’ for the venue, whatever that entails. Something about giving Petronile and our new friends a full welcome to the party celebration?”

“Not without me!” Bonnie gasps. “I’m the snack leader, no snacks without me!”

Isa pats them on the shoulder, looping his other arm lightly around your shoulders. “I’m sure they only bought the ingredients expecting you to make something super cool, Bonbon.”

Bonnie huffs, and breaks off into a run ahead. “I’ll just make sure!”

You laugh, and lean ever so slightly into Isa’s warmth at your side. It’s. Nice, really. To be full of enough warmth on your own, that this can just be that: nice.

“Should I warn them?” You ponder, looking up at Isa. He’s blushing slightly, surprisingly, and takes a second to register your question.

“Oh, that Loop’s got that thing about cheese?” He hums dramatically, looking up at the clear sky. “Nah. It’s not like they’ll actually tell them.”

It’s true. If there’s one thing you know about this strange new dynamic you’re stumbling into, is that Bonbon has Loop wrapped entirely around their finger. You’re not sure how that happened— it was a long, difficult few months of convincing and arguing, and one memorable ‘fight to the death turned crying session’ to even convince Loop to talk to any of them. The moment Bonnie had grabbed Loop’s hand though and very loudly shouted ‘thank you for making sure Frin was okay’, you saw it shift. The flicker of their light, the re-orbit.

They’d always understood you, after all. You wish you could have told them that they were always warm on their own, too.

Silly, really. That Loop had ever thought they wouldn’t fit in right here with everyone as easy as anything else.

Your palm itches— you pull at Isa’s arm until he drops it to his side, and slide your hand into his. Locking your fingers together, you breathe. In and out.

You’re out, the stage is gone. It’s just you and the people that loved you loud enough to pull you through with them. A home to make somewhere new, and somewhere you bring with you.

“Here’s to tomorrow, hm?” You say. You think you mean it. Isn’t that a funny thought?

#in stars and time #isat siffrin #isat spoilers #isat fic #isat loop #isat isabeau #my fic #pls make sure to check the tw's on this one it gets... heavy #i feel like there should be a warning for like italian comedy archetypes in this honesrtly

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plasticfreckles · 2 months ago

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🪶 hype food queue rookanis enjoy 🪶

"Lucanis."

"Hmm?" He barely looks up from his book.

Not until Rook brushes her hand over his arm. He follows the direction in which she nods her head, so slightly it may well be a draft in her hair instead.

It stings in his heart like lightning, knowing how well they know each other, so well they can communicate without even moving a muscle.

Around the corner of the building walks a bard Lucanis knows the face of. The musical sphere of Treviso is rather small, after all.

"They hired a bard. For outside. For the queue."

"Need to keep the crowds entertained somehow." Lucanis leans back against the wall. They're lucky they're in a spot in the queue where they're shielded from the sun steadily approaching its apex. "Not everyone came prepared."

Rook grumbles.

"Should've hired for somebody to bring snacks, too."

"I imagine the owners think that if the food's so good that people are willing to line up from sunrise just to catch lunch, they'll also be willing to be hungry for that time."

"Hungry, yeah, but I'm starving."

Her face lights up and she rises from her squat when he presents her with a bun leftover from last night's dinner, reminds him of a child at wintersend.

"I know," he says, and opens his book again.

By the time his book is finished and wandering back into his bag, the sun has travelled past its highest position.

The bard is starting their selection of songs over again for the third time.

"Do you recommend the book?" Rook asks. She's leaning next to him against the wall, her weight off her leg.

"It's alright." He shifts his hips, only slightly, presenting her with his bag for her to rifle through herself. "It's about this lost king of a doomed empire, only that king knows full well he's the king and that the empire is doomed without him. He just prefers to wander around the lands with his friends."

"I can relate to that." She digs her heel into the cobblestone beneath them and her shoulders into the brick behind them. "I'd rather be lost with you than doing politics, too." The book gets dropped into the depths of his bag once more before it has even seen the light again.

A sigh, then, as the queue moves and they shuffle a half a step ahead.

"Didn't we get here within, what, two hours of waking up? And we woke up pretty early, too."

"Three hours." Rook frowns at him. "We did wake up.. busy."

He's not normally one for public affection, still feels too clumsy and inexperienced to justify it, feels that their feelings for each other don't need displaying for all the world to see.

Her rare flush, her shy smile, the pull of her presence beside his, however, makes him easily turn to her, offer his hands for her to fidget with. Makes him not even attempt to balance his weight with hands against the wall when she pulls his face down to hers.

"You're upset." His mind reels, how he can tell just from the way she squeezes his fingers.

"Yeah. Not with you, though." She leans her head back against the wall, just far enough for them to not have to cross their eyes to look at each other. "Never with you."

"Talk to me."

"Oh, I don't know. We skipped breakfast for this. I know, I know - my idea, and you did ask if I was sure about skipping breakfast. But.. I don't think waiting this long for food seems right. The food cannot be that good." Dejected, suddenly, her eyes seemingly turning downward at the edges. Her hair falls over her shoulder.

"What if it's nasty?"

"We can still go back home. I'll whip up a quick picnic in the yard."

"You're such a homebody, Lucanis!" There's no accusation, no teasing, not even any seriousness in her reply. The tension in her jaw softens, just a little, the corners of her mouth only just not curling upward.

"Not really," he says. "But if you've already half a mind to just not eat here, why continue to queue up forever when we know I can make better food at home?"

We want to see the fuss. It's a steak. Only so many ways to cook a dead animal. So many ways to mess up. You're just making another argument to go home, Spite. You'd think we've both had our share of meat poisoning. Rook hasn't! Rook doesn't need to experience that. You don't know that! We both know she'd rather have smoked fish and potatoes than puking up her lunch in some alleyway.

"Sometimes I wish I could hear Spite directly, like Emmrich can." Me too!

The way she can tell their conversation without being part of it. It's almost like hearing it directly. Or maybe she's just this good at reading expressions. Or he this bad at hiding them. Maybe all three at the same time.

"He wants to try the food here. Even if it might have gone bad. Even if there's plenty of food at home. Barely even needs warming up."

"You know, I respect that. I'm way too lazy for all that."

"Well," Lucanis starts. He pulls her along as he walks backwards, away from the queue, the tavern, the shade of the wall. Out into the sun, to solitude, to their home.

"You have me, don't you?"

"I do."

🪶

no excuse for this lmao. i was queueing up for a concert and i got bored.

[~rina]

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separatist-apologist · 10 months ago

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Sink Beneath The Waves

Summary: There is more to the mysterious man, who saves Elain Archeron from a shipwreck, than meets the eye.

CW: Major Character Death

Read On AO3

“Wake up!”

Elain jolted awake, hair tangled in her face, to her youngest sister gripping her roughly by the shoulders. The smell of salt was heavy in the air, compounded by fear that seemed to hang like fog around them. Elain sat up in her bed, breath curling in front of her face.

“What’s happened?” she asked, wiping the sleep from her eyes. Nesta was sitting on the bed just opposite, eyes wide with horror.

“The ship is sinking,” Feyre told her, prompting Elain to swing her feet over the edge of the bed only to land in a few inches of frigid water. “We need to get out.” The ship was a steamliner, large and supposedly unsinkable. It was meant to take them to America across the Atlantic. Elain had been apprehensive the whole trip leading to the departure, and it had been her sisters who insisted ships were safe, now. They rarely, if ever, sunk.

You’re more likely to be hit by lightning, Feyre had said earnestly.

Elain supposed they’d never had good luck. The sort that would have them on a sinking steamliner rather than winning an absurd sum of money and living off the wealth until they died. They had an aunt in America who did have means, and had agreed to take them in and help them get sorted after their father had died, leaving them only with debts.

Shivering, and still in her white night dress, Elain sloshed after her sisters from their second class cabin into the hall. Lights flickered ominously as more water greeted them. They weren’t the only ones making their way toward the stairs, and even in disaster, Elain found it strangely amusing to see people queue politely for the steps.

Behind her, Nesta reached for her hand and squeezed, her touch clammy and scared. They were going to be fine, Elain wanted to assure her, but the words stuck in her throat. She’d feel better once she knew they were safe. She kept expecting some crew member to tell them to return to their cabins, that everything was fine and the water would be cleared out by morning.

It only occurred to her, as the water began to recede with every step upward they took, what the lower decks must look like.

She didn’t turn back to look, heart pounding in her throat.

Everything is okay. Everything is okay. Everything is okay.

Everything was not okay. They wove their way through the first class corridors, ignoring a woman clutching a sobbing, screaming child to her chest as she tried to reassure them everything was fine. Elain wished she had a mother to do the same, though she was a woman of twenty three and her mother had been dead for more than a decade.

The lights blew in one of the halls, throwing sparks over Feyre’s head like rain droplets in a storm. Elain had to bite back the urge to scream, thinking of the mother and child somewhere behind them. She didn’t want to panic them any further.

Elain was still clinging to hope that everything would be fine. Beneath the ship, it was easy to think it was simply panicked masses seeing water and overreacting. However, once they emerged on the top deck, the full scope of the horror came plainly into view. The ship was tilted, causing a slope as they made their way upward. It wasn’t so sharp that people were sliding back down, but Elain knew if they remained for another hour, the ship might end up standing wholly on its end.

People crammed toward lifeboats as crewmen called for women and children first. Nesta shoved Elain forward, causing Elain to, in turn, shove Feyre into the waiting hands of one of the crew members. Feyre screamed as the crowd surged, shoving Elain back.

It was a push and pull of desperation—Feyre vanished over the side of the ship, tears streaking down her face as she called out for her sisters. Elain’s panic became icy, listening to the sobbing and the creaking, intermingled to create a symphony of chaos.

“There,” Nesta whispered as another boat was deployed. There were seats—enough for three. Nesta elbowed forward, taller and steelier than Elain. Elain watched her older sister step inside, and just as she was about to, she saw that same mother with the sobbing child standing just to her left.

There would be other boats, she told herself, ignoring Nesta’s impassioned, and furious cries, to allow the mother to take her spot. The woman pressed a swift kiss to Elain’s cheek, holding her child closer to her chest.

“You’re an angel,” she whispered in Elain’s ear.

As it turned out, once that lifeboat deployed, the rest were on the other side of the ship. Elain made her way, ignoring the way the ship continued to lean dangerously. The large smoke stacks overhead cast large shadows and she wondered what would happen if they toppled. She’d be long gone by then.

The lights of the ship winked out as the vessel groaned beneath the weight of the water within. Elain had never truly known fear like she did right then, gripping the smooth, brass railing while trying to steady herself. Her sisters had made it safely and she would, too. They’d be reunited soon enough, and this would merely be another story they’d tell to friends.

Elain had made it to the opposite end of the ship, shivering violently in the cold night air. She could see lights in the distance—rescue was on its way, though whether it would be fast enough to keep them all from plunging into the water, Elain didn’t know.

Unlike the controlled chaos on the other end of the ship, this was pure pandemonium. Twice, lifeboats were sent crashing to the water, empty of passengers. The rest were sent half full, if that, thanks to panicking crew men who often jumped at the last minute, leaving the rest of them to fend for themselves.

The reality of her circumstances dawned on her just as all the lights on the ship winked out. She was holding the railing for dear life at that point, watching several men argue over how to cut the remaining lifeboats loose so they might get in. Whether they could even deploy them at such a lean was uncertain. Pistols came out, a bullet flying which effectively silenced the argument.

There was nothing she could say or do to keep things under control. Her voice was gone, silenced in her fear. Even if she could, the constant groaning of steel would have drowned her out.

A horrible crunching turned the world icy and silent. Beneath her feet, the ship shook violently, tilting so far forward that Elain nearly pitched down the deck to slam into a doorway leading inside. Holding the railing so tight her knuckles were white from the effort, Elain watched two of the steam stacks topple forward, their bolting crumbling under the strain of the water.

The ship was breaking in two, and she was going to take everyone down with her. In that moment, Elain was faced with two options—remain as she was and drown, or jump into the frigid Atlantic and potentially drown there. Both options terrified her—the water was inky black and bottomless, but the idea of being trapped on the ship as it made its way to the bottom of the sea scared her even more.

She could make her way to one of the lifeboats, she reasoned. A lot of them were only half empty. And the lights in the distance promised of rescue. Elain forced herself on the railing, bare feet shaking, and leapt into the night.

She screamed on her way down. It seemed to last forever before she slammed violently into the water. All the air expelled from her body, muscles seizing in the cold. Elain lay suspended beneath the surface, panic filling with before she managed to will her legs to kick, her arms to flail.

The moment cold air bit at her face, Elain began swimming as quickly as she could away from the drowning ship. She didn’t know if she could be sucked beneath with it, and she didn’t want to find out. She could hear nothing but her own breathing and the splashing of her hands in the water until she finally found an empty, floating lifeboat overturned on its side.

It was miserably, slippery work to haul herself atop it. With her night dress clinging to her skin, Elain lay on her back to stare upward at the starry sky. She was in a waking nightmare, surrounded by the sounds of terrified people also plunged into the frozen water and the miserable snapping of the ship. Where was rescue she wondered?

Where were her sisters? Elain closed her eyes to block out the horror of her current predicament. She thought of the lights in the distance that were surely coming, not daring to curl into a ball lest she overtip her little piece of safety. She was cold, but she was alive.

She was going to be alright.

Elain didn’t remember falling asleep. All she knew was one moment she was trying to block out the sound of a child wailing, and the next a masculine voice was calling down to her. Peeling open her near frozen lids, Elain found herself looking up at a wooden ship. It seemed so out of place in the misty dawn, and yet a ladder had been pulled over the side and a man was currently scaling it to help her up.

She didn’t think she could move. Elain watched, noting, as he came into view, that his long, auburn hair was pulled in a rather neat ponytail at the nape of his neck, and one of his eyes had been replaced with a golden fixture. She stared at the trio of scars raking down his otherwise handsome face, unsure what else to look at.

“Take my hand,” he urged, offering one to her as he used the other to hang on to the ladder. Elain forced herself up on her elbows so she could take the warmth of his hand. Elain exhaled a breath, stunned by the quiet.

“Where is everyone?” she whispered, letting him half carry her against his body. He couldn’t meet her gaze, instead turning back to his swaying ship. “Did they die?”

His silence was answer enough.

“Why did no one come?” she asked, her voice a little more urgent than before. He helped her over the edge, allowing Elain to tumble gracelessly to the deck where she found herself alone. The faint sound of voices told her there were others he’d pulled out lurking somewhere on his vessel.

“They did,” he told her, straightening himself. He wore tan breeches with brass buttons on either sides of his hips, and a white shirt tucked into the waistband, sleeves rolled to his elbows. Scuffed boots, though polished nicely, rose nearly to his knees, betraying an athletic man who worked hard, if his muscular thighs and strong biceps had anything to say about it.

“They didn’t get me,” she said, bottom lip wobbling.

He offered her a sympathetic smile. “I nearly missed you, too.”

“Are there others?” she asked, catching the sounds of footsteps on the stairs below. They sounded small—like a childs. That eased some of the ache in her chest.

“Yes,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “And we’ll look for more before we leave.”

He stepped around her for a crate, pulling out a large, green jacket to drape around her. Glancing down at her body, Elain realized every inch of her was on display. She’d forgotten she’d gone overboard in a thin nightdress. It was a miracle she’d survived.

“Can I help?” she asked. “I just—”

Elain bit her lip as he cocked his head, curiosity getting the better of him. “You what?”

“My sisters,” she finally whispered, biting back the urge to cry in front of her savior. “I need to know if they survived.”

It was more than that, though—Elain needed to help as many people as she could. The scale of the suffering, of the tragedy, was not lost on her. Even as she stood on that swaying ship, she could hear the sound of snapping steel and cracking metal. She could hear the desperate cries of the people denied a life boat, who’d made the same agonizing choice she had.

“There are clothes down below deck,” her savior said, pity in his eyes. “Warm yourself first.”

Elain did as she was told, following the path down below deck. It smelled like salt and wood and something else—something strangely comforting. Like sunlight over her garden back home and the warmth of her bed on cool, autumn evening.

Inside the cabin, Elain found more people milling about. Mothers with their children, deck hands and other cabin crew, men staring down at their hands, eyes glassy from the horror. Elain offered them a smile before making her way through, ignoring the doors to individual rooms she assumed they’d all be sharing, for another set of crates holding a variety of clothes, some so out of date she had to wonder where they’d come from. She managed to find a rather nice dress that fit well in a pretty yellow and green pattern that suited her well enough. Elain slipped into one of the rooms and put it on quickly, wishing she had more underthings. The dress itself was flowy, fashionable once upon a time, though comfortable which felt more important than looking like a respectable lady.

Once she had it laced over her skin, she found underthings weren’t wholly necessary. She managed to dig out some stockings and shoes before making her way back up to the deck where the captain as ushering some new souls aboard. Two men, both shell shocked and silent, took her place below deck as she returned to the cold.

“Your jacket…”

“Lucien,” he told her, cocking his head again. “My name is Lucien.”

“Elain Archeron,” she said, offering her his hand. His skin was warm against her own, filling her with the strangest feeling of contentment. Maybe it was the relative safety that made her feel that way. They exchanged small smiles before he nodded at the jacket still draped over her arm.

“Keep it. I don’t feel the chill anymore.”

Elain offered another smile, slipping her arms into the sleeves to leech the remaining warmth left to the fabric. “How does this work?”

“We just sail,” he said, his voice heavy. “And keep a lookout for anyone in the water.”

“Where is your crew?”

“No crew,” he murmured, taking the steps upward toward the helm. “It’s just me and this ship that’s been passed down generations.”

“Do you know how many people were rescued last night?” she questioned.

He shook his head sadly. “I don’t. I’m sorry.”

Elain steadied herself with a long breath. “That’s okay. I’m here to help, all the same.”

“You don’t have to, you know,” he said as she joined him at his side. “I wouldn’t fault you for resting.”

But Elain strangely wasn’t tired, or hungry. Now that she was safe, she merely wanted to get home. Cold air whipped her hair around her face, causing her to push the golden brown curls out of her eyes.

“I would fault me,” she finally said, admitting the truth. “It’s not just my sisters, it's…”

He stared, lips parted as if he’d never heard another person speak. She felt like her words were important—like he cared.

“I jumped from the ship,” she told him. “It snapped in half, it…I just…I want to help. I need to help.”

“Okay,” he agreed with a nod of his head.

It was agonizing work that day, eyes strained against the gloom, to try and pick out survivors. What were the odds, she wondered, that anyone had managed to survive the night. “There,” she whispered, seeing a bobbing figure in the water. It was a woman and a little girl, clutching each other tight with dull eyes and blue lips. Elain raced downstairs for blankets, relieved to find the cabin doors closed, and mostly cleared of bodies. People were tired—they deserved quiet.

“You found us,” the woman whispered to Lucien while Elain fell to her knees to wrap a blanket around the little girl.

“You’re safe, now,” she promised, noting the little frozen droplets clinging to the childs lashes. The child didn’t respond—Elain didn’t expect them to. She merely clung to her mothers hand, dress dripping puddles over the wood beneath them, before vanishing below deck.

“You should rest,” Lucien told her a second time as Elain’s legs began to ache a little from standing so straight, her eyes watering from the stinging salt air and staring into the gloom. What little light had filtered from overhead was quickly vanishing, leaving only the blackest night again.

“I don’t think people could survive another night,” Elain told him, leaning over the rail to look down at the water below.

“You never know,” he replied, coming to join her for a moment. Propped on his elbows, he bit his bottom lip ever so slightly. “You did.”

“One night. Not two.”

“All we can do is try. You’ve been brave,” he added, turning to wholly look at her. “No one offered to help except you.”

“They’ve been through a lot,” Elain heard herself say, heart quickening in her chest. “I don’t fault them for it.”

“Neither do I,” he hastily assured her. “Nor would I fault you for getting some sleep.”

“I’m not tired,” she said, looking at his face. He was so handsome—so lovely, and bright, and warm. Like the sun itself beating down on her, though he was only a man who’d realized she was alive and had pulled her out of the water.

Elain would take whatever she could get. Any little kindness felt monumental and overwhelming.

“Me either,” he said with a heavy sigh. “The ship, it just…”

He scrubbed a hand over his jaw.

“I don’t know what happened,” she admitted, wondering if he had a radio or something that might explain it. His eyes became glassy, expression slack as he stared into the distance.

“I wish I could tell you,” he finally said, his voice strangely helpless. “I haven’t seen a wreck like that in…my life, I suppose.”

“My sisters got into lifeboats,” she said, more to reassure herself than anything. “We were separated.”

“Why didn’t you join them?”

Elain explained about the mother shushing the child as they’d passed, and how they’d all caught up at the lifeboat. She couldn’t explain why she’d nearly traded her life for theirs. Only that in the moment, it hadn’t felt like a choice—she’d merely done it without question, without thinking.

Lucien’s lips parted, a strange look of wonder sparkling in his one good, russet eye. “That was…” he swallowed. “Very brave.”

“Was it?” she questioned. It merely felt decent. But he nodded his head, allowing them to lapse into comfortable silence. The world was quiet, even aboard the ship, and even the heavy mist blanketing the world didn’t feel concerning.

“I’m used to singular sailors,” Lucien told her once night had fully settled. They were still at the helm, him showing her how to keep the ship on course. Holding the wheel was harder than she’d expected, straining to pull away if she became complacent. “Not…not all this.” “Do you routinely pick up people stranded at sea?” she tried to tease. His fingers slid over hers, holding the wheel steady.

“More often than you’d imagine,” he replied, towering over her. It was tempting to lean herself back against his warmth, to bask in the solid strength of his body. He was a stranger, and yet she felt as if she knew him. “It’s become a calling.”

“Rescuing?”

He nodded. “I didn’t set out to do it, but…”

“Well, I’m glad you did,” she told him, inclining her head to look up at him. His eyes slid down her face, landing squarely on her mouth.

“So am I,” he admitted. “What would it take to convince you to lay down?”

There was a twinge of sadness to his voice. “I think all the rooms are taken.”

“Have mine, then.”

Promising the ship was capable of steering itself—some new technology that seemed wholly out of place on his large, wooden ship with its billowing sails, but she supposed it was more for aesthetic than anything.

The captain's quarters were large, with a rather nice bed pushed up against windows overlooking the sea, and a table and chairs for working or eating–whatever he preferred. Food was set out if she wanted it, though Elain was still too worked up to eat anything.

“Get some rest,” he urged, lingering in the doorway.

Elain nearly asked him to join her. She didn’t know what possessed her to do so, only that lingering feeling that she knew him. Instead, Elain nodded her head, allowing him to close the door.

She collapsed into the warm, soft bed, inhaling the smell of him on the pillow. She hadn’t meant to sleep, but the moment she curled herself beneath a blanket, Elain was gone. Her dreams were a haze of bright light and voices she couldn’t quite make out. Lost to the blinding sunshine, she thought she heard Feyre and Nesta talking, and when she woke, she darted back above deck expecting to see them.

Lucien seemed surprised to see her. “You’re back.” “It’s dawn,” she replied, rubbing sleep from the corners of her eyes. “I thought I heard my sisters.”

He only shook his head. “No Archeron’s.”

“Maybe they survived,” she said with a hopeful smile. Lucien offered her a shy one in response.

“Maybe,” he agreed.

They spent the day together—alone—out on deck. Lucien showed her how to climb into the bird's nest, giving Elain a three hundred and sixty degree view of the world around them. The mist had lifted, though it was still a gray, moody day with a faint sprinkling of rain that made it hard to stay warm.

She alternated between silence, looking for anyone they might have missed and asking Lucien a million questions.

“Don’t you get lonely out here by yourself?” she heard herself questioning later that evening, seated across from him at the swaying table. He popped a grape into his mouth.

“Sometimes,” he admitted.

“Where will you go when you drop me off?” she asked.

“Back to sea,” he replied easily, though she saw the sadness etched into his expression. He didn’t want her to leave. Neither did Elain, if she was being honest.

“I’m supposed to be starting a new life in New York,” she informed him, noting how he leaned forward with interest. He didn’t ask, but Elain told him anyway—how her mother had succumbed to cholera, and then her father had died, seemingly, of a broken heart. She told him about the debts and selling their family estate to make it even, leaving them penniless and in danger of destitution before being rescued by a wealthy aunt in America.

“You didn’t want to be married?” he asked, elbows resting on the table. They’d abandoned eating for talking, illuminated by a few candles anchored to the desk.

“I was engaged for a time,” she admitted, waiting for the familiar stab of shame and embarrassment. “He left when he discovered there was no dowry as promised.”

Lucien nodded his head. “That won’t be a problem for you now, I suppose.”

“Maybe I don’t want to be married,” Elain replied, unable to drag her eyes off him. He was off-limits—the wrong kind of man for someone like her. She was certain her aunt would never allow it, and besides, she barely knew him.

Still, she could imagine it. The whole thing was terribly romantic, marrying the man who’d rescued her from a watery grave. Would he abandon the sea for land if she asked? Elain didn’t dare—he didn’t know her at all.

“No? What do you want, then?”

“To travel,” she admitted. “Everywhere. I want to see the whole world.”

His smile threatened to blind her. “You’d get on another ship after everything that happened?”

Elain considered it. “Well. I suppose now I know what might happen. I could prepare myself better for rough seas.”

“You could,” he agreed. Was he wondering the same thing she was? He rose to his feet, rubbing his palms on his thighs. “I should—”

“Will you stay?” she asked, heart beating so loudly she was certain he could hear her. “Please?”

“You don’t have to beg,” he murmured, eyeing the bed again. “I ah…of course.”

Did he offer this to everyone? Unlikely. Elain hadn’t heard a peep from the people in the other rooms, and she wondered if they, too, were miserable in their loneliness. She was afraid to ask when they’d dock or where he’d go when it was all over. Was she a bad person for not wanting it to end? It was, easily, the worst experience of her life.

But when Lucien settled into the bed beside her, Elain thought that it was the best, too. She had freedom, away from the constraints of the life she knew she was hurtling back toward. He’d let her help him set food out for the other refugees, had shown her how to navigate by the stars, how to get the most out of the sails and keep the ship on course.

How much more would she learn if she could remain another week? Two? Elain curled beside him until her head was on his shoulder.

“You should sleep,” he whispered, his breath tickling her hair. Elain was certain she couldn’t be able to, certain she’d be too awake sleeping next to a man she barely knew. But like always, Elain fell into her too bright, confusing dreams.

They spent a week like that, Lucien loosening whatever kept him at an arms length when it came to her, Elain coming into her own on the ship. No one bothered them—she knocked on doors, sometimes receiving answers but more often, receiving nothing at all. She knew better than to intrude, though she often told Lucien how she wished they’d come up, too, and get some fresh air.

He merely offered her a sad smile in response. “Not everyone can find joy in tragedy,” he told her. It had been seven days with no sign of land, and Elain, who’d once been so desperate to reach her sisters, was finding that she never wanted to see it again. The strange, bright dreams had begun to fade back to normal as her body adjusted to life at sea.

“Eat this,” Lucien instructed, tossing her an orange. Elain smiled, digging her nails into the skin to get at the flesh.

“I was thinking,” she began, slowly chewing without looking at him. Elain was afraid he’d tell her no—already she could feel him stiffen beside her. “That when this is all over, I might…stay?”

There was nothing but the sound of the sea below them and the wind rustling the sails.

“Stay?”

“Yeah…ah…with you?”

“Stay with me.” He was merely repeating what she’d said, his voice toneless. “Elain—”

“Lucien, please—”

“You can’t stay—”

“I don’t want that life,” she interrupted, scrambling to her feet. Her orange fell to the deck, splattering citrusy juice between the pair of them. “It was all chosen for me. It doesn’t matter if I’m in London or I’m in New York, the result is the same. Everyone knows better, knows what I want and I need, but this, Lucien…this is what I need.”

He rose slowly to his feet, stretching his long body out as he stared unblinkingly back at her.

“I need you,” she added, wondering if that made her pathetic. She barely knew him, and knew that if he left, it would be a loss she’d mourn for the rest of her life. She’d always be sitting at the window, wondering where he was. If he was okay.

If he missed her.

“Elain,” he whispered, his voice strangely fragmented. “You don’t understand—”

“I do,” she insisted. If he was going to tell her no, let it be because he didn’t care for her. Not because he was trying to do right by her. “You saved me.”

His mouth crashed against hers before Elain could take a breath. He was just as warm as he always was, lips soft as he kissed her insistently. His hands slid into her tangled hair before one arm wound its way around her waist, holding her close. Elain surged up on her tiptoes, her kissing clumsy as she got the hang of things.

It didn’t take a lot of skill, truthfully. He groaned even at her clumsy attempts, holding her so tight Elain couldn’t possibly escape. She wanted to get lost in the feel of his lips against her, stomach tightening when his teeth nipped at her bottom lip.

More, more, more.

It would never be enough and she knew it. Elain didn’t care if it wasn’t proper or if having this man would ruin her. Maybe this was all she’d get—one night with him before he firmly told her no, admitted that he had a family or a wife somewhere and she was merely a distraction he couldn’t afford.

Maybe she’d shove him overboard if that was true.

Lucien hauled her up in his arms as if she were weightless, carrying her below deck not to the rooms that ought to belong to her, but to his cabin before slamming the door closed with his foot. Lucien laid her on the bed, standing at the edge to look at her.

“If I cannot stay,” she whispered, watching as he untucked his shirt, “then join me on land instead.”

He tossed the fabric to the floor, revealing the golden brown of his muscular skin. “Join you on land?” he whispered, kicking his boots off, too. Elain followed suit, using her elbows to crawl up the bed backward so her head hit the pillow.

“Come back with me,” she all but begged. Lucien silenced her with his mouth again, parting her legs with an insistent knee. This was an easier way to communicate. All she had to do was touch him. Elain had never had a man like this before, and gliding her hand down the smooth expanse of his back was thrilling. She let her fingers touch from his shoulders to the band of his pants and back again while Lucien ground himself into her, expressing his enjoyment the only way he knew how.

Elain, too, found herself desperate for more. Her hands managed to wedge between them, finding the buttons on his pants. Lucien choked, nipping her bottom lip as he drew back. “Slow down,” he whispered frantically, peering between them. She didn’t stop, slipping the button loose with one hand. A trail of dark, auburn hair trailing from his navel downward appeared, and if she’d been bolder, she might have pushed him to his back to truly examine him.

She wasn’t, though. Shyness stole over her at the bulge and the realization that if she pushed even a little, she’d have a wholly naked man laying on top of her.

Lucien kissed her again when he realized she wasn’t going to fully undress her. His tongue slid into her mouth, licking and tasting until Elain was arching into his erection, desperate for friction. So lost in pleasure, she hadn’t realized he’d begun unbuttoning her dress until she felt his mouth trail down her neck to her exposed breasts.

“Up,” he whispered, and Elain did as she was told, rising upward so Lucien could push the sleeves from her shoulders. He was the one to bare her, first, his pants unbuttoned but still covering him. Elain practically panted when he sank to his haunches for a moment to really look down at her.

There was something beyond lust gleaming back at her. Something she recognized, the same emotion that had caused her to ask him to let her stay. Elain’s heart soared—he was going to say yes. At the end of it all, Lucien was going to let her remain on the ship with her. They’d go to port, she’d assure her sisters were safe, and then she’d run off with the dashing sailor before anyone could stop her. There was nothing in her way. They could always come back someday, when he was tired of roaming and when Elain was satisfied she’d seen the world.

Lucien’s mouth trailing between her breasts dragged Elain back to the present. He was watching, both metal and real eyes fixed wholly on her. Before he could slip away, she pulled his hair from its piece of cloth, allowing it to cascade over his powerful shoulders. He smiled, beautiful as always, before pressing more kisses against the flat of her stomach.

Elain was holding her breath, afraid to seem too eager. That seemed unseemly for a woman, though she was. Propriety be damned, she knew what he was planning—she wasn’t a nun, after all. She heard women talk, knew, generally, what went down between men and women in the bedroom. She’d always been curious about all of it.

What would it feel like to have his mouth on her?

He was about to show her. Lucien hesitated for a moment, pushing her boneless legs apart with ease. She would have spread them for him if she hadn’t been afraid he’d think less of her. There was no nerves, no fear—she trusted him to do right by her.

He lifted her leg, peppering kisses from her ankle to her thigh before swapping, never taking his eyes off her. Did she want her to beg? Elain felt as if she’d done enough of that for the day—for a lifetime, really. She thought he might do it again, looking up at the swaying wooden ceiling just for him to lick clean up the center of her. Elain gasped, nearly kicking him between the legs in her surprise.

Whatever she’d expected, it felt nothing like the reality. His mouth was wet and soft, tongue practiced. He reached for her breasts, teasing and toying as he took slow, languid licks. It was as if he were enjoying himself, trying to draw it all out. Elain could scarcely breathe, her insides too big for the skin containing her. She felt as if she might fly into a million pieces as pleasure built hotter and higher with each pass of his tongue.

Lucien teased the entrance of her body with his thumb, barely pushing himself in. Elain gasped, arching so hard into his face she wasn’t convinced he could breathe. His other hand fell from her breast to yank her tighter, all semblance of control abandoned. He licked like a wild animal, desperate and frantic until Elain was careening toward the precipice. She chanted his name, trying to get him to slow back down, but Lucien wouldn’t hear it.

Elain wasn’t graceful or elegant when she came. With her hand grasping his hair, she practically rode his face, shamefully wanton, though she didn’t care. He let her, gasping only when she pushed away, suddenly overly sensitive. As she tried to catch her breath, to banish the brightness pricking at her vision, Lucien shucked off his pants and returned to her, kissing her greedily.

“I need you,” he whispered against her jaw. Weak sunlight poured through the window, illuminating his rigid, large cock pressed against her wet entrance.

“I’m yours,” she replied.

That was all the convincing it took for him to slide himself inch by wonderful inch into her body. It seemed to stretch on forever, the slow acclimation of adjustment to having something lodged inside her. Elain squeezed the first time just to try and shift a little of the discomfort, which caused Lucien to exhale a breath so forcefully that she had no choice but to do it again.

And again.

His eyes rolled upward. “If you keep it up, I won’t last but a minute.”

“There’s time,” she assured him.

His eyes found hers, earning her a messy kiss rather than any kind of helpful or reassuring response. Burying his face into her neck, he rocked his hips forward, causing pleasure to spike through her. Each drag of his cock, coupled with his lips against her skin, caused a different sort of pleasure. One that took a little longer, but burned hotter. Elain was gasping, twisting and writhing beneath him as any semblance of civility was erased, leaving only the creature in his bed.

He didn’t complain. “You’re so good,” he whispered, dragging his lips over her jaw. “So tight. Is this what you want? To stay here? With me?” His words trailed into a loud groan drowned by the sea around them. Elain could only pant the same word over and over.

Yes, yes, yes.

Elain came mere moments before Lucien, breaking apart so thoroughly that she was certain there was no coming back from it. She could be pieced back together but the fragments would also show, etched in glittering gold against her skin.

“Forgive me,” he whispered before he, too, came with what felt like the same passionate violence. Elain might have forgotten his plea in the aftermath, sated and boneless as he collapsed on top of her. There was nothing to forgive, nothing he could say that would change her mind.

Lucien held her against him, fingers stroking her hair as they laid beneath the sheets. For a long time, neither of them spoke. Elain had questions that slipped from her as she slept, hand pressed to his bare chest.

The blinding light had returned, drowning out whatever pleasant dreams there was to be had with heat so scorching she woke in a thin sheen of sweat.

Lucien was there, sitting on the edge of the bed and fully dressed. With his back to her, shoulders slumped, he said, “It’s time, Elain.” Her stomach clenched. “We’ve arrived?”

He looked over his shoulder. “Elain.”

“Lucien,” she pleaded, but he stood, offering her the same hand he’d once offered to pull her from the water. Elain took it, surprised and frustrated to find she was back in her night dress. When had she put that on?

“I don’t want to leave.”

“You have to make a choice, Elain,” he said, his voice dripping with anguish. “It’s time.”

Clutching his hand, Elain let him lead her barefoot from the cabin they’d slept in. There was no noise on the ship—only the blackest night that seemed to infest every space of the ship. It was almost as bad as the biting cold that swirled around them.

“Lucien,” she pleaded, but he held fast, taking her up the steps and back.

Back to the night before he’d found her. Elain balked, but Lucien didn’t relent, taking her to the edge where she watched herself, clumsy and freezing, claw her way up the capsized life raft. Time moved strangely, almost silently despite the echoing, screaming fears that bounced through her skull.

And Elain watched as her eyes fluttered shut, lips parted and blue. Her chest rose and fell.

The ship slipped beneath the waves.

And Elain’s body went still, one hand sliding into the water unnoticed, fingers skimming the icy surface. She turned to face him. She understood, then, what she'd been too scared to acknowledge the day he'd pulled her from the water. Her sisters had survived, but she had not. And he had come to ferry her into the afterlife.

“I’m here to take you home,” he said, gesturing around them. The night faded, and in its stead, a blinding, bright light emerged. For a moment the ship itself vanished—everything did, leaving her suspended in a great nothing. Her only anchor was his hand still gripping hers.

“Elain.”

It was her mothers voice. Her mothers face, shining and beautiful, unmarred by the cholera that had taken her from Elain when she’d been a child. Beside her stood Elain’s father, beaming as he was so often in her memories. “Elain, come home with us.”

She was rooted in place, breathing so hard she could have choked on it. “Mommy?”

She took a half step forward, pulled back by Lucien who pressed a kiss to her forehead. Cupping her face, he whispered, “I would have stayed with you. Forever,” he added, as if she didn’t know that.

Elain turned again, back into the warmth where her parents waited.

“Are you happy?” she heard herself ask them.

They beckoned for her, and some part wanted to go, too. Wanted to see them again, to bury her face in her fathers shirt and inhale the scent of spearmint and tobacco. To tell them how much she missed them and how she wished they could have stayed longer.

Elain took a step back. And another. And another.

Until she was back in the gray mist with Lucien, the light fading behind her. “If you don’t go—”

“I’ll stay. With you,” she added, looking, now, at him wholly. “I’ll ferry the souls of the dead with you.”

Lucien cupped her face gently. “Are you sure?”

But she’d been sure the night before. And Elain was sure then, too. Pressing a kiss to his cheek, Elain nodded.

“Forever.”

#elucien

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trainwiz · 2 months ago

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Sotha Sil Expanded 3.0 is now out!

It's been 11 years since the last update to Sotha Sil Expanded, and I'm finally back to bring it up to Todd's high standards (as well as apply a decade's worth of professional experience, assets, and new modding tools to it).

This features a HUGE amount of fixes, new features, new models, new meshes, new voice acting, new signage, new tubes, and generally aims to address the myriad of problems people had.

Is it still a giant puzzle-filled clockwork hell?

No shit.

Am I going to subject you to needless (keyword needless) suffering?

No. My back hurts and I make estimated tax payments, I'm above that now.

So come and take a trip back to 2012, when we were all bright eyed and hopeful, the internet thought Homestuck could still possibly be good, and Sotha Sil wasn't an eight foot tall brass heartthrob with enough self-insert smut to make even Vivec blush who also invented Tamriel's guns (I mean he still could be, guns are neat).

Full changes include:

The sewers of Sotha Sil have been replaced with a new area and memory matching puzzle, which stars a returning lore character and favorite of mine. If you don't like him, that's fine. Just know that I'm in your walls.

Fabrevar and Gestalt now have new voices (with Gestalt integrating the Gestalt Revoiced mod).

Tons of additional detailing and lighting in various cells.

The sewers still exist as an optional side area now, with their own reward.

The entire Clockwork City and Fabricant Foundry now have signposts to help you better navigate my deranged nonsense.

The Fabricant Foundry now provides telekinetic worker rings, to better help sort through the various deadly garbage you'll be faced with.

Fabricant Foundry puzzles now have lights that indicate when a sector is repaired and item weights have been rebalanced.

While killing mad fabricants in the slums will still cause the denizens to hate you, there is now a new quest that will allow you to seek penance and forgiveness for your horrible actions. To begin, talk to the Archcanon after you royally screwed the pooch.

New models for things like power cores, the Clockwork City's sun, as well as improved textures for things like the fabricant Tribunal.

Various ambient sounds have been replaced to be more modern and less grating.

Guide fabricants have been added to each district of the city, who can provide helpful directions.

Your strength attribute can be used to bypass several small puzzles, including allowing you to break glass, carry more garbage in the disposal area, and more.

Various areas in the city and dungeon that could previously softlock you now have ways and ramps out of them.

Added Sotha Sil's pauldrons, robe, staff, and crown once the main quest is complete. All of these are vastly more powerful in the hands of a master enchanter, much like Brass Daddy himself.

Added various missing icons for items in game, such as quartz ore.

Sotha Sil's mask (now his crown) has a new enchantment and powers.

Changed Subori's quest to be about following various bottles.

The runaway train sidequest now has a nonviolent solution.

The Chamber of Soleh is now a single area, with more queues for the invisible bridge puzzle.

Added sound queues to the radio tower box collection sidequest.

Added non-sneaking based solution to the Slums main quest.

Industrial district main quest now involves tracking down visible lightning blasts, and has multiple solutions for various stages in the quest.

Temple main quest has been shortened and made less tedious, including reducing the radius and locations of the liches and removing various pointless stages.

Added new original artifacts in Sotha Sil's Lab.

The Vault of Magnus will allow you to bypass its puzzles provided you have mastery (100 >) in the associated skill.

The Valley of Udok's puzzle has been redone to be more navigable and based around color matching, and is no longer instant death upon failure.

Vast amounts of optimizations done in various areas, including the Clockwork City itself (which now runs at playable framerates!)

A huge amount of new models, including signposts, lanterns, TUBES, wires, spheres, tunnels, and more, all appropriate or based off the existing Sotha Sil tileset.

Imperfections, Fyr Manor Modules, and Pieces of God are now able to be detected via the Detect Key spell effect.

Fixed issue where augmentations didn't work.

Fixed various script issues that would cause the mod to not work in OpenMW.

Reduced number of enemies throughout the mod, except where appropriate.

Hall of Delirum's meshes are now separate from Ghostfence meshes, allowing better compatability.

Fixed bad integration errors that prevented various doors from working.

Almalexia will now reset herself if you Darth Maul her off the ledges of the final battle arena. You have to do it PROPERLY, with swords, like Todd intended.

Fixed various bad colliders that could cause you to fall through stairs.

Fixed mismatched icons on ceramic armor.

Fixed missing textures for various meshes.

Fixed softlock that occurred with moon sugar crates in the Residential main quest.

Fixed exploit that would allow for infinite Ceramic pauldrons from the High foremer.

Fixed quests that wouldn't mark themselves as complete.

Fixed issue where the Sanctum of Serlyn couldn't be completed.

Fixed lighting issues in the depths.

Fixed issue where various lifts wouldn't function correctly, at least visually speaking.

#morrowind #sotha sil #sotha sil expanded #morrowind mods

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madhatterbri · 1 year ago

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Grind | W.O.

Summary: Will discovers he likes to grind on the boss' daughter. Historical AU. 18+

Author's Note: The devil works hard, but fanfic writers work harder. 😂❤️

@plentyoffandoms @theworldofotps @99hook

Impure fiction

Will had an eye on the boss' daughter for quite some time. He was shy about it at first before getting cheeky. No inappropriate actions or words were ever done in front of the watchful eyes of daddy, of course. Oh no. He saved them all for the moments they were alone.

Y/N sat at the desk crunching the latest numbers for her father's business. After sending her off to college, she came back with a degree in accounting. Her father insisted that she come work for him. When he told her that Will was working for him, she immediately accepted.

"Oi, what are you still doing here? It's dangerous out there for a pretty girl like you," Will announced and pointed out the window behind her. As if on queue, a flash of lightning followed by the roar of thunder shook the room. He made his way to Y/N's desk.

"Rain catch ya, did it?" She giggled upon seeing his wet features. His dirty blonde curls normally fluffy were now soaked. His clothes stuck to him. The white button-up shirt he wore, leaving nothing to the imagination.

"Think this is funny, do you? You may have the beauty, darling, but I got the muscles. A quick shower yourself would do you some good," he teased and moved like he was going to hug her.

"You wouldn't dare," she hissed and stood from her chair. Will had a big toothy grin on his face. Each step towards her met with the sound of his wet socks being squished between the floor and his feet. She quickly made her way from him.

He gave you a running head start. Will was an assassin who liked the feel of catching someone after they had a head start. The power it gave him as the person couldn't outlast him. The only thing better than the feeling was Y/N.

Y/N only made it to the kitchen before he caught her. His arms wrapped around her waist from behind. She squealed as the cold, wet rain touched her skin. Will spun her around and press himself against her in a proper hug. Curses and insults flew out of her mouth as she pushed him away.

"You bloody bastard! I will kill you!" She screeched and slammed her fists into his muscular chest. He laughed at her feeble attempts to hurt him, which only egged her on more.

He scooped her up over his shoulder. Her balled up fists banged against his back to be let down. Will eventually followed her wishes and placed her on the rug in front of the fireplace in the meeting room. Her father would come in here to unwind during business hours.

"Happy princess?" He asked with his arms extended outwards. His arms fell back to his sides when he saw through her white shirt. She followed his gaze and blushed. Her shirt was pressed to her body.

"Like what you see then?" She asked and started to unbutton her shirt. Will's mouth dropped open in shock. He gulped to get rid of the dryness in his mouth. He licked his lips. "Right then. You've got two options, Willy. Either we can do what we have both been wanting to do or you can fuck off. Which is it?"

Will wasn't as delicate as she was with his clothes. He grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled it apart. The buttons popped off and bounced on the floor. He dropped to his knees and kissed her hard. His hands cupped her cheeks as the fire roared next to them.

Her hands ignored her clothes and rubbed his damp body. She started from behind his neck and made her way to his chest and stomach. Each ripple of muscle feels tight under her fingertips. His hands followed suit and ran down to her shirt.

"Don't you bloody dare, Ospreay," she threatened.

Her shirt met the same fate as his. "Sorry, love, been waiting for this for too long,"

He ripped the fabric off her body and away from them. The next to go was her bra. Her arms lifted up as he slipped the garment over her head. His light eyes didn't hide that he was checking her out. Will urged her to lay back.

She laid on her back. He placed his hands at either side of her body. His lips connected to hers once more. Will made his way by kissing her jawline down to her neck and chest. He paid attention to her sounds, making sure to hit all the right spots. Her fingers snaked through his hair.

He sat up to unfasten her belt. She hoisted her hips as he slid her pants and underwear off. Her legs were spread under his lust filled gaze. The bloke still couldn't believe this was happening. All the times he dreamed about this.

Her moans sounded in the room as he teased her. His tongue slowly ascended up her slit. She closed her eyes and whined. They locked eyes, and he smiled.

With little hesitation, he went down on her. His tongue toyed with her clit as it pulsed in need for him. Her leg laid over his shoulder. One of her hands gripped his hair while the other held his hand. His free hand made use of working her.

Will started slow with thrusting one finger in and out of her. He saw the pathetic excuse of men she dated. They couldn't prepare her for him. Once he saw she was getting adjusted to him, he added another finger and then another. He spread them apart and curled them inside of her. She only got louder from there.

He stopped the moment the tightness in his pants was too painful to withstand. Will pulled away from her, much to her dismay. A loud whine of protest slipped out of the boss' daughter yet stopped when she saw him undressing. Soon, he was above naked as the day he was born.

"I got you, darling. Don't worry," he assured her and placed himself between her legs once more. His strong hands wrapped her legs around his waist. Will grabbed himself and rubbed the tip of his dick through her folds. He felt the head at her entrance. He leaned down and kissed her before slowly pushing himself inside.

His mouth captured her moan as he waited for her to adjust to him. She felt heavenly to him. His eyes closed to take everything in. God, if this was a dream, he never wanted to wake up.

"More," she begged against his lips. He happily obliged. The sound of skin hitting skin and their carnal sounds filled the room. The fire flickered in the fireplace, but he could see her pleased expression perfectly. Her eyes half closed while she moaned and whimpered his name.

His hands gripped her waist as his thrusts picked up. He never wanted to feel her so far from him. Will paused momentarily. He could feel the two of them were close, but he wanted his ego stroked by her one last time.

"Who makes you feel like this, huh? Who has you singing like this?" He asked roughly between grunts.

"Y-you do," she stuttered and bit her lip. Her walls started to clench around him.

"Scream my name, darling. Let everyone in London know who makes you feel so good," he ordered. She opened her mouth to speak, yet nothing came out. Only breathy moans. Finally, she found it in her.

"Will!" She called out once she reached the peak of orgasm. Will wasn't far behind. He shoved himself deep inside of her one last time. He came inside of her without a care in the world. Her dad would kill him if he ever found out, but he'd die a happy man.

The next few minutes were spent laying in front of the fireplace. He laid behind her and rubbed her side. His arm was used as a pillow for her head. The two of them were distracted by watching the dying flames in the fireplace. Will kissed her bare shoulder softly. Y/N smiled at a joke that popped in her head.

"I guess grinding the boss' daughter isn't too bad," she teased and kissed his bicep.

#fanfiction #aew fanfic #aew fanfiction #will ospreay x reader #will ospreay x y/n #will ospreay smut #will ospreay fanfic

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accidentally-in-fictional-love · 10 months ago

Note

Making it official: ⚡🩹🔞(<- always i just can't help myself) Feel free to use this if you want to, or write anything else really. I'm sure I'll love it regardless, Lightning has already taken root in my heart.

You Light The Sky, I'll Bring The Rain - Lightning/Reader

Warnings: No use of Y/N, gender-neutral reader, semi-spoilers for the movie but nothing actually main plot related, friends with benefits, one-sided pining (or is it?), lots of heavy talk, blowjobs, smut.

Wordcount: 8060

Summary: You've never liked Lightning. He was a bit of a snob, acted like he was too good for you, and always ever called when he needed something. No, you've never ever liked Lighting. But it was the man he used to be that always made you come when he called.

Notes: Switching up my queue just once because if I don't write for this man asap I'll explode. I fell in love with him at once, DD did such an amazing job as usual, I was smitten in the theatre once again and I can't stop thinking about him so here's a filled request for those who already love him~ I do plan on writing him a longer fic, but I need to settle on that plot first since I apparently love him enough to ship with /)w(\ so I gave that original idea to Addy, but I hope you enjoy this in the meantime 💗💗💗

You didn't know why you kept coming back to him. He was different now, much different than the man you knew back in college when you were stuck next to each other in your programming class, from his contacts to his clothes to even his haircut. He still painted his nails, that never changed, and he kept the ring you gave him the night you were walking around town and randomly found it on the ground. You still remember picking it up and trying it on, it was unwanted trash you could turn into something loved again; he seemed to latch on to what you said about it, and he'd gone quiet when you’d slipped it onto his finger and it'd fit him better than you.

That was years ago, he had a high paying job now and little time for you as a result, always busy with the meetings and parties and people surrounding him, so when he called you up one Friday night you expected it to be just another simple ‘hello,’ ‘I miss the old days,’ and maybe, ‘I miss you.’

‘Everyone's busy tonight, you wanna hang out or something? I know this new age tea place just around the corner from where I work, great vibes, you'll love their blends,’ came his soft voice from the other side, much softer than it used to be when you knew him before; he was too old to be talking like this, but you guessed this was another fake thing about him now, something calm and cool and easily approachable so his true self underneath wouldn't scare anyone else away.

‘Hey, Leo,’ you said instead of answering him, your phone placed on your desk while you typed away at your current project, which was honestly taking much longer than it needed to because your boss refused to listen to some nerdy coder trying to fix his company's website.

‘That's not my name.’

‘I'm not calling you Lightning,’ you replied flatly, you'd already had this conversation a million times before ever since he started his job and changed everything about himself. ‘If you’d just go ahead and give me literally any reason why I should other than, “AIA says all the kids nowadays are doing it,” then maybe I would, but I’m not calling a grown man Lightning because his artificial intelligence wants to brand him as cool, not because it’s something you actually chose for yourself.’

‘Can you at least call me that around my friends? I don't want anyone to be confused, or start calling me that too,’ he muttered, just a hint of his old self slipping through the cracks for a moment.

‘Fine, so did you actually wanna hang out or do you just want someone to get new age tea with you tonight?’ He'd done this before, on slow nights when there was no one else to turn to, there you always were, like a lighthouse in his storm of a life; maybe he was a Lightning, after all.

He went silent at your question, but this was all part of the conversation now, the casual exchange between you two that always happened whenever he needed you, and he took no offense to your tone anymore, just as you stopped hurting when you became the last resort instead of the first. ‘I… want someone with me,’ he admitted, he was getting faster with it since you started calling him out, but there was sadness in his words, it was another bad night, something his so-called new friends wouldn't know about. ‘I visited the hospital again today.’

You saved your project and picked up your phone, already heading to the bedroom to get changed. ‘Was it bad?’ you asked as you raided your closet, needing something to match his new style so he could at least feel comfortable, you wouldn't embarrass him by dressing the same way he used to this time, not tonight.

‘The job helps, you know the paycheck pays for all of it now,’ he started, not wanting to get to the hard part, and you didn't rush him as you found your nicest, hippest shirt you'd bought for work. ‘It's still progressing, AIA said the new treatment would help but she warned me-’

‘You're following the advice of an AI, remember that,’ you murmured so softly you weren't sure if he'd even hear it, but he did anyway, and you heard him clear his throat almost uncomfortably.

‘She did the calculations, she’s smart, so much smarter than you know, it’s so much more advanced than everything we learned in class,’ he told you yet again, but you’d believe it when you stopped seeing posts online about AIs saying human things just because that’s what they were taught to do. ‘The meds help, but… it’s gotten to the point where I can’t leave the house without it.’

‘Please, just come with me to the oncologist who helped my uncle.’

‘AIA said Dr. Krill was the best in the field.’

‘AIA isn’t real, she can look online and give you all the answers you want, but this is a human being I know who helped someone close to me, he can give you more answers than she ever could-’

‘Can you please just get some fucking tea with me?’ he snapped, stopping you in the middle of pulling on a pair of too tight jeans because that’s what the kids today loved to wear; his voice was loud, brash, emotional, this was the real him again, the one only you saw nowadays, and you sighed and walked over to where your phone sat on your bed. ‘Please, I’m sorry I just… I don’t wanna be alone tonight…’

‘You know I’ll be there soon,’ you said softly, just as quiet as him, and you heard his sigh of relief. ‘Do you want me to meet you at your place, or at the shop?’

‘Work, I’m still there finishing something up, we can walk over when you get here.’ He hung up immediately, no more time to talk, but you couldn’t get annoyed when you couldn’t imagine what he was going through. This was something that’d started right at the end of college, you’d been there since the beginning, and whenever he got an update you were the only one he could tell. After he got his job he’d paid off his family’s home, he was stuck living with his parents because of all this, and now took care of them from afar, the both of you moving to Silicon Valley at his urging because of the job opportunities.

It’d only worked out for him, you thought bitterly as you finished getting ready, your phone in your pocket and your keys in your hand as you headed for your car. He’d been picked randomly out of a group of 50 to participate in a foundling company’s new alternative to Siri and Alexa, but you hadn’t, whatever you’d presented to them they hadn’t liked once they saw him. You hated him for a while after that, but you didn’t now, not when you knew this job was the only thing keeping him alive. You’d talked about it once, what you would’ve done if your positions were reversed and you’d been the one picked, but he’d gone silent when it came to him imagining you in his place.

You thought it’d been jealousy even though he was the winner, the idea of you having everything he had so unfair after a lifetime of being overlooked, so terrifying even in its fantasy, that he never even entertained the idea for fun. ‘Never change, just be happy where you are,’ he’d told you that night as you lay on the roof of his building, the thing a giant, sprawling cage where you were only allowed to enter the stairwell, that was it. You turned your head to face him, and when he did the same back, you realized that you didn’t recognize him anymore.

You pulled up to that same building, needing to pay the meter since you had no access to the lot as a visitor after closing, and you saw him waiting by the door for you; he was talking to someone else on the phone, his back slouched against the wall and his free hand waving around as he spoke, but his voice was still soft even in his apparent distress, enough so that you couldn’t make out a word he said. You waved to get his attention when he started to pace, and he quickly said goodbye to his caller before readjusting his earpiece and walking calmly over to you.

‘Partner troubles?’ you joked only because you knew he was single, he always made sure to let you know whenever he was sleeping with someone again.

‘Doctor,’ he answered stiffly, and your laugh died in your throat with a rough cough. ‘C’mon, they’re open late but they stop serving food around 10, I haven’t eaten today.’

‘Old habits die hard, even with all the money in the world,’ you sighed as he fixed his collar and made sure he looked presentable again, but he had nothing to say to that one. ‘I see you’re wearing glasses again?’

He looked down at his detachable glasses where they hung against his chest, and he lifted them up and reattached them so they sat on the bridge of his nose. ‘Got the surgery a while back, these are fake,’ he admitted, but he at least looked a bit more like his old self with them on, as dumb as they looked.

‘Now all you need to do is fix your bangs, then you’ll be recognizable again,’ you teased, reaching up to mess with his hair, but he leaned away seriously, he wouldn't let you make him look disheveled when he was out and about. It killed the mood a bit, and his glasses were placed against his chest again as you walked, the tea shop just a few blocks away like he promised but not nearly close enough all the same. You weren’t fond of places like this, everything was always way too expensive and bragged too much about their superior blends compared to other chain businesses, but they were always the same in the end.

He gave the barista a small wave as he approached the counter, and she did the same to him, but there was no comfortable familiarity in their actions, just them going through the motions. You didn’t hear what he ordered, there were too many words and he wanted it way too specific for someone who used to down cup after cup of black coffee like it was water, so by the time it was your turn you weren’t sure if you should ask for the same and just accept whatever it was, or attempt to come up with something yourself. He gave you a nudge when you took too long, and you just smiled and glanced at the menu again.

‘I’ll just have a water for now, I’ll decide in a bit,’ you told her, and she rolled her eyes and got started on his order all the same. He wasn't happy with that, but you weren’t going to pretend you could understand the gibberish hanging above you. You examined it more closely, you were never much of a tea drinker to begin with, but he wanted the company, so by the time your small cup of overpriced and outsourced mineral water was placed in front of you, you downed it and asked for the only kind of tea you recognized. She rolled her eyes again at your simplicity, but you were there for him, by the time you came back she’d probably be working somewhere else, none of this mattered.

You took your order and grabbed a corner booth while his sandwich was being made, he never liked to sit near windows, and he surprised you again when he walked right past you and grabbed the empty table by the door. You let out a small breath and joined him without a word, and even though he picked his seat he still looked uncomfortable as he popped open the tab and took a sip. Your tea was still too hot so you just let it sit, preferring to watch him and take in all the other things he’d changed now that he was in front of you.

You already knew it’d be weird to get used to him just never wearing glasses anymore, he usually wore them when he was around you to save a pair of contacts, the only piece of that part of him the fake ones hanging around his neck. You reached across the table and took them while he ate, knowing he’d be unable to stop you lest he risk wrecking his sandwich, and you put them on and stared through slightly smudged plastic lenses at him. ‘Give them back,’ he said softly once he’d swallowed, but he didn't look too in a rush when he saw the way they looked on you.

‘These are the same frames from before,’ you noted, taking them off to pull them apart and put them back together a few times to test the magnets within, ‘the ones you wore when we graduated.’

‘They looked vintage, it makes for a good accessory,’ he simply said before he took another bite, a small sip of tea just barely washing it down; maybe he didn’t even like the taste, like it was something else AIA had recommended to him as part of his cleanse to keep him as healthy as possible.

‘Well, you did graduate what, two decades ago? Pretty vintage now if you ask me,’ you stated, his age making him wince even though it was a testament to how he was still here, still breathing. ‘So, how much did the surgery set you back this time?’

‘The company paid for it, actually, I just had to fill out a few forms and explain why it was beneficial for me to be able to see without assistance, and I was booked the next day,’ he said as he finished eating, a slightly larger sip this time making the wince return, he truly didn’t like it.

‘Sounds nice, you know how long it took me to even see a doctor to fix my carpal tunnel.’ You weren’t bitter about it anymore, but he glanced at you all the same.

‘You know I would’ve been able to help had you come to me,’ he reminded you, he always did when you brought it up, and again you declined it even though it was long over and done with.

‘And you know I never would’ve been able to pay you back if you’d taken me to one of those fancy doctors who charge by the minute.’ You tried your own tea but it was still a bit too hot, it burning your tongue a little, and even then you could taste that it was more water than tea, flavourless drivel.

‘I’ve never once asked you to pay me back,’ he said seriously as he sat up, his relaxed posture changing into something more stiff until the wince returned and he sat back again, his hand going to his stomach. ‘Sorry- I apologize for raising my voice, that was rude,’ he corrected himself quickly, and it was almost frustrating to see him like this, maybe this would be the last time, for real. ‘But you know I wouldn’t have asked it from you, just like you never did from me.’

‘So that’s what this is, one big payback for all the times I flipped the bill, drove you into town for every appointment when you could barely stand, sat by you until they kicked me out for the night, is that it?’ His eyes met yours, and you saw him again in them as he reached for your hand; you didn’t move away, just waited for him to touch you when he stopped, glanced towards the counter like he was afraid of anyone seeing him be an actual person again.

He made the motion to push his hair behind his left ear even though it was so short now, his earpiece blinking to signal a call that he then silenced, and he distracted himself with more bad tea until he was ready to answer you. ‘It was never about that,’ he began, but he was looking at the table instead of at you, ‘you know I never kept tabs on any of it, so neither should you.’

‘Then why do we keep doing this, Le- fuck, Lighting? You’ve got a great life now, new job, new friends, new you, why am I still the one thing you hang on to? Because you can tell me the truth? Because I know the real you, and you know that I keep coming back whenever you need someone to talk to about the bad days? I thought AIA could do all that for you now, be your new therapist you can let all that bullshit onto, so unless you tell me why, I’m outta here.’ He was silent while you talked, just listening, and when he didn’t speak you just sighed and stood until he was babbling and reaching for you.

‘Stop, alright, just wait, can we- can I go back to your place tonight? We can talk there, just… not here, not where she can hear us,’ he muttered lowly, his hand covering his face and blocking him from view of the only other person, and you let out another sigh before picking up your tea and motioning for him to get up. He did, his tea brought with him even though he didn’t like it, and you switched with him and headed for the door before he could protest. It was awful, whatever blend he was praising was certainly not this one, but you drank it all the same for him as he caught up to you.

You didn’t speak on the way back to your car, and for a moment you wondered if maybe he’d follow you home when he sat down next to you, his earpiece off and tossed among the change on your dash when your teas filled up the cupholders. This was serious, he always had that stupid thing with him in case of any emergencies, and you didn’t comment on it as you drove back to your apartment. It was nothing fancy like where he probably lived, you still hadn’t gotten to visit him, that was yet another part of his new life you weren’t allowed into, but it was still decent and had a nice view of the water if you did say so yourself.

You parked and he didn’t bring his earpiece with him, even his phone left behind on his seat when you got up to leave. ‘Hey, don’t you need that?’ you asked him before his door could close, and he checked the time before shaking his head and setting it back down. You weren’t going to argue, if someone decided to break into your car you wouldn’t lose much aside from the vehicle compared to his phone full of precious information, but maybe AIA really was that good, maybe she - it - would be able to save it all before anything got leaked.

You pursed your lips and grabbed it after all, just in case, at least the headset would be ignored amongst the change.

He already knew the code to get inside and wasted no time in getting to the elevator, he was in an actual hurry this time, and you felt his phone vibrate in your pocket as soon as you approached him. ‘Oh, here, don’t want you losing your job over something stupid like a data breach if this gets stolen,’ you said as you tossed it to him, no photo under the caller ID as someone called Melody tried to get a hold of him, and he stared at it before hanging up on her.

‘I don’t want to talk to anyone else tonight,’ he whispered as he shut off his phone entirely and shoved it into his pockets, and by the time you reached your floor he’d asked you to do the same. Something felt wrong as you approached your door, he was never this disconnected anymore, and you only had a second to open your mouth to ask what was wrong when he pressed you against your door and kissed you urgently as soon as you shut it.

You were used to this, every time it got bad he came to you for something no one else could give him no matter how much time passed, but you couldn’t ignore that pit in your stomach as you groaned uncomfortably against him and pushed him gently away.

‘Not tonight,’ you told him firmly, and he whimpered before trying again anyway, mouthing along your jaw in order to convince you. ‘Leo, please, I’m tired of this…’

‘Just once more, and if you hate me that much I’ll never come back again,’ he whispered desperately against you, the old him showing again and making your chest hurt; this was a part of him you didn’t miss, this part that said this to everyone who didn’t return his feelings, guilted them into a pity trap outside of his sickness, and you ran your hand along the back of his neck before taking him by the hand and leading him to your bedroom as you always did. He made sure to leave his phone and yours by the door though, he didn’t want to be disturbed, and honestly neither did you.

You didn’t let him start up again once your door was shut, but you did start to strip away everything that wasn't him, from his glasses to the fashionable scarf he didn’t need to the necklaces he’d bought at some local craft market because the gems promoted healing, all of these things not the Leo you knew and chipped off one by one until he was just in his shirt and pants. You went for the former next but he stopped you, instead helped you do the same, and when you both had trouble getting out of your too tight pants the mood was lightened when you collapsed onto the bed with them tangled around your legs.

He kissed you again while you laughed, and this time you didn’t argue against it, needing him just as much as he needed this, you always did, which is why you had yet to say no to him before tonight. His kisses felt easier again, this wasn't love but it was still something strong between you, something that he had yet to find a way to replace. His weight was comfortable over you as it always was, your legs wrapped around each other until you were pressed together again, and your fingers ran through his short hair as you let out a dissatisfied moan.

‘I miss your long hair,’ you whispered when you took a breath, and he sighed as he always did when you brought it up.

‘AIA likes it short, says it suits me better based on my face shape,’ he finally explained after many years and many more excuses as to why he supposedly liked it better.

‘AIA doesn't see you like I do.’ He stilled in the middle of kissing from your jaw to your earlobe, and you saw the way his eyes shifted the way they always did when he was doing calculations in his head; you were getting too honest, you hadn’t been able to keep him back then and you knew you could never keep him now, but something about tonight was making you want to try. You played with the hair at the nape of his neck when he looked at you, just waited for him to say something to make this nothing but a mutually beneficial transaction again, just like it'd been that first time years and years ago, and he looked ready to speak when he instead sat up and turned away from you. ‘I'm sorry, alright? I know this isn't anything, I didn't mean to-’

‘They've got me on a stent now,’ he said to the comforter as he played with it, and you sat up next to him and just waited. ‘That's what I saw her about this morning, they just put it in today.’ He lifted up his shirt to show you, and you followed the tube until it disappeared back under the dark fabric. ‘There's a lot I can hide from other partners, but I can't hide this, now that it's this bad I need to do injections every day…’ He gripped his shirt until he pulled it back down, his expression contorting into one of anger instead of misery. ‘I don't get it, I'm better off now, I was able to take care of everyone but myself, why can't I fix myself?’

‘Because you're not broken,’ you insisted firmly, your hands finding his even when he pulled away.

‘Termical fucking cancer sounds pretty broken to me,’ he sneered, disgusted with himself for still being sick after so much money tossed at too many doctors to name over too many years.

‘No, stop it, alright? Just stop, you know I-’

‘What? You what?’

You shoved him onto his back, your hands trembling over his shoulders as you stared down at the slight lift of his shirt where the tube traveled over his skin. ‘You know I've never seen you that way,’ you confessed to him, your honesty finally building up against the dam until it began to overflow, and for once you had his undivided attention without his phone or other people around to interrupt you. ‘Not even at the beginning, before you knew, back when it was just us barely passing that class; we always said it was gunna be us against the world, that if one of us got a job we'd help the other out since it was all so new, and then you…

‘You just had to come out here, and start working for them, and I was so happy for you even when you couldn't get me in cause I knew you were being taken care of. But then, the haircut, and the outfits, and those fucking glasses- who are you? "Lightning”? Who even is that? Because it's not you, I'm the only one who still knows you, Galileo, and I never wanted you to change out here, you never should've had to just to get these people to look at you, because I always have, I always have…’

There it was, everything was laid bare and out in the open for him now, and you shifted so you wouldn't put too much pressure on him knowing that he was hooked up. He didn't speak for the longest time, still doing those calculations before finally he sighed, looked away. You felt cold, and you sat back fully to give him room to sit up again, Leo finding your floor quite interesting as he tried to figure out how to word his thoughts. ‘Changing into this is what's kept me alive for so long,’ he said after what felt like an eternity, and your fists clenched over your knees. ‘You might not like it, and think that I'm different, but ever since AIA helped me fix everything about myself I didn't like I've been happier, healthier, more social.

‘I don't sit around alone anymore, waiting for you to pick up your phone because you've always been miles ahead of me, and I tried, I tried really fucking hard to get them to let you come with me, but you don't want to be where I am, not now that I know what this place is.’ He went silent a moment, gave you a small glance before returning his eyes back to the floor. ‘I know you don't like me anymore, I know it because I'm not stupid, but I never needed you to like me, not as long as you kept- we kept doing…’

His voice went quiet but in a new way, one that wasn't Lightning, but Galileo again, your Leo, and underneath it all you saw that he was still there, still waiting for you just like you'd always been waiting for him. ‘Why did you never say anything?’ you asked carefully, you couldn't mess this up now, and his hand rested over his stomach as he met your eye.

‘Why didn't you?’

You could only stare, he knew why you couldn't, and you knew why he didn't.

‘What do we do now? Can AIA solve this one?’ you tried to joke, but at the mention of her name he steeled; his hands found your wrists as he pulled you back overtop of him, this was new, and your cheeks flushed as you both adjusted until you were sat on his lap for once.

‘She can't solve everything,’ he whispered like he knew something, this was no joke to him, and you linked your fingers with his just so he'd stop frowning like that.

‘Then what do we do? Because if you're content with this, if we do this again, and then tomorrow I'm back to just being the last one you call when the party's over, then… I don't think I can do this anymore, not after what you said.’ You held him hard so he'd know you were serious this time, you'd almost ended it so many times before but it'd never stuck, but you both knew that this time it would if he just said the word.

‘You were never the last one I called, not even tonight,’ he told you, and you felt your heart clench in time with your hands over his.

‘You didn't make that clear enough, y'know,’ you laughed with a small sob, and he reached up to bring your mouth back down to his. This kiss felt different from the rest, it was honest, not just desperate for whatever you had before, and you cherished it deeply as you started to rut against him, ready to continue what you'd started a little less miserably now. He groaned against your mouth until you moved a little too hard, the groan turning from something pleasurable to pained as he broke away to gasp. ‘Sorry, guess we might have to be careful for a while,’ you cringed as he rubbed his stomach with a wince.

‘Just until I'm used to it, they told me that it shouldn't be too obstructive in my daily life,’ he hissed, and you watched him before shifting down until you were parting his legs and finding a comfortable place between them. He watched you back as you toyed with the drawstring of his pants, your eyes fond of what you found as he lifted his shirt with one hand and threaded his fingers through your hair with the other.

‘I've always liked your tummy, but I thought it was too personal to say,’ you confessed as you kissed him just under his belly button, the soft hair there tickling your chin as he let out a nervous chuckle.

‘I know I'm not getting abs anytime soon with this,’ he muttered, he was always so self-conscious about the way he looked back then too, and you gave him another kiss before placing your hand over the one in your hair.

‘Good, lemme keep just this, at least,’ you pleaded so gently that he had no choice but to agree, and when he nodded you took the drawstring between your teeth and pulled it until the small bow was no more. He sighed as you started to strip him in return, his clothes much more loose and relaxed than the outfit you'd chosen, and it was nothing but easy as you freed him of everything until he was bare before you. You got to see the full extent of his chemo like this, and it did hurt to see him still sick after everything he'd been doing to prevent this, but this had to be the final step, didn't it? You'd trust that AI if she was right about this, if her smart algorithmic brain really did do the calculations and found the exact path to the end of all this, because, as you pressed kiss after kiss to his thighs until he was a whimpering mess against your pillows, you didn’t want to imagine life without him.

He wasn't used to being loved, even when this started it'd been hot and heavy and fast until you were sweating in the backseat of his old car; there had been no passion there, just the two of you laying there in fear that you'd just ruined everything if the other didn't feel the same. To avoid that outcome entirely you'd just played it off, made it seem like this was just some drunken fun between two friends, and instead of an afterglow you'd slowly gotten used to him just smoking beside you while you held yourself under the covers and pretended it was his arms around you. You wouldn't let that happen again, not tonight, not tomorrow, not any other night you decided, he was always yours and you were going to make sure that Silicon Valley kept Lightning, because you were going to keep Leo.

You took him into your mouth and started to bob, careful to keep him pressed into the sheets so he wouldn't move around too much, and you enjoyed the view as you glanced up and saw the way his back slightly arched, his eyes shut tight in bliss. It was rare you got to do any kind of foreplay, he was always so busy you tended to get the call, go find him at work, or wait for him to show up so you could quickly fuck and get back to your lives. Only sometimes, when the night was late and his slight touches were getting addicting, did he let you take your time, but never like this.

You'd jerk him off while you watched a movie, and he'd grind against you until you were panting and ready for more, but stuff like this? Where you could worship him slowly and really convey how much you wanted him through your touch, it was almost forbidden. You'd done it only once before, right after he'd gotten the job and you spent the night together to celebrate; he still drank back then, and you'd had too much as you got down on your knees and let him fuck your mouth until it almost came out, the only instance of, ‘I love you,’ that either of you had ever come that close to saying as he painted your tongue and smiling lips white. When he woke up the next morning not remembering the way he'd looked down at you with nothing but love in his eyes, you'd just rolled with it and pretended that you didn't remember either, just another fun night between friends, nothing more had hppened.

You moaned around him until he gripped your hair a little harder, his thighs tensing as he tried not to trap you between his writhing legs, and you lightly dragged your nails over goosebumped skin until his sighs grew louder. If this was really happening, if he was really going to stay instead of going back to his apartment to talk to AIA like she really knew him, then you'd make up for every second you pretended like this wasn't everything to you. You waited until he was just about to come, he was always easy to read in the way his hips would speed up and he'd hold you until you bruised, the only time he left his mark on you because everything else was too intimate, and you dragged your tongue up the underside of his twitching dick before pulling off with a pop.

‘Wh-why’d you stop?’ he moaned as his hips jutted the air to find you again, and you smiled at him before pulling your underwear down your legs and going for the bottle of lube you kept in your bedside dresser. You didn't answer him with words, his hands kept at bay as you placed them on your hips and made him watch as you stretched yourself open, giving him a proper show so he'd really know how badly you wanted him. His eyes started to lid as he thrusted against your inner thigh, just enough to keep him hard, and you got ready to line him up when he stopped you. ‘The condom’s in my wallet, should still be in my pants,’ he let you know, and you just shook your head before sinking down on him until he was almost crying out.

‘Tonight, you're mine, I wanna feel you,’ you whispered as you adjusted to his size, and he desperately clung to you as he felt your tight heat for the first time without the familiar barrier to keep you apart. The stent was still new, you couldn't take him apart the way you always imagined in your wildest fantasies where you'd been able to confess, and he couldn't fuck you as hard as he preferred thanks to the stress of work and pretending to be someone so soft and quiet in order to keep selling himself, but this would be perfect all the same you decided as you chose a spot on his shoulders and started to move. Your nails dug into his skin as you braced yourself on him, matching lines of red spreading out under his own hands on you, your breathing wild until you found a steady pace.

Each time he tried to thrust up you'd slow until he stopped again, a silent warning that was just as torturous on you as it was on him, but no matter what he wouldn't stop to the point where it was making your knees burn from the effort not to move. You begged him to be careful, your voice giving out as he held you a little tighter and got you to slam down a little harder against him, but he just shook his head just like you'd done. ‘You really think… I'm gunna stop now… that I know you're mine?’ he asked directly into your ear when your head dropped down beside his, and any other time you would've shivered from his words but the feeling of the tube brushing against your own stomach was making you nervous.

‘I don't wanna hurt you,’ you whined, but one sweet kiss to your neck shut you up so fast it made your head spin.

‘You've never treated me like I'm fragile before, don't start tonight,’ he implored of you before kissing you again, and only when he sucked a mark that everyone would be able to see did you answer him. You felt him smile against your neck before one arm came up to wrap around your back, his hand sprayed over your neck and trapping you in place as he took a deep breath and started fucking you in earnest, his other hand guiding your hips when you couldn't move at all. You had to fight to keep yourself from laying flat against him, just the bare amount of space between you so you wouldn't shift anything or worse, force the tape to lift right now of all times, and you let him show you just how much he wanted you right back until his hips were speeding up and he was gripping you so hard it was making you keen.

‘Don't pull out, I want everything from you,’ you panted when you felt him slow just a little, he was thinking about it, and he let out the most delectable noise you'd ever heard him make in your life. He sounded like he wanted to argue against it, maybe AIA had filled his head with so much sex ed. that the thought of sleeping with you like this had given him pause, and you sucked in your own deep breath before grabbing on tight and using all your weight to drag him onto his side. This was more like it, you knew he couldn't resist being on top of you especially after your dual confession, and you wrapped your legs around him and forced him to face the fact that he was also starving for this just as you were. You grinned cheekily up at him before he hunched down to kiss your neck again, his stent safe and his core working hard while he finished fucking you.

His hips stuttered to a hard stop as he came inside of you, your entire body shifted up with each final jut of his hips until he was finished, the feeling of his warmth spreading through you while he held you like you were the only thing keeping him grounded enough to push you over the edge. Your fingers curled over his short hair as he shakily lowered himself onto you, your legs unhooking but not letting him go as you wrapped them around his own instead, a silent plea to not get up and start his usual ritual of pulling out his vape now that he also stopped smoking. He obliged not because of you but because he wanted to, his voice soft again as he pushed your bangs out of your eyes and whispered sweet nothings that didn't feel like Leo or Lightning as he said them, maybe there was more of him that he’d never let you see before.

‘Y'know, AIA told me never to tell you, she thought that I'd ruin things,’ he said so quietly you almost couldn’t hear even though you were so close.

‘This is why I know you better than an AI, like how that tea you got tonight sucked ass,’ you finally told him, said tea now long cold on your counter, ‘so maybe you guys should work on making her a mouth so she knows what taste buds are.’

‘It's supposed to be great for my immune system now that I've switched meds,’ he explained, but you waved it off with a grimace.

‘Start injecting it too then, cause I saw your face every time you took a drink,’ you grumbled on his behalf, and he actually laughed a little before he attempted to sit up. ‘No, please, not yet.’

‘It's almost 10, I'm gunna miss my dose,’ was all he had to say to get you to let go, and the feeling of his come running down your thighs was a little less appreciated than you wanted as he walked back to the kitchen. You wiped yourself off on the closet piece of clothing you could find before joining him, the two of you naked and waiting as he took out his meds from his coat pocket. You hesitated before walking over to him, and he looked self-conscious again before allowing you to see what he had to do from now on; you weren't put off in the least, you'd seen him inject himself with worse to numb the pain as his illness got worse and his self-isolation took hold, and when he was done you brushed your fingertips over the spot where skin turned to tape.

‘Don't be ashamed of this, I wanna see you get better,’ you said without looking up, and he let out a shaky sigh that sounded like he might be holding in more than shame.

‘I'll have to get used to doing this at work, people will talk,’ he already dreaded, and you let your hands slide over his waist to his back as you pulled him even closer.

‘Then lie, say it's something new age that they'll easily believe, what's that dumbass thing people are saying now? Where they take like supplements and stuff and call it something stupid.’

‘Biohacking?’

‘Fuck that's so pretentious, just say that shit to anyone who asks and they'll buy it with that haircut, trust me,’ you promised dismissively, but instead of berating you for not only making fun of the people he knew but his hair again, or laughing because he knew it'd be true, he just remained silent. ‘Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to-’

‘You're the only one who's ever honest with me,’ he thought aloud then, and you looked up at him in surprise; for a second you swore you were staring up at the man you knew in college, one blink and he was gone again, but he wasn't gone, he was just older, and looked a little different, but he was still there.

‘It's LA, someone's gotta be a real person down here,’ you joked when you felt yourself get choked up, and you swallowed when his hand cupped your cheek and stopped you from looking away. He kissed you again, and there was no more desperation, no more lies, no more secrets apart from one, one you couldn't find the answer to on his tongue even though you could taste it, and when you heard a small ahem you jumped and covered yourself in a panic from the intruder. ‘The hell-?’

‘Sorry to interrupt, I just wanted to remind you that you have an early day ahead, so staying up too late doing strenuous activities will only delay your sleep and risk you injuring yourself in a most unfortunate manner,’ a stranger's voice from nowhere told you, and you looked wildly around before he walked over to his phone, covered the camera with his finger, and motioned for you to stay back.

‘Thank you, AIA, we were just saying goodnight,’ he told his phone, and your eyes snapped to the device in confusion, hadn't he turned it off? ‘I should be getting home, we're meeting with new potential clients tomorrow and we need to make sure she's fully charged for the trip.’

‘What, no time for a vape session with me out on the balcony?’ You tried not to let your voice waver but of course you failed, of course something would steal him away again now that he was yours.

‘Lightning has actually quit vaping, as the toxins inside do more harm than good based on-’

‘Yes, thank you, I was just gunna say that,’ he cut in before his phone could teach you all about the health hazards of something you didn't even do, and you could see the apology on his face as he kept hiding himself from the camera like she was… watching. ‘Yeah, I don't… I don't do that kinda thing anymore, just drink shitty tea if I feel like torturing myself.’

You laughed, which made him laugh, and for a moment you forgot about his phone until AIA reminded him of the time in case he had no clocks nearby. ‘Y'know, you can always just, spend the night like you used to do, and then we can get up early, maybe grab breakfast at that greasy diner that always manages to make the most perfect bacon while still burning the hell outta their toast,’ you suggested nervously, and he looked down at his phone before shutting it off again, no goodbye to AIA.

‘I haven't had actual bacon in months,’ he revealed as he walked back over to you, and you patted his stomach and started to lead him back to your bedroom.

‘Sounds like you're due, I'll set the alarm, okay? No wakeup calls from nosy AIs needed tomorrow.’ You left him just a moment to grab your own phone, and he frowned at it before nodding, letting you set the alarm so you'd have time to get that breakfast even though the drive was long and he was bound to regret it later when all that grease met the abundance of healthy foods he'd been choking down. You were already looking forward to it, and you didn't notice the way your phone switched to your contacts for just a moment when you set it down, a new name adding itself before it went back to your home screen, your focus only on him as he finally held you under the sheets just the way you'd always wanted.

#Ray's Readers #Ray's Requests #david dastmalchian #lightning afraid #lightning x reader #oh boy I hope that doesn't end up in too many wrong tags #this took me way longer than it should've because I made the mistake of watching a movie with Rhys and OH BOY was my heart torn between the

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