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insomniac-dot-ink · 5 years ago

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She Walks on the Beach at Dawn

Words: 13k

Genre: wlw modern fairy tale

Summary: A woman sees a strange figure walking on the beach every morning. She seems to lack a shadow, and disappears after Claudia blinks. However, Claudia can’t seem to help herself: She can’t stop wondering about the lonely figure.

After many weeks of waiting she ventures toward the other woman and brings her a small present. And a strange and twisting tale of an unusual woman on a beach and her admirer starts to unfold.

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She walked on the beach at dawn.

She had loose ink-black hair that swayed down past her hips, and an airy foam dress the color of pearls and ship sails. It was sleeveless, long, and exposed a long swath of her dimpling back. She had eyes like iron ore, and freckles of gold that spanned her shoulders and cheeks. Her footsteps were light, bare, and quickly washed away by the morning tide.

I noticed, I always noticed, that she did not cast a shadow as the sun rose bloody orange across the ocean front. I never approached.

She sang as she walked: a jaunty, endless tune that tripped and dallied its way down the melody with the speed of playful hiccups or a prancing horse. She was slow as she walked, her head bowed, and her eyes downcast. There were no other houses near that stretch of beach. My grandmother had the only small white cabin for miles.

The cliffs were too rocky, and the water was too cold to attract anyone but grouches who hated company and delicate wildflowers that dotted the hillsides. She walked in the sunlight with her song as thin as spread butter, and I watched. I never used to get up at dawn.

I never used to watch sunrises or chase the retreating silhouette of lonely stray girls. I wasn’t like that. I wasn’t that type of person, or at least, that’s what I told myself. Nonetheless, there was no denying it: she was the strangest and most beautiful woman I had ever seen.

She walked for several long minutes with her back straight and voice carrying. I would watch safely from a distance until I would blink or accidentally sneeze and look away for an instant, and she would be gone. ------------------------- “Grandma,” I came back into the kitchen with the backdoor clattering shut behind me. “Have you taken your pills? I laid them out with the yogurt.”

A bent old lady with her curly white hair like cotton fluff atop her head squinted back at me. “Where have you been?” She said tartly. “I had to put the coffee on myself.”

“Sorry.” I said breathlessly and went to the counter to check the coffee pot and get out two mugs. One with kittens and the other big enough to fit a bowl of soup in.

“Don’t tell me you were at the beach again.”

I didn’t meet her eye and instead busied myself with the creamer and sugar packets. Those two were for me since grandma liked hers black as midnight.

“I told you not to go down there,” She sniffed. “Break your neck on the cliffs down that way.”

I glanced over my shoulder finally and finished pouring the coffee. “And did you take your pills?”

“Yes, yes.” She said and waved a hand dismissively. “Did you take yours?”

“It’s a patch, grandma.” I went over to kiss her forehead. Something in me exhaled from that comment alone even after all this time. “And I did.”

“Good.” She said and her sharp bluebell bright eyes swung to meet mine. “I don’t want you out there again.”

I shrugged, and started to sip my coffee. It was as bitter as you like it even with sugar, and I was humming to myself the same song I had heard almost every morning since I had been there. A song from the girl on the beach.

Grandma scowled darkly and muttered something to herself before drinking her own coffee in a way that suggested she didn’t even taste it. ------------------ The morning air smelled sharply of salt and ozone from the rumbling dark clouds in the distance. Grandma Lettie had been saying for hours the day before that there was a storm coming.

I still had a tradition to maintain though. I went to the crevice of a beach just alongside the cliffs and I ducked behind a set of boulders. It felt wrong, the hiding alone made my skin prickle in a way I hated, but it had been three months alone in this corner of Maine with barely any contact.

A few friends still emailed and texted and called, but it seemed less frequent and sometimes less friendly. Most of them were chums from the law firm with square sturdy jaws and white teeth made for the courtroom. Men with family bank accounts established in pilgrim times and women whose eyes spoke of hunger and procedurals. Each one of them would usually offer up a friendly “good for you” when I told them the news, and then wouldn’t meet my eye for a while. It didn’t matter.

I squatted on the beach with my hands twisting together. I had a ribbon in my hand, and that felt wrong too. For a moment, I worried she wouldn’t come or that the storm would bulldoze across the ocean in a flash and ruin everything. I knew I couldn’t do this drenched. However, as if on cue, a funny little melody burst to life and I peeked out.

The woman stood with her shoulders sloping and freckles golden in the first of the light. Her long black hair swayed and I could only just make out a twisting design on her back. I always was a sucker for tattoos even if I had refrained from getting them for my “law career.” That didn’t matter anymore either.

I crawled forward as I watched her dainty footprints mark time across the ground. My heart throbbed in my throat as I stood and it felt like some sort of test I hadn’t studied for. A roller coaster no one buckled me in for. What was I doing? She turned toward the light and her hair was pushed aside by a strong breeze.

I made out the tattoo. It was of an eye with long lashes and two circles spreading out around it in a spiral. It was dizzying to look at. And beautiful.

My hand shook as I lifted the ribbon and maybe I should have run then. Perhaps I should have dove into the water myself and let the ocean claim me. “Excuse me,” My words shook and I hated this. “I have, um, this.”

She twisted around at an unnaturally fast speed, and her eyes went wide. There was a darkness there that I didn’t expect and she hunched over. “For your hair.” I said and it felt much stupider than I had planned.

The song was gone from her thin lips and she leapt feet-first into the water while my mouth hung open. Oops.

“Sorry!” I called. “I’m really . . . sorry.”

I put the ribbon under a large stone I had found and scrambled away from the beach as fast as I could. My grandma commented on my “dour face” when I walked in through the back door and it was all I could do from breaking down into tears.

I didn’t go to the beach the next morning. ------------ It was a week later when I found it.

There was a village two miles inland where we bought our groceries, visited the doctor, and picked up medicine. I had no appointments that day, but managed to snag a whole chunk of parmesan cheese for a spaghetti dish I wanted to try making. There wasn’t much else to do in a cabin isolated with your grandma but learn to cook.

I ended up packing up all the groceries into my basket and meandering past the shops with little tight windows, lacy curtains, and knickknacks on tables outfront. I fingered a rouge dress outside one of the shops. It was bright as cherry lipstick with tiny white flowers sewn into the skirt. It was lovely as a spring day, and even had pockets and a modest neckline.

I bit my bottom lip and wondered if I was going to be brave today. Would the woman inside give me a look like I had grown a second head if I went inside and tried to buy it? I hated being looked at. I hated being seen since I was young and my mom tried to get me to sing in front of strangers at her parties.

I almost puked from their eyes landing on me and my mom boasting about my rendition of “You Are my Sunshine.” I put the dress down. I sighed, you already own that blue one from Fran with the white stripes and that purple lacy one. I reminded myself.

I wore them in front of the mirror in my room and thought about date nights and summer movies on the beach and returning to civilization. I turned to go home, but something caught my eye like a fish hook through the mouth.

There was a painted rock holding down a pile of fliers inside. The fliers seemed to be for a music night at a bar nearby or something. However, painted in heavy brushstrokes on the rock was an eye with long lashes and a twin spiral coming up from the center. I rushed inside with a sudden gust of energy.

The shopkeeper was a greying old woman with a white kerchief tied in her hair and a bright orange shirt that didn’t suit the petulant frown on her mouth. She was thumbing through a magazine when I banged into the room. She looked up slowly and I pointed wordlessly to the rock.

“What’s that?” I stammered when I remembered language.

She looked me up and down and I had to remind myself not to bristle. “Local band night.” She licked her finger and turned a page in her magazine. “Seven O’Clock.”

“No, I mean,” I picked up the heavy gray stone and brought it toward her. “This.”

She tilted her chin up with a fierce little movement. Her eyes were dreary slate-gray and her voice was throaty like craigs in a mountainside as she spoke. “You up on Sugar Hill?” Sugar Hill was what the locals called the cliff-top where my grandma lived.

Apparently, it looked like a lump of sugar in the winter when it snowed. It snowed often.

“Yeah.” I nodded and turned the stone over in my hands. “With, uh, Miss Sampson.” I tried to make my voice higher and less intrusive. I hadn’t spoken to anyone but my grandma for a few days now.

The shopkeeper nodded. “So you don’t know.”

“Huh?” I ventured and wished she could just hand me a pamphlet of local iconography and spooky symbols.

“You can have it.” Was all she had instead. “I’ve got more.”

“But what is it?”

She let a stream of angry air from her nose. “Keeps favor.” She said simply, “Don’t want the spirits chasing you.”

Spirits. I flipped that over in my headspace like trying to finger a hole in my pocket until all of the seams burst and my hand fell through. “Spirits.” I repeated and wondered if my confusion alone would be enough for her to elaborate.

“Yep.” She said and turned the page of her magazine which I saw now had a star chart inside. She also had an astrology chart fixed on the inside of her space and a crystal ball tucked away by her sleeve. Of course. “Spirits.”

I opened and closed my mouth before leaving the shop with the rock in tow. I wasn’t sure what I had gained-- if anything at all. ------------------ I sat staring at my barely chewable soup I had made for the night. I was experimenting with heavy stews, but the broth was thinner than I wanted and the meat was thicker. I stirred the contents around before my grandma huffed.

“What’s wrong now, Claudia?” She said. She had finished the soup in record time which was truly impressive for someone bordering on 90.

“Um.” I contemplated the beef very thoroughly. “Do you think girls . . . like ribbons? As presents.”

“Sure.” She said and squinted. “You meet someone in town? Be careful. They’re all superstitious kooks in Summervale.”

“Sorta,” I didn’t meet her eye. “But I think I scared her.”

The muscles around my grandma’s mouth tightened as she seemed to search for the right thing to say. “Then she’s not worth your time.” She finally settled on, but I think she might have misunderstood me.

I looked away. “Sure.” I sighed.

“Try the wildflowers,” My grandma contributed with something that was almost a smile. “Nothing like our flowers anywhere else. And if she still doesn't like ya’ after that-- then buy yourself a nice dinner and don’t look back.”

“Oh. Flowers.” I sat up straight in my chair for once. “Ours are nice.”

Grandma snorted as if that was obvious. I stood to go scurry outside before all of the light died for the day.

On some level I knew I should let it go. There was no point in chasing girls who dove into oceans. Nevertheless, I couldn’t get that image of her out of my head. A lone woman with her feet marking the earth and a song about nothing floating through the air. That sight every morning was so lonely it made my chest ache.

And by then I knew dearly about loneliness. -------------------- “Maybe she’ll try and eat me.” I muttered to myself. “Maybe evil spirits are real and she’ll be the avenging kind . . . Or maybe you just shouldn’t harass poor girls on their morning walks.” I chastised myself.

I walked around in circles. I gnawed my lip to smithereens and I almost went home twice. I held a dozen white wildflowers to my chest. They were wrapped in blue string and held a very simple note that only read: I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.

“Normal women don’t leap into the water to get away.” I kept going. “And you don’t even know what’s going on here. I mean, I don’t believe in spirits of course, but what if she’s . . .”

I never finished the thought as a prayerful kind of song was rising with the light. It was one I had never heard her sing before. I froze in place and hunched my shoulders. I listened for a moment. The melody was syrupy and filled with woeful long notes. I started walking toward it as if possessed.

“So, I hope you don’t mind me asking, but why do you come here every morning?” I practiced what I wanted to ask her. “I’m sorry if I bothered you before. I just thought, well, that’s a lot of hair. What about a ribbon? I love long hair. I’m growing mine out and, um, um.”

I came around the bend and stopped mid-stride. She wasn’t walking this time. She was standing on our tiny beach with the enormous gray rocks beside her that led up to the cliffs. Her back was turned to me and her hair was pulled into a loose ponytail.

The ribbon I had placed on the beach was tied in it like a shining blue beacon. I swallowed painfully and almost turned around again.

She must have heard my steps crunching in the sand however, and quickly turned to look at me in that unnaturally fast way. My mouth was hanging open and she smiled. I had never seen her smile before. It was breathtaking.

“Oh,” I fumbled gracefully. “Hello.” I forgot every other word in my vocabulary.

Luckily, she didn’t run away and instead turned with the rising sun behind her and hair fluttering like a living field of dark kelp. She put her hand out. “Hello.” Her voice was smooth and seamless like a river rock. “Are those for me?”

I presented the flowers to her. I suddenly wished I had worn anything other than the ratty long brown skirt I had been trying out, and a white blouse with smudges on the sleeves. On some level I wasn’t sure I believed I would meet her.

I wished I was someone else with better words and a sharper wit and hair fully grown out. It only reached my chin so far.

She kept staring at me and I realized she was waiting for the flowers.

“Yes,” I squeaked and wondered when I had become so bad at this. “Flowers.” I put them in her hands and her smile somehow grew wider.

“Why?” She asked and it was a lovely edgeless word.

“Oh,” I wiped my palms down on my ratty skirt. “I, um, you live in the area, don’t you?” I asked in a way that resembled a person.

She laughed and it was rustic and almost chaotic in sound. “Close enough.” She said, “Do you give all of your neighbors flowers?”

Only you.

“No.” I admitted. “We don’t have any other neighbors.”

She laughed again in that shameless close-to ugly way. I wanted to bottle it and sell it to the heavens for good favor. “Thank you.” She said slowly and shifted from foot to foot. “I’ve never gotten a ribbon before.”

“You haven’t?” I heroically kept going.

She shook her head and took a step back. “I appreciate it. And the flowers,” She crushed them to her chest before looking over her shoulder. “I should go soon. What’s your name?”

“Claudia.” I blurted out. “Claudia Samson, I live up on the clifftop.”

“I know.” I should have been much more creeped out by her saying that. “Will you come again?”

“Yes!” I swore it and there was an almost sad look on her face.

“Come again at dusk. Be careful of the cliffs.” She said in a way that was unnerving. And then she dove into the water headfirst this time and I wondered if my flowers even survived that.

I collapsed onto the beach and watched the sun shine as if my entire world hadn’t just been shifted and led to something that felt breakable and breathless. The woman on the beach didn’t look me over like I was about to start speaking backwards.

She just looked at me-- simply and wonderfully, and it was all too good to be true. I stumbled home after that and my grandma kept asking me why I was smiling like a fool.

I kept telling her that I didn’t know. Sometimes good things just happen. Sometimes you get to be a fool. ------------------ I had never thought to meet her at any other time but the dawn when I first spotted her the morning of one endless, sleepless night. She had just been a peculiarity back then, but now she was a full blown mystery. Where did she live? What did she do for a living? What did she think about in the morning when she woke up and what did she like to eat for breakfast?

I wanted to know everything. I couldn’t stop thinking about the way her lips curled into a cheshire grin and the way she asked if I was going to come again. I was definitely going to go back.

I put on the purple dress that showed-off my calves. I took off the purple dress and found some jeans that were at least unwrinkled. I put the purple dress back on and groaned at the mirror. Finally, I went to my grandma.

“Grandma Lettie,” I called and I knew she was in the television room watching her game shows or Animal Planet. “I have a question.”

Grandma Lettie lifted her chin and the gloom of the living room almost made me claustrophobic. She always watched TV with the lights off for some reason. I sucked on my bottom lip before turning on one of the duller lamps. “What do you think of . . . this?” I offered weakly in the purple dress with lace at the bottom.

“Let’s see it.” She said curtly.

I turned in place and it didn’t seem any better. “I know, it’s a little much.”

“This for the girl in town?”

“No.” I said truthfully. I was better now at telling the truth than when I was a lawyer. “Just someone.”

She hummed deep in her throat, “You taking her somewhere?” I shook my head and my grandma made a disgusted noise.

“I gave her the flowers. She liked them.” I answered shyly, “We’re just . . . meeting.”

Grandma shifted in her stuffed pink chair. She was thin now and her cheeks were gaunt and slightly haunting to look at. Her gaze was still razor-sharp and intelligent though, “Are you bringing something to do at least?”

“No?” I stuttered. “Should I?”

“Haven’t you dated before, woman?”

“Not like this!” I turned and stomped to the next room. “It’s not that easy.”

“Bring her wine!”

“What if she doesn’t drink?”

Grandma just snorted. “What kind of woman is that?”

“Grandma!” I whined and Grandma Lettie shook her head.

“She should at least like a good German beer,” she smacked her lips. “Or a little italian wine! I have some in the pantry. Make her a better woman yet.”

I rolled my eyes. I wanted to ask if that’s what grandpa did for her, but I knew it would be a sore subject either way. They were both unhappily divorced in a ceremony Grandma described as “making me a worse Catholic and a better person.”

I crept into the pantry for the wine and an ideal sparkled in the back of my head. “I’ll make a picnic!” I said brightly. “That’s like, a nice thing. Picnic’s are nice.”

“Wine is better!”

“Grandma, hush, I have to concentrate.” I started to think of inoffensive dishes to make for strange girls on the beach. Tuna sandwiches? No, it had to be better. It had to be something that would make her smile again.

I started cooking.

“You are a terrible nurse, Claudia.” Grandma grumbled when I didn’t share the food with her.

“But a good granddaughter, yeah?” Grandma just smiled and let me borrow a neat white blanket from the shed to sit on outside. ------------------ I rushed to the beach just as the sun was setting and my heart was threatening to burst and leave me dead. I managed to struggle my way down through the boulders just in time to see someone slipping across the sand. She was facing me this time.

“Claudia!” She sang. Her hair was still tied back and the foamy dress swaying in the wind, but she looked different. Her eyes were darker and face slimmer somehow. Her golden freckles seemed silvery and mouth quirked in a new direction.

In a fit of extreme embarrassment I realized I hadn’t asked for her name at our last encounter. I trembled. “I brought um, well,” I gave a nervous laugh. “Do you want to picnic?”

“Yes.” She said instantly. “Oh yes!” She clapped her hands. “So many people do that, yeah? They used to come all the time in the summer to picnic here.”

“So you’ve been here a long time.” I was still clutching the basket to my chest. “Were you born here?”

“Yes, yes,” She nodded. “I like your dress very much, Claudia.”

“I, yeah, thank you.” My cheeks flushed and felt somehow exhilarating and perfect to be told that. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I don’t think I asked your name before.” I stood transfixed to the spot and tried not to wind myself up into a panic attack.

“Ah,” She just nodded. “I’m Rommel. It’s nice to meet.”

“Rommel.” I said fondly. “That’s unusual. It’s good.”

She shrugged. “It’s mine.” She swept to the side, “Let’s eat, I have to be home soon.”

“Of course.” I nodded like I wanted my head to fall off and my hands only shook slightly as I spread out the blanket. “I made two avocado sandwiches with spinach doused in a little lemon and a tomato. And a fruit salad, and oh, uh, wine.”

“Wine?” Her face split open. “Wine, yes, magnificent.” Her words were somewhat fast and bled together like mixed paint. “I’d like that.”

I poured us the wine first and she beamed when I handed her the paper-towel wrapped sandwich. She took one enormous bite before putting it down-- her mouth smudged with mayonnaise as she did. “Are you a chef?”

“Oh, oh no.” I said and hesitated to bite into the sandwich. It seemed menacingly large as I looked at it again.

“What are you then?”

I almost choked. “Well, I’m looking after my grandma now.” I clarified. “She lets me live there for free while I, well, I kinda quit my job and decided to start my life over.”

“That’s fantastic!” Rommel was obliterating the sandwich with a speed I had never seen in another person before. “I love your cooking. You should be a chef.”

I gave a wheezy little laugh. “I’m not sure about that.” I nibbled on the outside of the sandwich. “What do you do?”

She gave me a sly look. “What do you think I do?”

“I don’t know.” I shifted in place. Rommel started to drink from the wine now. Her cheeks were flushed and raw and I couldn’t look away. “Singer? Um, tax accountant?”

She rumbled with laughter. “Definitely a tax accountant!” She shook her head, “Tell me about your grandma then. Do you get along?”

Rommel was full of questions. She wanted to know who my grandma was and why she was such a grouch. She wanted to know about the house I lived in and how many dogs I owned growing up and any funny stories about the neighborhood kids. She wanted to know everything.

It was a brilliant half-hour that I wished lasted a lifetime. I wasn’t used to talking about myself-- I used to erasing myself in the name of manners and good standing and a family name I no longer wanted. “So, um. I tried to be a big shot lawyer, but never actually showed up in court.” I chuckled, “I can’t believe my parents even wanted me to go into it. I had a stutter growing up! How could they see a kid like that and go: lawyer. Definitely should be lawyer.”

“What should they have said?” Rommel was giggly and bright-faced.

“Oh maybe dentist.” I said and it felt so good to speak freely. “Or perhaps part time as a professional koala bear.”

“Koala?” She shook her head. “I don’t see koala in you.”

I shrugged, “I love eating things that are bad for me and doing nothing.” I joked.

“What do you think I’d be?” She stuck her chest out and she seemed to like to play guessing games.

“Horse.” I said directly. “Or one of those funny little seabirds.”

She stuck her bottom lip out. “Seabird?” She whacked me on the shoulder. “You aren’t getting any flirting points.”

“Points?” I sat up straight as if electrocuted. “Jesus, am I being graded? Don’t tell my brain that. I’ll start hyperventilating like I did in the fifth grade during spelling bees.”

“Oh no worries.” Rommel said with ease. “No grades here. Though grade school has a lot to teach us, such as about the alphabet. And sharing.”

“You know a lot about gradeschool, eh?” I tried to probe for facts about her.

Rommel shrugged. “My mother is a teacher of sorts.”

Some part of me exhaled at that. She had a normal, teacher mother who probably lived nearby. She was a normal woman-- even if I still couldn’t pinpoint her shadow behind us. “And this for instance,” Rommel started tracing words into the sand. “A good learning moment from grade school.”

I almost choked on my wine and had to start coughing and beating my chest after a second. It was not elegant in the least bit, but in my defense Rommel had traced words in the sand. They asked: Do you like me? Yes. No.

“Well?” She put her hands on her hips. “What do you say?”

I crawled over and checked the yes. “You are quite tricky.”

She laughed. “Tricky like a fox!” She whooped, “Not a seabird.” She looked over her shoulder where the last of the light touched the purple seas.

“You are a lady of layers.” I grinned.

“Yes.” She said. “Would you like to do this again?” She asked quickly and cocked her head to the side. “Go on dates?”

“YES.” I stood up all at once and brushed the purple skirt off. “Yes, yes I would!” It was absolutely the sweetest thing in the world to be asked instead of doing the asking.

She nodded. “Have you ever been into town? I’d like to go.”

“Uh, yeah, I’ve been. They have . . . music nights and craft shows sometimes and all sorts of things.”

She smiled prettily. “Good. I have to go now, but when you come next I need you to bring me three things, and then we’ll go into town.”

“Anything.” I said and I meant it.

She tilted her chin down. “Three drops of your blood, a lock of hair from a land dweller, and a piece of shadow from a mountain stone.”

“Uh, what?” She smiled and I looked around me to see if I was about to be pranked or something. “What does that mean?” I turned to ask for more details, but she was gone. I was left alone in the dark with an empty wine glass and my head spinning.

Maybe she wasn’t such a normal woman after all. ------------- I paced back and forth in my room. That can’t be right, I thought to myself. She doesn’t really want my blood. That’s ridiculous.

I had heard her ask for it of course. I had her say “three drops of your blood.” I had seen the look in her eye that was neither humorous nor lighthearted.

It felt like preparing to take the LSAT all over again: questions with no right answer and answers that barely made any sense. I retrieved the rock I now kept in the drawer of my bedside table. I examined it carefully and chewed on my bottom lip again.

What if Rommel was something else? What if there is something more to this world?

I had been raised with rationality held to the highest esteem. My sister had been teased mercilessly by the entire family when she went to see a fortune teller at the carnival. My mom threw out some Tarot cards I had been given at a birthday party as a “sad gift.” We were raised with facts and hard reality and capital “t” Truth. I was one of the reasons I was bullied into being a lawyer-- as well as so many other reasons.

But what if I got to peek into something Beyond us, capital “B”?

It didn’t make any sense. It didn’t seem to have any logic behind it. On the other hand, I couldn’t imagine not seeing her again. It felt right. It felt like relief, being a potted plant that had been dying of thirst for years now and finally watered. Was it just because she was the first pretty girl that talked to me? Was it just because it was the first time I talked to a pretty girl as . . . myself? Was it all a sham done by gooey unknowable feelings I had developed somewhere in the plane ride between here and Manhattan?

Rommel. Rommel. I flopped onto my bed and kicked my legs in the air. “Rommel.” I said her name out loud and my cheeks flushed. It felt like the kind of crush I had never allowed myself in the past.

I beamed until my face hurt and my grandma called out. “Claudia!” She yelled in her dusty voice, “Claudia, come here!”

I rolled out of bed and my eyebrows rocketed up. “Grandma,” I quickly went down the stairs and to her room on the first floor. “You’re supposed to be asleep.”

“I would be if my nurse had helped me get tucked in.”

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t know you needed--”

“I’m kidding, Chicken,” She said fondly before turning on her bedside table lamp. Her face was bathed in its quiet glow. She smiled, “I wanna hear about your date.”

I hid my smile behind a hand. “Grandma.”

“An old lady has only so many thrills left! I heard you prancing around up there.”

I rolled my eyes before grinning. “It went well. Really well,” I leaned on the doorframe and I felt girlish and like I wanted to start twirling a pigtail. “She asked a lot of questions. Very, uh, spunky.”

“Fine, good.” Grandma lifted her chin up. “Did you kiss?”

“No!” I took a step back. “It was only like, a first, or second? Date.”

“Then kiss her next time.”

I remembered what I had to bring her and almost balked. “She did ask for something . . . weird.”

“I don’t wanna know.” Grandma waved a hand through the air. “If she asks for something behind closed doors then at least humor her. People will surprise you with their affinity for wax or spanking--”

“Grandma!” I jumped and almost left the room. “Nothing like that.” I burned brightly in the dark. “Just, um, something a little out of the ordinary.”

Grandma shrugged. “Did she ask for money on the first date?”

“No, of course not.”

“You’re fine then.” Grandma lay back down.

“You think I should bring her the things then?” I asked while trying not to reveal too much.

“Sure,” Grandma huffed and turned over in bed. She had obviously gotten tired. “Alright, I’ve confirmed that you didn’t self-combust or have a shot-gun wedding without me. I love you, Chicken. Go to bed now.”

“Oh,” I squirmed in place. My parents hadn’t been ones to say those words so easily. “I-I love you too.”

I scurried back to my room and tried to think about anything too deeply. Sometimes you shouldn’t try to break a good thing before you have it. ------------- I ended up getting all three things from my room. I cut off one of my brown curls, and then retrieved a small geode I bought at a mountain in Colorado on a family ski trip. I didn’t know what she meant by “shadow” of it, but a simple rock was going to have to do.

I wasn’t so sure about the blood since I wasn’t too fond of the stuff. I ended up perching on the toilet in our bathroom and taking deep even breaths. I was able to prick myself after two tries and my eyes squeezed tightly shut. “Ow.” I grumbled and put three drops of it on a piece of tissue.

I had slept through dawn by accident that morning so I would have to wait until dusk to see Rommel again. I had to fetch groceries in the afternoon first, and was almost late coming home. I would have been on time, but I had snuck down the street and picked up the red dress.

The old woman hadn’t even blinked when I bought it. She simply said, “Like the stone?” I nodded.

“It’s fine . . .” I didn’t meet her eyes as she checked me out.

“Best to keep it in a sunny spot.” She said cryptically.

“Sure?”

“There’s another concert at the bar tonight.”

I grinned. “I know.” I said slowly, “I think I’ll be there this time.”

She raised one bent old eyebrow. “$14.99.”

I paid and ran back home. I needed to do makeup. I needed to find stockings. I needed to spray my curls down and I needed everything to be perfect-- even if I also needed blood for everything to be that way.

I made it just in time as the evening arrived and she was standing on the tiny beach with her face tilted toward the sky. She reminded me of a dark reticent owl.

Rommel barely looked up as I breathlessly scrambled down the hill and held out a little package. “Okay, so I got these.” I said and she snatched them out of my hands in that lightning quick way. “Is this, um, like some sort of test?”

Rommel smiled pleasantly. “It could be.” She took the small geode, looked over her shoulder, and placed it in her pocket. She inspected the hair next before placing it in her other pocket. She frowned at the drops of blood. “Sorry,” She said with what sounded like real remorse. “It needs to be fresh.”

She looked over her shoulder again as if checking for something.

I blushed deeply. “How fresh?”

She put her hand out as if to take mine. “I’m really sorry.” She said quickly, “Do you mind?” She grabbed my hand and lifted it up. Some part of me replied: You can do anything you want to me. The other part of me replied with a series of question marks. I didn’t say either of that out loud.

“Um,” I said instead. “Okay.”

There was a brief sting on the pad of my finger and then the kitten-lick of her tongue. I nearly burst into flames and fainted like a lady from an old pulp fiction magazine. I pressed the memory of that moment away and looked back at her. “Okay.” I said dumbly. “So?”

She beamed and took my hand that she’d just bitten. “Let’s go!”

“Can you tell me what all that was?”

“Later!” She cried out. “Let’s go to town first.”

I was helpless to do anything else but follow her and follow her and follow her. Her black hair streamed behind her and bare feet slid across the summer grass. I was smiling and barely knew why.

Something tickled behind my left ear and words drifted from afar. I brashly and fiercely ignored those soft words behind us, and a voice that shouldn’t have been there. I ignored everything as I chased after Rommel. ------------------ We arrived into town just after the sunset with the night thick with muggy air and lightning bugs hovering over the long tendrils of summer-sweet grass. The strip of shops glowed like a string of welcoming Christmas lights and I navigated us toward two open wooden doors.

We were still holding hands by the time we reached the bar and I hadn’t become any less aware of that. Was I holding too tightly? Was my palm too sweaty? I felt incredibly rusty at all of this as we found our way to the bar.

It was a two-story wooden building that looked better suited for a tavern in a medieval video game or else a knockoff Irish pub. The windows streamed golden light out of the small windows I could hear commotion and chatter streaming out from the inside.

I hesitated. Rommel tugged. “It’s so charming.” She gushed and she seemed to be full of adjectives like “charming” and “amazing” and “fantastic.”

Being with her felt like chewing on a piece of sugary gum and never wanting to spit it out again. I stumbled in after her as we reached the doors. A middle-aged woman with long bushels of brown hair and a round belly handed us a pamphlet as we walked in the door. “Bar or table today, ladies?”

I buzzed with the force of her words. “Table, yeah?” I unexpectedly answered first as Rommel had let go of my hand and was poking around the area.

“This is so cool.” She said and tapped on a picture with a generic looking mountain in it. “Where is this?”

“Alps, I think.” The woman shrugged and I felt strangely embarrassed but that wasn’t new.

“They have wine here, Rommel,” I offered as I guided us across the crowded room. It smelled like bitter beer and split cider along with two dozen bodies squeezed together into one small space. The band was already tuning their fiddles as a golden-haired singer tested her mic.

“Do you go to these places often?” Rommel said and kept looking over the fairy lights and long wooden tables lined up throughout the room.

“No.” I said truthfully. “Maybe a little back in college, but I’ve always been . . .” Waiting? Nervous? I couldn’t finish the sentence.

Rommel was gleaming and shiny as a new coin. She tugged on the waitresses skirt after we sat down, “Two wines please.” She asserted quickly, “best in the house.”

“Best?” I tried not to let my panic show. I still had money from my law firm days, but it dwindled quickly when you lived with two people with medical expenses.

“Only if you want it of course.” Rommel buzzed. She on her own level, “I can pay. I mean, is alright if I pay for you?”

“Oh.” I sat up straight. This was different as well. “If you like? If that’s okay.”

“Of course it’s okay.” She patted my hand and it felt somehow more real and solid than anything else in the world. “I’ll get this round. That’s what they say, right?” She muttered the last part under her breath, “Yes, I’ll get the whole night.”

“What do you say was your job again?” I quirked an eyebrow up. Maybe I truly could become the trophy wife of my wildest dreams.

She winked. “Treasure hunter.”

I studied her face for a moment before turning toward the stage as the first bursts of music began to play. It was a fun and upbeat sound that resembled something celtic and old world. Rommel began clapping her hands along to it, “I love music!”

Her smile was infectious. “You’re quite good at it yourself.”

“They’re glorious though,” Rommel gushed, “So good.”

“You’re very . . . positive, you know.” I observed softly.

“Gotta be.” She said and swayed back and forth to the beginning of some folk ballad. “It’s an unpredictable world. Enjoy it while you have it.”

I hummed deeply at her unexpected depths, but maybe I should have expected them all along. She had said she was layered. Rommel was quick to down her expensive wine and then order another.

She was red-faced by the third song and clapping the loudest of any person in the room. I wanted to hide under the table as people threw bemused looks our way. In order to assuage my own nerves I ended up drinking my own wine in record time.

Rommel wiped her forehead the moment the next song was over and the break began. “Do you dance?”

“Not typically.” I was focusing on a spot on the wall. I glanaced shyly over to her disappointed face, “But I can be convinced.”

She rapped her knuckles against the table. “And how would you like to be convinced?”

I snorted. “You seem to think you have some power here.”

She shrugged nonplussed. “I am quite powerful.”

I smiled despite myself. “I believe it.” I could barely hide my awe at her.

A wild disjointed night unfolded. Rommel ate messily and sang loudly and by my third glass of wine she had me up on the table. People seemed to enjoy stomping on top of the wooden tables and hoping from one to the other in a kind of dance.

Rommel pulled me up before I knew what we were doing and stomped alongside them. It was the most fun I had had since before I could remember. The fiddle wailed away and we twisted and clapped and sweated buckets as we sang along and mouthed to the hectic sounds.

We held hands and twirled and the red dress spun out around me like a flower opening up and if I was going to use the word “perfect” I would have used it right then and there. I would have used a thousand words and traded every single one of them for one more second of that night.

Rommel was sweaty and smelled strangely of something fishy as she got down from the table and howled. “Thank you everyone!” She waved like she was their best friend now and took a messy drink from someone’s beer. The man didn’t seem to mind even as she was evidently absolutely tossed by that point.

She reached for her pocket and put two hundred dollar bills on the table. They were slimy and covered in something moldy and green. They looked like they had been soaked in water twice and dried using a weed whacker. The waitress scowled at it for a moment before checking for its legality and waving us off.

We swung our arms back and forth as we departed back into the warm night. I had no idea what time it was anymore, but I was giggling.

“I can’t believe you kicked that girl's drink into her lap.” I guffawed. “You’re so lucky you’re charming or she would have licked you!”

Rommel flexed her arm. “I coulda taken her.” She announced before swaying in place as we tried to stagger home. “I really am sorry I knocked it over though. I gave her some money too.” Some part of me was afraid it was another hundred, but was too nervous to ask.

I watched Rommel sway back and forth. “Went a little hard, I see . . .”

Rommel shrugged. “No point in holding back is what I say.” She tipped her head up to the stars to watch them twinkle. “It’ll all be over in a blink.”

Her existentialism had returned. I followed her gaze upward, “Does that make you sad?”

She lurched forward. Her toe snagged on something and she almost fell into my arms. “Yes.” She said and looked up. Her black eyes swam and some absolute sorrow swirled beneath the surface. “God yes.”

She covered her mouth and I didn’t know what to say. I patted her head instead, “It’ll be okay.” She gave me a grim smile and stood up to continue our unsteady trek toward the cliffs.

“Can I walk you to your place?” I asked timidly as Rommel’s moods seemed to be swinging wildly from one direction to the next.

She scuffed her feet in the grass and wilted in place. “I have to tell you something.”

“Yeah?” I said gently and tried to nudge her toward the cliffs where she must live somewhere. My feet crunched on the sandy beach as we arrived at our usual spot. “You’re very drunk though, so whatever you say I won’t hold against you.”

She shook her head almost childishly and her eyes were wet again. “You should get away from here. You should not come here again. You should move.”

“What?” I took a step back and the blood drained from my face. “Did I, did I do something wrong?”

“I was selfish.” She seemed to be starting on a tirade. “And you’re sweet.”

“Rommel.” I reached for her in order to close the growing dark gap between us. “Look at me.” I realized that’s all I really wanted. For her to keep looking at me in that way.

“I was stupid.”

“Please,” I begged as the colors of the world started to fade. “I’m sorry if you stayed out too late. I’m sorry-- are you going to be in trouble? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Yes.” She said solemnly and then turned quickly and started running.

I didn’t know what came over me, but I pivoted and started trailing after her. “Wait!” I said with a strained voice. “I don’t want to leave like this.”

Rommel looked over her shoulder as she reached the water's edge and her chest was heaving. “I’m sorry.” She said in a small voice.

“Wait,” I wheezed and delicately reached for her. “I want to make it up to you.”

“Don’t follow me! Don’t you realize?” She said in a whispery way. “You’re not the problem.” She tilted her chin up and her face was dark and shrouded. “I am.”

There came a crashing behind me and I turned just in time to see a wave so tall it could have taken down a large horse. It foamed at the mouth and the voice was back: Don’t, hissed something ethereal and larger than life. Touch my daughter!

I had no time to react as water as cold as heartbreak washed over my head and I was dragged toward the darkness. I thrashed against the wave just as Rommel screeched, “Don’t touch her!” She said, “She didn’t do anything wrong!”

It was too late. I clawed at the cold depths, kicked uselessly, and my eyes stung as the light faded. I was being dragged down, down, down into the dark by my ankles as I choked for air. My lungs gave a fiery, angry pulse, and salt poured down my throat. I was too drunk to fight for long, and the world submerged into a decaying empty nothingness. --------------------- A bird cawed overhead. Sharp light pierced my eyes.

It made a sour high-pitched whining noise. My head throbbed and my throat was so parched it felt like it could be used for sandpaper by school children. It took the last of my strength to wrench my sticky eyes open where they had been gummed shut. I turned over and quickly threw up.

I blinked a couple times and stared down at what was mostly sea water. I rubbed at my face haggardly and reminded myself this was why I rarely drank. It took a long moment for me to fully remember the night before.

“Rommel?” I flipped over to look across the small beach, but it was empty and serene. My red dress was filthy and ocean-crusted. Had we taken a swim that night? Had she left me on the beach after I passed out?

Everything was a fuzzy blurry mess and I stood with creaky knees and a hurt back. I sniffled pathetically, “Rommel?”

She still wasn’t there. I didn’t know why, but a hollowness ate me from the inside out for it. I turned to grope my way home and climb into bed. ---------------------- “I told you.” Grandma was not happy. “I told you not to go near the damn cliffs.”

I sucked on the chicken noodle soup weakly. I couldn’t even taste it. “It wasn’t the cliffs.” I drooped. “I just . . . took a bad swim.” Where had I gone wrong? What had happened?

Grandma clicked her tongue. “You got a fever?” She didn’t wait for an answer and her hand snapped out to feel my forehead. She tutted again, “You’re fine, Chicken. Go take a hot bath and treat yourself to dinner. She isn’t worth it.”

I was ready to drop to the floor again. In the fetal position. “She seemed so . . . good.” I said lamely, “It seemed like she liked me.”

“I’m sorry.” Grandma patted my hand with her cool palm and then turned toward the windows. “But life keeps turning. Turn with it.”

“I guess.” I blinked away some growing sorrow burbling up. “She had a laugh like . . . a ridiculous motor. And she said everything was fantastic! And great!” I face-planted into the wood of the table, “Rommel . . .”

“What?” Grandma barked. “What was that name?”

“Rommel?” I repeated. “She’s the woman from the beach.”

Grandma heaved a breath like her lungs were giving out. “Don’t.” She said dangerously. “Don’t ever go to that beach again.” Her eyes were sharp and far too intelligent to ignore.

I tried to listen. ------------------------ Grandma was a heavy sleeper.

I snuck out before there was any kiss of light across the water. It was that kind of ghastly vacuumed-sealed time of night-- the hour of ghosts and in between things. I slipped down to the beach with my head bent and my heart a noisy battering ram in my chest.

I just had to see her. I just had to say one or two things and then I would be done. I would never bother Rommel again, I would stick to the small town, and maybe never leave my bedroom again. I would get over it.

I almost tripped as I hurried my way onto the beach where the first purple of dawn graced the flat horizon. I could smell the summer heat rising before the day began. It was going to be another hot one.

I held my breath and looked in both directions. I clenched my hands together and tried to make myself small. I waited. I kicked up sand into my shoes and paced back in forth from one side of the cliff walls to the next.

It skimmed time off my life to stand and wait there with a certainty I was about to be rejected or told off. However, she never came. Her feet never pressed into the soft sands and no voice was there to yell “Claudia!” or “Wonderful!” At anything else.

Somehow, that was the worst possible option. I hung my head and turned just as the sunlight was freckling my skin. It was almost past 7 now and grandma would be up and about and asking questions.

I heard the barest sliver of something on the breeze and whipped around. “Rommel!?” I called loudly into the thin air but nothing answered. I heard just the hint of her song coming from what could have been an entire lifetime away.

I searched behind boulders, waded into the ocean, and tried to lean forward to look beneath the cliff face. I scanned the hills and even went inland to check behind trees. I ran back home where Grandma had finally come out at around 9 O’Clock to behold my sweaty face and heaving chest.

She gave me a hard scowl. I didn’t care.

“She’s gone.” I announced miserably. “I can’t find Rommel anywhere.”

Grandma beckoned me back home. I looked over my shoulder as I trudged up the hill-- I swore I could still hear her song coming from the ocean itself. -------------- The water sloshed against the side of the boat and I squirmed on the wooden bench. I clenched my teeth so hard they ached and the sailor man gave me a once-over that I hated even more than the dingy itself.

“You sure you know how to man this thing?” He was an older gentleman with sea salt hair and bad tobacco-stained breath.

“I’ll be fine.” I righted my enormou floppy hat and knew in my heart I was finally taking things too far. Grandma thought I was in town treating myself to a dinner and not looking back. I was looking back.

I grabbed the two oars in hand and grunted as I sunk them into the waters. This was going to be harder than I thought.

“Well alright.” He scratched his head and watched as I struggled away from the pier and toward the cliffs. “Be careful!” He called as he must’ve seen where I was headed. I turned my face away and ignored the man who’s dingy I was borrowing.

My wrists ached and I swore I was already getting blisters on my hands from the rough wood. I held on nonetheless and watched as the dusk swept across the land with lungfuls of purple and pink light.

It glittered across the dark ocean and I held on as the waves rocked me back and forth in place. I was not doing what any doctor would order me to do after getting hurt: I was going right back to the source.

I couldn’t sleep though. I barely wanted to eat or cook. I heard her song day and night and knew for certain where it was coming from and it was not the land. I rowed with all my might for what felt like an hour.

I glanced up as the sun plummeted off the edge of the horizon and I was losing the last of the sunset. “Dammit!”

I was below the cliffs now and staying just far enough away from the rocks. I twisted in place to look behind me. The pier was a long ways off. I sighed and moved my oars back into the water just as a sudden anemic lovely sound coursed through the air.

A song I recognized.

“Rommel?” I whispered and there was a figure on one of the rocks nearby. How had I missed her before? She was faint and strangely hard to look at. She was sitting on a sloping lichen-covered rock with her back turned to me and her feet submerged in the water.

I splashed the oars in and out excitedly and furiously moved toward her. “I’m here!” I cried with a sudden unexpected joy. “I made it. I missed you.” I gushed before I knew what I was saying.

Her head snapped around and her face was slimmer and less freckled. She frowned in my direction with her whole entire face. “Claudia,” she whispered. “He will kill you.”

I shook my head, drunk on my own victory. “Please,” I put my hand out to her. “Can we talk? I just want a few words with you and then you never have to see me again.”

“Oh,” She said heavily with her brow scrunching up. “Do you want that?” I realized her eyes were shining. “Because it’s so rare I even get to come on land. It’s so rare any of you can see me. Do you want to never see me again?” Her voice broke on the last words.

She was suddenly far less shiny than before, and thin streaks of dark tears trickled down her chin. They were strangely oily and grey.

I looked down at my lap. “You’re not a normal woman, are you?”

She shook her head with forlorn and pointed. I followed it into the water where her feet were shackled in heavy iron chains. “I’m not.” She finally said, “I was tricking you. I’m not like you.” She hiccuped and wiped at her face, “You should leave.”

“I . . . don’t want to.” I said truthfully and rocked the whole boat by leaning toward her, “Maybe, um, I like being tricked. Maybe I don’t mind that you’re not normal.” I chuckled to myself, “By all accounts I’m not that normal myself.”

Her eyes went wide and they were strange and dark as ever. “You wouldn’t say that if you knew.”

I sighed heavily. “Try me.”

She looked toward the enormous rocky cliffs with their clean drop-off and ugly jutting stones. “You have to ask him.”

“Who?”

“You have to ask my father if you can date me.” She moved her ankles, “He is already punishing me for daring to wander outside of his protection.”

“I know about overprotective fathers.” I tried. “I mean, mine was more the distant and gruff type, but you know”

“Please, Claudia,” she said thinly. “Do you actually like me? Do you really want this?” She gestured loosely to herself.

I calmed my galloping heart and met her gaze head-on. “You know when you look at me,” I hunched over slightly, “I feel like I’m more. I feel like I’m stronger and better than I actually am.” I chuckled. “And I have fun for once. Look, I understand what it’s like to . . . be alone.” I lifted my gaze to meet her eyes. “And I don’t want to be alone anymore.”

“I’d-I’d,” She hiccuped and kept wiping at her soaking cheeks. “I’d like that too. I’d really like that with all my heart, Claudia.”

I reached out to her and this part was at least familiar. This part at least felt right. “Wait,” She put her hand out. “I can be with you. I can become mortal, I would love to become mortal, but only with my father’s permission.” She pointed loosely, “My father, the shadow of the cliffs.”

“The . . . shadow of the cliffs?”

She nodded solemnly without any humor. “The tides met the shadows of the cliff and fell in love. They bore a child of the ocean dawn and dusk. And so it was.”

“Wow,” I tried to process that in bite-sized chunks but it felt more like choking on an entire meal with no silverware. “So, um, a child of the dawn and dusk, huh?”

“A creature of the ocean.” She said and she was looking off into someplace I couldn’t see. “A creature bound to her home or bound to death.”

“Oh, well . . . I can help. I can ask.” I swallowed slowly, “Do you want that?”

She nodded furiously. “I have spent centuries watching humans come to our cliffs and laugh and swim and frolic,” she sniffed and her face was clear again. “I have spent all this time watching them be in love with each other.” She stated simply and openly.

“Okay.” I nodded slowly. “Okay.”

“Here,” she reached out to hand me something. “The ocean will not toss you into the cliffs if you are wearing this. Go toward the caves and you will find him. Ask for me by name.”

“Uh,” I could feel myself getting in over my head. “I won’t,” I cringed. “This isn’t like . . . it’s not like me asking for ownership is it?”

She smiled gaily, “No. He just needs a reason to let me go.”

I swallowed and nodded. The bracelet was made of lumpy luminescent pearls strung together. I slipped it onto my thin wrists and grabbed the oars again. “I’ll give him one.”

I angled myself toward the cliffs and started to row. I prayed that the bracelet would work and I wasn’t making my way toward my death-- still, there were worse ways to go. I watched as Rommel waved at me before fading into the night like a dream. ----------------- The cliffs loomed much larger than I expected as I drew closer with one lung after the next. They were sturdy, impressive beasts with proud powerful spines of stone and an ocean that thrashed against their base.

The caves were simple black inlets where it felt like I was about to face the devil himself. I couldn’t stop my heart from jackhammering away, but neither could I stop rowing. The waters churned around me, but seemed to lose their power inches from my boat. They licked at the sides, the currents raced, and I could hear the crash of one wave after the next beside me, but my boat remained untouched. It was dark now and the only light was from the silver of a half-moon that smiled down from above.

I rowed until I was almost delirious with ache and exhaustion. I could see the mouth of the cave, but barely seemed to be making any progress toward it. Finally, I shouted. “Rommel!” I called, “I’m here for Rommel.”

In a sudden surge the boat was pushed toward the dank and cold opening with a swift tug. And then it was quiet.

The brilliant moonlight was to my back, and the rest of it was silent as the grave and twice as dark. My skin crawled and a prickle of dead-cold crept across my neck. Goose flesh rippled across my arms and the sensation of being watched was hot across my skin.

The world was very small and suffocating at that moment. “Rommel.” I remembered myself softly. “I’ve come from Rommel.”

Something moved in the dark and I didn’t blink.

It slithered and heaved with moist wheezing breaths from somewhere deep within. For a moment I thought perhaps I would drift deeper and deeper into the darkness and disappear forever.

“You,” A voice like smooth baseless wells and the echo of thunderstorms spoke from within the darkness. It laughed cruelly, “You’re the one who wishes to take my daughter?”

I lifted my chin boldly despite my shaking hands. “She wishes to be released.”

“Bah!” The word was enormous and seemed to raddle around inside my skull. “She doesn’t know what she wants. Mortality is cruel and mortals themselves are far crueler.”

“I know.” I said softly and something panged in my chest. “But we could . . . keep each other company. We could make it worth it.”

“Fool.” He seethed, “You are in love with the shadow of a person, a perfect replica, her humanity would make her just as slow and dull as the rest of you. She was created in perfection that should outlast all of you-- without that she is nothing but more meat meant for dying.”

“It’s what she wants.” I responded steadily. “That’s what matters.”

“Little cretin, will you still be enamored with her when she isn’t the dawn? The dusk? The ocean’s beauty itself?”

“But,” I stammered and groped for the right words. “Yes, fine! So she’ll be a little . . . more human. I don’t mind. I just want to spend a little more time with her.”

“Pathetic.” The darkness hissed. “But she gave you the bracelet so I will give the test nonetheless.”

“Test?”

“To prove your worthiness. As I have given to many before you.”

I suddenly felt like the ill-prepared heroine in a fairy tale. “Alright.”

“There is a bucket on the top of my cliffs,” I could almost feel the shadows grinning wide and cheshire. “Fill it.”

I waited and let the gloom cling to my boat as I drifted deeper into the cave and lost the hope of light. “That’s it?” I finally said and the voice laughed.

“That’s it.” The shadows rippled like an erupted star and the dark waters finally stirred. “NOW LEAVE.”

The boat gave an enormous creak as a wave arose and drove me back out into the middle of the ocean. Stunned, exhausted, and utterly at a loss I somehow managed to row home. And decided very thoroughly that I had a bucket to fill. ----------------- I slept like a corpse.

My arms were lead weights attached at the shoulder and my grandma had to bang on the door to wake me. “I thought you were going out to treat yourself!” She sniffed loudly, “Are you hung over?”

I just groaned.

“Well, good girl.” She said hotly before leaving me alone again.

It was almost midday by the time I fully remembered the past night and bolted to my feet to run outside and toward the top of the cliffs. Wildflowers grew in droves and my bare feet stung and scraped as I moved.

I scanned the grassy ground over and over. Perhaps he’s lying, I thought to myself, or maybe I’ve truly lost it.

I swept the area piece by piece, and just as he promised, a bucket stood right atop the cliff. It was an ordinary wooden bucket with a handle and a round face. I turned it over in my hands again and again, until I paused and looked into the bottom.

The bottom was completely black, depthless, a fathomless shadow in its own right. I had a terrible feeling about this challenge. ----------------- I tried water first-- obviously. I tried water from the tap. I tried milk from our fridge, I tried filling it with stones and grass and anything I could find.

There wasn’t so much as a thunk or a splatter with each new item. It just disappeared into the black hole at the bottom of the bucket. I reached my arm down once and all I could feel was a coolness against my fingertips and empty space.

I tried plunging it into a full bathtub but it simply swallowed all of it and left the tub bone dry. I even went all the way into town and bought Rommel’s favorite wine. I knew on some level there had to be a trick to it-- there had to be some special move.

Even after wasting good wine on sentimentality the bucket remained drained. It was well-past sunset when I stumbled home blurry-eyed and spent. The hem of my brown skirt was filthy from running around all day and my body ached in places I didn’t know I could ache.

I almost stopped for a short cry. I had no idea what I was doing.

The second I stepped into the kitchen someone cleared their throat from the dining room table and I looked up. Grandma Lettie was sitting hunched and frowning at the table with something in front of her.

“So,” She held up the painted stone from my bedside drawer. It’s eye looked at me with a cold indifference. “You’ve been messing with the spirits.”

My mind went blank and I shifted in place. “I don’t know what you’re--”

“Sit down.” She gestured to the seat next to her. “This is worse news than when you took that silly law firm job.”

“Oh.” I dragged myself over to the chair. The bucket was still clutched in my arms and I had to place it down on the floor to truly face my Grandma. I flinched slightly as I looked into her sharp blue eyes. “I can explain.”

“You better, Chicken.” Grandma Lettie clucked. “Because you shouldn’t mess with the old spirits of this place. Bad things happen to people on the cliffs.”

“You knew?” My eyes went wide.

She shrugged. “I know many things.” She glanced down at the bucket with a sneer on her lips. “I know you’re in over your head.”

I rubbed my hands roughly across my swollen eyes and worn face. “Yeah. I really am.” My voice almost broke over the words.

Grandma gestured loosely, “Well, let’s have it.” She sat back in the chair and her sly grin almost returned. “Tell me a story.”

So I told her a story of a woman who met a stranger on the beach and felt something like love for her. I told her of trying to give her ribbons and flowers and how she seemed to stream light from her with every movement. I told her about going dancing and feeling more than I ever had before.

I told her about being dragged under.

I told her about the woman chained to the rocks and the shadows that hissed from the darkness. I told her that I had apparently discovered the spirits of this place. And had been given an impossible task.

Grandma simply hummed and nodded in several places. There was a long silence when I finished the story and my head was in my hands. The silence yawned and ate me up from the inside out.

“I don’t know what to do.”

Grandma cleared her throat and her next words were like a gut-punch. “Do you love her?”

I peeked up through my fingers. “I,” My mind worked with the wheels spinning and gears grinding along. “I don’t know.” I said truthfully. “I know I want to spend more time with her. I want to see her again-- and keep seeing her. I don’t want her to be alone anymore.”

Grandma nodded solemnly. “Is this all what you want, Chicken?”

I nodded again. “This is one of the only things I ever wanted.” I said with a rumble in my chest and my eyes unfocused. “I’m certain of that.”

Wouldn’t it be nice? To hold someone. To walk along the beach with them. To laugh with them and show them the expanse of the naked world. Wouldn’t it nice to not have to fight to be seen, but simply exist as you are with someone else?

I exhaled.

Grandma reached over and patted my hand. “She’s got two parents.” Grandma relented, “Go ask the tides for the answer.”

“I’m pretty sure the tides tried to drown me.” I grumbled and remembered the sting of puking up sea water.

Grandma tilted her head up gravelly. “You’ll just have to speak her name then, won’t you? Tell her what you told me. Tell her that you want to help her daughter.”

I furrowed my brow. “Speak her name?”

Grandma sighed and gestured for me to lean in. “You learn a few things getting this old.” She murmured, “Come here.”

She whispered a name into my ear and I closed my eyes. My battle wasn’t over. -------------- I went to the beach at almost midnight. It was low tide and the summer breeze smelled of cut grass and sun-baked earth.

I closed my eyes before taking my first steps and raising my arms up. “Great mother!” I summoned and water licked at my toes with a cold lash. I tried not to run. “I don’t come to fight you.”

The ethereal drone was immediate. “Others have come before you.” She said in a voice of tumbling water and a push and pull of vowels. “You are not the first.”

I lowered my head and peered down at my bare toes. “I don’t mind.” I said and something fluttered in my chest. “Rommel should be freed. She wants to be mortal.”

“She doesn’t know what she wants.” The water snapped up toward me and I winced.

“I care for her.” I said softly, “Mother Irah.”

The water receded back into the surf as if burned. “Where did you learn that name?”

“It’s yours, isn’t it?” I whispered. “Let me free her.” The water stirred and churned with the only the light of the moon to see by. “A parent shouldn’t keep their child hostage!” I yelled this time with more force than I expected. “A parent should let their child be who they’re going to be!”

I would know about that.

The waves heaved in a disturbed frenzy before finally evening out into a dull expanse. A sigh came from within like the rolling in of mist. “Bend closer little one.” She said softly, “And I will tell you how to fill the bucket.”

“You won’t try and drown me?” I asked softly and the water gave no reply. I took a deep breath and lowered my face toward the ocean spray. It started to whisper.

The world became slow and syrupy as I listened. I stood up robotically afterwards and turned toward home. My thoughts bare and empty as I went into our shed and got out a saw. It took me barely a few minutes with the bucket to finish the job.

And I was ready to face the shadow of the cliffs and the ocean tide. --------------------- The gleaming hints of dawn pressed orange and fiery red across the horizon. My eyes throbbed with a dull pain from lack of sleep, but I didn’t care.

It was quiet, like the land was holding its breath and the last of the stars were watching as I walked down from the top of the cliff for what felt like the last time. My feet padded softly against the grass as I looked out over the strip of plain white sand.

I held the bucket in my hand and felt surprisingly calm as I approached the water’s edge. It was empty and a stillness grasped my bones and shook my insides. I lifted the bucket above my head and faced the cliffs.

“I’m here.” I said softly, “I’m here for Rommel.”

There was a figure sitting on one of the rocks in the distance. She didn’t move, but her long black hair was swept back behind her and her head was bent.

Something dark and slick moved along the cliff. It slithered across the places you cannot see and inked its way to a place you cannot comprehend.

“Arrogant.” It spat. “The bucket is not even partially full.”

I nodded. I held it up and the bottom of it was cleanly sawed off. The black hole still lurked in the bottom of it as I raised the bucket in the air. “Let her go.” I said and my voice didn’t shake for once. “Let her come to me and do as she wishes from here on out.”

“You wish to bring death to my daughter.” The shadow called and the waters churned. “You wish to make her chained to a finite life.”

I gnashed my teeth. “I wish to let her make her own choices!”

“Foolish knave, you think you are the first to ask for her hand? You are nothing but another pearl on a necklace of lies and treachery to deceive her, ruin her, take her.”

“You’re wrong.” I said simply.

The shadow laughed. “And you think you’ll win? Still? The bucket is empty. And no man has ever truly won her heart. No man has ever--”

“I am,” I thundered with a force that shook me to my marrow. “No man!”

I slammed the bucket into the water and held it under. The water started pouring in from both sides: it infinitely coursed into one side and infinitely went in the other. One infinity met another infinity and they embraced to make a single whole.

The bucket trembled against my palms before sinking to the ocean floor. The tides snapped around me as if in victory and a dark hiss came from behind me.

“You impertinent, cowardly--”

“Yes?” I smirked.

“Mocking, heedless, idiotic--”

“I said yes.” I stood up fully straight. “I am the impertinent coward. I am the mocking, heedless idiot.” I spread up wide, “And I just filled the bottomless bucket.”

The air itself seemed to crackle and fizzle with some unseen force. The shadows lurched and seemed to heave toward me as if to strike. But it was already too late. I had found the loophole as any good lawyer should.

I heard a splash in the water. I turned my head and sudden lightness spilled through my chest. A figure was waving and splashing through the water. “Claudia!”

I bounded into the surf and let the salt water spray my face as I ran. “Rommel! It’s really you!”

She was running. Her ankles were free. Her air was loose and the world was smothered into that one moment and that moment alone. She crashed into me with the force of a small train and I spun her around with the sun blooming into life behind us.

She pecked warm kisses across my cheeks and wrapped her arms around my neck as I spun her.

“You did it!” She cheered. “Oh Claudia, I never thought,” she said breathlessly, “I only thought.”

She looked deeply into my eyes and I realized her black irises had turned brown. Her straight white teeth had dulled slightly, and her front two teeth were slightly bucked. Her freckles faded into a normal summer-brown color and her hair turned wilder and less sleek.

She touched her face hesitantly as if she was just feeling it herself. She exhaled, “I am mortal.”

I leaned toward her hesitantly. “How does it feel?”

“Oh.” Her breath was ragged and she shook slightly. “It feels . . . a million ways. A million ways!”

“Is that alright?” I was smiling now and wasn’t sure if I would ever stop smiling.

“Yes,” her eyes filled with a brilliant wetness. “Yes! Claudia! Yes! Unless,” she gave me an impish look, “You’ll only have me as a dawn maiden.”

I shook my head. “I’ll take you anyway you give yourself.” I whispered, “If you want me.”

She pressed in close and I could feel the force of her. She was all lithe muscle and slippery damp limbs. She grinned for a moment before answering.

Her kiss tasted like citrus light and a world of strangeness I couldn’t understand. It was pulsing warmth and blew me apart with the gentlest of touches. We stood in the surf and kissed as my head spun and my world realigned. It shifted like stars in the heavens to make a new constellation.

A new light to be guided by, a new way to be myself.

She pulled back, pecked me hard on the lips again, and then slid her hand into mine. She tugged me back toward dry land. “Come on,” she burst out. “I want to meet your grandma.”

Suddenly, in a way I had never expected. I was no longer alone.

And there were two women walking on the beach at dawn.

---------------

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masterofmagnetism · 4 years ago

Text

they put me in the ground (but i’m back from the dead)

They took my life but it isn't the end They put me in the ground but I'm back from the dead

Oh, I'm the World Ender baby and I'm coming for you

WHO: Erik Lehnsherr, Scott Summers @firstxman, Jean Grey-Summers @jeaniegreysummers, Bruce Banner @hulkout. Mention of @mistressxfmagnetism WHERE: Stark Tower’s CRADLE lab. WHEN: February 21, 2021 WHAT: Jean and Scott get Bruce’s help resurrecting Erik. Erik comes back and is Not Happy. WARNINGS: Reference to past major character death, abuse, murder, assorted mental health issues, grief, ptsd. WORDS: 11k

JEAN: Erik crossed a line. No matter how she cried over his body, no matter how empty she felt when he was lowered into that grave (and she felt it, the shift in the earth, felt the ripple of emotion that came from the funeral even as she curled up in the rain under a tree in the park, even as she flicked through annotated poetry anthologies, a German dictionary propped open beside her), she knew they’d made the right decision. The only decision. Because Genosha was meant to be a place of safety, of respite, somewhere to escape from centuries of persecution and war. They’d already declared their strength with the siege. Anything after that was nothing more than malicious.

More than malicious. Genocidal.

Jean tried to tell herself it was the Phoenix. She told herself that if she could wake up in the morning with moon dust on her knees and blood under her nails and not remember any of it, that maybe the same thing was happening to Erik. Maybe he was overcome like she was on that lawn. But Erik didn’t ask for help. Erik didn’t hesitate, didn’t have a moment of outward remorse, didn’t let her into his head to see if there was an instance of it even internally.

Didn’t trust her, at the end of the day, despite his promises, despite his love. Despite everything they’d been to each other for all these years, Jean still wasn’t enough to break through. Her other father made that same mistake, out on that beach all those years ago. He made the same mistake every time he sent children to fight an old friend he wasn’t entirely sure would pull his punches

But that still didn’t give her the right to kill him.

After all, it was Jean who put the Phoenix into him. It was Jean who split the Raft, Jean who helped orchestrate the siege, Jean who encouraged the alliance between Erik and Scott. It was Jean who was fundamental in the unlocking of Lorna’s memories, Jean who indirectly led to the assault on Julio Richter.

Jean at the epicentre, as always, for once a driving force in her own narrative and hating every goddamn minute.

She killed Erik Lehnsherr, and it was the right thing to do, but him staying dead was a decision she couldn’t swallow. Asking the Phoenix for help was impossible. There were forces at play there she could never understand. Science was the only way forward, and there was something there when they exhumed the grave (Lorna would kill her, if this didn’t work. Jean would let her). Erik didn’t feel dead. He didn’t feel gone. He felt like he was … frozen. Waiting.

Stasis. A pause, rather than a full stop.

Jean chewed at the inside of her cheek, arms folded against the white of her lab coat. “We’ve run the preliminary tests more times than I can count,” she said. Scott would recommend, no doubt, that she slept before they tried this -- but she hadn’t slept properly in weeks. She couldn’t, until this was resolved. “We don’t know what frame of mind he might be in when he comes out, so we need to be prepared for anything.” Including killing him again, if necessary. This time, it would be her dealing the final blow. Marriage was all about equality.

SCOTT: When Scott was a child, his father was a retreating back. He always seemed to walk out of the door more often than he walked in it, always seemed happier leaving than staying. Scott remembered carrying a child’s anger in tiny fists, remembered a heart pounding against a ribcage in a way he wasn’t yet familiar with, remembered asking his mother on the days when she felt well enough to leave her bedroom why his father never seemed to want to stay. ’This is supposed to be his home,’ he’d said, ’and people are supposed to want to be home.’ And his mother went quiet, looked down at her hands, tried to think of something to say, some way to explain away anger too big to fit inside a body so small. ’People do things sometimes,’ she told him, ’Not because they want to. Because they have to. Because some things need doing. Your father does important work, Scotty. He does what he has to do.’

He learned to hate that phrase over the years. He does what he has to do. Even after his father died doing what he had to do, even after he took Scott’s mother with him, the phrase lingered. It was one Sinister used in that basement lab, one he hummed as he poked needles into veins and pulled memories from an already fractured mind. It was one Winters sneered when he kicked Scott in the ribs so hard he heard something crack. It was one Erik clung to with missiles pointed at a city full of people Scott loved.

And it was one Scott used when he took off his glasses and painted the whole world red.

Erik wasn’t very different from the rest of the fathers who’d let him down over the years. Scott knew that now. He wasn’t entirely separate from Christopher Summers, from Nathaniel Essex, from Jack Winters. They all clung to the same excuse, all hurt people and offered themselves an easy out in the process. Erik wasn’t very different from them at all. But neither was Scott.

If he voiced the concern to her, Jean would reassure him. Scott was sure of as much. She’d tell him that he’d saved lives doing what he did, remind him that Erik hadn’t offered much of a choice. She’d tell him everything he needed to hear, and she’d make him feel better in the process. That was exactly why Scott hadn’t told her his thoughts aloud. Jean would comfort him, and Scott wasn’t sure he deserved comfort. He wasn’t sure he deserved forgiveness. And redemption, he knew, wasn’t an option at all. You couldn’t be redeemed from a thing like this. Once that blood was on your hands, it stayed there. You could never get it out from beneath your nails.

But… Jean was offering him a chance to come as close to fixing things as was possible. Bringing Erik back sans Phoenix wouldn’t undo the damage that had been done. Scott knew from experience that raising the dead didn’t heal the wounds they’d left behind, but it was something. And god, he couldn’t keep doing nothing. Anything was better than that.

So he was here. In a lab he felt fundamentally uncomfortable in, with a man he hardly knew, planning on doing the impossible for someone he’d killed himself. His palms itched and his chest ached and his eyes were heavy with all the sleep he’d missed since Erik’s death, but he was here. And he hoped that could count for something.

“Can you restrain him, if necessary?” He looked to Jean, nervous energy flittering in his chest. “He may need time to… calm down.” There was every chance he’d be angry, when he came back. Scott certainly had been, and there was a letter in the Bugle to prove it. And Erik…

Erik had always done anger better than anyone.

BRUCE: Assumptions disappointed and killed more people than anything else in the world. When Bruce was young, he thought it was because disappointed weighed you down like boulders tied to your ankles in quicksand, but as the scientist had aged, he found that it wasn’t because the feeling was so heavy - it was because assumptions were akin to hope. Hope spread like a disease: clogged your arteries, confused the mind, and chased happiness down like catfish in a barrel.

Hope, on its own, could save lives. Could bring a dead man back to life under the skilled hands of a mutant and a man who belonged nowhere - could salvage what little tenderness resided in a heart made of stone. And in the very next second, it could slit the wrists of the person wielding it. It starts as a small trickle of blood that eventually bleeds you dry without you knowing, Bruce thought, large hands pulling open a gaudy blue menu, full of numbers and operations that, with hope, man could understand.

Bruce didn’t know the X-Men very well. Knew Logan from the few times they were forced to cross paths in laboratories just like this one, but not much else. Knew what he’d read in the papers and knew how Erik Lehnsherr should probably stay dead.

In his apparent all-mighty knowing (that he’d likely adapted from Tony), he also knew what assumptions did to good people who were just in the wrong place, at the wrong time, doing the wrong things for the right reasons.

While he hadn’t seen Scott and Jean very often, Bruce couldn’t imagine they looked this exhausted all of the time. While hero-ing and saving and destroying often took a toll on your mental and physical health, the look that they carried said ‘I’m pleading for hope, and this is the last place I have left to look.’ Bruce thought, for just a moment as he booted up the core CRADLE systems, that he’d probably worn that look too many times in his life too. Half-naked in the streets of Harlem, showing up in the rain on Tony Stark’s doorstep, visiting his mother’s grave with a clenched fist and flowers she would never get to see, or on the faces of the other monks at the Phuktal monastery in Zanskar when they finally learned of his story, who Bruce Banner really was.

Yet, he continued to hope that somehow things would change. That someone would bandage his wrists and tell him he could stop bleeding for the sins of others - do the right things because they felt right, sleep at night because it was OK if he stopped to rest, eat because it was alright to have something in his stomach other than regret.

People always assumed Bruce Banner was always battling for control, hoped that he wouldn’t let go of himself. Bruce always wondered if tomorrow would finally be the day he wouldn’t wake up again.

Staring down at Erik’s lifeless, bio-illuminated face inside of the CRADLE vault, Bruce wanted Erik to wake up. Whether it was for the right reasons or not, he wanted Erik to wake up. Licking his lips, Bruce gave Scott a somewhat sad smile, brows furrowed, “I think if things get out of control, I’ve got it covered.” We have it covered, his ridiculously sardonic brain reminded him unhelpfully. Even his mind and body were not his own - out of his control.

The stillness within the lab seemed almost clinical, if it weren’t for the fact that they were about to scientifically reconstitute living cells in an organically preserved carcass of someone they all considered a friend. “To be fair to Erik, I’d probably be pretty -“ Happy, “- mad if someone I trusted off’d me too.” The joke fell flat between them, and the chemical hiss of the CRADLE as it began to pre-register every input that he had settled into the machine filled in the silence for him. “I would say ‘ready when you are’ but I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready, so. It’s more ‘ready when you go because I have to be ready,’ haha.”

JEAN: Everything about this was a bad idea. Jean had fought between her head and her heart for as long as she could remember, and right now her stomach was squirming and her mind was screaming at her to stop, to leave well enough alone, to leave because Banner was a master scientist, but he needed their energy levels to make this work. She wrung her hands together as she looked down at the CRADLE and thought about that night, the couple of minutes that changed their lives completely. Erik stood there, argued with them that genocide could be an option. He turned into the very monster he’d been fighting since he was a child, and he saw nothing wrong with it.

Some people may say that was just Magneto. Jean knew better -- she had to know better. If she loved that man as much as she had, if she trusted him, then that meant there was something good in him, something worth protecting. That meant it was the Phoenix that caused him to stand there, thumb hovering over the metaphorical trigger. It was the Phoenix that almost had him killing her friends, her former students, even mutants who still resided on the other side of the bay.

He wasn’t thinking straight. He wasn’t thinking like himself. And when he came back, just as when she came back from Zatanna taking her out on the lawn of her childhood home, he would understand that. He would thank them, for doing what was necessary -- because he was the one who taught her how to do that.

Sentimentality had no place in war, Jean knew that, but she did what she did for him. She wouldn’t have his legacy tarnished by one final decision made in the heat of a cosmic flame.

“I can hold him,” she said. She was confident in that much. There was a reason why she wasn’t taking the risk of using the Phoenix, even if it was a tried and true method. She would stop it from fracturing into him again -- or anyone again -- if she could help it at all. “No,” Jean countered, turning around to Bruce. Softening her voice, she repeated, “No. You’re here as a scientist -- to help. If he’s going to lash out at anyone, it’ll be us.” Me, she thought to herself. If anyone touched a hair on Scott’s head, she’d never forgive herself … and chances were it would go a lot more south than she intended when she was trying to repair bridges.

She touched against the top of the CRADLE, ran her eyes quickly over the calculations flying across the screen. “There’s a reason I asked you, you know,” she said to Bruce. “Because I knew you’d understand it was more than just offing someone who was inconvenient. It was…” Mercy? The word itself seemed like an insult. “I thought of all people,” she continued, “you’d understand why we needed a Plan B.”

It wasn’t a personal secret. It had been broadcast over the TV, radio, newspapers. The self loathing that followed after Banner and the Hulk was comparable to that of Scott and Jean themselves. They’d never had pride in what they were unless they were trained to -- conditioned to. And from what Jean read in Stark’s mind, she knew Banner had contingency plans. The Hulkbuster armor, a series of arrows, certain poisons that would at least slow him down if not kill him if push came to shove.

“Erik didn’t know what she was doing,” Jean said, and her voice was far firmer on account of looking at Scott when she said it than she thought herself capable. “He doesn’t deserve to die for someone else’s mistakes.” A beat passed, a breath taken, and Jean nodded. “Start the process.”

SCOTT: Even without the Phoenix, paranoia ate at Scott’s gut like a disease. He’d never been a trusting man, not after a childhood wracked by grief and betrayal, and after everything that had happened since… Without a little doubt clinging to his fractured mind, he wouldn’t have made it as long as he had. He wouldn’t be alive now if not for his healthy dose of uncertainty.

(But was he alive at all? Did this count as living? He was clay and bone, an inanimate thing Jean had breathed life into, a body the Phoenix had claimed. Was living the proper word for what he was doing, or was it one assigned to him because no one knew any better term? How many times could a dead thing die? Maybe they were about to find out.)

This paranoia made him tense at Banner’s presence, made him uncertain and uneasy, made him shift and tighten at the reminder that the room was not occupied by his family alone. It was Scott, it was Jean, it was the empty shell of the man they had loved and killed, and it was Banner. It was them, and it was an Avenger. And they needed him, Scott knew. They needed him to ensure that this wasn’t a repeat of Jean standing over Scott’s grave on Valentine’s Day, needed an outside influence to ensure they wouldn’t repeat the same mistakes and call it a solution, but Scott was uneasy all the same. .

Banner swore he could handle it if Erik got out of control… but Scott looked to Jean anyways, didn’t relax until she confirmed that she would be able to hold him if she had to. The ease of tension didn’t last long before Banner spoke again and Scott tightened all over, wound tighter than a spring ready to take off. “If you’d rather have let him kill eight million people…” His voice was tight and sharp and unnecessary. It had been a joke, Scott knew, a poorly timed one, perhaps a tasteless one, but still a joke. But Scott Summers wasn’t known for his sense of humor.

(Scott Summers wasn’t known for anything decent at all. He hadn’t been for a long time now, and he was aware that it was a perception that predated the Phoenix’s reign of his body. He’d never been a good person. The things the Phoenix talked him in to doing only cemented a fact everyone else had always already known.)

Glancing to Jean, Scott let his lungs deflate, let the breath that was caught there escape in a quiet sigh. Erik didn’t know what he was doing. She sounded so sure of it, so positive, but… Scott had known what he was doing, with the bird ravaging his mind. He had known every step he took, been aware of every word he said. And maybe he wouldn’t have said them without the firebird insisting they needed to be said, but he would have thought them all the same. Maybe he wouldn’t have written a letter to the Bugle or killed police officers who stood in his way or participated in an insurrection against the government of a country he’d only ever wanted to belong to, but he wasn’t sure he would have thought those things were wrong, either.

It wasn’t entirely fair to say that Erik hadn’t been himself, but Scott wouldn’t argue it, either. He wouldn’t tell Jean that he wasn’t sure the bird absolved Erik of his sins, wouldn’t admit that he didn’t believe it absolved him of his, because doing so would mean saying that Jean wasn’t free of hers, either. And Scott loved her far too much to breathe that sentence to life, even if it might have been true.

“He deserves a second chance,” he said, because he believed that, if nothing else. Erik deserved a second chance because everyone did, because Scott had gotten more than his fair share and this was what he’d done with them, because Erik had suffered so much and worked so hard and he’d deserved a better end than the one Scott gave him. “So let’s give him one.”

BRUCE: It took a lot, for someone like Bruce to keep their comments to themselves. Even with the thought of his father barreling him down with a glass whiskey bottle, Bruce still piped up when it was not his place. He’d watched plenty of curses take the lives of people who didn’t necessarily deserve it - but Bruce knew from personal experience, just like the other people in that room, that Erik knew what he was doing. Likely deserved to pay some sort of penance for his actions. But Bruce also thought, calibrating the machine, that maybe knowing what kind of monster lurked beneath the skin was enough of a punishment in itself.

“I won’t say I understand,” The scientist started, initiating launch sequence, a loud hiss coming from the chamber beside them, hearing an echo of Tony’s voice in his head. Yeah, buddy. I’ll strike you down in cold blood if need be. Tony waving him off a moment later to talk about some sport neither of them gave a damn about. How hard had it been for Jean and Scott to make the decision to put Erik down? “But I get it. How much you want it, I mean.” How much you want the monster to be imaginary, he thought.

The hissing grew louder, echoing off of the metal room within the lab, numbers flying across Bruce’s panel and a loading bar appearing for the sequence duration. The ominous glowing green had Bruce shutting his eyes tightly for a moment, remembering the day the bomb went off. The gamma seeping into every fibre of his being - the excruciating pain he felt the first time Hulk entered his mind. Bruce wondered if maybe a piece of Erik would be missing too, when it was all over. If the Phoenix would gauge a hole in him that nothing could ever fill again.

“Go, Jean.”

ERIK: He’d been fifteen when Shaw had conducted the experiment that changed his life. Strapped to a table in the middle of the man’s lab in Auschwitz, leather strap between his teeth, Erik had been terrified by the manic look in the doctor’s eyes as he readied a syringe. The other doctor had been there, too, the one everyone in the camp knew only as Nosferatu, the one who never had his subjects come back to their bunks. Erik was scared of Shaw, but that one had his adrenaline pounding extra hard, noxious fear making his mind spin as he struggled to watch the two men out of the corner of his eyes.

He hadn’t realized he’d been shaking the metal table beneath him until Shaw turned to him and clicked his tongue, and Erik made a concerted effort to rein his powers back in—from the table, from the needle, from everything, because the last time he’d lost control, Shaw had pinned him down and broken his arm in two places.

Shaw finished his prep work and rolled over to the side of the table, the other man at his shoulder, watching with a detached gaze that made Erik feel like a butterfly pinned to a board. Shaw had brushed his hand through Erik’s hair as if he were trying to calm a spooked horse, shushing him as he readied the needle.

“This is my gift to you, Max,” he’d smiled. ”So you can be like me. Like us.” And then he’d slid the needle into his arm and pressed the plunger, and everything felt like it was on fire. He’d discovered later what the man meant, what ‘gift’ he’d bestowed on him in those labs.

Life. Too much of it. He’d been 93 years old, facing off against his children in the silo, and he’d scarcely looked into his forties. His cells aged slowly the way Shaw’s had, and he’d hated it, hated that the man couldn’t simply be relegated to memory.

When Scott had flipped the visor, Erik had died. But his cells hadn’t quite done the same—had sat in stasis through his burial, through his exhumation, through his settling into the Cradle and the tests that led up to the flood of energy that finally sparked his neurons back to life.

His heart beat once. Twice. His chest heaved as he dragged air into his lungs for the first time since the silo.

They tell you that your life flashes before your eyes when you die. They don’t tell you that it does the same thing when you come back.

Over the years, Erik had carefully constructed mental walls to keep unwanted memories at bay. Charles had once remarked that his mind was one of the most organized he’d ever been in, neatly linear and uncluttered by anything except The Goal and The Plan.

You wouldn’t know it, now.

The first thing he was aware of was that his mind felt empty, somehow, like he was missing a limb. He’d had a cosmic force that devoured worlds tucked in alongside his own consciousness for so long that its absence was jarring. Almost as jarring as the realization that all those walls were so much rubble.

Erik opened his eyes, saw a lab, and those memories of Shaw that should’ve been locked away assaulted him all at once. Terror, not helped by the realization that he was contained.

Get out get out get out get out.

The top of the Cradle slammed open, and Erik sat up, powers already stretching around the room, wrapping around whatever metal was in reach. Natural, unbidden, just reaching, leaving pens and tools hovering in the air above where they’d been resting. Defensive instincts long-honed seizing on anything that could be a weapon before he could even identify the threat.

And then he saw them.

“I love you, but I can’t love this.” Jean’s face, stone cold.

“You’ll be grateful I stopped you, later.” Scott’s fingers, perfectly steady on his glasses.

Betrayal from two of the people he loved and trusted most. ( But he should have expected that, shouldn’t he? Shaw’s voice, warning him that “sentiment will be the death of you if you let it, my boy.” Magda running away, Charles turning on him, sending an army of children after him—He should have known, always, and yet. )

Fury reared its head, as it always did, and Erik felt the beginning brushes of Jean’s mind against his and realized that those walls were gone, too, and no. No, no, no, no no.

<<Get OUT.>>

The sentiment was punctuated by the hovering metal around the room all flying toward the couple at once as Erik hauled himself out of the Cradle.

Jean didn’t even need to interfere, because the second his feet his the floor, a wall of exhaustion slammed into him. The Phoenix had been able to keep him going through almost no sleep for months, but without its energy in his mind, all that time putting off his body’s needs crashed into him at once.

His legs gave out from under him, and the airborne metal hit the floor at the same time he did.

Someone else was at his side, moving to help, and Erik snarled before he even realized who it was. “Don’t touch me.” Banner—it was Banner, and he was safe-ish, wasn’t he? Erik didn’t know if anyone was, couldn’t relax—stopped, hand halfway to his shoulder, and Erik curled his fists and shook his head as he tried to get the flood of memories clamoring for attention to settle.

“Make them leave. Get them out.” He was in no condition to be dealing with them—mind too loud, powers too weak. Maybe once, that wouldn’t have been a problem.

But he didn’t trust either of them. Not. One. Bit.

JEAN: Bruce wasn’t going to forgive them. He could say he understood a part of it, while distancing himself from the darkest aspects of what they had done -- the darkest aspects of the forces they were playing with now. The Phoenix remained silent in the back of her mind, though it was never true silence. That would imply some degree of calm, and Jean hadn’t known what that felt like since … God, since she was ten years old, maybe before. The Phoenix’s absence from this occasion said all it needed to about her stance. She thought Jean should’ve asked her. She thought they could’ve worked together, that Jean would turn to her and beg, that she’d regret what she’d done.

Regret that Erik was dead, perhaps. Regret over the actions she had taken to prevent something worse … not exactly. Charles drummed into her since she was fourteen years old that to be truly useful in this world, you needed to protect the downtrodden. To be truly good, you had to defend those who couldn’t defend themselves, defend those who would never forgive you for making yourself bleed on their behalf. The city of New York had done nothing for Jean Grey but rip her apart and refuse to put her back together again. The people hated her, splashed her husband’s face in graffiti, treated her father like a lunatic in the press.

But that didn’t mean she’d let them die. It was the same principle she extended here, standing over the CRADLE, watching the mechanisms begin to shift. (Did Stark know they were here, she wondered? He trusted Banner, she’d picked up on that much -- but from what she understood of Iron Man, he was a pragmatist. A logistician, at his core. He would say this was a terrible idea. Jean understood where that impression could come from.)

Everyone deserved forgiveness. The Phoenix had hurt, had ripped them apart, made them commit so many atrocities -- but this was the first step in giving a second chance, in piecing together the things Jean had broken.

But, again, that didn’t mean Jean was blindly trusting. Her intelligence wasn’t the first thing people thought of, when they thought of her (and she knew, of course, courtesy of hearing every goddamn ‘compliment’ that went through every person’s head), but it was something that only grew with experience. The CRADLE burst open, and Jean already had protective shields formed around Scott, around Bruce, and a split second later, around herself.

The metal dropped, though. The invisible shields remained in place, even if she knew Erik would assume their presence. The CRADLE hissed, smoke still rising from the chamber. The lights flickered, the walls shook, electricity in the air made her hair go static—

And Erik was standing in front of her. Erik was standing in front of her, eyebrows furrowed, jaw clenched, hands curled into fists by his side. Chest moving, breaths heaving. He was angry, always angry, angrier than she’d ever seen him -- but he was alive.

(Was that all that mattered? Rictor said, once, she over-simplified it. Breathing alone wasn’t enough to keep a person alive, but it was the first step. It was the foundations. Jean always had faith that could lead to something else.)

There was a beat of relief, a wash that went through her chest and relieved the tension that had curled into it (she could tell Lorna she brought her dad back), and then a moment where she realised it wasn’t dad she thought when she looked at this man. It was something else, something foreign, like looking at a stranger.

She’d mourned him, Jean reminded herself. She’d sat, curled in his seat, looking around at the books in his office. She’d taken a blanket from his home during the funeral, tried to find his smell under whiskey and cigar smoke. She’d mourned him, she’d loved him, and the first words that left his mouth…

Well, she had expected it. She had expected it, but there was a part of Jean that hoped, against all odds, just as there had always been.

“Last time we left,” she replied, coolly, keeping her hands stiff by her sides and her feet firmly on the ground, “you almost caused the Third World War. I’d like to make sure that’s not going to happen again.” If that meant Bruce and Scott remained wrapped in a telekinetic shield, if it meant she took the brunt of the flames, so be it.

Jean was used to the fire.

SCOTT: The process, once it happened, wasn’t a slow one. It was strange, watching it play out. Scott had never been present for this part before. He’d watched people he loved die so many times that the images were etched on the back of his eyelids, playing out like a movie projected on a sheet. He could rewind, pause, fast forward, take it from the top. Those moments were a part of him. And he’d had people come back to him, too, of course. Jean walking up to the Institute doors with her hands clasped together so tightly her knuckles were white, like a prayer and an answer all at once. Illyana showing up again years after she’d died, breathing and wild-eyed. He watched people die and saw them lowered into their graves, watched them walk back through the door after the dirt had settled, but this? The only resurrection Scott had ever been present for was his own, and there had been nothing miraculous about that. Nothing good, nothing incredible.

This was different. This wasn’t the Phoenix, wasn’t a cosmic force that described a curse as a blessing. This was some hodgepodge mix of science and telepathy that Scott doubted he’d ever entirely understand. Part of him hadn’t expected it to work at all, had thought the most they’d do was desecrate the corpse of a man who’d more than earned his right to rest, but he’d gone along anyway because Jean had asked him to and Scott had been bad at saying no to her since she took his hand on that park bench decades ago and asked him to stay. The Phoenix was like playing with fire, but this? This was more akin to trying to shape water into something tangible. Scott’s expectations hadn’t been high.

But they should have been. He should have understood that Jean Grey (Jean Summers) never failed at something she’d put her mind and heart into, should have remembered that she was the same girl who’d convinced a sullen, quiet boy that he was a thing worth loving, should have understood that she would move heaven and earth for the people she loved and that Erik, for all his faults, was one of them.

The Cradle slammed open. The metal in the room began to hum, hovering free of gravity. A familiar shield engulfed him, invisible and protective. And Erik Lehnsherr was revived the same way he had died --- suddenly, violently, and with a love so great that there was room for little else besides it.

There was a moment where the world stood still. Everything hung motionless. Scott held his breath, swore that his heart stopped beating for an instant, swore that the blood stopped pumping through his veins as the world waited to right itself again. And then it did, and everything came crashing back down in an instant. The anger slammed into the room like a train obliterating everything left on the tracks, like a car crash of rage and betrayal and grief and defeat. Erik was alive, and he was angry. Scott couldn’t blame him for that, couldn’t fault it. If not for Jean, he would have accepted whatever punishment felt necessary, would have let himself be skewered for his sins.

(“You don’t have to be a martyr,” Warren told him once. ”You don’t have to shoulder every mistake. You’re allowed to forgive yourself, Scott. You’re allowed to move on.” And he might have tried that if anyone had ever told him how. He might have done it if it hadn’t seemed so impossible, so unreal. How could you get out from under something that stretched the length of the whole sky above you? How could you get away from something that was a part of you? It only sounded easy if you’d never felt it before.)

But Jean was there, was shielding him, was protecting him no matter how little he deserved it. The metal dropped to the ground, and the shields stayed up. The anger remained. And with it, the guilt. The grief. The betrayal.

Scott stayed quiet, eyes darting away from Erik and back to Jean. She was hurt. He could feel it through the bond, see it in her posture. She wasn’t surprised, but she was hurt, and he ached with her. He’d wanted a happier resolution to this, a better end, but it had been a fool’s dream. Jean forgave Zatanna when she took the Phoenix down, just as Scott forgave Logan when he ended his suffering on that grassy knoll in Central Park. There were people, he knew that were easy to forgive. There were people good enough, decent enough, that forgiving them came as simply as breathing, as blinking, as turning your head. There were people who were easy to forgive because they were easy to love, because you wanted them in your life no matter the cost.

Scott had never been one of them.

BRUCE: Bruce wasn’t sure what he had been expecting. If there was one well-known thing about Erik Lehnsherr, at least to the public, it was that he was very focused. For good, for bad, he had the insight of an owl and the determination of a bull. Apparently, even in death, in exhaustion, he was equally so. He wondered if he would ever get to feel death. If it would always elude him like many other things in life; happiness, a home, a family, somewhere he felt safe.

He thought, for a moment, maybe he had been a little jealous of Erik. That Jean didn’t have the right to take that away from him, no matter how much he would be missed.

Jean’s protective barrier didn’t seem to move him. Emotionally of course, because her raw power was enough to match Erik’s, and he could take the static in the air like the Kansas plains right before a tornado came through. How many people would he stand beside who were more convicted than him? What kind of hurts did they hold, and why did they hurt enough to bring Erik back? ( Why did he bring Erik back? )

“Hey, buddy - it’s — hey. Let’s not do anything drastic,” Like accidentally murder someone else, haha — “I know you’re angry. Totally get it,” Bruce slowly approached with scuffed dress shoes, each click of their rubber soles sounding like a gunshot in the suddenly too-quiet room. He couldn’t imagine having that kind of power - to make everyone notice when he was there and also when he wasn’t. “But you’re going to be really dehydrated in a hot minute if you don’t let me help you up, okay?”

Bruce spared a look for his two companions, and maybe Jean was right. Maybe he was someone who could understand what they’d been through. That if someone had to save Bruce from himself, he would at least want it to be someone he cared about. Clint, Tony, Steve. He would never ask Nat to do it - she’d been made enough times to be a stone-hearted killer, Bruce wouldn’t add to that.

Although he didn’t really know either of them well enough, he could tell when somebody cared enough to still be there after you’d disappointed them. Jean thought Erik would be disappointed, stayed anyway. Would anyone care enough to stick around for him too?

Gently, as if approaching a spooked animal, Bruce placed calloused fingers on an expensive funeral suit, surprised when he electricity in the room didn’t shock him on contact. The ever-present scientist in him placed that interesting tidbit of knowledge in a file for future examination. Maybe because Hulk’s skin was like reinforced rubber? Was he a grounding material? Could that be something helpful in the future, like making schools safer during storms, or for severe weather shelters for the homeless—

“If you want them to leave, they’ll leave,” Bruce promised, not looking back at the couple again. He supposed the situation really wasn’t about them.

ERIK: Everything was too much. His mind felt like it had been ransacked, left in tatters as his previous cohabitant had rifled through memories and motivations alike to trim down only to what was useful. Tweaking perceptions, ramping up the paranoia.

Not paranoid enough, some part of him noted wryly.

Bruce's fingers wrapped gently around his shoulder, tone and stance reminiscent of the way they used to handle shell-shocked soldiers. He stiffened under the touch, knuckles going white against the floor, but he didn't shake him off. Reached up and dragged himself to his feet again, even if he swayed, even if the room spun a bit around him and wavered black at the edges. He needed food, he needed water, he needed sleep.

More importantly, he needed to get out of the presence of the two people who had murdered him before he lost control entirely. Scott was standing there in silence, expression torn between surprise and guilt, and there was none of Erik that had the capacity to feel anything but disgust for the man right now. It didn't take a genius to put together who had led the charge in the silo, who'd been calling the shots. Scott was a good little soldier. A good little husband. "Bird got your tongue?" Scott didn't have the Phoenix anymore, that much was clear--guilt wouldn't be anywhere in his face if it was. But the point stood regardless, and Erik didn't care that Jean always got tetchy when he so much as breathed a negative word in Scott's direction.

(Somewhat hysterically, he wondered if he'd make her mad enough to kill him again. Maybe he should--the time between his death and now was rapidly flitting away from his mind, but he remembered warmth, remembered family, and part of him wanted to claw it back.)

Jean's words had him choking on a laugh, and Erik nearly snarled at her across the Cradle, fingers pressing dents into the metal. "If that's what you're worried about, why am I back?" he hissed. And oh, there were other questions that came crashing on him, then.

"FRIDAY," he said, because he wasn't sure he could trust anyone in this room except the machine he could feel thrumming in the walls around them. "What's today's date?"

"February 21, 2021, Mr. Lehnsherr."

February. Two months. Two months.

Scott Summers had been resurrected a week to the day from his death. Jean had been so grief-stricken, so heartbroken, that she had moved heaven and earth and death itself to bring him back after just a week without him.

Two months. He hated that there was a part of him that was wounded by that fact almost more than the murder itself. There had always been two reasons that he was kept around, two reasons that people kept him close: love or use. She hadn't brought him back because she missed him or because Lorna did, which meant she must need him to do something—

Lorna.

The world constricted once again, because Lorna wasn't here. Her father was being resurrected, and she wasn't here. Erik knew his powers could scarcely reach across the room let alone the bay, but g-d if he didn't try anyway, breath caught in his throat. He felt the room tip at the exertion before he stopped, kept upright only by the tight grip on the Cradle and Bruce's hand at his back.

"Where is Lorna? Where is my daughter?!"

If she was dead, and they'd brought him back to a world without her, he would drag them all back to the grave with him.

JEAN: She’d never been the kind of woman who lived on an island. Her mind was tattered, splintered into pieces that could cut intruders like knives, ever since the Phoenix rushed into her body so many years ago and refused to leave. Jean never made sense, she knew, to the people around her. She burned too bright or not at all. She went hot or far too cold. She was capable of almost pathological compartmentalisation, or she saw everything at once so the picture was too damn big for anyone else to understand. She loved and loathed in equal measure, and she was, above all else, not the kind of woman who was easy to digest. Easy to adore, perhaps, but so many people desired to get close to the fire before they truly knew what it meant to be burned. There were so few who saw the worst of her and stayed.

Scott was one of them. If anyone touched a hair on his head -- even someone she considered family, someone who was more blood than anyone else on the planet -- she would rip them into a thousand pieces and scatter them to the wind without hesitation, without guilt, without grief. But there was another person who looked at her in all her chaos, in her fear, in her self hatred and mania, and who said, this girl is worth trusting. There was another person who approached her in the wreckage of other people’s lives and said it wasn’t her fault, that she held a great gift inside of her, and the only way to control it was to refuse to control it, to embrace it instead.

Erik had been that person. Erik knelt down in front of a child and he reached to her even when the rest of the world was pulling back. He gave her a safe place to rest, gave her logic, pragmatism, gave her a path that she followed long after he was gone. And then he was on the other side of a battlefield, throwing buses at her friends and threatening everything the X-Men were fighting for, and she was told to defeat him at any cost.

Perhaps this was inevitable. Perhaps there could only ever be Jean alive or Erik. Maybe having them both here at once, occupying the same space, defied some kind of cosic deity -- defied the Phoenix. Because as Jean looked at Erik, her chest tightening and her throat burning, the Phoenix was conspicuously silent. Conspicuously void of opinion, for one of the first times in living history.

Then Bruce opened his mouth, and the bird came back to life. We could kill him next, she offered.

“We’re not killing anyone.” It took a breath, just a second, for Jean to realise she said those words out loud, that she’d turned her head to the side as if a friend was standing right there -- as if Maddie was beside her (why was she thinking of Maddie, now, as if she was a shadow? As if she was someone lingering, constantly, even when she wasn’t here physically? Was it because they’d done it together, the three of them, and so it made sense to picture her now?) Jean collected herself, levelled a look at Erik as her eyes burned, too.

She wouldn’t cry. She refused to. But God, it would be so easy to let those tears spill, to fall to her knees, to run towards him like she was an eleven year old girl who’d lost everything that mattered to her in the world and he had all the answers.

But he was insulting her husband. He’d threatened the safety, the peace, of their entire people. He messed with Kara’s head, threatened Rictor, almost started another World War. She couldn’t forget that.

“I didn’t want you dead, Erik,” she said, as simply as she could. There were a hundred other things she could say. She could tell him how she knew the Phoenix felt in him, how it twisted everything, how it made things so simple and so complicated all at the same time. She could vindicate him, could say this wasn’t his fault -- but the way he was looking at her now…

(Maybe there was always meant to be one, in the end.)

She knew where his mind went, when he asked for the date. “I didn’t want to use her,” she said, because he deserved something of an explanation. “I couldn’t.”

You could have. Haven’t I helped you before? Haven’t I made things so beautiful—

“We needed you back,” Jean said, “not someone else. I found another way. It took some time, but …” It worked, clearly. It worked so far as there was breath in his lungs now and color in his cheeks. If that was the definition of life, they’d succeeded -- but Jean knew it was far more complicated than that. “Lorna’s alive,” she continued. “She’s safe, and she knows we’re here. I wanted to make sure we were … that she stayed that way.”

The Erik she knew would’ve wanted her paranoid, if it came to Lorna. He would’ve wanted her to take every precaution when dealing with something as unpredictable as life and death. Yet, as she stood there looking at someone who felt as much like a stranger as he had on that very first day they faced off in the middle of New York City, she wasn’t entirely sure he would see it like that now.

SCOTT: Banner’s voice was like radio static, something there-and-not-there in a way Scott had grown accustomed to as a teenager when the world became like a television with no static and he began to understand why his mother locked herself in her room for days at a time, why she spent so many afternoons in bed. It shut out the world sometimes, made him his thoughts and nothing else. Banner was there. Erik was there. Jean was there. And Scott wasn’t. Scott was in a silo, in a hospital waiting room, in a grave. Banner was promising he’d leave as if he knew how, Jean was throwing a shield around him as if there was something left to protect, Erik was---

---Erik was speaking to him. The realization dawned slowly, like a wave lapping your feet on a beach, covering them with sand slowly and quickly all at once in a way you didn’t realize until the pressure was there cementing you to the ground. It took Scott’s mind a moment to catch up with his ears, a moment for the words to register. It always did, when he got like this. When the world was radio static and his mind hopped from one place to the next like Kurt’s teleportation, like a superpower that took him to every place he’d never wanted to be.

Bird got your tongue? The words came to him, slow and deliberate, and for a moment he felt like he was twelve years old, like he was standing in Essex’s lab with his arms stiff at his side and his eyes locked to his feet, like fingers would come in at any moment to grip his chin and force it upwards, force eye contact. (Essex was the last person he’d looked in the eyes before the world went red and a pair of lenses separated him from everything he saw. He thought of that sometimes, what it meant. What it said.) For a moment, there was an echo of another man’s voice, decades ago but just as cold, just as disgusted. Come on, Scott. You’re so much prettier when you smile.

He flinched. He didn’t mean to, but he did. And it wasn’t fair, he knew. Scott was not a victim here. (And maybe he hadn’t been a victim back then, either. Maybe Essex had never done anything he didn’t have coming. Maybe if he were better, smarter, easier to love, things could have been different. Maybe - ) Scott had killed Erik, had opened his eyes and turned the whole world red, and maybe Erik was angry now but he had a right to be. Scott Summers was not Zatanna Zatara. He was not Logan. He was not a person who had done a favor for a friend, not someone who was only doing what his would-be victim asked him to do. What he did was his choice, his decision. No one forced him. No one made him. And maybe he’d only damned himself to save Erik from the same fate, but that didn’t make him any less damned. Did it?

Scott stayed silent, and the world kept moving around him. Time went slower, he’d found, without the Phoenix coloring it. The loss of immortality made every moment a mountain, every second a marathon. He watched realization dawn in Erik’s eyes in slow motion, watched anger turn to grief turn to fear. And Jean spoke, but it wasn’t---

It wasn’t to Erik. It wasn’t to Banner, it wasn’t to Scott. It was to someone else. Scott could almost feel her in the room, like a phantom limb. The Phoenix. Had Jean ever spoken to her aloud before? (He had, towards the end. He remembered it. Pacing in his room, muttering to himself. It was one of the things that made him realize the line had been crossed, one of the things that made him realize he was going, going, gone. His heart dropped into his stomach and his chest felt tight. Jean had a handle on this. She had to. She had to.)

He tuned back in to the conversation, listened as Jean insisted that they’d done what they’d done to ensure they resurrected Erik and not something else. A strangled sound escaped from the back of Scott’s throat at that, and he cursed himself for drawing the attention back to him. Given the opportunity, Scott had always preferred to exist in the peripheral. To be seen and not heard, the way he’d been taught by his father, Essex, Winters. “If we’d taken shortcuts,” he said, because the attention was on him and if he didn’t make it seem like he had something to say then it might stay that way, “we wouldn’t have solved any problems. Take it from me, that isn’t… It’s not how you want to come back.” An apologetic glance to Jean, the echo of a statement he didn’t dare repeat. Maybe we were better off dead. “Lorna’s safe. You’re safe. Genosha, New York… It’s all safe. We just wanted to keep it that way. That’s all.”

BRUCE: Every word Scott breathed made Bruce’s chest feel tighter and tighter. Safe, like Erik wasn’t capable of controlling himself. Safe, as if something really got out of control, they couldn’t handle it. Couldn’t handle him.

If Erik had needed to be put down because he was a danger to society and he hadn’t even hurt anyone yet, then what did that make Bruce?

Unbeknownst to him, lost in his thoughts, Bruce’s skin under his lab-coat began to turn an eerie shade of green, spiderwebbing out from under his sleeve and onto the fist that gripped Erik’s suit, holding the man up like he was Bruce’s lifeline. “Don’t talk to him like that.” The words sounded echo-y and far-away, like someone had smashed pots and pans together beside his ears and just let them ring. His throat felt full, like he’d been drooling for days and had forgotten to swallow. If they loved him so much, then they wouldn’t have killed him when it became inconvenient.

Would they have?

Hulk roared in the pit of his stomach, startling him into a barely noticeable jump. Gripping Erik tighter, green creeping into the corners of his vision, Bruce managed a not-so-controlled, “I’ve got it from here. You guys’ve done enough, right?” He hated, how much like his father he sounded when his ridiculous Dayton-Ohio-accent came out with his words.

Hated feeling like a monster, in front of judgmental eyes. Bruce may not have known Jean or Scott very well, but he couldn’t trust them any farther than he could throw them. As Banner, anyway. “I’ll make sure he ‘stays out of trouble.’” The words dripped with poorly hidden malice, maybe some misguided hurt, and he couldn’t hold eye contact with either of them anymore. Instead, he focused on Erik. Fed off of his exhaustion and hoped that maybe they could trade places. That maybe the next person that came knocking could put him down instead.

“FRIDAY? Can you make sure my floor is set to 75 degrees? He’s probably going to be a little cold, as tired as he is.” Licking his lips, Bruce cocked an eyebrow, still staring at the ground as if to say ‘Anything else?’

ERIK: Lorna's alive. It was buried in their responses, between excuses and explanations and lies he didn't care to hear, but it was there, nonetheless. Lorna was alive, and some of the panic that had filled his lungs like cement dissipated. Lorna was alive.

With that assurance, it was easier to focus on the rest of what they said. Safe, safe, safe, safe, safe....

(Alles ist gut, alles ist gut--)

And that was funny, wasn't it--absolutely hysterical, and the laughter bubbled up out of his chest before he realized it was coming.

We needed you back. Not someone else. (And it was needed, wasn't it, not wanted--)

It's not how you want to come back. The metal groaned under his fingers, lights flickering for as his voice rose. "What made you think that I wanted to come back?" he snapped, voice cracking for a moment. Just a moment.

Get it together. He cleared his throat, shook off the edges of black tinting his vision, marshalled his focus into staying on his feet. Don't show weakness. (Too late, too late, too late--)

"It doesn't really matter, does it? Because you needed me. And here. I. Am. My life was a problem. My death was a problem. How long do I get the floor this time, Jean?"

He stared across the Cradle at Scott, expression stuck in a strange space between anger and pity. "It was all for keeping everyone safe, hm? Is that what she told you to help you sleep at night, Scott? That you were making the world safe? No, no, no. You stopped me to keep everyone safe--fair enough. Can't begrudge you that. But that's not why you killed me. You killed me because you were angry. Because your chest was burning over Ric, over Kara, over Lorna, over all the failures of your fathers, and because you could take something in recompense. And because she told you to. Good soldier, good husband."

And then, for a moment, some of that anger edged back, some more of the pity filtering in, because Erik knew what it was like to love someone enough to do anything. "Did you realize you said almost the same thing she did, just now, hm? Did she notice?" A brief glance at Jean, before he looked back at Scott. They'd been sharing minds for years. Might be doing so now, even, and that had been the reason he'd never quite let Charles do the same--the fear of not knowing where your thoughts ended and theirs began.

"You and I both held the Phoenix, Scott. You know what it does, what it's like. How long has she been talking to it out loud? Do you feel safe, right now?" His head was starting to swim, the room growing more distant through the tunnel that was starting to settle in front of his vision, and Erik reflected absently that perhaps it wasn't the wisest of choices to be using so much oxygen on talking when his legs were barely keeping under him.

(You don't know when to quit-- oh, he owed Ric so much...)

He felt Banner's shift starting behind him, felt the radiation in the room spike, even through the dim grip he had on his powers at the moment. The man's voice, when it came, was strained, his grip tightening at Erik's back, and he would be lying if he didn't say it wasn't more than a little vindicating to hear the disdain with which the Avenger spoke to Jean and Scott.

He didn't quite get to express that, before the black won out.

JEAN: Jean had been angry her entire life. She’d been angry at what she wasn’t allowed to do, what she was, how she could go against the natural order of things and nothing ever seemed to come of it -- not until later, at least -- not until the sum of all her mistakes came crashing down in one fell swoop and she was left drowning at the deep end. But there was always someone who dove in, whether it was a backyard pool or the ocean during a raging storm, and that was Scott. Scott, who changed the world for her. Scott, who she changed the world for. Scott who killed a man when Jean asked him to, who would live and die for her, who promised to spend his life by her side regardless of whether she was beside him at the breakfast table or six foot under in a cemetery.

“Don’t speak to my husband like that,” Jean said, taking a step in front of Scott when Bruce shot him a glare. She didn’t come to the other scientist to be judged. She didn’t come here to be treated as the villain when she knew, deeply and instinctively, what the Phoenix was capable of -- how it changed people, twisted them up inside, changed them. She came here for one reason and one reason only, and he was standing in front of her now.

He was standing in front of her angry, but Jean knew him far too well to expect anything else, even if there was still a sickening disappointment swirling in her gut. “Because I always did,” she said, her voice quiet. Because she always would want to come back, regardless of what horrors were awaiting her the second air filled her lungs once more. Life would forever, constantly, be preferable to the lingering emptiness on the other side. “Because I thought--”

You didn’t deserve this. She wasn’t sure if he would hear it, if she was broadcasting it, if the feelings were leaking out of her like water from a cracked dam. “Because I’ve always needed you.”

Because it was her fault. The Phoenix wouldn’t be a part of their lives if it wasn’t for her decision on the shuttle at eighteen years old, a stupid child playing at being a god, a woman so desperate for approval from anywhere that she’d take sycophancy whispering in her head and preach it like gospel. “It wasn’t you, Erik. It wasn’t you any more than it was me on that lawn.”

He didn’t see that now. Maybe he never would. But Jean knew there was no other option, no other choice. Erik would admit himself there was nothing that could stop him from accomplishing his mission unless it was death. He was a man forged by soldiers’ cruelty, but he shared their pragmatism, their single-minded focus.

And then he kept talking, and the Phoenix roared to life in her mind -- almost laughing. Yes, it was laughing. It was bitter and cruel, but it was laughter, genuine amusement.

Oh look, she whispered, you brought him back insane.

“We were angry,” Jean said. “Of course we were angry. You violated the very principles we founded Genosha on when you threatened one of our own in a public place, for all to see. We were meant to be peaceful, a sanctuary. We were meant to be safety, and you turned it into your own personal battleground where you were judge, jury and executioner. You ripped apart the sanctity of a woman’s mind who is good and kind and honest in more ways than we could ever be, and you pointed a gun at the head of every citizen in New York and tried to justify it in a way that didn’t make you sound like Shaw.”

Because yes, that was in the notes she’d collected. Yes, that was in the memories he’d shared with her. Yes, she knew all about it -- and she knew that, if it came down to it, Erik would never become the monster that had ripped him apart and put him back together different than was ever intended. He wouldn’t wanted her to stop him. Her father would’ve wanted that.

Maybe this man wasn’t her father.

Bruce spoke again, and this time Jean let out a bitter huff of almost laughter. “Right,” she said, “because the Avengers are such a safe place for mutants, always have been. Remind me of all you did for our kind while you were parading the streets after your great victories and we were still hiding in backalleys, getting murdered for how we were born.”

(Jean never had a personal problem with the Avengers. She never understood why Scott burned with resentment towards what they represented, even if the people themselves weren’t to blame. She did now. Bruce stood there, on a pedestal despite his mistakes, looking down on them as if they were to pity. Like they were the monsters.)

“Erik, you belong at home. You belong in the place you helped to build. You belong in your own paradise. Come home, and we can be there or we can leave, but don’t--”

Don’t push us away. Not just Scott and Jean, which was inevitable, but the entirety of mutantkind that resided in the streets he’d pieced together. Everything he’d worked for, everything he’d sacrificed, and the Phoenix had torn it apart.

And then Erik hit the ground, and Jean was beside him in an instant, fingers going to the pulse on his neck as her other hand squeezed his arm.

Breathing? the Phoenix enquired. Jean nodded. How unfortunate. I thought we’d get to work together, again.

Jean looked back up at Bruce, at Scott, and slowly rose to her feet. Reluctant to leave him when the experiment was so new, so uncertain, and reluctant to leave him because everything within her screamed that was her family hurting, on the floor, aching.

“Take care of him,” Jean said to Bruce, reaching for Scott’s hand to intertwine their fingers together. Flames flickered, orange and purple at the tips, and formed a circle -- a circle she could see through, right back to their sofa and fireplace back in Genosha, right back to home where Rachel would no doubt be making cocoa in the kitchen. She’d never done that before.

Cosmic travel? Of course we have. You just forget. The human mind can only bend so far.

Jean squeezed Scott’s hand once more, knuckles white, and past the burning in her chest and throat she took a step into the portal, unsure whether she’d just healed a wound or created a new one.

#( adding a little bit of spicy doom tones at the beginning for *drama* )#f: discord #d: back from the dead #c: scott summers #c: jean grey #c: bruce banner #tw: murder mention #tw: abuse mention #tw: grief #tw: ptsd #tw: mental health issues

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k7l4d4 · 4 years ago

Text

Midnight Striga: Owl House/Fairy Tail Crossover First Episode Part 1

Hello All, today, I am transcribing the Owl House/Fairy Tail story I created over hear, for your reading pleasure!! Everybody Clap Your Hands!!!

“Phew! Looks like I lost them!” With an exhausted sigh, Luz Noceda crashed to the ground. “Just once, I wish I could go into town without a disguise and NOT get chased by Rune Knights. Is that REALLY too much to ask?”

With a sigh, Luz hauled the satchel she carried across her shoulder off, riffling through the numerous papers and books stored within. ‘Sometimes, I wished that I was better at thinking things through… but then I remember how boring that is!’ She mused to herself, before laughing aloud in response.

“Still, that was a close call.” Stretching herself out, Luz slipped a picture out of her pocket, gazing fondly at the photo of her and her mother, laughing together. It was one of the few mementos Luz had managed to keep of that time. “I better prepare, never know who could show up.”

One campfire, properly covered to conceal any smoke or light it may give off, and give away her position, and one emergency shelter later, Luz laid into a hearty soup she managed to make. So what you will about her social skills, but Luz definitely knew how to survive off the land… with a little help from the odds and ends she “Found” in town today.

With her belly full, Luz decided it would be a good point to get ready for bed, at least after she got some reading done. “Challenges of Space-Time and the Continuum? Nah, already read that, dull as dirt. Masterworks of Weaponry: A Guide to Gear both Standard and Exotic, cool but more technical than I’m in the mood for…”

As Luz narrowed her choices, she eventually reached the SECOND big memento of her Mother among her things: The Good Witch Azura, a fantasy novel series that had been the guiding beacon to her life of adventure and intrigue up until now. A complicated look appeared on Luz’s face. Ordinarily, she’d stash this book away, content with her memories of happier times that it brought to the surface, but today, she felt like maybe she should give it a proper read. As the words danced across her vision, Luz sunk deeper and deeper into her memories, heedless of the tears pricking at her eyes. All she could see was the wonderful, maddening book that had given her so much joy and heartache. The last thing her Mother had given her before she set out on her journey. Before she could fully lose herself in her thoughts, Luz’s attention was grabbed by the sound of an Owl hooting. Specifically, an Owl hooting from just a few short feet away.

As Luz turned her head, she caught sight of the dumbfounding image of a tiny brown owl, something she would normally coo over in delight at the sight of, were said adorable owl not currently lifting into the air, her satchel of works stored within a burlap sack it was carrying. “TINY BAG THIEF!!”

With a roar of outrage, Luz launched herself after the owl, internally marveling at its ability to support all that weight with its little body, but more than anything furious at being robbed. Luz DESPISED the idea of being stolen from. With an accompanying burst of wind at her steps, Luz effortlessly dodged the trees and boulders the little owl weaved around in an effort to shake her. As Luz closed in, her hand just inches away from snatching the owl’s burden… she tumbled through the rather obvious door-shaped portal that had been floating in the air.

With a cough, Luz pulled herself to her feet, finding herself in a canvas tent, the familiar rumbling of a market just outside. Whatever resulted in her coming here, it didn’t seem malevolent… for now. As Luz looked around the interior, she noticed how odd so many of the items stored within were. “Wow, and I thought I’d seen some weird stuff.” Luz walks over to a shrunken head. “But this? This is impressive.”

“Okay Owlbert, let’s see what you’ve got for Mama today!”

“Who the what now?” Confused, and intrigued, Luz moved closer to the tent flap. As she looked out, she let out a soft gasp of awe. Before her was one of the most fascinating sights she had ever seen, beings of all forms and figures trading and haggling in an old-fashioned bazarre. The tent she found herself in seemed to connect to a stand, one staffed by a surprisingly foxy older woman, grey hair held tight behind a bandanna, wearing a stylishly torn red dress. “Okay, let’s see where this goes…”

As the woman pulled out multiple valuable objects, including an Archive Terminal that Luz legitimately cried at seeing tossed like trash, discarding each without a moment’s hesitation, only to settle on some novelty glasses as being the thing to “Make her rich.” Yeah, Luz wasn’t too sure about that. But when she pulled Luz’s precious satchel and held the treasures over a fire? Yeah, that wasn’t happening.

“NOPE!” With a lunge, Luz leapt into the air, grabbing her satchel and the book Eda had been holding over a flame, and smoothly landed on her feet, not five feet away. “Yeah, sorry lady, but this is mine.”

With that said, Luz took off running, ducking back into the tent and heading for the portal, only to come up short as it folded up into… was that a briefcase? “You’re not going anywhere.” Okay, so the probably crazy lady could do a decent threatening voice. Well then…

Luz lunged towards the woman, aiming a sharp right hook for her torso. The lady’s eyes widened, before she shifted to the side, avoiding what would’ve been a stinging blow by the skin of her teeth. Growling, Luz crouched to the ground and spun, hoping to sweep the woman’s feet out from under her, only for her to once again dodge, smoothly leaping over the attack, now sporting a teasing grin. “That the best ya got kid?”

“Not even close.” Luz snorted. Alright, no more Ms. Nice Girl. Deciding she needed to end this quickly, Luz brought her fist to her open palm, a bright light building at the point of connection. “ Light-Make:”

The woman’s eyes widened. “What the-!?”

“Surging Spear!!” With a fierce grin, Luz released her spell, laughing inside at the dumbfounded look on the woman’s face as a bevy of ornate spears, all crafted from solid light, drove themselves into her gut, launching her into the street.

With a huff, Luz followed after, squaring off from across the lady (who she really needed to learn the name of).

As she pulled herself to her feet, the woman groaned out. “How in the Titan’s name did you do that?”

Luz blinked. “Magic.”

“Yeah, I know that, duh! I meant how can YOU use magic at all?” The woman snorted, a look of fascination in her eyes.

“I learned how.” Luz grunted, an annoyed glare fixed upon her face. “Want me to show you what else I’ve learned?”

The woman grinned. “Absolutely.”

Teeth bared in an answering grin, Luz leapt forward. As she closed in on her opponent, she focused on the energy flowing within her, and shouted, “Water Dance: Percussive Rhythm!!”

In response to her spell, water blossomed around her, circling her wrists and ankles. As she finally entered melee range, she lashed out with a trio of kicks, blunt whips of water following each. The woman dodged the kicks, blocking the water strikes using her staff, before retaliating with an overhead blow. Spinning away from the blow, Luz used the momentum to throw a punch, grinning in satisfaction as it and the accompanying water strike connected, as well as the following grunt of pain.

The grey-haired lady snorted, twirled her hand and produced a glowing ring in response. Luz may not have been familiar with spells of whatever type she was about to use, but better safe than sorry. She jumped back, and just in time, as a slithering tube of stone burst from the ground, the leading part shaped into the face of an Owl. Backflipping away from the spell, countered with her own. “Clinging Flames!”

Her spell lashed out in the form of numerous small sparks, which, while not very powerful, had the ability to cling to something without being overtly damaging, weighing it down. As the spell of the woman met her own, the flames lived up to their name, clinging to the Owl Tube and pinning it to the ground. Capitalizing on the distraction, Luz rushed in, launching an overhead kick to the woman’s face, only to be blocked by her staff.

“You’ve got some moves!” The woman grinned, the fierce joy of a challenge burning in her gaze. “What’s your name anyway?”

Luz returned her grin. “Luz Noceda! You?”

The woman barked a laugh. “Ha! I’ll make sure to remember that. The name’s-”

“EDA THE OWL LADY!!”

With the sudden shout, the crowd that had been watching their brawl scattered, cowering in fright behind the stands and trees. Coming towards them were a menacing trio of masked thugs, local guards or law enforcement by Luz’s estimate. Still, at least she had a name.

The lead guard stomped forward with a growl. “You are wanted for Crimes against the Empire, Misuse of Magic, and Demonic Misdemeanors!”

The now-named Eda groaned. “Will you bozos just leave me alone all ready? I haven’t done anything!”

“And you!” The guard turned his finger to Luz, ignoring Eda. “Are coming too!”

“WHAT!?” Luz shouted. “What did I do!?”

The guard snorted dismissively. “Disturbing the peace and destruction of private property.” He gestured, bringing Luz’s attention to the numerous signs of her’s and Eda’s duel, wreckage scattered about. The guard turned back to them, what little of his eyes could be seen behind his mask glinting in dark delight. “The both of you will be coming with us to the Conformatorium! And please, feel free to resist.”

Luz felt rage, white hot and murderous, burn in her chest. This bastard was more or less saying that, because she was defending herself, something that she was now starting to think may have just been her overreacting again but still, she was going to be arrested, tossed in prison, and left to rot. Turning her gaze to an equally enraged Eda, she asked, “Truce.”

Eda blinked, before grinning ferally. “Truce.”

With a roar, the two rushed the guards. Luz dropped down, sliding under the legs of the lead guard, a ball of wind building in her hand. “Sparrow Swarm!”

Her spell lashed out in a burst of wind bullets in all directions, each individual hit resembling a small bird strangely enough, and took out the guard before he could react. With a twirl, she spun towards the next guard, Eda having already brought down the one closest to her, and they both launched a quick strike to the remaining guard, sending him onto his back. Luz was honestly surprised at how quick they went down, but then again, they didn’t actually seem all that competent. As she climbed to her feet, she spotted Eda magically collapse the stand they had been fighting near just moments before into a bundle she could carry over her shoulder. As the crowd from before came out, roaring in delight at the spectacle, Luz chuckled, rubbing her head in satisfaction at the outcome. Before she could start enjoying the cheers, however, Eda grabbed her by the arm, hoisting her onto her staff, which was flying and COULD FLY apparently, a cheeky grin on her face.

“Up you go, kid!” Eda smirked. “You owe me some answers, and I’d hate for Wrath’s goons to get their hands on you.”

Luz rolled her eyes. “Fine, but you owe me some answers yourself. Deal?”

Eda laughed. “Deal!”

And with that, they took off for the sky.

#the owl house #owl house au #fairy tail #fairy tail au #owl house crossover #fairy tail crossover #luz noceda #eda clawthorne #magic

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tarithenurse · 5 years ago

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Stolen - 16

Pairing: Loki Laufeyson &/x fem!gifted!reader Content: Probably a shitton of proofing slips as I actually didn’t do any proofing this time. A/N: Three days straight of migraine/headache sucks. GIF via google.

16. The Golden Age of Grotesque

... Reader ...

He's gone when you wake up – nothing but a slightly crumbled sheet and a dip in the pillow he has used. As your bleary eyes get used to the dim light mocking the non-existent dawn and the sense of abandonment wanes, your hand smooths across the empty space left behind by Loki.

Of all the monsters out there, he is by far the most gentleman-like one you've met even with all the horrors he's brought upon innocents. He's a killer, logic hisses at you. He was under the control of that Thanos-guy, your Heart protests. And Aïsha? You feel ashamed at how quickly an answer presents itself, excusing him by trusting in your skills. It's the usual battle of conscience, one you're losing quicker each time. Perhaps I'm a monster too.

...

"Tell me, little mortal, is space as you had imagined?" Loki purrs from the captain's chair where his legs are dangling over the armrest.

Tearing your eyes from the scattered boulders of the asteroid belt, the stones reflecting the light from the local star in odd bursts of blue and purple, the god reminds you of a cat. "I...guess."

And just like a cat, he pounces at your hesitation. "Guess?" Green eyes bore into you.

"I...never really imagined much 'cause I didn't expect to ever see any'f space." You shrug. "Better than driving myself crazy with something outta reach."

"And now? It's right there, pet! Just reach out, feel the endless freedom!"

Elegantly swinging onto his feet, Loki pulls you up before the bronze navigation console, a projection of the current galaxy swirling lazily before you. It holds countless possibilities, all represented by itsy bitsy tiny dots illuminating everything including Loki's hands on your shoulders. I thought we were running? Fickle as the first flame of a fire, the Asgardian's moments of happiness amaze you – and goodness knows there haven't been many in the time you've known him.

"Where should I start, then?" you encourage him, hoping for the moment to continue.

His face is unreadable, a gleam of mischief the only hint he has come to a decision as he speeds up the ship and navigates away from the dancing stones to find a lifeless, dusty planet to land on.

“Come,” he orders, giving you no choice as he grabs you by the wrist and drags you along to his cabin where he digs out a pair soft cape which he sticks under one arm.

You never tire of Loki’s magic. How he can conjure up things from nothing, like the brightly glowing blue cube. Of course, you’re less than thrilled about the way it drops the two of you into a cloud of eternity and spits you out somewhere completely different – it makes your stomach swoop and your lungs clench.

“I prefer the view during the winter...but perhaps you can imagine it,” Loki explains with the voice of a tour guide.

But it’s already breathtaking? From where you’re standing, high above the surrounding landscape, steep cliffs descent rapidly before you down to the dark waters below that have cut into land from the distant ocean. From across the sea, the setting sun is sending it’s last rays onto your face and behind you, it adds a fiery quality to the red and yellow of the few deciduous trees and shrubs breaking the backdrop of dark spruce and fading grasses. High above, white clouds (painted with peachy colours) chase each other across a perfect sky, spurred on by the same wind that tugs at your clothes and carries the screams of the seagulls from down below.

“That’s a fjord.” The observation sounds lame in your own ears.

“Yes.” Blocking the view momentarily, Loki wraps the cape around your shoulders and secures it with a golden snake-brooch. “Welcome to Norway.”

... Loki ...

He finds it difficult to choose what pleases him the most: the sight of [Y/N] dressed in his colours, or the look of disbelief painted on her face. Either way, the Jotun finds no reason to stop a smile from tugging at his lips.

“You brought me...to freaking...NORWAY?!”

He hadn’t noticed his hands were lingering on the cape’s lining until the pretty mortal wraps her fingers around his. Eyes big, mouth drawn into a thin line which Loki knows she’ll break only to worry the lower lip with her teeth.

“Would it have pleased you if I’d claimed it was in another realm?” The woman’s grasp can’t hold him as he pulls away.

“I don’t care what you call it!” By the Norns, her voice grates his nerves. “If they realize you’re here! Won’t that...? Isn’t...? You can’t risk getting caught!”

Pardon me? Reevaluating the pinch of [Y/N]’s brows and the tremble in her hands, it becomes evident the outrage stems from something different than the venue itself.

“What is this? The prisoner cares for the monster?” Loki can’t help the mocking tone of the words.

"I...that's not...!" [Y/N] sputters indignantly. "You tell me I can't got back home and still you're dragging me to Norway. If you get caught, what you think's gonna happen to me, huh? Think the Avengers are just gonna: 'Oh, right, this woman who's been hanging out with Loki’s obviously innocent and we'll just let her go about her life'? NOT!"

He cannot help the ripple of laughter spilling at the sight of this endearing mortal. While he half expects lightning to burst from her as she bristles with near-righteous fury, the God of Chaos and Mischief recognizes [Y/N]'s attempt to circumvent fact. How peculiar. It's tempting to wrap her in an embrace – be the protector rather than the threat (whether indirectly or not).

"Do not fret, my darling." His smile silences her. "Even if they arrive, we'll be gone before they can lay a finger on you."

Gorgeous [Y/E/C] eyes squint at him momentarily. "Fine," she snaps and turns with a huff.

Despite the outburst, it's an amicable silence enveloping them as they watch the last of the sun's disc before it dives beneath the horizon in a final flash of ruby and amber, and it isn’t until the first star appears on the sky above that Loki sighs. Heavy with the knowledge they cannot stay atop this natural outpost, he quietly reaches for the woman’s wrist only to be rewarded with her hand, fingers entwining effortlessly – almost like second nature.

The shining cube already rests in his palm when [Y/N] speaks up. “We’ll have to talk about what’s happening sooner or later, Loki.”

Too late to stop the magic of the Tesseract, the indigo cloud consumes and spits them out. Perhaps the process is less smooth than it should be. Or perhaps an involuntary reaction from the god’s side jerks the human off balance ever so slightly that she stumbles against his chest. Either way, who could blame him from tugging her against him in an effort to steady her?

Seconds the length of hours pass before Loki dare loosen his hold and meet her gaze. “I told you the pitiful Avengers won’t reach you.” Or do you refer to other...developments?

“Not that.” A piece of his heart stays with [Y/N] when she gently frees herself. “I’m talking ‘bout the so-called plan you’ve got.”

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kimberly-spirits13 · 5 years ago

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Moroccan Outlaw

Pairing (Bart Allen x reader)

Synopsis: Living in the wilderness of Morocco by yourself after your parents were killed for witch craft, you fight to survive with everything that you have learned of magic and the myth that now surrounds your name. You think that your life will never change of this endless cycle until one day, a certain team comes to your dwelling to investigate strange news of something powerful lurking in the forest. That is when your life changes forever.

Warnings: None

You had never considered yourself a threat to anyone or anything that wasn’t a threat to you. You nor your parents had ever meant anyone any harm, however the world is a cruel one and doesn’t take lightly to things that it does not understand or take the time to adapt to. At the age of 7, your parents were taken and burned after being found out they were practitioners of witchcraft and magic. They had both come from a long line of magic users and taught you everything that they knew, including the combat that your father had picked up while serving in the army during his time. The only thing that you had of them now was a few books of magic, a few charms, and faint memories that haunted your dreams at night.

The town considered you a myth, a legend, and even an outlaw. At just the age of 8, you had learned what it took to survive in these rare conditions and kept to yourself, avoiding people at almost all costs. Tonight, was a full moon. This was the most significant time of the lunar phases because it was when the most powerful book of spells that your parents had left you gained even more spells and charms to use. You had opted to stay in your house and practice the spells that you would be gifted. Well, if it could even be considered a house. The place that you lived was like a three- story tree house over a wide stream. It was in a smaller clearing but still high enough up that no passerby would see it. There you and your panther, Onyx would live out your lives.

It was a normal day waiting for the spells and nothing in the world was happening to your knowledge outside of the usual mess of things. Well, at least that it what you thought.

_______________________________________________________________________

“Team, there has been a sudden disturbance in a sector of the forests of Morocco. It is thought to be magic with the level of power and magnitude that it emitted, however we cannot know for sure.” Nightwing informed the team, “We need to find out who or what this is and see who’s side it’s on.”

The only ones who weren’t on a mission right now was Nightwing, Blue Beatle, Impulse, Beast Boy, and Robin. Everyone else was either off or on mission assigned earlier. They got into the ship and headed off to Morocco to investigate whatever was going on.

_______________________________________________________________________

You settled in on your cot next to Onyx and watched as the sun started to set. Everything was going as planned. You had your herbal tea next to you and your spell book in your lap just like all the nights before. Everything was calm and peaceful until the magic sensors that you had put around your dwelling picked on a low flying craft. Onyx’s ears pricked up as you listened closely.

Hearing it get closer and then the sound stopping made you go on high alert. You walked to your table and summoned a looking spell to see what on Earth was going on. You saw nothing at first, but upon further investigation, you found that the ship was shielded with invisibility tech.

“Interesting.” You thought, “Tell me who these people are.” You said after seeing a few figured jumping out.

“Heroes?” You thought aloud, “I wonder what they’re doing here.” “Onyx, it’s time to go for a hunt.”

Onyx’s ears pricked up and he stood, walking to your side. Sliding on your combat boots and gloves, you stepped out of the shelter and traveled by the trees to where the ship was, not too far away. You observed them from a distance, sticking to the shadows and staying out of site along with your panther who was circling the group.

“Nightwing, I feel like we’re being watched.” The smaller one with a cape and jet -black hair said to who looked to be the oldest.

“I know what you mean.” Nightwing replied, “Just keep your guard up and...” He stopped dead in his tracks, “Impulse, don’t move a muscle.”

Everyone started at Impulse as he stopped, noticeably frightened at Nightwing’s command. They looked around until seeing a massive black cat staring at them from a small clearing like it was about to pounce. Then they all saw what Nightwing really was pointing out. A snake was coiled up in front of Impulse waiting for him to take a step closer. All of them were startled when you spoke up.

“Down Onyx.” You said in Arabic.

The panther went into a resting stance and didn’t pounce at the team but you on the other hand came into few after a few seconds of moving in the shadows.

You then stared at the snake, eyes gleaming red before it contracted and looked straight at her hissing. After a second it had been ripped apart and withered away with the wind.

“You know you really should be more careful hero.” Your magic swirled from your fingers before disappearing once more, “The floor of these jungles move with life.”

You jumped down to the ground, leaning on a massive boulder, “Who are you? Quickly, before I have Onyx sick you.”

“We’re part of the Justice League.” The leader with a blue and black suit and domino mask said, “I’m Nightwing, this is Robin, Impulse, Blue Beatle, and Beast Boy.”

“What is your business?” You demanded.

“We are here to investigate a surge of energy. Now I can assume that you were that energy surge. We’re here to take you somewhere where you’ll be safer and away from all of this.” He finished.

You smirked some at how hopeful he sounded. That was something that you had learned not to trust over the years. Hope was a delusion and something to pity for all who really relied on it.

“I’ll come. But only if you can catch me.” You smirked, lifting your index finger which started swirling with glittering red and purple smoke before your body was completely engulfed in it and you reappeared in the tree tops.

“Base.” You said to Onyx before starting off away from where the team was.

“Catch her.” Nightwing said as they all started to go after her in preassigned teams.

After some time of losing the team, you stopped on a branch and rested for a second.

“Watcha doin up there?” You heard from below. You smiled some when you saw Impulse.

“Becoming quite bored of this endeavor.” You said.

“Well then, allow me to entertain you malady.” He darted up the tree fast enough to not give you time to react, “Gotcha.” He smirked grabbing you.

“Please, can’t a girl play hard to get?” You said before disappearing once more, “Over here lover boy.” You waved from a different tree.

“Impulse, Y/N is a witch, take her to the starting point and we’ll give her a dose of some white light.” Nightwing said into the comm before Impulse was about to take off after her again.

“Got it wing.” He replied.

Impulse chased you to the starting point before you noticed what was happening. You went to turn around before Blue Beetle shot a beam of white light at you. With somewhat of a mix of a screech and scream, you fell off the branch that you were on and plummeted to the forest floor.

“I got her!” Impulse said going for you.

After a few seconds, you regained your senses and looked around before meeting his gaze. Rubbing your temples you spoke up, “Thank you.” You got out of his arms and brushed yourself off.

“No problem beautiful.” He said smiling at you as he got a good look at your figure.

Your skin glimmered in the moon light, contrasting against the dark red and black costume. Your now purple and gold eyes shinned in the moon light as you swept your hair out of your face.

“I don’t even know you name.” You said feeling weird that this random costumed person would just chase you down only to save you.

“Oh, I’m Bart, Bart Allen. That is presuming you’re coming with us.” He said.

“Y/N, Y/L/N.” You replied putting your hand out for what you thought would be shaking hands. Instead he took yours and kissed the top of it like he was trying to either be a gentleman or funny. You couldn’t decide which one it was.

“So, you’re coming with us?” Nightwing asked.

“Yes, well, that is as long as I can grab my panther and my books.” You said, “Trust me, it won’t be long.”

He nodded and you chanted a spell before the entire contents of your home was in a small box and your panther walked up next to you. He wasn’t that big and would never get that big which is why your parents wanted you to have him.

You sat next to Impulse and watched the forest fade out of view. Your home was now a tiny speck in the great big world, and you figured that you’d never see it again whether you wanted to or not.

“Have you ever been outside of your home?” Impulse asked you noticing the weary look on your face.

You shook your head, “Never.” “My parents always hid me away in fear that I would also be... well, executed with them if we were ever caught with magic.”

“I’m sorry.” He said giving a sympathetic look at taking your hand, “You’ll like it at the cave, trust me.”

“I’m sure I will.” You said as Onyx laid his head on your lap.

______________________________________________________________________________

*Narrator voice* A few months later

“Hey babe.” Bart said kissing your cheek.

“You missed Speedster.” You said before he pulled you into an actual kiss.

“Watcha reading?” He asked laying his head on your shoulder.

“Spell book, tonight’s a full moon so it got new spells a few minutes ago.” You answered.

“Could we cuddle?” He asked you.

“Will you still let me read?” You asked.

“Mhmm.” He answered.

“Okay.” You picked up your book and the both of you walked to your bedroom with Onyx who was tailing you.

The both of you curled up on your bed while Onyx jumped to the foot of it and laid down. Wrapping into the blankets, Bart laid his head on your thy and rubbed circles on your hips.

“I love you.” You said.

“I love you too Y/N/N.”

#bart allen x reader #young justice x reader #dc x reader #impulse x reader #bart allen #impulse #writers of tumblr #fan fic stuff #fan fic

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hollowempire · 6 years ago

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Lost || Illinois x Reader

Request: Toni suggesting reader snuggles with Illy for the first times. perhaps also a smanch. + Lexi giving me an idea for some minor angst

Summary: Lots of crazy things can happen on adventures.

Word Count: 1,668

WARNING: Swearing, heights, near-death

Why had she agreed to follow Illinois into this cave?

Y/n asked herself this question as she allowed the man himself to lead her through the seemingly never-ending tunnel system that extended through out the entire mountain. When they realized they were lost, y/n made the mistake of trusting Illinois to get them out, thinking he knew what he was doing. He didn’t.

“Why don’t you just admit we’re lost?” y/n asked her associate, as Illinois liked to call it. They’d known each other for a while, a partnership that wasn’t even supposed to happen. Y/n followed him after that first adventure and now every single time they manage to get into some sort of trouble.

“Because we’re not lost.” he insisted. A stubborn man, y/n came to realize as their friendship grew. Illinois refused to call it a friendship, though. He couldn’t afford to like people and preferred to keep it at a professional level, which to him meant no friends allowed.

“Illinois.” y/n said sternly. She stopped in her place and crossed her arms. When Illinois noticed that he could no longer hear the crunch of dirt from y/n’s boots he stopped, sighed, and turned around.

“Yes?”

“Look, if you wanna roam cluelessly through this impossible maze of tunnels, fine, but first let’s please get some rest,” y/n said. “I’m exhausted.”

Illinois shrugged. He had to admit, he was a bit tired too. “Alright, but first let’s go find a safe place to sleep... or at least as safe as it can be.”

Y/n nodded gratefully and quickly caught up to Illinois, who was already walking again. They eventually found themselves in a dome shaped area, the ground fairly flat. It seemed pretty stable, the opening wasn’t big enough for any boulders to pass through, and it didn’t seem to have any traps. Safe enough.

As y/n set her stuff down and went to get their sleeping bags out, y/n realized something. There was only one.

“Uh, Illy?”

“We’re not friends, no nicknames,” he reminded. There was a tiny bit of annoyance in his voice. That amount was about to grow once he heard the news.

“Right, sorry,” y/n said, dropping her head and twiddling with her thumbs.

“What is it this time?”

“We appear to have lost a sleeping bag,” y/n said, holding up the one she actually had.

“Are you kidding me?” he asked. He set down his bag and stride over to where y/n sat in the cold ground. “I’m not sleeping on this,” he stated, tapping the ground with his foot.

“Well I’m not either,” y/n said. She stood up with the sleeping bag in her hands. She spread it out on the surface of the cave floor. It was fairly large. “We could share...”

Illinois made a disapproving face, but he also saw that there was enough room for both of them. And so he agreed.

Getting comfortable was hard. The two of them twisted in place and put their limbs everywhere, which of course annoyed the other despite the fact that they were both doing the same thing.

“Motherfucker I will end us both!” y/n threatened when Illinois accidentally smacked her the fourth time.

“Theres no need to swear,” he grumbled.

“Then stay still!”

After the 10th time of getting a face full of his arm, y/n wrapped her arms around his midsection. Her hold on him was tight enough so that he could move and he couldn’t get himself free.

“What are you doing?”

“You won’t stay still so I’ll make you,” she explained as she rested her cheek against his back.

Illinois decided to just go to sleep. There wasn’t any point in arguing and he actually was quite comfortable.

Illinois woke up a couple hours later to find that he was snuggled up in y/n’s arms, face pressed into her chest. He was one of his legs draped over her thigh and his arms encircled her waist.

“Y/n, wake up,” Illinois said loudly.

Y/n reacted too quickly, moving right away without seeming a little bit startled.

“How long have you been awake?” he asked in an accusing voice as he and y/n both got up.

“A while... you looked comfortable and didn’t want to wake you,” she admitted, refusing to meet his gaze. “Sorry,” she added quietly.

Illinois shook his head and rolled up the sleeping bag. Without a word the two were on their way again.

After about an hour of trying to find their way out, it seemed they were even more lost than before. All thanks to Illinois, who was sure he knew the way. They walked along the side of a ravine, neither of the two really paying much attention to their surroundings at this point. They were busy arguing instead.

“I know what I’m doing, kid, you just have to let me do this!” Illinois said. He powered on ahead, stepping over rocks and cracks in the path to avoid slipping and meeting his demise at the bottom of the ravine. No amount of water down there could save anyone who fell, especially considering they were likely to hit a bunch of jagged edges sticking out of the side.

“No, you don’t! All thanks to you, we’ve been wandering around this cave for hours and haven’t seen any familiar areas, just new places that aren’t helping us out!” y/n argued back, also stepping over rocks and cracks. Illinois had given her many tips on how.

“I do know what I’m doing!”

“No you don’t!”

“Yes I do!”

“No you d-”

It seems Illinois’s tips for staying safe when walking an unstable path didn’t account for ground that had the appearance of being fine but had actually softened over time. As y/n stepped over a patch of ground near the edge, it crumbled beneath her and caused her to slide down the new slope it had left.

“Fuck!” Y/n shouted. She grabbed onto the edge and managed to set her feet on some bits of rock sticking out to keep herself from falling any further.

“There’s no need to be dramati- y/n?” Illinois mistook her cry as frustration at him, but soon realized she had disappeared.

“Down here,” she replied, her voice frantic. Despite her best efforts she was still slipping, her fingers weren’t strong enough and there was nothing she could get a good grip on either way.

Illinois sped over to the edge and squatted down. He looked over the edge and met y/n’s fearful gaze.

“Careful, there’s no point in both of us dying,” y/n said, forcing a laugh.

“You’re not gonna die,” Illinois said surely. He extended his hand to her but she didn’t take it.

“Yes I am, I mena just look at me,” she said. “Besides, you said it yourself. Your partners don’t tend to last,”

“Take my hand,”

Y/n shook her head. “There’s no point,”

“Y/n, please,” Illinois demanded, grabbing hold of her wrists.

Again, she shook here head. She could feel her grip getting weaker and there was no way Illinois was strong enough to hold onto her wrists for long. “What you said when we first met, you were right...” she admitted, referring to all his talk about falling in love with him. “I love you, Illy,”

Something happened then in his mind. As y/n let go Illinois immediately grabbed hold of her hands and pulled her up, struggling to keep himself from toppling over the edge with her. He still managed it.

“You could’ve died, asshole!” y/n scolded as soon as she was back on solid ground. She had landed on top of Illinois and stood up right after impact. As he rose up she smacked his shoulder.

“What was that for?”

“You always talk about how we’re not friends, how all your partners end up dying, how I’m gonna end up the same way and it’s not gonna matter,” she shouted, hands on her hips as Illinois cowered against the wall. “What changed? Why were you so willing to risk your life to save me?”

For possibly the first time in his entire life, Illinois was quiet. He didn’t know what to say.

Y/n raised her eyebrows expectantly. “So?” she asked, taking a step towards him. There was nowhere for Illinois to go, he was already backed up against the wall and had to face y/n instead of ignoring the problem like he would prefer to do.

“Because I love you too,” he said. He said it confidently, remembering he still had a personality to keep up with and couldn’t let himself turn into a mumbling mess.

“Oh, good... now maybe if we can get out of here I’ll kiss you,”

Illinois smiled. “Well then let’s-”

“I’m leading the way,” y/n interrupted. She walked in front of him and he complained the whole way, but under y/n’s guidance they were out within the hour. She wondered how he had every managed to return home before he had her.

Now out in the open, y/n suddenly felt shy as she eyed Illinois. It was much easier to admit feelings when your life was in danger or you were angry. Y/n was neither of those things at the moment.

“Are you going to go through with what you said or was it a lie to get me to listen to you?” Illinois asked, startling y/n when she turned around to find him right behind her. They stood a few inches apart, close enough to feel his breath on her face.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Of course she wasn’t lying to him, but was he lying to her?

Y/n decided on a quick peck, and Illinois whined when she left for the car right after.

“You’ll get more after you take me out on a date!”

Until she was sure Illinois wasn’t playing her, she’d have to make him put a bit of effort into getting into an actual relationship. He is fully willing to chase her across the globe.

#illinois x reader #illinois #illinois ahwm #ahwm #a heist with markiplier

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sebbytrash · 6 years ago

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Through His Eyes - Part Thirteen

Summary - Bucky arrives at the compound to start afresh but you and him have a somewhat colorful past, colorful being that you met him once before as The Winter Soldier and it did not go well. New beginnings, yeah? If you can learn to forgive.

Pairing - Bucky x Reader

Warnings - Angst (Is there every not?), flashbacks, nightmares, sexual content

A/N - Sorry its been forever, again. Pregnancy has kicked my ass. This may be a tiny bit self indulgent, I’m sure you wont mind. Feedback loved and appreciated.

Through His Eyes Masterlist

It’s quiet when you get back, the day turned into night somewhere along those streets as you sped past, taking the time to quietly pack away your feelings from the day. Getting your house in order before you can face anyone. Bucky stays silent, even after the bike is safely stowed and your walking the corridors back to your room. He hovers close by though, like he expects your legs to stop working at any point. (You’re OK with that.)

Steve is on the couch, takes one look at you both and opens his mouth to ask, his back instantly tight but you interrupt before he can. Quickly and quietly explain where you were and he just looks for a few seconds, eyes flicking between you and Bucky close behind you, says nothing except stretches out an arm and lets you curl up beside him. Bucky follows, that invisible rope that ties him to you pulled tight and sinks in beside you, sinks heavy like the moments of the day are strung from him like boulders. He pulls a blanket from somewhere and tucks it over you. Warm, safe.

You stay like that for a long time, watching episode after episode of Brooklyn Nine Nine because Steve knows it’ your favorite letting the rough edges of the day get forcibly smoothed by the laughter and lightness. The others join after a while, not knowing what’s wrong but knowing enough and knowing that company cures like nothing else. Sat here on this couch, surrounded by your friends, your family, you couldn’t feel further from that girl in the room. Their smiles, their hugs, their love… and even those fingers that grip yours under the blanket like he might disappear without them, they all remind you of how far you’ve come. It’s with your fingers still gripped in his that you wake some time later, head tucked against him with the blanket under your chin. The T.V is off and the room is empty, the air still enough that you know the others have been gone for a while, no doubt unwilling to disturb you, knowing how precious sleep is to you, to him. You stay there for minutes, longer, just listening to his breathing, in, out, deep, steady.

It’s wonderful.

It’s terrifying.

You feel as much as you hear the shift in his breathing when he wakes, the stillness that sweeps from those fingertips to his toes like he is all too aware of how close his face is to yours. You know he hears the shift in your own breathing when his fingers twitch against yours, grip just a little tighter before relaxing again, the only betrayal of thought or feeling. Perhaps it’s intentional, given his usual mastery over his reactions, his expressions. Showing only what he’s willing, an offered glimpse between his fingers.

That familiar tightness arrives, the sharp edged wire pushing at your skin. Pleading.

Even though today (yesterday?) was cleansing, healing, it was still painful and you were still so raw, exposed. Emotions laid bare, heightened, and so it’s that knowledge that forces you to fake a yawn and a stretch, a cartoon version of yourself waking up even though you know he knows you were awake the whole time. He lets you play it out unchallenged, accepts your smile with one of his own, his face shows no trace of whatever passed between those fingertips. Just that quiet, easy smile.

There are words poised on your tongue, waiting and willing to be said. It takes a lions worth of will to master it and let loose only those you choose to.

“I didn’t say it earlier, but thank you Bucky. For coming to get me.” He does a half sort of shrug like its no big deal and that action alone makes you want to clarify that you know, that you understand what it must have cost him, “I know it wouldn’t have been easy for you either.”

He stills at that, swallows loudly, or maybe just swallows but the sound reverberates into the silence of the room.

“I wasn’t afraid to go back there,” He says, and then adds “I’ve been back there.” The admission doesn't surprise you the way it should. Of course he has, hell bent on punishing himself for actions he was an unwilling party to. You wonder how many other places he’s forced himself to relive. How many wounds he has picked at.

His jaw twitches and he glances away like he’s unsure or working up the nerve, “I was afraid... that when I got there, you would hate me again.”

The ground shifts as the words cleave you in two, shower those pieces in such conflicting emotions that you feel both weighted and weightless. You cling desperately to those fractured pieces, having already lost too much of you and so unwilling to lose anymore.

You stand, probably too quickly to be casual and force yourself to look back to him. “I won’t,” you say, so that he knows and then thoughtlessly add, “I can’t.” Not even if I wanted to, the unsaid words hang in the air. You leave him there, between one blink and the next.

Copper. Salt. Dirt.

I’m sorry

I’m so sorry

Please

Please wake up

The dream voice stays long after you gasp awake, the desperation follows you as you shift and turn and try to find sleep again. The haunting echo that you know originates from deep inside a suppressed memory rather than something conjured by your sleep deprived brain. It’s minutes, hours later and it still won’t leave. That desperate plea, like nails on the already worn chalkboard of your skull.

You pace. And pace some more.

It won’t leave. He won’t leave. Your skin vibrates with all that tension from the last few days, rolls like the feeling is alive and you might see the waves across it, scattering and crashing against each other down your arms and across your chest. You drag your fingers down your arms, wishing, hoping that it might ease it.

It doesn’t.

The tension morphs and fights, coils down your gut like you absorbed all the energy of the sun and now its fighting its way out, demanding a release. Like you might boil alive with the effort to contain it. You bow over with it, the force of that energy, feel the blood rush and then finally, you unleash and throw your fist into the wall with a sickening thud. The pain lances through your knuckles, pieces of wall falling away as your free them and the familiar warmth of blood drips down your fingers. The energy roars its victory, like a Lion offered a pound of flesh to sate its hunger. It’s barely taken the edge off, barely scratched the surface.

You know then what you have to do, what it’s going to take to release all the energy, feeling.

A mountain of force.

Your feet move without thought, carrying you swiftly down halls and past doors until you reach it. The other door that altered your life irrevocably. A small part of you urges, begs you not to do this. Begs you to walk away, that this is not the answer.

The lion prowls, barely contained enough for you to knock on the door and to wait those two precious seconds it takes for him to open it. He’s not surprised to see you there, you can tell in his eyes he expected it. There’s no wariness in him, nothing tentative like something has changed, shifted between you. He’s not afraid.

He should be.

You consider briefly what you must look like to him, standing in a tank top and shorts, chest heaving like you’ve run the length of the earth to get there, fist clenched and still dripping blood, that ferocious energy burning you from inside out.

He eyes that fist, clenched so hard your nails were making half-moon indents in your palm, the skin threatening to break and takes a step forward, then another until his chest was touching yours. The energy absorbs him, swallows him up until your both thrumming with it. Slowly, so slowly, he reaches out and wraps his hand around your fist, brings it up so he can see as he smoothes out your fingers and runs his own across those indents. He watches you, not your joined hands, as he brings broken knuckles to his mouth and places the softest kiss across them, eyes burning like frozen flames.

Its fire, and fury, and everything you know it shouldn't be for something so tame and yet more intimate than anything else before. You silence the voice in your head and let go of that wire you carefully walk, consequences be damned.

A step, yours or his or maybe both, and then his lips find yours and the hard edges start to blurr. Your palms meet his chest and spread whilst you kiss him with a fervor you have no right to feel. He kisses you back with a twin intensity that terrifies you and yet thrills you. You urge him backward just as his fingers pull you forward, the door to his room shut swiftly behind as you clear the threshold. His fingers dance under the hem of your tank, betraying his struggle for control as they dig and release into your skin. His mouth, his skin, it chases everything else away, there’s only this feeling and nothing else. Its intoxicating. Except this time, you ignore the voice that says stop, you throw yourself into that feeling entirely and let your fingers slip up his neck and into his hair, search and find that low groan you’ve wondered about ever since that night in the gym. Marvel at how it sounds even better than before, at how the sound itself pulls a matching one of your own.

You slip a hand down and give a gentle tug on the collar of his t-shirt, unwilling to break contact to convey your meaning. He hesitates for a second and you wonder if he’s going to be the one who stops this when he pulls back but only so he can pull the t-shirt off and let it drop to the floor. When you meet his eyes, you see the quiet apprehension and you realise the reason for his hesitation, that you’ll see him, that’ll you’ll see what they did to him.

Without pause, you bridge the space between you and kiss him again, softer this time but with no less intensity and let your fingertips glide down his neck, smooth along the hard scar tissue across his shoulder and then let your lips follow the same path. Slowly, you kiss the worst of the scars, Bucky’s breath hitching with each one and the, bring your lips back to his only to find him eagerly waiting, his mouth on yours with such force that you sway backwards with the movement but he catches you, uses that momentum to lift you at the same time he backs you both towards his bed. He sits with you, letting your thighs tuck tight against his as his hands slide up your back. You wonder if it’s deliberate, how you are seated, if somehow he’s giving you control even when you don’t need it. You ignore the pang in your heart at that thought and throw yourself further into the feeling, hips grinding down as Bucky kisses and nips his way down your neck.

His hand climbs your back and gently push the strap of your tank to the side, the metal fingers hot against your already heated skin and his lips like a brand as they follow those same fingers. You head tips back and a soft moan escapes as his teeth graze along your collarbone, he hums in agreement, his other fingers sliding up your ribcage till his thumb grazes the underside of your breast. It’s too much and yet still not enough, you grip his head and tilt him back to you so you can press your lips to his again, biting down on his lip just enough to have his fingers inch higher, press and circle and pull low, aching moans from you. You get lost in the feel of him, his hands and lips, the tank stripped from you in one fluid motion that you would never have managed on your own, his mouth working your skin as your own fingers grip his hair and neck. Holding on as this broken man makes you feel like his lips and tongue might be the thing that puts you back together after they take you apart completely.

Its minutes, hours, seconds later and he grips you and turns, placing you with more care than he should on the bed and settling his weight over you, eyes searching yours for the fear you don’t own anymore, looking at you in a way that has you pulling him down to you so you don’t have to think about it, urging him with your hips and relishing the way he shudders with each roll. He tugs you with him as he moves to the side, hiking you leg up over his hip and gripping your ass under those shorts, moaning his appreciation into your mouth. Those fingers move closer and suddenly still, a tenseness in him that has you pulling back to look at him, a question in your eyes that your afraid to voice.

He presses his forehead against yours and closes his eyes, swallows once before whispering, “Maybe I should...change sides.”

It takes a second to understand his meaning, that he was once again worried about you, about how you might react to him and the fact that it's his metal hand inched under your shorts. You ache at his fear, that you put it there, that he put yours there too. Ache for what they took from you both. In answer, you cup his jaw and watch as his eyes open, hesitant but steady, ready to do whatever to make you comfortable, “Your right where I want you to be.”

His eyes dart between yours and whatever he sees is the confirmation he needs, the fire back in his veins as he kisses you with that force again, fingers reaching under and moving against you in a way that has you wondering if it had ever felt this good, if anyone had ever known exactly how to touch you. You let your hands wander over his chest, losing minutes in the feel of that solid, gritty muscle under your fingertips, your nails. He brings you higher, tongue and teeth and those ever proficient fingers, pushing you to places where shadows didn’t exist and demons have no power. The world tilts as you break, nails digging in like you might lose gravity and float off on the feeling alone. Forehead touches and nose nudges, lips hovering and taking, the world realligning underneath you. He looks at you that way again and your pretty sure you are looking back just the same.

It’s no more than a minute before the heady feeling has your hands wandering, urging him to rid himself of the sweatpants he’s still wearing and following the movement with your eyes, taking all his lines and solidness, the ache coiling down your spine with the way you want him, need him. He makes quick work of your own shorts, settling over you and gathering up your hips and thighs with such care at the odds with the way he nuzzles into your neck, teeth grazing and owning. He gathers himself up onto his forearms till he’s eye level and watches as he pushes into you, groans when your breath hitches and watches you fight against the urge to close your eyes and revel in the feeling. He rolls forward and up, taking all thoughts with him, carries the same momentum into a rhythm that matches the hunger in his eyes. He forces low, greedy sounds from your throat, seals his mouth over your like he’s trying to keep them, breathing turned harsh in the shared space between. This. This is the feeling you needed, the leftover energy disappearing with each delicious roll of his hips, with each nip of his teeth and growl from between. His flesh hand is swallowed up by your hair, his metal one sliding up your arm till his fingers are linked with yours, pressing your joined hands into the mattress above your head. Your free hand grips his waist as your hips match his, pushing together to work that fire over your body and into your bones, any resemblance of control slipping away beneath the sweat on your skin. Your legs begin to tremble as you near that edge, you feel his hips falter in response and then grind deeper, following that feeling like he's desperate, like you are too. The edge crumbles beneath you, falling further than you thought was possible, consumed by it, the fire, letting it take your harshness and your fury with it. It takes only a look from you before Bucky is tumbling down after you, shoulders hunching up close to your head as you feel every bit of him melt, feel his muscles settle against yours like thats where they’re meant to be.

He leans his forehead against yours, again, and you try not to notice how good it feels, trying to reclaim some of that control you so freely gave up. He kisses you, soft, enduring, the kind that has your heart beating erratically in your chest but still, you let him. Let him tuck you into his side and draw lazy circles on your back, let him place a kiss to your forehead with an intimacy you have no right sharing. You know you shouldn’t, but you let him anyway, because maybe, just maybe, you need it too.

The thought terrifies you. It thrills you.

Forever Tags: @manawhaat @captainrogerss @theashhole @a-little-hell-to-raise @peculiar-persephone @captain-rogers-beard @chrisevansnco @howlingbarnes @poealsobucky @samingtonwilson @vintagevalentinexx @abovethesmokestacks @imhereforbvcky @buckthegrump @avengerofyourheart @carriefish-er @stormy-thomas @danijimenezv @angelicthor @betheboo55 @palaiasaurus64 @raxacoricofallapatoriuspotter @johnmurphys-sass @katbird787 @sexyvixen7 @jobean12-blog @justreadingfics @justareader @smoothdogsgirl @theliarone @aikibriarrose @timeladylaurel @badassbakers @earinafae @crushed-pink-petals @tardis-is-mine @httpmcrvel @bucky2-0 @mocking-rain @sociallyimpairedme @jezzula @bless-my-demons @ign-is @indominusregina @-supernatural-coffee-llama @alwayshave-faith @itsonlysarah @superwholocknda @shifutheshihtzu @mizzzpink @yknott81 @haven-in-writing @xtina2191 @reniescarlett @notsoprettykitty @wickedwerewolf @ayeputita @tori-medusa-belongs-to-bucky @tatalopes23 @pineapplebooboo @mizzezm @thefridgeismybestie @memory-of-a-goldfish @supernatural-girl97 @standing-onthe-edge @ruinerofcheese @rosescentedblood @mysweetcookie99

#through his eyes #kale writes #bucky x reader #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes smut #winter soldier x reader #marvel fanfic

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thaisibir · 5 years ago

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La Vie en Rose (Bede and young!Opal time travel fic)

Here’s the fic I’d been promising to write about Opal’s past, based on my prior headcanon posts. Though this fic will explore Opal’s life, it’s all from Bede’s POV. Enjoy!

La Vie en Rose (Life in Pink) Rating: T (for character deaths and language) Chapter 1/10 - Fairy Tale (length: ~4k words) Summary: Bede doesn't get why that loony old bat Opal wants him to be the next Fairy-type Gym Leader. To help him understand, Opal has Celebi take Bede back to the time of her youth.

(For other chapters, look up the tag “pokemon la vie en rose” or go to my profile)

For what seemed like the hundredth time that day, Bede thought about making a break from Opal, that loony old bat. Nothing could stop him. She wasn't gripping and pulling him along by the arm, like a parent dragging an upset child through the grocery store. In fact, he fought a hard battle with impatience to match her stride. The oldest Gym Leader in Galar walked at the pace of a Chewtle on a cold day. It wasn't like she could chase him down if he took off. Her heart would probably give out first if she tried.

Before they had set off from the sprawling castle-city of Hammerlocke, Opal had insisted on walking, turning down chances to take the train and the Flying Taxi. The train made sense, since there were no railways leading through the dense Glimwood Tangle and into Ballonlea. But not taking the Flying Taxi perplexed Bede.

"We'll get there much faster if we take a taxi," he told her.

"I'm not hopping on that bloody death trap," she replied with a snort.

"So you want to get blisters on your feet instead?"

"I very much prefer that to crashing and dying."

Bede rolled his eyes. "We won't crash and die. Those taxis are very safe."

"Rubbish. My boy, you have no idea."

Bede gawked at her. More like she didn't have any idea. There had never been reports of Flying Taxi accidents on the telly. Not that Bede expected an ancient fossil like Opal to keep up with news on the telly, anyway. Did she even own a telly?

Opal wouldn't budge on her decision, so they ended up walking all the way from Hammerlocke to Ballonlea. They had walked side by side, making no physical contact at all, yet what Bede felt between them was the alluring, arresting air of her authority and of course, her very strange, out-of-the-blue offer.

He wasn't a Gym Challenger anymore, so could Opal really pick him to be the next Gym Leader? Was that allowed? Opal seemed like the kind of woman to turn her big nose up at the rules and do whatever the bloody hell she wanted, anyway.

She had declared that he had the "right amount of pink." What did that mean? That was the first question he popped just after she had swooped in on him at Hammerlocke, but she refused to tell him, only that "pink isn't a color easily explained." Bollocks, you couldn't explain color. Blue is blue. Green is green. Red is red. And so on. Bede couldn't make heads or tails out of this lady clearly off her rocker.

Chairman Rose had disqualified Bede from the Gym Challenge at Stow-on-Side, so Bede had never reached Ballonlea to challenge the Fairy-type Gym. Though he tried to keep his face impassive, his first visit to the town enchanted him.

A spectrum of colors from glowing mushrooms abound under the shade of towering trees. Some mushrooms were so big that they loomed over the cottages. Bede didn't know that they could get that tall. Burbles of a brook winding through the leafy floor filled his ears. From their perches on the Pokemon Center, a pair of Hattrem tittered at Opal and Bede. Farther away, Chinchou bobbed their angler lights overhead. A little girl sitting on a large boulder played with two bobbing Inkays, and as Opal and Bede climbed the stairs, she waved at them.

"Hello, Ms. Opal. Welcome, Trainer."

Opal smiled at the girl and gestured to her young traveling companion. "This is Bede. He's going to be the town's next Gym Leader."

The girl's eyes lit up and she fidgeted in her spot on the boulder. "Oh, that's so exciting! This will be the talk of the town for sure. Good luck, Bede."

"Er, thanks," he stammered, then as they walked away, he muttered to Opal, "You have an awful lot of confidence to say that."

"I am rarely wrong in the choices I make," she replied. An impish glance peeked from the brim of her hat. "Don't prove me wrong, child."

Though she had a jovial tone, his stomach twisted in nervousness as if she had said it ominously. Why was he nervous? Why did he care? He didn't really want to be a Gym Leader. He hoped to just glean whatever information Opal had on the Wishing Stars, then be on his way. If there was a second chance to redeem himself in the Chairman's eyes, then he would seize that chance by the throat.

Opal led him down a winding path away from the Gym. Bede frowned. "Wait, where are we going?"

She quirked a white eyebrow at him. "You're not living at the Gym. Don't you want to see where you'll be living?"

Bede nearly stopped in his tracks. She was taking him to her house. It looked like the other cottages in town, timber-framed and dotted with cascading plants. A wooden armbench occupied the tiny front yard. A door flap took up a third of the whole door.

Suddenly a Mightyena bounded through the door flap with ferocious barks. Bede couldn't help jumping back in alarm. An Obstagoon opened up the wooden door to occupy almost the entire threshold and crossed its arms. It leered at Bede with bared fangs and through red eyes narrowed in suspicion.

Opal waved a placating hand at the pair of Dark type Pokemon. "Oh, hush now, my dears. The boy's all right. He's with me."

Bede's hand flitted to the Poke balls on his belt, not to send them out, but to protect them. He had a team of Psychic types, after all. "What are they doing here? Aren't you a Fairy type Trainer, Ms. Opal?" He hated how his voice got high and cracking when he gets scared.

Opal patted Obstagoon's arm with one hand, then ruffled Mightyena's mane with the other. "These are my husband's Pokemon. Descendants of them, anyway. They keep good company. Sometimes good protection." At her touch, the two Pokemon relaxed and looked to her with undisguised affection.

Bede tried to relax, too. "You have a husband?"

"Had."

"Oh, so he's—"

"Not around." She gestured to another path with the tip of her umbrella. "If you want to meet him, take the trail to the Ballonlea Cemetary."

Bede rubbed the back of his head. What should he say? "Er, I'm sorry."

Opal gave him a toothy grin. "No need to be. He left me ages ago. Now come inside and have some tea."

"Yes, ma'am." Bede stepped inside the house after her, followed closely behind by the vigilant Mightyena and Obstagoon. He was not surprised in the least to find the interior painted in cheerful pastel colors, shades of purple, pink, and light blue. He felt like walking into a child's dollhouse. Every piece of furniture—the sofa, the dining table, the armchair, the nightstand—looked like it was made for one. Excluding the company of Pokemon, clearly Opal had been living alone for a long time.

As Opal went straight to brewing tea in the kitchen, her following remark confirmed his suspicions. "It's been a while since I've had visitors in here. Mostly because this place has been a righteous mess."

"I...I can see that," Stacks of papers, discs, and tapes were piled halfway to the ceiling, on the verge of toppling over if Bede carelessly bumped an elbow or his hip against them.

Opal set two steaming teacups on the table, then turned to pull a book from the nearby shelf. The thick weight of it bent Opal over and nearly made her drop it, but she managed to heave it over the table and place it with a solid thump before Bede.

"Here, a crash course on the care and training of Fairy type Pokemon. Written by my own mum."

Bede peered at the cover. "By Ruby Roy," it said. He looked up at her with a frown. "You want me to read all of it, Ms. Opal?"

"From front to back until you have it memorized," she said firmly. "Mum made me do that, so I'm passing down the same regimen."

Bede bit back a groan. He wasn't one to sit still and hunched over a book for a long time. As he sipped at his tea, he found her unblinking gaze of intense scrutiny on him unnerving, so he tried to avoid staring back at her by leafing through the Fairy Pokemon training manual.

The pages were Butterfree wing-thin, aged from lengthy ownership but evidently cared for since there were no holes or stains. Bede kept the teacup a fair distance from the book. Somehow he didn't want to risk pissing off an old lady like Opal.

"I notice that you favor Psychic types," She remarked as she sipped from her own teacup. "The jump from using Psychic to Fairy types isn't a terribly big one. I know many Pokemon that are Psychic-Fairy, like Gardevoir, Hatterene, and Galarian Rapidash. You would do well to start using them."

"I already have a Galarian Ponyta and a Hattrem," Bede said.

"Splendid. You'll still have to make some switches to your team, though. Go for a few runs through Glimwood Tangle to catch and train your new Pokemon. But first, before any battles, hit the books." She seemed to notice his dismay, and the corners of her puckered lips twitched upward, though not apologetically. "I'm an old-fashioned gal."

Opal had Bede read through one chapter for the day, then asked him to help her tidy up the house. "We'll need to get the clutter cleared so you can have your own space," she said. "I only have one bedroom, so you'll have to make do with the sofa."

Bede shrugged. "That's fine. I'm used to sleeping in chairs."

She thrust a feather duster into his hands. "You're a tall boy for your age," she remarked as she looked him up and down. "You can dust the shelves that have been out of my reach since my back got bad." She grinned. "How handy."

Bede resisted heaving a sigh, otherwise he'd get dust up his nose. He pulled up the sleeves of his pink oversized coat and got to work. The stacks of papers, discs, and tapes turned out to be years worth of audition material, records of thousands of candidates Opal had been considering to be her successor. She had kept them around for reference, or in case she had to contact anyone she changed her mind about. Now that Bede was chosen, she had no more use for them. Her Mawile proved to be a big help in shredding up the paper and chomping the discs and tapes into pieces in its big jaws. Bede noticed that Opal kept her Pokemon team, along with Mightyena and Obstagoon, out of their Poke balls while she was at home. Weezing floated and puffed in content around the front yard, while Togekiss nestled in the sofa, and Alcremie, due to its creamy body and high-maintenance care, was kept away from the furniture and could be in the kitchen where messes were more tolerable.

"I use the Poke balls only during battles," Opal said. "Just for show, like a stage prop. This may boggle your young mind, but back in the day, I grew up in a time before Poke balls were invented."

Bede paused in collecting scrap from Mawile to stare at her in disbelief. "No Poke balls at all? How did that work?"

"Oh, we simply kept our Pokemon around. Sometimes people kept them on leashes, though I'd rather not do that to my own. Imagine having a full party of six Pokemon and each went its own way!"

"That's crazy," Bede agreed. Weren't Poke balls invented fifty years ago? The remark slipped out of his mouth before he could stop himself. "Wow, you really have been around forever." She squinted at him and he quickly added, "Forever sixteen, I mean."

She leaned back in her armchair and giggled. "That's the correct answer."

Bede resumed his chores with relief. That peppy little brother of the Champion's annoyed him to no end, but he had Hop to thank for the warning: "When the Gym Leader Opal asks you how old she is, whatever you do, don't ever say that she's really bloody old!"

Once Bede threw out the clutter, Opal's house became much more manageable to navigate through. Bede had to fetch his own blankets from the attic himself, since Opal was no longer in good shape to climb up and down the ladder. His feet hung over the edge of the sofa whenever he stretched out to sleep on it. At first he was embarrassed when Opal made him borrow her purple fuzzy slippers, but he got over it because they kept him warm at night.

Bede learned over the next few days that Opal followed a rigid routine. At seven in the morning, she got up to have scones or oatmeal with a cup of hot tea. At eight, she went for a walk around town with Mightyena. Because the trees gave protection from the rising sun and kept the place cool and fresh, Ballonlea was the perfect place for a morning walk. Those who didn't know Opal well, like visitors and foreigners, would be surprised to see her, a Fairy type specialist, strolling through town with a Dark type Pokemon. The locals didn't bat an eye at this. If Opal wasn't seen with Mightyena on the trails around eight, that was worrying. By around eleven, she returned home to break for an early lunch of salad sandwiches prepared by Obstagoon. In the afternoon, she would take a nap, go outside to smoke a pipe on the armbench, or read the local newspaper Mightyena would fetch for her. Otherwise, on days that the Ballonlea Theatre was preparing a play, Opal would be over there from afternoon to late evening to manage the stage and cast.

Her current project, however, was Bede. So she stayed at home to make sure that he got situated, and kept the Gym closed to challenges in the mean time. While training in Glimwood Tangle, he evolved his Ponyta into Rapidash, his Hattrem into Hatterene, and acquired a Ralts. As for his fourth Pokemon, Opal gave him her Mawile.

"Though I haven't handed the title over to you officially, I still consider myself retired," she told him. "My battling days are over. You and Mawile seem to take a liking to each other well enough. She's yours now."

Mawile chirped happily at Bede's side. "Y-You don't have to do that," he stammered. "I can go catch another Pokemon..."

Opal waved a dainty hand. "Why go through that trouble when I can simply give you one? Like I said, I'm done battling. But not Mawile. You've seen how she has been chewing away at that audition scrap. She's still itching for battle. She's better off with you, my boy."

Bede had no choice but to reluctantly accept Mawile as a gift. This wasn't supposed to happen. He only trained in Glimwood Tangle to get stronger, and lived with Opal to cozy up with her so she could spill whatever she knew about Wishing Stars. Now he'd feel like scum if he hightailed out of Ballonlea with her Mawile in tow. And something about leaving an old lady alone again stirred up guilt he didn't expect. Besides, he didn't even have time to stop and ask about the Wishing Stars. Opal kept him busy.

It took Bede several days living with Opal and cleaning her house to realize that she had no photos whatsoever. No photos hanging on the walls, or sitting around on stands. Any hints of a past and a family were nonexistent. That baffled him, but he remembered the brief mention of her husband earlier, and he hesitated on bringing that up again with her.

Bede was getting used to the temperature in the cottage. He didn't need the extra blankets, so one day, while Opal went for her morning walk with Mightyena, he climbed up the attic to stow them away. But he forgot which chest held the blankets. He batted away cobwebs as he rummaged through the many boxes and chests that littered the floor of the attic. In his search for the right place, he fumbled in the dim light and bumped into a cabinet. Something flat and hard toppled off to fall straight on his head. He stumbled back and swore, clutching his throbbing scalp. A large oval portrait clattered to his feet face down. Still rubbing his head, he turned the portrait face up with his other hand.

Bede blinked in surprise. It was a woman, a young and beautiful one. Short dark curls framed her face. She wore a white blouse with a large frilly collar about her neck. She seemed to exude a cheeky, almost flirty air, with a hand propped on her hip and a wide grin as her gaze was directed just off to her left, probably at the artist who did the portrait.

"Who's this?" Bede muttered.

A relative of Opal's? A daughter, or a granddaughter? Or could that be Opal herself? Curiosity overwhelmed him and made him put aside his initial quest for the chest of blankets. He had a new quest. He opened up lids and dug into the confines of whatever he opened, hoping to scrounge up more hints of the old woman's past. He didn't know how much time passed. The attic had no windows. Bede got pulled into his new quest like an Electric type Pokemon drawn to a magnet.

After some effort to open up trunks at the deepest part of the attic, he managed to find stacks of photos with the same young woman. This time she posed with other people, mostly with an older, bearded, yet handsome gentleman and a boy with the same dark, curly hair that she had. In almost every photo, the man and boy had an arm around her. The young woman smiled widely, radiantly, through the sepia-toned dimness of old pictures. None of the photos were compiled into albums, for some reason. Bede spread them evenly and carefully on the attic floor, contemplating over his discovery.

"Bede?"

Hearing his name made him jump. Opal was home? He hadn't heard the door swing shut. How long had she been inside?

"Where are you, boy?"

Bede scrambled to gather the photos back into stacks. There were a lot of them. He wasn't fast enough to gather them all. Heavy stamps up the ladder made him freeze and whirl around. Obstagoon had climbed up the attic carrying Opal in its strong arms.

"Bede, thank goodness you're all right," she cried out in relief. "You didn't answer when I came home, so I thought something terrible had happened to you, and I—What are you doing with those?"

Her question cut through the air and made Bede cringe.

"Bede, where did you find the pictures?"

Opal's voice had always been soft and thin. The uncharacteristic sharpness to it now startled him.

"I-I was just coming up here to put back the blankets," he stuttered. "I-I found these by accident."

Opal tapped on Obstagoon's arm so the Pokemon could gently set her down. She closed the distance between herself and Bede with the same unusual quickness back at Hammerlocke, and snatched the photos from his hands. "I forgot where I had these. Now I remember where I've put them away, and I did that so I could forget."

Bede had never seen Opal so upset, and that terrified him. "I'm sorry," he blurted out. "I'm really, really sorry, Ms. Opal."

Not only did she look upset, she looked like she was in pain. A few photos slipped from her grasp and back onto the floor. Opal looked down at them, then her eyes scrunched shut and her lips drew into a thin, hard line.

Obstagoon let out a growl of concern and reached out with both paws to steady her. Bede tried to approach her, but the Pokemon bared its fangs at him. For a split second of dread, Bede wondered if she was having a heart attack. At her advanced age, that guess wasn't unreasonable.

Opal sucked in a long, shuddering breath, then let it out in a gusty sigh as she looked up back at Bede.

"You want to know, don't you?" She said softly, the angry light out of her eyes now. "I can hear you asking that question even if you're not asking it out loud." She beckoned at Bede to come closer, and pointed at the topmost picture of the stack in her hands. "That woman here...that's me."

"That's you?" Bede exclaimed.

She nodded. "That man is Roger, my husband. And that boy is Jasper, my son."

Bede's head spun from the weight of the revelation. He noticed that there were no pictures of Jasper beyond the time he was a boy. No pictures of Jasper in his teens, or older. "What happened?" He whispered. He feared that she would snap at him again.

Instead her shoulders sagged. "Where do I start? There's so much to tell." She buried her face into the crook of her thin arm to cough into it. "Blimey, this attic is so dusty. I'd much rather carry on the conversation over tea and better air. Bring the pictures down."

Bede blinked at her in surprise. "I thought you didn't want to see them, Ms. Opal."

"I didn't want to see them for almost sixty years," she murmured. "Times have changed. Now you are going to be the next Gym Leader." She rested a withered hand over Bede's. "Not only that, but you are practically under my care, like family. And since you're like family, I owe you my story, because soon it will be yours."

Opal, with Obstagoon's help down the attic, left him with that. Finally, Bede shook out of his stupor to gather up the photos of Opal and her family. For the first time in many, many years, he brought them downstairs.

Notes: On Mightyena and Obstagoon being descendants of Pokemon belonging to Opal's late husband: There's no canon on Pokemon lifespans, so I thought that relying on lifespans of real-life animals would suffice. At least, for the Pokemon whose designs are inspired by real-life animals. I used the average lifespans of dogs and badgers for Mightyena and Obstagoon. 70 years seems like too long for the original Mightyena and Obstagoon to stick with Opal. Same goes for her own Pokemon.

Musical inspiration for this chapter was "Concerning Hobbits" from The Lord of the Rings.

For voices, I imagine Bede to sound like Tom Felton as Draco Malfoy in the 1st and 2nd Harry Potter movies, and old Opal sounds like Maggie Smith as Lady Violet from Downton Abbey.

#pokemon sword and shield #pokemon swsh #opal pokemon #bede pokemon #pokemon fanfiction #pokemon fic #pokemon headcanon #swsh opal #swsh bede #pokemon opal #pokemon bede #pokemon la vie en rose

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showme-your-darkside · 5 years ago

Text

Never Be Sorry

Chapter One: Home

Warnings: (very mild masterbation scene at the end of the chapter)

You were born on a planet that was peaceful. Simple in design; greenery stretched for miles, oceans teal with waves of white foam that crashed into soft warm beaches. Most days were calm and quiet. Your parents had died when you were 12 leaving behind their modest farm. It few acres of land that you worked tirelessly to maintain.Each day you awoke at dawn. Your schedule was predictable and boring. You worked the fields, watered and fed your animals, then tended to your other chores. You were no stranger to hard work, it was practically in your bloodline. Generations of your family were farmers. You were simply continuing the tradition.

Sweat gathered on your brow as you carried the heavy stones to rebuild a broken area of your fencing. It wasn’t much, but the stacked rocks mapped out your plot of land. It’s not like you had many neighbors, but it was important to you to keep the appearance of your estate to its highest possible standards. It was past noon when your body reminded you that it required nourishment after hours of hard labor. You walked back to your home and fixed yourself something to eat. Bringing your lunch to the porch, you took time to admire the old weathered white paint chipping from the wood your great-grandfather had used to build your family’s home. You unloaded your weight onto the porch swing and gently rocked back and forth. If your porch could speak it would tell tales of late nights in the warm summer breeze, dancing, drinking, and family. Your father inherited this house as a young man from his father. It’s where he married your mother and conceived you. You were raised in a home that conditioned you to love hard work even from a young age.

You were always devilishly clever as a child. Trouble was never far away from your grasp. It followed you, more like chased you, in any direction you went. Strong willed and outspoken, you had always been the kind of person to be heard loud and clear. In school you were a “take-no-shit” kind of kid. Everyone who was halfway intelligent acknowledged that and made sure to not cross you. By no means were you sadistic, but you sure as hell had no problem putting someone twice your size into their place.

Now at the age of 24 you sit on the porch and reflect on your life. Unmarried, childless, working yourself into the ground. Alone and tired you secretly longed for an opportunity to breathe new air. There was no escaping your life though. You were where you were in the galaxy and there was no way of changing that. Returning to your chores, the day drew into night. The sky’s hue turning purple before fading into a clear black sky littered with stars and moons. Again you found yourself on the porch, this time staring up at the galaxy, yearning for something more as you often did on nights like these. Calm, quiet, untouched by the pollution of people. The isolation was welcoming, bringing security in the form of seclusion.

Unsure of when or how, you found yourself lying in a field. You probably passed out while stargazing as you often did. With no one around, you had no fear of harm while laying exposed out in the open. It was daybreak and it was time to return to reality. You stood up and dusted your clothes. You began walking towards your house taking in the crisp morning air. Filling your lungs with the sharp smells of the farm. You trudged through the door and headed to the shower. Rinsing yourself and quickly changing into fresh clothes, you remembered that today was your scheduled day to head into town. You were running low on some essentials, and you always looked forward to trips that offered you some social interaction. Most importantly, you were excited to see Marcus.

You hitched your goods to your Bergruutfa and hopped on. It always amuses you to see the looks you receive as you approach the market place perched a top such a massive beast. You knew you looked intimidating and part of you secretly loved it. Your Bergruutfa was a large, hulking beast that was more gentle than a new born babe. Her dark green leathery skin felt corse underneath your legs but you were used to the feeling by now. Bergruutfa’s aren’t native to your home so the looks you receive, even from those who are used to seeing you on your regular trips into town, are still beguiling. You bought Kaa’lia from a Twi Lek merchant about 4 years ago. She was a tiny thing back then, only a baby. You don’t know how in the stars the merchant had come across such a beast, but you didn’t care to ask questions. You needed a new companion.

You and Kaa’lia step through the threshold of town. Bustling with all different colors, textures, smells, and people. You surveyed the landscape as the sea of people parted for you without hesitation in the busy market streets. You looked for him in the crowd. Finally your eyes found him. His hair was sun bleached from the days spent manning his stall in the hot sun. His frame was tall and strong like a boulder. It was clear that he was no stranger to hard labor and his toned frame was reflective of it. You locked eyes from some distance away and you could see the smile form on his face. He was excited to see you. You felt a burning on your face as the blood rushed to your cheeks, and admittedly other places. You dismounted Kaa’lia and began unlatching the cargo from her sides. Gently patting her as you removed some crops from her carrier. Suddenly there’s a tap on your shoulder. You turn only to be met by Marcus’s eyes. Such beautiful almond emeralds caught you off guard.

“Hey there stranger,” he said playfully. “Where have you been? It’s been more than a week since I saw you last.” Was he keeping track of your visits? Did he want to see you as badly as you wanted to see him?

“Keeping tabs on me now? Are you studying me?” You giggled softly trying to hold a firm poker face. You didn’t want him to know that you were trying to provoke a reaction from him. Somehow, it was working. He noticed your absence.

“No! I was just- I was...I-”

“Marcus I’m just kidding!” You weren’t sure who was blushing harder, you or him. “I lost track of time on the farm this week. I made some big repairs to my porch. The house is so old it’s falling apart and it’s not like I have anyone to help me with it. Just little old me, all by my lonesome. I wish I wasn’t though.” You didn’t mean to make yourself sound so pathetic. You weren’t looking for pity of any kind. You didn’t even realize how sad you sounded until after the words left your lips.

“Why don’t I come by and help you?” He grabbed the back of his neck and gently massaged it while his eyes darted from you to the ground.

“What?” You were surprised by his offer.

“I’ll come by tomorrow morning and I’ll help you with the repairs.”

“I couldn’t let you do that. I have no way to pay you. And besides, it’s a lot of work. You have to be here in the market, I can’t ask you to waste your time with me.”

“Y/N, it’s too much work for one person. You’ll get it done quicker with some extra hands. And as far as payment, I’m sure we’ll think of something.” At that moment your face must have looked like a freshly erupted volcano. Your knees buckled only to squeeze your thighs to make sure your sex didn’t melt off from the idea of “repaying” Marcus.

“I don’t know Marcus. I-”

“Great! It’s a date! I’ll see you tomorrow morning.” With that he turned and immersed himself into helping a customer. Possibly so that you couldn’t fight him on it, but maybe because he was just as excited about the thought of spending a day alone together. You finished your business at the market and headed back home. You didn’t stop to say goodbye to Marcus because you were afraid that you might melt in front of him.

The entire ride back you couldn’t stop thinking about Marcus. His eyes, his smile, the way he said “I’m sure we’ll think of something”. You knew what you wanted to give him, and the thought alone was enough to make your thighs quiver. You arrived home and laid out beneath the stars once again. Mind racing with thoughts of Marcus and the countless forms of “payment”, you felt your hand slowly reaching towards your sex. You were warm, wet, ready to be touched. You wondered what it would feel like to be touched by Marcus. You began rubbing one out to the thought of him and the things he could do to you. After two incredible orgasms, you fell asleep to a feeling of tingling bliss.

#fanfic #kylo ren fanfiction #kylo x you #kylo x reader #sorry this is slow #first time writer #longtime reader #slow burn #star wars

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yrpspiritsintheshadows · 5 years ago

Text

A Strange Arrangement

Hideki sighed in content as he watched the whipped cream he was making double in size in the stand mixer.

There really wasn’t anything quite like the feeling of success at seeing a technique work out just like you practiced it.

“Alright, soon as this is whipped, I’ll get it into the cake and-”

There was a tugging on his apron, causing him to jump. He looked down to see Ken was giving him a puppy eyed look, tugging again on it.

“What’s up, Shark Pup?”

Ken smiled, jumping back.

“Can you make me a lunch?”

“Like, to eat here or a bento? And for that matter, why? I thought you already ate.”

Ken sighed, giving him a kicked look.

“I shared my lunch with my friends. I’m gonna be hungry real soon… Pleeeaaase?”

Hideki glanced at his mixer, checking the consistency of the whipped cream. Fluffy and nearly coming out of the bowl, just how he liked it.

“Maybe later. I need to finish my roll cake. If you’re patient, I’ll put a piece in there.”

Ken perked up, letting out a little gasp.

“Really? Can you put two?”

Hideki gave him a curious look, getting his roll cake set out on the counter and spreading the filling out atop it.

“This is really rich. It’s chocolate with strawberries and I’m gonna cover it with a ganache before freezing it. You’ll get a tummy ache on two.”

“I won’t! The other piece isn’t for me.” Ken put both his hands together, giving another pout… throwing in a whimper for effect. “Pleeeaaase?”

Hideki flinched, trying not to make eye contact. He knew that look. He had become very accustomed to it.

“Ken, please don’t make that face.”

“Pretty please?”

“Ken, who are you even hanging out with? You know you can’t feed chocolate to the dog.”

Okami, as if understanding this, let out a loud whine. Hideki rolled his eyes.

“She’s a really good friend of mine from school.” It wasn’t a lie, Ayami was waiting for him outside and he wanted to share a snack with her. “We’re going on a big hike.”

“I don’t remember hearing you talk about this friend before. Which one?”

“Her name’s Ayami.”

Hideki hummed in thought. He remembered seeing a few kids playing with Ken during park trips but never anyone by that name.

“Ayami, huh?”

He nodded, bouncing on his heels a little, leaning up to watch his big brother work. Hideki’s hands were fast as always, rolling the cake up carefully but securely before sliding it into the fridge. He moved to the stove, starting to melt chocolate together with heavy cream.

“So, can I have it? Please?”

“How long are you gonna be gone? Did you tell Dad or Mom?”

“I’ll tell them in a bit, but Mommy would just go “You have food at home, you two can eat here.” and… they don’t know Ayami’s mommy.” Ken pouted.

Hidei nodded, very familiar with that rule. He grew up with it from Aika and Daisuke. Before the age of ten, no friends were allowed in the house unless they talked to their parents first.

“Well, why not ask her to bring her mom over then? She’s gotta anyways if she’s being dropped off, right?”

Ken went very quiet at this, biting his lip.

“... Ken?” Hideki narrowed his eyes. “I’m not helping you keep a secret.”

“But it’s an important one…” Ken looked down at his shoes. “I promised.”

Hideki sighed a little. He knew that all too well. He wasn’t comfortable keeping secrets like this though. Especially if it went against their parents’ rules.

Sure, he’d gladly sneak the kid an extra cookie or stay up an hour later than he said because his favorite show was on… but when it came to going off alone, or rather, anything involving Ken’s well being after the nightmare incident, he wasn’t comfortable with that.

“Ken…” He looked up from his cooking, meeting his eyes. “I want to respect your wishes but I’m not gonna keep secrets from Mom and Dad. That’s not my thing.”

Ken looked down, breaking eye contact.

“Ayami’s not normal though.”

“Is she like you? Or like me?”

“.... She’s…” Ken mumbled something, looking away from Hideki. The teenager frowned, raising an eyebrow.

“Pardon?”

Ken smiled sheepishly, guilt in his eyes.

“She’s a ghost.”

Hideki’s eyes widened before he put a hand to his face.

“Keeennny, why didn’t you just start with that!?”

“Ehehe?” Ken kicked at the floor a little. “She’s not like a regular one though. She’s a Ghost Guardian… You know what those are, right?”

“Yeah, of course. Ghost kids who stay behind and work under Lady Phantova as her warriors against the undead.” Hideki took his pot off the stove, pouring it over the cake before shoving the entire thing into the freezer. “So, that’s who your little friend is, huh?”

“Ahuh… You see why I can’t just go “Bring your mom over.” since her mom is y’know...a GODDESS!?”

Hideki nodded, wincing a little.

“Yeah… I can imagine. At least tell Dad since I think he’d be more okay with this.”

“I’ll tell him later, Ayami’s waitin’ and I can’t cook.”

Hideki sighed, lowering his head.

“Okay, but just this once. I mean it bub.” He gave Ken a stern look. “And if you don’t tell, I will. This is not gonna be like your bad dreams. Okay?”

Ken nodded.

Hideki sighed before getting started on a relatively simple lunch, making sure there was enough for two.

“And if she offers you ghost fruit, you don’t eat it until you tell the folks. Alright?”

“Okay. Why?”

“I heard it doesn’t wear off that fast and you don’t wanna scare them with thinking you died and came back to pretend all was normal.”

Ken’s eyes widened before he nodded.

“Got it…. And Hideki?”

“Hm?”

Ken hugged him tightly.

“I love you.”

Hideki smiled softly.

“Love you too, Shark Pup.”

Things just keep getting interesting don’t they?

Honestly though, might be just the thing he needs to practice those gifts. He’s gonna see worse things than making a friend out of a dead kid.

It wasn’t long before Hideki saw Ken off, the little boy running off as he joined Ayami’s side. The ghost girl looked over her shoulder at him, giving him a thumbs up.

“Be careful.” He looked down at Okami, the dog giving a huff of annoyance. “What’s her issue?”

“It’s hard for her to keep up.” Ken frowned a little. “Okami, stay-”

The large dog bolted to his side, whining.

“Alright, alright. C’mon!”

“Be safe you two.” He waved, before the kids started to walk off… Only to jump when Hideki let out a yelp.

They looked back, seeing Eiji was standing right behind Hideki. The man raised an eyebrow, motioning with his finger for them to come back.

“... Uh oh.”

Ken gulped, hurrying back over, as Eiji knelt to his level.

“Am I in trouble?”

Eiji held up a finger, taking off his reading glasses.

“Not yet.” He gave a firm look. “First, I heard about half of what was going on in the kitchen. I was grading papers in the living room.”

Hideki winced.

“Frick…”

“You’re not in trouble. Like I said - not yet.” He gave Ken in particular a stern look. “Ken, can I finally meet your friend properly?”

“You knew!?” Ken yelped.

Eiji shrugged a little.

“I played with Ghost Guardians when I was little too. Kind of not a surprise to me, that you’d make friends with them too.” He was nostalgic as he looked Ayami over, nodding as he recognized the armor style. “Yup, the real deal… Which is why I’m not mad. But Ken, you should never be worried about this stuff, like I told you before - you can tell us anything and we won’t be mad.”

“Even if I tried to keep another secret?”

Ayami hurried over.

“It was my fault.” She insisted. “Please don’t be mad at Ken.”

Eiji looked at her, giving her a gentle look.

“I’m not mad. Like I said, I just want to know what my kids are getting up to. The woods aren’t entirely safe but if he’s got a friend like you, I think I can trust he’ll be alright… but I do want to at some point meet with your mother. Is that alright?”

Ayami nodded quickly.

“Frannie wouldn’t mind. If you played with us Ghost Guardians before then you’d know her too, right?”

“Yeah but it’s been about twenty years, give or take.” Eiji patted their heads. “But, no more of these little secrets, okay?”

“Okay!”

“Good… and Ken?”

“Huh?”

Eiji kissed his head.

“Be good and be safe.”

Ken smiled, hugging him tightly, relieved he wasn’t in trouble.

“Thank you, Daddy. I love you!” He grabbed Ayami’s hand as they ran off, Okami chasing after the children. “C’mon Aya!”

“Eep!”

Hideki and Eiji watched them go, before Eiji sighed a little.

“She’s so tiny…”

Hideki looked up at him.

“How young do you think she was?”

“Given I’ve seen Ken playing with someone I couldn’t see since he was about 4? I’d imagine she was five. She’s presenting herself as six right now but she’s still learning. Could be awhile before she decides her final age so to speak.” Eiji sighed. “Makes me just sad for her parents, if they were good ones.”

Hideki looked back to where they had gone.

“If they were anything like mine, they’d just be happy she has a life somewhere. Even if it’s just her afterlife.”

“Yeah… Welp, guess this means we might have a deity dropping in on us.” Eiji headed back inside. “I’m gonna go back sure I swept.”

“... So wait, that’s it? If Titan just showed up here, you’d be this nonchalant about it?”

“Kind of?” Eiji shrugged. “Honestly, this is just par for the course for me. I remember meeting her once when I was Ken’s age but that was twenty years ago. She probably doesn’t remember me.”

“Aww… Who could forget you?”

Eiji ruffled his hair.

“Aww shucks… Now… How about that cake eh?”

“Oh, you’re gonna love it. C’mon!”

Hideki hurried back inside, calling out for Hikaru and Carmen. Eiji looked back towards the forest, as the wind picked up around him.

The more things change… the more they stay the same.

oooooo

Ken and Okami were keeping up at a decent pace with Ayami, who was flying above them. The kids were relieved they hadn’t been in any actual trouble.

“Hey, my big brother packed a big snack enough for two people. Do you wanna share it with me?”

“Sure! When we get to a good rest spot.” She did a flip through the trees above them. “Wee!”

Ken saw a large boulder coming up. He picked up the pace, before leaping over it, forcing himself into a flip before he kept running.

“Oooo nice! You learn that recently?” She clapped a bit.

Ken grinned. The extra lessons while practicing with Chase and Eiji were paying off.

“Ahuh! Just can’t do it often.”

“Got ya…” She came to a stop, standing on a high tree branch looking around the forest. “Let’s see… Where to go…”

Ken looked around, Okami whining a bit as she nudged him along.

“Oof! Hey.”

Ayami looked down, raising an eyebrow.

“What’s up with her?”

“She smells something she doesn’t like.” Ken moved along, knowing very well that trying to go anywhere Okami deemed “danger” was a bad idea.

Ayami narrowed her eyes, looking around them, focusing on the energy of the forest.

Something was nearby but… it didn’t feel like a threat. Still, she swooped down, pulling Ken up, flying at a pace to keep up with how fast Okami was sprinting away from it.

“Oof! Hey!”

“I don’t think it’s bad but we’re not alone. Let’s not tick something off.”

“Right.” He looked behind them… He saw a bush rustle. “... Let’s get far away. Fast!”

Ayami looked behind them before using her strength to grab onto the scruff of Okami’s neck, lifting them both up.

“ARROOOOOOO!” Okami howled in alarm. She smelled it… It was close but she smelled it.

And she didn’t want it anywhere near her pup or the strange, not living pup.

“Um, Aya what are you-EEP!”

She phased them through a large brush of trees, before stopping at a large rock that had a relatively smooth surface, enough for all three of them to lay across.

“We’ll just stay here a bit.” She gave a salute. “I’ll go investigate.”

Ken frowned.

“It can’t hurt you can it?”

“Naaah. I’m already dead!” She boasted. “Nothing can hurt me!”

“Okay…”

Ayami gave a salute, before hurrying off, turning invisible. She came back to the path they had been on before, peering through the bushes and trees…

Whatever it was she had sensed and what scared Okami, was long gone now. She couldn't pick up a trace of it.

Weird… Maybe a forest spirit?

Ayami shook her head. No, that wasn’t right. It hadn’t felt dead.

The presence was alive… very much alive.

Maybe it was nothing. Probably a fox.

Still, she made note to keep close to Ken during more of these excursions if she didn’t have training.

Ayami hurried back to where Ken was waiting for her, already setting out their snack.

“Well?” He looked up, worried.

Ayami frowned.

“I couldn’t find it. It’s gone.”

“That’s good… right?”

“I think so but I’ll keep around more.” She sat on the edge of the rock, picking up a sandwich, taking a large bite out of it. “Mmm! Oooh that’s yummy! What’s in it?”

“Hideki makes this yummy sandwich spread, with veggies and cream cheese. It’s really good.” Ken smiled a little. “Aya, don’t worry, okay? I know you got my back.”

“And I intend to keep doing that.” She offered him a fist bump. “Ghost friends?”

“Not secret friends.” He nodded, bumping his fist with hers. He looked out over the forest, closing his eyes.

The forest’s energy was the same as ever but… his gut told him something else was around. He wasn’t entirely sure what it meant yet…

But he hoped it was nothing scary.

Just don’t let it hurt my family.

#Spirits in the Shadows #Ken Miyamoto #Ayami #Ghost Guardians #Original work #original writing #literature #paranormal #web series #yellow rose productions #Storm Arashi

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ducktracy · 5 years ago

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99. buddy’s pony express (1935)

release date: march 9th, 1935

series: looney tunes

director: ben hardaway

starring: billy bletcher (villain/dog), jack carr (buddy), bernice hansen (cookie)

though this is the 99th cartoon, this is my 100th review (gotta include bosko, the talk-ink kid now!) and i just wanted to thank you! this has been very exciting and fun for me, and i hope that i’ve been able to educate, inform, and entertain you. these cartoons aren’t masterpieces, but we’ve seen the good, the bad, and the ugly—which we will continue to see all of those. thank you for your support and motivation! in terms of synopsis: buddy competes against a fierce competitor with tricks up his sleeve.

a quiet, sleepy town in the old west. or not—this IS looney tunes. bullets fly and bodies roll, an undertaker even taking in a body that rolls right into his stretcher. how morbid! two men clinging to telephone poles shoot at each other, hitting the poles which each shrink in size as the shootout ensues. they meet in the streets, a big dog vs a little dog. the big dog plugs the little dog’s gun in his own gun, shooting him upwards with ease. the little dog comes crashing to the ground, taking the big dog with him. two men bury the men in the hole with the excess dirt they left behind.

elsewhere, buddy is tinkering away at a piano inside a saloon. now he’s REALLY under his final redesign. i like it a lot, i think it’s the most fitting and appealing. his stool takes a life of its own, dancing along to the music. meanwhile, a dog orders a glass of whiskey, drinking its contents and convulsing. nothing like a good whiskey to make you writhe on the floor.

cookie makes her appearance in another one of her waitress roles, singing an original song titled “oklahoma cowboy joe”. some intermittent shots of buddy playing the piano while she sings, including him being a ham and playing with his feet. a tiny cowboy (not yosemite sam) enters the saloon and shoots a few warning shots, cookie singing that his guns are empty and that it’s just for fun—makes me feel very safe. another man shoots him right in the head, his head exploding... revealed to be buddy in disguise. the gag is certainly incomprehensible but amusingly so, especially when an oil lamp falls on buddy’s head.

all of the sudden, a cowboy skates inside on his spurs and posts a flyer, shooting bullets to hold it in place. immediately the gaggle of cowboys in the saloon gather round to read the news. the flyer advertises a pony express race at 2:30, a mail contract awarded to the winner. buddy and cookie read it once the crowd disperses, buddy eager to enter. he shows off his horse to cookie, the horse whinnying happily. the villain of the cartoon pokes his head around the corner to eavesdrop, overhearing buddy boast “he’s the fastest in the county!”

buddy pulls out his pocket watch and excuses himself to get ready for the big race, telling cookie that he’ll see her there. outside, the villain takes the horse off its post and kidnaps it, giving a billy bletcher evil laugh for good measure. he makes off towards an abandoned glue factory (awfully random), where his OWN horse is waiting. it’s practically a shell, the villain shooting off a vulture perched on top of the poor thing. to restore it back to its former glory, he stuffs a balloon in the horse’s stomach and attaches a pump inside, blowing it up to size. he draws two dots on the eyelids of the comatose horse, who stares at him wearily before becoming a vegetable once more.

satisfied with his work, the villain takes his own decrepit horse to the post outside the saloon, passing it off as buddy’s horse. buddy dresses up in his cowboy garb, bouncing out the window and onto his fake horse, which takes off for the race.

the horse zigzags to the starting line—not bad for such a weak horse. cookie bids buddy good luck, to which he confidently replies “it’s a cinch!” the villain doesn’t think so, laughing him off.

some nice visuals as a man fires his starting pistol to signal the start of the race. he’s perched on a grazing horse, the force of the shot propelling him downwards and back up, the horse’s body reverberating in rubber hose goodness. the runners are off, an array of spot gags including a native american riding inside a teepee, a man hobbling on crutches, a man riding after a dog...

the man riding after a dog faces some trouble once the dog spots a rabbit. the dog stretches itself through many rabbit holes, the rabbit mocking the twisted up dog. sounds familiar! especially fitting since hardaway directed porky’s hare hunt, birthing a prototype of a familiar brooklyn bunny.

meanwhile, buddy and the villain are next and neck. the villain plays his dirty tricks, if stealing buddy’s horse wasn’t enough. he yanks the tail of buddy’s horse back, sending him flying. once more does buddy surge ahead. this time, the villain yanks the horse’s tail and twirls him above his head, laughing as buddy and his horse sit in a daze. he’s too busy laughing at the two to notice an upcoming cactus, getting knocked into it and twirling around.

our chase continues to a cliff, some beautiful animation of the horse galloping along as buddy dangled by the reigns over the edge, the cliff rotating as they move along. buddy twists around a tree, the villain passing. to prevent them from edging further, the villain shakes a bridge beneath buddy, tossing him up in the air repeatedly. buddy rides inside the bridge like a protective hamster wheel, chasing down the villain.

his makeshift protective wheel crashes against a rock, catapulting him over a cliff and dangling on a limb by his suspenders. the villain laughs, tossing a boulder down at the branch to finish him off. harsh! of course, the boulder bounces off the branch and knocks the villain, amusing animation as he tugs at the grass for support like a carpet. he and the horses topple over the edge and crash into buddy, all four plummeting to uncertain doom.

the entire landscape is riddled with mud puddles. cookie cheers buddy on from the finish line as the rivalry approaches, both sliding into mud puddles. thankfully, our hero buddy pops out of a puddle across the finish line, the villain left to lie in the rain. buddy and cookie kiss... a horse, that is. buddy’s horse pops up between the two and blushes at the unprecedented display of affection, iris out.

not a very captivating cartoon. there were some lovely visual gags and pieces of animation: the guy shooting his pistol and propelling off his horse, buddy barely holding onto his horse as it scales the mountain, the villain clutching the grass like a rug and pulling it, but it just felt not memorable at all. this can obviously be attributed to my ADHD, but some cartoons are easier to pay attention to than others. i found myself zoning out a lot on this one, and during my rewatch i was even like “wait, this was a scene?” overall, skip it. not the worst, but not much of anything. just another unmemorable cartoon.

link!

#lt #buddy’s pony express #reviews #long post

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myownpersonaldemons · 6 years ago

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Self-Tober Prompt 10

Fantasy

Grillby/Reader

This is actually just an AU for Chasing the End where the war between monsters and humans never happened that I thought of (not spoiling anything that hasn’t been revealed as of Chapter 15), and it’s kind of in a fantasy setting so.......................................here you go\

You heard the high-pitched scream that made your stomach drop and your hands drop the dish you were washing. Your heart beat heavily in your chest, but a soothing reassurance calmed you down almost instantly. It almost seemed to whisper ‘no one was harmed...it’s okay...we’re all okay’.

Still, you wiped your hands off on your apron and hurried outside into the yard. Grillby was holding a small flaming child high above a smaller amphibian monster who was attempting to scale him to get to the child. Nindree was too busy cackling, getting a dry look from her mate who then proceeded to head over to scoop Undyne into their arms.

“What happened?” you asked, half-amused as Grillby lowered Kindra slightly but still well out of reach of Undyne if she were to wriggle her way out of Cherja’s arms.

“Undyne wanted to show Kindra the new move that Gerson showed her! Cept, my little brat wanted ta practice ON your kid. Sorry for the intrusion, but the way! BUT! We’re basically family so DEAL WITH IT!” Nindree said with a big grin, and Cherja sighed exasperatedly, before swiping their long tail into Nindree’s legs and tripping her.

Undyne cackled, clapping her tiny hands at the sight of her mother sprawled on the floor.

“Apologiessss, Lionheart, Undyne was full of energy,” Cherja sighed, slithering closer to you.

You sighed softly, “No apologies needed, Cher. Which one screamed like that?”

Grillby jerked a thumb over to Undyne who was grinning proudly up at you from underneath her parents arm. You raised your eyebrow, “That was a loud scream, kiddo. Thought someone was hurt.”

“Gotta make em AFRAID!” Undyne shouted, pumping her fists upwards as best she could, but almost fell out of Cherja’s arms. Cherja sighed again before placing their daughter onto the dirt unceremoniously. Undyne grinned up at you, her red hair flopping into her face before she roughly shoved it out of the way. It looked like it had been braided at one point, but you knew Undyne hated the feeling of her hair braided unlike her mother.

“Undyne, do you wisssh to ssshow your Aunt them move inssstead?” Cherja asked, “No tesssting it on her, though.”

“Oh, no,” you waved a hand, “sweetie, you can practice on me, but first you gotta apologize to Kindra for scaring them.”

Undyne puffed out her cheeks before sighing dramatically and walking over to your SOULmate. Grillby bent down to one knee and Undyne held out a webbed hand towards Kindra, who had returned to her more human-esque appearance. Kindra stared at the hand before peering up at her father. Only when he nodded did she reach out and accept the hand shake.

“Sorry for scaring you...or whatever,” Undyne mumbled, before immediately darting back over to you and grabbing at your apron. “NOW?”

You huffed out a laugh, “sure, kid.”

Undyne led you a bit away from the house to the ‘sparring area’ as Nindree had declared it one day when she had tackled you to the ground one day. It had been ten years since you last had to worry about keeping your fighting skills sharp. The peace treaty King Riagol made with the human king had worked, thankfully.

Your best friend’s daughter was nearly fifteen and sometimes forgot that Halflings didn’t mature as fast as Monsters did, and sometimes couldn’t understand why your four year old wasn’t like her. Speaking of, you glanced over at Kindra, sending out a comforting pulse and she returned a loving one that almost made you start crying in the sparring ring.

You’d never thought you would ever have this life. A husband, a daughter...Gods, you didn’t even think you’d have friends. There had been a point where you had refused to look to the future, every day was one after the next because all you saw when you looked into the future was death, despair, and war. This wasn’t the future you had ever envisioned...but it was a future you were grateful for.

Undyne didn’t let you dwell on your thoughts for long at all before she was pulling you into an encounter. You skipped your turn by checking her and giggling at the description.

*Wants to get strong enough to suplex a BOULDER!

When it was her turn, you could see her face screw up in concentration focusing on her hand before a spear fizzled into existence. Undyne grinned wickedly at it before glancing over at her parents with excitement and then turned back towards you. With even more concentration she threw the spear towards your SOUL. You already knew there was no harmful intent in the blow, but it was your SOUL, so you shifted it out of the way of the spear at the last second.

When it was your turn, you checked her again and saw that the description had changed to:

*WILL suplex a boulder one day!

Your smile widened before you allowed her to end the encounter.

“One day I’ll be able to bet anyone in a fight!” Undyne shouted in promise before running towards Nindree and tackling her back to the ground. You snorted as the two began to rough house on the ground, shouts of praise and encouragement from Nindree and cackles and laughter from Undyne filled the small clearing that you and Grillby had made your home.

Cherja smiled fondly at the image before they turned back towards you, “Thank you...that isss all we came by for....ssshe wasss quite excccited. We ssshall get out of your hair, Gasster and Viv invited usss over for lunch.”

“OH! RIGHT!” Nindree sprung to her feet, Undyne tucked under her arm giggling, “Viv wanted me to tell you that she and that old fart think that their egg’s gunna hatch soon. Sans has been talkin’ bout nothing else.”

You smiled, “I can’t wait to meet Papyrus.”

“NEITHER CAN I!” Undyne shouted, “Sans doesn’t wanna rough house with me, and Ra’s too small still.”

“Anywaysss, let’sss go,” Cherja said, placing a hand on Nindree’s back, “We’re intruding.”

“Pah, what’s with you and Grillbz always telling me I’m intruding,” Nindree grumbled, but allowed her mate to guide her away after giving you a one armed hug, and punching Grillby’s shoulder.

“...if you stopped....we wouldn’t tell you...” Grillby shot back, grinning at her and giving her a lighter punch back. You waved, calling out promises to see them soon, and watched as they continued down the path back towards the capital. Once they were out of sight, you twirled towards your family and pulled Kindra out of Grillby’s arms.

“Well, wasn’t that an exciting morning,” you said kissing her nose, then added as you glanced at her small stripped dress, “good thing I enchanted your clothes to not burn. Combustible baby.”

Kindra smiled at you, returning the kiss on your nose with a bit too much pressure and enthusiasm. She giggled at you as you scrunched up your nose slightly. Grillby placed a kiss to her temple which made her giggle more, and then pat her father’s cheeks happily. He responded by blowing some sparks lightly at her, which made her giggle even harder as they dusted across her cheeks.

“What were you two up to?” you asked, nudging Grillby’s stomach with your elbow, “Besides lighting my daughter on fire.”

“I did it!” Kindra announced loudly, before bursting into flames in your arms. Grillby yanked her out of your arms immediately, and you felt the slight panic in his face but you simply laughed.

“Look at you! Have you been practising?” you asked, subtly reaching over to Grillby to soothe his worries. You both knew that she’d would have to have intent to harm you, but she also wasn’t able to stop things from catching on fire. Your clothes were not enchanted against fire...yet. You added that to your mental checklist.

“Yeah! With Papa!” Kindra chirrped happily, before kissing Grillby’s cheek and the wriggling in his arms. “I wanna go!”

“....where?” Grillby asked, but relented.

“Play with frogs!” Kindra announced, pointing towards the pond.

Grillby tensed slightly, and you rested your hand against his back.

“Just don’t burst into flames near the water, okay?” you said smiling down at her, “It makes Papa nervous.”

“Okay! I won’t!” Kindra said, beaming at the two of you before spinning around and skipping towards the pond.

Grillby let out a sigh of smoke this time and looked down at you before back at his daughter. You stepped closer and wrapped your arms around his waist. Immediately, his arms curled around you, but his eyes never left Kindra as she splashed in the pond and then began to crouch down to try to find some frogs.

Sometimes you swore he neared overprotective when it came to Kindra, but then again he had never been around Halfling children. All he knew was that fire elementals didn’t mix with water, and his daughter, who even if she was half-human, was half-fire elemental. The first time he had walked in on you bathing with her, he had nearly fainted.

Neither of you were going to dunk her into water when she was in her flame form...but she was old enough that she had control over switching back forth now.

You kissed the highest point on Grillby that you could, which was his chest, before releasing him. “Okay, crisis diverted, I’m going to finish up my morning chores. Are you heading to the tavern soon?”

He nodded, bending down to kiss the top of your head. Fingers gently tracing your jaw before he straightened, and moved closer to the pond. You could feel the worry that he was trying to tamp down, but you sent a soothing flow similar to the one he had just sent you, and watched as his shoulder relaxed ever so slightly.

Grillby had retired from the Royal Guard a few years back, before the two of you had even decided to have Kindra. Shortly after he had opened Home’s first tavern. He was tired of fighting, and he had found that he loved cooking and learning new recipes. Your cookbook, well it was his now too, was constantly on the counter with him scrawling the recipes that he made into it in his language. It was now a mixture of the strange Mage written language, and the Monster written language. Plus one scribbled recipe that Kindra had written for tea that Gerson had made for her.

Oh! Right, Gerson was in the city. He’d probably be at the tavern when Grillby went to open it. You’d probably swing by with Kindra if Gerson didn’t pop by your farmstead first.

If you went into the city, you’d probably pay a visit to Toriel and Asgore and see how their Egg was doing. Asriel was taking a while to hatch, but neither were worried, each Egg took its own sweet time to hatch. Riagol was a mess waiting for his grandchild, however, and complained that he would Dust before they hatched. Then what? He’d never get to meet his grandchild.

You had been on the end of a few of those rants, normally while you and Gaster were giving him an update on the latest SOUL research. Gaster had quite the humor once you got to know him...and now you didn’t have to guess why him and Vivaldi were SOULmates.

With that thought, you glanced over your shoulder to see Grillby ushering Kindra back towards the house. He gave you both kisses before heading out to the city to his day job.

The rest of the day sped by, as they all seemed to do now. You taught Kindra about human and monster history, you taught her some more magic tricks (small things to help her improve her control), and got her ‘help’ in the farm. Just before dinner, you took her into town to her father’s tavern, where she and Gerson chattered the night away, and you joked with Vivaldi and Gaster while Sans chuckled away holding onto his baby brother’s egg.

Kindra eventually got tired so you gave Gerson a kiss on the cheek, said goodbye to Viv and Gaster, and then encouraged Kindra to give everyone good night hugs. She did. Every single monster in the tavern. Who all cooed and aww’d at the little Halfling who was sleepily moving from Monster to Monster. You smiled and felt Grillby’s SOUL flare with affection.

It wasn’t a long walk back to the farmstead, and you sang Kindra to sleep along the way. Her tiny head tucked against your shoulder, one arm limp and the other loosely holding onto the neckline of your tunic. You quietly opened her bedroom door and slowly placed her into her bed. She stirred slightly, but settled quickly as you pulled her blanket up.

For a moment, you stayed with her, watching her chest rise and fall and her eyelids flutter with dreams. Memories floated to the surface, and you wiped a few tears from your cheeks before you stood up and left her to her slumber.

You entered your own bedroom and stripped down before pulling on your nightwear and slipping into bed. Grillby’s schedule varied, he normally stayed until the last patron left...and thankfully the monsters were kind enough to not eat up too much of the night. Still, sometimes you missed falling asleep with him in the bed beside you. Especially during the winters.

You were awoken by a warm arm wrapping around your waist and a strong chest pressing against your back. A soft kiss on your shoulder was followed by a trail up your neck, making a shiver roll down your spine that had nothing to do with the temperature. You gently stroked the arm around your waist and nestled back into his embrace.

“I love you,” you whispered, tilting your head so you could see him better.

“...and I, you,” he replied back just as softly. “...never thought I’d get this.”

“Me either,” you said before shifting in his arms so you were chest to chest, “I don’t know where we’d be if the war-“

He silenced you with a kiss, just a quick one, before pressing his forehead against yours. “...don’t think about that...when I do....it makes my SOUL hurt.”

You nod, foreheads brushing against each other’s lightly. “I know,” you run your hands up his chest before slipping them around his neck to pull him into another kiss. This one more heated.

There wasn’t a day that went by that you didn’t thank the Gods that the war never happened.

You didn’t want to imagine what your life would’ve been like if it did.

#grillby/reader #grillby x reader #Chasing the End #selftober #self insert #reader insert

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asteraegis · 6 years ago

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that evandra fic lmao

So it’s set in a sort of “kingdom au”, which is basically the same rules of modern day where everyone is alive but it’s a fantasy medieval period. It isn’t as smutty as my edawale and fryeway fics because evie has class unlike edward but there is sex in it eventually. 3604 words

Tags are: wlw, mention of animal death, a fuckton of kissing, cunnilingus, metaphors like that one lesbian sea shanty in odyssey (it’s a dyke/hozier thing), evie crushing big motherfuckin time, kassandra being kassandra

The view outside my modest stained-glass window taunted me as I sat nearly consumed by my studies. Ink I swiped over while writing painted my right hand’s palm and little finger indigo, smudging my forehead as I tried to soothe a fierce headache.

I stood and opened the window, leaning out against its ledge, feeling the breeze play with my loose hair. The crisp air blowing in from the alpines and lush forest gave me a welcomed shiver, a nice change in comparison to the stuffy room I had been holed up in all morning.

“I have got to get out of here,” I muttered, stepping away from the sights and wiping my hands and face clean with a handkerchief.

Abandoning my satin sleepwear, I slipped into a cornflower blue linen gown, tugging the most comfortable sandals in my possession on and descending down stairs of marble, my small travel purse in hand. A walk would do me justice afore I went mad in these walls.

Coming toward the palace mess hall, I decided to grab myself a canteen and loaf of bread seasoned with rosemary, setting these items in my bag next to my leather back journal and dirk. As I left the room and began to make my way toward the doors, my brother that thinks himself to be a jester with the rights of a noble cut in my path.

“Well, well, well! What’s this? The kingdom’s recluse of a princess is leaving her chamber?” Jacob chaffed. “Did the books tell you to give them some space, Evie?”

I rolled my eyes. He really never would understand that with nobility comes more than swordfights and feasts.

“I just want to go for a stroll, Jacob,” I replied, ‘course my reply came out like a hiss as I pushed pass him.

“Like, out in the garden?”

“No, a bit farther, down by the stream.”

“Oooh, an adventure you’re set on! Hope your books can protect you from bears and wolves,” he sneered.

I swallowed as to keep my temper, knowing he just wanted to get a rouse out of me. Turning around with a forced smile, I said to him, “I have a dagger with me, Jacob. How about you see if Arno needs pestering, hm?”

“Hmph, if you’re that desperate to be alone, enjoy your stroll, sweet sister!”

Jacob left and as did I, at last escaping the palace’s walls. I exchanged brief ‘hellos’ with the other noblewomen, Aveline, Elise, and her majesty Amunet, who were having a spot of tea and gossip under a grand willow tree. I strode toward the ivy strangled gate, then went forth venturing down the old river-stone path. Small finches and doves made songs overhead while egrets scouted for salamanders in the bank’s reeds. Squirrels darted in front of me as I headed for my long-time favorite hideaway, a tiny spring hidden by willows, oaks, and looming boulders. I could hear the faint call of its humble waterfall, teasing my skin that longed to stand under the gentle flow. A scenic cove, just for me and plenty to sketch while I lay in a bed of clovers, or, better yet, I could wade in the calm waters naked and let nature shoo my stress away.

But alas my daydreaming was interrupted by a frantic young buck knocking into me as it dashed across the stream elsewhere. I glared at the deer from my spot on the ground, rising to my feet quickly when I laid my eyes on what he had been chased by. A lean, taupe-coated wolf stalked out of the shrubs toward me, seeming to decide I would make and easier meal than the deer. My hand whipped my dirk in front of me and I stood my ground, clutching the blade in my sweaty palms and doing my best not to appear afraid, my heart beating wildly. The wolf went to lunge and I stabbed my knife into its fur, missing a puncture on the animal as I found myself more focused on avoiding its claws. The beast came at me again, pouncing on top of me. I held it back away from my face with my forearms, its teeth biting inches from my nose. The wolf had swatted my measly blade out of my hand from its last attack and from this angle I was beginning to wonder if maybe I should have spent more time sparring with Jacob rather than cooped up at my desk or in the library.

Just as things began to appear bleak, the wolf yelped and fell over, staggering to its feet with a fresh arrow lodged in its neck. Another arrow pierced its chest, giving me time to grab my dirk and finish the mad dog off, panting while my eyes scanned the vicinity for who had helped me.

A tall, muscular woman with scarred olive skin appeared from the bushes, adorned with garments crafted from animal hide I’m sure she fashioned herself. She replaced her bow back behind her, drawing near me with an out stretched hand.

“Are you all right, milady?” she asked, standing over me.

I took her hand and she pulled me effortlessly upright. “I’m, uh, I’m fine, thank you,” I stammered out, taking a step back from her as I felt my cheeks flush from admiration, thankfulness, and her closeness.

“That’s good to hear. Judging by your gold circlet and dress’ dye, you’re one of the princesses from the palace over yonder, no?” she inquired as she picked my satchel from the ground.

“Yes, I was bored and wanted to visit the spring a little north of here,” I said, taking the purse and setting my blade away.

“Might I accompany you, then? To ensure your safety, your highness?”

My heart fluttered at the mere thought of spending time with this heaven-sent Amazonian-esque woman. “Yes! Yes, of course! Oh, and please, ‘your highness’ is sweet, but just call me Evie.”

She smiled warmly, her honey eyes ensnaring my gaze. “Thank you, miss Evie. My name is Kassandra, should you be curious to know.”

“Then many thanks to you, Kassandra.”

We got to the spring in no time. Really, I would have likely been fine alone, but it was nice sharing the path with her while she explained that she was a mercenary, paid by a tanner to collect fox pelts. She was searching this area for the little vulpine creatures when she heard the wolf growling. At the hideaway, the ethereal beauty felt even more fantastical with Kassandra’s presence. She stared in awe of the surrounding area while I shamelessly watched her skin become dotted by the mist’s droplets coming from the falls.

She turned to me with that same charming smile but with childlike wonder in her gaze. “I’m sorry, your high—Evie, do you mind if I stay with you for a bit longer? Please, this place is one of the loveliest views I’ve ever seen.”

“Oh, not at all, Kassandra, I wouldn’t mind your presence. In fact, I have a rosemary loaf, should you be hungry and want to split it with me. It’s the least I can offer for your saving of my life,” I told her, doing my best not to appear desperate for her to stay.

“Really, Evie?” she was beaming from my answer. “I would love to share a meal with you!”

I couldn’t help but grin the entire time we ate together, her telling me that she came from the naval kingdom to the west and answering all the questions I asked about sea travel between bites.

“I’d love to go sailing someday,” I sighed finishing my half as she swallowed hers.

“Well, should your kingdom’s queen allow it, I would gladly petition to take you out,” she said, then hastily continuing with, “um, sailing, take you out sailing.”

It’s a wonder a woman could have such stunning charm, vast natural knowledge, and a kindhearted soul and still appear human by slipping up on her words. I leaned against the oak behind where we sat, giggling at her embarrassed expression. “I’m sure lady Amunet wouldn’t mind.”

Kassandra seemed glad to hear that, standing and facing the spring. “Um, would it be too awkward if I soaked in the water, miss Evie?”

Of course, I wouldn’t mind you being naked, I thought, Who would? “No, it’s fine if you do, Kassandra, please, go right on ahead.”

She thanked me, though it’s not like I own the spring and can dictate who is allowed to use it. I took my journal out of my bag to sketch the dragonflies dancing across lily pads and the rippling surface, but mainly to give Kassandra some privacy while she disrobed. Half way through drawing the body of the insect, my eyes wandered away from the paper and in her direction. She flipped her fur shawl off and unclasped her undershirt, revealing her back. Her skin was visibly sweaty, she must have been exploring for a while before coming across me. Next, she stepped out of her boots and pants, laying her clothes on a stone by the spring. Kassandra waded slowly into the water, moving her arms out to feel the cool, clear liquid swirl around her fingers. I couldn’t look away despite wanting to give her space, after all I had just met her. I found myself flipping to a blank page and sketch her figure as she wiped her hands over her body. I knew it was wrong to draw her nude without her consent, but I wanted to keep her image forever in my mind when I inevitably had to return to the palace and my dusty books. She unbraided her hair and dipped her head under the water. She flung her head back, her hair slinging sprinkles of beads across the surface.

I felt my cheeks warm. It was like watching a nymph play in a river, and I felt her aura pulling me toward her. I set the journal away and took off my sandals, Kassandra turning when she heard me rustling, the sunlight glistening off her wet chest and drenched locks. I gave a friendly smile to make myself feel less of a creep. “I think I might join you, Kassandra, it is terribly humid out and the spring is taunting me.”

It’s true I was being taunted, but it wasn’t by the spring. No, this woman’s body was like a siren’s call, awakening lust with its silent song only your soul could hear.

“It does feel quite refreshing, Evie.”

I lifted my gown up and over my shoulders, pulling down my panties and folding them next to my shoes and purse. Kassandra moved to help me into the spring so I wouldn’t slip, though her standing so near with my hand in hers made me feel light headed, her image clouding my mind. Her chivalry is nice and all, but this might get dangerous if she keeps it up.

The water embraced me, though I ached for the hand I was holding to clutch me instead. My thoughts flooded my common sense as I developed a dazed look in my eyes, staring down her wet frame. To rest my head against her neck, to feel her lips trail down my bosom, to press myself against her, to become one in this secret place. It was immoral of me to think of this as I had been betrothed to another who I loved, but he could never compare to her grace. She just held herself with an air of confidence, like she’s had eras of practice with women of all backgrounds, like she was a mythical creature that comes out whenever a woman heaves a melancholy sigh. I wish a gorgon would come and petrify us in this state so I could stand locked in Kassandra’s eyes with her for the next century. Better yet, to be a stone Kassandra carves so I could feel her press into my body day in day out and smooth me over and over until she’s done with me and I can stare at her without her notice.

“Uh, milady Evie, your hand.”

Her voice startled me and I flicked my eyes down, realizing I was still holding onto her. I released, blushing and staring into the water away from her. “Oh, oh my, I’m sorry about that.”

God, I’m such a dunce sometimes.

She chuckled. “It’s quite all right, dear, I don’t mind you staring.”

My eyes widened. She knows I’ve been staring at her this entire time, I thought, a hot feeling settling in my arms. Of course, she knows, I hadn’t managed to keep my eyes off her for long since she saved me. I’m such a harlot, I haven’t known her for longer than an hour, what am I doing?

“Kassandra, I’m sorry I’ve been lost on you for so long. I know I’m being rude, after everything you’ve done for me in this short time, I really shouldn’t be acting so stricken right now,” I was chagrinned, my desire for her drowning my senses.

She placed her palm to my shoulder, reaching around with her other hand to tilt my chin towards her, snagging my eyes in hers yet again. “Evie, I swear to you whatever you have been daydreaming about is nothing compared to what I yearn to do for you. You’re stunning, you’re intelligent, you’re sweet to me despite our class differences and short time being together, and you being ashamed of yourself for your mind makes you appear restrained. Let me help you release your tenseness; I promise to give you the attention you need.”

I was shocked, to say the least. That this, goddess, would want to treat me so. “Kassandra, I—”

She took both my wrists in her fingers and pulled me near. “Evie, I would build a shrine for you, I would sacrifice myself if it meant to stay with you forever in the afterlife, I want to worship you as the nobility you refuse to accept yourself as. Please, allow me to do this for you.”

This has to be a lucid dream, there is no way this woman is real, she can’t be serious right now, I thought. “Kassandra, you’re lying, you can’t actually want to—”

She leaned in and kissed me on my lips, holding me still for a moment before pulling back. “Did that feel like a lie, miss Evie?”

I’ll be honest, it didn’t. It felt like I had just passed away in my bed and cherubs were leading me to heaven. I closed my eyes for a moment then looked up at her. “Do that again. Everywhere.”

She shown a grateful smile and leaned into me again, our lips fitting together as she undid my hair and tossed my circlet to my things. Kassandra and I made out, our tongues touching at first on accident but then just because neither of us cared. We backed toward the small waterfall, it cascading down us as Kassandra ran her fingers through my hair. Losing a battle with my self-control, I found my arms wrapping around her neck and tugging her against me while I leaned against the wet stone. True, the shower and rocks were freezing, but her touch warmed me so, I could barely notice. She led me away, our lips not once parting, and laid me across a large horizontal stone that stuck out of the spring.

She pulled back for us to get proper breaths and Kassandra held my face in her left hand. “Evie, may I touch here?” she asked, gesturing toward my pelvis.

I nodded. “I did say everywhere.”

“Yes, of course, you’re right.” She lowered her face toward my neck, her breath tickling me. “Everywhere.”

She smelt like petrichor, so close to me, and I knew that today she’d ensure that, every time it rained, she would come to my memories. Her hands held my hips as she trailed her lips down my body like I had desired them to earlier. Kassandra licked at the water that clung to my breasts but didn’t stay fixated on them for too long like a man would, she knew exactly where she needed to be.

Her mouth continued down to my naval and then she spread my legs, a firm grip on both of my thighs. I moaned softly from her teasing kiss she left on my clitoris, her hot breath exciting me. Kassandra’s tongue started at the base of my vagina, coming slowly back up to where she had kissed. She circled it with the underside of her tongue, never lingering too long on one side. Her right thumb came down below her chin and rubbed my perineum, pushing down on it as she closed her lips around my clit. I felt my hips twitch; it had been so long since someone else did this for me. My hands reached down and clutched the back of her head, pulling her closer. I heard her chuckle, muffled against me. She knows that she has me now under the control of her mouth, flicking her tongue up and down like she was flipping a switch.

I felt a sense of hiraeth at her mercy. She had me biting my bottom lip, she could easily make me come quickly but she wanted to make sure she made this feeling last as long as possible. Never has anyone ate me slowly to savor their meal, it’s usually because they’re unsure what to do. I tangled my fingers in her chestnut hair, tilting my head back to moan, her sucking making me gasp.

“Oh, fuck,” I whispered under my breath and she decided it was time to finish me off.

I gasped, my pelvis tingling, my finger tips feeling like they had been burnt, they felt numb but not in a painful way. My toes curled, my clitoris trembling as she kept licking at me, not letting it come up for air. Arching my back from the stone, I wrapped my legs around her shoulders like I had before with my arms. I released her from my thighs’ hold after I steadied my breath and she came to kiss me again, her body over mine. I swung my arms and legs over her, pulling Kassandra down against my skin. She set herself so her thigh would rub against me again, taking one of my hands down to feel her. Kassandra was wet too, from more than the spring, I could feel her pulsing in my palm. I rubbed her clitoris between my fingers, her moaning into my mouth and her hand that get her propped up over me nearly slipping. It made me happy to know I was making her feel as I did earlier. She kept my hand steady on her, guiding my fingers to tell them exactly what she wanted. She backed off from kissing me as she came from my hand, her voice sounding so delicate doused in pleasure. Kassandra pressed her body against mine and kissed me again, this time I could tell it was to make up for her mouth not being able to say “thank you” at the moment.

She stood slowly and I sat up on the stone. She laughed, pointing toward the buck from earlier standing at the spring’s edge, sniffing at us from afar. “It appears we have a peeping tom.”

I giggled, moving to my feet, feeling that Kassandra had stolen part of my heart. The cool water around my pelvis made me shiver again, just not because it was cold. We waded hand in hand back to our belongings, the deer running off from us approaching. Kassandra and I got dressed and she kissed the top of my head.

“Would you mind if I walked you back to the palace’s gate, my princess?” she cooed in my ear.

“Of course not,” I entwined my fingers in hers. “And if you stay in the area, I’ll see about having you knighted in this kingdom, too. You deserve it after proving your ‘worthiness’ today.”

She snorted from her laughter which made me laugh too, leaning against her as she led me back down the path. The poor wolf from earlier was being scavenged by an eagle, which chirped at Kassandra as we passed it. I moved off of her when we neared the queen’s demesne as to not appear to any onlookers that I had been having a little affair while my fiancé was away. Luckily for us, the only person that saw us was the visiting Auditore prince, and he has plenty of scandals of his own to deal with.

I hugged her goodbye, Kassandra assuring me that this wouldn’t be the last time I see her, especially after I pointed out which window was mine with a wink. She kept her eyes on me until I had entered the palace and from outside my window, I could see her petting the eagle. She waved goodbye and walked off into the forest she came from. That night as I laid with my face in my pillow, I thought of her and decided to flip through my rough sketches of her. In my bag I discovered she had left a glove in my bag alongside one of the bird’s speckled feathers. I held them close to my chest, knowing that this night’s memory would last a lifetime, if not longer, then set them next to me in my bed, dreaming of Kassandra and all the things she did for me.

#i write #evandra #evie #kassandra #assassins creed #ac syndicate #ac odyssey #acod #acs #i talk #this is so gay oh my god i need to calm down #my lesbian is showing yall #evie frye #i might reblog my edward smuts so that they can be properly tagged too #since they are gone in my notes #lol anyway have fun with this sorry i used so many metaphors this reads like a hozier song #its 5:37pm #theres literally only one cuss word in this whole fic lol #this is what i do when i have essays due for class

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