amaris-whisperer

[amaris-whisperer]

The Lifeguard and the Ghostwriter l Conrad Fisher x Reader

Pairing: Conrad Fisher x Reader Genre: Summer Romance, Slow Burn, Soft Angst, Writer x Muse Summary: You didn’t come to Cousins Beach for love — you came to write. But every morning you try to find your words, he’s already there: Conrad Fisher, the quiet lifeguard with stormy eyes and a sadness he doesn’t speak of. And before you know it, he becomes the heart of your story — and maybe something more.

--

You didn’t come to Cousins Beach for love. You came to write.

That was the whole point: escape. Vanish for the summer to a place where no one knew your name, where deadlines and expectations couldn’t follow. You needed silence, solitude, space to breathe and create. You told your agent you had a vision. You told your editor the first draft was close. But the truth was, you hadn’t written a single honest sentence in weeks. Your main character had no voice, your plot had no heart, and the blinking cursor on your screen had become the most familiar presence in your life. So you packed a duffel and rented a dusty beach cottage on a whim, hoping the ocean air would shake something loose inside your chest.

Each morning, you walked barefoot to the sand with a battered notebook in hand, always before the crowds came, always before the noise drowned out your thoughts. You’d sit cross-legged near the dunes, fingers poised around a pen, waiting for something — anything — to come. The story wouldn’t. But he always did.

The lifeguard.

You didn’t know his name at first. Just that he was tall, broad-shouldered, always perched at the highest point of the whitewashed tower like a quiet sentinel. He wore the same navy swim trunks every day, a whistle around his neck and a deep crease between his brows. He didn’t joke with the others. He didn’t smile. He watched the water like it might betray him, like something might rise out of it and take him with it. You found yourself glancing up more than you should. You told yourself it was nothing — a distraction, a small curiosity — but you were lying. It was more than that.

He was beautiful, of course. Tan skin, lean arms, messy brown hair that curled when it dried, and eyes like a storm brewing far offshore. But it wasn’t just his looks. It was the way he carried sadness like a second skin. The kind you recognized. The kind that didn’t want to be seen but couldn’t quite hide. He reminded you of a line you wrote once and then deleted — Some people are born with broken hearts and learn how to keep them beating anyway.

You didn’t speak for weeks. You sat in your corner of the sand. He sat in his tower. Occasionally, your eyes would meet. He’d nod once. You’d look away. It was routine. Quiet. Predictable. Until the day you ripped out a page from your notebook in frustration, crumpled it, and missed your tote bag by a mile. It rolled across the sand, landing near the base of his tower. You sighed, about to stand and grab it, when a shadow stretched across your blanket. You looked up, blinking into the sun, and there he was.

“This yours?” he asked, holding out the paper.

You reached for it, embarrassed. “Yeah. Sorry. Writing tantrum.”

He glanced down at it, then back at you. “You’re a writer?”

“Trying to be.” You smoothed the crumpled page, then stuffed it deep into your bag.

“What’s the story?”

You raised a brow. “Excuse me?”

“The page I grabbed. It was about a girl walking into the ocean.”

Your breath caught. “You read it?”

“I skimmed it.” He offered a small shrug. “It was open.”

You narrowed your eyes. “Rude.”

He smiled — a real one, small and slanted and so disarming it made your chest twist. “Maybe. But it was good.”

You hesitated, surprised. “Thanks.”

He stood there a moment longer, then said, “Do you… like sad endings?”

You thought about that. “Only when they mean something.”

He nodded. “Fair.” And then, just as you started to wonder if you imagined the softness in his voice, he added, “I think some people are made for them.”

With that, he turned and climbed back up to his post, leaving you breathless in the sand, your notebook still blank. --

The next day, he waved when you arrived. A small flick of his fingers from the lifeguard chair, casual but unmistakably for you. You waved back, almost shy, the corner of your mouth lifting before you could stop it.

The day after that, he climbed down during his break, barefoot in the sand with a half-eaten sandwich in hand. “Turkey and Swiss,” he said, holding it out. “It’s either this or trail mix that expired last year.”

You laughed and took the offered half. “You have terrible taste in trail mix.”

He grinned, and you couldn’t help noticing how different he looked when he smiled — younger somehow, like some invisible weight lifted when he let his guard down.

So you brought him iced tea the next morning. One with lemon, one without. You gave him the choice. He picked the one with lemon and said, “Good call,” like you’d passed some secret test.

You started talking after that. Just a few words at first. Comments about the weather. Observations about jellyfish floating in on the tide. The heatwave that turned the sand into something near volcanic. The weird, chaotic things kids screamed at their parents — “I’m not putting sunscreen on unless you pay me!” — and the odd couples who set up umbrellas like they were waging war against the sun.

“Some of these families could be characters,” he said once, watching a father struggle to stake a beach tent into the sand while three toddlers cried over a melted popsicle.

You laughed. “You have no idea how many people I’ve silently cast in my book already.”

He looked at you, intrigued. “What’s it about?”

You hesitated, surprised by the question. Most people asked out of politeness. He sounded like he actually wanted to know.

“Right now?” You glanced down at your notebook. “A girl running away from something she can’t name. She thinks the ocean might help. But she doesn’t know how to swim.”

Conrad nodded, thoughtful. “So she’s drowning slowly.”

You blinked. “That’s... exactly it.”

“Does someone save her?”

“I haven’t decided yet,” you murmured, though part of you already knew.

That was the beginning of the shift.

From then on, he asked something new every day. “How do you come up with names?” “Do you always write longhand first?” “Is it lonely?” And in return, you asked about him. Not just surface-level stuff, but the things that lingered under the skin. He told you he studied biochemistry at Brown — a detail that surprised you. “I thought you’d be a literature guy,” you admitted.

“Too many feelings,” he said with a smirk. “Science is easier to solve.”

You learned he lifeguarded every summer, had since he was sixteen. Not for fun, but because someone needed to — because he was always the one who needed to step up. He didn’t say it bitterly, but there was something underneath. A hint of weariness. A glimpse of a boy who carried too much for too long.

His name, you finally learned, was Conrad. Conrad Fisher.

It echoed in your mind all night, over and over again, until the boy you’d been sketching in your notebook — vague and faceless, a stand-in for something you couldn’t define — suddenly had a name. A shape. A soul.

He became the lifeguard in your fiction. The one with quiet eyes and a careful heart. The one who watched the ocean like it owed him answers. You gave him a backstory that you didn’t fully understand yet — a mother who cried at night, a girl who left without a word, a weight in his chest that he didn’t know how to set down. You gave him silence, and strength, and the kind of longing that made you ache to write more.

But you also gave him warmth. The kind he didn’t know he had until the girl arrived — the girl who saw through the armor and asked anyway. You wrote a scene one night that poured out of you like water, unstoppable: she’s standing ankle-deep in the ocean, terrified of going further, and he wades in behind her, offers her his hand.

"Just lie back," he tells her, his voice soft. "I’ll hold you up. I’ve got you."

And she believes him.

You reread that line over and over again. I’ve got you.

It wasn’t supposed to mean anything. It was fiction. Just a scene. Just a lifeguard and a girl.

But when you looked up from your notebook the next morning and saw Conrad already watching you from his tower, arms crossed over his chest, wind in his hair, something in your chest clenched. Something real. Something blooming slowly, like a secret.

You told yourself it was still fiction.

But the truth — the dangerous, irresistible truth — was that every word felt closer to you than anything else you’d written all year.

And Conrad Fisher, without even knowing it, had become your favorite story.

--

It was a week later when you made your mistake. You left your notebook open in the sand while you went to grab coffee. When you came back, he was holding it, flipping through the pages. You froze.

“What the hell,” you blurted.

He looked up, guilt clear on his face. “I didn’t know it was yours.”

“My name is literally on the front.”

“I thought maybe it was… I don’t know. A journal someone left behind. I wasn’t going to—” He stopped. “I’m sorry.”

You walked over and snatched it from his hands, your cheeks burning. “You don’t get to read that.”

“I only read a page. Or two.”

You glared.

“I stopped when I saw the lifeguard character,” he said carefully. “Was that me?”

Your throat tightened. “What?”

“That scene. With the ocean. With the girl who doesn’t know how to swim but trusts him anyway.” His voice was softer now. “You wrote me like someone who saves her.”

You hugged the notebook to your chest. “Maybe I wanted to.”

He stepped closer. “You don’t even know me.”

“I want to,” you said, the words escaping before you could stop them.

For a second, he didn’t say anything. Then his gaze flickered to your mouth, then back to your eyes, and without another word, he kissed you.

It was soft. Warm. Salt on your lips and heat between your palms. He kissed you like he was afraid to break something. Like this wasn’t the end of something but the beginning. When he pulled back, his forehead pressed to yours, you whispered, “I thought you didn’t smile.”

“I do now,” he said.

That night, you wrote until your hand ached. Pages and pages. The girl. The lifeguard. The summer sky. You wrote a line where he said, “I’ve spent every summer waiting for someone to see me. And you did.”

You wrote it like fiction.

But it felt like a memory.

The next morning, he brought you coffee.

“I didn’t know how you take it,” he said, holding two cups.

You smiled. “You’re impossible.”

“Maybe.”

You sat beside him in the shadow of the lifeguard tower and let the waves do the talking. He told you about his mom. About the way everything felt heavier after she died. About Belly. And the kind of love that takes and doesn’t give back. You didn’t push. You just listened.

When you told him about your book, how stuck you’d been until now, he looked at you like he already knew.

“I think I was writing toward you,” you said.

His fingers found yours, threading between them.

“Then let me be worth it.”

Maybe it wouldn’t last. Maybe the story would end when summer did. Maybe this was only a chapter. But for now, he was here. You were here. And the words were finally coming back.

You didn’t come to Cousins Beach for love.

But sometimes, the story finds you first.

[amaris-whisperer]

Redacted l Bucky Barnes x Reader l Part 4 (Final)

Genre: Slow burn, angst with comfort, friends to lovers, team meddling, Soft!Bucky, bittersweet-to-sweet resolution

Setting: Thunderbolts AU

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Reader

Part 1 l Part 2 l Part 3 l Part 4 (complete)

—

You didn't remember walking out of the shop.

Your feet moved, but the world blurred at the edges—senses soft, overrun, like you were dreaming and afraid to wake. Bucky walked beside you, not touching you, not saying much, just there in a way that made your breath catch every time you glanced at him and saw he was still real.

He didn't ask where you'd been.

You didn't ask how he'd found you.

Not yet.

Some truths could wait.

The plastic grocery bag dangled between you, swinging gently, forgotten cereal box peeking through the top. His hand brushed yours once, by accident, and both of you flinched like it was the first time all over again.

The short walk back to your apartment felt like crossing galaxies.

The old woman downstairs waved as you passed her café window. You forced a smile. Bucky gave her a respectful nod, like muscle memory from another life. She didn't notice the way your hands trembled when you unlocked the door.

You stepped inside first. The smell of your quiet life greeted you—coffee beans, soap, paper, rain.

Bucky lingered in the doorway a second longer.

His eyes swept the room with that same hypervigilant scan you knew so well. Old habit. Ghosts in the walls. He clocked every escape route, every blind spot.

Then his gaze landed on the framed photo on your bookshelf.

It was blurry. Low quality. Taken from a distance on a rooftop—him, helmet off, hands resting on his knees after a battle, sunlight on his face.

You watched his throat move as he swallowed.

You set the bag on the counter. He followed slowly, like crossing the threshold into your space was sacred. Like he didn't want to scare you off.

You didn't speak.

Not until he did.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

His voice was low. Not angry. Not yet. But raw.

You turned to him, arms folded like a shield.

"Because you would've tried to stop me."

"You're damn right I would've." He stepped closer, jaw tight. "I would've burned everything down to keep you safe. You didn't have to disappear."

"I did, Buck. If I stayed, Val would've buried me—and anyone near me. You. The team. The mission. Everything."

He stared at you like he was trying to memorize your face, like maybe he'd forget it again if he blinked too long.

"I looked for you," he said, voice breaking. "Every damn day."

"I know," you whispered. "I saw you. On the news. Online. On cereal boxes, apparently."

He didn't laugh. He just moved.

Closed the distance between you with one step.

"You saved me," he said, so soft it hurt. "But you broke me too."

"I broke myself."

You reached for him then—gently, slowly—and when your hand touched his chest, the dam cracked open.

His arms wrapped around you like armor. He buried his face in your shoulder. You held him as his breath hitched, as five years of grief and guilt and rage simmered between your bodies, waiting for a place to go.

You didn't know who moved first.

Maybe you both did.

His mouth was on yours, sudden and desperate, tasting of salt and memory. His hands framed your face like you were something holy. You pulled him closer, fingers curling in the fabric of his coat, like you could drag him through time and back into the years you lost.

You kicked the door closed behind him.

Clothes fell in pieces—his coat, your shirt, the years between you stripped layer by layer until skin met skin and silence shattered.

It wasn't gentle.

It wasn't perfect.

It was needed.

It was your back against the wall and his body pressing against yours like gravity.

It was his breath in your ear, voice low and ragged:

"Tell me I wasn't a mistake."

And your answer, trembling and true:

"You were my favorite one."

The bed was shared eventually—barely made, still rumpled from a sleepless night before, now sacred under the weight of reunion.

His hands roamed your body like he was relearning a language. Yours clutched his shoulders like they were lifelines. The space between you burned hotter than the war you left behind.

It wasn't just sex.

It was years of unspoken confessions. Of loss. Of longing. Of everything you didn't get to say before the goodbye you never gave.

You whispered his name like a prayer.

He moaned yours like it was the only word he remembered.

And when it was over—when the heat settled and the silence wrapped around you like a blanket—you didn't speak right away.

You just laid there.

Forehead to forehead. Fingers entwined.

The storm had passed.

But the real questions were still coming.

And this time, you wouldn't face them alone.

—

Morning light filtered through the thin curtain, painting the room in soft gold.

You stirred first, eyelids fluttering open to the quiet rhythm of the city beyond your window—buses passing, distant chatter, the familiar grind of life starting again.

But for once, you weren't alone.

Bucky was still there.

Lying on his side, shirtless, chest rising and falling in that steady, soldier's rhythm even in sleep. His arm was flung across your waist, protective by instinct, like he didn't trust the world not to steal you again.

You turned carefully, drinking him in.

The faint lines by his eyes. The small scar beneath his lip. The silver glint of his arm where it caught the light.

He looked peaceful.

You hadn't seen him like this in years.

He stirred, just barely, as if he felt your gaze before he opened his eyes.

Steel-blue. Blinking into focus.

And then... the faintest smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

"Morning," he rasped.

"Hey," you whispered.

For a moment, neither of you moved. You just looked at each other.

Like a dream you were both afraid would dissolve if you blinked too fast.

Then his fingers brushed your cheek. Light. Gentle.

"You're still here," he murmured.

"You too."

He leaned in and kissed your forehead. It wasn't the desperate fire of the night before—it was soft, reverent. A promise, maybe.

You exhaled slowly.

And then came the question you'd been dreading.

"So..." he said, voice cautious now. "What happens next?"

You sat up a little, pulling the sheet with you, heart suddenly heavy again.

"That depends," you said quietly.

"On what?"

"On whether you still trust me," you said, eyes locked on the skyline. "On whether you're willing to be seen with someone who broke protocol and vanished into a ghost file."

His hand slipped into yours.

"I don't care about protocol."

"You should."

"I don't," he said, firmer now. "I care about you. I've always cared about you. That didn't change when you disappeared—it just hurt like hell."

You looked down, blinking fast.

"I thought keeping you in the dark was the only way to keep you safe."

"And I thought losing you was the only way I could break."

You swallowed, hard.

"I still have the flash drive."

That caught his attention. He sat up beside you, brows furrowed.

"I thought you leaked everything."

"I did. But there's a key still locked on it. Something... final. A failsafe. If Val survived the fall, if she ever came back—"

"She won't."

"But if she does—I can end her for good."

Bucky was silent for a long beat.

And then, gently: "Why didn't you destroy it?"

You looked at him, raw and honest.

"Because I needed something. Something that proved all of it mattered. That what we did... what I sacrificed... meant something."

His expression cracked—just a little. He reached up, thumb stroking the edge of your jaw.

"It did," he said. "It still does."

You leaned into him again, resting your head against his shoulder, the two of you tangled in morning light and truth.

You weren't running anymore.

And for the first time in years, neither was he.

—

Time flies.

The sun hung high over the compound, casting a warm glow across the open training field. It was supposed to be a day off.

Supposed to be.

Bucky stood near the center of the field in full gear—minus the scowl, which had been replaced by something dangerously close to amusement. Sam was on the sidelines stretching, sunglasses on, mouthing, "I'm not helping this time."

Yelena was pretending not to notice what was about to happen.

The rest of the team?

Already too late.

Because behind the tactical crates, under a patchy camo net that had not been there ten minutes ago, three small shadows lay in wait.

Ben—your eldest, seven years old and full of his father's seriousness—was the commander. He clutched a pair of plastic binoculars and whispered into a walkie-talkie fashioned out of an old radio mic.

"Target acquired. Launch phase in three... two... one—twins, go!"

From behind the bushes, a high-pitched battle cry erupted.

"FOR THE SNACK DRAWER!!"

Barry and Bella—five-year-old tornadoes in matching camo shirts and hand-drawn Thunderbolts masks—launched themselves into the open field with foam swords in hand and absolutely zero regard for anyone's personal space.

Ghost barely turned in time before Bella attached herself to his leg like a koala.

"My Ghost!! We meet again!!"

He sighed like a man who had lived too long. "I told you. My name's not—"

Thwack!

Barry hit him with a sponge grenade. "No talking! You're a villain!"

Yelena ducked a flying water balloon with the grace of a trained assassin.

"I swear, they multiply," she muttered.

From the sidelines, you sipped your iced coffee, sunglasses on, watching the chaos unfold like the world's most entertaining action movie.

Bucky jogged over to where you stood, panting slightly from his own recent ambush. He had glitter on his neck.

"Why is Ben yelling about flanking maneuvers?" he asked.

"Because you let him read your mission logs as a bedtime story last week."

He blinked.

"Right."

You tilted your head, smiling. "You look like you're enjoying yourself."

"I was," he said dryly, flicking a sticker grenade off his shoulder. "Until someone weaponized arts and crafts."

Just then, Ben appeared at your side, breathless and triumphant. He pointed at his dad with wild authority.

"Sergeant Barnes, you are outnumbered and outgunned. Surrender your popsicle stash or face tickle interrogation."

Bucky squinted down at his son.

"You wouldn't dare."

"I would triple dare."

Bucky leaned in slowly, nose to nose with Ben. "Don't forget who taught you how to sneak past a perimeter, soldier."

Ben narrowed his eyes.

"That's why I already stole the key to your safe drawer."

Your jaw dropped. "Ben!"

He just grinned and ran.

"Get him!" Bella shouted, charging after her brother with a battle cry.

Bucky turned to you, mock offended. "He's literally using my own playbook against me."

You shrugged. "That's what happens when a super soldier has kids with someone raised on espionage and chaos."

He smiled then. Not the small, careful smiles of the man who once flinched at every noise. But the kind of smile that came from a place healed by time, by love, by family.

"They're little monsters," he said proudly.

"They're ours."

In the distance, U.S. Agent was dramatically yelling, "I'M NOT A TREE!" as Barry scaled him like one.

Yelena laughed so hard she nearly dropped her energy bar.

Red Guardian had resigned himself to being used as a jungle gym. Again.

And in the middle of the madness, your kids—your three beautiful, chaotic, brilliant little nightmares—were thriving. Free. Loud. Safe.

Bucky turned back to you, pulled you in by the waist, and kissed the top of your head.

"We really did it," he murmured. "We made it out."

You leaned into him, eyes never leaving your kids.

"No," you whispered. "We didn't just make it out.

We made something better."

[amaris-whisperer]

Redacted l Bucky Barnes x Reader l Part 3

Genre: Slow burn, angst with comfort, friends to lovers, team meddling, Soft!Bucky, bittersweet-to-sweet resolution

Setting: Thunderbolts AU

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Reader

Part 1 l Part 2 l Part 3 l Part 4 (complete)

—

The safehouse was too quiet.

Too still.

The kind of quiet that didn't feel like peace—it felt like goodbye.

You sat alone at the rickety desk in the corner, the dim glow of a cracked laptop screen illuminating the shadows under your eyes. Rain tapped relentlessly against the warped windowpane, soft at first, then sharper, like a warning. The storm outside mirrored the one inside you—wild, relentless, impossible to calm.

Your hands hovered over the keys. You hadn't typed anything in minutes.

In the next room, Bucky slept for the first time in two days. He hadn't meant to—he'd been trying to stay up, waiting for you to finish decrypting the final files. But exhaustion finally won. You'd tucked a blanket over him the way you always did, careful not to wake him.

He looked peaceful like this. Unburdened. For a moment, he wasn't the hunted, the ex-assassin, the man with blood on his ledger and steel in his spine.

He was just... Bucky.

The man who held you too tightly when he came back from missions. Who whispered apologies in your ear even when you told him there was nothing to forgive. Who kissed you like he didn't believe he'd survive the next day, but hoped to god he would if only to see you again.

You swallowed the lump in your throat and looked back down at the screen. The decrypted files glared up at you—line after line of names, dates, bodies that had disappeared under the guise of "oversight." The real Thunderbolt missions. The dirty ones.

It was all here. The evidence. The key to dismantling Valentina's operation, to tearing her from the inside out.

And it was enough to destroy you, too.

Because if you released this... if you went forward with the plan you'd mapped out in secret...

You'd have to disappear.

For good.

You leaned forward, hands trembling as you typed into the field labeled FINAL TRANSMISSION. Just eight words. Simple. Final. True.

"Trust me. I love you. I'm doing this to save you."

You stared at them for a long moment, blinking through the burn in your eyes.

Your breath hitched.

You didn't sob. You couldn't afford to. But tears slipped down anyway—uninvited, unstoppable.

You pressed your fingers against your mouth, trying not to make a sound.

I'm breaking your heart.

Just like you're breaking mine.

Because even though he'd never asked you to stay—he needed you to. And even though you'd never asked him to choose—you knew he would, every time.

You couldn't let him choose you again.

Not if it meant he died for it.

Not if it meant losing the only part of him that had survived everything he'd done: his freedom.

You closed the laptop gently, like you were tucking away a secret.

Then you stood and moved silently through the room—pulling on your coat, your boots, the small flash drive tucked into your inner pocket like a ticking bomb only you were willing to carry.

You paused by the bedroom door. He was still asleep, arm thrown over the edge of the mattress, one scarred hand relaxed and open.

You wanted to kiss him goodbye.

You almost did.

But you knew if you touched him, you wouldn't leave.

So you turned away.

And walked into the storm.

Alone.

—

By the time Bucky returned, the safehouse was silent.

Too silent.

He stepped through the door with the usual tension in his spine, scanning the perimeter like muscle memory. He was holding a paper bag, the edges soaked from the drizzle outside, full of whatever food and parts he could barter for.

He called out your name once.

Twice.

No answer.

The chill didn't hit him all at once. It sank in slowly—like frost creeping through cracks in concrete.

The cot was cold. The coat you always wore was gone. The encrypted files on the laptop were missing from the terminal. No duffel bag. No coffee cup still warm.

No note.

No whisper of goodbye.

Just the soft hum of static from the power source under the table, and the echo of his own breath.

He dropped the bag on the floor without realizing it, heart pounding as he checked every corner, every blind spot, as if you were simply hiding—playing a cruel game of ghost.

But when he finally looked at the laptop, his knees almost buckled.

The screen glowed dimly in the dark, its flickering blue light illuminating just one message:

"Trust me. I love you. I'm doing this to save you."

His hand hovered over the keyboard, shaking.

He read it again.

And again.

As if repetition would change the words. As if it would summon you back into the room.

His voice cracked, low and broken as he whispered:

"I'll find you. No matter what."

Then silence swallowed him whole.

—

Days bled into weeks.

Bucky Barnes became a ghost.

Not to the public—he still wore the mask when he had to. Still fought, still hunted the people who deserved it. But something in him had shifted.

A man who had already lost too much had now lost something he wasn't sure he could survive without: hope.

He followed every lead. Burned through safehouses and whispers on the dark net. Shook down old contacts, traded favors, watched security footage in alley basements until his vision blurred.

Sometimes, he'd find a trace—a name that resembled yours, a CCTV snapshot with your frame blurred in motion, a rumor from a street vendor in Macau or Istanbul.

Always a step behind.

Always too late.

But he never stopped looking.

And you?

You saw him.

Once in a while.

On screens in underground cafes. On news clips, grainy and edited by a government still trying to decide if he was a hero or a weapon.

But the public had chosen. They called him a savior.

The new face of something clean.

Something good.

The soldier who turned his back on war.

You watched it all from the shadows, wearing new names, living half-lives, pretending you didn't reach out toward the screen when his face appeared.

You'd see him holding the shield, jaw set with conviction, surrounded by people who believed in him.

You were proud of him. Prouder than he'd ever know.

Because you had disappeared to protect that version of him—the version who could live without looking over his shoulder for you.

And still, some nights, when the city lights faded and the silence pressed in, you whispered into the dark:

"I love you. I'm still here."

Because love like yours—

Like his—

Doesn't end in silence.

It waits. It fights. It burns.

—

Five years.

That's how long it had been since you vanished from the world that nearly devoured you whole.

No more encrypted bunkers. No more cold war in alleyways. No more late nights drenched in adrenaline, your skin sticky with sweat and someone else's blood while you whispered secrets between broken kisses and bandaged wounds.

Just quiet now.

A tiny walk-up apartment above a sleepy coffee shop in the older part of Busan. Your name wasn't your own anymore. Your passport said you were someone else entirely—someone with no history, no affiliations, no war trailing behind her like smoke.

The streets here didn't know your face. And that was the point.

You worked in a bookstore tucked between a bar and a noodle house. You smiled politely at regulars. You made tea for your landlady, a sweet, wrinkled woman with a cane and no curiosity. She never asked about the scars on your arms, or the nights you cried out in your sleep, or why you flinched when the news played anything with military footage.

She simply brought you fresh gimbap and let you be.

You liked her for that.

Most days, you could almost pretend the life before had never happened.

Almost.

But there were still the souvenirs of your truth.

A flash drive, hidden under the floorboards, wrapped in cloth and memories. Containing what was left of the report—the one that had shattered Valentina's empire, splintered the Thunderbolts from within.

A scar, deep and pale near your right hip, the kind you earned in missions that never made the news. A memory sealed under skin.

And then... there was him.

You still kept Bucky Barnes.

Not physically, not in any dangerous, tangible way. But in the quiet moments. In the way you'd sometimes find yourself reaching for the space beside you in bed. In the dreams that bled into morning, full of metal hands and the feel of his breath at your throat.

In every ache that lived in your chest like something vital had been carved out and never stitched back in.

You missed him.

Every day.

Every damn day.

But you'd done what you came to do.

You'd saved him.

The day you leaked the report, you knew the target would shift. You knew Valentina would scramble, burn everything, dig for the mole—and never find you.

Because you were the ghost they made you into.

And the fallout had been beautiful.

Her power collapsed like rotten scaffolding.

Her secrets spilled into public record like bile.Thunderbolts defected. Whistleblowers surfaced. Nations pointed fingers. The task force was dissolved, rebranded, repurposed—until it was nothing but a cautionary tale in a high school civics class.

And Bucky?

He hadn't gone down with her.

He didn't just survive—he rose.

You watched from your laptop, your TV, your phone—streaming news clips and low-res bootlegs of international broadcasts.

He stood in front of the United Nations in a suit that didn't fit quite right, flanked by heroes, testifying on the misuse of post-blip military units.

He led raids against black ops ghost cells Valentina had left behind.

He rebuilt what she tried to turn him into.

He didn't rejoin the Thunderbolts.

He helped end them.

And then—against every odd stacked against him—he helped build something new.

They called it The New Avengers.

And for once, the name didn't feel like a gimmick.

He stood beside Yelena Belova, Red Guardian, Ghost, and U.S. Agent on magazine covers. Streaming ads showed him training recruits, smiling in glimpses that looked so genuine you couldn't believe they were real.

He was still Bucky.

But different.

Lighter.

There were toys now. T-shirts. A breakfast cereal with his face on the box, silver arm glinting under the words:

"THE SOLDIER WHO CHOSE PEACE."

It made you laugh the first time you saw it. A full, broken laugh that slid into a sob halfway through.

Because you were proud of him.

God, you were so proud.

Proud of what he'd become.

And proud that you had helped him get there—even if he'd never know how much it cost you.

You smiled every time you saw him on a screen, in a magazine, on a billboard in the subway.

But the smile never quite reached your eyes.

Because your chest still ached in that hollow place where he used to be.

You missed him like a limb.

And even though you knew leaving had been the right thing—

You never stopped aching.

You never stopped hoping.

—

That morning, the sun was kind.

Warm light poured gently through the buildings, softening the edges of the crowded Busan street market as it stirred to life. Vendors opened metal shutters, laid out rows of fruit and grilled fish, chattered with familiar customers. You knew most of them by name now. You blended here.

You liked the noise, the rhythm. It helped you forget you were still hiding.

The little corner shop on the end of the street was one of your quiet favorites. The shelves were cramped and overstocked, but the owner always gave you a nod and a discount, and never commented when you wandered in wearing dark glasses and a scarf, even in the heat.

Today, you moved through the aisles absentmindedly, a list in your pocket you hadn't bothered to look at. You stopped by habit in front of the cereal boxes.

Bright colors, mascots, sugar in every direction. But your hand didn't reach for the rabbit or the tiger.

Your fingers brushed a familiar shade of navy blue.

A bright box with bold lettering. A smirking man in a silver arm and tactical gear.

Bucky.

Grinning in his uniform. Holding Steve's shield—his shield now.

The "Avengers Breakfast Fuel" tagline curved above his image, ridiculous in a way that made your throat tighten.

He looked proud. At peace. The kind of peace you never thought he'd find.

God, you missed him.

Your fingers lingered on the box. You smiled to yourself—small, private, aching. One of those moments you let yourself have every once in a while.

And then—

A hand reached past your shoulder.

Long fingers closed around the box and plucked it from the shelf, swift and quiet.

You blinked, startled, turning halfway in a reflex that had never fully left you.

And then you froze.

Your breath stopped. Your body forgot how to move.

Because standing there—box in hand, in a plain black coat, dark cap pulled low—was him.

James Buchanan Barnes.

Older now. Just a little. There was gray at his temples, a deeper crease between his brows, the weight of the years etched into the corners of his eyes.

Eyes that had seen too much.

Eyes that were locked on yours like you were the first good thing he'd seen in a long time.

Neither of you moved.

The world went quiet, as if the city held its breath.

You couldn't speak. Couldn't blink. Could barely stand.

He looked at you like he'd spent every day imagining this exact moment—and still couldn't believe it was real.

He held the cereal box between you, his voice low, a touch hoarse:

"Still eating junk, huh?"

That broke the silence.

You laughed. Or tried to. It came out as a choked, shaky sound, half a sob, half a memory.

Your throat tightened, and your lips trembled as you whispered:

"You found me."

His nod was slow. Deliberate. His eyes never left your face.

"Took me long enough."

The cereal box fell to the floor between you, forgotten.

Then he stepped forward.

You didn't move.

Couldn't.

Your chest ached with something sharp and unbearable as he reached up—gentle, cautious—and touched your face.

His palm was warm against your cheek, the rough pads of his fingers skimming your jaw like he wasn't sure you were real.

You leaned into it before you could stop yourself.

Bucky's breath hitched.

"I thought you were dead."

"I almost was," you whispered. "But I couldn't let them take you down with me."

His jaw clenched. His hand slid behind your neck. You saw it in his eyes—the grief, the fury, the overwhelming relief.

He pulled you in.

And for the first time in five years, you felt like you could breathe again.

The street noise returned like a slow wave behind you—vendors shouting, scooters zipping past, a dog barking somewhere across the block.

But in that small corner of the cereal aisle, time stopped again.

Because you were here.

Together.

Still alive.

And suddenly, nothing else mattered.

[amaris-whisperer]

Redacted l Bucky Barnes x Reader l Part 2 l 18+

Genre: Slow burn, angst with comfort, friends to lovers, team meddling, Soft!Bucky, bittersweet-to-sweet resolution

Setting: Thunderbolts AU

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Reader (fem or gn)

Warnings: Mature content (18+)

Part 1 l Part 2 l Part 3 l Part 4 (complete)

—

Safehouse. Post-mission. The moment everything breaks.

The room was still. Shadows painted the walls in gray-blue hues. The only sound was your breathing, slightly uneven as Bucky sat across from you, eyes dark and unreadable in the flickering generator light.

Neither of you spoke.

Because nothing needed to be said anymore.

He stood first—slowly, cautiously—as though giving you a chance to stop him. You didn't.

He crossed the space between you and reached out, brushing his knuckles along your jaw. His touch was featherlight, but it set off something beneath your skin like a tripwire.

"I tried to stay away," he murmured. "Tried to keep this clean. Professional."

Your heart thudded.

You whispered, "You didn't try very hard."

He exhaled a soft, almost broken laugh.

And then his mouth was on yours.

This kiss wasn't about flirtation or fun. It was months—maybe years—of everything both of you had buried. Every time your eyes lingered too long, every brush of fingers in dark corridors, every mission that nearly killed one of you.

His hands cupped your face, thumbs sweeping over your cheekbones. Yours tangled in his hair, tugging, grounding yourself in something real.

The kiss deepened. His mouth moved against yours with increasing urgency, and you gave in—utterly. There was no point in pretending anymore. No masks. No rules.

You broke away just long enough to whisper, "Don't stop."

"Not planning on it."

His hands found your waist, lifted your shirt. You raised your arms, let it go. His gaze never left yours—checking, confirming.

"This is your last out," he said, voice hoarse.

"I'm already in," you breathed.

He kissed down your throat, his stubble scraping a path of fire across your skin. You gasped softly, your fingers pulling at the waistband of his pants.

And then you were in the bed—bare skin against bare skin, sheets tangled at your hips, limbs wrapped like ivy. He moved over you, around you, with you—not like a soldier, not like an assassin—but like a man trying to memorize you.

You arched under him, breath hitching as his hand found your thigh, pulled you closer.

Every movement was reverent, aching, real.

He kissed your shoulder, your collarbone, your mouth again. When you looked into his eyes, you didn't see the Winter Soldier.

You saw Bucky.

Your hands framed his face as he entered you, slowly, carefully. The breath he let out was ragged. Yours matched it.

The rhythm built gradually—no frantic rush, just tension unraveling between shared breaths, soft groans, whispered curses. You wrapped your legs around him, burying your face in his neck as your body melted into his.

He whispered your name like a vow. You whispered his like a secret you were finally allowed to say out loud.

When it crested, it wasn't an explosion. It was a collapse—quiet, shaking, breathless.

He held you through it. Like he didn't want to let you go.

Like he knew he might have to.

After, he laid beside you, arm slung over your waist, thumb brushing your side in slow, grounding strokes.

You spoke first, barely audible: "You were a mistake."

He didn't even flinch.

Then, softly, with the kind of truth that cuts, he replied:

"Then let me be your favorite one."

You closed your eyes, already knowing the moment wouldn't last.

Because in the morning, you'd go back to being the analyst. The liability. The risk.

And he'd go back to being the weapon.

But tonight... he was yours.

—

It had been two weeks since the safehouse.

Two weeks of pretending nothing happened. Of avoiding his eyes in mission briefings. Of watching your words around Valentina, even as you felt the weight of hidden surveillance pressing into your skin.

But tonight—tonight, he found you again.

A black site buried beneath an abandoned subway line. You'd come to check data logs. You weren't supposed to see him. He wasn't supposed to know you'd be here.

But there he was. Silent. Waiting in the shadows like he'd been summoned by your thoughts.

You didn't speak.

You didn't have to.

The moment the security door sealed behind you, he crossed the room. You collided in the dark like magnets too strong to resist—his mouth crushed to yours, hands gripping your waist like he needed to anchor himself or drown.

"Still a mistake?" he rasped against your mouth.

"The best one I've ever made," you breathed, pulling him closer.

He lifted you onto the cold metal desk, fingers fumbling at your belt while you tugged his jacket down his shoulders. This wasn't careful or soft like last time. This was built-up tension, hunger denied too long, too fiercely.

He kissed you like he was starving.

And you let him.

Your hands dragged across his chest, nails raking slightly over old scars. He hissed through his teeth, not from pain—but because he wanted more. So did you.

You gasped as he pressed into you, hips grinding just enough to send sparks ricocheting through your spine. His hands slid under your shirt—palms hot, rough, sure.

When he took you there, it was fast, frantic, your bodies moving with a rhythm carved out of desperation. The desk rattled beneath you. One of your boots hit the floor. Somewhere, a data drive spun out of place and clattered onto the tile.

You didn't care.

You bit his shoulder to keep from crying out. He buried his face in your neck, breathing hard, whispering your name like a confession.

It ended in a shaking, breathless crash—your legs wrapped around him, his arms tight around your back, your bodies trembling as if the whole world could collapse around you and this would still be the only thing that mattered.

When the silence returned, it was deafening.

He rested his forehead against yours, both of you sweating, panting, wrecked.

"I keep telling myself this is the last time," he whispered.

You nodded, fingers curling in his hair. "But it never is."

He kissed you again. Slower now. Like he didn't want to leave. Like he was trying to memorize the way you tasted in the dark.

And then, without another word, he was gone—vanished through the far tunnel like smoke.

—

Rooftop safe zone. Rain-drenched. One breath away from exposure.

The glitch came at 03:19.

A thirty-second blackout in the substation where you'd last accessed classified Thunderbolts data. Surveillance feed offline. Logs scrambled.

Valentina flagged it herself.

Her message came via secure channel. Just four words:

"Redaction isn't invisibility, sweetheart."

Your blood ran cold.

She didn't confront you. Not directly. That wasn't her style.

She was circling. Watching. Waiting.

You had to get to him before she did.

—

The safe zone was an abandoned rooftop communications relay on the far edge of the city. Cold metal underfoot, the wind tearing at your coat. The storm had rolled in fast—black clouds, electric with tension.

You found Bucky near the satellite array, hood up, back turned.

He heard your footsteps. Didn't look.

"She's watching," you said.

"I know."

You stepped beside him. Lightning flashed across the skyline. The rain made your hair stick to your cheeks, soaking your collar.

"She knows about us," you continued.

"She suspects," he replied. "She doesn't know anything. Not yet."

You stared at him. "It's only a matter of time."

He turned finally. Wet hair clinging to his forehead. Jaw clenched. His eyes... burned.

"Then we don't give her time."

You blinked. "What are you saying?"

"That we stop pretending this is nothing." He stepped closer, rain slicking his shoulders. "That we stop lying to ourselves."

Your heart hammered.

"We can't—"

"I don't care anymore."

You swallowed hard, voice trembling. "You should."

His vibranium hand reached up slowly, cupping the back of your neck, fingers cold against your soaked skin.

"I do," he murmured. "But not more than I care about you."

You didn't have time to respond. The moment broke—and his mouth was on yours.

This kiss wasn't like before. It wasn't careful or cautious. It was raw. Desperate. The way people kiss when they know the walls are closing in.

You pushed his jacket off his shoulders, fumbling with the buttons of your own coat as the rain soaked through every layer. He spun you into the metal scaffold, lips dragging down your throat, hands slipping beneath your shirt, callused palms mapping the shape of you like he couldn't believe you were real.

You gasped his name against his mouth, pulling him closer until there was nothing between you—no space, no thought, no escape.

He lifted you easily, wrapping your legs around his waist. Your back hit the cold steel, but you barely felt it—his body was everywhere, his breath hot, his voice low and broken.

"This is insane," you whispered.

"I know."

"We'll burn for this."

He kissed you like that was a promise.

You barely remembered the next minutes—clothes shoved aside, skin against skin, the sound of rain like static over every soft moan, every whispered plea. He moved inside you like he knew you—all of you—and you met him with everything you had.

It wasn't quiet. It wasn't slow. It was need.

When it ended, you collapsed into each other, panting, soaked, shaking.

He held you like he didn't trust himself to let go.

And when he finally spoke, his voice was a rasp in your ear:

"If I had to choose... you or the team..."

You pulled back, stunned. "Don't."

"I already have."

You searched his face. His eyes were calm. Resolved.

And you realized then—he wasn't just falling for you.

He would burn the mission for you.

And Valentina would know.

Soon.

—

The thunderstorm masked a lot of things.

Power surges. Signal distortion. Audio corruption.

But one camera, buried in the backup relay network, caught everything.

The video wasn't even meant to be online. A feed from an old surveillance drone piggybacking off the rooftop's defunct satellite. The system flagged the motion automatically and uploaded the footage to Valentina's queue under "unusual off-site activity."

She clicked it half-interested. Thinking maybe it was some operative lighting a cigarette during downtime.

What she saw instead?

Bucky Barnes slamming into you against the scaffold, your head tipped back in the rain, mouth parted, your legs wrapped tight around his waist. Her top asset. Her reformed killer. Her trump card—burying himself in a civilian analyst like he'd die without it.

You weren't just fucking.

You were gone for each other.

Valentina stared, stone still, as the clip looped—your gasped words barely audible under the rain, his voice hoarse and ragged, her best weapon choosing you in the most feral, undeniable way possible.

She didn't blink. Just leaned back in her chair.

And smiled.

—

Later that day, the blacksite's lights dimmed as two agents received a priority alert. The kind with no name, no context. Just a line of red text:

TARGET: [REDACTED]

STATUS: COMPROMISED

PROTOCOL: BLACKOUT

EXECUTE IMMEDIATELY.

You noticed something was wrong the second you walked into your apartment.

The quiet was too... perfect.

No hum of electricity. No street noise. No alerts on your tablet.

Just stillness.

And then—

A click behind you.

You spun. Gun drawn. Too late.

The operative stood in your kitchen, face blank, silencer already raised.

But before he could fire, a metal arm burst through the drywall behind him—shattering bone and glass in one strike. The assassin crumpled.

Bucky stepped through the hole he'd just made in your building's support beam, panting, eyes wild.

You didn't have time to ask questions. He was already grabbing your wrist.

"They sent a kill order," he growled. "On you."

You froze. "Val?"

"She saw the footage."

Your blood went ice cold.

"Oh my god."

He looked at you. Really looked. And said:

"We're not running."

You stared. "Then what—"

"We're burning the whole fucking thing down."

—

The world collapsed fast after the kill order.

Bucky moved like he was born for it—pulling you down fire escapes, hotwiring a black SUV in six seconds flat, and driving with surgical focus through back routes even S.H.I.E.L.D. probably forgot existed. You didn't ask how he knew where to go.

You just held on.

"Where are we going?" you gasped, your body still buzzing with adrenaline.

"Safehouse in Brooklyn," he said. "Real one this time. Off-grid. Built it myself."

"And after that?"

He didn't answer, and you didn't press.

The safehouse was buried beneath a shuttered laundromat, accessed through a floor panel behind a row of rusted dryers. Inside, it was concrete and steel, stripped-down, and quiet.

You were still trembling when he closed the last deadbolt.

Your voice cracked. "They really sent someone to kill me."

He turned, jaw clenched. "They'll send more."

You met his eyes. "You should leave. Now. Before they label you compromised too."

"They already did," he said flatly. "The second I touched you on that roof."

You opened your mouth—then shut it.

Because you both knew the truth. You weren't just his weakness.

He was yours, too.

—

Later, as you patched a shallow graze on his ribs, he finally asked:

"That last report you filed. What was in it?"

You hesitated.

"...A trigger phrase. Hidden in a footnote. Redacted text. I didn't know it would activate a protocol. I just wanted to flag a data inconsistency in the Thunderbolts mission metrics."

He looked at you, sharp. "What kind of inconsistency?"

"The kind that shouldn't exist unless Valentina's running black ops off-book. Using team kills to disappear assets. Ones even the government doesn't know about."

Bucky went still.

Then said, quietly, "You think she's using the Thunderbolts to clean up her own messes."

"I think she's using you to do it."

You handed him a flash drive. "The raw report. Unedited. There's code embedded in the metadata—time-stamped network trails, mission deviation logs. If we can get it to someone clean, someone outside her orbit..."

He shook his head. "There's no one clean in this system."

"Then we leak it."

That got his attention.

"We go public?" he asked.

You nodded. "We expose everything. The missions. The disappearances. The protocol that tried to kill me. We don't run—we detonate."

For a long time, Bucky said nothing.

Then: "If we do this... we don't stop. Not until she's finished."

You swallowed. "I'm not sure we'll survive it."

He stepped closer. His voice dropped. "Then we go down together."

And he kissed you—harder than ever before.

Not sweet. Not soft.

This was war.

You dragged him down with you onto the mattress—half-stripped from earlier triage—and undressed each other in near-silence, breath hot, movements rough. It wasn't pretty. It wasn't romantic.

It was desperate.

You clawed at his shirt, his belt. He shoved your shorts down with one hand while gripping your hip with the other. When he pushed into you, it wasn't slow. It was now—needing to feel alive, needing to feel you.

Your body met his like you'd been waiting for the collision. You rode the edge together, breathless and furious, tangled in sheets and consequences. 

He pressed his forehead to yours when it crested, his voice a cracked rasp in your ear.

"If we die for this... I don't regret a goddamn second."

Neither did you.

Not anymore.

—

Outside, on a cracked security monitor miles away, Valentina watched the fugitives vanish from satellite. Her reflection glinted in the screen's dim light.

She tapped her nail against the keyboard, slow and deliberate.

Then typed:

Activate Pursuit Protocol.

Deploy Ghost Unit.

Engage Thunderbolt Team Alpha.

Priority target: Barnes. Secondary: Analyst.

No recovery necessary.

[amaris-whisperer]

Redacted l Bucky Barnes x Reader

Genre: Slow burn, angst with comfort, friends to lovers, team meddling, Soft!Bucky, bittersweet-to-sweet resolution

Setting: Thunderbolts AU

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Reader

Warnings: Slight mature content

Part 1 l Part 2 l Part 3 l Part 4 (complete)

—

You'd never imagined a life spent spying on the world's most dangerous people would end like this — with your heart in the line of fire.

You sat rigidly in the sleek, glass-walled conference room deep inside a government building that felt more like a fortress. The hum of fluorescent lights overhead buzzed softly in the silence, competing with the faint tapping of your pen against the folder on the table.

Across from you, Valentina Allegra de Fontaine was the picture of composed authority. She was dressed in a sharply tailored black suit that emphasized her ruthless elegance, lips painted a shade of red that could kill just as surely as a bullet. Her dark eyes didn't flicker, didn't betray emotion—but they scanned you like a wolf calculating whether you were prey or a threat.

"I trust you understand the gravity of your assignment," she began, voice cool and controlled, but with an undercurrent that sent a chill down your spine.

You nodded, swallowing the knot of nerves tightening in your throat. "Oversight for the Thunderbolts. I'm to monitor their operations, report any breaches, and ensure compliance with government regulations."

Valentina's smile was thin, almost predatory. "Yes. In theory."

You met her gaze. "In practice?"

"In practice," she leaned forward, fingers steepled, "I don't trust you. Not fully. You work for them, but you also work for us. That means you're walking a knife's edge. One wrong move and you're expendable."

Your jaw tightened. "I'm here to protect the public interest, not to be a pawn."

"Pawns are useful, as long as they don't forget their place."

You took a breath. "I'll be impartial. I won't let personal bias affect my reports."

Her eyes flickered briefly—just a crack in the mask—before she smiled again. "Impartiality is a luxury few can afford when lives are on the line. Remember, you're the watchdog. But the Thunderbolts... they're not dogs to be trained. They're wolves. And wolves don't take kindly to being watched."

The words hung in the air like a warning.

You swallowed again, feeling the weight of her meaning. Your job wasn't just oversight. It was survival.

Valentina stood and smoothed the front of her jacket. "I'll be watching you as closely as you watch them. Prove me wrong."

Before you could respond, she turned on her heel and left the room, her heels clicking sharply against the polished floor.

You sat back, the silence pressing in around you, the cold weight of the assignment settling over your shoulders like armor.

Because in this game, trust was the most dangerous currency—and you had none.

—

The Thunderbolts' primary safehouse looked like it had been patched together by a contractor with a death wish. Cement walls. Bulletproof glass in some windows. Others, just plywood. Government-issue furniture, utilitarian and forgettable. The hallway smelled faintly of bleach and sweat.

You moved quietly, clipboard in hand, absorbing the details: exit routes, headcount, facial cues. Routine.

Except there was nothing routine about him.

James Buchanan Barnes was leaned against the far wall of the briefing room like the shadows belonged to him. Arms crossed. Expression unreadable. The kind of stillness that didn't come from peace—but from years of violence and control.

His eyes tracked you as you entered. That cold blue that had once terrified entire regimes. There were stories in those eyes—classified ones.

"You the suit?" he asked, voice low, like gravel sliding down steel.

You blinked. "Excuse me?"

He nodded toward your ID badge. "Government oversight. Watching our every move."

You didn't answer right away. Just stepped further into the room and let the door shut behind you. "I'm here to make sure your team doesn't go off-mission."

He smirked faintly, but it didn't reach his eyes. "Off-mission is the only way this team functions."

You studied him—how the weight of history seemed to settle on his shoulders like a second skin. He wasn't posturing like some of the others. He didn't need to. He had nothing left to prove. That made him the most dangerous kind.

"Then I guess it's my job to make sure it doesn't implode."

Bucky straightened, just a little. "Valentina send you?"

"She didn't request oversight. The Senate did. Official mandate, passed two weeks ago."

He raised an eyebrow. "And you volunteered for this circus?"

"I didn't realize it was a circus."

Now his smirk widened just a touch. "You will."

There was a beat of silence, and then he stepped away from the wall. You resisted the instinct to step back. Instead, you stood your ground as he approached—measured, calm, all lethal potential under the surface.

"You've got guts, I'll give you that," he said quietly. "But if you're planning to write your little reports and keep your hands clean, I've got bad news for you."

"I don't write fiction."

"You will," he said. "Eventually. Everyone who works for her does."

You blinked. "Valentina?"

He didn't answer. Just stared for a moment, like he was deciding whether to warn you or dismiss you. Then he looked away and started walking.

At the door, he paused.

"One more thing," he said, not turning around. "If you're going to survive around here, learn the difference between a mission and an execution."

Then he was gone, leaving the air colder than when he'd arrived.

You exhaled slowly, realizing you'd been holding your breath.

This wasn't just oversight.

This was a war zone in disguise.

And James Buchanan Barnes had just marked you as a wildcard.

—

The safehouse was quiet at night, which usually meant trouble was due to start soon.

You were going over the latest team logs in the common area, the lamplight throwing your shadow long across the cracked table. The Thunderbolts were ghosts by now—scattered across the city, executing a mission Valentina had conveniently redacted from your clearance level. Again.

You weren't supposed to question it. Just document the chaos.

Footsteps echoed down the hall—measured, steady.

You didn't have to look up.

Bucky.

He stepped into the room, pausing just inside the doorway. "No one else is here. You always work late?"

You glanced at the clock. 2:17 a.m.

"It's the only time the files aren't being accessed by five different departments," you muttered. "Or redacted to hell."

He approached slowly, the silence between you just as heavy as it had been in that first meeting.

"You don't sleep much, do you?" he asked.

You looked up. "That a professional observation?"

He leaned against the edge of the table, arms crossed. "Call it an educated guess. People who sleep easy don't take jobs like this."

You returned to your screen. "Neither do people with options."

He smirked again—but softer this time. "So what's your story, suit?"

You clicked a tab closed. "Why do you care?"

He shrugged. "I don't. I'm just trying to figure out if you're a spy... or just a martyr with a clipboard."

"Why not both?"

That earned you a huff of amusement. "Touché."

There was a beat of silence.

"You ever think about leaving?" he asked, suddenly quieter. "Walking away?"

You blinked. That... hadn't been what you expected.

"All the time," you admitted. "But I know what happens if someone like Valentina runs unchecked."

Bucky's face darkened. His voice dropped an octave.

"She already does."

You watched him carefully, trying to read what sat just beneath the surface. "Then why stay? Why follow her orders?"

He didn't answer right away. Just stared at a crack in the floor like it held a secret code.

"Because if I don't, someone worse will."

You sat back in your chair, the weight of it all hitting you harder than before. The Thunderbolts were supposed to be a second chance—for the world, for him. But the way he said it... it felt more like a sentence.

"She doesn't trust me," you said suddenly. "Valentina. She thinks I'm a risk."

"You are," he said, without hesitation.

You raised an eyebrow.

"She's not wrong. You asking questions? Writing honest reports?" He gave a low laugh. "That's a dangerous thing in her world."

"Then why haven't I been removed?"

He looked at you for a long time, his expression unreadable. "Because someone up the chain still thinks you're useful. Or expendable."

You swallowed hard. "And what do you think I am?"

Another beat passed. His voice was quiet. Careful. "I think you don't belong here."

"Thanks," you muttered. "Real comforting."

He shook his head. "No—I mean it. You're... different. You still believe in rules. People like Val chew that up. So do people like me."

You looked at him then, really looked. "Is that what you think you are? Just another weapon she points?"

His silence told you everything.

"I don't believe that," you said softly.

He finally met your eyes. "Then you're a bigger fool than I thought."

You stood slowly, feeling the tension pull tight between you. "I'm not afraid of you, Barnes."

His jaw flexed, something raw behind his eyes. "Maybe you should be."

And yet... you weren't.

You stepped around the table, close enough to smell the faint scent of soap and metal and something undeniably him. You paused beside him, your voice low.

"I'm not here to control you," you whispered. "I'm here because someone needs to see what she's really doing. Someone who's not afraid to write it down."

He turned toward you, only a foot of space between your bodies.

"If you write it down," he said, voice like a warning, "she'll burn you for it."

"Maybe," you said. "But not before I set a few fires of my own."

There was something like respect in his eyes then. A flicker of it. Maybe something more.

But he didn't reach for you. Not yet. And you didn't step closer.

Instead, you stood in the quiet for a moment longer—two people on opposite sides of the same burning bridge.

Then you turned, leaving him in the silence, your pulse thundering louder than your footsteps.

—

The mission was supposed to be surgical.

Go in, extract a rogue asset, get out clean.

Instead, it ended in fire. Two agents down. The intel corrupted. And Bucky bleeding from a shoulder wound he wouldn't let anyone patch up.

By the time you got to the safehouse, the rest of the team had scattered for debriefs or damage control.

Only he remained.

You found him sitting in the half-lit kitchen, arm wrapped in a towel soaked crimson. His vibranium fingers flexed involuntarily, twitching from pain or adrenaline—you couldn't tell.

"You need a medic," you said from the doorway.

"I've had worse."

"That's not a denial."

He didn't answer.

You crossed the room, grabbing the med kit from the cabinet above the sink. "Take off your shirt."

He raised a brow.

"Don't flatter yourself," you muttered. "I need to stop the bleeding before you pass out on government property."

With a quiet grunt, he peeled the ruined tactical fabric off, revealing the wound: a clean but deep graze through flesh and muscle. It was worse than he let on. But what held your gaze wasn't the injury—it was the scars. So many. Old ones, fresh ones. Some surgical. Others savage.

Your hands stilled for just a second.

He noticed.

"Cataloging the damage?"

"No," you said quietly. "Just thinking about how much one person can survive."

His expression didn't change, but something in his shoulders eased.

You cleaned the wound carefully, hands steady even though your stomach twisted. He didn't flinch. Didn't make a sound.

"You stayed behind," he said suddenly.

"I had to finish my report."

"That's not why."

You looked up. His eyes were searching. Tired.

You swallowed. "No."

"I got people killed today," he said. "Because I hesitated."

"It wasn't your fault—"

"I knew the intel was wrong. I should've pulled us out sooner."

You finished dressing the wound, sitting back slightly.

"Do you think you're the only one in this building with regrets?" you asked. "You think I sleep easy knowing my reports send people like you into firestorms?"

He stared at you like he wasn't used to being spoken to like a person. Like a man.

"You care," he said.

It wasn't an accusation. More like a revelation.

You exhaled. "Of course I care. But that doesn't mean I can save you."

He reached out then—just a brush of his fingers on your wrist. Not enough to startle, but enough to still your breath.

"I don't need saving," he said.

"Good," you replied. "Because I'm not a hero either."

You stayed like that for a moment—close, quiet, surrounded by shadows and unspoken things.

Then you gently pulled your wrist from his grasp.

"I'll log the injury as self-treated. Valentina doesn't need to know you were bleeding all over her kitchen."

He smirked faintly. "Protecting me, now?"

"Just the paperwork," you said. "The rest... is redacted."

As you turned to leave, he spoke—so soft you almost missed it.

"Don't disappear on me."

You paused in the doorway.

"Don't give me a reason to."

And then you were gone.

But the air between you stayed charged, something unnamed stretching taut—waiting.

—

The power went out around midnight.

You were still awake, staring at your laptop as the screen dimmed and then flickered to black. The hum of electricity faded into silence, and the entire safehouse was plunged into that eerie stillness that only happened in government buildings—like something was holding its breath.

A quiet knock tapped at your door.

You knew who it was before you opened it.

Bucky stood in the hallway, shirtless still, his shoulder wrapped in the bandage you'd applied hours earlier. The power outage cast him in shadow, the faint amber light from the emergency generator flickering in his eyes.

"No comms. No surveillance," he said, voice low. "Valentina's blind."

You didn't speak—just stepped aside.

He walked in without hesitation, but not with the predatory confidence some people might expect of the Winter Soldier. This was different. Measured. Careful. Human.

The door clicked shut behind him.

"You okay?" you asked, voice barely above a whisper.

He nodded. "Can't sleep."

"Me either."

He looked around your room—spartan, temporary. Just a cot, a desk, a stack of folders. A single unmade bed.

"You shouldn't be alone tonight," he said. "Not after the mission."

"Neither should you."

The words hung there between you—vulnerable. Raw. Open.

Bucky moved first.

He sat down on the edge of the bed, then leaned back against the wall. You crossed the room slowly and sat beside him. The cot creaked under your combined weight.

For a long moment, neither of you said a word.

Then you laid your head on his good shoulder. He didn't move. Didn't flinch. Just let out a long, quiet breath, like something inside him finally unclenched.

"Tell me the truth," you murmured. "Why'd you really stay behind?"

He hesitated. "Because I didn't want you to be alone when the storm hit."

You closed your eyes. "I've been alone for a long time."

"So have I."

You turned to look at him—and suddenly he was closer than he had been. Close enough to see the scar at his temple. The years in his eyes. The softness he hid behind all that steel.

"I shouldn't feel this way about you," you whispered.

"I know," he said. "But I do."

His hand slid across the blanket and found yours.

Slow. Gentle. Asking.

You laced your fingers with his.

Then he kissed you.

Not rough. Not fast. Just honest. Like it wasn't the first time he'd wanted to, but the first time he let himself.

You pulled him in like a tide, all soft urgency and trembling restraint. You didn't ask for promises. You didn't talk about consequences. You didn't talk at all.

There was no time for slow metaphors or delicate metaphysics. Just breathless hands under fabric. Quiet gasps in the dark. Months of tension turned into fire beneath skin.

It wasn't perfect. It was too fast and not fast enough. But it was real.

When it was over, the room was quiet again. Your limbs tangled together in the half-light, sweat cooling against worn sheets. His arm wrapped around your waist, the vibranium hum softer now, somehow more human.

"I've never..." you started, but trailed off.

"I know," he whispered. "Me neither."

You fell asleep like that—pressed into his chest, wrapped in something that had no name, no place in your reports.

—

In the hallway, the backup camera light blinked red. Recording.

Somewhere, someone was watching.

And soon, someone would decide what to do about it.

—

Amaris’s notes:

More parts coming soon!

I’ve been writing a lot of Bucky fanfics over the past few months and finally have time to start sharing them with you all.

I hope you enjoy going on these journeys with Bucky as much as I do. 😊

Thank you so much for your amazing support!

[amaris-whisperer]

Not Yours (Yet) l Bucky Barnes x Reader

Genre: Slow burn, angst with comfort, friends to lovers, team meddling, Soft!Bucky, bittersweet-to-sweet resolution Setting: Thunderbolts AU Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Reader (fem or gn)

Bucky dates around, blind to your quiet heartbreak—until the team starts setting you up with others. Now he's spiraling, jealous, and finally forced to confront the truth: he's been in love with you all along. But you're not a consolation prize—and he has to prove it. Cue one real date, one soft confession, and one very interrupted kiss. 💔➤❤️ (ft. smug Yelena.) -- The warehouse hummed with low conversation and the clink of gear being cleaned. It was the usual post-mission ritual—stripped-down weapons, bruises wrapped, wounds licked in silence. You sat cross-legged on a steel crate, picking dried blood off your glove and pretending not to look at him.

Bucky Barnes.

Hair mussed, sleeves rolled, laughter rough around the edges. He was standing with Val and a few agents from the external strike team, grinning at something one of them said. You couldn’t hear the words, but the way he smiled—not polite, not forced—told you enough.

He liked her.

Tall. Blonde. Everything you weren't. Everything you’d trained yourself not to envy.

You forced your eyes back to the knife you were oiling.

“Someone’s gonna snap that handle in half,” came a voice beside you.

You looked up. Yelena. She crouched beside your crate, eyeing you with a little too much perception.

“I’m fine.”

“That’s the second time you’ve said that today,” she said casually, reaching for the medical tape near your boot. “Which is usually how I know you’re not.”

You gave her a look, but she only arched a brow and added, “You keep watching him like he’s gonna turn around and finally notice the sun rises and sets around you.”

That stung more than you let show. You wrapped the knife and tucked it into your belt.

“I don’t—he’s just a teammate.”

Yelena laughed. “No. I’m just a teammate. He’s the ache in your ribs you keep pretending is indigestion.”

You opened your mouth to protest, but Bucky’s voice drifted closer, and your spine straightened instinctively.

"Hey—I'm heading out. Drinks, anyone?"

He wasn’t looking at you.

Val leaned in, her hand brushing his arm. “I’m in.”

A few others nodded, and you watched Bucky’s eyes skim the group. They passed over you like fog on glass. No pause. No flicker of consideration.

You stood quickly, grabbing your jacket.

“Not me,” you mumbled, already walking out. “Long day.”

You didn’t look back. If you had, you might’ve seen the way Yelena’s gaze followed you with a furrowed brow, thoughtful and a little pissed. The way Ghost silently elbowed Taskmaster and tilted her chin toward Bucky. The way Bucky didn’t even notice.

Later that night, you stood alone in the kitchen of the safehouse, pouring lukewarm tea into a chipped mug. You told yourself you weren’t waiting for the sound of boots. That you weren’t hoping the door would open and he’d come in, maybe apologize for ignoring you, maybe ask if you were okay.

But the door stayed closed.

And your tea went cold in your hands. --

Two days later, you were sitting cross-legged on the gym mats, wrapping your knuckles when Ghost dropped down beside you in silence. She didn’t say anything—not at first. Just began reassembling her collapsible staff with those pale, practiced fingers.

“You fight differently around him,” she said after a moment.

You didn’t look up. “What?”

Ghost’s gaze remained on her weapon. “Barnes. When you spar. You pull your punches. You hesitate. And you flinch when he flirts with someone else.”

Your breath caught. “I don’t flinch.”

“You do.” She clicked her staff into place and gave you a long, unreadable look. “I think he’s blind.”

That made something in you twist. You tugged your gloves on tighter, standing. “He’s not blind. He’s just—he doesn’t see me like that.”

Ghost stood too. “That’s the definition of blind, sweetheart.”

Later, in the briefing room, you kept your eyes on the mission board while Bucky leaned lazily against the table across from you, spinning a pen between his fingers.

He’d brought coffee. For Val.

You were sure it was for her because he handed it to her directly, flashing that rare smile he kept tucked away from most people.

You glanced away, jaw tight.

Yelena noticed.

So did Taskmaster.

And by the time the meeting was over, Operation Green-Eyed Soldier was unofficially born.

-- "You know what she needs?" Yelena said, casually tossing a protein bar at Ghost. “A distraction. A rebound. Something with a jawline and good arms.”

“Or someone with a motorcycle,” Taskmaster added, flipping a knife between their fingers. “She’s got a thing for leather and danger.”

“Someone not Bucky,” Yelena clarified, before glancing back toward the van window where you stood, adjusting your tactical vest. “Because our boy over there is too busy pretending he doesn’t have feelings.”

“He doesn’t,” Ghost said flatly.

Yelena smirked. “That’s the problem. He thinks he doesn’t. Let’s fix that.”

Taskmaster looked mildly intrigued. “How?”

Yelena grinned like a cat with cream. “Jealousy. The oldest weapon in the book.”

--

You didn’t know how the cute guy from logistics ended up assigned to your recon detail.

Or why he was suddenly so interested in hearing about your mission history and favorite drink.

Or why he walked with you all the way back to your quarters after the debriefing, lingering like he was hoping you’d ask him in.

But you smiled politely, nerves fluttering in your chest, and shut the door softly behind you.

From down the hall, a certain super soldier’s brow furrowed.

Yelena passed him a bottle of water, deadpan. “She’s got options, huh?”

Bucky didn’t answer.

-- “Isn’t this the guy from the Berlin op?” you whispered to Yelena, eyeing the tall, ridiculously attractive agent she’d waved over to your table at the bar.

“Yup,” she said cheerfully. “And rumor has it he thinks you’re hot.”

You flushed, about to object, when he dropped into the seat beside you and started talking. Smooth. Charming. Easy to like.

You laughed—genuinely—at something he said.

Behind you, Bucky sat at the bar nursing a whiskey, jaw locked tight. His drink barely touched. His eyes never strayed from your back.

Ghost leaned over and murmured in his ear, “Didn’t know she was your type.”

“She’s not,” he said too quickly.

Ghost blinked slowly. “Then why are you crushing that glass?”

Bucky looked down. His knuckles were white on the tumbler.

Later, back at the compound, Bucky found himself outside your door. He stood there too long, fist raised, debating knocking.

But what would he say?

Sorry I never noticed you until someone else did?

Sorry I didn’t care—until I did?

He let his hand fall, jaw tight, guilt simmering just beneath the surface of something worse.

Something dangerously close to jealousy.

-- The Thunderbolts rarely had downtime, which made moments like these feel almost stolen — the compound’s rooftop lit with string lights, someone’s playlist vibrating through an old speaker, and mismatched bottles of cheap liquor scattered around like fallen trophies.

Yelena had dragged you here.

And the moment Bucky saw you step into the light, dress hugging your figure, hair down, laughing at something Ghost said — he felt it.

Not the usual sting of jealousy.

Something worse.

Possession.

You hadn’t even known tonight would be a setup. But there he was — Agent Callahan — tall, clean-cut, not shy about being charming.

And he’d been sweet. Said he wanted to “get to know the girl who outsmarted Taskmaster in Budapest.” Told you he admired your courage. Touched your hand when he laughed.

You weren’t sure how you felt about it.

But you knew exactly how it would look.

Especially to Bucky Barnes, who stood across the roof pretending not to watch you.

His beer stayed full. His fists stayed clenched.

He saw Callahan lean in, whisper something into your ear that made you laugh. He saw the way your hand rested lightly on Callahan’s arm.

And suddenly, the world went red at the edges.

-- It happened too fast for you to prepare.

One moment, Callahan was leaning in — not kissing you, but maybe thinking about it — and the next, he was being pulled back with a rough jerk.

“Hey—” Callahan snapped, startled. “What the hell?”

Bucky’s hand was fisted in his jacket.

“She’s not interested,” Bucky growled.

You stood abruptly, heart in your throat. “Bucky—”

Callahan shrugged him off, confused. “Seriously, man, what’s your problem?”

“My problem?” Bucky turned to you, eyes blazing, breath shallow. “My problem is watching him put his hands on you like you’re some kind of—”

He stopped himself.

But the words hung heavy in the space between you.

“Like I’m what, Bucky?” you asked, voice calm but trembling. “Yours?”

Silence.

Everyone nearby had gone quiet. Yelena, Ghost, Taskmaster — all frozen around the edges of the scene they’d helped create.

Bucky blinked, chest heaving. “I didn’t mean—”

You took a step forward. “Yes, you did. But you don’t get to do this. Not after ignoring me for months. Not after looking through me every time I was right in front of you.”

He flinched.

“I watched you give your smiles to everyone else. Your stories. Your time. I got crumbs, Bucky. And I convinced myself I should be grateful for them.”

You were shaking now, voice cracking. “And I was. I loved the crumbs. Because it meant you saw me. But now that someone else does… now you care?”

“I always cared,” he said roughly, stepping forward, his voice low and breaking. “I was just too messed up to admit it. Too scared that if I wanted you… I’d ruin it.”

You swallowed hard. “You don’t get to ruin this for me because you were scared.”

Bucky’s hand reached for you instinctively—then dropped to his side. “Then tell me what to do.”

You paused. Your heart was screaming at you to forgive him, to fall into the arms you’d dreamed of for so long. But something inside you needed him to feel it first.

You stepped back.

“Go home, Bucky. Think about what you really want. Because I won’t be your afterthought.”

And you walked away.

Bucky didn’t drink that night.

Didn’t talk.

Didn’t sleep.

He sat alone in the quiet of his room, hands buried in his hair, trying to remember every moment he’d missed, every glance, every soft word from you that he’d brushed off.

They all came back now, clear as crystal. And they hurt.

Because now he knew: He wasn’t afraid of ruining you. He was afraid because he already loved you. And he was too late.

-- The next morning, you avoided the kitchen.

Avoided the training room.

Avoided anywhere he might be.

Because you were still too raw. Too aware of the way his voice had cracked. The way he’d said your name like it meant something. And you hated how much of you still wanted to forgive him just because he finally looked at you the way you’d dreamed of.

But he had to mean it.

This time, it had to be real.

So you waited. Let the silence stretch. Let your heart cool.

And when the knock came — long past midnight — you almost didn’t answer.

You stared at the door like it might burn you. Like behind it was something that could unmake all the careful walls you'd built just to survive loving him from a distance.

But you opened it anyway.

And there he was.

No armor. No Winter Soldier mask. No sharp, cutting gaze. Just Bucky — hair mussed from restless hands, jaw clenched like it was the only thing holding him together, and blue eyes full of something dangerously close to hope.

You didn’t shut the door.

Not yet.

“I thought you were done,” you said, voice flat but fragile.

He shook his head once, slowly. “No. Just… figuring out how not to screw this up.”

You leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed. “So? What did you figure out?”

“That I was never afraid of losing you,” he said quietly. “I was afraid I never deserved you.”

The words struck something deep. Something you didn’t want to feel tonight. Not again.

He shifted on his feet, eyes dropping to the floor before returning to yours — like he wasn’t sure if he had the right to keep looking.

And still, he tried.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“But you did.”

“I know.” His voice was hoarse. “Because I saw you with someone else and realized how long I’d been pretending I didn’t already love you.”

You blinked, stunned by the way he said it — not shouted, not begged, just... truth.

He looked at you like there was more. Like something sat on the tip of his tongue — but he wouldn’t offer it unless you asked.

So you did.

“Why now, Bucky?”

His throat bobbed. “Because watching someone else see you — really see you — and knowing I’d wasted so much time not doing the same… it felt like hell. Not jealousy. Not pride. Just pain. I thought I missed my chance.”

You stood in silence, arms still crossed over your chest like a shield. You wanted to believe him. God, you wanted to. But the ache of being overlooked, of being his almost for so long, still sat in your bones.

“I’m not a prize to be won out of spite,” you said.

“I know.”

“And I’m not interested in being your second choice because your pride got bruised.”

“You’re not,” Bucky said firmly, stepping forward. “You’re my first. My only. I just didn’t know how to say it until I saw what life looked like without you in it.”

Your heart cracked, just a little. You hated how sincere he sounded. How scared.

How real.

“You hurt me,” you whispered, voice trembling.

“I’ll spend every day proving I won’t again.”

You searched his face, that war-weary face you knew better than your own reflection. And for the first time, you saw it stripped bare — not just regret, but the kind of longing that came with consequence.

You didn’t let him in yet.

But you didn’t close the door.

And that, for now, was enough.

--

It took him three days to ask.

Three days of giving you space. Of checking in without pushing. Of showing up — not as the Bucky who kept his feelings buried, but as the man trying to finally get it right.

So when he knocked on your door again, this time a little earlier, hair brushed, wearing that stupid leather jacket you always liked — you let yourself hope.

He held up a takeout bag and two milkshakes like a peace offering.

“No team,” he said softly. “No games. Just you and me.”

You raised a brow. “You’re asking me on a date with burgers?”

He gave a shy grin. “Thought I’d start where I fit in.”

You tried to hide your smile. Failed.

“You got two straws?”

“Only if you’re sharing,” he teased.

You rolled your eyes and let him in.

-- The two of you ended up sprawled across the couch, knees bumping, laughing over bad action movies and greasy fries, your milkshake long forgotten on the coffee table. The tension that used to buzz beneath every glance was softer now — still electric, still heavy with history, but no longer full of silence.

“I keep thinking about how close I came to never saying it,” Bucky murmured, somewhere between the second movie and the third. “How stupid I was.”

You turned your head, resting your cheek on the couch cushion as you looked at him.

“You weren’t stupid,” you said. “Just scared.”

He met your eyes. “Still am. Just… less.”

And then the air shifted.

You didn’t know who moved first — maybe you both did — but suddenly he was closer, his hand brushing yours, his voice low and rough with something deeper than nerves.

“I don’t want to waste another second pretending this isn’t everything I want.”

You could feel the warmth of his breath now.

“And what do you want, Bucky?”

His gaze dropped to your lips.

“You.”

You didn’t hesitate this time.

The kiss was slow, then urgent. Familiar, yet brand new. His hands cupped your face like you were something fragile, precious, real — and yours tangled in his jacket, pulling him closer, anchoring him to now. To you.

You didn’t hear the door open.

Didn’t register the footsteps until—

“Well, finally,” Yelena drawled from the hallway, arms crossed, grinning like the cat that ate the canary. “Took you long enough.”

You broke the kiss, breathless and wide-eyed.

Bucky groaned into your shoulder.

Yelena just smirked.

“Don’t mind me. I’ll go tell the pool we won the bet.”

She disappeared as quickly as she came, her laughter echoing down the hall.

You looked at Bucky.

He looked at you.

And you both burst out laughing.

[amaris-whisperer]

Starlit Contract (Jungkook x Reader) ll EP.10

Episode 10 - Between Two Worlds Pairing: Jungkook x reader Genre: Fantasy, Romance, Angst Rating: T Tags: slow burn, celestial AU, reincarnation themes, soft angst, fantasy romance

-- Time had stopped.

Jungkook felt it the moment the world shifted beneath his feet, when the stars blinked in slow motion and gravity lost its grip on him. One moment he was standing under the fading sunset of Earth, and the next he was weightless—floating through a space of light and memory, pulled upwards by something ancient, something divine.

The celestial realm unfolded around him like a memory returning home. All was silver and starlight, infinite and echoing. Here, there was no sky, no ground—only a luminous expanse, humming with quiet power. He stood in the center of it, barefoot on light, surrounded by echoes of constellations that once sang him into being.

And then he saw him.

Taehyung stood ahead, waiting—not as the playful soul Jungkook once laughed with in the eaves of galaxies, but cloaked in authority, his expression unreadable. His celestial robes shimmered like woven nebulae, eyes burning with the ache of eternity.

“Jungkook,” Taehyung said softly. “You’ve come too far.”

Jungkook felt the heaviness of the words before they were spoken aloud. He looked down at himself—his body barely holding together, flickering at the edges, like a photograph burning from the corners. His silver veins pulsed slower now. His breath came too human, too fragile.

“You broke the law of balance,” Taehyung continued. “You gave your light to one soul. You touched her with more than fate. You gave her love.”

“I know,” Jungkook said, his voice hollow in the vastness. “And I would do it again.”

Taehyung stepped closer. “Then you must choose. You’ve reached the fulcrum of your contract. Either you return to what you were—immortal, whole, free from pain—and forget everything… or you stay.”

“And lose everything,” Jungkook finished, his tone soft.

“No,” Taehyung said. “You keep the love. But you carry the weight. You stay as a fading thing. Mortal. Bound to the grief and fragility of her world.”

A long silence followed.

Jungkook closed his eyes, and he saw her—Y/N—in the way he always did: sunlight tangled in her lashes, lips curved as she read aloud from her favorite book, arms around him in sleep. He saw her curled up in pain, hand clutching her chest when she thought he wasn’t looking. He saw her laugh, even when the world gave her no reason to.

He remembered the first time he saw her—seven years old, drowning beneath frozen ice, her soul flickering like a candle in a storm. She had whispered to him, through the veil of death and life: Don’t burn alone.

That was when it began.

He loved her before he knew what love was. He loved her before he even had a name for it.

“I won’t leave her,” he said finally, lifting his gaze. “Not yet. Not while she still believes I’m her wish come true.”

“You’ll suffer,” he said. His jaw tightened.

“I already am,” Jungkook whispered. “But she’s worth every flicker.”

“Then stay until the end of the year,” Taehyung said, voice solemn. “That’s all the time you have left.”

“I’ll use it,” Jungkook said. “Every breath. Every second. I’ll make sure she’s strong enough to live even when I’m gone.”

Taehyung studied him, the weight of the cosmos in his stare. “You’ve changed.”

“I’ve lived,” Jungkook replied.

Then, without another word, the celestial realm began to dissolve—stars retreating, time resuming, the world spinning back into motion.

And Jungkook fell—back into his body, back into the warmth of her bed, into the cold of human ache. But this time, he did not fear the pain.

Because she was worth burning for.

-- He returned to the human realm just past midnight, the hallway washed in shadows and the faint hum of the fridge the only sound between them. The apartment was still—too still—and yet he knew she hadn’t slept. Her light was on. Her scent lingered faintly in the air, warm and familiar like quiet forgiveness.

Jungkook stood outside their bedroom door for a long time before knocking. Not loud. Just once.

"Y/N," he said, voice soft, barely carrying through the wood. "Please."

There was a pause—just long enough to make his heart throb with doubt—then the door creaked open. She was standing there in one of his old shirts, eyes puffy from crying, but still so impossibly beautiful it made something ache in his chest.

She didn’t speak at first. Neither did he.

Then he stepped forward, slow, deliberate, his hand finding hers as if to make sure she was real. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “For not telling you. For hurting you by trying to protect you. I just… I couldn’t stand the thought of you worrying about me when you already have so much to carry.”

Her eyes shimmered, and her voice cracked when she finally said, “And I couldn’t bear the thought of losing you while pretending I’m fine. We both lied, Jungkook.”

He nodded. “Because we were afraid.”

Her lips quivered, her hand tightening in his. “But I never stopped loving you. Even when I was angry. Even when I cried.”

“I know,” he breathed. “And I never stopped either.”

He leaned in, slow, tender, searching her face. Her eyes fluttered shut. His lips hovered just above hers, trembling with the need to close the distance. He tilted forward, but before they touched, she gently turned her face to the side.

His breath caught. Her cheek pressed against his lips instead—a soft, chaste touch.

“I can’t,” she whispered, voice like broken glass. “You’re already flickering. And if we kiss like that… if you feel too much, you’ll disappear faster.”

The silence that followed was unbearable.

It was the cruelest kind of love: the kind that held back for the sake of the other. The kind that starved itself to let the other live.

He closed his eyes, pressing his forehead to hers. “Then let me kiss you like this,” he murmured, guiding her hand to his chest where his fading mark pulsed faintly beneath skin. “Let this be enough for now.”

She nodded through tears.

So he kissed her forehead, then her temple. The bridge of her nose. Her knuckles. Each touch aching with restraint, overflowing with all the longing he dared not unleash.

The warmth of her skin against his lips was a lifeline—fragile and fleeting.

Jungkook lingered there, his breath catching in the hollow quiet, the weight of everything he couldn’t say sitting on his tongue like ash. He had burned for her. Still burned for her. Even now, as the mark on his chest dimmed and flickered like a dying star, he would choose her again. A thousand times.

They stood there in the doorway for what felt like lifetimes, forehead to forehead, fingers knotted together like ivy too stubborn to untwine. And when she trembled, he felt it all the way through his bones.

“You’re cold,” he whispered, brushing her cheek with his knuckles. “Have you eaten today?”

She shook her head faintly. “Didn’t feel like it.”

“I’ll make something.”

“You’re the one who’s flickering,” she said, managing the tiniest, watery smile. “You should rest.”

“I don’t want to rest without you.”

She hesitated, then stepped back to let him in. The room was dim, the lamp casting a gold halo over the bed where one side was still rumpled from where she’d tried—and failed—to sleep. He didn’t ask if she’d been crying all night. Her eyes said enough.

He closed the door gently behind him, sealing them in their own small universe. And for a while, they just sat on the bed in silence—side by side but not touching. Not yet.

“I saw Taehyung,” Jungkook said quietly after a long pause.

She turned to look at him, lips parted.

“I got pulled into the celestial realm. Just for a moment. Long enough for them to give me a choice.”

Her breath caught. “What kind of choice?”

“To return,” he said. “To forget. Go back to what I was. Or… to stay.”

She swallowed. “You’re still here.”

He nodded slowly. “Because I chose you.”

She shook her head, blinking fast. “You shouldn’t have.”

“You think I don’t know that?” he said, voice cracking. “Every time I look at you, I know what this love is doing to us. But I still chose it. I still choose you.”

Her hands balled in the fabric of her shirt—his shirt. She couldn’t look at him.

“I know you’re scared,” he whispered, “but you don’t have to go through this alone. Not the pain, not the illness, not the fear. Let me be here. Let me be yours, for however long we have left.”

Tears streamed down her cheeks, and he reached out, gently brushing them away. She leaned into his touch this time.

“But what about when the contract ends?” she asked in a whisper. “What about after that? When you go… and I stay? How am I supposed to live without you?”

“You’ll be stronger,” he said, resting his palm over her heart. “You already are.”

“I don’t feel strong.”

“You don’t have to feel it to be it,” he said. “I will stay as long as I can, and I’ll leave behind every ounce of love I’ve ever known so you never forget how it felt. You gave me something eternity never could, Y/N. I want to give that back.”

She leaned her head on his shoulder, and they sat like that in silence, the kind that wasn’t heavy anymore, but warm. Healing.

-- Later, he helped her into bed, tucking the blankets around her with care. He lay beside her, not too close, but close enough that their fingers brushed under the covers. The space between them felt sacred, holy somehow.

“Tell me a memory,” she said softly. “Something you remember before you fell.”

Jungkook thought for a moment. “There was a forest made of light,” he said. “Not trees—just pure energy, living and breathing like wind. We used to sing to it.”

“You sang?”

He chuckled. “Not well. But it didn’t matter there. Everything was… harmony. Until I saw you.”

She looked at him then.

“You were dying,” he said. “Underwater. Your heart barely beating. And you still whispered something to me when you saw me.”

“Don’t burn alone,” she said.

He nodded, smiling faintly. “That was the moment I started falling. Not to Earth. To you.”

They both lay in silence after that, memories threading through the quiet like soft strings of starlight. The pain between them had not disappeared, but something else had settled in its place—an understanding.

He turned his face to her. “Can I hold you?”

She nodded, and he slipped an arm around her waist, pulling her gently to him. Her face fit perfectly against his chest, right above the flickering pulse of his mark. For a moment, he closed his eyes and imagined this was forever. That they would have time. That love wasn’t cruel, or borrowed, or steeped in ticking clocks.

But even that fleeting dream was enough.

Her fingers brushed over the faint glow on his skin. “It’s dimmer.”

“I know.”

“Does it hurt?”

He thought for a moment. “Only when I think about saying goodbye.”

She buried her face in his chest and whispered, “Then don’t.”

He kissed the top of her head. “Not tonight.”

And so they fell asleep like that—curled into each other, wrapped in quiet and the inevitable truth.

Love, in all its celestial cruelty, had demanded everything from them. But for now, they gave it freely. They held on just a little longer. To say: Even if I vanish, I was here. And I loved you.

And in the stillness before dawn, with his fading light and her fragile heart beating side by side, they found peace.

Even if only for tonight.

Even if it was borrowed.

[amaris-whisperer]

MOONFIRE | Aemond Targaryen x Reader (EP.10) l Mature content (18+)

Pairing: Aemond Targaryen and OC Warning: Mature content (18+) Episode X – “Ash and Ice, Crowned Twice” In a tower swallowed by snow, a mother calls, a kingdom fractures, and two lovers prepare for war—against prophecy, the North, and the Crown itself. -- Moonlight filtered through the old stone windows of Rivendale, painting the room in pale silver. The fire had long since burned low, leaving only embers and shadows dancing along the walls. Outside, snow fell in lazy spirals, muffling the world, cloaking it in silence.

Inside, it was only them.

Aemond stood at the edge of the bed, his one eye fixed on Emberyn with a look torn between awe and hunger. She lay among the furs, her chest rising and falling in slow anticipation. There was something almost reverent in the way he looked at her—not just as a man seeing the woman he desired, but as something more. As if she were a dream whispered in prophecy, a vision not meant for this world. Fragile. Radiant. Unknowable.

She reached for him first. Her hand brushed his, light as snow, and it broke something in him. He came to her without words, undoing the buckles of his tunic with steady fingers. Emberyn sat up to help him, her hands brushing the scars that crossed his chest—remnants of battle, of dragonfire, of the boy who became a weapon.

He stilled as her lips found one of them, kissing it gently. As if even his wounds were sacred. He undressed her slowly after that, reverently, peeling each layer from her skin like petals from a flower. His fingers learned her shape—every scar, every curve, every breath. His mouth followed—the line of her throat, the soft swell of her breasts, the hollow beneath her ribs where he imagined her heartbeat like dragon wings.

She sighed his name as he worshiped her, her body arching beneath his touch, her eyes wide and dark with want. He kissed her slowly, deeply, like a vow spoken not in words but in breath.

When he finally laid her back against the furs, their bodies bare in the moonlight, she looked up at him and whispered, “I’m not afraid.”

Neither was he. When he pressed into her, she gasped from the overwhelming rightness of it. She welcomed him with a cry that broke the silence, wrapping her arms around his shoulders, her legs around his waist. Their bodies met like sword to sheath—familiar, necessary. Like they had always belonged this way.

Aemond moved with command and care, his hands cradling her hips, his forehead resting against hers. Every thrust deepened their bond, each motion an unspoken promise. Emberyn clung to him, her fingers tangled in his silver hair, her mouth gasping against his neck.

There were no titles here. No prophecy. No court. No war.

Only skin to skin. Only breath to breath. Only them.

But then—Emberyn shifted. A silent question passed between them. He stilled, watching her. And she rose.

With hands against his chest, she gently urged him back, and he followed, lying beneath her now. The moonlight caught the golden shimmer in her eyes, something wild and holy in their depths. She straddled him slowly, deliberately, sliding down with a hiss that escaped both their lips at once.

Her hands braced on his chest, her breath shaking—but not from uncertainty. She moved with purpose. Power. As if claiming him, too, had been fated all along.

Aemond’s head fell back against the pillow. His hands gripped her thighs, reverent as if holding divinity. “Gods, Emberyn…”

Her fingers traced the scar that bisected his eye, then down to the place where his heart beat. “You belong to me now, Aemond Targaryen.”

His lips parted, his breath caught. “I always did.”

She rode him with a quiet rhythm, not rushed or desperate—but anchored in something far deeper. Each movement an echo of fire and prophecy and promise. Her pleasure built like a tide, drawn toward some ancient pull neither of them could name.

When they reached the edge and fell, it was together. Like stars collapsing into one another. Her voice caught in a choked sob, his jaw clenched against her name—they collapsed into the silence as one. Their limbs entwined, their hearts racing, their souls inexplicably changed.

Outside, the darkness continued to shadow Rhaelyria. inside, the fire sparked again—soft, flickering, and new.

Their breaths slowed, the silence between them no longer heavy but warm—like a blanket wrapped in starlight. Emberyn lay curled against his chest, her hand resting over the place where his heart beat steady and strong beneath her palm.

For a while, they said nothing. The kind of silence only shared by those who no longer needed words to understand one another.

Then, Aemond spoke—his voice low, like the hush of wind through winter trees.

“I would wed you tomorrow if I could,” he said.

Emberyn lifted her head slightly, her eyes still glazed with the haze of him. “You already have.”

He gave a faint smile at that, brushing her hair back from her face. “Not properly. Not before gods or men. I want the realm to see. To know I chose you—not for prophecy or power, but because I would burn the world before letting them take you from me.”

She searched his face, as if looking for the lie—and found none.

“And the Crown?” she asked softly. “Your mother?”

He exhaled through his nose, his jaw tightening. “She summoned us again. I plan to go, to face her, but not alone. You ride with me. As my betrothed. As my wife.”

Emberyn sat up, the furs sliding down her bare back. The firelight caught in her hair like captured flame. “They’ll never accept it.”

Aemond reached for her hand and placed it over his heart again.

“Then let them choke on it,” he said fiercely, rising on one elbow. “I’ve lived a life obeying oaths made for me. This… this is the only vow I’ve ever made of my own will.”

She touched his cheek, her thumb brushing the old scar that cleaved it. “And what if this leads to a war?”

His face darkened. “I will go wherever the war leads—but never without you. I won’t leave you behind, Emberyn. Not in King’s Landing. Not even at the gates of hell.”

She closed her eyes at that, the weight of his words sinking into her chest.

He held her tighter. “Then we will build a tower of our own. One they cannot bury. And if prophecy demands fire…” His voice dropped into a whisper. “Then let them see what love born in flame truly looks like.”

They lay together like that—two souls forged in quiet defiance—while beyond the walls, snow fell over a realm poised to burn.

--

Rickon Stark’s return to Winterfell ignited more than hearth fires. Snow swirled around the great courtyard as word spread—the Wolf had come home.

He stood tall in the Great Hall beneath the banners of House Stark, frost still clinging to his pauldrons, his voice low but unshaking as he unfurled a scorched, brittle page torn from Rivendale’s oldest records.

“The dragon will rise again in a woman’s womb,” he read aloud, the words rasping like ash in the firelit air. “And the realm shall drown in flame.”

The page trembled slightly in his gloved hand—not from fear, but from the weight of it. A murmur swept through the gathered lords of the North. Mormont. Cerwyn. Umber. Even the Maester of Winterfell leaned forward.

He did not speak Emberyn’s name, but he did not need to.

They all knew who had awakened the chained wyrm beneath the mountain. Who had flown on a she-dragon as young as a summer flame. Who now stood beside the One-Eyed Prince of King’s Landing.

“The South has always loved its dragons,” Rickon continued, his gaze sharp as ice. “But we remember the cost. Harrenhal’s bones still stand. The snow remembers where fire once scorched the earth.”

Some nodded. Others clenched fists.

“And now that fire comes north again,” Rickon said, his voice rising. “Do we kneel to it, as the Crown might ask us? Or do we remember who we are?”

No one answered. But in the silence, banners stirred, and hearts turned colder.

The North had not forgotten the old flames. And it would not let them rise unchecked.

The room did not erupt—but it simmered. A quiet storm is building.

Rickon Stark had not just returned. He had drawn the line.

And Winter was watching.

-- The cold came in whispers first.

Aemond tightened the furs around Emberyn’s shoulders as they prepared to leave Rivendale for the Crown. Ravens had flown. The Queen awaited. War brewed not just in the North—but in bloodlines.

Emberyn did not flinch from the path ahead, but her thoughts drifted to another fire entirely.

By moonlight, she ran her hands over Valeryn’s scales, the young she-dragon shifting beneath her touch. The iridescent hide shimmered with warmth and wildness, but Emberyn’s touch soothed her. As her fingers traced the ridged spine, she noticed how Valeryn no longer hissed when Vhagar drew near. The ancient beast’s shadow had once unsettled her—now, she watched the elder dragon with something close to understanding.

“Sister flame,” Emberyn whispered to Valeryn, pressing her forehead against the warm hide. “You feel it too. Don’t you?”

But even as her bond with the dragon deepened, a piece of her heart drifted—down, beneath the mountain, to the chained wyrm that had answered her blood.

Ignarax

He stirred in dreams. She could feel it. He would not stay beneath stone much longer.

That night, the wind turned cruel. A storm chased them to the Wall, and by morning, they were stranded—trapped in a half-collapsed watchtower, wind howling through broken stone. Snow battered the ruined keep from all sides.

And then—the pull. It hit her like flame through bone.

Emberyn fell to her knees. Her breath caught. She saw herself standing in the snow, a child clutched in her arms, wailing in silence. A great tower loomed behind her—its crown swallowed in frost. Overhead, a dragon screamed, not in rage—but in mourning.

She gasped, staggered—

And fell.

Valeryn let out a keening, guttural cry that echoed through the stones. The dragon flared her wings, stamping the earth beside her fallen rider.

Aemond, returning with firewood, dropped everything.

He stepped forward slowly, hands open, his voice soft.

“Dohaerās,” he murmured. Obedience.

Valeryn snarled low but did not strike. Her nostrils flared as she caught his scent—his soul, his grief.

“Nyke ēdruta syt iā hen lenton,” Aemond continued. I am here for one of your house.

Only then did the dragon still. Aemond knelt beside Emberyn, gently lifting her from the frozen stone. Her skin was cold, her eyes fluttering behind closed lids—lost somewhere far from him. He cradled her close to his chest, his jaw clenched.

She weighed more than just flesh. She carried bloodlines. Fire. Prophecy.

And now, perhaps, a child. He didn’t speak of that—not yet. He only moved.

By dusk, they returned to shelter. A healer tended Emberyn, murmuring prayers to both the Seven and the old gods. Aemond did not leave her side.

Not even once. He held her hand, even in sleep.

But when Lord Rivendale brought the second letter from the Queen. Aemond read the letter beside Emberyn’s bedside. Her breath had steadied, but her fingers still twitched in dream.

Now, Aemond understood how rumors traveled faster than ravens. Worry coiled through the Red Keep like ivy through cracks in stone. Whispers of Rickon Stark’s rallying cry had already reached the capital, twisted by the wind into prophecies fulfilled and betrayals foretold. The North was stirring. And so, too, was Queen Alicent.

So she wrote again.

Not as Queen.

But as a mother. My son,

I write not as Queen of the Realm, but as the mother who once held you in her arms and whispered prayers into your hair.

You were always the quiet one. The sharp one. The one who saw too much and said too little. And now, you’ve gone where I cannot follow—into vows made in secret, into bonds forged without your family's blessing, into powers that none of us truly understand.

I know you believe you are protecting her. I know you believe you are strong enough to hold back what is coming.

But the North stirs, Aemond. And whispers become fires in a realm already soaked in oil.

They say she carries prophecy in her blood. That doom follows wherever her dragon flies. That you have chosen love over loyalty, flame over duty.

I will not lose another child to silence. You are to come to King’s Landing. Both of you. I won’t ask—I need to see your face and hear the truth from your lips. The Small Council will demand answers, but I want yours first. No masks. No prophecy. Just my son.

If lies live in what you bring with you, Aemond, know this: no dragon, no crown, no vision will shield you from what follows.

Come home. Before the storm breaks.

With all the love I still have, Mother

He folded the parchment in silence, slipping it beneath the furs. He knew the time had come. This was no longer a battle for thrones or alliances, not merely a struggle for love or legacy. He and Emberyn stood at the center of something far older, far more volatile.

They would have to fight both wars—one from the Crown, the other from the North.

Two fires. Two dooms. And they were caught in the storm between.

There was no path left untouched by fire. And he would walk it beside Emberyn—northward, homeward, through the fire, snow, and into prophecy itself.

[amaris-whisperer]

Fractured Allegiance (Bucky Barnes × Valentina’s Daughter!Reader l 18+) l Part 2

Genre: Angst, romance, betrayal, drama Pairing: Bucky Barnes × Reader (Valentina’s Daughter) Setting: Thunderbolts AU Warnings: Mature content (18+), emotional manipulation, suggestive themes, angst, betrayal, morally grey characters  Amaris's note: Part 1 can be considered complete, but you’re welcome to continue the journey to Part 2 to see how they navigate their relationship and resolve their conflicts. --

The news hit like a thunderclap.

Valentina Allegra de Fontaine—disgraced, detained, and supposedly finished—was out.

Charges dropped. Evidence “compromised.”

The government's fingers are too dirty to hold her accountable. And just like that, the woman who taught me how to wield secrets like knives was back in the game.

The world barely had time to brace before the Thunderbolts were deployed again. There were whispered operations across Eastern Europe, black-site cleanups, and mission briefings so classified even the word “classified” seemed inadequate.

And at the center of it all was Lieutenant Barnes.

Bucky.

The same man who once left me in the wreckage of a shattered trust. Now standing in my apartment’s doorway again—grittier, angrier, and this time not alone.

He didn’t ask. He just said, “Come with me.”

“No,” I snapped. “You don’t get to decide that.”

He stepped forward, barely containing the storm behind his eyes. “You don’t understand what she’s doing. What she’s planning now.”

“I understand she’s my mother,” I bit back. “And you’re the one who destroyed her.”

“She destroyed herself,” he said, quieter now. “I just helped the world see it.”

“You used me,” I said. “And now what, you’re trying to save me?”

“I’m trying to keep you alive.”

I stared at him, jaw tight, heart heavier than I wanted to admit.

Because the truth was—I didn’t know what side I was on anymore. I didn’t know where my mother ended and where I began. But when I saw the tension in Bucky’s jaw, the almost-frantic desperation in the way he reached for me like he hadn’t slept in days… I knew he wasn’t lying.

Not about this.

So I packed nothing. Took nothing. Let him lead me out under cover of nightfall. He didn’t say where we were going. Only that it had to be far. Safe. Hidden.

We ended up in an abandoned safehouse in the Alps—an old SHIELD fallback bunker with reinforced walls, blackout windows, and one creaky bed shoved into a room too small for all the space between us.

The first thing I did when we got there?

I shoved him.

Hard.

“You don’t get to play protector now,” I snapped. “You don’t get to act like this is noble.”

“I’m not pretending to be noble,” he said evenly. “I’m trying to stop your mother from killing you.”

I froze. “What?”

“She thinks you’re a liability,” he said. “She knows I care. That’s enough for her to consider you expendable.”

My knees buckled a little, but I caught myself on the edge of the table. “She wouldn’t—”

“She already has people watching you,” he interrupted. “And if I hadn’t gotten to you first, they would’ve.”

Silence choked the room. Cold. Unyielding.

Then his voice dropped lower. Barely a breath. “I should’ve never left you.”

I stared at him. “But you did.”

He nodded. “And I’ll never stop regretting it.”

His words hung between us like a wire—taut and fragile.

“I don’t want to be your guilt project,” I said.

“You’re not.”

“Then what am I?”

He looked at me for a long moment. And I saw it—all of it. The pain, the apology, the things he never says out loud.

“You’re the only thing that ever made me stop running.”

I looked away. Because believing that—wanting to believe that—was dangerous.

And I’d trusted him once. I wasn’t sure I could do it again.

Still, when night fell and we lay in separate corners of the bunker, too wired to sleep, I heard his voice through the dark.

“She won’t stop coming. Not until she burns the world to keep her secrets buried.”

I didn’t answer.

Because part of me still wanted to believe she wouldn’t burn me too. But deep down, I wasn’t sure anymore.

--

Bucky had been distracted. That much I knew.

The Thunderbolts were gathered in a sealed war room, the air tense with the weight of strategy and vengeance. Yelena pacing, Ghost locked in silence, Red Guardian cracking his knuckles too loud. And Bucky—head down, voice low, parsing through classified coordinates that meant blood and fire.

It was the perfect moment to slip away. No cameras. No questions. Just the cold hallway, my coat, and a heart foolish enough to believe she’d still care.

I found my mother in a high-rise flat draped in shadows and secrets. Of course she wasn’t hiding—she never had to. Power like hers didn’t run. It waited. Coiled. Ready.

She opened the door like she’d been expecting me.

"My little star," she said.

My chest tightened. Her voice still sounded like lullabies and lullabies still sounded like lies.

“I had to see you,” I breathed.

And for a moment, she let me.

She let me bury myself in her arms like I used to as a child—when the world made more sense and all monsters lived under the bed, not inside bloodlines.

Her hand moved through my hair gently. A soothing rhythm.

“I missed you,” I whispered, clinging tighter.

But something shifted. Her fingers paused, then moved again.

Lower.

Slower.

A pinch.

A hiss.

Something sharp pressing into the side of my neck. I gasped—fingers twitching—but my limbs were already giving out.

“Mom…?” I choked.

Her breath grazed my ear. “I warned him,” she murmured. “No one takes my daughter from me.”

The room swam. My knees buckled. Her arms caught me as everything tilted and dulled. I was too numb to scream. Too heartbroken to fight.

“I need to fix you,” she said, almost lovingly. “You’ve been infected with sentiment.”

The last thing I saw before the darkness took me was her smile.

Soft. Cold. Final.

-- When Bucky returned to the safehouse, he felt it instantly. The stillness wasn’t right. Your jacket was gone. So was your phone. The back door cracked open like a warning shot.

“Damn it,” he muttered, voice tight.

He tried your number. Straight to voicemail. Tried traffic cams. You’d slipped under every watch.

“She’s gone,” he said to the Thunderbolts, jaw clenched hard enough to ache. “She went to her.”

Yelena narrowed her eyes. “Valentina?”

“She’ll use her,” Ghost said. “That’s what she does. Cuts soft spots into scars.”

Bucky didn’t wait for a plan. He was already halfway to the car before anyone moved.

The facility was hidden beneath a textile warehouse. Of course. It was always somewhere mundane—somewhere no one would look until it was too late.

Bucky tore through the guards with controlled fury, vibranium arm crashing through reinforced steel like paper. Security measures fell. Doors buckled.

He was an avalanche.

And nothing was going to keep him from you. --

I woke to white.

Not warmth. Not peace. Just sterile, blinding white.

A glass wall stood before me. I was inside a room that looked like a lab but felt like a prison.

My arms were restrained loosely—not enough to bruise, but enough to humiliate.

And she stood on the other side.

Valentina.

Mother.

"You’ll thank me one day," she said softly, like this was a gift.

“I’m not your experiment,” I snapped, throat dry. “I’m your daughter.”

She tilted her head. “Exactly. Which is why I won’t let you be ruined by people like him.”

She tapped the glass gently, like it wasn’t separating war from womb.

“He got into your head. And into your bed. But that’s what Winter Soldiers do, darling. They infiltrate. They infect.”

Tears pricked my eyes—but not from weakness. From rage.

“He didn’t lie to me. You did.”

She frowned slightly, like you’d disappointed her. “You’ll understand once the sedation wears off. Once the procedure’s complete. You’ll be better. Stronger.”

She reached for a control panel, but didn’t press it in time.

Because the ceiling exploded. Metal groaned. Smoke poured in.

And then—Bucky.

Through the dust, through the fire—he came. A force of memory and fury and heartbreak wrapped in black combat gear, gun raised, eyes locked on you first before anything else.

“Don’t move!” he roared at the guards, already taking two down before they even reached their weapons.

“Barnes,” Valentina hissed, stepping back. “How predictable.”

But he didn’t look at her. He looked at me. And something cracked in his chest when he saw the marks on my arms, the haze in my eyes.

“You found me,” I whispered, barely audible.

“I’ll always find you,” he growled.

I tried to stand. My legs buckled. He was at the glass instantly, fists slamming against it.

“Get away from her!” he shouted at Valentina.

But she was already backing toward the emergency console.

“You brought this on yourself,” she said coldly. “You turned my daughter into a weapon.”

“No,” Bucky spat. “You did that the day you stopped being her mother.”

She hit the button.

The floor beneath me shifted.

I was falling. The next thing I knew—I was waking again. But this time in his arms. Cradled to his chest like the most fragile thing he’d ever broken and was now desperate to hold together.

His voice was hoarse. “I thought I lost you.”

My head rested against his shoulder. “She said you infected me.”

He flinched, like the words stabbed deeper than any bullet.

“Maybe I did,” he said, voice low. “But not the way she thinks.”

I looked up at him, eyes glassy. “Why did you come?”

His jaw worked as he tried to breathe through it.

“Because I love you,” he said.

There it was.

No shields. No spy games. Just the wreckage of a soldier who had nothing left to hide.

And before you could fall again—this time into fear or silence—he kissed me.

Not like the first time. Not out of lust or adrenaline.

This kiss was an apology and a promise all at once. A vow carved in bruises and breath.

And when he pulled away, your fingers curled in the collar of his jacket.

“Don’t let me go again,” you whispered.

“I won’t,” he said. “Even if you run—I’ll come back every time.” -- The safehouse was quiet. Too quiet for what had just happened.

I was trembling in his arms, the room dim and heavy with my cries—cries he swallowed with each desperate kiss, each slow, anchored thrust inside me, grounding me as my body broke open beneath the weight of what you feared was coming.

“Please,” I whispered, tears slick on my cheeks, my fingers curling into his back. “Don’t kill her. Don’t kill my mother.”

Bucky didn’t move for a long beat. His hips stilled, chest heaving against mine, brows furrowed like the very idea of showing mercy to Valentina cost him more than blood ever did.

But his hand, warm and calloused, cupped my jaw. He looked at me.

“I don’t promise things I can’t keep,” he said, voice thick, lips brushing your brow. “But for you… I won’t touch her. Not unless she forces my hand.”

I buried my face in his neck. Because even in love, even in war, Bucky Barnes still left space for mercy. Even when it tore him apart.

-- The next day, I bit my nails raw. I  wasn’t allowed out of the reinforced safehouse bunker. The door locked from the outside this time, security at full force.

The Thunderbolts were on the move. The plan had shifted. They weren’t coming for information. They were coming to end it.

To end her.

I paced the room like a caged animal, nerves fraying with every tick of the clock. Time slowed. The world outside roared.

And then—footsteps.

Not the heavy kind. Not boots or guards or soldiers. Heels. Purposeful, swift.

The lock clicked. The door opened.

“Mel,” I gasped, staring at the familiar face of my mother’s personal assistant—her confidante, her shadow.

She didn’t hesitate. She slipped inside and closed the door.

“Bucky sent me,” she said. “I’m here to get you out.”

I stared. “He said—he said I’d be safe here—”

“Not from this,” she cut in. “Bob lost control. He became the Void. He’s pulling everyone into it. They’re all stuck—suffering inside their worst trauma. He’s… feeding off it.”

My knees went weak. “Where is Bucky?”

She met your gaze. “In there.”

I didn’t wait. I ran.

Mel shouted after me, but she didn’t stop me.

Couldn’t.

-- I arrived just as the chaos was ending.

The air was thick with smoke and echoes of screams that weren’t quite real. My boots crunched over broken glass. The building had nearly collapsed from the inside out—mind against mind, memory against memory.

And then… light.

Not from bombs.

From cameras and podiums.

The crowd beyond the broken doors was cheering.

Flashbulbs firing.

And standing tall, flanked by armed guards and the remains of her empire, was her.

Alive. Triumphant. Bloodless.

She smiled.

“Today marks the beginning of a new era,” she declared into the sea of microphones. “The Thunderbolts will now operate as the new face of global protection. Stronger. Smarter. Unchained.”

Behind her stood Yelena, Ghost, Red Guardian… and Bucky.

But he wasn’t clapping. He wasn’t smiling. He was staring through the crowd, past the lights, past the cameras.

At me.

And the moment my eyes met his—something in him shifted. He took one step forward.  Then leaned slightly toward my mother.

Whatever he said was low enough not to be caught on any mic—but I saw it in her face. She paled. Just a fraction. Lips thinned. Chin lifted.

I read her.

She’d lost.

Not on the stage, not in the war rooms—but in the only battle that mattered.

Him.

She didn’t own him anymore.

He was mine now.

And she knew it.

Because whatever deal had kept her alive, whatever threads she pulled to wear her crown again—he had made sure me were the price.

Her final trade.

Me.

He came for me before the cameras even cooled. I didn’t run or scream. I just stepped into his arms.

And let the world fall quiet again.

Because even if she rose again, even if Valentina wore a thousand masks, I knew this one thing

I was no longer hers to use as he was no longer hers to command. I was his. He was mine. And the war—finally—was over.

We kiss again slowly—like he didn’t want it to end.

My hands curled into his shirt, holding on like you could stop the world from spinning again. He tasted like iron and storm, the kind of heartbreak that never really healed, only learned how to live in someone else’s arms.

When he finally pulled back, your breath caught in the quiet between you.

“She exploited you,” you whispered, voice cracking with guilt. “Used the Thunderbolts. Used you. After everything.”

Bucky didn’t deny it. He didn’t need to. Instead, he looked at me like the war still raged behind his eyes—and you were the only ceasefire left.

“I told your mother something,” he murmured, his fingers brushing your cheek. “When the cameras shut off. When her press stunt was over.”

I stared at him, heart pounding. “What did you tell her?”

He swallowed hard, jaw clenched. “I said she could keep her victory. Her lies. Her title. All of it.”

He stepped back slightly, gaze flickering to the door like he could still see her ghost there.

“But I asked her for one thing,” he said softly. “The one thing she’ll never return.”

My chest tightened. “What was it?”

He met my eyes. “You.”

My breath shook.

“And still…” he looked at me again, this time gentler, like the storm had passed. “I’d go through all of it again. If it meant getting to you. If it meant you were still here.”

My heart cracked wide open.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

He shook his head.

“Don’t be. Just stay.”

"That was a choice I’d already made."

[amaris-whisperer]

Starlit Contract (Jungkook x Reader) ll EP.9

Episode 9 - Stardust between Us Pairing: Jungkook x reader Genre: Fantasy, Romance, Angst Rating: T Tags: slow burn, celestial AU, reincarnation themes, soft angst, fantasy romance -- It started with a bottle.

Jungkook was folding laundry in their small sun-warmed bedroom when his hand brushed against something tucked behind the lamp on her nightstand. He pulled it out curiously—a small amber bottle with a white cap.

His heart sank as he read the label: Carvedilol. For chronic cardiac conditions.

He stood still for a long time, the bottle cold and heavy in his palm. A sound behind him made him turn. Y/N stood in the doorway, her expression unreadable. But her eyes gave her away.

“What is this?”

Her silence said everything.

“Y/N. What is this for?” He asked.

She looked down. “It’s… it’s for my heart. The condition never fully went away.”

He blinked. “What do you mean? You said you were fine.”

“I said I was better.” Her voice was calm, but her hands were twisting the hem of her sweater. “I didn’t lie. Not exactly. But I’ve had this since I was a kid. It’s chronic. Sometimes stable. Sometimes not. It never truly leaves.”

Jungkook’s jaw clenched. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

She looked up at him, and the sadness in her expression made his chest cave in. “Because I didn’t want you to carry it. Because you already glow less and less every day. Because I see the way you hide the dizziness, the way your hands tremble when you think I’m not looking. You’re fading, Jungkook. And I couldn’t bear to be one more burden.”

He stepped back a little, as if the words stung more than he expected. “You thought I wouldn’t want to know?”

“I thought you’d blame yourself.”

He exhaled, the pressure building fast in his chest. “You should have told me.”

Y/N fired back, “And you should have told me!”

That broke the last of the gentle tension. Their voices rose—sharp, raw, unrehearsed.

“Every time I touched you, you flinched. You looked away when I saw your mark burning. You told me it was nothing! You’re breaking apart in front of me, and I feel it! And still, you lie like it doesn’t hurt!”

“Because I wanted to protect you!”

“And I wanted to protect you!”

The words hung in the air like shattered glass. Their breathing came heavy and uneven. The silence that followed was worse than any shouted word. Thick. Suffocating.

He reached for her then, but she stepped back. “I need space,” she whispered, and disappeared into the spare room, closing the door behind her with a quiet finality.

Jungkook stood in the hallway alone, feeling like his body might split from the pressure. He raised a hand to the burning mark on his chest. It pulsed, not with celestial fire—but with loss.

That night, he sat outside the closed bedroom door. He didn’t knock. Didn’t press.

But he stayed. Back against the wall, knees pulled to his chest, he listened to the muffled sobs inside. Her pain mirrored his own, echoing through the wood like thunder in a hollow sky.

He buried his face in his hands. He wanted to go to her. But something in him knew—this time, it wasn’t about fixing it. It was about enduring it. Letting the truth live between them for once, no longer wrapped in stardust or silence.

He whispered into the dark hallway. “I’m still here.”

Even if she didn’t answer or the stars stopped listening.

He would stay. -- Y/N’s POV

She didn’t cry because she was weak. She cried because for the first time in her life, she was terrified to be strong.

The secret she’d carried—her heart condition—had always been a quiet shadow. A fact she accepted like the rhythm of her breath, the beat of the blood through her veins. Something constant, yet invisible. Manageable. Mostly.

But now, that shadow had grown teeth. Because she saw the way Jungkook’s hands trembled when he thought she wasn’t looking. How he winced when he thought she couldn’t hear the mark on his chest hum with static. How he smiled, wide and foolish and in love—and how much it cost him to do it.

She wasn’t stupid. She knew long before he ever touched the bottle of pills on her nightstand.

And when the truth finally spilled—about her condition, about his fading—they didn't hold each other the way she imagined they would. They argued.

They broke.

She hadn't meant to scream at him. But his voice had gone sharp, hurt and raw like something sacred had been betrayed. “You should have told me!” “And you should have told me!”

Their words echoed down the walls like falling stars—blazing, beautiful, devastating. Then nothing. Silence. She had left him in the kitchen, and he hadn’t followed.

She curled into their bed and cried until her pillow was soaked and her chest ached in uneven bursts.

She should’ve told him the moment he fell into her world—naked, confused, glowing like a story she shouldn’t have believed in. But something about his wonder made her selfish. She wanted to show him all the things she loved, not the pieces of her breaking quietly inside.

She wanted to give him time without sorrow.

So she stayed quiet.

Now that silence had built a wall between them.

But even through the weight of it, she could feel him. On the other side of the door. She didn’t hear his voice, but she felt the way he sat against it, heavy with apology. With longing. With shame. His fingers brushed the threshold sometimes. And her heart clenched.

She turned toward the door, whispering through the stillness, “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to burn for nothing.”

No response. Just silence. But she knew he was listening. “You’ve already burned so brightly… I just wanted you to stay a little longer. Even if I couldn’t.”

The door creaked, but it didn’t open.

She buried her face in her hands again, a quiet laugh breaking through the tears. It wasn’t funny. Not really. But somehow, they had become two fools—both trying to protect the other by suffering in silence. Both thinking love meant shielding, when it was supposed to mean sharing.

She sat up, pulling the blanket around her shoulders.

She thought of the first time she saw him—not the day he fell, but before that. When she was a child, slipping under the ice, lungs freezing, heart slowing. There had been light. A warm, impossible light. She had seen his face, then. Not quite a man, not quite a star. But radiant. Watching her. Holding her.

She had whispered, back then, “Don’t burn alone.”

Maybe it was her fault, after all. Maybe that’s what summoned him.

She had made the wish. And now they were both paying for it.

-- Above the veil of the mortal world—beyond clouds and stars and time—a gathering stirred.

Within the astral plane, where stars pulsed like thoughts and memories lived as constellations, five figures watched Jungkook from a circle of silver flame. Their forms were luminous, shifting, cloaked in the radiance of galaxies. They had once been called gods, angels, Keepers. Now, they were witnesses.

RM stood at the center, his gaze heavy with quiet wisdom. Beside him, Jin’s expression was unreadable, arms folded across his chest. Yoongi lingered in the shadows, silent but intense. J-Hope shimmered like sunlight in motion, pacing restlessly. And Taehyung—his form the color of stormlight and dusk—watched the Earth below with a look that bordered on mourning.

“He’s fading,” Jin finally said. “His light is growing weaker by the day.”

“He’s unraveling his contract,” Yoongi added, voice low. “And he knows it.”

J-Hope stopped pacing, fists clenched. “He was never meant to stay. He’s not one of them.”

“But he is now,” RM said. “At least… his heart is.”

“It’s love,” Taehyung murmured. “That girl—Y/N—she is the reason his flame burns differently. That’s what Jimin said too, once.”

The name silenced the circle.

Jimin.

The fallen. The one who’d loved too deeply and broken the terms. The one who had disappeared from their plane, his fate sealed by the very laws Jungkook now tested.

“He’s walking the same path,” Jin said flatly. “He’s making the same mistake.”

Taehyung turned slowly, eyes burning brighter. “Is it a mistake to love? Is that what we are now? Enforcers of loneliness?”

Yoongi’s stare did not waver. “It’s not love we’re against. It’s obsession. He was not sent to bind himself to one soul. He was meant to guard the cycle, not break it.”

J-Hope looked pained. “He was the brightest of us. And now he hides on rooftops and in small kitchens, bleeding his light into a girl who can’t save him.”

“She doesn’t have to save him,” Taehyung said sharply. “She already changed him. Can’t you see it? He’s still Jungkook… but he’s more.”

“More?” Jin snapped. “Or less? He hasn’t sent a wish upward in months. He’s ignoring the stars. Ignoring us. And now his energy is collapsing in on itself.”

RM held up a hand, silencing them. His gaze lingered on the image before them—Jungkook, seated against a door, face buried in his hands, listening to the girl’s quiet sobs. There was so much pain in his stillness. So much longing.

“He broke the rules,” RM said, softly but firmly. “We must decide—do we call him home… or erase him?”

Taehyung stepped forward, his voice like thunder. “Call him. Give him a chance. I’ll go.”

Jin looked to Yoongi. Yoongi looked to J-Hope. They hesitated.

“Jimin’s light flickered and died when he was erased,” Yoongi said slowly. “Do you want that for Jungkook?”

Taehyung’s jaw clenched. “He’s not like Jimin. He remembers what matters.”

RM nodded. “Then go. Find him. Speak to him. But if he refuses to return, the council may not be merciful again.”

The silver flame flared once more.

And Taehyung vanished.

[amaris-whisperer]

MOONFIRE | Aemond Targaryen x Reader (EP.9)

Pairing: Aemond Targaryen and OC Episode lX – “Ashes on the Crown” In a realm where bloodlines burn and dragons stir, even queens must kneel to prophecy. -- The tunnel beneath the mountain felt like the throat of some dead god—silent, endless, pulsing faintly with heat. Emberyn’s torch flickered with every breath she took, its fire paling next to the molten veins that pulsed through the black stone walls.

She moved with purpose. The runes carved along her wrists had begun to glow again. Not ink. Not an illusion. 

Magic etched into her flesh by something older than blood.

She passed the final threshold. There, under vaulted obsidian ribs and a skyless ceiling, lay the beast from her dreams.

Ignarax.

The nightmare.

The dragon of the first fire-speaker. A creature bound not by chains, but prophecy. Its body was the color of scorched bone and embered rock. Coiled in on itself, as if the weight of centuries had turned its bones to stone.

Her voice was a whisper of memory. “Ignarax.”

A golden eye opened. Slow. Endless. A slit of liquid sun against darkness. Behind her, she heard boots. She didn’t turn.

“Emberyn,” Aemond’s voice cracked. “Don’t—”

She stood before the beast, pale and radiant in the orange glow. The runes on her skin shimmered brighter as the air shifted. He grabbed her arm. Desperate. “You will die if you try to wake it. It’s not like Vhagar. You don't know what it—”

She turned to him, face illuminated in firelight. “He not the end of my story, Aemond. He is the storm I must walk through.”

“Please,” he said, shaking now. “Please.”

Her fingers slipped free from his. She stepped forward. The runes ignited. And then she screamed—just like in the vision.

But the dragon did not strike.

It bowed.

Aemond stood frozen. His sword half-drawn, his breath short. He had never seen such a thing. Not in Valyria, not in books, not even in tales.

Emberyn turned, her voice distant and shaken. “It knows me. It’s not a bond. It’s memory.”

-- They returned from the mountain at dawn, faces still ghostlit from the fire below. They stood in the solar, the morning sun bleeding through stained glass like diluted fire. Emberyn’s skin still glowed faintly beneath her sleeves, the runes etched in her flesh refusing to dim even in the daylight.

Lord Rivendale stared at them both in silence—then at the faint glow still visible beneath Emberyn’s sleeves.

“You saw it,” he said—not asked. “The beast beneath the mountain.”

“Yes,” Emberyn whispered.

“Ignarax bowed,” Aemond said, voice steel-wrapped in disbelief. “Not bonded. Not commanded. It bowed.” Aemond added coldly. “You know what it is..speak.”

Her father closed his eyes. His face, once proud, aged a decade in a breath. “There is a name you’ve never been taught,” he said softly. “Not because I wished to keep it from you, but because I feared what it would mean if you ever had to bear it.”

He crossed to a locked drawer and withdrew an old, leather-bound codex—charred at the edges, as though it had survived flame itself. He opened it to a page written in both High Valyrian and an even older script that shimmered faintly.

“The first of our line...she was called Vaelyssia the Flameborne. The first woman in our line who bore the mark you now carry. She wasn’t merely a queen. She was a Fire-Speaker—a seer chosen by the flame, one who could not only read prophecy, but awaken it. Fire didn’t obey her. It remembered her. She wasn’t just a queen. She was a fire-speaker. Chosen by flame. Ignarax was her sacred mount.”

He then looked up at Emberyn, his voice quiet but reverent.

“She bled into the flame and spoke to dragons—not with whips or bridles, but with truth. The runes marked her the same way they mark you now. Not every daughter bore them. But when they reappear… it means the flame has chosen again.”

“No one commands two dragons,” Aemond said.

“No one ever has,” Lord Rivendale agreed. “Until you, Emberyn.” Emberyn’s breath hitched. “The Ember Mirror. The visions. The voice.”

Aemond moved to her side, his jaw tight. “You knew this power might awaken again. And you said nothing.”

“I prayed it never would,” Lord Rivendale said bitterly. “Fire-speakers die badly. Always. Betrayed. Feared. Used.”

The lord looked to Emberyn, haunted. “Vaelyssia died screaming in fire—betrayed by the king she loved, because her power frightened his court. They chained Ignarax beneath the mountain, sealed her legacy, and told the world she had gone mad.”

Aemond stiffened. “And you fear I’ll become that king.”

“I fear what any crown would do when they learn what she’s become.”

The silence hung heavy. Aemond stepped forward, placing himself between Emberyn and her father.

“I won’t let the Crown touch her. She’s mine. My future queen.”

“But will the fire obey you, prince Aemond?” Lord Rivendale asked quietly. “Or has it already chosen who wears the crown?”

--

The fire had burned low in the hearth, but the room had only grown colder.

Shadows flickered across the stone walls of Rivendale’s solar, cast by the dying flames and the storm brewing in the hearts of those who stood around the open tome. It sat heavy on the oaken table, untouched since Emberyn had uttered the name carved into its ancient page: Vaelyssia the Flameborne.

The name still rang in the air like an echo from another age.

Lord Rivendale stood with both hands braced on the table, his jaw clenched. The truth was a wound reopening—one long buried by time and silence. The blood of the Flameborne had not ended with ash and exile. It lived. It thrived. In his daughter.

And Aemond Targaryen, Prince of the Realm, had bound himself to that legacy with fire and flesh.

Aemond stood not far from Emberyn, one hand resting lightly on the pommel of his sword—not in threat, but as a silent promise of protection. His single violet eye watched her, as if memorizing the lines of her face, the way the firelight danced in her eyes. He was already planning the next step. Securing their bond. Strengthening the line.

He would not let her be taken.

But fate rarely allowed plans to settle for long.

A sharp knock broke through the charged silence.

The door to the solar creaked open, and a steward appeared, red-faced and breathless.

“My lord,” the boy gasped. “A raven—from the Red Keep. Marked by the Queen’s own seal.”

Aemond turned instantly. The steward didn’t even have to cross the room—Aemond strode forward and plucked the scroll from his trembling hands.

He cracked the green wax, unrolling it quickly. His eye darted across the words, line by line. A shift came over him—quiet, taut, dangerous.

Emberyn rose slowly from her chair, voice quiet but firm. “What does she say?”

Aemond’s jaw tightened. He said nothing at first. Then:

“She knows.”

He handed the parchment to Lord Rivendale, who read aloud the words penned in Queen Alicent’s delicate, pointed hand.

To my son, Prince Aemond Targaryen, and Lady Emberyn of House Rivendale, Aemond, I write to you not only as Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, but as your mother—who bore you, raised you, and trusted that the blood in your veins would guide you to wisdom, not recklessness. You have acted without counsel. You have taken a bride without the Crown’s blessing, and worse—you have awakened powers long buried for good reason. Do you think I do not know what it means, this union of fire and blood sealed in the shadow of a mountain? The whispers reach even the Red Keep. They speak of a dragon not seen for generations, of runes glowing on her skin, of ancient rites repeated in darkness. Tell me, Aemond—do you serve the realm, or prophecy? You are hereby summoned to return at once to King’s Landing, both you and Lady Emberyn. The Small Council shall hear what has transpired. If there is truth to speak, then speak it plainly. But if there are lies, if this is folly disguised as fate, know that no dragon—no matter how old or terrible—will protect you from what follows. I raised you to be strong. But even strength must bow to duty. Come home, Aemond. Let us face what you have awakened—together. — Alicent Hightower Queen of the Realm Your mother

Lord Rivendale’s hands gripped the scroll tighter, knuckles white.

“She calls it treason,” he muttered. “The prince of the realm binding himself to a house believed extinguished. A bloodline the Crown feared—because it could not control it. He had been sent for only securing our loyalty, not continuing our bloodline.”

“She demands I return,” Aemond said, his voice sharp as steel. “And summons Emberyn.”

“She’ll try to separate you,” Lord Rivendale warned. “Force you before the Maesters. Bind you in wards and watch you like a relic. If the wrong whisper spreads that a Fire-Speaker lives again, the Faith might demand a purge. The Crown may obey.”

Aemond stepped forward, a storm in his voice. “She won’t be taken. I swore that on fire and blood.”

Emberyn moved between them then—her presence like a spark falling into kindling. Her spine was straight. Her voice did not tremble.

“You said the Flame chose me. That it remembers me.” She looked at them both. “So let it.”

A hush fell. Then, she added, “Ignarax did not rise in fury. It bowed. It knew me. And if I am the last of the fire-speakers, then let the Crown see what that truly means.”

Aemond turned to her slowly, gaze burning.

Not as a prince. Not even as a man. But as something deeper. Bound.

“I’ll go,” he said. “To the Keep. To stand before the court and my mother. But you ride with me. As my wife. As my blood. If they raise a hand to you—”

He didn’t finish. He didn’t need to. Emberyn’s hand slid into his with solidarity, trust, and flame.

From deep beneath the keep, the mountain stirred. A low groan—half rumble, half breath—shivered through the stone floor.

Ignarax had heard. The fire was listening.

Lord Rivendale moved to the window, staring out at the black peaks beyond the citadel walls. “The world has long forgotten what it means to fear the flame,” he murmured. “But I have not. The nightmare under the mountain was once the sacred mount of Vaelyssia the Flameborne. She did not tame him. She woke him. Just as Emberyn has.”

He turned back toward them. “No one has ever commanded two dragons. No one has ever shared that bond—not through force, but prophecy. This... this will shake the realm.”

Aemond stepped closer to Emberyn, lowering his voice. “The Crown may accuse me of treason. But you? They’ll call you a weapon.”

“And if I am?” Emberyn whispered.

“Then let them learn the price of wielding fire.”

[amaris-whisperer]

Fractured Allegiance (Bucky Barnes × Valentina’s Daughter!Reader l 18+)

Genre: Angst, romance, betrayal, drama Pairing: Bucky Barnes × Reader (Valentina’s Daughter) Setting: Thunderbolts AU Warnings: Mature content (18+), emotional manipulation, suggestive themes, angst, betrayal, morally grey characters 

Amaris's note: Part 1 can be considered complete, but you’re welcome to continue the journey in Part 2 to see how they navigate their relationship and resolve their conflicts. --

He wasn’t supposed to be there.

Not at midnight. Not outside my office, leaning against the doorframe like he owned the dark.

But there he was—Congressman James Buchanan Barnes, suit collar loosened, shadows clinging to his shoulders like old ghosts.

“Couldn’t sleep?” I asked, voice softer than I meant.

“Didn’t try,” he said.

Something in his eyes—something tired, desperate, almost gentle—made my breath catch. I should have walked away. I should have remembered who he was. Who I was. But instead, I turned the key. Opened the door. Let him in. He stood in the center of the room like a man waiting for a sentence. Like he already knew what he came for would cost him.

I walked to the window, pretended the silence didn’t claw at my skin.

“You’ve been avoiding me,” I said quietly.

“I was trying to protect you,” he murmured.

I turned. “From what?”

His jaw flexed. “From the truth.”

“Then say it,” I challenged. “Say what you’re hiding. Say why you look at me like you’re drowning.”

The moment cracked.

And then—he moved.

He crossed the space between us like gravity had shifted, like something tethered him to me. One hand touched my waist, the other cradled the side of my neck.

“I tried not to want this,” he said, voice low, raw. “Tried to keep you out of it. But every time I saw you, I forgot how to lie to myself.”

My breath hitched. “Then don’t lie.” He then kissed me like a man who had run out of reasons not to. It started slow—his mouth brushing mine as if asking permission, but the moment I leaned in, everything gave way. The dam burst.

We crashed into each other like we’d been waiting lifetimes.

My back hit the wall first—his hand pressed beside my head, the other cupping my jaw with a tenderness that didn’t match the storm in his body. His mouth moved to my throat, jawline, temple—like he needed to memorize me. Like this would have to last.

“Tell me to stop,” he rasped, voice wrecked and low.

“Don’t you dare,” I breathed.

Clothes came off in pieces—torn, shed, forgotten. His suit jacket fell to the floor. My silk blouse followed, buttons scattering like secrets. He looked at me then—really looked. His metal hand lingered on my waist, cool against overheated skin, while the other trailed up my spine with a gentleness that didn’t match the sharpness in his eyes.

“Do you know what this means?” he asked, hoarse.

“Yes,” I said. “Do you?”

He didn’t answer. He kissed me again. We moved through the dark, stumbling toward the bed, tangled in each other like gravity had shifted. When we landed, it wasn’t rough. It was reverent. His touch slowed—like he was grounding himself in me. Every kiss pressed to my shoulder, every breath shared against my skin, was a confession he couldn’t say out loud.

He hovered above me, hair falling into his face, chest heaving.

“You’re not just a mission,” he whispered. “Not to me.”

I wrapped my legs around his hips and pulled him down. Not just because I wanted him. But because I needed to believe someone could want me outside of my mother’s shadow.

The space between us disappeared. And for the first time, it didn’t feel like war. It felt like surrender. There was no slowness to it. No gentle unfurling. Just fire—pent-up tension, restraint turned to ruin. His mouth was hungry, his hands gripping like he needed to anchor himself. Like he’d been starved for something real.

He took me like a secret. Like a man burying truth in skin. Like it was the last time he’d be allowed to feel. And maybe, deep down, we both knew that was true. His weight settled over me like something inevitable.

The moment his lips found mine again, slower now—searching, tasting—it felt like a tether had snapped. One hand slid beneath the curve of my back, drawing me closer until our chests pressed together, skin to skin, heartbeat to heartbeat.

He broke the kiss only to trail his mouth down my throat, across the line of my collarbone. “You’re dangerous,” he murmured against my skin. “I can’t think straight when I’m near you.”

“You don’t have to,” I whispered. “Just feel.”

He groaned low in his throat, and then I felt the slow, deliberate roll of his hips against mine—firm and sure, like he was memorizing the way we fit together. I gasped, breath catching as the tension that had simmered for months finally crested, sharp and consuming.

His mouth found my chest next, lips brushing the delicate skin with reverence and heat. His hands, one warm and calloused, the other cool metal, moved in tandem—one mapping the shape of my ribs, the other sliding up with slow purpose, fingertips skimming over my breast.

He paused there, eyes meeting mine as if waiting for permission even now.

What followed wasn’t rushed or frantic—it was slow, devastatingly intimate. Every movement was a conversation, every kiss a vow neither of us dared speak aloud. He murmured my name like it was the only thing keeping him anchored.

“You feel like peace,” he whispered once, burying his face in the crook of my neck. “And I don’t know what to do with that.”

I held him tighter. My fingers tangled in his hair, pulling him closer as I arched beneath him, every nerve alive and trembling.

His body moved over mine like a force barely restrained—rhythmic, powerful, like each motion was a wordless vow. I clutched at him, nails dragging down his back, desperate to feel all of him, to anchor myself in the storm we had become.

He whispered my name like it hurt to say. Like saying it made this real. And then—he moved deeper, slow at first, then with building intensity that knocked the breath from my lungs. I cried out softly, clutching him tighter, my legs wrapping around him like I could pull him deeper into the moment, into me.

His hips rolled with precision, each thrust stealing something from my chest and replacing it with something just as fragile—trust, hope, maybe love.

His metal hand braced beside my head, while his other one threaded through mine, grounding me. His forehead pressed against mine, sweat-slick skin and ragged breath shared between kisses that bordered on worship. 

“This is real,” he murmured against my mouth, voice breaking. “You’re real.”

I held him like I never wanted to let go. Our bodies moved together, his name whispered like prayer, my fingers curled into his hair, his lips against my collarbone. It wasn’t rushed. It wasn’t perfect. But it was real.

Because part of me already knew—when the sun rose, everything might break.

Because for a moment, wrapped in sheets and heat and everything unspoken, it felt like we were the only two people in the world brave enough to be vulnerable.

So real that when he collapsed beside me, breath ragged, hand searching for mine beneath the covers, I let myself believe it meant something.

-- When I woke, the world felt… still. Too still.

Not the peaceful kind. The eerie kind—like the quiet before a storm, where even my heartbeat sounds too loud. My arm stretched out on instinct, reaching for the familiar warmth beside me.

But the space where he had been just hours ago was cold.

Empty.

The sheets were rumpled, indented by the shape of him, but he was gone. Not a trace left, not even the scent of his skin on the pillow. Just the ghost of his touch and the ache still clinging to my thighs—reminders of how completely I had let him in.

I sat up slowly, the blanket slipping down my bare shoulders, confusion blurring the edges of my thoughts. A thin line of morning light crept through the cracked blinds, casting long shadows across the room.

Then I saw it. The faint glow from my laptop screen, still open on the desk across the room. And the open folders. The decrypted files. The ones only I could access. The ones my mother warned me never to share.

My breath caught in my throat.

I threw the blanket off, heart pounding, and scrambled toward the screen. My fingers hovered over the keyboard—hesitant, desperate.

The logs didn’t lie.

A flash drive had been inserted. Files had been copied. Details—code names, covert operations, evidence buried so deep it could crumble everything—transferred while I slept.

While I lay beside him.

While I trusted him.

He didn’t just take my body. He took access. Trust. Truth. The very core of what I was trying to protect.

And he didn’t even stay to say goodbye. The realization hit like a knife to the gut.

He used me.

Every whispered word, every touch meant to disarm me. Every kiss that made me believe it was more than politics, more than betrayal.

I stumbled back from the desk, hand covering my mouth as the nausea surged up.

Congressman James Buchanan Barnes hadn’t just left me empty.

He left me hollowed out—carved clean through by the man I let so close he didn’t even have to break in. He was already inside.

And now, he was gone.

-- The moment the cuffs closed around my mother’s wrists, something in me broke.

The woman I’d admired all my life—flawed, powerful, commanding—stood before the cameras, surrounded by agents, her expression unreadable. I expected to feel fury, confusion, maybe denial.

But all I felt was… hollow.

Because somewhere deep inside, I’d already known. What gutted me wasn’t the headlines or the cell doors or even the fall from grace.

It was him.

The man I let in when I should’ve run. The man whose name I moaned into darkness just nights ago—his hands gripping my hips like I was something worth holding onto. The man I clung to, skin to skin, thinking I’d found something real.

Lieutenant James Buchanan Barnes.

The man who brought her down. I didn’t even look at him. I couldn’t.

He stood just across the lobby when they escorted her out—dressed in that tailored black suit like he hadn’t shattered everything. His expression was stone. But I knew him too well now. I saw the twitch in his jaw. The way his fingers curled like he was stopping himself from reaching out.

I turned away. I didn’t say a word. I ghosted him.

Deleted his number. Ignored the knocks on my door. Left his jacket—the one he’d draped over my shoulders that night—in a cardboard box outside my apartment.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to hit him, throw something, tear at the lies between us like they could ever undo what had been done.

But I couldn’t even cry. Because the silence was louder than anything else. Because somewhere between the betrayal and the aftermath, I realized I hadn’t just lost my mother.

I’d lost him, too.

And the worst part?

I still wanted him.

--

The fluorescent lights of the interrogation room still buzzed in my skull hours after I left.

They asked the same questions on repeat, wearing me down with sharp-edged words and clipped tones: What did you know? When did you know it? Were you part of the cover-ups? Did you protect your mother?

I didn’t cry. Not when they pushed. Not when they showed me footage. Not when they reminded me that blood ties didn’t grant immunity.

But I shattered the moment I opened my door. He was there.

Bucky.

Sitting on the edge of my couch like he belonged there. Like he hadn’t helped dismantle the only foundation I had left.

I didn’t say anything. Just stared. He rose slowly. “You look tired.”

I scoffed bitterly and stepped past him. “You think?”

I dropped my bag by the door, kicked off my shoes with effort. My limbs were lead, my heart heavier.

He followed me down the hall, slow and cautious. “You’ve been gone for days. I—”

“You shouldn’t be here.” I didn’t turn to look at him. I kept walking until I reached the kitchen. “I don’t want to see you.”

His voice cracked, just barely. “I needed to.”

I turned, finally facing him, and the fury I’d buried under exhaustion came clawing out.

“I begged you to stay out of this.”

“She had to answer for what she did.”

“She’s my mother, Bucky!”

He flinched. Just slightly.

“You came into my life,” I said, stepping forward, voice trembling, “held me like I was something fragile. You kissed me like I was real. And then you used me.”

“I didn’t—”

“Don’t,” I snapped. “Don’t you dare lie to me now.”

He tried to get closer. I stepped back.

“You don’t get to be the hero in this. You don’t get to show up now and pretend you didn’t know what this would do to me.”

“I never wanted to hurt you,” he said, voice hoarse.

“Then why did you?”

His shoulders sagged, as if every word I threw hit something deep.

And that made me angrier. I moved before I could stop myself. My hand came up, fast and sharp across his cheek. The slap echoed off the walls, sharp and final. But it wasn’t enough. The ache in my chest was louder.

“You used me,” I said, breathless with fury. “You fucked me, Bucky. Then you destroyed my mother.”

His jaw tensed, but he didn’t flinch, or speak, or block it.

So I hit him again. Fists now. Pounding against his chest. "You let me love you."

He let me. I shoved him back, and he staggered slightly, never once raising a hand.

“You touched me like I was something sacred,” I spat, shoving him again, “and the whole time, you were digging through my life for whatever you could use to ruin hers.”

“That’s not what it was—”

“Don’t,” I snapped, the tears threatening to burn their way free. “Don’t give me some pretty lie about how it meant something when you were already tearing us both apart.”

“I didn’t plan it like that,” he said, voice low, strained. “I didn’t plan you.”

My voice cracked. “But you planned everything else, didn’t you?”

The silence between us was deafening. My fists shook at my sides.

"Why won’t you fight me back?" I choked.

“Because I deserve it,” he said, barely audible. “Because I knew I was going to lose you the second I did what I had to.”

I stopped, breathing hard. “You took the one person I trusted—my mother—and you turned her into a monster. Maybe she was one. Maybe. But you—you made me fall for you. You made me believe there was something good left in all of this. And then you left me in her ashes.”

“I didn’t want to leave you,” he said, finally moving closer. “I wanted to save you from it.”

“You don’t get to decide what I needed saving from.” My voice trembled. “You made me believe I mattered to you. You held me, touched me, said things I can’t un-hear, and then you walked away with everything I never meant to give.”

His eyes shimmered, and still, he didn’t defend himself.

“I gave you my trust. My body. My heart,” I said, almost a whisper now. “And you used all of it to rip apart my family.”

His head bowed. His shoulders, normally squared with soldier’s pride, slumped beneath the weight of my grief.

“I’m sorry,” he said, barely audible.

“No,” I breathed. “You don’t get to say that. Not when you knew exactly what you were doing the moment you slipped into my bed.”

He stood there, eyes red, cheek blooming with color from my slap, lips parted like there was more he wanted to say but couldn’t. His expression shattered—guilt carved into the lines of his face like penance.

And despite everything… I still wanted to reach for him, but I didn’t. I turned away, unable to look at him.

Because if I did, I might fall apart in the arms of the man who broke me.

And the worst part?

He still looked at me like I was everything.

I hated him for it. I hated that I still wanted him to hold me.

I reached the door and yanked it open.

“Go.”

He didn’t move. So I turned, looked him dead in the eyes.

“I can’t even look at you without feeling like a fool.”

That did it. He stepped out, silent as a closing chapter. And I slammed the door shut behind him.

The echo lingered in the room. In my chest.

Maybe once—months ago—there had been a version of us that could’ve been something real. A version not built on shadows and war and betrayal. But that version died the moment I woke to an empty bed and a glowing screen.

He took more than data. He took the last sliver of belief I had that someone could choose me over a mission.

And maybe I’d heal from that.

But we? We wouldn’t recover. Not from this. Not ever.

[amaris-whisperer]

Starlit Contract (Jungkook x Reader) ll EP.8

Episode 8 - The Heart Beneath the Constellation Pairing: Jungkook x reader Genre: Fantasy, Romance, Angst Rating: T Warning: Slight mature content Tags: slow burn, celestial AU, reincarnation themes, soft angst, fantasy romance -- The signs came again in the morning, as always.

He was pouring coffee when the mug slipped through his fingers. It didn’t crash—didn’t even fall. It hovered midair, caught in a flicker of light that sputtered like a dying flame before vanishing. The mug clattered to the floor, spinning in a lazy circle before settling.

Jungkook stared at his hands. They were trembling.

Not from fear. From exhaustion. From a kind of hollowing he couldn’t explain. The celestial energy in his chest—once a constant hum, a beacon—now pulsed unevenly, flickering like a bad connection.

Static in his veins.

“You okay?” she asked from behind, still curled in his shirt. Sleep-tousled hair, bare feet on the cold tile. Her eyes searched his.

He smiled quickly. Too quickly. “Yeah. Just clumsy.”

She chuckled, stepping over the fallen mug to wrap her arms around his waist. Her cheek pressed against his back.

“You’re never clumsy.”

He kissed her temple. “Maybe you’re rubbing off on me.”

They laughed, and for a while, it was enough to pretend.

—

Later that week, they went to the night market.

She dragged him through every stand—buying mango sticky rice from a cart that always ran out early, trying on mismatched earrings from a vendor she swore had magic hands, holding his hand as if afraid he'd drift away.

“You’ve got that look again,” she teased, handing him a skewer of something unrecognizable but delicious.

“What look?”

“The one where you forget how to blink.”

He grinned. “Can you blame me?”

She rolled her eyes, cheeks flushed pink. “You’re so cheesy.”

“You love it.”

“Tragically, I do.”

They wandered down aisles lit by string lights and paper lanterns. She stopped to press glitter onto his cheekbones, giggling when he didn’t flinch. He bought her a silver ring that wasn’t even real silver, but she wore it like a crown on her smallest finger.

And when no one was looking, he kissed her.

Soft and slow.

Her lips on his were the only thing that silenced the static. That made the pain in his chest blur just enough for him to breathe.

But by the time they got home, his vision glitched again.

He hid it behind the flicker of bathroom lights, the sound of running water. He leaned against the sink, heart pounding too fast, mark searing beneath his skin like a brand.

You’re not meant to stay.

He already knew.

Celestials who broke their contracts always paid. The cost was different for each one. Some forgot their names. Some lost form. Some... simply faded.

He wondered which he’d be.

She found him brushing his teeth with his eyes closed.

“You look tired,” she said gently, pressing a kiss to the back of his shoulder.

“I’m okay,” he mumbled, toothbrush still in his mouth.

“Promise?”

He hesitated, but she noticed.

“Jungkook,” she said, her voice low, hesitant, “you’d tell me if something was wrong, right?”

He met her eyes in the mirror. They were so open. So trusting.

He forced a smile, foam at the corners of his lips. “Of course.”

And she believed him. That was the worst part.

—

They made love again that Sunday. Rain on the windows. Her legs tangled with his.

It was slower this time. Quieter.

Not because they had to be—but because it felt like something fragile might shatter if they moved too fast. His hands trembled when he undressed her. Her breath caught when he whispered her name against her collarbone.

She touched every glowing mark on his skin like it mattered. He kissed the scar beneath her left breast, the one she never explained.

“You’re burning up,” she whispered, frowning.

“It’s nothing,” he lied.

Afterward, when she fell asleep with her head on his chest, his body trembled with a silent kind of pain. He clutched her tighter, his fingers knotted in her hair. As if holding her close could keep the unraveling at bay.

But the stars were bleeding through the cracks now.

And he couldn’t stop it. --

Y/N’s POV

She woke before him, as she always did these days.

The sky outside was still a pale shade of grey-blue, not yet ready to give way to morning. The city was hushed. The world hadn’t stirred. But her chest ached.

It wasn’t a sharp pain—no, those had long since become familiar. This was deeper. A tightness, a pressure that sat behind her ribs and whispered, not much longer now. She exhaled quietly, not wanting to wake him, and looked down at the boy—the being—beside her.

Jungkook lay on his side, his breathing steady but faintly strained. His arm was flung across her waist like a lifeline, and his face was tucked into the space between her shoulder and neck. Even in sleep, he glowed faintly. The silver threads of the celestial mark pulsed dimly across his chest, the light flickering—erratic.

Just like her heart.

She reached up and brushed a strand of hair from his brow. He stirred but didn’t wake.

“You’re getting worse,” she whispered, lips brushing his temple. “And so am I.”

She didn’t need a diagnosis to know. She’d known for months. The fatigue that never faded. The way her heart would skip beats, flutter too fast, then drop into stillness. She could feel it, this slow, silent race between her and time. It had never left her—not really—not since she was seven and nearly died beneath the ice.

She had always known her life would be borrowed.

But now—now that he was here, in her world, loving her like he didn’t know how to stop—it felt like she was stealing more than time.

She carefully slipped out of bed, moving with practiced silence. She winced as she stood, a familiar sharpness stabbing through her chest, radiating up toward her jaw. She steadied herself on the nightstand, counting through it. Inhale. Exhale. You're okay. Not yet. Not now.

Downstairs, she brewed tea. Jasmine for him. Peppermint for her.

He came down fifteen minutes later, blinking sleep from his lashes, his hair a halo of soft tangles. He grinned when he saw her.

“Morning,” he said, that soft bunny smile stretching across his face like sunlight.

“Morning, sleepyhead,” she teased, handing him his mug. He took it, their fingers brushing.

“I dreamt of the stars again,” he murmured, sipping. “But they didn’t speak this time. They just watched.”

She tilted her head. “What do you think they’re waiting for?”

He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Something to end. Or begin.”

She looked down at her tea. “Do you ever wish… you could stay?”

His eyes flicked to hers. “I do. Every second.”

She smiled back, but it felt like paper in her mouth.

They spent that day as any other—grocery shopping, cooking, laughing as he tried (and failed) to figure out how to use a pressure cooker. In the café later, she watched him serve customers with bright eyes and a grace that felt too perfect to be of this world. They danced in the kitchen to old songs. She kissed his knuckles when he burned himself on the kettle.

That night, they lay curled on the couch, rain pattering against the windows. He nuzzled into her neck, his fingers tracing her ribs gently, reverently.

“Do you ever wonder,” she asked softly, “what might’ve happened if I never pulled you inside that night? If I’d just let the storm pass and never opened the door?”

He pressed a kiss to her shoulder. “I would’ve found you anyway. That night… I was falling. Not by accident.”

She smiled, but her fingers curled tighter around his.

“I believe you came because of my wish,” she said. “Even if that sounds stupid. Even if you tell me that’s not how stars work.”

He pulled back slightly to look at her. “Tell me.”

“I was seven. Dying. And I didn’t wish to live. Not really. I… I looked up at that star—you—and I wished you wouldn’t burn alone.”

He didn’t speak for a long moment.

“You believed in me before I believed in myself,” he said finally, voice barely above a breath.

She nodded. “You were always real to me.”

--

Later that night, when he was asleep again, she walked to the window and pressed her hand against the glass.

She knew he was fading. He thought he was hiding it well, but she’d seen the pain in the crease of his brow, the dizziness he tried to mask with laughter, the way he flinched when his mark flared too hot beneath his shirt.

He was burning. And it was her fault.

Because she made a wish not to save herself—but to save him.

Because even as a child, she had seen his sorrow. And if her life was brief—if her heart gave out—then at least he would’ve known love. At least he wouldn’t be alone in that endless sky.

She wrote the wish knowing it might be her last.

And now, she would keep that promise. Even if it meant letting him go.

Even if it meant dying with a smile on her face so he wouldn’t see her break.

[amaris-whisperer]

MOONFIRE l Aemond Targaryen x Reader (EP.8) l Mature content (18+)

Pairing: Aemond Targaryen and OC Warning: Mature content (18+)

Episode Vlll – “The Nightmare Beneath” In fire they were bound—not by fate alone, but by the choices that scorched the soul. --

Rickon Stark left not with a bow, but a blade of words to set the court aflame with his fury. His accusations rang through the stone halls—venomous and loud. He called the match between Emberyn and Aemond a farce, a political conquest. He named her a traitor to the North and Aemond a usurper wrapped in silk and silver.

“House Rivendale has sold their daughter to dragonspawn,” he snarled in the great hall. “You’ll bring ruin to the North.”

But no one answered him. Her father said nothing. He did not stop Aemond when he placed a black-gloved hand on Emberyn’s waist in front of the entire court. Nor did he deny the prince’s right when Aemond declared:

“She is mine. Not as a prize. As equal.”

And so the Stark young lord left, defeated. Alone.

Three days later, the betrothal was sealed.

Aemond had not asked. He had informed. Her father, pale and disgraced, signed the agreement with a hand that barely held the quill steady. Aemond stood behind her, silent but radiating control. The ink had barely dried before ravens were sent to King’s Landing, bearing the news to Queen Alicent. A royal wedding was requested.

The very first night of their betrothal, Emberyn returned to the place where it all began—the chamber that housed the Ember Mirror.

The flames in the basin smoldered low, casting molten light on the obsidian walls. The heat wrapped around her like a cloak. She was barefoot, in a simple shift that clung to her like smoke. The room had once whispered secrets in fire. Tonight, it whispered something else—summoning.

The stone door opened behind her. She didn’t turn. She didn’t need to.

Aemond stepped in with a silence that cracked the air. He crossed the chamber as if led by instinct, not thought. She felt the warmth of his body before she felt his touch.

“You came here,” he said, voice low. “After everything.”

“I had to,” she answered. “This is where it began.”

His gloved hand trailed up her arm—slow, reverent. “She showed you something. The Mirror.”

“She always does.”

She turned then. Met him in the glow of firelight. Her breath trembled, but it wasn’t fear. He could see it. She wasn’t running anymore.

He kissed her. Not like a prince. Like a man who had waited long enough.

She pressed into him, gasping when he pulled her flush against him, his hands already working at the laces of her gown. There was no hesitation. No gentleness. Only fire meeting fire.

They fell together to the floor beside the Mirror, where ancient runes pulsed faintly with emberlight. He stripped her of fabric, laid her bare on the obsidian, and worshipped her like a storm—one that had always belonged to him.

When he kissed her, it was not a question—it was an answer to every unspoken thing between them. Emberyn responded with the same hunger, the same aching fire that had haunted her every time he looked at her as if she were already his.

He reached for her as if he had done so in another life, tugging loose the ties of her gown with a practiced urgency. The fabric slid down her shoulders, pooling at her feet, leaving her bare before the Mirror’s molten glow. His eye drank her in—not with possession, but reverence. Then his hands followed—tracing the lines of her waist, the curve of her hips, and up to her chest.

His palm splayed over her heart first, feeling its wild rhythm. Then he cupped her breasts, his thumb brushing across her sensitive skin until she gasped his name. His mouth followed—hot, demanding—leaving searing kisses along her collarbone, down the slope of her breast, until she trembled beneath his touch.

She reached for him then, tugging him down, pulling at the fastenings of his tunic until they were nothing but skin and heat and firelight.

He pressed her back onto the cool obsidian floor, her hair fanning out like ink in water. Runes shimmered faintly beneath her. The Mirror pulsed beside them, its flame rising in rhythm with their breaths. He touched her with the same precision he wielded a blade. Fingers first—exploring, coaxing, learning the rhythms of her breath, the tilt of her hips, the way her fingers clutched at his back. Then his mouth followed—soft, consuming, devoted.

She arched into him, every part of her singing with fire and fate. And when she looked down and saw the restraint trembling in his eye, she touched his face and whispered, “I want this. I want you.”

Only then did he allow himself to fall with her—into her—into the prophecy. And when he finally entered her—slowly, fully—she cried out. Not in pain.

In recognition.

It felt like something ancient had aligned. Like the prophecy itself curved inward at that moment, folding its wings around them. He filled her completely, his movements slow at first, as if memorizing every part of her.

Then the rhythm deepened. Commanding. Feral.

She arched beneath him, head thrown back, her nails clawing into his shoulders. Her moans echoed against stone and fire. She clung to him as if she were drowning and he the only air she’d ever known. He moved with a fury that bordered on sacred, his mouth finding hers again and again between breaths, between whispered oaths he had never spoken to anyone else.

He said her name like a vow. Like a promise in flame.

And when release took them both, it was not just of the body—but of soul and fire and prophecy. She saw it flash behind her eyes—the chained dragon, the flame-bound queen, the scream she had yet to voice. There, in the cradle of old flame, he bedded her. Fully. Finally. And she gave herself to him without fear.

Above them, the Ember Mirror blazed once more—no longer whispering, but watching.

Below them, buried deep in the mountain’s heart, Ignarax, who was called the Nightmare, stirred fully. Its ancient eye opened.

--

Later, while she rested curled beside him—marked, claimed, and glowing—Aemond rose and pulled on his tunic. At a desk in the shadows, he wrote in his sharp, immaculate hand:

To my lady mother, Queen Alicent of House Hightower, I have taken a bride before the formal marriage. The wedding will be held in King’s Landing andshall be held upon our return to King’s Landing. —Prince Aemond Targaryen

He did not ask for permission. He never would. And as the ink dried, he sealed it with black wax and kissed the edge of the page.

Then he turned to Emberyn, still wrapped in the silks he had pulled from her hours before. She lay watching him, unreadable.

"We will leave for King’s Landing before the moon changes," he said, slipping beside her. “You belong there. With me.”

She didn’t answer. That night, her dreams bled red.

The fire whispered again. But this time, it was not Emberyn in the flame—it was another woman.

A queen of old, cloaked in molten gold, her hair like cinders, cascading embers down her shoulders. Her eyes burned with power ancient and terrible. She stood tall before a line of dragons—massive, shadowed beasts with eyes like dying stars.

They were not ridden. Not tamed. They were bound with chains of obsidian and fire holding them to her will.

The queen lifted a dagger carved from dragonbone. With slow deliberation, she cut her palm and held it out. Blood dripped onto the blackened stone.

The dragons bowed. And for a moment, there was peace—terrifying in its stillness.

But the vision twisted.

Screams ripped through the air—high, desperate, inhuman. The queen turned, her golden robes burning at the hem. Her crown fell. Betrayal echoed all around her, faceless courtiers vanishing in flame.

Then the fire consumed her. She burned—limbs curled inward, mouth open in a scream that never ended. Her eyes turned to ash.

“The Queen of Cinders,” whispered the flame. “She trusted the wrong king.”

A beat. A breath.

“And so shall you.”

She jerked awake, her chest heaving, soaked in sweat. Her heart pounded against her ribs, wild and panicked, as though it might tear itself from her body. Her breath caught in her throat—ragged and uneven—her skin slick with the remnants of dream-fire.

The scream still echoed somewhere deep inside her. Not her own, but the queen’s.

Her trembling hands gripped the sheets. But they weren’t empty. They were cradled in someone’s warmth. 

Her Aemond

He held her even in sleep, his arm a band across her waist, his chest against her spine, his hand curled lightly beneath her ribs. His long frame encased her like armor—possessive, unyielding even in unconsciousness. And his face, when she turned slightly, was peaceful in a way she rarely saw. The harsh lines softened. The tension gone.

She didn’t want to wake him. Her fingers hovered just above his forearm, shaking, unsure if they should hold tighter or let go. The dream—the fire, the ancient queen’s betrayal, the dragon’s golden eye—it still danced behind her lids like a curse. But here, wrapped in Aemond’s arms, the world was briefly, mercifully quiet.

His breath stirred the loose strands of her hair. She closed her eyes and let herself lean back into him. Just for a moment. Just to feel him there, real and solid, against the unraveling in her chest.

His embrace held her like a promise. And Emberyn, though trembling, let it.

The chamber was still. No fire crackled. No wind stirred. But something else did. Beneath the mountain, deep below stone and secret, the earth murmured. The old tunnels groaned. Emberyn pressed her palm to the floor, her skin prickling.

But beneath the mountain…the fire was not done.

The heat from the stones below still throbbed faintly, matching the tempo of her blood. The name she had whispered—Ignarax—still hummed on the edge of memory.

Something ancient was waking and stirring beneath the mountain. Not just in her dreams—but in truth.

And it knew her name.

[amaris-whisperer]

Side by Side l Bucky Barnes x Sentry!Reader

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Sentry!Reader Setting: Thunderbolts AU Genre: Action, angst, Sci-Fi, romance, Hurt/Comfort, Psychological Drama -- He found me in the dark.

Not metaphorically. Literally.

The old HYDRA facility outside Riga was buried under layers of twisted steel and forgotten screams. Most wouldn’t even know where to start looking. But Bucky Barnes—Congressman Barnes now—had a way of finding what others missed. Or maybe he saw too much of himself in the stories that didn’t make it into official reports.

They were going to sell me. Like Bob.

Just another experiment designed for war. A government asset crafted in the image of obedience and destruction. But before I could be transferred to Valentina Allegra de Fontaine’s roster of walking weapons, he broke protocol.

He found me first.

I don’t know what he saw when he looked at me then—maybe the trembling in my hands, or the scars that ran deeper than skin—but he didn’t see a monster. He saw a person worth saving.

And he hid me.

Tucked me away in a small, bare apartment in Berlin where the windows stayed shuttered and the nights were silent. He never asked for anything in return. Just brought me food, gave me space, and watched me with those sharp, haunted eyes—like he was waiting for me to break, or maybe daring me not to.

Eventually, I stopped flinching.

We talked. Sometimes late into the night. About the weight of memory. About control and what it meant to lose it. He never pitied me. Never looked away when the shaking started.

And somewhere along the way, I fell in love with him.

Not all at once—but in moments.

In the way he turned his head when he laughed. In the way he never touched me unless I asked. In how he always made sure the door stayed unlocked, just in case I needed to run.

But I didn’t want to run.

Not until the night I tore his arm off. It wasn’t on purpose.

The surge hit me like a tidal wave—one of those residual effects they never fully explained. Rage. Power. A loss of self so complete, I didn’t even recognize my own voice when I screamed. One second we were standing in the middle of the living room, me trembling under the weight of another episode, and the next—I reached out, and his vibranium arm sparked, tore at the seams, and came off in my hands.

I didn’t even realize I was screaming until I saw the look on his face.

Not pain. Not fear.

Shock. Grief. And something worse—something like understanding.

I dropped the arm and backed away from him, hands covered in scorched metal dust. My breath came in panicked gasps. And then I ran—locked myself in the spare room and didn’t come out.

He didn’t knock. He didn’t push. He just left his arm outside the door. Quiet. Waiting.

I stayed in that room all night. And the next morning, I was gone. I left a note he’d never read, took what I could carry, and turned myself in. To Bob. To Valentina.

To the ones who made me.

I told myself it was to keep Bucky safe. That I couldn’t be trusted. That what I did to his arm was proof I didn’t belong in anyone’s life, let alone his.

But the truth was simpler.

I was terrified of what I felt for him—and what it would destroy.

-- He didn’t take it well.

Word spread fast. By the time Mel called him, he’d already torn apart the Berlin safehouse, interrogated half of Valentina’s network, and threatened to dismantle the entire Thunderbolts operation with his bare hands.

“She came to us willingly,” Mel told him.

“That doesn’t make it right,” Bucky growled.

When he arrived at the compound, the guards flinched just looking at him. He ignored them. Stormed past the checkpoints like a shadow with unfinished business. Thunder followed in his wake.

And then he saw me.

I was in the suit.

Black. Sleek. Restrained only by the orders injected into my bloodstream. Just like Bob. Just like we were built to be.

His jaw clenched. His eyes locked on mine.

“Take it off,” he said, low and furious.

“I can’t.”

“You think I’ll hurt you?” His voice broke slightly. “You think I’ll stop caring because of one mistake?”

“This isn’t about you,” I lied.

His hands shook. The reattached vibranium arm glinted under the fluorescents—new plates, polished, functional. But his voice was still raw.

“You think giving yourself up fixes this? You think throwing yourself into Valentina’s hands makes me safer?”

“It’s not about safety,” I said, quieter now. “It’s about control. I lost it, Bucky. I hurt you.”

“You didn’t hurt me,” he snapped. “You’re the only thing in this damn world that doesn’t hurt.”

I froze.

The room was so quiet, I could hear the echo of my own breath. Behind us, Bob hovered in the hallway, uncertain, while Valentina’s assistant smirked from behind glass.

“You think she’s going to let you walk away from this once you’re in the suit?” he said. “They’re not offering redemption. They’re offering slavery with better branding.”

I looked down. At the gloves. At the faint hum in my veins that came with the drugs they pumped into us. I had told myself I was taking control back.

But it wasn’t control. It was surrender dressed as sacrifice.

“I didn’t want you to see me like this,” I whispered.

He stepped forward—carefully. Slowly. Like approaching a wounded animal.

“I don’t care how you look,” he said. “I care that you’re still you.”

I met his eyes. Blue and steady. Full of hurt. Full of fire.

“I don’t know if I am,” I admitted.

“Then let me help you remember.”

The door slammed open behind us with a mechanical hiss.

Bob stepped into the room first, slow and steady like a loaded gun. The room darkened—not from the lights, but from him. That same silent weight he always carried when his power pulsed just beneath his skin. Cold. Inhuman. Ready.

Valentina followed, heels clicking like a countdown. She was all venom wrapped in velvet, lips curled into that cruel knowing smile she wore like war paint.

“Well,” she said, surveying the standoff, “isn’t this a sweet little betrayal party?”

Bucky’s stance shifted instantly—protective, poised. The metal arm twitched at his side.

“You’re not taking her,” he growled.

But Bob didn’t wait.

His hand flicked forward, and suddenly Bucky was airborne—slammed against the wall with a crack that made me flinch. The vibranium arm sparked against the impact, grinding as it was pinned by some invisible force. His jaw clenched, muscles straining against the weight that wasn’t physical—but pressure, like a vice clamping into the air itself.

“I didn’t want to do this, James,” Bob said, voice low. Almost regretful. “But you never learn to stay out of things that aren’t yours.”

“No!” I cried, running forward. “Bob, stop! Don’t hurt him!”

Valentina chuckled behind him. “Look at you,” she purred. “Still so sentimental. You were made for better things, you know. Power like yours, and you’re wasting it on him?”

Bob turned slightly, eyes locking onto mine.

“You’re not like them,” he said, calm but cold. “You were built. Just like me. Do you remember what you did to him? What you're capable of? This is who you are.”

I shook my head. “No. That’s not me anymore.”

He tilted his head. “Then why are your hands shaking?”

My fists curled at my sides.

Because I could feel it. The pulse beneath my skin. That dangerous swell of energy that hadn’t flared since the night I tore Bucky’s arm away. It crackled now—hot and volatile—rising to the surface like a scream I couldn’t contain.

Bucky was struggling again, teeth clenched, muscles taut.

“Don’t—” he gasped. “Don’t listen to them.”

I stared at him.

At the man who had given me space. Who had let me find myself. Who had never once treated me like a weapon, even when I was too afraid to be anything else.

And in that moment, something snapped.

I stepped between them.

Bob’s eyes narrowed. “Move.”

“No.”

The air trembled.

And then my power burst free.

It wasn't elegant. It wasn't controlled. It was a raw, searing flare of energy that shattered the restraints Bob had constructed. The lights blew out. Sparks rained down from the ceiling. And in the chaos, I threw myself in front of Bucky—arms flaring, body glowing with the very force I had tried so hard to hide.

Bob reached out—but I stopped him.

A shield of energy erupted between us, slamming him backward with a force that shook the ground.

And in the sudden silence, I turned—to him.

To Bucky.

His eyes were wide, filled with awe and disbelief and something warmer, deeper, rising through the cracks.

But I couldn’t let him speak.

Because I knew what had to happen next.

I turned around. Slowly. Face grim.

And I reached behind me—locking my arms around Bucky’s, pinning him in place. The way he had taught me once—to stop someone from throwing themselves into danger.

His breath caught.

“What are you doing?” he demanded, struggling against my grip.

“I’m ending this,” I said, voice trembling. “You don’t need to fight my battles.”

He shook his head violently. “You’re not alone—”

“But I was made for this,” I whispered. “Let me be what I was made for… just this once. For the right reason.”

I looked over my shoulder—into those blue eyes filled with fury and fear and something heartbreakingly tender.

“Trust me,” I whispered.

He stopped struggling.

Behind me, Bob was getting to his feet.

And Valentina? She had stopped smiling.

The next blow would tear everything apart.

But I didn’t care.

Because Bucky was behind me.

And for once in my life—I was exactly where I wanted to be.

-- The battle burned around us—heat, force, light—but in the end, it wasn’t strength that undid me.

It was him.

Bob's hand shot forward, his power latching onto the weakest part of me—my guilt. My grief. My fear. And in an instant, I was pulled into the void.

It wasn’t darkness.

Not exactly.

It was memory. Fragmented and cruel. A hall of mirrors that showed only what I tried hardest to forget.

I fell, not through space, but through myself—landing in a place that wasn’t real and yet had always existed inside me.

A small bedroom. Soft pink walls. A worn teddy bear on the shelf. A princess bed with a cracked crown etched into the headboard.

I was sitting there—me, or the ghost of me. Knees pulled to my chest. Silent. Hollow.

The day I lost everything. The day my parents didn’t come home. The day my world broke and no one cared enough to help the pieces.

The government labeled it a tragedy. The experiment that followed called it “opportunity.”

But I never left that room. Not really. Until the door creaked open behind me. Boots stepped softly across the floor.

“Hey,” Bucky said gently. “This room’s too small for you.”

I didn’t turn. I couldn’t.

“You shouldn’t be here,” I whispered.

He sat beside me without asking. Careful, close, warm.

“You think I was going to let you go through this alone?” he said, a bitter laugh in his throat. “You really don’t know me.”

“You don’t understand,” I said, voice cracking. “This is where I stopped being real. After they died… I just… disappeared. That’s why it was easy for them to use me. I was already gone.”

Bucky was quiet for a moment.

Then, slowly, he said, “I know what that feels like. When HYDRA got me… they didn’t have to destroy me. They just had to find what was already broken.”

My breath caught. He was staring ahead now—eyes glassy, distant.

“I remember cold rooms. Straps on my arms. Screaming and silence. I remember waking up and being told I was something else. Something dangerous. Every time I came back, I came back a little less.” He looked down. “Until I met someone who didn’t treat me like a weapon.”

He turned toward me.

“And I swore I’d do the same for you.”

Tears slipped down my cheeks.

“I hurt you.”

“You scared me,” he corrected. “But I was never afraid of you.”

He hesitated—then lifted his hand. Paused. Waited.

When I didn’t pull away, he touched my face. Thumb brushing my cheek, grounding me.

“I pushed you away because I thought caring would get you killed,” he said, voice thick. “But losing you hurt worse.”

I looked at him now—really looked.

The lines in his face. The storm in his eyes. The way he trembled, just enough for me to see it.

“I was so angry at you,” I whispered. “But more at myself. Because I never stopped wanting you close.”

“Then let me be close now,” he said softly. “Let me help you out of here.”

I broke then.

Not from pain, but from the way he held me.

He pulled me into his chest, his arms wrapping around me like armor. Like truth. I buried myself there—against the steady beat of his heart, the warmth of skin over scars.

“I don’t deserve you,” I breathed.

He kissed the top of my head.

“You don’t have to. We’re both a little broken. That’s what makes us fit.”

I tilted my face toward him.

And for the first time, I saw him not as the Winter Soldier. Not as the Lieutenant.

Just as Bucky.

He leaned in. Not fast. Not demanding. Just a breath closer.

And he kissed me.

It wasn’t fiery or desperate. It was soft. Slow. Real. His lips pressed to mine like a promise.

That we weren’t going to lose each other again. That maybe—just maybe—we’d start living not for missions, not for redemption, but for us.

When we pulled away, he touched my forehead to his.

“Let’s get out of this room,” he murmured.

I nodded. And together, we stood—two survivors in the wreckage of our past, facing the future.

Side by side.

[amaris-whisperer]

Starlit Contract (Jungkook x Reader) ll EP.7

Episode 7 - Glitches of the Sky Pairing: Jungkook x reader Genre: Fantasy, Romance, Angst Rating: T Tags: slow burn, celestial AU, reincarnation themes, soft angst, fantasy romance -- The city was glittering below them, streaked with neon and blurred raindrops on the rooftop glass. Jungkook stood beside her at the edge of the overlook, one hand in his coat pocket, the other loosely interlocked with hers. Y/N leaned against him, laughing quietly, her breath fogging in the crisp night air.

This was what she called a "date."

Ice cream even though it was cold. Rooftop jazz and that little bookstore she claimed smelled like "old time and forgotten secrets." She dragged him everywhere, and he let her—because the way her eyes lit up made every step worth it. Because these were borrowed hours, and he was greedy for them.

Y/N bumped her shoulder into his. “You’re too quiet. Regretting the third scoop of pistachio?”

He turned to look at her, eyes soft. “No. Just memorizing this.”

She blinked. “What?”

“This moment.”

She stared at him, lips parting in surprise, and something flickered in his chest—not the familiar glow of his celestial mark, but something messier. Something human. A tremor of emotion too big for language.

She leaned in again, closer this time. “You’re always saying things like that. Like you're counting down.”

Maybe because he was. He didn’t answer.

Instead, she reached up, her fingers brushing his cheek, trailing down to the corner of his mouth. “You know…” she murmured, cheeks flushed, “there’s a thing people do when they like each other.”

“What thing?” he asked, genuinely curious.

She laughed softly and rose onto her toes. “This.”

She kissed him.

And in that heartbeat, he forgot everything—who he was, what he was. There was only her mouth on his, her hands weaving into his hair, the taste of pistachio and honey on her lips, and the breath she stole from him like she needed it to live.

When she pulled back, breathless and smiling, he chased the kiss again, helplessly, until she laughed against his mouth. “Okay, okay—you do like it.”

He nodded dumbly. “I love it.”

He meant the kiss. But he also meant her. The way she existed like sunlight, defiant and warm. The way she found joy in the mundane and made him feel like he had a place among the living.

What she didn’t see—what he never let her see—was how his knees nearly buckled the moment her lips touched his.

Because when her mouth pressed to his, the burn beneath his skin surged—his mark flaring so violently it felt like fire carving through his ribs.

But he never winced. Never let it reach his face.

He’d learned to hide the pain, even when it left him trembling in the silence after she was asleep.

—

At first, it was just dizziness.

A brief sway in his steps. A blink that took too long to resolve. He’d brush it off with a smile when she asked if he was okay, blaming it on tiredness or the cold. But he knew better. He could feel it—an imbalance in the way his energy moved. Something sacred was being undone.

Then he couldn’t hold light the way he used to. The silver marks etched along his ribs—once bright and steady like the constellations they mirrored—began to flicker. At first faintly. Then with the same unpredictability as static on a dying star.

When he looked in the mirror, his reflection sometimes distorted. His eyes glowed too brightly—or not at all. Shadows moved behind him even when he stood still. And when he pressed his hand to his chest, the light there stuttered beneath his palm like a failing heartbeat.

The celestial energy that once pulsed with clarity had become erratic. His connection to the sky, to the realm of his origin, was fading.

He could feel pieces of himself slipping. A thread loosening from the fabric of eternity. He was unraveling. And he knew what it meant. He was breaking the contract.

Celestials were not meant to love. Not like this. Not with this kind of hunger. To choose one soul over the many he was assigned to protect—that was the most dangerous act of all. A celestial's heart was meant to be vast and impartial, a vessel of light without preference or attachment.

But she had become the exception. The axis his borrowed world began to tilt around.

And now, the universe was demanding a cost.

The burn of his mark worsened when she touched him. Her kisses left heat blooming beneath his skin, not from desire, but from resistance—his body trying to deny what his soul had already accepted.

He should’ve pulled away. He should’ve left when the signs began. But he didn’t stop. Instead, he chose her.

Again and again.

When she reached for his hand, he let their fingers intertwine. When she asked him to stay the night, he did. When she kissed him, he kissed her back with a hunger that trembled through his bones.

He chose her in every small moment. In every stolen glance. In every lie he told to keep her from seeing how close he was to breaking.

Because loving her felt more real than anything he’d ever known up there. More than stars. More than duty. More than light.

And if this was the price—flickering, burning, fading—then so be it.

He would give it all to live like this a little longer.

To love her, even as the sky began to glitch. Even as his time unraveled, one heartbeat at a time.

-- They made love for the first time on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

The storm murmured beyond the windows, soft and steady, like the sky itself was holding its breath for them. The café below had closed early, the world outside hushed and gray, wrapped in the stillness only rain could bring.

It wasn’t hurried. It wasn’t wild. It was slow. Intentional. Unspoken.

His hands trembled when he touched her, not from nerves, but from awe. She looked at him like he was something fragile and holy—like she knew without knowing that something in him was slipping away.

Her mouth traced the path of every glowing scar. She kissed each constellation etched into his skin, letting her lips linger on the lines that pulsed faintly with silver light. Her fingers wove into his hair like she had always known him. Like she had been waiting, unknowingly, her whole life.

He was quiet, reverent. His mouth worshiped the hollow of her throat, the curve of her hip, the soft space behind her ear where she sighed his name.

And when she whispered, “You’re burning up,” breath catching as her palm pressed against his chest and felt the unbearable heat rising from within—

He lied. “It’s nothing.”

But his breath hitched. His heart thundered. The mark at his sternum blazed, the heat biting through his ribs like a warning. She kissed him anyway. Loved him anyway.

He wanted to believe that made him safe.

Afterward, when her head rested against his shoulder and her hand lay across his chest, her fingers brushing over the now-fading glow, she drifted into sleep. The rain still fell, soft and rhythmic against the windowpanes, a lullaby for a world that had no idea it was running out of time.

Jungkook stayed awake. He couldn’t stop looking at her. He couldn’t stop holding her.

He drew the blanket higher around her bare shoulders and tucked her closer into him, like maybe proximity could stitch him back together. Like maybe her warmth could tether him here just a little longer.

But his body trembled. Not from cold. And in the corners of his eyes, the world glitched.

The ceiling blurred. The walls rippled. The air shimmered with distortions, like invisible cracks were forming in the seams of reality itself.

Stars bled through those cracks—pinpricks of his other world peeking through. The place he was being pulled back to. The place that had already begun reclaiming him.

Still, he held her. Clutched her like a prayer. He pressed his lips to her temple and closed his eyes. He didn’t know how much time he had left. A week. A day. Maybe less.

But if this was his ending, he wanted it like this. Wrapped in her warmth. Tangled in rain and love and the quiet, beautiful ache of being human. And for as long as he could, he would stay.

Even if the sky was already breaking. Even if the stars were calling him home.

-- One evening, as the golden dusk filtered through the windows and turned the walls soft with light, she looked at him with a quiet stillness he had come to recognize.

Her voice was soft. Almost too gentle.

“Why did you fall?”

Jungkook froze. Not because he hadn’t expected the question. But because it terrified him.

He always told the truth. Always. It was part of who he was—what he was. Celestials were born from light and oaths, bound to truth like stars to the night sky.

But this time… he couldn’t. He stared down at the mug in his hands, half-drunk tea gone cold. The silence stretched. Not awkward. Just heavy. Fragile.

She waited, as she always did. Trusting. And that broke him even more. Because the truth was this:

"Because I loved you before I even knew what love was. Because I saw you when you were dying—seven years old, blue-lipped, trapped beneath the ice. Your body still. Your spirit already floating between worlds."

He had come to her then, not in form, but in light.

She had looked at him with wide, terrified eyes. And she had whispered, “Don’t burn alone.” She shouldn’t have remembered. But she did. He never forgot it.

Even when she woke up screaming, lungs full of air again, life jerking back into her tiny frame. Even when shelived, and he was forbidden to return. Forbidden to look back. But he did.

He watched her grow. Every year, every scar, every time she stared too long at the stars like they were whispering to her. She didn’t know it then, but she was the first soul that touched him. The first flicker of emotion he’d ever felt that made him ache.

She made him want to stay.

And now she was here. Asking.

Asking him again why he fell from the sky, why he came to Earth, why he gave up the eternal quiet of the celestial realm for this—this fragile, temporary, beautiful moment.

He could have said it. Almost did.

But when he looked up and saw the way she was watching him, the way her brows were drawn with concern but her mouth curved in soft understanding—he couldn’t.

He hated himself for what he said instead.

“I heard a call,” he murmured. “Something in the world shifted. It was my time.”

And she believed him.

She smiled like she always did. With your whole heart. As if the world made sense again just by having him in it.

Then she leaned into him, pressed her cheek to his chest like it was her favorite place in the universe, and he wrapped his arms around her like a shield.

But inside, he was shattering. Because if she ever found out what he had risked…If she knew his love could break the contract…If she knew that loving her might cost his very existence—

She would let him go and he couldn’t bear that.

Not ever.

[amaris-whisperer]

MOONFIRE l Aemond Targaryen x Reader (EP.7)

Pairing: Aemond Targaryen and OC

Warnings: Assassination attempt, blood

Episode VlI – “Cost of the Flame” In the wake of blood and betrayal, mercy becomes the most dangerous weapon. --

The hallway should have been empty.

She knew it the moment the shadows shifted—too swift, too deliberate—like a predator stalking in silence. The flickering torchlight cast fractured reflections across the cold stone walls, dancing off steel that gleamed too suddenly. Emberyn’s breath hitched as instinct screamed at her to flee, to call out—anything—before it was too late.

She turned, voice barely caught in her throat, ready to scream, but the blade was already there.

A sharp, wet sound sliced through the night like a cruel whisper of death.

Pain exploded in her side—searing, burning, and then a strange warmth, spreading like wildfire beneath her skin. Her silk gown was drenched before she could even comprehend the injury. The world tilted, the stones beneath her feet seeming to ripple like a mirage.

She stumbled backward, collapsing against the cold stone, gasping, trying desperately to summon Valaeryn with her mind alone. The bond flickered—weak, fragile—like a dying star barely holding its light against the dark. Panic clawed at her chest as her strength faltered.

A merciless hand yanked her hair, wrenching her upright, and the cold steel of the attacker’s blade rose, poised to deliver the final, merciless strike.

And then—

The air shattered.

A roar ripped through the corridor—raw and ferocious, not the thunderous cry of dragons, but a man’s fury unleashed.

Aemond appeared as if born of war itself, descending like a tempest. His sword flashed in a deadly arc, cleaving through one attacker before the man even turned. The second assailant recoiled in shock and pain as Aemond’s other hand seized a fallen torch, flames roaring as he slammed it into the man’s face. The attacker screamed, staggering back before fleeing into the darkness.

Outside, Vhagar’s landing shook the castle with a sound like the end of days—earth trembling beneath monstrous wings. Valeryn also struggled and groaned loudly.

The halls echoed with a cacophony of steel, cries, and chaos. But Aemond’s world narrowed—until all he could see was her.

Crimson soaked her silks. She was crumpled against the wall, barely conscious, breath shallow. The sight shattered something deep inside him, a fracture made of fear and fierce desperation.

He fell to his knees beside her, trembling hands pressed over the wound, trying to stem the flow of life slipping away. “Stay awake,” he hissed, voice raw, almost breaking. “Stay with me, Emberyn. Don’t you dare—” His fingers pressed harder, panic rising in his eyes. She whimpered, a fragile sound like a dying breeze.

His gaze burned with a fury hotter than dragonfire. “Guards!” he roared, voice ringing through the halls like a warhorn. “Now! Bring help!”

The world around them blurred—flames licking the walls, footsteps pounding toward them, distant shouts echoing.

But Aemond’s focus remained unshaken, anchored to her fragile form, willing her to hold on, to fight, to survive.

-- The healer’s hands trembled slightly as he worked, the weight of the moment pressing down on him like a storm. Years of skill guided his fingers with careful precision, but the cold steel blade pressed at his throat sharpened every movement, turning each stitch into a knife’s edge.

“If she dies,” Aemond said, voice low and steady, but with an unyielding edge, “you do too.”

The man’s breath caught in his throat, and his face went pale. He swallowed hard, nodding once with a shaky resolve. With renewed urgency, he bent over Emberyn, redoubling his efforts, his hands moving faster, yet no less careful, as he worked to staunch the bleeding and mend torn flesh. Every second was a battle against death.

The chamber was thick with tension. Flickering torchlight cast uneasy shadows on the cold stone walls, mingling with the faint scent of blood and herbs. Emberyn lay pale and still on the bed, her breath shallow but steady. The faint rise and fall of her chest was all that tethered hope to despair.

Outside the bed, the air felt electric with anticipation. The guards stood rigid, their eyes flicking nervously between the healer and Aemond, who remained like a statue, his jaw clenched so tight it seemed it might crack. His hands gripped the hilt of his sword, knuckles white.

Only when the healer finally finished—binding the wound tightly and administering a sedative to ease Emberyn’s pain—did Aemond slowly, deliberately sheath his sword. The metallic scrape echoed sharply in the quiet room, cutting through the heavy silence like a thunderclap. Every man in the room flinched at the sound, as if the very noise carried a warning.

Then came a stillness so profound it swallowed every breath and heartbeat.

One by one, the figures in the room began to retreat. The guards stepped back first, their boots making soft noises on the stone floor. The maids, eyes wide and faces pale, followed silently. Even Lord Derek Rivendale lingered, his presence heavy and conflicted, before he finally moved toward the doorway.

He paused there, uncertain, as if torn between anger and fear. His gaze flickered to Aemond, seeking some sign of truce or reprieve. But Aemond didn’t look at him—not once. His dark eyes remained locked on Emberyn’s fragile form.

With a final clenched jaw, Lord Rivendale turned away, his eyes lowered in quiet defeat. The door swung shut behind him with a weight that seemed to seal the room’s fragile sanctuary.

At last, Aemond exhaled—long and slow—the first breath he’d allowed himself in hours. The tension that had coiled tight in his muscles loosened, if only slightly.

He moved to her bedside, every step deliberate and careful, as if afraid to break the fragile spell. Pulling a chair close to the bed, he sat down with a heavy sigh, the wooden seat creaking under his weight. His hands rested on his knees—still stained dark with blood. Not just hers, but theirs. The blood of the men who had tried to kill her and the blood he had shed to protect her.

His eye never left her face.

Not once.

Every shallow breath she took was a victory, every twitch of a finger a silent promise. He waited, watching, guarding the fragile thread that held her to this world—and to him.

-- The mansion moved around Aemond Targaryen with an almost reverent caution, as if the very stones sensed the fragile balance hanging in the air. Corridors fell quieter, footsteps lighter. Servants glanced furtively toward the prince’s chambers and quickly averted their eyes, unwilling to disturb the storm that raged unseen within. Even Valaeryn, the great dragon who had once ruled the skies here, perched silently on the cliffs overlooking Rhaelyria, her immense shadow stretching over the land without a single protest as Vhagar coiled protectively beneath her.

Inside the mansion’s ancient stone walls, Aemond was a man transformed—no longer the fierce dragonrider known for his fire and fury, but something more restrained, more desperate. He did not leave Emberyn’s room. He barely left her side, as if by proximity alone he could shield her from the darkness clawing at her life.

When food was brought, untouched trays were left by the door. The courtiers’ urgent reports, delivered with hushed urgency, were met with a dismissive wave or a silent glare that sent messengers stumbling back down the halls. The world outside her chamber had shrunk to this narrow, perilous bubble of time and breath.

Only the healer was allowed passage, slipping in and out under Aemond’s watchful, searing gaze—each visit marked by a silent interrogation, every movement scrutinized for signs of progress or failure. The healer’s face remained pale and drawn, the tension in his shoulders betraying the urgency no one dared voice aloud.

Rickon Stark did not come. Not once. His absence echoed louder than any confrontation, a ghost in the shadows that no one could explain. Rumors fluttered through the castle like restless birds—whispers of respect, fear, or calculation—but none dared approach the prince’s chambers to see for themselves.

Lord Rivendale made two attempts to breach the walls around Aemond, but the second time, he was met with a look so cold and unyielding, a silent threat that stripped away all pretense. His face went pale, and he retreated with a low murmur, leaving the prince to his vigil.

And so the days passed.

Emberyn lay wrapped in stillness, unaware of the tempest her fate had unleashed. Her chest rose and fell in slow, even rhythms beneath pale silks, the quiet cadence of life hanging by a thread.

Aemond sat by her side like a beast caged, his patience boundless but taut—every breath she took was counted with a careful reverence. Every slight twitch of her fingers was etched deep into his memory. His dark eyes never wavered from her face, tracing every contour, every line, as if by knowing her so intimately, he could keep the shadows at bay.

He was waiting for something—anything—to break through the fragile barrier of unconsciousness.

Waiting for her to return.

For her to open her eyes and anchor him to the world again.

For Emberyn.

-- She stirred first—a flicker beneath the veil of unconsciousness, a soft groan slipping past cracked lips. The room was dim, dawn barely brushing the frost-laced windows with pale fingers. The heavy silence wrapped around Aemond like a second skin, his figure still as stone beside her bed, watching with bated breath through the fragile curtain of her fluttering lashes.

Then, slowly, her eyelids lifted.

A sharp wince crossed her features, pain flickering across her pale face. She breathed in shallow, uneven gasps, each breath a small victory. Her throat moved as she swallowed carefully, gathering strength for the moment.

And then—her gaze met his.

“Aemond?” Her voice was a hoarse rasp, fragile yet unmistakable.

In an instant, he was on his feet, crossing the room with the quiet swiftness of wind over still water. He dropped to his knees beside her, eyes dark and intense, all the war and worry of the past hours distilled into a single look.

Her hand rose slowly, trembling, as if testing the air. When her fingers brushed his cheek, he made no move to pull away. The roughness of his skin against her delicate touch was grounding—real.

“You stayed,” she whispered, disbelief threading her words.

His jaw tightened, and his hands clenched behind his back in silent restraint, muscles taut like coiled steel. “I had to,” he said softly, every syllable weighted with a fierce devotion. “Anything else would have been treason—against you, against myself.”

She smiled faintly, a breath of warmth in the cold room. “Liar.”

Her fingers moved again, this time reaching for the collar of his tunic, tugging gently. He yielded without hesitation, as if surrendering was the only choice left.

When their lips met, the kiss was not tender or sweet—it was raw and urgent. It tasted of iron and wildfire, a fierce blend of blood and flame. It was not the kiss of lovers lost in softness but of survivors clinging to each other in a world gone to ash.

They kissed like those who had faced death and returned, with nothing left but the language of desperate touch.

Her hands wound into his hair, anchoring herself to him. His arms circled her, a fortress of warmth and silent promises. Time fractured and lost meaning. In that moment, the world outside ceased to exist—the past, the pain, the dangers that lurked beyond these walls all faded into shadows.

Yet even in the intensity of their union, a fragile tension lingered beneath the surface—too much and never enough all at once.

When they finally parted, breathless and trembling, the air between them was charged. Sacred. Scarred.

Burning.

Words failed them, but in their eyes was a silent vow—a fragile promise that this was not an ending, but a beginning.

--

The courtyard was a cavern of shadow and flickering light, the only sounds the crackle of torches and the low, guttural growl of Vhagar circling high above. The dragon’s massive wings stirred the night air, a reminder of the power waiting to be unleashed.

Three men knelt in the center, bound in heavy chains. Their faces were bloodied and bruised, bodies broken by interrogation, their spirits crushed beneath the weight of their crimes. They had confessed. They had named a buyer.

Aemond already knew who stood behind the conspiracy. The poison threading through the halls of Rivendale ran deep.

Above, on the stone balcony, Emberyn stood wrapped in a heavy cloak. The wind tugged fiercely at its edges, but she remained still, her gaze locked on the grim scene below. Her body was weak from recent wounds, but her eyes burned with a steady fire.

Beside her, Lord Rivendale was pale and silent, the lines of worry etched deep into his face. He dared not meet Aemond’s gaze.

The prince stepped forward, his presence commanding the space with a quiet authority that needed no elevation. His voice rolled across the courtyard like thunder, low and steady but impossible to ignore.

“For treason against the crown, the blood of dragons, and the attempted murder of a prince of the realm,” Aemond declared, “the sentence is death by flame.”

He did not shout. He didn’t need to. Only murmured. "Dracarys.."

Vhagar answered. With a beat of monstrous wings, the dragon descended, the heat from her breath scorching the night air. The three men were engulfed in blue-black flames, their screams silenced in moments as they turned to ash before the eyes of all who watched.

But the fire did not stop there. Aemond turned slowly, his gaze sharp as a blade, fixed now on the balcony above.

“I know who gave the order,” he said, his voice cold and steady, “and I know why.”

Lord Rivendale’s face drained of color.

“Your House is spared,” Aemond continued, “because your daughter bled for your sins.”

He let the weight of those words hang between them like a sword suspended by a thread.

Then, with a voice that cut through the tension like ice on fire, he pronounced, “Her betrothal to the Stark boy is over.”

A murmur stirred the gathered lords, and Rickon Stark stepped forward, fury blazing in his eyes.

“You cannot—!” he shouted.

But Lord Rivendale raised a hand, silencing him with practiced authority.

Rickon’s anger flared, raw and unyielding. “You’d let him—”

“I’d let my daughter live,” Lord Rivendale snapped, voice firm and resolute. “I will not risk Aemond Targaryen’s wrath for a marriage that is already ash.”

Rickon recoiled, stunned into silence, every muscle taut with frustration and disbelief.

Aemond’s voice came again, cold and absolute. “I’ve informed you of my intentions,” he said directly to her father, “I do not require your permission.”

His eyes flicked upward—to Emberyn.

She said nothing. She didn’t have to. Her single, resolute nod spoke volumes.

Behind her eyes, the fire roared—unbroken, unyielding.