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dominodebt · 5 years

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strange bedfellows

"Be with me when I lie down; you promised me this in an earlier life." –Mirabai

(Beds are not inherently sexual. There is nothing torrid or amorous about a bed. This is what Caleb is telling himself, anyway, when he agrees to share his with Jester.)

critical role | wc: 6,802

One hand scrabbles for his materials pouch on his bedside table, the other patting around desperately for his spellbook while his anxiety goes off the rails because someone tripped his Alarm spell someone tripped his Alarm spell someone tripped his—

A knock on his door. Caleb freezes in the act of reaching, hanging half off the bed, legs cocooned hopelessly in his sheets.

Someone tripped his Alarm spell and is now, apparently, informing him of this fact.

In hindsight, the spell is a habit—a ritual to soothe his paranoia. He doesn't need to cast it. The crew has proven themselves to be loyal and reliable, and the Nein wouldn't go poking around in his things. They're all past that point of reflexive mistrust.

Caleb did not cast his Alarm spell because he is suspicious of his friends, or doubts their honesty. He cast his Alarm spell because somewhere, out in the world, Trent Ikithon is looking for him, and some nights, one thin silver wire is the only way to pacify his anxious mind.

Nott is the only person he'd thought to name when designating who the spell would not affect—his small companion has a habit of coming and going as she pleases, and he has no desire to hear a ringing in his head all night each time she decides to go investigate something.

So since it is not Nott, and it is not Trent Ikithon, it must be another member of the Nein. Caleb sighs, sitting up in bed, willing the adrenaline to drain from his body.

Another knock. Caleb curses lowly in Zemnian.

"Come in," he calls through his fingers, rubbing his face with his hands.

It's Jester. Because of course it is.

She appears in his doorway slowly, listening to the ancient wood creak as she pushes the door aside. He watches her at the edge of his vision, struck—as he always is when he sees her alone—by how small she is. The faint light from the hallway she stands in silhouettes her as she peers into his room, eyes glittering like rock crystal in the low light of his room.

"Are you awake?" she whispers in that too-loud way of hers.

Caleb exhales deeply through his nose.

"Yes, Jester, I am," he replies lowly. "What are you doing?"

She slips inside, apparently declining to answer his question, and quietly shuts the door behind her. Her pink nightgown swishes at her ankles as she spins back around, quickly crossing the room to his bed, chattering lowly about something that Caleb honestly isn't sparing a single thought towards because why is she coming towards his bed—?

One blue hand appears his blankets, and Caleb realizes her intentions—

"Jester." Caleb's whole body has snapped taut like a sprung mousetrap. He sits rigidly in his bed, hands fisted below the sheets as he watches her at the edge of his vision.

Tension hangs for a moment as they stare at each other.

"Are you…?" Jester trails off, stilling her movements as if she'd just caught a glimpse of his uneasy stiffness. "Oh. Oh. Sorry. Does this make you uncomfortable? I should have asked."

Caleb opens his mouth to say yes, this does make him uncomfortable, thank you for noticing, and would she please take herself and that unnecessarily cute pink nightgown out of his room, now.

He forces a hard swallow down a throat that hadn't been quite so dry a moment ago.

He likes Jester. That isn't exactly a groundbreaking or controversial statement, because everyone likes Jester, but it's the truth. He likes Jester quite a bit, and he is all too aware of how absolutely fucked her last few days have been—from the small annoyance of putting up with Fjord's liaisons with Avantika to the true horror of being left alone in a chamber to face a godsforsaken dragon all on her own.

She stares at him, waiting—cutting such an impossibly small figure as she's bathed in the soft glow of his dancing lights that he feels his heart constrict. Such a large, loud spirit tucked neatly into someone so slight. She clearly is seeking something from him, and even though he has no idea what it is, he has already surrendered it to her.

Swallowing hard and listening to his anxiety wail like a siren's song in his head, Caleb manages a rough pass at an affirmative nod.

"Just…above the covers, ja?"

Her answering smile shames daybreak.

"Of course," she agrees, eagerly clambering aboard. He watches as she settles herself comfortably at the edge of his bed—legs crossed daintily beneath her as the blush silk of her nightgown pools across his blankets. She's within arm's reach—his bed isn't large enough to keep her out of it—but she's as far away as she can mange, and true to her word, she's seated primly above the various layers of sheets and blankets.

Her tail swishes idly above her shoulder as her gaze passes over his quarters.

"Where's Nott?" Jester asks, head tipped curiously as her darkvision fails to unveil a little goblin girl anywhere in the room.

Caleb shrugs—action still stiff with nerves. He hasn't quite recovered from her presence—the shrill chime of his Alarm spell is still ringing faintly in his memory. "She wanders, occasionally."

Jester looks back to him, nose wrinkling in telltale confusion.

"What?" she asks. "Like, around the ship?"

"Wherever she wishes," Caleb answers. He closes his book and lets it rest in his lap, feeling the most absurd need to put on more layers of clothing. His threadbare shirt is stained and worn and rumpled, but it isn't indecent. And besides, these are his quarters. He has nothing to be embarrassed about.

He glances back, sensing Jester's dissatisfaction with his answer. "I am not her keeper."

She nods, seemingly pacified, and Caleb waits for her to explain her presence—nothing is overtly wrong the way it usually is with Jester's problems. She isn't bleeding, or yelling, or babbling about how she had absolutely nothing to do with whatever catastrophe the group was about to see. She just sits there, idly glancing around his room.

Caleb shifts, feeling senselessly exposed.

"Jester…" he begins, lifting an eyebrow, drawing her earnest gaze. "It is quite late. Was there something you needed, or…?"

Some of the spark leaves her eye, and she looks away, visibly slumping at his pointed question. Caleb kicks himself, cursing his unwieldy tongue, scrambling for something else to say—

"I don't want the Gentleman to be my dad," she confesses quietly.

Caleb tips his head in acknowledgement. Ah. "I believe that is a reasonable thing not to want," he replies diplomatically.

Her blue brow puckers with a frown as she continues. "I mean…what are the chances, right? I spend my whole life looking for my dad and like—this first guy we come across is just him?" She looks to Caleb, expression distinctly discontented. "That's a little unbelievable, isn't it?"

Caleb stares back at her for a moment, listening to the way her lilting accent weaves through the air, turning her complaints into music. He declines to inform her that everything she does—absolutely every action he has seen her partake in—leans at least a little on the side of unbelievable.

She's a whirlwind, their cleric. A riot of color and sound.

Still, he offers his best response.

"Your mother could not confirm his identity for certain, and the Gentleman denied he had seen her," he tells her. "So long as those loose ends remain, there is no way to know, and no reason to worry."

She nods, still looking troubled.

"It makes sense though," she murmurs. Caleb is drawn to her hands. Small blue fists flecked with her colorful paints—kaleidoscope fingers that tug and twist at his blankets. "Him being my dad."

Caleb arches an eyebrow. "I don't quite see the resemblance," he replies, thinking of the dangerously calm and charismatic crime lord. He had been a cold man, in Caleb's own opinion—and clever enough to give even a student of Archmage Ikithon a run for his money. "There are many water genasi in the world, Jester."

Jester just sighs—a soft, small sound. Her shoulders sag, and Caleb frowns at the sight.

"Who would you rather your father be?" he asks. He sits forward, elbows on his knees, closer into her space, trying to catch her eyes. "Forget the Gentleman—surely you've imagined what your father might be like before him."

Jester seems to consider it for a moment—he watches her features scrunch up in that thoughtful way of hers—before her expression smooths back out.

"I never really cared who my dad was," she admits with a shrug. "I just wanted him to come back to the Chateau. I just wanted Mama to be happy."

Caleb quirks an eyebrow. "So…the fact that the Gentleman is a notorious, dangerous crime boss isn't what makes you wish he wasn't your father?"

Jester shakes her head, blinking at him like this should be obvious.

"No," she tells him. "I don't care who he is, or what he does. I only ever wanted him to be with my mama."

The simplicity of her desire—such a quiet, wholesome yearning—twinges at something deep inside Caleb. He clears his throat, shifting beneath the sheets of his bed.

"Ah," he murmurs, completely at a loss. He knew Jester loved her mother but…gods. "That's…that's incredibly noble of you, Jester."

The tiefling shrugs, ducking his gaze again, smoothing her colorful fingers across her rumpled nightgown.

"I don't know about that," she murmurs, bashful suddenly—like his simple compliment had flustered her more than her brazen move to his bed.

Something about her reaction—her sudden shyness of being called out for her selflessness, like she doesn't know what to do with the words, has never been given such praise—rouses Caleb's suspicion as he watches her. He has seen Jester take kind remarks about her clothes and her hair and her eyes all in stride—hardly ever blushing at a single one. But now he points out the very obvious, and she can't look him in the eye?

He frowns. Perhaps noble wasn't quite the word he was searching for.

"You don't value yourself."

Silence follows the statement, and for a moment, Caleb blinks, feeling the urge to search the room for the source before he realizes—with a dull kind of astonishment—that it was him.

Jester's eyes seem to glow in the dark—like a pair of cursed amethysts.

"What?" she asks, frowning hard.

Caleb considers walking his words back—he really, truly hadn't meant to say that—but his resolve hardens, and he gazes back at her.

"Jester you…" Caleb's tongue—cast with silver during his time under Ikithon—tarnishes as he struggles to articulate his point. "You're…you are never your first priority. Ever."

Jester blinks at the low intensity of his tone. He isn't yelling—Caleb actually can't recall the last time he'd raised his voice out of fury, his is a much softer, darker anger—but he watches as her hand rises to gingerly rest over her heart in an act of delicate surprise that reminds him so forcefully of her mother he thinks he might have a stroke.

"I am sometimes," she argues softly. "I've healed myself first, even when other people were hurt."

Caleb frowns, his memory pinpointing the exact moment she is referring to.

"Only after we convinced you to," he reminds her.

She rolls her eyes, looking away stubbornly. The most self-sacrificing person Caleb knows, and she can't stand to hear it about herself.

"Tell me something you want," he insists. "Not something you want for someone else. Something selfish. Something that only you benefit from."

Jester's soft, round features scrunch up in concentration as she considers Caleb's request.

"I…I don't know," she manages, shrugging in that charmingly inelegant way of hers. She peers at him through mussed indigo hair. "I want pastries, I guess?"

Caleb sighs.

"I was thinking something a bit…grader, Jester," he explains. He casts his mind around before it clicks, just as the boat rocks again, like the water is reminding him. "Fjord, for example. What we've been doing these past weeks—all this time at sea—this is all for him. This is his selfish request." He holds her gaze, imploring her to understand. "And that's fine, because we're here for him. Because we want to support him, ja?"

She nods a little unsteadily. Caleb pushes on.

"And soon, when we get back to land, it will be someone else's turn to be selfish, and we will go—I don't know—to Beau's family and—and bully her father for treating her the way he did, or to Yasha's homelands and aid her in putting whatever it is that haunts her to rest." He holds her gaze, willing her to understand. "Verstehst du?"

"Well, I want to spread the word of the Traveler, then." Her tone is somewhat smart, like she's proving she can beat him at his own game. Caleb levels a dubious look at her.

"That doesn't count, Jester. You're a cleric." He gestures somewhat uselessly with his hands, trying to explain. "Doing something you are duty-bound to do isn't a selfish action."

"But making the Traveler happy makes me happy," she tells him crossly.

"It's still inherently sacrificial," Caleb insists, choosing to dissect her attitude towards her favored god another day. When he has better control over his rogue tongue. "You're still serving him. It's an unbalance of power. It isn't strictly for you." He frowns

Jester huffs, the sound edged in frustration, and they stare at each other in the dim room, unsmiling.

"Well, maybe I don't want anything, then!" Jester's accent always harshens when she's upset, and Caleb listens to it ring out in his quarters. He just gazes back at her, declining to tell her what Ikithon always told him—swallows the words of his teacher's first lesson:

Everyone wants something.

Everyone—even little blue tieflings with sweet smiles.

"You're an exceptional liar," Caleb murmurs to her.

At the edge of his vision, Jester goes still.

For a moment, Caleb fears he's gone too far, and opens his mouth to apologize—

"I'm not nearly as good as you," she replies, in that deceitfully demur way of hers.

Silence fills the room—a natural reaction to the awkward exchange, but soon it grows stifling and uncomfortable. Jester hugs her arms to her chest, looking the other way, while Caleb's stare bores a hole into the cover of his spellbook where it lies on the floor beside his bag.

"May I ask you a question?" he ventures, what feels like an eternity later, trying to break the odd tension that's settled over the room.

"Of course," she agrees easily. She plops her chin in her hand, raising her eyebrows inquisitively as she stares back at him, seemingly just as eager to dispel the strange stiffness between them.

Caleb hesitates. For months he's spent nearly every waking moment shoulder-to-shoulder with the members of their little ragtag band, and while he has learned a great deal about his found family—and has systematically stored information pertaining to their likes and dislikes away for future use—Jester's preferences elude him.

She can be difficult to read, even for him—there's layers to their cleric, he's come to realize. What he hasn't realized quite yet is what layers are really her, and what layers are merely for show.

Jester is a whole play in and of herself, slipping effortlessly between roles. She's an actress, of sorts, but all her masks are so similar it took Caleb a moment to notice—and others, he assumes, may never catch on. Each version of her is just a shade different than the last—suitable to play the part she needs without drawing attention to herself.

There's enough common ground between all of them that it's difficult to track—she's always quick with a joke, earnestly determined, and just brash and proud and sarcastic enough for flavor, but what parts aren't truly hers? Where does the acting end? When is she just Jester?

Caleb shelves these thoughts for later.

Small steps, he reminds himself. Just one fact at a time.

"Most tieflings, as far as I've read and come to understand," he begins. "They—their blood, rather—it grants them the use and protection of fire."

He watches her closely, but she continues to stare back at him. He wonders if he can see it—wonders if he studies her diligently enough, he can watch her physically take on a different side of herself and present him with the most fitting set of characteristics she has.

Her phantasmal, duplicitous twin is not the only double Jester has tucked away. Of this, Caleb is certain.

But he drops his gaze anyway, not wanting to crowd her. He's already outed her as a liar, and she'd returned the favor. They both know this room is cloaked with dishonesty—both realize they use untruthfulness as a crutch.

He's hoping something small like this—an inconsequential detail—can help lure them both into some semblance of honesty.

"Yeah, of course," she answers in that wind chime cadence of hers. He glances up to see her already looking at him, smiling faintly. She appears no different, but he knows something's changed.

He nods. "But you…you seem to be more comfortable in the cold."

She nods back, though he senses a hesitation about her this time.

"Yeah," she says again. "I…I don't do as well with fire as other tieflings do." Her gaze drops once more. "I don't really know why."

Caleb knows exactly why—it's because her father is a damned water gensai—but he says nothing. Jester is nobody's fool. She knows that well enough, he's sure.

He racks his brain for something to say—something to keep that prickly silence at bay—when she speaks.

"I tried to make myself resistant to it." Jester is aimlessly braiding the tassels dangling off the edges of his throw blanket. Caleb nearly chokes.

"You what?"

Jester shrugs, unruffled. He watches her fingers weave the strings into a neat little plait. She won't look him in the eye.

"When I was younger, back at the Chateau. My mama, she used to—a long time ago, she had an act that involved fire. It was really popular—even more popular than her singing, I think. I don't really remember." Her brow furrows gently as she picks up more pieces of fringe to braid. Caleb just watches her silently.

"Anyway, I tried to recreate it." She pauses, briefly, apparently focused on her handiwork. Caleb doesn't push her. "It didn't work so well."

He has no such memory of the event, obviously, but his mind's eye quickly presents him with that exact scenario—a small blue tiefling, horns barely poking out from her tangled curls, eyes bright as she reaches out, grasping for a flame—

"It burned you," he guesses quietly.

She nods silently.

Caleb swallows hard. Considers telling her that he has had his fair share of problems with fire—that he knows what it feels like to be burned, that she isn't alone in her fear of flames, he too has overreached whilst trying to master an element out of his control, that he is haunted by ash and embers—

"I favor my mother," Caleb offers instead, surprising even himself. Since when does he feel the need to speak unnecessarily? Why is he suddenly obliged to fill the silence?

Jester brightens immediately, though, and he realizes he has no choice but to continue. Disappoint that face? He doubts he could even if he wanted to.

"Really?" Jester asks breathlessly, eyes shining in the darkness.

Caleb nods, lips pulling up faintly. Her cheer is catching.

"Ja. We both had red hair. My father, he was…" Caleb swallows hard. He has not allowed himself to revisit those memories in so long. "He was tall, and broad. A brick wall of a man, the way farmers tend to be."

Jester blinks with surprise. "You were a farmer?"

Caleb laughs quietly. "I was, a very long time ago." He skates his fingers across the cover of the Kenku book, idly lost in thought. "I wasn't very good at it."

"What did you farm?" Jester presses. She's scooted closer since Caleb began speaking, and he looks up to see her right beside him, entranced by his story, hands on her knees as she leans into his space.

"Ah." His brain stutters for a moment—caught like a wheel in a bog—before he stumbles on. "We grew wheat, mostly. We grew everything we needed but…wheat is what we sold to make a living."

"That's so exciting!" Jester gushes. "A real farmer!"

Caleb crooks an eyebrow. "As opposed to a fake one?" he asks, but she's waving his remark away, eyes bright with excitement.

"How do you say wheat in Zemnian?" she asks urgently, and he chuckles lowly.

"Weizen," he answers dutifully, his native language rolling smoothly off his tongue as always.

"Weizen." She tries to repeat it, but the Zemnian word clashes horrifically with her lilting accent, and it comes out all wrong. She wrinkles her nose at the sound of it, like even she can't believe what just came out of her mouth, and Caleb outright laughs.

"Wheat farmers!" Jester looks truly mesmerized, and Caleb can't help but smile back. "Tell me about it! What did you do? Did you have chores? Did you—" she cuts herself off with a gasp that would make Caleb reflexively reach for his pouch if Jester hadn't already seized his hand in both of hers.

He looks at her, bewildered, as she brings his captured hand up to her chest, eyes wide, mouth agape.

"Did you have animals?" she whispers, like the fate of the known world teeters on his response.

Caleb's entire conscious awareness has been narrowed down to the feeling of her hands holding his.

"Ja," he manages, the affirmative Zemnian word unusually clumsy on his tongue. "Ah, we had, um, a cow, and two horses, and—" she's squeezed his hand tighter, eyes like absolute stars "—chickens," he manages to rattle off.

Under her starlight stare, he stammers out more stories of his youth—giving life and voice to memories he's kept locked away for ages. She's enraptured by his artless tales, and Caleb feels the most irrational flush crawling up his neck. There is absolutely nothing of interest or consequence in the life of a simple Zemnian farmer, but she hangs on to his every word like he's the most talented bard in the world.

"Can we go?" she asks he's finished showing her the small scars on his hands from being pecked by chickens. She shakes his hand where she still holds it—where she hasn't let it go, all this time. "Caleb, can we go there next? To your farm? To your parents?"

The lightness he'd felt in her presence dims, suddenly. Caleb feels reality crash back into him, and he winces on instinct.

"My parents they…" Fire erupts in his mind's eye. A scream echoes distantly in his brain. He looks away. "They are gone now, Jester."

He feels her shrink beside him—watches her close in on herself at the edge of his vision. She drops his hand, and Caleb fights the urge to grab hold of hers again.

"Oh," she whispers. "Oh, gods, Caleb, I'm so sorry, I didn't—"

"I never told you," he interrupts her gently. "It isn't your fault."

They sit quietly beside each other. Caleb traces runes on the cover of his book.

"I want to make them proud," he murmurs. The truth burns where it lies coiled in his throat—his past clawing to escape, daring him to tell her, to see how much she cares for his silly stories and foolish tricks when she knows—

Caleb looks away. "That…that is my selfish request."

They're so close to each other now, on the bed. He's still beneath the covers and she's still above them but she's leaning towards him and he's facing her and it's all so…warm.

"That doesn't sound selfish to me," Jester tells him quietly. "And…if it helps at all, Caleb, I think we're all pretty proud of you."

He lifts an eyebrow, and she hastens to continue.

"Really! You—you're smart and you know what everything is and you decoded Avantika's journal and you put up the fire wall and you counterspelled her and you saved us from falling in the jungle and you're always using Frumpkin to see ahead and you listen to people and—" she breaks off, somewhat breathless. Caleb can only stare. "And you're really good at magic, Caleb."

Her compliment—earnest and eager—warms him gently, and he smiles despite himself. "Thank you, Jester," he answers. "You're quite good yourself."

She beams, basking in the glow of his praise

"It's nothing that impressive," she murmurs back.

"Oh?" he angles his head, tossing a wry grin her way. "You can speak with the dead. That's outlawed in the Empire, you know."

Jester goes stock-still, blinking. "What?" she blurts out.

Caleb just nods, maintaining a playfully serious tone. "Ja. Necromancy has been forbidden for decades." He leans closer—dizzying himself with his own proximity—to speak in a conspiring tone. "You're a criminal, you know."

She lets out a falsely scandalized gasp. "How dare you!" She's reared back, perched on her heels, drawing herself up as tall as she can on his bed, looking down at him with her nose in the air, fighting a smile.

"I will have you know, sir, that I am a lady of the highest integrity," she informs him archly, and Caleb snorts at her antics. "I don't know what sort of…nonsense you think someone like myself would get involved with. Me? Perform necromancy?" Her fake indignation is absolutely hysterical, and Caleb coughs he's so rusty at laughing. "Why, the next thing you know, you're going to accuse me of conniving with goblins and wizards."

Caleb falls back on his pillows—laughing and coughing—chest straining in a way it hasn't for as long as he can remember. The bed bounces as Jester follows suit. A companionable silence follows, and Caleb idly decides he could spend the rest of his life right here, in this room, with this warmth in his chest and this silly little tiefling beside him.

"Caleb?"

"Ja?"

"What if Uk'Otoa tells Fjord to do something terrible?"

And just like that, the mood swings again.

Caleb breathes deep, considering her question and ignoring the voice in his head that sounds traitorously like Eodwulf's as it mocks him for having a lovely girl in his bed asking about someone else.

Jester is a lovely girl, but this bed isn't his bed—not in that way. It's merely a shared space. A shared space where they both happened to be rather underdressed. Discussing very intimate matters. In very close proximity. That's all. Nothing odd or disreputable about it.

Caleb clears his throat somewhat awkwardly.

"Well," he begins, leaning back against the headboard, jolting slightly when Jester does the same, her head right beside his as they both stare up at the ceiling. "I imagine Fjord would—on some level—be inclined to listen. It would certainly depend on the severity of the request."

Jester hums noncommittally, and Caleb begins counting cracks in the ceiling, willing himself not to push, not to pry, let her work through her thoughts on her own—

"I don't think he's evil," she confides quietly. "But I also don't think he's good at being…good."

Caleb dips his head in acknowledgment, stark blue eyes tracing a particularly long, spindly fissure in the wood above him.

"To be honest, Jester, I don't know how good any of us are at that," he tells her, and she sighs, long and hard.

"Yeah," she mutters, disheartened. There's a pause. "Well, except Caduceus."

Caleb allows this with a nod. "That is true. Caduceus is certainly the best of us."

Jester hums again, and Caleb tries not to be unnerved by her lack of answers. She's given up a lot already. The last thing he wants to do is push her to give up more.

Another lapse of silence. Caleb wonders if it's a good silence or not.

"I thought of the selfish thing I want to ask for," she tells him after a moment, and Caleb blinks, straightening up a bit.

"Oh, uh, what is it?" He hadn't expected her to mull that question over all this time, and braces himself for a request he knows is far outside his meager capabilities—

She fusses with the hem of her nightgown, averting his gaze.

"I want you to call Frumpkin," she requests softly, a gentle lilt to her voice that ruins Caleb the moment he hears it. She chances a look at him, searching for his eyes from behind her wild, ink-blue curls. "Please?"

Caleb swallows hard. She is not—he is certain—trying to present herself in any particular way. She is not flirting, or being coy, or angling for some seductive tilt. She's just a girl in a nightgown, peering at him with such delicate, cautious hope, that he feels every single wall he built in the asylum crumble to nothing.

Eodwulf's voice is back in his head—low and humored, words tilted with his signature wry grin.

"You've got it bad, Widogast."

Caleb is inclined to agree.

Not trusting himself to speak, Caleb merely gives his fingers a practiced snap, and feels the tug of conjuration magic as his familiar appears seemingly out of nowhere to drop neatly into Jester's waiting lap.

The cat looks up at her, blinks twice, and gives his best mlep.

Jester's answering smile is dazzling.

"Hello Frumpkin!" she whispers excitedly, beaming as she starts to scratch the cat under his chin.

Frumpkin purrs, pleased, and Caleb watches as his familiar arches his neck back to give her better access. Nothing really happens for a while—Caleb sits beneath his blankets, chin resting on his propped hands as he watches Jester fuss over Frumpkin, listening to her murmur sweetly in Infernal.

After a moment, she scoops the cat up in her arms, and Caleb cracks a grin as his familiar's legs dangle a bit before she wrangles him comfortably into a hug, drawing him close to kiss the top of his head, between his ears.

"I don't want to fight Fjord." Jester's voice is muffled by Frumpkin's fur as she buries her face in his coat. There's a pause, and Caleb searches for what to say, assuming it's his turn to speak—

"But I will."

Caleb stares at her, openly surprised.

Jester hugs Frumpkin closer. "If Fjord does something bad—like, really really evil—I'll fight him." She stares off to the side—into nothingness—but her gaze is steady. "I don't know what will happen to him when we leave the ocean, but I don't think Uk'Otoa—" she mocks the name of the ancient demigod, and the boat rocks in response, though Caleb convinces himself it's a coincidence "—will be happy."

"Fjord's abilities comes from Uk'Otoa," Caleb supplies. "If he disobeys him, he may lose his magic."

"Then Fjord has to decide that we mean more to him than his power," Jester mutters back, petulant even to her own ears. She glances up at Caleb suddenly, and he blinks as the intensity her expression had held a moment ago melts away to uneasiness. "Was that selfish?"

Caleb reaches out, running coarse fingers across Frumpkin's head. His familiar mewls at the recognizable touch, tail curling at the end.

"Wanting your friends to not betray you in order to appease their evil, underwater demigod patrons is not selfish, Jester," he assures her. "That's…that's a very simple request. A baseline, really."

She nods, slowly, but the resolve in her eyes hasn't shifted. She means this, he realizes, in a way she means very few things.

His memory fashions him a scene that he hates the moment he sees it—Jester, on her knees, bloodied, bruised, weaponless, no spells left, defenseless as a Fjord-shaped figure looms above her, dark as pitch with glowing, yellow eyes, falchion in hand, water everywhere—

"It will not come to that," Caleb's tone is solid—as unshakable as any verbal component to any spell. "There will be no fight, Jester, I swear to you."

"I hope not," she whispers.

The silence lulls back over them, and Caleb is just opening his mouth with no godly idea of what he's going to say when she interrupts.

"Caleb?"

He smiles to himself. "Ja?"

"Do you have a spell that can put me to sleep?"

His smile freezes, before sliding off his face completely.

"What?" he repeats stupidly. He shakes himself, marshaling his focus. "Jester, if you have trouble sleeping, you should tell Caduceus," he informs her seriously. "I'm sure he has a tea—"

She flops over in that endearingly inelegant way of hers, burying her face in one of his pillows.

"I don't wanna drink dead people," is her muffled response, and Caleb watches her, some of his unease melting away.

"Fair enough, but I can't help you, I'm afraid. Enchanted sleep—at least the kind I am capable of—only last for a few minutes." He eyes her where she's spread out beside him and is struck with the sudden and most irrational desire to brush wayward strands of hair away from her face. He snatches up his book a bit wildly, frantically occupying his hands.

He swallows. Hard.

"You could—" bad idea bad idea bad idea bad idea "—stay here, for the night."

Jester perks up immediately, pushing herself up by her arms so quickly she nearly catches Caleb in the face with one curved horn as he leans away.

"Really?" Her delighted gasp startles Frumpkin, who arches up in surprise before slinking over to his master.

Caleb shrugs, as if his anxiety isn't unraveling his entire consciousness and asking pretty girls to stay in his room is a thing he does all the time. Or has ever done.

"Sure," he replies easily. "I, uh, I was mostly going to be copying spells and reading anyway."

It isn't true, but it sounds enough like something he'd do that Jester accepts it with a nod. "I'd like that a lot," she murmurs. "Beau snores and I…I think she needs some space too."

Caleb nods. Beau had leveled an entirely unfair amount of blame at herself after the incident in the chamber. She had no idea touching the orb would whisk her away the way that it did, and he knows she would have sooner died down there—standing guard as her friends made their escape—before she'd ever take the easy way out of anything.

"She'll be alright," Caleb assures her. "Beau's tougher than all of us."

Jester nods, and Caleb watches as she turns her head, adjusting herself to rest comfortably on his spare pillow. She still isn't under his sheets, and Caleb almost laughs—they've broken so many rules of propriety he isn't entirely sure how he's going to look the Ruby in the eye the next time they meet.

Still, he lays his down as well, and they stare at each other sideways like that for a long moment, swaying with the boat, lost in their own heads. Frumpkin settles down between them, curling up neatly.

"Do you want me to turn the lights off?" he asks quietly, hardly daring to speak, not wanting to break the spell. He gestures to the dancing lights that still circle calmly around the ceiling.

Jester shakes her head, and Caleb drops his hand.

"Jester?" There's something in her expression that hasn't been there all evening—a raw piece of honesty that draws his eye. He frowns, troubled. "Jester, is everything—?"

"I don't want to be alone." Her voice cracks, and Caleb's hands curl into fists. "That's my selfish request. That's the thing I want. I just…I don't want to be left."

Gods but she is going to be the death of him.

"Jester," Caleb murmurs. He wrestles with himself—he wants to touch her, wants to brush away her hair, her tears, her melancholy, but he cannot bring himself to do it. He settles with a gaze just this side of scorching in its intensity. "This whole group—all of us, every member of the Nein—you know we care for you, ja?" He searches her expression, suddenly concerned. "No one wants to leave you behind, you mean too much to us."

She just stares at him. Words keep spilling out.

"What happened back in that…that chamber, Jester—that place where Twiggy took us. It was a mistake. An accident." He feels warmth and realizes—belatedly—he's holding her arm tightly. He doesn't remember reaching for her at all.

Jester's eyes are slightly wide.

"The whole thing was fucked from the start. We were all disorganized and confused. No one meant to leave you behind—we would never do that, would never let that happen." The raw sincerity of his voice hangs heavy in the air between them. "I would never let that happen."

He feels overheated, suddenly—like he's burning alive. The idea that Jester doubts them—that she thinks that any force in this fucking universe could take her from them—rouses something bitter and furious inside of him.

And yet—it had nearly happened. She'd been the last one out of the chamber. The last one left facing a dragon. Caleb closes his eyes because who is he—of all people—to promise safety to anyone? Who has he protected? His parents are gone, Molly is gone, Jester was so nearly—

Her hand is cold against his cheek. Caleb blinks twice to find her staring back at him evenly.

"I know, Caleb," she whispers. "It's okay. I believe you."

He reaches up to place his hand over hers where she holds his face.

"It will never happen again, Jester," he vows quietly. "Not to you, not to anyone. We are all in this together, ja?"

"Ja," she repeats, smiling as she mimics his accent, thumb brushing across his cheekbone until she's suddenly pulling away.

"I am—" she hesitates, cheeks suddenly coloring, and Caleb frowns because she hasn't blushed once this whole time and now she's—?

"It's a bit chilly in here," she confesses quietly. "Even for me. Could I—?"

He reaches across her to grasp the other corner of blankets and sheets and pulls them back, allowing her to quickly wiggle underneath. When he drops his arm, she's back on his pillow, peeking out from beneath his blanket with a grin.

"Thank you, Caleb," she sing-songs, smiling to herself like a fool.

He tips her a wink, because he's feeling particularly bold. "Of course," is his measured response, even as his heart hammers away at his chest. "Gute nacht, Jester."

I swore off tumblr but was told there’s a strong widojest crowd here so I came crawling back just for this blueberry and her dirty wizard

I talk way more on my twitter (@reduxwriter) and have more widojest and crit role fic on my ao3 (MidwesternDuchess)

#critical role #caleb widogast #jester lavorre #widojest

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dominodebt · 5 years

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shrugs very aggressively

more walls of text

wow hey okay it’s me again golly gee

so we’ve all seen the news about tumblr and while I’ve never posted nsfw stuff, I still am really bothered by their entire handling of the situation and the language in their guidelines. plus a not-insignificant number of my mutuals and peers are still banned. so.

I have an ao3

I have a fic twitter

I have a real person twitter

I made a discord

I’m finishing the last few commissions on my backlog (so sorry for the wait friends my life has been a ride and a fucking half lately) and after that, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ tumblr’s use has kinda run it’s course for me.

I hope I can keep track of anyone else who moves. please always feel free to drop me a line–I always love chatting with you guys

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dominodebt · 5 years

Text

hey so this probably isn’t surprising and I’m sure y’all have seen this post by a lot of other folks, but until tumblr gets its shit sorted, I’m not going to be posting anything here. I’ve exported my blog and encourage you to do the same in case your account gets yanked or this whole site just ends up going under I kinda doubt that will happen but at the same time tumblr could be wiped off the face of the internet tomorrow and I’d be like “yeah that tracks”

I’m most active on twitter. I have one for my everyday nonsense and one where I only talk about fic. you can also email me at midwesternduchess @ gmail. all my work is still posted on ao3, and if tumblr actually does end up biting it, I might make a discord so I can keep in touch with y’all and read your work and all that.

that’s all for now! tumblr has pulled the accounts of a lot of my close friends and peers, and I only just got mine back after it had been mistakenly pulled a few weeks ago. I don’t see a reason to post to a site as unpredictable as this one is at the moment, so I’m just going to see what happens and go from there.

have a good one kids <3 hopefully I talk to y’all soon

#from duchess' desk

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dominodebt · 5 years

Text

☁️☁️☁️

♛ko-fi commissions♛

hey so re: this post—I resigned from my job.

due to the new state of my employment status, I’m gonna be offering small writing commissions through ko-fi. one coffee costs three bucks, so that’s all you need to give to get a swell little ficlet from me. just include your tumblr username and a brief summary of what you’re looking for, and I’ll @ you when I have it posted. the baseline of these fics is probably going to hover around 400-600 words, all depending on how immediately familiar I am with the subject matter and how flexible the prompt is.

if you want to give more than $3—hey thanks! the base word count of higher donations will obviously go up, so if you wanted something a little longer, there you go.

what will I write? pretty much anything my guys, gals, and non-binary pals. check out my ao3 and see if any of that tickles your fancy. I’m known for Overwatch and *wiggles hand* RWBY to a degree but give me 20 minutes with a laptop and I can figure out enough about whatever fandom you’re thinking of to write you something. I wrote a thing about K/DA that a lot of folks liked so if you like that, hmu. nox ruit is my Helena Wayne fic that’s fairly popular—I’ll write you a scene from that if you’d like. if you donate $20 or more, I’ll write a little story with your OCs. you want a sweeping, cinematic fight scene with your D&D character? I’d love to pen that for you. my askbox is open if you have any clarifying questions.

the link to my ko-fi is here 🌱

I appreciate any support you can offer—be it an actual donation, rb’ing this post, or just reading my stuff and enjoying it. heart ya kids ❤

#from duchess' desk #writing commissions #the cloudy days continue

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dominodebt · 5 years

Text

tfw author mom comes back from hiatus with nothing but Bad News 🌚

☁️☁️☁️

I resigned from my job today.

some of you who follow me other places may know that—until very recently—I held a full-time job with a rather large corporation. due to a lot of reasons, namely sexism and false promises, I resigned. it sucks. I’m horrifically upset. I’m very scared.

I’m probably going to formally organize some sort of ko-fi comission situation, wherein you send me a screenshot of a donation and I write you a thing, if that interests anyone. I’m also happy to be hired to Write Your Thing. whatever it is, really. I have a lot of experience in creative, professional, and academic writing. hell, I’ll send you my portfolio if you’re like, actually interested.

I don’t know where to go from here, really. I hope you’re all alright, wherever you are. be gentle with yourself. I’m certainly trying.

#from duchess' desk

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dominodebt · 6 years

Text

whaddup sideblog fam ✨

it sure has been a hot second

hey kids!! I’m super not dead! if you follow me on twitter, you know that since I actually never shut up over there, but just a head’s up if you’ve been wondering what I’ve been up to!

-I still write fic! I’m working on a multi-chapter Batman AU called nox ruit you can check out here!

-I graduated college! this is kind of old news but if you missed it, I celebrated by sharing a really awful picture of myself as a high school freshman

-I’m gonna start streaming this winter! I bought a fancy mic and got a PC and everything so come on by and watch me play through all my favorite vidya games

-I made a carrd! carrd is a fee service that lets you make online business cards! that totally sounds like paid promotion I fucking wish I just really really like the website but I made one because I’ve actually been fielding some professional inquiries about writing which is actually kind of crazy so it’s just a handy thing to have. if you make one send it to me because I wanna see!! mine’s still kinda under construction but I’m workin on it.

-I updated my FAQ! per the aforementioned professional writing inquiries, I polished up my faq page! give it a look if you want!

-I’m gonna be setting up a queue again! so there’ll be some reason to still follow this blog lmao

okay that’s all I have some exciting stuff coming up that I can’t talk about yet but if you like my work stick around!! you can always shoot me an ask (although admittedly I’ll respond way faster to an @ on twitter jsyk) if you have any questions, comments, or concerns! author mom loves you all okay bye for now <3

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dominodebt · 6 years

Note

🐰💥🤳

Idk if you’ve seen the dva short yet, but just in case you haven’t, I HAVE to commend you for getting dva so right in your fics. I mean the short even has her shoot a reactor with pinpoint accuracy!! And you wrote about her shooting a soda can in that fic where she talked with genji!! And you got the selflessness and fierce protectiveness down pat. I mean, you’re just incredible!

hey thanks! I’ve actually had a couple of people tap me on various platforms bringing up similarities, and it’s very very kind of you and very humbling for me to have my writing compared to the Shooting Star short

if y’all wanna read a fic where Blackwatch Genji and MEKA Hana talk shop and talk shit, here’s the link

much love to you, anon

#from duchess' desk #real talk though it's kinda wild how many little similarities there were???

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dominodebt · 6 years

Link

womp womp author mom wrote a thing bc these kids in the gaming industry are gonna give me a damn ulcer

hey so I’m a PR rep in my real actual life and wanted to talk about the gaming industry (specifically esports and streaming) through that lens. re: The Ninja Thing.

give it a read, if you’re inclined. or RT it on twitter.

#from duchess' desk

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dominodebt · 6 years

Text

apologies to those who had to scroll past a wall of text when encountering “nox ruit”

I promise I put all of my fics under “read more” tabs for that very reason, but tumblr mobile has never seemed to give a good goddamn about the “read more” tab and a few of you found yourselves scrolling for seventy years.

sorry, friends. I’ll look into it to keep this from happening again <3

#domino effect #tumblr mobile can eat my whole ass

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dominodebt · 6 years

Text

nox ruit

“I am at the end of my father’s bloodline / A legacy on its deathbed” -Ashe Vernon

(Helena Wayne is stranded in a parallel Gotham—one where her parents are alive, she was never born, and there are quite a few more bats than she remembers. AU.)

dcu | 6,559 | ao3

There are a handful of hereditary traits in the Wayne bloodline.

Height, for one—at twenty-one, Helena doubts she has any growth spurts left in her, but she already stands at a respectable five feet, ten inches. It's dwarfed by the looming presence of her father's form, but in a pair of dangerous heels, Helena can split the difference.

Blue eyes are another. The opaque lenses in Helena's old domino mask had not only offered her infrared and nightvision, but concealed arguably one of her most recognizable features—irises to shame a diamond's own blue.

"Like a pair of stolen sapphires," Mother used to joke, ruffling her hair fondly, and Father would snort from his desk, not even looking up from his paperwork to quip back, "Why do they have to be stolen, Selina?"

The list goes on—slightly upturned nose, sharp jawline, high cheekbones, deathly pale skin that Mother's darker complexion had overruled. There is undoubtedly a Wayne look, and Helena fits it to a T.

But beyond the physical, there is a unifying trait passed down from generation to generation in the Wayne family—unseen but no less potent—and that is the unique ability to get mixed up in the most fucking ridiculous, stupid shitshows known to mankind.

Such as the one she's in now.

Helena loiters like a ghost in the shadows of an alleyway, one hand on the curve of her crossbow, an annoyed cut to her jaw as she tries to figure out where the fuck she is.

She knows where the fuck she's supposed to be—Apokolips, the hellish, high-tech industrial wasteland that Darkseid rules over. Since his invasion of her home—since the death of her parents and near-every member of the Justice League—Helena has been working nonstop to find a way to take the fight to him. If she can find a way to lure Darkseid back to his godforsaken planet, she has the power to keep him there.

Well, she thinks she does, anyway. Constantine and Zatanna had sworn up and down that the little plan they'd hatched would totally work, we swear but Helena tends to take up Father's point of view when it comes to magic and those who use it, and that point of view is miles and miles of mistrust.

Then Darkseid had wiped out a quarter of the people living in Old Gotham with a sweep of his hand, and Helena had gotten on board with the pair's shaky-at-best plan pretty fucking quick.

But none of that explains why she's currently in an alley at what—by her estimation—is ass o' clock at night. She leans back against the graffiti-laden brick, finally sliding her weapon back in its holster. As big a fan as she is of problems that can be solved with a crossbow bolt, she knows that's not what she's faced with now.

Her instinct is to say she's still in Gotham—that the interdimensional transportation method that had been given the ungodly unfortunate name of Boom Tube—had failed. Their plan failed. She failed.

And while Helena Wayne is usually first in line when it comes to blaming Helena Wayne, even she feels the need to take a breath. Give herself space—perspective. She can handle this—she's the goddamn Huntress.

Even thinking the name of her chosen mantle has her standing up a little straighter.

So she's not in Apokolips—fine. That much is obvious. But she's still somewhere and despite the odd sense of familiarity granted by this dingy back alley, she knows she's not in Gotham. She can't be. Nights there have been different ever since Darkseid came—and Helena knows in her bones that genocidal alien monstrosity isn't anywhere near her.

Taking a breath, Helena pushes off the wall, easing out of the shadows and feeling more like Father with every step. When she'd run with him as Robin, she'd been so damn chipper about the whole thing—so bright and shining and eager to please. She used to love Gotham's nights, sprinting across rooftops flanked by her parents, utterly unconquerable.

And then dawn never broke, and night lagged and loitered until Helena quite forgot what daybreak looked like. Her parents passed like so many others, and the mantle of Robin faded with them, leaving Helena behind to gather up the ashes and from them fashion the Huntress—a dark, distorted reflection of herself left lingering in her father's footsteps.

Still, she moves out of the alley, forcibly reminding herself that she isn't Batman as she begins to carefully pick her way along the street the alleyway empties into. The familiarity is blinding—everywhere she looks reminds her of Gotham, and it only frustrates her further as she continues along, boots scuffing along cracked concrete.

She wonders if homesickness is clouding her judgment, but she can't really be homesick for a place she was in not five minutes ago, right? Besides, it looks like Gotham—the feeling is just off.

She suddenly goes very still.

Has she gone back in time?

The thought draws mixed emotions. On the one hand—elation. Gotham before Darkseid is all she's ever wanted and exactly what she's never allowed herself to pine for—an impossibility impossibly out of reach.

Her hope—in typical Wayne fashion—quickly falls apart, reassembling itself into doubt and scrutiny. Stranger things have happened, it's true, but possibility is not probability. Just because it can happen doesn't mean it has. Members of the Justice League have dabbled with time before, but those were very precise instances prompted by very precise circumstances. One does not just stumble ten years into the past.

She hears footfalls far before she suspects the owners of those footfalls thinks she does, and coolly holds her place, tilting her head to the side just enough to sharpen her hearing.

Two sets, two figures. One lighter on their feet than the other. Low, anxious chatter shared between them. Helena holds her breath, listening.

"Hey!" a masculine voice calls. "What the fuck you doin' over there?"

Helena subtly shifts her weight, evening out the distribution, preparing to move in any direction.

"Listen, this is our turf, alright?" a high voice—rather youthful as well. Helena frowns. "If you wanted in, you shoulda been here when they were carvin' it up months ago."

A gun cocks, and Helena narrows her eyes.

She may not know exactly where she is, but she's under no illusions as to who she is, or what her purpose in this life is.

She throws herself into a back handspring, twisting midair and kicking out with her leg at the peak of her arc with a satisfying crunch from the heel of her boot as the woman's face snaps sideways, jaw thoroughly broken.

Helena's landing—spectacular as it is—lasts only a moment before she's rolling away as the man's gun cracks twice, splintering the concrete where she'd been a moment before.

Batman typically fought with batarangs. Catwoman favored the whip.

Their daughter had taken to neither of them.

Her hand-crossbow is drawn in a moment and before the man can reorient his shot, Helena's taken hers.

Two bolts—one for his wrist, one for his shoulder—and the man rears away from her with a howl of pain, dropping the gun in favor of curling in on himself, cradling his wounded arm as he dissolves into explicit babbling, eyes wide with pain and shock.

Helena dives forward to catch the falling weapon—her first night patrolling as Robin she'd let a gun drop and it'd discharged at a civilian—and turns the maneuver into a somersault, using her momentum to throw herself forward and knock the man to the ground, effectively pinning him beneath her, forcing him to look down the barrel of the gun he'd held on her the last time he'd blinked.

She offers a jaunty smile as she settles astride him, adrenaline making her feel like a bit of a shit, as it always does.

"First time getting hit with a crossbow bolt?" she asks pleasantly, deftly disassembling the gun and throwing the guts of it off to the side, disinterested. She notes that his eyes have drifted away from her face to settle on something over her shoulder, and she arches an eyebrow.

Helena lifts her crossbow and—without looking—fires off another bolt directly behind her. The woman with a busted jaw goes down hard in a flurry of curses as the shot hits her just above the left knee.

She holsters the crossbow and notes the man's attention is most definitely back on her. "You were saying?" she asks, blowing an errant black curl out of her eyes with a quick huff.

His chest is still heaving, and Helena accidentally-on-purpose shifts forward, planting her hands on both of his shoulders and maybe applying a bit more pressure than needed on the one with ten inches of razor-sharp aluminum sticking out of it. He hisses with pain and she smirks.

"Ow, yes, okay? Yes. Who the fuck—a crossbow? Really? What the fuck?"

"Effective, you have to admit," she tells him conversationally.

"Who the fuck are you then?" he snarls at her, remarkably aggressive considering the position he's in. "Huh? You don't have a goddamn bat on your chest so you're—what?" His eyes sweep her uniform, taking in her mask, utility belt, and the stark white cross that almost burns against the pitch of her suit. "Fuckin' cross girl?"

Helena's eyebrow climbs higher as she digests this information.

One: Batman—or some masked vigilante with an aforementioned goddamn bat on their chest—exists in this place she's in now.

Two: His inability to identify her means that for whatever reason, Huntress does not exist in this place she's in now.

Three: Criminals still have abysmal imaginations. Cross girl? Really?

Still, she has a situation to settle before she tries to solve anything else, and looks around for something to restrain her would-be gunman with. When a quick sweep of her surroundings leaves her empty-handed, she just sighs, leveling a look at him.

"Look, we're in Gotham, right?"

He pulls a face. "Are you serious? Of course we're—where the hell else would we be?" He squints at her then. "What are you, patrolling drunk? Is that why you forgot your bat? Huh? Grabbed the wrong Halloween costume?"

Helena rolls her eyes, flexing her fingers where she grips the man's shoulders and drawing a low string of "owowowowow ok-ay," from him as she does.

"I'm going to leave you and your friend here for the GCPD to find," she tells him, eyebrow still lifted seriously. "And I'm going to leave my crossbow bolts, because the alternative is a bit messier than what I'm in the mood for right now. But if you make a break for it, the next one's going ten inches deep right here."

She taps him lightly between the eyes. He flinches.

"Good, now that that's settled." Helena flashes another cheery smile as she swings off of him, allowing all of her weight to bear down on his gut for one moment and smirking as the air is forced from his lungs in a strangled wheeze before rising fluidly to her feet.

She runs a gloved hand through her hair to settle her curls, idly tossing her gaze around as she decides her next move.

"Well, who are you then?"

Helena freezes, looking back over her shoulder. The man hasn't moved—because he can't or because he won't, she can't quite tell—and he glares up at her with all the indignity he can muster.

Considering the events of the last three-and-a-half minutes, he can muster quite a bit.

Helena peers down at him. "Pardon?"

He gestures at her profile with his good arm. "Your name, you masked jackass. Or are you leavin' it up to me? Because I'm more than happy to—"

"Huntress." She cuts him off coolly and holsters her crossbow. "My name is Huntress."

"Never heard of ya," pipes up the woman from a few feet away, words jumbled due to her busted jaw. Helena throws her an annoyed glance and sees she's hauled herself up to sit against they alley wall, content to wait for the GCPD to roll up, apparently.

"Well then, I'll rent out some fucking billboards next time, alright?" Helena snaps back.

"I liked Cross Girl better, to be honest," the man tells her, drawing Helena's gaze again. He shifts on the ground, preparing to settle in. Clearly, this is not the first time they've been apprehended and told to wait for the police. He nods helpfully to her suit. "Suits your costume better, too." He mimes the sign of the cross in the air, like some kind of ragged, back alley Pope.

Helena smiles back tightly. She's in hell. The Boom Tube took her to fucking hell. Unbelievable.

"I'll take it under advisement," she tells him stiffly.

She leaves the pair to their own devices—after convincing herself that shooting him again would be a waste of a crossbow bolt—and slinks off to ponder her situation.

She isn't in hell, as charming a thought as that might be. Gotham isn't hell to her—it couldn't possibly be. Even her Gotham, the one under Darkseid's thumb, is still where she wants to be, above anywhere else. She loves Gotham more than anything else—can't even picture her city without herself in it.

So why did neither of those delinquents recognize her?

Maybe the Helena of this Gotham never became Huntress? That makes sense, actually. She took up that mantle because her parents had been killed and she'd needed a new identity—she couldn't be Robin if Batman was dead.

So, if this version of her never became Huntress, then this version of Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle-Wayne must still be alive, meaning she's still—

A whisper—the softest hiss of leather-on-concrete—has Helena whirling around, crossbow drawn, lips pulling back in a snarl at whoever has the goddamn nerve to try and sneak up on someone they just watched take down an armed criminal with hardly any effort—

Helena's eyes go wide behind her mask. What the fuck—

A boy stands before her—and she truly does mean boy. She can't see him too clearly—his features are cast into shadow by the hood of his cloak, and a domino mask guards his eyes—but it's obvious he clears five feet by the narrowest of margins

Her eyes rove over his suit—familiar shades of scarlet, gold, and emerald—and settle on the patch over his heart that bears a capital R.

Helena's world goes sideways.

Robin. Holy shit.

Helena can only stare—crossbow still trained on him, though she doubts she could muster enough brainpower to make her finger pull the trigger.

A boy. A boy in the middle of this maybe-Gotham, in the Robin uniform. No—in her Robin uniform.

Helena's cold shock melts to white-hot anger in a moment.

"Why are you dressed like Robin?" she snaps, taking a step forward and milking her height for all it's worth and more as she looms over him. She's grown to be so much like her father—probably too much, if she's being wholly honest with herself—but with some boy wearing her goddamn uniform she's not exactly worried about that right now.

He sneers at that, and she watches—stares, really, Wonder Woman herself could come waltzing in from stage fucking left and Helena's not sure she'd be inclined to redirect her gaze—as his hand disappears behind his back to reach for—

I'm sorry, is that a fucking sword?

"Because I am Robin."

Helena is a woman who has seen shit—she watched her mother die in her father's arms, then watched her father die in her own arms. She'd seen Darkseid march into Gotham—her city, her home—and kill sixty-odd civilians in a heartbeat. She's been locked in Arkham Asylum, pursued through The Narrows, beaten within an inch of her life in the Burnley District. She's been witness to countless assassinations, deadly explosions, acts of terrorism—for god's sake, she had a ringside seat to the death of fucking Superman.

And yet—and yet—the cruelty that coats this boy's simple sentence gives even her pause.

Helena's mouth is bursting to speak but her mind is absolutely blank. She is completely thrown by the course of events that have transpired and doesn't quite know what to do about it.

She works her jaw for a moment, sizing this—her mind flinches to even think it—Robin up as she tries to figure out how to salvage the situation.

"And you are?"

His voice is totally void of any kind of Gotham accent—not the arch lilt of the Diamond Distract or the coarse drawl of Crime Alley. It makes Helena frown.

"I'm Huntress," she tells him shortly—because fuck she has to say something—and for once she's wishing her chosen costume offered a bit more identity protection. It never mattered in her Gotham—a place where Batman was dead and the world teetered on the brink of annihilation—the line between Helena Wayne and The Huntress hardly existed. No one cared if Bruce Wayne's orphaned daughter prowled around at night with a crossbow—they only cared if they survived to see morning.

And so few did, these days.

But now, with this boy staring at her incredulously from behind his domino mask—Helena has to catch herself from thinking her domino mask—she longs for a cowl to vanish beneath. She settles for sinking deeper into her cloak, allowing the garment to swallow her form as she regards him coolly.

"You seem dissatisfied," she notes, arching an eyebrow at the boy's continued silence. His uniform isn't quite like hers had been, she notes, unsure how that information makes her feel. She'd never been allowed a hood, and she certainly never carried a sword.

"Tt," the boy scoffs. "I suppose that's not the worst moniker I've ever heard."

Helena's eyebrows climb—if possible—higher. Because one: rude. So rude. Unbelievably rude. Two: what ten year-old has the word moniker in their lexicon?

"I wouldn't throw stones, Boy Wonder," Helena replies icily, because she has no idea who this tiny bastard is—a younger Dick Grayson? No way—but she knows it's insulting and she's banking on there being enough similarities between the Gotham she knows and the Gotham she's in for it to sting properly.

His expression sours magnificently. Helena tries not to feel too proud. He is still a ten year-old.

"I'm no Boy Wonder," he growls at her—yes, growls, sounding more like a dog than Helena thinks some actual dogs do—and his words are accented by the shriek of his sword as he starts to draw it again.

"Hey hey hey," Helena says quickly, stepping forward, crowding him, hands up in surrender. She swears his hackles raise, like some kind of alley cat, teeth bared in a sneer at her approach. "Easy, Robin—" she gives herself a gold star for not vomiting at calling him as such "—just…no swords, okay? I can't believe I have to say that, but no swords. We're not enemies."

He looks utterly unconvinced.

"Oh?" His tiny little ten year-old fingers are still wrapped very firmly around the hilt of his sword, but he's no longer actively drawing it, so Helena scrambles to continue.

"We're not," she insists. "You're Robin. You—" she breaks off, suddenly. Because holy shit—what if she's wrong? What if this is some kind of parallel universe? Where up is down and right is left and Robins carry swords and—and fuckin' kabob people or whatever it is people with sword do. Helena wouldn't know. The weirdest weapon she's ever seen is Aquaman's trident and she's willing to give him a pass on that one.

"You're—you're one of the good guys," she forces out, desperately hoping he's not about to, like, scoff at her words and slice her hand off, even though she's kind of totally prepared for that to be his next move. Her fingers itch to reach for her crossbow, but she resists.

Robin can't be bad. He can't be.

Batman and Robin are a team—the epitome of partnership. And not just because when she'd been Robin, it'd been a father-daughter deal. Even when Dick had donned the uniform, it was like a switch was thrown. A connection that ran bone deep. She and Mother had always been inseparable, but every time she threw on that cape, she was wholly and singularly Batman's partner. That's how it worked.

If Robin's evil, that would mean—it would mean Batman—

Helena sets her jaw. Squares her shoulders.

Nope. Not evil. She's not buying it.

"You're good," she tells him firmly. "And I'm good too. So that makes us…" she trails off, half-forgetting where she was even going with this.

"…not enemies?" he prompts, voice absolutely dripping doubt.

Helena nods stiffly, trying to convince herself she circumvented a fight by using diplomacy instead of acknowledging the fact that a child wearing her old uniform was a just a moment away from running her through with a sword.

Silence falls between them—it's awkward and tense. Helena is about to turn and leave just to break it, when the boy speaks.

"Batman isn't very fond of civilians trying to join in," he tells her, and god she wishes he'd choke on that harsh, posh lilt to his voice. He's only ten, Lena, she reminds herself, again.

"Well, I'm not very fond of children carrying swords," she snaps back because yeah, she hasn't really forgotten that he's still actively drawing one of those. "What's Batman think about that?"

She hadn't really meant to say it—she was actually trying to avoid the b-word, if she's being wholly honest with herself—but to her surprise, Robin looks away, a muscle ticking in his jaw. Curious.

"You still shouldn't be out here," he insists, turning his glare upon her once again. "You could get hurt."

Helena cocks a brow at the peeved disinterest he speaks with. Yeah, he sounds like a concerned superhero alright. Robin, her ass.

"Show me your permit to prowl around at night in a costume and I'll show you mine," Helena retorts, annoyed.

He snorts at that—she's not sure if it's in humor or irritation, but given all she's gleaned from this boy in the delightful ten minutes she's shared his company, she's betting on the latter.

But he finally releases his sword, and Helena lets loose a soft sigh of relief at that.

It's not that she wouldn't have fought him. It's not even that she thinks she couldn't have. But goddamn—show her someone who'd willingly engage in a sword fight in the twenty-first fuckin' century and she'll happily pass her mantle on to them.

Still. While she's glad there are no sword fights on the horizon, she knows she's overstayed her welcome here, and she feels her gaze playing across the surrounding rooftops, searching.

Wherever Robin appears, Batman is soon to follow.

She still has fuck-all idea where she is, but that's as good as a law of physics. She needs to move. Now.

"Well, not that this hasn't been enchanting," Helena drawls, taking a step back and watching him closely for a reaction. Mostly his sword hand. Or what she assumes is his sword hand, anyway. He's probably ambidextrous, the little shit. "But it's time for me to go. So."

Holding his gaze for just a moment longer—the boy radiates pain and anger in a way that would make her heart ache for him if it weren't for the fact that he's baring her sigil on his chest—before she turns around with the casual grace lent to her by the Kyle side of her lineage, carelessly giving him her back.

She hopes he sees the simple action for what it is—a silent declaration. An allegorical middle finger.

Yeah, I'll turn my back on you, Boy Wonder. And I won't fuckin' think twice about it.

She hears that "Tt" noise again, harsh with anger, and smirks to herself. Good. So they're all on the same page.

"I will find you again." It sounds like a threat.

"Not unless I want you to," she returns, voice cold with confidence as she draws her grappling gun.

She can feel his gaze on her as she vanishes into the night, scaling a nearby building and hunkering down in the shadows among a set of gargoyles that guard the overhang. She waits until the icy sharpness of the boy's eyes leaves her, and peers over the edge of the roof to catch the gleam of his cape's golden lining as he too takes his leave.

Helena sighs, leaning sideways up against one of the gargoyles and letting her feet dangle off the side of the ledge. She props her elbow up on the head of the one beside her, turning to give a sidelong look of exasperation to its neighboring statue.

"This sucks," she tells it conversationally.

The gargoyle continues to sneer malevolently down at the city streets below. Helena just sighs again as she tries to figure out what the fuck she's going to do.

Her first instinct—unbridled and immediate—is home. Wayne Manor. That's where she'll find answers.

But it's also where—statistically speaking—roughly sixty percent of her problems are probably lurking, not to mention the fact that after meeting this Gotham's Robin, she's not particularly keen on meeting its Batman.

Very clever, her subconscious coos sardonically. Call him Batman instead of Father. That'll keep you emotionally stable.

Gritting her teeth, Helena rises to her feet, giving the gargoyle an affectionate pat on the head before smoothly descending back down to the streets below, making it a point to stick to the shadows. She'd talked a big game with Robin, but if he's actively looking for her, she's at least not going to make it easy for him.

She wanders through the city, finding that this Gotham is as rife with crime and violence as hers is as she breaks up two muggings, a robbery, and a violent domestic dispute. Those she rescues all have the same reaction, she notes—extreme gratitude, followed by slight confusion when their eyes sweep over her suit and apparently don't like what they see there. Or rather—what they don't see.

You don't have a goddamn bat on your chest, the man back in the alley had snarled.

Helena puts it out of her mind. One thing at a time.

She finally emerges into the Diamond District—home to Gotham's wealthiest citizens and most upscale businesses—squinting slightly as she finds herself blinded by a gargantuan neon sign that tops the several-stories tall building across the street from her, its wattage impressive enough to cut through Gotham's signature gloom.

Helena pauses, disoriented for a moment. The Gotham she'd just drifted through had been fairly familiar—she'd passed under the shadow of Old Gotham's Clocktower, ghosted through the abandoned subway beneath the Burnley District, listened to the lull of the ocean at Midtown Pier, and even scaled an apartment complex to get an eyeful of Arkham Asylum across the Gotham River.

She knows the Diamond District as well as any part of Gotham, but as she scans the building, she finds herself at a loss. Granted, most of the buildings of her Gotham have long-since been destroyed or abandoned, and this Gotham is far from identical to hers, but something like this ought to have stuck with her.

Brushing hair out of her eyes, Helena tilts her head back to see what it's advertising—maybe the name will tip something back into place.

WAYNE ENTERPRISES stares down at her. Helena works her jaw, rocking back on her heels.

Well, that certainly tracks with the kind of day she's having, now doesn't it?

Quickly lowering her eyes, Helena stalks out of the sign's electric-blue glow and sinks back into the familiar comfort of the city's shadowy fog. She's going to sew a hood to disappear beneath onto her cloak before this shit show is over. She just knows it.

Still, unsettling as the sign is, it's information she can't afford to waste. The Wayne Enterprises of her Gotham was undoubtedly impressive, but on a much smaller scale. Still easily the largest and most successful business in the city, but that thing she'd just seen was positively monstrous.

For the first time, Helena doubts the presence of her Mother here. Batman exists, so Bruce Wayne is here in one capacity or another, but if her mother is married to her father in whatever world she's in, it hasn't been for very long—Selina Kyle-Wayne wouldn't let something like that stand for a second, thank you very much.

Thankful for the late hour and absence of pedestrians, Helena steps out of the shadows a good distance away from the looming Wayne Enterprises to approach a trashcan. She paws through it, pushing aside a handful of coffee cups, receipts, a busted umbrella and other miscellaneous items before coming across what she'd been hoping to find.

Sidestepping to better situate herself beneath a nearby streetlight, Helena extracts the item of interest and tries her best to mop off the coffee it's been soaking in as she scans the back of the magazine, which includes some credits for the publication in her hands: The Gotham Globe.

Tabloids. Possibly the worst source of actual information, but bursting with the kind of news she needs right now. She's Bruce Wayne's goddamn daughter—her face hasn't left the front page of a gossip magazine in all her twenty-one years. If she exists in this Gotham, she'll be here.

Flipping the magazine over, Helena's eyes skim the cover and she very nearly hurls into the conveniently located trashcan.

Bruce Wayne stares back at her. He looks exactly as she remembers him—looks exactly like her.

Tall. Piercing blue eyes. Pitch black hair. Sharp, regal features.

Helena swallows and tastes bile.

She takes a moment. Then another. Her eyes track a stray cat as it scampers about nearby, waiting for sense and rationale to return to her. Her hands shake where she holds the publication and she pretends not to notice.

The cat seems to sense her gaze, and its eyes snap to her in the gloom of the night, wary, before vanishing into the darkness.

Helena forces herself to look back at the cover.

Inside the glamor of the annual Wayne Gala the headline blares, which pulls a frown from Helena, because she's never heard of a fucking Wayne Gala, especially one that occurs on a yearly basis. It sounds like something she and Mother would invent and then gush about in horribly posh accents when they got bored at whatever social event they'd been forced to attend this time, and Father would give them his I'm amused but you still need to knock off your shit look.

Chewing her lip, Helena flips to the suggested page, and a glossy, full-page photo falls open in her hands.

Helena can only stare.

Gotham's Princes is the title, apparently, and is it ever an eyeful and a half.

Her father sits, flanked on all sides by…boys. Helena squints. No, seriously, who the fuck are these guys?

The caption very helpfully names them for her, and her eyes drift over their faces, committing them to memory.

Timothy Drake-Wayne is listed first—he stands to the left of her father, looking roughly her age, perhaps a bit younger. At a glance, he could pass for a Wayne, but Helena can see in his face he's not. Features too soft, frame too willowy, smile too unpolished. He's no more a Wayne than she is a Kent, but he exudes the confidence to at least play the part. The last name snags her—Drake-Wayne—but she tries not to dwell on it or the roughly one hundred and six meanings it could have.

Richard Grayson is next, and despite everything, Helena smiles softly. He's younger in this timeline—older than her, she guesses, but a few decades off from the somewhat harried ex-Robin of her Gotham. He's taken up post over her father's right shoulder, all lean muscle and effortless finesse. He offers the camera a winning smile, and Helena can't resist the urge to smile back at her adoptive older brother. She'll take the familiarity, even if she knows it'll haunt her later.

Jason Todd looks just as tall as Dick and twice as sturdy, Helena notes when her gaze finally travels to him. He stands opposite Dick over her father's left shoulder—dark haired as the rest of them—with a curious swath of white curling through the pitch locks. The skin beneath his eyes is bruised dark with sleeplessness, and Helena tilts her head as she assesses his poor posture. If Timothy Drake-Wayne had been unpolished, this Jason Todd is downright unrefined. There's a look of self-assurance in his eyes though—just a spark—and it's enough to make Helena withhold judgment.

Last is Damian Wayne, and Helena's eyebrow quirks as she stares down at what is possibly the angriest looking boy she's ever seen. He stands ramrod straight at her father's side, arms folded stiffly behind his back, giving the camera a severe look. His young features clash terribly with the stern cut to his jaw, and she can't decide if his perfectly fitted suit looks like something he'd wear to First Communion or a court case. Helena's eyes get caught on his last name: Wayne. He must be a blood son—he looks almost as much a Wayne as she does. But what is he doing mixed in with all these interlopers? Why does he look so cruel?

And just who is his mother?

She very skillfully and pointlessly skips over her father's name, skimming the rest of the article for anything else that might lend itself as a clue. It's nothing but walls and walls of text overflowing with praise for the gala's signature opulence, gossip about which celebrities showed and which didn't, commentary about the boys' suits—

Helena curses under her breath, flipping ahead to scan for more pictures. All she finds are more images of her father, Gotham's Princes—she rolls her eyes every time she reads the phrase—and one particularly artful shot of Wayne Manor that elicits so many emotions, Helena just snaps the magazine shut.

Nothing. No mention of a Helena Wayne. Or a Selina Kyle-Wayne, for that matter, which only winds Helena's anxiety tighter.

None of those boys had the Kyle look, either—not even in passing, like she did. Damian and Jason could pass on skin color, but they lacked any of her mother's other telltale features—cheekbones sharp enough to cut a man, full lips prime for smiling and shit talking, eerily bright green eyes—

Helena catches herself, cursing lowly as she flips the magazine open, gaze flickering back to where Damian stands stiffly beside her father. His eyes are green. Really fucking green.

She stares hard. Could it be? Could he really be the son of Selina Kyle and Bruce Wayne? Her brother? Was this Gotham's Helena Wayne swapped for Damian Wayne?

The thought unsteadies her at an uncomfortably intimate level—unseats her very sense of self.

Was she...not good enough?

Nope. No. Absolutely not. Helena grits her teeth, tossing the gossip column back in the trash and pulling a mental E-brake. She has enough going on right now, she doesn't need to create more problems for herself. If anything, she's the only thing she can truly count on right now—the only trustworthy being in the bizarre, parallel Gotham.

She's Helena Martha Wayne—only child of Bruce and Selina Wayne, heiress to Wayne Enterprises, beloved daughter of Gotham, and the Huntress. Nothing—not a bunch of boys in fancy suits, not an enormous neon sign, and not a ten year-old asshole with a sword—can take that away from her.

Emboldened, if just for the moment, Helena turns her back of the sprawling sign of Wayne Enterprises and grapples back across the city, putting as much distance between herself and her lack of self as she can.

Back in the familiarity of Old Gotham, Helena spares a moment to check in on the criminals she'd apprehended earlier. The alleyway is a bit more crowded than she'd left it—two uniformed GCPD officers are in the process of cuffing them, and as Helena skirts by on the rooftops, she catches snippets of the conversation.

"No, no, Officer, you aren't listenin'. It wasn't Batman, it was the Huntress. Ain't that right, Marsha?"

Marsha gurgles something vaguely affirmative, and Helena steals a glance to see her jaw getting checked out by a paramedic.

The officer being addressed just scoffs. "Huntress, huh?" he drawls, using his free hand to open the rear door of his car. "That's a new one."

The man splays his cuffed hands as far as he can. "Right? That's what I said!"

Helena watches as the two are piled in the back of the cop car before swinging across the street to the building she'd climbed earlier, smiling softly at the sight of the gargoyles.

"Hey boys," she greets them lamely, holstering her grappling gun. "Late, huh?"

She sighs, leaning against the statue and frowning moodily down at the streets of this Gotham But Also Not Gotham she's found herself in.

She's alone, she's broke, and her fucking cellphone doesn't even work.

But still…Gotham. Some form of it, anyway. One where her father is apparently not married to her mother and is instead the guardian of four boys. One of which may actually be his son.

His son. Not daughter. Because she doesn't exist here.

Helena wonders idly if she's in some personal circle of hell. A world that's just enough like her old life—the life she'd loved, the one before Darkseid—to make her bask in the familiarity, but so different in so many ways it makes her heart ache and her head spin.

A Gotham without Mother and Father—without them ever having existed together—isn't one Helena is interested in occupying, thank you very fucking much. Not to mention a Gotham she was never born in.

But fine. Fate thinks this is the worst it can throw at her? What a fucking joke.

She spins on her heel sharply enough to make her cape flare out behind her—a needlessly dramatic move she'd unconsciously picked up from years of watching her father—and stalks across the rooftop, destination decided.

If she can't be Helena Wayne, she'll have to go to the place where Waynes go to die.

A light drizzle begins to fall as she steps off the ledge and drops down into the inky blackness below. For a moment, she just falls—gives herself up to the pull of gravity and lets the wind rip through her hair and her cloak—relishing in the brief sensation of weightlessness before she's firing her grappling gun and swinging—

Crime Alley rushes to meet her.

so uh. I kinda really like Batman.

anyway, Helena Wayne is a canon character (though I wouldn't blame you for thinking she's an OC) who is the daughter of Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle from Earth-2, which is like DCU's parallel universe. this fic is kind of a take on the World's Finest comic run which featured Huntress and Power Girl in this exact scenario. Power Girl doesn't make the trip in my fic, because I'm going to be focusing more on the Batfam, but most of the bones of that original story are still in place.

hope it wasn't too confusing. and yes, if you were (somehow) unsure, that Robin she met was of course our own Damian Wayne. you'll need a fair amount if DC knowledge to get through most of this fic, I'm afraid, so if this isn't really your thing, that's totally fine—but maybe pass it on to someone who would like it?

I wasn’t even gonna post this on tumblr but it did surprisingly well on ao3 so I thought I’d slap it up. if you like it, the rest of the chapters will be updated over there!

hi I'm Duch and I'm so scared to write fic for a new fandom holy shit oh my god

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dominodebt · 6 years

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🐰bump🐲

(thanks for the support)

four-stroke cycle

“Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I’m not living.” -Johnathan Safran Foer

(They meet at an impasse—the proverbial fork. Who were they before they buried themselves beneath all this metal? Who are they now?)

overwatch | 5,048 | ao3

Keep reading

#icymi #Genji Shimada #Hana Song #cyborgbunny

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dominodebt · 6 years

Text

four-stroke cycle

"Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living." -Johnathan Safran Foer

(They meet at an impasse—the proverbial fork. Who were they before they buried themselves beneath all this metal? Who are they now?)

overwatch | 5,048 | ao3

At this point in his tenure at Blackwatch—which is more or less a month and a half—Genji has learned that appearances can be deceiving.

It's a lesson he learned first with Dr. Ziegler—the slender, pale slip of a woman with fair hair who Genji had immediately branded as unremarkable, save for the brilliant brain that kept her useful. She'd walked into his room upon their first meeting, head bowed over the clipboard in her hands, and he'd waited for her to look up—waited for this unarmed woman to shrink back from him like all the others.

Then she'd turned her eyes on him—and fuck those eyes—sharper than his own sword and drawn to his flaws faster than his face. Genji had swallowed very, very hard.

He'd misjudged Jesse McCree in the same way. Upon their introduction, he'd seen little more than a messy, unsophisticated arms dealer prone to a lucky shot now and again. He'd talked too loudly, dressed too ostentatiously—Genji once spent a summer with a shock of green hair, so he knows damn well what he's talking about—and tried too hard to be everything for everyone. He seemed to be trying to make a brother out of Genji, and considering how things had ended with Genji's last brother, he wasn't exactly in the market for a new one.

Then Genji found the jaw of a Blackwatch agent who had been antagonizing him for weeks mysteriously broken, and McCree nursing a bruised fist with a cocky grin the very same day. Genji had merely quirked an eyebrow.

Commander Reyes had perhaps gotten the worst of Genji's ill-founded verdicts—a tall, brick wall of a man whose steady tones and wise advice and genuine concern clashed with Genji's fresh hatred and anger, and he'd railed against him for no reason other than his unwillingness to accept the help and support so calmly offered to him. He'd disparaged the man in his mind, ducked his gaze when he could, skirted his path at every opportunity until even the young girl—the sniper's daughter, Fareeha—had loudly and unabashedly asked him why he was so afraid of Gabriel.

Then of course Genji had sat and listened as Reyes had vouched for him before a United Nations council—watched as this man who was loyalty and steadfastness personified—put his own honor and prestige at stake in defense of a boy who had done nothing but shun him. Afterwards, when the council had grudgingly agreed to Reyes' terms, Genji had forced himself to quietly thank the Commander, and nearly stumbled when the man replied by placing a heavy hand on his shoulder and giving it a squeeze.

And yet despite all this, he can't stop judgment from clouding his vision as he catches sight of a newcomer speaking with the quintessential trio of Overwatch brass—Reyes, Morrison, and Amari—in the Blackwatch hanger.

The girl is short and thin—willowy frame swallowed up by the enormous blue hooded jacket she wears. Her skinny legs sport black leggings with a hole or two, and her shoes look to be clunky and ineffective—high-top sneakers with the laces untied, a blinding shade of yellow with neon pink accents. On her head, she wears a backwards baseball cap. Genji squints. If he's not completely mistaken, the logo it bares is some kind of…glaring rabbit.

"You wanna put him in a mech?"

So caught up in his appraisal, Genji nearly misses the girl speaking. She's studying a tablet, appearing completely unaware of his presence while Reyes and Morrison glance up in horrifying unison to meet his eyes where he lurks across the hanger, trying to melt into the shadows cast by a stealth jet.

Amari doesn't look up, but then she doesn't need too—she sees everything.

"Not quite," the sniper murmurs, reaching out to change the image on the tablet. Genji cranes his neck, trying to see what she's looking at, but the angle the girl holds it at obscures his gaze.

"Oh." The girl seems to consider whatever new information she sees, rocking back on her heels, one hand deep in the pocket of her jacket. "You wanna make him the mech."

Genji bristles at the implication—he doesn't know how, but he knows he's the topic of conversation—but the girl chatters on, handing the tablet back to Amari and calling up a handful of holographic screens around her.

"Sure, I mean—Omnic tech is wicked—but it depends on how much of his fleshy bits he's got left, y'know?" She tugs idly on one of the strings of her jacket, while her other hand moves through the air—thin fingers sorting through various holographic screens that Genji can't make out from his distance. "He'd need a helmet, for sure. Probably something to stabilize his spine, because that shit looks wonky as hell—"

"We were hoping you could speak with Dr. Ziegler," Morrison cuts her off as politely as he can. "Perhaps combine your mechanical knowledge with her medical knowledge."

Something about this seems to amuse the girl, Genji notes—her lips tug up in a half-smile as she dismisses the floating screens with a quick, flippant gesture.

"Sure," she agrees easily, dropping her arms. She's restless—fingers of one hand tapping out a rhythm on her hip, while her other hand traces the zipper of her jacket, picking idly at the metal teeth. "But like, you do know she can do that on her own, right? Like, you don't need to spare my feelings or try to make me feel useful or whatever—Angela Ziegler doesn't need anyone's help." She shrugs. "For anything."

Genji can't see the small, sharp smirk that twists Ana Amari's face from his vantage point, but he knows it's there when she says, "If only that were true, Sergeant."

The girl—Sergeant? Genji chooses to ignore that—just shrugs again, and Reyes decides to speak up.

"She designed the suit Genji wears now," he remarks. "If nothing else, maybe you could give it a look and see what you think?"

"Be happy too," the girl agrees affably. "I assume that's him lurking over by the stealth jet, yes?"

Genji goes deathly still—Reyes and Morrison find him again, and this time Amari joins them, her buckshot eyes picking his form out of the darkness with ease.

"So it is," she murmurs, accented voice warm with amusement. "Speak of the devil."

Caught beyond a shadow of a doubt—he should have known better than to bet against Amari's sight—Genji slinks into the open, squinting slightly under the bright lights of the hanger.

The girl studies him curiously for a moment—he can feel her gaze rove over his form—before shrugging, apparently uninterested by the miracle of medical technology that stands before her.

"Neat," she offers, turning her back on him. "Come on, let's take a walk. It's nice out."

Genji hesitates—he had honestly only been trying to eavesdrop on tomorrow's plans regarding the mission to Ilios—but with a somewhat stern look from Morrison, a smirk from Amari, and a firm nod and a glance that all but screams behave from Reyes, he follows the girl out of the hanger and into the cool Milan evening.

They walk in silence for a moment—conversation not quite possible with her outdistancing him, given her head start and Genji's disinterest in catching up with her—until she stops atop the hill that overlooks Blackwatch's training fields, turning around to face him somewhat expectantly.

"So." Genji bristles on instinct as her eyes—large and brown and bright in the moonlight—meet his. "You're Genji Shimada."

He says nothing. Who else could he be?

"Sergeant Hana Song," she tells him breezily, sticking out a hand. He ignores it, and she doesn't seem surprised, smoothly withdrawing it after a moment to pull a soda can out of the pocket of her jacket. "I'm with MEKA."

Genji has no idea what that means. He also doesn't think he's ever cared less about something. The girl's casual mannerisms—the way she'd nonchalantly discussed something so monumentally important to him—rankles Genji in a way that draws out his worst temperament as they make their way away from hanger and the watchful eyes of their superiors.

Well, his superiors, anyway. The fact that this girl has rank of any kind already puts her leagues above him—the thought annoys him even more

"You are a child," Genji says coldly, and the girl—Hana, not a girl but a Sergeant—just rolls her eyes, popping off the tab of her soda with a practiced flick of her thumb.

"I get that you think you probably look, like, super cool and badass with all that Omnic tech," she says, taking a swig. "But you're obviously not much older than me. And my age doesn't define me, but thanks for playing." Her tone is off-handed and casual—like she's telling off some punk at an arcade and not dishing out sass to the half-dead heir of a clan of assassins.

Genji scoffs out of habit, but his curiosity is piqued. He knows there has to be more to her than what he sees—Reyes had left her out here alone with him while he's fully armed—and Genji can't remember the last time he'd been unaccompanied in the presence of someone who couldn't subdue him should the need arise.

Probably because it had never happened.

She must catch his wandering stare, because her lips quirk up in a harsh kind of smirk—tight, with a few too many teeth.

"I'm a gamer," she explains casually, leaning back against the half-wall that overlooks Blackwatch's training fields. This late at night they're completely empty, and the artificial turf is bathed in an eerie glow by the floodlights stationed around. The aluminum can flashes in the light as she lifts it to her lips. "Professionally," she adds, like that makes any difference.

Genji just stares, irritation darkening his expression. Endlessly clever, their little guest. A gamer. Honestly. What does she take him for?

"There's no need to tell such a stupid lie," he says, tone dark with dislike. He folds his arms, glaring out into the inky blackness of the training fields. "I'm the property of a secret organization. I'm familiar with the concept of confidentiality."

Something he says snags—her eyes snap to his sharply in the near-dark, expression suddenly cold.

"You aren't property," she tells him, and he's caught off-guard by the bite to her words.

"As good as," he retorts, unsure why he's angry in response to her anger, but there it is.

They glare at each other for a moment—Genji's struck by the raw ferocity of her gaze, before it seems to melt back to that coy coolness she'd sported earlier.

"Then let's go." She shrugs away from the wall, arching an eyebrow. "If things are that bad, you shouldn't be here." She takes a swig of her soda, and Genji honestly can't tell if she's joking or not when she lowers the can and tips him a wink. "I'll bust you out."

He gives her a hard look, trying to place her tone. Her smirk implies a joke, but her eyes are staggeringly serious. He resolves to ignore the whole display, folding his arms across his chest and looking away from her.

He counts three merciful seconds of silence before she's speaking again.

"I have a question."

"Of course you do."

"This, not wearing clothes thing—" she gestures helpfully to his half-bare chest "—what's that about?"

Genji bristles. "What?"

"Because I'm pretty sure being half-Ominc isn't an excuse to let it all hang out, y'know?" She quirks an eyebrow and Genji glares down at her, bewildered and annoyed. "You're like, legally indecent right now."

Genji honestly sputters—his typical angry indignation can't quite find a handhold on his tongue in his haste to assert the fact that he is not legally indecent, thank you very much, and who does this girl think she is?

She takes another sip of her soda, eyes crinkling with laughter over the top of the can as she smirks at him.

"I hardly think—" he begins.

He breaks off as she chucks the empty soda can at his face—his hand jerks up to catch it before he can even consider the action—and it gives a satisfying crunch as he sinks his metallic fingers into it.

For a brief moment, he debates just throwing the damn thing back at her, but he stays his hand when their eyes catch. Her eyebrow quirks.

"Throw it," she says, inclining her head out towards the training fields.

"What?" Her hand has disappeared up the back of her jacket, and he has a feeling it isn't more sodas she has stowed away there.

She rolls her eyes at his apparent incompetence, miming a throwing action with her free hand.

"Throw it," she repeats, more firmly this time, and with a scoff and few idle curses, Genji hurls the can out into the darkness as hard as he can.

It's quickly swallowed up by the dusk that's settled over them, and Genji squints, trying to track it, but his gaze is quickly diverted as Hana rustles with something at her back—a determined cut to her jaw—

In one smooth movement, she's drawn a weapon—a blaster of some sort, with a charm swinging from the butt of it—takes the briefest of aim, and fires.

A brilliant green burst of energy fires out the barrel, streaking through the sky and Genji has exactly one second to consider how fucking impossible this is—

A quiet ping! echoes back to where they stand as she picks the soda can out of the night sky, and he sees shards of aluminum wink as they catch the glow of the floodlights in its resulting burst. Hana tucks her blaster back in the waistband of her pants with a smug grin of satisfaction.

"Like I said." Genji snaps his gaze down to see her stowing the gun away, one hand on her hip, surveying her handiwork—she hardly moved to take the shot. Her eyes cut to his—sharp and bright. "I'm a gamer. Professionally."

He moves away from the wall to stand over her—an old intimidation tactic that feels like a reflex—and she just looks up at him without a glimmer of interest, utterly unbothered by the red-eyed creature looming above her.

"You did not learn that from playing games." His voice rattles out from beneath his half-mask with white-hot anger.

"Do you actually think being taller than me makes you scary?" she drawls, lifting an eyebrow. She sounds uninterested—bored. Her hands are back in her pockets, not even reaching for her weapon. "Because in case it somehow escaped your notice, I'm pretty fucking short."

Another stand-off—she refuses to duck his gaze, holding his eyes forcefully. Genji can't remember the last time he'd been challenged like this—even before he'd become a mess of human and Omnic parts, he'd been the damned heir of the Shimada Clan—but this girl doesn't seem to give a shit about any of that.

As she shifts her weight something flashes on the inside of her wrist, and it catches Genji's gaze, arresting his attention until she notices.

"What are you—oh." Spying his object of interest, she pulls up the sleeve of her jacket to reveal a sort of wrist brace with a keypad. She twists her arm to give him a better view, and it glints with a metallic sheen in the artificial lights of the training fields.

"It calls my mech," she explains—unprompted and off-handed—and Genji frowns hard behind his mask.

"It what?"

"My mech," she repeats, rolling her eyes. "Should we switch to a different language? My Japanese isn't great but like, you're clearly not hearing to me—"

"Why do you have a mech?"

Something about his question—posed sharply for no reason other than his utter fucking annoyance at her ability to keep surprising him—seems to amuse her, and he watches warily as she lets loose a rather tight smirk.

"Because I have a slightly higher percentage of taking down Omnics while inside it," Hana replies, quirking an eyebrow. "Only slightly though."

His anger deflates—flat lines into disbelief.

"Really." He stares her down, a little unnerved at how evenly she meets his eyes. "You. Fight Omnics."

She scoffs at his tone, rolling her eyes up to give him a look of annoyance. "Y'know, for a guy who's gone through all the shit you have, you sure seem to be taken by surprise a lot."

Genji huffs a sigh, working to marshal his temper. "I've fought Omnics before, and I hardly think—"

"Not like this you haven't," she says—and there's a sudden catch to her voice, like the scrape of a struck match.

He opens his mouth to rebut, but she's hit some switch on her wrist brace, and Genji watches as a hologram blooms to life between them.

It's enormous. Genji blinks, stepping back on instinct as both he and Hana are bathed in the watery blue glow of a massive, snake-like creature that unfurls from the light put out by Hana's device. It twists within the confines of its projection, flexing its claws, baring its teeth—

"It rose out of the East China Sea three years ago," she explains quietly, and Genji starts at the sound of her voice. "Obliterated the Korean Peninsula and assaulted its neighbors—China, Japan, parts of Russia—only to sink back into the water. We thought it was just…a fluke. A freak accident." She shifts inside her jacket—thin fingers of her free hand tugging on the strings of the hood. "Then it came back. For Korea, specifically."

The name of the country falls from her lips in a way that immediately tells Genji it's home—more than that, even. It's her heart, her judgment, her will. He never had that love for Japan, but he once held it for his own family—it's a staggering, overwhelming kind of devotion.

Genji gives a slow nod. He can't look away from the hologram. Neither can she.

"We made drones—hundreds of them—operated by artificial intelligent to try and destroy it." Here she swallows hard, and Genji realizes she hasn't even gotten to the worst part of the story. The light from the hologram highlights worry lines that mar her forehead.

"So what happened?"

"It learns."

Genji's eyes snap to hers, confused.

"The drone's AI couldn't keep pace with the Omnic's," she says. He wonders what she's seeing as she gazes up at the serpentine Omnic winding and writhing between them—wonders what memory she's reliving. Her expression is haunted, and he can tell by the way it sits on her face that it's familiar to her. "So they decided to give them pilots."

Genji frowns. "You're a pilot?" That still doesn't explain the skill and authority this girl touts. And aren't pilots supposed to be…tall?

She heaves a very put-upon sigh, rolling her eyes with exaggeration. "I'm a gamer," she reminds him. "As I apparently have to keep telling you."

"How does a gamer—?"

"The flight controls of the mechs are identical to the ones used in 16-Bit Hero." He snaps his eyes to hers—affronted by her interruption—and is struck by the way her gaze gleams—a stare like a switchblade. She punches a code into the keypad, and the hologram winks out of existence, dousing them with darkness once more.

"A game where I've held the top score for about five years."

Genji balks.

"They put video game players—"

"Why are you so hung up on that?" she cuts him off again, hand on her hip. Genji just glowers back. "Yeah, okay, so I'm a gamer. If I can pilot a mech as well as I can—and believe me, I'm pretty damn good at it—why does it matter how I learned?"

Genji just gazes evenly at her, trying to temper his mood, but Hana continues hotly, "People were dying—my people—my friends and neighbors and family!"

"Had you ever been trained in combat?" Genji asks, voice harsher than he intends. "Games might have sharpened your reflexes, but there is more to fighting than—"

She flings her arms wide, exasperated. "Look, dude, just because I'm not, like, a sword master or whatever doesn't make me any less of a fighter than you, okay?" She drops her arms, and they flop to her side with a soft whumpf. She suddenly looks very, very small, silhouetted against the training field floodlights as she is.

"I'd die for my country—for the people I care about. Isn't that enough?"

Genji looks away, staring out into the training fields. Hana chases him—sidesteps until she stands before him, and while he could easily dodge her gaze by merely staring over her head, he finds his eyes drawn to her own.

"What do you fight for, then?" she demands—she doesn't raise her voice, but her words still burn—eyes narrowed and too bright in the darkness. "What makes your cause so fucking noble that you have a right to judge mine?"

Genji's voice whips out low and fast. "I never judged your cause."

"But you judge me."

He scoffs. "That doesn't make you special."

She mutters something under her breath—so curt and harsh he knows it to be a curse—and looks away, the new angle allowing the floodlights to fall across her face, sharpening the look of annoyance she wears.

"I should kidnap you," she grumbles, half to herself, and Genji starts slightly. "Your head's way too far up your ass."

He bristles again—her unpredictable pace and tone is a stark switch from the typical steady seriousness of Blackwatch.

A moment of silence rolls over them as they both glare off in different directions. Genji keeps waiting for the moment when she'll just throw him a dirty look and march off—nothing's keeping her here, as far as he's aware, and he's been far from polite—but instead she just sighs, crossing her arms and looking up at him, expression distinctly exasperated.

"Look. Dude. Do you want this fancy Omnic suit or not?"

Genji frowns. "What?"

Hana sighs again, waving a hand around a bit wildly. "The whole reason I'm here. Do you want an upgraded suit? One that would let you fight? Well, fight better, anyway." She's watching him closely now—like she can draw the truth out of him without his permission.

Genji's not entirely sure she can't.

"It's your call. I get the feeling you've done a lot of fighting." Her eyes quickly skirt his profile—lingering on some of the raw scars bare in his half-armor. "I'd understand if you didn't want to fight anymore. Overwatch can beg for MEKA's expertise all they want—but if you don't want it, they can choke."

His eyebrow rises without his permission. "Choke?"

Hana shrugs. "Sure. I mean, I'm pretty sure you didn't really mean it when you said you were Blackwatch's property, but that feeling had to come from somewhere." Her hands grow restless again—Genji watches as she fiddles with the cuff of her sleeve, eyes lowered. "I like Commander Reyes, but Morrison…" she trails off, chewing her lip. "He gives me weird vibes. Win at all costs kind of vibes." Her gaze flickers to his, like she's gauging his reaction. He keeps his expression expertly schooled.

"I just—I don't want to act like I know what you've been through. You can't imagine the kinds of things I've seen and done, so I'm not going to do the same to you, but—" she cuts herself off, whisking her hat off for one moment to drag her hand through the long brown locks, staring out into the night closing in around them, huffing out a sigh.

"But?" Genji prompts lightly.

Her eyes cut to his—Genji wonders if he'll ever get used to the immediacy with which she commands his gaze.

"It feels like it's you against the world," she tells him softly. "But sometimes…it's just you against yourself."

Genji doesn't speak for a moment—just lets the many meanings of her words wash over him.

"As long as we're quoting philosophies at each other," he offers quietly. "Have you ever heard that life isn't a game?"

A small smile quirks her lips, and she glances up at him, tucking stray strands of hair behind her ear. She absolutely has heard this before, he surmises. Probably many times.

"I mean, if you treat everything like a game," she says. "What's the difference?"

Genji frowns hard. "When it's your own life at stake—" he begins.

Hana scoffs, shaking her head. "I have to," she interrupts. "I have to have a degree of separation—pretend like I'll just respawn if I go down, act like I've got a bunch of extra lives or whatever—the alternative is too horrifying." She looks up at him, expression disarmingly serious. "I'm too young to die."

So was I, Genji wants to say, but for the first time that night, bites his tongue. He's not dead—not really. A dead man couldn't be standing out here, in the cool Milan evening, trading barbs with a professional gamer who boasts a shot that rivals a soldier's.

He's not him. But he's not not him either.

"I meant what I said, by the way," she murmurs, drawing Genji's gaze once more. She lifts one eyebrow, assessing him calmly. "You feel indebted to Blackwatch, and I get that. But before you throw yourself out into a conflict like this, maybe know yourself a little better?" She shrugs, features pinched with a sudden flash of pain. "Seems like kind of a waste to risk your life when you haven't even decided what you're living for, you know?"

Genji tilts his head, digesting her words.

"And you?" he asks quietly. "You've weighed the risk yourself?"

Hana nods absently. "My equation was a lot easier," she replies. Busy fingers tap against the brick of the wall they lean against. The girl simply can't sit still, it seems. "I live for Korea or I die for it."

The unshakeable sureness of her words—and the disarming calm with which she speaks them—throws Genji. What would if feel like to care that deeply and honestly for something? He didn't want to die for Hanzo's pride—so what would he be willing to die for?

Then—so fast Genji's hand twitches toward his blade on instinct—Hana lurches forward to seize his good arm, pulling a sharpie out of her pocket and yanking the cap off inelegantly with her teeth.

He jerks away, but she tugs right back, and after a brief stare down, he surrenders and lays his arm flat in her hands.

"Soda, sharpies, a gun…" he watches her scribble down a set of numbers on the pale expanse of his skin. "What else do you have in your pockets?"

"Everything," is her prim response. "And I don't keep my gun in my pocket, that'd be stupid."

His lips curve in the makings of a smirk, but it falls as she pulls away, admiring her handiwork as she looks over what he can only assume is her phone number scrawled across his arm.

"There." She pockets the pockets the pen with a pleased expression. "Now you can call me or something?"

Genji bends his arm to inspect the number, lifting an eyebrow at her wording. "Or something?"

She rolls her eyes, flapping him quiet. "You know what I mean. Text me. Send me a picture of your dinner. Write me angsty poems about how much you hate the gorgeous rolling hills of Milan. I don't know." She shrugs. "You need a friend, dude. Like, desperately."

His expression sours—he does not need a friend—but she smiles softly and knocks her hip against his, their contrasting heights making the action a little awkward.

"We'll come up with a code for when you want to be busted out of here," she tells him, leaning close into his space, voice low and conspiring. "We'll call it, like, jailbreak or something."

"Not a very complicated code," he murmurs back, playing along at least partially.

She groans and pulls away—her eye roll so completely over-the-top and dramatic he almost cracks a grin.

"Fine," she bites out in a tone that holds absolutely no heat. "Since you're so clever, you can decide what the code is."

Genji is about to reply—can feel a sarcastic remark on the tip of his tongue, and it tastes so familiar, so like him—

A figure approaches—Genji suddenly hears the crunching of grass and his whole demeanor shifts and darkens as a man in a stiff uniform stops a few feet away.

"Sergeant Song."

Hana turns, and Genji watches—transfixed—as the girl's casual stance snaps into a formal salute.

"Sergeant Jo," she greets the man, the timbre of her voice lower and steadier than it has been all evening.

He nods, and Hana drops the salute.

"We're leaving soon—you done?"

She gives him a firm nod and the man's gaze skims over Genji for a moment before he turns to leave, and Hana follows suit.

Genji stands alone at the half wall a bit awkwardly for a moment—does he say goodbye?—when Hana's voice drifts back.

"You should check out my stream sometime," she calls to him. He can hear the shit-eating grin in her voice, so help him. She tosses a throwaway glance over her shoulder, eyebrow raised. "Maybe you could learn something."

He pulls a face, bewildered. "Stream?"

"I'm a gamer!" she shouts back at him, the anger in her voice belied by her grin. "Profess—!"

"I know!" Genji interrupts, smirking below his face-plate. "Professionally."

Her answering smile is dazzling. Then she holds up a fist—thumb stuck between her middle and index finger—and vanishes over the hill after her fellow solider.

knock knock guess who it is with a fic that nobody asked for and shouldn't have taken four fuckin' months to write???

so things have been rough. very very rough. but in a new game I call Stop Being A Bummer On Main, I'm just gonna say the worst isn't quite over, but a lot of good stuff has happened and things are starting to even out. my motivation to write took an obvious hit since it's been uh checks notes a cool four months since I've posted something but hey! I'm here and you're here and this fic is mediocre at best but dammit I'm trying lmao

anyway hi my name's Duch welcome to Headcanon Land:

1) Angela Ziegler is a fucking icon and people everywhere look up to her, but particularly young girls interested in science and medicine, such as Hana Song

2) I know skins don't have any bearing on canon or lore (nothing in Overwatch seems to have any bearing on canon or lore) but I like to think D.Va's Junker skin implies that, should the need arise, she could totally recreate her mech out of spare garbage lying around, thus implying she's handy as hell with mechanics. Going further with that, we know Hana's skill as a pilot is credited to her skill as a gamer, but I like to think gamers proposed themselves to the military and not the other way around. I think it makes much more sense that Hana herself built some sort of prototype that utilized the controls from 16-Bit Hero

3) Genji and Hana are much closer in age and are absolute nightmares to each other for no reason other than they can be

4) I hate the Black Cat skin and I know that's not a headcanon but goddammit Blizz give me a Sgt. Song skin I'm fucking begging you please

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