gobleann

[gobleann]

This story happened in a galaxy, far, far away. It is already over. Nothing can be done to change it.

It is a story of love and loss, friendship and betrayal, survival and defiance. About what it means to be a Jedi, and what it means to leave that behind.

But this isn't quite the story you know or remember.

It isn't one told in grand council chambers or about legendary heroes, fallen or corrupt, but on the forgotten fringes — far from the battlefields that made history. Made canon.

A strange thing about stories—

Though this all happened so long ago and so far away that words cannot measure the time or the distance, it is also happening right now. Right here.

It is happening as you read these words.

The Jedi Order has fallen, darkness blankets the galaxy, you have somehow made it out alive to tell the tale.

The Force beckons.

Your choice starts now.

⸻ Adapted from Revenge of the Sith (2005), Matthew Stover

reader x zayne, xavier, caleb, rafayel, sylus (all separate)

warnings: slavery, death, mentions of suicide, master/padawan relationship (after that relationship is abolished bc. order 66 -- also, masters and padawans in canon are not characterized by age. a padawan can be older than 30. its not a traditional school), alternate dark endings that include yandere etc. abrupt tense change in rafayel's and sylus's i'm sorry, these were all written on different days and had some time inbetween them, so i slipped and wrote theirs in present tense 😭 also, in all of them, i wanted to keep it star wars lore accurate but don't go into it fully expecting 199% canon friendly, fanfiction is my oyster. i tried to explain but im sorry non-star wars gang you may not understand what the hell goes on in this one.... 💔

you have chosen... Zayne, Your Jedi Master

Affiliation: Jedi Order (formerly, Council member) → Survivor in Exile

Homeworld: Coruscant

Species: Human

Force Alignment: Light Side (Jedi, Force Healing practitioner)

Weapon: Single green lightsaber

Era: Clone Wars → Empire

Character Inspiration: Obi-Wan Kenobi, Qui-Gon Jinn

Background

⟡ Zayne was once a legend in the making. From the moment his training began, it was clear he possessed an affinity for the Force unlike anything the Order had seen in a generation, supported by the unusual amounts of midichlorians in his blood. He passed his trials years ahead of his peers, and by his late twenties, he took his seat among the Jedi High Council — the youngest to do so in living memory. To his fellow Jedi, he became known as “the Healer,” a moniker earned not only for his rare and prodigious mastery of Force healing, but also for his willingness to cross battle lines to help planets and systems in need.

⟡ Yet Zayne was never truly at home in the chaos of conflict. He pulled his weight the Clone Wars with the serenity of someone determined to be a still point in a turning world. He avoided violence wherever possible, seeking peaceful resolution, sheltering the innocent, and healing rather than harming. Behind closed doors, he pushed back against the Jedi Council’s hardest edicts: the conscription of children, the acceptance of “acceptable” losses, the steady, shameful slide toward militarism that darkened the Order’s heart. He never rose to open rebellion, of course.

⟡ To the galaxy, Zayne projected unshakeable calm: eyes clear, wisdom measured, composure unbroken even as explosions rocked the hulls around him. But those closest to him saw the cost. Night after night, he wrestled with relentless insomnia and visions that left him gasping in the dark. These dreams, more like prophecies, showed him a future self cloaked in black, crimson blade drawn, committing unspeakable acts. Everyday, he meditated for hours, seeking solace in the Force, clinging desperately to the Light. The visions made him gentle to a fault, slow to anger, deliberate in all things, determined to shape a fate different from the one that haunted his sleep.

Relationship with You

⟡ You became Zayne’s Padawan in the early chaos of the Clone Wars, a last-minute assignment that left you standing, a little uncertain, beside a man who was barely older than you but already the Order’s rising star. The age gap was only a handful of years, but Zayne’s demeanor, the measured calm, the weight of sorrow in his eyes, the way he moved through the motions in the Temple as if he’d been haunting its halls for decades, often made him seem impossibly old. He could be gentle and patient, his instructions never harsh, but his expectations for you were unyielding. Because of the changing times, he instilled in you vigilance instead of serenity. You learned quickly that every lesson, every exhausting drill or meditation, was a form of protection, a way for him to armor you against a galaxy that was growing colder and more uncertain by the day.

⟡ Unlike many Masters, Zayne didn’t teach you by rote or force you to recite the Code until it lost its meaning, leading you through winding Temple gardens, down to silent meditation chambers, even out beneath unfamiliar stars on distant battlefields. He showed you how to listen — to the wind, to the pain of others, to the subtle current of the Force that connected all things. When you faltered, frustrated or afraid, he met you with steady patience, avoiding offering easy answers, only guiding questions.

⟡ In rare, vulnerable moments, he let you glimpse the cracks beneath his calm: his doubts about the Council’s decisions, his fears about the direction the Order was taking. These moments felt like precious secrets, small shards of trust passed quietly between you when the rest of the world was looking elsewhere.

⟡ The longer the war dragged on, the more you found solace in each other. You shared a language of coordinating through glances alone through battles, laughter in low voices as you patched up battered clones, silent moments side-by-side after difficult missions. The simple act of meditating together, or tending wounds in the medbay, became an anchor, something unbreakable and quietly sacred.

⟡ Every loss, every brush with death, thinned out the line between mentor and mentee. He let you see his grief, his exhaustion, the ache that came from trying to heal a galaxy bent on tearing itself apart. And in turn, you let yourself reach for him, not just as a Master, but as someone who understood your heart, your longing for peace, your unwillingness to become another blade in an endless war.

⟡ It was inevitable that affection would take root, hesitant and messy and tangled. When you realized your feelings had shifted into something deeper and more dangerous than loyalty or friendship, Zayne sensed it before you ever put it to words. He addressed it gently, with the same honesty and care that marked everything he did. “It will pass,” he told you in the hush after a battle in which you almost lost him and saw your feelings come to the surface, his tone tender, not dismissive. “You will outgrow this.”

⟡ But there was something in his eyes — something he never voiced, a flicker of regret — that told you the struggle was not yours alone.

Post-Order 66

⟡ When Order 66 tore through the galaxy, you were on different fronts, separated by light-years. As the Clones started attacking you instead of the Separatist droid army, communication channels went dark, panic, betrayal and the Jedi comrades you could feel in the Force going dark one after the other replaced clarity and purpose. In that confusion, you both felt the other’s presence snuffed out like a candle, as well.

⟡ Before any of you could return, no, retreat to back to the Temple on Coruscant, however, every surving Jedi received Master Kenobi's distress signal through the beacon: This is Master Obi-Wan Kenobi. I regret to report that both our Jedi Order and the Republic have fallen, with the dark shadow of the Empire rising to take their place. This message is a warning and a reminder for any surviving Jedi: trust in the Force. Do not return to the Temple. That time has passed, and our future is uncertain. Avoid Coruscant. Avoid detection. Be secret... but be strong. We will each be challenged: our trust, our faith, our friendships. But we must persevere and, in time, I believe a new hope will emerge. May the Force be with you, always.

⟡ You believed your Master had died. He believed his Padawan had been felled among countless others.

⟡ In the end Zayne, managing to get away by the skin of his teeth, was consumed by the unbearable belief that he had failed not only you, but everything he ever stood for. The Order was gone. He wasn't sure any Jedi remained in the galaxy. He, and the Council, were unable to sense the plot that had been unfolding right under their nose. The Clone army that had been given to them, fighting by their side, suddenly turning on them to eliminate them. None of them had been able to see it coming. He hadn't been able to. Because he'd been so self-obsessed, judgement clouded with his own visions.

⟡ And above all else, he mourned you. He replayed those final hours in his mind until they blurred — his own desperate flight, the deafening comm chatter, the endless stream of distress calls from Jedi scattered across a thousand systems. He hadn’t been there for you when you needed him most.

⟡ Had you called out to him, reaching through the Force for your Master, your friend? Had you believed he had abandoned you in the darkness, left you to die alone while clones turned on their commanders? The thought tore at him every time he closed his eyes to get some sleep: the possibility that your last moments were spent in fear, betrayed not just by the galaxy, but by him. He remembered every promise he’d ever made to protect you and be by your side, that you two were going to get through this together and build a better future. All of them were broken all in a single night.

⟡ Unable to reconcile his own role in bringing about the end of his own Order and the death of so many, Zayne abandoned the weapon that had defined him. It wasn't a decision he made as carrying a lightsaber out in the open would give out his identity. The simple fact was, holding a lightsaber triggered flashes of his nightmares, visceral and suffocating, the sight and sound of his blade igniting plunging him into memories of screams and death. Over time, he began fighting only when forced, reluctantly developing a martial arts-centered style, fluid and precise, leveraging agility and careful redirection of force rather than aggression. It was a practical necessity, but also a rejection born out of trauma.

⟡ Years passed quietly, far from Imperial eyes. In the hidden places of the Outer Rim, stories began to spread of a quiet, wandering healer who appeared without warning, treating injuries and illnesses no one else dared touch. Zayne asked nothing in return, trading meditation guidance or old Jedi wisdom for simple shelter or a meal. He helped farmers, refugees, runaways, and lost souls alike, moving on quickly to avoid leaving any lasting mark. But even kindness felt like penance, never enough to lift the burden he carried. Every life he saved felt like an apology whispered to you across the stars.

⟡ After the Purge, you learned quickly that survival depended on motion and discretion. You reinvented yourself as a wandering courier and occasional mechanic — skills you’d pieced together from years of battlefield repairs and resourceful improvisation in warzones. With a battered astromech droid and a starship patched from scrap, you traveled system to system hauling goods, offering occasional repairs, and delivering coded messages for desperate outlaws and small-time traders who couldn’t risk Imperial entanglements. Word of mouth and barter became your currency. You learned to slip through checkpoints, talk your way out of trouble, and vanish when danger grew too close.

⟡ Then, you tracked the rumors what you thought could be a Jedi survivor — bewildered conversations in a cantina, a half-remembered story from a Twi’lek child in a borderlands camp, the trail of a doctor who mended wounds without asking credits or names. The pattern felt familiar: kindness in the shadows, gone by dawn. Every so often you’d find a sign left behind, a meditation stone, a faint trace in the Force, the memory of someone gentle and haunted. Hope was painful, but it was all you had.

⟡ It took months to finally catch up to him, on a dust-choked world with no name, in a village battered by a recent Imperial raid. You found him at the edge of a makeshift medical tent, hunched over a wounded farmer, his once-careful long hair chopped short and streaked with grey that had nothing to with age, the lines on his face deeper, his robes patched and faded. He looked up, sensing you before you spoke, and in that silent instant the years folded away.

⟡ You just stared at each other, struggling to breathe, both searching the other’s face for some proof that this was real. Grief and relief mingled and ached together like an old, yellow bruise becoming red and purple again — the brittle shell of hope you’d carried for years cracking open with a single look.

⟡ He started to stumble over words he’d rehearsed a thousand times, but you shook your head, not ready for forgiveness, not ready for blame. There was too much between you. You asked him, simply, to let you help with the wounded. He nodded, wordless, hands shaking as he handed you bandages. Working side by side in tense silence, the two of you moved through the injured, falling into a ritual you’d once known so well.

⟡ Later, by the low fire of a crumbling barn, you called him "Master," but he corrected you that he was no longer that, and you were no longer his Padawan. There weren't any Jedi here in this room, and you couldn't disagree, heart aching that he didn't deserve that title anyways. The truth came out in fits and starts. You told each other how you’d survived, the running, the losses that had carved you down to the bone. Zayne confessed how he’d abandoned his saber, how the sight of it made his hands shake. You told him of the things you’d done, the people you couldn’t save, the guilt you both carried like another set of scars.

⟡ There were tears, and awkward hugs, and a slow, stumbling warmth that neither of you dared call hope. When you finally slept, it was side-by-side, shoulders brushing, neither of you willing to be the first to move away.

⟡ With the dawn, there was no grand decision. The Empire still hunted your kind; the galaxy was no less cruel. But it was easier to breathe with someone who understood. Despite him telling you that you could go, and that he wasn't your Master, that you had no reason to stay by his side, you traveled together, at first only to the next village, then the next. You weren't about to abandon this man who had fallen into such ruin and become a ghost of his former self propelled forward to survive only by the desire to punish himself for a failure that wasn't his.

⟡ You never called yourselves Jedi again. The word was a wound. But you developed a new purpose: wandering from system to system, healing quietly, teaching how to take care of themselves to refugees and children, slipping away before the Empire’s reach could catch up. He came along for the ride with your courier job and made a home in your starship. You were never quite safe, never quite whole, but the work gave meaning to your days and made the nights bearable.

⟡ You were not what you had been. You were not Master and Padawan. You were not the Order’s last hope. But you were alive, sticking together, finding a fragile peace in a galaxy that had tried to break you both.

⟡ Sometimes, in the hush before dawn, Zayne would look at you as if seeing you for the first time — hopeful, uncertain, almost ready to let himself believe that even after all this loss, love could endure.

Personality

⟡ Stillness, patience, and a quietly overwhelming presence. Zayne’s compassion is not weakness — it’s the steel at his core.

⟡ Lowkey, but never naïve; a subtle sense of humor emerges when least expected.

⟡ Prone to long silences, meditation, and questions that cut through your defenses.

⟡ Never lost his healer’s hands, but the war changed his voice. He’s older, heavier now, slow to trust, quick to forgive.

⟡ Struggles to accept joy, but can’t help reaching for it when you’re near.

Route Themes

⟡ Master/Padawan longing. Power imbalance, slow-burn respect, a connection built through survival and trust, not just rank, the student becoming the teacher in the end to the Master who has lost his way.

⟡ Detachment vs. Desire. Jedi teachings, forbidden love, the tension between duty and the simple, persistent truth of want.

⟡ Healing and Guilt. The question of whether survivors deserve happiness, and if the past can ever be left behind. "We have to do better" and "We have to be better" quotes come into play, and learning to apply them through a positive light stripped from burden, guilt and responsibility.

⟡ Redemption through Connection. Choosing one another, not as Jedi, but as people broken by war and remade by forgiveness.

Endings May Include

⟡ You and Zayne find a forgotten moon in the Unknown Regions, a quiet world where the Force is a gentle current and the Empire never looks. You build a life among forests and rain, tending to each other and the wounded wanderers who find their way to your door. Zayne finally lets himself rest, and the line between Master and Padawan fades into a partnership of equals. When he has healed enough, together, you and Zayne gather a handful of scattered Force-sensitives, rogue Jedi, lost Padawans, those failed by both Empire and Rebellion. You form a secret enclave, a new kind of Order where attachment isn’t forbidden, where the Force is honored in all its forms. Zayne becomes the quiet architect of something gentler, and you become his anchor — partners not just in the Force, but in hope. The galaxy never learns your names, but you have made sown the seeds for a tomorrow made by those you have saved.

⟡ The visions that haunted Zayne all his life finally come to pass. In a desperate stand against the Inquisitorius, you are struck down before his eyes, a casualty of the war neither of you chose. All the careful meditation, all the dogma of the Light, are cast aside by a grief so consuming it feels holy, and the Dark Side suddenly makes the most sense it ever has against a universe that allowed you to unjustly perish like this. It's not with rage that he embraces it, but clarity, a willingness to do what the Light never allowed. With chilling purpose, Zayne chooses to fall, and becomes the shadow in his own visions: he destroys the Inquisitorius from within in a matter of months, hunting them down one by one. When his vengeance is complete, he seeks you in the only way left — walking unflinching to his end, dying by his own hand at your grave, utterly unrepentant, having lost all his faith in the Light Side that failed you.

⟡ Gravely wounded shielding you from Imperial hunters, Zayne’s life flickers out with dawn painting the horizon. His final words are soft—a benediction in your ear, not a goodbye: “Keep the light in your heart. That’s where I’ll find you, always.” In the years that follow, he returns to you as a presence in the Force: a hush at your shoulder, a silhouette in the corner of your dreams, a gentle warmth guiding your hand when doubt creeps in. He teaches you to feel the living Force, to walk in both memory and hope. You grow old, carrying his love in every scar and every smile. He remains unchanged, a flicker, a guardian, the keeping of a promise never broken. When your time finally comes, your last breath finds him waiting — young, ageless, and radiant, his hand reaching for yours beneath a sky that never truly darkens. At last, you step into the Force together, luminous and at peace: love undimmed, reunited beyond the end.

you have chosen... Xavier, the Empire's Prodigal Son

Affiliation: None (formerly Imperial Royalty, ex-Sith apprentice)

Homeworld: Naboo

Species: Human

Force Alignment: Grey

Weapon: Single white/silver-bladed lightsaber (purified from a Sith crystal)

Era: Clone Wars → Empire Era

Character Inspiration: Darth Revan, Din Djarin

Background

⟡ Xavier was born in secret on Naboo, his existence shielded from public record until his father, then-Senator future Emperor, carefully introduced him to the galaxy. Even as a child, Xavier learned to move quietly through the palatial halls of Theed, his every word, gesture, and silence monitored by eyes both loyal and treacherous. To the outside world, he was the model heir: pale, reserved, strikingly intelligent, and always a half-step behind his father, too perfectly mannered to seem real.

⟡ By the time he was old enough to sense the electric charge of the Force all around him, Xavier’s destiny was already set. Palpatine denied the Jedi’s polite requests to “evaluate” his son, using political leverage and bureaucratic obstruction to keep Xavier off Coruscant’s radar. Instead, the Emperor arranged for clandestine Sith instruction — using trusted agents, ancient holocrons, and even his own presence. Xavier’s days were spent mastering fencing and protocol, his nights, in shadowed chambers, learning the Sith arts. The curriculum was brutal: meditation in isolation, survival games, lessons in manipulation and the machinery of fear. Weakness, especially the weakness of compassion, was scorned. All mistakes, big and small, brought “correction.” Every act of cleverness was rewarded with a sliver of approval, always just out of reach.

⟡ Sidious's meteoric rise reshaped Xavier’s life into something scripted and suffocating. He became a living symbol, rarely allowed to speak unscripted, his education handled by the finest tutors in galactic history, languages, and philosophy. But beneath the silk and etiquette, he was isolated. Friendships were discouraged, affection was transactional, and loyalty to his father was enforced by unspoken threats and rewards.

⟡ During the tumult of the Clone Wars, Xavier is Palpatine’s carefully hidden ace, the apprentice whose existence the Jedi never suspect. While the galaxy sees him as a polite, reserved son to the Chancellor, he is steeped in Sith training behind closed doors. Outwardly, he attends Senate sessions, charity galas, and diplomatic banquets as the model aristocrat, always present but never quite at home.

⟡ Whenever the Supreme Chancellor needs a problem solved without drawing the Jedi’s attention, Xavier is quietly dispatched. He deals with inconveniences in the Senate, manipulates or eliminates Republic officials who sniff too close to the truth, and ensures Palpatine’s web of secrets remains untangled, carrying out assassinations, sabotage, and diplomatic manipulation, yet with each mission, the conflict inside him grows.

⟡ Though the Jedi sense a growing darkness, they never suspect Xavier—the Chancellor’s own son — of being the elusive shadow behind failed Separatist plots and vanished dissidents. He’s even been dispatched by his father to shadow Jedi missions, observe their tactics, and report back, all under the guise of “Republic security liaison.” At times, he is ordered to let his targets live, planting evidence or rumors that fuel discord between the Jedi and the Republic.

Relationship with You

⟡ You first met Xavier during a tense negotiation on Coruscant, both of you young and burdened with titles you never asked for. As a Jedi Padawan assigned to “diplomatic security,” you were expected to be vigilant but invisible, yet your instincts kept drawing your attention to the Chancellor’s silent son. He rarely spoke unless spoken to, had the posture of a prince and the presence of a ghost, eyes cold and unreadable. His politeness felt flawless, almost protocol droid-like, but every so often, you caught a flicker of exhaustion or distant pain in his dissociation.

⟡ When an assassin’s shot went astray during a senate summit, you threw yourself between him and the blaster’s path, taking a glancing hit meant for his heart. Xavier, in shock because this wasn't a part of the plan and paranoid if his father was trying to get rid of him for a new apprentice (as it was the rule of the Sith, everyone betrayed each other), tried to dismiss your pain with icy courtesy, but you ignored the droids and medics, tending to him with quiet stubbornness until he finally relented. It was the first time anyone had truly seen him beneath his layers of duty, a moment of raw vulnerability he’d never known. Your gentle insistence, your genuine concern, and the ease with which you offered comfort, without expectation or calculation, became a turning point. After that, he lingered after meetings, sometimes inventing excuses to cross your path, drawn by a need he didn’t yet understand.

⟡ Conversations in the corridors of power grew into secret moments. He was careful, never letting the galaxy see what you were to him, but in the quiet spaces between battles and banquets, he let himself be, asking about your training, your dreams, your doubts about the war. He shared memories of Naboo’s lakes, fragments of childhood lost, thoughts on the burden of legacy. With you, he laughed for the first time in years. You taught him to value small kindnesses, to question orders, to wonder what lay beyond his father's design. Contact with you in any occasion, an accidental brush of hands, a too-long glance, was a risk, an act of quiet rebellion against the role he was meant to play.

⟡ As the Republic faltered and Jedi found themselves isolated, Xavier’s position became untenable. He’d been raised to be the perfect tool, the heir of darkness—but you made him long for something different. Love, to him, was a dangerous and revolutionary force: to care for you was to betray everything he’d been taught, to risk the wrath of his father and the fury of the Sith. However, he couldn’t stop himself. Protecting you became his obsession and an expression of his independence, sometimes subtly, other times at great risk, using his influence to steer missions, tip off allies, or shield you from the worst horrors of war.

⟡ But the galaxy was spiraling toward catastrophe, and he knew—sooner or later—he would be commanded to turn against you. You were Jedi. You were meant to fall. Loving you was the first and only decision he’d ever made for himself, and if fate demanded your life, Xavier would have to choose: obedience or rebellion, darkness or the hope you awakened in him.

Post-Order 66/Empire Era

⟡ The night Order 66 shattered the galaxy, Xavier received a direct, unmistakable command from his father, now Emperor himself. He had known, perhaps from the start, about the quiet, forbidden feelings Xavier harbored for you, a Jedi, an enemy. This order was his final trial: a test not of strength, but of devotion. If he were truly loyal, he’d be the one to hunt you down, to end your life personally as proof of his dedication to the new Galactic Empire and the Sith way. Xavier’s father knew precisely how deep the blade would cut, and how thoroughly this betrayal would break his son’s humanity.

⟡ Xavier chose rebellion. Quietly, ruthlessly, he turned his extensive Sith training and shadowy connections toward a single purpose: saving you from the bloodbath of the Jedi Purge. He tracked you under the guise of a Sith assassin, using the terror of his red blade and Imperial authority as cover. When he finally caught you, cornered and desperate, he stunned you into unconsciousness, whispering apologies you would never hear.

⟡ You awoke days later, hidden in a secure, isolated safehouse deep within the Outer Rim, far from Imperial reach. It was only then you learned the truth that fractured your heart completely: Xavier, the reserved and gentle son of the Chancellor, the boy whose quiet affection you had come to cherish, was a Sith apprentice. His saber was crimson, just as it had appeared in your darkest visions, and everything he’d ever told you felt tainted by betrayal.

⟡ You ignited your saber and leveled it at him, demanding, through grit and unshed tears, that he pick up his weapon and fight. He was a Sith, he should kill you, right? He did not. Instead, he let his saber clatter to the floor, the light dying at his feet, leaving only your blade and the roaring anger in your heart.

⟡ You could have killed him. Should have, maybe, every rule, every instinct, every loss behind you screaming for retribution. But you couldn’t force your hand, not even as you pushed the tip of your blade against his chest and waited for his true nature. He only stood there, empty-handed, watching you with something shattered behind his silence.

⟡ Rage finally boiled over, then. You struck him, open-handed, slaps and fists, every accusation built over years of war and loss pouring out through your hands. The strikes landed with the sick satisfaction of impact, but they didn’t move him. He took each blow without protest, without even the dignity of flinching, as if he needed them, as if they could somehow absolve him for everything he’d done and everything you’d lost.

⟡ You hit him until your strength broke and your vision blurred. The saber you had turned off because the Jedi in you couldn't bring herself to kill, slipped from your grip and clattered to the floor. You screamed questions at him, about trust, about lies, about the friends you would never see again, about all the innocents that had died. Monster, he was a monster. You asked him why he didn't stop it. You asked him why he'd saved you and nobody else. He only answered with silence. A cruel one to you, but to him, there were no words that would give back what was lost.

⟡ And when there was nothing left but your sobs wrecking through the empty safehouse, he stooped to retrieve your saber, set it quietly beside you, advised you to keep your head down and that you had everything you could ever need in this house, and left. He didn’t ask forgiveness or try to explain. He simply walked away, bearing every wound you gave him and every one he could never name, leaving you alone with your anger and your heartbreak and the knowledge that nothing would ever be the same again.

⟡ From that moment onward, Xavier vanished from your sight, but never from your life. As you struggled alone in the lawless corners of the galaxy, constantly hunted by the Empire’s relentless Inquisitors and bounty hunters, you slowly became aware of a presence in the shadows. Imperial patrols disappeared, pursuers inexplicably vanished, surveillance records mysteriously corrupted. Xavier became your ghost, silently eliminating anyone who threatened you, always from a distance, always without ever revealing himself directly.

⟡ It infuriated you. His constant, silent watchfulness felt like both a comfort and a torment, a relentless haunting of what you’d lost. You never saw his face clearly, only glimpses of a pale figure at the edge of your vision, disappearing before you could call his name. Always close enough to protect you, always too far away to confront.

⟡ Gradually, Xavier shed his former identity, surfacing in whispered rumors of the galaxy’s darkest corners as Lumiere, a bounty hunter of unparalleled skill and ruthless efficiency. Lumiere took special interest in contracts on Imperials, corrupt officials, and traitorous Inquisitors. His reputation soared: an anonymous phantom sought to be hired by everyone. Secretly, each contract was chosen carefully — targets who threatened you or those like you, systematically erasing Imperial evidence of your existence and quietly dismantling the network meant to hunt Jedi survivors.

⟡ During these long, lonely years, Xavier underwent a transformation of his own, wrestling the darkness from his heart. Painstakingly, he purified his Sith kyber crystal, turning it from blood-red to a pale, brilliant white, a symbol of the redemption he sought not for himself, but to be worthy of your memory.

⟡ Years passed, and you, too, had adapted to survive, becoming a bounty hunter yourself. Your path occasionally overlapped with Lumiere’s work, technically making you colleagues within the vast, shadowy underworld. Though you knew who Lumiere was and the Empire was still looking for its lost prince, you were aware that he'd left you with the decision of taking the first step, whether you would kill him or confront him. He was waiting for you, a friend or an executioner, always.

Personality

⟡ Quietly intense, restrained. Speaks little, watches much, and rarely reveals his true intent.

⟡ Emotionally self-denying, but not heartless — his compassion emerges in dry humor and small acts of unexpected kindness.

⟡ Years of palace intrigue and Sith discipline have made him suspicious, strategic, and wary of trust, but yearning for something real.

⟡ Haunted by his father’s legacy, and determined never to become him.

⟡ Treats the Force as a burden — uses it only when absolutely necessary. The white blade is both weapon and warning: he cannot fully escape the darkness that made him.

Route Themes

⟡ Almost lovers to enemies, "I did it for you", and second chance romance

⟡ The burden of legacy and upbringing vs. the freedom of the real self

⟡ Mercy as rebellion x "My mercy prevails over my wrath"

⟡ You and Xavier as partners on the run — outlaws, fugitives, but never alone

⟡ Making peace with a future neither of you expected

Endings May Include

⟡ In the end, you cannot forgive Xavier. In a final confrontation, he refuses to fight you. “If this is justice, then let it be yours.” You strike him down. His last words are a plea for your future, not his own. The Empire loses its shadow before they can reclaim him, and you’re left with the heavy peace of vengeance, forever haunted by what was lost.

⟡ Together, you become the galaxy’s most wanted as a pair of legendary outlaws. Sometimes you’re partners in heists; sometimes you lay low as lovers in a nameless starport, always looking over your shoulders but always together, building a new code that belongs to no one but you two.

⟡ Xavier returns to the heart of the Empire, taking up his birthright as the Emperor’s son and the Sith's Apprentice. The cycle is complete. In the end, as all Sith do, Xavier — finally forced to choose between you and his father — kills the Emperor in a storm of power and fury, taking the throne for himself. The galaxy quakes as Xavier is crowned the new Emperor and secretly, the only Sith Lord, casting aside all pretense of hiding. He offers you a place at his side, not as a prisoner, but as his equal: his Empress, partner, and co-ruler of a reborn Empire. The two of you rule from the heart of Coruscant, your love as much a weapon as any saber. Together, you reshape the galaxy’s future, shrouded in legend, fear, and a twisted, immortal devotion. Whether you temper his darkness or revel in it by his side is a choice left to you, but one thing is certain: the galaxy will never be the same.

you have chosen... Caleb, the Fallen Padawan

Affiliation: Jedi Order (Padawan, former youngling clan) → presumed dead → Imperial Inquisitorius (eventually becomes Grand Inquisitor)

Homeworld: Alderaan

Species: Human

Force Alignment: Light Side origins; walks a razor’s edge as a Dark Side user (never truly Sith)

Weapon: Double-bladed reddish orange lightsaber (Inquisitorius design, never bled, just looks like it was bled); formerly single blue saber

Era: Clone Wars → Empire Era

Character Inspiration: Anakin Skywalker, Trilla Suduri

Background

⟡ Caleb’s first memory was sunlight filtered through ancient stone — high arches, endless corridors humming with quiet, soft, serene presence and peace. He had been brought to the Jedi Temple as an infant, placed in the care of the Order before he’d learned to speak. If there was a family beyond the walls of Coruscant, he never remembered them; the Temple and its way became the shape of his entire world. Your friendship was woven into that world so deeply that he could not imagine a life without you beside him, the pin in his pinwheel through every trial and triumph..

⟡ He grew up in one of the Temple’s tightest clans, a group of younglings bound more by shared experience than blood. You were his shadow and his mirror, both of you learning the Jedi forms, the meditations, the ancient histories recited under the stern gaze of instructors. It was a childhood shaped by discipline and doctrine, but you and Caleb always found moments of laughter in the cracks: racing across the Temple gardens after curfew, sneaking extra portions in the refectory, daring each other to explore the forbidden nooks and unused archives.

⟡ Caleb was gifted from the start. Quick to master lightsaber sequences, even quicker to master the sunny grin that always helped in getting you out of trouble. And you always got in trouble. He was the model youngling any Master would want as a Padawan, and you were "the problem". Too rebellious, too hot-headed. He always believed in you and your abilities, though, and even though you didn't say it out loud, it got you through your worst. You would have ended up in the Service Corps if it wasn't for his support.

⟡ Fiercely loyal, quick-witted, and unafraid to bend the rules for the sake of a friend, Caleb was always the first to cover for your mischief. When you got caught slipping out after lights-out, he’d take the blame. In the training halls, he’d let you win just often enough to keep your spirits high, teasing you mercilessly when you didn’t notice the times he pulled his strikes. His laughter could chase away the sting of even the harshest reprimand from the Council, and his presence made every hardship bearable.

⟡ But beneath the supposed self-satisfaction and his brilliant performing status, he nursed secret dreams of the stars: late at night, he would whisper his hopes of flying starfighters, leading ExplorCorps squadrons after being knighted, chasing freedom beyond the Temple walls. It was a private ambition, shared only with you, the one person he trusted never to laugh or judge.

⟡ As Padawans, your bond only deepened. You became each other’s anchor, adversary and accountability partners in training and friendly rivalry, confidants in whispered late-night conversations, partners in every daring scheme. There was a tenderness between you, an apple growing out of the innocent flower of its tree that should have stayed as a flower.

⟡ The Jedi Code was clear, and you both learned to fear the Council’s watchful eyes. Lessons on attachment became lessons in concealment: to school your faces, temper your voices and eagerness, hide the simmering feelings that were ready to boil over behind a mask of calm.

⟡ For Caleb, those feelings were a fire he could never quite extinguish. He buried them deep, training harder, flying faster, throwing himself into missions with a hunger for distraction. But when he was alone with himself and there was nothing to numb and crowd his mind with, when the galaxy seemed too vast and the Temple too empty, he always found his thoughts turning back to you — the friend, the rival, the one person who made the Force feel less like a duty and more like home.

Order 66

⟡ You both were still Padawans when it happened. The Temple was a nightmare of red-lit corridors and echoing blaster fire. You and Caleb pressed on through the chaos, shepherding two terrified younglings named Kevi and Mia, one clutching your robe, the other barely keeping pace. The smell of smoke and scorched stone was unbearable, but you encouraged them through the Force as you hurried them through secret passageways and sealed corridors. It was a gamble, a wrong turn could mean death.

⟡ In the hangar, hope was almost within reach a surroundered ship clearly laid as a trap for any Jedi would come this way waiting. There was no time to think, only to act. It was then Caleb’s hand found your arm. In the Force, you felt the pulse of his decision, his love, his unspoken goodbye. You couldn't even react. Without a word, he stepped forward, drawing every eye and every blaster to himself. His saber flared blue in the smoke. He shouted — at you, at the children, at fate itself — urging you to run, to live, to save them when he could not.

⟡ You hesitated only a breath, then gathered the younglings and sprinted for the ship. Behind you, blaster bolts cracked through the air, the snap-hiss of Caleb’s blade the only thing holding chaos at bay. You shoved the children inside, the smallest sobbing into your tunic, the older one biting back terror for the sake of the younger. You looked back once, just in time to see Caleb’s silhouette wreathed in smoke, the only source of light amid the ruin. His blade whirled, a brief shield against the impossible, and then he was gone — lost in a hail of blaster fire and a wave of Force agony that nearly knocked you to your knees.

⟡ You slammed the hatch shut, hit the launch, and piloted the ship away from the Temple’s dying light, managing to outmaneuver the chasing ships only because of Caleb's piloting tips and tricks that had come handy through the Clone Wars. The children clung to each other as you drifted into the void, their soft cries the only sound. Your heart screamed to go back, to fight, to search the wreckage for any sign of him, but you couldn’t. He'd made his final wish clear. You had lives to protect.

⟡ Moving forward was the only choice left. The pain of leaving Caleb behind burned in you like a second sun, but it was that pain — and the small hands gripping yours — that drove you onward, into the darkness of survival.

Empire Era/Inquisitorius

⟡ Long before Order 66, Sidious had calculated that his purge would never be perfect. Of course some Jedi would slip through. He needed more than the Clones, he needed a new breed of hunter that knew the Jedi inside and out. The Inquisitorius Program began in secret: dossiers compiled, agents placed inside the Temple’s walls, their purpose simple: find Jedi who might bend, not break. Sidious paid special attention to Padawans and Knights who chafed under the Council’s rules, those whose grief or doubts made them vulnerable. He kept lists of those too close to the edge, and his spies, servants in the archives, instructors with secret debts, even healers in the medbay — watched, waited, and reported. Discontent was currency. Affection, a weakness to exploit.

⟡ Caleb had always seemed the perfect Jedi on paper. Skilled, charismatic, loyal to his friends. But there was a fault line running through his heart, and Sidious’s agents saw it clearly: the quiet way he watched you, the fire behind his eyes whenever the Code was invoked to shame or divide, the reckless, defiant streak that surfaced whenever love was threatened. What no one else knew, what even you hadn’t realized, as that Caleb’s faith in the Order had begun to rot. He’d grown tired of the secrecy, the emotional self-flagellation the Council demanded. Your bond became the wedge that Sidious’s spy needed. A single moment, a longing look shared when you thought themselves alone was all it took. His name was added to the Emperor’s list.

⟡ Instead of being killed on the spot during his last stand, Caleb was subdued, bound, and spirited away to an unknown Imperial black site. Induction into the Inquisitorius was never the same for any two candidates. For some, the Emperor promised power and survival if they’d turn. For others that were set on their Jedi ways, the way was paved with agony — torture, deprivation, mental and physical torment designed to break the will and flood the soul with hate and fear. Caleb was offered the former, but only on the understanding that if he refused, you and the children you’d saved would be hunted to extinction and he couldn't do anything about it. He agreed for leverage.

⟡ Sidious saw through the ruse. As punishment, Caleb was handed to Darth Vader, who subjected him to trials so merciless that the scars would never fade. His right arm was severed and replaced with cybernetics, a gift for his final rite of passage and of his “promotion.” He was given the name "First Brother".

⟡ Basically shooting through the ranks, Caleb became one of the Empire’s most efficient assets: the Grand Inquisitor. Outwardly, he was the Empire’s cold enforcer: mask, red blade, chilling reputation. Inwardly, he never stopped searching for you, never stopped trying to keep you safe. Secretly, he fed the Empire false leads, sabotaged hunts, and erased traces of your existence wherever he could. His mastery of the dark side was real, but never complete. His love for you was his final anchor, the line he refused to sever.

⟡ You became a ghost the day you left Coruscant. For a while, your only mission was survival: keeping yourself and the two younglings alive as you fled from system to system, never staying anywhere long. Every night, you told yourself it was only temporary, that the galaxy would right itself, that you could find the last survivors and rebuild something of what you’d lost. But the galaxy had no mercy for Jedi, least of all for a fugitive with children in tow. You forged new skills, slicing into Imperial records, blending in with smugglers, stealing ships and credits when there was no other choice.

⟡ Years passed in a cycle of pursuit and escape. The younglings you protected grew older, learning to blend, to hide, to survive, and you delivered them to safer hands. You never stopped looking for other Jedi, or for scraps of the old Order. Sometimes you found them scarred and embittered, and sometimes you found only graves. As the years went on, you became bolder. You sabotaged supply lines, orchestrated prison breaks, passed vital intelligence to the nascent Rebel cells. Your code was simple: the Empire would not hunt children if you could help it. For every Force-sensitive the Inquisitors tracked, you were there first, spiriting them away, buying time with bluffs and blaster fire.

⟡ Your refusal to die quietly, your reputation for rescuing Force-sensitive children, and your knack for evading the Empire made you infamous within the Inquisitorius. You became the obsession of more than one hunter, but only one ever seemed to truly find you.

⟡ The Grand Inquisitor developed a pattern. When he caught you, he’d back you into a corner, sometimes with a warning in the Force, and other times with a clashing of sabers, always with the sense that he was holding back.

⟡ At first you resented his persistence. Then you questioned his failures. How could the Emperor’s most ruthless hound be this inept? How did you keep slipping through his fingers when everyone else fell? It began to nag you how familiar his presence was, the way his duels with you always left you alive.

⟡ When the truth finally came out, when you struck down the Inquisitor’s mask to reveal lightless eyes and a half-broken smile with the same devotion as when you were kids — it was both a betrayal and a homecoming.

Personality

⟡ Caleb is all heat and ache beneath a soldier’s discipline. He laughs with his whole body, but rarely lets himself anymore.

⟡ Fiercely protective, self-sacrificing to a fault, he would take a blaster bolt for you without hesitation.

⟡ The Jedi taught him restraint, but it’s your friendship and your memory that have kept him from falling into true darkness.

⟡ As an Inquisitor, he’s sharp, commanding, almost cruel in battle, except with you. You’re the line he never crosses.

⟡ Haunted by guilt, convinced his hands are too stained for peace, but still hopes for redemption, if not for himself, then at least for you.

Route Themes

⟡ Friends to enemies to lovers. A bond forged in childhood, tested by war and loss, remade in the fires of Empire.

⟡ Sacrifice and moral ambiguity. What is the line between survival and betrayal? Can love survive the choices made to protect it?

⟡ Redemption, forgiveness, and agency. Your story is as much about forgiving yourself as it is about forgiving him.

⟡ Hope after devastation. Finding life — and love — where you thought nothing could grow again.

Endings May Include

⟡ You convince him to fake his death with you and leave the Empire behind. You take over an abandoned Inquisitor fortress together, transforming it into a hidden sanctuary for lost Force-sensitives, orphans, and runaways. Caleb leads as a protector from the shadows, and you create a home, your found family thriving in the ruins of what once was meant to destroy you. In the epilogue, he's a General in the Rebel Alliance and a Rebel Pilot.

⟡ Caleb chooses to remain Grand Inquisitor, but only if you become his “right hand” — his secret within the Empire. The two of you walk the knife edge: lovers by night, Imperial rivals by day, weaving coded messages and sabotaging the Empire from within, all the while dancing with danger and forbidden affection. No one in the Empire suspects a thing — except perhaps Vader.

⟡ Caleb arranges for you to be safely spirited away — never to meet again. Years later, when the Empire falls, you discover a hidden cache: a holorecording, a faded blue lightsaber, and the truth of everything Caleb did. He is long gone and has died as a villain, but he leaves you one last message: “Live free. That’s all I ever wanted for you.”

you've chosen... Rafayel, the Senator of Lemuria

Affiliation: Lemuria (King → Senator)

Homeworld: Lemuria (hidden ocean world, Deep Core, neutral but occupied)

Species: Lemurian — amphibious, rare, long-lived; masters of illusion-based telepathy and underwater sign language

Force Alignment: Unaligned (Force-sensitive; specializes in psychic illusion, perception warping, mind tricks)

Weapon: Vibrodagger

Era: Clone Wars → Empire Era

Character Inspiration: Cassian Andor, Padmé Amidala, Leia Organa

Background

⟡ Young, reluctant King of Lemuria: burdened by a throne he never wanted, often skipping his own council meetings to wander the deep, but cares fiercely for his people and their traditions.

⟡ True power on Lemuria lies with its elder council; Rafayel’s role is more symbolic. Yet in crisis, he is the only one who can unite both the old and young of his species.

⟡ Lemuria is a legendary, nigh unreachable (surrounded by so many nebulae) ocean world in the Deep Core, protected by treacherous waters and the illusion abilities of its people; neutral during the war, but courted by both sides for its Force nexus.

⟡ The negotiations between Lemuria and the Republic are painful and protracted. The Jedi are polite, but Lemurians — Rafayel especially — see outsiders as a threat to their fragile peace.

⟡ You, as the Padawan diplomat sent there along with your Master, spend months navigating the labyrinthine currents of Lemurian court and council. Every meeting is a dance: sometimes you wait days for Rafayel to summon you, other times he vanishes to the deep with no warning, mocking you to learn Lemurian sign language if you want to come along with him, otherwise you'd be lost immediately, as you two wouldn't be able to communicate underwater.

⟡ The elder council is patient, but Rafayel is deliberately difficult: teasing, evasive, questioning your purpose. Sometimes he refuses outright to attend his own council’s meetings if it means dealing with Republic officials.

⟡ Yet, over time, a pattern emerges. Rafayel starts calling you to private meetings — ostensibly to discuss politics, but the conversations drift:

⟡ He asks why you care so much about a world that treats you as an outsider. He challenges your Jedi ideals, mocking the Code but also asking if it ever feels lonely to serve an order that demands you hold nothing for yourself. On rare, quiet nights, he offers to show you the bioluminescent reefs, teach you the sign language, Lemurian music, or the sunken temples that no outsider has ever seen, then vanishes again, leaving you wondering if you imagined the invitation.

⟡ When a Separatist plot unfolds and you’re gravely wounded defending Lemuria so it won't be forced to choose sides (as you want the decision to be natural, and they should be left alone if they want to remain neutral), it is Rafayel — not the council — who sits beside your bedside in the hidden medical sanctum. For days, he won’t let anyone else near.

⟡ The next time you can properly converse, he’s softer, his sarcasm gentler. “You bleed Lemurian colors for people who barely remember your name,” he says. “Why?”

⟡ You challenge him back: if he truly loves his people, why is he so willing to see them isolated, friendless, while the galaxy burns? You call him fatally indecisive — careful, but honest.

⟡ It is this confrontation, and your pain on Lemuria’s behalf, that finally moves him. For the first time, Rafayel attends the council in person, vouching for you and the Republic’s cause. His speech is short, dry, and biting: “If we must trust anyone, let it be the one who nearly drowned for us and still stayed.”

⟡ The alliance is formed on Lemuria’s terms, at Rafayel’s word. Trade, protection, and the bare minimum of galactic involvement. They are still not a part of the Republic, but they're on its side.

⟡ In the weeks and months that follow, your roles shift. You are no longer adversaries but confidants, forced together in the liminal hours between council business, planetary crises, and the constant threat of Separatist retaliation.

⟡ Rafayel grows to trust you, bit by bit. He confides in you about his loneliness, his duty, and his terror that he will fail everyone if he ever truly opens his heart. You share your own doubts, the way the Jedi Code feels both sacred and suffocating.

⟡ The bond between you forms slowly, but once acknowledged, it is fierce: glances held too long during council debates, late-night swims where you speak only in Lemurian sign, safe beneath the waves, shared silences where the Force hums with the tension neither of you can speak.

⟡ Finally, when peace feels possible — when Lemuria’s future seems safe, at least for now, and when word comes that you might be reassigned — Rafayel asks you, quietly, if one day you can stay. He respects the Jedi path you're on, because it's been chosen by you, so he will never ask you to leave it. But he does proclaim how he's come to adore you, and wants nothing more than to keep you in his ocean forever.

⟡ There has been nothing that made you feel you've belonged somewhere more than the Lemurian mission has. As an average Padawan that has been questioning your place and morals during wartime when your kin weren't the Peacemakers they were supposed to be, striving and succeeding to protect Lemuria and becoming beloved here has been equivalent to heaven's fullfillment.

⟡ You admit you would stay forever, if the galaxy allowed it.

⟡ Your eventual secret marriage is a Lemurian ceremony: you exchange tokens, each carving a piece of memory into the other’s palm — a small cut, a pressed thumb, a flash of the Force. The vow is spoken underwater, sealed by a moment of shared breath. Only the sea and bears witness.

Order 66 & Aftermath

⟡ When Order 66 begins, you are offworld. Even before news travels to Lemuria, Rafayel feels your agony through the Force as the bond you share is violently severed. He feels you die.

⟡ And at the same time, his world is crumbling: the Republic collapses, the Empire rises, and Lemuria, even though never a true Republic member, finds itself under sudden, hostile Imperial occupation. He can't leave his planet, he can't look for you, isn't given anything other than a supposed Jedi treason that led to them being dealt with.

⟡ Rafayel, grief-stricken and enraged, cannot function as king, the more he can't get off the planet, the more he spirals. But he's told to get it together by his aunt. For the sake of his people.

Empire Era/Insurgency

⟡ He makes an impossible choice: he steps down as king, leaving Lemuria in the hands of his formidable aunt, someone trusted by the elder council, strong enough to hold the world together under threat. Outwardly, he claims it’s to better serve Lemuria’s future, privately, it’s a calculated move. Only as a senator in the Imperial Senate can he gather intelligence, build alliances, and play the long game. The title shields his true work, even as it puts him under constant Imperial scrutiny.

⟡ Life on Coruscant becomes a kind of exile for Rafayel, a daily parade of verbal chess, false smiles, and endless, suffocating luxury. In every gilded hall, senators and dignitaries vy for the Emperor’s approval, trading rumors and slander as if it were currency. Lemuria, in their eyes, was a curiosity: a world to be mined, its former king a symbol, its senator a pawn to be wined and dined, never trusted.

⟡ But it was the talk of the Jedi — your name, spoken with sneering contempt or careless condescension — that truly tested his composure. The very senators who toasted the Empire’s “peace” never tire of spinning stories about traitorous Jedi, about how the Order’s “foolish idealism” brought ruin, or about how “it was a mercy” they were purged. Each time, Rafayel endures in silence, face blank and pleasant. No one knows that every word spoken against the Jedi was an insult to the only home he’d ever found offworld. He becomes a master of deflection, his smile as sharp as a knife, feigning ignorance or offering a barbed joke, never betraying the grief and fury that wants to kill everyone in the room for slandering your name.

⟡ Behind the facade, Rafayel becomes a node in the nascent Rebellion’s network. He passes coded messages through art, encrypted sculpture, or Lemurian song. Senators like Bail Organa and Mon Mothma become his cautious allies — aware of his true loyalties, respecting his boundaries, but relying on his connections in the Deep Core and his planet’s unique resources. Under the surface, Lemuria itself becomes a hotbed of quiet resistance, protected by its illusions and treacherous seas, with Rafayel’s reports and smuggled supplies making the difference for both local insurgents and the wider Rebel cause.

⟡ The summons comes cloaked in bureaucracy, as most Imperial orders do: a string of new relief missions, all carefully designed to burnish Lemuria’s “cooperation” and pacify restless systems at the edge of the Empire’s reach. For months, Rafayel has made these forays into the Outer Rim under the flag of humanitarian aid, distributing medicine, surveying the wounded, offering platitudes to Imperial governors while passing coded messages to rebels. This time, the destination is a bleak planet whose name barely registers on Senate rosters, another world left threadbare by the Empire’s justice.

⟡ The Lemurian council praises his service; the Emperor’s sycophants applaud his diplomacy. Only his most trusted allies understand the true value of these missions. Rafayel’s hands deliver aid and solace, but they also work the knots of rebellion, smuggling hope where none is meant to grow.

⟡ Still, this time feels different. In the weeks leading up to departure, Rafayel finds himself stalked by visions, dreams where the sea sings with a voice he can’t quite reach. On the ground, the relief effort unfolds as expected: supplies distributed, officials placated, children soothed by the gentle, foreign cadence of Lemurian.

⟡ He finds himself returning to field, day after day, making excuses — checking on water purification, inspecting field medics, searching for nothing in particular, drawn in by something in the Force that grows stronger.

⟡ Thinking he might have found a surviving Jedi, Rafayel investigates in disguise, keeping to the shadows. He sees you first from a distance: hunched in a tattered cloak, weathered hands clutching a worn satchel, moving with the wary caution of someone who’s been hunted too long. You barter for supplies in awkward, clipped gestures — your voice never rising above a whisper, if at all. He follows you, keeping his distance. It’s not caution that holds him back, but terror: the Force hums with recognition, but your posture, your hair, even the way you walk is unfamiliar. He fears it’s a trick, his own longing conjuring ghosts. Then he catches a glimpse of your face in the firelight — just for a heartbeat, the same eyes he loved beneath Lemuria’s oceans. He almost calls out, but the word catches in his throat.

⟡ At night, you work late by lanternlight, grinding herbs and sorting vials. He sees the townsfolk at your door, taking your medicine, leaving you with broken belongings in exchange. No gratitude. They are swiftly dealt with that he has a long window to get close to you, alone.

⟡ Rafayel tries to speak to you in Basic, at first, a gentle greeting, a question about his “ailments,” an attempt to spark some distant recognition. You freeze, staring at him with suspicion, and when a neighbor steps into view you slip away, vanishing with the ease of someone who has learned to survive by running. He tries again. And again. Each day, he finds reasons to cross your path, sometimes under the guise of needing supplies, sometimes just to watch from a distance as you work. He leaves small gifts at your door: herbs that you use for your medicine, flowers, pretty stones sometimes inscribed with Lemurian symbols to see if you recognize them. It’s only when a storm floods the town and you find yourself stranded outside, struggling with your heavy basket, that he steps close enough for you to see the sign language he uses, the swift, fluid movements of Lemurian hands, a language you should not know. You respond excitedly, hands shaking.

⟡ For the first time, you truly look at him. There is something just beneath the surface, confusion and longing and a grief you do not understand. That night, you dream of a warm ocean, of hands twined in yours, of a promise made in a language without sound.

⟡ Rafayel is gentle but persistent. He visits every day, never asking for more than you can give. He helps repair your roof, fetches water, sits nearby in silence while you work, never crossing the line between presence and intrusion.

⟡ He notices the scars, old and new, the way you sleep with a dagger beneath your pillow, the way your shoulders tense at every loud voice. He realizes just how much you’ve suffered, how deep the wounds go, learns that your voice is gone and it's trauma related, not a physical injury. You mouth words, but nothing comes. In dreams, you flinch from touch, reliving old terrors you can’t name.

⟡ When the townspeople harass you, accusing you of curses, theft, or crimes you never committed because of your warnings that come real through Force visions no doubt, interpreted as a bad omen by people, Rafayel is the one who stands in their way. At first, he uses illusion to confuse and misdirect them. When that fails, he makes examples of the worst, ensuring they will never threaten you again. Rumors spread: the witch has a demon for a protector now. Nobody dares to cross you again.

⟡ As weeks pass, you become less afraid. You start to wait for him at your garden gate, to leave out a second cup of tea. You laugh, a small, rusty sound, at one of his jokes. Some days, you sign stories to him, simple things: a strange dream, a memory of swimming, a favorite flower from a childhood you cannot place.

⟡ One night, after you’ve had a nightmare so severe you nearly break the door trying to escape, he collapses in front of you, tears rolling down his face, saying, "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry I couldn't protect you, I'm sorry I wasn't there. Come back to me, please come back to me. I would have done anything. I’ll do anything now."

⟡ He wants to take you away from here, but at the same time, the life he leads isn't the most perfect or desirable one. The time is ticking until he has to get back to the Insurgency again, and he has to choose what to do.

Personality

⟡ Sardonic, irreverent, fiercely loyal; prefers teasing and humor to direct confrontation, unless someone threatens those he loves.

⟡ Introspective, old beyond his years, yet startlingly youthful and impulsive when he lets himself feel.

⟡ Has the soul of a poet but the heart of a survivor. Expresses grief through action, love through devotion, and fear through stubbornness.

Route Themes

⟡ Healing from trauma, reclaiming self and voice

⟡ Survival, exile, and the forging of new legacies

⟡ The burden and power of the crown versus personal happiness

⟡ "What happened to you? Who did this to you?"

⟡ Love as a force stronger than memory or violence

⟡ Hope returning, even after everything is lost

Endings May Include

⟡ Unable to bear the thought of you suffering any more because of the Empire, Rafayel asks for your help to utilize your Force Bond, and calls upon the deepest reserves of Lemurian magic. He weaves an impossible shroud across the stars, a living illusion seeded into the HoloNet itself. Lemuria slips quietly from galactic memory. The change is subtle but absolute: star-charts and navigation relays begin to rewrite themselves, records fading or fragmenting, travelers forgetting the very route that brought them close. Even seasoned cartographers, navigators, hyperspace scouts, astrogation droids, traders, fleet dispatchers, find their plotted courses inexplicably rerouted, sensors slipping past the nebulae as if guided by a gentle, unseen hand. Astrogation archives in the Senate, bounty hunter records, even black market smugglers’ maps all reflect the new “truth”: Lemuria simply does not exist anymore. Every Imperial bureaucrat tasked with monitoring Lemuria is subtly repurposed, memories blurring at the edges until they move on to new assignments. The small garrison left behind in Lemuria is quietly absorbed and digested. Any who try to report the truth find their words faltering, their data corrupted, their minds turning gently away from the memory as if waking from a dream. Only a handful in the galaxy remain aware of Lemuria’s existence: those trusted few sworn to secrecy, and those rare souls the Force itself chooses to guide across the shifting tides. You and Rafayel remain at the center of this lost paradise, ghost royals in a world forgotten by all but destiny. The violence of the past recedes, and in the soft embrace of Lemuria’s sun and sea, your memories slowly knit back together. There are no more wars to fight or vengeance to pursue — only days of healing, gentle laughter, and peace. Rafayel’s vengeance fades to memory, replaced by a quiet, abiding joy: the victory of keeping you safe and whole, hidden from a galaxy that once devoured everything he loved. In the end, obscurity is freedom, and the two of you are legend, living proof that love can rewrite even the stars themselves.

⟡ Rafayel cannot bear to lose you — not to the Empire, not to your mind, not to the cold tide of fate. When gentle methods fail, he uses every secret of Lemurian Force teachings, every desperate scrap of his power, trying to force the pieces of you back into place. He tells himself he’s helping you, healing you, loving you the way he always promised. He breaks your mind, utterly, irreversibly, and you end up losing your sense of self completely, docile, beoming childlike with not one thought behind your eyes anymore. You don't recognize him. You don't recognize yourself. In his terror and guilt, Rafayel cannot let you go or entrust you to anyone else. He removes you from the outside world, taking you with him back to Coruscant. The meaner senators call you his "little bird" or "child bride" due to your deteriorated state, interested in the little pet he's decided to keep after coming back from his humanitarian mission. He doesn't parade you around, however, hiding you from all the curious eyes. When Lemuria is finally reclaimed after the Rebellion triumphs, Rafayel installs you in the highest room of the restored palace. You live in luxury and comfort, but you are kept isolated from the world for your “safety.” Rafayel becomes deeply reclusive, devoting his life to caring for you. From this point forward, you exist as a gentle, obedient presence, no longer able to make decisions or express independent will. Rafayel never remarries or takes another partner. The people of Lemuria come to refer to you as “the moon in the cage” — a figure both mourned and revered, their queen that never was.

⟡ Rafayel quietly arranges for you to be smuggled, under diplomatic pretenses, to a safe location: one of the hidden bases used by Lemuria’s insurgency network. This base is remote, protected by being underwater, populated by loyal Lemurian agents, and sympathetic outsiders. Here, you have time to recover, away from the Empire’s gaze. You spend weeks, then months, among the Lemurian resistance: healing physically and mentally, learning again who you are, surrounded by gentle security and practical help. Rafayel visits as often as he can, bringing small comforts from what once was 'home' for you two, and arranges for discreet healers, trusted rebel psychologists, and Lemurian artists to help with the trauma that still lingers. During this time, you begin to remember: small flashes at first, then dreams, then names and faces. With Rafayel's patience and the Lemurians’ rehabilitation, your speech returns, though you still prefer Lemurian sign. You slowly reclaim old skills — meditation, connection back to the Force, self-defense, the delicate art of moving unseen and helping others in small, vital ways. Sometimes, resistance members ask for your help with coded messages, triage, or strategy from a Jedi who has fought in the Clone Wars and survived. Piece by piece, your sense of agency grows stronger. Rafayel ensures you are never pressured into fighting, only invited to contribute as you wish. One day, when your memory and purpose are fully returned, Rafayel sits with you and asks what you want — truly want — for the first time since he found you. You tell him: you need to fight for the galaxy, not just for Lemuria. All the Jedi can't have died for nothing. You can't have gone through so much just to sit back and watch. The Empire has to be defeated. The Rebellion is rising, and while Lemuria’s people need him, your path is to work more directly, for yourself and all your fallen comrades. Rafayel understands, even though it pains him, he will not be the man who cages you, even out of love. With contacts from Lemurian intelligence and his blessing, you make the leap from recovered refugee to covert agent for the Rebellion, becoming a "Fulcrum", which is a title used by agents and spies early in the Galactic Civil War, with the purpose was to gather and distribute intelligence, and recruit new members to the rebel cause. Meanwhile, Rafayel returns to Coruscant and his double life, never revealing your survival and continuing his own work. Through coded communications, secret rendezvous, and rare, precious meetings, you remain each other’s anchor. Your love endures. When the Rebellion finally declares itself, when Lemuria’s flag joins the Alliance and open war against the Empire begins, you and Rafayel are at last reunited in public as spouses in crime, having reclaimed what was lost.

you've chosen... Sylus, the Pirate King of Onychinus

Affiliation: Onychinus Syndicate (rules from the shadows of Nar Shaddaa and the Outer Rim underworld, pirate fleet leader)

Homeworld: Unknown (claims several; his records are always forged)

Species: Human (rumors say otherwise, no one’s sure)

Force Alignment: Dark Side user, unaffiliated with Sith or Jedi, walks his own path

Weapon: Red lightsaber (custom hilt, single blade; used as a symbol more than a tool)

Era: Empire Era (crimelord ascendant)

Character Inspiration: Darth Maul, the Stranger, Nightsisters

Background

⟡ Born to unknown parentage in the lawless fringes of the Outer Rim, Sylus spent his earliest years traded from hand to hand as property — first as a street rat in the slave quarters of Nar Shaddaa, then as a gladiatorial combatant in Hutt-run blood pits. As a child, he was forced to fight for the amusement of his masters, surviving only through a vicious cunning and a knack for reading opponents’ moves before they made them. His first brush with the Force was entirely instinct, a predator’s sixth sense honed under the pitmaster’s whip.

⟡ By adolescence, having experimented a lot and with more mastery over the Force, Sylus had gained notoriety as a prodigy in the arenas, known for impossible victories and a savage refusal to die. In the chaos of a slave uprising orchestrated in secret, he killed the Hutt who owned him, rallied fellow slaves, and vanished into the night with a handful of survivors. Over the next decade, whispered stories of a pirate leader began to circulate: a ghost who struck at slaver convoys, melted into the void, and left nothing but carnage in his wake.

⟡ Allegedly, this happened eons ago that people in the Underworld regard Sylus as an immortal. Everyone speculates about what he is. Perhaps, he lived during the times when the Sith were a species.

⟡ Sylus is the architect and undisputed ruler of the Onychinus Syndicate — the largest, most elusive criminal network in Hutt Space, butting heads with other crime lords daily. The Syndicate spans dozens of Outer Rim systems, running smuggling operations, pirate fleets, information brokering rings, and a shadow economy fueled by vice and secrets. His flagship, the Voracious, is crewed by liberated slaves and outcasts from every corner of the galaxy, loyal to Sylus above all else.

⟡ He wields the Force in ways that defy Jedi and Sith traditions: his abilities are brutal, raw, improvisational, and patchworked by every text and information he could get about just what he was wielding, shaped by years of survival and defiance. If asked by Jedi, he would say "I'm what you would call a Sith," able to cloud minds, sense lies, tear through mental defenses, and even manipulate technology through the Force, shorting out holonets, frying droid circuits, and twisting security systems to his will. Rumors swirl of darker talents: Force-driven rage in combat, uncanny luck, and an ability to vanish from sight or mind.

⟡ Information is his sharpest blade. Sylus is a legendary slicer, adept at breaking the tightest encryptions and weaponizing data. He trades in blackmail, holonet manipulation, and psychological warfare, toppling rivals or governments without ever firing a blaster. His network of spies and informants reaches into the Imperial bureaucracy, criminal underworld, and even the rebel cells struggling to stay hidden.

⟡ While his methods are ruthless and his motives hard to decipher, Sylus is infamous for dismantling slaver syndicates and sabotaging Hutt power wherever he finds it. He’s the one who burned Jabba’s palace to the ground, who “abolished” Hutt rule on Tatooine by pitting the planet’s syndicates against each other and arming the enslaved. For many, he’s a terror; for the desperate, a legend whispered about in hope.

Empire Rule, or Ruline the Empire

⟡ You, once a Jedi Padawan, now fallen into slavery after Order 66 as you were unable to navigate the crime cesspool of the Outer Rim, end up sold to a Hutt, stripped of your name, and any possibility for a future. Which, your survivor's guilt tells you that you fully deserved.

⟡ When cornered by the Hutt for refusing to break, you let loose the Dark Side in a raw, stunning display, strangling the Hutt with the Force, killing him in full view of his court, knowing you’ve signed your own death warrant.

⟡ As chaos erupts, Sylus enters the scene, captivated, intrigued, and utterly fascinated. He was coming to kill the Hutt himself, but finds you there: surrounded by chaos, blood on your hands, wild-eyed and radiant with raw, untempered power. You are fascinating, the most exquisite contradiction: a Jedi losing herself, all the more beautiful for her ruin.

⟡ Rather than allow you to be killed in the crossfire or let your transmitter chip be activated by any of the Hutt's court, Sylus “claims” you — publicly declaring you his, liberating you and saving your life but throwing you into the heart of his pirate domain.

Relationship with You

⟡ But Sylus is not your savior. He’s your captor, benefactor, and tempter — all at once. You've fallen from the hands of one evil to the pit of another. He says you can leave any time, but also warns you the only safest place for your kind in this galaxy is right here in his territory. If you don't want to be caught by Inquisitorius, your best bet is sticking to Onychinus for a new life. Sticking to Sylus.

⟡ For a long time, you mistake him for a Sith. The truth is more complicated: Sylus mocks both Jedi and Sith, wielding the Force as his weapon, with no faith in “codes” or “orders.”

⟡ He overtakes the role of rehabilitating a Jedi as a personal project, showing you the galaxy’s underbelly, the thrill of being unbound by any code but your own. He offers a dangerous education: using the Force to its fullest as liberation. Not the path of the Sith, but his path — pleasure without shame, strength without apology, cunning without cruelty (unless warranted).

⟡ He wants to see you fall, but not into misery, he wants you to choose yourself for once, to savor every want you ever denied. Rather than punish your outbursts about right or wrong, he celebrates it, pushing you to embrace your passions, desires, and the power you’ve always been told to fear.

⟡ He surrounds you with luxury but never lets you forget your debt, freedom in exchange for your trust and your greed. Endlessly pleased when you refuse to work for him, but would accept to work with him. But you still have a long way to go, starting soft as a 'freelance shipping redistributor'. But he's certain you'll come around from a smuggler to a pirate, eventually.

Personality

⟡ Sylus is all effortless charisma and impossible confidence; nothing frightens him, and he’s rarely interested in anything. You happen to casually break that last rule. He's curious about everything regarding you, even what the most, that includes him once, would regard as boring.

⟡ He mocks both Jedi and Sith, calls them children fighting over scraps while he rewrites the rules.

⟡ Morally ambiguous to the bone: capable of unspeakable cruelty, but also strange, ferocious loyalty for those he claims as “his.”

⟡ Sees your darkness not as corruption, but as potential, and is endlessly patient in drawing it out.

⟡ Teaches through provocation, seduction, and challenge: “What if your anger and greed are holy? What if pleasure is a lesson? What if you never belonged in a cage at all?”

Route Themes

⟡ Seduction to darkness, but with a twist: freedom, not corruption, is the goal.

⟡ Survival and self-ownership: reclaiming agency in a world that chews up the good.

⟡ The thrill of being wanted for everything you are, including your flaws.

⟡ Outlaw romance: partnership in crime, mutual obsession, the danger of becoming the legend you once feared.

⟡ The Jedi Code, re-examined: what if the rules were made to keep you weak?

⟡ Falling together. Or rising apart.

Endings May Include

⟡ Throughout your time together, hints drop about your missing memories and strange flashes of Imperial interrogation rooms and red-bladed Inquisitors. You experience gaps in time, unexplained reactions to Imperial agents, and an occasional, unsettling sense of déjà vu whenever you hear certain code phrases. Unbeknownst to both you and Sylus, you were captured and forcibly reconditioned by the Empire after Order 66. They implanted a behavioral trigger, your “Jedi” survival was allowed solely to infiltrate and dismantle criminal threats to Imperial control. As you rise in Sylus’s organization, the Inquisitorius activates your sleeper protocol using a trigger phrase broadcast across the HoloNet. Your demeanor shifts overnight: you betray hidden Syndicate strongholds, sabotage Sylus’s fleet, and leak his operations to the Empire. Sylus realizes the truth too late — he recognizes the signs of brainwashing, understanding you were a tool made to destroy him. But it's too late. It's love that brings about his downfall, not any enemy. The Empire seizes Sylus, parading his defeat as a victory. You’re rewarded with a high-ranking position and public recognition, but privately haunted by memories that begin to return — flashes of your time with Sylus, your real feelings, and what you’ve lost. The ending closes with Sylus imprisoned in a high-security Imperial facility, hinting that Sylus still believes in you, waiting for the day you’ll break free from Imperial control and choose your own fate, maybe even to bring the Empire down from within.

⟡ When the Rebel Alliance is fully operating, your guilt and stubborn hope pushes you to aid them from the shadows, smuggling intel, sheltering fugitives, and daring Sylus to care about something beyond survival. He mocked your faith, but when the Alliance needed help most, you choose their cause openly. Sylus only follows because you did, risking everything to see your hope burn bright — just once. And that’s all it takes to put the entire Onychinus Syndicate, its guns, its ships, its secrets, behind the rebels’ desperate mission. But when the Empire’s new superweapon, the Death Star, targets your rebel base, there’s nowhere left to run. The Syndicate fleet is decimated. You and Sylus make it to the surface, battered and bleeding, side by side as the sky turns white-hot above you. You’re the one who wanted to change the galaxy. Sylus is the one who followed, simply because he loved you more than freedom or infamy. He murmurs against your hair that he wouldn’t trade a single choice — that dying with you, on your terms, is a curtain call grander than anything that could have brought about his death in his world. Your last moments are tangled together: you and Sylus, locked together on a black-sand shore as the sky splits open, the arc of the Death Star’s superlaser lighting the horizon. His head pressed to yours, your fingers twined, silhouetted against the last dawn.

⟡ As Sylus’s teachings take hold, you recognize both your passion for him and the moral boundaries you cannot erase. Your love burns bright, fierce, and complicated, but his ruthless pragmatism clashes with your lingering sense of justice, and you decide to go your own way. He doesn’t chase you, decision to let you go coming frustratingly easy to him. You don't understand where that comes from at the time. Years later, your paths cross again as rival Syndicates — your crew fighting tyranny, Sylus’s empire growing ever stronger. When you see him again, the spark remains, bittersweet and unresolved. Smiling faintly, he says with pride and quiet longing: “I always knew you would find your own way. Come back when you tire of playing hero.” You never do, but are occasionally reunited with him through midnight trysts, an illicit affair you two always come back to even though your ideals never truly align.

⟡ Eventually, no one in Hutt Space remembers your birth name. They speak only of the Pirate King and his infamous “Shadow,” his First Hand, a force-wielder whose presence chills the bone and ignites rebellion in the desperate. Every syndicate who once hunted you now pays tribute, every Imperial patrol that crosses your border learns terror in the dark. You and Sylus, side by side at the heart of a black-flag fleet, have become the chaos that remakes the rules. He taught you to break every chain — first the ones around your wrists, then the ones wound tight in your mind. You taught him to believe in something more than vengeance and the cold pleasure of power: you made him believe in us, in a future unruly and untamed. The galaxy calls you criminals, devils, folk heroes. Depending on whose fortunes you’ve broken. Worlds freed from slavery whisper your names as a promise, and nowhere is your legend more fiercely protected than in the shadows of the Onychinus Syndicate. No vow, no code, no empire will ever lay claim to you again. You make your own justice, your own pleasure, your own legacy — two outlaws standing together, sovereign in the dark, answering only to each other. And in the hush between the stars, you realize: this is what freedom feels like.

[gobleann]

Sylus study because I want to draw him in my own style and I think I got it. And semi spicy stuff because I'm just delulu like that

[gobleann]

Character who doesn't get to die & character who doesn't get to live. Is that anything.

[gobleann]

Duality of a girl fr (Because I can't decide in between of edgy and soft aesthetics of being Sylus wife)

This Wedding Banner has been the most fun things to do in LADS since forever for me. The new events and the (very fucking generous) Unicorn Ops had been so fun and helpful like hhhhh I thank infold

NOT TO MENTION THE CALL BACK TO THE LORE. THE MOMENT I SAW THAT BACKGROUND CATHEDRAL IN THE FIRST 10 SECONDS. I WANT TO SHOOT MYSELF

[gobleann]

Crow Family- A New Friend

Young Luke and Kieran AU, Sylus x nonMC!Reader | fem reader, not proofread | 909 words | based on this idea! | Crow Family masterlist

author’s note: so so excited for the wedding banner (I’m about to start pulling) and ahkdjskfhsmgmd the new update is so cute but omg updating that game is so anxiety inducing for some reason. I wish everyone good luck on their pulls! <3

anyways, i’m going to write some more drabbles/ficlets for this because it’s too damn cute >_< this was so much fun to write, i love little luke and kieran. feel free to send some requests for Crow Family shenanigans! <3

Wrangling a set of six-year old twins was no easy task, Sylus was learning.

Getting Luke and Kieran to come with him to the mall was a feat in itself, but they needed new clothes and Sylus couldn't leave them alone. Call it paranoia, but Sylus didn't trust anyone but himself to take care of the twins. If someone he hired to watch them turned out to be an enemy, well... Sylus would only find out when it was too late.

That was why, when he lost sight of the two little boys in a crowded shop, a panic unlike any other shot through Sylus.

His pace picked up, steps becoming shakier the longer he couldn't find his boys. Sylus backtracked to stores they'd been, shops they'd pointed out. The cookie shop they'd demanded they stop at. The toy store they spent twenty minutes in as the twins tried to decide which ball was bounciest.

No sign of them, and Sylus was beginning to fear the worst.

The boys, meanwhile, were trailing a woman they had seen twice before. The first time, she was leaving the cookie shop as they came in, offering a sweet smile and small wave. When they saw her again, this time a few people in front of them in line for the cash register at a clothing store, they'd only exchanged brief nods before silently slipping away from Sylus's side.

And here they were on a pursuit mission, wondering what the best way to approach the target would be.

Luke took a tentative step forward, reaching to tug on the fabric of your pants. "I like your keychain,” he said, looking up at you with wide eyes.

"Thank you!" You grinned, your own eyes widening as you watched an identical boy walk up next to the one still holding onto your pant leg. You crouched down in front of them, glancing around for a parent. Seeing none, you looked back to the boys, not letting your smile waver. "And what are your names, my loves?"

"I’m Luke!" the first boy announced proudly.

"And I'm Kieran," the second added.

“Well, Luke and Kieran, where are your parents?” you asked.

“We don’t have any parents,” Luke said, tilting his head.

You stared at them, unable to keep the smile plastered on. “Oh…” you mumbled.

“We do have a Sylus, though!” he said cheerfully.

You nodded along. “Right, a Sylus…” You cleared your throat. “Do you know where Sylus is?”

Kieran shook his head. “No idea.”

“Can’t we just come home with you?” Luke grabbed a hold of your hand.

“I don’t know about that,” you chuckled. “How about you stick with me until we can find Sylus, hm?” You smiled, holding onto the boys’ hands.

A few stores down, panic was beginning to settle deep in Sylus’s bones. He’d never been this long without his boys in a public space. He’d never been in the dark about their location.

He hadn’t been this worried about them since the night he took them in.

When he just barely heard, “Can I get the red one?” in a tone he’d recognize even in sleep, Sylus nearly cried out of relief.

Following the voice, he found himself in a candy shop, staring at a young woman holding his two boys by their hands while their tongues turned red and blue from their lollipops.

“Sylus!” They called out in near unison, rushing forwards towards the man as he dropped to his knees, arms wide to hold them.

“I was so worried about you two,” Sylus breathed, pulling them closer against his chest.

“Sorry, Sylus…” Kieran muttered.

“Oh! You have to come meet our new friend!” Luke tugged on Sylus’s hand.

Sylus raised an eyebrow. “New friend?”

“Uh-huh!” Kieran nodded triumphantly. “This is the super nice lady that spent time with us while we waited for you.”

Rising to his full height, Sylus gave you a polite smile. “It seems I should thank you then, miss. I know they can be a lot to deal with.”

You shook your head. “It was really no problem! They’re such sweethearts, really.”

“Can she come with us, Sylus?” Kieran asked.

“I don’t think so, buddy…” Sylus frowned.

“Let her come with us, Sylus! Please? She’s nice and she smells good and she’s pretty and she bought us lollipops!” Luke quickly exclaimed.

“How about this,” you proposed, holding back a giggle. “I’ll give you my phone number, and you can just let me know if you want to meet each other again. I’d be happy to spend more time with you boys.” You smiled.

Sylus nodded hesitantly. “…Alright. Thank you again,” he said, taking the paper with your number on it before grabbing onto the twins.

“Bye-bye!” Luke yelled.

“Bye—!” Kieran called out.

You laughed, waving them off. “Goodbye, my loves!”

An hour later, you received a text from an unknown number.

I can’t thank you enough for taking care of the twins today.

They haven’t stopped talking about you since we left.

You grinned as a picture came through, two little boys proudly showing off their red and blue tongues through toothy grins. You quickly typed back a response.

I’m so glad I got to spend time with them! I hope we can meet again soon :)

Staring at your message, Sylus felt a quiet peace settle in his chest. “Maybe that would be a good idea,” he muttered, a smiling pulling at his lips.

comments and reblogs appreciated and asks open! <3

masterlist

taglist (10/50): @dolledbunnytail @sleepykittyenergy @orbitraiden @coffeedragonhobbyist @plzdonutpercieveme @sylusgworl @webshooterrr9 @animegamerfox @nezuswritingdesk @glitterykingdomangel

[gobleann]

NOT ME GETTING RAFAYEL WEDDING BANNER.

You fish

[gobleann]

Hnnnn I'm thinking about an AU where Dragon!Sylus meets Sea God!Rafayel. The young dragon has never seen a Lemurian before. He knows nothing about the Sea God. Upon meeting him, Sylus attempts to eat Rafayel (and is nearly drowned in response).

R: "A dragon hath not passed through these waters in over a thousand cycles. Have dragonkin forgotten about Lemuria?"

S: "My 'kin' are long gone. I am the last."

R: "Yikes. Thou hast my pity."

For this AU, Rafayel is older than Sylus and is sure to critique Sylus' ignorance about dragon-related topics.

R: "Thou hast never sharpened thine scales? How strange."

S: "Scales sharpen? How?"

R: "Art thou aware that thou art a dragon? Thou should already know!"

[gobleann]

Sylus just wanting Mc to take from him and ask/want for different things puts things in a different perspective.

Mc wouldn't care about gems and clothing, unless Sylus wants her to. Because he wants her to dress and match him. He wants her to want to be beside him, and for the leader of the N109 Zone, he can't have his gf looking cheaper than him. So Mc looks into the latest fashions, trying to make him proud as she stands beside him, not asking him to buy a lot, but enough to make him feel wanted bc the man's love language does include gift giving. Mc wants to make Sylus happy, she wants to see him walking over and giving his card. Bc he's so snarky and dramatic when he does it, she loves the look of him taking care of her sm 🥰

He'd genuinely want Mc to be possessive (not obsessed). He'd want her to bite him, for her to kiss him when they're alone. Mc is equally as ravenous as Sylus in bed, and doesn't stop telling him how she wants him and how much she can't stand when he's not touching her. He uses his evol when they have sex half the time, just bc Mc goes crazy when he transforms

Mc wants everything Sylus has. His clothes, his side of the bed, his attention, even his snacks. And he just gives them to her, while calling her kitten and telling her how greedy she is. But he smiles when he does it

Mc choosing to love Sylus, even though it's not supposed happen. Mc wanting to love Sylus and wanting him to want her. This is something Sylus can't even begin to imagine until it happens. And that's when he realizes how badly he wants Mc to WANT him. His eye, his bad dreams, his terrible humming. Even the blood on his hands. He wants Mc to want him so badly, not even needing him. Just genuinely wanting him for who he is and who he wants to be for her ✨️

[gobleann]

And brother you know what they did? They Dance

Naur I was drawing this yesterday and I KNOW Sylus would have a love hate relationship with Hadestown.

So much so I wrote his reaction to it down below

The theatre doors had long since shut behind them, sealing in the golden haze of the final bow, the echo of the chorus, the stunned applause. Outside, the world felt too still. The streets glimmered under recent rain, every puddle mirroring neon signs and taxi lights that drifted like ghosts through the evening.

Sylus walked quietly beside Lizzie and she didn't speak. At least not yet.

He could feel it, her joy had not dulled, only settled, like embers after a blaze. But him? He was quiet in a way that felt unfamiliar, even to himself. Not brooding. Not thoughtful. No calculated silence like he often wore as armor.

This quiet was… raw.

Hadestown had struck a part of him he hadn’t known was still vulnerable. Not just the myth of it, the elegance of the songs or the beauty of the actors. It was the loop. The futility. The truth of love being held together by hope and undone by fear.

And he hated how much he saw himself in Hades. In the way Hades clung too tightly. In the way love turned into a fortress. The way trust was something so brittle it shattered under the pressure of protection.

He hadn’t said any of this. Not out loud. But he hadn’t needed to. Lizzie, perceptive in her quiet, had noticed.

Of course she does.

They stopped in a quiet street not far from the venue. The air smelled of wet pavement and warm pretzels from a late-night cart. A thin layer of mist hung like memory, and Sylus leaned against the alley wall, slipping his hands into the deep pockets of his coat. He stared up at the sky as if trying to shake something loose.

That’s when he noticed Lizzie pull out her phone.

He tilted his head. “Trying to preserve the memory already?”

Her thumb swiped across the screen, not answering him yet. Her face was half-shadowed beneath the strands of her hair and the reflection of her glasses. She looked different like this, softer almost. Or maybe that was just the lighting. Or maybe that was just the way she held joy in her own way: quiet, tender, but full.

Then he saw the Hadestown album cover on her screen. Sylus blinked, then scoffed with a crooked smirk. “You’re not gonna tell me to sing, are you?”

Lizzie lifted her head slowly, finally looking him in the eye.

“Nope. Not today,” she replied, her voice light but tinged with warmth. “Your heart’s already damaged enough.”

He gave a quiet, breathy laugh, the kind that wasn’t quite joy but wasn’t nothing. “And you say I’m the dramatic one.”

She smiled before hitting play.

And the moment the soft instrumental of “They Dance” drifted out from her phone speaker. Barely loud enough for anyone else to hear it was like something in the air shifted. Time slowed. Or maybe it folded in on itself.

Sylus inhaled. The music was… haunting. The kind of tune you hear in a dream and wake up trying to remember.

He lifted an eyebrow, “Do you even know the steps?”

Lizzie stepped toward him, her old worn shoes gently brushing his boots.

“Well, there’s one way to find out,” she said, eyes shining under her lenses. She didn’t reach for him, not directly, but the invitation was in her posture, in the way her fingers hovered near his.

He didn’t hesitate long.

Sylus pushed away from the wall, his coat falling open slightly, the night breeze tousling strands of his silver-white hair. He stepped across from her. They were close now. Close enough he could see the way her pupils dilated in the low light, how her breath caught as he mirrored her position.

No choreography. No perfection. Just presence. He let his hands hover near her waist, not touching unless she said yes with her body first. She responded with a small, near-imperceptible lean forward. And that was enough. He touched her, lightly.

One hand at her waist, the other gently holding her fingers not long Lizzie began to move.

A simple sway at first. Back and forth. It wasn’t about dancing, really. It was about staying in step. About staying. Still staying. After all the metaphors. After all the songs and past lives and broken things.

Sylus watched her. Carefully. As he always did. She was humming along the music under her breath now barely audible, but it was there. Her voice slipped between notes like it belonged there. Like she’d always been part of the story.

To know how it ends and still began to sing it again.

That line echoed in his mind. He had always thought himself above sentimentality. But there was something about this. The two of them, in a quiet alley post-tragedy, dancing to the ghosts of a love story that hurt too much to name, that cracked him open.

He murmured low, “You memorized every step, didn’t you?”

She tilted her head, pressing her temple near his chest. “Of course. I told you it’d get you.”

Sylus chuckled, the sound uneven. “You didn’t warn me it’d feel like being dragged through glass with a smile.”

Lizzie grinned. “Now you know what it’s like being me every time I revisit it.”

They turned slowly beneath the amber streetlamp, their reflections blurred in the puddle below. Sylus whispered, almost absently.

“Do you think… the next time they’ll get it right? ...Orpheus and Eurydice”

Lizzie didn’t answer at first. She just pulled back enough to look up at him.

“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “But I think the point is… they tried again”

He stared at her and suddenly, everything ached less. Not because it hurt any less but because she was here. And she saw it. Saw him.

They danced until the song faded, and the city forgot them. And in the stillness after, when Sylus leaned in just enough to let his forehead touch hers, she whispered, “Even if we’ve danced this before in other lives… I’m glad we’re here now.”

He closed his eyes with a stiffened yet genuine smile, “... It's one sad song"

She hummed, resting her head lightly on his chest, where the music now stopped.

“Yeah. Its one fucking tragedy” she murmured, letting her face get lost in his shoulders, “but we sing it anyway.”

[gobleann]

You went for a drive out of the city, and during a coffee stop, you decided to break the news in a creative way. You had "Best Dad Ever" written on his cup.

🧜‍♂️ Rafayel

The drive is calm. For once, Rafayel isn’t dramatically complaining about how boring the scenery is, nor is he blasting music at full volume just to mess with you. Instead, he’s relaxed, one hand draped over the wheel, sunglasses perched on the bridge of his nose, humming lazily to himself.

You hand him his coffee.

“Mm, thanks, cutie,” he purrs, taking it without looking, already lifting it to his lips—

Sip.

Pause.

His fingers tighten slightly.

Then—

The car swerves.

"RAFAYEL!"

With zero hesitation, he veers off the road and slams the brakes, the car jerking to a sudden, dramatic stop.

"WHAT THE HELL—" you start, gripping the dashboard.

"WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS?!"

Rafayel is staring at the cup like it just personally betrayed him. His eyes are huge, his fingers clamped so tightly around the cup that you’re genuinely worried it might crack.

He snatches off his sunglasses, turns to you, and—says nothing.

Just breathes heavily.

Like he’s witnessed something cosmic.

You raise an eyebrow. "Something wrong, babe?"

He flips the cup toward you, jabbing at the words printed on the side.

Best Dad Ever.

"Is this a joke?" His voice cracks. “IS THIS A JOKE?!”

You bite back a laugh. "Nope."

His entire body freezes. His brain disconnects from reality.

Then—

He LAUNCHES himself out of the car.

“RAFAYEL, OH MY GOD—”

He starts pacing.

Wildly.

Hand in his hair, fully spiraling.

"I KNEW THIS WOULD HAPPEN!" He throws his arms in the air. "MY GENES ARE TOO POWERFUL—THIS WAS INEVITABLE—"

You lean out the window, exasperated. "Can you—"

"I CAN’T BREATHE—"

"Then inhale through your nose, genius."

"I AM. IT'S NOT ENOUGH."

He stops abruptly. Whips back toward you. Marches over to the car like a man with a mission, plants his hands on the doorframe, and leans in—

"You’re serious?" His voice is deadly quiet now.

You hold his gaze. “I’m serious.”

For a second, he just stares at you.

Then, suddenly—

He laughs.

At first, just a short breath. Then—full giddy, unfiltered joy. He grabs your face, kisses you sloppy and hard, and laughs against your lips like he can’t believe it.

"I KNEW IT!" He pulls back just to yell into the sky. "I AM ABOUT TO CREATE THE MOST GORGEOUS CREATURE IN EXISTENCE. DO YOU UNDERSTAND? THIS IS HISTORIC. THIS CHILD WILL BE A CULTURAL ICON—"

You groan. "Rafayel—"

“I HAVE TO DOCUMENT THIS MOMENT.”

"—No."

He’s already reaching for his phone.

"—RAFAYEL, NO—"

"WE NEED A PORTRAIT. A MONUMENT. A SERIES OF LIMITED-EDITION ART PRINTS."

You physically reach over and grab his wrist. "GET BACK IN THE DAMN CAR."

He gasps.

Dramatically.

Hand-on-heart levels of betrayal.

"You wouldn’t deprive me of this joy?"

"I will deprive you of seeing your child if you don’t start driving."

Instantly—he’s back in the car.

Straightens his jacket. Adjusts his hair. Puts on his sunglasses.

"Holy sharks," he breathes, gripping the wheel. "I'm gonna be a dad."

You sigh, finally relaxing. "Yeah, babe. You are."

He exhales slowly.

Then, softer this time, he reaches out, brushing his fingers over your stomach—reverent now.

"You just made me the happiest being alive," he murmurs. His smirk is still there, but his voice is completely serious.

You smile, resting your hand over his. “I know.”

The moment lingers—soft, intimate, perfect.

And then—

A wicked glint flashes in his eyes.

“Ohhh,” he grins, leaning back lazily. “This kid is gonna be a menace.”

You groan. "Rafayel—"

"THEY WILL BE CHAOS INCARNATE."

"Stop—"

"WE HAVE A DYNASTY TO BUILD."

And just like that—your entire future flashes before your eyes.

🖤🐦Sylus

It’s been a quiet drive, Sylus tapping his fingers against the steering wheel, humming along to the music. He’s in a good mood. Relaxed. Smug, as usual, but easygoing.

You hand him his coffee.

He takes it, sips, lets out a pleased little hum—

And then—

The car jerks.

You barely have time to register what happened before he slams on the brakes, throwing an arm across your waist to stop you from lurching forward.

“SYLUS—”

"EXCUSE ME?!"

The wheels screech to a stop on the side of the road. A cloud of dust kicks up behind the car, but Sylus doesn’t even look at it. No—his full, undivided attention is now locked onto the cup in his hand.

He turns it slowly, his crimson eyes glowing as he reads the words again. And again.

Best. Dad. Ever.

He blinks.

Then he grins.

Not just a smirk—a full, wicked, teeth-flashing, Sylus-style grin that immediately puts you on high alert.

“Kitten,” he purrs, tilting his head, voice dangerously low. “Is this what I think it is?”

You cross your arms. “If you think it means I’m pregnant, then yes.”

He lets out a low whistle, tapping the cup against the steering wheel like he cannot believe his luck.

“Oh-ho-ho,” he laughs, running a hand through his silver hair. “Oh, kitten.”

“…Why do you sound like you won something?” you ask, already regretting everything.

He takes another slow sip of coffee, relishing it, before placing the cup deliberately in the holder. Then he turns to you.

And just—stares.

His eyes gleam. His smirk deepens. And then—

“You belong to me now,” he murmurs, voice soaked in satisfaction.

Oh. Oh no.

“Don’t—”

“You were already mine,” he continues, ignoring your protest, fingers tracing slow circles on your knee. “But this? This makes it official.”

You squint. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Oh, sweetheart,” he breathes, leaning in until his nose barely brushes yours. “You are so trapped.”

Your breath catches.

His lips brush your jaw. Soft. Slow. Dangerous.

“Our baby,” he murmurs against your skin. “My legacy.”

Okay, that makes you snort. “Legacy? Are you serious—”

His fingers tighten on your thigh.

“I never joke about ownership, kitten.”

Your stomach flips. “Sylus, I swear—”

“I am,” he continues, voice so dangerously pleased, “about to be the most unbearable man alive.”

“You already are.”

He chuckles, dark and smooth.

Then, with zero warning, he pulls your seat lever—fully reclines it—and cages you in with both arms.

“SYLUS—”

“You think I’m letting you out of this car without celebrating properly?” His knee presses between yours. His lips hover just over yours. “Oh, kitten.”

A smug, deadly whisper—

“You’re not going anywhere.”

And just like that—you are so. Completely. Screwed.

☃️ Zayne

The drive is quiet, smooth, the hum of the engine steady. Zayne is driving like he does everything else—efficiently, precisely, with absolute control. One hand on the wheel, the other resting on the gear shift, his posture effortlessly composed.

You hand him his coffee.

He takes it automatically, barely looking away from the road as he lifts it to his lips.

Then—

The cup stops midair.

His fingers tighten.

His eyes flick down.

The muscles in his jaw shift.

You can see the exact second his mind starts processing.

His lips part slightly. His brows furrow just a fraction.

His eyes scan the words again, like data he needs to verify.

Best Dad Ever.

And just like that—Zayne enters full diagnostic mode.

His pupils dilate. His breathing adjusts. His shoulders tense in micro-movements.

Then, before you can speak, he mutters—

“Seven weeks.”

You blink. “What?”

He doesn’t answer. He’s already calculating. His eyes flick to the dashboard clock—counting back the exact number of days since your last cycle.

“No, wait,” he mutters, more to himself than to you, “six weeks, five days. That lines up better with—”

He cuts himself off, his grip on the wheel adjusting, his mind racing a mile a second.

Then he grabs his phone with one hand and immediately dials a number.

You stare at him. “Zayne, what are you—”

“It’s Doctor Zayne, I need a full prenatal assessment scheduled immediately.”

“What?!”

He ignores you, listening intently. His tone is calm, clipped, entirely professional, as if he’s in the middle of a patient consultation.

“Yes, priority level one.” His fingers tap against the wheel. “Standard screenings plus full genetic panel. I also want a full cardiovascular assessment given her recent—”

“ZAYNE.”

His jaw tightens. He barely spares you a glance, still listening to whoever’s on the other end.

“No, reschedule that for tomorrow, I’ll be overseeing this personally—”

You reach over and end the call.

Silence.

Zayne blinks once, slowly, as if rebooting.

Then he turns his head very carefully toward you.

“…Did you just—”

“Yes.”

His eyelid twitches.

“You,” he says, deadpan, “just ended an emergency medical consultation with one of the most sought-after specialists in the Linkon-city.”

“Yes.”

His lips press together tightly. His nostrils flare just a fraction.

Then—the cracks start showing.

His throat bobs. His fingers flex around the wheel. His chest rises with a sharp inhale—

And then, finally, he breaks.

His entire body sags forward as he presses his forehead to the steering wheel, exhaling shakily.

“…Oh, fuck,” he mutters, voice completely wrecked.

You blink.

He takes another sharp breath, his hands gripping the wheel like he’s stabilizing himself.

“…I was fine,” he says, more to himself than to you.

You stare at him. “No, you weren’t.”

“I was,” he insists, head still against the wheel. “I had a plan. I was handling it.”

You tilt your head. “Handling it like a patient case?”

His fingers flex again. “It’s not the same.”

“Zayne.”

He doesn’t move.

“Zay.”

Nothing.

So you reach out, fingers slipping into his hair, scratching lightly at his scalp—

He lets out a breath that absolutely shatters you.

Like something inside him has finally collapsed.

Then—without warning—he turns and kisses you.

It’s not like before. Not calculated, not measured, not careful.

It’s desperate.

Like he needs to feel you, needs to know you’re here, with him, real.

When he pulls back, his forehead rests against yours, his hand coming up to cradle the back of your head.

“I can’t…” He exhales slowly. “I can’t lose control of this.”

Your chest tightens. “You don’t have to control everything, Zayne.”

His hand slips down, pressing gently against your stomach. His fingers splay, warm and reverent.

“…You’re right.” His voice is quieter now.

Another pause.

Then—

A tiny, breathless laugh escapes him.

You raise an eyebrow. “What?”

His eyes flick to yours, golden-green and impossibly soft.

“…I’m going to be a dad.”

You smile. “Yeah, you are.”

Another shaky exhale. Then, a full-blown smile—rare, genuine, warm.

“…Shit.” He laughs again, shaking his head. “I should’ve seen this coming.”

You grin. “Should I be concerned that you can predict organ failure before it happens, but not this?”

His hand tightens just slightly over your stomach. His smirk is smaller now, more sincere.

“No,” he murmurs. “Because this—”

He leans in, lips brushing just over your temple.

“This is the best surprise I’ve ever had.”

🍎 Caleb

It’s a perfect drive—at least, for now. The sun is low, stretching golden light across the road, and Caleb is relaxed, one hand on the wheel, the other lazily resting on the armrest. He’s humming to himself, terribly off-key, completely endearing, and utterly oblivious to the bomb you’re about to drop on him.

You hand him his coffee.

“Thanks, pip-squeak,” he murmurs, taking it automatically, his eyes still on the road.

He takes a sip.

Then—

He stops.

His hand tightens around the cup.

His posture locks up.

And just like that, you realize you’ve made a terrible mistake.

The car swerves.

“CALEB!”

With military precision, he pulls over so hard the tires skid, shifts into park, and slams the brakes.

He doesn’t move.

He doesn’t breathe.

You barely have time to process before he whirls toward you, holding up the cup like it’s an explosive device.

“WHAT. IS. THIS?!”

You blink. “Uh. Coffee?”

His eye twitches. His chest rises in one sharp inhale.

Then—his voice drops to a whisper.

“…Are you messing with me right now?”

Your lips twitch. “Nope.”

Silence.

Pure, deafening silence.

Then—

His entire soul leaves his body.

He throws the door open, jumps out of the car, and immediately crouches down with his hands on his knees.

You watch in real time as a fully grown man has a complete emotional crisis on the side of the road.

"OH FUCK. OH FUCK. OH FUCK."

“CALEB, GET BACK IN THE CAR.”

"I NEED A SECOND."

“You’re going to get hit by—”

"I NEED A FUCKING SECOND."

You drop your head into your hands as he rakes his fingers through his hair, muttering to himself like he’s trying to process the meaning of life.

Then—abruptly—he stops.

Stands up straight. Spins to face you.

“…How long?”

You hesitate. “Caleb—”

“HOW LONG?!”

You sigh. “A few weeks.”

His jaw clenches. His eyes dart down, scanning you, like he’s only just now realizing that oh shit, you’re actually pregnant.

Then—he yanks open the car door, sits back down, and buckles his seatbelt like it personally wronged him.

You blink. “…Are you okay?”

“No,” he admits immediately.

He exhales sharply, presses his hands to his face, and just—

Whimpers.

Not dramatically. Not in distress. Just the most overwhelmed, overjoyed, short-circuited noise you’ve ever heard come out of him.

Then, suddenly—he laughs.

Not just any laugh—a helpless, breathless, disbelieving laugh.

“Oh, fuck.” He drags a hand down his face, his grin growing. “Oh, fuck. We’re having a baby.”

You grin back. “Yeah, we are.”

He turns to you, and something changes.

The panic is still there—but beneath it? Something warm. Something so impossibly, devastatingly soft.

Then—he moves.

His hand presses to your stomach.

Just rests there.

Like he’s afraid to push too hard, afraid to shatter this moment.

His throat bobs. His fingers spread slightly.

And then, his voice—softer than you’ve ever heard it—

“…That’s our baby.”

You nod.

His eyes flicker. His entire body tenses.

Then, without warning—

You are no longer sitting.

You yelp as he hauls you into his lap, wrapping both arms around you and crushing you against his chest.

“CALEB—”

“NOPE.” His voice is muffled into your shoulder. “I NEED THIS. GIVE ME THIS. RIGHT NOW.”

You laugh. “You’re squishing me—”

"YOU’RE PREGNANT WITH MY BABY AND I HAVE TO DEAL WITH THIS EMOTIONALLY, THANK YOU."

You let him have it.

For a long moment, he just holds you. His breath is shaky, his grip tight, like he’s trying to memorize every second of this before it slips away.

Then—he shifts slightly.

A deep breath. A pause.

Then, suddenly—

His grip tightens, and he leans back just enough to look at you dead in the eyes.

“…Okay but—what about me?”

You blink. “What?”

His ears start going red.

“I mean,” he clears his throat, gaze darting anywhere but your face now, “what about… you know.”

You smirk. “I don’t know. Clarify.”

He groans, tilting his head back against the seat. “Pip-squeak, come on.”

You hum, trailing your fingers over his shoulders, down his chest. “Ohh. You mean—”

"YES." His grip tightens on your hips. "What happens now? Do I just—" He gestures vaguely between you. "Forget about it? Nine months of nothing?"

You shrug innocently. “Well. There are other ways…”

He freezes.

His eyes darken. His jaw clenches. His fingers twitch.

“…Other ways.”

You nod. “Mhm.”

He stares. Processing.

Then, suddenly—

He grabs the steering wheel with both hands, stares straight ahead, and shifts into drive.

“Okay.”

You snort. “That’s it?”

“I have to drive us home. Immediately.” His voice is far too serious. “This is now a time-sensitive situation.”

You laugh. “Caleb, you are so—”

He shoots you a warning look, eyes still burning. “Do not finish that sentence unless you want me to pull over again.”

You grin wickedly. “And then what?”

His grip tightens on the wheel.

Then, low and dark—

“…Don’t test me, pip-squeak.”

And just like that—

You have created a monster.

☀️ Xavier

The drive is smooth, effortless. Xavier handles the car the way he handles everything else—calmly, efficiently, like he’s already three steps ahead of reality. The road stretches endlessly ahead, the soft hum of the engine filling the silence between you.

You hand him his coffee.

“Thank you, love,” he murmurs, taking it without looking, perfectly composed, as always.

He lifts it to his lips, takes a sip—

Then stops.

His fingers tighten slightly around the cup.

You watch as his eyes flick down to the message.

Best Dad Ever.

For a moment, he doesn’t react. Doesn’t tense, doesn’t flinch. Just…observes.

Then, with deliberate ease, he tilts his head slightly in your direction.

“…Very funny.”

You blink. “Excuse me?”

He gestures toward the cup, lips twitching in amusement. “You can’t fool me, princess. I know you too well.”

He takes another slow sip, entirely unbothered.

“This is a joke,” he continues, matter-of-factly. “You wanted to see if I’d panic. Clever, but predictable.”

You hum thoughtfully. “Oh, yeah? What makes you so sure?”

His smirk grows. “Because if it were real, you’d be significantly worse at hiding your anticipation.”

You tilt your head. “Mm. Maybe.”

He chuckles softly, shaking his head as he shifts his focus back to the road. “You’ll have to do better than this next time.”

You shrug, lifting your own coffee to your lips.

He barely glances at it.

Then—he does a double take.

His brows furrow. His body stiffens slightly.

You see it—the moment the wheels in his head start turning. The moment his brain connects the dots.

Best Mom Ever.

Of twins.

There is a pause. A deep, soul-crushing pause.

Then, slowly, very slowly, he takes one more sip of coffee.

And immediately chokes on it.

He coughs once, hard, sharp. His grip on the wheel tightens so fast his knuckles go white.

And then—he does the single most terrifying thing he has ever done in his entire existence.

He slowly eases his foot off the gas pedal.

Not jerking the car. Not slamming the brakes. Just gradually reducing speed with surgical precision.

His eyes are locked straight ahead, unblinking.

The car glides toward the shoulder of the road in complete, deafening silence.

Then, in eerie, methodical movements,

He puts the car in park.

Takes off his seatbelt.

Reaches over.

And plucks your coffee out of your hands.

You blink. “Xavier?”

He says nothing.

Instead, he places both cups onto the dashboard.

Adjusts them. Lines them up perfectly so that the words are directly facing him.

Then—

He stares.

At the cups.

At the words.

At his entire future.

Silence.

Then, very quietly—

“…Twins.”

His throat bobs.

His hand comes up and presses against his temple.

Another beat of pure silence.

Then—

He laughs.

A single breathless, helpless laugh.

Then another.

And another.

Until suddenly—

He dissolves into a full-blown existential breakdown.

His entire body tips forward, forehead pressing against the steering wheel.

“Twins.” His voice is muffled, bordering on delirious. “I—twins. Two. There are two.”

You bite your lip. “There will be, yeah.”

He lets out a sound that is neither human nor machine.

Then, slowly—he lifts his head again.

His eyes are unfocused, like he’s calculating probabilities of survival in real-time.

Then—

His head turns toward you.

And you swear you see actual panic.

“How,” he exhales, voice quiet, shaky, “do we own two of something when we never needed to own one?”

You blink. “Xav, what—?”

He gestures vaguely at the cups.

“How do we prepare for twins if we were never prepared for a singular baby?”

You open your mouth—

"WE DON'T EVEN HAVE TWO OF THE SAME PILLOW."

You freeze. “What.”

He gestures more aggressively now, looking absolutely unhinged.

“OUR BED.” He waves toward the back seat. “THE PILLOWS. THEY’RE DIFFERENT. HOW DID WE GET TWO DIFFERENT PILLOWS? HOW DID I LET THIS HAPPEN?”

You stare at him.

“You’re spiraling.”

“I AM LOGICALLY PROCESSING THE GRAVITY OF OUR SITUATION.”

“Xavier.”

He inhales. Exhales.

Then, softer now, more real, more raw—

“…We’re going to have twins.”

You nod.

His shoulders drop. His eyes soften.

Then—before you can react, he reaches out, pulls you into his lap, and buries his face into your neck.

For a long moment, he just holds you.

No overthinking. No calculations.

Just you.

When he finally speaks, his voice is low, warm, unshaken.

“…I am never going to recover from this information.”

You laugh softly. “You will.”

He leans back just enough to meet your eyes. And finally—finally—his lips curve into a small, exhausted smile.

“…They’re going to be terrifyingly intelligent.”

You snicker. “Oh, for sure.”

“And devastatingly attractive.”

“Obviously.”

He hums. “I will be insufferable.”

“You already are.”

His arms tighten around you, his lips brushing your forehead.

“…I’m going to be a father of twins.”

“You are.”

“…That’s the most terrifying thing I’ve ever heard in my life.”

You grin. “You’ll be fine.”

Another pause.

Then—

A mischievous glint sparks in his eyes.

“…Twins, you said?”

You narrow your eyes. “Yes?”

His smirk returns, sharper this time.

“So.” He tilts his head. “Shall we test for a third?”

You shove him so hard the car rocks slightly. ****** More stories here: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aleksa_Tia

[gobleann]

Possession, Obsession, Devotion: A Study in Five Men

Nope, I haven’t vanished. Super grateful for all your messages and the sweet support — seriously, thank you. Just swamped with work right now, so writing’s slowed down a bit. Still working on your requests, I promise! And I’m knee-deep in a pretty massive, emotionally wrecking angst based on a Songfic prompt. While that one’s cooking, I thought I’d drop another batch of my random writer notes — all bundled up in one chaotic little post.

CW/TW: Headcanons, Possessive Behavior, Obsessive Love, Jealousy, Power Imbalance, Toxic Romance, Red Flags Treated as Romance, Intimacy with Control Undertones, Emotional Manipulation (Mild), Dubious Coping Mechanisms, Intense Emotional Dependency, Suggestive Themes, Mild Sexual Content, Unhealthy Attachment Framed as Devotion Genre: Romance-Infused, Erotically-Charged Drabbles with a Generous Side of Fluff Words Count: 8.6K

5 Petty Jealousies That Reveal Just How Much Caleb’s Obsessed With You

1. You call another man “handsome” — even as a joke. You were teasing. Flirting, in that harmless, breezy way of yours. Caleb laughed. Then immediately kissed you like he needed to reassert territorial dominance with tongue and body weight. Funny how your jokes always end with your back against the wall and his hand on your throat. Lovingly.

2. You go to someone else for help instead of him. You needed tech support. A charger. Help moving the couch. And instead of calling your six-foot-two, military-trained, emotionally unstable boyfriend — you asked Xavier. Caleb didn’t say anything. Just stood in the doorway, watching, calculating how long it would take to move the entire solar system to make sure you never do that again.

3. You don’t sit on his lap when there’s clearly space.You chose the chair. Next to him. Not on him. He’s not mad. No, no. He's just questioning the entire fabric of your connection and whether you’ve lost all sense of instinct. And when you finally realize and climb into his lap? He sighs like a man being restored to life.

4. You post a photo where you're not touching him.Nice shot. Great lighting. Cute outfit. But why is he two feet away and not glued to your side like a shadow with military clearance? His arm belongs around your waist. His hand belongs on your thigh. And your caption? Should’ve been his name, followed by a possessive noun.

5. You forget to wear his dog tags. He left them for you. Carefully. On your nightstand. The same tags he’s worn through hell. And you? Walked out the door wearing a cute sweater and nothing that says “belonging to Colonel Caleb.” He’ll never say a word. He’ll just strip you slow the second you get home and fasten them back around your neck himself. With teeth.

5 Lies Caleb Tells Himself About You

1. “I don’t care that she uses my toothbrush.”You could take a fresh one. You don’t. You reach for his, same as always — like that handle belongs to you more than to him. He mutters something about germs. Then watches you rinse with that smug little smile. And later, when you're asleep, he moves it back to your side of the sink. Right where you like it.

2. “She can wear whatever she wants.”And you do. His shirt. His flight jacket. That tiny black top you swear is “practical.” He acts unbothered. Says nothing. But the second someone else looks too long? He stands behind you. One hand on your waist. That casual kind of possessive that feels like a warning wrapped in warmth.

3. “I don’t need her to text me when she gets home.”You’re a grown woman. A Hunter. You’ve neutralized things with more teeth than common sense. You say “Don’t wait up.” He says “Sure.” Then checks his phone every ten minutes like it's a heartbeat monitor and he's waiting to hear yours again.

4. “It’s fine if she flirts. I know it’s harmless.”You’re charming. It’s part of who you are. You wink. Smile. Lean in a little too close. Caleb plays it cool. Says, “She’s always like that.” Then grabs your waist in front of everyone and whispers: “Try that again, and I’ll fuck you so hard next time you won’t remember anyone else’s name.”

5. “She doesn’t need to say she loves me every day.”You say it once. In passing. A low little “love you” as you walk away, like it’s nothing. But he hears it like an oath. And that night? He holds your hand a little tighter. Pulls your body a little closer. Not because he needs to hear it again. But because if he doesn’t touch you, he might forget how to breathe.

5 Things That Make Him Go Completely Feral (In Lust, Not Rage)

1. Your hair falls in his face. Leaning over him. Stretching across the couch. Just close enough that it brushes his cheek like it has rights. You don’t even notice. But he does. Every time. He doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t move. Just breathes in and lets the world narrow to that one soft, smug part of you.

2. You chew on your thumb when you’re thinking. Not seductively. Not even consciously. Just a tiny bite to the edge of your nail while you’re mid-rant about your latest recon or trying to remember the name of a street vendor. It’s nothing. Stupid. Barely a gesture. And yet — he stares. Tracks it like a countdown. Fists flexing slow. Jaw tight. Because that mouth should never look that innocent.

3. You interrupt him when he’s cooking. He’s focused. Knife in hand. Half-distracted by heat and oil. And then you slide in behind him. Touch his lower back. Squeeze something you shouldn’t. Say “Smells good, chef,” with a grin that makes his whole spine forget how to hold. He curses. Tries to shoo you off. You lick something off his finger. And now dinner’s going to burn.

4. You try on his Fleet cap like it’s a joke. You lift it off the rack. Set it crooked on your head. Salute with two fingers and that smile that once made him fall off a training tower. “Colonel,” you say. And he’s gone. He should laugh. He doesn’t. He walks over, takes it off you slow, and kisses your temple like he’s reassigning you to a very different kind of mission.

5. You say “I’m yours”. Not in bed. Not in public. Just… casually. In passing. In that low voice you only use when something’s real. “I’m yours.”He looks at you like you just disarmed a bomb with your bare hands. And then he ruins you for saying it so lightly.

5 Power Couple Moments That Made Everyone Else Jealous (And a Little Scared)

1. You’re the only one allowed to fly with him in his military jet.Clearance denied. Protocol says no. Regulations triple-confirm it. And yet — you’re in the co-pilot seat, boots up, fingers tracing buttons you’re not supposed to touch. He doesn’t stop you. Someone once asked why you get to ride with him when no one else does. He looked up from the cockpit and said, “She’s my gravity.” End of discussion.

2. You only need to place your hand on his to calm him down.No words. No pleading. No strategic de-escalation. Just your fingers, settling lightly over his, when something in him starts to coil too tight. And just like that — his spine eases. The heat in his eyes lowers by a degree. People have seen him end arguments with three words. They’ve never seen him go silent for anyone but you.

3. You’re the only person he’ll interrupt a briefing for.He’s mid-sentence. Room full of officers. Tactical projections glowing on the wall. His phone buzzes. He glances down, sees your name — and pauses. “Give me five,” he says. And walks out without waiting for permission. Someone once asked who it was.  He said, “The only priority higher than this fleet.”  No one asked again.

4. You walk in on his arm at the Farspace Fleet annual gala.He’s in dress whites. You’re in black. And the room — full of admirals, envoys, diplomats — parts like mist when you enter. He doesn’t introduce you. He doesn’t need to. You’re not just his date. You’re the one who makes him dangerous in silence. And everyone knows it.

5. You don’t need words to communicate.One glance. A tilt of your head. A tiny shift in posture across the room. He’s already moving. Already reading you like mission data. To others, it looks like magic. Intuition. Maybe telepathy. But for you two?  It’s just muscle memory — built from years of almosts, nevers, and finallys.

5 Times Caleb Was a Walking Red Flag But You Loved Him Anyway

1. He pulled the full personnel file on a man you once smiled at.You were being polite. Friendly. The guy asked something harmless, you laughed. By morning, Caleb had his record open on a secure datapad, scrolling like he wasn’t reading a life — just calculating the risk factor. You asked what he was doing. He said, “I like knowing who wants what’s mine.” And then kissed you like he hoped you never asked him to stop.

2. He showed up at your door at 02:03 AM. Soaking wet. Furious. Silent.You missed one message. One. He waited. Thirty minutes. An hour. And then something in him snapped. No threats. No drama. Just the sound of his knock like a warning shot. You opened the door. He didn’t speak. Just stared. And then pulled you in with a grip like survival wasn’t optional anymore.

3. He scared the hell out of a junior pilot for asking your name.The kid was fresh. Eager. Smiled a little too long. Said, “Hey, what should I call you?” You started to answer. Then turned — and saw Caleb across the room. Expression calm. Stance neutral. Eyes loaded. The pilot apologized before you even said a word.

4. He slammed his hand on the table when you joked about breaking up.Just a joke. A throwaway line. Something stupid like “Guess I’ll go find someone less intense.” And his hand hit the surface before the words fully left your mouth. Not loud. Not violent. Just final. He didn’t yell. Didn’t argue. Just looked at you like you’d put a knife in his ribs and smiled about it. You never made that joke again.

5. He called you “dangerous” — and meant it like a vow.It was late. You were arguing. You said something sharp. He caught your wrist and said it low, almost reverent: “You’re dangerous.” But not like an accusation. Like awe. Like worship. Like he’d already decided to stay, even if you wrecked him completely. Even if he’d have to protect the world from you. Or protect you from himself.

5 Petty Jealousies That Reveal Just How Much Zayne’s Obsessed With You

1. Someone else bandaged your scratch. Just a graze. A stupid piece of shrapnel across your forearm. A colleague wrapped it up. No big deal. You came home smiling. Told him it barely hurt. He nodded. Quiet. Then excused himself to the kitchen. Five minutes later, he returned with antiseptic, clean gauze, and the words: “Take it off. I’m doing it properly.”  You didn’t argue. Neither did he. 2. Someone at work lent you their umbrella. A man. It was raining. You forgot yours. He offered. You accepted.  Zayne didn’t say a thing when you mentioned it over dinner. Just hummed. Neutral. The next morning, you found a new umbrella in your bag. Carbon fiber. Windproof. Labeled discreetly with your initials. You didn’t ask how he knew the exact weight your bag could carry without straining your shoulder. 3. You asked the waiter to recommend a wine. It was harmless. Polite. You were curious. But Zayne was sitting right there. He didn’t blink. Just looked at the waiter, then at you. Then took the list back. “Actually,” he said, calm as glass, “she prefers reds with less acidity. I’ll order.” You nodded. The waiter nodded. And somewhere between the clink of glasses, you realized that wasn't about wine at all. 4. You didn’t invite him to your morning training. He’d had a night shift. Surgery ran late. You wanted him to rest. So you left quietly. He woke up to an empty bed, your gym bag missing, and a silence that felt like a closed door. You came back to find his routine disrupted, his pulse still too fast — and a protein shake mixed just how you like it, chilled and waiting on the table. He never mentioned it. But now, if you decide to “let him rest” again… your training starts later. And doesn’t involve clothes. 5. You called another man “smart.” It was a game show. Trivia night. Some stranger on-screen made a clever move. You smiled. “Wow. That was actually really smart.” Zayne didn’t look up from his tablet. Didn’t even shift. But ten minutes later, you found yourself in a very precise debate about probability, strategy, and why that move wasn’t that brilliant after all. You didn’t argue. You just leaned closer. He didn’t smirk, but you felt it anyway.

5 Lies Zayne Tells Himself About You

1. "I’m just your cardiologist during exams." It’s clinical. Professional. Necessary. He listens to your heartbeat, takes your vitals, asks you to breathe deeper — deeper. You unbutton your shirt. He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t look. Doesn’t feel anything. Except for the part where he adjusts his gloves a little too tightly. And maybe takes one extra second to remove the stethoscope from your skin. 2. "Lunch tastes the same without you." He orders the same thing. Same café. Same tea. But the pastry tastes off. The space feels louder. The table — emptier. He tells himself it’s fine. Then brings the leftovers back to his office. Doesn’t touch them. Just leaves the box where your hand might find it later. 3. "I don’t need to pick you up." It’s logical. You’re a professional. Your job runs over sometimes. So does his. But your message was short. The streetlights are on. The buses are unreliable.  He checks traffic cams. Weather. Public transit delays. Then sits very still, staring at his phone, wondering how to offer you a ride without making it sound like panic. 4. "I’m not checking. I’m sleeping." You once left while he was asleep. You thought it was kinder. Quieter. Now he says he “needed water” or “had a dream.” But every night, at 3 AM, his hand reaches. Just to feel your back. Your wrist. The smallest proof that you haven’t disappeared again. 5. "Short skirts are inefficient." He says they’re impractical. Not suited for cold weather. Definitely not for terrain with hostile wanderer activity. You raise a brow. He adds, “You’re not seventeen. Dress like it.” But the second no one’s watching, his hand is already sliding up your thigh under the table. And when you raise a brow at him, he just says, flat: “Checking for circulation.” You’re not fooled. He’s already failed the mission.

5 Things That Make Zayne Go Completely Feral (In Lust, Not Rage)

1. You straighten his tie. You’re not thinking about it. Just reaching out, adjusting the knot, smoothing the line down his chest like it’s second nature. He stays still. Breath held. Eyes on your face. You step back. He doesn’t. Because now all he can think about is using that same tie to bind your wrists to the chair in his office — and how many minutes he can steal between appointments without compromising your breathing. 2. You dip your finger into the frosting of his pastry. You don’t ask. Just lean in, collect a bit of cream with your fingertip — and taste it. Oblivious. Innocent. Distracted by something else. He watches. Silently. And now the fork in his hand feels criminally unnecessary, because his mouth is dry, his mind’s gone blank, and he’s halfway to pulling you into his lap just to return the favor — with interest. 3. You take off your bra without removing your shirt. It’s casual. Automatic. You’re talking about your day, laughing, and then — One arm out. Then the other. The strap slides through the sleeve and vanishes into your laundry bag like it never existed. His brain glitches. His hands twitch. And he will absolutely spend the rest of the evening pretending to listen while picturing every technical step of reversing that maneuver with his teeth. 4. You imitate him. Badly. You’re wearing his lab coat. His glasses. Sitting at his desk, brows drawn, lips pressed tight. Your impression is awful. He should be annoyed. But instead — he watches. Sharp. Quiet. And when you finally laugh and start to take it off, he gets up. Takes the coat from your shoulders himself. And tells you, too evenly, “You forgot the gloves.” 5. You trace lazy shapes on his wrist while talking about something unrelated. You’re saying something about your neighbor’s cat. Something trivial. But your fingers are moving in a slow, absent pattern across his skin. And Zayne — who has operated on live hearts under pressure, who has held lives in one hand and death in the other — is currently struggling not to grab your wrist and drag you onto the desk. Because apparently, nothing in this galaxy has the precision impact of your fingertip.

5 Power Couple Moments That Made Everyone Else Jealous (And a Little Scared)

1. You have a keycard to his office.Not a guest pass. Not a shared access code. A permanent, personalized, high-level card to a room most staff can’t even knock on without permission. You walked in one day mid-shift, casual, spinning the card between your fingers like it was a hairpin. Three nurses saw. One dropped her tablet. Rumors started before you even closed the door. Zayne didn’t correct them.

2. When he received a prestigious award, the first person he thanked was you.Best cardiothoracic surgeon of the year. Cameras flashing. Applause rising. Everyone expected a speech about innovation and responsibility. Instead, he said: “I’d like to thank the one person who keeps me alive enough to do this work. My partner. My favorite interruption.”Then he looked straight at you. The auditorium melted.

3. You’re both dressed like weapons. And everyone notices.He wears tailored coats, precision-cut collars, charcoal palettes like a tactical signature.You? Heels like blades. A suit that redefines “combat-ready.” And when you walk together — sharp, silent, side by side — people stop talking. Someone once tried to photograph you. The headline read: Unknown dignitaries arrive. Security does not comment.

4. You don’t argue. You duet.Someone crossed a line. Loud, drunk, smug. Zayne responded first — clean, cold, just one sentence long. The man blinked. Started to retort. You finished it for him. Elegant, sharp, no profanity required. He left. Fast. And you turned back to Zayne like nothing happened — while everyone else tried to recover from what could only be described as a linguistic orgasm.

5. He opens doors, buttons coats, and moves chairs like it’s instinct.Not performative. Not flashy. Just… precise. He adjusts your sleeve without thinking. Helps you into the car like it’s always been his hand. You barely register it. But the woman across the street? The one who saw it all from behind her coffee cup? She’s still texting her group chat about “the man in the long coat and the woman who ruined my standards.”

5 Times Zayne Was a Walking Red Flag But You Loved Him Anyway

1. He gets live data from your heart monitor.Your Hunter’s Watch sends updates to the cloud. Zayne rerouted the feed to his private tablet. “Just in case,” he said. Now he knows when your pulse spikes. When you’re injured. When you don’t sleep. You never gave him access. You never had to. The first time he called mid-mission to say “slow your breathing” — you realized he wasn’t tracking. He was watching over.

2. He absolutely hates when you drive. Always.You're capable. Fast. Efficient. And yet — every time you take the wheel, something in him shuts down. He doesn’t argue. Doesn’t protest. Just goes silent. And stares at the road like it personally offended him. He says, “It’s fine.” But he holds the dashboard too tightly for that to be true.

3. He freezes every time you say “I can handle it.”You mean well. You’re strong. You are capable. But when you brush him off with a casual “I’ve got this,” he doesn’t nod. Doesn’t smile. He just stops. Eyes unreadable. Hands still. And when you come back later — even fine — there’s already a backup plan on your datapad. Three versions. In color.

4. He never replies to emotional messages right away.You send: “I miss you. A lot.” His read receipt appears. Then… nothing. For two hours. And just when you start to spiral — he sends a photo. Of your favorite pastry. Waiting on his table. With one word: “Soon.” You hate how well it works. 

5. He spoke to the man flirting with you like he was reviewing his autopsy.It was harmless. A drink. A joke. A compliment. You laughed. Zayne didn’t. He stepped in, shook the man’s hand, and said: "Tell me, has anyone ever checked your prefrontal lobe for impulse control irregularities?"The man left. Quickly. You rolled your eyes. Zayne didn’t apologize. He just took your hand. And changed the subject. Completely calm. Fully satisfied.

5 Petty Jealousies That Reveal Just How Much Rafayel’s Obsessed With You

1. Someone comments “🔥” under your photo — and you like it.He sees it. Of course he does. He sees everything. You think it’s harmless. He thinks it’s appalling that someone dared mark your beauty with an emoji better suited to grilled meat. He says nothing. But that night, you get a charcoal sketch of yourself in your favorite pose, signed with a tiny flame in the corner. When you ask about it, he hums. “Oh, just honoring your admirers’ creative input.”

2. You linger too long in front of another artist’s painting.Not just glance. Linger. Eyes soft. Head tilted. That thoughtful little breath you take when something moves you. He stands beside you, perfectly still. Smiling. Then leans in and whispers, “Cutie, if you start weeping, I may need to challenge the gallery owner to a duel.” You're not sure if he’s joking. You’re also not sure you want him to be.

3. You talk about a beautiful place you visited… without him.You’re glowing. Describing the light, the air, the view. He listens, nods, even asks questions. Then: “And did the sun taste the same without me there?” You pause. He smiles, all charm and cheekbones. “I’m just wondering how it dared rise, knowing we weren’t together.”

4. You send him a photo — and there’s someone else’s hand in the frame.You didn’t notice it. He did. He stares at the image like it’s a crime scene. Zooms in. Later, he replies: “Beautiful composition. Fascinating use of background tension. Would love to discuss the symbolism of that wrist — whose is it?” You laugh. He doesn’t.

5. You say some actor is “exactly your type.”He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t blink. Just goes very still, then casually asks, “Before or after makeup?” Later, you find your datapad background changed. It’s him. In perfect lighting. Shirt unbuttoned just so. The caption reads: “Still unsure who your type is? Look into my eyes. You’ll remember.”

5 Lies Rafayel Tells Himself About You

1. “I didn’t paint you. It’s just resemblance.”He insists it’s a study of emotion. A symbol. A face from memory. But the tilt of the head, the mouth, the birthmark near the collarbone — they’re all yours. You ask, teasing: “Is that me?” He blinks. Smiles slowly. “Cutie,” he says, “I wouldn’t paint you without permission.” And then changes the subject. Very deliberately.

2. “I don't reread your old messages.”He’s far too elegant for that. Far too composed. Except on quiet nights. On long flights. In museums where the silence scratches at his skin. Then he opens the archive. Just for the rhythm of your words. The accidental poetry. The way you once wrote “come home soon” like it meant more than time and place. He says it’s for “emotional reference.” He lies beautifully.

3. “I don't watch your mouth when you talk.”He’s an artist. A visual thinker. Of course he looks at faces. But not like that. Not at yours. Not like he’s memorizing the shape of every syllable just to feel them later against his throat. Not like he’s fantasizing mid-conversation about shutting you up with his tongue and tasting the sentence off your lips. No. Never. He’s listening.

4. “I haven’t memorized your scent through every season.”He claims not to notice. But he knows the spring version of you — soft rain, citrus skin, the aftershock of lilac. He knows the winter version — leather gloves, cinnamon breath, quiet wool. He doesn’t name them. Doesn’t chase the memory. But when you walk past — his eyes close. Briefly. Automatically. Like he’s gathering air before going under.

5. “I don't imagine your name with mine.”He’s not that romantic. Puh-lease. Marriage is a construct, surnames are politics, and love is beyond paperwork. He says all that with a flourish. And yet — there’s a notebook. Tucked under his mattress. Full of signatures. Yours. His. Just to see how it would look. Just in case.

5 Things That Make Rafayel Go Completely Feral (In Lust, Not Rage)

1. When you eat something juicy. Fruit. Fingers. With zero awareness.You bite into it slowly, distracted. Something sweet. Ripe. Juice glides over your lower lip, and your tongue follows without thinking. He watches, motionless. Not breathing. Not blinking. You glance at him. He tilts his head. Smiles. Says lightly: "That peach is about to become my personal enemy." You laugh. He doesn’t. He’s too busy wondering how it’s possible to be jealous of the fruit.

2. When you kiss his hand instead of his mouth. He leans in, expecting lips. Contact. Heat. And instead — you take his hand. Press a kiss into his palm. Soft. Deliberate. His breath catches. His throat tightens. Because that wasn’t affection. That was submission. And now he’s wondering just how far you’d let him take it. 3. When you tease him with your voice. Not the words. The tone. The whisper. You say his name like silk sliding over glass. You ask “You think so?” like it means “prove it.” You laugh — not loudly, but just enough to make his chest hurt. He could diagram it, break it into sound waves, prove the seduction in math. But instead, he just steps closer. And says, low: "Say that again. Slower." 4. When you sit on the floor, barefoot, flipping through his sketches — looking like you belong there. You’re humming something. Knees tucked up. No shoes. No guard. You tilt your head, study a piece, murmur: “I like this one.” He doesn’t even remember drawing it. He just remembers the way your hair spills over your shoulder and how the studio feels suddenly too small for how much he wants you. He doesn’t touch you. Not yet. He just watches like a starving thing. Memorizing the moment in case he dies of it later. 5. When you say “more.” In any context. “More sugar.” “More time.” “More.” That’s all it takes. One syllable. One open door. You never mean it the way he hears it — but he takes it as a promise. Like permission. Like a match tossed onto something already too dry to survive. And the next time he touches you? He makes damn sure you say it again.

5 Power Couple Moments That Made Everyone Else Jealous (And a Little Scared)

1. He painted a self-portrait — with you reflected in his pupils. Not your full form. Not a shared composition. Just his face. Direct gaze. And in both eyes: you. Looking at him. Always. When the painting debuted in the gallery’s main hall, critics called it “a study in obsession.” He called it accurate. 2. In an interview, he said you’re the only one who gets his sketches. The host asked who his work goes to first — gallery, agent, press. He smiled lazily and answered, “Her.” The room stilled. “The raw ones. The incomplete. The brutal drafts no one else deserves to see.” He didn’t say your name. He didn’t have to. The moment he said it, you were already trending. 3. He delayed his own exhibition opening because you weren’t there yet. The venue was full. Lights ready. Guests murmuring. But he stood at the entrance, fingers laced behind his back, perfectly calm. “She’s on the way,” he said. “She had a prior engagement.” No one questioned him. Later, when you finally arrived — graceful, composed, in a deep sapphire gown that matched the evening — only he noticed the tiny scratch on your knuckle. The faintest shadow of something darker, just beneath the perfume. You smiled. He took your hand. And the doors opened like they’d been waiting for you all along. 4. Someone flirted with him. He looked at you. Then said: “I’m already spoken for. Permanently.” It was charming. Playful. Someone touched his wrist, laughed softly, leaned a little too close. He didn’t pull away. Didn’t react. Just turned his head toward you. Found your eyes. Then said it — quietly, cleanly, like a closing signature on a finished masterpiece. 5. At a charity auction, he sold a painting titled: “Painted Between Her Breathing and Mine.” The crowd didn’t know what to do with that. Some laughed nervously. Some applauded. The bidding started high and ended astronomical. But as the winning guest walked past you, holding the canvas with reverent hands — he still glanced back. At you. As if to say: That canvas holds the image. But I keep the original.

5 Times Rafayel Was a Walking Red Flag But You Loved Him Anyway

1. He can disappear for three days and return with, “I just needed to stop being jealous.” No warning. No calls. Just silence, like he fell off the planet. You panic. Rage. Rehearse five speeches. And then he walks in — composed, scented like night air and oil paint. “Sorry,” he says softly. “I was being irrational. Had to… recalibrate.” You want to scream. Instead, you breathe him in like he’s home. 2. He destroyed the career of a critic who called your photo “poorly lit.” It wasn’t even a real insult. Just a throwaway line in a blog. But Raf read it. Once. And within a week, that critic was blacklisted from three galleries, publicly corrected by five curators, and accidentally misquoted in a viral controversy. You found out much later. He just looked at you and said, “No one calls shadow a flaw when it falls across you.” 3. He faked an illness so you wouldn’t leave for a mission. Nothing dramatic. Just a cough. A warm forehead. You hesitated. Postponed. Stayed. The next morning, he was radiant. Healthy. Annoyingly smug. You narrowed your eyes. He only shrugged, kissed your wrist, and whispered, “I needed one more night. Forgive the performance.” You did. Of course you did. The guilt felt almost like foreplay. 4. He left your clothes wet in the wash so you’d wear his shirt instead. Accident, he claimed. Timing. Cycles. But somehow, your entire outfit was still in the machine — cold, damp, and useless — while his favorite linen shirt lay folded neatly on the bed. You put it on. He watched you button it. And smiled like he'd won a silent war no one else even knew was happening. 5. He reads your messages without asking. Calmly. You know it. He knows you know. He doesn’t deny it. Just traces your jaw one evening and says, “You don’t hide anything from me. That’s why it doesn’t count as intrusion.” And the worst part? He’s right. You stopped hiding a long time ago.

5 Petty Jealousies That Reveal Just How Much Xavier’s Obsessed With You

1. You nap on the wrong side of the bed.You nap on the wrong side of the bed. Not wrong, exactly. Just… not his. You’re curled up in the late-afternoon light, peaceful, quiet, unaware. He doesn’t wake you. Doesn’t move you. But when you stir, there’s a weight in the silence. His side of the bed is untouched. Pillow perfectly aligned. No warmth. No scent. And your blanket — tucked just a little tighter — like a quiet reminder that even when you’re here, something’s missing. Something he’s not sure how to ask for without sounding ridiculous. Like: your perfume. On his pillow. Where it should be.

2. You tell him about a dream. Someone else was in it.You describe it absently. A mission. A flash of danger. And a man — not him — at your side. He listens. Nods. Doesn’t blink. But that night, when he kisses you, his hand stays on the back of your neck longer than usual. And his mouth says I want you, but his grip says: you don’t forget me, even in sleep.

3. You keep something old, worn, unnamed.A keychain. A patch. A folded slip of paper. Nothing dramatic. But it’s always near. He asks, once: “What is that?” You smile. “Just something from a long time ago.” He nods. Never brings it up again. But two days later, he leaves something else beside it. Not to replace. Just to match the weight.

4. You let the barista choose your drink instead of him.You smiled. Said “sure, why not.” Took the new coffee without hesitation. He was beside you. Holding your usual. You didn’t notice. But when you left the café, his own drink sat untouched. And he walked a little faster. A little quieter. As if recalibrating the fact that maybe someone else knows your taste. Even if it’s just in coffee.

5. You close your laptop too fast when he walks in.“Just a movie,” you say. Too quickly. He doesn’t ask. Doesn’t tilt his head. Just nods and sets his gloves on the table like he didn’t notice the flicker in your tone. Later, while checking your tabs, he sees the paused frame — teeth on skin, hands holding wrists, someone begging. Silently. His breath doesn’t change. His expression stays neutral. But when he finds you, hours later, he doesn’t speak. Just pins your arms above your head and kisses you until you can’t remember what the scene looked like — only what it felt like when it became real.

5 Lies Xavier Tells Himself About You

1. “I’m not jealous of whoever taught you how to fight like that.”He knows it doesn’t matter. It’s skill. It’s history. Efficiency passed from one warrior to another. He tells himself it’s irrelevant. But when he watches you move — precise, lethal, beautiful — something coils in his chest. Not because of the technique. But because someone else saw you become this version of yourself. And he didn’t.

2. “It’s logical to sleep apart sometimes.” You need rest. Space. Post-mission decompression. He understands. It’s healthy. Statistically sound. But the first night you say “I’ll sleep in my own apartment,” the bed feels wrong. His internal balance off by degrees he can’t quantify. He tells himself it’s fine. Then stares at the ceiling for hours, heart syncing to a rhythm that isn’t there.

3. “It doesn’t bother me when you keep things to yourself.” You’re independent. He respects that. Boundaries are natural. But you say “I’m fine” with a smile that doesn’t reach your eyes, and he catalogs ten micro-expressions that say otherwise. Still, he nods. Doesn’t push. Then replays your words in his head for the next three days, trying to solve you like a puzzle that refuses to open.

4. "I could walk away, if it ever came to that." He tells himself he’s rational. Detached. If you chose something else — someone else — he would adapt. But deep down, he knows: he’s already memorized your weight in his arms, the way your name fits inside his silence. If it ever came to leaving… he wouldn’t walk. He’d stay exactly where you left him. Quiet. Waiting. Ruined.

5. "You wouldn’t lie to protect me. Would you?" You say “it was nothing,” “I’m just tired,” “I handled it.” And he accepts it. On the surface. But his mind starts building alternate versions. Safer ones. Worse ones. Ones where you bled and said nothing. He tells himself you’d never hide real danger. But he still checks your vitals in the logs. Every time.

5 Things That Make Xavier Go Completely Feral (In Lust, Not Rage)

1. You walk in wearing a bright yellow duck kigurumi.  Absurd. Fuzzy. Zipped up wrong. You yawn, mumble something about tea, and pad across the room like comfort incarnate. He looks up. Blinks once. And forgets what he was doing. The beak hood. The bare ankles. The way you scratch your neck, half-asleep. None of it should be seductive. But now he can’t look away. His gaze tracks you like threat assessment — only it's not danger he’s calculating. It’s proximity. Access. How long he can pretend he's unaffected… before you end up against the wall. Still wearing the duck. For now.

2. You adjust the chest plate of his armor.  No rush. Just fingertips over matte metal, sliding a buckle, pressing a clasp. Your hands linger longer than they need to. You don’t even realize you’re doing it. But he does. He’s counting your seconds, your pressure, the exact placement of your thumb. If anyone asks why his next shot missed the center by half an inch, it’s because you touched him like a secret no one else was allowed to see. 3. You peel off your combat gloves with your teeth.  It’s efficient. Quick. Practical. But the way your mouth closes around the strap and your fingers flex once, twice, before they’re bare — He’s staring before he knows he is. Processing nothing but the curve of your jaw and the memory of that same mouth around his length. The second glove doesn’t stand a chance. Neither does he, honestly. 4. You wear a thin black choker.  No explanation. No warning. It’s not part of your gear. Has no field utility. But it’s there, snug against your throat like a promise no one else knows about. He sees it once and looks away. Sees it again and swallows too hard. The third time, he doesn’t look at all — he just shifts in his seat like everything in his world needs immediate recalibration. 5. You say “later” when he leans in.  Just a little. Enough to feel the pull. And you smile, soft, apologetic, not teasing — just... not now. He nods, like he understands. He always does. But from that second forward, every calculation, every breath, every cell in his body becomes attuned to the moment you say now. And when you finally do — he doesn’t wait. He doesn’t ask. He just takes, like patience was never part of the equation to begin with.

5 Power Couple Moments That Made Everyone Else Jealous (And a Little Scared)

1. You moved in perfect sync — without saying a single word. In the training hall, you didn’t say a word — but moved like a mirrored code. You shifted, he adjusted. You reached, he passed. No signals, no commands. Just two bodies in absolute sync. Someone watching whispered, “Do they rehearse this?” Someone else muttered, “No. That’s just them.” And suddenly, no one wanted to spar with either of you. 2. Someone called him “too quiet.” You didn’t let it slide. It was a throwaway comment —“He’s so silent, it’s weird.” You didn’t even look up from your drink. “Then you’ve never heard him breathe next to you.” The room went still. Xavier didn’t react. But you felt it — how he went still too, the way his attention locked fully on you. As if your words changed the temperature. 3. He braided your hair for three weeks while your wrist healed. At your desk. Between reports. No comments. No hesitation. Just practiced hands and quiet efficiency, like it belonged in the schedule. And maybe it wasn’t romantic. Or loud. But after that, no one ever looked at you the same way — because somehow, without trying, the two of you had redefined what closeness looked like. 4. You didn’t ask for his jacket. You didn’t have to. A shift in the wind. Goosebumps on your arms. No complaint, no drama. He just stepped behind you, slid his cardigan onto your shoulders like it belonged there, and said nothing. The couple walking by paused. Stared. You didn’t. You were already reaching for his hand. 5. There’s a photo of you on his desk.  Just you, caught mid-laugh, in natural light. Among tactical reports and encrypted drives. He never explains it. Never acknowledges it. But everyone who enters that room sees it. And no one ever asks if he's serious about you. They already know.

5 Times Xavier Was a Walking Red Flag But You Loved Him Anyway

1. He monitors your meals like it’s a clinical trial. “You didn’t eat enough protein today.” “That pastry had no nutritional value.” “Are you hydrating?” He says it softly. Calmly. Like a doctor. Like someone who cares. And yet — you’ve seen him survive three days on black coffee and whatever snack bar was closest to his hand. You mention this once. He pauses. Then says, “That’s different. I’m used to operating under stress. You’re not.” End of discussion.

2. He didn’t argue. He made the argument disappear. You disagreed about something small. Nothing dramatic. Just opposing views. He didn’t push back. Just nodded, quiet. Said, “If that’s what you think.” Later, you realized the entire issue — schedule, person, condition — was gone. Resolved. Removed. Replaced. No apology. No discussion. Just silence... and a solution that left you with nothing to win.

3. He never asked where you’d been.Not once. Not even after you were late. Not even when your message came hours too late. He didn’t accuse. Didn’t guess. He already knew. Tracked your path, logged your signal drift, checked your pulse history. All without a word. And still held the door open when you arrived.

4. He always calls via video when you’re in another city.He never misses a day. Never just texts. Always video. He says he likes seeing your face. That it “grounds him.” And maybe that’s true. Maybe. But every time the screen lights up, you notice how carefully his eyes scan the room behind you. How his voice sounds different if there’s movement. How he never quite hangs up until you say, “I’m alone. It’s quiet here.” Only then does he relax. A little. Maybe.

5. You told him, “Sometimes, you scare me.” He said, “Good.”It slipped out. Low. Uncertain. Not a joke, not an accusation — just the truth. He didn’t deny it. Didn’t soften. Just met your eyes and said, calm as ever, “Good. Then you’ll stay alert.” And for a moment, you weren’t sure if he was warning you… or protecting you from something only he could see coming.

5 Petty Jealousies That Reveal Just How Much Sylus’s Obsessed With You

1. You didn’t tag him. He made sure the world knew anyway.You posted a photo. Cute. Stylish. Perfect lighting. But no mention of him. No tag. No trace. He reposted it within minutes. Same photo. New caption: “Correction: mine.” It got five times the reach. And suddenly, everyone knew better.

2. Someone else made you laugh. Sylus didn’t.The waiter was charming. A little too witty. You laughed — loud, unfiltered. Sylus just raised a brow, pulled out his wallet, and handed the man $2000. “For your last night in customer service,” he said. He smiled. You choked on your wine. The waiter never came back.

3. You called some man a friend. Sylus ran a background check.“He’s just a friend,” you said. Lightly. Barely thinking. Sylus smiled. Tilted his head. “I’m just a man with access to his tax history.”And that was the end of that conversation.

4. You said another man had a nice voice. Sylus gave you no air.It was innocent. Harmless. “His voice is kind of nice.”  Sylus said nothing. Just waited. That night, he read you poetry in three languages, one line at a time — mouth against your neck, breasts, stomach, thighs — until you begged him to stop. Not because you wanted him to. Because you physically couldn’t take more.

5. You forgot to wear his ring. He didn’t forget anything.It wasn’t intentional. You were rushing. Distracted. But he noticed. Of course he did. He said nothing all day. Then, that night — when you were breathless, undone, on your knees — he took your hand, kissed your finger, and slid the ring back into place. Slowly. Deliberately. Like sealing a deal you forgot you signed.

5 Lies Sylus Tells Himself About You

1. “I didn’t pick your outfit to match mine. Must’ve been the stylist.”It was just coincidence. That your lipstick matched his cufflinks. That your dress followed the same line as his collarbones. That when you walked in together, people paused — like royalty had arrived. He didn’t say a word. Just looked at you once. And didn’t look away for the rest of the night.

2. “I’m not furious that I wasn’t your first.”He says it doesn’t matter. Shrugs. “I’m not a teenager.” And yet, the thought of someone else touching you before him? It coils in his chest like smoke that won’t clear. He tells himself you chose him now — and that’s what counts. But the next time you moan his name, he fucks you hard enough to make sure no one else’s ever mattered.

3. “I don’t answer your messages instantly. I’m just always holding the phone.”He just… saw it. Right away. Just happened to be holding his phone. Just happened to pause mid-meeting, mid-deal, mid-war — to write: “Be safe.” You tease him for how fast he replies. He teases back. And never mentions the part where your name makes him drop everything.

4. “I’m not obsessed with the way you say my name when you’re annoyed.”You do it without thinking. That exact tone. That breath. That syllable dipped in heat. He rolls his eyes. Says, “What now, kitten?” But every time it happens — he shifts closer. Hears it again later in his head. And stores it next to the version you whisper when you want him most.

5. “I wouldn’t beg. If it came to that. …But only for you. And only once.”He’s not that man. He doesn’t plead. Doesn’t bend. But when he thinks of you leaving — really leaving — something dark and fragile coils behind his ribs. He tells himself he’d let you go. That he wouldn’t chase. But even in the lie… he’s already halfway down the hallway.

5 Things That Make Sylus Go Completely Feral (In Lust, Not Rage)

1. You ask him to zip your dress. Then don’t wear anything underneath. It’s casual. Innocent. “Help me?” You turn your back, lift your hair, and wait. He moves slow — almost reverent. But when his fingers meet bare skin where silk should be… he doesn’t finish the zip. He turns you around, steps in close, and says, “You came dressed for trouble. Good. So did I.” 2. You say “don’t be gentle” with a smile that promises you’ll say it again, louder. He always controls the pace. The heat. The rhythm. But when you lean in, lips brushing his ear, and whisper those words — something in him fractures. He doesn’t ask if you’re sure. He doesn’t give you time to change your mind. He just obeys. And makes sure you feel the echo for days. 3. You use his tie to pull him into a kiss. He likes power. Centered, composed. Collar straight, voice cool. But when you grab that perfect silk tie, wrap it around your fingers, and yank — he stumbles into you like a man starved. You kiss him once. He kisses you back like vengeance. 4. You say “yes, sir” in a tone that means the opposite. You drawl it. Sweet. Defiant. Like you know exactly what it does to him. He doesn’t argue. Doesn’t smile. Just leans in, voice low against your throat, and says, “Keep using that tone, kitten. Let’s see how long you last when I take it seriously.” You don’t last long. Not that night. 5. You put on his ring and ask, “So what does this buy me?” It’s a joke. Almost. You twirl it on your finger, playful, reckless. He watches. Then smiles slow, wicked. “That?” he says, stepping closer. “That buys you a night where I don’t stop until you forget your own name.” And just like that, you do.

5 Power Couple Moments That Made Everyone Else Jealous (And a Little Scared)

1. The earring incident at the casino. You dropped it. Somewhere between the blackjack table and the bar. Nothing dramatic — until your face shifted. That quiet flicker of loss. Sylus didn’t sigh. Didn’t scold. Just raised a brow. And a dozen seasoned criminals began crawling across the velvet floor. They found it in twenty minutes. You wore it for the rest of the night. He wore the look of a man who’d moved the world back into place. 2. The arrivals are always his favorite part. You come back from missions — tired, sore, alive. And there it is: his sportscar. Engine humming. He’s waiting with a bouquet of roses so rare you don’t recognize half the species. The entire terminal watches. You don’t. You’re too busy smiling. He says, “Welcome home.” And just like that, the war disappears from your shoulders. 3. The seat at the head of the table. It was a high-stakes meeting. Old money. Dangerous names. Sylus led you in by the hand — then pulled out his chair. You blinked. He said nothing. And while you sat at the head, calm and poised, he stood behind you like a king who knows exactly where real power sits. No one even dared raise a brow. 4. The auction. Your hand. His silence. He gave you the paddle. Not instructions. You bid on instinct — numbers rising, tension thick. The item? A rare protocore with blackout-level clearance. Sylus didn’t flinch. Not once. And when the gavel dropped — he leaned in, lips brushing your ear, and said, “You can spend my money however you want, kitten. Just make sure they see you doing it.” 5. The moment the room lost him to you. It was mid-negotiation. Tense. Crucial. Every word counted. But across the table, your fingers tapped. Your eyes glazed. You were bored. Sylus watched. Then stood. “Deal’s done,” he said. “You’ll take our terms.” And somehow, they did. Because the only person in the room whose attention he wanted — was already drifting.

5 Times Sylus Was a Walking Red Flag But You Loved Him Anyway

1. He knows what’s in your delivery before you do. No one told him. But every time you order something — clothes, tech, vitamins — it’s re-screened. Not stopped. Not blocked. Just… “verified.” You only noticed when your favorite moisturizer showed up improved. New formula. Better scent. Hand-selected. Of course. 2. He said he’d put you on IV if you skip another meal. You were busy. Distracted. He asked what you’d eaten. You said, “Does coffee count?” He laughed. Once. And muttered something about installing a medical station in your apartment. He was “joking.” Until you saw the discreet courier bring an IV stand the next day. Just in case. 3. He took you to dinner at a place you hadn’t been since Academy. You didn’t realize where you were — until you saw your ex across the room. The one who cheated. Sylus just smiled. You were in a dress that made people stop breathing. He ordered champagne. Lobster. Left a four-digit tip. And made sure your ex saw everything. Including the way you kissed Sylus on the way out. 4. He froze your accounts. Just to prove a point. You said you didn’t need his money. You insisted on “independence.” So he waited until your card declined at the pharmacy. Then texted: “You have my black card. Use it. Or stay home.” You gave in. He sent flowers. 5. He apologized like a storm front. You fought. It was ugly. The next day, a gift arrived at HQ. Then another. Then six more. By day four, your car was full. You marched to his door, furious. He opened it, leaned against the frame, and said, “Took you long enough. Come yell at me. I’ll pour the wine.”

[gobleann]

Not me making this because there a high chance I won't get that flower event so I'm staying delulu

Also yes this songs hurts me. I write a whole plot about this song. If you want me to post it just say so 😭🙃🙏

[gobleann]

maybe a dragon

— Lucian wants to be like his papa, which strikes fear into Sylus's heart like no other.

ʕ ꈍᴥꈍʔ: lucian & sylus spotlight!!! did i cry when i wrote this? yes, i did. it was just supposed to be a soft banter thing exploring their dynamic but it kinda snowballed into this... now both lucian and kyros (coming up next!) have angsty drabbles. i hope you enjoy this one! ❀-urs

important heads up for context of this story: lucian is (my headcanon) 1/2 of sylus's twin boys. around 4 years in this one! ᡣ𐭩

sylus & lucian | sylus x reader | angst, fluff, comfort, sylus's son showing him that every part of him is lovable, dad!sylus, mom!reader tw: mentions of past violence/self-harm

Lucian likes it when papa is startled. It’s an emotion he’s extremely gifted in bringing out of him. Not by hiding around corners and going ‘boo!’. No, papa just smirks at that and shakes his head, tells him to try again. 

Lucian is especially talented in being in places papa never expects (or never wants) him to be in.

“Lucian!” Sylus barks, rushing over to him who balances himself on the window sill. Peeling fat little cheeks off of the glass and cradling him to safety. 

“Lucian.” Sylus warns when Lucian is halfway up the bookshelf. He supervises, but when Lucian loses footing, Sylus is quick to scoop him up and out of the study, drawing him close to his heart and calming his own erratic breathing. 

“Lucian?!” Sylus exclaims, rushing down the stairs after his son who passes him, sliding down the banister. 

Statues, trees, shelves, counters, tables and chairs— Lucian craves height. A bird’s eye view. Everything would be so much easier for him if tiny dragon wings popped out of his back. Although, that would be another headache for Sylus altogether.  

“Papa?” he asks one morning, already hauling himself up his father’s legs. Hair messy from sleep, having followed Sylus out to the balcony. His bare feet had pitter-pattered on the cold tile, and now he longs to be lifted.

Sylus has since shifted his routine to keep up with his family. He doesn’t mind it, not when he spends most of his waking hours being cuddled by his two boys, and his evenings snuggled up against you. 

“Yes, angel?” Sylus quirks his elbow out, just enough for the boy to use it as leverage. 

“D’you—do you likes going up?” 

“Upstairs?” Sylus asks, slightly teasing. He tilts his head to the side to give Lucian his shoulder to grip.

“No, no,” Lucian says. Shifting comfortably, completing his climb now with both legs dangling off of Sylus’s shoulders. He is pointing to the slowly coloring sky, tilting his head down just enough that Sylus can see his eyes. “Up, up-high, papa?”

“Oh,” Sylus nods. He thinks, he does appreciate being out on the balcony, checking in hotel rooms on the top floor, plane rides, looking at the scenery from atop a mountain after hiking it with you. Perhaps he does, although he doesn’t outwardly seek the thrill of it. “I do. But I don’t… look for it. I’m tall.” 

Hopeful eyes shine with enthusiasm only children can exude. “Will I be tall?” 

Sylus revels at this, singing, “Maybe.” 

“Why maybe?” 

“Because mama’s small.” 

“Mama not small.” Lucian giggles.

“Mama’s a kitty cat. Very tiny.” 

“No, mama not!” he giggles again, little bubbles of joy bursting from his chest. Stomach trembling against the back of Sylus’s head, ruffling his father’s hair. Contagious, Sylus grins too, straining to get a glimpse of Lucian’s laughing. 

Tiny means Mephisto— and Lucian distinctly recalls looking upwards when asking mama for sweeties.

Sylus reaches up and pinches his cheek. “Who knows? Maybe your whiskers will come in before your wings.” 

Lucian flinches, gasping like he’d just been startled by thunder. An excitement rushes through him, and his little fists tug at two spots on Sylus’s head that would’ve been too sharp for such soft hands a lifetime ago. “I’ll get wings?” 

It feels like an attack, when it flashes in Sylus’s mind like lighting— the image of his son with wings and scales and the tiniest of horns. Sylus has to take a grounding breath, distress reflecting in how his voice drops into a somber tone. 

“Or whiskers.” he tries to play along, to steer him ever so gently elsewhere. To you, back to you. His son will have his face, but he prays for him to have your heart, your soul. 

But Lucian has already invaded his vision— bright amber eyes and a happy smile. One Sylus has never seen on a face like his regarding turning into a monster.  It makes his stomach churn, his throat tighten, his muscles into stone. Like when he once lived in that cave, unmoving and undisturbed. Like when he was slain for being that very thing Lucian’s eyes shine for now. 

What once was something cursed unto his body, bloody and battered by his own hands— his son now craves. His son now wants with unabashed wonder. A gripping, heart-leaping prospect rather than the most horrific of fates. 

Sylus takes a deep breath through his nose, reeling it in. He feels his jaw tremble at the exhale, refusing to be dragged into the riptide of his anguish. Not now, he wills himself, not in front of Lucian. 

But his child’s desire knows no fences or stone walls, especially when he feels it draws him closer to his father.

“Papa, I want wings.” he says simply. Upside down, kissing his forehead, because mama does it when she’s near papa’s face too. 

Sylus flinches slightly at the all-too familiar action, not enough to jostle Lucian, but just so for the boy's voice to lower just that little bit. As if he thought he’d startled a poor deer. Lucian whispers, “Two please?” 

Sylus can feel the phantom crystal heart in his chest crack. And he knows for sure that one day, his love for his children will be the cause of its inevitable shatter.  

And he thinks this is his punishment for all the grief he’d caused you when you found him that day tending to his crumpled wings and bloodied horns. These things he’d purposefully hidden and tucked away to not horrify you now like he did back in that life, in that cave. 

To be faced with a soul that is both yours and his— with his face and your smile— telling him he wants to be just like him. Just like Sylus. And every inch of hate and dread for who he was is sickeningly turned on its head, slapped across his face in the image of his boy. Because how could he hate that of what he loves so dearly? 

And yet, maybe this is what you see when you look at him. This is what you marvel at with galaxies in your eyes and tenderness in your touch— his face, with the heart of a dragon. This— in the shape of a little boy— is who he is. One who cares, not abandons. Who feels, not hurts. Who loves, not leaves. 

Just like you did, your son cradles his being in tiny hands. Just like you did, his son looks at him with boundless affection. Just like you did, his son caresses his horns, embraces his wings. Just like you do, his son is cleaning his bloodied wounds, whispering words of comfort and telling him— “It’s okay. You’re beautiful, and I love who you are.” 

And somehow, that makes the pain bearable. Maybe now, he believes it too.

“Okay.” Sylus says through the lump in his throat. Swallowing thickly sticky sentimental pain to replace with something else. Something better. Something good. 

He gently maneuvers his beautiful beastly boy down into his arms into an embrace, burying his nose in his starlight hair and pressing his lips to the space between his brows. “Two then, for my Lucian.” 

His Lucian, whose talent lies in startling his papa with how little of him it takes to heal the wounds he’d thought were too deep to reach. Though, he supposes little hands can squeeze through the crevices of his heart just fine. 

His Lucian, whose talent also lies in making his papa cry. 

In silence, you catch them staring at the dawning of a new day. Two silhouettes of the same shape, talking fondly to one another, against the rising orange hues of the endless sky.

“Will I get big wings?” Asks the little one.

“Maybe.” Says the big one. “Mephisto’s wings are small.”

“Papaa!” Lucian whines and hopelessly buries his face in Sylus’s hair. Just like you do. And, for Sylus, what a delightful thing it is.

✧˚ ⋆｡ next: maybe a turtle (kyros, coming soon!) || read more with the little twins here || more sylus thoughts ✧˚ ⋆｡

thank you for reading!

[gobleann]

Lizzie thinks she's just being helpful and practical, meanwhile Sylus is ready to take a bullet for her in the next 0.3 seconds.

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God this fairy / Pixie Hollow cannot stop invading my mind istg. Especially with the recent SPRING AND FLOWERS UPDATES IM LIKE AUGHHHH. A/N do you want more of these au or at least a summary of it because I NEED TO YAP

In the the meantime enjoy something I write specifically for this au te he

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The brooch. Bent, battered, had once been tossed aside into some alley, half-lost in the dust and mud. The vest, a relic from his younger years, had long since been folded away, too small for him now. He had half a mind to offer it to Luke or Kieran, maybe in that stiff, untouchable way bosses did when they couldn't say he care.

But this feeling? This feeling wasn’t old.

Sylus stood tall and unreadable, the perfect portrait of Bleakwatch authority. Another day. Another shipment of pixie dust from Neverland. Another tedious battle to ration and guard it, stone by stone, grain by grain. Centuries of sweat, negotiations, sacrifices and now, maybe, just maybe. Bleakwatch would finally earn its own dust tree. A fragile hope he couldn't allow himself to believe in yet.

"PIXIE DELIVERY! COMING RIGHT UP!"

The voice shattered through the heavy air, bright and blinding as the sun cutting through the Great Bridge canopy.

Sylus’s eyes lifted. He shouldn't stare. He really shouldn't. But he did.

He watched the flutter of her skirt, the tumble of fabric cradled in her arms, the way the wild, tangled roots and ancient magic of Bleakwatch bent around her as though this place had been waiting all along for someone exactly like her to exist. And she fit so effortlessly it made something in his chest twist and tear.

As Lizzie swooped down from the air, grinning that grin, that infuriating, impossible grin. Sylus felt his world crack at the edges, one silent hairline fracture at a time.

And then he saw it. The outfit. Gone were the crinkling, impractical Neverland leaf uniforms.

Instead, she wore his old vest. Snug, stitched to fit her stubborn spirit. The brooch he'd once mourned, his battered, forgotten insignia, pinned proudly against her chest, gleaming like a vow. And boots. Boots tough enough to stomp through even the worst of Bleakwatch’s mud and smoke.

"Also you're right," Lizzie continued, pushing her glasses up her nose, completely unaware of the existential crisis she was causing, "these outfits are way more practical than the leaves—so you better stop complaining, alright?"

Sylus’s mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. Nothing. Not a single coherent word survived the impact.

These things —

These stupid, fragile, human things —

He recognized every piece annd they anchored her to him in a way that no ceremony, no decree, no oath ever could.

Somewhere just behind him, he was certain he heard Luke and Kieran exchange a silent, painful Look™.

Sylus stared so hard his brain folded itself neatly into a single repeated thought: Marry me. Marry me. Marry me.

And Lizzie... She kinda seen it. Seen the way the tips of his ears flushed red when she buttoned the vest. Seen the way his wings stuttered the second she smiled at him. A real smile, like light rain given form.

She was giving him time. Maybe even waiting for him to catch up.

When she moved closer, reaching up. fingertips brushing his collar in a slow, deliberate adjustment. Sylus swore something inside him shattered cleanly and rebuilt itself around her.

"You look good," Lizzie said softly, as if it wasn’t the most earth-splitting thing she'd ever said.

Sylus’s heart slammed against his ribs. He inhaled sharply, clinging to whatever scrap of sanity he had left.

"Y-You finally took my advice," he managed, voice rough, too honest.

[gobleann]

SCREEEAAAMSSS

I JUST COMBINED TWO OF MY FAVORITE THINGS HELP

I literally mashed my blorbos (my lads, my beloveds) into the actual canon worldbuilding of Pixie Hollow and it fits so stupidly well I am going FERAL.

The city air of Bleakwatch was thick with soot and copper tang, the smog swirling in the narrow streets like restless spirits. Lizzie flew just above the ground, her hornet wings buzzing sharply with each impatient beat. Every turn Sylus took — every hidden alley, every sliding metal door he led her through — Lizzie followed without a word, but the glare she leveled at his back could have cut steel.

She hated how he enjoyed this. How he let the city swallow them, twisting and winding deeper into its underbelly, as if he were leading her on a game instead of a supply run. Her shoes clicked harshly against the cobblestone when she finally landed, arms crossed tight over her chest, lips pressed into a thin line.

Sylus, of course, noticed. He always noticed.

He turned with a lazy flick of his wings, hovering backward for a moment just to smirk at her.

"You know, Little Lantern," he said, voice light with amusement, "you glaring at me is not gonna make this job any easier."

Lizzie said nothing, the glare deepening by a fraction — but Sylus only chuckled low in his throat, hands in his pockets as he drifted down to the next crossing.

"Well... not that it matters now, huh," he added, almost like a dare.

Lizzie exhaled through her nose, sharp and short, and took off after him again.

If he wanted to treat this like a game, fine.

She would win.

[gobleann]

a really good "flesh out your oc" game would be to get a group of other people with ocs and do a dangonronpa kinda roleplay, as the ocs. bad news. someone will only be playing for one round.

[gobleann]

𝐀𝐁𝐎𝐔𝐓 𝐌𝐄.

∘ㅤGobleann

∘ㅤShe/Her (AFAB)

∘ㅤSoutheast Asian

∘ㅤENTP

∘ㅤArts and Lit Enthusiast

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𝐎𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐒.

∘ㅤHallucinating my way through writing Sylus like my life depends on it

∘ㅤTainted by LADS thanks to my friends — now Sylus lives rent-free

∘ㅤWill download (apps, games, chaos) when I get a tablet

∘ㅤI write original stories too. Worldbuilding is my love language

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𝐑𝐔𝐋𝐄𝐒.

∘ㅤNo hate or discourse — don’t bring it here

∘ㅤ17+ blog only — no minors

∘ㅤDon’t copy, repost, or translate my work

∘ㅤBigotry (Islamophobia, homophobia, Zionism, etc.) = immediate block

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𝐁𝐄𝐅𝐎𝐑𝐄 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐀𝐂𝐓.

∘ㅤLove and Deepspace-centered blog, sprinkled with original art and writing

∘ㅤNot spoiler-free

∘ㅤI write for female/AFAB (she/her) readers only — focused on Self-Insert characters, my AU, and MC!Readers

∘ㅤPrimarily SFW, though NSFW may appear occasionally

∘ㅤEnglish isn't my first language — grammar slips might happen

∘ㅤReblogs = love

∘ㅤRequests are open, but I pick based on vibe/mood

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𝐖𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐈 𝐖𝐑𝐈𝐓𝐄.

∘ㅤAU Centric Stories

∘ㅤMC!Reader centric stories (Female/Male)

∘ㅤNo specific appearance, race, or body type required

∘ㅤNo cheating plots

∘ㅤNo sensitive or triggering content without the proper tags

∘ㅤOpen to explore topics outside of requests

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𝐓𝐀𝐆𝐒.

∘ㅤ#gguides – Main post navigation / pinned overview

∘ㅤ#ggarchive – Full writing archive & masterlists

∘ㅤ#lizzie au – My personal AU: drama, plot spirals, emotional damage

∘ㅤ#readermc – Self-insert focused writing and reader POV content

∘ㅤ#gmuseum – fanarts

∘ㅤ#yappingsquare – Theories, rambles, lore deep-dives, you name it

∘ㅤ#writtingthought – Headcanons, concepts, future LIs, brainrot entries

∘ㅤ#AO3fics – My fics archived on AO3, available for your reading pleasure

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. Mₐₛₜₑᵣₗᵢₛₜ .

-soon updated-

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𝐄𝐍𝐃 𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐄.

If you’ve scrolled through all this, I expect that you’ve read the rules.

If not, and you violate them? You’re ready to be blocked. I don’t do second warnings.

Also: yes, I post about LADS, but I have other stories, characters, and worlds too.

If you’re curious, I suggest you check them out — or miss out.