#[[since we did not want an unused building to have to be sorted out during the recent map discussion we have seen pop up.]]

[mothergoosinganon]

is mg coming back or is mg dead

—he could come back dead. he could come back alive. depends on if or when he is freed. she has been in the box for three and a half weeks. she went into the box with one remaining protein bar in her pocket. however. it seems as though nobody he has known even realized he is gone. so he very well could starve to death in the empty pocket dimension of the box.—

[greysfall]

My 4444-word review of NEO TWEWY (with personal illustration + heavy spoilers)

My overall critical score for the game is 7.5/10, while my personal enjoyment score is 8.5/10. This review is posted as I have 80% completed the game, got the secret ending and achieved the Angel psychic rank. I’ll first start with the main pros and cons as follows.

PROS:

-        Enjoyable as a whole, still upholding the first game’s spirit in world building and sharing the same backbone - which was mostly revealed in the Secret Reports, it’s impossible to grasp the story without reading them.

-        The new cast and new game is charming in their own way

-        The old cast’s return is one of the biggest highlights for sure, it was fun and impactful. Everyone stays true to themselves and also had their own stories wrapped up nicely.

-        Boss designs are cool, new pins are fun to use and collect

-        The connection between the old and new cast is well written and executed, including but are not limited to the tension between the old and new protagonist, the weird but fun interaction between the 2 Composers, the new friendships revealed and formed

-        Sho being in the main cast is something so uniquely TWEWY and uniquely Sho

-        Still good music

-        Still many fun side quests, some of them really uphold the same quirky spirit of the old game and some are surprisingly touching

-        Many new nice stores and yummy looking foods to explore

-        The map is really easy to memorize for me, it’s fun to travel around the “current” Shibuya to see all the differences compared to the past

-        The social network is crazy and interesting to read through

-        Has an anti-frustration system to help 100% complete the game more easily and earn money faster, so post-game is relatively managable.

-        Overall, I really feel the efforts the team poured into making this as their passion project, not just during the development process but for all the last 14 years. They showed the vision of what they wanted to make, at the same time giving something to both the old as well as new fans.

CONS:

-        The biggest problem with the game is scenario writing. The story is so heavily back-loaded. The director himself thought it would be better to balance out the tension flow by adding more at the beginning but gave in to the scenario writer in the end, probably due to time pressure. This results in an underwhelming execution of characterization and lots of wasted potentials for the first half of the game.  

-        I struggle to view it as a stand-alone game, since the backstory and the old cast both play such an important role in the core of the game. If someone plays this game without having played the OG, they can only enjoy it on surface value at best.

-        The new cast is nice but most of them aren’t quite as intriguing as the old cast, maybe it’s cuz they’re all too nice deep down that they lack a little bit of an edge, of that batshit craziness that everyone in the OG used to have? I think some characters (Fret, Nagi) ended up weaker in terms of characterization because the writer is too afraid of making them unlikeable – which kind of backlashed cuz they only became likable in the most expectable way to cater for a specific group of fans. I would have wished for the other team leaders to be more crazy too, had they not suffered 30+ loops of the Game…

-        The CAMERAWORK IS HELL.

-        Gameplay does get tedious at certain points with all the time travels.

-        Shiba is so badly written as a villain, some Shinjuku characters should be given more screentime cutting into Shiba’s– like Hishima or Kaie or even, Hazuki (though his limited presence also solidified his importance).

-        Some of the main character designs, for example Beat’s hairstyle and his food reactions are hilariously bad. What’s the point of covering up most of his unique facial features?

-        Some of the minor/side characters’ design are too cool for them to have such a small role (eg: Ayano, Eiru). Ryoji did get much screentime but is nowhere as fun as Makoto was.

-        Overall the scope of this game is made a little too big for the team to handle as perfectly as the last game that was very compact, it felt somewhat rushed in development too so the missing pieces are clearly there in the final picture

The entry fee versus paying for it all in the end

An important difference between the Neo game and the original Shibuya game was that the Shibuya rule asked for an entry fee that is the Player’s most important asset, stated as a chance the Composer gives them to reexamine themselves. Meanwhile, the Shinjuku rule neither encourages nor allows personal growth and ultimately aims to erase as many Players as possible. It’s a pity we were never introduced to the full Shinjuku rulebook, as it seems like the system there focuses more on building up power and a grand government to compare with the individuality-driven system of Shibuya.

When you have to compare the new game and the original game (OG), this is an important factor to consider. Also, the OG has a serious storyline running through and through, locked with a different partner/GM creating unique atmosphere for each week and you don’t get to see your old partners again until the end. NEO’s team system does not allow such deep insight and communication between the Players. All of your teammates are always there throughout, the dynamic does change with each new addition but it is not as prominent as a partner change.

Another important factor is how the OG was built from scratch for a new platform as “something no one has ever seen before”, while Neo recycled a lot of old unused ideas from the previous development (check out this interview for more details). The development team for NEO lacks 2 key members and had a change of writer so the final product is not as strongly bound together as the last game.

The new cast is definitely inspired by today’s teenagers (from the view of creators), compared to the old cast they’re more sociable and always seem to take whatever works for them despite feeling unstable inside. They are all innocent and genuinely nice kids, avoiding to hurt each other to a degree that they end up keeping some sort of distance. They’re also unable to communicate at deeper levels, always stagnant at this half-baked stage of equilibrium without any motivation to get to the core of things. That is the cost of entering the game without an entry fee, without even dying or having a reason to be there/to fight seriously. These kids were stolen from the RG into a Game that was decidedly the worst environment for them to change or develop, just wandering around cluelessly to find a way “out” until tragedies started to unfold one by one and they ended up being charged the total sum of the price for their actions – ultimately losing everything in the end.

That is, I believe, a story arc which can resonate more to the youth of today rather than of my generation. If the message of the old game was to “listen”, enjoy life to the fullest and accept to trust others, the message of the new game is to “speak up” from the inside, trying to understand yourself and take actions instead of just going with the flow and finally, to take responsibility for such actions.

If Neku was handpicked by the Composer for being the special one with an all-dense soul to ensure victory of the game then Rindo was just a normal kid chosen out of random by Kubo to be his back-up plan, who just happened to have a high enough imagination to awaken the incredible power from his pin. Rindo was then officially chosen by the Composer as Josh picked up and handed the pin to him again, this time not as Josh’s personal Proxy – but as the Proxy to represent the normal people of Shibuya and via whom he could gamble if humans can fight for their own fate.

The underworld heroine and the hero with little of his own

Shoka is for me a refreshing and layered heroine. She’s the kind of character that took at least 3 trials of creators to form as a complete individual – that included Nomura who gave her the base design and Reaper background, Gen who gave a more cunning touch and the writers who made her English dialogues more punchy. Dishonesty equals “tsundere” is such a cliché, so the English writers tried really hard to avoid that trope in my opinion, while still letting her good intention come through.

She serves as the character who is informed of everything the players should have known, and there was almost nothing she could do about it. Almost. Until she met Rindo.

They were drawn to each other by sharing a state of “not having anything of their own”. They both started out with not being able to truly know themselves, Shoka even hated her RG life but also managed to mature from that stage before Rindo. She must have vibed with Shiki’s love and passion in the Gatto Nero threads, initiating her connection with Shibuya and understanding herself more. With Shoka as Swallow, they were able to open up to each other and offer mental support… but was still not getting to the centre of their problems because for all this time, Shoka could not tell Rindo the most important things about herself.

How did Shoka feel when she met Rindo at the UG? She probably didn’t want to hope that he would live the day until she witnessed the Twisters’ potentials. From the very beginning, they were both incredibly conscious of each other and also constantly frustrated that the person they happened to “notice” was such a condescending bitch/a clueless loser. The Shinjuku Reapers are overall quite drunk in power and uncompassionate to Players, Shoka included. She is also a master of dissociation, which results in her constant boredom, tone swings, haughtiness and subconsciously distancing herself from the friend – the boy she cares about – from false hope, as she judged from facts that it was a hopeless situation where nothing could ever be. Maybe she is naturally a bit of a chameleon just like her name suggests (Shoka 紫陽花 = hydrangea, the color-changing flower), so putting on an act and always dissociating herself from what’s important was easy, while hiding her contradiction was impossible. It was the ex-Reaper Beat who broke it out to her, that she should decide whether she really cared and wanted to do something for a change. He knew how it felt like to cross that line, and knew she wanted to too.  

Shoka is endeared by many of the Shinjuku Reapers and has shown independent acts of kindness (the Shinjuku ghost), proving that her kind and truthful side is as real as her harsh and dishonest side – which makes her a nice mirror to the previous heroine Shiki, who also embraced a dichotomy of self-complex and self-love within her character. In the end, she was the first of the new cast to ultimately accept all that is important to her and independently made the decision to help save Shibuya despite all costs.

She was jealous at Rindo’s interaction with Tsugumi and Kanon but remained silent cuz she wasn’t at a place to have any say about it. She also didn’t reveal about Swallow because that would only add an awkward irrelevance to their current situation, as she was too ready to face erasure at the end of the Game. She only wished to “play a game” with him, be it FanGo or the Reapers’ Game. The tension that the team could only feel at the end, she’s felt it the entire time. The song “DIVIDE” is applicable to not just one bond in the game, but it always makes me think of theirs. There is always a “divide” between her and Rindo throughout the course of their journey, as the living and the dead, as a Player and Reaper, as someone who has a place to return to and someone who doesn’t, someone who knows little but wields too much power and someone who knows a lot despite not being able to do much.

“If only I had the chance to connect with you on the other side

But time goes on, and without us realizing it

The battle is getting heated

Time goes on, and without us realiazing it

Divided again”

To be honest, maybe I didn’t grow any affection for the new main cast from Rindo’s perspective but from Shoka’s. Since I started to sympathize with Shoka, I started to see the boy in a more “real” way. The real Rindo, behind his peaceful façade with others, would lash out on Shoka for her unfairly harsh attitude while none of the others cared. He could also subtly feel that mantle of unspoken secrets from her, her own contradictions, the unresolved chemistry between themselves – and not knowing what to do with it rather than to feel angry with all the unfairness he could not process. (As a Libra too, he’s triggered the most by unfairness!)

It is actually a positive development as he’s at least “reacting” to something strongly now rather than to keep evading his problems. During my replay, I clearly saw the difficult situation Shoka was in, her remaining harshness after the Motoi incident was due to her internal struggle with a mission to save her own life, versus a chance to really be with the team. Her decision was to do both at the risk of losing favour from both sides. Rindo started to accept her layer by layer, as the person who resonated the most to her contradicting nature from the start and knew that via learning her resolve, he has learnt his too.

Later into the game, she even got too much of his attention. Maybe even without knowing she’s Swallow, he’s familiar with her thinking direction and Swallow had always been closer to him than any other friend. It was only after she had to betray her important ones twice that she could start being truly honest. The scene when she died a 2nd time left a strong impression in me, the little reveal let Rindo know that he is also losing Swallow as he’s losing Shoka – and that only death could drive the last secret out of her. Her final “Later, loser” echoed through Rindo as it was the final truth, with only him remaining to hear it: they had actually, already lost everything.

Rindo was the boy who never dared to face all that matters to him until he lost it all, fighting an unfair battle in the faith that they would somehow still win. Shoka was the girl who always knew what was dear to her, but never dared to think she could be together with them ever after and still threw her all into a battle she knew was losing. I think they stir each other on naturally to fill out their gaps, similar to what the Shibuya game partner systerm would have aimed for. The end reward was a little divine intervention to help close up the divide between them once and for all.  

During the game there was not enough space to process anything personal so at the ending when they officially became “friends”, it was an important affirmation of their bond. Some people complained it was friendzoning but it’s not, they just have arrived at the perfect place to start something more. “From now on, we will truly be together” – I read it as that kind of message.  

The heroine from a lost battle, with her story taken away

After reading the secret reports and playing the game to be surprised of how small a role Tsugumi had in the main game despite being the “Hype-chan” thought to be a major character of the next TWEWY installment, many fans would feel sad at a missed opportunity to see the Shinjuku arc in full depiction.

It was shown clearly that, a Shinjuku arc was very carefully planned out and is a vital part of the whole story, yet it could not be made due to various circumstances behind the development scene. I would assume, that the team were not able to make a TWEWY game that ended on a despairing note, but it already happened in their mind, thus becoming a mental burden that forced them to break away from it and started the game anew with NEO. A significant part of NEO became the healing arc for the Shinjuku characters, especially for Tsugumi though I really wished more emphasis should have been placed on her rather than Shiba. We didn’t even get to see her brother – Shinjuku’s Conductor who had a vital role and instead was given the clueless Shiba, who had absolutely no idea what’s going on all the way until the last day in NEO. It’s as if Tsugumi has had her story stolen away from her, because her own battle ended with a saddening loss.

I think every time the game creators look at Tsugumi, they would feel that sadness too. Maybe to them, she is a bigger character than what is seen by the fans, as despite their failed effort to depict her story, she’s lived in their mind for all these years through periods of destruction, healing and rebuild.  Though it is a pity we could not get to experience the full scope of the Shinjuku story, the creators was clear about the place they wished for it to arrive at.    

Individuality, connection and the social network

The team system adapted from Shinjuku rulebook does not allow much room for personal development, as the team dynamic is closer to a work relationship forced to bear results, than a spiritual bond to max out all corners of understanding as found in the partnership system. The old Shibuya system allowed only 1 winner and 1 week limit per game, while the new rule declares for a 1 winning team and only the team at last place will be erased – the other teams will enter another loop. Furthermore, whichever team to challenge the unwinnable Ruinbringers will face the risk of ending up dead last followed by erasure. As a result, the longest-standing teams are most likely not the strongest ever recorded, but the ones who have figured out a strategy to simply survive until something changes, enjoying their newly found social constructs while they are at it. Basically, it is a system to hypnotise players into the illusion that they are still “living”.

Therefore, we as players would not get to the core of each Player individually as fast and directly as we did in the last game. The Twisters were able to stand out not because they’re powerful, they only started to have a real chance after growing enough to each form a meaningful and personal connection to another teammate. It did not come as a team, nor did it intiate from the existing friendship between Rindo and Fret. In fact, I did not find much solidity or anything truly note-worthy about the main team and new characters within themselves until they started clashing with other team members, Reapers and new recruits from week 2 onwards. Rindo found his personal development with Shoka (via a clash with Motoi and pretty much a mini dating sim between them), then via the confrontation of his role with Neku; Fret found his with Kanon then Nagi, the team learned about the real Neku via Beat, Neku entered the UG via Coco’s wish to save Tsugumi… it was not the team but their personal links that empowered them to fight and solve each of their problems.

The other team leaders may have failed because they did not form such personal links, after 30+ hopeless loops Fuya’s team all fell apart to pursue their own interest even at the cost of erasure, Motoi quit his KOL façade to work like a dog for the Reapers (probably to save just his own ass not his team), while Kanon dropped her tricks to find changes via honest cooperation in acceptance of a fair loss. The despairing note in that is huge without making much of a scene because their failure didn’t happen at their best effort to “win”, but in their last attempt to find a way “out”. Even Shiba got his way “out” in the end thanked to his personal friendship with Hishima and Tsugumi.

Something has shifted in the mindset of the game creators in the last 14 years, as both games are about “connection vs individuality” but the last game focuses more on connection between just individuals and this one on the overall network that is formed out of those individual connections.

The introduction of Beat into the main cast was truly the bridge between old and new, they helped each other out in several turns before officially recruiting him. Beat is a character whom a lot of fans including myself have felt somewhat concerned about after Neku disappeared from the RG, so when the new kids welcomed Beat with warm and organic interaction and Beat seemed happy, I started to feel like I wanted to help them out too! I think the overall team chemistry is enjoyable enough for new players, but I could warm up to the new kids more from the pov of a returning character – whom I’m glad to be Beat, as the older brother figure who is genuinely kind, fun, serious and upbeat at the same time; who is needed and needs the kids in return.

The social network is a fun and refreshing feature. You can read all of the crazy tidbits about Shibuya and the links each character have formed with the town people, it’s also fun to visualize how the characters act off screen. Characters’ profiles provide extra insight into their background too, like how it reveals Tsugumi has been friend with Coco during her time in the RG. During the game when not all characters have showed up, you can sometimes guess which empty spot will belong to whom. For example there is a 1 character linking to Neky that is not linked to anyone else, so I could guess that was Joshua, and that another character linking only to Joshua was probably Hazuki, hinting that the 2 Composers are related before either of them even showed up.

Hazuki only showed up for 5 minutes, but his presence is so vital and true to the game that I think he is the most memorable out of the new cast. The two Composers have such an intriguing bond, with their yin/yang or phoenix/dragon themes, opposite color design, the sempai/kouhai tone and the way they keep some sort of distance/work relationship as if it’s mandatory between Higher beings, yet at the same time they can talk so casually because they are truly equal – and different from one another. I have written a separate meta on them here.

Some people pointed out, that all Shinjuku characters’ names and themes are based off Hanafuda cards and the Phoenix in Hanafuda belongs to the Paulownia suit – which is Joshua’s name flower. This is so interesting because it feels like the creators somehow saw it as a sign to interweave the Shibuya and Shinjuku storylines together. Though it doesn’t come out much on the surface, it’s fascinating nonetheless considering both Josh and Haz had at some point interfered with the other town’s affairs.

“Shibuya tour with Haz” was such a special scene, as it happened between 2 characters who do not/no longer have a reason to care about Shibuya, on the subject of what is worth saving about Shibuya. Hazuki carried out the purification of Shinjuku and stepped in to restore Shibuya just as part of his job and unlike Hanekoma or Joshua who both possess profound understanding of humanity, he really didn’t know humans at all. Rindo’s irrational wish invoked in him a sense of curiosity, to try gambling on something irrationally and learning a bit of what his senior have experienced. With all the pieces put together, it provides an overview on Higher beings as a whole, and that Joshua and Hanekoma are really the odd ones out with Hazuki being somewhere in between them and the rest.        

The old friends

It’s easy to have returning characters overshadow the new cast as they have already matured out of their personal story arc and stayed in our hearts for all this time. In the end, I have managed to enjoy both the old and new cast separately and altogether, and they will both find their own place in our memory of this game for the long term.

Sho is truly as crazy as ever, the game wouldn’t be the same if Sho is any less of what he is. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like Neky or Beat is younger than Nagi at all, with moments when it seems like Neky has aged 14 years instead of 3 years. His friendship with Coco surprised me pleasantly, and their interaction together with Beat was fun to watch. Rhyme’s found a new dream and her friendship with Kaie is precious too, especially considering that she can still talk to him online after the game ended. Josh and Neku’s interaction suggested that they have resolved the past and are on equal terms now, they even parted ways in good spirit and I don’t feel any worry about them like I did before.

Neku and Shiki’s reunion scene was beautiful, theirs is such a special bond that it has grown and supported them even without being able to see each other. I am so happy to see them all again and that they stay true to who they are, albeit looking more grown up, cooler and happier than ever before.  

Overall, NEO can’t become a classic on par with the OG, but is definitely a good sequel and a good game in its own rights. I’m happy with whether or not there will be a 3rd game to complete the 3 monkeys theme, but if there will be – I hope the creators can really find the time to learn from the last 2 games and start over with a fresh mindset and strong core.  

[electronictimetravelmoose]

Being a Malfoy and dating Fred Weasley would include:

Warnings: mention of death

Wordcount: 2.1k

Requested by anon

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To start it all off you were Draco’s older sister by two years, so you are in the same years as them

Your parents love you even tho only your mom really shows it

You and Draco are also really close, you have been since you were kids and you two never really got around to play with other kids

Still it is only natural for siblings to say they hate each other and fight but you make up eventually

Growing up you already showed a strong talent in magic and your parents knew you would do great things someday, so it got even more exciting when you started your first year in Hogwarts

The Sorting Hat took quite long to decide where to put you, you would have fitted into Ravenclaw just as much as into Slytherin but in the end you decided on Slytherin (out of family reasons or being scared of your parents wasn’t quite sure)

While the sorting ceremony happened you just couldn’t take your eyes of the two wet, ginger haired boys talking and grinning at each other

You soon found out they were Fred and George Weasley and that they liked to wreak havoc but it just made them that more interesting

Over the next two years you grew a major crush on one of them and you could have smacked yourself for it

You were a Malfoy and Fred was a Weasley, or as your family and the other Slytherins liked to call them, a blood traitor

So you kept your mouth shut about it and admired him from afar

And then your little shit of a brother came to Hogwarts and figured it out in less than a week

“Really (Y/N), a Weasley?”

“Oh shut the fuck up you little ferret.”

It stayed between the two of you for the time being but he kept on bringing it up and annoying you with it

Time passed and the feelings only continued to grow even tho you rarely spoke a word to him

It took until your fifth year that the two of you became friends and that only because you covered for them

You were in the library studying for your upcoming transfiguration test when the two red haired boys burst in and took a table not far from you. You looked over and looked them over. They were both breathing heavily but smiling while getting their stuff as fast as possible out of their bags and onto the table. Fred glanced around and stopped when he spotted you. He gave you a wink and put his finger over his mouth in a ‘shhh’ motion before turning to his brother once again. You felt your face grew hot but you tried to ignore it and rolled your eyes, getting back to work. 

Not five minutes later the silence got disturbed again when Professor McGonagall came in looking rather angry. She immediately made her way over to the twins and gave them a look which screamed ‘you better not try anything’.

“Mister and Mister Weasley, what were the two of you thinking?” , the professor's usual strict voice was upped and you got a chill down your spine. You never wanted to be on the receiving end of that. 

“Professor McGonagall, we don’t know what you are talking about. We were here all afternoon.” , Fred answered first. “Yeah, we have been studying for the test tomorrow.” George followed up trying to make it sound more convincing.

“Oh really? Can someone confirm that?” Professor McGonagall crossed her arms and starred the boys down.

They looked at each other trying to figure something out but you broke the silence before them.

“I can vouch for them, Professor. I came here after Potions to study and they were already here studying as well.” Your voice was as calm as ever and you gave her a small smile when she turned to look at you. Fred and George gave you both shocked expressions behind the professors back but you didn’t acknowledge them and just continued looking at her. 

McGonagall looked at you closely before letting you all off the hook and leave. Even if she knew you were lying she couldn’t prove it and as soon as she was gone you let out a sigh of relief. That was horrible, you thought.

Well not so horrible after all because after that little ordeal you and the twins became friends and after some bribing you even started to help them with their pranks

If your feelings grew while only looking at him they now skyrocketed through the roof and sometimes you felt like you could throw up

You grew closer to him over the next year and that is when the yule ball came along

You didn’t get your hopes up on him asking you, the year before he had shown interest in Angelina Johnson so for you that was his obvious choice but to the surprise of most he asked you and you immediately said yes, even tho a bit shocked

That was the point where Draco told your parents about you and the Weasley and hell broke loose

Your father was totally against it and even threatened to take you out of Hogwarts and send you somewhere else, thankfully Narcissa could stop him from doing so

She didn’t have to say anything for you to know that she was against the building thing between you and Fred but she kept her mouth shut

For a while before the ball you thought to cancel it but you decided against it

You wanted it for so long that you wouldn’t let your family ruin it

After the ball you and Fred grew even closer but the relationship to your parents and Draco got pretty strained, especially when Draco started to talk down on you

It took a while until you and Fred would start to date but what was clear is that he had some kind of feelings for you as well

When the summer came after Voldemort returned everything turned to hell for you and it didn’t took much for you to leave

Seeing as how your parents and brother treated you and how the dark lord himself was in your home

You were scared for your life so running away was the only options, but you still tried to make Draco come with you, trying to show him how much danger he will and already is but he didn’t listen

Thanks to a little help from Fred and George you found a new home rather quickly

Some of the Weasleys were a bit weary but Molly greeted you with open arms and soon made you her second daughter

She heard so much from the twins and especially Fred about you that she could see why he wanted you to stay with him

As this was the time they moved into the Order of the Phoenix headquarters for the summer, so did you and through that you met your estranged uncle Sirius who you immediately bonded with

Since you were a kid you were much more upon to muggles and others that your parents told you, you should hate and that are less than the purebloods that you and your family are that you started to hate those ideas

It was one of the things that made you bond with him besides being a runaway and the treatment you got from your parents after doing something that displeased them

Over the summer a lot happened and being in so close proximity with Fred everyday gave you two the final kick to start date

Seeing as you all lived together in only such a given amount of space everybody knew within a few days, and they were fine with it

But as we know as soon as Sirius bonds with any given child they become his, so a little talk happened, but otherwise everything was great

To sum up the next hell year of school, Umbridge is the biggest bitch you have ever met and you wished she would burn like the pile of shit she is

Also at some point your aunt and nine other Death Eaters were broken out of Azkaban and it made you fear even more for Draco because you knew where those individuals would be staying

But putting all the bad things aside you helped Fred and George with the creation of new joke articles and finding people to test it on, you joined the DA and gained some more practical knowledge on how to defend yourself against foes and the dark arts

Of course you also spend some alone time with your boyfriend in unused classrooms or his dorm and on the weekends in Hogsmeade, be it on the usual way or one of the passages

Most things were going good and after Fred kept on asking you about leaving with him before the school year ends and opening the shop with him and George you said yes

Screw it, you already finished all your N.E.W.T.S and what is a few weeks left going to do to your grades?

So you guys made the show of the years with fireworks and a kick to Umbridge in the ass with one particular one, and with that off you were

The next two years went by in a flash with the work that came from opening the shop and keeping it running, the time you spend with Fred building up your future together and all the other stuff that life throws your way

It was a bliss but you also kept thinking about your family

You had lost Sirius, which you started to get to know and grow closer to, you had lost your parents and brother in some way too because none of them would talk to you and you feared what could happen to Draco

But that was all put to the side when things got more dangerous after the Death Eaters attacked Bill and Fleaur’s wedding and attacks in general happened more and more

Throughout the year muggles, half-bloods and even purebloods who were seen as blood traitors got killed and you knew that they would come after you as well, sooner or later

You got through the year with a few close calls and a lot of cautions until you got a message from the Order saying that there will be a battle in Hogwarts and they needed all the help they could get

During the battle you never left Fred’s side, even if you wanted to look for Draco and make sure that he was okay, Fred was now part of your family and you would do anything to protect the ones you loved

It turned out that staying with Fred would save his life in the end and after saving him from the collapsing ceiling he asked you to marry him

“Fred! I don’t think this is the right time to ask me that!”

“I just almost died! I think it’s the right time to do so!”

“Fine! It’s a yes!”

You battled your way through what turned out to be the first wave of attacks when you finally got a break

You gathered up with the Weasleys and Hermione and exchanged hugs when you spotted Draco and sprinted towards him

Without thinking he came towards you and hugged you back as you enveloped him in your arms

There was no way you would let go of him and tears started to roll down your face

“You're okay, you are okay… I was so scared something happened to you. I missed you so much.”

“...I missed you too.”

You made him come over to the Weasley family with you and he did so without saying a word

The rest of the day and the second half of the battle went by fast, when your mother called for Draco to come over you saw him think for a second but in the end he remained by your said and held your hand which made you look at him with a proud smile and to the surprise of everyone Narcissa came to your side and hugged both you and Draco

She fought by your side for the rest of it and after it was over she hugged you for the first time in years before she and Draco left

In the next few years you would rekindle your relationship with your mother and brother, you would marry Fred and eventually get two beautiful twin girls named Winifred and Roxanna. 

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Tagging: @satans-bae-and-queen, @hippogreif-joana

[i-am-trying-my-best-okay]

Roughly How I Would Write Twilight As A TV Show

SEASON 1 (AKA Book 1, Twilight)

It would start out with the typical Renee sending off Bella at the airport, but I think she should give her the camera now instead of later in the series, sort of like a send off present and it gives Bella an actual hobby. From the first scene it shows that Renee likes her daughter, but she doesn’t really cares and loves her, and that’s more on Bella’s side than hers, as Bella will hug her before going into the airport and Renee will let go before Bella and Bella will just keep hanging on to her, showing that she doesn’t really want to be separated from her mom. Also, throughout the first season she will be constantly checking her flip phone (I still want this to have the same time setting) to see if her mom messages her, but she never does, which will sink Bella into a deeper and deeper depression each time she checks.

When she and Charlie meet it’s really awkward, but both sides are trying and both sides feel bad about making things awkward. Also throughout the first season whenever they start getting closer Bella will sort of put distance between them and then hate herself for it. Perhaps she pushes him away because she is unused to this type of parental love and it makes her nervous. When she gets to school she meets Jessica whose very nosy but because she’s a self proclaimed reporter and likes to know everything about everyone; and she does. Except for the Cullen's, and that’s why she’s so obsessed with them, because she doesn’t know enough about them or she senses their is more. When Edward first sees Bella, whose eating with Jessica and only Jessica because she has a bad rep around the town so she has no real friends, he can’t read her mind and that really freaks him out. We’ve now shifted perspective towards the Cullen’s, and Edward is having a crisis because he’s grown so used to knowing every person’s thought it sort have turned him into a bit of a control freak and now he’s not sure how to handle this, and his siblings are trying to calm him down. Also later, probably that night, he’s freaking out and he wants to go see her and maybe test if he can read her thoughts when she’s asleep, which his family’s all like ‘bruh stop’ but he doesn’t bruh stop and tests it out, only to find out he can’t and he doesn’t try again. 

When Bella and Edward meet Bella doesn’t really care much about him and his weird behavior, but then he stopped a car with his hand and then she cared a whole lot more. Maybe after the hospital she tests it out, seeing if she was actually crazy or not. Like she steals one of her dad’s handcuffs and before class handcuffs Edward’s seat to the leg of the table then during class suddenly goes really close and Edward scoots away really fast, breaking the handcuffs, or just something similar to that where she tests if what she saw was actually real. She gets into a few more conversations with Edward stretched out, at some point maybe Bella will throw the golden onion at Edward in anger, who knows. Throughout this entire season we will be constantly switching perspectives from Edward and Bella, which will give us some more time with the Cullen siblings and their dynamic.

Anyway, Bella will ditch the dance to go to the city and then the beach Charlie requests for her to take a at least three friends, and so she recruit's Jessica, Mike and Jacob, and this is where we first meet Jacob Black, but not the first time we meet Mike. With Mike, I kinda completely changed him, and he’s now a kid with serious anger issues and a tendency for small amounts of arson and fights, which makes him an outsider like Jessica, but they never hung out as fellow rejects or anything. Charlie was probably a bit late picking up Bella from the airport because he was busy driving Mike home from yet another case of arson. He never really gets charged with anything, since Charlie has sorta took it upon himself to look after him. Anyway, Bella probably had taken a picture of him when she first got here and that made him really mad but she had ran away. Now, as she approaches him to ask him to go to the city with her, he tries to fight her, but as they fight she still asks him to go to the city and than the beach with her, which kinda throws Mike off but he actually agrees because he’s worried his mom is worried about him not having friends, so they make a deal about pretending to be friends but of course they turn into real friends. Now with Jacob, Bella goes to his house to ask him, and find him fixing some weird broken thing with the music blasting and him singing along. When he see’s her he immediately knows it’s her and is thrilled. Charlie also came along to see Billy and we see cute friendship moments between them, also Charlie confessing his worries about Bella and Billy giving him advice. 

So these four head on out to the city, and it’s the first time these people have come together and they slowly form a tight friend group. They roam the city and start chaos everywhere they go. Mike teaches them all how to shoplift although finds out Jessica is practically a pro, Jacob wants to roam through the dumpsters for parts he can use and the rest of them help him with Mike setting the occasional fire in these dumpsters, Jessica shows them how to stalk people and they tail a guy all the way home but they forgot about the not going inside his house part and the guy notices them so they need to make a run for it, and Bella is trying to take all these picture and nearly dies due to her clumsiness and determination to take the perfect pictures which lead to the rest of the gang saving her from falling off a building or onto the subway tracks or something. All and all, they’re each surprised about how much they like each other, except for Jacob, he liked them all from the start.

So they decide to all go out to eat before heading to the beach and Bella says she wants to go to the book store really quick and to not wait up for her. She had actually seen this book about anomalies and such through the window earlier that day, and she decided to go back for it. She had decided to go to the city originally because the drama with Edward was getting to be too much and she just needed some time away from Forks, but that book had captured her attention. Anyway we go to Edward and his family, who were at the city because they figured it would prove a nice distraction from Bella. Alice couldn’t say that Bella would be in the city because Jacob is with her and they don’t really outright say that he’s a werewolf yet. At some point the Vam Fam had smelled Bella and Edward went to go see her, much to his Vam Fam’s disappointment. 

So Bella almost gets attacked by that group of guys and Edward steps in and they get to talking in the car he had stolen; well, technically Alice was trying to steal it but when he sensed Bella he took it from her and drove off. They go to the restaurant where her friends are and confirm that she has a ride with Edward to the beach, although at first he just says he’ll take her home afterwards since he can’t go to the beach, but Jacob’s all like ‘nah bro I’ll give you a pass’, since Jacob couldn’t care less about whatever feud is going on. So they eat and have an argument and they go back to the car all angry, and Edward is still bitching about how he doesn’t understand what Bella thinks or feels, since what with reading minds for roughly a century he doesn’t really remember how to properly understand a person, and this frustrates him. Before they go into the car, Bella checks her phone to see if her mom and texted her back. You see, before going on this day trip Bella decided to take initiative and text her mom first, since she didn’t do that before cause she was worried about bothering her. She did this early in the morning, and it was already night, and her mom still hadn’t texted her back. This caused sort of an emotional breakdown from Bella right there in the parking lot. She’s basically all like ‘fine, you wanna know what I’m thinking? well here you go’ and she just tells him everything, about her current situation with her parents, why she decided to move here even though she didn’t want to, how she just always wanted her mom to show that she loved her so she would always do everything to get that love, how guilty she feels for not being able to give Charlie the daughter-father relationship he probably wanted, feeling guilty wanting to be loved by her mom, basically screaming all her trauma at him. At the end she silently gets in the car and looks out the window as they drive away.

Edward feels kinda bad, so they have a nice bonding conversation, and Bella is still freaked out about his speeding. Anyway, it’s during this conversation that they both sort of develop//realize feelings they have for the other person. At first, Edward was just drawn to Bella because he was unused to not understanding people and he became obsessed with knowing her, and as he had gotten to know her he developed feelings. As for Bella, throughout this she had been interested in his inhuman nature and was equally as obsessed to understand and then also ended up falling for him. Basically they fell in love because of a desire to get to know the other person and desperate to make the person not know them. But when Bella tore down her walls in that parking lot Edward also told her some personal stuff, and I think it’s here in this car that Edward drops the bomb about being a vampire, and with now more fully understanding each other and no longer having that draw of being close to each other because of wanting to understand, there still a desire in both of them to keep seeing each other and that’s when they both realize their love.

Anyway, Edward drops Bella off and leaves immediately, but we still see people that live there scold Jacob for telling him it was okay to come drop of Bella. The squad have fun at the beach and Bella gets some great pictures, although she’s still digesting the whole Edward’s a vampire and she might be in love with him thing, so she tells her knew found friends about the whole being in love part and glosses over the vampire bit. Back with Edward, he tells his Vam Fam about being in love and telling Bella, where there are definitely mixed reactions. Now this is where they start interacting with Bella directly, rather when before they just tried to get Edward to chill about her. Alice is of course thrilled about this and has publicly declared Bella as her new best friend; it was an actual public declare, she had a microphone and announced it several times in the middle of town. Rosalie is super not thrilled about this, and definitely treats Bella coldly, although she’s thrown off at Bella’s apathy. Emmett, like Alice, is 100% down with this. Jasper is cautious, but otherwise just wants to watch it all unfold. Carlisle and Esme weren’t happy about exposing them to some teenager, but they support his endeavors none the less.

Anyway, after many shenanigans Bella is invited to dinner at the Cullen's, and she brings along Jessica, Mike, and Jacob. The family’s a bit wary of this guest list, as it was the girl who had tried several times to break into their house and expose their secrets, a well known arsonist, and a soon to be werewolf. But, they actually all had a grand time, and they all kinda start acting like one big family. Particularly Jacob with Jasper and Alice, and Jessica with Rosalie and Emmett, to set up my plans down the line. Now, I’m not saying that there NEEDS to be a polymerous relationship with these two sets of three, but I’d like for it to happen. Jacob would probably notice Jasper’s not really enjoying himself at this socializing stuff, especially with the smell of human blood and all, and Jacob comes over and they get to talking and Jasper will get into that, and it’s helpful that since Jacob is in the future going to be a werewolf he doesn’t have the urge to eat him. So Alice will come over, thrilled that Jasper is having a good time, and then her and Jacob will probably get into something wholesomely chaotic and Jasper will just sit back and watch, enjoying the drama that will come from this. And with Jessica, she’s asking a million questions and exploring the house as much as she could, and Rosalie has taken it upon herself to try and placate her, but Jessica ends up roping Emmett into something and Rosalie now needs to look after him too, but somehow they all have a good time. Meanwhile, I feel like Mike would really vibe with Carlisle and Esme, not in a polymerous way like the others. They’re so exasperated by his behavior but never rude to him, which he finds jarring and it encourages him to be nice to them, and they sort of become like parents to him.

Anyway more stuff happens, probably romantic stuff between Edward and Bella and Jacob kinda slowly realizing he has feelings for Bella more near the end of the season but not letting it show, and then there comes the baseball scene. While they’re doing baseball Jessica actually put a sort of spy camera thing on Bella, but Edward wasn’t around when this was happening, and Jacob was with Jessica when she did this so Alice couldn’t see it. Anyway, Jessica, Jacob and Mike go about spying and they find out that about the whole vampire thing, Then the other vampires show up and they actually drive down to help, driving out onto the field, nearly running over the other vampires, which by the way, besides Victoria, James, Laurent, there’s actually going to be two more vampires with them. I say this, because after getting out of the car, Mike throws a match at this other vampire which sets them ablaze. James, who afterwards comments how he always hated this vampire, takes this opportunity to tear them to pieces as they burn so they die, while Victoria and Laurent are in the back like ‘this bitch really just did that; this is why we can never add new members to our group’. I dunno, I feel like this group of three should be a lot closer and maybe not spilt up or something, like their actually friends.

So now James has two objectives; make Mike into a vampire, and eat Bella, in no particular order. He just takes a really big interest in Mike. Anyway, Laurent is just so done with this drama, and tells James that the Volturi was probably going to be really upset about four non vampires being in on the secret, so they probably don’t want to get involved when shit hits the fan, and Victoria, who is always down for a little murdering, convinces him that they need a more careful plan then just going after them. So James reluctantly agrees, but when they leave he tells the other vampire that’s there to go after Bella and Mike and bring her to him without telling the other two.

So drama ensues, they gotta keep Mike and Bella from dying, they gotta deal with more people knowing their vampires, etc. I think that the vampire that now’s gotta track down Bella and Mike, who I’m gonna call Eric because this is Eric now, isn’t super down with this but is going with it cause he doesn’t want James to kill him. So he feels bad about all this and becomes pretty sympathetic, and the Vam Fam at some point will try and convince him to just join them and that they’ll protect him, but Eric didn’t do it so they had to kill him in the end and it’s very sad.

Anyway, we’ll probably go back to the vampire trio and they figured out that James sent Eric away and now Eric was dead, and they’re just talking. Also, I’m making Victoria and James not mates, because I don’t want that. And there’s the dance that of course needs to happen, and at the end of the season it shows how far Bella’s and Charlie’s relationship has progressed, and with Bella injured she needs Charlie to do some things for her, and she’s forced to accept parental care and learns that it’s actually not that bad. She also stopped constantly checking to see if Renee had texted her. So back to the dance, the Vam Fam siblings and Bella with her friends all go and of course cause chaos that gets them kicked out of the dance. So they decide to go running around town instead, and Bella and Edward have a quiet moment together and it’s nice.

SEASON 2 (AKA Book 2, New Moon)

So the Vam Fam doesn’t leave town, because I don’t want them to. There was going to be a birthday party at the Vam Fam’s house, and along with Bella’s friends Charlie’s invited and he tries to invite Billy too but then Billy turns him down saying he can’t go there, which makes Charlie sad so now Billy’s sad and he grits his teeth and asks the Vam Fam to hold the birthday party somewhere on neutral ground, so they do and they end up going to like the woods or something, maybe that special meadow Bella and Edward had gone to. So the party’s going fine although it’s a little tense with Billy there, which kinda makes the rest of the people there confused. Jacob doesn’t really get why his dad hates the Vam Fam, or why most everyone he knows does, and he tires to get them to get along, but it fails. 

When Billy sees Jacob all friendly with the Vam Fam, particularly Jasper and Alice, Billy tries to put a stop to that, telling Jacob not to get to close. Jacob’s trying to make light of the situation, being all like, ‘nah dad, you crazy’ and Emmett joins in trying to make a joke of it; I feel like Emmett and Jacob would have such a Fred and George Weasley vibe to them as friends. However, as Billy gets more and more persistent with Jacob cutting himself off from the Vam Fam, Jasper gets noticeably hostile, not liking that idea at all, and ready to throw down with Billy. Alice, also visibly upset but not hostile, tries to calm him down while the rest of the family tries to reason with Billy, as they are also not thrilled with the idea of not seeing Jacob again and they don’t want Jasper to fight Billy and break the treaty. Bella’s trying to get everyone to calm down by reminding Billy that this is her birthday party and uses her birthday privilege's to ask him to leave it for now. Meanwhile Mike is yelling at Billy and Jessica is writing everything down, Charlie’s asking Billy to not ruin his daughter’s birthday party, it’s a mess all around. 

At some point Billy says something that goes to far and Jasper lunges for him and the Vam Fam need to stop him and such. After the party Jacob takes Billy home, and both of them think that the other doesn’t know about the vampires so they’re just kinda tensely all like ‘well that was weird, probably nothing to really look to deeply into though, haha’. After the party to lighten the mood Edward starts bitching about how he couldn’t give Bella a present, and so Bella takes a picture of him and says ‘there, now you gave me a present, happy?’ and it’s very cute. Jacob gets a bit upset at Jasper, telling him that he shouldn’t attack his father and stuff, and Jasper doesn’t feel bad about it and is just sad that Jacob is now upset and Alice is trying to get them to make up, which they do eventually. And Charlie questions Billy about his odd hatred and Billy kinda dodges the questions.

So in this season it’s basically about how Edward and Bella are dating and Jacob is secretly in love with Bella but it’s not a secret to the Vam Fam thanks to their powers and then Jacob deals with the werewolf thing and how he’s suddenly supposed to hate them. It’s a very Jacob centered season. And there is of course the motorcycles, which are there because Jacob gave them to Bella as a birthday gift, saying he had found them at the dump a few days ago and still need to fix them up, so now they start hanging out alone more to fix the bikes, although sometimes Mike and Jessica tag along. This is also where Bella learns that she actually really likes the rush of adrenaline, much to Edward’s nagging. There’s also going to be some tenseness between Edward and Jacob in this season, but it’s more quiet since Jacob never outright says he likes Bella, although after he learns about the whole mind reading thing he doesn’t know what to do about that. And of course there’s the jealousy from Jasper and Alice’s side, who are slowly coming to terms with their feelings for Jacob, and are heavily conflicted because he’s going to be a werewolf and they can’t be together after he turns but they still want to make the most of the time they spend together, and it makes Alice anxious when she can’t see Jacob’s future which makes him unpredictable to her and she worries if something bad will happen to him when he’s out of her sight which in turn makes Jasper sense her worry and makes him worried so they try to be around him as much as possible, which he enjoys but is a bit thrown off by.

This is where Jacob introduces his other friends Emery and Quil. I want to make them a bit more distinct from each other, so I want Emery to be the quieter yet very rebellious one that does crazy shit, and Quil to be the more extroverted one but can get very moody and cynical, which Leah can definitely vibe with and they often have deep conversations. Speaking of Leah, we also meet Leah and Seth this season. The Vam Fam is less than friendly towards them, similar to how they treated Jacob at first, the only difference being that they didn’t end up warming up to them, except for Leah and Rosalie, who became surprising friends.

Jacob gets stressed about the situation with Emery suddenly joining Sam’s little cult, and while the Vam Fam sympathizes with him, they don’t tell him the secret. He’s not super surprised that Emery suddenly got into the group, since Emery’s always doing crazy shit and so does Sam’s pack, but he does find it weird that he’s suddenly not talking to him and Quil anymore. So Jessica is now super ready to expose all of Sam’s secrets on this weird group and how he sucked Emery into it, so she, Jacob, Bella, Quil, Leah, Seth and Mike keep trying to find out about Sam’s crew, and Jasper and Alice try to put a stop to it, worried that finding out will trigger Jacob’s transformation, and Rosalie and Emmett sometimes give assistance because Jessica asked, but they don’t get to involved because of the treaty, and Edward is really worried about Bella while she does this so he’s torn between helping and stopping it, shifting from helping Jasper and Alice and Rosalie and Emmett.. And this sort of mystery solving thing carries on for a while, and at this point Sam and his crew are pretty fed up with it.

So then comes the time when Jacob becomes a werewolf, and happens after him, Bella, Mike, and Jessica take a break from spying and cause chaos at the movies; the employees saw them enter and they already knew it was going to be a rough day. Bella was recording the movie illegally, Mike set a small fire to the popcorn, Jessica broke them into where they were making the movies play and that’s where they watched it, and Jacob, in his sickened state, accidently broke the thing playing the movie and they had to bolt. Bella, Mike, and Jessica all get worried about him, and they try to go visit him at home but Billy keeps pushing them away, and the Vam Fam wouldn’t give any details, so Jessica does what she does best and breaks in, where Jacob nearly attacks her in his wolfy state, but he manages to calm down and he and Jessica talk about how he’s turning into a werewolf. 

So after Jacob can go out and about, the pack tells him he can’t hang out with the Cullen’s anymore since they’re vampires, and Jacob’s all like, ‘okay, but they don’t hunt people, they hung animals right? so what’s the problem lmao’ he’s genuinely confused why they need to be all hostile towards them. And here while they’re trying to convince him to not hang out with vampires it can show the dynamic of the pack. Sam can come across as too harsh and a very dominate person, while his second in command, Jared, is much more chill and tires to broaden Sam’s narrow view. But Jared is the only one who can do this, since they’re very close and possibly lovers that have imprinted on each other. Emily is actually a werewolf now, and she got her scars because she and Sam actually became werewolves at the same time and when they first met as werewolves their hormones were all over the place so they attacked each other and that’s how Emily got her face injuries. Anyway, she’s got a level head too but she mostly thinks about what’s best for the pack rather than everyone like Jared does. Then there’s Paul, the guy whose always of the mindset to throw punches first and ask questions never. I’m going to make Brady and Collin here now too, and with Brady, he’s honestly apathetic to the idea of now being a wolf, and would much rather go read a book or something then be here with all this wolf drama. As for Brady, she’s pretty social awkward, but just as vicious as Paul if she gets into the mood. Basically, she’ll be all like, ‘uh, hi, yeah, um, maybe we should, uh, if you don’t mind that is, just go in and kill them all? please?’ and I changed Brady to a girl just to help with the ratio of boys to girls in the wolf tribe. As for Emery, he’s the one who will put himself in the most danger, but also he’s at odds with Sam what with them being half brothers and not having the best relationship before all this wolf stuff went down. Also, Jessica is there too when Jacob goes to meet them, which the pack isn’t happy about, telling her she can’t report this.

Anyway, the Vam Fam are depressed about the whole situation with Jacob cause they really liked him, so imagine their surprise while Bella and Mike were also hanging out at their house when Jacob and Jessica burst in. Jacob explains what’s been going on, basically asking if he can break the treaty and still hang out. Rosalie’s all like ‘bitch no’, nervous about the safety of her family, and Edward sides with her, much to Bella’s glaring. Esme and Carlisle, are hesitant, but do give in. And Alice, Jasper, Emmett are of course ecstatic of this news that he didn’t suddenly hate them. I think this is actually an opportunity for Jacob to get closer to Jasper and Alice, since Jasper can help with Jacob’s new found anger. I think werewolves when they first become werewolves they have an explosive temper, kind of like puberty, but then after a few months or however long they calm down. Anyway, Jasper can help with managing his anger, and this may result in some codependency's now that I think about it, but these books are built on codependent relationships, so the more the merrier. 

But then the vampire trio tell the Volturi about the situation down at Forks, and the Vam Fam need to go down to the Voltari to go talk to them. But Jessica, who had actually started to gain a lot of odd information on the vampire world as any good reporter would, hears the news of the potential planned killing of the Vam Fam set up by the vampire trio, so now Bella, Mike, Jessica and Jacob need to go to the Volturi to put an end to that. Before the Vam Fam could even get to the Volturi, James gets all impatient and starts attacking them right then and there, in front of all those people. A fight scene happens, and then Jane shows up like ‘surprise bitch’, but then the real surprise comes when Bella and her friends show up, causing a scene and it accidentally lets James and his crew to get away.

I think it would be a cool scene if Jacob, Edward and Bella enter first ahead of the rest of them and the moment they’re in front of the Volturi, with Aro looking at them, he’ll smile and say something like ‘a vampire, a werewolf, and a human; what an oddity you all are’ and since these three had kinda been a bit at odds this season what with Jacob’s crush on Bella, now they are a united front. So they make an arrangement for them all to become vampires within a certain time frame or else they will be killed. Aro also says that they’ll occasionally go check up on them.

Now Edward’s being all emo and avoiding Bella, which makes her sad so Jacob goes and tracks down Edward and he bolts, so now Jacob is chasing after Edward, being all like ‘bitch you better go see her’, and he actually ends up catching him. Edward’s all like ‘but don’t you love her’ and Jacob just kinda shrugs and says something like how mutual love is much better than a one sided one. They have this heartfelt talk about stuff and Edward goes to see Bella, and Jacob, who at this point had just been comically chasing Edward around, allowed himself to cry once Edward left. Then he’ll go talk to Alice and Jasper, and throughout this entire season it seemed obvious that they were both trying so hard to keep hold on the ties they had, regardless of the obstacles, and now it’s kind of come full circle when they can just relax and be together and stuff, also there will be a small hint of Jacob’s returning feelings towards them. So Edward and Bella share a moment, maybe back at that meadow or something.

But the last scene of the season will be Leah and Seth at home with their dad Harry, and the whole Leah transforming which gives Harry a heart attack and then Seth transforms too, and it’s just going to be a very jarring scene to end on.

SEASON 3 (AKA Book 3, Eclipse)

So the first scene will be with how James, Laurent and Victoria are making their army and this is where Bree comes in. Victoria is honestly thriving with this whole army thing, and James is just super impatient and wants to just go kill em, and Laurent is low key stressed about pissing off the Volturi. 

But with the wolf pack, there’s a new dynamic that Leah and Seth brings and there’s the whole grief with their father, so maybe the just refuse to transform for a while, sort of defying the pack and it’s alpha and choosing not to be a part of it. So that’ll cause drama for a while, as if there wasn’t enough with Jacob still running around with vampires and by the looks of things getting way to close to Jasper and Alice. Jacob is trying to get over his love of Bella, and is doing pretty good, much to the delight of Jasper and Alice, but they don’t want to rush things. Also, I don’t think werewolves should be able to share thoughts so they know exactly what’s happening with each other at all times, but instead when they shape into werewolves they can communicate with their minds. That way Jacob can keep it a secret about the whole turning three humans into vampires thing.

Also, with the idea that they now how to eventually turn three humans into vampires or else they’ll die is kinda unsettling to the Vam Fam. They’re trying to decide when to do it, and they all have different opinions. Jessica and Mike are honestly ready right now, but Bella wants to wait till after high school since she worries about Charlie, Rosalie and Edward wants to do it never and would honestly rather try and bring down the Volturi, Emmett will be down for honestly anything whether it be doing it now later or fighting the Voltari, Esme, Carlisle, and Alice actually agree with Bella and think waiting till they move town again would be the smartest plus Alice looks into the future and thinks that it’ll be the best possible outcome, Jacob is just upset that they’ll all be leaving him although he is reassured that he is welcome to come with although he’s not sure how that’ll pan out with the pack, and Jasper just says he’ll take care of things when they turn since he knows newborns best and just watches everyone fight over the timing since he lives for the drama. And this will also be the season of Vam Fam backstories, so throughout we will get flashbacks of what each of the Vam Fam went through. Their backstories will basically be the same, except I’m gonna tweak Jasper’s and make him a slave that was forced into fighting for the confederate side. 

Also, per their promise, the Volturi will occasionally pop in just to check up on them, which will cause the wolves to mad about that. ALSO, listen, what if Aro and Marcus became low key friends with Charlie? LISTEN they keep coming around to Forks, and eventually Charlie will approach them because he hears that they’ve been talking to his daughter and he asks what’s up. Aro and Marcus will bring him to a bar or something and lie about it, but as they get to talking they somehow start bonding, and Aro and Marcus are like ‘what’s happening? what spell is this human casting upon us?’ but it’s just Charlie being the best as usual and them starting to like him. So now they’re friends that often have conversations as the season goes on, and when Billy catches wind of this he is super unhappy, wondering how Charlie can be so chill yet so prone to getting into dangerous situations, kind of like his daughter.

And since last season the polyamorous relationship that got more time was Jasper, Alice, and Jacob, so now we’ll shift more towards Rosalie, Emmett, and Jessica. Rosalie is obviously super unhappy about having to turn Jessica into a vampire, since although she loves Jessica she didn’t want her to end up like her and was content with having to leave her in order for Jessica to leave a normal life. So now throughout the season Emmett and Jessica take it upon themselves and the single brain cell they share among the two of them to reassure Rosalie in the best way they can; also, it really establishes how Rosalie is the brains of this trio, with Emmett being the himbo and Jessica being the stubborn dumbass.

So then news about the vampire trio building an army and such travels to Forks and Jessica is actually the first to hear of it. Also, the objective of this vampire army is more world domination than just tracking down Bella and Mike, although that’s definitely part of it. Since the Volturi is already after them, why not strive for world domination? We’ll also keep having scenes of the vampire army shenanigans, particularly with the vampire trio and Bree. Also, Alec and Jane were in charge of the tracking down the vampire trio thing, and they discovered the army, and they were gonna put a stop to it, but then they met Bree. They probably met while Alec and Jane were debating how to take down the army and the vampire trio and such, when some random drunk guy showed up and was being a creep towards them, so they were gonna finna destroy him when Bree popped up and threw a rock at him, took the two and ran. They get to talking and shenanigans' and they actually grow attached to her, but Bree is a very weak vampire, which is odd for a newborn, so they know the Volturi won’t accept her and that would mean they would have to kill her. So they keep delaying the killing of the vampire trio and the army to hang out with Bree some more, tortured by the idea that they’ll have to kill her eventually. Also, I’m gonna make Bree their age, or make them Bree’s age, whichever works.

So anyway, with the threat of the vampire army, the vampires and the wolves are forced to work together. Aro and Marcus know that Jane and Alec are supposed to take care of it, but they’re kinda amused so they’ll see how it all pans out. And of course chaos ensues and nobody can get along, which bugs Bella the most because she has this thing about making everyone around her happy at the cost of herself, so she comes up with idea of doing a group bonding exercise, like they all go to an amusement park or something, which she in fact hates but does for the sake of bonding.

So back to the Leah situation, she needs to go through a whole arc, and Seth does too. Leah probably low key thinks Seth blames her for the death of their father, but the thought never crossed his mind. And since she’s avoiding Seth because of this, Seth thinks that Leah doesn’t want him around. So they need to clear up that understanding, probably with the help of Emily. While Jared makes sure Sam doesn’t slaughter all the vampires and potentially Jacob, Emily tries and mends things within the pack. 

At some point, Leah and Mike get kidnapped by the a few members of the vampire army. What had happened was Leah and Mike were hanging out, as everyone was taking shifts trying to get Leah and Seth to transform again, and Seth had run off at this point, and Mike was surprisingly making some serious progress, when a few members of the vampire army, including Bree, saw them and was like ‘oh wait, isn’t that Mike? from the pictures James showed us? and that girl has black hair, is that Bella bro?’ so they kidnap them.

So Leah is super not Bella and the vampire trio get angry and punish them, well, Laurent kinda just watches. So Bree will meet up with Alec and Jane kinda messed up from the punishment, also, Bree still has no idea who Alec and Jane are or even what the Volturi is. But anyway, when Alec and Jane find out about this they are very unhappy, and hatch a plan with Leah to go get the Vam Fam and the werewolves and come fight the army now, now that they have a location of them. Jane and Alec are doing this rather than taking them down themselves because if the rag tag team of vampires and werewolves were the ones fighting and not them then it would seem more reasonable if one of them were to escape the battle and disappear, that being Bree. 

Mike isn’t there when this plan is hatched because he’s taking with James, who wants to turn Mike into a vampire now, but his other two friends keep telling him that Mike will just turn on them and they need to convince him to join their side while he’s still a human. So him and James hang out and although Mike is cussing them all out, him and James actually have fun causing destruction, and he also causes the biggest case of arson he has done yet, which gives him a rush. Also, Leah is trying to turn into a werewolf now, given the dire circumstances, but she can’t and she doesn’t know why.

So Jane and Alec tell the crew about the kidnapping and the location, so they all head out. Jessica and Bella try to convince the Vam Fam to just turn them into vampires now so they can help out, but they say that they’ll just be unconscious for a few days so it wouldn’t help, but Jessica and Bella say that they can be like a back up plan if they fail, so when they wake up they can avenge them or something. And this is the first time the werewolves aside from Jacob heard about the plans to turn three humans into vampires, so discord ensues but they don’t have enough time so they just go to the vampire army with Bella and Jessica tagging along, thanks to Alice who said they would in fact be useful.

So they get to the army and the battle ensues. Seth is now in werewolf form, wanting to protect his sister, and when Leah sees Seth in a tight spot, she manages to turn into a werewolf again and protect him. Mike is actually very attracted to the idea of destroying the world, but when he sees his friends, he doesn’t want them destroyed so he doesn’t go to the side of the vampire trio. After a lot of epic fighting and some unexpected teamwork, the vampire army is destroyed, and within that chaos Alec and Jane took Bree and high tailed it out of there, explaining the whole situation to Bree. She’s kinda upset that they were planning to kill her, but then Aro and Marcus appear before the situation with that could get too out of hand. Marcus senses the strong relationship the three have, and tells Aro that they will indeed lose Alec and Jane if they kill Bree, and they kinda need them so Aro plays if off like ‘why didn’t you tell me you guys wanted a new friend? sure she can join the Volturi’  and although they are confused they’re just happy Bree’s gonna live, and now they can be together.

So the vampire trio retreat, still alive somehow, and the vampire army is gone, and they got Leah and Mike back, plus Leah and Seth transform now, so all’s well that ends well. Also maybe Brady and Leah get together, which would have been set up throughout the season. Why? I dunno, because I want Leah to be happy, and also with the personality I gave Brady it would be a fun dynamic I think. Brady is all shy while Leah has a much more forceful personality, but Brady is always ready to cut a bitch while Leah isn’t all that down with hurting people most of the time. They’d probably imprint on each other.

So back with the whole Emmett and Jessica trying to convince Rosalie not to worry too much about Jessica turning into a vampire, Rosalie had known what they were doing since the beginning, and to her surprise it actually slightly worked? Not really but Rosalie chooses not to focus on the fact that Jessica will be turned into a vampire, but instead that they’ll always be together, and it’s sweet moment for the three of them. And so the Vam Fam decide to do the vampire turning thing after high school, and Edward asks if they can do it after his and Bella’s honeymoon, since he and Bella had an arrangement. Now, the audience knew about this since Bella throughout the season had been asking if Edward wanted to sleep together since she wanted to do that as a human, but he’s very adamant about the whole wait until marriage thing, so he proposed at probably the worst time, and she accepted.

But the Vam Fam didn’t know about this, so now their all dealing with that, and agree let Bella wait until after and Jessica and Mike will turn first. So some days go by and they’re planning the wedding, and then what a surprise; Renee shows up, having heard about the wedding from Charlie.

SEASON 4 (AKA Book 4, Breaking Dawn)

Wedding time, yay. Also, Renee is creating a super uncomfortable atmosphere, what with the whole Bella feeling neglected from her, and also she brought along Phil, her new husband. Everyone’s acting pretty protective over Bella, eyeing Renee up. Particularly Edward; whenever he sees Renee he just glares at her full on while holding onto Bella, and whenever Renee tries to talk to him he throws so much poetic shade Renee doesn’t even know what this man is talking about.

Bella’s kinda tense about Renee being here, and tries to get along with her, but after getting all that parental love from Charlie, she forgets that’s not how Renee operates, leading to some tense moments between her and Renee. But the wedding planning continues and Alice is stressed because these chaotic idiots are ruining her perfect planning skills. But the wedding goes on and it actually goes off without a hitch. Well, except for Mike causing a teeny tiny fire to only ONE of the bouquets, and Bella did end up tripping going down the aisle while bringing Charlie down with her so Edward went over to her and they both had to go to their places together, and Emmett and Jacob did do that drinking contest but Emmett left out the part where he couldn’t get drunk and Jacob got absolutely wasted so Jasper was in charge of taking care of him, Jessica was trying to get info on the other vampire guests which was annoying them while Rosalie stood menacingly behind her to make sure they didn’t try and anything, and one of those other vampire guests did end up sort of trying to attack Billy, but other than that it went great.

But before the wedding came to a close Bella realized that she’ll probably never see Renee or Charlie again, so she pays a lot of attention to Charlie, but near the end she asks Renee and Charlie to take a picture with her, one that she could keep for after. She and Renee got on better terms, and Renee admits that she could have been a better mother. So Bella and Edward go on their honeymoon where they have tons of sex and we get lots of scenes of that, but back in Forks, disaster ensues.

So Mike and Jessica are getting ready for the whole going to be a vampire thing, and the Vam Fam makes arrangements to move. Mike and Jessica leaving won’t look weird, since they just graduated high school and it’s not like they have anyone particularly close here, well, except with Mike’s mom. So he goes to say his goodbyes to her, and it’s very sad because Mike knows they’ll never see each other again but his mom doesn’t. And then there’s the whole situation with Jacob going with them, which his pack and dad aren’t happy about. So he’s trying to convince them, when suddenly him imprints on Alice and Jasper. Now it’s official; he needs to go with them, and it’s actually a kind of sad goodbye to his dad and the werewolves that were actually his friends. So now the Vam Fam has included Jacob in it, now it was Jessica and Mike’s turn.

So the Vam Fam and Jessica and Mike go to the new house and they turn Jessica and Mike into vampires, with Rosalie being the one to do it for Jessica and Carlisle doing it for Mike. Then, the vampire trio show up to ruin things, and there’s a big fight, and James and Mike have their own separate fight going on. Throughout this entire series, it would be shown the parallels between Mike and James, how naturally violent they both are, how it seems to be a match made in hell for these two. But now it seems like their violent ways had caught up so them, as they fight with everything they got and enjoying the hell out of it, and so Mike and James die together, having killed the other one. Mike’s final words will probably be something like ‘damn, I just got these cool ass powers; I was gonna do so much’ and James laughs and is like ‘hell yeah, you missed out’ and after they say that they die, hand in hand.

The vampire trio, now the vampire duo, is devastated at this news, James was like family to them. So they run off but swear revenge, even Laurent pissed off now. They all mourn the death of Mike, and Alice was taking it especially hard because she had relaxed on the future seeing and didn’t see this coming. Then she saw the thing with Bella being pregnant and went to go call her to tell her that she was pregnant and Mike was dead.

Bella had already suspected the pregnant party, but the Mike being dead took her so off guard she actually fainted, although Edward caught her. They go to the house where the wolf pack was already there at the request of Jacob, to help fight when the vampire duo attack. Although, they are not happy with the pregnancy. It’s very emotional for a while, what with Mike dying, Jessica dealing with being a newborn, and Bella on the verge of dying with this baby she refuses to give up.

So she gives birth and dies but comes back a vampire, and now Renesmee is out in the world, which the Volturi doesn’t like. We go back to the Volturi and get some scenes with them, also with Aro and Marcus consoling Charlie about his ‘dead daughter’ who they actually feel genuinely bad for. Also we get scenes with Bree, Alec and Jane, who are just having a grand time, although some of the other vampires pick on Bree for being so weak, Alec and Jane roll up and they’re on their knees in front of Bree begging for forgiveness, which she gives much to Alec and Jane’s pouting. In any case, the Volturi know about Renesmee, and they need to go kill her.

So Bella’s discovering her mind blocking powers, and Edward is losing his mind about how he finally knows why he can’t read her mind, and Jessica learns she doesn’t really have any powers other than an average vampire. Life goes on and such, and Bella and Edward are getting really attached to Renesmee, loving the hell out of her and doing their best to figure out how to be parents, and this is when the coupling of Jacob with Alice and Jasper and Jessica with Emmett and Rosalie is now official, so they get couple moments. But then the Volturi rolls in. Alice does her thing and shows what will happen if this battle happens so they roll back out, but then Victoria swoops in and straight up kills Renesmee, then Bella kills her. Laurent is there, but after Victoria dies he realizes that all his friends, his family, are dead, and so he just closes his eyes and allows himself to be killed.

So after Renesmee is dead, Edward and Bella are really going through it, and then Bella just reminds Edward of his days of killing murders and pedos and such, and she kinda hints that she’d be totally down for some of that. And so now it’s murder road trip time of killing murders and pedos, and the Vam Fam isn’t upset about the killing really, their just worried that this might not be the healthiest way to handle the loss of their child. But they do and we get to see a bunch of their killing fun times, and there’s actually going to be a time jump of maybe like 30 years or so, when the Vam Fam is in a different town doing stuff, and then Edward and Bella show up and they’re all reunited. Edward and Bella settle down from the killing joy ride, although they hint that they wouldn’t be adverse to doing it again if they get into the mood. So now that’s their cute couple thing; killing murderers and pedos.

EXTRA DETAILS

Couple pet names would consist of; 

Edward to Bella: Love, My Lion  (Edward had that dumbass line about him being the lion and her being the lamb, but I’m gonna change it so he was like ‘at first I thought you were the lamb and I was the lion, but I realize it’s the opposite’ or something stupidly emo like that and Bella’s all like ‘Edward pls’ but the nickname stuck)

Bella to Edward: My Lamb (same explanation as above)

Rosalie to Jessica: My Little Storm

Rosalie to Emmett: My Monkey Man

Emmett to Rosalie: Babe (when referring to both Rosalie and Jessica he says Babes), Angel

Emmett to Jessica: Babe (same explanation as above)

Jessica to Rosalie: Kitty

Jessica to Emmett: Big Boy

Jasper to Alice: Ma’am, Frightening Little Monster, Darlin’

Jasper to Jacob: Sunshine, Darlin’

Alice to Jasper: My Darling

Alice to Jacob: My Dearest

Jacob to Jasper: Cat (It started as a joke and then it wasn’t)

Jacob to Alice: Raven (again, started as a joke)

Jared to Sam: Sap

Sam to Jared: My Life, Precious Thing

Leah to Brady: Baby

Brady to Leah: Mine

Regular nicknames used by anyone;

Isabella: Bella, Bells

Michael: Mike, Mikey

Jessica: Jess, Jessie

Charlie: Chuck (only if you want to annoy the hell out of him)

Rosalie: Rose, Rosie

Jasper: Jazz, Whitlock

Alice: Mary, Shorty

Emmett: Em, McCarty

Edward: Anthony, Eddy

Esme: Platt

Carlisle: Lyle

Jacob: Jake, Jay

William: Billy

Sam: Sammy

Jared: Jay-Jay

Emily: Lily

Paul: The Paul-ster (If you want him to try and kill you)

Brady: Phyco

Leah: Lee Lee

Seth: Sethy

Collin: Lin

Victoria: Vickie

James: Jamie

Laurent: Laur’

Aro: No (insert heart emoji)

Marcus: Mark

Jane: Plain

Alec: Al

Bree: Baby Bree (mostly just Baby)

Also, I find it hard to believe that the Cullens stuck to America while moving around so much, so this is where I think all of them are from:

Esme: Caribbean

Carlisle: Britain

Jasper: America

Emmett: Canada

Edward: Italy

Alice: Wales

Rosalie: France

ALSO throughout the entirety of the series it’s probably going to have more Edward and Bella moments then what was written, since this is a story about their romance, I just thought I’d put in other stuff and mention it since the romance scenes would be pretty obvious.

[theruby-redmare]

Back on Cricket!

I've ridden Ms. Cricky 4x now since her accident 8 weeks ago (Remember when J initially said I might not be able to ride her a few days.....anyway). Ideally, I was going to start off in in the indoor to minimize possible stressors for the first few rides. Ofc, M and J decided to park vehicles with two full loads of hay, in addition to the hay already stored in the corners and stacked to the ceiling in the indoor. For a full week (and ongoing), even when it rained and the outdoor was unusable. If I was paying board, I'd be livid. But I'm not, so i had to suck it up, ride outside, and hope deer/cats/etc. wouldn't jump out of the woods!

The first day I walked like 6 laps each direction and trotted a long side each direction. Not spooky at all. Walked like a drunken sailor; I committed to not taking up contact for the first ride to not overwhelm her so I did my best to correct with my legs but she def is unbalanced. The first trot transition she napped hard (furious head shaking and took steps sideways). I insisted, off she went, and she didn't try it again.

The second ride, I walked a little less and trotted more. She was very looky for unknown reasons but didn't spook. She was slow to pick up the trot when I first asked, but def better than the first ride. I asked for a canter down the long side once each direction. I was trying to just sit still and stay out of her way, but I had to squeeze a little to keep her going because it felt like she was going to drop halfway.

I was more nervous going into the third ride, as she had a few days off, there were other people in the arena, and the bugs were really bad. I sprayed so much fly spray on her but she was doing full body shakes while warming up on the lunge. She ended up being super good and forward when I got on! Oh how I missed my little sprightly pony. All business. First trot transition was solid. I kept a soft contact and just tried to think “straight” without nagging her. She was soft and reaching for it. We cantered a lap each direction; I still had to squeeze to keep her going at times, but she had moments of keeping the pace and relaxing over her top line. When I down-transitioned and slipped the reins, she gave me ~5 strides of stretchy trot.

Fourth ride was very similar to the third. I’m honestly amazed at how well behaved she was for all the horseflies attacking her, just some head shaking. I added a few big circles at the trot and a couple steps of leg yield at the walk. 

Overall, she’s sound and pleasant but definitely needs to build back her fitness and balance. Bend/straight needs major work again. Ever since I put the saddle on, everyone at the barn has been super “friendly”/inquisitive about her progress. Like they care... During my second ride, someone even asked if I would be competing at the big local event in 4 weeks. It took everything for me not to snap at them. My long-term plan, pre-injury, was to move up to starter for that show and try to win it again. But these people ruined it. Sure, I could feasibly do it, but I would have to rush her back into jumping and/or sort of wing it like last year. And that doesn’t leave a lot of time to get her back trailering confidently (my trailer friend is convinced Cricket will just get on for me like nothing happened but I'm skeptical...also why risk wrecking her as soon as she’s healed). Plus J and M run this event, and I don’t want to give them money. Or help fuel Cricket’s possible sales ad if we placed. Speaking of that, the owner never responded to my text letting her know that Cricket was back to riding. I don’t know what my next move is here, because it looks like nothing is going to change at this rate.

[haloud]

an overture bold and beyond

for the Roswell New Mexico Big Bang (@rnmbb)

[AO3 link]

Jesse is dead, and Alex is left standing in the whirlwind of thoughts and emotions left behind by the events of Crashdown and the days leading up to it. With the dust settled, Alex and Michael pick through the debris--they've argued many times before, but the last one, in Michael's workshop, lingers over them, demanding...something, demanding to be seen, to be spoken, to be soothed. Through three conversations, they search for an understanding they've never found before, one that brings them closer together. (An episode 2x10 fix-it fic)

with art by @bisexualalienblast!

1.

The shed is as it always was and at the same time something else entirely. Small and dusty, smelling of wood, at night it would throw weird, spiked shadows from the tools and trophies adorning the walls, but during the day the light is pale yellow and pleasant against the pine. Ten years of light and absence have faded the posters that still shroud the walls. The floor is clean and swept and no amount of scalded memory could make Alex recall exactly where the blood used to be.

Dad is dead, and that means there is a life’s worth of unloading and sorting and dispersing to do of the things he possessed and left a mark on, and Greg has done enough, which means it falls to Alex. And it’s only fitting that the shed go first.

Still, where to begin? Should he get a dumpster for the antlers or a box to collect the tools for donation? Should he be cold and unfeeling, or should he pore over the cracks of his soul and salvage some sentimentality, some silver lining for the toolbox that built his treehouse, or the low bench that served as his bed on the safe and hidden nights, or.

For so long, this tiny, old, unused building loomed so large in his mind it blotted out any light that could shine on anything else. And then, through sheer stubbornness, he told himself it was just a building with such intensity that now, here, with the boogeyman six feet deep for good, it’s shocking all over again to find out that he was right.

It’s just a building. There are cobwebs so thick one corner is entirely grayish-white. The windows are grimy; the floorboards creak. Alex stands in the middle with his hands in his pockets. Somehow, he always thought there would be more screaming, like the soft and sweet-smelling pine might have captured the echo. It’s almost as unsettling as seeing a ghost, to stand at the center of his nightmares and not be haunted at all.

Greg would have come out here with him if he’d asked—but he didn’t ask. Greg would have hovered, looked at him all full of concern, like he thought Alex was being some sort of martyr for tackling this alone. Hell, maybe Alex thought that too, just a bit. Maybe that’s why it’s so bizarre to stand here and be...fine.

He’s fine. He’s too fine. He’s so weirdly, blissfully, mind-numbingly fine. 

No grief. No celebration. Just a fineness so complete and immaculate it could be mistaken for emptiness if his head were a little clearer. 

Alex takes in a deep, woodsy breath and blows it out slowly, making dust motes scatter and dance.

He left the door open intentionally, to hear if Greg shouted for him, for a quick escape, just in case, for a breath of fresh air. When a shadow falls across it Alex freezes, braces for impact, until he jerks his head up and sees the reason.

“Hey,” Michael says. A smile flickers across his face and then it’s gone, and Alex breathes through the blow of it.

“Hey.”

A beat passes. Alex chews on the inside of his cheek. They’ve been alone together once since their fight, and that was a hostage situation.

“Maria made me bring food over. I gave it to Gregory. Seems to be holding up okay.”

Was that true? That Maria made him? Or was it a cover, a thin, defensive veneer protecting him from—well, if he was really just here on an errand of respectability at the behest of someone more respectable, he could have—it would have been easy, the easiest thing in the world, to leave the food and slip back out without Alex ever having even known he was there.

Yet here he is, having sought Alex out. Should Alex let himself hope that this means something, that everything they were building, all closeness and understanding, wasn’t set aflame and burned to ashes in a furious, impulsive whirlwind?

He’s here. It’s something.

Alex has been practicing, since that last night they were alone together, since the bunker. He had a lot of time to think and could only hum the melody he found for his song so many times. So he’s been practicing what he’d say next time he saw Michael, what he’d say to make it right. To stretch out an open hand and not snatch it back, to allow himself to be reached for and not snap at it, all teeth. It all feels like a ridiculous fantasy now, looking at Michael’s quiet, expressionless face. He’s never known what to say. Maybe he never will.

Clearing his throat, Alex says, “Yeah, he’s, uh, made his peace, I guess. Still, we’re keeping each other company for now. How’s Maria doing?”

“Hanging in there. If it wasn’t for Liz…” Michael swallows and glances away.

“Yeah,” Alex replies hoarsely. Yeah. If it wasn’t for Liz, Flint’s body count would be up by one, and it would be Alex’s fault. Should have secured him better. Should have made sure there wasn’t a second key. Should have warned Charlie instead of going out the back. Shouldn’t have been distracted by his father. Should do something to stop him from acting again. Disaster struck. Justice done. Should…

“Hey. Alex,” Michael says, and Alex snaps out of his head to see him hovering closer, concern all over his face.

“Just,” Alex waves his hand, waves him off. “Just thinking about where we’d be without Liz. Not a pretty picture.”

“Yeah.”

Michael retreats just a pace or two back to the door. For a moment, Alex jolts like he could stop him from leaving, but then Michael turns to talk again.

“And…how are you?”

“What?”

“I mean. I’m not sad the bastard’s dead, but.” Michael leans against the doorframe and crosses his arms. “I’m not gonna break out the champagne until I know it’s cool with you, I guess.”

“Ha. I…I think the feeling’s a little more ‘lazy Sunday’ than ‘wild party.’”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Like…I can breathe easier now. I’m not ready to celebrate, I just want to drink it in, you know?”

“Sure. We can make it mimosas instead.”

At that, Alex laughs, a short and underused thing. He runs out of stamina quickly. Part of him aches to invite Michael in, to sit beside him on the bench and talk about all the things they aren’t saying. But how would Michael take that? Here, now? Alex needs more time to consider all the pieces on the board.

“And physically?” Michael steps back toward him, nearly pacing for the number of times he’s walked those three feet of floor. He touches his own forehead where Alex is cut in two jerky movements, one forward, one up. “No concussion or anything?”

Alex shakes his head. “Clean bill of health.”

“Good. That’s good.”

The awkwardness dances between them like the dust does, and Alex measures his breaths to keep calm. The light should make things easier; it couldn’t be more different from the dark underground of Michael’s workshop, but the tension between them is the same.

“You were right,” Alex blurts.

“I should go,” Michael blurts at the same time, and then the two of them are frozen again until Alex breaks the ice.

“No, don’t. Please. I didn’t get a chance to really say this when you found me, but I need to.”

Michael hesitates. Alex holds his breath. But then Michael sighs, shoulders lifting and falling, and nods.

Bracing himself, Alex continues.

“You were right.”

Michael makes another aborted noise of protest, but Alex barrels on.

“My father was lying and manipulating the way he always has, and I was so ready to think that he was defeated that I stopped trying to see through him. I wanted to be right so badly that I convinced myself I was, and I hurt you, and I could have hurt so many more people if Liz hadn’t been able to—if Isobel wasn’t there to hold off the fire—”

His voice falters and he closes his eyes, then forces them open. No hiding.

Michael works his jaw for a minute or so like he might respond, might get angry, but he takes so long to start talking Alex almost continues his speech.

But then Michael says, “You don’t have to do this. You’ve got no obligation to make me feel better or whatever. We both had a hand in making bombs this weekend, and I’m the one who knew what he was doing.”

“For me. You made a bomb for me.”

Michael levels him with a golden look.

“Yeah. I did.”

“To save me. And maybe I didn’t know what my father would use that piece for, but it was never going to be anything good. I just wanted answers, it didn’t have to be life or death. I’m—sorry.”

Alex hates apologies. Always has. After growing up the way he did, they always felt like a test, a test of his own commitment to forgiveness, to the value he chose for himself, the value his father never would have tried to beat into him. Or like an exertion of that same pressure on someone else, a desperate, pathetic cry for acceptance, for absolution.

And apologies were always particularly difficult between the two of them. Like each one granted might rip the bandage off all the old wounds that were never treated at all. But it was time, long past time, however, that they began to face these things.

Michael sucks in a breath and blows it back out in a huge sigh.

“Look,” he says. “It doesn’t make me feel any better to listen to you beat yourself up, okay? It’s not like you were entirely wrong; it’s not like I was making any strong effort to see things from your perspective. I…”

Michael flexes his left hand, then shoves it in his pocket, and another wave of guilt drags at Alex like quicksand. He can’t look away from that pocket even as Michael starts talking again.

“I still don’t understand. Why you would want him to change, why you would want anything from him after all this time and…everything. But there’s a lot I don’t get about family. And I probably would have told you giving up the piece was a bad idea no matter what, but I shouldn’t have to understand everything perfectly to listen when you’re telling me something’s important to you. I’ve been talking to Maria…” He pauses.

“It’s okay,” Alex prompts. It’s been months; there’s no point in pretending like what’s happening isn’t happening.

It would be easier if any of their endings felt like the end. If he could shake off the certainty of old habit that time would pass and gravity would bring them back together. Michael and Maria have a good thing. Alex is taking steps, trying new things. And yet…

Neither of them would ever say it. They’ll both push it to the back of their minds, paper over longing with something new.

Yet.

Michael says, “Maria isn’t sure if suppressing her powers her entire life is what she wants. And I feel like an asshole because we both know that I’m asking her to do something I might not be able to do myself in her shoes. So I’m trying to understand where she’s coming from, no matter how much it hurts. I’m putting in the work. In every part of my life, okay?”

Alex nods, not knowing what to say.

And Michael carries on, like he’s trying to lighten the mood.  “Anyway, I figure I might at least try and earn those second chances you keep giving me, right?”

His tone is light and weightless, but it sends Alex’s heart plummeting into his stomach.

“What does that mean?” He asks, even though he already knows.

Michael shrugs. “Look, I should really get back to the hospital. Text me if anything comes up, okay?”

“Michael!”

“What, Alex?”

His voice spikes, then his lips press together in a harsh line, but Alex doesn’t wait for any attempt at an apology. No amount of yelling ever made him scared of Michael.

“For what it’s worth,” he said, “And it may be out of line for me to say this outright. But. You’re nothing like my father. Never have been. Giving you second chances—I mean, letting anyone make mistakes and work past them—it’s nothing you have to earn any more than, I mean, I have to earn them, which isn’t to say I don’t know I have things to work on—”

“Alex, stop.”

Michael mercy-kills his rambling, and Alex inhales deeply and bobs his head once in a nod, and Michael drops his eyes to the floor.

“Gonna tell you something I’ve never said to someone who wasn’t comatose, so, uh. Be honored, or something.”

Alex nods to tell him to go on, even if Michael can’t see it.

“Look, I know you know what it’s like to grow up under shitty circumstances, so I won’t waste your time getting into it, but. Growin’ up, and then even when I was older, in high school and after, all my relationships had always been…transactional. Except you never saw the price tag and you just had to guess.”

A soft noise escapes Alex’s mouth, and Michael glances up then lets his eyes slide away again. Alex doesn’t say a word to interrupt him. Alex is tense with a strange mix, gratitude and regret at how little he knew, how little he still knows, about how Michael the boy makes up Michael the man, and how little Michael knows in return. How much he still has to learn. 

All he wants is for them to be in each other’s lives to keep that learning going. But how to say that in a way that isn’t begging Michael to be pinned down by him? 

Michael continues, “That’s why I didn’t believe you at first when you said people could just be nice for no reason. You were the first person who showed me there was another way, and then after you, I…stopped believing in it again. Partially ‘cause I knew I’d fucked up with you, so I didn’t deserve you anymore. That’s a kid’s way of thinking at it, but yeah. With Max and Iz, with Sanders, with Maria, and yeah, with you, trading favors is what I default to, and I’m trying to stop thinkin’ of it like that. I am. But trying to earn things, people, second chances...it’s the kind of habit that’s stubborn to break.”

“I’m trying, too.” Alex measures his breath again and wonders if Michael can tell he’s doing it, how obvious he is. Does he owe Michael at least as much vulnerability and courage as that took, or is that transactional thinking too? “I’m trying to remember that my morality isn’t always universal. I thought I was doing what was right, and in some ways I was, but I was acting in a world where everyone thinks exactly like myself, and that’s just not the real one.”

Michael stands up a little, then. His eyes sharpen. Alex doesn’t know what he’s going to say, so he keeps talking.

“I subsumed my moral compass in work, in mission for so long, that the second I started recapturing it…I lost sight of so many other things.”

“No. No, Alex,” Michael says firmly. Outside, the sun is beginning to set, the light deepening, the blurriness of early dusk. It smudges Michael’s edges; it softens him. It’s reminiscent of how he looks at dawn, a sight Alex may never see again, and his chest aches. And he aches for the fine, furious tremble, the certainty in that fixed jaw.

“Yes,” Alex disagrees. “Your faith in me is…” So many words are so loaded. Unearned? Undeserved? “It’s, um, an honor. But…I think I know who I am now. And I’m learning more every day.”

He winces as his own cheesiness, but Michael just softens, slouching back against the door, a flicker of a smile on his face.

The light is truly dying, now, and Alex looks around the shed. He didn’t get anything done he intended to tonight, but it can wait for another day.

He looks back at Michael and asks, “Is it hard for you? Being here again. I should have asked earlier, I…”

His voice dies off as Michael takes a step inside, looking all around himself before his eyes settle on Alex again. He’d stayed so close to the doorway and the open air the whole time they were talking. Inside, with the broad shoulders and strong hands that had been budding and awkward on his seventeen year old self, he takes up so much room there’s none left for the last of the ghosts.

“I’m okay,” Michael says. “He’s gone. Never gonna hurt me again. Never gonna hurt you again.”

“I know it’s just a building, but it seems like it should be more. It was the only place I felt safe, and then in one moment he tore that away. It’s hard to process that someone like that is just…gone. You know he used to tell us all about how his grandfather built this place with his own two hands? I just…”

Michael looks at him, then, and it’s the same like the shed is the same. Ten years of safety, ten years of hiding and neglect. He looks at him like he always has, the careful, creative study of men who named constellations.

He has a hammer in his hands. He holds it out to Alex handle-first.

“Yeah. This place sucks.”

2

Michael looks like shit. His eyes are ringed with purple shadows, both from sitting by Maria’s bed and from the sleepless nights present and future, his hair rough from where he’s been running his hands through it. Isobel rests a hand in the crook of his arm, close enough to him that he can physically feel her comfort. If it were Alex, he’d chafe at the pity, but at the same time he’d do anything to be in Isobel’s place, to be allowed that closeness, to be that part of Michael’s life where he knew how to provide any comfort but silent presence.

Isobel, however, doesn’t stick around long after they read Tripp’s journal, leaving them with a tousle of Michael’s hair. They’re left to the bustle of a busy diner, but the world seems to shrink all the same. Alex fiddles with the loose vinyl strings at the edge of the booth and searches for the right thing to say.

“So do you think they were? Cosmic?” He asks, watching the cover of the journal like it could tell him anything more than it already has.

“Does it matter? They’re both dead.”

“I. Yeah. They are,” Alex says, then leans back in the booth and lets out a carefully measured sigh, working his fingertips into the muscle of his right thigh, hoping to ease the persistent ache.

His head hurts, too, and he closes his eyes to give himself a break from the pressure and strain behind them. It blots out the journal in front of him. It blots out Michael’s weary, troubled face; it blots out his strong, whole hands folded on the table.

Tripp must have closed his eyes too. For decades, as the woman he loved was tortured and imprisoned and experimented on and left to die, to die in front of her son’s screaming eyes as Alex held him back from joining her.

When he opens his eyes again, he almost expects Michael to be gone, but he isn’t.

“How are you holding up?” Alex asks, tentatively. His hand inches across the tabletop like he might take Michael’s, soothe him where he’s begun picking at the skin around his nails, but he forces it back before Michael even notices his approach.

“Fine. I’m…ha.” Michael shakes his head. “Gotta be fine, right? Been here before.”

“Michael…”

“It’s true.”

“I know.”

Alex doesn’t apologize. It wouldn’t mean anything anyway, not here and now with all that’s gone between them. Michael’s eyes flicker up to him as if checking his reaction; his shoulders curl inward, making himself small.

“Don’t know why I thought this time would be different. But now I know, I guess. Common denominator. Should’ve already known, but I’m a dumbass like that.”

“No, you’re not, you’re—”

Michael ruthlessly cuts him off. “Shouldn’t you be asking how Maria is, anyway? I thought you were her friend.”

Alex blinks at him, cocks his head. But it doesn’t take a genius, or an expert in Michael Guerin, to see that for the deflection that it is.

He has been to the hospital to see Maria, plenty of times. It’s basically only hospitalization that’s kept him from bringing it up, from asking what she’s thinking. Michael and he are here, now, only feet between them once again like the feet between them in the tiny shed as they tore it down around them. No closer. Alex wants to get closer, but denial is the reliable companion comfort is not. So Alex focuses on his body and filling it, staying within it, staying present, while Michael bleeds the love of two people and ten years and one into the space between them, walking wounded.

“I am, but I’m your friend too. And to hear her tell it, she’s the one who broke up with you. So I think my priorities are okay for now.”

“Oh, we’re friends now, are we?”

That one hurts, but Alex just shrugs. It’s true that friends might not be the right word for what they are to each other. What they are has to be a word that doesn’t quite exist, at least not in the only language either of them knows how to speak. If Alex lingers too long on the potential of the languages either of them could know if it weren’t for the confluence of violence and neglect, he would be lost.

Michael flattens his palms and leans over. “Nothing to say? Really?”

Alex replies, “I don’t want to fight again.”

“Why?” Michael snaps. “Because you don’t want anything from me right now?”

At that, Alex can’t help but flinch, muscles locked up and frozen like a wolf inches from the teeth of a trap, and Michael flinches as well.

“I—I didn’t mean that. I—” Michael shakes his head. His face twists into something awful, something grieving, something inward. He rocks back, muted colors all but disappearing against the bright vinyl cushion behind him. God, Alex just wants to touch him. A hand on his shoulder, a hand on his hand. It’s the only way they’ve ever been able to communicate. But just because it’s familiar doesn’t mean it’s enough.

“No, you’re right,” Alex reassures. “You’re right. In your lab, I was wrong to come at you like that, and not just that, I was completely out of line not taking no for an answer—”

“No, Alex, no. You might have been wrong about your father changing, but we already talked about this, and I should—I should be able to control myself by now.”

A prickle of unease trickles cold across the back of Alex’s neck. He lowers his voice, though it’s probably too late to prevent any eavesdropping. “What do you mean? Control yourself? Michael, you’re one of the most controlled people I know. I hate that you’ve had to be, but from what you’ve said, the control you have over your powers is amazing. Admirable.”

Michael barks out a dry laugh. “My powers. But it’s more than that, it’s always been. You know that better than anyone; you said it yourself, and you were right. Fucking wasting my life, right? And now here I am, wasting this chance to be there for you because I can’t just get over some hurt feelings.”

There for him. Michael is the one with the freshly broken heart, and he’s coming down on himself for not comforting Alex about the death of a great-uncle he never met, a great-uncle who abandoned his mother when she needed him. A great-uncle who should have died somewhere his brother never could have buried him on family land, should have died where he stood, like Alex would, like Alex would if it was Michael, if it was his—

Alex shakes his head frantically at that, at Michael’s cold shutting down of his own pain as just hurt feelings. What a screw-up. Michael isn’t perfect either, but Alex was never taught to pull punches, neither with fists nor with words.

“Michael, do you want to know why I said those things to you last time we fought?” 

“Because I wasn’t listening! ‘Cause you were pissed at me, I don’t know—”

“Because the change in my father had me confused and scared, and I was floundering for control.”

Michael opens his mouth, eyebrows scrunching together like he’s ready to argue, but Alex barrels on, staring straight into Michael’s eyes, knowing in his core that Michael isn’t going to look away from him.

“I thought that piece could be leveraged against him, and I didn’t care how you felt about it. I was hurting, and I took it out on you because you were an easy target. A safe target. I know in every part of my being that you would never hurt me.”

“No!” Michael protests.

“So when I tell you some garbage about you not deserving my faith in you, it’s gospel, but when I tell you I was wrong, it’s too much?” Alex demands.

To that, Michael has no answer. His mouth falls open, but nothing comes out, so it snaps shut again and he shakes his head.

“I’m the last person who’s gonna get on your case for not watching your mouth when you’re pissed,” he says with a casual shrug.

The ache in Alex’s thigh has radiated all the way up into his hips and lower back. In the kitchen, something clatters to the ground, the sound bringing the setting back in harsh relief, the very public diner loud and living all around them. Michael takes notice too, leaning back self-consciously, pulling his jacket tighter around himself.

Alex doesn’t know how to argue anymore; he knows he doesn’t want to. He can’t undo a lifetime of evidence built up inside Michael that he’s worthless with a few pretty words, no more than Michael could do for him over ten years. Trying is how they got here, at least in part. A good strategist knows when to retreat and try again another day.

Michael hasn’t said anything more, hasn’t probed farther for a fight, so sensing they’re done here, Alex takes the journal from the table to put it in his jacket pocket. But when his fingers touch leather something about the sensation makes him stop.

“Do…do you want to take it? I mean, he wrote about your mom, I…” He swallows, and continues, “I can’t give any part of her back to you, but if it gives you any comfort at all to read about her…”

“He was your ancestor. A Manes man. One who wasn’t a bloodthirsty bag of dicks. You should give it back to Maria or keep it if she doesn’t want it,” Michael says gruffly.

Not bloodthirsty, perhaps, but Alex is less sure that he was any sort of hero or any sort of comfort to Alex now. Tripp’s dog tags hang around his neck, warmed to the temperature of his skin but still palpably there, the feeling strange in a way his own never were. A reminder of what can happen if you believe in something but fail to act upon it.

“Yeah, it belongs to the Delucas. I wish Patricia had gotten to read it. I don’t know why Tripp didn’t...”

“And we never will. I’ll leave returning it to you. Can’t imagine Maria’s eager to see me at the moment.”

“You might be surprised.”

Michael just shrugs again and slides out of the booth, shoving his hands in his pockets when he stands.

Alex does a calculus at this point grown familiar, of whether he should nurse his drink for a little while longer so Michael doesn’t see how hard it is for him to stand, how painful to walk. So Michael doesn’t see him as weak. So they don’t have to have the awkward moment where Michael drives off while Alex calls an Uber or something because he walked here from the coffeeshop when Michael and Isobel texted him and now he can’t make the return trip. So—

“I got street parking,” Michael says.

“What?”

“My car’s right outside. Let me give you a lift home? We can stop by and grab whatever you need from your car and I’ll come back and get it, give it a tow or something.”

His eyes flick to Alex’s, briefly, then dance away. He doesn’t say it out loud, that he’s been able to notice that Alex is hurting.

“Or you can call Greg or Forrest or Kyle or something and I’ll get out of your hair,” he continues. “I know you don’t need my help—”

Alex grabs his wrist. He gets half cuff, half skin.

“Michael. I’d appreciate it, actually.”

The smile he gets is a half-bitten thing, brighter than the sun itself.

The sun sets in their eyes as they turn onto Alex’s street, and after ten minutes of silence, Michael speaks.

“I was out of line, spoiling for a fight with you back there. I won’t do it again.”

Alex doesn’t need to look at him to know that he’s golden, pure gold.

“We’re both on the remedial track for emotions and handling conflict. I understand, Michael.” He curls his fingers around the truck’s bench seat like he did when he was seventeen and they couldn’t hold hands in public. He can almost imagine there are grooves there that fit just him. “It isn’t second chances, or third, or fourth. It’s proof we’re learning how to make mistakes without ending the whole world over it.”

If he stole some of that from his therapist, so be it. 

Michael’s voice is a little thick when he replies.

“That...that sounds pretty good to me.”

When they pull up to Alex’s driveway, he doesn’t get out right away, though he picks up his crutch and settles it over his lap, partially for a quick escape if he loses his nerve, partially for something to do with his hands.

Alex watches the lavender-gold sky and says, “It’s okay, you know. To be angry. I know I said the opposite, before, but…” he swallows harshly. “But it was hypocritical, and I regret it, and.” Horribly, tears prick at his eyes, but he has to get through this. “You deserve to feel safe. I don’t want to make you feel unsafe, ever. I walk around saying I’m doing the opposite like I deserve some kind of medal, but then I attack you, and I put you in danger—”

He chances a glance Michael’s way, only for the crack in his heart to widen at his hunched, defensive posture, curled around the steering wheel like it’s a shield to protect him where he’s most vulnerable.

Michael says, “You were the first person. The only person. Who ever made me feel safe. Who ever cared enough to make sure I had a place to go even if I didn’t trust you or if I pushed back on it. Who didn’t ask anything in return. We share a lot of the same pain from those days. But I don’t know if you know what that meant to me. I don’t know if you know how fucking hard it is for me to hear you talk like this now. I don’t know what you want from me.”

Horror creeps in at the edges of Alex’s vision. His lips are numb, but they still form, “Michael, you...you haven’t thought that you owe me for that for all these years, right? Please, please tell me you haven’t…”

“No! God, no.”

Michael looks at him, the sunlight turning his eyes to honey. His mouth is chapped, but it just makes Alex want to feel that roughness with his thumb, cup his jaw and feel the stubble against his fingertips. 

Those instincts may never go away, but that doesn’t mean they have to suffer, even if they can never make being in love good for the both of them. A life where their jagged edges align in the way only they can for each other, where they find that perfect angle where nothing, nothing hurts at all when they sit beside each other...that’s all they need. 

Michael turns away before he says anything more. The sun doesn’t turn, though, just limns his eyelashes in gold, casts his cheekbones in dramatic shadow, and Alex lets out a soft sigh from somewhere deep in his soul that Michael can be, from every angle, this unchanged.

“I don’t want to owe anyone anything. I’m tired of it,” Michael says, voice low and rough. “And I found out recently that some people in my life I thought I was racking up debt to I’d die without repaying had wiped my slate clean long ago. I can be wrong about stuff sometimes. I’m pretty smart, but I’m a big boy.” 

He flashes a quick morning-mist smile, eyes quirking sideways to look at Alex as he does it, and Alex smiles back, shoulders dropping as some tension leaves him. Michael’s eyes flick down and away before he speaks again.

“But where do we go from here? You and me, I mean. We keep tripping over ourselves to make up for the last fight out of too many to count in our lives, but there’s gonna be an after, too. What’s that look like for us?”

Alex rests his hand on the bench seat between them, just so it’s there, in case Michael wants to take it. And Michael glances down, and the apple of his throat bobs, but his hand doesn’t inch any closer.

That’s okay.

“Do you want to come inside?” Alex asks.

“Huh?”

“Friends hang out, right? No starting over. Let’s start from right here. Still got a guitar you can use, if you’re into that. Or we can crack open some beers and watch Netflix or something. Anything you want.”

Michael faces him for real for the first time, his generous mouth parted in shock, but then his face goes soft.

“Sure, yeah. I’d like that.”

 3

Alex meets Michael’s eyes from across a crowded room. His cultural knowledge suffered significantly while he was active duty, but throughout his life he’s watched enough rom-coms curled up on the carpet with Liz, Rosa, and Maria to know how that’s supposed to feel, and to know now that the movies never did the feeling justice. Michael slowly removes his hat, and Alex’s heart swells so much he can hardly stand it.

And then Michael is gone, somewhere and sometime before Alex has lanced himself of all the words that have built up inside his skull, pounding against his temples, spilling out his eyes and ears and mouth. Only Isobel remains, and she gives him a sympathetic look and two thumbs up, whatever that means.

Well, not just Isobel. Greg is here, and Forrest, and some coworkers Alex turned Maria’s way to keep traffic up at the bar. But the space Michael left is vast and empty, and for all Alex didn’t ask him to come, it hurts a little like rejection would have hurt if he had asked and Michael told him no or hated the song.

At least he can hope that Michael heard something of what he’s trying to say and will carry that with him, whatever happens next.

The song ends. His fingers stutter and linger over the keys; the spell shatters around him and the world rushes back in with applause. Forrest beams at him from the front row, and he smiles back a little awkwardly. Being so vulnerable so publicly…not really his thing. But maybe not all bad, not when it brings tears to his brother’s eyes and he kisses a man in the open, his father’s voice drowned out by ivories and drunkards and his own heartbeat echoing off his bones.

Forrest squeezes his hips and smiles up at him as the next person takes the stage and the night goes on around them. “I’m proud of you,” he says, just for the two of them to hear. “How do you feel?”

“I feel…good.”

He does. He does feel good, in a way that’s refreshingly distinct from the haze of okay he’s been drifting in for weeks.

“Buy you a drink?” Forrest offers, raising his eyebrows, hooking his thumb back at the bar. Maria is still at home resting, so she isn’t there to support and/or lightly judge him.

“Uh…”

Say yes. He probably should, right? Just see what it’s like dating someone in the open. But would it be fair to use Forrest like that, as an experiment?

“…Can I take a rain check? This,” he gestures back at the stage, “Was kind of a lot for me, believe it or not, so I’m not in a chatty mood. Is that okay?”

Forrest’s smile doesn’t budge. “Okay, man, sure. See ya around.” And he heads to the bar alone.

Alex’s shoulders drop, feeling a little disappointed, feeling a little like he isn’t as disappointed as he should be. Hands in his pockets, he makes his way over to the door, only to stop short when he sees Kyle at a table in the back. Sheepishly, Kyle lifts his beer at him in a salute—but that isn’t an explanation, so Alex beelines for him anyway.

“I thought you hated this shit,” he says mildly, without preamble.

“Oh, I do. The second someone starts in on some amateur poetry, I’m out. But I was just being a dick earlier, and that’s not what I do these days so…”

“Apology accepted.” 

Alex glances around before sliding in across from Kyle. It’ll get awkward if Forrest sees him, but oh well.

“Hell of a performance,” Kyle says, going to flag down a waiter until Alex stops him.

“I’m not sticking around for long. But, uh, thanks.”

Kyle takes another long pull of his beer, and Alex raises an eyebrow at him.

He says, “You know, if I was so bad you have to drink to forget, you can just say so. My delicate feelings have been through worse, actually.”

“Ha! No, it’s…” Kyle trails off, staring at his beer instead of anywhere near Alex. “Eh. It’s part of the deal, but sometimes it still sucks to get slapped with reality. No matter how much you change, the people you’ve hurt don’t have to forgive you.”

“I…”

“No, don’t apologize. I get it. I was a big part of the reason you never would have sung that song in this town without the people that support you now. It’s okay that you still hesitate sometimes about me. Just, you know,” he shrugs with a small smile. “Sometimes I’m gonna drink about it.”

Alex leans across the table. “Kyle. You’re a good man. And my friend. Okay?”

Kyle’s shoulders drop an inch or so, and his face shifts with a more genuine, soft smile. “Okay.” Then he turns serious again, and continues, “But you know it’s going to be the same for Flint, right? First, that you can’t redeem someone who has no remorse—I had to make my own choice to be a better guy, to live by a better code, and no one could have done that for me. Second, that even if he does make that choice, the people he’s hurt have no obligation to forgive him. Michael has no obligation to forgive him, and you can’t force him to. You have to make peace with that now, before you start down this road.”

“I know. But thank you, for the reminder.” Alex lets out a long breath. “I don’t know if I can forgive Flint. But he’s a part of my father’s legacy, too. I can’t undo all the harm, but if I can reduce any harm in the future, if I can even do that much…”

“I wish you luck. But, man, just...don’t try and bear too many other people’s sins, okay? You’re not responsible for what Flint does. You gotta look out for yourself, too, you know.”

“Thanks,” Alex says. What else is there to say? He might disagree with Kyle both on what makes someone responsible and also the degree to which he’s already acting in his own self-interest. A truly selfless person would focus on what’s already within control in order to do the most good, not on trying to control everything they could. But if Alex doesn’t know how to live with himself and his choices at this point, he’s already lost. There’s a certain comfort and strength in that.

“Any time,” Kyle replies, saluting him again.

Alex leaves the table and leaves Kyle to it, making for the door and for fresh air. He’ll go home and have a beer there, maybe. Look at his keyboard and think of other songs to write, now that he’s gotten Michael’s song out of his skull.

Like all songs won’t be about Michael, somehow, always. 

That thought might have been depressing six months ago, six years ago, in the middle of all the missing they’ve done. But now Alex lets the nostalgia wash over him, welcomes it as an old friend. As a part of him, natural, not something that needs to be fixed or cut away. Every song is about Michael because Michael is a part of him. Nothing wrong with that, no matter how their relationship keeps changing, even if Alex never gets what he wants. He can live with that.

He steps out onto the Pony’s empty patio. Most likely everyone is either still inside watching other performers go on or has already left in disgust at the whole affair. The glow of the string bulbs softens the night, turns the bar into a welcoming place, an oasis of light, makes it hard to take that last step off the porch and into the parking lot. That’s probably the idea. Maria’s savvy like that. 

According to Max, Michael helped her hang these a few years back, and somehow he always comes up with replacement bulbs when they’re needed, always knows just what the fix is. It’s so easy to imagine him up on a ladder, deft hands weaving the cords around the wooden lattice, winding a perfect web, not too bright or harsh, just right. Alex sighs, and if it’s overly wistful, well, that’s a secret between him and the night.

“Everything okay?”

Alex jerks around at that voice. He’s heard it from nowhere before, but this probably isn’t one of those times, and sure enough, Michael lifts his head to give Alex a look of concern, head tilted to the side. That dramatic black hat, along with his dark clothes and curled-in posture, it makes him blend into the background, no matter how large he looms in Alex’s eye. He’s always been good at diminishing, at blending. Alex wishes he’d never had to learn to do that.

Alex forces his shoulders to lower, forces a smile to his face. “Yeah, you just startled me. Didn’t think anyone was out here, and, um, I thought you left. During the song.”

The silence stretches too long, too awkward as Michael rolls his shoulders in a shrug, does a familiar old nervous gesture of taking off his hat, running his hand through his hair, and settling his hat back down. Alex spent two weeks trying to find the chords right for that memory, the quiet yearning it awakes in him.

“Yeah, I—I don’t know,” Michael says. 

He doesn’t lean against the wall; he doesn’t fold his arms in front of him. He has nothing in his hands. Alex can’t remember the last time he saw him so without a shield, and it takes his breath away. 

Michael continues, “I know I wasn’t invited. I mean, uh, I think you didn’t mind seeing me too much, if I can read your face half as well now as I used to, but I wanted to respect that.”

“I didn’t! I didn’t mind.”

Silence falls again. Alex should say something more, should explain himself, shouldn’t let Michael walk away from this thinking he wasn’t wanted.

He blurts, “I thought about inviting you, but I—well, you heard the song, and with things with Maria still so recent and up in the air, I didn’t want to put you in a tough spot. I understand.”

Michael smiles at him, a look so soft Alex can hardly stand it. He licks his lips as if to check if he can still feel, still taste Forrest there, like that might be some sort of reminder that there are other things in life than Michael. He feels nothing, tastes nothing—but how much of the way Michael has always lingered on his skin and on his senses has been psychosomatic all along, because of how much he wished Michael would stay? No one could ever compare. It’s wrong of him to even try.

“You could have asked,” Michael says. “Let me know what it was about. I would have been here. I would have come. I’m happy—proud of you. For doing that, in there. I hope it was everything you wanted it to be. The moment you needed.”

“I don’t know. I honestly don’t. I want to say I was doing it for me, but...it’s hard to tell. Something else I’m working on.” Alex shrugs and puts his hands in his pockets just for something to do with them. “It...it definitely meant something, though. I’m happy.”

“Then I’m happy, too.” 

Alex shakes his head. “You don’t have to say that. You wanted so badly to be open with me, but I was never ready, and now that I am, it’s…” Too late. But he doesn’t say it, like filling the air with it might make it even more real than it already is.

“Alex. I lived in this town with your father for ten years. I got it. It hurt, and that hurt might have been screaming louder than the fear we both shared, but I did feel it too.”

The silence that follows has a hole in it where another apology might fit, but if they get started they’ll be here all night.

“Look, um,” Michael says, “Were you looking to get out of here or do you want to sit for a while? It’s a pretty nice night.”

What had previously been the truth—that the show had him feeling good but wanting privacy after willingly divesting it so dramatically—goes right up in smoke, and in its place is just the clean, simple desire to be in Michael’s company, close enough for their knees to brush under the small table, under the fairy lights, under the sky.

“I’m sorry,” Michael says. Alex sucks in a sharp breath.

He hadn’t expected the apology to actually reach the air. Hadn’t even wanted it to.

Alex has never liked apologies. What good is an apology? Greg used to apologize, sometimes, in hushed words when their father wasn’t listening. Flint and Clay never bothered, and Alex preferred it to empty words. Greg’s apology is easier to accept now, with the advantage of hindsight, coupled with action, but Alex doesn’t know how to react to Michael’s sorry.

Jesse Manes never apologized. Not for anything. And now he’s dead. Alex sits across from Michael. The slam of the Pony’s door as someone leaves, the slam of a car door as someone arrives, it all just sounds like hammers falling one after another.

How long did it take for Alex to stop flinching at the sound of military-issue boots approaching? At the shape a man’s shoulders made in uniform towering over him? At the snap and bark of a sergeant’s voice?

Michael’s shoulders are rounded. He always slouches so much.

Alex misses flinching, sometimes. He misses simple, unconditioned, weak prey instincts, universal signals of the vulnerable, of the frightened, so someone capable of comforting him might know how badly he’s in need of comforting—

“Alex?”

Michael’s hand rests in the middle of the small table, bare, his palm upturned like it’s just waiting for the weight of Alex’s hand to settle on top of it. It’s his left hand. Over ten years and one hundred hoarded golden hours, Alex loved the way that hand touched him, like it was all of Michael contained in one small limb. Hurt and hopeful, with a necessary tender lightness, with a shape that sometimes made his throat ache to look at it. Some days he couldn’t use it at all. But he never hid, never tried to cover that part of himself to make Alex comfortable. Maybe that’s why Alex reacted so poorly to the bandana he wore these past months. He made the mistake for so long of thinking that a baring of scars was the same as a baring of souls, and then he learned he was wrong. And then Michael’s scars were gone…

But the hurt still lingered.

Alex puts his hand in Michael’s.

“What are you sorry for?”

“Hearing you sing in there…you’ve got me thinking about how much time we missed. The part I played in all that, pushing you away time and again. Not trusting you, not talking to you.”

“We were just kids.”

“I know. Still. Kids hurt each other all the time, and worse than adults do, most of it. And I’ve done my fair share of that, too.”

Oh, Michael. 

“The hurt kids do to each other, it’s not the same,” Alex says softly, as gently as he can muster. “I’m thirty years old. If I can’t look back and forgive the kids we were over the past ten years, what hope is there for me now?”

Michael shakes his head stubbornly. “I was old enough to know better. To be better. To use my words instead of just lashing out when I was hurt. Maybe you don’t remember some of the shit I said, when we used to fight over you leaving, but I do. If we’re turning over a new leaf now, sayin’ sorry just feels like the right thing to do.”

He makes himself look so small. The table forces the barest necessary space between them, but not so little Alex can gracefully lean across it to press their foreheads together, or to rest his hand against Michael’s heart, no matter how much he wants to, no matter how tightly he presses their hands together to make up for it. He wants to feel that heartbeat, let Michael feel his own, match themselves to the same vital rhythm.

But this is about new leaves, like Michael said. So Alex takes a deep breath and lets the words stretch and burn and breathe between them, strengthening the muscles that he let grow so weak for so long.

“Michael. Listen to me. When you were seventeen, homeless, and vulnerable in ways I couldn’t even comprehend, you threw yourself onto my rich, homophobic, military father to protect me. That takes more courage and goodness than it takes to throw yourself on a grenade. Trust me, I know.”

“But—”

Alex leans in, the table biting into his stomach, close enough now to feel Michael’s breath on his cheek and smell rain off the collar of his shirt. “I refuse to blame us—to blame you—for the way it broke us afterward. Okay? No more keeping score. We have the pieces—we can, maybe we can work together to put them back together. No matter what the final picture turns out to look like, even if it’s something completely different than we thought it would be at seventeen. Is that—would that be okay?”

Michael’s thumb passes over the back of Alex’s hand, a simple gesture that makes the hair stand up on his arms. All static, all electric. Alex aches, but it’s a good one.

“I don’t know if it’s too late for us. And you weren’t wrong when you said that things are still rough with Maria. It doesn’t even feel real that things could be over between me and her. And I saw the way Forrest Long looked at you.” Michael’s voice goes so soft Alex can hardly stand it. “If that’s something, you should let it be something.”

“I don’t know if it’s something. I don’t know if I want it to be.”

Alex’s words are distant even to his own ears.

Michael says, “That’s okay too. I’m just tired of pushing, tired of pulling. I want us both to be free, to, to just follow our hearts and see where we end up. I guess that’s my version of not keeping score. ‘Cause I know that you’re in here,” he puts his other hand over his heart, “No matter what our relationship is like. Fighting that just hurts us worse.”

Hope is such a painful thing. Michael told him that for years and years and Alex never quite believed him. But now that he’s asked to hold true to his own beliefs—that hope is necessary, that hope is a tool against yesterday, a compass pointed firmly in the direction of tomorrow—he wavers.

“It shouldn’t have had to be a fight,” he says. “You tried to tell me that you just needed space months ago, and I didn’t—couldn’t—didn’t want to listen. I wanted us to be okay; I thought if I atoned or whatever, we would be okay. But I wasn’t doing it for you. Digging for information, turning over every rock to find the ugliness underneath, that’s what I needed, not you.”

“But you were trying. I recognize that now, I do.”

“I—” Inches from arguing, Alex stops himself short. Patterns, it’s all patterns. They both have to get better at recognizing them, and that means Alex can’t do the same thing he’s told Michael is wrong, where he believes Michael’s assessment of him only when it suits the ugliest voices in his head.

So he says, “Yes. I was. I wanted to empower you the way I feel empowered when I have all the information at my fingertips, but I didn’t ask you what you needed.”

Michael leans forward. “And I should have told you outright that I needed space instead of trying to make you leave so it would make sense when you did—or just trying to hurt you for staying this time and not any other time when I really needed you to.”

Alex swallows hard and nods. He leans forward too. Michael’s hand is so, so warm in his. The two of them walk the same tightrope toward solid ground.

“I’m glad,” Michael says. “I’m glad that you stayed this time. You deserve to know that. I’ve been fighting to get free of the past; I know it’s unchangeable, but it’s always there, telling me all the ways I should have been better, and. Right now, in the present. Thank you. For being there this year.”

Michael smiles at him, a real smile, the kind of look Alex thought he might have imagined from across the bar, with music in his lungs. His eyes crinkle up, sparkling, face utterly transformed with what can only be utterly consuming fondness.

I love you. I love you. I love you. How could he not? How could he have ever convinced himself he was capable of stopping? Michael’s laughter is the joy of knowing someone. Alex hasn’t felt so seen and so unafraid since he was seventeen years old.

Maria and Michael just broke up a few days ago, and it wasn’t mutual. There are so many leaps Alex wants to take now that he’s taken this one, to see how they feel, to reshape and reaffirm his comfort zone now that some of his ghosts have been put to rest. There are so many reasons to wait, to make sure that this time they can get this right.

But what if Michael doesn’t know? Even at this stage down the long road of getting to know the man he loves, Alex knows how easily he doubts his own worth

He and Maria understand each other, as ever. He would give up his brain to see the future, too.

Michael’s face has gone soft and concerned the longer Alex hasn’t responded. Tingling spreads up Alex’s arm when Michael’s warm, rough hand tightens around his own, and the softness he feels helps unloosen his chest and let the words come out. 

“No, thank you,” he says, fitting his other hand around Michael’s knuckles so Michael’s healed hand is cradled between his.

That touch lingers for a long moment. For most of their lives, Alex hasn’t been able to read Michael’s face, has second-guessed what he thought each little flicker meant, has held back from acting on what he thought Michael was telling him, no matter how achingly open Michael’s face was. Now, though, Alex just has no idea what is going through Michael’s head as he watches their joined hands, Alex’s fingers against Michael’s bare skin, the bandana abandoned somewhere before Michael even came to the Pony tonight.

“Should we...should we talk about this?” Alex asks, letting his finger draw gently against Michael’s middle knuckle. Michael’s fingers flex in his grip.

“Don’t know what there is to talk about.”

“I don’t know.” Alex shifts and clears his throat. “Just...anything you want to say. Anything you’re feeling. Anything you want to say to me specifically.”

Michael glances around. They’re alone on the patio, but Alex understands. The silence of the night and the muffled clamor of the bar on the other side of the wall give the illusion the whole world is listening.

Then, bluntly, he says, “It hurt. What you said. That you so obviously didn’t understand I might have a hard time looking at it for personal reasons, since I never asked for it to be healed. I thought if anyone understood that, you would.”

Alex’s knee twinges in concert. He itches to rub it, but his hands stay still wrapped around Michael’s. 

Michael continues, “Hiding the healing had nothing to do with you, and if I was still pissed at your dad for causing it or at Max for healing it, that wasn’t really any of your business, either. That’s all.”

Deep breaths. Having all that out in the open is a clean thing, a necessary thing. Alex nods. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

Michael nods back and lets his shoulders drop. “But Max is the person I need to get into it with, not you. Then he was dead when I really needed to, so it got all twisted up and stuck inside of me, and I didn’t say anything to anyone. I don’t blame you for not being a mind reader and coming to some wrong conclusions.”

It’s that—it’s that that leaves Alex floundering for a moment, that instant of Michael seeing his guilt and cutting through it with a few words. He leaves a vacuum in its place and all of Alex’s other feelings, so carefully compartmentalized, have to rush to fill it in. Michael lets the silence linger, but Alex can feel the quickness of his heartbeat in the small of his wrist.

“What about you? Anything you want to say to me?” Michael says. “‘Cause we’ve fought before, but for some reason we keep coming back to the bunker. Feels like maybe there’s something there.”

“I…”

That...yeah. He was right. So many times, they’d fought. When they were kids and everything was falling apart. Over ten years, among the pieces. The argument they had in the bunker was practically a level-headed disagreement compared to the fight they had before Alex’s last deployment, the worst one, the one that cut them apart for almost two years without a word to each other. Even that one had scattered like mist under the morning sun when they were in each other’s arms again. 

And maybe that’s part of it. That their physical relationship has changed, that without the language of touch everything feels harsher and harder to forget. But the other reason lurks behind the walls in his mind.

He’s supposed to be better now. More peaceful, more understanding, more balanced. To preach forgiveness then lash out at Michael, the one person it’s always been safe to be angry with—it’s an ugly thing. Alex doesn’t want to hold it. Doesn’t want to be that. He’s supposed to be better now. It doesn’t matter how often a therapist tells him progress isn’t a straight line. It shouldn’t matter. 

If he can fix this, make it like it never happened, maybe he can fix them.

Alex doesn’t want to look that feeling in the eyes. Has avoided it, so far. And how to say it? He doesn’t even know if Michael wants them fixed. Not the same way Alex does. And now’s not the time to ask that question. 

“I just want us to be okay,” he says. Simple. Weak. He hates the sound of pleading inside his own skull. He isn’t used to it. It’s just Michael. Michael won’t use it against him, won’t hurt him, he knows this, but inside something turns and hides and covers its head with its arms waiting for the blow. To buy it time, he babbles, “Not talking about it feels like hiding. All the times we let arguments go in the past—I want to do things differently, to actually say I know what I did wrong and say that I know we, I, can do better, I don’t know, I just want things to be different, to change for good—”

“Okay.”

Michael’s voice is soft. So soft Alex wants to whimper.

“Okay, Alex,” he repeats. Now his other hand, hesitating just slightly, comes up to rest against Alex’s, so they’re holding onto each other as fast as they can with the distance and objects between them. 

That’s it? Just okay? 

Michael shifts their hands, slides their fingers together slowly, and gives them a squeeze.

Oh.

Okay.

“Were you wanting to get out of here?” Michael asks suddenly, dipping his head slightly so his hat hides his eyes.

“No, um. Actually, I think I’ll stay a while. It’s a nice night.”

He’s exhausted, but nothing could tear him away. Not now. And it is a nice night, clear and cool, the sky wide and velvet above them, in their little bubble of light.

“Cool,” Michael says. He leans back in his chair, though he leaves their hands connected, and he looks up at Alex again, eyes glimmering with a smile. “‘Cause I want to hear more about how you got into songwriting for real. You didn’t tell me about it when we hung out the other day.”

“A magician never reveals his secrets,” Alex replies, but his heart sings at the interest.

“Ok, sure, uh-huh. Well I’m going to go get us drinks, and when I get back maybe you can distract me and pull a rabbit out of a hat.”

“Between the two of us, you’re the one with the magic hands,” Alex says, only for his mouth to drop open when he realizes what he’s just said.

But Michael is already cackling, and the sound is so soothing to Alex’s soul he can’t interrupt, and he’s standing up to go inside, and it’s impossible not to notice how he doesn’t let their hands drop until the last possible moment, and then he’s sweeping his hat off his head with a dramatic bow and a cheeky smirk, and Alex can’t help but smile back at him.

He turns to head back into the Pony, and as Alex watches and mirrors the motion, he flexes his hands, rubs them together, then slides them into his pockets as if to hide the lingering feeling of touch for safekeeping.

And then Alex is alone, still smiling, knowing Michael will be back soon. 

[seasonsofeverlark]

Heated

Author: @hutchhitched​

Prompt: Bonfire [submitted by @endlessnightlock​]

Rating: E

Summary: Peeta Mellark left home at 18 for college at his girlfriend’s request. He hadn’t seen her since, but one night, a decade later he joined his high school friends for a bonfire on the beach and found her again in a very heated way.

__________

Peeta checked the time and pressed harder on the gas pedal. He was running behind, and he hated being late. Unused to having a chance to take time during the fall for anything personal, he felt a little out of sorts as he wound along the ocean highway on his way to meet his friends for a seasonal bonfire. He hadn’t been to the event for ages, not since he’d left for college and spent the bulk of his time back east. He’d missed Oregon autumns and nights on the beach with crisp air and changing leaves. It was good to be back, even if he was going to be late.

Darkness fell as he steered the car, passing slower traffic when he could and wondering exactly who was coming. Finnick, his best friend from high school, invited him several weeks ago, and Peeta had put him off until his calendar opened up for a few days during his business trip to the west coast. As wind blew in through the car windows and ruffled his hair, he admitted accepting the invitation was the appropriate action. He needed this break from the regular stress of his job.

By the time he exited the highway and pulled onto the dirt road that led to the beach, it was dark, and the stars twinkled above him. He smiled at the forms sitting around the fire, friendly figures from his past who called out for him to join them.

“Peeta!” Finnick shouted, his cheeks rosy from merriment and drinking. “We were just about to go skinny dipping.”

“Before I even had a chance to say hello?” Peeta observed drily. “That’s…just great, man. Seriously, great.”

“You can stay,” he offered. “Katniss is planning to.”

Her name washed over him, friendly and comforting. Katniss Everdeen. His first love, high school sweetheart, best friend for years until he made the difficult decision to leave and pursue his education from halfway across the nation. It had broken his heart to leave her, but she’d insisted, refusing to allow him to give up anything for her. And now, here she was, in the flesh, and flashing a tremulous smile his way.

“Hi,” Peeta managed to say. “Good to see you.”

“Good to see you, too, Peeta.”

Her melodic voice soothed him, working its way into his joints and spreading out in warm waves that swelled through his bones. His body relaxed, inch by inch, until his limbs loosened and grew peaceful. All his usual twitching and extraneous energy stilled as he sank down next to her. He was too lost in her to even notice as the others slipped into the darkness. The sound of their laughter swept in from the waves, but he didn’t bother to pay any attention.

“How have you been?” he asked, eager to hear her speak again. “It’s been so long.”

“Okay. Still here. Put my sister through college. She’s in med school in California now.”

Peeta nodded, memories of Prim Everdeen’s infectious grin danced in front of his eyes. “Good for her.”

“She’s doing great. My mom’s okay. Better mentally. Always takes her medicine,” she added, referring to her mother’s mental health issues that had forced Katniss to grow up much too fast and parent her younger sibling. Peeta’d tried to help out as much as possible to ease her load, but he’d had his own problems to worry about. He still wasn’t sure if he would stop by to visit his own mother before he left town.

“What about you?” he asked, curious about her reticence to talk about herself. “What’s happening for Katniss Everdeen?”

She shrugged and twisted her braid around her index finger before pulling the tie free and nervously unbraiding her hair. Once it was free, she plaited it again, all the while biting her bottom lip.

“I mean…”

“I always loved your hair down,” he said softly. “I know you like it tucked back, but when it’s loose around your face, you’re gorgeous.”

She flushed, pleased but bashful, and shook out her hair. “Thanks.”

“You’re always gorgeous.”

He held her gaze, shining molten silver as the fire reflected in them. She stared back at him, uncertain, and he scooted closer to her. There weren’t words enough to explain how much he’d missed her, how the dull ache of wanting and not having her had left him empty inside so that his victories felt hollow and his losses hurt even more. He’d only been with her for a few minutes, and he already felt like he was reborn.

“Things haven’t been so great for me,” she admitted, barely audible over the crackle of the fire and the rush of the surf. “I… I think I got lost after you left.”

“Sweetheart, I’m so sorry.”

She smiled sadly and stared out over the ocean. “I know I told you to leave, and I don’t regret that at all. I thought I was prepared to stand on my own, and I did. I’m proud of that. I took care of myself in addition to helping my mom and supporting Prim in her success.” She curled her hands into fists for a split second, but then forced them to relax. With a rueful smile, she turned to him and admitted, “You weren’t here to remind me to take care of myself first, and I forgot. I figured I’d worry about me later, but now… It’s been a decade, and my life’s at a standstill.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? You should have.”

“Why? What could you do about it? We drifted apart. You had your own life. You deserved that. You still do,” she argued. “I wasn’t going to take that away from you. I wouldn’t ever.”

“What if that’s what I wanted? What if you’re what I want now—who I want now?” Agitated, he thrust his fingers through his hair, shoving his curls off his forehead in exasperation.

“You don’t even know me anymore. I doubt you would.”

Peeta opened his mouth to protest, but their friends returned at that moment, giggling and sopping and partially clothed. Finnick and his fiancée were lip locked, and other couples were paired together as they grabbed bare skin and donned their discarded clothing. It took only a few minutes before they descended into complete debauchery and peeled off for more private surroundings. Peeta could hear vehicles starting and driving away, leaving him alone with Katniss again.

“So much for reunions,” he muttered, slightly irritated and simultaneously thrilled with his remaining company.

“Well, maybe it’s time to go,” she mumbled and made to get up, but Peeta grabbed her arm. Squeezing it gently, he looked at her, pleading silently, until she settled back onto the beach blanket where they sat.

“You know,” he mused, “I hated that you told me to leave. I didn’t see it as you doing what was best for me so much as you giving yourself a chance to have a life without me. I thought maybe I’d been too overbearing, too serious, too concerned about settling down when you deserved a chance to make your own choices. I missed you, and I couldn’t admit it because my heart was broken, so I cut you out, concentrated on school, got my MBA, started working, received a promotion or two. I did all those things, but none of it really mattered to me. Not without someone to share it with, and there was no one I wanted to do that with but you.”

“I could have fought for you. I could have, but I was scared. I loved you so much, and I knew what that kind of love had done to my mom when my father died,” she admitted hoarsely. “It was almost a relief when you gave up on me.”

“I never gave up on you. Never.”

“Almost a relief,” she repeated, “but not really. I always felt like part of me was halfway across the country with you.”

Her admission washed over him, flowing like warm honey and sweetening the world around him. She felt the same way. She must, and that meant he had a chance. He finally had another shot to be with the woman he’d loved since he’d first seen her the day they started Kindergarten.

“Come with me, then,” he whispered. “Or let me come back to you. Whichever way works, just let us be together.”

It was too fast, too ridiculous to expect their reunion in one night, but that didn’t stop him from wanting her. I couldn’t keep him from imagining the future he’d not allowed himself to believe he could have. He could see it all so clearly—them together, marriage, children, building a life he wanted so badly he ached for it.

She raised her face to his, wistful and cautious. Carefully, he tilted her chin and brushed his lips against hers. A delicious whimper fell from her, and Peeta almost crushed her to him. The feel of her in his arms was nearly too much to bear after the years apart. She was oxygen to air-starved lungs, and he craved her. He swept into her, eagerly chasing her taste, practically swallowing her whole. A warning tickled at the back of his brain—don’t come on too strong. Take it slow. Let her make the move. Don’t beg her to agree.

Pulling away reluctantly, he leaned his forehead against hers. “I’m sorry. That was a lot. I’m back on my best behavior.”

“That’s too bad,” she answered hoarsely, licking her lips. “That’s really, really too bad.”

“What is?” he whispered, afraid to burst their bubble. It was safe there, warm and affectionate and full of possibility. He willed her to feel the same.

“I was hoping maybe you’d want to be a little naughty.”

Katniss stood, then, and held out her hand. Head spinning, he rose and watched as she took a step back and shrugged off her button down. His mouth fell open as her olive toned skin lit up golden in the firelight. She licked her lips and slid a strap over her shoulder, exposing the curve of her breast.

It was too soon. This couldn’t be happening. He attempted pinching himself to wake up, but what he saw was real. His first love stood before him, baring herself to his eager gaze, and he swore he’d gone to Heaven.

“Katniss.”

Her name came out as a prayer, but her body was the gospel. Acres of gilded skin emerged as her clothes fell, and he observed the ritual reverently. When she stood before him, exposed and waiting, he joined her. Disrobing, he breathed in the ocean spray as cool breezes caressed his feverish skin.

Peeta stared, unable to tear his eyes away from the glow of firelight on her smooth body. Pert nipples graced perfect breasts, and her waist curved into swayed hips and lithe legs adorned with a strip of dark curly hair that practically invited him to dive in. Stepping forward, he pulled her into his arms and jumped.

The combustion was spontaneous. No, even that was too slow for the flagrance between them. He was on fire, burning brighter than the sun with his skin melded to hers. Collapsing onto the beach blanket, she wrapped her legs around his waist and rutted against him.

“You have… no idea… the effect you have,” he whispered between breaths as he worshipped her body with heated open-mouthed kisses. “Sweetheart.”

She arched her back and opened for him. He dipped his head slowly, giving her time to protest if she wanted. When she did nothing more than moan his name, he nudged his nose against her slit and licked a stripe along her skin. Grinning at her reaction, he shook his head and prodded deeper. Her flavor burst on his tongue, simultaneously tangy and sweet, and he savored and devoured at the same time.

“Peeta,” she cried, desperate but eager. “Feels so good…”

Her approval convinced him to raise his expectations and give her what she really wanted. Tilting her hips, he spread her open and dove back in. She bucked against him, her hips growing wilder while her cries became wanton. Groaning her name, his voice was muffled against her slick skin. Latching onto her clit, he sucked, while she twisted under his mouth and cried his name to the night. Milking her with his tongue, he worked her through a climax, grunting as writhed under him.

She went limp, shivering, although her skin scorched his, heat radiating from her in the wake of her orgasm. He shifted on the blanket, moving her from the moisture captured in the blanket beneath her and draped her over him. Her breath puffed on his chest as her limbs tangled with his, clumsy and pliable as he traced her spine with the pads of his fingers. She mouthed against his chest, painting him with sloppy kisses, and nuzzling his chest.

“You want more?” he asked hoarsely. “You need to come again?” She nodded and snuggled into him, so he maneuvered her limbs so she straddled him and guided her onto his cock. “That’s it,” he groaned. “Feels so good.”

She moved, and he slanted his head back as she began to ride him. Stars flickered overhead, twinkling cheekily at the bonfire. The fire crackled, flames leaping to the heavens, dancing happily in the breeze and cheering their coupling, years in the making.

He burned from the inside out, embers filling his belly, until he was coming, spilling deep into her, pouring the very essence of contentment from him to her and connecting them in a way that he knew would change him forever.

Peeta watched her—beautiful, graceful, powerful. He surveyed her as she tightened, her face peaceful, her hair wild. He steadied her when she threw back her head and shouted, spasms wracking her body. When she was done, she slumped against him, sated and drowsy, her skin dewy and fused to his.

“I’m never going to be able to let you go after this,” she murmured into the sweaty crook of his neck and shoulder.

“Don’t. Don’t do it.” She shriveled, and he realized how that must have sounded. “No, sweetheart. I mean, don’t let me go. I don’t plan to let you get away after finally finding you again.”

“It’s not practical.”

“Love’s never practical. Fuck practical. Come with me, or let me come here. I’ll make it happen,” he insisted.

She didn’t speak for several moments, and he realized what he’d implied—that he loved her, that he’d move for her, that he’d upend his life if it meant he could spend the rest of his life with her. After what felt like an eternity, she finally spoke.

“I’ve kind of been ready for a new adventure.”

A smile split his face, and he rolled them over so his body blanketed hers. He accepted her offer with a deep kiss as the bonfire lit their future.

[sockablock]

in light of the truly heartwarming response I got to part one of this story, please enjoy: How To Build a Magic School, Chapter 2

—

It took a special kind of mind to follow the Mighty Nein’s conversations once they really got heated. It helped, at least, that they were seated in close proximity, sprawled across a ring of crates in the main tent, but the fact of the matter was that trying to pay attention to seven people all chiming in at once was already giving Essek a mild headache. And minor neck pain.

“—kind of disguise,” Veth was saying. “I know it’s been a couple years, but folks here…they might not be happy to see a…a...”

“A foreigner,” Fjord said, diplomatically.

“A Xhorhastian,” Yasha tried.

“A drow,” Essek came to their rescue. “No, she is right.”

There was a sharp and semi-affronted exhale from Jester. “Did you get any funny looks when you arrived? Did anyone say anything to you?”

“And do you remember which ones they were?” Caleb added quietly.

Essek hesitated, trying to remember, but through the bright haze of sunlight and hot summer, the furious clamor of construction outside—

“I…do not think anyone saw my arrival.”

“You’re wearing full black and carrying a pink umbrella,” Beau grunted. “Are you sure?”

He hesitated again. “Ah…no.”

“All sorts of interesting people have visited us since the school project started,” Caduceus said. In line with the conventions of his personal narrative, he was attempting to make tea over a tiny, portable burner. “You probably won’t be the strangest thing they’ve seen or will see, working here.”

“They’ve already seen Fjord—”

“Hey! That—why—”

“The people of Felderwin can be touchy though,” Veth continued, smugly ignoring Fjord. “I don’t really think you can blame them, either. If it wasn’t the goblin attacks for years before that, it was the, well, the huge invasion where a purple worm ate the ground and half the town caught on fire.”

She maintained eye contact with Essek as she said this. Her gaze intensified when he shrugged. 

“That is…fair enough,” Caleb cut in. “But I would feel…ill at ease to force you, Essek, to hide if you did, ah, did not wish to…”

Essek gestured vaguely at his appearance. “Actually, I had assumed I would be needing to disguise myself. I have masqueraded as a high elf before, and it would not be difficult to do so again.”

“Isn’t that a lot of spells wasted?” Fjord asked. “Won’t it be annoying to have to keep that up?”

“It’s not that hard,” said Veth, under her breath.

“Oh, oh, I could Polymorph you!” Jester clapped her hands together, enthused. “I can make you anything! You could be an elf, or a tiefling, or a firbolg or a—”

“I appreciate the offer,” Essek said smoothly, “but I do have a few resources at hand. A simple ring of illusion would do the trick.”

“What are we gonna say about you, though?” Beauregard asked. All heads turned toward her. “If the court wants to know about you, a random mage and one of the first hires of the magic school, what are we supposed to tell them?”

They considered this.

“He’s a…family friend?”

“Whose family?”

“Well, I’d like to think of us as a family—”

“Why don’t we say he’s from Nicodranas?” Jester suggested. “We could say he’s, um…oh! That he was recommended by Yussa!”

“Yussa?” Essek echoed.

“Actually…that doesn’t sound half-bad,” Fjord mused. “Master Yussa is a mage that the king recognizes, yes?”

“Ah, he is a mage?”

“He’s a friend of ours!” Jester beamed. “A super powerful wizard that lives in the Open Quay. He’s pretty powerful, Essek. Maybe even more powerful than you!”

This was delivered with a winning smile. Caleb sighed. “From what I gather, Master Yussa is much older, and has had quite a few lifetimes’ worth of practice. He is also…quite reclusive, and therefore not exactly what we had in mind for this school.

“And he said no,” Beauregard muttered.

“Yes, danke, and he also turned us down. The point is, we can pretend you are acquainted with him. That should be enough to assuage the court.”

“Will this…Master Yussa agree to such a thing?” Essek asked.

Caleb answer with a faint grin. “He is a wizard who feels he is…not so beholden to court pressures. Also, he owes us a favor, as is.”

Essek couldn’t help but match Caleb’s expression. “Is that so? Then I find I quite admire this man.”

“We saved him from the Happy Fun Ball,” Yasha supplied, a collection of syllables that no betting man would have ever predicted to come from her. “He likes us.”

“He loves us,” Jester corrected. “He has our Little Willi and his assistant Wensforth practically worships us and everything!”

After the pertinent information had been properly located, Essek nodded. “That is, er, lovely. I owe him my thanks.”

“Now we just gave to give you a new name,” said Veth. “I don’t think we can keep calling you ‘Thelyss,’ unless we want the idiots on the Committee getting suspicious.”

“The…excuse me?”

“The Arcane Restoration Supervisory Committee,” Caleb sighed, “is a group of concerned officials—”

“—nosy dillweeds—"

“—that was formed to manage—”

“—micromanage—”

“—to oversee our current rebuilding efforts. It is very likely,” he continued, giving Beau a look, “that this is the court’s way of reconciling with the fact that an unknown quantity has been handed the reigns of the Dwendalian Empire’s arcane future.”

“I know that,” Beau countered, “I just don’t like them.”

“Caleb is the unknown quantity,” Caduceus added.

“…I see,” said Essek, eventually. “Should I, ah, be concerned about them?”

“Probably not,” Beau said. “They’re just a bunch of nobles who think they understand the first thing about magic.”

“You being an expert on the subject, of course,” was what Essek did not say, because self-preservation interrupted just in time. Instead, what left his mouth was:

“I had also anticipated concern about my involvement—that is, Shadowhand Essek Thelyss’s involvement—in this matter. If necessary, I can masquerade as someone else. I, ah, will still need an umbrella during the daylight hours, though. Or perhaps a large hat?”

The elongated squeal from Jester atop the milk crate filled him with regret.

“What was the name you used last time?” Fjord asked. “Desden…Desbin…”

“‘Dezran Thain,’” Essek supplied. “Actually, I could employ that title again.”

“Uh…is that a good idea?” Veth asked. “Wasn’t Dezran a friend of the Assembly’s?”

Essek shook his head. “Strictly speaking, Thain was just a very minor lord that lived in Nicodranas. When the peace talks began, he was called upon by Da’leth to play tour guide and host due to his interest in magic and local familiarity. Only he, de Rogna, and Tversky knew who I really was.”

“It is…not bad, as far as our plans go,” Caleb said after a while. “It aligns with the story that you are Nicodranian, and it might actually sit well with the court members that had favored the Assembly. As for those who supported us against them…”

Beau rolled her eyes when Caleb’s gaze fell on her. “Yeah, yeah, an Expositor will vouch for him.”

“An Expositor?”

“Gods, fine, this Expositor.”

“Thank you.” Then he gave Essek a nod. “That about covers it then, ja? This story, we can tell the court, and then—"

“Wait, hang on—” And this was Beauregard again, leaning forward, staring directly at Essek.

“Yes?” he said.

“What did you tell your court?” she asked.

—

Mother had spoken to the Bright Queen alone. This was not technically out of the ordinary, as the Umavis of Rosohna frequently met to discuss state matters too selective for anyone else. But Essek was unused to being considered “anyone else,” which was why the situation still rankled, in his mind.

“Tell me again,” he turned to face his mother, floating clothes and books drifting past his head. “Is that all you said?”

“Whatever do you mean?”

At his still-annoyed expression, his mother sighed. “Yes, dear. I just told Leylas that this was a unique opportunity for you to integrate yourself within the Empire and gain ample information that would otherwise be inaccessible. We all saw how abruptly the war ended, and how quickly the Assembly seemed to fall afterwards. No one can blame her for being curious.”

A small inkwell drifted across the room as Essek resumed packing. “And then?” he prompted.

His mother sighed again.

“And then I reassured her Majesty that there were plenty of souls that could temporarily come together to fill the void you would leave behind—”

No doubt all from Den Thelyss, Essek thought.

“—and that even in absentia, you would still be serving as a valuable font of information for the Dynasty. Which, after all, is what the Shadowhand is meant to do. And of course, should it ever be required, you could always be called home.”

“…indeed.”

“Indeed,” his mother smiled. “Though, of course, this is all under the assumption that aside from your prospective employer, nobody else will know who you truly are.”

Essek gave this due consideration.

“I have a feeling that the rest of the Mighty Nein will be told, Mother.”

The Umavi of Den Thelyss was not an easy woman to read. Her expression gave nothing away as she said, “I see.”

“But,” Essek added, because he felt he needed to, “I don’t think anyone else has to know.”

She reached out slowly and plucked a mirror from the air.

“I have more faith in you than that, my dear. I am confident you will ensure it is so.”

—

“—temporary leave of absence,” said Essek, now, to the Mighty Nein. “I have been the Shadowhand for most of my life, and a diligent scholar of the nation before that. I was owed some vacation days.”

“Vacation days—” began Fjord.

“But how temporary?” asked Beau, cutting him off. “I thought it’d be hard for you—you know, as you said, the Shadowhand—to just up and leave, after all. How long can you stay here?”

Essek gave her a wry smile. “Fortunately, I expect my definition of ‘temporary’ is somewhat different than yours.”

“Longer,” said Caduceus.

“Longer,” he agreed. “It is very safe to assume that I can stay for at least a decade, if I wish.”

“And I certainly hope you do wish,” said Caleb quickly. “There are many things we will need to accomplish, after all, not just today during construction, but in the future. And, ah,” he added, a little more pointedly, “I do feel as if I should thank you again. For everything you have done for us, and now today in volunteering your expertise.”

“Man, we’re really going to need it,” Jester groaned, throwing herself back across the milk crate. “The Committee keeps telling us to go faster, hire this person, that person, build the school different—everything.”

“Really?”

Caleb chuckled. “Yes, but that all can be explained tomorrow,” he said. “For now, though,” and he stood, crouching to avoid the ceiling of the tent, “let me show you to where we are staying. I expect you must be tired, ja? If not by the travel, then at least the time difference.”

For just a moment, Essek thought about saying otherwise. But there was something in Caleb’s hopeful expression that made him pause.

He yawned very minutely, and smiled. “It would be nice to put my things away,” he admitted. “And, ah, perhaps have a short rest.”

“Of course, of course,” Caleb gestured to the door, but did stop to address the group at large. “I’m sure I’ll be back soon,” he added, “but if anyone needs me…Jester?”

She saluted cheerfully, for the spirit of it. “Got it!”

“And of course, Veth, you are the Professor in charge.”

This was answered with an expansive wave, and a grin.

“Of course, Headmaster! Leave everything to us!”

—

“So…Headmaster, eh?” One pair of footsteps—and then sheepishly, another—began to crunch through the freshly-dewed grass. All around them, spanning the entirety of the field, a legion of masons and stonecutters and workmen cut, sawed, hammered, and hefted the thick wooden frame of an enormous building in its first stages. A group of surveyors stood at the center, arguing as more lumber was lugged into view, directing the flow of Construction and Progress.

“Apparently so,” Caleb said, “though I have to admit, I am not quite used to that title yet.”

Something enormous soared overhead, momentarily blotting out the sun.

“Would you prefer Professor Widogast?”

Caleb sighed as the shadow vanished.

“I prefer ‘Caleb,’ to be truly honest.”

Essek chuckled. “Then for now at least, I will oblige.”

He glanced up as the next shadow approached, squinting to see in the bright morning light. After rubbing his eyes and blinking a few times, he could make out the shape of a massive carpet, carrying sacks of sand and brick.

“Spoils from the remnants of Soltryce,” Caleb explained, before Essek could ask. “We found quite a number of things in the basement of that school, some…well.” His expression went dark, and not just because of the shadow overhead. “Many of those things we managed to release. Some, ultimately, had to be destroyed.” But then he gestured to the enormous architectural undertaking around them and added in a lighter tone, “Some things, though, ended up being rather useful. Like the, ah, look, over there—”

Essek blinked again, and this time spotted what appeared to be twelve hulking stone statues, moving slowly between a line of workers. Each had gait like rock grinding on steel, and were lifting whole logs like they weighed nothing.

“Guardian constructs,” Caleb said. “They were a nuisance to battle, but once de Rogna was gone, they went dormant and stopped fighting. We figured out how to pilot them later.”

Essek looked suitably impressed by this. He shifted his umbrella into his other hand.

“Really?” he said. “And are you now their master?”

“Oh no, nein,” Caleb quickly shook his head. “Honestly, it was suggested, but I…there was something that bothered me about the idea of having control of them. And not just I, but…it felt wrong to let any single person control a fleet of sleepless warriors. So Beauregard got creative.”

“Indeed?”

Caleb pointed to a wooden sign that was nailed into the ground a few feet from their path. A handful of workers was crouching next to it, carefully reciting what was scrawled across its surface. After a moment, to Essek’s genuine surprise, he realized they were practicing an arcane incantation.

“How do—”

“A pronunciation guide,” Caleb said. He was—yes, he was smiling about this. “We managed to translate enough verbal commands to make them usable for anyone who can read Common.”

“But…but…that’s everyone,” Essek said, hurrying a bit to catch back up. It took him some effort to tear his gaze from the sign. “Are you not…are you not concerned about this information falling into the wrong hands?”

“Ah, but if anyone can use them, then there is no problem. The playing field, as they say, has evened out. That was Beauregard’s idea, anyhow.” At the silence that followed, Caleb tilted his head and said, “Think of it this way, ja? A magic sword controlled by an evil person is not so dangerous if even a peasant can tell it to stop. What is the use of a weapon of war that listens to everyone’s commands?”

“Yes, but…” Essek struggled to find the right words. “Now…now…right, but now the sword is a, a, a butter knife! What would be the point of that?”

Caleb was quiet for a moment. Then he managed a trying smile. “That…depends on what you need though, no? Right now, what we are looking for is not war. It is toast. Er…that is, a metaphorical toast.”

“But…still, if that is the case, anyone could steal your constructs,” Essek said, somewhat subdued. “Should they not be guarded? As you would protect a prized tool?”

Caleb actually snorted at this. “If anybody attempted to do so,” he said, “they would receive quite an earful from the Chief Surveyor. They would not dare.”

And then Caleb turned, met Essek’s gaze, and it looked like he was waiting for cheerful agreement.

Neither response felt appropriate. Something about this still bothered Essek, almost like trying an ill-fitting sock.

“I think, ah, that I prefer jam,” he managed eventually. “On my toast, that is. And perhaps, a cup of tea?”

Blessedly, this elicited a chuckle from Caleb. “Of course, of course. That I can provide. We are quite close to the tavern, as is.”

And indeed, after only a few more minutes, they passed through a thin line of trees and arrived at the edge of a small, but bustling town.

“Welcome—well, welcome back to Feldwerin,” Caleb corrected. “Though this time, I expect, you will be staying longer.”

—

When the war ended, Felderwin Tillage had been left in a state of utter chaos. Purple worms had torn apart acres of land, fields had been razed by advancing soldiers, and scores of houses, stables, and shops had been burned to the ground when the invasion began.

And then, the Cerberus Assembly had fallen, and more information flooded the populous. They’d been told, virtually overnight, that the Archmages had been secretly using this town as a testing ground. They’d unleashed uncontrolled magic here for generations, tricking and abusing the townsfolk for their experiments, forcing a local lad—the widower—to work for them, and when people fell ill, they’d blamed it all on molded fruit.

Suddenly, the villagers felt quite foolish. And then, they’d started to get angry.

So it came as a genuine shock to Caleb that when the time came to build their campus, Veth had stepped forward and said it should be in Felderwin.

“But…they’d never agree,” he’d said. “Why should they?”

But she’d shaken her head. “They will.”

And so, the next morning, Veth marched through the village center with Luc and Yeza following behind, the Mighty Nein scrambling to keep up. She’d stormed up the stairs of the Town Hall, looked the Starosta dead in his eye, and informed him that everything was about to change.

All they’d need, she said, was a swath of land outside town, far enough away that it wouldn’t interfere with the calm that this village had been so denied, but close enough that it was still in the tillage. She’d told him, when he’d protested, that yes, there would be mages, but there would also be student mages, young, burgeoning minds that would spend quite a long time at the school. They’d be trained there, fed and housed and cared for, and eventually, once they grew up and graduated, when they looked back fondly on their younger years, it’d be in Felderwin.

Besides, she’d added, tapping the side of her nose, now the King would have to protect this place. After all, it’d be right next to the Empire’s arcane center, and wouldn’t it be nice to finally have some proper defenses? Not to mention, if you needed to borrow any of the bright young masons and stonecutters we’d hired, well. That could be arranged, easy.    

Sometimes, she’d said, it doesn’t hurt to be on the map. Because then the world pays attention to what happens to you.

And then the mayor had said, Aren’t you dead?

And then Veth had informed him, I got better.

And so it was now, a few months later, that Caleb led Essek past the newly-rebuilt Brenatto Apothecary, toward the Glassy Grass Inn. It had become the go-to tavern for the Mighty Nein, not because they were unwelcome in Veth’s house, per say, but more due to a gentle conversation that Yeza had had with his wife about work-life balance after Caduceus had walked into the center of the shop during its busiest hours in nothing but a towel and a toothbrush.

After that, they agreed to at least sleep next door.

The bell overhead rang as they entered, though the sound was lost in the din of voices. Essek had barely shut his parasol before a burly man in an apron rushed past, carrying tray upon tray of drink and food.

“It’s gotten rather busy since we moved in,” Caleb explained. “Word got around, and apparently people quite like staying in the same pub as us. That, and old Littlebottle agreed to let our workers take meals and rooms at a discount. The barkeep.”

“Really?” Essek raised an eyebrow. “How generous of him.”

“Well, apparently he is grateful for the business. And, I expect, grateful that our project has kept his neighbor preoccupied. Apparently Veth and Yeza were responsible for quite a number of the scorch marks at the edge of his lawn.”

“Is that so?” Essek chuckled. “I find it easy to believe.” Then he added, as he watched Caleb wave to a face in the crowd, “It seems you have taken well to your new assignment. And life in this town.”

He was caught off-guard when he noticed the faintest coloring of Caleb’s ear.

“Oh, er…is that so? Have I?”

“Well, I…just meant it seems you have made friends with the locals. And you, ah, move through the village with purpose, and had quite a lot to say about your endeavor.”

“Is that—scheisse, was I annoy—”

“Oh! No, no, not at all. I just, er…”

They stopped in the doorway leading up to the second floor, laughter and conversation winding slowly all around them.

“I just meant, ah…it is nice to see you so relaxed,” Essek finished lamely. “Retirement from adventuring seems to suit you.”

Caleb seemed to relax. “Well,” he murmured, “I am glad you think so. Though I must say, my retirement has certainly been eventful.”

“Better still than the typical hero’s retirement, no?”

“Ha! Lucky for me, eh?”

They stood there for a moment longer, as if neither were sure who should go first. But after a short pause, Caleb stepped back and began rummaging through his pockets. “Here, ah, here, take this,” he said, and pressed a small silver key into Essek’s hand. “It leads to my bedroom, but you can rest there while I see about getting you a room. And some tea.”

Eseek turned it over, looped a finger through the cord. “Oh, but I can’t just leave you to—”

“No, nein, I insist,” said Caleb. “I do not mind—”

“Are you sure—”

“Of course.” And with the air of someone playing a trump card in a social encounter, he added, “After all, you have travelled quite a distance, my friend. Please. I will join you in a moment.”

—

The Mighty Nein ate their sandwiches peacefully in the meadow outside their tent.

Then:

“I thought he’d be wearing different clothes.”

“What?”

“I dunno. I just thought he’d look…less shadowy.”

“Like he wouldn’t be wearing that creepy mantle, or something?”

“Yeah! Like I thought he’d be in, like, summery clothes! Like a flowy shirt and regular pants and short sleeves and straw sandals. He is taking a break from being a spymaster, after all.”

There a pause as they pondered the likelihood of this.

“He…could be wearing that under the mantle,” Caduceus said.

“Sandals? Really?” said Fjord.

“But his skin, he probably could not wear those if he wanted to,” Yasha said.

“Hmm…that is a good point,” Jester conceded. “But still, all black? In the summer? That’s

“Not if he’s got, I dunno, ice under there,” said Veth. “What if he has a bunch of ice strapped to his chest?”

“Ice? Now, really…” said Fjord, but everyone else had started to ruminate on this.

“No stains,” said Beau eventually.

“What?”

“No stains,” she repeated “If there was ice, there’d be stains. From it melting, right?”

“Or he’d be—ugh, gross—he’d be leaking,” said Veth. “Like there’d be puddles underneath him and stuff.”

Three of them snickered delightedly at this. Then Caduceus passed around more juice, and more sandwiches.

—

There was a cat on the bed when Essek walked in, sprawled out as if it owned the place.

Disguised drow and disguised fey regarded each other for a moment. Then Frumpkin stretched lazily, and yawned.

It occurred to Essek, as he continued to stand in the doorway, that this might be some kind of test. Minutes passed as he struggled to find the right thing to say—this was a familiar, was it not? And then he realized that anything he did end up saying would probably come across as rather silly. He decided to err on caution and simply nodded to the cat before sitting down on a worn wooden chair.

It ignored him completely. Essek twisted at his sleeve.

And finally, by the Grace of the Luxon, there was a polite knock at the door.

“Come in, come i—Caleb, that is much too much food.”

“Nonsense,” said Caleb, who had closed the door behind him rather inelegantly with a foot. Carefully balanced across his arms were two wooden trays absolutely laden with breads, cheeses, sliced meats and fruits that Essek at a first glance couldn’t name. A third tray floated behind Caleb, supported by a faintly-shimmering Unseen Servant, carrying drinks and utensils.

Not to be outdone, Essek gave a faint smile and flicked his wrist with a flourish. The trays rose out of Caleb’s grasp and drifted toward the table.

“I had it,” but his former student was now smiling as well. “Though I have missed seeing an esteemed Gravaturgist at work.”

The food came to a gentle rest between them. “I have also missed showing off,” Essek said wryly. “It is hard to find someone in the Dynasty unfamiliar enough with Dunamancy to appreciate my skills quite as much as you d—you alldid.”

“We did make you teleport us around quite a bit,” Caleb chuckled. He picked up a small piece of bread and split it in two, offering half to Essek. “I do not think we ever repaid you properly, either.”

Essek examined the bread in his hands. “Well, if I remember the contents of your letter correctly, it is the world that should be trying to repay you. The Chained Oblivion? Really, Caleb?”

“Oh, ah…” The man actually had the nerve to sound bashful. “That was mostly an accident, as it were.”

“You…sorry, you accidentally defeated the Chained God? Is that what you are telling me?”

“Well, er, no, not exactly.” He picked up one of the small round fruits and held it between his fingers. “It was sort of an accident that we found it…or rather, we did not know what we were looking for.”

This sounded like the Mighty Nein that Essek knew. He motioned for Caleb to go on.

“We had been…following a dream of Yasha’s,” Caleb said. “She had received it from the Storm Lord ages ago, but with one thing and another, we had never had time to pursue this. There was…a place, an island in the sea, she had felt it was a place of great importance. We weren’t sure why, until we arrived and found…”

A place of starlight and iron chains, buried in the heart of a dead volcano. A chamber, a ritual-site, fading incense and chalk, ensnaring an obelisk and a shattered crystal and at its center, a pulsating, churning darkness—

A hole in reality, Essek would remember, lying awake that night. The bastards had found a hole in reality and then they’d jumped in—

And found themselves standing in a pocket dimension…or at least, that’s what they’d thought. The air swirled with dark mist, the sky alive and churning. The walls of the world seemed to lurch and expand and it was Caduceus who realized that the whole plane was breathing. Jester shifted them out, returning them to the chamber, and they began to pour through the notes left behind. They realized that someone had found a Divine Shackle, then turned it in on itself, re-directed the ritual, created a bridge that would grant them access to the very being of Tharizdun, the most ancient and chaotic of forces—

“But who?” Essek breathed. He held a gooseberry, though he didn’t know it yet. “Who was responsible?”

Caleb scowled. “They left their notes behind. Who else would it be?”

As far as the Cobalt Soul could tell, the archmages themselves had not originally been involved in any actual cult. But after Vence’s capture, and Tasithar’s transfer, a spark of interest had been ignited in the minds of some of the nation’s brightest.

“It is like your metaphor,” Caleb said. “Before, they were simply sailing on a boat—"

Essek hesitated. The horrible sourness of the fruit might’ve been muddying his concentration. “It is what?”

“Like they were sailing,” Caleb repeated. “And every so often, they could lean over the edge and skim the sea for knowledge from relative safety. But capturing the cultists had…inspired the Academy to instead, go for a dive. And so they dove, down into the deeps, plumbing the darkest tides for secrets. And of course, they ultimately encountered the monster of all monsters…”

From there, it had been a matter of getting the proof—about this, about everything else they’d done—into the hands of Cobalt Soul. But word got out, and whispers travelled, and more people than the Nein could ever have imagined rose up, demanded justice and retribution—

Essek remembered the reports he’d received on the morning of the fall of the Cerberus Assembly. The casualties had been extreme, but what happened afterwards, even more so.  

“You arrested them,” he murmured. “The ones that survived, anyway.”

“And still, quite a few of them escaped,” Caleb sighed. “That is of course not even including the fact that not all of them were guilty enough to fully imprison to start with. As I understand, Hass has left to see the world, and Lord Uludan is still a diplomat for the king.”

Essek glanced at a slice of cured ham. He wondered if it would be enough to counter the taste in his mouth.

“With the…Assembly gone,” he said carefully, “there will not be a council of mages to balance the rule of the king, anymore. The nation has lost a powerful governing body and a source of great strength. What do you suppose this means for Dwendal?”

Caleb raised an eyebrow at Essek. “I certainly do not think the Assembly was doing much balancing to begin with,” he said, almost as slowly. “As for the King, well…the man is quite old, and very paranoid. He will be tricky to manage, and yet there are a number of good people surrounding him. In fact, the elimination of the Assembly could allow them to finally step up. That, and this nation has now witnessed a historic uprising of the people. For the first time in a long time, citizens are trying to make their voices heard. And unless the royal court wants more chaos, or to fall in the way that the Assembly did, for once, I think they will have to listen.”

Essek lowered his hand. He stared at Caleb. “But…they are just people,” he said, astonished. “How could they know what is best for the nation?”

Caleb’s expression changed, slightly. He was silent for quite a long stretch of time.

“My dear friend…they are the nation.”

—

“No,” said Fjord.

“But—”

“No, Jester. I will not let you tape ice cubes to my armpit.”

There was a pause. Then a huff.

“Fine, I’ll ask Beau.”

—

After lunch, Essek was shown to a room slightly farther down the hall.

“It will likely be some time before we will be able to move into the school grounds,” Caleb said, “so I recommend you make yourself comfortable here.”

Essek was given another small key, tied to a leather cord.

He felt like something needed to be said. Gods, if he could just figure out what.

“I, ah…thank you,” he tried. “For…lunch, for everything, the room, and, ah, if you need gold—"

Caleb shook his hand. “Nein, please, no. It is, as they say, on the house. More accurately, on the dime of the royal treasury.”

There was another hesitation. Essek sought desperately for a solution, but when nothing came, he sighed. And gave up.

“I, um…am sorry,” he said. “If I…made a statement that was…incorrect.”

Caleb studied his expression. Then, he seemed to sigh as well.

“A school is for learning, is it not? Maybe we will be surprised by who teaches.”

“Er…”

“I just mean,” Caleb murmured, “that we do truly come from different worlds. That are, in many odd ways, rather the same. I just hope it will not be too much.”

Essek was not a stupid man. He opened his mouth again, to protest, but stopped when a hand brushed against his arm.

“You should get some rest,” Caleb said. “Unpack, adjust to our time zone, relax. Then tomorrow,” and here there was the faintest hint of smile, “I will give you a real tour of the school. You should have a voice in some of our plans, too, for the curriculum and into the future. And,” he added, almost as an afterthought, “it will be better to have everyone around when we finish the story. Yasha does very good sound effects for the Chained Oblivion.”

There was another pause. Not nearly as tense, but still quite bewildered.

“She does…what?”

“You did not think that was the end of the story, did you?” Caleb grinned. “That we toppled the Assembly and the Maw that Devours just vanished?”

Essek recalled the other reports.

“Ah,” he said. “More the fool I.”

Caleb gave him a friendly pat. “Once a bridge is built, it goes both ways,” he said. “It is funny how often we wizards forget that.”

Then, in the warmth of the hallway, he nodded.

“Have a rest, Essek Thelyss. I will be down the hall. Let me know if you need anything.”

Then he nodded, and turned around, and left.

—

“Jester, I—oh gods, that’s cold.”

“Hold still, silly! You have to hold still.”

“But I—ah—oh, oh gods.”

—

And later that evening, alone in his room, Essek summoned an exquisite onyx chest. He popped it open, and slowly all his worldly possessions began to drift out. Clothes, papers, books and components slowly floated across the room, settling into the proper drawers or hanging themselves in the closet.

And then, Essek collapsed into bed. With a wave of his hand, a small mirror appeared.

It was black, made from polished volcanic glass and set into a twisted metal frame. It had been a gift, and as far as mirrors went, it was rather lacking, but—

He sighed.

It would get the job done.

—

[Part 1] - [Writing Tag] - [The Bail Project] - [National Bail Fund Network]

[twistedlymad]

Hello there, I love blogs and your writing. If you have the time, can you please write about the MC (fem reader) where she accidentally summons Stitch himself, befriends him, Stitch took an instant liking to her, with the TW guys becoming jealous to the new familiar and Stitch causing all sorts of mischief and pranks towards them. Thank you, keep up the good work and stay safe

Ohmaigawd. When I first read your request, I was honestly shocked! OwO

I literally could not have made the connection between Twisted Wonderland and Stitch at all! When I started writing, I did so many research! Forgive me, but, I have not seen any episode nor movie related to Stitch during my entire childhood, hence the research ahaha

One note though, I cannot make you summon Stitch as he already is a being on his own. However, I can make him appear in Twisted Wonderland :’)

Anyway, I hope this story lives up to your expectations! Thank you for requesting and have a lovely day! 

What if Stitch appeared in Twisted Wonderland? (Ft. Grim, Ace, Deuce, Sebek, Jack, Epel and Crowley) (Twisted Wonderland crossover w/Lilo and Stitch)

It was a quiet night at Night Raven College, no unnecessary arguments, no drama involving dorm leaders nor their members and most importantly, no fights occurring.

Or so you thought.

After having dinner, you and Grim went back to your Ramshackle Dorm after saying your goodnights to your friends.

“Fgnaaaaa! That deluxe-katsudon was the best dinner I’ve ever had!” Grim said as you put him on top of your head. It was his go-to spot for relaxing.

“You always say that to anything you eat.” You said, laughing. “You should cut down on all the extensive eating, you don’t want to have a certain teacher order you to run laps more than usual now do you?” You continued, a slight smirk on your face as you felt slight shivering on top of your head.

“Ahaha, you know what? Maybe I’ll skip lunch tomorrow.” The creature said to you and you shook your head.

“I told you to pay attention to your diet, not skip out on meals. It’s unhealthy.” You said as you opened the door to your humble Ramshackle Dorm, Grim jumping from your head and went inside. Before you went in yourself, you took a look outside and saw that the sky was clear and the moon shone upon you with no distractions. You felt a slight breeze blow through your hair and decided that it was a perfect weather to take a walk.

“Grim, I’m going to take a walk! You can go to sleep without me!” You yelled into the dorm before closing the door behind you and went on your walk.

You weren’t far from the dorm, in fact, you were taking your walk on the small field behind the building, enjoying the peace and quiet for once. As you looked up to the sky again, you noticed the stars that littered the sky. You took out your phone and took a picture of the night sky. However, a certain star caught your eye.

It was rather large to be a star? You thought it must be because the star was relatively close. You almost shrugged it off, keyword: almost. You would’ve went on your merry way if it wasn’t for a certain fact about the star.

It was getting bigger, it looked as if it was right above you. Once your mind had taken this fact into realization, your legs got the message and began to move out of the way. You ran to a few trees and hid behind one of them. A crash was heard soon after, it was rather loud, Grim would have probably heard it if it wasn’t for the fact that he was asleep. You peeked your head out from behind the tree to see what had happened, but all you could see was smoke.

Your mind had told you to get back into the dorm and call Crowley but your curiosity got the better of you. You began to walk towards the smoke to see what had crashed. You craned your neck, trying to get a better view when all of a sudden a part of the crash had flung open. You were taken aback and took a few steps back, fearing for whatever would emerge from the thing.

However, the only thing that emerged is a blue koala? Was it even a koala? You weren’t sure. Your whole body froze as it looked at you.

But what scared you the most was the fact he had 4 arms.

AND 4 GUNS?!

The creature then pointed the guns at you and your arms immediately flailed up to shield your face.

“D-Don’t shoot! I wasn’t going to hurt you!” You yelled, hoping that it would just go away. The creature just looked at you, guns still pointed at you. However, you noticed that it was slightly trembling, so you slowly lowered your arms.

“Umm… Hi?” You waved to it, you weren’t sure if it even understood you. But it replied.

“Hi?” Your eyes widen and slowly crouched down to its level. The creature still had its guns pointed at you. You just held up both your hands as if to show you were harmless.

“C-Can you understand me?” You asked and the creature nodded, but then shook its head.

“Ah… I’ll take that you do understand but you aren’t quite sure on how to speak it.” The creature nodded furiously.

“Interesting… Do… Do you have a name?” You asked and slowly approached the creature. The creature still stood his ground.

“S-Stitch. My name is Stitch.” It said and slowly lowered its weapons, slowly realizing that you meant no harm.

“That’s very good, where are you from?” You kept the conversation going. You were trying to let it relax and know that it has no need to be defensive. You sat down and looked at it.

“Ha… Hawaii.” You nodded with a smile.

“I assume you’re a boy?” He nodded.

“Ah… I see… I should introduce myself too.” You said to him. “My name is (Y/N) (L/N). Nice to meet you.” The koala-like alien blinked at you before nodding.

“(Y/N)?” He asked you.

“Yes, (Y/N), that’s my name.” You smiled to the creature, it also gave you a smile back. Stitch and you looked at the crashed craft and could already tell that it was unusable. Sighing, you returned your attention back to the creature, you used your hand to cup his head to look at you.

“Say, Stitch, how about you stay for the night? We could go find help first thing in the morning.” You offered and you saw his eyes light up. Stitch nodded and you smiled.

“Alright, come, let’s get a good night’s rest.” With that, you and Stitch walked back to your Ramshackle Dorm. You let Stitch sleep on the bed while you slept on the sofa. Grim was already asleep on the bed so he didn’t hear the crash happening. You let Stitch shimmy himself into the bed and tucked the two creatures in, after doing so, only then you went to sleep on the couch.

You were awoken the next morning by a scream.

“FGNAAAAAAAAA!”

Your eyes jolted awake and you saw Grim running towards you and away from an already awoken Stitch.

“(Y/N)! THERE’S A MONSTER IN OUR BED!!!” Grim yelled, jumping into your arms. Your eyes travelled to Stitch only to see him looking kind of sad. You just let out a small smile.

“Grim, he’s not a monster, his name is Stitch and he crash landed on our yard yesterday. I’m going to take him to see Crowley in a short moment.” You said, petting Grim to soothe him.

“Does that make him an alien?” Grim asked you and you shrugged.

“I guess.” You said, letting Grim go and walking over to Stitch, who was now curled up into a ball. You then bend down to his level.

“Good morning Stitch, I’m sorry you got scared a moment ago, but this is Grim! He won’t hurt you, he was just surprised to see you.” You said and nudged Grim over.

“I am the Great Grim, the most powerful mage in Twisted Wonderland!” You rolled your eyes at his introduction.

“Grim? (Y/N)?” Stitch asked and you nodded.

“Yep, that’s us. Now, let me just go prepare for the day and we can go find help for you.” You smiled at Stitch and left Grim and Stitch in your room. You got dressed and had Grim resting on your head while you hugged Stitch in your arms. As you did, Stitch somehow morphed his extra 2 arms back into his body, this made you jump a little.

“So, you can morph those arms in and out?” You asked the blue creature and he nodded. “Wow, that’s very surprising. Well, time to go.”

With that, the 3 of you set off to find the bad fashion sensed and lazy headmaster. When you arrived at the headmaster’s office, Stitch had hidden himself behind your legs. You giggled and told him not to worry and went in the office together with Stitch and Grim.

Truth be told, the headmaster had let out a girlish scream when you brought Stitch into his view. The 3 of you were taken aback but the headmaster had quickly calmed down and asked you what had happened. After explaining the situation to Crowley, he decided that he will have students from Ignihyde Dorm to check out the crash and see if they can help, meanwhile, you get to have Stitch stay as your pet since you were a beast tamer after all. But in return, you must keep an eye on him 100% of the time and not allow any nonsense to happen at all.

Pfft, I think most nonsense happened because of you Crowley.

“Well, looks like we’re stuck together for now Stitch!” You said to the blue koala. “Now, you two better behave well in class later on.” You said and the three of you went to class.

After this time with Stitch, you would be lying if you said you weren’t attached to the him. Grim and him actually chatted here and there and became fast friends really quick.

Whispers and gossiping were heard once you’ve stepped foot into your classroom. You felt slightly uncomfortable, Stitch saw this and bared his fangs at the students who were gossiping about you and Stitch. Grim shot a few nasty looks here and there but nothing much.

“(Y/N), I don’t mean to be rude but, what is that?” Deuce asked you once you sat down at your usual spot, between him and Ace.

“This little cutie, is Stitch!” You said happily to the two of them.

“He’s the most adorable little creature I’ve ever seen!” You added, hugging Stitch closer to you. In return, the little blue koala-like creature snuggled close to you too.

Little did you know, a few sounds ‘tchs’ were heard from the two Heartslabyul boys beside you. However, Stitch heard them. Oh, this little creature knew what was going on when he looked up to see two jealous slightly annoyed faces looking down at him. And with that, he had concocted a plan to see how far he could annoy them.

They boy’s eyes widen as they saw Stitch had a semi-evil smile on his face as you giggled and kissed his nose. The boys were shocked! A few veins of theirs popping too! Low grumbles and mumbles were heard from the boys but you payed no attention to them as Professor Trein had walked in and began teaching.

As the bell rung, signaling that it was time for lunch. You stretched your body, arching your back after having it hunched over a table for some time. You then looked down to see a sleeping Grim and a semi-asleep Stitch. You let out a soft giggle and woke the both of them up.

“Grim, Stitch, come on, let’s go get some lunch.” And the two creatures woke up.

“Fgnaaaa! It’s eating time already? Come on, let’s go!” Grim said excitedly.

“Jeez, Grim is sure as hyper as ever.” Deuce commented.

“He better not steal my sandwich again…” Ace added and you let out a small laugh.

“Don’t worry, I’ll keep an eye on him.” You said, winking to the two boys. They blushed slightly as you walked with the two creatures to the cafeteria. The boys followed behind but was met with Stitch sticking out his tongue at them behind your back.

Cue more veins popping and potentially a bad boy Deuce breaking out.

Nevertheless, the two Heartslabyul boys had scowls on their faces and kept mumbling to one another. Somethings about ‘that little alien thinks he’s so high and mighty’ and ‘how dare he have more treatment from (Y/N) than us’ were thrown here and there from them.

When you arrived at the cafeteria, Grim jumped from your head and ran in a beeline towards the line for buying food. Ace and Deuce accompanied him as you and Stitch went to find your other friends. You saw them sitting at a table when Epel had waved you over. You smiled, waved back and head towards their table.

Jack, Epel and Sebek sat and chatted when you came over, and all their eyes landed on Stitch. You noticed that and began to explain what happened last night. Once you finished, Ace, Deuce and Grim were back with their food.  

“So, he’s an alien?” Jack asked and you nodded.

“Yes, and he is the most adorable creature ever! How can you not love him?!” You let out a small squeal and once again hugging Stitch closer to you.

Multiple and I mean MULTIPLE ‘tchs’ were heard. You were too busy giving Stitch attention that you didn’t hear a single thing.

Remember when I said Stitch knew about this jealousy the boys had for him?  

With a small smirk on his face, he kissed your cheek.

Innocently.

Jaws were dropped to the ground, eyes were wide open like saucers, and the most terrible thing was,

Sandwiches and food were squeezed until they were either like a thin piece of paper or entirely inedible.

FOOD WAS WASTED. HOW COULD THEY?! QwQ

You were shocked to have Stitch kiss your cheek. You looked back at the blue koala-like creature only to see him giving you the most adorable puppy eyes ever!

“Awwww! I love you too!” You said and hugged Stitch tightly and him hugging you back, tightly as ever.

“You see what we had to deal with?!” Ace whisper-yelled to everyone and they all nodded. Well, everyone except Grim. The little furball was just happy he got his sandwich and sat there, eating happily.

You guys were chatting and eating, with the occasional glaring between Stitch and the boys of course, when Crowley came up to your table, informing you that the dorm members of Ignihyde managed to fix Stitch’s aircraft and even upgraded it.

Truth be told, you felt happy and sad at the same time. Sure, it might mean Stitch gets to go home, but it also meant that you’ll have to say goodbye to him. It might have been only a day, but you’ve grown attached to the creature and now it’s time to say goodbye.

You had stick on a smile on your face and hid your true feelings inside.

“That’s great! Well, Stitch, let’s go and see your new aircraft!” You said to Stitch and all of you went back to Ramshackle Dorm to send Stitch off.

When you arrived, the aircraft in front of you didn’t look too much different when you first saw it, but it did have a few tweaks here and there. You let Stitch inspect his new ride, checking for anything that might go wrong again before taking off.

You were painfully quiet, which didn’t go unnoticed by the boys and Grim.

When Stitch had finished inspecting, he gave you a big smile and nodded furiously, telling you that everything was okay and that he will be going shortly. You gave him a smile back.

“Well, looks like you’re going home.” You said to him and gave him a hug. He hugged you back tightly and did something very surprising.

“Ohana.” Said the blue creature. You were puzzled.

“What?” You asked Stitch as you pulled away from the hug.

“Ohana means family. (Y/N), you took me in even when you knew I wasn’t normal. You, Grim and everyone were friendly to me and didn’t try to hurt me in any way. You even helped me in this unfamiliar world and didn’t push me away. That’s why, you’re all family to me.”

“You’re my ohana.”

Tears streamed down your face when Stitch said those words. A genuine smile had formed on your face and Grim was right beside you, bawling his eyes out as well.

“Thanks Stitch, you’re ohana too.” You said as you and Grim hugged Stitch together.

The boys at the back were holding in their tears. How could they think that this sweet little creature tried to take you away from them? They felt like as if a gun struck their hearts with guilt for wanting to hurt Stitch even though he only wants someone to guide him through this unfamiliar world.

You then pulled away from the hug and let Stitch get into is aircraft. Once the engine is up, you stood back and waved goodbye to him. He smiled and waved goodbye to you too before ascending into the sky, going back to his home.

The boys came up and comforted you as you wiped your tears away.

“Listen, (Y/N), we know Stitch meant a lot to you…” Deuce started but you just shook your head.

“Don’t worry, even though my relationship with Stitch was strong, I still have a lot of ohana here.” You said and smiled to them, in return they smiled to you as well.

“Yanno, I don’t mean to ruin the mood, but, VARGAS’ CLASS STARTS IN 4 MINUTES.” Grim said to everyone and you all laughed.

“Well, we better hurry if we don’t want to get punished. I remember the last time it was Sebek and Ace who got punished and their punishments were to run 200 laps and do 300 push-ups.” You giggled at the memory and the boy’s faces paled.

“What’re we waiting for? LET’S GO!” Ace yelled.

And so the 7 of you ran as fast as you could to get to class in time.

[dorizardthewizard]

The Revival of Akillian: Chapter 8

Prologue / Chapter 7 / Chapter 9

8. AN UNEXPECTED PASSER

“Arcadia News! News from all over the galaxy!” A female voice announces to playful music, as the show's logo scrolls.

- From across the galaxy, indeed, - says Nork Ag’net, TTV's star presenter. - And more particularly from the small planet Akillian. Things are certainly going on on Akillian at the moment! Wouldn’t you agree, Callie?

On the giant holo-screen next to Nork Ag'net there is an aerial view of the ancient capital that appears frozen in the ice, like a huge angular iceberg washed up on the edge of the Windy Plateaus. The only moving element in this frozen setting, the Akillian flag, still flies atop the Soustra Tower, the tallest building in the ruined city. The camera zooms in and dives along ice cliffs and frosted walls, to Callie Mystic standing in front of one of the walkways leading to Arena Stadium, which resembles a huge ocean liner frozen in a bluish crystal.

- Indeed, Nork! Because I'm talking to you live from a place that some consider cursed, since the Catastrophe that led to the Ice Age... it’s the Arena Stadium! As you can see, externally nothing has changed in all these years, but what interests us here is that this place of sinister memory has just recently been reinvested in by a man - and not just any man. That is: Aarch, the former star striker of the Akillian team!

While delivering her speech, Callie crosses the footbridge and enters the interior of the stadium, to a scene of frantic activity led by the “Scrap”, who are melting the ice, pumping water, consolidating the superstructure, climbing the collapsed walls, and repairing faulty circuits.

- If the ground floor has become unusable, - continues Callie, crossing the site. - This is not the case for the underground areas and the corridors of the stadium which, miraculously, were spared from the progression of the ice and whose renovation was entrusted to a small army of hard-working robots. Aarch has agreed to answer all of our burning questions…

In his father's studio, Rocket, seated in front of the screen, is half-heartedly preparing a wreath of roses - Norata's famous purple roses - while following the show with a dismal expression. He puts down the clippers, disheartened.

- For example, how does he hope to, in his own words, “write a new page in the history of this sport on our beautiful planet” with the rookie team he has just recruited? He will answer us, I hope, with his legendary frankness...

Callie has just entered a room furnished with comfortable sofas, where Aarch and his team are waiting - only Tia is missing. Micro-Ice waves at the holo-cam.

- We will also get to know his trainees better, the lucky ones selected to take up this incredible challenge. But is this just luck, or is it...

The TV is suddenly cut off. Startled, Rocket whirls around: his father is there, remote control in hand.

- Dad! Why did you turn it off?

- You know perfectly well that I will not go back on my decision. So why are you hurting yourself by watching this?

Rocket gets up, angry.

- I'm not the one who hurt me. You did!

He leaves the room, boiling with rage. If he could have slammed the door, he would have, but unfortunately the door is a sliding one.

Norata is left alone in his office, in front of the black screen and the cut roses, as memories flow into his mind...

Fifteen years ago. That infamous free kick that would decide the fate of the game, possibly Akillian’s victory over the Shadows - his first victory. Aarch, in full control, all lit up with the Breath of Akillian. A glance at Norata, who smiles at him and nods his head: Come on brother, make us win! Aarch takes a few steps back and takes off… an arced, magnificent shot, going around the wall of the Shadow's defense. The ball shoots towards the goal… and the unbelievable, the inconceivable happens: the ball explodes in the hand of the Shadows’ goalkeeper. And then... the hurricane. The ground shaking, the howling wind swirling between the stands, the cascade of snow and ice spewed out by an inky sky. The stadium that cracks on all sides... the screams, panic. The frantic sprinting. Norata tries to catch up with his brother, taller than him, with longer strides. He slips on the ground covered with hailstones… a bad fall. A searing pain in the leg. Impossible to get up. And his limbs, that broken leg that freezes... Norata, alone among the raging elements, in the middle of this stadium that is collapsing under the hurricane, lashed by snow gusts, stoned by furious hail. Alone.

Alone, Norata remained; alone and forgotten on Akillian, while his glorious brother pursued a prestigious career elsewhere, on his own two legs...

Norata snorts, sits down at his desk and turns on the TV, resuming the work his son had abandoned. Memories are sometimes much worse than nightmares...

***

Sitting on the edge of a sofa, Callie interviews Aarch, who looks very relaxed:

- Rumor has it that you have applied for your team to participate in the next Galactik Football Cup?

- It’s not a rumor, - smiles the coach. - It's the truth!

- Isn't that a bit... rushed?

- I leave that up to the League to decide.

- Do you really believe that you can build a team worthy of the name in such a short time?

- Why not? Thanks to my friend Clamp's machines, we train hard, you know...

- And where are the Red Tigers in all this? They are the official Akillian club after all!

- If my team is approved, I propose a match to determine who will represent Akillian at the Cup.

- Interesting! ...What does your former friend and teammate think? I mean of course Artegor Nexus, the coach of the Red Tigers.

- Artegor, who loves victories so much, will not pass on the opportunity to face a club weaker than his! - quips Aarch.

- Aaarrrgh! - roars Artegor Nexus, angered by what he just saw and heard.

Seething, he grabs the first thing that comes to hand - a gilded bronze statuette of a ball, the only trophy ever won by Akillian in a friendly match against the Cyclops - and throws it violently at the screen. It bounces off the soft surface, hitting a panel of glass and shatters it in two.

- It's curious, - says Adium, the president of the Federation. – It looks like you're afraid to go up against Aarch!

Artegor swivels around and slams his hands on the desk.

- What are you talking about, Adium?

- What exactly are you afraid of? You have a lot more resources than him and your players have been training for longer...

Artegor makes a violent effort to contain the anger that boils in his veins and escapes in dark threads around him: the Shadow’s Smog… he has spent too much time on Obscurantis.

- I'm not afraid of anything or anyone! – He straightens up, sighs, and reverts to his usual arrogance. - Especially not Aarch. I am a better coach than him. And I have always been much stronger on the pitch!

***

At nightfall, Rocket slips surreptitiously into the courtyard through a window of his father's chalet. After making sure no one has seen him, he runs to his jet-snow, which he had parked outside for once, instead of returning it to the garage. He starts off slowly so as to not wake his dad, then steps on it when he enters the street, in the direction of Arcadia and the Arena Stadium…

He abandons the jet-snow in front of the access gangway, stepping onto it carefully. Nothing and nobody can stop him... he enters the interior of the stadium, where there is still a frenetic activity: the “Scrap” do not need any rest, knowing neither peace nor respite. A little disoriented within the construction site, Rocket tries to recall the route taken by Callie Mystic during her report. She crossed this hall, took this corridor… a “Scrap” suddenly rises in front of him, blinking with its electronic eye. Uh oh! Is it going to throw him out? Report him to Clamp?

- We have completed the renovation of Sector 12, sir. Do you want to inspect the site?

Rocket lets out a sigh of relief.

- Uh... it's okay, I trust you. Good job. Keep it up, guys!

- Thank you, sir. Should we start Sector 13?

- Yes, of course, get started with Sector 13.

The “Scrap” pulls away and Rocket continues on his way, holding back a laugh. How lucky that these robots are not very smart! He descends into the basements, which are much tidier and quieter, and wanders the halls for a while, not daring to open doors at random, for fear of falling upon the team's dormitory - or worse - his uncle...

A large round door attracts his attention, on which a sign reads HOLO-TRAINING. “Here it is!” breathes Rocket. Trembling in apprehension, he presses the open command. He expects alarms to sound, or at least the door to stay closed...

It slides silently.

Heart pounding, Rocket enters a large circular room, where the ceiling lights up as he enters. Four steps lead down to a hall below, in the center of which sits the large white cube he has already seen during the trials, in which Tia had presented herself in such a strange way. Tia… that cute little Obiane… who's probably part of Aarch's team now. She wanted it so much, and given her talent… she is surely there, somewhere, very close… his heart sinks at the thought.

Now, it wasn't for Tia that Rocket came. Going around the gallery surrounding the hall, he arrives in front of the desks supporting the consoles and control panels. He fiddles with his dreadlocks, puzzled: he doesn't know anything about computers, where do you find the holo-trainer's open command in there? How to get it started? From what he understood, everything is virtual inside: if no program is started, it will only morph into a big empty box…

A console is located away from the others, placed on a sort of stand. He looks at the touchscreen, being careful not to touch anything. Among the dials, tables and cryptic symbols, an area marked REPLAY glows in green.

Could it be that simple? Rocket puts his index finger forward, still hesitating… well, after all, this is what he came for. If it doesn't work, too bad, it's not going to break anything anyway...

His finger presses on the glowing area.

It generates a drop-down menu that displays the list of the last programs launched in the holo-trainer: passes, dribbles, target shots, ball handling, saves, special shots, etc. A cursor allows you to select one or the other. So far, it seems simple… Rocket chooses “passes”, the first on the list. Then he touches the REPLAY area again.

The holo-trainer's door slides out in front of him. Shivering, he walks inside... the door closes, the white ground turns into a football field, the black walls fade away in favor of an artificial sky. A ball appears at Rocket's feet. Moving targets, represented by concentric circles, begin to drift here and there. He quickly understands what he needs to do: hit each of these targets, which are supposed to be players on the move. A little more difficult than his landmarks in the ice, over there in his secret cave...

Rocket concentrates, takes a few steps back… and shoots. The ball sinks into the first target, which flashes green as the circles move apart from each other, measuring the force of the strike. A new ball materializes in front of him. He aims for another target and starts over… once, twice, three times… ten times. Each time the target moves faster and is more difficult to hit. But Rocket is super focused, and he never misses one. At the eleventh target appear blue sims who try to obstruct, to prevent him from aiming or shooting. He dribbles around them quite easily, cunningly trying new shots: twist, arc, one or two rebounds... always, the ball hits its target. Exhilarated, Rocket doesn’t realise the time passing... until a luminous icon looms in the air in the middle of the field, announcing END OF PROGRAM. Below appear the words “Total points: 160”. He does not know what these points correspond to, whether they are correct, or whether they are sufficient…

Everything disappears in the holo-trainer; the floor lights up white, the walls darken, and the door opens. Rocket exits, returning to the console. He feels fit, even excited, he would be tempted to start another program. But someone could come at any time... after a last regretful glance at this magnificent device, he goes out into the corridor and goes back the way he came... this time, no “Scrap” stops him.

***

Later that night, the Arena Stadium receives another visit: he is the youngest of bookmaker Ballow's henchmen, also arriving on a jet-snow. He studies with suspicion the fresh traces left by Rocket, inspecting the surroundings using infra-red binoculars... concluding that no guard is posted in the vicinity, he walks over the bridge with a cautious step, carrying a small shoulder bag.

As soon as he gets inside, he is assaulted by one of the “Scrap” on the site. He draws his pistol, ready to fire (and jeopardize his mission at the same time), but the robot addresses him with deference:

- Sir, we have a structural problem in Sector 13. Can you come and see?

- Buzz off, you stupid machine. - growls the henchman between clenched teeth.

He casts worried glances around him but does not spot any human around the brightly lit worksite, where the “Scrap” work diligently and (more or less) efficiently.

- I don't understand that answer. – replies the “Scrap”, its diodes blinking in perplexment. - Should I tell Professor Clamp?

- Absolutely not! Uh... wait until he wakes up. Yes, that's it: when he is awake and comes to inspect the site, then you will tell him your problem.

- Very well, sir.

With these words, the robot goes into stand-by and collapses on its pseudo-pods. “What morons, these machines”, smiles the mobster. He takes a blueprint out of his satchel and resumes his cautious progress through the construction site, where the other “Scrap” pay him no attention.

He arrives at the renovated part of the basement and walks along the silent corridors, plunged into semi-darkness, pointing a micro-torch at every sign he sees. Finally, he finds the door he is looking for: large, round, marked HOLO-TRAINING. With the same trepidation as Rocket had some time ago, he presses the open command, pulls out his pistol again and points it towards the doorway, expecting to see guards, droids, he doesn't know what.

The door slides normally, nothing and no one shows up, no alarm chirps. “Too easy”, smirks the henchman. He remains on the threshold for a moment to inspect the room. That console over there, all by itself on its stand... it must be the main command post. He approaches it, kneels in front, then rummages in his bag, pulling out a small flat device with a micro-antenna and an auto-grip suction cup on one side. He places it under the console, stands up, steps back, then extracts from the bag a receiver hardly bigger than a credit card, on which he switches a tiny cursor to the “test” position: five diodes light up and flash green, one after the other. The thug nods, satisfied.

He turns off the receiver, puts it back in his bag and walks back in the opposite direction. He passes the same robot near the exit, still on stand-by. Another “Scrap” tries in vain to impart information to him, spraying him with laser beams of various colors.

As soon as he gets back to his jet-snow, Ballow's man makes a call:

- Mr. Nexus, it's Jorg. Mission accomplished.

He climbs onto his machine, drives off and plunges into Akillian's blue night.

***

Clamp never sleeps much. As a skilled scientist, he constantly ruminates on a thousand problems in his head, constantly has ideas to explore, programs to improve, avenues of research to explore. Awakened before everyone else, he's always the first in the holo-trainer room, but not for training - Clamp is about as skilled with a ball as a mountaineer with fins - but to perfect his invention: correct this or that defect, test new training sessions...

This is how he finds his console stuck on REPLAY and on program selection “passes”. He scratches his beard, intrigued: he hadn't left it like this last night… and the last session was ball control, not passing! He remembers it vividly: Micro-Ice had made everyone laugh by being thrown off the conveyor belt like a sack of potatoes.

He asks his console to review “passes” on the monitor. What he then discovers in the viewing window leaves him speechless… he decides to call Aarch straight away - even if it means waking him up.

He arrives ten minutes later, already tucked into his breeches and his three-quarter-length jacket with trims, but disheveled and still sleepy.

- If you woke me up just to show me one of your inventions, Clamp, I warn you that I will not take it very well!

- Not at all, Aarch. Take a look at this.

It plays back the sequence in full screen mode. Aarch opens his eyes wide, suddenly awake.

- Rocket?

- Yes, your nephew. But take a good look...

Rocket aims, shoots, hits the target. Aims, shoots, hits the target again. Return shot - target hit. Dribbles past a sim, shoots in a spin - target hit. Head, foot, rebound, shoot – target hit, behind a sim. And so on, and so on. “160 points” displays on the console.

- He did a perfect run, Aarch! I’ve never seen such a good passer before. Impressive!

Aarch nods doubtfully.

- Impressive, yes, as you say. Unfortunately, he is my brother's son. And you know what Norata thinks...

[iron--spider]

you’re as good as it gets

“Whoever would have thought Peter would replace me?” Tony asks, peering over at Pepper as they set the table. “I guess I should have. I guess I should have seen it coming. I’m not as cool as I once was.”

 “I am going to record you,” Pepper says, glancing up as she sets the silverware down. “And then I am going to send the videos to Peter, whenever you do this.”

 “Good,” Tony says. “Then maybe he’ll see how much he’s hurting his old man—” Pepper starts coming at him with the dish towel, and Tony laughs, holding his hands up in surrender. “I’m kidding, I’m kidding. Sort of.”

 “This is what you wanted him to do, right?” she asks, bracing her hand on the chair and looking at him. “This Octavius guy, doing this with him gets Peter college credit?”

 “The class does,” Tony says, chewing on a toothpick. “The working with him thing is a whole different...thing.”

 “He’s just living his life,” Pepper says, and she’s looking at him sadly now, like she might get it. “Getting better after everything he’s gone through. You know he’s not actually replacing you, he’s just—”

 “No, I know,” Tony says, laughing a little bit. “I know. I’m just being dramatic. To irritate you.”

 “Mhm. Easily done.”

 Tony doesn’t know much about Otto Octavius. Well, he knows everything he learned after he heavily, heavily researched him when Peter started working with him in his lab on the weekends. But, he doesn’t know Octavius as a person, and he doesn’t hardly trust anybody with Peter, even people he trusts. Logically, this is a good thing. Peter’s preparing for college. He’s getting back into the groove of things after...all the bullshit. He was having a hard time with it, for a while. Being gone for five years. His life upended. Tony nearly dying in front of him and losing an arm as a result of the near death. So Tony knows this is good. The kid’s moving on.

 He’s moving on?

He’s moving...on. 

 Tony’s had a lot of people move on from him. He expects it. He expects every day for Pepper to up and leave, for Morgan to pack up her little pink Hello Kitty suitcase and disappear in the wind. Rhodey never picking up his calls again. Happy slamming the door in his face. All of them would probably beat the shit out of him if they knew he still thought that way, but it’s so ingrained in him that it’s hard to push it back.

 He knows it would piss Peter off too. So Tony never says anything to him about his own dumb shit or his worries or his occasional loneliness, despite his firecracker of a daughter who’s been dressing up in Spider-Man costumes lately. But Tony misses Peter. And feels a dumb tinge of jealousy knowing he’s learning and growing with some other asshole scientist mentor guy. Tony is supposed to be the only asshole scientist mentor guy in his life.

 His phone buzzes in his pocket.

 “Speak of the devil,” Tony says, opening up Peter’s message. 

 “See, there you go,” Pepper says, laying out napkins. “He wouldn’t be messaging you if he’d replaced you. He’s too polite for that.”

 The message is a photo—a billboard of Tony himself, the kind of shit that started cropping up everywhere after everyone found out what he did. Suited up, sans helmet, staring upwards with a look of determination and grit on his face, like some kind of stained glass church art. Peter is in the foreground, both eyebrows raised, and it’s captioned “TONY ARE YOU STALKING ME?”

 “What a nerd,” Tony says, full of fondness. 

 “Make sure he knows he’s coming for movie night tomorrow or Morgan will never forgive him,” Pepper says. 

 “Noted,” Tony says, crafting a reply.

 ~

 A couple days later Tony is falling asleep sitting up in the workshop, still analyzing the layout for the new bot he’s creating to accompany DUM-E and U. He’s seen Peter a couple times in the past week, but the kid looks more worn out than normal with every new day that passes. Tony had texted a bit with May, trying not to worry, but that’s practically his every day state of mind, especially when it comes to his kids. 

 His kids. Plural. Two. How long has he been thinking about Peter like that? One of his own. Since before the end of the world? During, while he was gone, when there were things Tony couldn’t change, when the world was so heavy that he had to remove himself from it? When his failure loomed in front of him like a crumbling shadow, the darkness drawing all the light away from him?

 Was it then? Or was it when he saw the kid on their newfound battlefield, like a memory of a lifetime past, an impossible miracle? Talking and talking and talking like he used to?

 Tony leans forward and braces his elbows on the table, digging his thumbs into his eyes, nearly poking his own fucking eye out with his new titanium alloy thumb. It’s been a while and he’s still not used to the new arm. How it looks, how it feels, what other people think. An eternal reminder, just like the arc reactor was. Once again, he’s marked.

 He’s about to call it a night when his phone starts ringing.

 Peter.

 It’s after midnight, and yeah, he’s gotten calls from Peter at all hours of the night, but usually, it’s when he’s in trouble. 

 Tony answers fast. “Hey buddy,” he says. “You okay?”

 Peter’s breath is coming fast, and he doesn’t say anything for a moment. 

 Tony sits up straighter, eyes intent. “Peter, what’s going on?” he asks. “Talk to me.”

 “I—I, I—I made a bad decision. I didn’t know. I didn’t—I didn’t know. Help me.”

 Tony nearly leaps to his feet. Help me. Not I need help. Just help me. “Where are you?” he asks. “What happened? Who did this, what’s going on?”

 “I’m in—I’m in the suit,” Peter says, and Tony doesn’t know if he’s ever heard him sound like this. Only in the moment he knew he was dying. Or when he thought Tony was.

 “I’ll track you, are you safe?” Tony asks, getting up and sweeping towards the exit, a tension headache spreading across his forehead. “Can you stay where you are?”

 “I’ll—I’ll stay close to where I am, it should be—should be okay, but I don’t know, I don’t know.” His voice breaks and he sucks in a few gasping breaths. “I can’t think. I can’t—help me, please, I messed up, I don’t know what to do.”

 “I’m coming, I’m on my way,” Tony says, trembling now, himself, trying to summon the kind of strength that whatever this is needs. “Stay on the line with me, Pete. I’ve got you, just stay there.” He grabs his earpiece on the way out, activating it.

 “Friday, track Peter and give me the fastest possible routes to get to him,” Tony says, starting up the stairs. 

 He hasn’t had a suit on in almost a year. He hasn’t felt strong enough, safe enough, and the others have been covering it. It, the royal It, everything that needed to be done. Tony did what he could and it wound up well, and after that, nobody’s needed Iron Man. 

 But Peter needs him now.

 ~

 Tony can barely get him to talk while he’s on his way over, and that terrifies Tony even more—just short, clipped answers, wavering breathing, and it sounds like a panic attack. But Peter doesn’t seem to hear him, when Tony tries to talk him through it. He’s faraway in his head, too. 

 Tony finally finds him in an unused tunnel in Harlem, and getting over there without drawing a crowd is more difficult than Tony would have liked. But Friday finds him the way in that Peter must have found, and it’s like dropping directly into a horror movie. Quiet, echoes, dripping. 

 Peter crying.

 He’s sitting there, against the wall, his mask balled up beside him. This place is dirty and abandoned, and he looks too bright and vibrant to be here. Even in the state he’s in.

 Tony lets the nanos crawl back into the housing unit and he rushes over to him, kneeling by his side. He glances up, briefly, to make sure no one is keeping him here, that this isn’t a trap, but he doesn’t see anything anywhere. He hopes Friday would alert him to anything like that.

 “Hey, hey, okay,” Tony says, one hand on Peter’s shoulder, the other tipping his chin up. “Here I am, okay? What happened? What’d you do? I’m sure whatever it is, not your fault, we can fix it. We can fix it, together, no problem, kid. You know how much shit I’ve messed up and thought was beyond repair? Plenty. I always fix it, and we’re gonna fix this too.”

 Peter’s eyes finally focus on him, red-rimmed, and he shakes his head. He shudders to his feet, bracing his hand on the wall behind him, and he nearly falls before Tony grabs him and steadies him.

 “Otto,” Peter says, sniffling. “Doctor Octavius. He, he, he—he’s a bad guy, Tony, he’s—I’ve been helping him invent things and working on his specs and I’ve been helping him with all this stuff for months and months and he’s using it to hurt people, to commit crimes. He’s got—an entire team of guys, and I didn’t even mean to find them but I found them, tonight, they’re all these costumed villains, they were—they were working with the Rhino, that big guy I put away last month—”

 “Yeah, I remember,” Tony says, still holding onto him.

 “The police thought he had people behind him, more—more powerful people, but tonight I went after these guys that had robbed a bank on 4th street and I webbed up one of them but the other got away and I followed him—but I realized he was leading me somewhere bigger, and there were—Tony, he was there, Otto, he was in charge—he’s using these—these arms, they look like octopus arms, and I, I—I’m the one that helped—I helped him, I helped him with those—with those specs—”

 He covers his mouth, shaking his head, and before Tony can think about hugging him he steps forward and buries his face in Tony’s shoulder. 

 Peter keeps talking, muffled. “He’s responsible—his group, these people, they’re responsible for so, so much—shit—countless robberies, kidnappings, that—that explosion, at that office building, that happened—that happened in July, that was them, Tony, and people died, and I—and I’ve been—working with him since June—”

 “Stop, stop, stop,” Tony whispers, holding onto him.

 Peter gasps, sounds like he’s gonna start choking, and he claws at Tony’s shoulders. “I should have—realized, I should have known, some—somehow, figured it out, realized, but he—he acted so, so normal, with me, and I thought he was—I thought he was doing something—good, but he’s—he’s not—”

 “And you’re sure—”

 “I’m sure,” Peter whispers, wounded. “Positive. And I—they were picking up and moving their—base and I was—freaking out too much to even—follow—keep track—”

 “Shh, relax,” Tony whispers, ruffling Peter’s hair. “Relax, breathe.”

 Peter stops talking, but his breathing is labored, and he’s holding on tight.

 “The guy that got away, that led you to all this, did he know you were following him? Did he know what you saw?”

 “Don’t think so,” Peter says. He shakes his head. “I should never have—even taken that course, with Otto, let alone started—working with him. I made a bad decision, a—a stupid decision. May is gonna be so disappointed in me. And I know...I know you don’t like him.”

 Tony scoffs, still rocking them back and forth, gently. “I didn’t not—listen, one, May can never be disappointed in you. Please. And me, I’m just—I’m just jealous. I wanna work with you, I wanna hoard you, and that’s selfish of me, whatever. That’s all. But fuck that guy, now I have a reason to hate him. We’re gonna take him down, yeah?” He pulls back, holding Peter by the shoulders. “Yeah?”

 Peter looks positively fucking miserable, but thankfully, uninjured. “I’ve been helping him, Tony,” he says, dejected. “With...God knows what. The arms, they’re—they were supposed to be for limb replacement, but he’s altered them, and they’re—they look dangerous. He was in charge, he was—with all these criminals, some I’ve seen before, some that have gotten away from me and he was—he was in charge.”

 “Listen,” Tony says, stepping a little closer. “I’ve been betrayed before. More than one time. Used for what I know, what I can do. That’s what happened here. Nothing else. You have not and will not ever hurt anybody or anything. You’re a fucking angel, kid, and this does not change that. We’re gonna take care of this. You could do it without me, because you can do anything, but I’m gonna help you every step of the way.”

 Peter heaves a sigh, the kind of motion that shows he’s still horrified and put-upon by all this, but relieved that he’s not handling it alone. Tony knows how that is. It’s always easier to have backup, especially when things are personal. They both take things to heart.

 Peter moves in and hugs him again. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. 

 “Nope,” Tony says, automatically, hugging him back. “No reason to be sorry. My least favorite phrase from you.”

 “I’m just sorry for everything,” Peter says, voice breaking again. There’s a lot more behind that one, and Tony sighs, rubbing his back.

 “Don’t be,” he says. “You’re doing everything right. The world just sucks and good people get taken advantage of. And you’re as good as it gets.”

 “But we’re gonna fix it,” Peter says, tentatively, like he’s hoping to believe it.

 “Yes,” Tony says, firmly. “We’re gonna fix it.”

[axeylotl]

Cold Night In

OK SO- I had the idea for this AU during class, and hardly even thought about it before writing this, which is really weird since I never write and I have so many more well thought out AUs that i could write about. but anyways I haven’t written anything in ages so if some parts aren’t good then let me know so I don't keep making the same mistakes! (also if ya’ll like it I might make more of this)

the basic synopsis is: Reginald is the desk worker at a shoddy motel in the mountains. on a particularly harsh night, a stranger wanders in.

Reginald sat in the creaky wooden chair at the front desk with a long, fuzzy scarf wrapped tightly around his neck. The single room building was cold, only barely keeping the howling blizzard outside. The fire was across the room, surrounded by two comfy looking chairs on either side and a sofa in front, though it was just a bit too far to do much for him. The heavy frost and darkness of night made the windows useless to look out. It had been a long day, and Reginald was nodding off at his desk.

He was snapped awake, however, by the sound of the bell above the door and the howl of wind to his left. A tall man in heavy looking clothes walked through the door. He wore a black, fluffy trapper hat that obscured his face as his head was tilted down. As the man walked up to the desk, Reginald got a better look at him. He had a stern, expressionless face and a bushy, orange mustache that was covered in ice and snow. He brushed it off a bit before speaking. 

“One night.” the stranger’s voice was low and gruff, it sounded like he didn’t use it often.

The stranger set a wad of cash on Reginald’s desk. Reginald was slightly taken aback by the man, as he radiated an air of intimidation. Many mountain climbers came through and stayed the night, but this man was different. Maybe Reginald was just tired, or maybe it was because of the raging storm. Either way, he was eager to get this man to his room and out of Reginald’s own. He took the money and counted it quickly, confirming it was enough.

“Uh-of course sir, right this way.” Reginald stood up and led the stranger to the back of the room, opposite the entrance door. He struggled a bit to open the door, as it was nearly frozen shut. Quickly, however, it swung open, letting snow and freezing air inside. The resident buildings, which could usually be easily seen just across the small field, were invisible in the dark and storm, but Reginald was confident enough that he could make it just fine. He wrapped his scarf around tighter, and set out with the stranger.

It was difficult to keep his balance in the wind, but he managed to make it to the empty building with the stranger right behind him. It was no larger than a single bedroom, but it was a place to stay nonetheless. Reginald tried to open the door, but it wouldn’t budge. He tried again, more forcefully this time. Too forcefully. The door swung open, slammed against the wall, then was torn completely off the old, shoddy hinges by the storm. Reginald stood there for a second, completely stunned. That was the only open room they had, and now it was rendered unusable in a matter of seconds.

“I…” Reginald turned back to the stranger. If there was any expression on his face at all, he couldn’t tell.

“...Guess we’ll ‘ave to go back.” the stranger said simply, as he turned around and started to make his way back to the main building. Reginald turned too, surprised at the fact that the stranger had said anything. So, they trudged back through the snow together.

…………………

The stranger stood to the side and held the door open, and as soon as Reginald was through, the man slammed it shut. As he caught his breath, Reginald realized what this meant. He was going to have to spend the night cooped up with this stranger. He looked up at the tall, imposing figure and started to get nervous. Every bad outcome that could happen with this situation started flooding his mind. What if they were trapped even longer than one night? What if they needed food? What if the man was dangerous? Reginald tried to stamp out those thoughts, but he wasn’t very good at it. Suddenly, he realized he’d been staring, and so had the stranger. Uneasily, he broke his gaze and started towards the lounge area of the room, and the stranger walked beside him. He kept his focus in front of him, but Reginald couldn’t help but look at the man.

The stranger started taking firewood off the shelf next to the fireplace and rekindling the dying fire. While Reginald knew he wasn’t supposed to let customers mess with the fire, he was too tired to care. He sat down on the rug in front of the fireplace, took his gloves off and held his hands to the fire. Reginald could’ve fallen asleep right there, if it weren’t for the presence of the other man, just in the corner of his vision. Soon, the fire was going strong again, and the stranger sat down on the rug alongside Reginald. For a good while, neither said anything. Reginald still couldn’t see any thoughts or emotion on the stranger’s face. The silence was starting to make him uncomfortable, so Reginald did his best to start up a conversation. If they were gonna be here all night, they might as well get acquainted with each other, right?

“So, uh, what’s your name?” Reginald did his best to sound friendly.

“Don’t ‘ave one.”

“Oh, um, okay” Reginald wasn’t totally sure what he’d expected, but it certainly wasn’t that. Worried about irritating the stranger, he waited a bit before trying again with a new question. “Where are you headed to?” 

“Not sure. ‘M just tryin’ to get away.”

Reginald hesitated a moment. “Get away from what? If you don’t mind me asking.” He wasn’t totally sure he wanted the answer.

The stranger stayed silent a second before responding. “The law, I suppose.”

There was silence for a good minute or two, as Reginald desperately tried to think of a conversation starter that wouldn’t take an unexpected nosedive to an uncomfortable dead end. Being by the fire was getting a bit too warm, so Reginald unwrapped his scarf and set it in his lap. The stranger seemed to have had the same idea, as he started taking off his heavy outer coat, revealing a worn sweater underneath. The man got up from the rug and sat down on the couch behind them. Reginald thought about going and sitting with him, but quickly shot down the thought. He still didn’t know the man, and he was a criminal, wasn’t he? He might be dangerous. But still, Reginald couldn’t shake the idea. They couldn’t leave the fire on all night, so it would eventually get cold, and they’d have to stay warm somehow. He looked around at the stranger, who was already starting to nod off. Finally, against his better judgement, Reginald got up and put the fire out, instantly making the room darker and colder, then sat down next to the stranger. 

“What’d you do ‘at for?” the stranger mumbled sleepily.

“Well, you can’t really leave a fire going with no one to take care of it, and i’m going to bed. So I uh, I thought we could keep each other warm? There’s not much else to stay warm…”

The stranger grunted in response, and leaned into Reginald, nuzzling into him a little. Surprised at how easily the stranger accepted the idea, Reginald could feel his face turn red. Hesitantly, he leaned into the stranger, and was surprised at how comfortable it was. Despite the fact that the man had made Reginald nervous since he came in, being close to him like this made him feel relaxed and secure in a way. But Reginald didn’t have time to realize this completely, as he was already drifting off to sleep.

…………………

Reginald slowly opened his eyes. It was cold in the room, and there was a distinct lack of a person beside him. The windows showed a clear morning outside and let in light that lit up the room in a chilly, dream-like feeling. As he sat up, Reginald looked around for the stranger. He was standing in front of the door, as if waiting for some sort of cue to leave.

“Bye.” the stranger said, and promptly opened the door and left. 

“Wait!” Reginald called out, but the man was already gone, leaving him blinking in the cold morning. 

For the rest of the day, Reginald couldn’t focus on anything. He kept thinking about the mysterious stranger. How, and why, did he not have a name? Did he actually have a name, but didn’t want to say? What crime had he committed and why was he running from it? In the back of his mind, he somewhat wished that the man would come back again. And if he did, maybe Reginald would be brave enough to ask some more questions.

[snowdice]

Big Bang Editing Story [Day 3](Part 2)

In the same vein as my study session fics, I’m going to be writing a story while I edit my Big Bang Fic. I will write and publish 100 words of the story every time I finish doing final edits for a section of my Big Bang Fic.

This will be a royalty AU and unlike the study fic, I actually have a few plans for it going in, but you can still feel free to send in asks with suggestions or questions to help me along.

Because this story is a story I’m writing to edit, I’m not going to edit it very consistently… The two chapters are finished and under the cut.

Also! I have a lot of world building for this story already and I have a role for all of the sides! (Even the ones that won’t show up for a little while.) Feel free to ask any questions. There’s plenty of magic in this AU.

If you’d like to block these proceedings, please feel free to block the tag proofread stories. I will reblog this post with the parts of the story I do today.

Chapter 1

“Please?” the younger teenager said as he threw his arms around Logan in a hug. Logan gave him a disgruntled look when a stray arm bumped some of the papers on his desk and one that he’d been using fluttered to the ground.

“Patton, I have work to do.”

“You work all the time,” Patton pouted back at him.

“I’m the crowned prince,” Logan reasoned. “There is a lot for me to do.”

“You’re not even doing royalty business tonight,” Patton pointed out. “You’re just reading your book.”

“But I have to do some tomorrow and if I agree to a sleepover, we both know neither of us will sleep.”

 “We’ll sleep, I promise!” Patton said.

Logan gave him a skeptical look. They had been having these sleepovers for a decade at this point and in none of them had Logan ever actually slept. On the contrary, Patton usually kept him up long enough that Logan was so tired he couldn’t fall asleep and then the boy himself would pass out leaving Logan to stare grumpily at the ceiling.

“Future Royal Advisor’s honor?” Patton tried, eyes hopeful. “Come on, we can play dress up.”

Logan glared at him. “I am 17 years old,” he reminded.

“I’ll do your hair,” he tempted. “I’ll even let you read a book while I do it.”

The look in his friend’s eyes and the fact that he really was quite good at hair started to weaken Logan’s resolve.

 Patton, knowing him so well, saw his tenacity faulter and pitilessly pressed his advantage. “Mama made fresh cookies today,” he said. “They’re the ones with strawberry jam. We could sneak into the kitchen and steel some in the middle of the night.”

“Considering you are the head chef’s son and I am the prince, it would hardly be considered stealing.”

“But it’s more fun that way,” Patton argued with a laugh. “Come on, you need to have some fun. You’ve been stressed out lately.”

“This is fun,” Logan said with a frown, gesturing to the large book in front of him.

“I know,” Patton said, “but your brain has got to be tired from reading all of that Latin and Sand’s Kit.”

“Sanskrit.”

“Gazuntite.”

 Logan sighed. “Why did father agree to make you the royal advisor in training?”

“Because he knows without me, you’ll send your entire life sitting at this desk reading your book.” Patton scrunched up his nose at him.

“I would also do my royal duties.”

“But sometimes you need to relax,” Patton said. Logan opened his mouth. “Really relax. No super encoded magical books that make me dizzy looking at them. We’re going to play dress up, eat cookies, and read silly books, and that’s final.”

“Oh, I’m being commanded, am I?” Logan asked, an eyebrow raised. “You’re really going to try to command your prince? You’re lucky I don’t have you tossed into the dungeon.”

Patton hopped off the chair he’d pulled up to Logan’s desk and scrambled a few feet away. “You’d have to pull yourself away from your book to do that,” he said, sticking out his tongue at him.

 Logan glanced down at his book. Reading the Pragilium text despite its difficulties had been his life’s work since he was a small child, and it was something he very much enjoyed, but he was tired from his duties and his lessons the last few weeks and not in the way he would be if he agreed to Patton’s sleepover. He looked up at Patton. He was shifting back and forth on his feet, a smile on his face. The book could wait.

Logan carefully closed his book and stood from his desk chair. Patton was already giggling before Logan lunged for him.

 Patton was a lot more agile then Logan was himself and knew the castle just as well since he had been brought to live here when he was just starting to walk, yet he was clearly slowing his place so Logan would not lose him. They ran through familiar corridors, careful to not slam into the stationed guards as the slid around corners. They ran past the large window that gave the best view of the castle garden and Patton avoided the spiral staircase that would let out near the kitchen where his mother was currently preparing that night’s dinner. Instead, he made a dash through the smaller dinning hall, unused at this time because they had no important guests, and then hung right to bolt towards the wing with Logan’s own private quarters.

The guards that stood in front of the double doors to the private hall, stepped aside easily at Patton’s approach. Patton pushed through the doors and they swung shut behind him.

“Traitors,” Logan accused, shooting past them through the door himself.

 The guards only seemed amused by his accusation.

“Help!” Patton yelped. His still light tone didn’t worry Logan that something was actually wrong, but it did make him wonder who he was speaking to. That became clear, however, when he noticed his father standing at the end of the hall outside the entrance to his own bedroom. Patton sprinted past Logan’s bedroom and directly at the king.

“What is going on here?” Logan’s dad asked amused as Patton darted around him to use him as a human shield.

“I made Logan stop working and now he wants to throw me in the dungeons.”

 “Well,” Logan’s father said. “It’s a good thing I’m king and can overrule him then.”

“Thank you, Thomathy.” Father chuckled at the nickname, and Patton poked his head around the king to stick his tongue out at Logan once again.

“He’s sticking his tongue out at me!” Logan pointed out. “Surely that counts as some sort of treason.”

“Does not!” Patton claimed.

“Does too!”

“Does not!”

“Stop it!”

“Make me!”

“I would, but you’re hiding behind my father like a coward,” Logan argued.

“He does have a point there, Pat,” Father reasoned. Patton just wrapped his fists into the man’s robes and shot him a piteous look.

 “Oof, Pat,” Father said, rubbing his chest as though it ached. “That look is a shot straight to the heart. Is someone trying to assassinate me?”

“No,” Patton said. “I wouldn’t let them.”

“Hmm,” Father replied, reaching out to ruffle his hair and then stepping away from him. “I can always count on you Pat. I have to head to a meeting now. Keep our troublemaker out of mischief for me?”

“Oh, I’m the troublemaker?”

“Of course, Thomathy,” Patton swore, ignoring Logan completely. “Can we use the jewelry box for dress up?”

“Sure, go ahead,” Father agreed. “I won’t need any for a while. Just keep them safe.”

 “We will,” Patton promised. Father smiled at him and walked towards the entrance of the hall. He paused to press his palm to Logan’s cheek briefly before continuing and disappearing through the doors.

Logan turned back to Patton. “It seems you have cornered yourself,” he pointed out.

Patton glanced around himself. He had, in fact, sequestered himself in the end of the hall. The only possible avenue was into Father’s bedroom and he’d likely locked the door behind him if he was going to be gone to a meeting. Patton giggled when his predicament set in. “Truce?” he offered.

“Not a chance.”

 “No! Logan! Truce!”

Logan took a menacing step towards him.

“Defensive offence!” Patton shrieked and charged at him.

The air was knocked out of him when Patton slammed into him. “Ugh, Patton, why?” The arms that had wrapped around him squeezed hard. “I’m being attacked! Guards!”

To the guards’ credit, one of them did stick their head through the door just to make sure. Patton waved at them.

“There is no respect for the crown in this entire castle!” Logan sputtered when the door closed once again.

Patton released his waist finally, and instead grabbed his hands. “Come on, I bet I can pick out a good fun book from your dad’s library for you to read during our sleepover.”

“My book’s fun.”

“And easy,” Patton stressed. “We’ll have to wait for the cover of nightfall to steal the cookies, but there is plenty to do until then.”

“Fine,” Logan said with a put-upon sigh, though he honestly didn’t feel any true resentment. He wondered if he’d regret his decision to agree to Patton’s ‘sleep’over in the morning.

He would find in the years to come, that he very much wouldn’t. For, many, many reasons.

Chapter 2

Virgil hated this. He really, really hated this. To think he wished he was back in training camp. He yearned for General Landon’s mistreatment like he imagined most children desired their mother’s affection. He tried not to sniff too loudly from his place behind the foul-smelling bags he’d hid behind in the small shed long enough ago that his legs had long since cramped.

He could tell from small window opposite him that the sun had set recently, though it was not quite last light. Soon he would have the cover of darkness and would have to move from this spot. That was almost worse than staying cramped here forever and starving to death in the shed. He felt sick. He felt so sick. He didn’t want to be here.

 A noise startled him, and he flinched down further behind the bags as someone pulled opened the door to the shed. A man made a groaning sound and set gardening tools down on the table with a clank. Virgil did not want to imagine all the ways each of those things could kill someone, but his brain didn’t give him the choice.

Virgil focused on breathing as quietly as he could even when the thoughts in his head made him want to pant. The man continued to put away the tools in different places in the shed. Virgil tried to curl even tighter into his already tight ball when he strayed too close a few times.

 The man finished his work and wiped off his hands on his shirt. Virgil expected him to turn and exit the shed, but instead he called out. “I can see your hair.”

Virgil froze, and when the man turned to look right at his hiding place, he let out a small whimper. He tried to scramble away when the man took a step closer to him, but there was nowhere to go but to press himself up against the back of the shed, the man’s body between him and the door.

They sized each other up for a long moment. Could Virgil make it to one of the tools if he moved quickly enough? He didn’t know. He doubted it and there was more than a likely chance that he’d reach for a tool himself with his much longer arms.

“You here to steal food from the castle garden?” the man finally asked.

 Well…no, not at all. He wished he was here to steal food. How should he respond? What was the most tactical answer? He cast his mind back to his training. There were a few options when faced with this situation, but he didn’t know which was the best one. The most obvious explanation was to go with his cover story and try to say he worked in the kitchen, but this man worked with the garden. There was every possibility he knew people in the kitchen. Another strategy would be to agree with whatever he said and hope he came up with a reasonable explanation on his own… but that explanation seemed to be that Virgil was a thief. Would he immediately be dragged in front of the king or have his arm chopped off or something else horrible? He could try spinning it around on him by asking him questions back and confuse him. He could ask him why he was here or if he was the one stealing food. That would be stupid though, he was obviously the gardener. That would probably just piss him off and make Virgil’s fate worse.

Virgil couldn’t breathe.

 “Hey kid,” the man said. “What’s going on?” He had crouched down in front of Virgil and the fading light from the window finally hit the side of his face the right way to light up the currently black tattoo on his face. Virgil blinked. He was really glad he hadn’t just lied in that case. He did not comment on the marking or otherwise indicate he knew what it was. That would breed questions about why he knew what the man was. Why was the man a gardener if he was a multrum? It didn’t make any sense.

That didn’t matter now however, Virgil needed to say something, and it had to be the truth.

 “Kid?” the man said again.

“I don’t want to be here,” Virgil said truthfully.

The man’s tattoo shimmered just slightly, and he paused. He settled himself down in front of him. “Well where do you want to be?”

Virgil shrugged.

The man frowned and then leaned back to grab something out of a bucket under the table. “Here,” the man said. An apple was plopped down in his lap.

Virgil stared down at it in confusion.

“Are you hungry?”

“Yeah,” Virgil admitted. “I wasn’t here to steal though, promise.”

The man nodded. “Go ahead and try it,” he suggested. “It’s from a new hybrid plant that just started growing fruit.”

 Virgil cautiously brought it to his lips and took a bite. “It’s good,” Virgil said softly. “Thanks.”

The man watched him eat for a long moment. “What are you doing here?” he finally asked.

Virgil was careful with how he responded. “Hiding.”

He arched an eyebrow. “From what?”

Virgil was not fool enough to say.

“Well, you can’t hide in here,” the man said once he realized Virgil wasn’t going to speak. “I lock it from the outside during the night. How about I walk you back to wherever you’re supposed to be. Where’s that?”

Virgil bit his lip. “The castle,” he said.

 He titled his head at Virgil. “Alright,” he agreed. “Come on.” The man offered him a hand and he twitched before slowly taking it. The man pulled him to his feet carefully. He reached over and grabbed another apple from the bucket. “Here, have another one for the road,” he offered.

Virgil looked at it in confusion. “Oh,” he said. “T-thanks.” He stored the apple in his pocket and when he’d looked away, he felt a hand descend on his back.

He yelped and jerked away, eyes wide, but the man was just holding his hand in the air where Virgil’s back had been, looking confused.

 “Sorry,” he stuttered. “You just startled me.”

The man eyed him. “Sure kid,” he agreed. “Let’s get along.”

Virgil nodded and followed him out of the shed. He waited for the man as he locked up the shed and then they walked side-by-side to the castle. The man never reached for him again, Virgil noticed.

Virgil found himself shuffling closer to him as other random castle workers passed them, using him as a cover. No one looked at them twice.

The man took him in one of the doors of the castle. It was one near the kitchen if Virgil’s mental map was right.

 “Can you find your way from here?” the man asked.

“Yeah,” Virgil replied. “I know where I am. Thanks.”

“No problem kid,” he replied. He nodded at the bulge in Virgil’s pocket. “If you ever want another one of those apples, I have plenty.”

“Oh,” Virgil said softly. “Thanks for the offer.”

He inclined his head and turned back to leave out through the door they’d come through. Virgil watched him go. Well. That was the weirdest interaction he’d ever had with an adult, but at least all of his limbs were intact. He gulped looking around at the strange hall he was in. For now.

 There weren’t many people coming in and out of the kitchen at the moment since dinner had long since passed, but he was still cautious as he took the spiral staircase up. Though most wouldn’t question him in the more public areas of the castle, it still never hurt to be safe. He came out in a large corridor across the way from what he knew was a small dinning hall for important guests. It was still fall, but it was getting late enough in the season that there should not be any guests staying for fear winter may come early and snow them in.

 He kept close to the walls as he quickly passed through the dining hall, wincing as his shoes clacked softly on the floor and then turned left. He kept his ears peeled for guards and ducked around corners when he heard people coming, but eventually found himself in the correct hall. It was a hall of large bedrooms used for visiting dignitaries, and he slipped into the first bedroom on the left.

He took a moment to gawk at the large bedroom. Most of the furniture was covered in white cloth to keep it from getting dusty when not in use, but he could still imagine how beautiful it was when someone was staying there, how soft the bed and chairs must be, and how pretty the designs on the wardrobe.

He shook himself and turned his attention to the bed. He crouched down and squirmed underneath it. His arms stretched out, searching along the wall at the head of the bed until he found the loose board. From what Virgil had been told, a dignitary from Faumatia had come here in the spring before their membership in The Alliance was known and planted supplies for this. He grabbed the bag and squirmed back out from under the bed. He opened the bag and pulled out exactly what he’d been told would be there: a knife, some dried meat (which he chose to forgo since he still had the apple), and one sleeping potion enough for the guards who would inevitably stand at the entrance to the hall The King’s bedroom was in.

 Then, Virgil settled in to wait for a few more hours until the rest of the castle was asleep. He chewed idly on the second apple he’d been given. He felt a little bad; he wondered if the nice gardener liked his king. Would he make the connection between The King’s assassination and Virgil? Would he feel guilty for helping him even if accidently?

He shook off the thought. He had enough to feel bad about without feeling bad about that too.

He waited for hours before he finally decided it was time to move. The clock had struck 2am a good while ago and everyone but the night guards should be asleep. He stood and snuck back the way he came, past the dinning hall and into another area of the castle. The correct hall was easy enough to find with its two guards posted outside of it. With practiced ease, he kept silent to the shadows and snuck up on them. When he was close enough, he pressed his shirt up against his nose and uncorked the potion, tossing it so the gas it made when hitting oxygen hissed and spiraled up their legs. They were down in a moment and Virgil was running past them, holding his breath. He closed the doors behind him silently.

Now, he just needed to find the king’s bedroom. He imagined the floorplan in his mind. There were two bedrooms in this wing: one for the prince and one for the king. He froze. Which was which? He remembered which doors led to bedrooms, but racking his brain, he couldn’t remember which one they’d said was The King’s.

It was fine. They’d both be asleep at this hour. He’d just check the first bedroom on the left and see if it was the prince or the king. If the prince was sleeping there, he’d back out and go to the next one.

Decided, he took out the knife and crept to the first bedroom door. He turned the knob and pushed it open slowly.

Confused eyes met his the moment the door finished opening. It was the prince. What was he doing awake at this hour? The stared at each other for a long moment, both frozen. The prince’s eyes drifted to the knife.

Then, something heavy and flat slammed into the back of his head.

 Chapter 3

The figure whose head Patton had just slammed a cookie sheet over tottered forward and fell to the floor; the knife fell limply from its hand onto the floor. Patton immediately stepped forward to kick the weapon away towards Logan. Logan stepped forward to grab it and stored it away quickly at the bottom of the chest at the foot of his bed.

He looked back up at Patton. “T-thank you,” he said.

“Um-huh,” Patton replied, still looking down at the fallen figure. It did not seem like it’d be getting up anytime soon. He slowly lowered the cookie sheet.

 He cautiously knelt down next to the person.

“Patton, what are you doing?” Logan asked.

“I just want to see,” Patton said. He carefully shoved the figure over to its back so he could peer at his face. It was a young boy with a pale face and kinda squiggly dark hair that framed his face unevenly. “Oh,” Patton said softly. “He’s just a baby.”

“What are you talking about?” Logan asked.

“He’s like 12,” Patton said with a frown. “Maybe 13.”

“He also had a knife,” Logan stressed, but he did move closer to get a better look at him. “We should call the guards.”

“But...”

“No, Patton,” Logan said firmly.

 “Maybe it’s just a misunderstanding?” Patton tried.

“A misunderstanding?” Logan scoffed. “What? Did he accidently sneak past the guards into royal family’s private hallway and come into my bedroom in the middle of the night with a knife?”

Patton looked down at the kid. “Well…”

“He’s clearly an assassin,” Logan said. “We need to call the guards so they can deal with him appropriately.”

“Can we at least wait until he wakes up?” Patton said. “I want to talk to him. Maybe…”

“He’s not a feral cat you can tame.”

Patton bit his lip and looked up at Logan about to do something sorta mean. “But aren’t you curious?” Patton beseeched. “He’s so young. Who would have sent him? Who would have trained him if he’s really an assassin? How’d he get past the guards? Don’t you want to know? They probably wouldn’t tell you if we let the guards take him away.”

 Patton could see Logan’s resolve breaking. He was weak to his own curiosity and whoever this kid was, was a curiosity. He sighed. “We’ll have to check him for any weapons before he wakes up, and we’ll have to restrain him.” Patton beamed up at him. “We’ll call the guards and tell Father as soon as we’re done or at the first sign of trouble.”

“Sure,” Patton readily agreed.

“Hmm,” Logan said. “Watch him closely for a couple of seconds.” He ducked through the door to his little work area and then ran back with a corked bottle. “Hmm… can I borrow your bracelets?”

 “Sure. Why?” Patton asked, already working them off his own wrists.

“This is a binding potion,” Logan explained, taking the bracelets and pouring a couple of drops carefully on them. “It keeps people locked in place. It’s rather strong though and if I applied it directly on his skin, it’d hurt him and be hard to take off. This way, the bracelets will just act like magical cuffs. They’ll hold his arms in place wherever we need them to be.” He waited for a moment and then tapped his own finger to where he’d applied the potion. “It’s dry” he said.

[thessalian]

Thess vs Home Maintenance

Currently I am alternating between Horizon Zero Dawn and cleaning. I’m still trying to get all the rubbish in my flat into one big pile so I can take a picture of it for an estimate of how much it’s going to cost to hire someone to come and take it all away. Unfortunately, one of the things I am discovering is that unused items scattered in various nooks and crannies around the house don’t take up as much space as when you shove them into garbage bags. Plus it’s harder to keep those bags out of sight. So the house actually looks objectively worse the more I do because I have Pile O’ Bin Bags colonising a corner. But I know everything will be better when all the stuff is collected and gone, so I persevere.

There is a voice inside my head (that sounds like my stepfather, because I know full well that it is what he would say if he were here) saying that it’s been several weeks and I should have everything sorted by now. I am trying very hard to remind myself that the man has not had a job for over twenty years, and when he did have one, it was not a low-level admin job (ever notice that the lower your pay band, the more abused you get in the workplace? Because I fucking have). My day is basically this:

Wake up at 5:45am

Throw on clothes and stuff something resembling food into my face to be out by 6:10 or so

Hour and a half commute with twenty minute window for Transport for London fucking up (worse these days since I have to walk about a half-mile to get to the nearest convenient bus stop for my route)

Eight and a half hour work day in what is currently an understaffed office, subtract an hour for lunch, half of which minimum is spent finding something I can fucking well eat because there aren’t many options for gluten-free convenience food.

Hour and a half commute home (usually longer because public transport Be Like That)

Once home, dinner must happen, and I basically always have to cook if I want a decent meal because, again, there aren’t many options for gluten-free convenience food

Shower - doesn’t take very long but sometimes I just need it to because my muscles fucking ache and the hot water makes it better for awhile

Try to get a halfway-decent amount of sleep, or at least wind down halfway properly

You may notice that this doesn’t leave a whole lot of time or energy to do moderate to heavy housecleaning. I’ve been getting little bits done as and when I can, but towards the end of the week I was largely incapable. And sure, I could give up most of my weekends for housework but that is neither physically nor emotionally healthy. I need rest, and my stepfather (and the part of me that borrowed his voice to punish myself for not managing perfect housekeeping on top of a job that keeps me out of the house for literally half the day while still meeting my physical needs to some degree) needs to cope with that. He has never lived alone to any significant degree; he’s always had some help with housework during his adult life (first wife, then help from his kids, then my mother). I don’t think he really gets what it is to live alone.

Also he’s the King of Procrastination himself - he took three years to finish a home improvement job in the first house we shared in this country and he has avoided getting any of the work that’s needed done on this flat done for years so he doesn’t get to throw stones. Buuuuuuut he will anyway and I think my brain is trying to prepare me for that while also torturing me, because my brain does that. So I’m arming myself with “I have done a fair bit of work but job and physical needs do get in the way” and setting up, “No offense, but you’re one to talk about procrastination” at least inwardly (because saying it to his face would end badly) as a shield.

Why does any of this matter? Well, my mother bought another flat in this building and one of the ones she owns is going to be a rental property and the other is going to be for me to live in. Either way, both need major refurbishment. I was given a choice of which of the flats I wanted to be ‘mine’ and I picked the new one, which is at the end of a corridor, not under the Really Loud Stompy Kids, not next to the lift so I don’t have the lift shaft cutting into the living room space, and is basically better laid out. Which is nice but it means that my stepfather’s inspecting the property and is now obliged to set right the various disasters in this flat, most of which he’s known about for years and hasn’t got around to getting fixed despite insisting that it’s his job as defacto landlord (bathroom floor tiles cracked, probably because of a leak somewhere, leaky kitchen sink tap combined with clogged sink drain owing to non-functional garbage disposal that I asked to have taken out years ago, boiler so old and broken that it takes two hours of electricity-bill-intensive ‘day boost’ to get enough hot water for a shower, really crappy wood-effect laminate improperly installed on the floor, the fact that we had to paint over one coat of paint and two coats of wallpaper rather than start from scratch on the walls...) Summary: I need to be ready for a move and now that my stepfather’s finally ready to get this done, he’s apparently grumpy because I’m not working to the timetable he hasn’t told me about. Well, fuck it. I’ll do my best. It’s all I can do.

I love my family most of the time but honestly, they really need to just step off. Nagging is not helpful. But at least he’ll probably chill a little when I tell him I finally got EDF to give me a date for replacing my faulty electricity meter. That on top of my bank finally letting me do direct debit again (I’ve tested, the one I set up for BT hasn’t bounced back and it’s been at least a week so I think we’re good) means I’m at least nailing some part of Being An Adult.

Anyway, I’ve scrubbed the kitchen walls and bagged a whole bunch of trash and the laundry’s nearly dry so I should get my personal needs met and head to the corner shop before settling in for a little more relaxation time before D&D night. I just needed to vent about Household Bullshit because it’s there on top of all the other bullshit. Ugh.

[krisanderwrites]

Malachite and Sparrow 02

My second summer there was a mix up in the paperwork and I had to vacate the dorms for two weeks until it was sorted out. None of my classmates lived close enough to make couch surfing a viable option, so I eventually swallowed my apprehension and called my mother. Although I attempted to keep the conversation short, she was elated to hear that I would be coming home this year. When I finally hung up, I knew that there was no way Malachite had not overheard my given name. Of course she was considerate enough to not mention it.

The long trip home was peppered with anxiety attacks and countless worries. By the time I finally arrived in the airport, I was exhausted. Thankfully that gave me the excuse to ignore the way my parents did not recognize me until after a second glance. They shuffled me into the car, berating my tardiness and how it was messing with my sister's schedule since she had an important meeting. Everything felt dull and far away, much worse than my depression ever was while at college.

I took it easy, as much as someone going to Elsewhere University can on break. Unable to break the habit of watching every word I uttered, I found solace in furthering my research online and at the local library. I cleaned out my old room, throwing away most of the things I had no use for anymore. I visited my great-aunt Hazel in her nursing home. When she pressed a plastic bag full of small boxes into my hands, I gave her a strange look.

"For exchanges," she said, smiling. Opening one, I found a kitschy set of matching topaz earrings and necklace. Realizing the gift, I gave a small gasp. She would not accept me doing anything for her in exchange, simply saying that she had no use for all of them anyway. I still have no clue how she knew about the Gentry. However, she had certainly given me ideas.

I began to talk to my sister and mother, telling them about Malachite's love of jewelry of all kinds- how she even made her own on occasion. In response, they gave me all of their old things that they no longer wanted to pass along to her. A few of my cousins even dropped off their old mismatched earrings and pendants and charm bracelets. I went to the nursery and picked up seeds of plants I had not been able to get my hands on while on campus. In the back of my closet I found my old fighting gear and packed it into an old gym bag my brother was going to throw out.

To make sure there were no debts I mowed lawns, weeded gardens, cleaned out gutters, scrubbed bathrooms, and bathed dogs. Each present got a chore in payment. Money exchanged hands as well, but I tried to reserve as much of that as possible for more important things than trinkets to trade. In the end I left with two more bags than I had come back with, full of all sorts of helpful things. I think somehow I knew even then that I was never really coming back.

"You know... you really have changed," my mother remarked as she dropped me off at the airport.

My mouth was dry, "Yeah, I think I have too."

"I'm not sure it is for the better," she snidely added.

"Well, I do," I shrugged and grabbed the last bag out of the trunk.

She seemed uneasy, "I suppose this is goodbye then."

"Yep," I said.

"Will you at least call?" she asked.

"Probably not," I answered, not even attempting to stretch the truth. "I think we both have very different ideas about who I am, and it would probably just hurt more."

There were tears in her eyes when she laughed, "You really have changed. I will wish you luck, then. Don't worry about your father; he already knows. He's considered you dead for at least six months now."

"That does explain the lack of conversation," I had quipped. "Well, I have to somehow get through security with all this."

I walked away without looking back even once. Somehow it felt like I was shedding my old skin. I checked my bags and got onto the plane with no troubles. Smooth sailing for the Captain. The feeling of overall sluggishness left upon entering campus again. Dropped off in front of the dorm building with my bags, I was delighted to see a greeting party of crows waiting for me. They were rewarded with the best sugar cookies my hometown had to offer. Overall it felt more like coming home than visiting my family ever had.

        *        *        *        *

Settling back down into a dorm room felt strange knowing that it was going to be just me on my own again. I planted all the seeds I had bought in trays that I placed upon the windowsill. I sorted through all the jewelry I had amassed and threw away the unnecessary packaging; it still filled most of a duffel bag. My old fighting gear was relegated to the back of yet another closet; I could not bear to throw it away but for now it served no purpose. Perhaps I could find a new group to practice with on campus later. I took a part-time job at a local veterinary clinic to help expand my knowledge and experience.

To be truthful, everything was just a distraction until Malachite returned. Without her nearby I felt the pull of the Else at my veins. Sometimes I would stare out at the forest with a longing- an urge- to simply walk among the trees and then keep walking. Realistically I knew that this was a terrible idea, but it was true all the same. The Fair Folk were more numerous on campus as autumn drew closer, all eagerly anticipating the return of the students as much as I was.

With no small amount of glee, I showed off my acquisitions to Malachite. She stared, wide-eyed, and asked what in the world I was planning on doing with all of that jewelry. I laughed her off, claiming that I was just going to save it all for a rainy day. It was mostly true. (I was something of a zombie-survival plan person anyway.) I did not tell her that my intuition said that there were storms coming.

Still, things continued on much as normal for quite some time, if perhaps a bit busier. I gave presents to Jimothy- as many beads as my cousins had managed to trade for me doing their chores. Clients at the veterinary clinic occasionally brought me gifts for helping to care for their animals, which I in turn gifted to fae or other students. My study group commandeered a room in the library where the time distortion was not too terrible. I set a broken wing for one crow and stemmed the bleeding broken beak of another.

Sometimes I attended parties just to escort people back to their dorms safely. Ever curious, I worked endlessly on ideas and inventions that I never intended to see the light of day. After all, knowledge of how to heal and soothe comes only after knowledge of how to hurt and break. The contraptions piled in my closet next to my unused fighting gear.

It took some time for me to realize that Malachite had plans of her own.

By helping others and trading in offerings of homemade bread or sweets for crystals and gemstones, she had amassed quite a literal treasure trove. Taking these precious finds, she then created jewelry from them. Homemade trinkets are always worth more to the fae than ones that you buy in a store. As I watched her collection grow, I suddenly understood her concerns with my own hoard.

Then one day I walked in during a break from classes and realized something had happened. Malachite was burning sage in the room which showed evidence of a recent bout of furious cleaning. When pressed, she simply said that the salt lines had been worn away over time and needed replacing. The fearful glances to the corner of the room, however, spoke a different story.

I decided that though my hands were often burned with silver nitrate (so useful in stopping small bleeds), perhaps having the Sight was something I should keep around more often. Just in case. I began wearing a mood ring on my middle finger. It immediately turned to black and then remained that color whenever I wore it. I tried not to feel anxious about this and failed miserably.

        *        *        *        *

Right at midterms there was a brief flurry of activity before things settled down again. Hardly anyone got taken over midterms that year, as there were several days that were designated safe due to the school fair. Then there was a night where all the signs were there for A Hunt. There was a new moon and strange yelling that could be mistaken for baying. Everyone kept to their dorm rooms and locked the entrances.

What came knocking at our door was our new RA, who was a nice enough woman studying business and law.

"Captain," she had said.

I had tilted my head and informed her that was not my official nickname.

"No," she laughed, "but it suits you well. You're already rather well known as a Knight." Something about that title rang true in my bones and I had to suppress a shiver as she continued, "Anyway, there is a bit of a situation. They are asking for you to come out and see to one of their hounds."

"What they?" Malachite had demanded.

"You know, the Fair Folk," she explained.

"Absolutely not."

Blinking, we both turned to the side. Malachite pushed forward to stand in the doorway, hands on her hips.

"I'm not letting Sparrow take one step outside on a night of A Hunt. Even if it were not suicide, the chances of being stolen are far too great."

I laughed, "All my new surgical tools are made of steel. I doubt any of Them would want me."

Despite her protests, we both ended up following the RA to the threshold of the dorm hall. Standing there was a perfectly respectable attempt at a humanoid form, albeit with an extra limb or two. At least they were trying. The hound itself was, as typical, an eldritch abomination that could possibly be construed as canine if you were on LSD and also only had ever known dogs from the story of The Hound of the Baskervilles. However, the long, hungry glances the Good Neighbor kept sending towards Malachite were disconcerting.

"I will heal, for that is what is right," I offered readily, "but should you attempt to take or harm my companions, I will fight, as that is also right. Do we have an understanding here?"

The hissing reply was not pleased-sounding, but not being attacked outright was a good sign. When finally it nodded petulantly, I stepped forward to the heaving mass on the grass and kneeled down. Luckily it turned out to be a small favor. The monster had thorns in its hide from a hawthorn tree dipped in iron. Snarling at the wicked items, I palmed them with the thought to destroy it later by fire. A small salve applied to the wounded areas and the Hunt was once again ready to leave.

"Freely given," I said as they vanished into the mists.

"You're foolish," noted the RA. "You should have asked for something."

"Asking for payment is more foolish than being a good person," I replied. "All my aid is freely given, and I won't charge the Gentry any more than the crows. I am a healer, after all."

"Talk softly, treat others kindly, and carry a big damn stick," supplied Malachite.

"Exactly," I smiled as I closed my fist around the iron-tipped thorns.

        *        *        *        *

The hungry eyes of the Gentry were long forgotten as time slipped past. There was too much to do and too many who needed aiding for paranoia to set in fully. It did not catch my attention at the time that my plants were starting to grow a little too well or my newly acquired pet fish seemed more colorful than was natural. I did not notice when I began to avoid eating my food with excess salt.

No, my first sign that something was terribly wrong was an itching, sore rash across the back of my neck.

It took some time, but eventually we figured out the trusty iron chain that our talisman rested upon was causing the problem. For a few days, neither of us spoke about it. Suddenly developing an allergy to iron was greatly concerning. And telling. We both knew what it meant, despite trying to ignore it.

Slowly, things began to change. The salt lines in the doorways and windows became complex symbols and runes. The gemstone satchels somehow migrated away from my side of the room. I began to take my coffee with creamer and sugar, despite always having had it black before.

"Fae-touched," someone told us when they noted me sitting on the grass to avoid the iron bench. "Not quite a Changeling, but not entirely human either. You've gained a lot a favor with the Gentry. Or a lot of ire, I suppose."

"Don't listen to her," another student rolled their eyes. "Everyone knows Captain Sparrow's a knight and a healer. The Good Neighbors like you just where you are."

It explained a little, we supposed. My family was mixed, but both sides had come from areas steeped in tales of the Fair Folk. Those with links to the old countries always were a little more at risk. So we simply decided to take more care and discuss our options. And we agreed. Neither of us would leave for the Else without the other. We would remain together through thick and thin.

Thus our third year at Elsewhere University ended with us just as close as before.

[talldarkandroguesome]

4th of Sun’s Dawn, Turdas

Nabine knows me altogether too well.

Unlike Avon, who tries to keep festivities for my name day to a discreet location and reigned in, Nabine has little care for such notions. In fact, she hired out a great number of the workers of The Den to give me a start into celebrations starting at sun down and going into the night.

There was a nostalgia in knowing that we loved one another and understood the power and enjoyment of group escapades. We indulged in a few bets and some competition over who could bed particular sorts.

It is not as though only the hired Den workers were in attendance. Nabine also invited a few of her friends and acquaintances. She had additional toys and furnishings to set the mood for different scenarios. There were themes that took place at different points in the evening.

As a special treat, which I know Nabine always used to reserve for special occasions such as this, she told me to use my birthgift on her and others as part of the fun. She made sure to inform everyone invited as to what it was I would be doing. Everyone had given her verbal permission, which was echoed again before we started each activity, with some safeties in place should someone change their mind throughout.

I know how hard it is for someone like Nabine who prefers to be in a dominant role to let another be in control. I think that is part of why she likes me to use my birthgift during activities where she wishes to play a more submissive role; she has a tendency to slip back into that role regardless, just out of reflex.

Or perhaps some part of her does like the idea of letting someone else take control from her, though it is hardly something she seems comfortable with in the long-term. 

There was feasting and dancing and music and room after room of oiled bodies intertwined. At times it was hard to tell exactly how many people were making use of each part of your body or who exactly you were engaged in what with.

I could almost hear Avon’s voice asking me if it was safe to simply let yourself be part of the mass of people seeking pleasure from whatever source it came from. I could have laughed. He has never understood, being that he takes so long to form physical attraction to other people and has such a diminished libido.

Not that I would see this as a negative. It is exactly what is best for him. Though I could hardly live the same way.

So long as the body is not in too uncomfortable a position for too long, there is a sort of sensation that can only come from such activities. It is almost as if you are not a person in a crowd so much as you are one part of something bigger. A group that has become one, a single goal, a single purpose. Everyone working towards that great, building sensation. Everyone working hard, not only for their own pleasure, but for those around them as well. And when one is satisfied, they often continue on, as eager to bring others pleasure as to receive it. People of all races coming together with a shared vision.

Those who do not experience such attraction or who have not participated might find difficulty understanding that uniquely spiritual feeling that happens in such large groups. And, as I often found myself in the middle again and again, I got to feel myself being pulled and pushed, the group of our bodies moving as if a single organism. Several times I was suspended above floor or furniture by the ministrations of the other celebrants. Perhaps that is the same feeling as levitation, though I think I had far more fun that a mage levitating around.

As dawn arrived, Nabine had me find a place to sleep off the alcohol and told me she had more prepared for when the full day had arrived.

I kissed her in a way I have not kissed in since she left me for the cult. I was so grateful for her being back in my life, back in my arms.

She laughed and told me that I better not use this as an excuse to skip my mage training or she would be cross. I laughed and followed her instructions.

I was not quite sober when I arrived to class. It made things easier, I could relax, concentrating primarily on the spell and less on the judgement of those around me. With a few bit of advise from the instructor, and half as many tries as the day before, I managed to complete my lessons. The teacher said I was clearly working hard. That  although I was slower and getting the spells to work, I had such a deep pool of magicka that once I learned the basics, I would probably excel at a more rapid pace than my peers. It was encouraging to hear.

I almost ran back to The Den. I was excited to see what my beloved Nabine had in store for me.

On my arrival, she tossed me a pack and told me that we were going on a hunting trip.

Now, I was worried about how foolish I would look shooting a bow besides a master bowmer like Nabine. But I knew she likely put in a great deal of effort to make this happen, so I followed without either complaint or question.

We took roads through the treetops. Unused to such travel, having done it only the once, and then we were taking major roads rather than the side passages that Nabine moved through, I often had to teleport to keep up. It was tiring, but she is so fast and she did not wait for me to catch up.

Finally, after several hours moving southeast, Nabine stopped. I looked around and then down. There was a small cart besides the firepit of a camp: two Altmer and a Bosmer, sitting around the fire were talking, the two Altmer loudly complaining, their Bosmer companion trying to placate them.

Nabine turned to me and asked me if I was ready for a fun performance. I smiled and asked her what type of hunt was this going to be,

She grinned and licked her pointed teeth. Leaning in she told me that I was to pretend to be a good Dunmeri slave boy and to put on the clothing in the pack.

I opened it up and found a silk veil for my face and even less for around the rest of me. Mostly it was jewelry designed to attach chains to. Nice mammoth leather collar and cuffs with big bone loops.

When I was dressed, Nabine took some makeup from her bag and painted me up appropriately and then sewed in more hair so that I had a long ponytail atop my head. Then we made our way down.

As we approached, the Bosmer in the camp turned and then back to her companions, informing them that their wait was finally over and the entertainment had arrived. 

The Altmer grumbled and asked what their money had been spent on exactly.

The Bosmer said that she had secured a rare Dunmer slave, raised as a performer, but forced to fight for the Pact, but after seeing the rages of war, turned coward and ran, only to be caught by a lieutenant who had the eye to recognize what was before him.

The two Altmer came round to inspect me. I made sure to keep my eyes lowered and my posture submissive. Then pawed at me, checked me over for health and unsightly marks. I wanted so bad to slit their throats. I would have been a mount or beast checked before being sent to the slaughter. The irony of knowing what fate was to bring.

When the Altmer had given their approval, the Bosmer finished their arrangements, collected coin and told them to enjoy me as long as they would like before dawn. That my handler was there to make sure that her property was not going to be damaged beyond healing.

I was asked to dance. So I began to do so, the careful precision of the Deif Indkhes dance.

As I made sure to exaggerate each movement, they shouted at me for song. Some kind of music. That is when I knew I had them.

There is a sort of siren-like song that accompanies the dance. And as I began to sing, they pulled off the clothing I wore so that I was bared before them, using both my my body to entice them and my voice to call them. It took little to work, I could see the lust grow in their eyes. I was an object, a curiosity they wished to possess. It was just what I had hoped for.

My song continued, I willed for them to come close, to join me, to use me. All that was in return was to offer me that which I no long had, but which they possessed. And they responded by eagerly following my instructions.

As I began to service them both, I glanced over to Nabine. She was watching the situation hungrily. In all meanings of the word.

She gave me the signal that meant she was ready to go on my queue.

Just as the Altmer reached their height of pleasure and began to climax, I took the one in front of me and reached up as though to steady my hands upon their shoulders. Only, in each hand was a small needle. I made sure to hit veins on both sides, so that the poison would travel that much faster.

As the Altmer in front of me began to struggle, the one behind me seemed to wonder what their friend was doing.

They had little time to contemplate, for I heard the familiar sound of an arrow forcing air out of a body. I pulled the veil from my face and wrapped it around the mouth of the Altmer in front of me, pulling them back where they struggled. Then they tried to scream, but I pulled hard, keeping them from doing so.

When that Altmer was dead, I turned to see Nabine already field dressing the other. She scolded me for poisoning the other one, preventing her from being able to do anything with the other.

Then we stages a scene to look like bandits and Nabine pushed me down on the ground, her body still covered in the Altmer’s blood. She looked so beautiful. 

We made love right there in the camp,

And when we had finished and repacked, we headed back to her home where we could bathe and get the children ready for bed.

I must say, it has been a while since I have so thoroughly enjoyed my name day. I just wonder what else Nabine has in store for me over the next few days.