#‘ah… i remember my early days………. ‘ staring into the distance like she’s telling a war story

[sapphic-luthor]

Is it just me or does Jess the Secretary want what Susie the Lab Tech have?

oh my god anon HUGE brain

[hozierandco]

Sam Fender x Reader / call me lover

Friends to lovers. Lots of fluff.

Plot: Y/N and Sam have been friends for as long as they can remember but growing up has led them to grow apart. There are many things they have to tell one another.

The thing with kids is that they grow up. Too quickly, with too much silence surrounding them.

Sam was a boy, Y/N was a girl but to one another, they were just friends. They had known each other for as long as they could recall and had not doubted one second that they were just friends. Of course, there were the subtle questions from their parents, the hesitation when Sam would spend the night at Y/N's but their parents too knew it was just friendship.

Although they agreed that with all the secrets and trust they shared, they would be the best of couples, they thought it to be too pure to be broken.

Their friends too believed that it would inevitably happen, that they would end up together. Of all people, Dru was the most persistent on the matter. He had known Y/N for a longer time than Sam since Y/N's mother was the doula and a close friend to Drew's. Therefore, the two of them considered each other as siblings.

He  liked to tease Sam to make him confess a crush he would have on Y/N. To no avail.

And then, there had been Y/N's first boyfriend when she was 15. At a time in his life when he was still playing Fifa in his room when he was not toying with his piano, he had to endure his best friend clung to her boyfriend's arm.

For the first time, he felt repulsed by the sight of Y/N but mostly by that of the Alex Turner wannabe her heart had fallen for. He began writing about love and deception though he had no reason to have known either.

Of course, the idyll was cut short with Alex Turner #2 coming back from summer camp without his virginity anymore, exploit he felt the need to share with the whole school.

Sam and Drew had come to Y/N's rescue the day at school and together, they had eaten pizza and waited for Y/N's tears to disappear. It was the world against them from now on, and nothing could change that.

Sam had worked his ass off to make Y/N proud and had done all he could for his A-levels. In spite of all the intensity and long hours of going over Horatio Nelson and the Boer War with Y/N, he gave up and started working in a pub. He was to be a musician, no matter what.

His fingers got crooked because of his guitar, his voice sore but at last, he was given a festival to play at. Drew would be there too of course.

As for Y/N, she had started working in an architect's office while studying at the local Uni.

Things got so fast. The kids grew and were soon overwhelmed with new responsibilities. Y/N had a new life for herself and Sam was about to tour before releasing his debut album. When he found out that a label had signed him up, the three friends along with Dean and Joe had screamed their lungs out.

It had come out of the blue that Joe fancied Y/N and it had also come out of the blue that Sam didn't like this turn of event.

The tour meant that they would not see each other for at least half a year as Sam's studio was in London. They had never been away from one another for so long so the day Sam left North Shields, it felt like the soil was crumbling under her feet.

Y/N informed herself of Sam's whereabouts through Dru as Sam didn't reply to her texts. Dru was regularly implying to his friend that he should call her every now and then, but he was always "too busy". Just like that, silent formed around them.

"Sam, call her", Dru begged one more time.

Sam sighed. He did not dare calling her, he felt as though he had let time rule his emotions. The more distance he put between them, the harder it was to think of something to say. Sure, he was busy but he always had been busy.

"You know what day it is today, don't you?"

Sam stared with round eyes at Dru.

"It's her bloody birthday, Sam. Just call her, okay?"

Dru had taken Sam's phone from his coat that was lying on the floor and forced Sam to take it.

Sam went to the room, right next to where he was and dialled Y/N's number, ending up on the voicemail "Hi! I hope that the voicemail just indicates that you're getting hammered somewhere and I also wish you a happy birthday. I'm sorry I didn't call earlier, I wish I could make it up to you. I miss you and I love you"

It was not until the message got sent that he realised what he had just said. Sam knew that opening up always led him to say too much and he couldn't take the risk to lose Y/N.

"What's wrong?" Dru asked when he saw Sam visibly agitated.

"I screwed up"

"You just had one call to make, how can you screw up a call?"

"I said something I shouldn't have. I told her that I loved her"

"As in I love you?"

"Yeah, I mean it's not something we say to each other"

"And do you? Love her?"

"Yes, Dru. I think I do. I think I always loved her"

"Well then, you haven't screwed up. You've just made things easier"

Days went by without a word from Y/N and Sam to pass time was playing with his phone a couple of times a day, not knowing what or if he should write to her. But then it got worrying, he feard that something had happened to her.

"D'you have news of Y/N?", he confronted Dru one night.

"She didn't say that she loves you back, huh?"

"She hasn't said anything at all, in fact. Is she alright?"

"That's odd. Yeah, she's fine, I just got a text from her, not even ten minutes ago. I can ask her to reach out for you if you want"

Dru is a magician as not only five minutes later, Sam's phone buzzed.

Y/N: Dru said you called on my birthday. My phone was off, you should have left a message... Sam: I did! You didn't listen to it? Y/N: I didn't get anything... Sam: Can I call you now? Y/N: No, not tonight. I'll call you tomorrow morning, good? Sam: Yes :)

Sam was not a morning person but he woke up as early as he could. He waited and finally she called. On FaceTime. She looked radiant, unlike him who severely lacked of sleep.

"Hey!"

Bring the tone down, Fender, Sam thought. You're gonna freak her out.

"Hi, sorry I couldn't call you yesterday. It's good to see you"

Just like that, one moving still of Sam was enough to have her mood lit up.

"So, can't make a voicemail work, huh?" Y/N joked around.

"I promise you, it worked. I don't know what happened but it's good I get to tell you like that"

"Tell me what?"

"Well, first that I'm sorry I've been an idiot lately. It's just that I've missed you so much and I wanted to see you and I couldn't stop thinking of you all the time"

An unfamiliar noise of a plate falling.

"Garlic's going on an adventure?" Sam referred to Y/N's cat that was known to be the clumsiest cat on Earth and that Sam had helped naming six years prior.

The distraction was much needed as Sam was blushing and it started showing on camera.

"Let me just go somewhere quieter"

As Y/N left her living room for her bedroom, Sam saw the silhouette of a man trying to assemble the splinters the plate had left behind.

"Sorry for that. What were you saying?"

"Nothing. I'm just sorry I didn't call you earlier and I hoped that you had a great birthday..."

"You sure there was nothing else"

"Yeah, yeah I'm sure"

The two of them chatted for another 5 minutes when the conversatio became awkward.

Y/N was certain when she hung up that Sam was about to reveal his feelings. And she would have let him. In fact, she would have revealed hers as well.

But Dan had to be in the way. Or was it Ian? Stan? Y/N had always done this. When she was thinking of Sam too much, she was collecting men to share the night with.

She never got attached to anybody but liked to wake up by a man's side.

A few weeks later, Dru called Y/N with good news.

"We've got some rest from the tour. We'll be at Shields for a month or so. I cannot wait to see you again, little sister!"

Y/N had set her mind to meet them at the train station from where she would get in the tour bus with them. Since Sam's aborted declaration, Y/N had not gotten any news from him and was not taking any.

When the van arrived and its doors opened, Dru ran to Y/N and hugged her "Ah, come here, you!"

There was a new face amongst the original team.

"Hi, I'm Lisa" the stranger introduced herself. By gazing that her hand was in Sam's, Y/N took a wild guess that the two of them were a thing.

"Nice to finally meet you. You're the 5th Beatle or so it seems. The boys could not shut up about you"

Y/N grinned at Dru and fainted a smile towards Sam. Unfortunately, she couldn't say as much for Lisa and blamed Dru to have kept it a secret.

Lisa was gorgeous, it was undeniable. Her posh accent had made the journey with her and contrasted with hers and the boys'. As long as Sam is happy, I'm happy, Y/N tried to convince herself as she got in the van.

"So, pub?" Dru asked. It was not even 5 pm but the idea seemed to everyone's taste.

"I'll join you later if that's alright. Joe, can you drop me off? I've got a few things to do before I join"

"You alright?" Dru whispered at her as he was seated next to her in the back of the van.

"Yeah, I'm fine" but as she answered, she stared a little too long at Lisa and her brown curls, her tanned skin and her perfect Julia Roberts smile.

"It's Lisa, huh? I don't like her either. Too posh for Sammy"

"I've never said I didn't like her"

"Then what?" Dru hesitated and then exclaimed "Oh!"

As he had nearly shouted, all of the boys and Lisa turned around to laugh at his looks of bewilderment.

Dru shushed himself down as his friends took the piss at him "Finally got the epiphany that you're ugly, Michael?" Dean mocked him.

As Dru brushed the joke and everything went back to normal, he went on with his whispering "You fancy Sam?"

Y/N simply nodded which got Dru leaning back in his seat, stirred by the confession.

"There, you go, princess" Joe stated as he had parked right in front of Y/N's flat.

They all greeted Y/N goodbye and agreed that they would see each other at 7. Sam did not dare looking at her in the eye. He knew he should have said something about Lisa but he had not come around it, why would he since she had her own life now?

As she opened the door, Y/N started tearing up a little, stunned by all the events. She seized her phone and sent a text.

By 6.15, the intercom rang. Y/N had changed into a wrap dress made of sequins and black heels.

"Hey!", she exclaimed to the man who was waiting by the door. This one was Chris, a chap she had seen some days prior. He reminded her of Alfred Enoch somehow with his chiseled jaw and round cheeks. Y/N didn't feel like being alone tonight and Chris was good company.

"Y/N, here!" Joe informed as he was in charge of getting a new round of drinks "By the table over there. Oh hi" he said to the stranger "I'm Joe"

Chris was by far the best-dressed man there as, clearly not familiar to pubs, he was wearing an open white shirt over brown chinos.

Dru and Tom made some space for Y/N and Chris to sit once Y/N had introduced everyone to her date.

The conversation was very much alive by 8 except for the fact that Lisa and Chris felt left out as it was all about childhood memories and family-related topics.

Sam was all eyes for Y/N. It was as though nothing awkward had ever happened between them and as though they were kids all over again.

In an effort to include Chris in the night's ambiance, Y/N asked him to dance with her. She hoped by that that she could get a reaction from Sam as dancing was THEIR thing.

At her birthday parties, they were always the two ones inventing silly dance moves on cheap Eurodance. As teens, they would always wiggle at gigs while the rest of the audience would look at them tenderly.

"I should get going. I've got a meeting in the morning" Chris let Y/N know as a song by Marvin Gaye ended. It was only 10 pm but Y/N didn't hold him back.

"C'mon, Sam. Invite her to dance, you're dreaming of it" Lisa rushed him. "She's your best friend after all"

What if he didn't want to be her best friend anymore?

Sam got up and joined Y/N. Tonight, he would tell her the truth. Not tomorrow, tonight.

"May I accompany you?"

"Yes, you may. Lisa's not into dancing?"

"I don't know but I'm into dancing with you"

"He's in love with her, isn't he?" Lisa asked Dru who had just ordered more drinks.

"Yeah, I think he is.. I'm sorry"

"Don't be, it's no big deal. Sam and I were just fooling around anyway. She's sweet, just what he needs"

"They just have to admit it now"

"So, Chris.. You two are together for long?" Sam asked.

"No, I mean technically we're not together. We've met twice with tonight"

"He seems nice"

"Yeah, I suppose. You and Lisa?"

"About the same: couple of weeks, nothing too serious"

"What did you mean to tell me last time?"

"Last time?"

"Yeah, you were saying that you missed me and all"

"Well, yeah. Touring without you sucked. I've missed you every fucking day. I want to be with you all the time. It's always been like that me and you"

"I missed you too, Sam"

The song had changed.

"What I'm about to say could ruin what we have but I just have to say it: I've always loved you, Y/N. It took me a whole ass tour to realise that. It's what I told you on the voicemail"

"I love you too, you idiot!"

Dru admired Lisa's ability to remain amicable even when she understood that Sam and Y/N had just confessed their feelings. He had judged her badly and saw what Sam had seen in her: a genuine goodness.

Sam was eager to kiss Y/N but had to make sure that Lisa was alright. He wanted more than anything else in the world Y/N and him to be together but he couldn't do it like that.

He turned around to Lisa only to see her kissing Dru. Sam shook his head and turned back on Y/N who was laughing at this sudden act of PDA.

Sam laughed along and then joined his lips to Y/N's.

[thinkingisadangerouspastime]

love

Written for Day 7 of @aangweek! Read here on AO3.

~*~

7. love - don’t got nowhere to go / so we’ll go with the flow / yeah, we’re living the life / sippin’ on sunshine

“I can help clean,” Aang offered as Iroh began clearing their group’s cups and plates from the circular wooden table.

Iroh chuckled, shaking his head. “There’s no need -”

“I insist,” Aang interrupted, standing and collecting his own dishes. “It’s the least I can do to thank you for closing the shop early so we could be together without politicians and paparazzi peering over our shoulders.”

“There’s no use arguing with him,” Toph commented before Iroh could protest further. “Once Twinkle Toes decides to help someone, nothing will change his mind. Accept your fate, Iroh.”

Katara laughed along with the rest of their friends, and Aang gave them a guilty grin.

“Hey, I learned from my wife-to-be,” he teased, pressing a kiss to Katara’s forehead. “Never turn my back on people who need me!”

Katara rolled her eyes at his comment, but she couldn’t stop herself from smiling. Aang and Iroh gathered the last of the group’s dishes before disappearing into the kitchen.

Zuko hummed in contentment, draping an arm around Mai’s shoulders. “I wish we could meet up like this more often. Be together without all the chaos.”

Today had involved an annual meeting of important representatives from all four nations, this year hosted by the Earth King. In other words, Katara knew, it was a very rare opportunity for their friend group to reunite in full. Only after the day’s politics had ended, of course.

Sokka snorted. “I agree, but you’ve gotta admit it’s pretty much impossible for this to be a regular event.”

“Ember Island is always open for an impromptu vacation,” Mai reminded them, earning more laughter from the group.

“I might take you up on that soon,” Suki mused, pulling her hair out of its ponytail and shaking her head. “A vacation is sounding more and more attractive with every second.”

Katara allowed herself a breathy sigh. “Spirits, if I could get Aang to take a vacation…” She snorted. “That would be the day.” Her fiancé was notoriously stubborn about working until he dropped. In fact, there was only one other person whose work ethic could compare.

Mai chuckled. “Zuko is exactly the same. Always working himself into the ground.”

Ah, yes. There it was.

Toph snickered. “Sounds like a match made in the Spirit World. Are you guys sure Zuko and Aang shouldn’t be the ones getting married next month?”

Zuko flushed a shade of scarlet as bright as his fire. “I’m sitting right here, you know.”

Katara bit her tongue to hold back a snicker as Toph grinned at him. “Yes, I’m very aware.” Her grin narrowed into a sly smirk. “You’re sitting right here, and yet you deny nothing.”

Sokka burst out laughing, lightly elbowing Zuko in the ribs. “She’s got you there, hotman.”

Mai snorted at the nickname before giving Katara a play-sympathetic look. “Master Katara, how do you cope with the fact that my husband and yours-to-be are in love with each other?”

Katara sighed, leaning back in her chair and pressing the back of her hand to her forehead. “Oh, it was incredibly difficult for me to come to terms with.” She wiped an imaginary tear from her eye. “After I learned they’d kissed, I thought I’d never -”

“Oh, Agni,” Zuko groaned, burying his face in his hands at the same time Toph exclaimed, “Sparky and Twinkle Toes have kissed?!”

Katara couldn’t feign her melodrama any longer, letting herself succumb to a fit of intense laughter that made her entire upper body shake.

“Yes, they have,” Mai confirmed with a smirk. “It was hilarious, and I will never let Zuko hear the end of it.”

Zuko stared dead into the distance, his empty expression screaming that he’d rather be anywhere but there. “You’re going to tell them the story, aren’t you.”

The melancholic certainty with which he spoke was enough to make Katara snicker once more as she gave Mai a knowing glance, but before the Fire Lady could respond, Sokka spoke.

“Of course they’re going to tell us the story,” he scoffed. “The Avatar and the Fire Lord kissing? That’s the kind of thing you pass on forever to future generations!”

Suki laughed. “You sound way too invested for someone who has also kissed the Avatar,” she teased, smirking at her boyfriend.

Katara raised an eyebrow in amusement. Now that was news to her. “You did what, Sokka?”

Blood rushed to her brother’s face. “Not on the lips!” he squawked, crossing his arms over his chest. “I am just very comfortable in my feminine side around Aang.” He tapped his cheek. “So yes, we have technically kissed, but not like that.”

“To be fair, I’m pretty sure we’ve all been on the receiving end of Aang’s affection in some way or another,” Suki conceded. “That’s just his way of expressing love.”

A smile flitted onto Katara’s lips at her friend’s words. She knew most of all, perhaps, how Aang inclined towards physical affection. He was especially fond of kissing the tip of her nose.

“Really?” Sokka said, bewildered. “What, does he have a ‘thing’ with each one of us?”

Suki shrugged. “I mean, I guess so?” She smirked at their group. “Aang and I have a special, top-secret handshake. That’s our thing.”

Katara laughed. “I remember when Aang was just beginning to figure out the motions he wanted to include in your handshake.” She held her own hands up in joking surrender. “I was never privy to the final product, of course. Only experimental aspects.”

Sokka pouted. “First of all, I am hurt that I was never told this handshake existed. And second” - wounded, he placed a hand over his heart - “how come I don’t have a handshake with him?”

Suki rolled her eyes. “Babe, you said yourself that your thing with Aang is cheek kisses.”

Sokka appeared unconvinced. “Yeah, but I’m not the only one who gets cheek kisses from him.” He jutted his thumb towards his sister. “Katara gets them all the time!”

“Katara is also going to marry him, Snoozles,” Toph said with a snort. “I don’t think it’s totally off-base to consider she might have a few additional privileges compared to the rest of us.”

“Katara might be the one who snagged the Avatar,” Mai drawled, a smirk tugging at the corners of her lips, “but I think it’s safe to assume that everyone in here had a crush on Aang at some point in their life.”

Katara burst out laughing both at Mai’s declaration and the different forms of denial that followed. She’d long since accepted the reality that Aang’s charm meant many people would fall for him. And if anything, it made her feel even luckier that she was the one preparing for a wedding.

Mai appeared to thrive on the chaos she’d incited. The Fire Lady had clearly been spending more - maybe too much - time with Aang. “I don’t know why you’re all so up in arms about this,” she commented, studying her nails. “When I saw him dressed up for Zuko and I’s wedding, I wondered if I was marrying the right man after all.”

Zuko choked at her words, and Mai laughed as she patted him on the back. “Kidding. But I did think Aang was the best-looking man at the reception.”

Everyone’s gaze turned to Zuko, who sighed, shoulders slumping. “No, I agree with her.” He flushed, his eyes dropping to the table. “Aang was definitely the most attractive person there.”

Katara remembered that outfit of her fiancé’s fondly. Saffron robes that danced the line between classy and casual, as fitting for an Air Nomad Avatar. And perhaps she recalled the attire begrudgingly, too, as it had attracted both wanted and unwanted attention towards her then-boyfriend at the reception.

“I’ll admit my heart fluttered the first time Aang returned to Kyoshi Island after the war,” Suki mused. “I hadn’t expected him to get so tall.”

Sokka gave his girlfriend an affronted look. “Wait a minute. Wasn’t I there -”

Suki silenced him with a finger over his lips. “Sokka. We both spent that weekend discussing how hot Aang had gotten. Don’t deny it.”

Katara raised an eyebrow at her brother. “You were planning to make some moves on Aang?”

Sokka’s face reddened. “You know what?” he finally said. “Maybe in another life. I’ll leave it at that.”

“You’ve been awfully quiet, Toph,” Mai commented, giving the earthbender a small smirk. “When did you realize you had a crush on ‘Twinkle Toes’?”

Toph crossed her arms over her chest, which Katara noted with amusement did nothing to hide the rosy blush coloring her friend’s cheeks. “Never. Because unlike all of you, I’m blind and therefore cannot be affected by Aang’s so-called ‘good looks.’”

“Aw, but Aang is so much more than his looks,” Katara teased, unable to remain out of the chaos Mai had incited any longer. “What got you, Toph? His voice? His jokes? His incessant kindness towards anyone and anything?”

Toph opened her mouth before slamming it shut. “Fine,” she grumbled. “I’ll tell you. On one condition.” She pointed at Zuko. “I still want to know how Sparky and Aang locked lips.”

Mai snickered at her husband’s misfortune, and Katara herself couldn’t help but laugh as Zuko muttered a variety of curses under his breath.

“An easy deal,” Katara agreed. “Now tell us - what got you?”

Toph exhaled a resigned sigh. “His voice,” she grumbled, and the table burst into another round of laughter and cheers. Really, they were lucky that Iroh or even Aang himself hadn’t returned to investigate all the noise.

“Honestly, no one can blame you there,” Sokka remarked, shaking his head. “Who could have predicted Aang would grow up the way he did?”

Katara raised an eyebrow at her brother, though she doubted the expression was as intimidating as she intended it to be. “Really?”

“Okay, well, except for you -”

“Enough chatter!” Toph interrupted, slamming a fist on the table. A smirk pulled at her lips. “Sparky? Storytime?”

Zuko groaned. “Remember how I said I wished we could all meet up more often?” He shook his head. “I take it back.”

Suki laughed. “Stop whining and get on with the story, Zuko.”

“Or else I’ll tell it for you,” Mai added, slipping her hand into her husband’s. Katara couldn’t deny the story would be funnier if Mai told it, as she’d already heard it a dozen times from her friend.

Zuko sighed. “It’s not even an exciting story.” He rolled his eyes. “I was going over some paperwork with Aang and Mai. At one point, Aang was called away for - for Avatar business, or something.” He huffed. “Aang went to give me a ‘goodbye kiss’” - Zuko pointed to his forehead - “because that’s his ‘thing’ with me, I guess. But I didn’t realize what he was doing, so I looked up to ask him a question, and we -”

“- and you accidentally kissed?” Sokka finished flatly. “Aw, man! That is boring.” He shook his head in disappointment. “Such a letdown.”

“What Zuko conveniently forgets to mention every time he tells this story,” Mai said, amused, “is that he leaned into the kiss.”

Toph burst out laughing as Zuko adamantly protested that no, he had not, no matter what his wife said. “So,” the earthbender said amidst her snickers, “what I’m hearing is that Zuko never really got over his crush on Aang?”

“No, he did not,” Mai mused. “But it’s not like I can hold that against him. Having a crush on Aang is perfectly understandable.”

“If it’s any consolation, Zuko,” Katara said, resting her elbows on the table and placing her chin atop her hands as she gave the firebender a devilish grin, “Aang thinks you’re a pretty good kisser.”

Her comment set their group off for the umpteenth time, and Katara snickered at the rollercoaster of emotions roaring over Zuko’s face. There was nothing better than sparking a little chaos every now and then, was there?

Huh. Aang had rubbed off on her, too. She supposed being engaged to him would do that.

“Uh… I feel like I missed something here?”

Katara bit the inside of her cheek to contain her laughter as Aang dropped into his seat beside her. “Oh, no. You didn’t miss anything.”

Aang stared with a mixture of amusement and bewilderment at their friends, who were yet to collect themselves. “Are you sure? What did you guys talk about without me?”

Katara hummed noncommittally, shrugging. “Nothing special.” She pressed a gentle kiss to his cheek. “Just how much we love you.”

~*~

more of aang being adored by his friends in fanworks 2k21, please and thank you. i hope you enjoyed my collection of ficlets for the week, and as always - thank you for reading!

[honeylikewords]

uneasy lies the head (poe dameron)

In the wake of her passing, the official, if somewhat symbolic, royal title of Alderaan has passed to from Leia Organa to her chosen heir, Poe Dameron. Along with his elected position as the Galactic Senate Represenative for his home planet, Yavin V, Poe is now burdened with the responsibility of a political office he never imagined holding, and is called to attend a summit of the galaxy’s leaders that will be held aboard the Starcruiser Halcyon. 

This piece is based on a few things: one, me liking the idea of Prince of Alderaan Poe, two, my interest in Begrudging Politician Poe, and three, the new details that have come out about the real-life Halcyon experience that will be opening up at Disney World in Florida, which you can read more about here! I’ve been really excited about it for a long time, and just thought it’d be fun to tie one of my favorite characters in to this amazing new experience that will be coming soon! 

(Content Warnings: mentions of Leia’s de@th, some slightly risque flirting between Poe and his wife, and a little bit of making out, but that’s about it! Word count is 5k.)

Poe stands in front of the mirror, anxiously adjusting the epaulets of his tunic. They don’t seem to sit right on his shoulders, he thinks, passing a hand through their silvery fringe and watching them brush the snow-white fabric of his sleeves. This isn’t his kind of uniform, and when he looks at himself, he sees more a child wearing the spoils of a raid on their parent’s closet than the Senate representative he was meant to be. He tries tightening the high, pale collar of his tunic against his throat, swallowing thickly and watching his Adam’s apple bob beneath the colorless fabric. That didn’t help much dignify the image, he thinks, eyeing himself morosely.

He looks older. His beard is fuller, having let it grow out to appear more… wise, he supposes, and the grey streaks running through it match the ones appearing more and more every day at his temples. His tan fingers tease lightly at the end of his beard, trying to stroke it like he’d seen other, more senior politicians do when lost in thought (or at least trying to come across like they were). It makes him look pretentious.

Sighing loudly, he slumps his taut shoulders and rolls them a few times to loosen the aching muscles. He turns away from the mirror and steps out of the dressing room, entering the stateroom and collapsing onto the edge of the bed, his face in his hands. He hears a door hiss open and looks between his fingers at the emerging figure.

She’s still fidgeting with her hair, which is now lifted from its former looseness into a series of intricate looping braids. Letting out a huff, she takes her hands away, seemingly having resigned herself to leaving the hair as it was. Poe lifts his head a little, resting his chin on his palm as he watches her pat her dress and check the mirror in the dressing room, just as he’d been doing mere moments before.

She looks much, much better than he does. It’s an objective fact. Her air is stately and refined, with her gown framing her regally. The fabric is a delicate, pale blue, trimmed with fine threads of gold that interweave and flow, like braided ivies, trailing up her waist in a way that guides Poe’s wandering eyes to the loveliness of her figure. She seems to belong better to this world, with its mannerisms and socialites, its political politenesses. He never had the patience to be so diplomatic, even though that is his job, now.

He watches her pull a face at herself in the mirror, frowning at some flaw he’s oblivious to, and he stands up, coming to her side and placing his hands on the small of her waist, leaning his head on her shoulder and kissing her cheek amiably.

“You look like a princess,” he purrs, hoping his flattery will encourage her confidence. He hates seeing her unhappy with herself.

“I wish,” she responds, voice tinged with something wan and far away. “I… I really do wish.”

He knows what she’s thinking about: he’d been thinking about it, too. Dropping the air of adulation, Poe reaches for her hand and gently knits their fingers together, pressing their locked hands softly against her belly for reassurance. He meets her eyes in the mirror, and the two share expressions of loss.

“I miss her, too,” he murmurs. “I don’t feel like… like I can do what she did. What she left for me to do.”

He feels his wife squeeze his hand intently, causing him to lift his head up and meet her gaze as she turns to look at him, unfiltered by the mirror. Her eyes, clear and sharp, stare at him as she nods, then kisses his forehead warmly, taking her free hand and brushing it softly across his cheek.

“She chose you for a reason,” she whispers, soft and sincere, just like she always does. “Leia left you her seat and title because you’re the only person fit for the job. She trusted you.”

Her hand dips to his jaw and she lifts his head up from its morose slump. He cannot look away from her, even if he wanted to.

“I trust you, too.”

Poe takes in all the angles of his wife’s face, knowing that no single word of what she said was untrue, but searching for the possibility of a lie anyway in some small giveaway of her expression; after all, how could he be the one fit to carry on in the shadow of his predecessor? How could his shoulders carry the burden of her greatness, much less improve upon it? But there, in her eyes, Poe sees the truth, reflected over and over again: he was chosen for this job, chosen to carry on a legacy he had no option but to strengthen. He is the only one who could, whether he believes it or not.

He straightens his back a little, standing up taller,  and squeezes his wife’s hand in silent thanks, taking a moment to press their foreheads together and breathe in the scent of her. She is wearing perfume-- something they’d never had access to during the scarcity of the war-- and he marvels at how something so small changes the entire atmosphere of her presence. She truly embodies the grace and elegance of the woman who came before both of them, looking every inch the part of an Alderaanian royal.

Glancing back at himself in the mirror, Poe huffs; while she may look, indeed, just the way Leia would want the nation to be represented, Poe does not. He looks stuffy in his garb, at times like an old man in the too-tight clothes of his youth, and, at others, like a scrawny teenager in the baggy trappings of someone he was only pretending to be. She seems to sense his dismay, as she takes the initiative to comfort him, this time.

“You look dashing,” she smiles, adjusting his lapels and the ribbons of decoration on his chest. “Prince Poe Dameron, Senate Representative of Alderaan and Yavin IV. You’ll knock ‘em dead.”

At that, Poe lets out a playful, exasperated huff, rolling his eyes.

“Yeah, I’ll be great,” he grimaces, eyeing his form in the mirror. He raises his voice into a mocking lilt, swaying his head from side to side in an intentionally cartoonish parody of a stuffy bureaucrat. “Oh, Senator Y’Barra, your engagement commission is most dreadful! Shall we discuss its heinousness over tea and crescent crumpets? Garcon, we need more gold-dusted butter for our scones if we are ever to pass this bill!”

She covers her mouth to hide the beginnings of a smile and tries to reprimand Poe, affectionately slapping his chest.

“It’s nice that we’ve been asked to attend the summit, Poe. At least try to make some--”

“Don’t say friends,” he groans. “I don’t want to make friends with these people. They’re politicians; they don’t want to do anything other than profit, and post-war reconstruction is a hell of a time to make money for slime bags like these people.”

That seems to take her back for a moment, and Poe watches her expression shift as she sorts through her thoughts, her lips pursed, eyebrows arched. She then shrugs and nods, acquiescing.

“Probably. But there are probably also people like you: people whose service in the war and dedication to their people, all across this galaxy, led them to this job. People who just want to rebuild. Do better. You’ll find them, dear: you’re an excellent judge of character.”

She taps her fingers against his nose playfully.

“After all, you picked me, didn’t you?”

“If I remember correctly,” Poe teases, lowering his eyes to her lips and smirking, “You were the one to get a crush on me first. All butterflies and nerves anytime I so much as passed you in the halls. More like you picked me, huh?”

Poe catches her face take on the familiar cues of embarrassment and flustering; he can just tell he’s got her all a-twitter, and she pouts her lips, looking down at her shoes shyly as he starts to chuckle. It’s adorable to remember how flighty and skittish she was in those early days, and how enamored of her he himself was, and remains. Getting her all shy like this is a sweet harkening back to that early, giddy tension, and he dips his face down, hovering his lips just above hers, feeling her draw in a breath of neediness and--

“Senator Dameron,” a robotic voice announces through the commlink in the stateroom, freezing Poe in place. “The ferry is beginning docking procedures with the Halcyon. Please proceed to the boarding area. A droid will be sent to collect your luggage as you leave.”

“Ah, shit,” he growls. He’d completely lost track of time.

Dodging back out into the stateroom, Poe glances out the window and sees the looming mass of a gigantic starcruiser, a sharp body of glimmering steel and inky black portholes contrasted against the star field behind it. It is massive-- far larger than any ship Poe had personally piloted in the past-- and spans more than the distance his window could afford a view of. They are extremely close, and within minutes will be aboard the behemoth, where Poe will have to eat, sleep, and breathe senatorial and princely dignity.

He turns away from the window to see his wife making sure everything was packed and prepared for departure, checking the bathroom and dressing room before giving him a confirming nod: everything is where it needs to be. They are ready to go.

They walk towards each other and Poe places his hands on his wife’s arms, stroking up and down the bareness of her shoulders to steady himself. As he feels the warmth of her skin beneath his rough palms, Poe blinks with awareness and gives her a quick squeeze, darting off to the dressing room. He opens a trunk and lifts up the topmost layer of fabric, running back into the stateroom with it carefully laid across both his forearms, then turns his wife to face him and gently lays the upper corners of the fabric on each of her shoulders.

“The cloak,” he mumbles as he fastens the pale silver silk around her neck, “Don’t wanna forget that. A princess is set apart by garments like that.”

“Right,” she hums, admiring his hands as he fusses with her collar. “Sometimes it’s hard to remember that since you’re the prince, now, and I married you, I’m the--”

“Princess, yep,” grins Poe. “Princess Dameron.”

“By marriage only,” she teases.

“And I’m only the prince because she left an essentially honorary title to me,” Poe wits back. “But it suits you, at least.”

“You think?”

“Mm. Now, I think the prince owes his princess one of the tenets of royal responsibility: unadulterated affection towards one’s spouse.”

“Is that a tenet of your responsibilities?,” she smiles, brow cocked.

“I just made it up, but I like to think so.”

Once again, Poe presses his palms against the soft curves of her upper arms, squeezing in the grounding manner he knows she likes, tracing his thumbs along the creamily-smooth fabric now covering her, and he leans in close, admiring how the light shifts against her skin as his shadow draws nearer. He parts his lips, ready to feel the gentle swell of her soft ones against his, when, as if by divine interruption, the hydraulic hiss of the stateroom’s door fills the room and a silver-plated protocol droid peers at him through the now-open door. He grits his teeth to resist letting out a completely undignified expletive aimed at the droid and stares at it pointedly, trying to silently communicate that it had interrupted a private moment.

“It is time to board the Halcyon, Senator,” it chimes in the lilting manner all protocol droids seem to have, seemingly blissfully unaware of his frustration. “Please, come with me to the boarding area.”

Behind the protocol droid, a cargo lifter droid rolls by, seemingly waiting until Poe and his wife leave the cabin to enter. Poe sighs, but can’t resist letting a small chuckle out: both droids, despite their different purposes, both seem polite, in their own sorts of ways, and he always finds that endearing.

Looking to his wife, Poe gives a little bemused half-smile and shrugs his shoulders, as if apologetic but resigned. She takes his hand and turns, nodding to both droids with an impassive but gracious expression, one that Poe notes is more than befitting of an official such as herself. Distanced, but not dour, regal, but not recalcitrant. He loves it.

“Thank you,” she says, coolly polite. “Please, lead the way.”

The protocol droid begins its stiff-jointed hobble towards the boarding area and Poe and his wife trail behind, arms linked at the elbow as Poe fidgets with her fingers. He twiddles her marriage band as they walk, always comforted by the feel of it on her hand. He admires it as they silently proceed; it’s somewhat rough-hewn, made from hammered durasteel, a little uneven and dented in some places from the haste in which it was made, and Poe loves it.

He loves how it contrasts the delicate, fragile jewelry common amongst royals, how it’s not meant to glitter and shine and grab attention, how it ties her to him and he to her, with no regard for image or pomp. It is heavy and solid and made purely for the sake of love and belonging, and she wears it everywhere she goes with pride, as if it was the finest-cut Oshiran sapphire, or the most carefully sculpted gold. It is one of the crown jewels of Alderaan, now, and the thought of it-- of his parent’s simple, quickly-made wedding ring, forged in a time of war, without promise of any moment past the one they were in, now being a royal regalia-- makes his heart ache to bursting with unadulterated love.

Poe tugs her hand up and kisses her knuckles as they finally round the corner into the boarding area; somewhere in the back of his mind, he registers the droid saying something about how their luggage will be sent directly to their stateroom aboard the Halcyon, but he’s hardly listening. He’s looking at his wife, his rock, his tether, as they begin their socialite dance, seeking steadfast comfort in her as he prepares to have to play his part in a world he was never born to be in.

The droid gestures to a corridor formed between the two ships: passengers traipse from the shuttle onto the boarding area of the Halcyon, representatives from a myriad of species in a breadth of costumes and liveries. Poe and his wife exchange glances, knowing that these people will have some hand in forming what comes next in the political landscape of the galaxy, and that they, too, will be instrumental in forging the new governments of the rising Republic.

“Come on,” she smiles, trying to coax him along, tugging his hand and taking a step forward, “It’s gonna be fine. It’s not like my flyboy to get cold feet, hm?”

Poe chuckles and shakes his head, trying to dislodge his clouding worries, and walks in time with his wife, joining the throngs of senators and royals and presidents and diplomats making their way aboard the Halcyon. Some of them exchange pleasantries, others are locked in conversations: some even look at Poe and his wife and nod in acknowledgement, or turn to their compatriots and whisper.

Poe feels an embarrassed heat creep up the base of his neck; he knows rumors have circulated about his particularly unusual position as a representative for a dead planet and a living one, and about how he’d been named the next in line for a royal title he was not born into. He tries not to let it get to him-- let people think that they think, and do your job, Leia had always told him-- but the feeling of alienation and disbelonging hangs over him, shaming him into silence. He tenses, and keeps his eyes fixed forward, which grants him an ever-nearing view of the grand foyer of the massive starcruiser.

The Halcyon is unlike any other ship Poe has ever been on. He’d heard about starcruisers like this, meant to be enormous cruise ships travelling in luxury and style from one planet to another, filled with sprawling cabins and indulgent amenities, and had never even pictured himself aboard one. The thought hardly appealed to him: days, weeks, even, of doing nothing? Just wandering aimlessly around, decadent and opulent in one’s revelry? The mere idea disgusts him. Still, as he steps into the expansive entry for the Halcyon, he finds himself feeling something other than disgust: he feels strangely at home.

The area is bustling as ship workers and bellhops collect luggage and transfer it to droids, as greeters guide guests to check in areas and hand them keycards, as officers check passports and documentation against databases, all lit under the glow of thousands of lights, which reflect off polished durasteel and marble surfaces. Holo projections provide information about travel destinations and the cruise itself in hundreds of different tongues, while a massive projection of the captain glows a familiar blue and greets the boarding politicians.

Poe turns in awe, gazing at the dozens of porthole windows affording views of distant and nearby star clusters, at the navigational crew high above, checking maps and charting courses, and takes a deep, steadying breath in through his nose, squeezing his wife’s hand tight. The hum and thrall of the ship, with its thousands of moving parts and requisite workers, feels exactly like all the ships he’d served on during the Rebellion. He half-believes that if he closes his eyes and turns around, he’ll open them and see Leia there, giving orders and directing the workflow.

The memory sits on his heart, but instead of a heavy, lingering pain, it kindles a warm, growing fire: she lives on in him. She would be proud to see him carrying on the mantle, working to do what no one else has the skill, speech, or stones to do. She is never really gone. Never can be.

Instilled with strength and purpose, Poe looks to his wife, who is staring at the gargantuan hub of activity before her, almost taken aback by how bustling it is. He leans down and gently pecks her cheek, tugging her along and breaking her out of her trance. They’ve got places to be, things to do, royal engagements to avoid, after all. As they begin to move closer to what Poe believes is the reception desk, a Twi’lek in a sleek, almost military-looking white uniform steps in front of Poe and his wife, grinning from green ear to ear.

“Senator Dameron, Princess Dameron,” she greets, bowing at the waist respectfully, “I am Lyna’ame, and I’ll be directing you regarding your stay on the Halcyon. Thank you for honoring us with your patronage.”

“Uh, thank you for having us,” Poe stammers, unsure of how to conduct himself in such a position.

Lyna’ame looks up at him with a quizzical eye, but seems too well-trained to respond with anything more than a polite smile and a nod. She produces from the pocket of her grey-trimmed suit a pair of infochips, extending them towards Poe and his wife.

“You will be staying in the royal suite on Deck B, unit number eighteen,” Lyna’ame smiles. “These chips will act as your keys to the room and to any amenities you should wish to access, and will remind you of upcoming engagements or conferences you should be in attendance of.”

As if on cue, the small screens on the infochips light up and read “19:00: Senatorial Dinner In Ballroom One!” Poe blinks at it, then flashes Twi’lek a cordial but slightly cold smile, taking the chips from her hand and tucking them unceremoniously into his breast pocket.

“Alright, thanks. I think we can get it from here.”

She seems not to register his attempt to tie off the loop of the conversation, continuing anyway.

“You will also have access to all the facilities of the ship, including the swimming areas, dining areas, lounges, bars, activity centres, spas and--”

“I’ll check the brochure in the room,” Poe smiles, searching for an exit. “I appreciate it, but, uh, my wife is very tired--” --Poe nudges her with an elbow and she balks, then understands his intention and mimes a yawn, nodding sympathetically-- “--And I’d love to get her some rest before any hobnobbing, y’know?”

“Of course, your highness,” Lyna’ame says, again accompanied by a civil bow. “The elevators are to the left. Press your infochip to the pad and it will take you to your floor. Your luggage should already be in your room, and please,” she smiles. “Enjoy your cruise.”

Poe bows back, then leads his wife by the elbow to the elevators, where they tap their key card and the doors hiss open. As they board, just the two of them, Poe’s wife turns to face him and raises one eyebrow, haughty.

“Really threw me under the bus there, Poe,” she smirks. “‘Oh, my wife wants to leave this conversation because my wife is awkward and doesn’t know how to handle subordinate behavior from service workers’. Real nice.”

Rolling his eyes, Poe can’t help but smile, and instead of replying, drops his hand to the small of his wife’s back, grazing his fingers there for a moment before dipping slightly lower and--

She jumps, then giggles, hitting him with a shocked but not at all displeased expression.

“Did you just pinch my ass?”

“Maybe,” he smiles. “Why?”

“You just seemed so…” She touches his arm, searching for the right word, chewing her lip thoughtfully. “Severe, before. Lost.”

“Feeling better. Feeling… like I can do this, maybe. Or at least do what I need to do, even if it doesn’t look exactly like how everybody else might expect me to.”

At that she purses her lips and nods, and he can tell she’s happy for him: he’s not entirely out of the woods about this whole ‘galactic representative’ thing, and certainly not used to all the expectations that come with being the heavy head that wears the crown, but he’s going to be alright. At least, he feels like he is, at this moment, and that’s all that matters.

Poe finds himself allowing his smile to grow wider as he dips down and nuzzles her temple, teasing his lips over her ear, tempting and toying.

“I still hate the suit,” he whispers, sending her shivering, “And I don’t want to talk to these people like we’re all buddy-buddy--”

“--Acknowledged, Senator,” she teases, rubbing his arm in the way that lets him know she’s itching to get more handsy.

“But we’re gonna have a private room,” he continues, “And a lock on the door, and at least--” --He checks the infocard, which reads “17:05”-- “--About two hours before anybody’s gonna need us, so I say we shimmy out of these nice duds…”

Poe’s finger trails down the silky rivulets of her collarbones; he has to admit, he does find her massively attractive in this royal robing, but he figures it’ll be less hassle for both of them to assure he doesn’t get too rowdy while they’re wearing some of the best (and irreplaceably expensive) fineries in the galaxy, so he’ll have to bid her pretty little dress and luxurious cape adieu for their stateroom rendezvous. Not that he minds: the dress might be pretty, but the woman underneath is ten times more so. Besides, she can always put it back on again for the dinner, anyway.

“We go see what kind of minibar we’re looking at,” Poe teases, watching her roll her eyes, “Hop in the bath, and see where those two hours take us.”

“Mm, we’ll see,” she demures, patting his chest. He knows she likes to dance around it, never say anything too scandalous where someone else can hear, and he loves that; she extends the tension, making him wait for what he wants. He may not ever have been a patient man before, but she forces him to slow down, savor it, work for it. And that’s delicious.

The elevator doors slide open as Poe leads his wife out into the hall, kissing her jaw as he checks the suite numbers. They shuffle along, exchanging little pecks and touches in the graciously empty hallway (what would the other representatives think, she reminds him in a hushed tone as they pass rooms, if they saw the new prince of Alderaan and Senator for Yavin V hanging off his wife like a pubescent teen?) before arriving at suite eighteen. Poe fumbles in his breast pocket, keeping his lips planted on his wife’s neck, then slaps the infochip haphazardly against the door. It clicks open, and Poe doesn’t even bother to look inside: he just coaxes his wife in, and tumbles in after her.

The lights in the room slowly turn on automatically, rising from a low dim to a sunny brightness, illuminating white-panelled walls and a lush, wide bed, all the furniture sharply clean and sleekly modern, trimmed in shades of black and silver. A massive window shows the endless expanse of space beyond the double-layered transparisteel, and while Poe would normally be more inquisitive and peek around the room to admire it, he’s more than occupied as he pushes his face deeper in the warm, scented crook of his wife’s neck.

“Careful,” she warns as his hand starts to pet at the base of her head, eking dangerously close to the beginnings of her hair roots, “These braids took me hours. I don’t want to have to re-do them, Dameron”

“I get that,” he breathes heavily, “But you look really hot with messy hair and--”

“If we’re going to go to that dinner, I’m not going to go with my hair flying everywhere! I’ll look like a… well, you know!”

“Like a woman well-loved by her husband,” Poe teases, nipping at her jaw. “But, fine, we’ll skip the dinner, and I’ll just keep you all to myself. Nobody else has to see. In fact, I’d prefer they didn’t.”

His eyes glimmer with wolfish promise as he sets his wife down on the edge of the white-blanketed bed, staring at her as her skirts form pools of silver and blue. He’s serious: the summit dinner all but disappears from his mind as he looks at her; how beautiful she is. How elegant. So poised and pretty and his, all his, to love until all the suns swallow themselves and burn out. All these representatives won’t miss him at one measly, lousy dinner, right? Not when he has the love of his life to attend to, surely.

“What’s gotten into you?,” she giggles, kicking off one of her sophisticated shoes as she sits on the bed. “You’re acting like we’re on our honeymoon!”

Poe leans in and places his hands on either side of her hips, bumping his forehead to hers as he takes long, weighty breaths, feeling the heat radiate off of her.

“I just… This is a lot, right?”

“Mm,” she acquiesces.

“And you’re kind of… what I go back to when I’m in too deep. So, right now, all this summit stuff and the Senate and the council? I need that to take a backseat to me being with you. The person I love. And letting that be what guides me in what I need to do for… everybody else.”

She lets out a soft, appreciative “aw”, her eyes softening as she cups his cheek, and Poe leans into her hand, allowing a little lasciviousness to leak into his smile as he stares down at her.

“Plus, it’s kinda… you know, a little sexy, being somewhere so new and ritzy. I’m not used to this kind of stuff. That, and we barely got a honeymoon, if you remember--”

“Yeah,” she recalls, sighing and pinching the bridge of her nose, clearly vexed by the memory, “I remember. The day after we got married, that First Order outpost tried to open fire and you were up and out of bed and back in deployment after less than twenty four hours of being a married man.”

“Duty never sleeps,” he shrugs. “But… We can make up for lost time here, on this big, shiny, fancy-ass ship, huh?”

Poe wiggles his eyebrows with playfully rapacious intent, sending his wife into a fit of good-natured laughs. He adores when she laughs; it sends his heart racing, every inch of him alight with the joy of knowing that her smiles are because of him, the sound of her voice bouncing up and down with glee all caused by some silly little thing he’s said or done. Unable to contain himself, Poe leans down and kisses her, cutting off the sounds of her laughter, a deep, satisfied groan emanating from his chest.

“God,” he rumbles as they part for a quick breath, “I haven’t gotten to do that all damn day.”

“It did feel really good,” she sighs, clasping her arms around his neck. She seems to take pause, etching his face into her memory with her eyes, then comes to a decision: Poe would recognize that resolute gleam in her expression anywhere. “Alright, we’re staying.”

“...You mean it?,” he chirps.

“Yep. You tell them your poor, defenseless wife is laid up ill and needs your constant and most doting attention,” she smiles, kissing the tip of his nose. “Then when you’re done calling the front desk, you come over here and you help me get out of this dress and into that bath you promised.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he chuckles, then catches himself. “I mean, yes, Princess.”

“Mm,” she beams, teasing him with a pinch on the thigh. “Much better.”

They share another deep, drawn-out kiss before Poe manages to wrest himself away from her and off to the side of the room with the comm built into the wall, but glances over at her as he taps at the screen to connect with the front desk. She grins coyly from the bed, kicking one leg out in a pseudo-sultry, semi-silly way from beneath her sumptuous gown. Poe can’t help but feel a swell of endearment.

As the call connects, Poe sighs dreamily to himself; if all else failed, at least he had her, and with her by his side, he was definitely going to enjoy a very, very pleasurable cruise.

[moonflowerlesbians]

count your blessings instead of sheep

Hello, friends! Back in November, I decided to partake in my first fandom Secret Santa exchange. I’m not much of an artist, so I opted for the holiday-themed fic route, and this one-shot was born. So, @satelitesprite I hope you enjoy, and Merry Christmas! Thank you so much to @damiesecretsanta​ for organizing. 

Read this work on AO3.

Title: count your blessings instead of sheep, Rated T, Word Count: 4763

Summary: In which Dani takes Jamie's White Christmas comment a bit too seriously. (But Jamie's absolutely not complaining.)

~~~

One day at a time, they’d said. Jamie had looked at her so earnestly, spoken with such conviction, as if by sheer force of will she would bend the world, stacked so vehemently against them, to her whims. And, Dani supposes, she may as well have succeeded. They’re still here, after all. Still together. Still alive.

Jamie had said something else, too, that same day. A confession she’d admitted almost shamefully. A film about honoring memories and protecting what matters. A sight she’d like to see.

Dani gets to thinking, planning, scheming, if one could call it that. She makes a silent promise, to Jamie and then herself.

If they make it until December, Vermont is as good a place to spend the holidays as anywhere, she thinks.

Dani can’t seem to stop moving. The cuticle on her thumb is raw and bitten; her legs, one crossed over the other, bounce, bumping the tray table in front of her on occasion and nearly sending her drink toppling into her lap. She all but leaps out of her seat when Jamie places a hand on her knee.

“Easy, there,” Jamie raises an eyebrow. “Tremble any more and you’ll disrupt radio frequencies.”

It’s a weak attempt at humor, but Dani appreciates it nonetheless. The little notebook in her breast pocket burns a hole in her blouse, stuffed full of ideas and anticipatory hope.

“Might be able to help if you told me where we’re headed.”

She’s been trying for weeks to nose her way into Dani’s plans, to glean some inkling of direction since Dani first hinted, one quiet evening in early November, that maybe thinking about Christmas isn’t such a bad idea.

“Yeah?” Jamie had said, soft, not quite believing. The future, their future, had been a taboo topic, danced around like an active bomb.

“Yeah,” Dani confirmed, “trust me?”

“‘Course.”

Then it had been library visits and guidebooks and scribbling telephone numbers on lined pages and Jamie-don’t-you-dare-open-that-box.

Dani rocks with the gentle movement of the train beneath her as it rounds a bend in the tracks.

“Whatever happened to the fun of not knowing?” Dani tries for a tease but falls somewhere just short of playground wedding jitters. A little confused and perhaps regretting her choices. She clears her throat. “I just,” she sighs, “I want you to have a good time.”

Jamie scoffs. “Ah, well, you know how difficult I am to please. Such high standards and all.” She gestures to the tray table between them, littered with snack-sized pretzel packets and a can of seltzer to share.

Dani rolls her eyes. “The picture of refinement.” Jamie pops her shirt collar with a huff and a wry smile that earn her a playful kick to the shin, and she pouts. “Still not telling you.”

Jamie retracts her lower lip, her ploy failed. “Should’ve known I wouldn’t get you to crack on the last day. A steel trap, you are.”

Dani snorts at the obvious exaggeration. They both know just a lingering stare from Jamie has her weak at the knees.

She can’t say she’s complaining.

On the subject of their trip, though, she has managed to keep impressively silent, offering only such vague clues as, “Thoughts on the desert?” and “D’you suppose four thousand is too much if it’s a room with a balcony?” At latter of which, Jamie had gone slightly pale, but she had declared, albeit shakily, something along the lines of, “whatever makes you happy,” as she blanched.

And, oh, how Dani had loved her for it.

As the temperate trees outside their window turn to evergreens and the cold trickles in from the mountains, it becomes abundantly clear that Dani has not brought them to the desert. Just one more stop until theirs, and Dani can’t help the flash of worry that streaks through her like lightning.

She’s a perfectionist by nature. Or, at least, she was. Likes her ducks in a row, likes her trains on time and her schedules stuck to. These past months have been agony, each day a guessing game, no way to be sure what will come next. She understands the necessity, has tried to embrace it, even, but when the opportunity presented itself for her to plan something concrete, she leapt at it.

Jamie had stepped back, understanding how badly Dani needed this. A part of her, she told Dani, late in the night, wrapped in blankets and sweet embraces, was simply glad Dani could bear to think of the future, even short term.

When they left Bly, Dani would not allow herself to entertain the thought of next week, much less next year. But, as time slid past with no sign of her co-inhabitant, she relaxed, millimeter by millimeter, drop by drop, the tension slipped from her body. The paranoia, the jolt of terror upon rounding a corner, looking into a mirror, faded gradually each time she saw only herself, one eye brown, one blue.

Each day with Jamie pervaded her idea of “normal” until that is what their life became. Normal. Waking up together, seeking out breakfast, exchanging quips before setting about their adventure of the day felt...normal. A remarkable concept for the woman whose notion of normal shattered with a pair of glasses.

She sits across from the woman she thinks of as her best friend and marvels at how different her life was, even just a year ago, when the sentiment of a Christmas with someone she loves was unfathomable. She can only hope Jamie doesn’t hate it.

Jamie, who is folding the tray up and sweeping crumbs into her palm to dispose of, only to realize she has nowhere to put them. She looks around for a moment, mumbles a shit to herself, and stands to toss them in the bin in the restroom, while Dani watches affectionately.

“What?” Jamie says, when she returns, gathering her things.

“Didn’t think that one all the way through, did you?” Dani says, a little smug. It’s not really a question.

“You said one more stop, yeah? Thought we should be ready.”

“Eager?”

“You’re having a go at me,” she rags, “Been building this up for a month. Can’t blame a woman for being a wee bit curious.”

A conductor wanders past, loudly announcing the next stop.

“Vermont, eh?” Jamie wraps the strap of her bag around her hand once, twice. She’s nervous, too, Dani realizes. The unpredictability has taken a toll on her, as well. Jamie, who woke up at five-thirty like clockwork, who tended to the same plants on the same grounds with the same tools, who saw the same five people each day. She likes routine, just as Dani does.

Perhaps, should they make it to the new year, it’s time to find a place to plant themselves. A place to call their own, if Jamie will have her. Somewhere to land. The thought sends a thrill through her.

Dani nods. “Trust me?”

Jamie studies her. “Always.”

Dani collects her belongings from the overhead as the train slows to a creaking stop at the platform. They appear to be the only two disembarking. Unsurprising, really. From Dani’s research, the town’s population is in the low thousands. The station, a one-story, low building, is rustic, all exposed wood and lantern lighting fixtures.

“Clayton?” An older man calls as they step off the train. He leans against the hood of a town car emblazoned with the logo of his proprietor.

Holiday Inn, Est. 1942

“That’s me,” Dani chirps, meeting him halfway from the tracks, where he takes the bags from her arms with an amiable nod. Jamie follows him to the trunk -- boot, as she insists it’s called -- and drops her rucksack next to Dani’s, while Dani, herself, opens the door with a grand flourish. “M’lady.”

Jamie sends the driver a sidelong glance, but he slides into the front seat without a word. She accepts Dani’s invitation and turns to her once they settle a respectable distance apart on the back bench. The driver, Wallace, as he introduces himself, turns the key in the ignition.

“So, the Holiday Inn?” Jamie prods. “Wasn’t aware the big hotels did shuttle services now.”

“Not a hotel,” Dani corrects.

“No?”

“An inn.”

“Ah, thanks, love, that clears it right up,” Jamie deadpans, but there’s no bite to her words.

“Hold your horses,” Dani placates, “You’ll see soon enough.”

“Can’t feel my bloody hands, been holding these damn horses so long.”

Dani swats her across the stomach. “Quiet, you.”

“Oi, ‘s no way to start a holiday, is it?”

“So, what brings you across the pond?” Wallace cuts in, the car rounding a bend on its climb up the mountain. “We don’t get many Brits around here.”

Jamie looks to Dani, a smirk curling upon her lips. “Not entirely sure, actually. You want to take this one, Poppins?”

“She hasn’t been stateside since we were kids,” Dani supplies. “I thought it might be a nice change of pace to spend the holidays with my cousin since it’s been so long.” Then, muttering to only Jamie, “She’s more sarcastic than I remember.”

“Oh, that’s lovely. You know, I haven’t been overseas since the war. Can’t bring myself to fly these days.” He continues to regale them with stories of his time in France, and they allow his tales to fill the silence for the duration of the ride, Dani offering polite interjections wherever appropriate. This is, in part, a way to keep Jamie from asking questions and spoiling the surprise mere moments from its fulfillment.

They turn onto a narrow road lined with towering fir trees. Undisturbed snow from a recent bout of winter weather bows the branches. Jamie watches out the window, transfixed by the changing landscape. Dani cannot see her face.

“Here we are,” Wallace says, with a note of pride. “She needs a little work, but she’s home.”

A house comes into sight as the car crests a hill, a three-story colonial with a broad front porch and white trim. Rocking chairs perch near the railings, and pale blue shutters frame tall windows. An old barn stands a little ways down, weather-worn, but charming.

Dani hears a quick inhalation from beside her. Jamie’s gaze is fixed straight ahead. Dani’s stomach flips.

Their car pulls up in front of the lodge, and Wallace grabs their bags from the rear.

“We’ll be just a sec,” Dani says.

Jamie’s back is to her as she turns in a slow circle, absorbing the scenery, until her eyes come to rest on Dani, who fidgets with the nail on her index finger.

“So,” she begins, “I, um, I know we said we’d take it slow. But, you said snow could be nice, and you’ve done so much for me, and I just wanted to give you this one thing, but I get it if it’s too much or too cold. I just thought, you know, it might be nice since you said you saw White Christmas as a kid that one time, and I know it was probably a joke, but--”

“Dani,” Jamie interrupts, with a saccharine laugh and the most gentle smile, “love, not to interrupt what was shaping up to be quite the eloquent speech, but this,” she gestures at the picturesque cabin and the trees and the mountainside, “this, you didn’t have to do all of this.” She looks around hesitantly, then takes one of Dani’s hands in her own. “I almost forgot I mentioned that story, but, apparently, you didn’t.”

Dani grins sheepishly.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Jamie assures, “this is stunning. Everything I could’ve imagined. But, and I’m sure I’m starting to sound like a broken record, I would be just as happy spending Christmas in a shack under a bridge, so long as I’m sharing that shack with you.”

“I’d like to think this is at least a few steps up from a shack.”

“Oh, it most certainly is. Can’t say I’m mad about it, either. Quite fond of being warm, you know.”

“Speaking of,” Dani segues, “inside?”

“Please.”  

Dani drops her hand and leads Jamie up the porch steps, the old wood groaning underfoot.

“Dani Clayton?” A portly woman steps out from behind a counter.

“Present,” Dani says brightly.

“Anne,” the woman replies merrily, “I believe we spoke on the phone. Welcome, the both of you, to the Holiday Inn. Such a pleasure to host this little family reunion.”

Jamie appears perplexed for only a moment. “Jamie,” she greets, accepting the proffered handshake, “lovely to meet you.”

“Right, well, your room is up the stairs to the right, third door in.” Anne smooths her apron and passes Dani a key. “Wallace, my husband, should’ve dropped off any luggage, and please join us and the other guests for Christmas Eve dinner tonight, won’t you?”

“We’ll be there,” Dani promises.

“So, cousins, then?” Jamie prompts once Dani has inserted the key into their lock.

“I figured it was the easiest way to get around two women sleeping in the same room,” Dani says apologetically. “Family bonding, and all.”

“S’pose sisters wouldn’t have made sense with the accent.”

“We look nothing alike.” Dani shuts the door behind them. “Wouldn’t have been believable.” She flops unceremoniously onto one of the two double beds. The pale pink quilt wrinkles as Jamie sits, leaning back against the oak headboard. The windows are shut, but the off-white, lavender-printed curtains sway in an unfelt breeze, and a small fire crackles in the brick hearth. The sun is just beginning to set over the treetops, casting the room in a golden haze.

“‘S nice here,” Jamie remarks. “Feels familiar.”

“I, um, I may have picked this place because it looks like the one in the movie. Had them fax me images of the rooms to find one--”

“That looks like the one Betty and Judy shared in White Christmas,” Jamie finishes, noting the white doors and gleaming brass knobs.

“And, the inn, too. I tried to find out if we could go to the real one where they filmed, but turns out it was a set on a soundstage in California.”

“You mean to tell me the painted backdrops were just,” she gasps for dramatic effect, causing Dani to laugh, “painted backdrops?”

Dani groans. “In hindsight, it should’ve been more obvious, but at least I tried?”

“And an admirable effort it was,” Jamie chuckles, tugging Dani’s sleeve until she moves up the bed to lay her head on Jamie’s shoulder. “Looks just like the real thing, right down to my very own Judy.” She presses a kiss to the top of Dani’s head.

“Mm, I think you might just have a thing for blondes in turtlenecks.”

“Seven-year-old Jamie might’ve been a wee bit taken with Vera-Ellen,” Jamie shrugs. “Who’s to say?” She continues, “Not a lot of pretty blondes for me to fall for back in those days.”

“Oh, well, as long as she’s pretty,” Dani teases.

“Happen to like my version much better, thank you. Terribly sorry, Vera, may you rest in peace; can’t hold a candle to Dani Clayton.”

“It’s because I made one of your childhood dreams come true, isn’t it.”

“Hm,” Jamie muses, “proud of that one, are you?”

“Just a little.”

“It’s wonderful, love,” Jamie speaks softly, raking easy fingers through Dani’s hair. “Promise.” A pause. Her hand freezes for a moment, then resumes its steady path. “No one…ah, no one’s done anything like this for me before.”

Jamie’s life thus far has been far from perfect, as Dani knows from the pieces Jamie has shared. Bouncing from home to home as a child and landing in with the wrong crowd. A life in which stability and consistency did not exist, in which Jamie came to learn that companionship--love--is conditional and hinges upon her ability to provide. At the first sign that she could not be serviceable, in some way or another, she was cast aside.

She learned to work with her hands. Plants cannot reject you, after all, and there are always cracks to be patched, leaky faucets to be repaired. To some, the work might feel tedious, but to Jamie, the monotony feels safe, providing her a sense of immutability in an otherwise turbulent life.

And, as Jamie tells it, three years into her residence at Bly, a goddamn American started traipsing about the garden, and everything went to shit.

More or less.

Dani thoroughly wraps herself around Jamie’s middle, eliminating any space that existed between them. Words fail her, but she hopes her message resonates all the same.

Things are different, now.

***

When they eventually untangle themselves, it’s in favor of washing away the grime of travel with a hot shower. Dani unpacks as Jamie steps under the spray, rejecting the proposal to join, on account of one of them should make sure they’re on time for dinner.

They’re still almost late, though, neither realizing that the barn they’d seen that afternoon doubled as the formal dining room, and they stumble in just in time to settle at a small table in the back of the packed hall.

“Didn’t realize this was dinner and a show,” Jamie comments, observing the raised platform at the front of the room.

“So, there may have been another reason I picked this place,” Dani explains in a whisper, so as not to irk the other patrons seated nearby. “They have this Christmas Eve tradition I read about in one of the travel books and--”

Music echoes through the space from a small pit orchestra set up to the side, and a spotlight illuminates the stage, where two figures are hidden by pale blue fans.

“They may, or may not,” Dani winces, face screwing up into a weak grimace, “kind of, invite local performance groups to do songs from the movie?” She bites her lip, peering at Jamie through one eye.

Jamie, for her part, appears equal parts enthralled and perturbed. “Gotta hand it to you, Poppins,” she says, mouth slightly agape, “You know how to keep to a theme.”

Dani likes to think she hadn’t been chair of the prom committee in high school for nothing. “I really hope you don’t absolutely hate this movie, or this will be a very awkward dinner.”

“Wasn’t one of my favorites,” Jamie admits, leaning in, “but it certainly is now.” Under the cover of the tablecloth, she grips Dani’s hand and gives a discrete squeeze, Dani relaxing at her touch. “It’s very sweet,” Jamie murmurs, amused. The silver chain resting around her neck reflects the stage light as she turns her head. The number draws to a close, met with enthusiastic whooping from the jovially intoxicated crowd.

A server delivers two plates, starter salads, to their table, jotting down polite requests for main courses and alcoholic beverages.

By the finale number, Dani is warm and a bit wine-drunk. Her chair has migrated, over the course of the evening, to perch mere inches from Jamie’s. The gardener’s fingers move with the melody, eyes closed, an easy smile on her lips. She hums under her breath to match the vocalist crooning into the microphone. Dani commits the sight to memory. Jamie, here, draped in flickering shadows, untroubled by good intentions, chores that ought to be done, single-sided debts to be paid to no one and everyone. She is utterly beautiful. And Dani is utterly smitten.

Perhaps it is the wine. Perhaps it is the security provided conveniently by the position of their tucked-away table. Dani parts the tablecloth and traces down Jamie’s slender wrist, their fingers slotting together like a key in a lock. She presses the briefest of kisses to Jamie’s shoulder. Jamie’s thumb runs over Dani’s knuckle.

The antique oil lamps lining the walls glimmer warmly, and the final verse of the reimagined Irving Berlin classic fades into applause.

It is snowing lightly when they wander back to the main building and into their room, faces flushed from the chill. Dani giggles, squirming away from Jamie pushing a cold nose into her neck. Jamie chases her, pins her to the door with a sound kiss. Dani cups the nape of her neck, holding her close. The flurries melted into her hair are cool against Dani’s palm.

“Good night?” Dani asks, pressing their foreheads together.

“Mm,” Jamie puffs against her lips, nuzzling closer “was perfectly splendid.”

“Was it, now?” Dani ribs coyly.

Jamie pulls back just far enough to meet a pair of heterochromatic eyes. “Dani,” her voice is insistent, sincere, “thank you.”

Dani feels herself blush under the intensity of Jamie’s stare.

“I mean it.” Jamie’s index finger curls pointedly under Dani’s chin, tilting her head up, and something pulls low in Dani’s gut. “Thank you.”

Her lips are soft, pliant beneath Dani’s, speaking volumes in the silence. The snow continues to fall outside, blanketing the earth in mysticism the way only a new snow can. In here, though, the air burns.

They break apart at their lungs’ insistence, chests heaving in unison, but they do not stray far, choosing instead to stay, wrapped up in each other, neither willing to allow the moment to pass. Jamie smells faintly of smoke and the inn’s shampoo. Her sweater stretches slightly in Dani’s insistent hands.

“Don’t suppose you’ve got any mince pie and whiskey stashed away?” Jamie nods to the fireplace, lips kiss-swollen and hair mussed.

Dani pauses, a little taken aback, and feeling a bit like someone’s just doused her in icy water. “Do I have...what?”

“Have you got any mince pie and whiskey?”

A flash of panic shoots through her, and she runs through a mental checklist. Is there something she missed? Something Jamie had said?

“Um, should I?”

“What else are you supposed to leave Father Christmas?”

“Milk and cookies?”

“Milk and cookies,” Jamie scoffs in a poor imitation of Dani’s Midwestern accent, “how’s that going to keep a person going all night? Blimey, man’s got to travel ‘round the world, you know.”

“Blimey, must’ve left them in my other suitcase,” Dani laments, outlining the fair curve of Jamie’s collarbone, enjoying the feel of her smooth skin.

“A real shame.” Jamie’s exhale is a note heavier.

Dani hums, “Bet I can make up for it.”

Jamie’s brows rise. “Oh, can you, now?”

“Mhm,” Dani affirms, with a sigh. Before she can go any further, though, her face splits into a yawn, and any semblance of seduction is instantly dashed.

Jamie laughs, stepping away and checking the grandfather clock that stands in the corner of the room. “Half eleven. Ought to get you to bed.” She leans in, with a wink, “Santa won’t come if you’re not asleep.”

“Oh, come on,” Dani says reproachfully, rolling her eyes in a manner not dissimilar to chiding Owen’s god-awful puns. She tugs Jamie toward the wardrobe.

They slip between the sheets a short while later, lying close in the double bed, a perfect mess of legs and arms and contentment.

“‘S after midnight,” Jamie whispers, long after Dani thought her breathing had evened out. “Happy Christmas, love.”

Dani’s heart swells. “Merry Christmas, Jamie.”

***

Pale sunlight filters through the sheer curtains, coating the wallpaper in a serene glow. It’s rather poetic, Dani thinks, the way the light falls across Jamie’s sleeping face, highlighting the graceful tilt of her cheekbones, the button of her nose. Jamie looks ethereal in the morning, something Dani cannot truthfully claim about herself.

She traces the high arch of Jamie’s brow with her thumb, and the woman’s eyes flutter open. She blinks, adjusting to the feeling of being awake, until her gaze settles upon Dani, propped up on her elbow.

“G’morning, sleepyhead,” Dani coos.

“Been up long?” Jamie asks, voice low and sleep-rough.

“Not long,” Dani replies. “Was getting hungry, though. Thought you might like to see what Santa brought you before breakfast.”

Jamie sits up slowly, a cheeky grin turning up the corners of her lips. “As though waking up next to you isn’t enough?”

“Sweet-talker,” Dani says, nudging her, “It’s small, I promise.” She rolls out of bed, grimacing when her bare feet make contact with chilly wood. She rummages through her backpack, the one Jamie knows not to investigate, and emerges with a small, rectangular package wrapped in brown paper. A red bow is stuck to the top, a little squished, but thankfully still intact. Dani crosses her legs on the bed.

“Now, hold on.” Jamie reaches for her rucksack, pulling out a newspaper-covered object. She sets it on the bed. If Dani didn’t know any better, she would think Jamie seems, almost, embarrassed. “Not much experience by way of gift-giving, I’m afraid.” She wrings her hands in her lap.

“Hey,” Dani soothes, “like you said. I’m happy just being with you, okay?”

Jamie gives her a small smile. She huffs, “Look at me, being all gloomy on Christmas morning. C’mon then, open it up.”

Dani picks at the newsprint, unfolding each section delicately, deliberately. As she peels away the final layer, in her hands, she holds a small camera and a few rolls of film. She looks to Jamie, who studies her carefully, gauging Dani’s reaction.

“Might be silly, but I thought, you know, all this traveling, might be nice to collect a few momentos. Have something to look back on a few years down the line.”

Years. Years. Years. Dani allows herself to imagine them, together, somewhere, anywhere, on a couch, years from now, turning the pages of a photo album.

Yes, she decides, years.

She must have some kind of expression on her face, because Jamie speaks. “Alright, there?” She says it casually, lightly, but underlying the words is a pool of worry. Worry that Jamie has overstepped, that she’s made a mistake, that Dani will cast her aside.

“Years,” Dani says. “Years,” she repeats, high-pitched and carefree. She captures Jamie’s lips in a kiss, a celebration of time gone by, a promise of time yet to come.

“Take it you like it, then?”

Yes, Dani wants to scream, God, yes. You’ve given me the future and there are not enough words in the world to explain how I feel about you.

She settles, instead, for inserting a roll of film and bringing the viewfinder to eye level, the lens pointed at Jamie, who still wears a small smile. She is illuminated by a halo of sunlight, catching wayward hairs in its rays. The shutter clicks, and it’s loud in the stillness of the morning.

At the confused tilt of Jamie’s head, Dani attempts to clarify. “I wanted,” she explains, sounding only a little strangled, “the first memory to be of you, and me, here. In this moment.” She sighs, “Just us.”

Jamie’s face softens as she understands. Her hand snakes around Dani’s head, and she pulls her close, pressing a kiss to her forehead.

“Alright, your turn,” Dani decrees, when they separate, and Jamie accepts the offered gift. “Not as exciting as a camera, but I hope you like it.”

“Poppins,” Jamie breathes, staring at the unwrapped item on the bed as if afraid to touch it, “it’s beautiful.”

Dani had found the journal at a craft fair they visited in Chicago. The man said he’d been working with leather for twenty years. The book is bound in green leather, with shimmering gold trim around its border. On the front cover, a leaf, also covered in thin gold foil, is stamped into the material. Dani had been immediately drawn to it.

“I think we had similar ideas,” Dani jokes. “I thought, since you’re always talking to yourself and coming up with new ideas, you might like a place to put everything in that brilliant brain of yours.”

“Feels like I’m saying this a lot lately,” Jamie chuckles, “but thank you, Dani. I love it.”

As if on cue, Dani’s stomach makes itself known, and she cringes.

“Right, how about breakfast?” Jamie inquires.

“I can wait,” Dani says, “The dining room closes at ten.” She glances at the clock. “We’ve got time.”

“For what?”

Jamie catches the mischievous glint in her eye. “Pretty sure I still have to atone for my grievous crime of depriving Santa of whiskey and mince pie. Unless, that is, you’ve decided to let me off the hook?” She gingerly places Jamie’s journal on the bedside table next to her camera.

“Oh, you, my dear,” Jamie all but purrs, punctuating each word with a kiss, “are still very much on the hook.”

***

Breakfast has all but ended by the time they make it downstairs.

Dani decides that cold pancakes have never tasted so good.

[bcwallin]

One Nostalgia Later

Zero barely talks about his great lost love. As the “aged proprietor” of an “enchanted old ruin” known as the Grand Budapest Hotel, he tells his life story by skipping around her presence, touching on the existence of his “darling Agatha,” but avoiding falling into the pit of despair. Beautiful things don’t get to be completed in his world, where poems are always cut off, nice sentiments are interrupted, and the dark specter of war and disease cuts short any hope of living long, living with love. The man who “struck one as being, deeply and truly, lonely” knows what it is to lose.

For a brief time, Zero and Agatha shared a love. They were outcasts, ignored, working in service jobs that required self-abnegation—he as a hotel lobby boy; she, the pastry girl at a bakery. We see them in their bedrooms; it’s not much. “We did not have 50 Klubecks between the two of us,” recalls the older Zero. They worked long, demanding hours and had few moments to spare. Zero’s meals were held with the rest of the hotel staff. Agatha suffered the overbearing, watchful eye of her boss at the bakery, Herr Mendl. Being together was difficult, but the few moments they shared were rapturous. Their courtship felt like young love feels: furtive, secretive, and bursting with flushed emotion.

That young love never gets to mature. Agatha dies too early. “An absurd little disease,” the older Zero says parenthetically of the cause of death. So, every moment is preserved in amber, but never lingered on for too long. “She is a nearly absent presence in the story, by Zero’s choice: a narrative door marked ‘Do Not Enter,’” writes Matt Zoller Seitz, in his book about the movie. “He won’t speak of her. It’s too painful, and he’s too private.” But the aged Zero can’t tell his story without including her, try as he might. And we get glimpses.

On one good day, Zero and Agatha go to a carousel. They’re accompanied by Herr Mendl, but they barely notice. Zero gives his love a gift. He’s so anxious for her to like it, he can’t even wait for her to open the wrapping before he bursts out with what it is. He can’t contain his love in the inscription, either: “For my dearest, darling, treasured, cherished Agatha, whom I worship. With respect, adoration, admiration, kisses, gratitude, best wishes, and love.”

Throughout their courtship, the world around Zero and Agatha bursts at the seams with the portents of war, as newspapers tease, armies gather, and the brightly colored, idyllic world of the fictional state of Zubrowka teeters on the brink. The start of the war, after all, sees the appearance of black-clad death squads, and eventually, the draining of color from the film itself. Darkness and death loom quietly, but no matter what’s going on in the world, a first love is a first love. And it’s all encapsulated in a single image.

Agatha’s face takes up the center of the boxy frame—her gaze is transfixing. She stares lovingly, straight through the camera. We’re Zero, locking eyes with her. The colors shift over her face as carousel lights turn behind and around her. She is radiant, then shadowed, then red. She has the slightest hint of a smile, her head tilted, just so. Agatha stares with her deep blue eyes and it’s near-impossible to look away. But who would want to?

In this single moment, the music fades as if it’s playing somewhere else, the lights haze, as the focus can only be directed toward Agatha. Time is frozen, if only for a moment, as we experience the ecstasy of loving and knowing you are loved. Of early love, with its rushed heartbeats, tingling limbs, empty stomachs, stuttering lips, and sweaty brows. We hold onto this eternally familiar moment. As Italo Calvino once wrote, describing a different, frozen moment in time: “The suspicion that has gripped me is precisely this: that I have come to find myself in a space not new to me, that I have returned to a point where we had already passed by.”

* * *

The Grand Budapest Hotel continues a literary tradition that’s stretched from Dante to Moulin Rouge!: women die tragically and their lovers memorialize them in their writings. Agatha is an ideal, an image. Like Madeleine to Scotty in Vertigo (but less creepy), like the woman of an aged Mr. Bernstein’s tale in Citizen Kane (but more meaningful), Agatha exists as a memory or a reference.

With its frames within frames of shifting perspectives and aspect ratios, The Grand Budapest Hotel is distinctly literary. Its opening monologue is lifted nearly verbatim from Beware of Pity by Stefan Zweig, an author whose work is credited with inspiring the film, whose mustache seems to appear on more than one character’s face, and whose disappearing world is fictionalized as the setting. Zweig’s non-fiction is a great example of the longing for a lost place; his fiction for lost people. In his novella Journey into the Past, Zweig chronicles the long-awaited reunion of a man and a woman who had once been deeply in love, years ago. “How much time, how much lost time, and yet in the space of a second a single thought took him back to the very beginning.”

Zweig’s stories are often framed as recollections told over, as stories shared with strangers because of their absolute meaningfulness—much like the memorializing by grieving lovers of literary tradition—because these memories needed to be stories, to be remembered by somebody else. Zweig’s framing characters look to create the literature of their own lived stories. Journey into the Past sees two characters, Ludwig and an unnamed woman,  returning to their own story, with one seeking to consummate his unrequited love of nine years’ distance. They had had an emotional affair, tucked into passionate glances and tacit communication, years earlier, while her husband was alive. They kissed where they could, but they had to hide from the servants who always seemed to be around at the least opportune time. Ludwig’s desires were never fully satisfied and he was called away on business so he could build his fortune. And he and his love made a promise to be together once he’d return.

But the trouble with remembering love is that its amber glow sets up dangerous expectations. After being away far longer than he’d have liked to be, Ludwig is greeted fondly by the woman’s staff. He joins his love to the literary tradition and wonders to himself, as Zweig writes, “Odysseus…the household dogs recognize you, will the mistress of the house know you again too?” He’s been away for nine years. He’s gotten married, but he still returns for a rendezvous with the woman he loved and lost, to fulfill a promise she had made him, but which she realizes she cannot keep. Ludwig recalls a couplet from a French poem by Paul Verlaine: “In the old park, in ice and snow caught fast / Two specters walk, still searching for the past.” The poem, which cuts off there in Zweig’s story, imagines a dialogue between lost lovers:

—Does your heart still surge at my very name?

Do you still see my soul when you dream?—No.

—Ah, the beautiful days of inexpressible bliss

When our lips met!—It may have been so.

—How blue the sky, how hopes ran high!

—Hope has fled, vanquished, to the black sky.

Like Jay Gatsby or Mr. Bernstein or Lemony Snicket, wondering what might have been, Ludwig and Verlaine’s narrator and an old Zero romanticize their visions of love as time goes by.

“Any adequate view of nostalgia will acknowledge that it involves a felt difference between past and present: the very irretrievability of the past is salient in the experience,” wrote philosophy professor Scott Alexander Howard. We may seek to stay in the past through memory, Howard tells us, because the present seems worse, because we didn’t realize how good life was, or because we’re spontaneously overtaken by nostalgia. Nostalgia may mean that we see the past as a time that was better, and while that doesn’t necessarily mean that our vision of the past is false, it does mean that things get amplified to a whole other level:

The nostalgist knows the past in question was unpleasant at the time, but in memory it is altered by certain effects: for example, the memory has acquired a gold patina, or it seems to be an uncanny distillation of a whole time period. Neither effect strikes the self-aware nostalgist as true to the quality of one’s experiences at the time when those memories were encoded. Yet they are part of what is targeted by nostalgia. The emotion seems to be directed precisely at the “fictional” features of the memory image—things which one recognizes to be not inside the scene on the other side of the window, but drawn onto the glass.

That amber glow or gold patina grows as we distance ourselves from a disappeared world. Zero’s story, his world, his love are by definition irretrievable.

The carousel (in reality, a wood frame built around a camera setup) is irretrievable. The lights (in reality, constructed to be evocative more than representative) are irretrievable. The shared moment—stolen between long shifts of service as Herr Mendl looks on—is gone, and its memory is a fictionalized, amberized construction of nostalgia and longing.

As the elder Zero looks back, the once garishly pink and red hotel now looks like a holdover from Soviet-era architecture, its colors a drab collection of beiges and oranges. The grand ballroom holds few diners and the place, in general, is empty. Guests push their own elevator buttons, serve themselves from vending machines, and, at times, even retrieve their own keys.

And Agatha. Zero holds onto her memory, but reveals very little of it. She has 15 lines in the film’s screenplay. The first time we hear of Agatha, the older Zero avoids saying much, and talks of her only when he has to. It’s all gone and irretrievable. Sort of.

* * *

One cold November night at Penn Station, the poet Alandra Markman, then going by the pseudonym Allan Andre, wrote a poem for me and a friend (we missed our train, but the delay was worth it). “One nostalgia later” gave a compelling portrait of family meals, “as winter nights dissolve into warm / recollection and company we’re still keeping.” The way the poem goes, we create our nostalgia as we live through moments, readying our stories to be told and remembered some time later on. “Let every glow, mechanical or felt, be one / with the shadows we’re still casting, / and guide our bodies into greater light.”

The story of Zero and Agatha’s love was created on the carousel. In that moment, we see their love blossoming, deepening, exploding with the soft-focus lights of ecstasy. The elder Zero tells us he’s exercising restraint, avoiding talking about Agatha as much as he can, but if he were truly offering a utilitarian telling, there’d be no need to include this gaze frozen in time. In that moment, we never see Zero head-on, never see the reverse shot of adoration. It’s only Agatha and light. And us.

The elder Zero tells the story to a writer, the writer remembers it long enough to write it as an older man, the older man’s book becomes important enough for him to become a beloved national author, and through the eyes of a devotee, we read this book. When Stefan Zweig incorporates listeners into the story, it’s not just for the purpose of framing. The value of a memory is in how it feels to the rememberer, but the value of a story is in how it feels to the one who hears it. It is the storyteller himself who seeks out the opportunity to tell his story—the older Zero needles the writer into admitting his curiosity and offers, of his own volition, to tell it  in full. The telling is not for the benefit of Zero himself; he is giving something to the author, creating an experience for his audience. With its multiple framings, The Grand Budapest Hotel tells us that we are the viewers, the listeners, the readers. We are part of the experience, and we create our nostalgia as we experience it, so we can tell the story later of a place with bright reds, dark blacks, and swirling lights.

I remember The Grand Budapest Hotel, and I remember those swirling lights and the clutched breath and the deep longing. I think about that one frame of Agatha, frozen in time, holding her lover’s gaze—holding our gaze—as the darkness briefly clouds her face. Every time Zero and the writer and Wes Anderson tell me the story, I see that darkness and I face the irretrievability. I don’t feel nostalgia; I feel regret. For Zubrowka and everything it represents. For the grandness of the Grand Budapest. For Agatha.

* * *

When Calvino wrote about his frozen moment, it was in the story “t zero,” in which the narrator, a hunter, faces a lion L, the arrow A just fired from the hunter’s bow at the time tx. The hunter considers the possibility that A will collide with L at point X and he will be saved, or that A will miss the target L, which would then sink its very sharp claws into his chest in the less preferable of situations. It feels familiar, the narrator tells us, though not because of a comparable lion he’s fought or some feeling of ancestral memory lodged in his DNA. “If I say this moment I am living through is not being lived for the first time by me, it’s because the sensation I have of it is one of a slight doubling of images, as if at the same time I were seeing not one lion or one arrow but two or more lions and two or more arrows superimposed with a barely perceptible overlapping, so the sinuous outlines of the lion’s form and the segment of the arrow seem underlined or rather haloed by finer lines and a more delicate color.” He is experiencing a sense of timelessness, as if he’s lived through this moment in time and space, again and again. “What, after all, is the use of continuing if sooner or later we will only find ourselves in this situation again?”

While the elder Zero withholds a lot, rewatching The Grand Budapest Hotel can feel like a slight glimpse into the heart of an old man, thinking about his lost love and the potential of bright colors and bursting emotion that could have continued for the rest of his life (the internet loves a revisionist theory about a movie—what if the Grand Budapest Hotel of the past only looks that way because of how Zero remembers it?). Calvino’s hunter is doubtful. Zero seems assured. He memorializes his beloved with the hotel that stands for their love. With the story he tells of her. And he lets us see a little.

And we see the near-imperceptible smile, the tilt of a head, the unblinking eyes, the brightness and the dark. We see the warm glow of memory that says how great this was and the hint of sorrow asking how great this could have been.

Originally published on Bright Wall/Dark Room

[thewritewolf]

In Due Time Chapter 1: Witch AU

Hello and welcome to my entry for Marichat May 2020 - In Due Time! Figuring out an idea for this fic was an exhausting journey and I must've gone through nine or ten different ideas before inspiration struck and I ended up with this one. I've very excited to tell this story, and I hope you will like reading it just as much as I did writing it.

@marichatmay

Enjoy!

Summary: For eight years, Chat Noir and Red Beetle have been fighting to bring Hawkmoth to justice. But after so many years with no progress to show for their efforts, there are rumors that the Red Beetle has given up crime fighting.

Alone and without even a partner to rely on and all the while facing increasingly more dangerous akumas, Chat Noir has to find someone worthy of taking up the ladybug miraculous.

First Chapter | Previous Chapter | Next Chapter 

Read on Ao3

Marinette stood in the bus with a handful of strangers, most of whom were sending her curious glances. That didn’t surprise her too much and she couldn’t blame them, even if it was making her a little self conscious. Paris might be a large, cosmopolitan city, but even so, someone dressed like a witch at sundown was sure to attract attention.

As she clenched her hands against her heavy skirt, Marinette was glad she’d at least designed her outfit to be practical. Having to endure all this scrutiny while freezing in the late October weather might have caused her to just head right back home before even reaching the party. And having to keep track of a purse while holding onto her prop broomstick would’ve been just awful. Another benefit to being a designer - she could add pockets to whatever she wanted.

It came as a huge relief when she got off the bus and started seeing more people in costume. At least she wasn’t sticking out in the crowd any more. Although now she was wondering just how many people were going to be showing up to Alya’s party. For all that talk about how Marinette went overboard with things, Alya could certainly keep up with the craziest that Marinete could pull and then some.

Maybe it was because of all the traffic the Cat Chat had been seeing. It had never really died down since those early years in lycee - the opposite, actually. The longer Hawkmoth’s war on Paris dragged on, the more that Chat Noir and Red Beetle were put into the spotlight and lauded. Or critiqued, Marinette admitted with a frown. That last article she had read had been scathing, but Alya had been quick to rip it to shreds on the Cat Chat.

As she stepped into the building after flashing her VIP ticket to the doorman, there was no doubt in her mind that the now infamous article was why there were so many people wearing costumes of Paris’s heroes today. Well - wearing costumes of Chat Noir, that is.

“Girl!”

Marinette looked around, clutching her broomstick tightly. She smiled when she saw Alya, wearing a female version of the Chat Noir costume, bulldoze her way through the crowded floor.

“Alya!” The two women kissed cheeks and hugged. “It’s been a few days, how have you been?”

“Crazy and frantic,” Alya said with a laugh. “But you know I wouldn’t have it any other way, girl.” She took a step back and walked around Marinette. “And look at you! You really went all out with this costume, huh?”

“What was I gonna do?” Marinette said with a smirk. “Not splurge for my bestie’s Halloween party?”

“I appreciate it, M. It helps the atmosphere.” She leaned in conspiratorially. “Especially with how tacky some of these costumes are. But hey!” Her voice returned to her usual volume again. “I can’t expect everyone to have a snazzy outfit for the first annual Cat Chat Halloween party.”

“You’re obsessed.” Marinette giggled.

“Why shouldn’t we get to have some Halloween fun too? Trust me, this is the start of something great.” Alya glanced behind her and cursed. “Or at least it would if people would stop trashing things. Sorry for bailing, but foods over there,” she jerked a thumb over her shoulder as she started edging away from Marinette. “Have fun! Socialize!”

And just like that Marinette was alone again.

Now, Marinette wasn’t a shy wallflower by any stretch of the imagination. But this was a perfect storm of eroded confidence that she had emerged into. The lingering stares on the bus. The press of people all around her. The fact that she knew literally no one here except for Alya. Which was surprising, at least until she remembered that Nino was busy today with a gig on the other side of town. He may not understand his girlfriend’s obsession, but at least he was supportive.

Regardless, it all piled up on her until she found herself floating at the edges of the party, using the big buffet table and the wall at her back as a buffer against the giant throng of people.

“Pretty big turn out, isn’t it?”

Marinette just about jumped out of her skin when she heard a voice just behind her, causing her pointy black hat to fall over her eyes. As she fumbled her broomstick and drink to try and fix it, she felt it be lifted and placed carefully back on top of her head.

“Sorry about that, little witch,” came the voice again and now she could see vibrant green eyes like shining emeralds looking down at her. Down because the person they belonged to was so tall, even lounging against the wall like he was. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“No sweat,” she replied mechanically, her designer eyes already at work sweeping over his outfit. It turned out to be the sixth Chat Noir costume of the night, but she could hardly complain. It was leaps and bounds better than the usual cheap stuff that she’d been seeing all night.

“See something you like?” There was a teasing lilt in his voice. Her eyes rose back to his and she saw the flirty smirk he was wearing.

“Sorry, I was just admiring your costume. It is definitely the most accurate one I’ve seen all night.”

“Are you something of a Chat Noir expert?” He asked, an amused glint in his eyes.

“Well, I’m a designer so I have an eye for those sorts of things. Everyone remembers the ears and tail, and most people remember the bell,” she flicked his, delighted that it had a pleasant metallic ring. “Getting the size of the bell, the leather-like quality of the ears and tail - those are common mistakes.”

“Well, if I’m going to be Chat Noir, I may as well go the full distance, right?” Again there was a playful look in his expression, like there was a joke he wasn’t sharing.

“Yeah, but most people don’t even realize that the super suits are made up of tiny hexagons,” she said, pointing at the miniscule figures making up his costume. “How do they even do that? Heck, how did you?”

Chuckling, he shook his head. “You must be a really big fan then, huh? Like you said, most people don’t know that trivia.”

“It helps that my best friend runs the Cat Chat,” she said with a smirk, expecting him to be impressed. Instead, he snorted.

“Yeah that makes sense. If you’re Alya’s closest friend, you probably get sent all the articles before they’re published.” He patted her shoulder. “My condolences. Even I can’t keep up with everything she puts out.”

“Which reminds me-”

“Witch reminds you?” He said, looking very pleased with his pun.

Marinette chuckled, shaking her head. “Sure. Anyway, you haven’t given me your name?”

His smile widened. “You can just call me Chat Noir.”

“You might have to be more specific there,” she said with a glance to a couple of Chat Noirs nearby.

“Ah, trying to rely on my good manners to figure out my true identity. Very clever, but no, you’ll have to make due with just Chat Noir.”

“You really are playing the part, aren’t you?” Marinette rolled her eyes. “That’s fine, I suppose. But seriously, what’s your costume made out of?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“Well, I’ve always been curious about the real deal since I’m an up and coming designer-”

“In my experience,” Chat Noir interrupted with a grin. “‘Up and coming’ usually means ‘down and out at the moment.’”

She glares at him for a moment before turning away. Intending to get a refill of punch and some distance away from ‘Chat Noir’, she started walking away. He snagged her elbow - not tightly, but just enough to make her pause.

“Wait! Sorry, that was rude of me. This is the longest I’ve gone talking to a pretty lady for a while, please excuse me.” When she turned back around, he breathed a sigh of relief. “So, you’re a designer?”

“Yes,” she said, still feeling a little miffed but also feeling a boost to her ego from the pretty lady comment. “I actually made my costume for this party.”

“Really?” Chat said, surprised. “I thought it looked a cut above what everyone else was wearing. Do you mind if I take a look?” He smirked, but it lacked some of the cockiness from before. There was a slight shyness that was endearing. “I don’t want to just… oogle you without permission.”

She giggled. “Sure! I’d love for someone to actually appreciate the work that went into this.”

Setting down her drink, she held her broom and spun around slow enough that he could get a good look. When she was facing him again, he was wearing an impressed look.

“Its even better than I thought it was. Naturally, I realized it was excellent quality, but not many designers today would remember to balance comfort and practicality in addition to appearance. Plus,” he added as he ran a claw along a seam, “these stitches are expertly done. I bet you’ve been practicing sewing for a long time.”

“Since before lycee! I was making clothes and accessories even back then. In fact…”

Their conversation wore on for the next couple hours and it turned out ‘Chat Noir’ had more than just a cute face and a flirty tongue. He had a surprisingly good knowledge of fashion and the industry, even gave her a few tips for how to break into it.

As much as she tried to steer the conversation toward him and what he did, he always managed to expertly get her back into talking about her. It was almost as if he had plenty of practice doing it, but she was just glad to have someone new to talk to. All her work recently had left her without many friends to casually talk to. Which was no doubt another reason Alya had gone out of her way to give her a VIP invite.

Eventually, though, ‘Chat Noir’ left. It was only a few moments later that she realized she had forgotten to ask his name again, or at least ask for his number (he was a cutie after all). But by the time she turned around to look for him, he’d vanished without a trace.

Not that she had long to dwell on it. Just as she was frowning and searching the crowd, Alya stormed over to her. Her eyes were wide and she had that manic energy around her that Marinette had rightly learned to dread over the years.

“Girl! Do you know who you were just talking to?!”

“Some guy that wouldn’t give me his name and insisted I called him Chat Noir,” she said with a sigh. “Which sucks, but-”

“That’s because that was Chat Noir!”

“I get why you think that - it was a super impressive costume - but-”

“No, girl. Listen to me.” She put her hands on Marinette’s shoulders and stared her in the eye. “I’ve spent eight years running a blog with a cat pun in the name because of that furry. Eight years of studying Chat Noir and Red Beetle. I’ve interviewed him! If anyone can point out the real Chat Noir out of a bunch of lookalikes, its me.”

Alya shook Marinette in her excitement. “You just spent the evening flirting with Chat Noir, you amazing minx!”

Marinette smiled as Alya babbled excitedly, but in the comfort of her own mind she frowned. That wasn’t at all what she expected the bombastic, energetic hero she always saw on television to be like. With the party dying down, she headed back to Alya’s place to spend the night, still trying to merge the image of the larger-than-life hero of Paris and the shy boy asking her if she’d let him look at her costume.

There seemed to be more to Chat Noir than she had ever given him credit for.

[ripley95]

Echoes of Old Embers

Chapter 10

Pairing: F!Shepard/Kaidan Alenko

Rating: T

Chapter length: 3.5K

Story Synopsis:

After surviving the war, one of Shepard’s biggest regrets was rejecting Kaidan at Apollo’s. Fate has a way of bringing Jane and Kaidan back into each other’s lives. A misunderstanding with his family makes Kaidan and Shepard relive old history and question where they stand.

Link to Chapter 1 on AO3

Chapter Synopsis:

Shepard helps Kaidan’s mother prepare food for Libby’s wedding. They get to know each other better while Shepard worries about saying something to deepen the misunderstandings surrounding her relationship with Kaidan.

Read to Chapter 10 on AO3

Tumblr Links:

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Chapter 11 | Chapter 12 | Chapter 13 | Chapter 14

Read the chapter here below the cut:

Shepard watched Kaidan as he went outside to go work on the yard before she headed towards the kitchen to help Ada, dishes from their breakfast still in hand. She paused in front of the doorway, steeling herself to go in. Now that she’d thought about it, putting her foot in her mouth again was a significant risk and maybe being alone with Kaidan’s mother wasn’t as safe as she’d been making it out to be.

Whether she’d be putting her foot in her mouth or not, time was wasting, so she pushed herself to go into the kitchen. Ada was already busy at work preparing everything. She was pulling out baking dishes, utensils and all sorts of ingredients. Thanks to the war ending, and everyone still trying to rebuild society, Shepard figured that luxuries like catering businesses were probably not a priority right now. This wedding wasn’t supposed to be huge by any means, but she knew there was going to be a decent amount of people there. That ensured that there was plenty to do in the kitchen, which didn’t ease the unsettled feeling in her stomach at all, knowing that she might be stuck here helping with prep all day. It provided much more time for something else to go wrong.

“Ah, there you are,” Ada said, turning around to glance at Shepard, still busy getting everything out to prepare. “You can just put those dishes in the sink for now. We’ll have plenty needing to be washed by the end of all this prep work,” she said as she turned back to pulling out more ingredients and recipes.

Shepard followed her orders, like the good soldier she was, placing the dishes down gingerly and washing her hands.

“So, what are we making?”

“Well, there’ll be a lot,” Ada said with a laugh tinged with a bit of frustration at the notion. “Luckily, some of my friends have agreed to come cook everything tomorrow, so we won’t have to worry about it. Still, I want to try to prep as much as I can today to make their lives easier. The one we’ll start with is my famous glazed carrots. It’s one of the sides that Libby wanted. In the fall, we make apple cider and store it in the freezers so it can last a while. We still have a batch from the last harvest that somehow made it through the war. I use that as a marinade with some spices and butter. I don’t usually like tooting my own horn, but it’s delicious,” she said with a proud smile.

“I can’t say that I’ve ever had anything like that before, but it sure sounds good,” Shepard said, legitimately intrigued with the idea of it. She supposed anything was better than what she was used to lately, but she’d already sampled Ada’s cooking and she couldn’t imagine anything coming from her tasting bad.

“I’m not going to lie, it’s one of my favourite dishes. I was happy to know that Libby thought of it fondly enough to have it at her wedding. That being said, I’m used to making it for a family of six, not for a gathering of more than fifty people, so I think we have our work cut out for us. Kaidan’s sure capable of tucking a lot of it away, too, so we also have to account for that,” she said with a laugh.

“It sounds like we should get to it then. Where do you want me?”

“I already have you set up over here,” Ada said, lightly slapping a pile of bagged carrots that she had put on the large island in the centre of the kitchen. It had barstools on the opposite side. “I figured this would be the easiest. You can sit or stand as you please when you need to give your leg a rest.”

Shepard nodded and went over to the other side and sat down on one of the stools. Her leg was feeling okay, but she thought it best to rest it in case she might be up and busy helping more tomorrow morning before the wedding.

“How did you know it was my leg?” Shepard asked curiously.

“Hmm?” Ada asked, confused.

“I mentioned that I was injured before, but I don’t think we ever specifically mentioned that it was my leg.”

“Ah. Well, I didn’t always help run the orchard, you see,” she said with a wistful smile.

“Oh?” Shepard said, opening the bags of carrots and picking up the peeler.

“Here, put the shavings in this,” she said, handing Shepard a bucket. “We’ll use those for the compost later. I used to be a nurse. I got my start in the Alliance, too, actually.”

“Really?” Shepard looked up to her in disbelief. She wasn’t expecting that. “I’m surprised Kaidan never mentioned that.”

“Ah, he was probably doing that to grant mercy on me,” she said with a chuckle. “I was only enrolled very briefly, mind you, and this was way back in the earlier days of the Alliance when there was much less interplanetary travel. I’ve still never been off-planet. I’m sure you can’t even imagine what that’s like,” she said, giving Shepard a smile.

Shepard chuckled. “Not really. I was born in space. Spent most of my life there.”

“Sounds amazing,” Ada said, giving her a smile. “Then again, I think anything opposite from what you’re used to is bound to sound a little amazing. Maybe it’s nothing but routine for you.”

“There’s definitely some truth to that,” Shepard agreed. “I don’t know if I would quite call it routine. With my job, there was rarely ever a dull moment, but yeah, I would say space is what I’m used to. Probably doesn’t hold the same amount of wonder as it would for someone who’s never been up there. Meanwhile, seeing where you live has been pretty stunning. Not that I’ve never been ground-side, but every place I go is so unique. I haven’t seen anything quite like this before.”

Ada nodded in agreement.

“I’m not sure if you’re just trying to change the subject on me, but you can’t bring up being in the Alliance and not tell me that story,” Shepard said with a curious smile.

“Ha, I should have expected that I wouldn’t be able to pull one over on Commander Shepard,” she said with a laugh. “I suppose my reason for joining the Alliance was the same reason that a lot of people joined. I wanted to get into the medical field. I had already gone to school, but the Alliance was offering a program where they’d reimburse education expenses. It would have helped me a lot at the time, so I decided to give it a shot. Maybe you guessed it by now, but it’s how I met Ethan,” she said, with a whimsical smile.

Shepard stopped peeling the carrot and stared at her, surprised that Kaidan would have kept such a secret about how his parents met, especially with how familiar it was to their own circumstances. “Forbidden romance?” she asked, intrigued.

“You could say that, though, I think it’s probably even worse than you’re thinking. It wasn’t just the regs that were an issue. Ethan was a patient of mine. Not very ethical of me, I know,” she said with the same shit-eating grin that Kaidan had. As much as she was talking about ethics, she clearly found the situation amusing, which made Shepard smile.

“So, what was it? Love at first sight? Did you leave the Alliance so you could be together?” Shepard questioned with a smile.

“Oh no, nothing like that at all, actually. We maintained a respectable distance even though I was quite taken with him even early on. The first time I ever saw him, he came into medical with a sprained ankle from training. I don’t know what he did to it, but it looked like a cantaloupe, and must have hurt like hell. Even through the pain, he was cracking jokes the whole time. We hit it off immediately, but we didn’t act on anything until much later. After he recovered, he’d come around every now and then to catch up. Sometimes he’d bring me a coffee. Actually, he’d bring them for everyone on my shift, but I’m pretty sure it was an excuse to see me. He never did it when I wasn’t there.”

Shepard couldn’t help herself from smiling at that. From everything she’d heard over the last few days, Kaidan sounded like he was the spitting image of his dad.

“We’d chat on my breaks, but we never started anything romantic that early on, no,” she said, looking sombre recounting old memories. “No, you see, there’s this little hangup when you join the Alliance. Even when you just want to be in medical or engineering or anything not involved in the actual combat, you need to at least have basic weaponry certification. Let’s just say, my certification classes didn’t go very well. I kept screaming every time a gun went off. The first time I had to actually fire a weapon, not only did I scream again, but I also dropped the gun because I was so scared of it and proceeded to pass out. When I came to, I believe I asked if I shot anyone, to which I heard the whole class laughing behind me. Luckily the guns automatically go into safety mode when you lose contact with it.” she said, looking directly at Shepard, distracting herself away from her busy hands momentarily. “But look who I’m talking to. Of course, you know all of that already. Anyway,” she continued, looking back down at the food, starting to work with it again, “I was so panicked that I didn’t remember it at the time, and I was concerned I may have killed someone. So as you can imagine, I was discharged pretty swiftly after that. I wasn’t all that disappointed, mind you. I didn’t have much hope for myself to get over that fear. Yet another area that I suspect we’re different,” Ada said with a smile, no harshness behind her words.

Shepard smiled at that, as she peeled the carrots. “You could say that,” she said.

“Yes, well, as soon as Ethan learned that I had been discharged, he looked me up and asked me out. He really didn’t waste any time with that. I suppose the rest is history. I wasn’t particularly proud of my time in the Alliance, so I think my kids tend to keep that piece of information to themselves for my sake. Now anyway. There was a fair amount of teasing when they finally learned about it for themselves. I may not have been any good at it, but the Alliance is pretty important in the Alenko household.”

“Now, there’s something that we have in common,” Shepard said.

“Oh, is that right? I was never fond of the term, but Kaidan did call you a ‘military brat’ earlier. So you come from an Alliance background, yourself, then do you?”

“I do. My parents were both Alliance. Dad died for the cause.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Ada said genuinely.

“It’s okay. It was a long time ago. I barely knew him.” Ada nodded at that, not wanting to open old wounds. “My mom’s still going strong, though. She’s an Admiral now.”

“Impressive. She already sounds like an amazing woman.”

“She is. She worked hard for it. But anyway, back to you. I believe you were trying to tell me how you picked up on the fact that it was my leg that was injured.”

“Ah, right. I tend to lose my train of thought easily. After I was discharged from the Alliance, that didn’t change my original plans of working in the medical field. I saw more than my fair share of cases like yours. I think you hide it well. It’s hardly visible, but I can tell that your leg is still bothering you. I’m not sure what happened to you, but it must have been severe if you’ve only just been released from the hospital recently.”

Shepard stopped peeling for a moment, trying hard not to relive the Citadel collapsing on top of her, or the months of surgeries and physical therapy. “Yeah, you could say that.”

Ada had been measuring out ingredients and mixing the marinade the entire time that she had been talking, but that was enough to make her stop and look at Shepard.

“Has anyone told you how much they appreciate what you’ve done?”

“All the time,” Shepard said dryly.

“I suppose that’s not to be unexpected. I have a feeling most people don’t understand the full extent of your sacrifice and duty when they say that, though.”

Shepard looked up at her then, carrot and peeler still idle in her hands.

“Kaidan told us about the Reapers, you know. I mean way back in ’83.”

“He did?”

“Oh, yes. He told me a lot about his time serving with you. How cold was Noveria, by the way? It’s notorious for its harsh weather. Kaidan called me afterwards. He clearly had the sniffles. I told him to wear a sweater,” she said, shaking her head at the memory. “You know what, nevermind. I’m already losing track again,” she said, as Shepard had to silently laugh to herself. “Anyway, that was all years ago now. I think the right people put money towards squashing the rumours that there was a threat. Most people moved on with life as though nothing happened after the Citadel was attacked. But there were some of us who questioned things. People got wind of something going on. I asked Kaidan if he believed they were dangerous and he told me that he believed they were. He told us about all the push-back you were getting, but as far as we were concerned, it was all I needed to hear on the matter. It’s the reason that Ethan jumped so quickly to go back into the Alliance when they finally landed. He knew everything was at stake because his son said so.”

Shepard nodded, already knowing Mr. Alenko’s fate thanks to that dedication, not really knowing what to say to a grieving widow about loss. She had never experienced anything quite like that. She figured Kaidan was actually better equipped to handle that one.

Ada shook her head, looking out the large kitchen window. Shepard turned to see what she was looking at and noticed that she was watching Kaidan working outside.

“Ethan and Kaidan were so alike in so many ways. Ethan never backed down from a fight when he was able to protect the things he loved. The moment I heard about Kaidan joining the Normandy again after becoming a Spectre, I always thought there might have been something more to it. Of course, I would have expected Kaidan to jump at the chance to really try to make a difference during the war no matter what, especially when fighting the Reapers was so important to him, but there was more to it than that. I knew he had someone important in his life.”

Shepard looked back to Ada then, another pang of guilt hitting her. Apparently, the misunderstanding had gotten to her too.

Ada must have caught the look on her face and put her hands up in protest. “It’s none of my business. I know my kids have been squabbling about the two of you since you got here, but you don’t have to explain yourself to me. Kaidan said you’re not together, and I’ll take his word for it until he’s the one to say otherwise. But my point still stands. There’s something between the two of you. Maybe not a romance, but he cares for you. You’re important to him.”

That immediately calmed Shepard down. She liked Ada’s relaxed attitude towards the whole matter. Finally, she nodded in agreement. “He’s important to me too.”

“So I thought. A mother can tell these things,” she said with a cheeky grin. “He may not have said so in words, but it was pretty clear how much he cared about you, even back then. Every time we managed to have a vid call, I always asked him how he was doing. Without fail, he always had this smile that you could tell he was trying to hide a little, but the truth was really in the eyes. You know, eyes have a harder time lying, and his were always beaming. It was the same thing after he joined the Normandy for the second time. To be honest, I wasn’t surprised at all when Kaidan came walking through that door with you,” she said, nodding her head towards the front door. “When he called me to tell me he was bringing someone to the wedding, he had that same look in his eyes.”

Shepard tried to avert Ada’s gaze, and busy herself with the carrots then, but she couldn’t help a small smile forming at the knowledge. Even if it wasn’t because he had romantic interests for her, it felt nice that he still cared, and was happy at the prospect of bringing her back home with him.

“See,” Ada said, enthusiastically, making Shepard glance back up to her, still trying to peel the carrots in her hand. “The eyes don’t lie.”

That brought out a real smile from Shepard, unable to contain it now.

“Ah-ha,” Ada said, completely happy with herself, acting as though she caught Shepard with her hand in the cookie jar, before relaxing again. “Don’t worry. I said I’d stay out of it and I will. But it’s nice to know that whatever it is that you have with my son is reciprocated,” she said with a smile.

“It is.”

Ada nodded at that before looking back to what she was doing while Shepard winced inwardly with yet another pang of guilt, knowing that it wasn’t exactly reciprocated. That maybe it could have been if she hadn’t rejected him at Apollo’s so foolishly. That now, it was just her awkwardly fawning after him in her head while having to go out of her way to put up a wall between them. Luckily, Ada didn’t seem to notice her reaction as she continued the conversation.

“Back in ’83, I didn’t know it was you, of course. We didn’t even know much about his mission at all, but anytime we talked to him, he was always just... happy. Usually, with those same eyes you just had.”

“Really?” Shepard asked, already knowing it was true. That was the one and only time in their history together where they ever acted on anything. Where they abandoned the regs, and said what they felt. It was the only time she let herself get that close to anyone.

“Oh, you better believe it. And it’s the same look I got from him during the war, too, right up until the very end,” she said with a smile. “And you want to know a secret?” she asked coyly. Shepard didn’t respond, and just looked up to her with curiosity. “It’s the same look I saw in him this morning when we were making breakfast together, too. He’s almost a different person around you,” she said, going about the preparations.

“What was that about not meddling?” Shepard asked, keeping the accusation playful.

“Not meddling, just figured you might want to know,” she said defensively.

Shepard narrowed her eyes at Ada, knowing precisely what she was getting at. Truth be told, she really didn’t know what to think of that information. She liked to think she was a different person around Kaidan too, but that didn’t necessarily have romantic implications. Maybe none of that mattered. The regs were still an issue. She still hoped to be back on active duty again someday. Just because she made it out of the war didn’t mean death wasn’t a possibility anymore. Nothing about their relationship or history was easy. She didn’t know that what she’d just heard really changed anything.

“Now that I’ve talked you into oblivion, why don’t you tell me about space?” Ada said, with an err of genuine excitement and interest. “And your mother, too. I think we all know a bit about Commander Shepard, but why don’t you tell me about Jane,” she said with a smile.

With that, the solemn feeling that had settled in Shepard’s gut lifted slightly. Talking about Kaidan and long-lost wishes she wanted to be fulfilled was difficult. She wasn’t ordinarily fond of talking about herself, but it might serve as a good distraction in this case. Once again, her mantra played in her head.

‘This will all be over soon.’

[it-was-all-a-beautiful-dream]

Chariot Truths

Ivar the Boneless x Reader 

Warnings: swearing?

There was nothing left for you in Kattegat now they had gone to war in England. The Lothbrok boys had left you behind their sweet sweet y/n. War was the only thing that had crossed their minds and so they left. 

You had always relied on the boys to keep you safe. Your father was one of Ragnar’s closest friends but had died before you really got to know him. You had wanted to learn to fight since you were a little girl but the sons of Ragnar wouldn't let you. Their answer always the same when you protested. “Why would you need to learn to fight when you have us.” Ivar was the worst for it, his possessiveness often had people running scared when it came to you. Everyone knew you were off limits. You could never scold him for it, he didn't seem to know he was doing it half of the time and you didn't mind. You were in love with Ivar. Had been from an early age, so it didn't bother you. 

So it had made you pissed when they had left. Lagertha promised to look after you while they were away but it wasn't the same. That’s why the day they had first left for England, was the day you asked Lagertha to train you as a Shield Maiden, and she had happily accepted, for she had always thought of you as her own daughter, you reminded her so much of Gyda.

Stripping from your delicate gown, you changed into viking armour suitable for any great warrior. Today was the day you would be joining the war in England. It had taken a lot of persuasion when you spoke to Lagertha, but in the end she agreed, she believed after your training, you were ready. You had said your goodbyes and were on the boat with other men and women setting sail for your destination. You couldn't help but wonder what the boys would think, especially Ivar. Ubbe probably wouldn't approve, he’d be shocked as he thought of you as a little sister. Hvitserk would probably be impressed, you were best friends, and had always spoke to him about wanting to fight. He had told you to follow your dreams but they were always shot down by the others. Sigurd, you didn't know what Sigurd would think, honestly, you weren't as close as you were with the other brothers, he spent most of his time wrapped up in his own world or bullying Ivar. It made you dislike him so you didn't care what he thought. Ivar was really the only one who mattered and you couldn't wait to see him. 

-Ivars POV- 

Ivar couldn't help but feel anger at the moment. The main reason for his constant anger was because he had left you behind in Kattegat. It wasn't like he really had a choice, it was that or he took you with him and he wasn't stupid enough to put the woman he secretly loved in danger. He couldn't help but think of you all the time, wondering what you were doing, how you were living over there without the son of Ragnar. He sighed, he would give anything to see you right now., it was selfish, but true. Some part of him wished he had taken you with him but you were to fragile. He couldn't have any distraction if he were to lead the great army. 

Ivar looked up as a horn sounded in the distance, breaking him away from his thoughts. Ah, reinforcements had arrived. Time to welcome the rest of the great army. 

-Y/N POV- 

You grinned like a cheshire cat when your boots made a thud as you hopped off the boat. So, this is England. You looked around then swung your bow over you shoulder and made your way to the great army’s camp. 

You had just reached the outskirts of the large camp when you were tackled by a strong figure. You quickly turned with knife in hand to gut your assailant but were restrained and then heard two lots of laughing that sounded oh so familiar. Hvitserk and Ubbe. You turned around and grinned at the two men jumping into their open arms. Hvitserk looked thrilled and so did Ubbe…. maybe not as much.. but he was still happy. 

“Y/N, what in Oden’s name are you doing in England?!” Ubbe picked you up and swung you around while you laughed at the two boys reactions. When he put you down, you filled them in, told them everything about your training with Lagertha and that it was only fair you got to come and fight too. They were impressed, who would have thought little old Y/N would change into a fierce Shield Maiden. “Wait until Ivar sees you Y/N.” Hvitserk smirked as he noticed you shiver. He knew all about your love for Ivar, after all you were best friends, you spoke about everything to each other, and as much as you were now a fierce Shield Maiden, you couldn't help the blush that rose up your cheeks. 

Hvitserk and Ubbe had led you to the centre of the camp. Ivar. You could hear his booming authoritative voice before you could see him and your heart started pounding. You lifted the hood you wore on your black cloak and pulled it over your head as a sort of cover. You didn't know if you were ready for him to see you yet. You were scared of what he would think. He knew you as the girl who wore pink floaty dresses, not a badass Shield Maiden who wore leather and chains, carrying deadly weapons. 

Before you could actually find Ivar, you heard a familiar laugh. Floki. You turned quickly dropping your hood. He was almost like a father to you. With your father dying when you were so young, Floki had made it his mission along with the sons of Ragnar to keep you safe. You grinned up at him, and he laughed again and pushed a couple of strands of hair from your face. “My little Y/N, what has brought you to England at a time like this. The gods have created a new path for you I see. Oh and wait until Ivar sees what the Gods have in store for him, yes, yes, lets see.” He looked up at the sky and laughed once more. Oh it was good to have your crazy Floki back. “Come, let’s find Ivar, he will be thrilled to see you. He has so much to tell you!” 

It didn't take you long. Floki had spotted him first and you could hear him talking to Ivar. “I have a surprise for you Ivar.” You were trying to push your way through the crowd and then suddenly it parted and there you were, stood face to face with a confused looking Ivar. He hadn't noticed you really yet, but when you took down your hood, you heard him gasp. You grinned up at him. 

“Hi Ivar.” You grinned even wider as he stared at you with an open mouth. He pushed himself off his chair and used his newly constructed crutch to walk up to you. Butterflies were ever present in your stomach as you nervously waited for his reaction. He finally stopped right in front of you. You had to stretch your neck up just to look at his handsome face and before you could say anything he used his free arm to pull you into his chest. 

“I’ve missed you so much Y/N, I cant believe you're here. Is it really you?” He kissed the top of your head and then pushed you back to take a better look. “Look at you, a Shield Maiden, it suits you.” You blushed as he winked at you and gave you a toothy smile. “I have so much to tell you. I have something to show you, you will love it!” You couldn't help but stare at him. You had missed him so much. Your Ivar. You felt at peace again knowing you were so close to him. It made you so happy to see him excited about something. You hated it when he was so serious all the time, you liked carefree Ivar. 

You let him lead you into the woods, Floki came with you both so he could carry Ivar. He was too impatient to crawl. Before you could get to your final destination, Floki put Ivar down and disappeared, leaving the both of you alone. He started crawling and you followed him, only to come face to face with the most wonderful thing you'd ever seen. Floki the boat builder has outdone himself this time. You couldn't help but tear up as you looked at Ivar interacting with the Chariot. It was his, something for him that could act as his legs in battle and you couldn't be happier for him. You walked over and sat on the side of it with him taking in all the little details and modifications that Floki had made. You turned your head to look at Ivar, and found he was already staring at you. You didn't even think about what you did next when you leaned up to kiss the man you'd loved since you could remember. He was shocked at first but then he kissed you back, roughly, urgently, like he couldn't get enough. Like you were going to disappear. You broke away and just looked into each others eyes and then Ivar grinned. 

“And all this time I thought you liked Ubbe.”   

[siribear]

with the paint job finished and dried, all that’s left is to prepare for the trip. the sun creeps overhead as minutemen continue to bustle about the castle. her people strap the minigun she took from the museum of freedom to the back of her new power armor; others load in enough ammo to take down another deathclaw. 

meanwhile, whisper and deacon sit underneath a canopy, double, triple checking their usual weapons of choice.

‘you’re sure this old thing will protect you out there?’ whisper rolls the fabric of the hazmat suit between her fingers. the material has thinned and worn over the past couple centuries, and even now her hands come away with dust.

‘no rips or tears,’ deacon says confidently. ‘des and carrington looked it over.’

this time, she switches to the helmet. the surface is scuffed and dirty, but intact. ‘the respirator? all the valves work? does it - ‘

‘yes.’ he sets aside his rifle and snatches the helmet from her hands. ‘it’s not as sturdy as your walking death machine over there, but it’ll do.’

whisper frowns. ‘i’m just trying to make sure you’ll be safe, deacon.’

‘then keep you and that minigun between me and any glowing sea creatures.’

another minuteman drops by with a bag of supplies: more stimpaks than she can count, a few bottles of rad-x, a handful of radaway. they’ve already packed away their rations and ammo. now they’re down to basic necessities and however many rolls of duct tape whisper can find. just in case.

the longer they sit, the more anxious she gets. every step brings her closer to shaun, but she has to take those steps. ‘i’m sure no one would notice if we just snuck out now.’

‘with the power armor?’

‘sure. i’ll distract them.’ he stands and points in a random direct. ‘everyone, look over there!’

they share a laugh when a few minutemen do stop and look, only to stare at them when nothing appears. though whisper has to wave them off in apology, she feels her nerves abate, if only a little.

-

an hour later, she’s back in her quarters, slipping into a spare suit of underarmor danse found for her. the muted black bodysuit offers little protection itself, but danse had said it would make walking around in the armor feel a little less awkward. pulling on the gloves, she finds they fit well enough just over her wedding ring. a break between the wrist guards and gloves gives her enough room to reattach her pipboy. the needle stings more than usual going under her skin, thanks to the mottled black and blue bruise around her wrist.

somewhere, back at home, is a picture of nate wearing a similar suit under a set of combat armor. 

all dressed, she returns to the courtyard. there stands deacon, just outside and away from the crowd, ready in his bulky hazmat suit. ‘well,’ he says when he sees her, ‘you look good.’

she adjusts her collar. ‘not as good as you, partner. are we ready?’

deacon nods his head toward the others, gathered around her new navy blue power armor. ‘they’re ready for you. careful you don’t get caught up in a parade.’

preston, sturges, ronnie shaw, and alan, who runs radio freedom, do look like they’re gathered with purpose. organized. preston better not have made this into an old minuteman ceremony she doesn’t know about. when she approaches, she asks preston the same question.

‘would have killed them to give ya a new suit of armor, huh?’ sturges puts a hand on the arm of the suit. ‘but she shouldn’t give you any trouble out there. she’s even an even better model than the one you picked up at the museum, and that survived a deathclaw, too.’

‘she gets the sturges seal of approval?’ she says with a hint of a grin. ‘maybe the brotherhood doesn’t hate me so much.’

‘but don’t take any unnecessary risks,’ preston argues.

‘can’t have the minutemen fall apart again so soon,’ ronnie chimes in. ‘not when you’re doing some actual good, here.’

whisper shakes her head. ‘if anything happens to me, preston becomes - ’

‘nothing’s going to happen,’ her second-in-command interrupts, shaken. ‘you,’ he says to deacon, approaching, ‘you’ll keep her safe.’ his tone brooks no argument.

‘of course,’ deacon replies easily, too easily, in preston’s opinion, because he frowns.

‘well then!’ sturges claps his hands. ‘let’s get you in this thing, boss.’

at the press of a switch, the back of the armor opens. arm and leg plates unfold, and she steps into it, fitting herself once more into the frame. the thin material does help, as danse noted, and the metal joints barely dig in with the protective padding the underarmor provides. sturges hands her the helmet and, because she has to try it once, she tosses it in the air and flips it like she’s seen danse do before. she catches it and clicks it into place, hiding the giddy grin she’s now sporting.

the heads up display boots up immediately, picking up information from her pipboy and feeding it into the edges of her vision momentarily. she checks the fuel levels, and it’s at - ‘uh, sturges? this is reading me at half fuel right now.’

‘ah, right. we took your old fusion core from the other set of armor. figured it’d give you a little more oomf to get you out there.’

‘everything else good in there, partner?’

‘one thing,’ she says, almost to herself. there was one modification she specifically asked sturges to handle, other than the new paint job. she flips on her headlamp and aims at the ground.

‘little early for the floodlights, isn’t it?’ deacon asks, looking at her. but when she directs him to look down, at the picture that will be lost when the light is cast into the distance, he smiles. in the center of the light, in a shadowed grey, is the silhouette of the railroad lantern. she turns off the headlamp, pleased.

‘everything looks good in here, then. time to head out.’

their escort takes them to the edge of the castle’s new neighborhood. minutemen fall in line behind preston and the others walking behind her and deacon. it is a parade, in its own right, but the entourage breaks off before travis can start a rumor about the minutemen marching through the commonwealth.

and then it’s just her, deacon, and the sound of metal footsteps on broken pavement.

-

whisper leads the way west across south boston, sticking to the flat roads. anything to conserve fuel. december hits the commonwealth differently than she’s used to. by her birthday she’d normally be bundled thicker clothes. long sleeves, jackets. but now that it’s passed, she’s content in the underarmor, and deacon hardly looks cold in his suit.

beside her, he stretches his hands upward. ‘you’re carrying me there if i get tired, right?’

she holds her arms out in front of her. ‘feel free to hop on whenever, as long as you return the favor.’

‘sure thing, partner. as long as i get to take that armor for a test drive.’

‘what? no. after all i went through for this, you’re carrying me and the armor.’

he takes a deep breath. ‘did i ever tell you about the time i carried a whole suit of power armor on my back?’

deacon proceeds to tell her a story of how he once saved a brotherhood soldier in the capital wasteland. ‘couldn’t get that hatch to open,’ he says, pointing toward the back of her armor. ‘so i had to carry him all the way back to the doctor in rivet city. mind you, that took hours.’

she doesn’t try to keep her indulgent hum even remotely convinced. he continues anyway.

‘dropped him off at the entrance to the city, where he finally woke up. didn’t know where he was, just remembered almost getting gunned down by super mutants. so, i told him that i,’ and he flexes, ‘brought him all the way to the city.’

‘let me guess, the city threw you a party for being a hero?’

he shrugs. ‘nah. he accused me of being a synth and held me at gunpoint until the guards stepped in.’

‘i see. there’s a lesson in there somewhere, isn’t there?’

his gaze catches somewhere to their left. the landscape is different. even from the road, she can see the metal fences and structures obviously erected long after the war. even the coast looks too close, with buildings half swallowed by the sea. massachusetts bay university. whisper remembers a few friends that went there. along with the poisoning incident that appeared in the news.

‘what’s over there?’ she asks when deacon steers them further away.

‘institute took over university point a few years ago,’ he says, gravely. ‘get too close, we might run into the stragglers.’

there’s something more to it, she figures. he’s too tense for fear. but she doesn’t fight him, instead finding a road outside jamaica plain to travel further west.

-

just outside milton general hospital, whisper picks up a faint distress signal. deacon stops his patrol of the area as she plays it through her speakers.

‘if anyone is out there, please... help.’ deacon sits next to her, face illuminated by her pipboy light. ‘what’s going on out there? i felt the ground shake, and nothing since. it’s been... four days, i think?’

‘this is... pre-war,’ she says. felt the ground shake. they’re still a few days away from the impact sight, but even from sanctuary hills, she remembers the sound of it. loud above even the grind of the elevator. a crack of thunder, then the shockwave coming over them like a wave only seconds later.

‘i’m so thirsty. please... somebody, hurry.’ the message ends with the woman crying, and the jarring monotone voice notifying them that the message will repeat. and it does. trapped in the jewelry safe - please help.

‘hey, shut it off.’ deacon reaches for the dial himself when she doesn’t move. ‘it’s been hundreds of years. you can’t do anything for her now.’

she snaps out of it. ‘i know. i know, but - ‘ four days. longer? no water, no one to save her. trapped in that small hole in the wall, like - like her neighbors in the vault. suffocating in their pods. and she just - slept. ‘i know.’ travis comes over the radio and flips to a new song. she lets it play through the night.

-

days later, they finally approach the edge of the glowing sea. blown apart trees and scattered car frames cover the area. the air grows thick with yellow-tinged fog. her geiger counter clicks slowly in her ears.

deacon snaps his helmet into place, the respirator hissing as it begins to recycle the irradiated air. ‘shit. never really thought i’d have to come out here.’

‘you can still turn back.’

he rolls his shoulders. ‘the walk back to hq would be boring without you. come on. sooner we get in, sooner we get out. maybe des will finally approve my vacation request after this one.’

stepping into the glowing sea is like diving head first underwater. whisper leads the way, branches crunching underfoot. with every step, the ground looks more cracked. ‘if not, you could always be a full-time minuteman.’ she pushes aside the shell of a car so they can pass. ‘i’ll approve your vacation myself.’

‘well, then.’ he gives her a salute. ‘yeehaw, sugar.’

through the fog, the entire landscape looks the same: stretches of fallen highway, buried underneath irradiated dirt; pools of orange water, feral ghouls wading through the sludge. one group notices them, and though whisper tears through them with the minigun, her geiger counter becomes a stream of noise instead of a steady click. deacon raises a hand in a thumbs up, unscathed.

they hardly speak, for fear of attracting unwanted attention. neither of them can tell what’s over the next hill, or the next. is that the sound of her steps or something else? did she breathe too loudly in her helmet? even though there’s nothing around them, whisper feels surrounded. even deacon is silent as he scouts ahead. quieter than her, he presses forward, keeping them away from roaming deathclaws.

though he can scout over hills, she has the advantage when the land becomes flat. a scanner built into her power armor picks out enemies in the distance, too far for him to see without a scope. when the yellow fog camouflages another pool of feral ghouls, she leads them out of the way.

as night descends upon the sea, it becomes almost untraversable. whisper keeps them at a slow pace with her night vision, but deacon is forced to stick close. a church steeple becomes her beacon in the night as she aims for a place for them to stay. though it’s half-buried, when she looks through the hole in the roof, she can see the sanctuary is still safe. mostly. she picks off the few feral ghouls she can see through the holes.

‘we can climb in through the steeple,’ she tells deacon, crouched at her hip. ‘clear out the last ghouls and we’ll be safe for the night.’

‘and how are you getting in there? you step out of that suit, you’ll die.’

he’s right. though the power armor has kept her safe from most of the radiation, her rads are still ticking upward every second. she won’t last an hour without it.

‘i jump through the roof, obviously.’ she turns on her headlamp, illuminating the broken roof for deacon to see. it’s definitely large enough for her to fit through, and with the armor she won’t even feel the impact. ‘the steeple is big enough for me to climb back out in the morning. it’ll be fine.’

they aren’t left with very many options. the area is dangerous enough during the day, but at night? and with deacon unable to see, they have to stay somewhere. there’s nowhere else nearby that she can see, either.

deacon laughs, shakily. ‘you first.’

-

they find a room underneath the stairs for shelter. a priest’s room, it looks like, with a now-broken desk and filing cabinets full of faded sheet music and sermons. a wooden cross still hangs stubbornly above the desk.

‘feel at home?’ whisper asks, taking up the space near the door. if anything gets curious about the gunshots, they’ll have to go through her solid power armor first.

‘ha-ha,’ he intones. ‘haven’t heard that one before. you’re as bad as glory.’

‘don’t compare me to her. you’ll hurt her feelings.’

deacon settles himself in a corner, helmet hitting the back wall with a dull thunk. whisper remains standing, fearing if she sits she’ll never get back up. ‘we’re in a church, sugar. i’m a deacon. anything you want to confess?’

‘bless me, father, for i have sinned,’ she begins, and deacon leans forward to listen. ‘i made fun of a brotherhood paladin, once, for sleeping in his power armor. and now i find myself in such a situation.’

‘i see.’ deacon sighs heavily, playing the part. ‘your penance will be to step in his shoes. rest in your armor for the night and pray we don’t have to do this again,’ he finishes, breaking character near the end. she laughs.

‘amen.’

-

her alarm wakes them just before dawn. deacon climbs the steeple first, stairs creaking beneath his feet. he calls to her when he’s outside, and then it’s her turn to mount the stairs. she climbs quickly, each one threatening to give with every step. but it’s only when she ducks under the steeple roof to jump to the ground that it gives. the tower leans, wood cracking beneath the power armor’s weight. she jumps, landing hard on her knees. the wood snaps, tower crashing to the ground.

‘uh,’ she says, getting to her feet. ‘that’s not blasphemous, is it?’

deacon raises a hand, makes the sign of the cross. ‘you’re forgiven. but let’s get out of here before something comes and smites us.’

they head west, toward a building barely visible on the satellite view of her pipboy. given that they have little information to go on, checking any potentially sealed building sounds like their best bet. there’s nowhere for him to survive anywhere else out here.

keeping up their previous strategy, they make quick work across the sea. any heavy footfalls that don’t belong to her drive them slightly off course but they continue to follow her map west. they’re almost upon it when deacon holds out his hand to stop her.

‘do you hear that?’

whisper holds her breath. her scanner doesn’t pick anything up on the horizon, but she does hear... something. a slight rumble, then - rain. light patters turns to a downpour in moments. she relaxes, thinking it’s just the storm, until something shifts in her peripheral. she only has time to turn before a giant creature bursts out of the ground.

she sidesteps an oversized stinger before drawing her minigun. the thing steps back, large, black claws held high and threatening. it looks like a scorpion, but its size easily dwarfs a car. its body is covered in a hard, black carapace, broken up only by its exposed joints, glowing a faint green. the thing screeches, high and piercing, and whisper brings the minigun to life, firing directly into its face. green blood splatters across the ground, but it doesn’t stop the thing from charging.

deacon fires, hitting the stinger hard enough to send it plunging into the ground instead of her face. whisper continues to spray into its head, bullets flying wildly. the scorpion squeals again, and a roar answers to her right.

a deathclaw stares the trio down with pale red eyes.

‘the building!’ deacon yells, and she spins without a second thought. stinger still stuck fast in the ground, the scorpion doesn’t follow immediately, but the thundering footsteps that follow tells her they aren’t the only ones running.

she looks behind her to see the deathclaw tear into the scorpion. its massive jaw closes around the tail, snapping it off with ease. though it tries to fight back, the damage it sustained from the minigun keeps it from lasting very long. another roar, victorious, the albino deathclaw turns its attention toward the fleeing humans.

deacon turns the corner on the building’s second floor, easily accessed from a nearby hill and a hole in the wall. she hears two gunshots before she’s upon him, two feral ghouls dead on the ground. the footsteps grow closer. he runs toward an elevator at the end of the hall, and she pries open the doors to - an empty shaft.

rifle held ready, he turns back toward the hall and the albino deathclaw, slowly turning the corner. no need to chase prey it knows is cornered, apparently. but whisper has other thoughts. she grabs deacon without warning, scooping him into her arms, and jumps. they land on top of the elevator cart, the crash echoing through the shaft. above them, the deathclaw roars, thundering down the hall. it tries to fit through the elevator door. head first, then shoulders, then -

‘down!’ deacon yells, lifting the elevator hatch at her feet. this time he jumps and she follows, down into the basement. the deathclaw roars long and low, but never follows.

-

they head deeper into the building’s basement, clearing any feral ghouls in their way. ground zero, she thinks with each one they kill. each feral wears the tatters of office suits and dresses, likely still working before the bombs fell. too late, before anyone saw it coming.

she doesn’t know when, but her geiger counter stops clicking at the constant presence of radiation. she double checks it, just to make sure it’s working, but her screen still shows her status. and if those numbers are correct, then likely she and deacon need to stop regardless - their rads are at the edge of ‘healthy’ levels.

stepping out of her power armor in a back room, she breathes a sigh of relief. she unzips the top of her underarmor and peels herself out of the sleeves. the cooler air of the basement chills the sweat on her skin. after a moment, she returns to the main room they’ve made their shelter with a bundle of food and radaway. deacon sits, legs outstretched, in front of a fire he’s built out of old papers. whisper rests her legs atop his as she prepares to hook up their bags of radaway.

deacon flinches when she pulls away from inserting his IV. ‘what happened to you, hero?’ he reaches out toward her neck, fingers brushing against her throat, down her arm, to her wrist. she follows the trail he leaves, and sees what he means. illuminated by the firelight, her bruises stand in stark contrast to the orange glow against her skin. ‘maybe i should have gone with you, if this is what going with the brotherhood gets you.’

‘danse stopped it from being worse,’ she says, leaning back to set up her own radaway.

‘is this the lead up to, you should have seen the other guy?’

her stomach churns from the radaway. ‘considering the supermutants are dead now?’

‘i should have gone with you. the brotherhood - ‘

‘i know! look, i don’t like the brotherhood either, but danse and his team - ‘ well, haylen, if anyone. ‘ - they’re not bad people. if i hadn’t found preston first, i could have been in the brotherhood.’

‘you wouldn’t have lasted.’

‘how do you know?’

when he shifts, his knees brush against hers. she refuses to move. ‘i know what kind of person it takes to be in the brotherhood,’ he says as she stares him down.

‘deacon - ‘

he sighs, and turns the basement of the abandoned offices into his confessional. ‘you’ve put up with enough of my bullshit. if there’s one person i should come clean to, it’s my friend, right?’

whisper swallows, throat as dry as her bag of radaway. she removes her needle as he does the same. ‘i’m a liar. everyone knows it. i don’t try to hide it, because the truth is: i’m a fraud. to my core.

‘when i was young,’ he tilts his head. his eyebrows rise just above his sunglasses. ‘a hell of a long time ago, i was... scum.’ his voice cracks on the word, voice rough. she wants to tell him to stop. it’s okay if she doesn’t know if it hurts him too much, but she finds that she can’t.

she wants to know.

‘i was a bigot, like the ones in the brotherhood.’ he tosses his empty bag into the darkness. ‘a very violent bigot.’

‘like the brotherhood?’

‘worse. i ran with a gang in university point.’ he pauses, lets the pieces fall into place. that’s why he was looking at the old university. running away from his past, not the synths. ‘we called ourselves the UP deathclaws. for kicks, we’d terrorize anyone that we thought was a synth.

‘we kept egging each other on. started with some property damage. broken windows, broken fences. graduated to some beat downs in back alleys. then, inevitably,’ he swallows, ‘a lynching. the claw’s leader was convinced we’d finally found and killed a synth. looking back, i’m not so sure.’

she blinks. doesn’t say a word. nods when he continues to stare. she isn’t running away, not from him.

he hangs his head and continues. ‘i broke all contact with my brothers, after that. time passed, i became a farmer, if you can believe that.’ he laughs, smiles, wistful. then, ‘one day, i found someone.’ he removes his sunglasses and looks to the dark ceiling, blue eyes bright. watery. ‘she saw something in me i didn’t know - didn’t think - was there.’

‘what was she like?’ she asks, curling her legs against her chest, resting her head on her knees.

‘barbara,’ he sighs her name, ‘she was... she just was.’ he looks to her. ‘when she smiled, it was like those old magazine covers. her eyes - ‘ with a hand on his face, palm pressed against the bridge of his nose, he laughs softly. ‘ - we were trying for kids.’

she sits up straight, at that. a family. he wanted -

‘then one day, it turns out, my barbara? she was a synth. she didn’t know that. i certainly didn’t. i don’t know how the deathclaws found out, but... there was blood.

‘they killed her,’ she says, knowing. blood - nate’s vault jumpsuit turning red with it.

when he croaks out a, ‘yes,’ she slides in next to him. barely touching. ‘i don’t remember much clearly after that. i know i killed most of the claws.’ he laughs again, this one broken. ‘i must have made a big impression because the railroad contacted me. figured i’d be sympathetic, seeing that i lost my wife. and, well, what i did afterwards.’

‘you know i know what that’s like.’

‘yeah. you against kellogg? that was - i should have said something sooner. i’m sorry. i don’t even know why i lie anymore, but i can’t tell the truth. everyone - tom, des, you, even carrington - they deserve to be in the railroad.

‘i don’t. i’m everything wrong with this whole fucking commonwealth. but you’re the only friend i got. i don’t deserve you being okay with this, and i’m not asking for forgiveness. i just... figured you should know who you’ve been traveling with.’

‘i know who i’ve been traveling with,’ she says quickly. takes her own sunglasses off, just to prove it. ‘you’re deacon. the one friend i’ve got in this place. all that you’re doing with the railroad, everything you’ve been helping me with - you’re trying to make up for your past. that’s admirable. i’m on your side, you know?’

deacon shifts back against the wall. ‘well, i’m not really the hugging type so. good talk, partner.’

and yet, he doesn’t move away when she shifts that extra inch closer to lean her head against his shoulder. nor does he move to put his sunglasses back on. instead, he rests his head against hers. ‘john,’ he mumbles, eventually. ‘my name’s john. feel free to forget that in the morning.’

together, they watch the fire burn down to embers before bedding down, back to back in the shadowed corner of the basement.

[unikornu]

Page 7, Prearranged

(re-written)

The atmosphere in Nuka Town lost a bit of tension, at least around the operator’s territory, after Red Eye spread out the news after the first victory upon taking the park. Lucy woke up early, still slept in Porter’s room but keeping the promise this time, not searching and digging around his stuff, only stealing a few cigarettes. She dressed up and decided to head to Parlor alone without bothering if Gage is awake.  

As the elevator arrived to the parter and the door slid open she bumped into raiders chest.

- Gage, you have been out whole night? She asked, surprised.

- Not the whole night...but ye, most of it. Nisha wanted to have a word after we came back. His face looked a bit more roughed up than usually, even for him.

- Is....everything okay? She shouldn’t care but words just flew out of her mouth as she tried to look closer at his face but he turned it away.

- Ye, just talking, business since we actually moved things onward. You? Where ya headed, Boss?

- To visit Lizzie, need her help with something. I think this might give us a little advantage, at least what i remember from the manual i stumbled upon some time ago. She tapped her pipboy.

- I will join you later, Boss if you still want company. He stepped into elevator and looked at her walking away.

- Sure, Gage. She turned her head and nodded at him before the door closed.

-----

The Parlor guard let her in, losing his usual grumpy expression this time, upon meeting. Lucy headed straight towards Lizzie lab, knocking as usual on the door frame to safely disrupt her from whatever dangerous occupation she was at.

- Mags already heard the news. If you would just see the smile on her face, to be the first one to get the park. Lizzie put her tools aside and turned to her.  

-So...you need something more? She asked.

- Ye...look, i have that pipboy but i barely know how it functions actually but i saw it has some special cable to hack into things, maybe robots too? Would be useful if it actually works. Lucy unwrapped the pipboy and handed it to her.

- I only heard about them but never saw one with my eyes. Can i...? She looked at Lucy before even opening the back panel.

- Of course. I can see you know you way around...tech and weapons and God knows what. See if you can figure it out while i’m gone?

- Since you actually seem up for this job, why not, Boss. And you gave us park afterall, might help you further as an...exchange. Lizzie pulled her hair behind the ear and immediately sat at the table, gathering the tools around and smiling, focusing fully on the pipboy.

- Ok..i will leave you to it. As she left the lab she stumbled upon William on her way back out.

- Boss, a pleasure, especially after the yesterday’s venture. He ran a fingers through his hair and pulled his hand forward as he approached her.

- Uhm...just did what had to be done, right? She smiled awkwardly at him and reached for his hand back to shake it.

- I hope you will keep at it, Boss, we all do. Instead of shaking the hand, he took it softly and raised to kiss it, like a pre-war gentleman, looking down at her.

- Oh my...i mean, yes. As Gage walked to the room, geared up, she slipped the hand away. - I have to go, we will talk another time, William. She nodded at him and turned away, surprised by his manners, biting her lower lip.

- Feel free to visit, anytime, Boss. William said at her back, as she walked away.

Gage shook his head at him and left the Parlor after Lucy.

-----      

- I need to tell and show something, follow me. Lucy whispered to him as she took  lead and passed the town.

- Alright, Boss. Gage obligated and went after her.

They strolled all the way to the raiders famous tree, the one welcoming every new victim takin on the courage to put a step into the train to the Nuka World. Lucy stopped near it and faced Gage.

- How much do you know about Institute? She asked, looking up at him.

- Well, i heard the rumors from the Commonwealth, about synths, replacing people and shit, that they stir some experiments in secret. A lot of fucking shady stuff, Boss. Why? He looked her in the eye, a bit suspicious.

- Okay...listen. As we are through the first step of the job here and i’m actually still on my legs, standing i think its good to tell you this before we move onward. She turned around, scouring the hill beneath the tree, looking for some gap or crack.

- Don’t tell me you freaking work for em. Gage followed her and watched pulling the white crate with the institute sign on it.

- A little hand? She struggled to pull it out, with both her hands placed around the handle, pushing with her legs, as it got stuck on some roots.

- Ok, just move a bit. He leaned down and grabbed the other half of the handle.

As they pulled together, the root eventually cracked enough to finally release the package and send them on their backs as they put quite a bit of force to get it out. She turned her head towards him as they were lying down, noticing the raiders scars and bruises along with the green-hazel color of his eye. Everything looked much cleaner now that the distance shortened between them so much, in a broad daylight.

- So..Boss? He turned his head away as he noticed her staring at him and stood up.

- Ah ye, right, let me explain, now that we got it out and deal seems to be clear. She stood up as well, brushing the dust off her clothes and hands. - I was...well actually i still am, the agent for the Institute, just like Kellogg if you heard of him. But the terms changed a bit...as my position changed too.

- Should i be worried, Boss? I mean...which side to you play, theirs or our? He crossed his arms, uncertain what to think about it yet.

She paused for a moment at the second question but gathered the facts together and the last day, her arrival and point of it.

- I’m on your side, Gage. She looked him straight in the eye. - But this deal might be beneficial for us all and maybe the future, if we get that far. She crouched by the box and opened it. It was filled with ammunition and the newly constructed sniper rifle along with a some calmex dozes hidden beneath.

- So how it would work exactly, Boss? And how are we sure they won’t screw us up? I don’t mean to dislike it but...you know, trust get you only this far. He took the rifle in his hands as she handed it to him.

- They don’t care what we do, they just want data, some devices planted here and there, maybe samples of weird shit we might meet along the way. And in return we get...some stuff, better than what wasteland has to offer, maybe even better than what Gunners have. She nodded at the rifle. - It’s yours, you have a good eye.

- Shit...nice. He looked through a scope and then back at her. - Also, you mean it, Boss? Being by my side? I..don’t mean for it to sound weird, fuck, but you know what i mean.

- I know its been just one trip so far but...it might have been what i was looking for. She smiled and shrugged. - I don’t mean the whole Overboss thing, i ain’t the leader type, but that...lifestyle of yours, not giving a shit and simply, getting through life, grabbing what you want on the way, reminded me of some past. She turned back to grab the syringes from the box and stuff them in her bag.

- So..you up for the next trip, i guess? The wrinkles on his forehead softened as she looked away.

- Yes, i am. And i know where we can test this rifle. She grinned, looking towards the tall bridge in the distance.

----  

As they strolled together towards the bridge, keeping themselves in a taller grass and the shadows, Gage suggested it would be better to wait till it gets darker.

- They won’t see us that well and if they are about to launch something serious at us we will also see it better, lighting up. Gage nodded towards the abandoned shack. - Won’t be long, Boss.

- Alright, you know them better and what they can be up to. She followed him inside the shack, filled with hay and...

- Cats? What the fuck? She didn’t hide her surprise as she jumped past them.

- Don’t ask me. Even Mason tried to take them to his zoo but they always stick to this place. No freaking clue why.

- And you didn’t kill them for food? She dropped down on a pile of hay and leaned her back against the wall.

- If we would starve then ye, otherwise...we ain’t that fucking big savages, Boss. At least i know where to look for em if needed. He pulled himself an old rusty chair and sat down as well. - You could a nap if ya want, Boss.

- No...i do not sleep in the open like that, but you should. You have been up almost whole night at Nisha’s. She stared at him, suggesting him to open up the topic.

- Nah, im fine Boss. We just talked about future plans. She wants to be sure i won’t piss her off again like it happened, with Colter. He sighted and eyeballed her.

- I don’t think she is the type to be ever....satisfied unless she is the one in charge of everything. She took a piece of hay and rolled it through her fingers. - I know you got some beating, i can recognize it. She stood up, brushing off the hay and looked back at him.

- It’s nothin new for me, Boss, at least from her. And ain’t much you or me can do bout it now. Gage looked at the window, waiting impatiently for the sun to go behind the horizon.

- Right now, no. But it doesn’t mean we cannot start...thinking about it and stir something on our own. She approached him, blocking the view he was staring at. - I didn’t need much time to feel she will gut us eventually no matter what i do, sooner or later Gage.

- And i thought you ain’t the leader type. He stood up slowly from the chair. -She is dangerous and experienced Boss, maybe most of them all and you just came here so...keep it easy for now, and just for us eh? He put a hand on her shoulder and shook it.        

- I don’t need to be a leader to notice shit. It will have to be solved somehow, sooner or later but, ye..let’s focus on a task at hand. She took his hand off and sat back down, lighting a cigarette and awaiting for the darkness to hide them in its shadows.

----

The duo crouched lowly, into the tall bushes. Lucy pumped with fresh dose of calmex and Gage giving a look around through a scope onto the bridge and below.

- Ain’t looking good. I think we will just take down what we can and leave the power armored guy for later. Not like they can do anything else anyway other than duck there. Gage pulled the eye off the scope and noticed that Lucy moved on. - What the fuck are you doin, Boss? He whispered after her.

- Let me take down the ones below, its just three of em. They ain’t gonna hear shit. She whispered back and disappeared swiftly into the shadows.

- Goddamn woman. He pointed the rifle towards her direction, awaiting for her move. He noticed a spill of blood flying into the air from behind the wall and barely keeping up with her movements, slicing the flesh and swinging the knife with a butcher finesse. - Fuck, she’s fast. Gage looked towards the nearby tower and took down a gunner as he stood up, calling for his mates.  

They didn’t move, crouching low, making sure no one heard them up on the bridge. Gage walked, keeping low to join Lucy near the shack. - Not bad, Boss but we wont take the guy up with just that, there ain’t much cover either up there.

- With regular ammunition we won’t stand chance but maybe this will do. She pulled a small box with a few bullets for the rifle, bigger this time, glowing with an orange shade shining from beneath the shell.

- Damn, what are these? Gage grabbed the bullets and roll around one of them in fingers.

- A prototype, explosive ammunition for this rifle. Came with that package as well. Might give us a chance actually.

- You ain’t the patient type are you, Boss? Wanting to finish every task right at hand, no matter what. She shrugged her shoulders at him.

- Its your choice. I ain’t going up if you are not up for it. She whispered and looked up, making sure they are still safe.

- You know what, fuck it. I sat enough on ass. If anything i will let them throw you out if this bridge first. He grinned at her and started reloding the rifle with the new ammunition.

- Real gentleman. She snarked and entered the shack with him, stepping into the elevator and sitting low as it raised them slowly up.  

-----

Lucy jumped at the gunner as he turned abruptly, pushing him to the floor and stabbing through his throat, to not alert the others.

- Nice moves, Boss. They ran to the next cover, looking from behind the barrier of concrete and metal.

- Ain’t my first time. She shook the blade off the blood and scanned the terrain, looking for any covers and shadows towards the patrol, sitting in the metallic shack, light of the candle glowing in the small opening, their leader walking nearby, looking down the bridge, carrying a minigun.

- How many bullets he will need? She asked.

- I dunno, maybe three if the impact will be as strong i expect. Ya have any grenades?

- I always have a grenade. She chuckled and pulled one from under her chest piece. - Smoke type, to cover us, when needed. Gage found that amusing for some reason.

- If you take care of the guys inside i can focus on the big fucker. Will need few seconds to reload, it can take only one of these bullets at the time. Gage suggested but caught her by the hand as she was about to move.

- What? She crouched back and looked at him.

- Be careful, Boss. She nodded at him and approached the metallic shack, staying low and avoiding trash and junk on her way to not cause any noise. Gage was watching the leader from the scope, waiting for the right moment.

Lucy waved a hand towards him and pulled the pin, throwing a grenade inside and spreading a large thick smoke all around. She didn’t waste any second, dodging around them and slashing. Gage pulled a trigger meanwhile, a bullet flew, crashing on the power armor and releasing a strong orange glow before it turned into energetic explosion. Lucy got blinded by it, running from the shack and hiding behind the building.

- Shit, its strong. Gage noticed her and understood the strength of impact. She couldn’t be near but he couldn’t take a good aim as the gunner started showering him with bullets.

- Right...pistol. Lucy pulled the gun Gage gave her before, suggesting it might prove useful as well. - Hey, i ain’t finished here, come at me you son of a bitch! Lucy started shooting at him, regular bullets bumping from the metallic heavy structure only being an annoyance for the man but it was what she needed. A distraction, from a distance.

- Oh i will finish you soon bitch. Nothing that a bunch of swears and clinging of bullets in the head wouldn’t manage to switch the attention of a man.

- Fuck. He was faster than she thought and his gun probably also upgraded as its bullets cracked through the shack metallic structure, keeping her on her toes.

- Hold on, Boss, Here it comes! Gage managed to hit him with the second fire before he ran behind the building. Lucy covered her face this time and used the occasion, as the gunner was stunned, crouching on his knee. She ran up to him and force-pulled the gun off his hands, kicking it away as it fell.

- Got ya, bitch! He recovered fast, beside his armor reducing to almost a skeleton base but still having its basic functions going, enough to punch her in the stomach and throwing to the ground. He pulled off his cracked helmet aside, steaming from heat. Lucy landed, half stunned on the concrete but seeing him approach her, stomping heavly she crawled forward to expose him again for the Gage.

As she raised her eyes the shadowy steps appeared in front of her, stoping her and freezing in place.

“Wrong Feit! It ain’t what i taught you. Only whores go onto their kness like that” - a voice that haunted her occasionally appeared yet again and vanished right after as the gunner stood up beside her.

- Shit. Gage ran from his cover, putting the third bullet in the rifle and approaching forward till he saw her better, pulling herself on the ground and gunner foot pushing on her back.

- Oh i will kill you, but slowly..so u can feel every muscle and bone crash in your fucking body. He pushed, her chest piece cracking open and putting an unbearable pressure onto her.

- What the fuck you waiting for!? Just shoot for fuck sake! She could take a lot but that was an impact stronger than the usual man force.  She knew she was too close to him but the pain slowly became unbearable and she would rather avoid hearing her bones crack.

Gage hesitated and risked a few more seconds, switching the bullet for the regular one. Despite her sudden scream he stayed focused, squinting his eye and holding his breath as he aimed for his head. - Pick up on someone your size fucker! He shouted only to turn his head enough towards him to shove that bullet into his head. The body fell ungracefully to the side, raising up the dust gathered around.

- Boss, shit? You okay? Gage ran up to her and crouched, turning her around.

- It actually fuckin hurts, i can’t move. What took you so long? She grabbed his hand he offered her and with a little help lifted herself to a sitting position as he pushed onto her back with other hand.

- If i would pack that special one, you would not only have your goddamn back cracked but probably get burned or worse. He looked over her for any other wounds. - Can you stand, Boss?

- Not without a little support for a while. I will be fine once i shove some med-x and other shit when we get back. She looked at him, not expecting such behavior and cautiousness from the raider.

- I would rather prefer you not needing too often this treatment in the future. He grabbed her around the waist, helping her to keep the balance.

- But hey, we solved another problem, together. She smiled at him and pat his back as they got lifted back down, leaning to his side. He rolled his eye down, to meet hers for a second and smiled back with one corner of his mouth.  

- Hope ya can keep it going, because i have a good feeling about you, Boss.

They came back to the Fizztop but an invisible figure was following them along, rendered so well with the background it remained undetected, entering the Town after them.  

[tynct]

Fate

masterlist

» summary: a fortune teller visits the kingdom to tell Donghyuck of his future, and, apparently, his soulmate.

» genre: prince!au, soulmate!au

» words: 1.4k+

» a/n: last banner with that font bc i lost it rip

The palace is buzzing with excitement over the arrival of the fortune teller. Because Donghyuck was of age, she was coming to tell him about how he’d one day rule the lands, and he’s absolutely dreading it. What if she tells him he’ll be the death of the kingdom? Bring their rule to an end?

Donghyuck hisses when you slap the back of his hand with a spoon, effectively ripping his mind away from worrying about the fortune teller, and he shoots you a sour look.

“When I said distract me, Y/n, I didn’t mean beat me up with utensils,” he whines, leaning back against the counter as you cut up the last of the strawberries before sliding them into a tupperware. Your parents work in the kitchens, and although you’re not technically an employee, you spend most of your time there. Ever since you and Donghyuck met, he’s been glued to your side, and when he wasn’t off doing princely lessons, he was holed up in the kitchen with you.

But today, instead of hiding from his duties behind a stove, you’ve decided on preparing a small picnic, and you’ve had to stop him numerous times from picking on the snacks you’ve packed. You’re well aware of the stress Donghyuck is under, and with the fortune teller on her way, you’ve witnessed him breaking down in the middle of rambling to you about his lessons and parents.

You’re hoping being away from the castle gives him peace of mind, even for a little while.

The trip to the hidden spot you had chosen goes smoother than you had thought it would, considering you’ve blindfolded him. He had stumbled a few times, but other than that, you’re both in one piece when you reach the destination.

“I found this place a few weeks ago, and I’ve been wanting to bring you since,” you say nervously. In all honesty, you’re not sure how wowed he’ll be. Donghyuck is a prince; he’s been to the most lavish parties, has dined with the most beautiful of royals, and you suddenly feel self conscious in your choice of a picnic spot as he undo’s the knot.

The wide smile that pulls at his lips has your heart fluttering, and when he turns to you, he laughs and engulfs you in a tight hug.

“I love it!” he exclaims, giddily pulling out the blanket from his bag and lays it out flat. You’re so relieved he doesn’t hate it as you join him and dig around the basket for the forks, unbeknownst of his eyes on you, and when you turn to him with a plate, he’s quick to blink away the hearts and takes it with a smile.

Donghyuck doesn’t even have a chance to uncover the lid before his phone buzzes in his pocket. He ignores it with a huff, but when it rings again, he glances at you anxiously. You know what the drop in his expression means when he answers the call.

The fortune teller is here, and is requesting him immediately.

The way back to the castle is hectic. Donghyuck had shoved everything back into the basket and pulled you along with him, not letting go of your hand until he’s standing in front of the doors to her room, his chest heaving.

He can barely think over the pounding of his heart in his ears. This is the moment that decides his fate; the moment he’ll learn if he brings life or death to the world. He doesn’t think he’s ready to discover something like that so early on- no, Donghyuck knows he isn’t, but it’s what all the future rulers in his family had to go through, and he’s no different. He can’t skip this even if he wanted to.

“It’ll be fine, Hyuck,” you murmur, and at that moment, his parents round the corner. You quickly back away from him as they scowl at you, and you’re once again reminded of your very different statuses. They’ve never approved of him hanging around a lowly kitchen hand, but they had stopped trying to seperate you when he had grown old enough to talk back. He sends you a final shaky smile before they disappear behind the doors.

The first thing Donghyuck notices is how strongly it smells of incense inside of the dimly lit room. It sends a chill down his spine, and he longingly glances behind him, wishing that you could join him rather than his parents. Their presence does nothing to calm him as they walk closer to the pair of chairs formed in a circle, and when they all sit, he notices with a start a woman at the head of the table watching his every move.

“I requested only the prince,” she says, her voice gravelly. Her words have his parents frowning, and when they open their mouths to respond, her gaze alone is enough to make them bow and exit the room with their heads down.

Donghyuck is in awe of what she had just done, but if anything, it makes him feel even worse. His parents had offered him no comfort, but they had given him some form of reassurance. Now he’d have to face by himself, and he gulps anxiously when she turns her eyes back to him.

“You want to know of your future, yes?”

His spine straightens at her question. “Ah, yes.. Isn’t that why my parents called you here-”

“They didn’t call me, young prince; I called them.”

“Oh,” Donghyuck clasps his hands together underneath the table, his knuckles white from the immense pressure he’s apply. If she was the one who wanted to see him, then his future is really good, or really, horribly, bad.

For a moment, he thinks she’s choking, but then he realizes that she’s laughing and he stares in bewilderment. “Don’t look so worried! I’m only here to deliver good news.”

“Good news? Oh, thank god,” he breathes, deflating into his chair. He had automatically assumed the worst when he was told about the fortune teller, thinking that she’d whisper of his doom and-

“Well, good and bad news.”

Donghyuck could cry at this point, but he’s made it this far without shedding a single tear, and he’s hoping he can keep it up until he’s a safe distance away from the creepy lady across from him.

“Bad news,” he blurts, and clears his throat when she raises her brows. “Please, tell me the bad news first.”

Avoiding his parents when leaving the fortune tellers chambers had been surprisingly easy, seeing as they were nowhere to be found in the halls. He had been surprised when even you weren’t there waiting for him, but he didn’t dwell on it long, already taking off towards the kitchen to spill everything she had told him.

You’re elbow deep in flour when he finds you, your hair a mess as you try and flatten out the dough.

“Don’t you look attractive,” he grins, and nearly stumbles to the ground when you leap at him. He laughs quietly as you pull away when you remember the mess of powder all over you.

“How’d it go? You’re not sobbing, so that must be a good thing, right? Nothing terrible?”

“I don’t destroy the kingdom like I had thought,” he collapses onto a box of potatoes in the corner, his eyes sliding shut as her words swim in his mind. Good King. Great Ruler. “Let’s just hope she’s right, because I really love the idea of bringing peace to the land, instead of war like my great grandfather did.”

Your hand grasping his has him smiling once again, and when he reaches up to trail his thumb down your cheek, he freezes. He must’ve gotten flour on his fingers somehow, because he creates a white streak across your skin.

“Y-You have some flour..” Donghyuck trails off, and you don’t notice the way he gawks at you as you quickly brush it off.

Not only had the fortune teller had told him of his future regarding the kingdom, but of his soulmate. He hadn’t known those even existed, and she had said in a hushed voice of the one with a white mark across their face who he was destined to be with. He had thought she meant something like a scar, or a birthmark, but he understands now.

“Is it gone?” you ask, the streak still there, but he nods and rolls up his sleeves.

“Let me help you.”

[ddaengyoonmin]

Chapter 2

Genre: DystopianFuture!au; Prison!au; historical and mythological characters; based on the Fate/ anime series. Fluff, Angst, Smut (it’s gonna be real smutty in some chapters 😳) Action and fighting will be a definite theme.

Pairing: poly!Ot7 X Reader

A/N: there will be some three(maybe even more)some smut in future chapter

Warnings: Mentions of killing and murder; swearing; mentions of abusive behavior, (SMUT!! Mature content) Handjob, Talk of male masturbation and being turned on.

Word Count: 5.3k+

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

You sat on the olive green couch that was placed in their living room.  There were many rips and stains, definitely not up to par with the luxury that you were used to in your former life.

Part of being summoned meant that you were instilled with the knowledge and history of what had happened since your death. And your purpose here in this game.  It was a lot to take in, it had been quite a long time from when you last walked the earth.

It was strange, you couldn’t quite remember how you’d died.  Everything about that was fuzzy, you remembered all of your previous life, everything was there except any details surrounding how you might have met your end.  You’d always thought you were immortal, I mean, you were a GODDESS .  What could possibly kill a god...except maybe another god.  That was a thought you couldn’t let linger in your mind, you didn’t think you had any enemies that would have hated you enough to try and kill you.

You saw the garage door that you had entered the house from swing open. It was your master! You had barely started getting up, a large smile glowing on your face upon seeing him, when he- without looking your way - stormed out the front door of the house.

The guilt you felt made your stomach sink.  You were telling the truth, you had no idea how to turn off this curse that was upon you.  In your former life, humans and gods alike found you irresistible, an aura surrounding you that made men and sometimes even women fall into a frenzy of want and lust.  It had gotten you into much trouble.

 You actually had been married to a man named Hephaestus or as the Romans called him Vulcan, he preferred to go by the latter. Where as you preferred your Greek name over Venus the one nicknamed to you by the Romans.

You never quite liked Vulcan the way he liked you.  He had also been captivated by you and the curse that drew men and gods to you.  You had many affairs and other lovers, none of them meant much to you.  Sometimes you just couldn’t help yourself, you had felt trapped in the marriage you were in, and you literally could get any man you wanted if you were feeling like escaping to somewhere else.

These seven men here you had just met seemed to be just as taken by the throes of the animalistic lustful curse.  You had feelings of hate towards yourself about it, you wished you could turn it off.  You knew what it would mean for them to win this war, and for you.  If the war was won your soul would get to finally get peace in death, if you lose you’d sit in oblivion waiting for your next turn to fight again.

Your master didn’t seem very happy with you.  As much as you could feel his need towards you, his heart and his eyes seemed to be cold when he had looked at you.  

He was such a beautiful man, and you wanted nothing more than to make him happy and obey, you wanted him and your team to win.  You wanted him to like you and approve of you.  He seemed disappointed that it was you who was summoned to him, your heart ached because of that.

One by one the men from the garage started to file in. Two went to their rooms and some went to the kitchen and started making food.  All of them but one avoiding eye contact with you and keeping away from you all together.

The vibes in the air were awkward to say the least.  

But, one of the men stood by the door, staring at you with a big grin, biting at a silver lip ring piercing his plush lower lip.  

You couldn’t help but roll your lip between your teeth as well.  He was so beautiful, with his jet black hair and gorgeous features, you could’ve easily mistaken any of these men for a god too if you didn’t know better.

He groaned softly tipping his head slightly back as he watched you bite your lip back at him.

With all the restraint that he could muster he started walking towards you and sat on the couch next to you, but with as much distance as he could put between the two of you.

“I’m Jimin” he spoke with words spilling from his lips like a song.

“Nice to meet you Jimin” you returned

“Sorry for all of our behavior here, I hope you don’t feel unwelcome but it's going to be difficult for us to be around you.”

You nodded in understanding, disappointed but not surprised that they were reacting the way that they were.

“Will master at least talk to me?” you pouted

“Ah, Sorry but I have a feeling he’s going to be the most difficult to get along with out of all of us”

You frowned and stared down into your lap.

Jimin’s head spun around in all directions, like he was looking to see if any of the eyes in the house were on the two of you.

Upon seeing they weren’t he scooched a little closer to you.

“Hey, we aren’t supposed to do anything with you...touch you or…” he trailed off, his eyes scanning you hungrily up and down.  “I wouldn’t tell anyone though, if we did...if you wanted” he smirked

“JIMIN I HEARD THAT” a voice shouted from the kitchen angrily, followed by a tall brown haired man stomping your way.

“Shiiiiit” Jimin chuckled, “I gotta work on my whispering huh? This small fuckin’ house” he shook his head.

The tall man was now standing in front of the two of you, hands on his hips.  Your eyes level with the erection in his pants that still didn't seem to have gone down.

He saw you staring and blushed, quickly putting more distance between himself and you.  

“Jimin, we need help in the kitchen.” He grumbled. “I’m Namjoon by the way” he said towards you quietly as he left back to the kitchen.

“Ahh, looks like our time here is being cut short.  Don’t worry pretty lady, we will be seeing a lot of eachother” he stood up and sent a wink your way as he went to join the older man.

After the men were finished cooking, one by one they started to join you where you still sat in the living room.  Three of them sitting on the floor with their dinner plates and the one called Namjoon sitting in the chair next to the couch, placing his plate right on his boner hoping to hide it.  Making you feel quite strange for being all alone on the couch while they sat on the hard wooden floor.

“I-I can sit on the floor if you want the couch I don’t mind” you mumbled at them

A heavily tattooed boy with brown hair glanced at you quickly before returning his eyes to his plate.  

“Nah, that’s okay” he shook his head.

There was silence for a long time while they ate.

“Um...hyung where is she gonna sleep” Jimin suddenly gasped out.  “We can’t make her sleep on the couch.”

The heads on the ground suddenly shot up and stared wide eyed at Namjoon then to you.

“Oh…” he murmured

At that moment Yoongi walked in through the front door.  He glanced your way for a moment and then to the rest of the group, “I’m going to bed” he said shortly starting to walk towards his room.

“What about her? Where's she sleeping?” Namjoon yelled to him.

Yoongi groaned and turned around rolling his eyes, “I don’t care. The couch? You figure it out Namjoon.” He snapped

His words hurt you, making you feel worse than you already did.  He was your master, but you could tell he wished he wasn’t.  Your curse made everyone love you but hate you for making them love you, and that's why you thought of it as a curse.  Your husband hated you for it, all the men you had been with before either after having sex had acused you of being a witch and putting a spell on them forcing them to want you.  Or they would just want to claim you, and you’d become an object of their obsession. While it was true that it was some sort of spell, it’s not like you wanted it to be that way.  You wished they could have just loved you for you.  

Namjoon sighed as Yoongi stomped away.  

“I hate to ask you to sleep on the couch, it's a shit couch.  But I don’t really see any other option.  I don’t think we trust ourselves to sleep in the same room that close to you” he decided

“Its okay.  I’m fine here.  Whatever makes you happy I obey” you softly spoke staring down at your hands in your lap.

One of the men who hadn’t introduced himself yet, let out a small groan.  “I like the way that sounds” the blonde man spoke.

“Jin!” The brown haired man scolded and punched him in the shoulder.

“Sorry Taehyung I can’t help it! She’s so perfect.” he grumbled

After some talking amongst themselves basically ignoring you now, only talking about you as if you weren’t right there, they all went off to bed. Leaving you alone on the couch.  You really didn’t mind. But part of you wanted to go find your master and curl up next to him, you felt yourself drawn to him.  Despite his grumpy attitude he really seemed like a good guy, you wanted him to accept you.  

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

The next day they all gathered together in the living room.  You had woken up to them talking strategy about the war.  

“Morning gorgeous” a friendly voice rang out when you opened your eyes.

This black haired boy was one that had gone to bed early last night, so you had figured he was going to be one to avoid you, the friendliness was unexpected.

“Morning” a small smile on your lips as you sat up.

The man was sitting on the floor leaning his back on the couch where you had been sleeping.

He had his head turned around and his eyes were full of lust looking you over.

“I’m Hoseok by the way, you can call me Hobi if you want” he winked

All the other men were glaring at him.  You sighed.  You could tell that your presence was straining on their friendship, and that made you feel guilty.

“Don’t worry we’re gonna try and be on our best behavior” Jimin spoke while looking over each of the other boys with a mischievous look “I’m pretty sure all of us rubbed one out at least once this morning to try and get ourselves under control” He chuckled.

Jin nodded proudly, unashamed to admit that Jimin was right.

“I know for sure Jungkook did too, he can’t seem to be quiet when he does” Jin laughed loudly.  

Jungkook who was sitting on the floor across the room from you gasped “HYUNG!” he looked embarrassed “Don’t say that in front of her”

“It’s fine” you assured “You guys shouldn’t feel embarrassed about stuff like this, I know the effect that I have. I’m sorry.  But the least I can do is be understanding of how you feel.  If you do want to-” you started

Namjoon cut you off “Don't.” he shook his head quickly “If you’re about to offer yourself to us, dont.  We agreed that we wouldn’t and you telling us its okay to would be way too hard to resist.  It’d be easier if we just tried to ignore it.”

You shrugged. “Oh.”

“Anyways” Namjoon continued, clearing his throat and adjusting himself in his pants.  Your words had obviously already had an effect on him.  He couldn’t imagine how hard it would be to resist taking you for his own if you had offered it to him. “We were talking strategy for the game”

You looked around the circle of the six men, one was missing.  The one that should’ve been there more than any of them.

“Where’s master?” you sweetly questioned before Namjoon spoke again.

Jimin was the one to answer, “he’s out working on the car.” was all he said.

“Anyways!” Namjoon repeated, starting to get annoyed.  Maybe part of his annoyance coming from the way that you referred to Yoongi as master.  He knew that was what he was to you, but there was a part of him that was jealous of that.

“We were saying that since the war starts in about six days it’d be best if we figured out how we were going to win this thing.  We’d like to use your power to try and distract the other team.  Do you have any weapons that we should know about that you can use?” He directed his gaze at you.

You shook your head “No weapons but I do have some spells, and in this world I have incredible strength and hand to hand combat skills as well, I’m pretty acrobatic and my fighting style is close to Aikido mixed with Jiu Jistsu. I can also levitate when I need to.”

Hoseok turned his head to you again “Damn girl.” raised his eyebrows surprised.

They all nodded in agreement with Hoseok’s statement of awe.  

“Okay so what kind of spells? And most importantly what’s your noble phantasm?” Taehyung questioned

You awkwardly adjusted yourself so that you could try and face all of them.  “Well. For spells, They are mostly hypnotizing spells, I can make people see what I want them to see, confuse and disorient them, not really anything in the way of attacking but I could for example make someone think that their own teammate is me or one of you so they attack them.”

Jin’s eyes widened “Thats fucked up.” he gasped

“But useful” Namjoon added

“And your noble phantasm?” Taehyung asked again

“I-I’m kind of embarrassed of it” you shyly whispered. “It’s not a weapon or anything like the other servants will probably have. It goes in line with the effect you are all already feeling.  It basically is what is happening to you already, but one that I can control that's like 100 times stronger.  It would basically immobilize anyone with the feelings of lust that overcome them” you admit

Jimin started to roar with laughter “So they’d just freeze and jizz their pants” he continued to laugh holding his stomach and rolling on the ground.

“I told you it was kind of embarrassing” you mumbled and pouting at his making fun of you.

“Ah don’t be embarrassed goddess.” Hoseok soothed “It could be really useful.”

“Though I can’t imagine anyone being more taken by you than we already are” Jimin added in.

They all seemed to be warming up to you, not as angry and more relaxed when they spoke to you, even though you could tell their feelings of lust hadn’t lessened.

You continued to talk strategy, deciding that it was best to try and scope out which of the other servants were men and work from there. The Archer class servant would probably pose a threat since he didn’t have to get up close to you, it would be easy for him to avoid being taken by your spell.  Assassin would probably be easiest they predicted, as they usually had to get up close for their fighting, as long as it was a man you had a good chance of using your powers to seduce him once he was in range.  

You didn't necessarily like the idea of using your literal powers of seduction on victims in this battle, but it was all you had to work with if you wanted to stay alive, and keep these men that you were growing quite fond of alive as well.

You heard the front door open and Yoongi stomped in loudly.

“Sup” Jimin yelled over to him.

Yoongi trailed his eyes over the group of men, eyes finally landing on you.

“Mn” he grunted, shooting dagger eyes your way while slightly biting his lip. Then turning his line of sight back to Jimin  “I’m going out. Need a part for the car”

“Hi Master” you tried sweetly to get his attention.

To your dismay he just ignored you and grabbed a jacket, leaving back through the door he had just come through slamming it on his way out.

“Ah, don’t mind him” Jimin shook his head at the door Yoongi had stormed out of, then glancing at you. “It’s not your fault, he was cranky even before you got here” he chuckled.

You still couldn’t help but feel so guilty for your failure to impress and please you master.  He couldn’t even stand to be around you.

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

For the next couple days Yoongi still avoided you, but the rest of your team was more than welcoming and friendly.  They couldn’t seem to leave you alone, always asking you if you wanted to hangout with them, and feeding you fancy meals that you could tell they weren’t used to cooking just to impress you.  

The house was small and there wasn’t much to do, they’d sometimes play cards or board games to pass the time.  Occasionally you’d accidently brush a hand or even your body against one of the men while moving around the house.  They’d always gasp and recoil quickly stiffening up and getting awkward.  

Jimin had told you all of them had to keep pleasuring themselves more than usual just to be near you without breaking the rules Namjoon had put on them.  Once you’d even noticed that Jungkook had to run out of the room after you’d accidentally brushed your hand against his leg.  He was gone to the bathroom for a suspiciously long time before returning with his face red and flushed and a shy look on his face.  

The media and camera crews had started to flood into the prison, setting up for the war. Setting up for the grand bloodbath of a show.

You had to do a short interview with some of them and take some pictures so they could release your name, class, and powers to the public. They did your hair and makeup for you in a studio that you were brought to, and gave you an elegant red shimmering dress to wear. Your whole team accompanied you to the place where you were to be interviewed. Unfortunately some of the crew were men and Namjoon and Hoseok had to step in a few times, barking at the camera men to keep their distance from you as they fell under your spell.

As your master, Yoongi had to sit in on the interview as well, he kept his answers short and somehow managed to go the whole time without saying a single word to you. Rushing off as soon as it was over.

You weren’t allowed to see the other team’s interviews as none of you were allowed to get any details on the other servants and teams that you hadn’t found out on your own.

On your fourth night living with them, they had all gone to sleep and you were settling yourself down on the couch with the gray knitted blanket they had given you to use when you heard footsteps coming towards you.

“Hey” a whisper echoed in the dark.

You sat up to see Taehyung standing over you. “Hi?” you returned.

He kneeled down and got eye level with you. “I can’t sleep, can I sit with you for a bit?” though you couldn’t see him well, you could tell he had a cute smile on his face.

You nodded “Of course Taehyung”

You moved to the side letting him sit next to you.

He grinned and joined you on the couch.

“So tell me about you.  I know from stories and books, but did they get anything wrong?” he wondered.

You laughed lightly “Um.  I actually did have Namjoon go pick up a book on greek mythology yesterday so I could skim through it out of curiosity. Yeah they got some stuff wrong.”

“Like what!” Taehyung whispered, excitedly bouncing in his seat

“I never had any children.  Gods didn’t really give birth.  They just kind of… appeared.” you shrugged. “They said I had children...I found that very strange.”

Taehyung nodded, “Oh okay.  Anything else? I’m really just curious, you don’t have to”

“No its fine.  They did get a lot right.  I was married, am married? I don’t really know how that works...and I had many affairs that I’m not proud of.  My husband wasn’t a good god though.  Not to me at least.  He was always angry and jealous and wanted to keep me locked up and all to himself” you hissed out at your memories of Vulcan.

“No shit?” Taehyung gasped surprised “I’d read that you were but I was kinda hoping that part wasn’t true” He hung his head disappointed.  “Not that I’m judging or anything, I guess I’m just a little jealous” he laughed.

“I’d like to think that the ‘til death do us part’, section of marriage vows applies here, so maybe I can say I’m not married anymore” you giggled. Then grew serious “I never loved him” you turned your head to Taehyung meeting his eyes in the darkness.

“Have you ever loved anyone?” he asked returning your serious tone.

You shook your head. “No. Funny though huh? I’m the goddess of love but I’ve never loved.” you frowned, not actually finding it funny at all, “I just could never tell if they actually wanted me, or if the curse on me told them they had to want me.  How could I ever trust a love like that”

Taehyung looked at you with a pitying expression “That’s actually really sad.  I understand though.  I’d like to think I’d still be head over heels for ya if you didn’t have that spell on me” he winked your way with a smirk.

You just sighed in return and paused for a while. “But there really isn’t any way to know that is there?”

Taehyung stared at you for a while, an expression you couldn’t quite make out on his face through the darkness.

Then suddenly he moved close to you, so close you could feel his breath against your face.

“Shh.” he whispered, his hungry eyes staring at your lips. “If they find out I was here...that could be big trouble” he quietly spoke

You nodded.

Then taking you by surprise he was pressing his lips against your own, his hands trailing up and down your sides as he did.  He groaned softly into your mouth, his tongue flicking against your lips until you invited him in.

You knew you shouldn’t, but you were used to men throwing themselves at you like this, and you yourself loved to indulge your own lustful fantasies.  You can’t say you hadn’t thought about this before with each of them at different times, but you didn’t want to make them fight or cause jealousy between the group.  

Right now with Taehyung's tongue swirling with your own, and his hands cupping your breasts, you have to admit you wished this could’ve happened sooner.

“You’ve been such a tease” he whispered against you, pulling back from the kiss and lightly licking up the side of your neck.  Then grabbing your sides in a strong grip and positioning you so you were laying down on the couch and he could hover over you.

Your mind flashed back to your previous life.

Vulcan screaming at you in your room as he threw a vase so close to your head that it could’ve hit you.  Maybe he was aiming for you.  It had shattered against the wall behind you.  Tears in his eyes he yelled out “Why do you always have to be such a tease? You are MINE Aphrodite, MINE.  If I ever catch you with another man again.  I swear on all the gods on Mount Olympus I will make sure you can never sleep with anyone ever again.”

You winced at that memory, causing Taehyung to notice and pull back from the aggressive kisses he was placing all over your neck and shoulders.  

“Did I do something wrong?” he gasped out with a worried look.

“No.  It’s fine.  It’s not your fault” you muttered.  Its mine, its always mine.

Taehyung took that to mean that he could continue where he’d left off, now planting softer kisses on your collar bones.  He started to grind his hips into yours, you could feel his erection pressing against your core as he did.  With a small moan he took the straps of your dress and tugged them down off of your shoulders, exposing you to him.

“Oh fuck” he breathed out.  Eyes wide as he stared down at your breasts.  You could feel his cock twitch in his pants against you.  

He started to speed up his grinding against you as he lowered his head to bring one of your nipples into his mouth.  Flicking it quickly with his tongue then sucking and releasing it with a popping sound.

Your hands trailed down your to the hem of your dress and pulled it up slightly, so you were naked there too, as you hadn’t been wearing any panties.

Your fingers now started to unbutton the black jeans he had been wearing.

“Damn” Taehyung gasped, his eyes closed and his expression showing how much he was lost in the pleasure that was you.

You pulled out his long and thick cock, it was obvious how hard and needy it had been for you. You started to run your hand up and down his shaft, causing a series of moans a gasps to escape his now quivering lips.  His body jerked every so often when something you did with your hand was especially to his liking, and when you figured out one that really sent him into a state of bliss you kept up with it.  

He lowered his head to the crook of your neck, keeping his hips raised enough that you could continue to pleasure him.  

He turned and lightly nipped at your ear, “Fuck baby, you’re too good at this” he grunted out.

You sped up your pace of up and down, sometimes all the way, sometimes just focusing on the head of his now throbbing and rock hard cock.

“Just like that baby.  Don’t stop...its so…” he whined.  Starting to move his hips into your hand as you gripped him.  

You brought the hand that wasn’t on his cock to the back of his head, running your fingers through his hair as he buried his face into your neck, sucking and leaving marks that you were sure were going to end up being a problem to hide.  You didn’t want to stop him though.  The way his face was formed in an expression of pure pleasure and need.  You loved it.  You craved making men feel this way.  Taehyung looked so incredible like this.  

“I-I’m g-gonna...fuck fuck fuck” he gasped out, his body starting to tense.  You sped up your pace even further as you could feel him approaching his high.

“Ohhhh shit” he groaned.  His hips now stuttering as he released his cum onto your stomach, some getting on the dress that hadn't been fully pulled off of you. His cock twitching in your hand as you continued to milk every last drop of cum out onto yourself.  

Taehyung was shaking and gasping as he pulled himself up from you.

“Holy shit.” he breathed out with a smile.  “You’re so good” he leaned down and planted a kiss on your cheek.  “I could do that all night. I bet you could too huh baby” he muttered into your ear.

He stood off the couch and buttoned himself back into his pants, then went and got something to clean you up with so you could re dress yourself as well.

You sat up and pointed to the hickey now left on your neck.  “This might be a problem” you giggled

Taehyung’s face fell in shock “OH fuck. I didn’t even realize I did that…shit.SHIT” he whispered yet still managed to emphasize the obscenities that fell from his lips.

He thought for a moment with slight embarrassment and worry on his face.

“Maybe...just tell him you scratched your neck too hard or something” He suggested.

“I really don’t think that it looks like anything but what it is Taehyung” you chuckled “But I’ll try”

Taehyung pouted.  “Yeah, lets try.  They’d be so pissed if they knew I got to you first.”

You sighed at his comment.  Like he thought of you as a fun toy that he got to play with that his brothers didn’t.  You were used to being thought of this way, but it didn’t make it hurt any less.  Men would use you for your beauty and toy with your body like a possession.  You expected him to be done with you now, to get up and leave.  But he didn’t.

“Hey sorry I got carried away.  You know none of us can think of anything but doing things like what I did when we are with you.  I guess I just have the worst self control out of all of them” he sighed “Wait...unless they have?” he suddenly realized that could be a possibility.

You laughed and shook your head “No just you for now”

“Oh for now huh?” his eyes narrowed, but his lips were pulled into a playful smirk. “Hmm. I don’t really like to share”

“Yeah no one ever does it seems” you stated, a lingering memory of your husband in the back of your mind.

“I would if it was what you really wanted though.  Our teammates like you like I do.  And as much as i’ll be jealous.  Like, really really jealous.  If it was what you really wanted…” he stared at you, his eyes filled with seriousness and honesty.

“Wait what?” you stuttered out. “No one has ever…”

“Ahh I’m not saying go rush off and fuck anyone you see.  I still want to keep what we did a secret. Namjoon’s rules and all.  I’m just saying I’d rather share than have none of you if you know what I mean”

This was something new to you.  Every man you’d been with only wanted to own you, to lock you away all for himself.  Taehyungs honest words really struck something in you that you’d never felt before.  Tears started to form in your eyes, you held them back as much as you could but one slipped out falling down your cheek.

“Hey hey, I didn’t mean to upset you.  I know you can’t help this...If you didn’t want any of this I’m so sorry” His voice filled with concern

“No it's not that,” you muttered “Taehyung you are one of the nicest men I’ve ever met. All of you are, I can tell master is good too even though he avoids me.  I’m glad that it was all of you that I got summoned to.” You smiled kindly at him “And I’m glad we did what we did”

Taehyung relaxed and leaned back into the couch.  “Ah, Good. I’m glad you’re here too.  Thank you” he added with a genuine smile. “I hope we can do this again” he winked and at that got up off of the couch.  

“I’m going to go to bed so its not suspicious, as much as I’d love for you to join me I think they’d notice”

You nodded with a smile “Goodnight Taehyung.”

[kosmosian-quills]

Week 7 - Free

For the final week of @yourocsbackstory​‘s fall event. I really had fun with this one! It truly was a blast to take part in the event, thank you for hosting it!

This piece very quickly became one of my favourites for a number of reasons. Firstly, I’m impressed with how quicky I managed to write it. Anyway, I hope you enjoy!

“How long have you studied ballet, your highness?”

Practice is over, now, and it’s just me and Zofia today. We are probably two of the more experienced ballerinas in our group, but that is not to say that the others are bad at it. We’ve just had the most practice.

“Since I was 8.” I tell her simply, as I stretch my legs. “What about you?”

Zofia is sat on the bench, swapping out her specialised prosthetic from the one she uses for ballet to her normal, everyday leg. She does this with such efficiency that I am almost in awe of, but this is simply normal for her. The least I can do is not make a spectacle out of it. She straightens out her midnight blue tutu, the skirt clinging to her slender figure.

“I was 6 when I started, your highness,” she explained, “I was 9 when this happened. I loved to dance, I didn’t want that to stop me.”

“I imagine it must have taken some getting used to?”

“Oh it did, I actually required an additional surgery to have it fit the prosthetic I need for ballet. There’s an additional joint where my knee should be, it makes it much more flexible.”

“That’s amazing, Zofia, I’m happy for you.” I smile.

Anna, our ballet mistress, had left the room by now, so we were alone. She unravelled her hair from its tight bun, sending her dark hair coming cascading down, resting over her shoulders so gently. Her chestnut eyes were focussed as she fixed up her ballet prosthetic into the case she keeps it in. The leg was almost cyborg-ish, with a few lights in the joints. I don’t claim to know much about how it works, and I would like to know, but I don’t want to seem insensitive when I ask questions. How can I ask her about something she’s had for many years, and not seem totally ignorant? Is it safer to not ask anything at all?

How do I ask such a question?

“You know… you don’t have to call me ‘your highness’ when we’re alone, Zofia.”

She sat tall and proud, her hands clasped in front of her as she regarded me. “I know, your highness, I would rather treat you as you should be treated, at all times.”

“I don’t… expect that from you, at all. I don’t expect it from any of you. I don’t want our only interactions to be based on a hierarchy, Zofia. Please, it would mean a lot to me.”

She considers me for a moment, looking down at her hands. I come over and join her, taking a seat beside her, and clasping her hand gently in mine. Such a tense grip, she has, I wonder why? She doesn’t seem afraid of me in any capacity, so why this bout of nerves I wonder? Why does she seem so… hesitant, to call me by my given name?

“Please, Zofia, I would like us to be friends.”

She looks back up at me, that small smile she had before – the one she has all the time, that professional one – it isn’t the same as it was. The smile seemed… warmer, more genuine.

I suppose giving her permission to do something was all she needed.

“Alright, Anjelika. Friends it is.”

I truly have a lot of proud respect for my eldest Maiden of Honour, if only because of her raw will power to defy expectations. How many people must she have faced, I wonder, after her accident who told her that she can no longer dance the way she used to?

Probably a few, and yet here she is now, having proved every single one of them wrong.

---

“I hope you know what you are doing, Anastazja,” I ask her as she carefully, almost methodically, stretches her arms and jumps on the spot.

“I assure you, I do, Anjelika,” she smiled in return, her wavy blonde hair bouncing as she did.

I tried to copy her warmup routine. It was Anja’s choice of activity today, and I am more than willing to take the time to indulge in the hobbies of my friend. We were up bright and early, the sun still low on the horizon, and we had plans to lap the gardens until we had run the equivalent of two miles.

Anja had done this many times by herself, there were a few mornings where I heard her creeping out of the dormitory to do this in the early hours of the morning, before she started her duties for the day. It was only when I spoke to her about it, allowing her to not wake up as early and get her exercises in that she took me up on the offer.

She has the rest of the day with me and the others.

But today, it’s just us.

“It’s nice here. The air, it just reminds me of home,” she smiles, closing her eyes and inhaling deeply through her nose. I was probably too used to it to notice, but there is the distinct taste of lingering salt from the sea that enveloped the castle in the air around us, it’s crisp and fresh.

“Oh, of course, you’re from Nadmorzem, aren’t you?” I recalled.

“Yes, it’s got a wonderful path to run along the coast with. Its where I used to train, my coach always did say that trail had a bit or everything,” she takes off her jacket, leaving her in her black shorts and red shirt designed for athletes. There’s white lettering on the front, it says “LEWANDOWSKA”. It’s her name, and on the back is a declaration of her team, the North Western division of athletics. She must be very proud to wear that, for her to even own that shirt means she’s exceptionally skilled in her field. “My younger brother, Henryk, he’s 12 now, he always tried to race me. He’s a good sprinter, but he could never reliably run distance, I always won those.”

“Why did you stop?”

There’s a moment of silence as she turned to face me. “There’s a point where I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I could have kept training and training, and I’d be on my way to representing the country. A great honour, yes, but then... After that? Who knows? I had done nothing but train, train, train, all for that, but I have no idea what I’d be studying or anything. I don’t even know if I would have been happy.”

Her dark blue eyes stare out at the sky above our heads, and the wind sweeps through her wavy hair as it rests in her ponytail. She has one hand clenching at the side of her shirt, tugging down.

“The day I got this offer was like an answer to a prayer, in all honesty, Anjelika. I finally had an opportunity, a gateway to do something different, and still be proud of what I have done, and will do. I am proud to be here, with you, and I don’t regret it at all.”

I smile at her. “I’m glad to hear it Anastazja.”

“Anja, please,” her grin is almost cheeky as she jumps up a few times on the spot. “Well, we’ve wasted enough time stood here. Let’s get going!”

I follow her lead as she starts jogging through the gardens, twisting through the flora and fauna that grows here.

I hope that I make her proud now, I hope that I can accomplish even half of what she has.

--- 

“Is this really what you like to do in your free time, Irena?”

The bespectacled girl is completely weighed down by the sheer number of books she’s carrying, almost comically, her arms totally full of the various titles. Thick, heavy bound hardbacks with shiny letters of all sizes and colours. Her arms were held totally straight by the sheer number of books, and they were all the way up to her chin, resting it on the books in an attempt to keep them steady.

I was not carrying that many books. Only 5, but they were enough.

“This part is the least fun part,” she smirked, “getting the books to someplace peaceful where I can focus properly. I’m grateful that you’re here to help me a little.”

“It’s not a problem, Irena.”

She adjusts her hold slightly, I can see the strain on her fingers, her tanned skin now slightly red from the pressure of holding all those books.

“Oh, oh no!”

She froze in place, pressing the stack of books tighter to her, trying to keep them steady. I saw what was happening. The middle of the stack was swaying out, away from her. Dropping all of those would be disastrous! Many of those books are older than me, and even then having them land on your feet is not something I would like to experience. I’m sure Irena doesn’t too!

“Here!” I step around in front of her, using my much smaller, more manageable collection to push her books back into their stack properly.

“Thank you, Anjelika!” she laughed.

“Perhaps this wasn’t such a good idea, should we try to even out the load a little?”

“Probably a good idea.”

Contrary to my original intentions, the books were indeed now on the floor, but only on our terms. They hadn’t totally collapsed, spines destroyed and papers everywhere like we had dreaded they would. They were carefully being restacked into newer, hopefully sturdier stacks.

“What about all this interests you, Irena?” I asked, studying the front cover of an old book titled History of the Motor Car, alongside a history book titled The Kosmosian Revolutionary War – A detailed guide of the factions and their roles.

She shrugged, “I guess reading has always been something I’ve enjoyed. It’s a way for me to learn new things, and hopefully remember it in case I need it. My father always did say that knowledge is absolutely everything. I suppose I did it all for him, to make him proud.”

“Not for you?” I ask, cocking my head to the side as I hand her another book.

She shakes her head quickly, “Oh, of course it’s for me! Father would not approve of some of these, if he knew I was reading them. He’s… a little set in his ways.”

“Ah, of course.” I understood what she was referring to. A suffocating parent, probably more than a little disapproving of some of the things their child might want to do. “You said you had sisters? Are they in the sciences, like you said you wanted to be?”

“No, actually. Sylwia, my eldest sister, she is currently a practicing nurse. Father was proud of that. Tatiana…” she stops what she’s doing for a moment, and I notice her grip a hold of the book she has in her hand very tightly, breaking our eye contact, “she works for the Kosmosian consulate, in Warsaw.”

“Did he not approve? Your father?”

She tucked a stray lock of her brown hair behind her ear, pressing her glasses up her nose too. “He… didn’t think it was appropriate, but he thought it was for the best.” She sighed, “I miss her. She always did like talking to me about a lot of this stuff…”

I realise after her voice trailed away, that it trembled ever so slightly. Oh no, I went too far! “I’m sorry, if I’ve upset you…”

“Don’t be! It’s not as though she’s dead or anything,” she chuckled, “besides, when I told her about this, she was overjoyed. She said she’d come visit me soon.”

“That is wonderful to hear, Irena,” I smiled, before tapping my new stack of books with my fingers, “now, are we ready to proceed?”

“As I’ll ever be!”

We still didn’t make it back to the room, and it was all because of a stray door opening in her face. The books ended up back on the floor, a total mess, but she just laughed.

I was certain there was no harm done – to both my friend, and to the books – and joined her in that laughter. It’s all we could do.

--- 

“I’m… sorry this won’t be very interesting, your highness…”

My youngest Maiden of Honour is wringing her wrist in her hand as she takes a seat by her desk, her sketchbook held close.

“I’m sure that’s not true, Matylda,” I dismissed, raising my hand slightly, “I thought that this is an ideal way for me to get to know you, by doing something you enjoy. We already do a lot of what I enjoy.”

Her nervous blue eyes, which were so wide with something almost like fear, were suddenly more at ease. Why would she be afraid of me, I wonder? It was a curious expression, to be certain, but I wonder why she was so nervous to be alone with me, when the others were… relaxed, almost.

“I, erm… I really like living here with you,” she told me, opening her sketchbook to a new page, before slowly reaching for one of the pencils in the cup that was resting over there. Some of her face was shielded from me by those locks of untameable sunshine blonde curls, “it’s such a lovely place to live, and it’s so interesting.”

“Thank you, Matylda.” I smile at her, taking a moment to look around her room from where I am seated, as Matylda settled into what she was doing, sketching the vase of lilies that rested on the desk. Or at least, outlining the sketch, by the looks of it. She did not need my commentary here.

None of the Maidens had particularly made a mess of their rooms, but they certainly had added a lot to their rooms that made them their own. There were photographs and posters, there were a few coats or scarves hanging over chairs – and in Irena’s case, a mountain of books stacked on the floor beside the bed. Her little collection for bedtime reading.

Matylda’s is different. She has kept it in such pristine condition that it’s almost like no one lives here. There’s nothing out of place or unordinary, there are well watered yellow and white flowers on her desk and bedside table though, adding bright splashes of colour to her living area. There’s a stuffed zebra rested in the centre of her pillows, but something about it is odd. It’s laid on its stomach, its legs flat outwards, making it look like the zebra was flying. The mane was a mess, and some of the fabric looked a little faded, I can only assume that this is a treasured childhood animal, providing her comfort whenever and wherever she needs it. Perhaps it is just that little bit of home, for her. After all, she is not yet 16. This is her first time truly away from home.

There was something that caught my eye, however.

In every room that belonged to my friends are several personal photographs on their bedside tables. It’s easy to tell which ones are family, though. There’s a certain laxity in their eyes, but just enough respect to take the photo seriously.

Matylda has more than one photo here.

On her bedside table, there is one professional looking photograph – it contains herself, two small children, and two others that I assume are her parents. Her family, all smiling there with her, that same sunshine hair, but none of them share such vivid curls.

But nothing quite compares to the unrivalled joy that I can see in her gentle smile in her other photograph here, on her desk. It’s a self-portrait, taken by the young man sat with her. There’s a cheeky smile on his face, and hers is more restrained, yet it’s a lovely expression They’re sat on a seat together, somewhere outdoors, their arms over their shoulders.

He is a handsome boy, I have to admit.

“Who’s that in the photo with you, Matylda?” I ask curiously.

She doesn’t form coherent sentences for a while. She’s blushing furiously red, and stammering away. “I, erm… he’s…”

“A friend?” I suggest, trying to be helpful.

“Err… yes, yes a friend.”

“Is he still back in your hometown?”

She nods once, her curls bouncing with her as she did. “Yes, he’s studying hard for his exams. He wants to go to university in a few years.”

“That’s lovely, Matylda. I wish him luck.”

She giggles a little, “I’m sure he’d be honoured to have your good luck on his side, Anjelika.”

“You’re too kind.”

By now, her sketch was starting to take shape. Quite a lot of the basic outline had been immortalised on that paper, with a few preliminary lines of shading on a few petals. She had even taken note of how one of the leaves was crooked and bent, the smooth surface creased down at an odd angle.

”It’s nice to be able to talk like this with you, Matylda,” I tell her, “how long have you been drawing like this? It looks exceptional from here.”

Her cheeks still burned red, but I saw the happy smile on her face. Such a nice smile she has, and I’m struck to realise just how little I have seen of this genuine smile from her since she started. She had a smile she used professionally, but it’s a far cry from this beautiful smile. I hope to see more of this smile in our futures together.

--- 

“I think these look perfect, Anjelika. Right here.”

Karolina is knelt down beside me, resting on the purple mat she placed in front of this patch of earth. She’s already got soil and dirt on her clothes, on her knees and gloves that she’s using, with a few marks down her front for good measure.

She doesn’t care about any of that as she guides me through the process of caring for the plants like she is right now.

“Is this not too much, Karolina?” I ask, hesitant.

“No, of course not. This is perfect.”

I follow her example as I snip away at the overgrowth in the bushes, taking her word for it on whether or not I am doing this properly. She’s much quicker than me, though, really thorough in her work too.

“I take it that you did this a lot at home, Karolina?” I ask with a smile.

She wipes her hands down her well-worn purple and lilac overalls as she answers me, “yes, my parents own a huge farm, and I loved to help them out. They taught me everything I needed to know – wait, that one’s a bit short now.” She gently put her hand over my busy pair of hands, effectively stopping me from continuing whilst she spoke. “Don’t let them get that short, ok?”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“No need to be sorry! It’s not the end of the world, I admit it took me a while to learn what is too much when it comes to caring for these.”

She is so calm, it’s wonderful to be taught something like this and not be feeling stressed about making a supposedly simple mistake.

“My job at home for the last few years was brewing the rose tea when the flowers were fully blossomed,” she told me, taking a hold of one of the flowers and studying its gentle form with her fingers. She traces the edge of the petals carefully, “it feels good to be able to do that again.”

“I can’t wait to try it, I do enjoy rose tea every now and then.”

“It’s good for, erm… easing pain, isn’t it?”

“No, I wasn’t aware of that. I shall have to try it, though.”

She chuckles a little at me, “rose tea is good for a lot of things, indeed.”

“Do you have anything else you were in charge of back home?” I asked, continuing to work under her careful guidance.

She shrugged, her long, fiery hair that is tied back in a ribbon firmly in place, “I wasn’t necessarily in charge of much. I just did what I needed to do. I did enjoy making the fruit tartlets we’d sell in summer at the marketplace. Blackberries with some brandy, cherries and kirsch, oh, and some vodka with raspberries. We’d let them soak for weeks in the alcohol, it infused them so well. Dad would work with the alcohol, selling the fruity infused things at market, and I would make the tartlets. The alcohol made them so very… tart, they were lovely.”

“I’m not sure how much alcohol we will get away with brewing here, Karolina,” I smile as she told me her story.

We had stopped working for the moment, mainly because I didn’t fancy losing any fingers because I got distracted, but it was night to listen to my friend like this.

“Oh that’s a shame, how else are we going to celebrate your upcoming birthday?” she nudged my shoulder playfully with her hand.

“We’ll have to find another way,” I smiled in return, “I’m sure father wouldn’t complain about fruity flavoured alcohol for Wigilia.”

She grins at me in return, and I can see in her emerald green eyes that she knows what a wonderful idea this is. Even if we don’t drink it, being able to adopt her family’s techniques is something to be proud of.

I hope we can do that for her.

--- 

It’s late in the evening, here in my room. It’s been a long day of work – we went out to the mainland today – but it’s good to be back. We’re here in my room, sat in front of the warm fireplace, sipping at perfectly steeped cups of the most wonderful rose tea Karolina had made for us, made with roses we grew ourselves.

We’re all laughing at whatever Irena had just said, and the smiles and laughter… they are amazing to listen to.

As I look around the faces of my five friends, the friends who I have come to know and love much better in the last few weeks, and I feel my chest swell with pride. Our time together was so lonely at the start, but now it feels like we’re a cohesive unit. It feels like there is absolutely nothing that can shatter this feeling for us. No one and nothing can take this moment away from us.

The echoes of laughter ring in my head long after they subside, but the smiles remain. They stay here with us, etched on our faces, eyes bright and caring. Even Zofia has lightened up a little for this, and is enjoying this just as much as the rest of us. Little Matylda has really come out of her shell, something that is amazing to see how much more confident she is around us. Irena’s jokes are appreciated a lot more now that everyone else is more receptive to them. Anastazja is a more than willing ear to talk to. Karolina is just a wonderful friend to have around.

“This is so nice, everyone,” I smile at the others.

The others nod in their agreement.

“I feel like we’re on top of the world,” Irena says, stretching her arms out upwards to emphasise her point.

“Yes, we should absolutely keep this going,” Zofia suggests, pouring herself and Anastazja another cup of the rose tea from the teapot in the middle of the table.

“I’m so grateful for meeting all of you,” Matylda bows her head down at us, I return the gesture, as does everyone else.

“Anytime, Laleczka,” Irena grins, nudging her slightly. Her smile is just the same as that one in her photograph. Matylda loves that little name Irena gave her, little doll. She’s as beautiful as one, certainly.

“Yes, I feel like we’ve struck gold here with one another,” Karolina says, “all together, with you Andzia.”

Andzia. I feel my smile widen at Karolina. Oh, it feels good to be at this place in a friendship. Andzia, I’m finally one of them. I’m not someone with a more important job than them, I’m someone they love and care about just as much.

Zosia, Anja, Irenka, Laleczka, Kasia, and Andzia. No one else knows who these girls are but us.

They’re the best kept secrets in this castle, and we love them, and treasure them oh so dearly.

[xathia-89]

Long Lost Sibling - Mitsuhide

I was frowning at the bowl full of dark paste in front of me. The staff reckoned that it would help cover up my roots after I’d had to break down and ask for help in this era. All of the warlords had been highly suspicious about not seeing me apparently, but since my hair was growing quicker than I could cover it with scraps of fabric and I’d now run out of contact lenses, my appearance was changing swiftly. The maids had known from the start and had been very accepting of the tale I spun about being from the future. It was a game to keep the warlords from finding out.

Playing Princess was never something I was comfortable with, so I had argued back with Nobunaga and also been given the role of Chatelaine. Not that Hideyoshi trusted me to do anything except murder Nobunaga. I wasn’t sure who he was more suspicious of, Mitsuhide or me. He was brutally open about the lack of trust at least, both of us always knew that he was waiting for one of us to betray the great Lord Oda.

The staff revelled in it when I was bored. Since the job was to freak out the warlords as much as possible. Swords would never stay still, and Shogetsu was always pouncing out of cupboards and mostly onto Hideyoshi and Ieyasu. Then it was a case of minute adjustments to clothing, very mean I had to admit, so I tended to stick to doing it on the haoris rather than their actual clothes. Make something just the tiniest bit too short so it wasn’t that comfortable to wear when it had been perfectly fine last week. Then I started using bamboo cages to drop onto Mitsuhide, something that everyone was looking forward to being tripped.

“You really are a pain in the behind when you’re bored,” a silky voice interrupted me, as I couldn’t help but smile. Mitsuhide had figured it out, unfortunately.

“Are you going to tell on me then?” I asked, trying to keep my eyes down on the floor so that he wouldn’t see the differences.

His head was resting now on my shoulder, breath hot on my ear. It almost felt familiar, a flash of an impression in my mind before it slipped away again.

“Maybe not about the pranking, but I do have some questions about this lovely hair of yours,” he eventually said. I kept my panic internal, it was something I was trained to do, regardless of the situation you never let anyone see any kind of emotions except those you want them to. He tilted my head up and then paused. “Just where did you grow up little girl?” He frowned.

“I think your better question would be as to how I managed to hide my true appearance for so long,” I scoffed, removing his fingers from my chin.

“You seemed to have gotten all the staff onto your side, judging from the state of things around you,” he commented.

“Well, a chance to have something over on you guys, they were eager to take part as long as it was harmless. Brought amusement to them in their work,” I replied casually. It was haunting me to look straight into Akechi’s eyes. It felt like looking into a mirror, and the eyes were meant to be the window to the soul. If I listened to Hideyoshi, then it would be believed that Mitsuhide had no soul. He was happy as anything to lump us together, and this new uncovering of mine would sign me to it.

“Why change your appearance? I heard your long tale of being from the future,” he swiftly stepped away, putting a small distance between us as I went to make some tea. “I have no taste buds, I am sure you’ve been told.”

“You still need hydration,” I replied. “And it’s impossible to hide if you look like you do. You have aides to sneak around and hide as the spider setting the trap, I prefer to do the dirty work myself,” I smiled, pouring out the tea into cups. “If you would take a seat, then I am certain we could have a civil conversation about my past, and answer that question you have in your eyes,” I gestured.

He was wearing a neutral mask to cover his emotions. I could only glean the smallest pieces of what he was thinking by the motions in his eyes.

“My past starts when I am seven years old,” I smiled.

“What about before that?” I had never heard such a tone before from the snake and recoiled slightly at it.

“I have no memory before that. I was found in some woods near Kyotanba, not far from here. I was taken in by a couple who took in kids as a way of money. They constantly made fun of me for my hair and eyes, so I took to hiding my hair early on, then when I became of legal age, I left. I had good enough grades and credentials to get myself taken on by the specialist governmental department,” I paused and smiled. “I say credentials. I broke in when I was 15 and exposed all of their weak spots. They were so impressed that I could be brazen enough to turn up the following day and talk them through everything that was wrong with their current system, that they said if I had the grades to match my practical knowledge, they’d take me on.”

“What sort of specialist department?” His voice was coming out strangled, and something was clearly bothering Mitsuhide, but he didn’t want to discuss it directly.

“Much like what you do for Nobunaga,” I replied. “I was working to eliminate any problems for Japan’s safety. Chasing down unsavoury individuals that were working to undermine the government. Our form of Lord is a unified Japan, and everyone selects their leaders, and they all come together to form a government. You always get those pushing for their own agendas though, so accidents happen, I’m sure you know that,” I smiled. “Anyway, I had lenses to cover the colours of my eyes up and then coloured my hair. You’d never know I was there,” I shrugged.

“This is some fanciful tale Natsuki,” Mitsuhide took a sip of the tea, and paused. He was staring into the cup. “I had a little sister. Whenever she was bored, it was lethal to the rest of us. We could never find our prized possessions, and she always charmed the staff to her side without a problem. She disappeared suddenly when she was about seven. It devastated our parents, and I remember that I was constantly searching for her. Then you turn up, with the same name as her, the same traits, the same hair and eye colour, and give me a long spiel about coming from the future, and I am meant just to believe it?” His voice was a thread in the air. “My Imoto was the prize jewel of our family, her smile would light up the whole of Tanba.”

“I don’t understand you,” I shook my head, a little afraid of the man.

“Ah, excuse the intrusion,” Hideyoshi burst the door open, and then froze as he got a good look at us both. My hair was white from the roots to where the brown hair dye started, and my eyes that had always been brown up to this point were now a shade of amber, and I was pointing a .44 calibre handgun at the addition to the room. “What?”

“We were just discussing my sister who disappeared all those years ago, and then how this lovely young woman turns up with exactly the same name and traits,” Mitsuhide was back in his shell, no emotions on his face. “And I find out we have the same eye and hair colours, so I was asking about her past.”

“Are you sure it’s Natsuki this?” Toyotomi was more than a little broken as I sighed and rolled my eyes. My gun was tucked back away in my obi where I liked to keep it, as I could see the slightest changes in both of the men from their stances. It made me smirk on the inside for them to realise I was never unarmed.  

“Seeing as you keep threatening me all the time about your precious Lord Nobunaga and making sure I’m still not a threat after all this time, then yes I’m fairly certain I am the same woman who pulled Nobunaga out of the flames,” I sharply replied. “Now, got tottering back to your war council, and leave me to sort out my hair please,” I ordered, glowering at them both.

The paste hadn’t worked. I was frustrated as I sat at the teahouse in Azuchi. The only person who had changed was Hideyoshi, he was struggling to decide who to follow around the castle when we were both present. Otherwise, he was constantly trailing me. Sasuke had nearly been caught on a couple of occasions as I played with my white and brown braid that was trailed over my shoulder. The ninja had told me that he had a theory on the wormholes that he wanted to discuss with me, but it was going to have to be a time when we could make sure we had some privacy.

“Have you considered my offer yet, princess?” I grimaced at the sound of Shingen’s voice.

“And my response still stands,” I replied, not looking happy as I turned around. His whole posture froze up as the hair and eye colours sunk in. “Have you seen a rogue ninja? He wanted to talk magic with me?” I smiled sweetly.

“Wait, what’s happened?” Takeda took a seat and most of my patience.

“We’re from a special little place that allows for you to change your appearance. Natsuki has run out of things by her appearance,” the aforementioned Sasuke appeared from nowhere, slotting between us. “I had heard the rumours. And it’s science, not magic.”

“Mitsuhide thinks I’m his long lost sister, trust me there, there’s magic involved somewhere,” I snorted.

“Given your change in appearance, I am suddenly quite inclined to believe him,” Shingen surprised me with his opinion, the flirtatious tone long gone as he peered closely at my hair.

“I take it the pastes and things didn’t work then?” Sasuke asked, trying to ignore the warlord.

“The maids were lovely, but my hair is just too much to colour sadly,” I sighed. “And my lenses are going to give me eye infections if I’m not careful. I’ve run out of cleaner and clean sets.”

“It would be awkward to deal with,” Sasuke nodded. I could see him subtly admiring the new hair colour, and trying to hide that he liked it. “I was looking at the wormhole patterns and where you were in the weeks leading up to our meeting at Kyoto, and I think it was following you around,” he frowned, producing a map for me of the pattern of wormholes.

“Do you think it was trying to do something then?” I asked, tilting my head to the side as I shifted a little closer to the ninja.

Shingen was watching us with avid interest. I figured from the start that there was definitely something that I hadn’t been told about these two, and the merchant, Yuki. But it wasn’t hurting anyone from what I could see, especially since they never asked me about anything aside from my daily life. Though how quickly they both disappeared when Hideyoshi came to find me was a puzzle.

The vassal didn’t want to make me jump after the display a few days beforehand, and he was exceptionally polite. I would likely need to produce my gun again once Nobunaga had heard about it. He led me back to Azuchi, the atmosphere tense between us. Friendship was never going to happen, he simply didn’t trust me on a subconscious level as I realised he was taking me to the main hall.

All of the warlords were looking at me with a renewed interest, the sole exception of Mitsuhide. Oda had a glimmer in his eyes that I didn’t like at all. All of the men had their swords, and there was an air about the room. Warfare seemed likely if I made the wrong move.

“I can definitely see the resemblance now,” Nobunaga commented with a smirk. “Hard to deny what stares you in the face Natsuki, I would say you are the missing little sister of Mitsuhide.”

“If that is the case, explain how I come from the future,” I snapped, forgetting that most of the room had no clue as to the tale I had spun to Oda just after rescuing him from the flames.

“Are you still spouting about that?” The dark haired male frowned.

“She wasn’t lying,” I was surprised that Hideyoshi stood up for me of all people, my mask slipped momentarily before I could school my expressions again. “I overheard her talking to Mitsuhide about her life, and then she pulled a weapon of sorts on me when I entered and startled her,” he was looking embarrassed about the situation at least now.

“You mean this one?” I sighed, producing my favourite handgun from the folds of my obi, and startling the entire room. “It’s a gun, just a little more advanced than your pistols,” I shrugged. Ieyasu was swift and had it out of my hands for a study, and then keeping it out of my reach. “Hey, that’s mine,” I was trying to grasp it by twisting myself around Tokugawa. Then I was fed up, kicked him in the back of his knees to make him stagger and snatched the weapon off him before anyone else could get their greasy mitts on it. It was safely tucked back away with a slight glare to the room.

“Now there’s definitely more to you than I know,” I didn’t like the sound of the tone of Oda’s voice.

“I trained as a special agent. I took out any perceived threats to the country, I would study them, stalk them and determine if they needed eliminating or just realigning,” I spoke briefly. “Much like Mitsuhide does for your rule.”

“Seems like the siblings are not that different anyway,” Masamune chuckled. “No one expects a woman.”

“In the future, you don’t expect anyone who blends in,” I corrected him.

“Now I’m just tempted to take you out onto the field,” Nobunaga’s laugh was haughty.

“If you send me out in a kimono then I’m just begging to be caught by tearing the fabric,” I shrugged.

I had spent the time with the seamstresses to perfect my outfit. It was a mimicry of the sort of thing I had seen Sasuke in when we were last on the battlefield, the only differences that I had pistols tucked into an obi sash that I liked around my waist. As annoying as it was to adjust to the era, I found that part of me liked being dressed up as a girl and a princess, not that I wanted to be in full formal dress all the time, that would drive me nuts. The other warlords just smiled when I appeared, and all the more so when I scared one of the ninjas of Nobunaga’s collateral and then stole his horse as my winnings. I pulled my mask down after completing the task and moved the horse towards Oda, who smirked at me. He had set me that preliminary assignment just to break me in for the forces I think as half of them were trying to figure out who I was while the others knew and were trying to work out how I did it.

“How are you going to hide your hair then?” Hideyoshi was a combination of paranoid and intrigued.

“I have a covering for it when I need to move in darkness,” I replied nonchalantly, the saddles of the Sengoku weren’t as comfortable as the ones in the modern era as I began to fidget a little. If this wasn’t going to be a one-off, then I would definitely need to design something to put on the saddle.

Setting up camp was a new experience, I was still being treated like a Princess despite that I was about to be used to go out on a scouting trip that night. I was made to sit with Nobunaga and Mitsuhide once the main tent was set up, and they were looking over maps in silence. It wasn’t the most thrilling of things to do to pass the time for sure.

Oda finally summoned his ninjas, and I pulled my mask back up. It kept my nose and mouth protected from anything getting into them and also from the chill of the night air. Though I was then held back until they had all gone off in one direction, and I frowned at Nobunaga.

“I figured that they would just hold you back,” he smirked, and it was the first time I recalled ever seeing Mitsuhide look like he was prepared to fight his Lord physically. “You go off in the other direction, and prove yourself,” he shrugged. “You’ve been biting for a chance to do so,” he smirked.

“You won’t be disappointed,” I laughed, pulling the material over my roots and back to cover most of my head as it formed a bandana appearance, and gave a mock salute to the two warlords before disappearing off in the opposite direction.

“She didn’t take a horse?! What’s she doing?!” I heard the panic in Hideyoshi’s voice as I dashed through the treetops. Horses made too much noise, and I had a lot of ground to cover, but needing to avoid any traps was essential.

I spied the usual pairings of scouts trying to overlook our camp, a few collections littered through the forest as the warning system to get back to our enemies, and then I spotted our scouts in the form of Masamune’s trusted aide, Kojiro and his men. I scuttled down a tree to meet up with him as part of me thought that touching base in the field would help.

“You scared me, Princess!” The aide hissed as I stole one of the favoured food supplies from the pack between them.

“Three sets of scouts slipped past you,” I stated, pausing to take a bite of the rice ball.

“We let two of them go, either one of them was ahead of us, or they’re really good,” Kojiro replied. “I take it this was a fuel stop before you keep moving?”

“Keeping in touch is never a bad thing,” I smiled and patted the man on the head as I finished eating. “I’ll let you know if I see anything else.”

I had found something of a comfortable spot, I had a decent view of the Uesugi-Takeda camp when the sound of a twig breaking alerted me that I wasn’t alone in my immediate vicinity. My movements were slow and steady, peering through the leaves as I saw that it was a guard patrolling the camp. I had been in deeper than this before and not been caught, and lifted my head back to focus on the base.

A rustle of leaves over my head sent me into a mild panic, and then the covering over my hair had gone before Sasuke showed himself and dropped onto the branch next to me. We lowered our masks and gave friendly smiles.

“Is this the point we admit we’re on opposing sides?” I asked, tilting my head slightly.

“We always knew it though,” he replied.

“It was just a polite avoidance of the obvious then,” I nodded, turning my head back towards the camp, where Kenshin appeared to be looking for someone. “Your Lord is missing you.”

“I heard your brother was nearly sent into a panic when you were sent out by yourself,” Sasuke countered.

I smirked and then gave the man a kiss on his cheek before disappearing back the way I came. My ears were honed to catch any sounds of being followed before I chose to drop back in on Kojiro.

“I’m surprised to see you again,” the aide eyed me up.

“There’s only one ninja in both forces who stands a chance at catching me, and he found me,” I shrugged, “Any intel you need me to feedback?”

Mitsuhide was expressing emotions when I returned, and it was surprising to us all. He had decided that regardless of the wormhole problem, I was definitely his little sister, that we looked like mirror images were starting to push doubt into my mind that I wasn’t. Then I remembered that Sasuke had taken my bandana and I hadn’t retrieved it as every warlord was staring at me during my report to Nobunaga.

“And your head covering?” Oda asked, an unimpressed look in his eyes.

“Kenshin has a ninja that’s really close to him, and he got close enough to grab that piece of fabric. That’s all that happened in that encounter,” I replied with a casual shrug.

“If you are still doubting that you are Mitsuhide’s sister, then what just happened is a prime example of how you are,” Hideyoshi snapped.

“I can accept falling through one wormhole, not two,” I replied before going to leave.

“I won’t tolerate failure Natsuki,” Oda’s voice was that of fact.

“Who said I’d failed? I might be able to learn more about this ninja now we’ve established he’s interested in me,” I replied, a smirk over my shoulder to my boss.

I wasn’t sure who had initiated what, but each kiss was never enough as I was pinned to the floor underneath Sasuke. We had gone looking for each other and found the other in a small clearing halfway between the camps. It had been a simple small talk at first, then we’d gotten onto the topic of how I could be Mitsuhide’s sister as he continued his explanation that the wormhole that brought us to the Sengoku had been chasing to get me back here. I didn’t know just how anxious I had been about my childhood. I shared about all of the teasing I had growing up, and how I was passed from foster home to foster home because who wanted a teenage delinquent who was smart enough to break into government properties and then have the balls to go back to tell them what she’d done. He was fixing the bandana back into my hair, the moonlight kept illuminating it, and we wanted to stay hidden in our little bubble for just a bit longer. For someone who had such a stoic outside, he was bursting with passion on the inside as my fingers were tangled in his thick, shaggy brown locks.

A chuckle made us both freeze, and we found that we were facing my brother after turning our heads slowly.

“I didn’t think the interest was anything but mutual, Imoto,” he smirked. “Though hearing how you grew up exactly is nothing short of heartbreaking,” he paused and took a seat next to us. “Is the world still that cruel?”

“Not for everyone, I had no family,” I replied, reluctant to lose complete body contact with Sasuke as I entwined our fingers. “I didn’t look like anyone else, and standing out meant that I got all the anger because they could justify it to people who couldn’t care less.”

“It was terrible when you left,” Mitsuhide’s voice wavered slightly, to most people I imagine they wouldn’t have caught it as I stared at the white haired male. “Our parents spent their time scouring the country for you, every time someone came to us with news, they were hopeful. You disappeared without a trace.”

“Like I just fell through a wormhole,” I murmured, taking the time to try and push my memories.

Then I felt the weight of Mitsuhide’s head on my shoulder. “You were always up to no good,” he chuckled. “And you’d never hear me sneak up, so I’d catch you out like this. And I’ve seen the expressions on your face in reflections, you know this feels familiar and safe otherwise you would have already punched me.”

“The thought has crossed my mind,” I replied, trying to keep aloof of the whirlpool that I was skating dangerously close to.

“And ninja, I don’t care what side you’re on, I won’t mention anything unless you hurt my sister,” Akechi promised before kissing me on the forehead and disappearing back into the forest.

“This won’t be easy to keep quiet,” Sasuke spoke up. “Though I get the feeling we do have a supporter in your brother at least.”

I rested my head on his shoulder. “It could be worse,” I smiled after a short silence, and a smile. “I know exactly where your fingers were going, and we could have been a lot less clothed when he found us.”

[kyogre-blue]

Nanowrimo, day 12 (wc 1568)

“A trading company?” Alibaba repeated.

“That’s right. I’m going with Hinahoho and Rurumu, and I’ll take the chance to negotiate with the national chief to give us exclusive trading rights.” Thinking for a moment, Sinbad added, “And a fleet. Since we picked up so many people, we’ll need a bigger ship.” 

“Planning to scam him quite a bit, aren’t you?” Alibaba noted dryly. 

Sinbad grinned unrepentantly. “What, do you think I can’t?” 

“No, you’ll definitely do it,” Alibaba said. The level of charisma required was just unfair, but he knew that Sinbad would succeed. After all, the kingdom of Sindria had been born out of the Sindria Trading Company. 

It was kind of exciting to witness it himself.

Satisfied, Sinbad nodded. “Then once we have the goods, we can head back to Balbadd and open our first office. We’ll be counting on you for the local contacts.” 

“Hey, when did I agree to join?” Alibaba protested — nevermind that all of his supposed contacts would be a decade too early to use, and even his knowledge of the local trade laws wouldn’t match up exactly. However, as a merchant, he couldn’t help considering it. “Well, it’s a good idea to set up in a trading hub like Balbadd,” he said slowly. “But the distance will be prohibitive, especially if you want to ship anything perishable. Also, Imuchakk is not known in the southeast, so you will need to do additional work to build up interest.” 

“...” Somewhat at a loss over this sudden lecture, Sinbad could only lean back and listen. 

“Compared to that, starting in Reim might be a better choice,” Alibaba mused. “Napolia on the coast is no less of a trading hub, but it’s much closer. Reim is a major market in its own right too. And it’s much more familiar with Imuchakk… although maybe not in the most flattering light. On the other hand, you’ll need to find out what their trading requirements are and probably get a license. ...And you won’t be able to see Madam Esra for a while. What do you think?” 

“...Reim, huh? I admit, I’m curious about that place,” Sinbad said. “Why not? Let’s start there. Since you’re so knowledgeable, we’ll be counting on you!” 

“And I’m telling you, I don’t remember joining,” Alibaba shot back. 

“You don’t want to?” Sinbad asked, raising his eyebrows pointedly. “You don’t think it’s exciting? You love this merchant stuff, I saw you haggling and doing those investments at Balbadd. Think about it, we’re creating a whole new trading company. There hasn’t been one like ever before! And I don’t plan to stop with just Imuchakk, you know. I meant what I said — I’ll connect the world. This is just the first step. You don’t want to be part of that?” 

He looked infuriatingly sure of himself as he gestured with one hand as if holding it out to Alibaba. He really did have a way of pulling people along in his wake, making them believe in the shining dream he spoke of. Alibaba wasn’t sure whether it was better or worse knowing that he really would succeed in everything he claimed. 

It was very tempting. 

He really was very tempted. After all, it wasn’t like he had a way of getting back. So far, it seemed like it had been some kind of freak chance that landed him in this dimension. Maybe he was stuck there forever anyway. Maybe it was time to give up and accept it. 

...Like hell he could just accept it! 

He still needed to settle his debts in Balbadd, his Balbadd. He still had a promise with Aladdin to fulfill. 

And, frankly, he was tired of wondering whether he was messing up Sinbad’s legendary adventures. This wasn’t where he belonged. It wasn’t his place. 

“There’s still things I need to take care of,” Alibaba explained vaguely. 

“Mm-hm. So where are you going after this?” 

Alibaba thought for a moment, then had to make a face. “...Reim, probably,” he admitted. That was one of the two remaining leads Yunan had given him — a girl named Scheherazade and the Musta’sim magic academy. 

“Oh, what a coincidence!” Sinbad gave him a smug grin. “At this rate, I’ll start thinking you’re just looking for excuses to stay close to me. There’s no need, you know, my Sindria Company will always have a place for you.” Leaning in close, Sinbad tried to trick he had learned recently. “I need you. We can’t do it without you.” 

“Ha ha,” Alibaba said dryly — because he knew that Sinbad very much did not. Grabbing the side of his face, he pushed the troublesome future king straight into the nearest snowbank. 

~.~ 

Chapter 7: Napolia

There was no blockade around Napolia. That was the first thing Sinbad noticed. No navy ships patrolling every approach, no catapults and ballistas lining the entrance to the port, just a few watch towers that were barely distinguishable from the surrounding buildings. 

It was nothing like his old home. 

Perhaps it wasn't a fair comparison, since Contastia had never been hailed as the second most prosperous city in Partevia. But thinking about it, Sinbad wasn't sure if such a place even existed in Partevia to begin with. Everywhere had been drained dry by the war. Any ship going in or out of the country needed to pass through security checks so tight it was almost infeasible, and the few merchant vessels Sinbad had accompanied from one internal port to another had sailed with half empty holds. 

He'd heard once at the tavern after a job that it hadn't always been like that. Partevia had once had a bustling trading port as well -- an island, in fact, dedicated to trade with every corner of the world. But it had been judged indefensible and forcefully abandoned when the war intensified, before Sinbad was even born. 

Napolia wasn't very defensible either, and yet here it was, prospering.  

It took considerable effort for Sinbad to remain standing proudly at the prow without craning his neck at every passing ship, the buildings along the shore, and the tiny figures of the people in every imaginable garb and style. He didn't want to look like the small town hick he was -- because he was representing the Sindria Trading Company now, because looking lost and wide eyed was a good way to become a mark, and because Ja'far had already mocked him plenty on the way -- but it was very hard. 

“My goodness, it’s quite busy,” Rurumu murmured. “In all this, will we be able to dock safely?” 

“We’ll be fine. In a place like Napolia, they will have ways of managing it,” Alibaba assured her. “The port authorities will send someone over. Look, that’s them over there.” 

He pointed to a small ship sporting several rows on either side, quickly cutting through the waves toward them. A man waved a bright flag toward them and, receiving Alibaba’s acknowledgement, made some kind of gesture, which Alibaba appeared to also understand. 

“Okay, head toward that dock there,” Alibaba told the others. “We’ll be in the fifth spot from the end.” 

As Hinahoho and Mahad guided their ship toward the right dock, he and Rurumu began a quiet discussion regarding the management of major ports -- something that was apparently not entirely standardized, but there were certain conventions that could be expected. Part of it was to avoid any accidents and better manage space along the docks, but part of it had to do with politics and avoiding putting vessels from unfriendly countries next to each other of slighting a foreign delegation by leaving them to dock at a less used pier. 

Sinbad listened in with half an ear. There was still a lot that went over his head, no matter how much ground Rurumu had managed to cover in her merciless training during the journey. And there were things like this that even Rurumu didn’t know. Although the national chief Rametoto had given her an extensive education, international trading had not been widely covered for obvious reasons. She had made do while teaching them by combining economics and diplomacy, but certain things would naturally fall through the cracks. 

Now that they were getting closer to shore, the unique design of their Imuchakk vessel was beginning to draw attention from the masses rushing along the docks. Sinbad could imagine their whispers of interest, and he did his best to look even more dashing. 

Ah, he couldn’t wait to explore everything... 

Alibaba’s voice trailed off distractedly in mid-discussion, and his head turned as he stared, frowning, at a docked ship they were passing by. 

“What’s wrong?” Sinbad asked. “It’s got a Balbadd flag, but that shouldn’t be a problem, right?” 

“It has a coat of arms too. It’s an official vessel of the court,” Alibaba said, finally tearing his gaze away. He shook his head as if trying to get rid of some troublesome thought. “It’s fine. It’s probably just an ambassador or something. There’s no way it could be the king himself, he can’t travel this far...” 

For some reason, he laughed nervously and repeated, “There’s no way.” 

Sinbad exchanged a look with Rurumu. She shook her head. 

“Do you want me to buy a new headscarf?” Sinbad offered judiciously, and very seriously mimed wrapping up his head like ‘Ali’ had done in Balbadd. 

The flat look he received was completely undeserved.