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mcfreakin-bxtch · 4 years

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Playing with Fire

Part Five of the Just this Once Series

Warnings: Smut (no actual smut tho guys sorry), Masturbation (f), Teasing, Language, Dirty talk, Terrible Star Wars knowledge

Word Count: 2.3K+

Summary: A tease through the links and a bet fulfilled.

A/N: This chapter is a little short, but I hope you all enjoy! This may seem a little anti climatic and messy but that’s on me guys, that’s my bad. Also this may seem different in tone if that makes sense? The next one will be more smutty goodness but with some injuries (and yes i used another random star wars planet don’t kill mee)

You’ve finally figured it out.

After about a week of travelling to your next destination, it finally occurs to you to just play at his own game. You know—fingering you in a crowded cantina, smirking to himself while you struggled to stay quiet in that fucking booth...

But first, you must say that Edis is a strange place. Rain falling at every hour with apparently no signs of ever letting up, and the humidity is unforgiving—how Mando is handling it in all that armor and padding, you’re almost too afraid to ask, because there’s just no way that he’s comfortable, and an uncomfortable Mando can lead to a grumpy one.

Maker you’re grumpy yourself if you’re being honest. The Child has been restless lately, like the heat is getting to him as well, and that’s been taking a toll on your (already) poor sleep schedule; Mando tries to help, but there’s only so much he can do. However, it has given you the chance to think of the perfect payback for your little deal—or bet is a better word—and you gotta say, you’re a little proud of yourself for coming up with this evil—and small—tryst in the first place.

If it’ll work the way you want it to, time will tell.

“Were you even listening?”

The modulated crackle startles you from your thoughts. You turn in the pilot’s seat, making contact with the visor and the stiffness of his posture confirms your suspicions—he’s hot and grumpy.

“Sorry,” you mumble. “Lost in my thoughts.”

He doesn’t acknowledge it. “I’m leaving. They should be nearby, and everything should work out as long as you and the ship stay hidden.”

Like anyone could. Mando isn’t messing around on this one—well, the man doesn’t mess around with anything, actually—and he’s made damn sure that not only are you available with a few weapons nearby (some hidden, of course, just in case), but that the Razor Crest is shadowed by towering trees a bushes in this small part of the rainforest; it’s nearly impossible to even see the gunk through the one of the thickest part of the forest. If anything finds you, they most likely won’t come back alive.

“Okay. Good luck.”

He gives you one nod and the cape whips as he turns around, strutting towards the ladder as you follow behind. Mando checks on the kid—sitting up in the middle of the haul with a few little toys surrounding him—and gives him a gentle caress of his floppy ear before using his vambrace to open the ramp. He doesn’t give you a glance back, and that’s okay with you, but you can’t deny the slight stinging in your chest when he disappears into the foreign planet.

“Alright little guy,” you say with a grunt as you plop down on the floor next to the Child. “Let’s figure out what to do.”

***

Ten days.

Mando has been gone longer on bounties like this, believe or not, but that still doesn’t ease your increasing anxiety when the com link stays silent; you suppose you’re used to the quickness of his updates.

Today, after hours of entertaining the baby the best you could, you can finally settle comfortably in the pilot’s chair… but now what?

Sleep, your body says, because what else is there really to do? Don’t, your mind tells you, because you have the baby here alone on an unfamiliar planet and anything could happen. A part of you wants to go out and check the foreign terrain. One look shouldn’t hurt—

“Hey,” his voice speaks through in statics.

You quickly fumble with the com, feeling like a clumsy mess when you almost drop it in your haste; he’s caught you by surprise, for about the hundredth time.

“Y-yeah. Yeah I’m here,” you stammer.

“Not so close,” he tells you, annoyed and tired.

You wince and pull your hand back from your mouth. “Sorry. Good news, I hope?”

“Yes. And no. It’ll be at least a few days before we’re out of here.”

That sucks.

You suspect that the quarry is indeed with him by the short words, and that’s okay, because with your plan now in the front of your brain, fresh anew like the first time you cococked it in the wake of sleep, washing your quick irritation away, your chance is finally here.

“Mando,” you say as sweetly as you can—your heart skips a beat when there’s a moment of silence. “They can’t hear me, right?” you continue before you can find out if the com is dead or not.

This is incredibly risky. Even a little unfair of sorts, given that he’s technically working right now, and that leaves no room for games or distractions—the moment is just too good to pass up.

Another minute goes by. You sink in your chair in disappointment, ready to admit defeat.

“Not now.”

Yes.

“This was part of the deal, Mando,” you remind him. “And I’m already starting to get wet.”

That isn’t a lie. The slickness of your arousal is starting to seep from your core—fourteen days (counting the week it took to get here) is a long time, and as long as you can get him to keep talking, this will work beautifully for you.

A pause. “I can’t…”

“I’ll do all the talking,” you lick your lips and slink down comfortably, sliding your hand along the length of your neck, imagining it’s his hand wrapping around your throat. “You just listen. You can do that, can’t you?”

You wait, and for a split second you’re afraid that, yet again, you’ve done something wrong. You really have to start working on that.

“You don’t—”

“Okay.”

Maker. Maker okay.

“I uh—” what were you going to say to him when you thought of this in the first place? “I… you know what I think about when you’re gone?” You know he can’t answer much, not without giving himself away, but you pause anyway for dramatic effect. “First, I imagine you stalking towards me like you always do… like I’m one of your bounties.”

Your pussy quivers in excitement as you close your eyes and picture him doing just that, sliding your hand down to your chest, groping your covered breast and trying to mimic the same amount of pressure he applies to them—you really wish it was his hand instead.

“Then you cage me in, leaving me with nowhere to go. There’s a specific type of exceleration to it. One that makes things even more… exciting.” You pinch your nipple and whine, loud enough to give him a good show—Stars you hope that quarry can’t hear you through the baskar bucket of his. “You like to drag it out, to watch me shiver in anticipation, and fuck if I don’t like it either.”

You can hear the light breathing through the comlink. A spark of victory, early victory, runs through your body and straight to your pussy, neglected and hungry for any type of friction.

“And then,” your hand slides further down to the waistline of your pants, fumbling with the buttons. “You touch me. Softly, at first, because you love to tease—” a barely audible sigh interrupts, bringing a cheeky grin to your lips. “—and I think you’re an ass man, because you never miss a chance to lay your hands on mine.” Your fingers slither their way under your panties; your inner thighs twitch at the first brush of your finger against your aching clit, and more slickness escapes your cunt. “And you ghost your fingers over my breasts, down my stomach, over my hips where you like to grip them tight, to my dripping pussy…”

Not a peep from the com. You’re surprised he’s kept his composure. You shouldn’t be, yet a part of you is.

“And,” you go on with a moan. “When I feel your thick fingers paw at me, rip my clothes off and fuck my pussy deep, getting me ready for your big cock while your teeth scrapes against my neck—oh fuck…” The curse slips from your lips without warrant; your fingers buried in your pussy like you’re explaining to him. “My fingers are not the same—” you bite down on your lip as you curve your fingers, delicately trying to find the spot Mando finds with precision. “They don’t make me feel as full as yours do. But I’m still fucking myself with them, Mando. While you’re out there, and I’m in here… it sucks, doesn’t it. Having to stay quiet when all’s you want to do is fuck me until I can feel you for days and day after, your cum leaking from me, and who knows, maybe I won’t even let you cum.”

“You will,” he nearly growls, and that’s an early sign you’re in a world of trouble when he does get back. “That’s part of the deal.”

“...What...deal…”

The faint voice cuts in annoyingly, and Mando shoots back with a decent threat that’d make you terrified for your life; again, it’s probably wrong that it does nothing to deteriorate the fluttering of your wet muscles.

“Keep going,” his tone leaves no room for argument.

Your fingers move faster. “I think you should be a little nicer to me,” you sigh dramatically. “You’ve been gone for so long, leaving me all by lonesome… you like to do this a lot I’ve realized, leave me high and dry. But you might have a chance to fuck my face if you’re a good boy.”

You have to stifle your giggle at the last bit.

“Yeah, you’d like that,” you coo. “And I’d swallow every drop.”

A barely audible exhale filters through the link. You’re right there with him, your face scrunched in concentration.

“I’m happy as long as you’re inside me,” you continue on with delight. “You’re an asshole sometimes, but you can fuck.”

Mando sighs again, this time feigned with theatorical frustration—well in his case, it may be truthful, but it sounds more for the quarry’s (and yours) benefit than the latter.

This is more of an ego boost for him more than anything as well, if you think about it, but as long as you get him riled up and you cum, that’s enough for you. So you curve your fingers the best you can given the compromised position and flick your thumb against your clit, images of his gloves sliding down your pants in the cantina playing through on repeat. This time you moan louder for your own amusement, imagining him struggle; it’s sweet, sweet revenge.

“And?” He asks suddenly—calm and steady.

His voice, even modulated like that, makes your muscles twitch as the coil in your lower stomach boils to a tight flame, and the sloshes of your fingers slinking in and out of you adds to the euphoria clawing through your core.

“Your cock,” you whimper. “Stretches me out so good every time. You’re so big, Mando, so thick in every way and it feels amazing. I bet you miss the way my sweet cunt clenches around you.” You bite down on your lip to hide a groan, wanting to hear his response as your fingers move even faster, scratching against the itch. “Don’t you?”

Your pussy flutters around your fingers at the first scrape against your sweet spot (finally!), and—well fuck, you’ve never seen much of him to actually picture what his cock looks like driving in and out of you at the verioucious pace he usually chooses, so this is a little bit difficult than you thought it’d be; as long as you keep fucking yourself like this…

“Yes.”

Your breath shakes as you exhale. “Shit I wish you were here right now,” you rub your clit harder. “I-I want you to fuck me so hard when you get back, Mando. Want you to—hmm—to grab me so hard that I have bruises the next day. Use me. And you’d come right in my tight little pussy, isn’t that right?”

You don’t expect him to answer this time. Not when you’re so gone in your little cheraid and your pussy clenches harder and harder until there’s nothing but white noise tying you down to this moment.

“Fuck. Fuck I’m so close.”

You try to conjure the feelings Mando gives you—the feel of his hands, pressing down all over you, fingers leaving indents in your skin, his mouth on your neck, biting down on the sensitive flesh until you’re marked; the drag of his cock along your slick walls until there’s tears in your eyes and you can feel him all the way to your cervix.

“Mando,” you whine, then bite down on your lip again; the Child certainly doesn’t need to hear this. “I… I need to hear you. Say something, anything.”

“Go ahead,” gruffer, close to a grunt—your pussy gushes at that. “Now.”

The command is clear, and it’s not going to take you that much to ride the waves of your orgasm starting to crash down over you. Your moans and whimpers trapped behind tight closed lips and your fingers covered in your juices, it takes a few more curves of your fingers and tight circles on your clit to feel the hard and delectable clench of your inner muscles.

“Yes,” your body trembles. “Oh Ma—” You hide the rest of the plea behind a muffled scream as short bursts of pleasure sparks through your entire body, your fingers trapped in the squeeze of your cunt as more juices flood down the slope of your ass, milking every drop of your orgasm.

After a few long moments your tense muscles relax and deflate, relieved and satisfied. Though, the only problem is that it is short lived, an orgasm small enough to hold you over until the real deal comes back. Speaking of…

“Mando?” You breathe. “Still with me?”

“I’ll be there soon. Be ready.” And then nothing.

Chuckling to yourself, you wince as you slowly pull your fingers out, wiping your slick covered fingers on your pants.

And now you wait.

For however long that’ll fucking be.

#the mandalorian #the mandalorian x reader #the mandalorian x you #din djarin #din djarin x reader #din djarin x you #fanfic #the mandalorian imagines #pedro pascal

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batarella · 4 years

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3 birds 1 stone - chapter 12

‘Dick, Jason, and Tim. Supposed brothers 'till the end, until all three fall in love with you. Who wins your heart?

The man who earned it, the man who stole it, or the man who always had it?’

A/N: We continue the three perspectives!!! AND we got special appearances from a few characters today eeeeee we’re so close to the finale. Hope you guys enjoy this one!

WORDS: 12,068 WARNINGS: violence, arm dislocation, muscle injuries, alcoholism, mentions of coffee addiction and insomnia

MASTERLIST | 3 BIRDS 1 STONE MASTERLIST

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Dick:

That day, this all ends.

Telling himself he got into this mess because he hadn’t a choice, that he hadn’t already stopped because it was all just too riveting and captivating and not at all within his control, was nothing short of a lie.

He had every say in it.

But not even his fucking conscience could convince him to stop. He wanted this mess. Dove right into the lava. He knew every bit of the heartbreak he’d have to endure and he willingly brought it to himself. To get lost into the deep dark woods, with nothing more than an oil lamp, to be pricked by the many thorns and suffocated by the leaves and trees that crowd about much like a bush. To get lost in her, and never want to climb out of any of it. He knew how slippery the road ahead of him was and still he kept going, kept driving, sped up a little even when he thought he’d actually get to where the stars pointed him to.

But so profoundly was his loss of himself, without much effort at all to escape from those grasps even when he told himself he did; going to another woman, wanting the same arrest of his heart to hopefully take him away, but without halting those thoughts of Y/N and how her smile that he’d seen earlier that day would last until dark, maybe even beyond that. Those flares of her face and her voice and how he let them speak to her every night, change them into burning whispers against his ear when he’s memorized her voice too much to make her say anything he wanted her to, even when they only last in his head.

Dick never tried to stop her from taking her heart like that, even when he had to watch her be with another.

Tonight, it all ends. Every bit of this torture that he brought only to himself, it all comes to this sorry halt.

Dick, standing atop a roof of an office building in Dresher, knew that at that moment, he had to sit this one down. He had to be alone and in the darkness to make this as painful as it possibly could, hoping that if all that pain were to be felt now, compress them into this little tub of static blackness, then perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad the next day, and the day after that. Even when he knew this would backfire, he had to.

No one, especially not Y/N, would want him to end up with her. Tim deserved her. Hell, even Jason’s done a lot more for her sake than he had. He can't hope anymore. He can't let this go on.

All this would have gone better if he’d known this sooner.

So with him on that rooftop, sitting on the ledge fifty stories above as if not at all was he a push away from death, Dick let his finger scroll across his phone’s screen moist from his sweat. The battery was going to run out soon. He’d been there for hours, staring at that same picture of her from the day in the nursery, when the sun had been kind to her, touching the surface of her skin so perfectly, it showed more of the little details that he’d already memorized. Those exact images would be thrown out by the end of tonight. Pack their bags. Scram them out the door.

It had, as expected, proven to be difficult.

The thirty-seven pictures he took that day, he’d already heartly remembered by the end of it. Countless of times, he pulled them out of his pocket just to take a second to look, even at the worst. Another month had passed and nothing had happened much since, nothing out the ordinary, which meant their friendship was back to how it used to be. They were friends.

And that was why it ends tonight. Because if he doesn’t fight these thoughts, if he doesn’t fight her, he loses her. He loses this friendship.

Are you sure you want to delete this photo?

Confirm.

Thirty-six times, he let his finger do the talking. Not his heart. Not even his brain.

At the last one, the screen was too distorted by a fallen tear that had seeped out of his domino mask for him to go on. It was the only hindrance he needed to give up and stop. At least for a second.

But he couldn’t even dwell on it too much, or let himself cry, let it burn his skin off enough so it wouldn’t hurt any more afterwards. He couldn’t even let himself have that luxury when he heard the thudding noise of his brother’s boot-cladded feet, a Bo staff that hit the ground, and a black cape that enforced a gust of wind to blow against the back of his head.

Dick just closed his eyes, and just after that, Tim walked over to stand right behind him.

Greatest Detective in the World. But even an idiot would know what he was up to, sitting in the darkness crying while his feet dangle off a rooftop’s ledge, eyes to his phone like he was reading the saddest sob story in the whole world or that he’d just received a text that one of his loved ones’ lives had been taken away from cancer.

The way Tim was silent, he knew.

And Dick just let him believe it, without even a word to explain himself, he did. He let Tim’s mind do the figuring out and the explaining because not even his own words would be half that truth.

Tim’s voice that night wasn’t the kind he heard often.

“You think this is the right time for that, Dick?”

A crack on his knuckles, his throat sounding rough and beaten, Dick didn’t know what to even say.

“We called you fifteen times over at the bridge. We needed you-“

“Sorry-“

“And it turns out you’ve been at your phone the whole time-“

“You handled it without me.”

“That isn’t the fucking point.”

A month of silence, since that deathly night after they took Y/N home. Several minutes, together in one car, had proven to be one of the most insufferable moments of his life. And not surprisingly, it went on for even more days after that.

Dick turned off his phone, but Tim snatched it away from his hands and walked away so Dick couldn’t grab it.

He stood from the ledge. “Come on, Tim. Not cool.”

“Hmm. Cute,” Tim faked a smile and swiped around the screen, at the last picture of Y/N he had. “Could have sent it to me. And Jason.”

“Tim-“

“But it’s cool,” Tim said. He threw the phone back at Dick and he caught it just before it hit the ground. “All good. Finally, you have something of her all to yourself, right?”

Tim was Tim. Not this. Not someone so angry and grievous and someone who was looking at him that way with so much disgust when he used to be that young boy of fourteen who looked at his older brother like a god. How long, he thought, must he have kept all this frustration bundled up inside, where not even he could reach into. Someone who’s so calm, so in control of what he says, had finally given in and let his annoyance flourish about. He wondered, as anyone would, at what point Tim had finally had enough of all of this.

“Tim, please-“

“You,” Tim pointed his gloved finger right at Dick’s face.

“You were supposed to be my brother.”

Tim:

Of course, he’s had enough.

He’s had enough of all this a lot longer than anyone else, even he, would have thought.

It might have been since that day Y/N was crying over an argument they once had, over something he can't even remember, that almost pried them apart, only for Dick to come along and console her without telling Tim where he was, and he only knew because Y/N told him what happened. If she hadn’t, Tim wouldn’t have known.

He wouldn’t have known Dick had long been pining over the love of his life, never mind how she was in his arms and kissing his lips and calling for his name.

Dick, who could have literally anyone he could possibly wish for, just had to want her.

“What do you want me to say?” The asshole started after a moment’s silence, of nothing but a helicopter’s whirl from far above, the lack of light from everywhere around them, and their footsteps against the empty cement.

He couldn’t even look at his brother in the eye with his mask on, but he knew enough to know what he felt. It didn’t matter if he was sincere. It didn’t even matter that he cried.

“Nothing,” Tim said. “You’ve done your damage.”

“Damage?”

“You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

“Enlighten me.”

Tim scoffed and faked yet another laugh. It annoyed himself at that point.

“You are unbelievable-“

“I’m not trying to do anything with her anymo-“

“Don’t even start with that, asshole.”

Tim’s hands were shaking, and subconsciously he tried to repress those tremors, hoping they’d go away if he clenched them enough, but they only got worse.

“She was mine,” he cried. “And you just couldn’t handle that-“

“I never tried anything with her when you were together.” Dick tried to step closer to him but he just backed away.

“So you weren’t just waiting for us to break up so you’d swoop in and be the hero?” he scoffed. “I asked you to make sure she was okay, not take advantage of her hurting just so you’d have your chance.”

“And why did you break up, Tim?” He had the audacity to ask. “You didn’t love her anymore-“

“You knew I still did-“

“Then why hurt her?!”

“Because I was hurting her anyway!”

Never. He’s never been this angry. Not that he could recall.

“I was 17. Everything about me changed. Wayne Enterprises. Red Robin. Fucking Bruce dying and coming back to life. She was there but I was about to lose my fucking mind. I thought she didn’t have a place in all that mess anymore so I broke it off.”

Finally, he stepped close enough to Dick, almost to leveling with his height. His brother had his lips hidden, hands falling to his sides.

He looked terrified.

“Two seconds after that, I never regret anything more my whole fucking life. I thought talking to you would make her feel better, but you just couldn’t help but bat your pretty little eyes at her when she was vulnerable. I wanted to go back but I couldn’t ‘cuz you were already there!”

He was snarling, and a growl escaped his throat by the time he backed away. Tim didn’t even get to hear himself until he saw his own reflection in the white of Dick’s mask.

But Dick. He didn’t even take it as a hint to just shut up and take his rambling.

“I never meant to keep her away from you-“

“I went to you, Dick.” Tim wiped his lips with the back of his gloves, watched over to the next building to avoid his brother’s face. “I always went to you for help. With her. You know how long I’ve wanted her. And I went to you because I thought you were my brother and you’d help me.”

“I did help you!”

“You were helping yourself!”

His hands slammed against Dick’s chest, and it was a good thing he didn’t fight back. He would have just taken that as an excuse to keep hitting.

“Tim,” Dick held his hands up. Tim backed away. “Just go to her-“

“THIS ISNT ABOUT HER ANYMORE, ASSHOLE!”

Hands shoving his chest once again. This time, Dick had caught them, held them by his wrists enough so Tim couldn’t pull them away.

“THIS IS ABOUT YOU AND ME, GRAYSON!” Tim screamed. “WHAT HAPPENED TO HAVING EACH OTHER’S BACKS!”

“YOU THINK IT WAS MY CHOICE TO GET IN BETWEEN YOU!?”

It was from a whip of strength not even he had known prior, but it hurt when he finally could take his hands off of Dick’s grip, and with that, he backed further away, though his eyes couldn’t stray from looking straight into his brother’s.

“IT DOESN’T FUCKING MATTER IF IT WAS-“

“THEN I’M SORRY!’ Dick swallowed. “IS THAT WHAT YOU WANTED TO HEAR?!”

“No,” Tim’s knees hit the railing and so close did he fall, but he kept himself up, rubbed the bottom of his chin with his gloved hand. “You're not sorry…”

Dick’s silence. Even more so did he want to just lunge at him and strangle his vocal chords. No matter how far-fetched, Dick was supposed to tell him all the things he wanted him to say. So far, he’s said none of that.

Dick just watched when Tim turned around to rest his weight onto his palms, looking out into the open seeking for just about any kind of help there was that he could call out from the wind, but there was nothing.

“You're right,” Dick said, and Tim felt the cement crack from beneath his palms. “I’m not sorry.”

“Fucking bold of you-”

“What would have happened to her if I hadn’t stepped in?” He heard Dick’s voice louder and clearer, which meant he was walking closer towards him.

“I would have come back. I always wanted to come back, but by then she was all over you. I couldn’t-“

Tim looked at his own hands. “I had it coming. I can't blame her.”

Another whiff of air, and it blew the strands of his black locks right onto his eyelids. They stung, but he didn’t push them away. He just kept his eyes locked onto the blankness of the gray, the dark that went all the way into his spirit.

“But I do blame you-“

“Tim, you hurt her-”

“AND YOU HAVENT?!”

Dick caught his Bo staff, which Tim had thrown right at him as swiftly as he turned around. His mouth was as dry as his palms were sweating. His teeth were close to breaking. And his eyes dangerously drifting off into some unknown nowhere just so he wouldn’t have to look at such betrayal.

“Tim-“

Tim was shaking, or at least his hands were, when he gave into his impulses and moved so fast, grabbing Dick by the collar and standing him down.

“You stand there blaming me for all that hurt when here you are-“

“What the hell do you want me to say to you?!”

He was strong, stronger than any one of them would have thought. Dick couldn’t even move, much less out of shock than it was out of his hold on him too overwhelming to counter.

“Tim, this isn’t like you-“

“You have no idea what I’ll do,” Tim growled. “Why do you think I became Red Robin?”

To separate himself from the likes of what it used to be. To not be Robin anymore. To stray away from his ideals, ideals and morals no longer his.

Because he was, in his truest capacity, capable of much darker things than people seem to know. Even his own brother.

“I hate you-“

Dick, who took that second to take advantage of weakness, grabbed him by the wrists and pushed him off with the soles of his feet, not enough to send him to the ground but enough to almost topple him. And when he looked up, immediately, Tim’s fist headed for his brother’s head, but again it was caught by Dick’s palm.

“HEY, HEY, HEY, ENOUGH! BOTH OF YOU!”

A much deeper, louder voice, the third one to be heard that night. It was that, and two strong arms that grabbed Tim by the shoulder and Dick by his suit’s back. Even when it wasn’t even to much effect, they stopped.

At least, for a second they did, before Tim started for Dick’s neck and he had to be held back with a strong hand right against his chest. “Let me go!”

“What the hell is going on with you two!?”

“Stay out of this Jason!”

It was easier for Jason to stand right in between, just to stop either of them from going after their skin. Dick had stopped. Tim, on the other hand, had to be held back by the shoulders. “Tim, calm down!”

“I said stay out of this!”

Jason:

“One of you pinheads tell me what’s going on!”

“Are you really gonna let Jason fight your battles, Dick?!”

Tim tried to push Jason out of the way. He was lucky, in fact, that none of them could see the irate look on his face hidden behind the safety of a red helmet. Otherwise they might have started for him too, just at how disgusted he looked at them both. And he had every right to be. He knew exactly why they were fighting. It was the devil in him who felt like asking.

Jason held him back with his cape. “Hey, KNOCK IT OFF-“

“Let go of me!”

“You don’t think I wanna bash this asshole’s brains out everyday, Tim?!” Jason hauled him to the floor. “Trust me. You can hold back.”

“Oh, fuck you, Todd.”

“You shut up.” Jason pointed at Dick. “If this is about Y/N I know exactly why Tim wants you dead.”

“And why am I the one you two’re ganging up on?!”

“If I was, Dick, I’d just let this one have at it with you. Thank me later.” Jason said, nodding over at Tim. Tim shrugged off his brother’s hold on him and frowned.

“You were never the one to trust, Dick,” Tim gulped. And Jason knew Dick would have thought the same. His flaring eyes, the burn that was almost never there from someone so usually calm. It was unnerving seeing Tim this way. “Look at everyone you’ve hurt. Y/N. Kori. When are you going to stop?”

“Don’t you fucking start with me, you little-“

“Hey! Knock it off!” Jason pushed Dick again with a shove of his hand. Dick stepped back.

“Jason, just get out of here -“

“I don’t know, man; Feels like I have to be the responsible one. For once.”

Tim grabbed Jason’s hand and hauled him to the side so he could step closer to where Dick was standing. “You don’t want to be a part of this.”

Jason, if not at all wanting that to be true in the slightest sense, didn’t fight back and took Tim’s shoving. But, as he’d thought, Dick was the one who looked at him so slyly he wanted to grab his lips and use them to haul him over the building.

Suddenly, every part of his skin wanted to burst, blood beating through every inch of vessel and flesh so much it burned him. His mouth sewed shut, ears hurting at the redness. Again, if not for the helmet, it would have been a dead giveaway.

But Dick wasn’t having it.

“Trust me, Tim. He already is.”

“What the hell do you mean-“

“I said, enough. You two settle this at home.”

Jason tried for Dick’s shoulder just to push him to back away, but he threw his hand off.

“Don’t fucking act like the good guy between the three of us,” Dick said. “What are you gonna say next? That this isn’t what Y/N would want?”

“You think it is?!”

Dick chortled and he turned away. Tim still wouldn’t let his glare away from his brother and if Jason would let him, he’d have mauled him to death.

“You always did think you knew what was best for her, didn’t you?”

“Jason, what the hell is he talking about?”

He never told him. The bastard never told Tim when he was so sure he would, when he basically told him that night outside Y/N’s doorstep that by the end of the hour, Tim would know what he’d done and he’d have found Jason by the next, even when he tries too hard to disappear, which he had tried to do for four months, hiding from his brother, and not long after he’ll never be welcomed into the manor as so much as a guest. It did surprise him, after many months, that Tim hadn’t so much as acknowledged it. Part of him wanted to believe Tim didn’t care, or had already forgiven Y/N and in turn forgiven him.

But, of course, Dick hadn’t told him. The asshole wanted this to drag out as painfully long as he possibly could. Make him carry that burden himself just because he thought it was right, as Tim’s brother, even when he wanted no part of those niceties.

“You wanna tell him?” The blue leotard wearing ass said. “Or should I?”

“Don’t fucking bring me into this shitshow-“

“Brother, you walked right into it yourself.”

“I will kill you,” Jason growled. “One of these days.”

“Tell me what?”

Tim’s voice, the softest it had been since the start of that night.

He shouldn’t.

His little brother, one whose relationship had proven far too difficult to build, if there was ever a chance at a good relationship at all. His brother. An established brotherhood he once despised so much, took too many years just for it to be something tolerable. His little brother.

He never had a little brother like Tim. Perhaps even now, he wouldn’t. Not once he knows.

“Tim, I-“

“Jason, tell me what’s going on.”

Dick no longer even had that smirk on him. He just looked sad for the both of them, as he should be. As anyone should be.

“Just tell him.”

So much did his fist want to just fly and land straight at Grayson’s perfectly chiseled cheekbones, break his face so much he wouldn’t live to stand a day.

But Jason had grown too silent, too guilty.

He couldn’t even take off his helmet and look at either of them in the eye.

Tim stepped right in front of him and on his face kind of worry that often lingered prior to it being the worst rage to ever engulf into.

Was there a way out of this? To counter the impact? Make it so it didn’t hurt so much?

If Grayson had just told him, it wouldn’t have to be this way.

“Jason-“

He looked up, and through the slits of his visor, he knew Tim wanted to look at him in the eye, to find something out of this truth.

“I…”

His throat, it hurt to even breath. And when this happened, he usually takes the helmet off. This time, however, he couldn’t do that. Not when he had so much to say despite him not wanting to.

“I slept with her…”

It was a shame Dick didn’t look too much like an ass right then. If he did, he’d have a reason for himself to just jump at him with a knife. But all he could even see, all he could bring himself to watch, was his feet.

Nothing else. Not when Tim was looking at him that way.

“What?”

“I slept with her-“

Tim.

Was it even Tim anymore? The boy in front of him? Who never looked at him with so much betrayal?

“When?”

“A few months ago…” he said. “Lasted about a month.”

Then, it wouldn’t even have mattered if it were him who broke the news, the asshole that Dick was, or the Gotham Times.

Tim.

No longer his little brother. Never will be again.

Right for the neck. That’s where Tim pounced a second less than he was smart enough to move away.

Dick:

That asshole deserved it.

But if anyone deserved it more than Jason did, it was Dick.

Was it to divert Tim’s attention from himself? Give him a breather and a while for Tim’s anger to mellow down taking it out on Jason so he doesn’t take it out on him so much? Possibly.

But the moment Tim’s hands squeezed the living daylights out of Jason’s neck, he knew he shouldn’t have brought it up. It was wrong. This was all wrong.

He started for Tim’s arms, grabbing them both just to at least give Jason enough time to breath, but this newfound strength certainly wasn’t one he’d expected. When he did manage to pull them off, Tim swung his fist right at Dick’s face.

Then, he went back for Jason, who then took that short time to grab both his fists and stop them for hurling him over the roof.

This was his fault. This was his doing.

And all the more did he want this to end when Jason held Tim strong enough to make him scream, and with that, he threw another punch right for his helmet, shattering the visor beneath his bruised knuckles. Jason tried to kick him away with his knee, but Tim was pushing him.

Jason, who should have been a lot stronger, was not doing much to fight Tim. And instead, he tried talking him out of it.

“Tim!” he coughed. Tim still holding both fists went on to push him. “Tim, stop!”

Head slam against his helmet, and it broke, enough for a part of it to be chipped off and expose his forehead.

Jason finally hurled Tim over to the ground just so he could wipe the blood stain off from seeping down his eyes, but that wasn’t much of a good idea. Not when Tim took that as a chance to jump for his brother, grabbing him by the shoulders, and with the forces of their own bodies flying across the wind, the railing wasn’t enough to stop their fall.

Tim and Jason fell over the building, down fifty stories with one’s hands wrapped around the others throat, and Tim went on to strangle him even as they fell.

Dick, without even thinking much, dove into that same abyss. Did he have a plan? No. Was this going to work anyway? Probably not. But he had to try.

At least, it was all he had to do. When Dick leapt, head soaring straight down for a car so miniscule that wouldn’t be so small the more he wastes time, his brothers thrashing bodies that broke the speed of their fall worked to his sorry advantage and Dick managed to catch up.

He grabbed Tim off, thankfully with the fall lessening his grip but not at all did it change the murderous look on his face. This wasn’t his brother. This can't be him. This was someone who had all his frustrations bottled up in the form of coffee addiction, insomnia, and workaholic tendencies, someone who hadn’t vented out his hurt and anger at him, who he apparently had been hating for a while.

When he had him in his grasps, Dick grappled up to the next building. “Jason, hold on!”

It was, in actuality, the worst idea he’s ever come up with. Other than the fact that Tim weighed a good 170 pounds, Jason was no lighter. Not even in the slightest. And carrying both of them? He might as well be hauling up a whole tank.

That one single grappling hook showed them no appreciation despite it holding on the best it could. And it was to no help that the hook landed on a building too far.

They were just yards up the ground when the rope tightened, and the impact on Dick’s arm he was sure had the bone dislocated. A scream was all he could muster at the shooting pains that went all the way up his neck, but still, he held on, and even when it lasted no more than a few seconds, it was all too agonizing not to feel like it lasted hours.

All it took was to at least break the fall, but that was all he could handle. Dick let go of the grapple gun and they were falling across the whole block, across the street over to an abandoned lot with junkyard cars and probably some broken glass scattered across the ground.

Tim landed on top of one of the cars, breaking the windshield under his weight. Jason wasn’t so lucky, rolling across the cold cement with it hitting his helmet, enough to expose his face.

And Dick, with it not helping his arm at all, landed right against the fenced border and fell to the ground. Some wire sticking out might have impaled his skin.

He was breathing. Was he still breathing? There was throbbing. Redness. Blood that went to his eyes, most probably. He could hear his heart and basically the rest of his senses going haywire.

When he looked up, already Tim could stand, right on top of the cars.

Now lacking his Bo staff, Tim smashed the broken metal beneath his feet and pulled out a slab hard enough to break bones.

Tim:

If Dick were smart, he should have let him die.

This was always how he was, how this was all going to boil down to. His so many ways of dealing with loss, heartbreak, and stress, it was never going to hold him back enough if he hadn’t an outlet. And this, tonight, this was all part of the inevitable. He did what he promised Y/N. He kept off the coffee and had eight hours of sleep every day. But did it mean it warded off his thoughts on her? On his brothers? On their betrayal and how much he’d been holding that all off for months? Not even close. In fact, they grew worse.

Who does he start with?

Dick was all the way over at the fence. Wounded. Dislocated arm. He pulled himself up and went for a wall he could smash his shoulder against just to pull back the bone.

And Jason.

Shit.

Should have went for him first.

Two glocks in his hands. This man wasn’t afraid in the slightest.

“Jason, don’t!” Dick cried. Too late. He already shot one of the cars.

Tim spun about just to dodge at least the shattered glass. He was aiming for his legs, at all the parts of his body that wouldn’t be so lethal. How kind of him.

Which meant, that if it were the vital parts of him exposed, Jason wouldn’t shoot.

So he didn’t even try to hide himself, his chest especially, when he hurled himself over the many car hoods and roofs. Jason kept going, and this time he went to shooting the glass on purpose. Probably to hit him with the shards.

Tim reached the wall and pushed his feet so he’d roll on the ground. Cape up, he looked through the many places to hide, but he didn’t want to hide. What he wanted was to grab one of them, any of them, by the shoulders, pin them to the ground, and have his fist have at it with their stupid faces.

He ran up to Jason, cape protecting his legs and arms, and just as he did Dick had crept up behind him, grabbing Jason by a headlock. Elbow to Dick’s chest, he took that as a chance to grab his guns and throw them over to the side. So close did he miss one of the bullets, if grazing his shoulder was ever a miss. But he ignored that hiss and landed a hit on Jason’s stomach.

But not even that could last long, with Jason practically subdued. Dick set Jason aside to block Tim’s fist from landing anywhere near either of them. He kept hitting, swinging, it was all a blur after the third time he felt his shoulders hurt. And Grayson’s was no better. So he aimed for it.

What was he doing?

Foot landing on Dick’s pelvis. It was enough for his body to skid across the ground. He looked up at his brother, teeth gritting so much that it hurt, Tim didn’t move fast enough before he could move away from Dick’s fist, which landed a good one right to his teeth.

Jason:

This was the most ridiculous fight he’s ever been on. No different from a fucking pellet gun war over at the gardens that one time they were drunk and stupid. This was a game, one he really didn’t want to play. He should have known, and what he thought that time was that somehow, she was worth going through all this chaos for. That moment of bliss, that month of beauty and serenity and peace, was it worth this? With his own brothers?

It wouldn’t have been if it was just a month of beauty and serenity and peace. But it wasn’t just about that anymore, was it?

So this had to be worth it. In every way. With Dick and Tim over a few yards away, Dick holding his shoulder and trying so hard to avoid being hit there and Tim so unruly and angry and being so taken over with his rage, not at all was he anything like this before tonight.

He had the choice. To grab the gun that had skidded over to his side, shoot them both in the shoulder to put everything to a stop, or join in on their rumble to drag this out as long as inhumanely possible. Three different men who knew exactly what the others’ moves will be, this wasn’t going to last very long if it were to be a good way.

But, if this were to be dealt with bullets, he can say goodbye to either of them of ever being his brother again, to never be a part of this family so hard to love but love nevertheless.

He stopped his hand from reaching for the gun, and with that, he started for the two.

Jason grabbed Tim’s ankle just before it would have landed on Dick’s chin, threw him to the side so he’d land on the floor.

Dick’s fist, which would have hit Tim, instead hit Jason right at the nape of his neck. He almost toppled over to the ground, and with that flash of rage, he struck back at Dick right at his bad shoulder. Might have been too far. But he didn’t care.

Tim hit his back, right up against his sharp knee. He cried out at the unnerving bellows that went straight to his head, picked himself up just before he hit the ground.

Another hit for his head, but Dick had stopped it with his own hand, twisted Tim’s ankle so he’d once again lose his balance and fall.

Three different men.

Three different fights.

Three men who knew each other far too well to be beaten so easily.

They jostled and rolled about, around the junkyard over so many of the cars and the broken glass and even the fence that had long blown over. This wasn’t at all supposed to be what they’d spend the night on, but with the slabs of metal being thrown, the cars almost hurled up with their peak human strength, their limbs flailing, some barely missing a nerve on their head and some wrecking a whole tooth out of their mouth, it was not, to even some capacity, ever going to end as well as any of them hoped.

And with them at the middle of the barren empty grounds, Jason dodging Dick’s fist only to meet Tim’s knee, Dick being absolutely smothered by Tim’s head smashing against his, and Tim being pinned to the ground by either of his brothers larger than him that he hated so much.

It all would have ended in death, after the kind of blur that clouded so much of their moral thought and any kind of sense at all to remind them of what they were doing, if not for something far too strong for them to easily swerve from.

Or, better yet, three things too strong for them to swerve from.

At a whiff so quick for any of them to have possibly even sensed, a flash of purple was the first to wave off that blur from their eyes. And it went for Tim.

Stephanie was first to subdue him, holding Tim down with her knee landing right at the small of his back. He cried out both at the shock he hadn’t expected and the pulsing pain that probably went all the way up his spine, but he was done. Steph had grabbed Tim’s head and pinned him down right against the floor.

The next one was Dick, and before any of them could even turn, something so brightly blinding, a figure of yellow, fell from one of the cars’ hood and grabbed Dick by the neck. Duke was smaller, but not at all was that some disadvantage. His huge armored arms, locking Dick enough for him to just flail his hands about, it was enough to make him stop.

And, just as he expected, the next thing he saw after that flash of a second he was spared, was a blur of black so silently creeping up on him, Jason couldn’t move even when he knew it was coming. No one could have seen it. Not even him. By the next second, he was bent over one of the cars, hands to his back, and Cassandra had a taser stuck to his hip.

“NO, NO, NO, CASS DON’T-“

Barely enough to fry him unconscious, but enough to fucking electrocute his skin off so his muscles could barely move.

Dick:

This should all have ended sooner than it even happened.

And the shame crept in, not even when he stopped struggling against Duke’s hold on him, but when Barbara, the last to come into the scene, flew in from the window right across.

She looked like she wanted to murder all three of them by a rope around their necks. One single rope. Having three just wouldn’t be worth it.

She took off her cowl and let her red hair fall to her back, so they’d easily see just how disgusted she looked at them all, at the look on her eyes, at the look on all their eyes.

“Duke, let me go-“

“I’m sorry, Dick.”

“Please.”

“If we could, Nightwing,” Babs swallowed. “I’ll have you tied to that streetlamp for the rest of the night.”

Jason tried to reach for something in the car just to kick Cass away, but she tased him again. Some smoke flew up from his flesh.

“Cass, that’s enough,” Babs said.

Cass glared at them all, then settled to just holding Jason down with his arms.

“Is anyone going to tell me what the hell is going on with you three?”

“Maybe if you get your foot out of my head, Steph, I’d actually get my brain back and answer her question,” Tim said.

“You lost your brain when you fell down that building.”

“You saw that?”

Steph snorted. “You’re lucky I didn’t jump in until I had all of us on call.”

“Lucky?!”

Steph twisted Tim’s arm and his cries could be heard over to the next block.

Jason tried, again, to break free from Cass’s hold, but her fist wasn’t one to welcome when it landed much like a bat would’ve right up against Jason’s head.

And Tim, who almost pried Steph’s knee from against his back, was just pinned down again not even a second after breaking free.

They were too tired to go up against any of them.

So Dick, knowing there was no other, prettier way out of this, let go of his hands from gripping too hard on Duke’s arm. He didn’t let go, but it had loosened, enough for him to properly talk. Babs went over to him. That dagger-infested glower stuck through, but at least there was some appreciation for his lack of resistance.

“It was a misunderstanding-“

“Was it?!”

Babs clenched her jaw.

“This is about her, isn’t it-“

Tim’s voice echoed. “No!”

Tim:

He growled and shoved Steph’s hand away, but they kept on his arms, pushing them down against his spine. She was strong enough to subdue him, stronger now that he was exhausted and his muscles were all strained, but that didn’t mean he was, in any way, going to back down from this fight. This wasn’t over.

He could crane his head up enough to look at Babs.

“This is about these two traitors who lied to my face for months!”

Steph was having too much trouble keeping him down. “Tim!”

“Are you really going to take their side?!”

“No one is taking anyone’s side here.”

Babs eyed Cass at least to make her loosen her grip on Jason’s twisted arms. Cass rolled her eyes, sighed, and still without a word, she grabbed Jason by the back of his collar to make him stand. But it wasn’t without her taser stuck up to his side.

“Cass, I’m not gonna fucking fight you-“

“Just shut up, Jay,” Dick said, and with that, Duke tightened his arm.

“They wanna know,” Tim panted. “Tell them all why we’re in this mess.”

His voice, all broken and rageful and so unlike what anyone would have thought. It turned the heads of everyone around. Steph loosened her hand around Tim’s neck much out of her own disbelief.

“Stabbing me in the back the way you did…”

“Tim, you don’t have to-“ Babs went on, but Tim’s screams were too much.

“Tell them! Say why you’re all a bunch of ass-“

“You’re the one who wanted this to be some shitshow!” Jason’s teeth shouldn’t last long with how much he was gritting them when he hissed and snarled at Cass, who poked the taser just beneath his hip.

“Cass, enough with the taser.”

“Yeah, Cass,” Jason said. “Where the hell did you even get that?”

“Some douchey police officer over at Chinatown,” Duke said to him while still keeping his hands on Dick.

Something so foreign, so unruly and aggressive, it was taking too much control over him. Tim’s eyes were burning, and there weren’t even any tears. His blood pulsed through every vein, strong enough for it to hurt, and loud enough for him to hear it through his bloodied ears.

Tim pushed Steph away and for a moment, he was free. He wasn’t even thinking anymore. He just wanted his hands squeezing the voice out of Jason’s neck.

Babs grabbed him by the cape just as Steph caught up, and again he was on the floor. Still, he screamed, thrashed about because everything within him just yelled for him to finally let it out. He was done being the nice guy, done being the brother they both pushed around, took advantage of, lied to, and picked on because they knew he’d never fight back.

“Tim…” Babs helped Steph holding him down. She looked up at Dick. “What the hell did you do to him?”

“Nothing we can't sort out!”

“Jesus, Dick,” Jason snorted. “You haven’t said one smart thing all day.”

“Like you're any better, you asswipe.”

“Enough!”

Babs stood right between them, otherwise they’d have lunged for each other even if they had a missile launcher aimed for their heads.

“Let me go. Duke,” Dick said. “I’m not gonna fight any of you-“

“Yeah, three seconds ago you were close to running Jason’s head through a windshield.”

“Just let me go and we’ll all calmly-“

“Calmly?” Duke laughed. “I saw you fall down that building from where I stood. None of you know what calm is.”

Duke’s voice was stern and not at all did he sound like he’d trust him enough for that, no different than Steph’s or even just the look in Cass’s eyes. Because, if anything, other than the utter disgust, disdain, and disappointment, everything before them was something not to easily believe.

Not long after, before anything even happened, before Tim heard that first trace of a large black cape and the heavy soles that would have broken the cement floor underneath if he hadn’t purposely landed so swiftly, with the shadow that wasn’t in fact a shadow, but a suit so terrifying, dark, and so close to invisible, it was the night in a physicality no two people could similarly describe.

Tim knew he’d get here first, before anyone else even turned their heads. Because he stopped with his cries and faced his untimely doom. Face to the ground, quiet and unmoving. Everyone else followed but that was after he’d already appeared.

Not even anyone from the likes of the worst villains had seen the look on Bruce’s face as close to the one he had right then.

Jason:

If he were alone, he’d just have snorted. The look on Grayson and Drake’s face. Couldn’t be drawn.

He’s seen that same frown on Bruce every time he shoots a damn gun, which was every night. He could paint it by memory and he wouldn’t miss a detail. The squinted white of his eyeholes, his lips forlorn and flat. His hands, clenched enough for it to hurt, hidden beneath his cape. Oh, Dad. Did I do that?

These guys just needed some getting used to.

And he shouldn’t be amused at the fact that at least, for once, he wasn’t the only one in trouble this time. Tim looked ashamed. Dick looked like he’d seen a ghost. Dick should have known this, at least. He’s steered up a few times of trouble himself. Nothing like what he’s done, that’s for sure. But he shouldn’t be so stricken. Still, he was, which made it all the more inappropriate if he were to smirk right then.

Damian was right beside him. He wasn’t entertained, or intrigued, what he usually was watching his father tell off his brothers. In fact, he looked bothered. Like they’d just taken so much of his time away from what he’d rather be doing, which apparently was more interesting than this.

Ah. Of course. An out-of-town mission. Just Batman and Robin. They left Babs in charge. Probably why she looked just as horrified as Dick, hands to her side and keeping the slight shake of her palms hidden. It seems she prepared for anything to happen on patrol that night, anything Bruce prepared her for being the boss. What they hadn’t prepared for, apparently, was them.

“Batman, I-“ Babs swallowed. “We have this under control. You can go back to-“

“Let them go.”

Chills down everyone’s wobbly spines at his growling voice proved more terrifying under the filter near his neck. Everyone except Jason, of course. But he can't be so relaxed. Cass was getting suspicious. He just felt her hands tighten even more around his wrists.

But perhaps, he should be afraid. He’s gotten into mounds of trouble, but it was never anything like this.

He snorted again. They hadn’t hurt anybody. It was just them three and their lack of brain. They’ll be fine.

He hoped.

“Bruce, they’re trying to kill each other-“

“They can try.”

Babs, right then, might be the one to kill them right after. Maybe with her bare hands. Maybe with a truck. With a deathly, silent scowl at all of them, she nodded.

Duke was first to let go of Dick, and with that a pat on the back. Dick rubbed the back of his neck, stayed put and didn’t even step away. He was relaxed. Ashamed, but relaxed. He just stretched out his limbs and already everyone was satisfied.

Next, it was Jason. With a reluctant Cass finally letting him go, and the taser, Jason tumbled over to the nearest car hood just to keep himself up. That fucking taser robbed him of his knees. How many volts was that thing?

Finally, Steph swung her legs over from holding down Tim’s body and helped him up. She dusted off his back, apologized under her breath. He probably had a lot to say if it weren’t for the seven other pairs of eyes on him, watching him from letting out so much as a twitch.

Tim didn’t shove her away so he could go back to poking Jason’s eyeballs out. He just stood there and stared at him like Jason and Dick were lucky everyone else was around. Which, he probably was. He wasn’t going to deny that.

The last people to be so afraid of Bruce were the three of them, the perpetrators, the reason for this little reunion. So instead of letting out something so cocky and unapologetic, something so at the borders of causing Bruce to have an aneurysm, not one mouth resisted from being kept shut. It was the kind of silence that wasn’t often expected from such an unusual family.

And Bruce looked at the three of them not with anger, or dismay, or even annoyance.

He looked disappointed.

Which, arguably, makes it a whole lot worse. Hell, even for him. He’s been yelled at since the day he came back and all of a sudden a little fight with his brothers is what brings him to shame.

Bruce was unmoving, so his voice startled and shook.

“All this…” he said. “For her…”

No one spoke. Not even a cricket. Even with the horns and sirens from afar, the bustle they couldn’t care less the only noise there was, it was deafening.

“Don’t you think you’ve disappointed her enough?”

Jason ignored the shattered edges of his helmet that poked on his cheek, ignored the blood it drew or the strain on his arms. Everyone did, perhaps.

“Go back to patrol.”

Batman left, as quickly as he’d come. Robin followed right behind him.

Batgirl turned around, nodded at her team, which was all there was out of her, out of anybody. They could see her fists clench, her eyes down and avoiding the others. The Signal flew out of the scene, Spoiler grappled up to the next rooftop, and Orphan disappeared out of thin air, without a word or even a grunt.

Nightwing, Red Robin, and Red Hood left that junkyard lot, and as the brothers they were, and dreadfully still are, they kept out of each other’s ways for the rest of that quiet night.

-----

What was so different about that night, and the many more nights that followed, was how they no longer had each other to turn to, even more now that it seemed they needed their brothers the most. Jason was, in the worst sense, used to the kind of isolation he was forced into after the matter. Dick had to learn to be alone, but it always had been better to have another’s shoulder to lean on and talk to. Tim, not so much. Not when he almost always turned to Y/N. And if not her, Dick. His older brother. One he once looked up to like a being unreachable, now a traitor he’d scoff at if he dared to show up.

So what they did, and what they were forced to do for several nights, was to deal with the cosmos and the whirlwind of thoughts all by their sorry selves. Dick usually could be found in training, spinning about in the uneven bars set up for him at the manor, have the sweat and the strain in his muscles force out whatever it was that bothered him into some physical outlet, how it often had been for many years as he appreciated himself for the care it brought. For the others, however, it wasn’t so much the same. Tim would spend all hours in the office and wouldn’t so much as nap even when his whole body tortured him to at least stop his back from being crouched so much. And Jason, well, had already drowned himself in booze, even more now that the reasons had faded clearer.

Alone in his apartment, over at the nook by the window where he usually spent the day with a book, now his mess of a hair would be plastered against the cold glass and the many bottles that surround him would block the surfaces of the cushion. It never actually got out of hand. He only ever drank to get rid of that noise blaring into his ear the way it was now, the way it was for all three of them.

And Tim couldn’t turn to that same comfort, or whatever it was that caffeine, stinging eyelids, and an unhealthy staring into a computer screen with an all nighter at the office would bring him. That night after the fight, he couldn’t sleep, even when he tried to. Which led to no one’s knowing, a cup of coffee when the day had risen and he was forced to go on with that said day like nothing happened. That cup would turn to two. Three. Eventually it dawned on him that he’d slept what he should have in a single day in a span of three.

Dick’s training, as it turned out, wasn’t so healthy at all. The strain in his wrists began a little over two hours ago. He’d been at the grounds for quadruple that time. For that day alone. Would it kill him if he didn’t stop? Probably not. Would it almost kill him? Probably. But he went on. Kept his hands busy. Forced himself to feel that exhaustion that should be taking his mind out of everything and not amplify it.

But this was only the beginning of what eventually would be that highway to descent, to some slope with no ladder to climb back up to, no guide for them to reverse and no light at the end that would eventually bring some alternative to the truth. They only had the truth to hold on.

Their brotherhood. One so strained. So complicated. One that took far too much time to build and rebuild. They couldn’t, not even if they wanted to, be apart from this family, deny that they were a part of it. They couldn’t escape each other’s presence no matter how many times they’d change their numbers or block out their trackers or find another city to live in. They couldn’t lose something that had grown too strong for them to fight against. That night, they tried. Or rather, the forces tried. The forces run by their bitter rivalry or the want for the same woman.

It was the fifth night after that fight, when Dick let go of the bars, finally giving his hands that rest too many hours overdue. He wiped his sweat, drank from his bottle, and pulled out his phone. That night, he thought it was enough, that this silence and bitterness and sheer negligence over their bond would eventually break for permanence. He knew that this coping was only just the beginning, and that it will, for everything he was certain about, would it become so much more, something so dark, that it would pull the whole family apart. He didn’t want that. For any of them. So that night, he sent a text to Tim and Jason.

Tim’s first account wasn’t on his brothers, though it had crossed his mind many more times than he would have hoped. His first thought, if anything, was how Y/N would have thought if he let himself fall. It’d be in his rule this time, that he wouldn’t let the caffeine get to him or reach to such extremes he’d never otherwise control. But Y/N wasn’t going to believe that, as nobody should. Hell, he probably shouldn’t place that much faith onto himself at all. Even if he does so much as lose an hour of sleep, one for every night until there wasn’t any hours left, if he allows himself one more cup when he had one just half an hour before, he knew it’d be just the beginning.

So, when he got that text from Dick, he realized it wasn’t worth much the risk.

He hated them both like he’s hated no one else, wanted them to realize just how much of a wreck their doings have imprinted on him and Y/N, how the consequences that followed weren’t nearly what they deserved at all. But if he doesn’t fight that hate, if he doesn’t find peace, it’ll be that darkness for him, that same life he hadn’t learned to control, one where he once lost himself to. and in turn, made him lose Y/N. And he’ll lose her again if he won't listen to that conscience. He texted Dick back and told him to meet him at Pauli’s.

Jason, on the other hand, acted as was expected of him. When he saw that text the first thing his lack of conscience told him was to get another phone and forget it all happened, disappear for another few months, show up when it was convenient, and hope that this all blows over before his escapism backfires.

But he never did get to bring himself to throw out his phone and get a new one, much less delete the text before he’s even seen it. A few days after, he let that daft little voice in him to open the text, allow himself a few seconds just to witness its premise. But he’d read through everything in that split second he allowed himself to. Dick didn’t really have much to say. And what else was to come next other than the few days of tussling and fighting and the many more bottles of booze that were not at all helping with those same voices that just wouldn’t shut up.

Was this all worth it? Was anything worth this at all?

Because those few years it took just to have any sort of a conversation with Dick, much more with Tim, certainly wasn’t a few years of a bond rebuilt that he wanted to go through again.

He loved them. In his own, twisted little way. He loved his brothers and actually would go out his way to save them from whatever horrors he’d been forced to face. That love didn’t have to be from occasionally hanging out in the holidays or spent an hour or two in a bar.

At least, in his conscience, if he were to die one day like he’d realize would happen again, knowing life wasn’t exactly his alone to spend and control, he’d know he did whatever was best for the people he loved.

So, despite Dick and Tim not at all expecting so much as a text back, they still had it in them to wait a few hours. In that dimly lit corner of Pauli’s, the aroma of freshly backed pancakes distracting them from their otherwise bland pickup from the rest of their senses. They waited, not hoping for the best.

Jason went into the diner and saw them, ordered a cup, then took a seat across Tim, with Dick in between.

That silence, the same for everyday for the past five, it was haunting and eerie, disturbing, uncomforting, one they knew they’d all have to settle if they wanted to move on and actually bring some light into whatever it was they’ve caused.

Jason didn’t take off his hoodie. Tim warmed his hands with his cup of hot chocolate. And Dick, knowing he’d have to start, cleared his throat and looked up.

Dick:

Seeing Tim walk through that door was a surprise enough, much more Jason coming along and not even was he three hours late. Fuck. Fuck. What does he even say? Where does he ever start? Should he even start?

Giving in to his impulses certainly was bad an idea. This was, in every way, what he should have expected when he picked up his phone and thought to call his brothers hoping it was the right thing to do. And, perhaps, it was the right thing.

But was he the right person to start it? Lead this conversation to the direction he wanted so they’d get to a better place? The one that pushed his impulses in the first place?

They were all too awfully silent. Tim’s had his second round of hot chocolate. He doesn’t even like hot chocolate that much. And Jason looks like he’s hiding himself from the cops with his hood down and neck craned to the table’s surface. He’s never been in anything more awkward and uncomfortable in his years. This was just humiliating.

But, he was sure, humiliation should be the first thing they’d have to go through. Setting their prides aside, talk with the other’s stories in mind and hope that by the end of this, it’ll at least be a bit better.

So he started, in the most bland, uneventful way, he tells them both.

“Thanks for coming,” Dick said.

Tim momentarily bit onto his lip, and Jason stayed motionless without so much as a nod. At least Tim glanced over at him, even when it was just a second.

“How are you, Tim?”

Tim’s finger traced over the brim of his cup. He’s finished it. Didn’t seem like he wanted to order another one.

“Alright. I guess.”

“Good. Jason?”

God, this was awful. He doesn’t even ask how their broken bones are healing after a life-threatening encounter in patrol. Hopefully this greyness wasn’t too weird, not when it should be the start of something even more difficult to overcome.

Jason’s order of coffee came into the table and it made Tim shift in his seat, leaning to the back to stay further away from its aroma. Jason took a sip. “Fine.”

As quiet as they possibly could. Dick wished he had something to order, even when it was just a piece of pie they’d displayed over at the counter. But he didn’t want to get up or even call a waitress.

He was, in the most obvious sense, ashamed. Ashamed that he wasn’t either of them, which he wished nothing more to be. He wished he was them so he wouldn’t have to be the man who’d hurt Y/N the most, when he was supposed to be who she’d turn for comfort, because they weren’t the man who’d been in love with her for so long, never thinking he’d have a chance. And when he did finally have her, even for a just a moment, when he finally got to kiss her that one time he’d been waiting for so many years, it all broke down and nearly diminished what he took years to build. Their friendship. Something so great yet so fragile, when their love never could be so easily set aside to make way for a friendly bond.

“I’m sorry,” Tim said, and his voice had gone softer. “I’m sorry I started a fight. And for being so angry. That was uncalled for.”

He did want all this to be right with them. Both of them. Two of his brothers he’s learned to love. And with that love comes many sacrifices.

“You don’t have to be sorry for being angry.”

“Would you like more hot cocoa?” The waitress came in with a pitcher. Tim declined, and she left.

He stared at the empty cup and rolled his lips.

“Yeah, I… I kinda do.”

Further into the day, the less people there were in the diner. And with that came more silence. There were half the people in there than when they’d first arrived. Soon enough, they’ll be the only ones left.

“I’m sorry, too.”

Then, without even a word, Dick and Tim turned over to Jason.

They didn’t expect him to apologize, or even say anything for that matter, possibly for the rest of the night.

But Jason shrugged, looked up at both of them in the eye, and he nodded. It was enough for them both to know what he meant.

Jason:

Get this over with. As quick as they possibly could. But he should know by now that this was going to take time. With how difficult it was. This wasn’t going to end any better than when they’d started if they rush through.

Jason took a sip out of his coffee and leaned his arms over on the table. Still, he didn’t take off his hoodie, as if he was going to take off not long from then.

“I don’t exactly know where to start,” Dick said. “But I think we should put this out there now.”

Neither of them looked him in the eye. He and Tim both stared at their cups as if it were any interesting.

“I’m sorry if I’m doing this wrong. I’m just saying what I think is best.”

“It’s okay,” Tim said. “Just go on.”

This was harder than when they had to help out the League face Brainiac. And that certainly was something.

“I love Y/N.”

Okay. Wasn’t what he thought Dick would say. But okay.

“Tim loves her, too.”

Shit. Alright. So that’s what this motherfucker thinks he’s doing.

“And I for sure as hell know, that you love her as well, Jason-“

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Jason’s voice was deep, controlled, and as monotonous as he forced it to be. Without a flick of a lie or a speck of truth, as they both would have easily picked up if they listened to him hard enough. That is, if it worked. Which it probably hadn’t.

“We don’t know who she wants…” Dick said. “And frankly, I don’t think she does, too. At least for now.”

“It could be any of us.” Tim didn’t take his sight away from the blankness of the white table’s surface.

He can't take this. No. He never should have opened that text. This was a bad idea.

Y/N will choose one of them. Not him. Not when he was the one who fell in love with her far too late, realized just how perfectly imperfect and how she managed to be this little bundle of happiness for him that he never could find in another. Someone whose presence he yearned for on the days when he thought nothing could be okay. He realized all that when too late, when his brothers already cemented their places and have already gone out of their way to win her love. And, on top of all that, he was the one he didn’t have a close friendship as a ground for something to lean onto. They weren’t close. Not like she was with Tim. Not even with Dick.

“This is ridiculous,” Jason stood up from his seat with his cup half finished. “I’m leaving.”

“Jason-“

“Dick, I want no part of this-“

“You can deny it all you want, but what if she chooses you?”

“She won't choose me. That’s the point-“

“Everyone knows that’s just as much of a possibility than everything else. It didn’t even take much time, and already you’ve wooed her. You think we didn’t notice that?”

Jason stopped and faced the counter, away from his brothers.

“Just sit down.”

“Dick-“

“I know this hurts but what if she actually does choose you-“

“I don’t love her.”

“You do. And she might love you back.”

No. Don’t bring his hopes up like this. This fucking-

“And if she does, are you really going to turn her down?”

Jason closed his eyes. He had nothing to say.

“No matter what Tim and I do, if it’s you she wants, then it’s you who’ll make her happy. Do you honestly think I believe you won't at least take that chance?”

Nothing. No voices whispering into his conscience to fuck everything and leave. Nothing that told him what to do, much less what to say.

He just knew that whatever he was, it wasn’t nearly as strong as that one pull that forced him back on his seat.

This shitshow already hurts as it is. What’s a little more?

Tim:

There’s a chance for all of them.

That’s what has always been so hard for him to understand. Never would he have thought it to be true, but it was.

They were both good men, good people, and if he were honest, he’d admit to Y/N being lucky if she were ever to choose one of his brothers in the end. He never, ever wanted to admit that. Not even now.

But for so long, he’s ignored the fact that those choices might be for her happiness, for what she deserves, and that might not always be about Tim. That whatever it was he wouldn’t admit to himself didn’t mean it wasn’t true. Y/N smiles like no other with Dick and no one else understood her like Jason. Even if Tim were her best friend, even if they had together from the very beginning, even if he probably loved her the most. It won't be about that.

So he has to accept all this.

And if it meant her happiness, then that hurt will be a lot easier to deal with.

“He’s right,” he said, and his two older brothers looked up at him.

“I’ve always thought you two… Well, I wish I was in your place. Not always. But, right now I do.”

They were confused to say the least. They didn’t look like they understood. Tim was the one who got to be with her, had years of calling her his love, had her love in return and have her actually show it the same way he did.

But that was just that. He had her. And now he didn’t. Because of him. Because he had her and was stupid enough to let her go, something neither of his brothers would have done if they were him.

And he wanted to laugh at the looks of both their faces. They didn’t have to say anything at all, but he understood. They envied each other in so many other ways, too complicated to map out. Because they’ve all done their own grievances, done so much that they regret.

Which is why this had to happen. Because no one knew what was going to happen next.

“I know it’s hard for all of us…” Dick said. Tim stared out at the window to see the start of the cold evening. “But we’re brothers. I don’t know about you both, but I don’t want this to tear us all apart.”

It already did, he wanted to say.

But it might not be true. It might not be too late. This brotherhood could still be salvaged. And in a way, it might be worth all that hurt.

“The last few weeks have been hard… for all of us… taken its toll on the rest of the family. And we’ve worked too hard on each other. I don’t…” Dick swallowed. “I don’t want to lose Y/N, but I don’t want to lose both of you either.”

It was easier for him to shut his eyes closed.

Neither do I, Tim thought.

“But… Y/N deserves to be happy… We’ve put her through too much.

“And if it means being with the one she loves, one of us, then so be it. We’re done making her decisions. We don’t decide between the three of us. If she wants to choose, then she gets to choose. And we won't have a say in any of it. She decides if it’s one or none of us at all. She deserves this.”

Jason finished his coffee. He no longer sat so stiff.

Tim sat back on his chair and stared out the window.

“And whatever it is, we’ll deal with it. As brothers. We’ll have each other. It’ll be okay. We’ll make it okay.”

That cold night of late November had the first snowdrop of the year. It was light, subtle, and one would have missed it if they weren’t looking out for too long. But they saw it, and never had something so gentle calm what used to be this rageful storm, not since Y/N.

They hadn’t spoken another word in that diner. But for many hours, they stayed.

They continued to wait for many months. They were patient.

October. November. December. January passed.

And on that day of the second week of February, a day Y/N once loved and hated at different times, they put an end to that waiting.

-----

MASTERLIST | 3 BIRDS 1 STONE MASTERLIST

-----

A/N: I honestly can’t wait for the finale. AHHHH

MAIN TAGLIST:

@idkmanicantenglish, @wunderstell, @birdy-bat-writes, @multifandomgirl-us, @icequeen208, @offendedfishnoises, @arkhamtoddler, @elsenthal, @lucy-roo, @loxbbg, @reclusive-chicken-nugget, @l-inkage, @http-cherries, @river9noble, @zphilophobiaz, @annoylinglyaries, @knightfall05x, @hyp-oh-critical, @satan-s-ass, @1-800-starmora, @flowersgirl02, @nahcho, @thatonecroc, @trixie-bb, @daddyissuesmademe, jasonsbitch, @shadowsndaisies @jaybirdbooty @writing2sirvive

SERIES TAGLIST:

@spaceservicestation, @thedeadlythoughts, @vanessafabricius, @pinkforest05

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osamiiya · 4 years

Text

Pairing: Tendou Satori x Reader

Type of fic: Angst (But make it like, the middle to end)

TW// Death, panic, slight panic attack

Summary: Tendou's in love, and he'll stay in love, because, how could he forget you?

A/n I'm back baby, also I cried while writing this so good luck 🤩

Songs I listened to while writing: Love Like You (Caleb Hyles) , Be my Mistake (The 1975) , Mr Loverman (Ricky Montgomery), Lonely (Noah Cyrus), She used to be mine (Jessie Mueller), Before you go (Lewis Capaldi)

"Satori~" Tendou turns around, grin only growing as he hears your sing song voice call from around the corner.

He watched with bated breath, letting out a soft sigh and a heartwarming smile, as he holds out his hands and pulls you into his chest. Taking a deep inhale and exhale.

"How did you sleep?" His grin is soft, and those who've only seen a sinister smile on his face from volleyball would be surprised at how full of love and adoration it held. Truly, Tendou's paradise from the rest of the world, a breath of fresh air from those who found him creepy or weird.

No, you weren't like them. Ever since the beginning you were always the first to jump in to defend Tendou, who had just started to shrug off the looks and whispers of those around him.

"The best sleep I've ever had."

"Yeah?" Tendou sways the two of you in his arms slightly, his tall and thin frame trying it's best to keep you warm from the fall air.

"I had a nightmare." Tendou hums, clearly not worried about it.

"You did?" Tendou's heart squeezes in a way he can't describe as you look up at him with innocent eyes.

"Yeah, your bus was in a car crash." He hums, chills running down his back as remembers the rush of feelings that accompanied the dream.

"Well, I'm here now, besides it's just a dream." Too engrossed in his conversation with you, Tendou isn't aware of the worried look Semi sends him and then Ushijima.

But before he can formally say anything, Ushijima interrupts him.

"He'll be ok. He always is."

---

Tendou's absolutely sure that the looks he's gotten from people in the halls have passed just staring because he was weird looking, there was some underlying message in the stares now, something he couldn't decode.

"Don't mind them Satori." You tug on his uniform blazer, marching ahead of him slightly, eager to get to the convenience store.

"You know y/n. Eating ice cream in the winter leads to all sorts of bad things." Tendou leans over you as you pick out an ice cream from the ice chest, hands coming to your hips and subconsciously rubbing circles into the uniform fabric as he pretends to compare the different ice cream types, as if he wouldn't get the same ice bar he always got.

Tendou's eyes sparkle with happiness as you pick out a new flavour, turning over your shoulder to smile and show him the ice cream you picked.

As always, Tendou pays. Something about how you can repay him later, maybe when a manga he really wants comes out.

"Satori, do you want to try?" There's a mischievous smirk playing at your lips as you hold out the ice cream. After stopping on a park bench, not to far away from the school, the two of you just couldn't wait to have the slowly melting ice creams.

Instead of licking the ice cream as you expected him to do, Tendou leaned over and planted a kiss on your lips, humming as he pulled back and licked his tongue over his lips, smirking at your bewildered expression.

"Tendou." Ushijima's curt voice pulls both of your attentions away from eachother and to the stoic boy above you.

"Ushiwaka, sorry we didn't get you an ice cream. You don't like them anyways, but I did get you..." Tendou trails off, rummaging through the white plastic bag you had acquired at the store, a polite smile on the underplayed college student's face.

Tendou lets out an 'Ah ha!' as he procures the mint chocolate flavoured protein bar you've seen Ushijima eat during practice before.

Ushijima takes it from Tendou's outstretched hand, a polite and curt thank you as he sits next to Tendou.

"We were about to talk about the literature project." Tendou hums, sending you a wink and taking a careful bite of his ice cream.

"Tendou, y/n is gone." It's like ripping off a bandaid, it hurt to see his best friend push himself deeper into a fantasy he created of his own imagination.

"Silly Ushiwaka, they're right-" Tendou's stomach drops as he turns and sees you with a sad smile spread over your features, eyes glassy.

"No, they're- Ushiwaka they're right here." Tendou's confused, was this a prank?

"Tendou, y/n's bus was in a very bad accident, and they didn't make it out of the hospital." Tendou lets out a dry and nervous laugh.

"No, that was my nightmare last night, there's no way..." Tendou's blood runs cold and his hands are shaking.

'Not my Y/n. He's talking about the wrong Y/n.' Tendou's thoughts are too quick for him to keep up with, quick breaths coming out in short bursts.

Words are trapped in his throat as he looks between you and Ushijima. Ushijima's face uncharacteristically full of pity, and your's sad, a tear rolling down your cheek.

"Ushijima I think I need a minute." Ushijima nods at Tendou's serious voice, on the verge of breaking, and gets up, walking a good distance away.

"You're gone?" Tendou's hands are shaking as his voice cracks, wanting to reach out to you.

"Satori, listen to me ok? I love you. Don't ever forget that." A tear rolls down Tendou's face as his thoughts become clearer by the second.

What was once incomprehensible static in his head taking the shape of a word, then two, until they formed a sentence.

'Y/ns gone.'

A sob claws it's way out of Tendou's mouth, and he feels like he's in elementary school again.

"Make sure you don't give Goshiki too much of a hard time ok? He's always trying to impress you guys." Both of your hands are on Tendou's face at this point, and it scares him that he can't feel you, your warmth gone, your presence hanging on by a thread.

"Always eat enough ok? I know you don't have a big appetite, but don't get sick while I'm gone ok? Don't skip out on your meals, please." There's tears running down your face, and Tendou finally notices how you're not really there, tears falling quickly, like rain on the bench.

"You're not here?"

You stop wiping his tears away, giving him a sad smile and a kiss on the cheek.

"I'm at Tokyo Cemetery, darling." A bone shattering shiver rolls through Tendou as he lets out another sob.

"You can't go, I need you." Tendou's shaking, trying to suppress a scream in pain, his body overflowing with realizing and pain.

"You've been in denial Satori." You wipe his tears and leave a kiss on his cheek, and it kills Tendou inside because he can almost feel it. He wants to feel it. Tendou wants to feel your lips on his cheeks.

"Be good ok? Remember how we were going to go to Paris? Take my memory there, take me around Paris using that photo in your wallet. Kiss me goodnight, don't forget me." Your voice is strained and Tendou can't breathe.

"You hear me Satori? Don't forget me, ok?"

"Ok." He manages, it comes out forced , and very much real. A contrast to the life he's continued to live with you in his head, his body and mind now painfully aware that he'd been walking around like a husk of his last self, his mind entertaining the hope and the denial that, you y/n, were still alive. And Tendou could kiss you, and hold your hand, and see you in his jersey one last time.

'Y/ns gone.' And with that Tendou's back to the reality he hates, where you're gone. Tendou can't breathe and his mind feels like it's a tape recorder on 3x speed.

His heart is beating and his hands are grabbing for something to ground him. Seeing his best friend break apart, Ushijima speeds over, taking big steps and allowing Tendou to grip tightly to his shirt, sobbing loudly.

"I didn't get to say goodbye." He chokes out, burying his head into Ushijima's stomach, letting out a yell of pain and heartbreak.

Ushijima feels his heart constrict at the demonstration of his best friend's pain, the red haired boy screaming into his maroon shirt, soaking through the fabric as he rests his hand on Tendou's head, rubbing it in a way he's seen you do it before.

"I loved them and I couldn't say goodbye." Tendou screams, voice raw and filled to the brim with pain, lanky body shaking violently.

"I didn't get to kiss them one last time. I didn't get to tell them I loved them. I never got to take them to Paris like we planned. I never got to give them my volleyball jersey and see them in the stands, cheering for me one last time."

Tendou and Ushijima stay like that for what seems like hours, Tendou buried in his best friend's embrace, needing to be grounded from his raging thoughts.

"I loved them Ushiwaka." Tendou whispers, no longer shaking, voice and eyes hollow.

"I know Tendou." Ushijima tried his best to sound gentle, he knows that Tendou needs it.

"I didn't get to say goodbye." Tendou's like a broken record as Ushijima helps him get off the park bench, plastic bag filled with two uneaten melted ice creams picked up and thrown out.

"We were going to see the eiffle tower." Tendou whispers from his bunk above Ushijima's.

Body heavy with exhaustion, he's about to sleep when he sits up suddenly, hands panicked as he searches for something.

"Tendou?" Came Ushijima's voice from the below bunk.

"My wallet, where's my wallet?" He's stammering and his voice is raw from sobbing and his hands are shaking as he looks.

"Tendou." Comes Ushijima's calm voice as he gently hands Tendou the wallet.

Immediately Tendou opens it, digging through to find the picture he's sure he kept in there.

Pulling it out, he smiles gently, all run out of tears, as he brings the photo shakily to his lips, kissing the photo gently and smiling, looking into your eyes, frozen in time, no idea of the future, just pure happiness.

"Goodnight, my paradise."

---

Permanent Taglist

@sachirou-senpai @prayerofthehaim @ryusex-wife @x-ia-n @wompwomphq @elianetsantana @jovialnoise @yuujiya @peteunderoos @curiouslilbeast

#Anyways what did you think.#*?#tendou angst #tendou x reader #tendou imagine #tendou satori x reader #tendou satori #tendou satori angst #haikyuu angst #haikyuu x reader #tw// death #tw// panic #tw // panic attack #tendou scenario

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moral-turpitudes · 4 years

Text

To the Moon:

A/N: Totes cried while writing this but it’s fine.

Trigger Warnings: Angst, Descriptions of Character Death, Drinking, Pregnancy, Cancer, Fluff, Grief, etc.

Word Count: 4,225

Characters: Thomas Shelby x Female!Reader x Anna Shelby (OC?/Daughter)

Request: “Hi this is my first request and it’s an angsty Tommy x Reader where the reader is an old flame and they didn’t work out but Thomas still loves the reader anyway, and she sends him a letter out of the blue. Apparently the reader got pregnant and had a kid but she’s really sick now and doesn’t want her kid in an orphanage. It could end in fluff but doesn’t have to.”

Requested by: @wierdestmoppet

A/N: Get ready for some sad shit. I saw the request and this is what my mind jumped to lol. I wrote this to be set like around Season 1-ish btw.

Summary: Life and death have a way of revealing the truth within us, and it can cause things to happen at the most unexpected times. This is especially true for Thomas Shelby as he realizes not even he can stop death.

Part 1 | Part 2

“Dear Thomas,

How are you? It’s been a long while and I hope you and your family are doing okay. I know this may be out of the blue, but you know I’ve never been much for planning things. You also know that I prefer getting straight to the point, so disregard any smudged writing in advance. I’m trying to keep the tears at bay while writing this, but I figured I’d burn any bridges while I still can.

I know we parted in anger but I’d love to know if you’d forgive me for how I acted. When I left during the months after you had gotten back from France, every fiber in my being wanted to stay there with you, but I couldn’t. I had no one besides you and your family and it made me feel worse, like a burden. I was so scared you’d send me away if I told you then...so I made that decision for you and I know it destroyed you.

I don’t think I’ll ever forgive myself for that, and now of all times I’m sitting here wishing I could be back there in that dirt-covered town, walking by the cut with you just like old times...but I can’t, not in this life anyway.

It saddens me greatly to know I’ll never see your face again, but for the sake of time I’ll be blunt. A couple weeks after I left, call it karma if you will, I fell more ill and went to the doctor. When I left, my suspicions were confirmed. I was pregnant.

I fought the urge to call you though and I regret that to this day, but I’m writing this now to hopefully make up for it.

I had not been with anyone else the whole time you were deployed. But if you can think back, you’ll remember our time at the Garrison and how you’d brought me home. That night stuck with me for nine months, Thomas. I had a beautiful baby girl who I named Anna. And the best part is that she has your eyes.

With all that said, I know this is a lot to take in, but I have one dying wish. You see, I’ve been diagnosed with cancer and the doctors said I have only days left to live. I’m...I’m trying so hard not to cry because I don’t want to wake the poor girl, but I can’t go on much longer and she deserves a good life...One that I can’t give her. I’d love for her to not have to go to the orphanage, as it would break my heart. So I’m asking you to do probably one of the hardest things you’ve had to do in some time, my love. I’m asking if you’d be willing to take in our Anna?

I’ve always wanted her to meet her father, and I wanted to wait until she got older to do so...but it seems life had a way of throwing off those plans as you can see.

I just wanted to let you know in case a lovely little one year old shows up at the shop soon. I’ve sent my friend here in London to take her to you after I pass. I know you may not love me anymore Tom, but I hope that whatever love is still in your heart, you can give that to our daughter. And that you can also find a place in your heart for forgiveness, I know I have.

I’m not expecting anything else, but I truly wish you the best in life, both for you and the family. I’ll think of Anna and you when I sleep tonight. That’s about as close to being in heaven as I can think of.

With all my love,

Y/N Y/L/N”

Thomas set down the letter, hands shaking as he slid his finger over the dried ink that was smudged in various spots by her tears.

He sat there with his head in his hands, tears silently falling from his eyes as the memories came flooding back.

He had just gotten the business in line, and had a good thing going with his family. Even securing a legal betting license, but just as he’d known all his life, he couldn’t get his hopes up when it came to love. Every woman he’d ever loved seemed to have an expiration date, and this one tore him to the core.

As he sat there, the rain pattered on the windows of his office at the shop. The sound only fueling the rage inside him as he came to terms with the letter.

He had thought she’d moved because she found someone new or thought she’d gone off to find a job somewhere perhaps. But he didn’t expect this. After all, he still loved her. He was never good at showing it but he truly did love her and now she was being ripped from him without even getting to say goodbye.

He took a shot from his glass at his desk and threw it in frustration, shards exploding on the ground like tiny specs of glitter.

As he watched the shards shimmer in the dim light, he remembered the fancy envelope. Frantically picking it up and seeing a small picture hanging out of the corner that he must’ve missed before.

It was of Y/N holding Anna. Y/N had a weakened look to her as she sat on the steps of her apartment in a light green dress. It was her favorite color after all, and he knew that.

She had the brightest smile despite her frail state as well and it instantly caused him to smile too. When his eyes landed on his daughter it only grew and he felt his throat tighten as he cleared his throat, trying to keep his emotions at bay.

She indeed had his striking blue eyes though, and the beautiful color of her mother’s hair. With tears threatening to fall, he noticed she had her smile too, thanking whatever gods above that she didn’t get his toothy grin.

As he admired the picture, he remembered seeing the date and a phone number scribbled on the letter, her handwriting noticeably declining compared to when she used to write him long ago during the war.

Without a second thought, he called her number hoping she’d answer. His heart stopping for a moment as he heard static on the other end before it picked up, a faint voice saying “Y/L/N Residence.” in response.

“H-Hello, I’m sorry it’s late but this is Thomas Shelby. Is Y/N there?” He asked, his voice trembling as he wiped tears from his eyes.

“I never thought you’d call...” She said.

“You sound...different.” He said.

Y/N laughed, and he swore he could feel his heart pound at the faint sound of it.

“Death does that to ya.” She said, making light of the situation.

“Y/N...I-I got your letter. I know we don’t have much time...but I love you. I do. I-I love you so fucking much okay?” He said frantically, sitting down at his desk.

“I’m not dead yet.” She lightly chuckled.

“I know...just wanted to let you know I do love you, and that I forgive you. For everything.” He said quietly.

“I thought you’d moved on Tom...But I love to you too. I’m so sorry I’ve put you through this...” she said, breathing heavily.

“Don’t you worry sweetheart. You’ve done nothing wrong. I-uhm...I haven’t moved on. I could never move on from you, Y/N...” He said, her name on his tongue like a spark. He hadn’t said her name so often in ages.

“Did you get the picture?” She asked.

“Yes. You’re beautiful. Anna is too. Beautiful just like her mother.” He said, holding the picture in his hand.

“I was so excited when she opened her eyes. I’m so glad she has yours.” She said, her voice fading a bit as she reminisced.

“And I’m glad she has your smile my love. Can’t have her running around with a smile like mine aye?” He joked.

“Oh stop.” She chuckled.

He laughed lightly as she continued, her breathing audible over the phone.

“I’m happy the letter got to you when it did. I was trying to hold out for you both.” She said, her voice thickening as tears welled up in her eyes.

“I’m happy it did too. You’re the strongest woman I know. You know that right?” He said, wiping his own tears from his eyes as he heard her crying.

“I want our Anna to grow up strong too. Have you considered my offer?” She asked.

Thomas hesitated, his hands were shaking more than they had when first reading the letter.

“Yes. I-I don’t have a nursery yet, but I’ll be able to get things sorted in no time, alright love?” He said.

Y/N sighed with relief. “Good...you don’t know how happy that makes me. I’m...I’m holding her little hand right now. She’s got a firm grip just like her daddy.” She said, sniffling.

“Good. She can rough house with Finn when she’s older.” He said.

“Just...protect her Tommy. She’s so sweet. I love her so much...” She said, her voice weakening.

“I love you, to the moon and back you hear me? Is the nurse with you?” He asked, noticing her voice changing.

“Y-yes. My friend is too. Told her to bring Anna as soon as I go. I-I’m so scared Tom...” She said, her voice cracking as she cried.

“And I love you to the moon and back too sweetheart. I just wish I could have you here with me.” She continued.

“I know you’re scared Y/N. Just hold Anna’s little hand and listen to my voice...okay? Everything will be alright. I-I promise.” He said, his own voice cracking as more tears ran down his face.

“I’ll always protect our daughter. And I’ll tell her how much you meant to me and how much you loved her. I’ll always love you. Always, to the moon and back aye?” He said.

Her breath shallowed as she answered, the last of her strength fading as she spoke.

“I love you both. To the moon...and back.” She said, taking a final breath before her eyes closed and her body went slack, including the finger that her daughter was clutching onto while lying beside her in bed.

The line was silent as Tommy listened. His heart nearly broke when he heard Anna’s cries, and her friend and the nurse sniffling as they helped around the room.

“M-Mr. Shelby? This is the nurse. I know this is hard...but would you like her ashes or would you prefer her to have a traditional burial? She never got the chance to specify.”

He wiped his tears on his sleeve and looked out the window as the rain fell, the moon shining brightly as he gazed up.

“Traditional burial. She needs to be where she’s loved. My family will be in touch as soon as we can.” He said.

“Alright. We recommend doing it soon, tomorrow perhaps. Her friend just left with Anna and will be by your shop in the morning.” She said.

“Uhm...yeah tomorrow is fine. Bring Y/N to the fields and we’ll take care of the rest. I’ll be here at the shop when Anna gets here.” He said, his mind feeling like it was about to explode.

“Alright. I will see you tomorrow Mr. Shelby.” She said.

“Alright.” He whispered before hanging up the phone.

He frantically strode over to his whiskey stash, downing a good portion of it before he ran to the shops bathroom. The mixture of suddenly ingesting all that alcohol and his frazzled nerves taking its toll.

When he composed himself, he freshened up as best he could and splashed cold water over his face, trying to wash the memories and the rush of the alcohol away.

As he made his way back to his office, he thought to call everyone. Even if they were sleeping, this was the one time he truly needed everyone in the family.

“Polly? It’s me. I’m going to need uhm...a crib...and a funeral lined up in the fields. Can you bring the crib here to the shop? I-I guess I’ll need anything baby related.” He stammered.

“Holy mother...slow down please! What are you talking about?!” She asked tiredly through the phone.

“It’s Y/N...yes...her....she left me because she was pregnant and she had the baby and she’s mine. Her name is Anna and she’ll be here in the morning. Y/N she uhm...she died. I just talked to her as she passed alright? She ended up having fucking cancer. She wrote to me and...and it was her dying wish that I take care of Anna for her. I need everyone here. This is the one thing I can’t do alone, Poll.” He said frantically.

Polly stayed silent as she processed what was said, he could hear her sniffling as she spoke.

“Christ have mercy....I’ll call everyone in. You try to get some sleep even if you’re lying on the shop floors. You can’t take care of your daughter drunk like that. I can hear it in your voice.” She said before hanging up.

Polly quickly got ready, waking up little Finn and sadly explaining to him what happened. Together they gathered an old crib from when Ada stayed over with Karl a couple nights, and she found some baby food and diapers.

Next on her list was to call Ada as she had more things at the ready, and she and the rest of the blinders were just as shocked as the news rolled in.

2 hours had passed and Tommy had forced himself to lie down with his coat draped over him on his office floor. The half empty bottle of whiskey smashed to pieces from when he’d gotten off the phone with Polly.

His eyes were blood shot and moving rapidly under his closed eyelids, dreams of coming to save Y/N from the inevitable somehow threatening his mind as he watched her disappear like a ghost. His eyes flew open though as he heard the shop doors close. His tragic slumber interrupted further by numerous heavy boots on the floor.

He sat up slowly, trying to smooth out his hair and putting his coat on as the draft from the cool night air crept in through the creaky floors and window sills.

He sat there on the floor, not having the strength to get up as Polly and the rest of his blinder brothers came into the dark room.

“Tommy...Polly told us what’s happened. I’m so sorry...” Ada said, holding a large bag of everything baby related that she could find. Little Finn held a small crib and Polly had a blanket in her arms as well as a small bag of food.

“Everything was fine a couple hours ago, I was just ‘bout to go home then I saw the letter on my desk...” He said, wishing selfishly that he could turn back time.

“Look mate...we have your back. Just tell us what ya need done and we’ll do it. It’s a family meeting after all.” John said, nervously biting the toothpick in his mouth.

“I...I spoke with the nurse. She said they recommend having the funeral tomorrow. We’re having it in the field like we usually do. It’s what she would’ve wanted probably. I couldn’t let them burn her and stuff her in some urn. She deserves better. God damn it...” He said putting his head in his hands. He’d always been the one in control. He’d always had a solid plan, a solid mode of attack, but this was something he had no control over. Just as much as life had control over death. It was all out of his hands.

“I’ll go get Johnny Dogs and the Lee’s help with all that, you stay here Tom.” John said, kissing Esme goodbye as he went out into the night.

“Oi, brother do you want me to go with him? I promise I won’t do anything this time.” Arthur said, crouching down by his brother and placing a hand on his shoulder.

“I don’t care, as long as Anna gets here safely and as long as Y/N can have a decent place to be buried in. That’s all I’m on about now. Fuck the rivalries, for one day.” He said. It wasn’t like him to stop condoning a lot of violence, but perhaps this made him have a change of heart.

He glanced at the photo she sent him, his eyes glossing over as he held it in his shaking hands.

“She has my eyes.” He said, his own filling with tears that not many of his family had seen in so long.

“She’s beautiful.” Polly said, sitting by him on the floor. Little Finn helped set the crib down and Esme and Ada helped clean up the mess Tommy had made.

“She is...” he said.

Around 4 hours later, John and some of the Lee’s returned and told them they’d gotten everything set up and Tommy had met with the nurse. She was dressed in a black dress and a black coat, and holding a silver necklace with a light green stone in it. It was Y/N’s that Tommy had given her before he went off to war.

“She wanted you to keep this, to give to Anna...she thought maybe as an 18th birthday gift would be nice...” She said, wiping a tear from her eye.

“Thank you. I’ll keep that in mind.” He said, putting the necklace in his jacket, clasping the button on the small pocket so it was secure.

As the night blurred into the morning, Polly and Esme napped in the chairs as Tommy rested his head at his desk. Finn and the rest all finding places to doze off to in various corners of the shop.

As much as Thomas hated everyone sleeping uncomfortably, he knew it was good they were here. He needed the support whether his pride liked it or not.

It was around 6 am when the nurse arrived again, letting him know Y/N’s funeral things were all set up. And it wasn’t long after that a small car pulled up. A woman with blonde hair and a black dress getting out quickly as she reached for the little girl.

Her faint cries were heard as Thomas watched from the doorway, alert and ready to do what he had to do for the coming days, and eventually years.

“Hello Mr. Shelby. My name is Jess. I was a good friend of Y/N’s. Here’s your daughter. I hope she’ll be a comfort to you.” She said quickly as she handed her to him.

He nervously cradled her into his arm as she squirmed in defiance at first. The new person holding her making her only want her mother more.

“Hey...hey...shhh. It’s alright love. It’s okay. Daddy’s here. It’s okay.” He cooed, carefully swaying a bit as he held her. As she adjusted to her new surroundings, she gradually stopped crying, her bright blue eyes opening and landing on her fathers face. Tears were coating her cheeks as she looked up at him in silence, curiously as she took in the man holding her.

“It’s okay. I promise.” He said, gently wiping her tears as he carried her inside.

Polly and the girls gasped quietly so as not to startle her too much. But she cried nonetheless, the new people overwhelming her. Tommy cooed again and gave her his finger to hold, helping her out of her crying fit.

“You’re a natural Tommy. Must’ve been all the babysitting when we were little.” Ada said, as she watched her niece slowly stop crying.

“I can only hope so.” He said, looking down at his little girl. John and Arthur and the others came near as quietly as they could, watching as she had a death grip on Tommy’s finger.

“She’s a strong little bugger. Finn you’ll have to show her the ropes ya know.” Arthur said, Finn looked on curiously at his new niece and nodded.

“Not till she’s older. We have to protect her alright, Y/N will strike me down if we don’t.” Tommy said, smiling a bit as he wondered where her soul was now.

“How about we let you be? We’ve set everything up in your office, so it should suffice until later today when you can take her home. The funeral is at noon. So everyone get home and get ready and meet at the field.” Polly said, before patting Thomas’ shoulder. He was in shock at the nights events, but his daughter luckily helped him from spiraling too far down.

The hours leading up to the funeral were spent trying to feed and change her and having Polly come back early to show him the ropes. Anna was dressed in a small black dress and wrapped in the soft blanket Polly had brought, her cries echoing throughout the shop as everyone gathered their things.

“She’s gonna be a little hell-raiser, I already know.” Polly said.

“Good. Maybe she can take over this place someday aye?” Tommy said, placing his cap on as Polly nestled her into the car with her.

“If she wants to that is.” Polly said, closing the door and looking at the little bundle. Tommy started the car and drove off towards the fields, the bonfire sending smoke into the air upon their arrival.

Tommy stopped the car and closed his eyes, taking a deep breath as he sat there.

“Are you alright? We can take a minute if you need it Tom.” Polly asked, putting her hand in his shoulder.

He wiped a stray tear from his eye and ran a hand over his face before looking back at his little girl. Her eyes wandering over him as he sat there.

“No. I’ll be fine. We’ll be fine, we just have to say goodbye that’s all.” He said, getting out of the car and gently picking up Anna.

She protested at first, her eyes welling up with tears as she looked around, but they stopped once she saw her fathers face. He was grinning slightly at her and stroking her hair, trying to make sure she was alright.

“She’s okay. She’s probably bloody overwhelmed, poor thing. It’ll be like that for a while, but you can do this Thomas.” Polly said, walking towards the field.

“We can do this right Anna? We have to say bye to mummy alright? It’ll be okay my love.” He said, her cries stopping as he walked with her in his arms and towards the wagon and the bonfire.

The smoke invaded everyone’s lungs as the flames grew around the wagon. Everyone who knew her back when they dated coming together to say some nice words or to offer up small prayers.

Tommy couldn’t say anything, fearing he’d break down, but he stood there holding their daughter, throwing a rose towards the flames and silently thinking of her. Hoping she’d watch over them while she was up there.

As the ceremony ended, he wiped a stray tear away and carried the little girl around the remains of the fire, trying to think of a plan for their new life.

Anna mumbled as he sat with her on a nearby log, giving her rose petals to play with from one of the leftover bouquets.

“Those were your mums favorite.” He said, hearing her mumbling in baby babble.

“M-mama.” She said lightly, looking out at the fire. Thomas felt his throat closing as she said it, wishing nothing more than to bring her back.

“Yes love...Mama is gone but dads got ya now love. She loved you so much...” He said, tear running down his cheek as he kissed the top of her head. She looked up at him as he held her on his lap, still gripping his hand like a security blanket and smiling like Y/N.

Over the next couple months they both grew used to each other’s company. She was babbling more and not crying as much, but she could always sense something was missing. Thomas was home more now than he’d ever been, always keeping an eye on her and taking her to the shop when he’d go to work. Everyone loved her though, as they all took turns watching the little girl.

“She’s doing so well. I know Y/N would be proud, Tommy.” Ada said, patting his shoulder as he stood at the window, looking at the night sky.

“She would aye? I’m seeing more of Y/N in her each day. Only a matter of time before she takes Finn out though.” Tommy said smirking.

“I can’t wait to see that.” Ada said, slowly walking away to do her paperwork.

Tommy walked in his office to see Finn playing with her, giving her random toys as she sat up in a chair, and watching her throw them to the side as soon as she saw her father.

She smiled her little smile and threw her hands up towards him as he walked to her, crouching down and scooping her up as she giggled.

In the silence between them he’d often look up after the long day and see the moon, hoping Y/N would be looking back at them from up there, and he’d whisper to himself that they were alright, hoping in some way she’d know they were.

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headcans-oneshots-and-stuff · 4 years

Text

Moonflower

Warning: I mean kidnapping, but it’s more funny than angsty, also slight Yandere vibes torwards the end Word count: exactly 2222 (nice) Summary: It was a rather usual evening for you, a Gala, trying to avoid the mayor, getting kidnapped- what more could you want from your night?

This was requeste from a phenomenal anon: Okay this is really silly, but cute to me for some reason. But could you write, like, reader is kidnapped by the Riddler as a hostage for Batman. But whether they wanna just mess with him, or if they like him, or whatever, for some reason, reader kisses Riddler. On the lips. Idk, I just think the idea is cute as well as whatever Riddler's reaction would be. I hope you like it ☺

Part 2 - Masquerade Part 3 - Magical/Misery/Massacre

You were almost thankful when the light in the ballroom of the city-hall flickered off and fog filled the area that was now only lit up by the lights from outside. The Gala you had been attending, one of the almost monthly charity gala's that some rich-guy (this time the mayor himself) held to make himself look better and to keep close contacts with all the other rich-guys in the city, was so boring that you were minutes away from crashing it yourself. Admittedly, your father was also an all-time favorite Gala host, but he had the excuse of having to keep face with his "side-business" and his parties were often at least somewhat entertaining. But this one? Horrible. Of course, you had somehow managed to be the only one "available" to go, so, not only were you extremely annoyed, but you were also completely alone in a room of rich old couples that tried to lick Bruce Wayne's eldest daughters, possible the next leader of Wayne inc. and one of the most prominent and appeared people in the Wayne-family (as the only one who wasn't dressed up every night and went fighting), boots. You had to admit that you could understand them somehow. Other than your siblings and your dad -who all kept it pretty low with the media- you were on every second tabloid, at every second event and on every second talk-show. You had quickly become the new face of the name Wayne, "proudly" sharing the place with your father. So yeah, you were more available than the rest of your relatives and with ever appearance in the media, they thought more and more that they knew about your opinions and the way you think. Some times you regretted your decision to keep away from the vigilante lifestyle to focus on keeping the Wayne-name alive. You couldn't quite remember when you made that choice, but you knew that as a girl, your father didn't want to train you any further than self-defence, because he was scared you'd get hurt, then Dick came along and was around your age, but still got to train and fight with your dad. Back then you'd been furious about that, but whenever he actually got hurt you felt like it was maybe the right thing to do. Then Dick left and in your anger at your dad for just picking up the next best kid and basically forgetting your sibling, even though you soon warmed up to Jason and accepted him as a second brother, you started focusing on school more and actually started to enjoy conversing with the business-people at Gala's about the news and the market. And somehow, after Jason died and you planned to take Wayne inc. away from your father as revenge for letting your brother die (a plan that you soon let go off when you recognize how much it actually had hurt him), you were somehow in the position of the heir of the Wayne empire, even though at some point -you were pretty sure- your dad asked you if you wanted to be trained like your other siblings to become a vigilante yourself, you were now on the way to business. That way was usually pretty bearable, but completely alone on a Gala that was like an exact copy of all the other ones, you would rather be stuck in a 24-hour business meeting. So, yes, when the Party was cut short by a villain attack you were probably a bit too happy. You heard the panicked calls and shouts of the other guests and quickly activated the bat-alarm ("Cool name dad, thanks for that") that was placed on the back of the necklace you wore (you had many other necklaces that included it too because in modern society you couldn't wear the same jewelry too often). Deciding not to risk waiting for them (and hoping that you could maybe make it to the small dinner down the street to eat something before one of your brothers (most likely Damian who would cling to you every time the two of you were together (even if it was more than the two of you)) found and dragged you back to the manor to check you over), you grabbed the skirt of your rather heavy dress (of course today was the day you decided to wear one of your bigger dresses), pulled it up to your upper thigh and quickly rushed to were you remembered the nearest exit to the Veranda to be. When the cold evening air hit your face you let out a small sigh. Very nice, you thought and started to walk towards the gate, when you felt a sharp pain pierce through your neck, immediately followed by numbness flowing through your whole body. "For real?" you managed to mumble before your legs lost their strength and you tumbled over, not sure if you even hit the ground before you blacked out.

When you woke up, you were almost sure that you'd be back in your home. The last few times you got taken, your family had been quick enough to get you before you even entered any hideaway. But you weren't home. You woke up laying on a rather slim matt on the floor of a small cage. You looked down at yourself to see that you were still wearing the dress that you'd worn earlier and that, even though the gaps between the bars wasn't large enough anyway, you couldn't really escape on your own in that. Damn modern fashion. When you had scanned the area around you you widened your radius to the hall your small personal jail was located in. It was literally just a big, empty warehouse, no-one in sight. "You know," you shouted into the emptiness, hoping someone would hear you, "kidnapping me is really uninspired, you aren't even the first one to do it this month." You sighed when no answer came and instinctively put your hand up to your neck to play with the necklace. Your breath got caught in your throat when you realized it wasn't there. Suddenly a spotlight flashed over the roof of the room, illuminating something that was hanging at the highest point. You didn't need to be close to recognizing your piece of jewelry. "Tell me, Miss Wayne," a voice suddenly filled the room and you started to look around, not sure where it came from, "why does a businesswoman like you have her own personal dog-whistle for batman?" You swallowed hard but kept your composure. "For many reasons," you started in the most confident voice you could manage, "I am in quite of a demand." "So is the mayor and I don't see him having one," the voice got closer and finally a figure stepped close enough for you to make out. You still couldn't see who it was though. "Well, maybe you just didn't see it, maybe it's in his shoe or something." "I don't think so," he stepped closer and you finally recognized the figure and his outfit, but you couldn't even mumble Riddler before he continued: "I studied all the kidnapping patterns of the most important figures in Gotham and somehow you're the only one who the bat always gets to in a matter of minutes." Okay, it's worse than I thought. Time to buy dad some time. "Okay first off, thanks for calling me one of the most important Gothamites," you said, playfully brushing your hair behind your shoulder, "and second if you really know that he has his eyes on me, shouldn't you be worried? I mean I'd think you would have figured out that there's a tracker in it by now." Of course, you knew that he knew and you also knew that he probably had some way or another to block it, but the longer he talked, the sooner your dad would find you. "You're not so stupid," he said, stepping closer to you, somehow already standing in front of your cage, "I've been watching you for a while now and we both know that you're just trying to stall for time, my dear." "You know, it's kinda creepy to say that you watched me. I mean, sure, you're the evil guy here, but still. Stalking?" He chuckled a bit but seemingly ignored what you said. You had to pull other levers, you realized when he turned around. "Don't you still want to know why I have my own Bat-whistle?" you shouted a bit too loud, but effectively managed to get him back to you. "Why would you tell me?" he asked suspiciously. "Well, I guess you want to know that and I really want to know what you think you could gain out of kidnapping me, so you tell me yours, and I'll tell you mine," you winked at him, mischievously. "Hmm," he eyed you, "fine. Even though it's quite obvious isn't it? You're the perfect moonflower for my bat-trap," he said, raising his hand to just slightly hover in front of you. For a second it felt like there was some kind of static energy between you, but you tried to ignore it. "I guess it's my turn now," you breathed out, ignoring the weird mood around you, "As you probably know, the bat has a very weird, honestly with a somewhat strange undertone, relationship with my dad. In exchange for some, uh, financing as my father put it, he agreed to keep his eye out for me a bit more. It's just the result of a parent's protectiveness and business." You weren't really lying, even though the way you said it clearly gave off a very different picture than what was actually the case, but it seemed like the man in front of you bought it. Shouldn't he be here by now? "Well, I guess the reason he protects you a little bit more than the rest of the city is irrelevant as long as he is searching you," he shrugged, seemingly satisfied by the answer and at the same time not really happy about it. You couldn't risk him losing interest again. "There's another secret you might want to know," you whispered ominously, gaining his attention for a second time that night. Before he could investigate your sentence, your hands slipped through the gaps between the bars and grabbed the Riddler's collar, pulling him flush against the poles and crashing your mouth with his. At the feeling of your soft lips against his, he immediately froze, fixed in position like a statue. When you needed to take a breath again, you pulled back, smoothing your dress down and fixing your hair, the man in front of you still completely stiff. "I should probably tell you that the tracker in my necklace isn't the only one on me, you should've really taken my advice and checked the shoes," you smirked and winked again, the Riddler's gaze fixed on you with eyes as wide as dinner plates when the wall behind you crashed open and your family came to your rescue. "Until next time," you shrugged at him when your cage was broken open and Nightwing picked you up and carried you out, from what you could see before you were out of reach, the man you just kissed never moved.

[Bonus]

It had been a fairly long day at Wayne Inc. and the suit you were wearing was starting to be annoying and you wanted nothing more than to peel out of these clothes and get into your jogging pants and one of Jason's oversized T-shirts. So, as quickly as possible, you rushed to your room, ignoring Damian's plead to join him on a walk with Titus, only to stop in your steps after you had opened the door. Your (alarm-wired mind you) window stood open and allowed a cold breeze to fill your room. For a second you contemplated calling someone to check it out, but your curiosity got the best of you. You quietly closed the door and sneaked over to the window with the plan to check if someone was outside, but when you stood in front of it, your eyes landed on a small package that stood on your windowsill. You looked around again, before closing the window (and checking that the alarm wiring was still intact) and sitting down on your bed to open the small box. It was packed neatly with a grey wrapping and a Y/F/C ribbon, making you especially careful when opening it. Inside was a perfume bottle that took your breath away. It was gorgeous. The Cap was adorned by a glass flower that was completely white and round, but other than that there was nothing on it that would give away the contents of the bottle. Having been briefed about poisonous packages by not only Wayne inc. safety regulators but also at least every member of your family at least once, you didn't spray any of the perfume, instead, laying it back into the box. It was then that you noticed the card in it that had the same colour as the inside of the box, making it easy to overlook. You took it out and turned it around to read the words that were written on it with the neatest font you've ever seen. Until next time my Moonflower...

#Riddler #Riddler x reader #edward nygma #edward nygma x reader #batfam x reader #dc x reader #batsis #batsis!reader #batfamily #batfamily x reader #bruce wayne #batman #damian wayne #robin #dick grayson #nightwing

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mimik-u · 4 years

Text

Flower Child (Chapter 14): Night

AO3 Link

6:10PM:

For the last fifteen years, Jay Zircon had been Diamond Electric’s top lawyer alongside her sister and fellow counsel, Gilda. Whatever lawsuits the company faced—and it had faced more than its fair share—the pair headed the legal team which incisively ensured victory for their illustrious CEO, Yellow Diamond.

Where Gilda was aggressive and willing to snipe beneath the belt, a style that suited their similarly minded boss, Jay was more circumspect in her methodology, able to work through all the variables of a given case to create a slower but undeniably thorough position. When the two of them worked together, they made a dichotomous but somehow remarkably fluid team.

They didn’t lose very often.

They couldn’t afford to lose given the status, prestige, and formidable demand of their employer, who also didn’t lose.

Very often.

(Yellow Diamond had lost her only child four years ago, and it was clear to everyone, to all who knew her, that she hadn’t been the same since.)

The Zircons worked together often in the sense that they were continually forced into close proximity to each other by the nature of their jobs and painful holidays with their aging mother… but as far as working together in a more metaphorical sense went, aliens would invade Earth first before the siblings would ever find common ground for longer than a day.

And somehow, aliens were less of a far-stretch.

“I’m looking at all the facts now, and I truly think, if I-I’m allowed to be frank, Mrs. Diamond, that it is in our best interest to settle for this particular case.” Jay’s voice trembled as she carefully addressed the figure at the head of the conference table.

Arranged in a black three piece suit, Yellow Diamond was simply—there was no other word for it—striking, a slightly slouched but otherwise imperial statue cut from marble in her hardback chair. There was always an air about her, an impression, that she was an impenetrable fortress, her tall walls fortified with sharp weaponry and stone.

Her architecture was magnificent, but in its harshness and angularity, all lines and geometrical edges, it always emphasized an implicit message: She was a woman who it would be unwise to cross.

She stared between the sisters impassively, finger interlocked below her sharp chin as she listened, though Jay couldn’t help but notice that the CEO’s attention was divided between them and her phone, which sat dormant on the table, a silent specter.

“That’s your go-to solution, isn’t it?” Gilda scoffed, her arrogance impressively balanced in the haughty tilt of her nose. “Settle. What is this? A petty traffic ticket? We shouldn’t be settling anything! We could have them on the ropes if we just—”

“Gilda!” She interrupted incredulously, splaying her hands forcibly on the table. “Loosen your cravat so you can see the big picture for heaven’s sake! The factory‘s waste has been unlawfully leaking on a protected reservation for twelve years. We can contest that until we’re blue in the face, but no judge on this green earth is going to rule in our favor.”

Her sister opened that insufferable mouth of hers, likely to argue some asinine point that Jay would spend the next thirty minutes trying to meticulously deconstruct, but the familiar tango was harshly interrupted by the ringing of a phone that was neither of theirs.

“Quiet!” Yellow Diamond hissed, fluidly pulling the device up to her ear, and there was a viciousness in her ordinarily well-regimented face that neither lawyer felt particularly equipped to contest.

So they blanched into obedient silence on either side of the tense CEO.

Gilda uncomfortably picked at her portfolio.

“Blue? What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

On the other end of the line, the woman who Jay knew to be Yellow Diamond’s wife, seemed to reply.

Fifteen years was a long time to have known the Diamonds, and during that span—all those days, weeks, and months—Jay understood both very little about them and an incredible lot.

Fifteen years ago, Pink Diamond had been a precocious ten-year old who had accompanied her mother to work from time to time. She used to play on the elevator, zipping from the lobby to the fortieth floor constantly, as though it was some exciting game called Annoy the Poor Elevator Attendant. Jay had been awkward and clumsy then, a young lawyer still trying to find her footing as the newest addition to one of the most elite legal teams in the entire city, and one of her most vivid memories from that time was the youngest Diamond accidentally bumping into her on said elevator, causing her to spill her scalding coffee all over her favorite portfolio.

The child had apologized profusely and even proffered her own jacket as a napkin because she was sweet like that—if a little impish. Freckles crossed the bridge of her nose like trailing dandelion dust; there was a gap in her mouth where she’d just lost a tooth.

For a couple of years there, Jay became familiarized with the heiress’s occasional presence in the building. She was the shock of pink hair bobbing impatiently in the elevator, and she was the flash of red converses heeling off down the hallway and around the corner. She was the lone bubbly voice in a sea of sober business droning. She was ten, and then she was thirteen, and then she was sixteen, obnoxiously jingling the keys to her new convertible around everywhere, as though just begging someone to ask about them.

She was the rare smile on Yellow Diamond’s unbending mouth—crooked there, stiff.

Almost reluctant.

But undoubtedly there.

And then, just like that, she was gone.

The hallways of Diamond Electric felt a little less… vibrant without the spontaneity of those red converses and the climbing octaves of that high, lilting laugh.

Mischievous.

To the last.

As for Blue Diamond, Jay could only claim to have seen her maybe a handful of times in the course of her employ at DE, though only one occasion was stark in the lawyer’s well-ordered recollections.

At the trial where Pink Diamond’s killers were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, the Zircons’ euphoria at having argued their cased well was immediately tempered as the entire courtroom watched a tragedy unfold before their eyes. There was no applause as Yellow Diamond stood and held her wife in her arms.

There was only silence.

And baited breath.

And a mutual, unspoken, dirty relief that they were not the Diamonds and only passive voyeurs to what was assuredly unspeakable misery.

That night, Jay and Gilda were quite polite to each other as they taxied away from the courthouse.

A mutual, unspoken, dirty truce.

“No, no, I’m, of course I’m not busy,” Yellow said, standing up with an abruptness that startled the Zircons. She was already halfway to the door before at least one of them recovered their wits.

“But, Mrs. Diamond!” Gilda interjected. “The lawsuit. We—”

“We’re done for the night,” Yellow called over her shoulder, a brusqueness in her voice that left no room for argument. “We can reconvene in the morning.” “But—”

The door slammed on Gilda’s final protestation.

A framed picture of the Empire City skyline comically fell from its place on the wall at the force of the exit, landing facedown on the floor with a pathetic ker-clunk.

Jay glanced down at the neatly compiled packet below her—the efforts of at least two weeks worth of joint research.

They had barely made it past page four; there were fifty-two pages total.

“Her head’s just not in the game anymore,” Gilda sniffed, scooping up her own papers with a roughness that wasn’t entirely impersonal. “Hasn’t been in years now.”

“Gilda,” Jay chided sharply, her voice low, but even she knew that whispering was an exercise in futility.

Their boss was long gone.

“Oh, don’t give me that holier than thou nonsense, sister mine. You know it. Everyone in this office—nay!—this building knows it.” She shoved her portfolio back into her briefcase and closed it, harshly palming the brass clasps. “Our stalwart leader has been compromised.”

“She’s still grieving obviously. She’s taking care of her wife…”

Gilda only shook her head, standing up from her own chair. Her impeccable coif—tall and vaguely impossible looking—gleamed beneath the warm overheads.

“And I’m sympathetic towards her,” she said. “I am. But you cannot run a multibillion dollar business on sentiment.”

It was an effective closing statement to which Jay Zircon had no reasonable rebuttal.

Her sister swept out of the conference room with a last harrumph of contempt, while she alone remained, the last diner at that long, empty table. She shuffled a few of her papers absentmindedly and glanced out of the yellow-tinted windows as the sky slowly turned over to night, charcoaling.

Sentiment.

This company had no use for it.

6:44PM:

The conversation had lasted maybe ten minutes, two of which were lost to clumsy silence as Yellow Diamond navigated from the conference room to her office around the corner, closing the door behind her with a resolute click.

They spent three minutes more on useless pleasantries because that was just what a phone call between two spouses who didn’t really talk anymore entailed.

The barely breathed, Hello.

The awkwardly returned, Hi.

The shuffling of their reluctant breaths, all static and white noise over the line, before Yellow ripped the bandage off with all the indelicacy she centered her brutal facade around, exposing the wound raw.

Did you mean it? Are you sure you’re… okay ?

Because the bleak truth was that she wasn’t sure she believed Blue when she said that she was fine. Four years of perpetual mourning had taught her entirely too much about silent, grief stricken nights and very little about belief, hope, and all of those other empty platitudes. Blue Diamond could say that she was fine and leave a suicide note in the wastebasket three hours later. Blue Diamond could promise that she was okay, only to dissolve on a balcony full of sun because she was light five minutes ago… and now—and forevermore—she was not. She could build a cathedral out of reassurances and condemn it to the ground with just the thought, the remembrance, and the overwhelming absence of Pink Diamond, who haunted them both perpetually and always.

They’d been in the ruins for four years now, and the bottom line was that Yellow Diamond didn’t trust mere words.

And maybe, just maybe, she didn’t trust Bl—

Pleasantries and silence—that was what a phone call between two spouses who didn’t really talk anymore entailed.

There was breathing, and there was the swelling darkness just outside the gold colored windows of Diamond Electric.

In and out and in and out.

Inhale.

Exhale.

And there was a long pause as Blue Diamond collected her thoughts in that quietly precise way of hers; she was always so meticulous in how she used her words, as though they were instruments to be handled with delicate care.

Yes? She replied gently, her voice lilting upwards as though she was asking a question. And no… perhaps both at the same time if those emotions can coexist without contradiction… Yellow, I—

What? Because Yellow had abruptly cut in, unable to stand the tension.

So impatient to the last.

Unfailingly.

The coldness of the office pressed upon her like a vice, its hard edges sinking in her skin. She dug her fingers into the smooth surface of her desk as though to ground herself, but there was nothing to hold on to but the grains. It was always like this when she talked to Blue; the expansive scope of her world narrowed down to her and her alone. Gravity meant nothing; time meant nothing; everything in the world meant nothing.

Except.

And always.

Blue.

I’m sorry, she simply said.

It was only two words; they landed in the pit of Yellow’s stomach like a blow.

I’ve hurt you—immeasurably—in all these collected years, and I’m sorry for that, Yellow, she continued, her voice soft, for all the immeasurable, collected hurts. I am.

Two weeks ago, Blue Diamond had been lying catatonic in her bed, decomposing.

And now, she was apologizing for four years worth of hurt.

It was inconceivable.

Impossible.

It felt wrong.

Surreal.

Why? Yellow’s voice was strangled in her throat, dry and parched. Why now?

Why not a year ago when Yellow knelt by her bedside and pleaded with her—begged her—to stay goddammit? Why not all those hundreds upon hundred of nights that she had slept in the study on a damn leather couch, keeping one eye on the half-opened door in her study, even in the throes of sleep? Why today, of all days, when the consummate businesswoman was in the middle of yet another crucial meeting she would easily abandon all for the sake of one person?

Why?

The question scratched her chest; it punctured her beating lungs.

Why now?

And why… why was Yellow never enough?

(She had wanted to be enough.)

I visited a boy who is fighting for his life today, came the quiet reply. And it reminded me, quickly, of how fragile this all really is.

She had paused then.

The unspoken name nestled between them; the memory of their daughter wreathed her neck.

Pink used to love coming up to this very office just because she liked spinning around in her mother’s chair. Her shoes would briefly flash against the floor just so she could gain momentum, and then she would spin, spin, spin, her head tilted back in the beginnings of a long laugh.

Yellow glanced at it then, the worn leather shining dully in the light glancing in from the windows.

It was completely and utterly empty.

I have to go, Blue. Sorry. I stepped out of a meeting.

She had dismissed the meeting.

Oh, I—

We can talk when I get home tonight.

And then she had clicked the phone off unceremoniously and shoved it across the desk as though it offended.

Ten minutes.

For the last twenty, Yellow Diamond had been sitting in the darkness of her office in that damn leather chair, nursing a glass of scotch between her trembling hands. She downed one smooth shot and then another; she drank and she drank until the expensive decanter was all gone, and the after notes of vanilla and barley and peat smoke burned her aching mouth. She drank and she drank, rummaging through her liqueur cabinet with a kind of desperation that made her feel less like a human and more like a rabid dog, hunting for just a drop of water.

Anything to take off the edge.

She drank until all the memories went away, until four years worth of them were walled off by the dulling buzz of Lagavulin.

And when a single tear crept down the hardened architecture of her face, collecting pitifully on the point of her sharp shin, she was so damn drunk, that she didn’t even know what she was crying about anymore.

Why?

Why now?

And why was she not enough?

She had wanted to be enough.

The beginnings of stars rose from the fire of the sky, and Yellow Diamond watched them as they crashed and burned.

7:01PM:

See, the trouble started when the vending machine near their hotel room stopped working.

Nose wrinkling, stomach rumbling for the want of a snack that would tide her over until Greg got back with pizza, Amethyst tried shaking it, kicking it, and even pleading with the stupid thing all for the sake of a Twinkie she knew probably wouldn’t even taste that good.

But to no avail.

The Twinkie gods hated her apparently.

And so, with a sigh that sounded a hell of a lot more like a groan, she punched the refund button and got her dollar twenty five back in quarters before deciding to try the vending machine in the hospital lobby, moving along the smooth, carpeted floor with new purpose. The rubber sole of her left boot flapped noisily as she walked, having come loose a few weeks ago; she’d been meaning to get it repaired, but between work and Steven, time had been less of a quantity that she possessed, so much as it was something that she chased after.

Every second was a gift, and every minute was a fucking lottery.

There was an elevator ride down and accompanying elevator music, jingling and jangling rhythmically to the beat of her antsy nerves. And there was a text from Vidalia asking how Steven was doing, which she didn’t know how to answer, so she just didn’t reply. (V would get it better than most. Her hubs was a quiet man, so she knew the language of silence entirely too well, whereas Amethyst was still getting the hang of it. Silence was a stalker she had spent half of her life trying to avoid.)

And finally, there was the elevator prying itself open into an atrium that was darkening with the gathering night. Only a few visitors remained, scattered in various hardback chairs and wearing the same tired, careworn faces.

Amethyst didn’t doubt that she looked the same to them.

Because these were faces, sure enough, of loving someone and being afraid to lose them. There was a depletion to the act, a necessary consumption, that united them together beneath the flat roof of the Empire City Regional Medical Center.

They were exhausted—all of them.

So damn weary.

Amethyst had already slumped halfway to the vending machine when she saw her.

One of those same tired, careworn faces.

But a very particular tired, careworn face at the same time.

Blue Diamond, looking incredibly uncomfortable in the chair upon which she sat, her metal cane gleaming by her side.

Amethyst flicked her phone upwards so that the home screen briefly flashed on—it was 7:07. Hella late, and yet, the old lady was still here, looking for all the world like someone had killed her cat or something equally as egregious. Her plump lips were all twisted in a quiet, gnawing sort of frown as she played a little with her long hands on her lap.

Her eyes stared at the ground, but Amethyst could tell—the woman wasn’t really seeing it.

And there was something so singularly sad about this image.

Vulnerable.

That made Amethyst push her Twinkie quest to the back of her mind.

Shoving her curled fists into the pockets of her joggers, Amethyst took one step and then another across the tiled floor until she was standing right in front of the puzzle of Blue Diamond, the multibillionaire who had worn a bathrobe to a cemetery.

And she knew it was insensitive of her to think that way. Regardless of the woman’s faults, numerous though Amethyst assumed they were, she hadn’t asked for her griefs to be handed to her on a silver platter.

She hadn’t asked to be undone.

To be fair, though, no one ever did.

That was just the dice of life, rolled across a slanting table.

Snake eyes.

Sorry.

Better luck next time.

“Anyone sittin’ here?” She asked gruffly, jerking her thumb towards the empty chair on Blue Diamond’s left.

Startled from her solemn reverie, Blue looked up then, mouth parting slightly in a soft ‘o’ of surprise as recognition pinched her silvery brow. She shifted in her seat, hunched shoulders straightening with an understated kind of elegance that Amethyst had come to closely associate with Pearl.

This wasn’t an especially welcome analogy, though. After all, while she’d gotten used to Pearl’s various quirks by now, for a long time there—years even—she’d always felt… condescended by her in a way.

Patronized.

Small.

That feeling took a long ass while to go away with a person whom she considered to be one of her closest friends; how much longer would the sensation last with a total effing stranger, especially the very one she was, like, supposed to hate just on mere principle?

Amethyst ran a habitual hand through her hair in the awkwardness of it all and shifted her weight from one shoe to the other, rocking back and forth. The sole of the left one went flap, flap, flap.

“You’re… one of Steven’s guardians, yes?”

“Yup, one of many.” And then, because she knew that probably didn’t clarify matters, brusquely added, “Amethyst. I was the one who brought him to your suite the other day. Can I sit?”

She once again gestured pointedly to the chair, raising a lavender brow in such a way that more or less communicated, Jeez, woman, get it together.

“Oh, yes! My apologies,” came the appropriately abashed reply. “Please. Be my guest.”

And so, with a little more force than was necessary, Amethyst threw herself into the empty seat, ass already chafing against its hard bottom, the tips of her boots just barely scraping the clinically white floor.

She could feel Blue Diamond’s tallness next to her more than she dared to look at it for herself; her presence was overwhelming as it was without having to look at her dead on—the shadows turning circles beneath her huge eyes, the parentheses around her quivering mouth, and that air of misery that the twenty-nine year old knew well enough without needing to observe it in a perfect stranger. Out of the corner of her eye, though, she could see that the woman had gone back to staring at her wrinkled hands, templing them delicately on the blue fabric of her lap.

“My valet is coming to pick me up,” she offered without prompting, “but I believe traffic is delaying her.”

“S’always cray cray around this time of night,” Amethyst returned knowledgeably. She couldn’t claim to like Empire City, but after a few months of driving up here so often, she supposed she at least couldn’t refute that she knew it. “Lotsa idiots out n about.”

“Reckless, are they not?”

“The absolute wooooorst.”

And both of their mouths briefly quirked at exactly the same time before silence fell between them again, clumsy and awkward, like an entity still growing into its feet.

They were talking about traffic.

Neither of them really wanted to talk about traffic.

Amethyst broke the stillness first, studiously continuing to not look at her companion. Instead, she drew her leg upwards into her chair, so she could pick at her boot some more.

Flap, flap, flap.

“So you saw him, huh?”

It wasn’t necessary to evoke his name; after all, she was pretty sure that the image of him laying in that hospital bed, all swarming with tubes, haunted the both of them even now, invading the sanctity of their minds and eyes.

Flap, flap, flap.

She was going to tear her shoe to shreds if she kept it up.

(She kept it up.)

“I saw him, yes,” Blue agreed quietly, her fingers stilling in their cathedral position. One thumb was balanced carefully atop of the other, bricks without mortar, construction without foundation. “I... wasn't ready… he was so small... and I almost looked away... I'm ashamed to even admit it."

The confession was broken into tiny fragments, each splinter slow and painful in the rolling of her accent.

Amethyst couldn’t help herself then—restraint had never been the name by which she was known.

She was blunt.

She parried back, “You still could, y’know. You don’t have to be here for this.”

You don’t have to put yourself through this if you can help it.

(We can’t help it.)

“Not your circus, not your monkeys, and all that jazz.”

And maybe that was the crux of it, the beating heart behind the entanglement of her reluctance when it came to the wealthy woman sitting next to her. The Crystal Gem couldn’t understand why someone, anyone, would willingly partake in this exhibition when they had every blessed out in the world. Blue Diamond didn’t have to care for Steven. She didn’t have to be here. She could go back to the fiftieth floor of her penthouse suite and wall herself away from one care of this world more. Just from her looks alone, Amethyst could tell that she couldn’t afford another loss, and yet, she could absolutely afford to get away from the possibility of another loss if she just, well, left.

If she hurried.

Before the boy who was kind enough to extend flowers to random ladies in the cemetery could worm his way into a heart that had already had its reckoning.

But—and Amethyst was just now realizing this with the force of a collision—maybe that was the crux of it, too.

That simple goodness of a proffered hand had been enough.

It had changed a life.

Maybe, quite possibly, it had saved one.

“I… just got off the phone with my wife,” Blue Diamond whispered, “and she asked a singular question to which I couldn’t provide the answer. Why? Such a simple beast, and yet a devastatingly complex one.”

Why Rose all those many years ago?

Why Steven now? Why couldn’t they find him a damn kidney?

Why couldn’t life give them one damn break?

Why?

The familiarity of the question rose like a lump in Amethyst’s throat.

“I’ve looked away from her—from everything, really—for so many years, even before my daughter…” The woman trailed away, her voice hitching. It took her a few seconds to regroup. She placed a steadying hand on her chest. “… and now, for reasons I cannot necessarily explain myself… I don’t want to anymore. Maybe, Yellow, it is because a child in a cemetery told me that it was quite possible to still feel the pain of my loss and still live? Maybe, Yellow, it is because I sat upon a balcony with him and envied the hunger he had for life, and wondered, for the first time in years, if it was still possible to obtain a modicum of it for myself? Maybe, Yellow, I saw him in a hospital bed today—sick—and it reminded me of a truth that I’d long forgotten.”

Amethyst chanced a peek at Blue Diamond then, stole it ashamedly, as though she was a child reaching a hand into the cookie jar.

The dim incandescence of the overheads crowned her silvery head in soft, white light as she glanced upwards, her half-moon gaze angled to a spot that the Crystal Gem couldn’t quite see.

She almost looked beautiful—a portrait in melancholy, all feathery brushstrokes.

Steven would have thought so anyway.

Hell, he was the type of person who would have even said it.

“And what that’d be?” She asked.

What was the answer to that devastatingly simple, that horribly complex question, Why?

If there was even an answer at all.

What truth had a woman as seemingly erudite as Blue Diamond so guiltily forgotten?

Blue looked down then, a strand of wavy hair falling between her eyes. It curled a little at the end.

“Why?” She murmured, her strained voice barely above a whisper. Amethyst had to lean in just to catch what she said next. “Because I love you, Yellow—so much. That is why.”

The rawness of the proclamation, the sincerity of it, seared the both of them, landing cleanly between them like the precise swing of an axe. It was always such a vulnerable gamble to admit to love, and perhaps it was even revolutionary to proffer it as the solution to why.

Why am I trying?

Why am I still here?

Why can’t I look away, Steven?

Because I love you—so much. That is it.

That is all.

And that is why.

It was a simple phrase, and it was a profound one. It was scarcely said; in Blue Diamond’s case, it was forgotten.

“You should tell that to her,” Amethyst suddenly said, and just for a moment there, it didn’t matter that the person in question was the dread Yellow Diamond, her mortal enemy or whatever.

Just for a moment, Yellow Diamond was merely a person who was loved by another.

“Exactly like that,” she pressed before glancing away, her bangs falling across her eyes. She played with her busted shoe again as heat clambered up her face—flap, flap, flap. It was surreal to be sitting here, giving advice to a woman so different from her and so alien. It was only chance that they were both sitting here—here, of all places—beneath the roof of this hospital.

Tired and careworn.

Alike but not especially.

Perfect strangers.

Connected simply by a flower and a boy.

Now it was Blue Diamond’s turn to stare; her tall, sickle-shaped eyes were drawn to the noise of flap, flap, flap, which made Amethyst self-conscious about the fact that the woman was likely wearing a designer dress.

Damn these rich people.

“I fear it may be too late. I’ve done my damage.”

“Maybe,” Amethyst shrugged. It was all she could do. “But ya won’t know until you’ve tried.”

They were both silent again. Outside the glass windows, the world had taken on the dull purple of night, pulling it over its shoulders like a cozy, star-spangled nightgown.

“Thank you… Amethyst.”

Blue Diamond offered her a parenthetical smile of an olive branch of a truce; it was a reluctant little gesture, still stiff and foreign on the mouth of someone who looked like she hadn’t smiled in years.

“Nah, don’t mention it, dude," she shrugged.

It was not forgiveness, nor was it absolution.

But it was a tiny concession.

It was a tired half-smile pulling at her lips.

“I needed the reminder, too.”

7:39PM:

Traffic in Empire City was always a risky gamble of a business, especially at night when the only rule of the six lane seemed to be, “Everything goes, and good luck with the going, buddy, old pal, my friend.”

Having spent years driving up here with Rose for various doctor appointments and then relearning the routine all over again with Steven these past few months, Greg liked to fancy that he could navigate the beast as well as any boardie from a small beach town could ever claim to. But even still, all the ample driving experience in the world was no match for what a car wreck could do to the flow of vehicles streaming down the neon lit highway.

Somewhere a little up above his van, there was a cacophony of sirens—red and blue and shrill and insistent. In the passenger seat, the pizzas he’d picked up nearly an hour ago were cooling, the rich, greasy smell of them sidling up to his shoulder temptingly. He thought about taking a bite because it was late and he was hungry, but ultimately decided against it.

Amethyst would never let him hear the end of it.

So he thought about the accident up ahead and hoped that no one had been seriously injured. (He had his doubts, though. There were so many sirens, wailing.) His van slowly crept forward as the cars ahead were painstakingly navigated around the ruins. People honked up and down the endless line because patience wasn’t Empire City’s strong suit; the big city, the golden apple, didn’t wait for anyone, least of all everyone, and sometimes, it felt like everyone in the world lived here, a population made of skyscrapers and cars and brilliant lights.

But thinking about the wreck didn’t entertain him for very long—his apologies to those affected—so he thought about the soulful tunes crooning through his staticky radio. Some R&B band from the eighties whose name just barely escaped him. They sung about love and loss and red Corvettes that shined beneath the hot, sticky sun. Greg’s thumbs slapped the wheel rhythmically to the melody, picking out the notes with an easiness that might have made old Marty proud on a good day.

But then the music suddenly shuddered off, the jockey apologizing for the inconvenience.

They’d try to get the station back up shortly.

The silence was unbearable.

So he popped in the closest CD, thinking it was his relaxing music compilation.

But nope.

It was death metal, the sudden explosion of the heavy bass and snare drums nearly sending his car veering into the next lane over as his hands jerked on the wheel.

“Wrong one!” He panted, chest heaving with feral panic. “Stop! Eject!”

And with a slap harder than intended, he punched the panel of buttons at random, the noise screeching to a stop, the CD comically popping out like toast from a toaster.

Ding.

And silence filled all the empty spaces once again.

In the silence, Greg had no choice but to think of Steven.

He took great gulps of air, his shoulders still shaking from the reverberations of the abruptly snuffed music, and could find no more distractions.

This was the end of the road on an endless road of snailing cars.

His hands clenched painfully around the wheel, the images revving across his mind’s eye—unbidden, quick, ugly, and unwanted.

His son.

His only son.

Laying in that hospital bed.

Dying.

Was this all life had to offer? He wondered to himself, and in the place of noise, there was emotion; there was sadness and horror and anger roaring up the column of his throat.

Rising.

Leaking.

Dripping.

Down his ruddy cheeks and into his beard.

Down his throat.

Draining.

Loving people who were gonna always leave him in the end? Finding home only for it to immediately forsake him? Maybe old Andy had had it right, always up there in that great, blue oasis of sky—never touching the ground long enough for people to find him and love him and hurt him.

Maybe there was something to the idea of giving up.

But no. “Stop that,” Greg scolded himself harshly. “Stop.”

He’d spent his entire teen years running away from his folks and all their shiny expectations, so he was done running away. He had told himself that the moment he kicked Marty outta his van and turned it back around to Beach City and its sprawling sands—to the little oceanside town and the big woman with pink hair.

Right then and there, he’d been ready to accept the consequences of his actions.

The starchild had grown into a man.

And that meant staying the course, no looking back or skywards, no regrets or what-could-have-beens.

For Steven Universe, he would stay until the end… no matter what that end happened to be.

That was responsibility.

And that, above all, was love.

Love was solidity, and it was thereness, and it was warmth.

It was patience, and it was risk that never quite guaranteed reward.

Love was staying.

Even when things got tough, and maybe especially when they did.

(Stay, he'd pleaded with Rose when Dr. Howard turned the ventilator off. He had held her hand. He didn't want her to be alone.)

(Please, he begged as the lines that measured the beating of her heart began to falter and fade away.)

His bushy brow furrowed in quiet sympathy as he finally maneuvered around the scene of the accident, going slowly as a traffic officer signaled him on with a hand and a whistle. He saw the carnage out of the corner of his eye, all twisted metal and climbing smoke. What looked like a Nissan had plowed right into the back of a fancy lookin’ black town car, not unlike the one which had brought Blue Diamond to the hospital earlier…

His heart lurched.

But then he thought about it.

He considered.

Nah.

Couldn’t be her.

From what he understood, her high rise was somewhere past the hospital.

8:54PM:

“Pearl, go home before I tell Gunga on you,” Kiki teased, but all the same, there was concern in her voice, a hint of seriousness that didn’t quite mark her playful threat as simply playful. It flashed in the depths of her warm, brown eyes. And it brushed against Pearl’s shoulder with a gentleness she had come to expect from the younger Pizza sister.

The two of them were both working behind the bar of Fish Stew Cuisine tonight, the restaurant Kiki’s father and grandmother owned. It used to be just a casual place for locals—then called Fish Stew Pizza—but with time, effort, and a considerable amount of increased tourism when vacationers realized that there was a lovely beach here to visit and trash, it had expanded into one of Beach City’s finest restaurants.

It was a slow night, though, rain coming down in heavy sheets outside the tall, glass windows.

At this late hour, only a few diners remained, casually enjoying their dinners to the rhythmic tattoo of the storm—mostly regulars, people who understood that through rain, hail, sleet, or snow, Fish Stew would always be here for patient guests, arms open wide and plates steaming with good food. The amber light strewn from the dusky lamps made the place feel warm, as though it was full of quiet fire, flickering in so many overhanging hearths.

Pearl swiped persistently at a stain on the glass she was cleaning.

She’d been working on it for five minutes now in the absence of a new customer to tend to.

“I can’t just leave,” she returned exasperatedly, still scrubbing away at the mark. She was starting to think that it was yet another lost cause.

(She seemed to have a penchant for those lately.)

“I promised to work until closing.”

And I have to.

There are bills to pay and possible surgeries to fund.

But she didn’t say this part aloud; she didn’t want to put that weight on a seventeen-year old who meant well.

“Girl, closing isn’t ’til eleven, and you’ve been here since two,” Jenny Pizza laughed, glancing up from her phone long enough to do so. She was Kiki’s older sister and a bit of a rebel to the boot. Though she was technically on the clock, too, she had been sitting on the other side of the bar for the past half hour now, sending something she called “snaps” to her friends. These “snaps” often involved her making funny faces at her camera, ninety percent of these compelling her to poke her lips out. “Go home, and get some shut eye. Seriously.”

“Seriously,” Kiki parroted, snatching the glass from out of Pearl’s hands when she wasn’t looking.

With a certain primness, she chunked it into the nearest recycling bin as the bell on the door pealed, signaling an incoming customer.

“Kiki!”

“The new ones are coming in next week anyway,” the girl only replied with a shrug of mischievous shoulder. “Now, Pearl, go the eff home. We got this. Right, Jenny?”

“Mhm.” Jenny made a vague noise of agreement without looking up again. “Yeah, you’ve got this, Kiki. Get it.”

“Well,” Kiki only rolled her eyes, “I’ve got this anyway.”

Two massive arms, both scarred and tattooed, slammed down on the countertop then, and Pearl’s mouth immediately twitched into a smile to see that it was none other than Bismuth, a local construction worker for the city and a fellow Crystal Gem. Her spectacularly colorful dreads were thrown upwards into a haphazard ponytail, and her mouth was wide with one of those trademark Bismuth smiles, all lopsided, shining with white teeth.

“Pearl,” she scolded in that wry way of hers, “are you givin’ these pretty ladies trouble again?”

“Yesssssss,” Kiki replied, already starting on the woman’s usual order. (Jerk chicken and eggs.) “Homegirl won’t go home even though she’s been here all day. Just look at her.” The teenager gestured vaguely at Pearl’s body. “She looks dead on her feet.”

“You’re being incredibly rude tonight, you know,” Pearl huffed, unable to resist the urge to glance down. There was an unidentifiable stain on the collar of her shirt.

She hated unidentifiable stains on the collars of her shirts.

“It’s for your own good,” she replied sagely, turning away as her saucepan began to sizzle on the stove. With Jenny also occupied, Pearl was left to the mercy of Bismuth, who’d always had a way of seeing through her, down to her deepest core.

Nothing escaped those dark eyes of hers, not a tool, not a loose screw, not the quiet, aching sadnesses of a friend. With a self-assuredness that Pearl had always lacked and a gentleness that she had always loved, her old companion reached across the bar and placed a calloused palm atop of the pale ridges of Pearl’s knuckles, covering them completely.

“C’mere, sugar,” she said softly, “and tell me all about it.”

“It’s late,” Pearl whispered automatically, glancing away. She always had some excuse or another. “And you’ve been working. You must be tired.”

“Hell,” Bismuth snorted as Kiki pushed a soda towards her, “if I’m tired, then you must be exhausted. The kid’s right. You look it.”

“The kid’s always right,” Kiki chimed in knowingly before moving away again.

And so, as the breath of rain continued to hiss on the roof, Pearl drew up a stool and sat across the bar from Bismuth, her hand warm beneath the other’s surprisingly gentle touch.

And they talked.

Softly.

Pearl told her everything.

She told her about the cemetery and Steven and the tiny hibiscus flower that passed from his hand to that of Blue Diamond’s, watching as Bismuth’s expressive face twisted in the same sort of horror and disgust that she herself had been grappling with ever since the bathrobed woman had somehow made her way into the entanglement of their lives. And Pearl told her about the last trip to Empire City, how Steven had almost needed a blood transfusion, and how that almost had become their reality when he’d collapsed in the beach house, hitting those wooden slats with a thunk that still echoed in the hollows of her head.

“I yelled at Amethyst,” she whispered, horrified, trying to withdraw her hand from beneath Bismuth’s.

Bismuth’s grip only tightened.

“I said some horrible things.”

“We all say horrible things,” the woman only replied, looking down, ever so subtly glancing away. Fifteen years ago, she and Rose had had a falling out over how to protest Diamond Electric. They hadn’t made up before she died. “The fixin’ part is what matters.”

And so Pearl, swallowing hard in acceptance of this lived-through truth, went on and on until her voice was scratchy from the strain of it. She told Bismuth about how small Steven was in the hospital bed and how sickly. She told her, fingernails digging into the grains of the bar, about how Priyanka Maheswaran, who always had a solution, didn’t really have an answer. She told her about the IVs and the wires and the blood transfusions and the possibility of a feeding tube.

And she told her, without saying a word, that she was scared.

Admissions did not come easily to the woman, but they were written across the physiognomy of her entire body anyway.

The desperation leaked from her pale eyes.

And all the sleepless nights lined her pointed face.

And there was a stiffness in the way she held herself, so harshly, with studied discipline.

But by definition, discipline was necessarily repression, and repress, repress, repress was the motto and model by which Pearl lived her life. It was the lone vanguard which kept her from shattering to pieces on the floor—just another mess for Kiki to sweep up with the rest of the clutter.

It was her last defense against total dissolution.

When she had nothing, at least she could put a smile on her face and pretend otherwise.

“So it’s been a long week,” she smiled wearily at the end of this.

She smiled because the alternative was to fall apart.

"To say the least.”

But, again, that was the thing about Bismuth.

Nothing escaped those dark eyes of hers, not a tool, not a loose screw, not the quiet, aching sadnesses of a friend.

With that familiar self-assuredness, her old companion rose from her seat and walked around to the other side of the bar.

“Bismuth, wait, I—”

And then, without hesitating, she crushed Pearl into her strong arms.

The engineer smelled faintly of oil and flavored tobacco.

Peppermint.

Crisp and sharp.

“To say the least,” she only agreed as Pearl’s lower lip began to tremble.

Her arms were limp, useless, by her sides, hanging over the edges of the stool.

“I’m fine,” she tried. The word fell flat on her tongue. “Really.”

“I don't doubt that you are. I never would. But you don’t have to be, hon,” Bismuth replied softly, her breath kindling warm against her ear. “You work so hard… and you care so much… that it ain’t a crime to need some tender love n care, too. It ain't weakness to be kind to yourself, Pearl."

Pearl was frozen, statuesque, even as the world somehow continued to spin around her. Diners chatted, rain fell, and the eggs sizzled in their frying pan. Everything and everyone else had their place in this world.

She wasn’t sure where that left her and all the griefs she so tightly wrapped herself around—scars and still-bleeding wounds.

“How can I break,” she asked, her voice tight, “knowing he’s lying in that hospital bed? What right do I have to fall to pieces when what he’s fighting is a hundred times worse?”

Somehow, Bismuth had an answer to this, too; she seemed to always have an answer.

She rubbed gentle circles into Pearl’s back.

She didn't let go.

“Pain isn’t a competition, Pearl,” she admonished. “When you’re hurting, you’re hurting.”

There was a matter-of-factness to this statement, a sense of finality, and perhaps that was what did it in the end; the raw truth of it confronted her, and it scalded her, and it forced her to confess.

Pearl shattered, and Bismuth was there to scoop up all the pretty, broken pieces.

“It hurts all over,” she admitted as the tears wrenched themselves loose from her eyes.

“I know, sugar."

Outside the restaurant, the rain continued to beat its relentless dirge into the Boardwalk, the sky falling in shards and unholy music, all needle sharp notes.

If the crescendo screamed, it absolutely roared.

10:03PM:

Outside the window of Room 11037, night wrapped its velvety arms around a sky shivering with stars, and Garnet, attentive of every wire and tube, wrapped her warm arms around Steven as they laid in his hospital bed together, watching a late night re-run of Crying Breakfast Friends. This was the episode where Pear betrayed the stoic Spoon’s trust, and all the assorted breakfast people cried about it for a good seven minutes of the show’s eleven minute runtime.

For some odd reason, the animation on Spoon’s tears was exceptionally well done, the liquid fluidly running down the curvature of their face as they wailed incoherently.

“Wahhhhhhhhhh.”

(Not for the first time, Garnet absently wondered who had been paid to write this.)

Beneath her, Steven sniffed noisily, bringing up the less-encumbered of his hands to swipe tentatively at his nose; it was an awkward movement with the oxygen cannulas in the way.

“You’ve seen this one before,” Garnet teased softly, her voice landing somewhere in his dark hair. “Twice that I know of. It can’t be that sad anymore.”

She waited for a laugh and a witty retort—for a remarkably insightful analysis into why it was okay to cry over crying breakfast utensils—but one wasn’t forthcoming, even though the child’s shoulders were conspicuously shaking.

She looked down at him then, catching a sliver of his face in the light wash of the television; tears streamed silently from his eyes and down the sunken hollows of his face, down into the collar of his gown, down past the spiral of wires.

“Steven.” Garnet propped herself up with an abruptness that was almost violent, though when she cupped his face between her long fingers, her touch was exceedingly gentle. “What’s wrong?”

But Steven shook his head, burying it into the front of her sweatshirt as a low whine escaped past his anemic lips.

His chubby fingers twisted into the fabric next to her stomach.

“Steven!” Panic slipped up the rungs of her voice.

She looked around wildly her for the call button on the railing, but they were surrounded by so many tubes and blankets.

And it was dark.

And Steven was crying.

“Garnet,” he finally moaned, “my back hurts.”

It was a common symptom with his disease. Because the kidneys were located right below the ribcage, his upper back often spasmed when they were being particularly bothersome.

At home, they would give him medicine and press a heating pad to his spine, hoping against both hell and hope that the warmth would sooth the worst of the pain.

Here in the hospital, they could give him morphine.

They could even sedate him.

Make the pain go away for a few hours if that was mercy.

(Once, after a particularly bad attack that’d almost brought them to the hospital, Steven had described the pain like being stung by a jellyfish over and over again, as though its tentacles were wrapped around his torso, wringing him out all over.)

“I have to get a nurse,” she said automatically, her throat dry. He clung to her so tightly that she didn’t dare move an inch. On the TV, Spoon was still crying, their keening overwrought next to Steven, who cried so quietly these days that it was almost like he hated for anyone to hear.

“They’ll drug me?” He asked astutely, the sound muffled in her shirt.

“Yes.”

“It’d make me sleep.”

“Maybe... yes.” Garnet couldn’t see where he was going with this until his fingers tightened just a fraction more where they gripped her.

Her lips parted.

And there was silence.

And there was crying.

And there was understanding most of all. It scorched Garnet and simply ruined her.

“You don’t want to go to sleep.”

It was a statement, hoarsely dragged from her mouth.

She received a minimal head shake as her answer.

“You’re scared.”

And somehow, she knew the veracity of her words before he nodded his assent into her chest.

Steven was scared to fall asleep—afraid, maybe even terrified, that he wouldn’t wake up. The horror of it, the awfulness and the unfairness, and the cruelty of it rose up in Garnet’s chest like a tsunami, a fire, a hurricane, a storm.

Yet, she remained immobile.

She didn’t move.

What could she even say to that?

What was she supposed to say?

Words were insufficient.

(She couldn’t even reassure herself.)

The small TV screen suddenly faded to black as Crying Breakfast Friends ended, and the credits rolled, the show’s elegiac theme song playing softly in the background, all piano notes and somber violin strings.

It was a little easier, at least, when she couldn’t see his face.

“I’m scared, too,” she admitted.

It was only three words, but they exacted her, and they excavated her; heat clambered up her cheeks, settling somewhere behind her burning eyes.

Steven’s shoulders briefly stilled, though all the machines keeping him alive continued to whir on.

“Y-you are?”

“All the time.” Scared to touch him, scared to even look at him. Scared that one day, she would wake up and he would be gone, a shell finally reclaimed by its shore. Scared to leave this hospital room lest she miss a single moment, and scared to stay if that meant watching him go. Scared that they wouldn’t find him a kidney in time, and scared that if they did, they couldn’t afford it.

Garnet was a wreck, barely holding together.

She was Garnet.

She had to hold together anyway.

“And sometimes, Steven,” she whispered, hugging him to her chest as much as the tubing would allow, “that is what love is—being scared and moving forward anyway.”

Into the darkness, hand in hand.

Without the promise of safe return.

Her mothers had done it.

Rose Quartz had done it.

And the footprints they had left behind were big to fill, but Garnet didn’t have to fill them; she just had to follow their lead.

Steven was quiet for a couple more heartbeats still before he slowly withdrew his head from her chest to look up at her; he didn’t quite let go of her shirt; he took ragged, rasping breaths, his shoulders heaving to the rhythmic whirring of his heart monitor.

“You can call the nurse now.”

“Okay,” she whispered.

It was all she could manage.

“And, Garnet?”

“Yes, Steven?”

“I love you.”

10:45PM:

Cooling down after a long day of work was always struggle for Priyanka, whose mind was such that it was perpetually working ahead to the next day of work—all the patients she had to do rounds upon, all the charts she had to fill out, and all the procedures she had to meticulously prep for, spending as much time in the hospital’s library as she did the operating room.

If the table of her head wasn’t perpetually well-set, her thoughts surgically arranged on a porcelain plate, scalpels placed in descending order by size on the adjacent napkin, then the doctor felt unmoored from the trait which made her feel fundamentally herself.

Her precision—unerring, diligent, and unpretentious.

She checked and double-checked and was a better nephrologist for it. By the nature of the temperamental organ she was dealing with, her patient mortality rate was high, but no one, by the nature of her methodology, could say that it was because of human error.

She checked and double-checked, trying to quantify every conceivable possibility before they could make themselves known in the real world, and when she neglected to deconstruct a hypothetical, which was a rarity in and of itself, she would chastise herself for it both before and better than anyone else ever could.

Priyanka Maheswaran was a study in precision, never shirking away from the reward that often laid at the end of hard labor.

But what no one had ever told her was that a side effect of being precise was being so damn tired.

All the time.

She struggled to cool down, and she was exhausted. She desperately wanted to sleep, but her mind whirred and whirled and calculated and thought. The dichotomous interplay of these qualities led to her sipping hot tea in bed with a pinched expression on her face as her husband stretched out next to her, reading his tattered copy of Crime and Punishment and sometimes laughing aloud when a line struck him as funny.

“Ha,” he snorted after awhile of this before replacing his bookmark (an old grocery store receipt) in his new spot and closing the heavy tome. “I love Dostoevsky.”

Lips pressed to the rim of her nearly empty mug, Priyanka arched a sharp brow at him, smiling wryly.

Her husband was a dork.

“Should I be jealous, dear?”

“Naturally,” Doug returned, reaching over to place the book on his nightstand before turning back towards her. “Dostoevsky has it all. A great grasp on existentialism and a beard for days. He could tone it down on the heavy moralism, though.”

“That’s what you said about Tolstoy,” she reminded him with a tilt of her head. “Good beard, too much sermonizing.”

“It’s a running theme,” her husband admitted sadly, and then, catching each other’s eye, the two Maheswarans suddenly laughed, the sounds loud in the otherwise quiet room.

It was moments like these, after nearly seventeen years together, that kept them going strong. They loved each other, and they liked each other, and they especially liked to make each other laugh.

Even if it was about something as specific as Russian literature titans.

And maybe especially if it was about something as specific as Russian literature titans.

“We’re going to wake our daughter up,” Priyanka finally said, setting her mug down on her own nightstand. In the lamplight, the dark ceramic gleamed. Her phone, sitting next to it, showed that she had a new message from one of the surgical interns she was training.

She’d open it in a minute.

Knowing the group of fools she’d gotten this year, whoever it was had probably stabbed themselves with a syringe.

(Again.)

“It’s never too early for Connie to have an opinion on old Russian men,” Doug chuckled, but he, too, was settling down as the heaviness of night began to sweep across them both.

He sighed fondly and took her hand then, intertwining their fingers on top of the blankets.

Priyanka wasn’t much of a touchy-feely person, but her husband absolutely was, and she knew, from all the coagulated years of having been married to him, that this simple gesture was about being close to her, about reacquainting himself to her presence.

So she didn’t let go.

Instead, she squeezed once, resting her head against the backboard of their bed and closing her eyes for the first time in what felt like days. The darkness was nice and inviting, blanketing her head like a cozy throw.

It was just all the thoughts, buzzing like bees at the velvety, black edges, that made it so unbearable.

Patients, charts, and procedures.

And Steven Universe most of all.

She worried for him constantly now that he was in the hospital; she carried his sunken face with her everywhere that she went; he made her half-sick.

He forced her to become undone.

Caring.

It did something to her.

“You look tired, honey,” Doug said softly. “Shall we put a nightcap on the evening?”

Priyanka opened her eyes again and nodded ever so briskly. She tucked a strand of black hair behind her ear and let out a small, exacting sigh.

“I think that’d be in order,” she agreed, and it was a sign of her exhaustion that she acquiesced so easily. Usually, he had to plead with her to close down shop for the night.

These weren’t usual times.

Without letting go of her hand, her husband twisted away and turned the latch of his lamp with a click, thrusting half of the room into darkness.

And she was about to do the same when the rectangular light of her phone caught her attention again.

Instead of just one message from her intern—a perky blonde named Dr. Stephens—now she had eight of them in total and a missed call.

The doctor always put her phone on silent when she drank her nightly tea so she didn’t have to be a doctor for fifteen minutes.

She could simply be Priyanka.

Her stomach clenched.

An influx of messages was never a good thing; her mind raced ahead of her; it anticipated the worst.

“Hon?”

Doug’s questioning concern pressed against her side, and Priyanka found herself clenching his hand all the tighter as she used her free one to pick up the phone, unlocking it with a quick swipe and clicking the message app with a suddenness that was brutal.

Monday, 10:57PM:

Dr. Stephens: DR. MAHESWARAN!!!!!

Dr. Stephens: UNOS JUST CALLED.

Dr. Stephens: WE HAVE A KIDNEY FOR STEVEN UNIVERSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dr. Stephens: Car crash on the lower East Side. The donor is brain dead, but all their other organs are viable.

Dr. Stephens: And they’re a match for Steven.

Dr. Stephens: Seriously. I’ve checked and double-checked.

Dr. Stephens: This is our person.

Dr. Stephens: The surgeon at Empire Gen’s gonna perform the harvest procedure tomorrow morning at 10AM, and I told them you’d be there.

In the half-darkness of her room, Priyanka held that phone aloft like it was priceless gold and let out a breath she had been holding for a very long time. Her shoulders heaved with the sensation of it, the feeling, the emotion.

Of goddamn relief.

Warm, sweeping, glorious relief.

A kidney.

Steven Universe was getting a kidney.

#bellow diamond #blue diamond #yellow diamond #steven universe #pearl #amethyst #garnet #priyanka maheswaran #yellow zircon #blue zircon #jenny pizza #kiki pizza #greg universe #bismuth #s: steven universe #mimik-u #flower child #hoooooo boy this is a long ass chapter

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thegalleonsnest · 3 years

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Wiggle’s Muse - Short Excerpt turned into a FanFic

Yo, so, I wanted to share a small snippet of a future project I’m working on (while also delaying my current art projects). What I’ve written out here in this post was originally in a format not meant for professional writing purposes, but I said “eh, why the hell not,” and written it out in sort of a short fanfic format for you guys to read. This project btw, is not a fanfic (had to make that clear). What I am working on is a very large scale project for myself and is still in the blocking out/rough draft phases. This right here is probably my most fleshed out scene I’ve written out, and feels pretty complete as it’s own thing. Honestly, I’d appreciate the feedback if any of ya’ll found this interesting!

Also I’m putting this in a tumblr post because I don’t have an AO3 or fanfiction account, and this is already too short for it anyway. Read the excerpt below

In front of the camera lenses, multiple grumpuses walk back and forth discussing a matter of topics but most importantly, where was Wiggle?

"Has anyone gotten ahold of Wiggle yet? She was supposed to be here hours ago,” a gruff voice coming from out of frame says. “We’ve tried calling her for over an hour, but we got nothing,” says another off camera, “do you think we should reschedule-” before they could finish, the studio doors bust open with a loud thud echoing the studio room. A tall, short armed grumpus with a boa stumbles along the room carrying an oddly shaped banjo.

“There she is,” said the gruff voiced grump, “Wiggle, whatever you got going on, you better do it now cause we got a meeting with investors in half an hour!” From the blurry view of a slightly out of frame Wiggle, she barely registered what the grump said. In a stumble, she walks to the center of the camera’s view & shakes her head, almost slurring her words, “Doooon’t worry, Darling, we’ll get you a new vest later.” “What, no, wait, that’s not what I-” before another word could be said, Wiggle readies her banjo and strikes a quick pose before strumming the strings like her life depended on it.

It didn’t take longer than a few seconds before the crew sprung into action, setting the proper lightning, mics and cameras around her. Her rhythm and measures became a lot more stable, catchy even, and then she broke into song. The next set of lyrics would become an instant, regrettable classic.

It’s not long before the VHS tape stutters and stops, showing mostly static. A magenta furred Grumpus with some hair covering a part of eye, hits the eject button, takes out the tape and turns off the tv. “Girl, you were a right mess there!” She said with a giggle. “Tell me about it, Vrittany...” Wiggle said frustratingly, pinching the bridge of her nose. “And you’re telling me you can’t come up with anything better than that? Come on now!” “I wish I was lying, but I’m not. No matter what I come up with, nothing is topping whatever the heck my walking coma came up with instead!” Wiggle grabs her mug of coffee and takes a longing sip.

The two sit across from one another at the coffee bar. The aroma of that day’s set of cocoa beans waft through the cafe as most of the outside lamps fill out the darker spots inside. The place is nearly empty besides them, and a single muted green furred occupant sitting at a booth at the opposite end of the cafe, drawing away in his sketchpad.

“So, whatcha gonna do?” Vrittany asked sarcastically, “Stay awake for another week? Get inspired again? Hehe.” Wiggle sets her mug down, and answers, “I did try that again, but in style I fell asleep comfortably on a couch in the lobby”. Vrittany looked a bit stunned. “You’re kidding?! You’re crazy!” “Not crazy, Vrittany,” she takes another sip of her coffee before striking a pose in her high stool seat, bellowing out her voice. “Just creatiiiivly driveeeen~” “Whatever you say, darling,” Vrittany says before turning around to her bar’s sink. She cleans several mugs and glasses with gusto while preparing one last pot of coffee, enough for a single cup for later.

Vrittany takes off her apron and hangs it on the wayside of the counter as she walks around to take a seat next to Wiggle. After situating herself, she puts a paw on Wiggle’s shoulder. “Listen, pretty sure this is just a rut you’re stuck in right now,” she says. “Doesn’t every artist go through that every now and then?” Wiggle turns her head toward Vrittany, “Well..yeah, but this is different,” she desperately says. “I can’t let a song I made in my sleep be the best thing I’ve ever made! I know I can make something that’ll shake the world more than whatever ‘Do The Wiggle’ was.”

Vrittany pulls back her paw from Wiggle to put on her best thinking cap. As deeply in thought as she was, her face immediately relaxes into a deadpan expression, “Have ya tried singing from the heart?” Wiggle cracks a smile, “HA, if only that’s how it works! It takes a musical genius to write a hit song in show biz, not just some field day with my feelings.” “Eh, worth a shot. Got any other plans?” “I’m still trying to figure that out. I need some kind of inspiration...almost like a-”

Before she could finish her thought, they both caught a glance at the muted green furred grump who walked up to them. He mustered up the words and said, “E-excuse me, you’re Miss Wiggle, right?” Wiggle turned in her seat to get a better look at the young Grumpus. She could tell he was nervous, clutching his sketchbook in his arms rather tightly. She quickly put on a more relaxed front to help calm things down, while also still showing off a bit of her excited side. “Why yes I am, Darling,” she said enthusiastically. “And I can tell you must be a fan of mine.” “Y-yeah...!” The green grump looked a little more relaxed, but still stiff in the shoulders. “Hey now, no need to be so nervous. I always got time for my fans.” “Thank you, Miss Wiggle. Um…” “No need to finish that thought, Darling, I know what you’re about to ask and I’m happy to oblige!”

Before the young man could stop to say something, Wiggle pulls out one of her many professional hand out photos that she has, and quickly signs with her autograph before handing it to him. “O-Oh, thank you, Miss, but that’s not what I was going to s-say.” he sheepishly says. “Really? Not an autograph,” Wiggle says surprisingly. “It’s usually the first thing fans ask of me.” “Sorry, I just...I wanted to show you this sketch I made…”

The nervous grumpus slowly turns his sketchbook around to reveal a fully sketched art piece depicting a stylized Wiggle singing her heart out at the bar with Vrittany hanging out in the background cheering her on. He hands it to Wiggle to give them a closer look. It was still somewhat messy, showing a few guidelines and early roughed out shapes, but for what it was, it was still impressive to the two girls.

“Woah, that’s pretty rad!” Vrittany yelled out, leaning out from her seat trying to get a closer look. Wiggle was pretty stun, gasping at the sight of such a piece of artwork. “Darling, you drew this?! Just now,” Wiggle asked in awe. “Yeah! I was listening to some of your music and then you came in and sat down. It made me wanna draw you as fast as I could,” the green grumps says excitedly before rubbing the back of his head. “Sorry if it’s still a little messy looking though…” “Don’t be, because it is beeeaautifuuul~” “T-thank you so much, Miss Wiggle! T-that means a lot to m-me!” the grumpus says while his face lights up red from the praise. “You’re like an inspiration to me.” “Really now? Like a muse? All I do is sing the night away, Darling. You draw little masterpieces like this from me?”

As Wiggle continues to be enthralled by the young man and his work, Vrittany notices the coffee pot had finished brewing. She gets up from her seat and go back behind the counter to finish her last cup for the night. Wiggle and the green grump continue their conversation.

“W-well kind of,” says the grump, “it’s a bunch of music that inspires me when I draw. A lot of your stuff is so upbeat and fun, it gives me lots of different ideas to pump out!” Wiggle looks back, almost flabbergasted. “I’m...honestly a bit stunned that I had that kind of impact on you, Darling,” she says, almost with a melancholy tone, “...heh, kind of forget sometimes I do make some kind of impression on grumps like you.” She looks back down at the sketchbook, entranced by the creativity that sparked in the moment. That dazzling moment where it all clicked...where could she find that, when someone else can find it in her?

After an awkward minute of silence, the young grump spoke up and said, “If you like, you can keep the sketch page, Miss Wiggle?” Wiggle snapped her head back up from the sketchbook to the green fuzzball. “W-wait really? Are you sure you wanna give up this piece of art?” said Wiggle worryingly. “It’s no problem at all,” said the green grump proudly. “I already took a picture of it to save for later. I’m gonna make a painted version of it online later! Besides, it’ll make me happy if you kept it, since I was going to give it to you anyway.” “Oh Darling, you’re nothing more than a sweet one now, aren’t you? I’ll gladly keep it!” “Thank you so much, Miss Wiggle!”

Wiggle hands the sketchbook back to the green grumpus and he tears out the sketch. “No, Darling, thank you,” Wiggle says ecstatically. Vrittany returns from behind the bar with a to-go cup in hand, saying “Here’s your order, kid.” “Oh, thank you, Vrittany. How much was it again,” the green grump asked. “Eh, don’t worry about it. Don’t feel like counting change. It’s on the house.” “O-oh you sure?” “You wanna change my mind?” “Don’t think I can, so thank you!” The green grump turns back to Wiggle and says “It was so nice meeting you in person, Miss Wiggle!”

“The pleasure is all mine, Dar-,” Wiggle catches herself before she realizes something. “Actually, what was your name?” “It’s Grite, Grite Tillsland!” Wiggle lets a genuine soft smile grow on her face. She felt a lot more at ease and happier knowing her new friend was much more relax and happy overall. She reached out her paw for a handshake, and Grite reciprocated.

“The pleasure’s mine, Grite, Darling.”

#Bugsnax #Wiggle Wigglebottom #TheGalleonsNest Writing #Fic #wip excerpt #Bugsnax Fanfic #Hope you guys enjoy a taste of what's to come #even when there's very little context #I've got multiple large scale projects lined up #this is just one of them #I hope to officially start it this year #but there is still a lot of backend work to be done #and also I got tons of art to make too before then

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destinyowned-blog · 5 years

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Random Cassandra edits

#・ ˖ ✦ ⋄ . Everything that I’ve done ❝Mine: All❞#・ ˖ ✦ ⋄ . Take a picture because it lasts longer ❝Mine: Static❞

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katehuntington · 4 years

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Title: In Bad Waters - part eleven Word count: ±4650 words Episode summary: Still in possession of the Winchesters’ belongings, Zoë meets up with the hunters on her next case. When it turns out to be a little more complicated than anticipated, she accepts their help in order to make an important deadline. Part eleven summary: Now that Laura if after Zoë, the boys have to think fast in order to save her. Will they realize she’s in trouble? Episode warnings: Dark! NSFW, 18+ only! Descriptions of domestic violence/child abuse. Drug use/addiction. Angst, gore, violence, character death. Description of blood, injury and medical procedures/resuscitation. Swearing, alcoholism. Supernatural creatures/entities, mentions of demon possession. Descriptions of torture and murder, drowning. Illegal/criminal practices. Mentions of nightmares and flashbacks. Author’s note: Beta’d by @winchest09 and @deanwanddamons. Thanks, girls! Gif isn’t mine. If you are the creator or know who made it, please tell me so I can credit you.

Supernatural: The Sullivan Series Masterlist

S1E02 “In Bad Waters” Masterlist

Stunned, Sam stares at the door of room seventeen. Dean walks down the hallway with his suit jacket hanging over his shoulder, not having noticed anything unusual. But when he doesn’t hear his brother’s footsteps in his wake, he turns around. “Comin’ or what?” Sam places his hand flat on the door, trying to detect any sign of movement on the other side. He feels like something is off, and shifts his gaze to his brother. “The door just slammed in my face.” “It’s Zoë; what did you expect?” Dean returns, being smart. The younger Winchester isn’t convinced, however, and he pounds on the wooden surface. “Zo?!”

But the huntress doesn’t hear him. She seems isolated, as if the grand hotel room is soundproof. The wall lights flicker, buzzing as they do, the designer lamp in the corner doing the same. Every hair on the back of her neck elevates, both from anticipation and the freezing temperature, which causes her exhaled breaths to float in the air like miniature clouds.

Zoë swallows apprehensively, her gaze frantically darting across the room for anything she can defend herself with, while the disturbing image of Laura stares up at the only living being in the room. The little girl’s neck is clearly broken, her head oddly tilted to the right. Skin so pale it hints to a shade of blue, black bruises noticeable on her arms, legs and cheek as well. Laura glares at her next victim, her eyes hidden in the infinite darkness of her sockets. Water drips on the ground from the edges of her dress and soaked through hair, leaving puddles on the floor. The constant drip mixes with the sound of static from the television and the running water in the shower.

Slowly, Zoë backs out. “You don’t want to do this, Laura.” “Or what? You will kill me?” she returns, way too clever for her age. Little smartass, Zoë can’t help but to think. The huntress is the one who needs to start with the smart talk, though. It might be her only way out of this clusterfuck. She needs to distract the ghost, and pray to the God she doesn’t believe in to make it out of this predicament.

“Why are you doing this?” Zoë asks, as calmly as she can muster. “They didn’t stop it,” Laura says, anger causing her voice to tremble. “They all knew, but they didn’t stop it.” “Why are you haunting me then?”

Carefully, Zoë glances aside from the corner of her eye, at the backpack on top of the drawer. She knows it contains a bag of salt and it might just be her only way of saving herself, or at least stall long enough for her hunting partners to realize something is wrong. She could use a Winchester shotgun right about now. That rock salt shooting two barrel would be handy. Laura’s response triggers her to snap her gaze back at the ghost.

“I’m haunting you, because you are trying to stop me. You didn’t want me to kill Mrs. Dawlson.” Zoë backs out further until she feels the drawer against her spine. While talking, one hand noticeably tries to find the bag of salt in the backpack. “Mrs. Dawlson was a good person, with a family. Now I know how you feel about the person who did this to you--” “- Yes, you do know how I feel. Don’t you, Miss Sullivan?” The spirit turns her head in an abnormal angle, the bones in her neck snapping. “You know how hating someone for what they did to you feels like. That’s why you became what you are.”

Startled, Zoë stares at the little ghost. How the hell does she know all this? Is she playing mind games here? It’s scary how Laura stays so well mannered, and Zoë has trouble looking her in the eye any longer. “I know what your father did to you was cruel and unforgivable, but this isn’t you, Laura. You need to let go,” Zoë tells her. “I can’t. You understand that. You can’t let go either. Someone hurt you, Miss Sullivan. It didn’t just happen, he knew and still didn't help you. Don’t you want to kill him?” Laura pressures. “Oh, I do,” the huntress replies honestly. “But grown ups realize what consequences there are to murder.”

In a blink of an eye, Zoë throws a hand of salt at Laura’s face, which causes her to scream and flicker on and off, but only for a moment. Zoë hastes for the door and turns the doorknob, but Laura still has control over the environment and the barrier between her and the Winchesters stays shut. Sensing her presence, the huntress turns around and sees Laura coming at her rapidly, as if she’s watching a video on fast forward. Right under her nose, the child stops and stares up at her angrily. “That wasn’t very nice,” she hisses.

Suddenly, Zoë feels herself being lifted off the ground, as light as a feather. There is nothing delightful about it, though, because a second later, she smashes into the wall on the other side of the room. “That made me feel angry,” Laura continues, her chin propped down as she gazes at her next victim from under her brow.

Zoë struggles up, but before she can make an attempt to flee, Laura makes a sideways gesture with her hand, sending her victim flying. With a loud bang, she collides with the hard wall on the other side of the suite, the plaster crumbling as she lands on the drawer which breaks through its leg, causing the huntress to glide off the surface and fall down on the floor. Dizzy, she recovers as she feels blood dripping down her cheek, coming from a laceration above her temple. As soon as the black spots disappear from her vision, she glances back up at the disturbing young girl. She points her little finger at her, as Zoë starts to feel an increasing pain in her chest. “Now I’m going to kill you, nice and slow. Just like Daddy killed me,” Laura sing songs eerily. Frightened, Zoë stares at the girl. Before she can blink, the ghost has a death grip on her neck and works her against the wall.

Her efforts to escape have been hopeless so far and with no weapon to defend herself with, the odds are not in her favor. She tries to back out further, but unfortunately she can’t move through walls just yet. It doesn't happen often, but the huntress is in deep trouble. Images of the murder scenes of Laura’s previous victims flash before her eyes; she might end up just like them. In one last desperate attempt to get out of this situation, she closes her eyes, trying to calm herself. In a split second, she pictures Sam Winchester and concentrates. Then she cries out his name.

“SAM!!!”

“Did you hear that?”, Sam asks, alerted on the other side of the door. Dean walks up to him and listens carefully. “Hear what?”

“SAM!!! Get me out!!!”

“There! You heard that, right?” Stunned he stares at the door, then he hits it with his shoulder. “Zoë!!” “I didn’t hear anything. Did you eat mushrooms for lunch or something?” Dean questions, confused. “Dean, you have to trust me! Laura is in there!” Sam cries out.

Without pausing, his younger brother tries to bust the door with a kick, but the lock will not budge. For a split second Dean watches his brother, who keeps going at the varnished wood with everything he’s got. Apparently, he’s not kidding and it puts Dean in hunter mode instantly. It’s not even instinct, more of a reflex. He would follow his brother blindly, he trusts him without a single doubt in his mind. “What is going on here!”, a member of staff shouts at them from the end of the hallway. “Call 911, now!” Dean turns to him and starts running down the corridor. “Where are you going?!” Sam glances aside, out of breath. “I’m gonna try from the outside! Keep going!” Dean commands before he rushes around the corner.

As fast as he can, Dean sprints back to the main hall of the Hampton Inn. While bolting down the stairs to the first floor, he searches for the car keys in his pocket. Very well aware that every second counts, he crosses the lobby towards the parking lot. Quickly, the hunter opens the trunk of his Chevrolet and takes out a shotgun, loading it skillfully. He doesn’t go back inside, instead the hunter runs down the hotel complex, counting the room windows as he passes them.

For once, the universe is helping him, because under Zoë’s suite a van of maintenance crew is parked on the sidewalk. Agile, Dean hoists himself up by the mirror with one hand, climbing onto the roof of the vehicle. Inside, the child ghost has her hands around Zoë’s neck and forces her all the way up to the ceiling, the huntress’ body slack. Laura is about to snap her neck, but then Dean catches her attention. The spirit tilts her head slowly and looks Dean in the eye, then she opens her mouth further than anatomically possible as her eyes sink back in the back of her head.

Knowing no fear for the entity, Dean aims and releases the slug filled with rock salt. It shatters the glass instantly and flies straight through the ghost’s head. As sudden as she appeared, Laura evaporated into thin air with a scream. Zoë collapses down the wall as Sam busts in right at the same time, the vicious spirit no longer locking him out. He stares at his brother through the broken window for a split second and then notices Zoë on the floor, just a heap of fragility. “Zo!” Sam rushes to her and kneels down. Carefully, he cups her face with both hands and taps her on the cheek gently, after which she slowly comes to, coughing. The hunter breathes out, relieved when she opens her eyes. A groan escapes from her lips and she squints as the pain dawns on her. She leans against the wall, out of breath and clearly experiencing discomfort. Blood runs down her neck from a wound on her head, her nose is also bleeding. Several cuts are spread out over her arms and face; she’s a mess.

No wonder, because when Dean steps through the window, he notices that the entire suite is trashed. The table has shattered somewhere during the struggle, glass is scattered everywhere. The couch has toppled over on its back, the TV ripped from the wall and the screen distorted. He crouches down next to the wounded woman, who clamps her hand at her side and takes a careful breath, which obviously hurts her.

“Hey, take it easy.” He puts his hand on her shoulder as she rests her head against the wall again, biting back the pain. “I think I cracked some ribs,” Zoë moans. “What else hurts?” Sam carefully sweeps away her dark hair to reveal the bleeding cut underneath. “The better question is; what doesn’t?” she comments, as she closes her eyes for a second. “That little fucking brat...” “Cursing and angry already. You’re gonna be fine, I see,” Dean jokes, lighting the mood.

Zoë looks up at him, a hint of a smile pulling at the corner of her mouth. He might say so, but she doesn’t feel so good. Carefully she touches her nose, from which blood still drips to her lips and down her chin. “Broke it?” Dean checks. “I don’t think so.” She sniffs. “I swear, if she kills me, I’ll haunt her sorry ass, ten years old or not.” Dean grins at that comment and looks away, but Sam isn’t set at ease yet. “Where’s that ambulance?” he asks his brother. “Ambulance?” Zoë repeats, annoyed. “Yeah, you know. One of those minivans who hurry injured people like you to a hospital,” Dean nags. The huntress glares at him and then turns back at Sam. “I don’t need no ambulance.” “Nope, you’re absolutely fine. You don’t need our help either,” Dean rubs in with a sarcastic tone. “Shut up,” she mutters.

The oldest of the brothers rights himself, smiling victoriously, because for once the huntress doesn’t have a comeback ready. He moves to the doorway to meet the authorities, sirens already blaring in the distance. As soon as Dean is out of sight, Sam cocks his head at Zoë, astonished, his eyes piercingly demanding answers. “I heard you,” he whispers. “I figured,” Zoë responds, carefully removing the blood from her upper lip. “No, I mean...” He pauses and glares over his shoulder to make sure Dean is really gone. “I heard you in my head. How the hell did you do that?”

Zoë glances at the young hunter. It’s clear as day that he’s intimidated by this bizarre turn of events. Honestly, she was just as surprised when she felt Laura’s grip on her loosen. Why she did it? Instinct perhaps. It was her last attempt to connect with anyone outside this room. How she did it? She’s still trying to wrap her head around that one. “I don't know, I just…” She presses her palm against her forehead, this headache is killing her. “That bad, huh?” Sam sighs sympathetically. “Dude, I feel like I’ve been used as a boxing bag.” She pulls back her hand and is unpleasantly surprised by the crimson on her fingertips.

Sam cannot stop worrying, she can see it. Not just about her, but about this telepathic intermezzo they had just a few minutes ago. “It’s probably nothing, Sam. We’re both sensitive to this psychic stuff. It’s no big deal,” she tries to comfort. But the concerns don’t wear off. Not that he can ponder on it for long, though, because a moment later, paramedics rush in.

Some time later, Zoë is uncomfortably sitting in the back of the ambulance. The police have also arrived; several cars are parked on the sidewalk. Officers and forensics are examining the crime scene for traces of the assaulter, which of course, they will never find. The paramedics took care of her head wound and several other minor injuries the huntress suffered. Her face feels like Mohammed Ali himself threw a few punches at her, and to top it all, Detective Lee is standing right in front of her for the third time this day.

“Are you sure you didn’t see anything?” Lee checks, after he wrote something down in his notebook. “Not a thing. It attacked me from behind and knocked me unconscious,” she lies, without batting an eye. “It?” The officer looks up at her, a bit indignant by her choice of words. “You know, he, she, whatever,” Zoë mutters, pretending to be casual. Lee watches her for a moment and puts away his notebook. “Off the record,” he starts. “Do we need to put a lot of effort in this case or can I tell my sheriff that the FBI is taking over?”

A little surprised by the new direction of the detective, she looks back up into his eyes, then chuckles. He has a point; right now they are busy questioning each other instead of actually solving the case. They are working the same terrain here and neither of them are helped by that matter. “I’ll spare you some trouble. We’ll take over,” Zoë states. He nods as a sign of agreement, realizing that this is probably for the best. They have no sense of direction on this bizarre case and every lead they do have runs directly towards a dead end. The FBI has more experience with this kind of abnormal. “We’ll be at your service if needed. I hope you’ll catch our killer, this town can’t afford more crimes like these,” the officer ponders. “Neither can I,” Zoë half jokes with a huff, rubbing at the dried up blood on her chin, which is starting to itch. “Good luck,” he wishes her. “We’ll keep in touch.”

Zoë watches him head back for his car as he gestures to his partner to follow him, who was asking Dean some questions. After all, he did demolish a hotel window with a shotgun, but it seems like he’s cutting him some slack. Good for him, because even though she doesn’t like the idea, he did save her ass.

The oldest of the Winchester boys remains standing on the sidewalk. He takes a moment as he looks around. The PPD start to gather their belongings and the first police car leaves the scene. Sam is in the room, looking for leads. Then Dean spots Zoë inside the ambulance and saunters over. “Hate those damn interrogations,” he mumbles as he leans against the left door of the van. “Right there with ya, but they won’t bother us anymore,” she states. “Good riddance,” he comments as he watches the cars leave, then he turns to Zoë, observing her for a moment. “How do you feel?” “I got my ass kicked by a ten year old. How do you think I feel?” she returns snarky.

Dean nods in agreement, being able to imagine that, a smirk adorning his features. “At least you didn’t get killed,” he argues. “You’re the first to survive an attack like that.” “True enough,” Zoë agrees.

Silence follows, the huntress taking the opportunity to take in the guy in his mid twenties. The suit he’s still wearing looks good on him. At first sight you would think he’s comfortable in one, but the loosened tie gives him away. The warmth of midday plus the action, caused beads of sweat to form a trail along his hairline, his skin shimmers. His strong features stand out against the blue sky. With his lips slightly purged, he watches the scene, the sun catching the apple green of his irises. Zoë might not be able to stand the older Winchester brother, but he certainly is handsome.

She isn’t the type of person to apologize, but does realize that his quick thinking saved her life. Strangely enough, that never happened to her before. She never needed to be saved, she was always able to take care of herself. Or is it that there never was anyone there to save her, and she had a little luck with getting out of sticky situations?

“Hey, Dean?” She hesitates. He turns his head to face her, waiting for what she was about to say. “I just wanna say, uh...” she speaks with difficulty. “You kinda saved my ass out there, so--” “Don’t mention it,” he responds before she finishes her sentence.

Dean watches her and smiles slightly when she averts her gaze. Seems like she might start to realize that she can’t always make it on her own. He relieves her from the confronting words, though, he knows it’s difficult to say them out loud.

As the huntress slips off the gurney, she flinches and puts her arm around her side when her ribs ache. Dean tries to make eye contact. “Sure you can hunt like this?” “Of course I can. I had worse,” she snaps, the peaceful moment gone in an instance. Dean shows his hand in innocence, burying the other in his pocket. “Just askin’.”

At that moment, Sam walks up to them, hopefully with some new information. His identification hangs from his neck, so that the police still at the scene know who he pretends to be without asking. “Smart move, Zo,” he compliments, crumbling salt between his finger and thumb. “Where did you find that?” Dean asks, curiously. “On the windowsill. I always salt every entrance of a place where I dare to close my eyes”, Zoë explains before Sam can. “No idea how she got inside in the first place, though.” “She could have come in through the vents,” Sam considers. “I’ll just sleep in a circle of salt next time then,” the huntress mutters. “What did you find?” “Nothing. Same situation as the other three incidents, only you survived.” Sam claims. “I keep wondering, though; how is she able to relocate? I’ve never seen a ghost jump houses like that before, unless they are tied to an object, but you didn’t bring back anything from the crime scene, did you?” Zoë shakes her head. “No, I didn’t. The only explanation I can think of is that she latches onto the person who was there when she manifests, but even that doesn’t add up. “Did Laura say anything?” Dean wonders.

The huntress breaks eye contact with the older Winchester brother. Oh, Laura said something, alright. Something she will not forget anytime soon. Ghosts have the ability to see right through people, sometimes even read their thoughts and memories. The deepest secrets aren’t safe when the afterlife sets in. It scares her that Laura knows about her, about the demon. About John.

“She mentioned something,” she brings up, leaving the personal stuff out. “She kept saying ‘they didn’t stop it’.” “I heard her say that too,” Sam admits. “In your vision?” Dean checks. Sam confirms with a nod and turns back to Zoë. “Did you see anything else?” Sam questions.

The young woman looks away while she ponders. What other details could be of importance? By replaying the moment in her head, she tries to remember every particular detail. “Her hair was drenched,” she recalls with closed eyes. “Water was dripping on the floor. She was wet through.” Both boys frown at that. How does that fit their theories? “That doesn’t make any sense,” Dean comments. “Ghosts look like that when they went for a swim and didn’t come back up, not when they got killed in a beating. Water had nothing to do with her death, she broke her neck.” “I know, another clue of which we have no idea of what the hell it means,” Zoë sighs.

All three fall quiet, trying to figure out what they are missing. Before they can brainstorm further, one of the two paramedics approaches them. The hunters keep their mouths shut when he gets close enough to pick up on any conversation, careful not to talk about the supernatural when unknowing people are around. “Mrs. Evans? I’m afraid we have to take you to the St. Bernards Medical Center in Jonesboro,” he tells her. “What? Why? The AMMC is right around the corner,” Sam jumps in before Zoë refuses to go to any hospital at all. “The ER has been closed down, Sir,” the paramedic answers politely. “For what?” Dean likes to know.

Then two police cars rush by. A bit startled, Zoë glances around the van to see what’s going on, as another car stops. She’s surprised to see that Detective Lee rolls down his window. “Federal agents,” he greets them with a nod. “We have another one at the Medical Center.” Their eyes widen and Zoë’s jaw drops. Another one? How did that happen so fast? Dean is the first to recover from the unexpected news. “We’ll be right there,” he states.

Lee rolls up his window and accelerates. Sirens scream through the street as they drive up the road. The hunters watch the convoy take off, still taken aback. They don’t need a name, they already know who Laura killed. “Hughes,” Dean knows. “Yep,” Zoë sighs and gets on her feet. “Mrs. Evans,” the paramedic objects. “I don’t need to go to hospital. I’m fine, thank you,” Zoë ensures. The first responder insists, however. “I really recommend you to come with us.” “I’ll sign the AMA, thank you,” she returns, her tone stern yet polite. “We’ll take care of her,” Dean backs her up

Sam eyes him, unpleasantly surprised; how could he agree with that? She almost got killed by a ghost, broke her ribs and now she doesn’t even want to be checked out? When he gets a warning glare from both his brother and the huntress when he is about to object, he closes his mouth again. What’s the use anyway. They are both stubborn as hell.

Moments later, the paramedic returns with the Deny Medical Treatment form, which Zoë signs under her false name. Leaving the paramedics behind, she shuffles across the parking lot of the Hampton Inn, reluctantly accepting a supporting shoulder to lean on offered by Sam when he detects she’s still feeling dizzy. “You’re nuts, you know that?” Sam scoffs. “Completely aware,” she answers, this not being the first time someone calls her crazy. “You’re not alright, Zo,” Sam presses. “You’re talking like I’m halfway dead!” she cries out. “Well, you came pretty damn close!” he snaps. “Dude, chill. I know you’re worried about your little girlfriend here, but she has to stay with us,” Dean brings to mind as they reach his Chevrolet. “Excuse me, dickhead, but I’m not little and I’m certainly not his girlfriend,” Zoë corrects, offended.

Before he can respond, Sam also objects. “Why does she have to stay with us?” “Because if she doesn’t, she’ll be alone and Laura will attack her again. We’re not leaving her out of our sight.” Dean opens the door to the backseat of his precious Impala and makes a gesture to Zoë. “Get in.” he orders. “What, in that?” Zoë chuckles as she glares at Dean’s baby inferiorly, letting go of Sam to stand on her own feet. “No thanks, I’ll take the Dave.” “You’re not getting on a bike,” Dean makes clear before she intends to head over to her black roadrunner, irritated by her tone. “It’s not a bike, it’s a Harley Davidson Road King,” she corrects snobby. “If I ride, I ride my Dave, no way you’ll get me in that car.” “That car is a ’67 Chevrolet Impala”, he counters, his face contorting after her insult. How dare she? Zoë pretends the older Winchester brother is non-existent and walks on, while Sam laughs silently as Dean grinds his teeth and watches her leave. “Wipe that damn smile off your face and get in,” the oldest orders his brother.

Sam doesn’t stop smiling, but he does get into the classic as Dean settles in the driver’s seat. Frustrated, Dean starts the engine and roughly drives up to Zoë, then he brings his car to a stop between her and her motorcycle. By this time he has already rolled down his window and now stares up into Zoë’s dark eyes.

“You know just as well as I do that riding that Harley in your condition would be close to suicide. Quit being so fucking stubborn and get in the fucking car!” he commands. They stare at each other, their eyes battling in silence. Huffing in disbelief, she averts her gaze, shaking her head as she attempts to tame her anger. How dare he speak to her like that? “Zo, c’mon. We just want you to be safe,” Sam offers, taking a more gentle approach.

The huntress shifts her focus to the youngest brother, his warm eyes begging her to just get in and stop acting tough. Of course she knows it wouldn’t be an easy ride on her bike and that being driven in a car is far more responsible than riding down the highway herself on a two-wheel vehicle. It’s admitting this to Dean that she detests. Nevertheless, Zoë lets out a sigh, thick with annoyance. Reluctantly, she reaches for the door-latch, but she’s not willing to give in without having the last word. “I thought you said it was a ’67 Chevrolet Impala,” she recalls, using air quotes, as she sits down in the back seat.

Dean rolls his eyes, ignores her comment with difficulty, biting the inside of his cheek to distract himself. As she slams the door, he accelerates. While they exit the parking lot of the Hampton Inn, Dean once again realizes how badly he wants this case to be over, because if Laura does not succeed, he would like to break Zoë’s little neck himself.

Thank you for reading. I appreciate every single one of you, but if you do want to give me some extra love, you are free to like or reblog my work, shoot me a message or buy me coffee (Link to Kofi in bio at the top of the page).

Read chapter twelve here

#Supernatural: the Sullivan Series #Supernatural fanfiction #Dean fanfiction #Sam fanfiction #Dean Winchester fanfiction #Sam Winchester fanfiction #Dean Winchester #sam winchester #supernatural #SPN #Dean x OFC #Sam x OFC #Dean angst #sam angst #Dark!Supernatural

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wkemeup · 5 years

Note

Okay but what was Bucky saying about y/n to Steve and Peggy before they met her 😂

I’m With You - Masterlist

“You need to talk me off a ledge, Steve.”

Bucky stood in line behind a dozen angry passengers boarding a 3am flight to Atlanta, all tapping their toes incessantly and trying to peak up and over the shoulders of those ahead of them in hopes of getting on the plane faster, but Bucky would have much rather his flight have been canceled entirely.

“What’s going on?” Steve replied with a yawn.

Bucky could hear the tiredness in his friend’s voice, the soft rustle of the bed sheets and the click of the lamp. He felt a sharp stab of guilt, just realizing what hour it was, but he was sure he was going to collapse into a heap of himself if he didn’t talk to someone. This night couldn’t have possibly been real and if he didn’t tell Steve, he was sure might find a way to convince himself it was all a dream.

“Is that Bucky?” he heard a quiet voice mumble through the phone; English accent laced with sleep. “Put him on speaker, love.”

“You’ve got both of us now, punk,” Steve said and Peggy whispered a quick ‘hello.’ Bucky gritted his teeth and before he could offer an apology, Steve added, “you better start talking before we fall back asleep.”

A passenger shoved Bucky hard in the shoulder, pushing past him when he didn’t take the two steps ahead of him fast enough to keep up with the line. He let the man go without complaint.

Bucky realized then, he couldn’t talk about his sister; not with the anxiety peaking again and rushing through his veins like rapids. It only seemed to calm when you were with him and he didn’t know how that was possible, to have just met someone hours earlier and for his entire world to be dropped upside down like this.

But it was and it had been. And now, he was in trouble.

“There’s, um, there’s a girl.”

Silence. A pause, then, “a girl?”

“Yeah, Steve, a girl,” Bucky snapped. “Stop making me feel like I’m in middle school.”

“Hey you’re the one calling me at 3am over a girl, Buck!”

“Boys, stop it,” Peggy snipped, a light thump through the speaker as she swatted Steve’s arm before she let out a sigh. “Bucky hasn’t so much as mentioned a girl or anyone in three years, so give him a break, darling.” Then, to Bucky, sweetly, “tell us about her.”

Had it really been three years since he landed stateside again? It felt like longer than that and yesterday all at the same time.

There were pieces of him could still feel the gravel under his back when he slept at night and he still found himself glancing over his shoulder for threats in shopping malls, sneaking around corners at his office building, constantly vigilant. The other half of him felt like it was a lifetime away, like he’d been this isolated, shell of himself for decades, like he hadn’t used the muscles in his cheeks in a millennium.

He swallowed, shoving a hand into his pocket and letting a family of five behind him cut the line. He wasn’t ready to get on this plane just yet. The bag of skittles in his pocket were heavy as stones.

“You remember the stupid shit I used to do with Bec in Charlotte?”

“Is that why you’re callin’ so late?” Steve asked, his voice considerably softer and Bucky wondered how much Peggy’s silent stare had to do with that. “Your flight get canceled?”

“Yeah,” Bucky sighed, pinching at the bridge of his nose, “but it’s back on. I’m boarding now.”

Another silence took over and Bucky wondered if they could hear his heart pounding through the phone.

He glanced back at the long line of people behind him and resided to simply step to the side. He was letting just about everyone pass him by anyway, might as well be the last one to board. He took a deep breath.

“The girl, Bucky,” Peggy reminded him gently.

“Right.” Bucky scratched at the back of his head, finding that his eyes kept drifting down the terminal in search of you, though he knew it was foolish. You had a flight to catch, too. How could he possibly miss you this much? It ached in his bones. It burned like a fire.

So, he told Steve and Peggy everything.

He told them about how you’d been the only other person in the terminal to smile in relief when the cancellations starting rolling in. He told them about the man in the suit who spilled your coffee all over you and how you’d been so patient and kind to the gate agent who looked to be about seconds away from tears.

He told them about how when he was faced with the possibility that you might just walk right out of his life right then and there, he’d done something he hadn’t done in years and asked to buy you coffee. He told them how adorable you’d looked because you were so surprised, shocked even, and he’d let himself flirt for the first time since he’d been home from the desert.

He told them about sitting in the coffeeshop people-watching past when the café was supposed to close and how he’d dragged you into cartwheels at midnight.

“Cartwheels?” Steve gaped. “Seriously, Buck? She must have thought you were completely insane.”

“She did,” Bucky confirmed, a slight laugh in his voice. He didn’t even realize he was smiling. He didn’t notice the nerves left his body.

“How terrible was it? You hadn’t done one of those since your layovers with Becca when you were sixteen. I bet it was awful,” Steve teased, though it was followed by a short grunt and Bucky was certain Peggy must have shoved him hard in the side for that. Bucky grinned.

“Don’t pay attention to him,” Peggy said. “Then, what happened?”

Then, Bucky told them about how you didn’t give him your name until almost an hour later and while he played it cool, it drove him impossibly insane. He told them how he took you to get snacks at the store Charlie worked at – yes, that old man is still alive, Steve! – and then, about how you’d told him the reason you were going to Atlanta in the first place.

“Oh, that poor girl,” Peggy sighed.

Bucky could still picture the look on your face; the genuine belief that you were somehow not worthy of this jerk of an ex-boyfriend and he couldn’t understand it. You were impossibly kind and funny and so stunningly beautiful; Bucky could hardly keep his heart in check around you.

He told them how he tried to explain his situation with Becca to you, how it came out as a jumbled mess, how easily you changed the subject without hesitation and the relief he felt at that.

Then, he told them about the questions over giant checkers and Steve teased him relentlessly, despite Peggy swatting him again, telling Bucky, ‘well I think it’s sweet and Steve could learn a thing from you.’

It felt like a month’s worth of time sat in the span of a few hours and Bucky found himself leaning up against the wall, watching the grumbling passengers make their way to the plane, a smile aching in his cheeks the longer he talked about you.

By the time he got to the end of the story, about how he’d just barely kissed you before the damn intercom went off, alerting you to your flights that were dangerously close to boarding, there were only a few stragglers left in the line.

“Y/n sounds lovely,” Peggy said after a moment. “So, why the ledge?”

Bucky sighed, slowly making his way to the very back of the line. “I don’t know. Maybe I was too much, you know? I don’t remember how to do this stuff. I feel like I dumped all my baggage on a woman I’ve known for a few hours and I fucked it all up.“

“Come on, man, I don’t think that’s true,” Steve said reassuringly, all tracing of the teasing nature leaving his voice. “It sounds like she likes you. I mean, who else would put up with cartwheels in the middle of the airport?”

Bucky found himself chuckling under his breath despite himself. He handed the gate agent his ticket and they pushed out a tight-lipped smile, nodding for him to continue down the gateway.

“She’s really something, Steve. I don’t know the last time I felt like myself and when I was with her… I don’t know, it was easy again, like all this stuff with Bec never happened and I never enlisted. I was laughing and smiling and telling jokes and—Jesus – I was flirting. Didn’t know I could still do that.”

He could hear their laughter in response through the speaker as he stepped into the plane. Everyone else was seated, most people already trying to close their eyes and find some rest before the plane landed in Atlanta.

“Tell me you got her number,” Steve begged and Bucky clenched his jaw, slumping down into his seat. The silence was enough of an answer. “Bucky!”

“I know, I know! But I gave her mine, at least,” Bucky replied weakly. “Just have to hope she’ll call.”

“She will,” Peggy said and the soft rustle of the sheets came like static through the phone. She yawned. “Y/n will call, Bucky. I’m sure of it.”

It was a problem for another day, he supposed.

A flight attendant stood over Bucky’s shoulder, eyeing his phone and he muttered a quick apology.

“I gotta go. Plane’s taking off,” Bucky mumbled into the phone, nervously glancing back up at the attendant who was still watching him as he continued walking through the cabin.

“Call us tomorrow when you get settled,” Peggy requested. “I know Sunday won’t be easy but we’re here for you. Just need to keep busy on Saturday. Think you can do that?”

Bucky nodded, letting out a deep breath. “Yeah, I’m sure I’ll find something to keep me occupied.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself, pal,” Steve said, the click of the bedside lamp turning off. “Anyone who willingly goes along with your ridiculous layover shenanigans has got to really like you. I’m not sure I would even do a cartwheel on that dirty floor for you, buddy.”

Bucky laughed, his cheeks muscles sore and whether it was from the lack of sleep or from smiling more in one night than he had in years, he wasn’t sure.

“You off the ledge now?” Steve asked.

“Yeah. Consider me back on solid ground,” Bucky replied. The flight attendant was making his way back down the aisle to scold him again and Bucky quickly said, “okay I really have to go now before I’m the reason this plane never makes it to Atlanta. Get some rest, guys. Thanks.”

“Always, pal.”

“Fly safe,” Peggy added.

With that, Bucky ended the call and turned off his phone, holding it up for the attendant to see. He narrowed his eyes on Bucky, almost in warning, before he retreated back to his seat for takeoff.

Bucky settled into his seat, folding his arms and letting his eyes drift closed. Despite the lumps in the back of the cushioning and the arm rest to his right completely taken over by the man next to him, Bucky felt a sense of calm, a wave of relief, for the first time in a long while.

His mind drifted back to the beautiful stranger in the airport. The woman with the coffee on her shoes and the laugh of an angel and the kindest eyes he’d ever seen.

He found you again in his dreams.

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky x reader #bucky barnes #bucky barnes one shot #marvel imagine #i will be reblogging with tags from now on if youre looking for it lol #send me drabble prompts or head cannons!#im with you

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thepandalion · 3 years

Photo

Happy pride month to all! Drew myself and my flags (and got my own eye color right, for once-), and this will probably become my main pfp now because. looking great there.

the version w/o the writing of happy pride (and also the list of flags and lil things I threw in bc extra details) bellow if anyone seeing this thinks its interesting enough to listen to me ramble-

Eyy

well, for flags, I believe the jacket being an ace mess is obvious, but the shirt beneath it is not only the aro flag, but also a play on the fact my other pfp had a green shirt with the same texture added here (which is really just me finding a picture of tv static and making it a low-opacity overlay-)

wings and wing-ears are obvious, because it’s still me and being me includes jackets, glasses (and, somehow, these are the actual glasses I have, randomly being uneven bc I read fics while laying on my side on a couch included--) and a lot of wings. the crown-halo is actually another thing I burrowed from Dandelion’s design, because I drew it and immediately went “oh, that’s so cool” and then proceeded to add it to my own lil sketches I do bc I’m too lazy to ink, occassionally.

anyways, back to pride stuff, nonbinary flag patch on the arm of the jacket and a pin next to it with my pronouns! (well, actually they/them and lun/lunar, but even I forget the second set sometimes, nevermind the fact a lot of people don’t know how to use that set, so, they/them is the one I use more commonly-)

also, rainbow scarf included based on the fact I actually do own a rainbow scarf (and suspenders and stockings, but those I usually only use on actual pride stuff, while the scarf I go with anywhere-)

also, the choker has a glass heart on it- I really struggled with it, because I do glass well only if it’s 3D and this is just. a panel of glass.

the eyes are something I had to actually go to my mom to ask about, because she’s known me longest and therefore must know what my eye color is (it’s sorta a fun story, but my eyes change color based on like, a billion variables, including lighting, weather and mood, mainly, so I usually default to my favorite shade for them, which is the neon green I get when there’s a good weather to take a walk and I’m feeling energized). her response was to send me a picture of a close-up of a cat’s eyes, which were the same shade mine are currently, and also somewhat like the color in the drawing (except more neon, I didn’t manage to put the neon in without disrupting the color pallet too much and I’d rather have something pretty than accurate, considering the fact I don’t have wings for ears, actually.

last thing to add is that, for once, I managed to remember my hair is actually no longer completely blond! I started coloring the tips purple a few years back, and though it fades pretty fast, it turns this pretty green/aqua color, so, I added the transition from purple to green to blond at the tips of my hair, which I made shorter than it is irl, because having incredibly long hair is impractical but having super short hair felt weird when I did so having it at shoulder length could be interesting (even if I love drawing it either mermaid-length or barely bellow my ears-)

Happy pride to all, anyways!! ^w^

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statticscribbles · 4 years

Text

Shadow

Summary: Steve/Billy, I love some good body horror, also this was written like years ago, so it might be a little different to my usual style

He’s tried his best to ignore it, the hissing; the way he can feel his own heartbeat being twisted into screams; how nothing smells the same; there’s some sort of sweet rotting scent, like vomit or drying meat. It takes him far too long to realise its himself; he watches the veins, the tendrils sliding against his skin, he runs his fingers over them, feeling ridges and coils he knows he shouldn’t. He cant help but shiver, picturing unblemished skin, picture harring-don’t think don’t think don’t think, he screams in tandem with the veins, with the creature that sinks below his skin as he sunk below the world, do not give him away, keep him safe keep him safe, don’t think don’t think, he knows its dissecting him, pulling him apart in pieces, internally; he imagines someone cutting him open once it kills him; his brain scrambled beyond function, his organs cut into chunks, into ribbons and shredded beyond the worst murders any of them have seen.

He can feel movement, not under his skin as he expects but himself moving; he knows he hasn’t been outside in hours weeks days, too long; he cant feel the sun, cant feel the cold wither; he’s not sure what he needs to wear; he’s unconcerned, he needs- dont think dont think dont think; it breaks, the way he grits his teeth scowling at himself at how the veins choke against him; with how they recede, how he can feel warmth suddenly rushing through him like water; he knows it knows too; he’d tried, he reminds himself, took the better part of however long it had been; he likes to think days; he knows he probably doesn’t have that.

He’s moving too fast, begging himself to slow down, to act human to appear what everyone sees him as. Nothing changes except he can no longer feel once more; he knows he should be tired dimly recognising the area he’s in, how far he’s traveled; how far it forced him to go, he staggers forward unsure of the ringing in his ears, the way the ground twists, his face hitting the grass; he wonders if the ground will swallow him once more. Instead light floods his vision, he can see feet moving towards him; he struggles finding himself bound to the earth; he can feel the veins pulsing the excitement they both feel is making him sick.

-Jesus- He doesn’t hear the figure speak just knows the way the face moves and the concern melts; he can feel the figure picking him up; he feels like he should weight ten tons but the veins are so busy thrumming in his ears he’s barely aware the figure is talking let alone the other people who seem to have appeared, he wants to shut his eyes; the lights are undulating against the shapes and items he no longer can name. He can feel everything spinning around him as a central point; he cant even move to turn to vomit; he cant hear anything suddenly; everything fully being silenced. he doesn’t struggle, doesn’t move frozen; numb; waiting for what happens after the silence; waiting for the screaming; the sound of bone snapping and fragmenting; the feeling of blood dripping from inside him to pool against his skin and muscles unbroken.

Nothing comes; he tentatively closes his eyes relieved when he can. He sleeps on his own for the first time. He doesn’t wake up, just as he doesn’t fall asleep. He’s only aware of the not being when his vision seems to return to him, when the blurry expanse of gray and blue pull back, the flashes of light and prickle of fire recede from his body. He cannot turn his head. He cannot move his body. He cannot feel what is not his; for the veins, the smoke that bleeds from under his skin has soaked against his body, he can feel it feather light in its movements as it coils around his organs, snakes between his bones and pulls the marrow from them. He knows he shouldn’t fight anymore; not now, not yet; he lets the smoke, the cool leeching from inside him settle centered in his chest.

He wonders if the smoke is what’s keeping his heart beating, surprised when he can feel the hold it keeps over him lessen. Fix it, fix it, fix it. Is all that come through when he tries to move, tries to think about what is suddenly flashing in front of his vision. Hand, fingers, arm. He sighs, letting the air return to his lungs by himself. He cringes knowing the creature has given him control back to posess someone. He reaches half blind towards the heartbeat the creature allows him to hear. Take, take, take. He’s confused when he can feel panic rise, the smoke bubbling into his throat cutting his breathing off. Wrong, wrong wrong. He leans his head against the wall keeping his eyes closed trying to avoid the feeling of everything twisting from under him. He opens them slowly surprised to see something sitting across from him. He doesn’t scream, his eyes clouded, he wonders why he can’t see.

“Billy, what happened.” Oh no.no, no no, wrong wrong wrong, not him not him, not him. He wants to vomit, he can feel his mouth cracking, his teeth grinding as he pries them open, fighting his own nerve impulses and synapses to manage to unlock his jaw. His vision goes black but the sound stays, he can hear it, the same creature that came to him in the other place, the broken screaming thing that stuttered and vomited sound, that was drowning in static and too much of everything, warping his vision the same as it is now. The sound is what he remembers, he can feel his arms, his hands trying to move towards his own mouth, to shut him down, to bring him to control once again. He can hear the scream clearer, its more of a whine, a pitiful noise the kind animals make when they’re wounded, not a creature from the other place he reasons, something from this place, something from here. He can feel a finger hooking into his mouth, his own trying to force his jaw closed or maybe to make him puke the creature so it can find a new host, so it can find something better.

Instead he doesn’t scream , he cannot when half is hand is being crushed by his teeth. He doesn’t feel pain, he can’t feel anything just as he can’t see and then he can’t hear. He knows the creature is angry, he can feel the way it ripples against him, like water damp and heavy. It vanishes all at once, and suddenly he’s lying on a bed, in a house, in a room , in Steve’s room, with Steve, Steve, Steve, Steve bleeding from his hand, half of which is now on the bed sitting next to him. He looks up, Steve’s face twisted in horror, his hand reaching hesitantly out. Fear, fear fear, he’s afraid he’s afraid of you, you’re bad, you’re bad. He can hear it echoing before everything is taken away again. He understands his last view of Steve the figure was meant to be agonizing for him to think of.

He’s not sure if he’s sitting or laying once more, he can faintly feel a hand somewhere against him and he reasons someone must had at least restrained him. Those wont stop us, we need, we need. He screams into his head, howling and trying his best to drown it out. He’s given sound and partial sight back, he’s still sitting, the figure Steve is next to him, he flexes his fingers twining them with Steve the figure’s. He watches the figure relax, can see his mouth moving but not the sound that comes out. He watches, tracking his eyes and skipping a breath when he sees his hand, uninjured next to him; the part he’d bitten off, the fingers he’d crushed under his teeth sit next to it, blood staining the sheet and the flesh itself a dull gray and sheened black. “What’s going on,Billy, what happened?” He swallows confused how clear Steve is. “It; it wants-“ “Want’s what?” Steve’s fingers tighten, the other hand brushing up his arm. Wants you, wants you wants you, want you, want you, want you. “Don’t know, just know I’m supposed to bring it what it wants.” “You can’t remember anything from-“ His voice cuts off, as if he’s underwater and he waits patiently for Steve the figure’s voice to return. “Billy?” He relishes in how comforting his name is. He blinks at Steve, not nodding, not moving, the burning in his chest reminding him he’s not breathing either. He waits, curious which will give in first.

“It wants you.” He breathes out before it can choke him back down. Steve freezes nodding slowly. “Why?” “Because I want you.” Steve’s eyebrows knit together but he nods. “And you’re the creature right so-?”

“No! I want you! You’re mine!” No right to him, no right to him, mine mine mine. He screeches, snarling in the space between them before he tugs Steve even closer, pulling him on top of himself effortlessly, he can dimly hear the hand, his hand, thunking to the floor and he pays no mind as he curls around Steve. He doesn’t struggle, laying there limp, shaking only slightly. He can feel his hand running through Steve’s hair, humming softly. Mine mine mine mine. “It wants what I have what everyone here does, it wants. It hurts with it, like I do, why we match so well.” He mumbles hand petting Steve’s hair. “I thought it wanted to take the world?” “Yes.”

“Am I like a gateway or somethin’? If anything El would-“ “Mine.” Billy hisses between his teeth and Steve looks up. “Oh.” Billy hums please when Steve nods slowly, he presses their forehead together and they sit content in silence for a moment, Billy trying his best not to choke on the veins that burrow into him like barbs.

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fyexo · 4 years

Text

EXO's Kai Talks Independence, Motivation And His Incredible Career

There’s the saying that you’ve made it into the upper echelons of fame when you achieve single-name status. Monikers like Beyoncé, Ariana Grande, and Billie Eilish ring a bell for they’ve relentlessly dominated not just the music charts, but pop culture, fashion and news in general. Then there’s also Kai. The 26-year-old main dancer of popular K-pop boy group EXO and a member of global K-pop boyband SuperM, beloved for his powerful moves, and experimental style — read: crop tops — that challenges the traditional markers of masculinity.

Today, it’s clear that the space Kai inhabits has only gotten bigger since his debut eight years ago, most recently wearing the hat of Gucci’s first-ever Korean male global ambassador — dismantling cultural boundaries and parlaying the mononym, Kai, beyond the K-Pop realm. In this cover interview, the superstar chats candidly about going global, being independent, and why he felt like he needed an Instagram account.

Some time ago you revealed the results of your personality test on Instagram live. With regard to the question “Have you wondered about your existence?”, you answered that you have.

I think I have always thought about the question, “Why was I born?”. Also, I often wonder about questions like, “Why am I not born as someone else but as me; is the world I see through my eyes different from another person’s point of view?”

You revealed that you have an INFJ personality type based on the MBTI — it seems quite accurate.

I don’t really remember my result, so I plan to take it again. My family has taken it too, and after seeing my mum’s result I thought it seemed like a very credible test [laughs]. My mum is a dreamer. Even before I debuted, she said, “You like to dress up, and because I brought you up in that way you are definitely going to have something to do with fashion brands in the future.” Naturally, when I became a Gucci ambassador, she was ecstatic.

Your Instagram feed’s theme is filled with “EXO”, “family” and “Gucci”.

I created my account in 2018 when I was having a shoot with ELLE for Gucci’s Cruise show. I’ve always known that social media was important, but I really felt that even more when a lot of celebrities asked for my account during the show.

You participated in the filming of a global eyewear campaign that was revealed not too long ago in the Amoeba Music store in Los Angeles. Was it a special experience for you as a musician?

Of course, it was supposed to be closed down and so the fact that I managed to take pictures and create memories of that historical place made me feel happy and blessed. The production crew were all non-Koreans, and the atmosphere at the location was different as well so it was all very nerve-racking. I felt like I had gone back in time to when I first debuted.

Even Kai gets nervous. Have you had any other similar experiences when a location you liked disappeared or closed down?

The old SM building I grew up in when I was a trainee and formed so many memories [at] just recently underwent some remodeling works. The rooftop and a few other spaces where I spent so much of my time have all disappeared. Those were places that meant so much to me, so with the new changes made, I was able to actually realise how much time has passed.

There are many people with a good [sense of] style. [Your] outstanding point is that when you try out different styles, it doesn’t seem foreign [to you].

I think that cool and pretty things can be captured easily but capturing a specific concept — in terms of fashion — can be a difficult feat. I use that mentality as an excuse to try out different styles of fashion that I would not have dared to in my daily life, such as the reggae hairstyle that I did in Growl, or the short crop jacket that I wore during my promotions for Obsession. I think two weeks is more than enough to prepare and try out new things [laughs].

You have made appearances in variety programmes such as Knowing Brothers and Radio Star last year. Were these experiences enjoyable?

Thanks to the humorous moments that came about, I actually received many offers from other shows. However, I was worried that the Kai that I portray on stage could be hindered by my different sides shown on TV, and that it might be difficult for anyone to focus on my performances due to the drastic differences.

I can’t not mention SuperM’s group promotions. Three different groups under SM came together to form this sub-unit, as part of a project!

When EXO went on our American tours, we experienced that culturally, races and traditions had been blurred. I could feel that there was less of a “line” separating us. I was able to approach fans more easily; I don’t think there’s a limit to K-Pop. I don’t need to deliberately mention the [global] success of Parasite. The fact that I became the global ambassador of Gucci eyewear proves that race does not matter at all, but it’s more about one’s talents and charisma.

Personally, I felt the progress of K-Pop after watching the safety briefing videos that SuperM and BoA shot together for Korean Airlines.

I am too shy to watch it, but I did receive a lot of video stills of myself from my friends and they didn’t look good at all. They keep sending me parts where I look bad [laughs].

Due to your performances and dancing, I think the pressure on the stage is incredible.

Usually I don’t have much worries, stress, or even anger, but it’s different right before going up on stage. I get so stressed to the point it can be tiring. Honestly, waking up at six in the morning with hardly any sleep just to pre-record our performances for music shows — it sounds impossible. I’m only able to show 20 per cent of my all and that is really sad. Last year was such a busy year, I hardly had any time to recharge myself nor did I feel I was ready to stand on stage, but the show still had to go on. I was not fully satisfied with the performances as a dancer, but it just has to be endured.

What are the reasons that you are able to carry on despite all the difficulties?

The contentment after I get things done, and the comfort that I was able to pull through. On the other hand, I think the sincerity I feel towards everything I do and the constant ambition to do things better is a huge motivation and a relief when I accomplish it. If I don’t feel this way, it will mean that this work no longer means as much as it did to me in the past. Showing my fans the best version of myself, and the comfort and happiness I feel when I’m contented with my performance or work, is really important to me. In the past I couldn’t even sleep after making one mistake, but I sleep really well now [laughs].

And dancing is still something you enjoy?

I’ve been dancing for almost 20 years now. I can’t not dance. Even when I was young, I’d dance everywhere and anywhere, to the extent my mum said, “Stop dancing, it’s embarrassing.”

It’s well known that you have some really special and tight relationships with a few people around you. Do you get any inspiration from their advice, or from their influence?

I’m not the type to ask for advice from anyone first. Even when I ask what’s the better of two choices, I already have an answer [that I’ve] decided on in my mind. I’ve always felt that I needed to be independent; to [think for myself] when I decide, in order to be able to say that it is “mine”.

So, you’re a man of few words around people.

If they want me to be. If necessary, I will say good things, but more [so] the realistic point of view. I always think of the worst possible situation before saying anything [when giving advice], so those who know me well will not ask me trivial questions. When things go south or important decisions to be made, they will look for me. As for myself, I humbly listen to criticism or harsh words.

“Sexy” and “beautiful” are words that you probably hear a lot, but your fans call you “cute”. Which sides of yourself do you think are cute?

None! Even if I have thought of myself as cute, I won’t say it or admit it [laughs].

There are many people who idolise you as they see you as an iconic person. Does [the phrase] “a symbolic beauty of youth” or any other nicknames that you carry, feel a little too exaggerated?

Everyone views me differently, so I can’t say that it’s burdensome or exaggerated. Instead, I’m thankful. I don’t want to think of these nicknames or titles consciously as I live my life. Like, “Oh since they call me this, I should try to behave a little more as such”. I only want to show my true self without having other considerations — always.

What do you consider to be beautiful?

Definitely cool clothes, sculptures, drawings and paintings. When I look at some really good-looking people, I feel that that is beauty too. But personally, I think that true beauty lies in moments. Past memories and ordinary moments that when you look back, [you] realise that what you felt back then was more beautiful and precious than any other happiness that you’ve experienced.

A line from the drama The Miracle We Met pops into my mind — “Memory isnot [just] a record of time, but [is always]accompanied by emotions. That’s something surprising we never expect.”

Good memories always bring back rushing emotions, regardless of when you look back at it. That is really beautiful, and that is why I really love watching movies with film static noise, as it seems like I’m looking into someone’s memories.

Your name Jong (鍾) comes from“iron drum bell” and In (仁) comes from “benevolent”. Your grandfather named you that, which means to be as benevolent as the person who rings the morning bell. Throughout your life, have you ever thought about the meaning behind your name?

Hmmm, firstly, I’m not a morning person [laughs], but hitting the bell at dawn means to be of use to someone and to [have] more initiative, so I do want to live up to that and inspire others. Perhaps I could already be doing just that, I’m not sure.

I’m sure you’ve garnered plenty of praise for your dance techniques, but the shoot today focused quite a bit on your looks too. Which feature of yours do you like?

I do like to think that I have my own attractive features, like my small ears or a round bear like nose which most would say is so-so — but I still like them. If I really had to choose, it would be my chin and eyebrows for now. I think these two features make up 80 per cent of my defining look.

What does family mean to you?

Family is family. There may be no one in the world who will be completely on my side, but my family will still accept me as I am. I grew up happily with two siblings, and so if I were to have a family of my own, I always thought three kids would be just nice. But now when I look at my sister struggling with childcare, I realised it’s definitely not something to think lightly of. My family members are also my seniors (sunbae) in life.

Your eight-year anniversary is coming up soon, and you’ve probably been through many hardships. Do you think it is necessary for a person to go through pain to mature?

Looking back now, not all hardships have changed my nature; I personally don’t see the need for a person to go through change and pain in order to mature. But you know there is going to be a tough time for everyone at least once in their lifetime, and it’s not so bad a thing to be positive and think of precious things to get through it. Most importantly, just because you’re going through something difficult doesn’t mean you should hate yourself or be hard on yourself, because the most precious thing in the world is yourself.

Some may look at you and think that you’ve got it all. In spite of this, is there still anything that you wish to have, and is there a further goal you have in mind?

Before my debut, I had a lot of ambitions but the Kai I am today doesn’t have anything else I could wish for. I don’t think the place I am today is my final station but even if it is, I would be okay with that. Even if my debut was the end, I am proud of the life I’ve led, and I would be super proud of whatever I do. I am able to say this confidently because I learnt that the more fixated I am on something, the less happy I am. I learnt that it is better to focus on and enjoy the present; to enjoy doing what you do.

What type of person do you hope to be to your loved ones?

There is only one thing I wish for and that is for them to always be by my side no matter what decisions I make. Likewise, I will do the same.

SOURCE: Elle Singapore June 2020

#exo #kai #t: interview #elle singapore june 2020

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blackypanther9 · 3 years

Text

Part 38 - The memories...

You = Your dream/past/memory - self.

No one’s POV...

As you slept, a weird dream happened.

In your dream...

You stood in a very weird village yet...it also felt very familiar to you. As if you once lived there...

"Dest !", someone yelled happily.

You smiled at a girl with dark blue hair and beautiful rainbow colored eyes.

"******** !", you (dream self) said.

You couldn't hear the name, because some stupid static sounds appeared. You cringed at that.

"Hello Destiny ! How are you ?", a boy with brown, messy hair and bronze eyes said.

You heard right...bonze. You smiled back at him.

"Great Rexon. You ?"

"I missed you...", he said pulling you into a hug.

"Destiny my Love !!", screamed a girl, running to you.

You cringed and stared at her, disgusted. She tried to tackle you down with a hug. Sadly. You dodged her attack in a quick movement, with ease. She fell on her stomach and landed on the ground, hard.

"Oof !"

She looked at you, hurt.

"Why didn't you catch me ?! We are destined to be together !"

You looked at her in disgust.

"Stay away from me, Leondra. We aren't destined to be together ! I don't love annoying, stupid girls. I'm no lesbian ! Now fuck off !!!", you yelled aggressively.

She stared at you in shock and pain. Then her eyes darkened and her face was red.

"You WILL be MINE !!!", she screamed and attacked you.

You grabbed her fist, as she threw it at you, and twisted it until it made a loud 'CRACK !'. Leondra screamed, while your friends laughed at her, you just gave her a face with no emotions. After you had enough, you let her go and she ran, crying, away. Suddenly someone touched your shoulder. You turned around, quick, and flipped the person to the ground. Black hair and orange, surprise filled eyes fell into your sight. Familiar ones, you smiled.

"Gernaldo Alonso Brut ! My old friend. How are you, Scarson ?", you teased.

He huffed, but grinned at you. You reached your hand out to him, he grabbed it, but instead of getting up, he pulled you down on top of himself. You yelped in surprise and punched him playfully. After some time of laughing, you both got up.

Suddenly your surroundings were changing.

You were in a big room with 10 men there...they looked weird. Then you remembered ! The conference room ! You didn't know anymore than that.

"Destiny Andrea Dust...Your punishment will be a long travel in space. Find other planets, realms and races. Find out everything about them (culture, lifespan, weaknesses, strength, etc....). Find out how they call their own race too. Understood ?", one of the men said.

"When shall I come back ?"

"After one year you have to return, with all your knowledge you collected.", another man said.

"Then I understood. I accept my punishment.", you told them in a monotone voice.

You were dismissed and stormed out to get ready for your departure, called....home....

Then you suddenly saw images. You were at the race Gamora was from, the race called Zehoberei. Then you were even on Midgard ! But there still lived dinosaurs...At least for 2 more days. You saw Nebula's kind too ! Her race was called the Luphomoid. In every realm, you were, you talked, played, ate, drank and laughed with them. You actually really noted everything they told you and took pictures of them, with you in it. It was always heartbreaking to leave to another planet. One day...you were on a planet, named....Titan. You met them all...they were so kind to you, well...except one...A boy named...Thanos. You met the mad Titan as little boy ! After they told you everything, which took 3 days straight, you had to leave to another planet. Sadly...this was the last planet...And your calendar showed you that you still had years left...In space...it took longer than in your home. MUCH longer...

Suddenly there was another flashback. You stood on weird ground. Then you remembered where you were ! Morag ! You saw 4 beings in front of you, smiling. Death, Infinity, Eternity and Entropy...

"Hey Dest ! Are you coming ? Lunch is ready !", one of them said.

"Okay ! Give me a second Eternity, I will be there !", you said.

"Okay."

As 3 of them left one came to you. They stood next to you.

"You are dying, my friend. Why don't you tell us ? Maybe we can help you and safe your life."

"Death...You can't heal this disease. It is slowly killing me from inside. There is nothing you could do."

"Destiny...I already have a solution."

You turned to Death and looked at her. She continued with a deep breath.

"It may be dangerous and you would need to pay a very large price. But...it's worth it. The realms and space needs someone like you, to protect everyone from the evil and avoid innocent races deaths. You know that...the Infinity Stones...we created, were too big...right ?"

"Yes ? So ?"

"Everyone will soon find out, what we created and will be after us. We split every gem in half. Maybe...Your body is strong enough to carry one half of them inside of you. It would make you immortal. You were more than a god. And I would trust you, that you know what you do with them. You are a fighter and a strong one at that."

You stared at Death in pure shock. You then let tears slip.

"You really think it could help me survive ? You really...trust...me ?"

Death nodded, smiling at you.

"Of course ! You showed us that you are indeed, very trustworthy. But...you will have to make a promise..."

"What is it ?"

"Never use it for evil and protect the whole space with them. Kill just the evil ones."

You looked at her serious and said...

"I swear to never use it to kill innocent ones, protect everyone as long and good as I can and to just kill the evil ones."

Death hummed.

"Good. Now come with me, lunch is out for you. We start to implant them now."

"W-wait ! R-right n-now ?!"

"Hey...don't be afraid. The sooner we begin...the sooner you have it behind you.", Death assured you.

You took a deep breath.

"Okay. You trust me...and I trust you.", you said.

"Guys ! Destiny is dying ! Help me implant the other halves of the Infinity Stones in her body !", Death yelled.

They ran to you both.

"Death are you crazy ?! She could die ! You-!", Infinity got interrupted.

"She will die anyways. She is our experiment and also...she agreed to it and swore to always do the right thing. Now help me safe her.", Death said in an angered voice.

Eternity looked at you.

"Are you sure about this ? Do you really want that ?"

You nodded determined.

"I won't back out of this now. Guys...I wanna live ! I don't want to die of that disease ! It can't be healed, the Infinity Stones are my last hope."

Entropy sighed.

"To the table. We are gonna implant the Stones."

"WHAT ?!", Infinity yelled.

"You heard me. To the table, we are doing it. I don't want to let Destiny die so young, because of a disease. We will help her, because she helped us a lot. She is one of us now."

Eternity sighed.

"If Dest really wants to do it...I agree."

You and Death smiled. Infinity looked at you and saw how despairing you were. Infinity sighed.

"Fine. But if Destiny dies, I tell you that I warned you."

They agreed and you ran up to Eternity, Entropy and Infinity and hugged them.

"Thank you."

Then the room changed and you laid, strapped down, on a table. On your left was Death with the Infinity Stones. On your right were the others with their tools.

"You will feel every little movement. No numbing. It will hurt like hell. Do you still wish to do that ?"

You gulped but nodded determined. Infinity growled and mumbled that you were an idiot. Then they began and Entropy didn't joke that it will hurt like hell. You screamed in pure pain no matter what they did. They cut bone pieces out of your hands, feet and head. It looked like a murder scene, but you fought and Death kept implanting adrenaline syringes, to keep you awake, because if you close your eyes now...you would be gone for good. But the weird thing was...they put 1 more inside you. Which were then actually 7 Stones...After 2 hours of painful, torturous lifesaving, it was over.

"We are finally done.", sighed Infinity relieved.

"Yes. Now we wait for any reaction her body gives. I hope her body will carry the Infinity Stones...", Eternity said.

"If we placed them right and her body is strong enough, her soul and heart pure and innocent too, she should be fine. I believe in her and you should too. Like Death does.", Entropy told them.

Death looked at you and smiled a little smile. She stroked your hair.

"You did it. The little part is done, the main part is now..."

You wanted to ask her what she had meant, but she held a finger to your lips.

"Don't speak. Your body is weakened, because of too much blood loss. I mean that the Infinity Stones and your body need a connection. If one of the gems or your body refuses the connection...you explode and die. If they connect...it will hurt even more than that what we just did. We won't know if it will tear you apart or if they connect and accept each other. It will burn a little by the connection, that is because of me. If it hurts, but doesn't burn...they refuse.", she said.

You stared at Death, worried and scared. Death and the others sensed your fear.

"Don't worry kid. I think you will survive that. I know you will. You are very strong.", Eternity said, smiling.

"I do too.", Entropy told you grinning.

"Count me in !", Infinity yelled.

"We wouldn't have done it if you weren't worthy. We see you as worthy. The gems probably too.", Death explained.

You smiled a little, bravery in your eyes again.

"No...going...back...now...I...will...accept...my...fate...", you brought out with much effort.

"Rest a little now. It will take some ti-."

"ARGH !! AHH !!", you screamed.

They all rushed to your right side and stared at you shocked.

"It already has begun...", Entropy said.

"Destiny ! Try to ignore the pain !", Eternity screamed in panic.

"How does it feel ? Does it burn a little ?", Death asked calm, with worry in the eyes.

You nodded a little. You (Now) saw how you (dream self) glowed. (Don't forget that you see your past/memory self with all the events that had happened.)

"What is happening ?! DESTINY !", Infinity panicked.

You saw your dream self lifting itself in the air. You screamed even more in pain. You then heard ripping sounds and an explosion. You closed your eyes and as you opened them again...you saw your dream self torn in pieces. You gasped and the others did also.

"No...", Death said shocked.

"I told you she isn't able to handle it ! ARE YOU NOW HAPPY ?! WE FUCKING KILLED HER !!", Infinity yelled.

Death's face fell and her skull showed up. She growled.

"Shut up ! Look !", she yelled.

They all ran to Death and saw your heart, weird...it is still beating. And that with normal speed, like you still live. You saw it too and were confused.

"What does that mean ?", Eternity asked confused.

"It means that the gems were testing her body. Her body and the gems accepted and connected each other...They test their limits. She is alive !", Entropy explained happily.

Suddenly your torn body parts set themselves together and you were standing before them, in one piece, again. Your eyes were still closed, but not pinched.

"Destiny ?", Entropy said.

You opened your eyes and they were rainbow-colored. They all gasped.

"It worked !", Eternity yelled.

"You made it.", Death said.

"Thank God, Dest.", Infinity sighed relieved.

"Glad you made it, Destiny. And you have interesting eyes.", Entropy told you smiling.

You went, confused, to the mirror and gasped as you saw your eyes. Suddenly they changed back to your green ones.

"Well...I think you need rest and after that very much training. We teach you everything we can and know. The rest...you have to somehow figure out on your own. They have probably more than we in store.", Entropy explained to you.

You nodded and with that...The images changed again.

You saw yourself training with Death and Eternity. They shot blasts at you and you shot one back, a much stronger one. It knocked them back and they stared at you taken aback, before smiling at you.

"You learn fast. Great !", Death praised.

You giggled.

"I have friends, who teach, train and saved me. I am like you now !", you said giggling.

"No. You are more, Dest.", Entropy said, standing behind you.

You jumped and shot a blast at Entropy. Entropy blocked the blast quickly.

"I am so sorry, Entropy !"

"Nonsense. It was your right reaction.", Entropy said smiling.

You smiled back and the images changed again. You fought against all four and won.

"You are perfect ! The training was worth it.", Infinity and Eternity said.

"Indeed it was.", Entropy agreed.

"Entropy...I think it's time...", Death told her in a serious tone.

Entropy lost the smile and stared serious at you and the others. All their faces were serious now. Entropy sighed.

"Destiny...come with me."

You looked at them confused but followed Entropy inside the temple of Morag.

"Listen to me. You have to do some things for us...one last time..."

Your eyes widen.

"W-what do you mean ? Are you all dying ?"

"No. But we are hunted. We lived hundreds of years now, actually even 2 million and...some races found us and they know about the Infinity Stones...We have to get rid of them and hide them somewhere. We knew it will someday happen. You are still in exile, but we can't keep you here longer than maybe 40 more years. You have to hide the gems in the whole universe. Separate them and hide them. Then come back and honor the little time we still have left together.", Entropy explained to you.

"Can I touch the other halves ?"

"Yes you can. They won't overpower or kill you. They will just connect with their other halves and give you more strength in your body, if you want them to. But please...promise me that you will never do this. Just when you and the whole universe is in great danger and you really see no other way out. It can be very dangerous. Nobody can know of anything of this and us. Not even your best friends just if you are really sure you can trust them. Swear it."

"I...I swear on my life. And the Infinity Stones."

"Good. You are the protector of the universe. And not just this one timeline, it is to everyone there exists. You hear me ?"

"Yes, Entropy."

"Good."

You and Entropy went into the room, where the other halves of the Infinity Stones laid. Entropy stuffed them into a little bag and then stuffed them into your hands.

"We shouldn't have ever given these halves of the Infinity Stones to the Celestials... They told the enemy about them.", Entropy mumbled.

"I know it is actually not our right to ask you to repair the mistakes we made. But...please help us and fix our mistakes, we can't fix them anymore. We can just fight and then die."

You nodded with a determined face.

"I will always help you, because you also helped me, when I needed you the most. I accept this mission and will succeed. I always help the innocent and my friends. I shall prepare my leave. The sooner I go and do it, the better for all of us.", you told Entropy.

Entropy smiled at you, tears in the eyes.

"Thank you."

With that you hugged Entropy and storm - walked into your room.

Then the pictures changed and you saw where you hid the most of the gems. The Mind Stone in the scepter, Loki had. And surprise, surprise...it was your own scepter. The Reality Stone was given to someone who was actually very trustworthy...How did the Dark Elves ever get on it then ? You hid the Soul Stone in the planet Vomir, put a spell on it which Death teached you and is practically a curse...The Time Stone you gave once to someone on Midgard and said to protect it with their lives and that they can experiment with it. But you kept the Space Stone and the Power Stone, because there was nowhere a safe place.

So you returned to Death and the others and told them that you made it. After that you just had 20 months with each other and then THEY came. A little army and a....Titan.

"Dest ! RUN !", Eternity screamed.

You ran to them and hugged everyone one last time.

"Thank you for saving me...", you mumbled.

"No problem. If you ever need us and there is nobody here anymore...come back and summon a little sandstorm. Our spirits will take the sand so you can see us and we are there to talk with you. I promise you, we won't leave you, ever.", Entropy swore to you.

"We always watch and help you.", Eternity told you with a sad smile.

"Be safe kid.", Infinity whispered.

"If they ever attack your home, Dest...Run and don't turn back. You can't let him catch you.", Death told you.

"I swear I will, my friends..."

Then you jumped into your little Space ship and flew away like the devil, wiping your tears from your face. The next image was after your exile. Your friends pestered you with questions, you didn't want to answer and so you didn't answer them. You fought with yourself and shedding tears, about your 4 friends.

"How many times did I say that you should shut up finally ?!", you screamed at them.

They all stopped and looked at you shocked. The girl with the dark blue hair then cleared her throat.

"Dest is right...She just came back...she must be exhausted.", she said.

"Thank you, Se****na.", you growled.

"No problem."

And her friends, except the dark blue haired girl, left. She walked you home and went with you inside the house.

"You know that you can trust me and you have to tell me. I can read you Dest. We are best friends since we were 4 years old. We are now 20 years old. You are hurt, worried, conflicted, sad, angry and you feel betrayed. Your eyes were always the key to your true face. I hate your facades. So...What the hell happened ?"

At first you ignored her, hoping that she will drop it, but...it didn't happen. You sighed.

"If I tell you, you must be a grave about it all, or else I have to kill you. Understood ?"

She nodded her head, staring at you serious. With that you sighed and told her everything. Well...Until she interrupted you.

"WHAT ?! They saved your life with powerful stones that could, in the wrong hands, destroy the whole universe ?! Because you had that deadly disease, nobody can heal ?!"

"Yes."

"You must be very close friends then...Sorry for interrupting...please continue."

And so you did. With a few interruptions here and there to answer the girl's questions. She comforted you. Then the images changed again. The village was under attack, you dragged your dark blue haired friend with you, to a hole that could send you to death, your only escape. You both stopped in front of it and you turned your back to the hole.

"Se****na ! Please I beg you ! Just do it, for all of us !"

"Dest...I can't do this to you ! You are my best friend !"

"JUST DO IT !! IT IS THE ONLY WAY TO ESCAPE HIM !", you screamed.

"NO !!!"

"Se****na...please...just delete my memories. He and I won't know each other after that for a while. It is the best plan I have for the future. Please. You are the only one who can do this !"

"I..I-I !"

You grabbed the girl by the shoulders.

"Se****na...I trust you to help everyone in the universe to be safe a little longer. Please."

"O..okay...", she sobbed.

The girl stretched her arm out and whispered a spell. After she was done she hugged you.

"I locked them away. No one can erase your memories, Dest. Be careful and...try to remember us some day..."

With that she pushed you into the abyss. You had tears in your eyes and she screamed.

"In the library ! We hopefully will meet soon again !"

'Thank you Serafina...'

Then an impact came and you landed in Asgard. You still had the Space Stone with the Tesseract around it, you created it once. As you saw King Bor you told him to come down and explained everything quick (You and soon losing your memories). Then you pushed the Tesseract into Bor's hands your last words were.

"Keep it safe for me..."

"I will...Destiny..."

Out of your dream...

"DESTINY !!"

You jolted up in a sitting position, screaming.

"HELL NAH !!! MOTHERFUCKER !!!"

You then just remembered that you were in Jotunheim and everything is fine. You made direct eye contact with Laufey, who held a crying Loki.

"What happened ?"

"Loki tried to wake you up and you laid there like you just died !", Thor roared in anger.

"Don't you dare screaming at me you little shit !!", you screeched at Thor.

He fell silent and was pale. You turned back to Laufey.

"How late is it ?"

He looked at his clock.

"2 am. You slept for almost 2 hours."

"Okay. Loki and the others go back to sleep. I will wake you up later. Sorry for panicking and waking you... Laufey...we have to talk."

Laufey looked at you confused but nodded.

"Why can't we stay too ?", Loki asked.

"Because...it doesn't concern you. Just go back to sleep guys..."

'Lena fled somewhere...we have no clue where our friend is...', you heard Serafina's voice say.

"Okay.", they mumbled and went back.

"So...What do you wanna talk about ?", Laufey asked you worried.

"....My first life...and memories..."

He stared at you shocked.

Part 39

Masterlist with all Chapters of this Story click here !

#Marvel #Loki Odinson #Loki Laufeyson #Thor #Loki x Reader

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