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littleliterarylesbian · 27 days

Text

Dear, James -4

| part 1 part 2 part 3

Harry has seen his Papa in many states before, whether he remembers them or not is different, but he knows he was there.

He has never seen Papa as angry as he is now, clutching at the front door, rage rolling off him in the form of magic, causing the ceramic key and trinket holder near the door to crack and the wood under his feet to splinter. He can see how Papa is clutching at the door so hard his fingers turn white as he peaks into the front hallway.

Papa told him to stay in the kitchen, to continue eating, but he didn't listen, shoveling in the last of his cereal so it didn't get soggy in the milk before he carefully walked to the front door. Harry can't see who's past the door, Papa has the door mostly closed and his body in the opening. He wants to know so badly, he itches for it, but Papa always said that curiosity isn't a good thing. But Papa is also very angry right now, and maybe Harry can get a kick in before he's sent to his room...

"I heard of what happened... Mr.Black" The voice of the stranger paused between the words oddly, and Harry watched as the wood on the door started to peel from where his Papa was gripping it.

"Sadly I still insist, you have the wrong house. Please get off my property." Harry can see how Papa's jaw clenches, and well, Papa is wrong, he is a Mr.Black, and he did also get fired from his job recently. It was upsetting, but as Papa said, they still had enough money so that Harry could have seven children and those seven could have seven children each and they'd still be comfortable for life and then some.

He doesn't want to have seven kids though, but that's not important.

"I don't believe I am ever wrong," The voice said, and Harry wrinkled his nose. Apparently Papa has the same reaction because when he opened his mouth to speak, the stranger spoke again.

Harry is glad they have magic, as the ceramic piece by the door finally shattered, keys and rings and one of his mini plastic dinosaur from several years ago that he keeps forgetting about scattering along the surface of the hall table.

"You're son is very like you, despite appearances." Shit. Caught. He tried to shuffle back to where he wouldn't be seen, but Papa turned his head too quickly, a glare being pinned on him, and Harry couldn't help to shuffle in place before rushing up to his parent's side, holding the back of Papa's shirt. He's been caught already, why not ride it out?

"Get off of my property." Harry nods enthusiastically, frowning at the old man in front of him because his Papa is right and the man needs to go.

Though the stanger's beard is very long, it's funny, the grey compared to the colorful... something or other that the man is wearing. He still isn't welcome hear though.

"I have a job opening for you, Mr.Black." The man says and Papa rolls his eyes, groaning, giving up all pretenses of pretending. Harry would have kept with it though, if he was Papa, just until the man gave up.

"Oh? What a coincidence. I just get fired from my job as an astronomy professor and suddenly you're here, telling me you can solve my problems." Harry has to fight down a smile at his Papa's tone. So sassy.

The stranger raises an eyebrow, and Harry can feel the anger flare again, so he tries his best, leaning against Papa and he thinks it works. He can't feel it much anymore, but Papa is still so angry.

"I wouldn't know what you are implying Mr. Black."

"Really." Papa doesn't ask a question, keeping his glare and, personally, is Harry was in the strangers position he would have already been sent up to his room.

"I believe it would be best to talk about inside however." The stranger smiles and Harry can't point it out, he's never been too good at that, but it doesn't feel like a nice smile. Harry doesn't know how that's possible.

"How about you go and suck the dick of the lover you left rotting in prison again." Harry should tell Papa to put a coin in the swear jar, but he holds it in. It can be excused just this once he thinks. Papa deserves a swear once in the while.

The stranger doesn't say anything, just staring and staring until finally Papa bites out a "Fine." and lets the man in.

Harry would have just shut the door on the man, but oh well.

The stranger walks in like he knows where to go already, and after a few seconds Harry is surprised that the man does, walking right past them and going to the sitting room. Papa sighs and turns to Harry.

"I thought I told you to stay in the kitchen."

Harry shrugs, "You were taking too long."

Papa sighs and rolls his eyes, but still kisses the top of Harry's head as he passes while Harry hangs back, looking at what Papa will have to fix later, because despite Harry having a wand already and knowing how to use it, Papa says it's just for emergencies, and a few peeled pieces of wood, a cracked photo frame, and a broken ceramic is probably not an emergency. He bites his lip, but still turns to follow the older two into the sitting room.

When he gets there, Papa is on one side while the stranger is on the other. There's almost like an invisible line across the room and Harry doesn't hesitate before standing next to Papa.

"Did you get the letters?"

"Harry isn't going to Hogwarts."

The man raises an eyebrow as Harry looks up to his parent with a puzzled expression. He knew he wasn't going to Hogwarts, that's not what he's confused about, he already has most of his stuff for Beauxbatons anyways. What he doesn't understand is why the man is bringing it up.

"We need an astronomy professor, and with your recent gap of employment, I thought we could come to a conclusion Mr.Black."

"I'm perfectly fine where I am."

It's silent for a second before the stranger sighs, shaking his head, "I heard that another Mr.Black and a certain Mr.Potter are quite distraught as of late."

Harry watches as Papa stands up straighter, and he can't help the uncomfortable bubbly feeling in his stomach because Papa clearly doesn't like this man, and suddenly he's bringing up people who Harry knows he's related too. They've always been sensitive subjects when it come to his parent.

He looks down and tugs an arm away from being crossed against his chest and holds that hand. He thinks some moral support could help, but Papa still crumbles the same, letting his other arm drop and pushing his shoulders back as he stares at the man.

"What about them?"

Harry knows that his papa still cares about his brother and his ex, but Harry doesn't. He's never even met them for Merlin's sake, they never even bothered to visit or see either of them despite how lonely Papa has been.

Yes, they still have Aunt Pandora and her wife Aunt Lily, along with their daughter who is Harry's best friend, but Harry knows that Papa still misses them, from how he gets caught staring at the letter writing supplies late at night, how even after all this time Papa will stare at a photo album that Harry once managed to sneak a peak into only to see the so called family that left the both of them to fend for themselves. And Aunt Pandora. She was also in the photobook.

The stranger purses his lips, and Harry squeezes on his Papa's hand. "It seems they recently got a letter that was quite disturbing. Left them both in shambles, my dear boy."

Papa wrinkles his nose, but apparently let's whatever comment he had saved up go.

"A letter from the name Regulus Black."

"That's not new." Papa sounds bored, but Harry can tell by the sudden slight squeeze on Harry's hand.

"Ah, my boy, but it is. See, apparently they miss you. I've seen them for years, and despite everything now is the time they seem quite torn up."

Papa lets out a breath of air and Harry watches as his free hand clenches. He's almost tempted to reach over and hold that one too, but then he wouldn't be able to frown at the stranger. Somethings are a higher priority then helping his papa. Like discomforting this random old guy. He doesn't seem to be fazed, but Harry swears it's working.

"If they regretted it, a letter would have sufficed instead of you coming here."

"They believe it's been too late for far too long. I thought I'd go out of my way."

"I'm still not taking your shitty job, I'm fine right here. I can find another if needed."

The stranger walks closer, "Can you truly, Mr.Black?" The way he says it means something that Harry either doesn't know or hasn't caught onto yet, but one look at his parent and it seems like he's the only one, face paler then normal, eyes slightly wide as he stares as the other man. A noise of confusion escapes him and Papa's head shoots down, looking at him for a second before turning back.

"I can, I know I can."

The stranger smiles a little, like something Papa said was funny, and now the weird feeling in Harry's gut traveled up to his chest. What does the man mean? Why is he hurting Papa in their own home? Sure it might not be physically, but that's not the only way someone can hurt. He knows that, so why doesn't the stranger? Is it because that is what he is? Nothing but a stranger?

Papa's jaw clenches and his eye twitches in a way Harry doesn't think he's seen before, "What did you do?" The stranger doesn't answer though, smiling the same weird smile as he has in the past before speaking himself, already moving out of the room.

"I'm sure you'll make the right choice my boy."

Papa is still standing there as the front door shuts and Harry finally asks the question that has been on his mind since he saw the man.

"Who was that?"

| part 1 part 2 part 3

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familyvideostevie · 1 year

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hi lovely, could i request reader taking off sirius' makeup and it's just a soft and giggly moment, i hope that makes sence and if you don't feel like writing this then you don't gotta it's just a little idea <3 love you

thank you for the request! this was very sweet so here's a little scene <3 | gn!reader, fluff, 0.8k

The bathroom feels crowded with both of you in it. Sirius is on the counter, long fingers toying with the edge of your t-shirt and legs around you where you stand between his knees. You've got one hand on his chin, gently, and the other presses into his skin.

"Did you get this tattooed, or something?" You are having trouble keeping the swipes of the makeup removal wipe soft as you rub at Sirius's lower eyelid.

"You know the locations of my tattoos, darling. Intimately." His hands slip under the waistband of your sleep pants to cup your ass over your underwear. You allow it, but only because he's holding still like you asked.

"If you did get makeup tattoos that would save me a lot of time," you grumble. You'd not felt well this evening so you stayed home when Sirius went to the pub with the boys. You've been missing him for hours, and now that he's back you're trying to figure out how you can keep touching him all evening.

He wrinkles his nose, the gold ring through one nostril catching the light for a moment. "I'm not the one who won't let me take off my own eyeliner." He kneads your flesh with firm hands and you click your tongue.

"Because you scrub your face until it's red and hardly ever take anything off properly," you chide. "You're lucky I'm here to rescue your pretty skin." You move your hand so that you're more cupping his jaw than holding him steady. Touching Sirius is grounding. He's the most solid, sure person you've ever met.

He leaves your poor bum alone and slides his hands up to your hips, warm fingers and not-so-warm rings squeezing gently. "Has your headache gone?" he asks, softer now. His eyes study every inch of your face and if you weren't so used to it by now you'd feel a little self-conscious. But Sirius is always looking at you, always tracing your features like he's seeing you for the first time.

You shake your head. "Not totally," you say. "But I took something and I've been drinking water." He frowns and it moves his whole face, brows furrowing and you narrowly avoid poking him in the eye. "Hey!" you scold. "Stay still."

He ignores you. "Do you want me to go get something?" he asks. His knees press into the sides of your thighs. "The corner shop should still be open. Or I could call Evans, see if she has some of those migraine meds--"

You press your fingertips to his lips. "No," you say. "Close your eyes." He stares at you for another moment before obeying. You brush the wipe over his lids one more time and deem it as good as it's going to get. You study him now that his gaze is off of you. Long lashes, a small scar above his eyebrow on one side. The strong brow and intimidating line of this jaw. He's beautiful.

"I wouldn't have gone out if you had asked," he says. You tap his cheek and turn away from him to throw the wipe in the trash, but his hands tighten their grip on your hips before you can move very far. "You know that, right? You're my priority."

You cup one of his elbows with your free hand. "I know," you say, and mean it. Sirius has never done anything to make you question it. "But I'm fine, really."

"Do you want me to read to you?" he asks. "Put your head in my lap and I'll stroke your hair with my magic hands." He tickles your sides and you squirm, laughing.

"Who told gave you the impression you had magic hands, you loser?" You lean in to press your forehead to his. You know you're kidding yourself, but you swear just touching him makes the ache in your skull lessen.

Sirius brings his lips to the corner of your mouth lightly. "You did," he says. He trails them up your cheek to the corner of your eyes. "Last night. And yesterday after lunch. Oh, and in the kitchen on Wednesday when I bent you over the --"

You quiet him with your own lips, chasing his to kiss him before he can keep going. He laughs into it but allows it, releasing your hip to press his hand to your cheek as he traces the seam of your mouth with his tongue. But he only teases you for a moment more before pulling away. "C'mon, sweetheart," he says. "Let's get you in bed."

You toss the wipe that's still in your hand somewhere close to the trash bin and wrap your arms around your boyfriend, resting your head on his shoulder. "In a second," you say into his shirt. He hums and you feel it in your own chest as he pulls you close.

thank you for reading <3 reblog, send feedback, masterlist here!

#sirius black x reader #sirius black x y/n #sirius black x you #sirius black fanfiction #sirius black fic #marauders fanfiction #marauders

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averysexyleon · 4 months

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in which wintersberg progress

(longest excerpt ever, sorry)

Karl squinted. He took Ethan’s hand, and just when Ethan wondered what in the world he was doing, Heisenberg turned the palm over and pulled away the gauze. Then, Heisenberg looked up, with that suspicious squint.

“Don’t you uh…have a uh. Partner. Who’ll tell you those things? That boulder punching asshole ?”

Ethan frowned at the name, and then frowned more deeply at the question. He tried to formulate a response, and realized this felt entirely too similar to the days he had to cover for Mia. To formulate, for his friends and colleagues, an explanation of what happened with her. Why she disappeared. And before that, why she was gone for so long even though they were married.

As Ethan fumbled an answer, Heisenberg nodded, an almost ethereal light filtering into his irises from the moonlight behind Ethan. “Ahhh. I see. He never told you. Never intended to.” Heisenberg bit his lip.

Clearly he wanted to say more, chastise Redfield worse. But at the very miserable expression on Ethan’s face, he forced himself to sigh instead. Karl took both of Ethan’s hands, cradling them with a gentleness he didn’t quite seem capable of.

“Ethan. I’ll tell you, I will. But I’ll also tell you…this kinda secret. The kind Mia had, the kind Chris has–these ain’t the secrets you get to learn, and keep your relationship. Why the hell d’you think she worked so hard to keep you from knowin’? Cause she wanted to keep you.” A calloused thumb stroked over Ethan’s hand, and he could feel his own heart beating in his throat.

His voice really was a whisper. “How…how do you know all that, about Mia?”

“D’you understand what I’m tellin’ you right now. You don’t get to know the truth of things, and then go back to playin’ housewife, Winters. With anybody. Knowin’ the truth isolates the fuck outta you.”

Why did Ethan’s heart feel like it would explode? The same relationship anxiety that he’d always felt was creeping in on him. He’d known all this was true, hadn’t he? Heisenberg just had the guts to put it into words. And oh no, his vision was blurring, the intent, scarred face in front of him fading in sharpness when tears stung his eyes. Oh no.

The hands over his hands made their way to his cheeks. Karl was going to kiss him, wasn’t he? He was right there, he was staring at Ethan’s lips, and his breath was hot, and he was RIGHT THERE…Ethan tried very desperately to speak or blink or do something that didn’t involve a trembling sob, but he failed, and Heisenberg didn’t kiss anything. He held Ethan’s face, and tilted his own head to the side slightly. His voice became a rumble, audible somewhere in Ethan’s throat, alongside the heartbeat.

“I just want you know what you’re gettin’ into, by askin’. If you can handle that. You can hate me if you want to. But I’ll tell you the truth.”

Heisenberg’s question was sincere, his eyes almost pleading. “You still trust me?”

There was a thick silence between them, Karl not daring to move, and finally Ethan wiped his eyes again and nodded, fervently. His wandering eyes met Karl’s again, and he saw the relief there. The satisfaction. The silence stayed. Ethan was staring at Heisenberg strangely; the engineer drew away, finally-slightly, and countered the stare with a, “What?”

Deeply embarrassed, the blond admitted with fiery red cheeks, “I thought...you were gonna kiss me.”

Heisenberg looked confused, and finally the bright, dangerous smile returned. Wide, in all its glory, with cheek creases and a raised brow that put more wrinkles onto the scarred forehead. He pulled farther away, and adjusted the coat jacket, which had come unbuttoned during his fiery pacing earlier. “Don’t be ridiculous, Winters,” he teased in a more characteristically exuberant tone. He tipped his head sideways; it looked even more boyish without the hat. “Not til you’re single.”

With a wink, he strode out the door, leaving Ethan to feel the fire on his cheeks and the sudden return of a cold bite – wind against his neck.

le full chapter here

#wintersberg #karl heisenberg #ethan winters #chris redfield #mia winters #wintersfield

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wandabear · 2 years

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Hello how are you? I'd like to ask for something like Y/n and Wanda in a zombie apocalypse. I'm not very good at summarizing but I hope you can write, thanks 🤗😊

WHERE ARE YOU NOW? - WANDA MAXIMOFF X F!READER Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - chapter 3

Thank you for giving me this one! It was really cool, some time ago I wrote something about this and it was good to do it again. I hope you like it or enjoy it. 🌻

The noise of the pen hitting that paper again and again, with some anxiety. The woman sighed, thinking how silly this idea was, but she still kept going town after town, city after city searching for her…Even if she wasn’t there. She was never there. ㅤㅤㅤ

She carried a list of cities that Wanda might have fled to after the 'catastrophe'. Boston Providence New Heaven New York New Jersey Pennsylvania?

ㅤㅤㅤ

The idea was to leave a letter in each place. One where only she knew where to find, a little code between them in their past. A clue to follow. A little hope.

ㅤㅤㅤ

Everytime, Wanda and Y/N always used to play a little game where they had to guess where they might be. Only that time… they were separated forever.

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“Are we talking about something apocalyptic like… zombies, alien invasion or a climatic catastrophe?” Y/N asked, curious as she cut up some cheese so they could enjoy while dinner was in the oven.

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“Zombies?” Wanda wrinkled her nose.

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“Okay but… ‘I am Legend’ zombie style or just dumb zombies like ‘The Walking dead’?” She frowned at Wanda, offering some pieces of cheese to her.

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“Well...” Wanda took a piece of cheese and ate it. Delicious. Those warm moments together, the good times. “The first ones are like mutated, they're really wild… and the second ones are zombies. So I would say more like 'the walking dead'... Slow ones but dangerous.”

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“Okay, okay. That’s good, I have big chances to survive. Zombie outbreak, virus thing. Big deal.” Y/N nodded.

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“You wake up and you’re in this big place, a big city. What’s the first thing you would do? Think about it, your life depends on it.” Wanda asked as she washed some dishes. They used to play that game every time one of them cooked or washed the dishes, it was fun.

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“Maybe try to get away from the city?” Y/N shrugged, staying a little thoughtful until then looking back at her beloved girlfriend. “But definitely, I would always be with you. I woudn't know what to do without you.”

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Wanda looked at her for a moment, trying not to smile but it was impossible.

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“You’re so whipped, detka.”

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“Oh, shut up!”

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Y/N sighed deeply at that memory and opened her eyes again, coming back to the cold reality, back to life. Picking up the pen again, she began to write on the paper.

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« Wanda... It’s me again. I know, I must look really crazy writing letters to someone who will never read them. Who keeps writing letters in times like this, right? Maybe that’s the answer, you know me, I’ve always been somewhat like a pro for these cheesy dumb stuff. I’m not good at expressing myself, but at loving… well... I try.

A friend told me that maybe the way to find you it's trying something else. Anyway, there are days like today when I can’t stop thinking about you. We recently came to New York. Yelena, Kate, Jules and me.

They help me everyday… to not lose my mind, of course. You wouldn't recognize me right now. How long have we stopped talking to each other? That day, yes…

I don’t know what to say. Before, I knew what to say to you, I had so many beautiful words to say to you, until you left. You left. But that doesn’t matter now, right? Because I know you were saving yourself. I saw him. He seemed nice. It seemed like he made you happy.

All these years I have been… I’m no longer the same person I was before. I've killed people… I needed to survive, I didn't have another option. I’m not the same… but there’s something that would never change and is that I would never stop loving you.

I know we were so damn stupid, enough to let us go.

Please, I just wanna know, are you still alive? Tell me, does it make sense that I’m still looking for you? Should I give up as everyone says? Please, give me a sign. Please, be alive.

Hope to see you again. I love you.

Y/N.»

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For a moment, Y/N wondered if she was doing the right thing, the reflection in the mirror showing that she was a completely different woman. Not only physically, but also inside. Was she right to look for her?

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Y/N sighed once more and then folded that letter slowly and carefully. She got up from her seat and looked in that house for the perfect place to hide it, she ended up doing it behind some nice painting. A beautiful beach and a purple sunset, something that made her smile slightly with melancholy and nostalgia.

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After putting away the letter, Y/N took one of her paint spray cans and began to write on the wall, something that only Wanda could understand and big enough for her to see, pointing to that painting. A date.

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‘JULY 8, 2022’ - Y/N.

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"You're still doing it, huh?" A voice behind her made Y/N turn around. She could easily recognize Yelena's accent everywhere. The blonde finished adjusting her backpack and a machete on her waist when she approached to see that graffiti. "Do you think they'll ever see it?"

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"I hope so." Y/N looked down at her, leaning down to grab her own. To one side her ax was waiting for her, with which she was in charge of freeing the path of the zombies that got in their way.

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"Is Kate ready?" The taller woman asked her as they left that room, they found refuge in an old bar in Little Italy. Although Y/N had completely refused to visit Manhattan as she felt there would be too much danger, the three of them managed to avoid all the hordes of zombies surrounding that city.

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"She was able to get some arrows from an old gun shop, we make others… with my amazing and skillful help. You know? I'm good at that." The blonde said with a smug smile. Yelena was finally getting into a good mood after eating something other than beans.

They found some things to eat, some rice and some cans of tuna. Sadly though, no macaroni.

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"I'm ready!" Kate smiled, as always. Sometimes Y/N was surprised by that, Kate always tried to see the positive in all the chaos that surrounded her. So unlike Yelena, who was completely in love with Kate.

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Beside Kate was Jules, who had red eyes for almost an entire week. Her jaw and headaches were getting worse and they couldn't find any drugstore, not even a damn painkiller. What was the point of being a doctor if she couldn't even help her best friend?

ㅤㅤㅤ

"We’re ready." Jules barely whisper, gently rubbing the side of her face.

ㅤㅤㅤ The four women left that place carefully and very quietly, somewhat sad to leave such a pleasant place, but it was too exposed. Danger was always around the corner.

They got far enough from the main streets, daylight was not the best idea to travel, but the night used to be quite dangerous in that area.

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"Where are we going now?" Kate asked wincing, trying to block out the sun that was shining directly into her eyes. She put on black glasses that Yelena gave her a few weeks ago. The glasses were her favorite color, purple.

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They just walked stealthily through that uninhabited part of the city. Y/N looked over Yelena's shoulder, who was sniffing around one of the maps they stole from an old newsstand.

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“New Jersey.” Y/N whispered, Yelena simply nodded knowing that she was the best choice before traveling, start the road to the center of the country, maybe they could find some nice farm... maybe.

ㅤㅤㅤ

Find a nice and lonely place in the center of the country. Wooded areas, maybe. Where the land was fertile and they could harvest, try to find a quiet life after the tragedy.

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“Y/N... You know that it’s possible that you may not find her… after so much chaos… she may even be a Biter. Why do you keep trying?” Yelena asked, looking at Y/N, knowing that it might hurt but it was the truth. In front of them, Kate and Jules chatted about how wonderful the city was before the 'incident'. New York lights left anyone dazed.

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“Have you stopped looking for Natasha?” Y/N answered in the same way, noticing how the blonde was now facing forward. A quiet Yelena meant a battle won. “You can't fool me, Yelena. 'Cause, just as I leave letters everywhere, I know you don't stop trying again and again on all those radio frequencies and channels. Searching, asking, calling her. Every channel possible.”

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Yelena was quiet, she knew that Y/N was right.

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"There you have, that's the same answer to the question you're asking me now. Now, can we go on?" The brunette swallowed hard, watching as little by little they approached the Hudson River. Some cars were abandoned, completely destroyed or burned. The girls took some time trying to remove as much fuel as possible from one of the cars and some stuff that could be useful.

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"What now?" Kate asked, looking at the river, knowing that nothing good would come of them swimming across the water. They hadn't seen the Biters swim, but there were other kinds of dangers they couldn't expose themselves to.

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“We must cross the river.” Y/N wrinkled her nose, looking both ways. “We can find a boat, we can walk to the George Washington Bridge or we can go through the tunnels. Lincoln tunnel is the closest I think.”

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“We don't know if there will be a boat nearby.” Yelena shook her head, trying to block the sunlight from hitting her face. She hated the weather lately, the sun was hotter and the night was colder. “The tunnels will definitely be dark and full of biters… But we don't know if it will be safe to cross the bridge, it's full of abandoned cars… there could be biters there too.

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“Geez.” Jules whispered.

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“I'm not going to lie to you, there probably are biters there. Less than the dark tunnels, we have a better chance of getting out alive if we go across the bridge.” The tallest brunette began to walk, noting that the bridge was about two kilometers away. Y/N turned to see one of her best friends, the one who could save them. “I trust Kate's aim and her bow. I trust you'll have our backs, but do you think you can do it?”

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The gaze of the three women was fixed on the younger girl, who nodded quickly, although Kate wasn't going to deny that she was feeling quite nervous.

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“Perfect then. Kate will watch our backs from distant threats and we must protect her…” Y/N finally said. The four took their backpacks and walked around that river, praying that no threat would appear to them.

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And yes, although several Biters appeared, none were difficult to kill. From distance, Kate managed to take down some Biters with her arrows while Yelena and Y/N finished off those caught between the cars.

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They walked about seven hours, getting far enough from the city. By going through the bridge, they avoided a huge horde of biters who apparently had taken refuge in the tunnels.

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Seven hours, maybe 22 miles, plus another hour, because one of the roads was destroyed. According to Kate who was reading the map, they arrived at a town called ‘Westview’ in New Jersey. Although it wasn't what Y/N expected, it wasn't too bad to be able to find a small town to spend the night away from the city.

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It was a pretty quiet place, kind of nice. Those where you can hear the birds in the morning and listen to the crickets at night. Perhaps, if that terrible tragedy had not happened, it wouldn’t been bad to live in such a place. Or at least that's what Y/N thought.

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Wanda would be in love with a place like this…

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Some empty buildings and abandoned houses in the suburbs. What appeared to be a huge building with a huge clock that reminded her of 'Back to the future'. A nice gazebo too.

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Spent about forty minutes looking for a place to rest and make something to eat. They were about to give up when finally, the girls found some luck in their pockets.

ㅤㅤㅤ

They reached a huge abandoned supermarket, that made them feel a bit excited, but not everything was good news. To their bad luck, they found nothing but leftovers and garbage. The shelves were down and broken, a completely desolate place.

ㅤㅤㅤ

“This place really sucks!” Yelena yelled really annoyed, throwing an empty box of macaroni and cheese. Clearly someone took ALL those boxes and that made her so damn furious.

ㅤㅤㅤ “Don't worry, we'll find others boxes somewhere.” Kate said looking at her from one of the shelves. Feeling really lucky, the archer found some bottles of water and some gunpowder in the hardware store.

ㅤㅤㅤ

The Russian just kept growling under her breath some words in russian that none of them could understand. Y/N stuffed a few things into her backpack as she watched Jules, who seemed somewhat down. Really down.

ㅤㅤㅤ

“Are you okay, chicken?” Y/N asked a little worried, noticing how Jules simply nodded slowly with a small friendly smile.

ㅤㅤㅤ

"Peachy."

ㅤㅤㅤ

It definitely wasn't and Y/N knew it.

ㅤㅤㅤ

“I promise we'll find something, really.” She tried, but Jules just shrugged, she completely lost all hope some time ago.

ㅤㅤㅤ

“If the infection progresses, there will be no going back and you know it. We need painkillers, antibiotics right now…” Jules simply tried to say something, but her voice cracked. “I'm fine for now...”

ㅤㅤㅤ

"We'll find it and you'll be fine, I'll be able to take it off."

ㅤㅤㅤ

“What do you want me to say? That I'm fine, but I'm not, I'm just waiting for me to get sepsis and die horribly? Just because of a stupid infection!”

ㅤㅤㅤ

“Jules…” Y/N whispered and reached out to pat her shoulder when Yelena's voice caught their attention.

ㅤㅤㅤ

“You have to come to see this, right now.” The blonde said, seemed quite excited and that caught the attention of both women, who looked at each other a bit confused.

ㅤㅤㅤ

They followed Yelena to one of the rear warehouses, a huge door that had previously seemed to be locked with various objects, was now open showing the amount of boxes they had stored.

ㅤㅤㅤ

“Kate found it after pushing two of the fallen shelves against the door.” Yelena said with a proud smile, pointing to some boxes of macaroni and cheese, although some seemed to have broken they were in good condition. “I can't believe they left all this behind!”

ㅤㅤㅤ

“It’s just one box of macaroni…”

ㅤㅤㅤ

“IT’S NOT JUST MACARONI! IT'S HEAVEN.”

ㅤㅤㅤ

A huge smile and a hopeful look appeared on the faces of those four women. They were soon taking it upon themselves to collect a few things like they were kids at a candy store, trying to grab as much food as possible - and find medicine for Jules - when Y/N stopped.

ㅤㅤㅤ

A huge smile and a hopeful look appeared on the faces of those women.

They were soon taking it upon themselves to collect a few things like they were kids at a candy store, trying to grab as much food as possible - and find medicine for Jules - when Y/N stopped.

ㅤㅤㅤ

She heard a strange sound that came from some hidden doors, covered by boxes in the back of the warehouse. Even some coming from what appeared to be a huge freezer.

ㅤㅤㅤ

Y/N looked at that door for a moment, somewhat doubtful not knowing if she heard a noise or maybe it had been her mind, playing tricks on her.

She waited a few seconds but heard just hopeful silence. Yes, surely it was her mind.

The brunette smiled and shook her head, she went back to taking some cans of corned beef when she heard some knocks again, this time more insistent and perhaps more terrifying.

ㅤㅤㅤ

“Girls… Who got in first?” Y/N asked, a little hesitant.

ㅤㅤㅤ

“Kate.” Said the blonde one, who was busy putting things in her bag. Yelena and Kate approached Y/N, now the three of them seemed a bit hesitant to move forward.

ㅤㅤㅤ

“Then I want to assume that you know what's behind that door...” the doctor murmured, but again, new knocks were heard again. This time, stronger and even more.

ㅤㅤㅤ

“I didn't even know there was a door there.” Kate swallowed, a little embarrassed and scared.

ㅤㅤㅤ

The knocks became stronger, so much so that the door began to shake, ready to break, and the chains that locked it began to give up.

ㅤㅤㅤ

“We have to go.”

ㅤㅤㅤ

“But we have stuff...”

ㅤㅤㅤ

“We must go now!” Y/N yelled taking her backpack and backing away. Her friends did the same and went out the door, as soon as they managed to do so that huge door fell hard, letting through a horde of completely hungry and outraged zombies.

ㅤㅤㅤ

The girls ran as fast as they could, avoiding some fallen furniture and jumping over it with agility. Y/N managed to grab Jules and get her out of there as fast as she could, saving her life from being eaten by the horde.

ㅤㅤㅤ

"Wait, I couldn't get medicine!"

ㅤㅤㅤ

"If you go back YOU'RE GOING TO DIE ANYWAY!" Yelena said seeing how Kate turned to shoot some arrows, making the zombies closer to fall and delay the others.

ㅤㅤㅤ

"COME OOON! I'M GONNA KILL YOU BOTH!" Y/N yelled as they ran through the uninhabited streets of that town, trying to lose the horde of zombies, but it seemed quite difficult. They seemed too hungry. How long have they been trapped? No wonder no one had dared to look for all that food.

ㅤㅤㅤ

“SORRY, I DIDN'T KNOW!” She heard Kate say, who was shooting her arrows at the fastest biters now.

They managed to kill a bunch of them, but to their bad luck, the noises they made had caught the attention of more biters in that town. The brunette looked for some explosive bottles and threw them at the horde, thanks to Kate's arrows they ended up catching fire but they didn't seem to stop. Yelena managed to spot a large building guarded by huge iron fences that could help.

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ

"this way!" She exclaimed pointing to that building, the public library. The girls ran over and threw their bags on the other side before climb the fences, which looked pretty sharp but was much better than siding with the zombies.ㅤ

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ

Between the three of them they managed to help Jules through it, who seemed quite sore and tired.

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ

“You okay?” Y/N asked looking at the girl who only nodded slowly, closing her eyes for a few seconds to hide the stabbing pain in her head. “We must hide now, these bars will not help us forever.”

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ

They approached the huge doors that seemed completely sealed from the inside so it was best to go around the building. The windows were boarded up and covered, there was nothing but an old outside entrance to a basement. The door was locked with a chain and a huge padlock.

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ

Y/N searched through her stuff until she found her tools to sneak it open, when Yelena just rolled her eyes at her.

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ

“Step aside.” The blonde came over and took Y/N's axe, starting to hack the chain until it broke, just like the padlock. The door swung open, letting the women through.

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ

“I was going to do it quietly and not call another horde of hungry zombies!” Y/N complained, shaking her head and taking her axe from Yelena, ready to attack any threat that came near.

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ

“Yes, yes. No problem.” Yelena muttered wryly as they entered the huge library. The place was locked from the inside by various pieces of furniture and bookcases, the windows were sealed or at least the first and only room they reached.

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ

“Not bad, huh.” Kate said with a huge smile. They all nodded somewhat hopefully, happy to find a good place to spend the night when the sound of a gun charging alerted them.

Not just one weapon, but many. Two women were watching them from many meters away, two men from the second floor who were aiming at them too.

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ

"Did you have to say it, Kate?"

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ

“You have three seconds to turn around and leave with the horde you all brought from the supermarket!” growled a redhead with a husky voice. She seemed like a badass, because everyone seemed to pay attention to her. “How stupid you can be to get into…”

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ

The redhead woman stopped, approaching slowly to see their faces in a better light.

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ

Yelena Belova couldn't believe it, neither could Y/N. Natasha Romanoff was in front of them, keeping her gun behind her pants. She wasted no more time and jumped on both of them, hugging them so tight to never let them go again. She looked different, well, not as much as they expected. ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ

"Sestra?"

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ

“Yelena?… Y/N?” Natasha lowered her gun and took a few steps towards them, completely surprised and excited to see them again.

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ Yelena stammered a few words and just hugged her sister so tightly, fearing that she would disappear again.

Y/N just smiled as she walked away from that hug, letting both sisters meet again, who kept telling each other how much they had missed each other and shedding some tears of happiness.

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ

But her heart skipped a beat, a huge leap that she thought her heart would escape from her chest.

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ

“Y/N?” The brunette heard behind her. That voice, that angelic, soft, lovely voice. That voice that carried a certain shyness, a slight Sokovian accent that made her world shake completely. Her. Was it really her?

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ

As soon as Y/N turned around, she saw her… finally saw her. She looked so different, so…beautiful. Her red hair was left behind, now had her natural brown hair. Wanda.

But before they could say anything, a loud noise was heard and they all watched as Jules ended up on the ground, blacking out.

As you know, Jules is portrayed by the amazing Adelaide Kane. link

forever taglist? Yes. Here goes some amazing and lovely people tags ✨ : @wandsmxmff, @bluesimps-world, @oh-thats-cute, @sleepilysworld

If you want to be tagged, just ask! Thanks you so muuuuch to the people who leave a ❤️ , 🔁 and leave comments -even as an anon on my mystery box of questions and requests-, you make me keep writing. 🐻ㅤㅤㅤ ㅤㅤㅤ

#Wanda maximoff x reader #wanda maximoff x f!reader

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the-al-chemist · 1 year

Text

Artemis Hexley: The Wilderness Years

Chapter 6: Masks

A/N: Artemis and co end up at the centre of a shocking turn of events at the World Cup. Warnings: violence, threat, acts of terrorism and hate crime.

Once the match ended, the campsite turned into a wild and raucous party, bursting with music, dancing, and revelry. Nowhere was that more the case than in the Irish supporters’ section of the campsite, where several overlapping fiddle tunes could be heard in the air, and almost every single witch, wizard, and leprechaun was on their feet dancing along underneath the green and gold flags that waved victoriously over the tents.

Artemis and her friends had been quick to join the celebrations, and had stayed out drinking and mingling and enjoying the festivities until Artemis’ voice was nearly gone and her feet were aching from all the dances Chiara had tried to teach her.

By the time she and Chiara returned to their tent, midnight had come and gone, and the party was only just showing signs of winding down. They were the first back to the tent; Penny, Tonks, and Andre were apparently determined to stay out until sunrise.

“I’m surprised you didn’t want to stay out longer,” said Artemis, pulling a jumper over the top of her pyjamas and climbing into her sleeping bag. “You’ve got more reason to celebrate than the rest of us.”

“It’s been a long day,” Chiara replied. There was a note to her voice that made Artemis look at her sceptically. “I’m just tired, that’s all.”

“So, you wanting to leave had nothing to do with Jae dancing with those Veela just now?”

Chiara gave Artemis a weary look, and Artemis raised her eyebrows. Chiara sighed.

“He can dance with whoever he likes,” she said, lying back onto her pillow so that her white-blonde hair fanned around her head. “I have no right to be bothered by it.”

“But you are.”

“Yes.”

Artemis nodded. She lay down too, and shuffled onto her side so that she was facing Chiara.

“Chiara, what happened between you two? I mean, you obviously miss him, so why-”

“It was a trust thing.”

“Yeah, you said that before, but that’s not an actual explanation,” said Artemis. “You know, if you’re still this upset, you should probably talk about it with us. We’re your best friends, that’s what we’re here for.” Chiara said nothing, but her face softened. “Was it all the dodgy stuff he sells, or did he do something bad?”

“No.” Chiara shook her head. “No, he didn’t. He would never.” She looked at Artemis from the corner of her eye. “Jae’s a very good person, he’s just better at pretending not to be sometimes.”

“So why couldn’t you trust him anymore?”

“It wasn’t Jae that couldn’t be trusted. It was me.”

“Wait, what?” Artemis’ nose wrinkled. “What do you mean, you couldn’t be trusted?”

“I never told him about me. That I’m a” - even though the tent was empty aside from the two of them, Chiara still paused and lowered her voice before saying the word - “werewolf.”

“But you were together for… what? Two years? More?”

“Two and half, by the end.”

“How did you manage to keep it a secret from him for so long?”

“It actually wasn’t that difficult,” Chiara said, with a sharp little laugh. “I’m used to keeping it a secret, after all. It’s not like we were living together, and I already couldn’t see him some nights because of my shifts at St Mungos. We did night shifts from the start of our training, so I just… made up some more. He never noticed that they always coincided with the full moon. I thought I was being quite clever at the time, but looking back, it was really stupid. He was bound to find me out eventually.”

“I guess,” Artemis frowned. “So does he know now? That’s not why-”

“No. Thank Merlin, no.”

“Then what happened?”

“He got injured one evening and decided to go into my work and get me to check him over on his way home. Obviously, I wasn’t there when I told him I would be, and he assumed the obvious, that there was someone else.”

“Why would that be the obvious thing to assume?” asked Artemis. She would never have assumed anything like that of Chiara.

“Well, he was hardly going to guess the real reason, was he now? And it wasn’t like I could tell him the truth either, so… I let him assume that. And that’s why it ended.”

“I don’t understand,” Artemis said. “I get you not telling him at first, but when he’d already half-figured it out, surely you could’ve just told him the truth.”

“I didn’t feel like I could,” Chiara sighed. “It was like I’d been wearing this mask for so long, and I was just so scared to take it off by that point. I was scared to let him in, even when I knew that if I didn’t, then… And I realised at that point that if I was that scared to tell him, it was because I didn’t trust him, and obviously at that point he didn’t trust me either, and… Well, what’s the point of loving someone if you don’t trust them?”

“I was told that love doesn’t ever have a point, it just is.”

“I suppose you’re right, so you are. It’s not like any of this stopped me from loving him. I don’t think it stopped him from loving me either, as much as you can love somebody without really knowing them, anyway.”

“You know, you could still-”

“No, I can’t,” Chiara said firmly. She sighed and blinked twice, her eyes fixed on the canvas ceiling of the tent. “It’s too late now. And as Godric-awful as it is that it didn’t work out because I never truly let him in, it would hurt even more if it had been because he saw me for what - for who - I really am. I know it sounds ridiculous, but at least this way it’s the mask that’s the problem, and not the real me who’s underneath it.”

“That doesn’t sound ridiculous at all,” said Artemis. She removed her hand from out of the sleeping bag and gently squeezed Chiara’s arm. Chiara wiped her eyes and shook her head.

“What about you, anyway?” she said, her voice forcibly breezy as she turned onto her side to face Artemis.

“What about me?”

“How are things with you and Chester?”

“Fine.”

“Really?”

Artemis’ eyebrows furrowed at the sceptical expression in Chiara’s eyes. “What do you mean, really?”

“Well, he’s not here…”

“I only had four tickets.”

“Which you gave to us and not him.”

“You were here first.”

“Ah,” Chiara’s lips twitched. “Good to know that the English still prioritise queuing over romance.” Artemis laughed, but Chiara’s chuckle was brief. “Have you told him yet? About the Vaults, and Rowan, and your family?”

Artemis shook her head. “I mean, he knows that the Vaults were a thing, and he knows that Rowan… He knows I don’t speak to Mum or Jacob anymore.”

“But does he know why? Have you told him exactly what-”

“No. I don’t need to.”

“Maybe you should,” said Chiara. “Trust me, you don’t want to end up-”

“It’s not the same as it was for you and Jae, though,” Artemis explained. Chiara looked doubtful. “It’s not! You didn’t tell Jae about something that was still going on at the time. If I was still dealing with the Vaults and things, then it would be the same, but it’s not, because all of that’s in the past now. It doesn’t affect me anymore.”

Chiara smiled, but the look in her eyes remained solemn. The tent was quiet, until Tonks stumbled in, tripped over Andre’s suitcase, and landed on top of them on the ground, laughing as they made noises of complaint.

“You’re fine. Don’t be such drama queens,” she told them. “What are you talking about?”

“Nothing,” Artemis said quickly. “Where are Penny and Andre?”

“Chatting up Quidditch players. Andre’s got his eye on the new reserve Keeper for Puddlemere United and Penny’s currently surrounded by half the Wigtown Wanderers. Lewis Parkin was getting her a drink when I left.”

“How come you left?”

“The Muggle bloke that owns the field came and told people to keep it down.”

“And you listened?”

“I kind of had to, I’m an Auror now. Most people didn’t, though.”

She gestured at the canvas panels of the tent, through which shouting and music could still be heard, followed by a series of loud bangs that sounded like fireworks.

“Wow,” said Chiara, her eyebrows raised. “They really didn’t listen.”

“Let’s go back out,” said Artemis, standing up and shaking off her sleeping bag. “We can’t miss the fireworks!”

Chiara and Tonks exchanged wearied glances, but they also started to get back up. As they did, yet another bang - even louder than the ones before - sounded outside. And then, someone screamed.

The three girls froze, and the blood seemed to drain slightly from both Tonks and Chiara’s faces. There was another scream. And another.

“Artemis, I don’t think those are fireworks.”

Outside the tent, it was chaos. Gone was the merriment; the music had been replaced with screams and desperate cries, the beats of the drums with the thundering footsteps of the confused and terrified-looking people who ran between the tents, some towards the woods, some deeper into the campsite. In the stampede, most of the lamps had been knocked over, and so the night was darker than before, the only lights coming from a few fires that had broken out in the near distance, and the occasional flash of a spell being cast.

“Penny’s out there,” Chiara said, her voice a hoarse whisper as her wide eyes scanned the scene in front of them. “Andre, too.”

“We have to find them. Come on!”

Tonks led the way back to the place where she last saw Penny, the three of them jostling their way through the still rushing crowds as fast as they could without losing one another in the mass of panicked people. Eventually, Artemis saw a glimpse of long blonde hair illuminated by the light of a nearby tent that had burst into flame.

“She’s over there!” she shouted to the others, and sprinted towards her. “Penny! Pen!”

She hollered Penny’s name at the top of the voice as she ran, and as she drew close, Penny looked up at her. She was standing with an athletic looking wizard with brown hair, who had one of muscled arms wrapped around her and the other raised with his wand in a defensive position. Penny’s face was pale, her eyes full of tears, and as soon as Artemis reached her, she threw her arms around her and began to sob onto her shoulder. Artemis patted her gently and looked suspiciously at the wizard behind her, who lowered his wand a little.

“What happened, Pen?” she asked once Penny had stopped crying enough to talk. “What’s going on?”

“The Muggles,” Penny said, with a sniff and a shudder that shook her whole body. “The man who owns the field, he was over there, going back to his house and… These wizards attacked him.”

“What? What wizards?”

“I don’t know, they were all wearing masks.”

“Masks?”

“Oh, aye. If I didn’t ken better,” muttered the wizard with the wand, “I’d say they were Death Eater masks.”

Artemis’ eyes widened at the mention of the Death Eaters, and Penny’s lip trembled before she continued to explain:

“They were casting spells on the Muggle man, and then a couple of people tried to stop them and they cast curses at them, too. They set some of the tents on fire, and then…”

“They marched away,” Penny’s new friend finished her sentence for her. “That direction. Cannae be sure, but it looked like they were heading for the cottage.”

“There were children in the cottage, I saw them earlier. What if they hurt them?”

“Someone will stop them before they get that far,” Artemis told Penny reassuringly, but Penny was not to be consoled.

“People tried, but they kept cursing anyone who got in their way,” she said. Her eyes filled with tears again, and she looked helplessly in the direction of the Muggles’ cottage. “All he did was ask people to be quiet!”

A tear rolled down Penny’s cheek. The wizard looking after her moved his hand as if he was going to try and wipe it away for her, but he glanced at Artemis and instead used it to rub the back of his own neck. Artemis took a deep breath before placing her hands on Penny’s shoulders.

“Okay, this is what we’re going to do,” she said, trying her hardest to sound like she knew what she was doing. “Andre’s got to be around here somewhere. We’ll find him, and then we’ll go and find the Aurors. Tonks is bound to know where…”

Her voice tailed off as she glanced over her shoulder and realised that Tonks and Chiara were no longer behind her. She turned to look at the crowd, but there was no sign of either of them anywhere.

“Where are the others?”

“They were here a minute ago. They can’t have gotten far, we’ll find them in no time.”

“Will you be okay by yourselves?” the wizard asked the two of them, though his eyes were still on Penny. “I can come with-”

“We’ll be fine,” said Artemis. “Thanks, though.”

She took Penny by the hand and pulled her back into the crowd, wondering which direction Tonks and Chiara were more likely to have gone in. She tried to get a look at each of the faces that rushed past her, in case it was one of theirs or Andre’s but there were too many people and they were all moving too fast for her to pick out all of their features, especially in the dim light and with the smoke that had settled in the night air. When she finally caught sight of a face she recognised, it was that of Jae Kim.

“Are you lot okay?” he asked them. He looked around them as if expecting to see someone else behind them, but there was no one there. His eyebrows furrowed and his jaw tensed. “Where’s Chiara?”

“We don’t know, we’re looking for her.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“She was with us, and then we looked back and she was gone.”

“Well, where did she go?”

“We don’t know,” Artemis repeated herself, rapidly losing her patience. “That’s why we’re looking for her. Tonks, too. Do you want to help us or are you just going to stand there asking stupid questions, or what?”

Jae screwed up his face, clearly both frustrated and frightened, but he nodded his head. “Yeah. Sorry. I’ll help.”

“They’ll probably have gone to where Andre was earlier,” said Penny. “That way.”

They set off once more through the crowd, which was growing more panicked by the minute. A fresh wave of people were running in the opposite direction to the one they were going in, many of them clutching crying children, and Penny’s grip tightened on Artemis’ forearm.

“What are they all running from?” Jae asked, his question barely audible over the drunken shouts and screams and the loud bangs that had started going off again.

Neither Penny nor Artemis answered him, because seconds later, the cause of the stampede became clear.

A mass of wizards and witches in black hooded cloaks and masks were marching through the field. Several of them were using their wands to illuminate the night air around them in an eery green glow; others were clearing tents out of their path, either by sending them flying off, or blowing them up; and more were firing curses at the wizards and witches who were attempting to stop them. In the centre of the throng, a group of the masked wizards had their wands pointing straight up into the air, where four people could be seen floating and spinning over fifty feet above the crowd. All the masked wizards were jeering loudly at their victims.

“Is that…?

“That’s them. The Death Eaters. They’ve got the whole family,” said Penny, gnawing at her lip. “The children, too. Oh, this is horrible. Why isn’t anyone doing anything?”

“They are, look!” Artemis pointed at another group of wizards and witches charging at the Death Eaters and surrounding them. Many of them were wearing Auror or Mediwizard robes, but most were dressed as they were - either in their pyjamas or the clothes they had been wearing for the match and the parties afterwards. Artemis could just about make out the red-haired heads of Bill and Charlie Weasley in their midst, with what looked like Percy and Arthur following after them. “We should help them.”

“What about the others?”

“If they didn’t come this way, they’ll be fine. If they did, then you can bet that they’re already over there trying to help, too,” Artemis reasoned, and Jae took off without a word, running at the Death Eaters with his wand raised and already firing spells. “Come on, Penny!”

Penny nodded, and the two of them joined the fight, keeping half an eye out for Tonks and Chiara as they cast curses at the Death Eaters.

“Careful!” one of the Mediwizards was shouting. “Don’t let the Muggles fall!”

It was too late, as a series of spells hit the Death Eaters levitating the Muggles, their limp bodies began to plummet from the air. The Mediwizard immediately pointed his wand at one of the children, and so did Artemis.

“Wingardium leviosa!” she shouted.

She wasn’t the only one to call out the spell; nearby, a tent levitated into the air, its canvas stretching out at the corners to form a sort of net. Elsewhere, different spells were being used to rescue the Muggles, with someone conjuring a large ribbon that wrapped itself around a Muggle and slowly rolled them down to the ground, and another clearly having transfigured an area of the grass into a trampoline, for when the other child fell, he bounced back up into the air again before coming to a complete stop.

The Mediwizards and several other civilians - Artemis was sure she saw Chiara among them - rushed to the Muggles and began to check them over, while the rest of the crowd resumed their fight with the Death Eaters, casting their spells with wild abandon now that they no longer had to worry about indirectly harming the Muggles. The Death Eaters fought back with even more disregard for the amount of harm they might cause, until suddenly, they stopped in their tracks as if frozen, staring at the horizon. Then, one by one, they Apparated away, all of them disappearing into the night in quick succession.

“Oh, bravo!” Artemis heard a familiar voice call out, and she turned to see Ludo Bagman clapping his hands together, his mouth curving into a relieved smile. “Jolly good work, everyone!”

But not everyone seemed pleased. Many of the rest of the crowd still seemed restless and scared - even more so than they had previously. Several of them had, like the Death Eaters, frozen to the spot, their eyes fixed on the distant skyline. Someone let out a strangled cry in the dark, and a second later, the smile slipped and colour drained from Ludo Bagman’s face. Artemis felt Penny’s hand tighten on her arm once more.

“What is it, Penny? What’s…”

Artemis’ words died in her mouth as she followed Penny’s gaze to the woods at the top of the hill and saw what was floating in the night sky above them: an enormous green skull had risen from the trees, a serpent protruding from its mouth. The skull glittered in the darkness, sparkling like a nebulus of fireflies. Artemis’ eyes widened and her mouth went dry. She had seen that skull before, but not in many years, and only ever in pictures, either in Defence Against the Dark Arts textbooks, or on the pages of newspapers in her early childhood, when the Wizarding World had been at war, a war against Death Eaters, and the one the Death Eaters followed. Voldemort. This skull was his sign, the mark he left behind.

The Dark Mark.

#artemis hexley #chiara lobosca #penny haywood #nymphadora tonks #jae kim #death eaters #goblet of fire #quidditch world cup #harry potter fanfiction #hphm fic

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modern-inheritance · 4 months

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Modern Inheritance: Reunion, pt. 2 (Reluctance and Recall)

(A/N: I just wanted to get this out there. I might continue writing it and put a better ending on it, but for now I just want it off the WIP pile so it stops haunting me. Happy New Year and the like. Hopefully I'll have more stories out this time!)

~~~~

It hadn’t escaped him that she had left her combat jacket on that night. Or that she was wearing it when she came out the next morning. Or the day after that. Or the next six mornings.

They portioned out their days. Arya would spend the morning drafting reports and debriefs, filling out paperwork to reverse her apparent death and half begrudgingly taking on Brom’s share of more mundane documents as he joined Eragon and Saphira at Oromis and Glaedr’s lessons. They split the evenings, Arya going sometimes to guide Eragon and Saphira around Ellesméra or attempting to mend her fragile relationship with her mother. Other nights she joined Glen for dinner and spent the night remembering the days they spent crawling in trenches and infiltrating camps, Fäolin perched above them in his little nest.

Afternoons, though, were for wandering the pines together, walking aimlessly and just talking. Glen told her about the last months, his recovery and the process of fitting, building and bonding with his new arm. The struggles and the joys of connecting the nerves without further surgery, the excited yelling that earned him a pair of tongs to the face when he finally picked up a mug without shattering it or throwing it into his own teeth.

The three months he spent without leaving Rhunön’s shop. He didn’t tell her it was because he couldn’t find the courage to face the Queen.

In turn she told him the entire story of Eragon and Saphira, everything the two had shared and every bit of information Brom would reveal about his and their lives in the village of Carvahall. The Raz’zac, the disastrous first flight, Brom’s near death experience, the young son of Morzan and his surprising allegiance. Glen could tell she glossed over the madcap escape from Gil’ead, their eventual return to the Varden getting a similar treatment along with the post battle recovery under Farthen Dûr.

He didn’t press for a time. But eventually, he knew he had to.

It was eight days after their impromptu reunion, meandering alone past one of the solitary beech trees that some elf had planted and warded years ago with leaves near dripping with the winking lights of bioluminescent moths, when he finally tried to break through.

“You know you can take that off, right?” Glen teased, plucking a wrinkled fold on the arm of Arya’s combat jacket. “You’re gonna get more looks than usual if you keep wearing it with those cargos.”

Arya looked down with a frown. “Hey! I think it looks good with these! Green and tan go good together, right?” She had never been much for fashion, or even being all that presentable beyond the occasional inspection back during basic or black tie events for the Varden. At those, all it took was a black dress to get whoever dragged her along off her back, even if she insisted on wearing combat boots with it.

For a moment she remembered, with some fondness, the first time Fäolin had been forced to join her at a fundraiser in Surda. Teasing him about his slicked back hair, chucking him under the chin to get at the bowtie that was damn near choking him over the starched collar of his borrowed suit. His laugh when she asked him where he had put the backup pistol, her own when he subtly touched the grip of the one strapped to her leg under the dress. “You’re my backup pistol, remember?”

Then it was gone again.

Shaking his head as if his commander were a lost cause, Glenwing peered up from under his brows at the dappled sunlight filtering through the heavy needles above. “Come on. What are you hiding under there?”

“Nothing.”

The medic closed his eyes with a deep inhale and soft sigh at the deadpan tone, the sharp hint of warning contained in the single word. So it would be like that.

He stopped walking. “Arya.”

“What?” Her momentum had carried her three paces beyond, so she had to stop and turn to him. Her fists were jammed in the pockets of the combat jacket.

“We don’t lie to each other.” He fixed her with that look. The medic look. The look that said ‘I am here to help and if you don’t let me there will be a very difficult road ahead.’ A look that he hadn’t given her for years, decades.

His heart sank when she cut her eyes away from him. “I don’t…” Arya broke off and rubbed the back of her neck again, fingers digging in roughly. “There’s too much to do. We can worry about it later.”

“You finished the paperwork this morning.” Green eyes slid closed in a quiet, nonverbal curse for telling him that earlier. “You– we –were relieved from guarding Eragon and Saphira days ago, and we won’t be called to that again until they leave. Please.” Movement caught his attention. “Your hands have been shaking since you got back.”

Arya looked down. The tremors had been increasing in frequency since Tarnag. The moments of recall around her wrists always followed their appearance.

“Arya, you know that I can’t break my oath to you. I can only help you if you allow me. I can’t tell anyone unless you tell me to.” Careful that his approach was seen well before he reached out, Glen touched his commander’s shoulder gently. “I don’t want you to do this alone. I didn’t. I couldn’t.”

And still, she refused to look at him. “You don’t need this on top of everything else.”

“Cut the bullshit.” That got her attention. Glen swore only half as much as the rest of their little squad, and when he did it was usually cause for alarm. No one wanted the man holding their bleeding guts in suddenly swearing out of nowhere. “You’re scared. I understand. And I’m here to help you.”

The accusation made Arya let out a short bark of laughter. At Glen’s raised eyebrow, she merely shook her head, half a twisted grin on her lips. “Ah, Glen. I’m not scared. Nothing really scares me anymore.” Again she let out a short laugh, squinting up into the needles above much like he had and put her hands on her hips.

He really didn’t expect her explanation.

“I’ve puked on a shade’s shoes before and lived through the consequences. And I did it again, too. Twice.”

Glenwing stared, bewildered. It took him some seconds to find his words. “...I…I don’t know if you’re joking with me, or if this is your way of saying you’re going to talk about it, or–”

“Oh, I one hundred percent puked on Durza shoes multiple times. That’s one of the things that I like to remember about all that.” Arya was smiling broadly. It didn’t reach her eyes. “If you really want to know,” The smile fell. “I’ll tell you. But later.”

“No.”

“Glen–”

“I have the file. You know I do.”

Arya closed her eyes in surrender. The file had been sitting on the table for days now, a clear sign to her that he was waiting for her consent to begin the process of unraveling the last nine months. “Yeah.” She inhaled. Smelled wet concrete and tasted copper and iron. Released the breath with a rough sigh. “Okay. Tonight.”

“Tonight.”

~~~

Glenwing was sitting on the couch with tea already made, file sitting undisturbed on the coffee table, when the door slid open and closed. Relief seeped into his limbs, feeling cold on his left and warm on his right. He hadn't been entirely convinced she was going to show up.

He looked up when she didn’t immediately sit beside him. Arya stood in front of the low table, shoulders tight and fists again firmly shoved in the front pockets of her combat jacket. Every line of her body reflected tension, but her dark eyes glinted with steel when he met her gaze.

“You sure you wanna do this?” Arya motioned to the file with her chin, sharp and jerky. “It’s a lot less…” She paused, searching for the right word. “Brutal. If you read it from there.”

Glen nodded. He did his best to sound gentle but firm. “I need to hear it from you.”

Her jaw clenched. “...I don’t know how much I can tell you.”

“Whatever you can. Whatever you want to.” The medic patted the cushion next to him. “We’ll stop whenever you want.” She waited a few more moments. Then, with stiff steps, Arya sat a few feet down the couch. “Take all the time you need.”

Arya braced her elbows on her knees and leaned over, studying the moss that made up part of the floor of their flat. “I’m not…I’m not ashamed of what happened there.” A shiny backed beetle meandered onto the edge of her boot. She reached down and let it crawl onto her finger, lifted it to examine the iridescence of its carapace. “Hell, I’m proud of what I endured. I don’t know why it's so hard to talk about it like this.” She grinned as the little creature fluttered its hidden wings, the thin sheaves dark in contrast to the elytra’s color. “I’ve joked about it plenty.”

Glen leaned back. He had his notepad in his hands, rumpled and scuffed and one of the corners charred. “You’ve always preferred deflecting whenever something’s bothering you.”

With a gentle puff of air, Arya encouraged the glittering insect to take flight. They both watched it go, floating to the window where it escaped through the barely open latch. “...Yeah.”

She took a deep breath then, resumed her previous position, and rubbed the flats of her palms together. “I guess I should start from the beginning.

“That night we were ambushed, when you lost your arm and Fäolin was killed, Durza captured me after I teleported Saphira’s egg.” Again the woman focused her eyes on the ground, watching the miniscule hairs of the moss waver in the near imperceptible movements of air created by the cracked window, her breath, and Glenwing’s breath. Connecting currents that linked everything in the room. “I was in and out, but when I woke up fully I was in a cell under Gil’ead’s keep, their maximum security wing.

“There were shackles on my wrists. They weren’t connected to anything, so when Durza came in I obviously tried to take his face off.” Half a smirk touched her lips, a tone of bitter pride coloring her words. “So he locked the shackles to the wall. Then I tried to headbutt him when he got too close. So he put me in a chair and locked me to that.”

The woman tilted her head slightly, brow knitted in a hint of confusion. Her braid slid over her shoulder to hang free. “He just…talked to me that time. Sat across from me and told me who he was, gloated about the spells he made to break our wards with just bullets and Urgals at his disposal.” To Glen’s surprise, Arya had an almost wistful, crooked grin when she looked over at him. “You know what he did next?”

Despite her previous assertion that nothing could really scare her, Glen saw, buried beneath the convoluted and contorted emotions in his friend’s eyes, a glimmer of fear. He shook his head, afraid to break whatever courage was driving her to speak.

“He asked me, point blank, if I would submit. Asked if I would surrender then and there, knowing the spells he had created, the potential he had, knowing what he was. He told me what awaited me if I did. I would be taken to Urû’baen immediately and presented to Galbatorix. He would receive the information I had to give, take more if he wanted, and then I would be released into his service. I’d swear oaths to him and become his new Forsworn, and used however he saw fit to bring down the Varden, Surda and Du Weldenvarden.” She let out a soft scoff, that pained look still twisting her lips. “I told him ‘no.’ Only word I said to him besides ‘bite me, bitch’ and ‘fuck you’ a few times.” She laughed again, and it sounded desperate, near panicked at the edges. “He just smiled, that fucking smile, and said ‘good.’”

Her own smile gone, Arya dragged a hand down her face, skin going pale as she remembered. “He spent…I don’t know how long. I’ve got no sense of time anymore. He spent what had to be hours just…just telling me what he could do to me. What he would do to me. He paced around and around that stupid fucking chair, grabbed my neck from behind and whispered in my ear the experiments he wanted to try.”

A shudder passed from the back of her skull to the base of her spine. Arya did her best to focus on the swaths of moss between her boots. Pincushion moss. A bryophyte. They grew it there because it was soft and stayed that way even when the weather turned dry for weeks at a time.

She could feel his hand gripping the base of her braid, head yanked back against the metal edge of the chair. The way he cupped her throat, thumb pressing just under the joint of her jaw and stroking her skin as she did her best to appear nonchalant. Simply met his gleeful gaze with cold fire in her eyes. She would not look away.

The elf took a shuddering breath and untangled her fingers from where she had been clenching them together hard enough to leave bruises. “And then…he did. He did all of it and more.” She blinked, willed the floor to return to its green carpet rather than the grey creeping in. “And I fought it. I fought whenever I could. He stopped using the shackles in the cell because my wrists were shredded and I wouldn’t stop fighting them. I don’t know how long it was till I…” Her words caught in her throat. She blinked again. Why was this what made her choke up? “Till I couldn’t fight anymore.

“He dosed me with Skilna each day, tried to wear me down.” Her lungs hurt at the memory. The time that he had sat on her cot, one leg daintily crossed over the other while he let the poison run its course longer than before. Watched her, that fucking smile plastered on his face, the antidote held in his lap, as she coughed up blood until she couldn’t anymore, as she writhed against the feeling of her bones shattered like crystal glass and the overwhelming, all encompassing fever that turned her veins to molten lead.

He had wanted her to ask for it. To beg for the antidote.

She crawled over, every movement triggering more liquid glass to explode within her cells. Grabbed his leg. Saw that triumphant, gleeful grin in the haze above.

With her last ounce of strength she slipped a finger between his leg and his high, polished boots and deposited a mouthful of blood into the space.

Her gurgling laughter at his disgust made her smile briefly, lost when the noise ended abruptly with a crack and the sound of a tightly gripped, torn throat struggling to breathe. Still. The broken jaw and flail chest had been worth it. And she didn’t even have to ask for the antidote.

“He uh…” Arya cleared her throat, tasted the same blood as he dragged her out of the cell again, fury evident in each step. “He had to change it. To a longer form. One he could trigger at will. I was apparently getting some sort of tolerance.” She could see the pen moving from the corner of her eye. “He couldn’t always be there. Something about reporting to Galbatorix. He told the guards to keep his…his work, going while he was away. Only rule was no blows to the head. Needed the information in my mind unscrambled.”

Glenwing’s pen slowed. He didn’t want to ask the question. He knew she could feel his eyes on her, the way she shifted and raised her laced together hands to her lips. The way she tensed when he put the pen down and leaned toward her to touch two fingers to her forearm. “Arya….”

She refused to look at him. “They didn’t.” Her jaw was clenched. “They…they tried.” One of her hands twitched before the other clamped down on it. She blinked. “One of them…one of them must’ve found some old book somewhere…talked about elf customs or something.” Slowly Glen saw her entire body go tense, muscles locked and coiled to their limit. The first mumbled words of her next admission were lost in the quiet breath that delivered them.

“...tried to notch my ear.”

Glen’s blood went cold. The practice was ancient, heralding back to the bonding of the dragons and elves and the…peculiar…additions the dragon’s blood had on elves' practices of coupling. While a gentle bite on the ear of a mate was considered a pact of love, of devotion…a notch was a symbol of bitter solitude. Any elf with a notched ear was considered almost untouchable when it came to love, mating, partnership, acceptance. They were given only for horrific deeds, the slaughter of children, taking an unwilling mate, murder of a partner, and, above all else, for the betrayal of the entire elven race.

If Durza had learned of this from his men he would have carried it out as the ultimate humiliation, and bound the mark to her body so that no healing could touch the wound.

It took every ounce of Glenwing’s self control to not seize his best friend’s face and turn her to him, looking for the telltale rift. Instead, he steadied his voice as best he could and managed an only slightly enraged, “They tried?”

“They didn’t manage it.” The words were hollow, the memory of just how close she came to being marked still bouncing in her skull. Unlike the others, this one was…hazy. She could feel the panic in her chest and the many hands forcing her to the ground as she struggled to lift her broken body. They wanted revenge for the men she had…disposed of…after their attempts to take advantage of her weakened state. The cold, cold metal of a set of wire cutters sliding against the side of her head and behind her right ear.

Then just…relief. Gratitude? And spending time curled under the cot, pressed as tightly against the wall as she could manage until the pale hand dragged her out for another span of agony after a longer than normal gap.

For some reason the sense of relief sparked warmth that soothed the growing lump in her throat. She pressed her fingers into the spaces between her knuckles, grounded herself in the discomfort as she found sore tendons and protesting connective bands. “Eragon was captured some time after that. I don’t know how long. Adrenaline and pain tablets kept me on my feet long enough to get out with them. Eragon, Saphira and Brom healed what they could and got me awake. The rest you already know.”

Glen picked up his pen again and rolled it between his fingers. “Poison?” He had masked the tremor in his tone, but the rage wasn’t going to fade quite so easy. He wouldn’t press, not now at least. This was enough for one night.

“Right.” Gil’ead retreating from her mind, Arya straightened somewhat and clasped her knees with hands now blooming with fingertip shaped bruises. “Durza activated it. We got through the Hadarac before it caused problems. I might have…had to use the dream state to survive it.” She winced, fully expecting a lecture.

Instead, Glenwing chewed the end of his pen. “You got out of it.” It was a statement of fact, laced with a hint of assurance that he wasn’t angry. He had taught her how to trigger the dream state for emergencies, and poison was certainly on the qualifying list.

“After a bunch of Tunivor’s Nectar…yeah.” Arya blinked, suddenly remembering another visitor during her half-addled state in Tronjheim’s hospital. “And the Wise One gave me something to pull me out.”

Glen stopped his absentminded chewing, pen dangling from his lips as he shot his commander a look of shock. “She’s back?” The way the stylus bobbed with his words made him look almost comically like Brom with his pipe.

“Werecat and all.” Arya frowned. “Didn’t I say she’s the one that fixed Eragon’s back?”

“You kind of ignored the recovery period.”

“Ah.”

The woman’s bearing had shifted again. Glen saw more anxiety than before, less tension in her limbs as she cut her gaze away again and picked a loose thread by her knee. “Speaking of the recovery period…”

“I broke the Star Sapphire, injected myself with four full doses of adrenaline to try and stop Eragon’s back from bleeding, overdosed, had several cardiac events, and Vilks put me on strict orders and told me I’d die if I didn’t follow them.”

‘Ah’ indeed. No wonder she looked nervous. There was nothing that could trigger fear in a lifelong, diehard soldier with nothing else but their deployment than the anger of a very exasperated medic with the power to put them on an indefinite hold.

“You what?!”

Arya had already bolted off the couch, skittering past the coffee table. “Look, I know you’re upset with me for pulling a stunt like that again–”

“FOUR?!”

She was already down the hall, nearly slingshotting past her room when she grabbed the doorframe. “Just…read the file, Vilks took good notes, I’ll change, just…yeah!”

Torn between fuming and alarmed, Glen grabbed for the file on the coffee table. He swore when his knuckles impacted the side of the wood, the metal leaving a decent dent. Making a mental note to speak to Rhunön about his continued issues of emotional override, he snatched up the packet with his right hand and flipped it open to the tab at the very back.

Vilks’ handwriting still kept its tight scrawl in his advanced age, and after so many years the doctor had perfected the art of short, sweet and to the point in his notes. Possible seizures. Fluid in the lungs, intubation for two hours, O2 mask for six after. Five VTach events before AED applied, unknown number post. Repeated attempts to leave bed before fully aware. Restrained for aprox 10 minutes before reminded of patient history. Energy extremely depleted, side effects of poisoning, imprisonment, poor diet, adrenaline overdose and magic overuse. Given orders of NO MAGIC two weeks, consistent bedrest and sleep (unlikely), multivit 2/d two weeks, recheck two weeks. Warned of consequences.

A quick note at an angle, dated eleven days after the initial list, added ‘Given consequences after discovered participating in rigorous PT. Patient given icepack for forehead contusion and required to replace hospital clipboard at next possible opportunity.’

Despite his frustration, Glen couldn't help the smile that curled the edges of his lips. ‘Of course.’

“If you’re going to chuck that at me, let me get a head start first.” The medic looked up at his commander’s wry request. She had donned a pair of jogging shorts and a loose tshirt, the standard PT gear of Varden recruits in Fathen Dûr.

Glenwing snapped the file closed. “I wouldn’t warn you if I was going to throw it, especially after reading that. Let’s sit at the table, better light.” Arya shrugged, thumbs hooked in the small pockets of her shorts, and followed him to sit in the dining area where bright werelights hung above their heads.

They sat together, bathed in light tinged with the greens that dominated their home away from the Varden. Arya, after a moment of hesitation, placed her forearms on the table, palms down.

The medic resisted sucking his teeth, and instead bit the tip of his tongue as he reached out and gently lifted the woman’s left arm. A swath of scar tissue encircled her wrist, creeping up her hand and palm just slightly before diving down and dipping a concave wrap two inches down her forearm. The right side mirrored the same mutilation, both dark and a mottled red mix of soft ridges and silken patches. With a light touch to the back of her hand and a nod of acquiescence, he turned her palm up to reveal her tendons etched at the surface of her skin, as if locked permanently taut.

“They’re just like that.” Arya broke the silence. A half hearted shrug tilted her wrist, and the flexor tendons jutted out further. “Tissue’s gone. Tendons just kind of…stand out, I guess.”

Glen hummed in acknowledgement, inwardly swearing at the possible damage that lurked beneath her skin. “Do you have any numbness in your hands or fingers?”

“No. The shaking started when we were around Tarnag. It feels like pins and needles sometimes, but it’s not affected my grip or range of motion.”

Gently manipulating the joints, Glenwing confirmed her words before picking up his pen and scribbling a note down. “And you didn’t heal these…?”

“I like them.” Arya’s eyes were clear when he snapped his gaze up to hers.

“Arya, they've got nerve damage. In your hands.”

At that the woman pulled her hand from his grip and crossed her arms, hiding the dark bands from view. “Can you heal the nerve damage without healing the scars?”

Glen frowned. “Yes, but–”

“Then we do it that way.” She held him in her gaze for a long moment, waiting for him to acquiesce. “This is my way of taking it back, Glen.” And again, she suddenly cut her eyes away with a quiet mumble.

“What?”

“It helps…” He could see her flex her fingers involuntarily under her arms, gnash her teeth at some unseen jolt. She looked like he did when the phantom pain kicked in unexpectedly, a shock that lingered for minutes or hours. “It helps when I have recall. When…when I touch them it’s like….” The woman fumbled for words, distress building. “He never left scars when he gave me hallucinations.” She gripped the table edge with white knuckles, tilting the chair back slightly. “And when I feel the scars I just…I know I’m not there. It helps bring me back sometimes.”

Sometimes. Not always.

‘Recall.’ That cursed thing. Sensory recall and elvish memory went hand in hand, making the calling up of emotionally charged memories laden with past sensory detail a normal, if not somewhat uncommon, occurrence among their race. Arya’s had always been strong, bringing back physical touch and involving a majority of the senses for most of her moments of involuntary recall. Glen’s near rivaled hers, built up from the years of war and countless moments where PTSD took hold of the accursed skill, if it could even be called that. They both relived their traumas, ricocheting to the past as the world went on around them, seeing but not seeing.

Every time he thought of the ambush, he smelled the smoke, felt the hot ash and cinders embedding in his clothes and his skin. He could taste blood and pine ash, the grit between his red stained teeth and the excruciating wrong that was the needles and the dirt and bark and ash collecting, sticking to the mangled flesh of his ruined arm. He didn’t always see it, and for that he thanked whatever stars watched over him. That was his only escape. Seeing the metal limb that now dominated his left side, a zing of phantom pain that reminded him that the original limb was long gone…it made coming out of the recall easier. Something to remind him that the past was the past.

Glenwing reached out and, with a feather touch of his mechanical hand, reminded his commander to release the creaking wood of the table. He cupped her scarred knuckles, turned her palm to run a cold thumb over the ghost of a hastily healed burn.

“I’ll do my best.” He promised.

A rush of air left Arya’s lungs, a relief she didn't quite realize she needed. An acknowledgement of the scars beyond the cursory looks cast her way under Farthen Dûr, the concerned frown Brom gave them every once in a while. Glenwing understood their purpose, in a way that no one else could. “Thanks.”

Satisfied he could mend some of the frayed nerves, Glen turned to examining the smattering of new scars that littered the woman’s arms. Nothing was particularly egregious, and while several of the straight lines that slid down from beneath the woman’s sleeves looked near surgical, Arya simply told him it was ‘healed fully’ and ‘not a problem.’ Again, he didn't push it.

“Is there more?” Glen took a sip of his now cold tea, making a face before reheating it with a quick word. If this was all that needed checking then he could call himself pleasantly surprised given her previous description.

Arya paused. “There’s a few on my legs but those were…those were healed. He healed them to the surface at least.” She tried to shake the sudden jolt of seeing steel nubs protruding from her shin, the excruciating ripping, tearing, snapping, as the bone split down its length. All that remained were four pale pink spots in a line from the last time that particular method was used. “Eragon and Saphira healed a scrape on my right leg, but they did well. No complaints there.”

“Uh-huh.” Glen tapped the point of his pen at the upper corner of his paper, resisting the urge to chew on the end again. She wasn’t telling him everything. But it was a start. “Is that it?”

“...No.” Arya sighed and pushed back from the table to stand. “I’m not healing these either, okay?” Her voice was muffled as she tugged her shirt up and over her head. She tossed it into the achingly empty chair across from her and stood clad only in her shorts and sports bra. “Make me look badass.” She turned and pulled her braid over her shoulder, gesturing with a jerked thumb at the expanse of her back.

Glenwing dropped his pen. “Well. Shit."

“Hey!” Arya whirled to him. She seemed genuinely offended. “Come on, Glen! I survived this shit. You know what that took? I’m fuckin’ proud of these, and I’m not healing them for bullshit vanity.” He didn’t answer. Just stood and put his hands on her shoulders. “What are you–”

And pulled her into another hug.

Arya froze. She could feel the cold metal of his left arm holding her around her shoulder blades, a stark contrast to the warmth of his right hand squeezing around her ribs. Someone was touching her back and he wasn’t recoiling, wasn’t probing, wasn’t hurting. She wasn’t struggling, fighting, desperate to run away. An ache that she didn’t even realize had been tied into the muscles along her spine for months suddenly released, bringing with it a rush of relief and a soothing mix of warm where warm was needed and cool where cool was needed.

“Don’t lie to me.” Glen murmured in her ear, his voice catching. “You tried.”

Arya squeezed her eyes shut.

The day after Vilks cleared her for magic use. Checking the multitude of scars that covered her back and criss-crossed her skin with burns, cuts, hills and valleys of hypertrophic and concave bands. The visible slide of muscle where the layers above had been carved away. There was space between them, yes. But all she could see was the red, pink and silver of lingering damage made physical and, above all else, undeniable. She looked…she looked almost broken.

She had tried to heal them. And found herself scrabbling, clawing, writhing on the floor of that stupid little bathroom, choking back a scream of unimaginable pain as the nerves in her back exploded in protest. Everything she had endured, condensed and dripped in a steady, maddening flow along each pathway, electric and burning and pain. Once again it was all that existed for her in that moment, an extended second that encompassed months and months of time she could not begin to grasp nor understand the passage of.

She ripped away from the magic and lay, panting, on that stupid, stupid bathroom floor. Blood steadily streamed from her forehead to the tiles where she had cracked it on the stone, trying to breathe through the lingering aftershocks and remembering the spells that he had used to the same result. Felt, deep in her chest, an interwoven pity and horror for Eragon and the new hell he was beginning to endure. She couldn’t heal herself. And she couldn’t heal him. Magic wouldn't erase these wounds.

Arya reached up and grabbed onto Glenwing, clutched at the loose folds of his shirt under his shoulder blades as if he were her last hope against drowning. “They’re…” She shivered, pressed her forehead to his shoulder. She had decided already, that day back in Tronjheim, that if she couldn’t remove them then she would wear them as a badge of pride. She wasn’t broken. She couldn’t be. They were the proof. “I’m…. I beat them. I beat him.”

Glenwing didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. He knew, and she knew as well. They’d weather it just as they always did, together and steadfast and strong against the push of everyone else. So they had scars. That didn’t mean they were lost, or broken, or could be cast aside as soldiers who had long passed their expiration date. Fifty years, seventy in her case, was a long, long time to fight.

They’d just have to keep fighting.

They wouldn’t have it any other way.

#eragon #inheritance cycle #the cyclists #the inheritance cycle #modern inheritance stories #ket's modern inheritance cycle #Glenwing #arya (inheritance cycle)#arya (inheritance)#arya drottningu #recall #ptsd #durza #durza is cocky and never has his wards up #i made the puking on a shades shoes thing canon now so no backsies #these two are so messed up and they know it and drag each other through the dark tbh #Glen is like the one familiar person Arya has after Gil'ead and the same goes for Glen to Arya #Fyrn breoal #modern inheritance

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livingintheupsidedown · 2 years

Text

Sharing Secrets

Steve Harrington x reader

[862] - You go to Family Video to tell Steve a secret, but he beats you to it.

A/N - I think I hate this but everyone’s got to start somewhere right?

7:55pm

Steve Harrington has been your best friend for as long as you can remember. Middle school, high school, boys, girls, college rejection letters, anything you can think of you’ve been through.

Together.

So why was it so hard to share this secret? You can’t even remember the last thing you had to keep from Steve other than what you got him for his birthday last month. Secrets just didn't exist between you two. Every crush, every trouble at home, every sad thought, Steve was the first to know and vice versa.

And now sitting in your car outside Family Video you started to doubt yourself. Was this crazy? Were you really about to do this? What happens after? The neon sign flickering above you brought you out of your thoughts and forced you to take the first step towards heartbreak. You know he won’t feel the same yet you had to tell him and it had to be tonight, before you leave.

The bell ringing above the door caused Steve to sigh. Who the hell comes into a store 5 minutes before closing? Without looking up he took a deep breath and started to speak,

“Welcome to family video- oh hey sweetheart”

Your heart fluttered at the pet name, his eyes met yours and you felt a wave of nerves wash over you. You cast your eyes downward tilting your head, almost ashamed to meet his beautiful brown eyes. The same pair of eyes you wished you could get lost in.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” You could hear the sincerity in his voice and raised your head in panic, afraid you’d already upset him, to find him making his way out from behind the counter. You could feel the tears start to pool in your eyes.

“Woah Woah hey talk to me, what’s going on honey?” Steve told you but you couldn’t will yourself to speak, couldn’t form the words you so desperately needed to say. You felt his hand on the side of your face and instinctively leaned into it, cupping his hand with your own.

“I’m leaving.”

Silence

“What?”

It wasn’t until you felt him grip your chin between his fingers that you looked up, only to be met with a look you’re sure almost mirrored yours. “What do you mean you’re leaving?”

“I’m leaving tomorrow and I need to tell you something before I go.” You replied with just as much emphasis. “'cause if I don’t tell you now I'm not sure I ever will.”

You could see the confusion on Steve’s face and wanted to wipe away the wrinkles he’d created with his frown. As if a child was sulking for not getting their own way. His eyes flicked between yours before he spoke again.

“Sweetheart what the hell is going on, what’d do you mean you’re leaving? Where are you going? For how long? I-”

“My parents bought a house in Boston, I didn’t know until last month. I thought they were joking when they said we were moving. I tried to find a place here which is why I was taking all those extra shifts at the record store but it wasn’t enough.” taking a deep breath you continued “ I don’t have a choice, I'm sorry.”

“Baby, you can’t leave.”

Baby. That was new.

“I don’t want to Stevie.”

“Then don’t,” he said gentler, less admonishing “move in with me.”

His eyes stilled as your own searched for any hint of sarcasm. Anything to prove that the words that had just come out of his mouth weren’t serious.

“Steve I-”

“I’m serious move in with me. You know my parents are never home anyway it’s not like they’d notice. I love you too much to just let you go.” Steve tucked your hair behind your ear, and something in his voice told you that this was different. That this love was different. As if he read your mind he blurted out:

“You know I'm in love with you right?” he murmured to you as if it was another secret to be shared between just you and him. “I’m totally in love with you and if you leave now and I missed my chance to tell you I'd never forgive myself.”

Sometimes you swear you and Steve are so connected that he really can read your mind. “How have you ended up with a love confession when that’s exactly what I came here to do?” You chucked under his gaze. “You stole my thunder, Harrington.”

He let out a shaky breath and it was only then you realised how close you’d become to one another. He rested his forehead on yours and you could feel your nerves wash away. As you closed your eyes he whispered:

“Can I kiss you?”

“Please.”

His lips against yours were a sensation you’d longed for, and yet nothing could come close to the real thing. After pulling away reluctantly your eyes roamed his face and you couldn’t stop the smile that formed on yours.

“So.. is that a yes?” He asked and you couldn’t help but laugh.

“It’s a yes.”

Coming home to Steve every day didn’t sound so bad.

#steve harrington #steve harrington x reader #steve harrington x y/n #steve harrington one shot #stranger things fic #stranger things #steve harrington drabble #steve harrington blurb #steve harrington fic #steve harrington x you #steve harrington fluff #stranger things x reader

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squirrelno2 · 10 months

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Tradition Prologue (Witch!Flynn au)

So three million years ago I wrote this fic, wherein Bobby does magic to try and secure a great future for Sunset Curve (except uhhh it’s a perfectly canon compliant opening. sorry)

I don’t know when I’ll get around to the sequel I wanted to write, dealing with actual canon events in that universe, but sometimes when one finds a fun little scene full of dramatic irony in one’s documents, one simply must post it on Tumblr. Feel free to ask me things about this universe, especially since any full-fledged fics for it will have to wait until after Nightingale is finished

Flynn was seven years old when Carrie’s dad sat her and Carrie down, worry in his eyes.

“Are you girls sure you want Julie at your sleepover?” Mr Carrie’s Dad asked softly.

“Yes!” Carrie blurted. “Daddy, she’s Flynn’s neighbour and she’s my new best friend which means we have to have her at all our sleepovers now otherwise it’s not fair.”

Flynn nodded solemnly. Neighbours were supposed to be people you always had in your life to play with. She wasn’t about to leave Julie out of any sleepovers.

“Girls, you know you can’t tell her about magic,” Mr Carrie’s Dad said. “You have to be careful around people who aren’t part of the World.”

“Julie’s really good at keeping secrets,” Flynn said. “She knew what I got Carrie for her birthday and never told.”

“Magic is a little bigger than a birthday present, Flynn. And friends like Julie…” Mr Carrie’s Dad frowned. “Carrie, sweetie, if you want Julie to come over she’s always welcome. But I need you girls to know that making friends outside of the World – it’s not bad, it’s just – those friendships fail.”

He said it fast and sharp. Carrie pulled back from her dad. Flynn stared at him. She’d never heard him sound so unhappy. He always sounded like he was playing a game with them when he talked, like it made him happy just to be with Carrie and Flynn. Mr Carrie’s Dad didn’t usually sound angry.

“I’m sorry,” he said, sounding tired. “It’s only a sleepover. I’m not being fair. Just… promise me you girls will be careful.”

“I promise, Daddy,” Carrie said.

“I promise, too,” Flynn said quickly. Mr Carrie’s Dad sighed and stroked Carrie’s hair.

“Well, I guess I should call Rose and ask her about letting Julie come over,” he said. “If Julie’s mom says no, there’s no arguing, all right?”

“Yes, Dad,” Carrie said. When he was gone, she turned to Flynn.

“Do you think it’s true that we can’t stay friends with Julie?” Carrie asked. Flynn wrinkled her nose.

“I think it’s stupid, and we’ll all be best friends forever,” Flynn said. Carrie smiled.

“Let’s make a pact,” she said. “Magic pact.”

They weren’t allowed to sacrifice blood for spells, because that was only for grown-ups, so Carrie cut a little bit of Flynn’s hair off and Flynn cut a little bit of Carrie’s. They twisted it together, then went to the bathroom holding the mess of black-and-blonde hair between them.

“We’re not going to let ourselves leave Julie behind,” Carrie said solemnly.

“We’ll be her best friends forever and ever,” Flynn added. They dropped the hair into the water, and at Carrie’s grave nod, Flynn flushed the toilet. Together they watched the knot of hair spiral down the drain, and Flynn felt pleased with herself. Julie would never have to lose them over some stupid magic, because now there was magic keeping them together.

#witch!flynn au #julie and the phantoms #flynn taylor #carrie wilson #trevor wilson #snippets and sneak peeks

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astartothemoon · 2 years

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borrowed and blue // Fall

Summary: Steve, having enough of his father's constant disapproval, needs to move out of his parents’ house. Reader is back in town after having inherited the old record store on main street, only she has no place to stay. Eddie, being friends with both, brings the two together and offers a solution. Though neither of them can afford a place by themselves, together they make enough to rent a little house at the edge of Hawkins. Follow the two as the navigate life together and deal with the feelings that arise eventually.

A love story told in 4 seasons.

Pairing: Steve Harrington x female Reader

Trigger Warning: Swearing. Mention of alcohol. Mention of food. Slight mention of intimate situations.

A/N: Likes, reblogs, comments are all much appreciated. I am German. Sometimes I get the tense wrong or make mistakes. I am useless when it comes to punctuation. Go easy on me, please.

FALL // AUTUMN

Fall has slowly but surely taken up residency in Hawkins. Half the leaves have turned shades of orange and red while the rest have started deserting the trees and now crunch under your boot with every step you take.

Steve’s woolen sweater does little to keep the cold out but he’d quite honestly rather freeze to death out here leaning against the backdoor of Family Video than be warm and toasty at home.

“ You’re no fun today, dingus. What’s got you looking all gloomy? “ Robin asks before stuffing her face with another bite of her turkey sandwich.

“ Honestly Harrington. You’re a real downer. “ Eddie agrees, cigarette smoke flowing like a veil around his head.

“ Way to gang up on me guys. And anyway, why are you even here? You don’t work here.”

Eddie unabashedly shrugs his shoulders. Really it shouldn’t come as a surprise to Steve. Eddie has somehow made himself a permanent 3rd party in their chaotic friendship after the events of last spring. Wherever Robin and Steve go, Eddie goes. And while he drives him crazy sometimes with his inability to stay still for even a minute and his big mouth, Steve has to admit that he enjoys having another person around.

“ Maybe I want to rent a movie.”

“ You never rent a movie! You just make us bring them around so you don’t have to pay.”

“ He’s got a point there,” Robin admits, snapping her mouth shut when Eddie throws her a sour look.

“ It’s called being smart, Harrington. You should look it up. Anyway, back to you. Why the long face? You know those frowns are gonna leave wrinkles and your face is the best thing you got going for you. No offense.”

“ I take full offense in that actually. “

He doesn’t. It’s the foundation of their friendship — teasing. It comes with the situation. Befriending someone from high school you never thought you could ever have anything in common with is weird. Not a bad weird, but weird either way.

“ Cut the crap. What’s wrong, Steve? “

Robin isn’t serious a lot. Steve thinks he might be able to count the times on one hand. But when she is, it’s a little terrifying. It makes you want to open up to her just so you don’t let her down. There’s a motherly quality in Robin being serious. Steve isn’t sure he likes it.

“ My dad had a go at me again. You know, the usual. “ You amount to nothing. You’re a disappointment. You put shame on the Harrington name””.

“ I’m sorry, dingus. “

“ I just — I can’t deal with it anymore. I need to get out of that house. Every time I look at my dad I see disappointment in his eyes and every time I look at mom I see — nothing. It’s like she doesn’t really care at all. I’m sick of it. “

“ What happened to that place you went to check out the other day? “

Steve lets out a humorless chuckle “ That was perfect and way too expensive for just me. And anyway, what do I need two bedrooms for anyway? Now if one of youuu guys — “

“ Nope. I love living with my parents. They drive me everywhere, they wash my clothes. You know I would but I’m also not stupid. I'm not leaving the nest when it’s soooo comfortable. And I’ll be off to college soon anyway so — “

It sends a shiver through him, the thought of Robin leaving. Robin and Nancy and all of his old friends. Everyone makes their way out of Hawkins at some point, hell even the kids will leave someday in the not-so-distant future. There is nothing here for them. Everyone leaves but him. Well, he and —

“Eddie?”

No answer. Instead, Eddie seems caught in his own thoughts once again. It happens sometimes. He’s probably planning another d&d campaign or something like that, things Steve knows absolutely nothing about. Sometimes it’s endearing, sometimes it’s aggravating.

“Munson? “

“ Huh? What was that? “

“ You wanna move in with me? “

“ Oh absolutely not, we’d end up killing each other. But I might have an idea.”

A smirk spreads on Eddie’s lips that leave Steve feeling a bit uneasy. It’s not that Eddie has bad ideas or that they come from a bad place, he just tends to go over the top a lot of times.

“I hate the way that sounds, do you hate the way that sounds? “ Steve asks, turning to Robin who only shrugs her shoulders in reply.

“You’re gonna thank me later, Harrington. Trust me.”

Dropping his cigarette, Eddie walks past his friends, tussling Steve’s hair in the process, and leaves without as much as a goodbye.

“ Sooo, that’s a completely normal reaction and not totally weird or anything.”

“ Steve, it’s Eddie. What do you expect? But hey, maybe he’ll surprise us and actually has a good idea on how to get you out of your predicament.“

Yeah, maybe. Only it’s way past the time that believing in a maybe filled Steve with any sort of hope.

Maybe stopped sounding like a possibility a while ago.

Maybe is a pipe dream.

Maybe is disappointment wrapped in a neat pretty bow.

"Yeah, maybe.”

“Steve Harrington?”

“ Mmmh.”

“ Pretty boy Harrington?”

“ The very same.”

For the first time since he brought it up (Y/N) lifts her eyes away from the boxes of vinyl records and properly looks at Eddie.

The record store has that certain kind of boxed-in smell. Like dust and leather. Like old books and cardboard. Like home. And it’s hers now. All hers. With all the good and bad.

And there’s no record store without Eddie Munson.

“I’m still trying to come to terms with the fact that you are friends with Steve and now you’re asking me to move in with him?”

“I’m not asking you to do anything. I’m just offering a solution to a problem. Steve is — surprisingly kind of cool. He has a stable income, not much but stable. And he’s not nearly as messy as I am. You can take it or leave it. Just think sleeping in the backroom of the record store doesn’t sound super comfortable. “

He’s right. He usually is, (Y/N) just hates to let him know that. Boy gets awfully smug when he knows he’s right.

She’s not sure how many more nights she can go sleeping on the thin futon she keeps at the back office, without ruining her back for all eternity. It’s stuffy in here and nights get awfully cold. Maybe renting a place with Steve Harrington isn’t the worst of all scenarios. But it feels an awful lot like admitting defeat. “I know what you’re thinking. This isn’t you failing, this is you accepting help from a friend, okay? “

There’s a sense of sincerity in Eddie’s deep brown eyes that she will never quite get used to. Beneath the teasing and the jokes there’s a bond so thick it can never be broken. A thread woven by two trailer park kids who never had anything but each other.

“ I hate that you know me so well.”

“ I know. But hey, if it makes you feel better you can return the favor.”

A smirk threatens to pull at the corner of his lips. Barely there but there after all. He knows that whatever he’s asking for, she’ll say yes. He’s her friend, her brother by choice not by blood. There is no way she’ll ever say no.

“ Oh yeah? And what favor would that be?”

“ Give me a job. “

“ Huh? “

“With everything that happened I can’t — I can’t continue dealing. And though I am officially acquitted that doesn’t mean shit in this hellhole of a town. So you can imagine how ecstatic businesses are about hiring Eddie Munson, acquitted in the eyes of the law but still a killer to all of Hawkins.”

She hates the way his voice shakes when he speaks. Though he tries to veil his pain with jokes and laughter, it doesn’t really work. There’s fear and sadness lacing his words. There was always a hidden sadness in this boy but ever since the incident of last spring, of which she still hasn’t heard the entire story, it’s more prominent, less hidden.

“ You’ll always have a job here if you want it. I hope you know that.”

“ Oh, I know.”

“ And I’ll be giving you all the shitty shifts.”

“I wouldn’t expect anything else. Aaand you’ll let me have band practice in the back? “

“ Of course.”

And when he smiles at her with the same smile of a 5-year-old Eddie, the one she ran through sprinklers with, the one whose ceiling she glued glow-in-the-dark stars to, she knows she did the right thing. And she’ll do it all over again for the rest of both their lives.

“Soooo I can tell Steve you’re in?”

“ You can tell Steve I’m willing to take a look at the place.”

An overgrown path flanked by elms and maple trees leads up to the property. It’s a kaleidoscope of reds and oranges, a few specks of green still trying to hold onto the last drops of summer. It feels like a dream, a watercolor painting of the perfect fall scenario. Picturesque. Beautiful.

The house is small but enough. It’s cute. It’s homey. There are two bedrooms, a small kitchen, an open area for living and dining, and a bathroom. The floor is brushed wood, the walls all painted a dusty off-white.

(Y/N) can see herself living here. She can almost smell the coffee rising from her mug as she lounges on the bench swing by the front porch. Can taste the lemonade and ice cream and beer she will hand out in summer as her friends hang out in the backyard. There’s a fireplace made for Christmas stockings and a hook on the front door to hang a floral wreath when springtime calls.

It’s easy to get lost in dreams of what could be. And then her eyes meet Steve across the way and she is being reminded of what is.

“ What do you think? “

I think it’s perfect.

I think I want to spend my whole life here.

I think I want to make this my home.

All those thoughts run through her head but none of them make it past her lips. She hardly knows this guy, there’s no way she’s gonna share all her heart's desires with him on a Tuesday morning when he hasn’t even had a coffee yet.

“ I think we’re gonna need a couch.”

She can almost see the gears turning and the lightbulb switching on as the words she spoke start registering in his mind. And then he smiles and she must admit, despite everything in her wanting to deny it, that Steve Harrington has a really great smile. One that almost brings a little glimpse of summer back into the cold fall morning.

“ So that’s a yes? “

“ Yes, Harrington. I think we should try this.”

He goes in for a hug then thinks better of it and pulls his arms quickly deciding to punch the air in excitement instead. There’s a nerdy quality to him. She wonders if he knows. It’s slightly endearing. Slightly.

“ Awesome. Cool. Great. Uh — I don’t have a couch but I do have a TV.” “ Cool! I have a coffee machine, a record player, and a cat.”

Mondays are a drag. Even when you’re your own boss. It’s one of the basic pillars of humanity. Mondays suck.

The air is brisk and sharp when (Y/N) makes her way out of her cozy warm bedroom and steps into the living area of the house. The floor is cold beneath her bare feet. They really need to invest in a rug or something, she thinks before her eyes meet the empty living room. A rug and a couch.

Steve’s door is still closed. The guy doesn’t get up before noon if he doesn’t have to go to work. Or maybe he just doesn’t wander out of his room. It’s been two weeks now and living with him is surprisingly easy. He’s not loud, he’s not messy. He’s barely around as it is. Most of the time he’s either at work or hanging out with this girl called Robin. Who (Y/N) thinks might be his girlfriend, she’s not entirely sure though.

The captain, (Y/N)’s black cat who used to live in the alleyway behind the record store, weaves his way around her ankles, his soft fur brushing against her skin.

"You hungry Cap? Let me brush my teeth real quick and I'll feed you, okay?"

Cap looks up at her with big black eyes and that's as good a reply as she can expect from the chubby cat.

The bathroom of their new house is small and cluttered. There’s makeup and lotions and hair products everywhere. The shower curtain is an ugly shade of washed-out blue and a little too short, which results in the bathroom partially flooding every time someone takes a shower.

Their bathroom is a bit of a mess but it’s a controlled mess, one (Y/N) is slowly but surely getting used to. What she doesn’t expect is to open the door and be greeted by a half-naked stranger.

Confusion and shock color the blonde girl’s face as she catches sight of (Y/N) through the mirror. An oversize shirt falls down her body, ending just below her butt, a sliver of red panties peeking out as she turns around.

“Holy fuck, who the hell are you?”

“You know what, I was gonna ask you the exact same thing.”

“I’m Leslie,” the girl says matter-of-factly as if not knowing should make (Y/N) feel some kind of shame. It reminds her of the way Tammy Thompson used to talk after coming back from her Nashville trip that one time in year 10.

“Good for you, what are you doing in my bathroom?” “ Uh — this is Steve’s bathroom.”

There’s a part of (Y/N) that wants to laugh. That wants to let out a hearty giggle and face the absolute ridiculousness of the situation. Though that part has to submit to the part of her that hates Monday mornings and hasn’t had a coffee yet.

“It’s also my bathroom. Do you see those lipsticks over there? You think those belong to Steve?”

Like the flip of a switch, the girl’s face falls. A deep unease settles over her features making her look much younger than the previous mask of post-coital confidence.

“Shit, are you the girlfriend?”

It’s not the first time someone has asked that question since they moved in together. It comes with the situation. There’s a certain expectation when people of different genders share a living space. (Y/N) thinks it’s absolute bullshit. Men and women can totally be just platonic friends. Not that her and Steve are even that.

“No I’m — you know what? Wait here.”

Life is just a sequence of battles being thrown your way. The art is to know which ones are worth fighting and which ones to pass on to your housemate.

A whiff of cold air slaps (Y/N) in the face as she opens the door to Steve’s room. The blue curtain flows with the breeze finding its way through the open window. It’s the first time she’s stepped foot in here since they properly moved in. His room smells clean, like crisp fall air and fresh linen. And a little bit like expensive cologne. There’s a dresser on one side of the room, his bed on the other. Other than that it’s pretty bare.

Wrinkled sheets hide the bottom half of Steve’s body, his chest proudly on display as he spreads out starfish-like on his bed. Man, that boy has a lot of chest hair. For a moment (Y/N)’s mind goes on a little time travel mission. Back to high school days. Back to when Steve was on the basketball team and took every chance to be on the skins team during training. Did he have as much chest hair then?

Before she can fully form the thought she shakes her head in displeasure. What business has she thinking about Steve Harrington’s fucking chest hair? Absolutely none.

“ Harrington, wake up.”

Nothing. Of course not.

God, she fucking hates Mondays.

“ Steve! Wake the fuck up!”

Absolutely no reaction.

Desperate times, desperate measures.

Grumbling to herself (Y/N) makes her way toward Steve’s sleeping form.

“I swear to god, if I end up seeing your penis I’m going to strangle you!”

In a swift motion, she grabs the pillow from beneath his head and smacks him across his stupid pretty face.

“What the fuck, (Y/N).”

“Oh, that does it then, physical violence?”

His voice is raspy and laced with sleep. It would be sexy if it was anyone but pretty boy Steve Harrington.

“What do you want?”

“I’d like to use my own bathroom in peace.”

Steve lifts his arms off of his face, regarding her with curious confusion. His eyebrow almost disappears behind his stupidly perfect hair. Where everyone else would sport an impressive case of bedhead, Steve’s mane looks perfectly styled as if every strand has been placed with precision. Maybe, she thinks, he’s some kind of wizard brewing potions and casting spells to keep his hair looking nice at all times.

Or maybe his hair is just that great.

“You need my help to go to the bathroom?”

“No, Harrington. I need you to get your friend out.”

“My frie — oh shit.”

He’s not naked. Thank god. He’s just wearing really tight boxer briefs. Gray ones.

It’s a face (Y/N) never thought she’d ever find out firsthand. Steve Harrington is a boxer briefs kinda guy. That’s another thing that comes with living together. Sooner or later you’ll figure out stuff about the other you never needed to know. You’ll know anyway. And from then on the knowledge is yours to do with as you see fit.

(Y/N) tries to push the info to the furthest corner of her brain, right there in a dusty box that holds most of what she learned in geometry class and the names of all the drunk girls she’s ever made friends with in a bar bathroom.

Then again, at least he’s not naked.

It takes Steve a full 25 minutes to convince Leslie that (Y/N) is in fact not his girlfriend and another 20 to get her out of the house. She leaves with a promise of him calling again. It’s a promise he has no intention of keeping, even (Y/N) can tell. It’s a soft lie. One meant not to hurt but to cushion the inevitable fall.

It’s gonna hurt anyway and for a second (Y/N) feels bad for the girl. Only for a second though. Her third cup of coffee washes away those feelings.

“I’m really sorry about that,” Steve exclaims as he drops down onto the floor next to her, his own cup of coffee in hand. “It’s not gonna happen again.”

“We should set up some rules.”

“For when we have dates over?”

“For living together.”

“Okay uh yeah — that makes sense. I guess.”

(Y/N) rips a page from one of the many notebooks lying around.

“What should I call it?” She asks before Steve takes the sharpie from her hand and scribbles something onto the blank page.

Steve and (Y/N)’s roommate rules.

“Okay sounds good. 1. Dates need to be out by morning or announced in advance. That cool with you?”

Steve nods his head in approval, hair shaking with every move.

“ Anything you wanna add? “

“ Mmmm.” His lips almost disappear with the way he sucks them in, trying to speak up but worried about upsetting her.

“ Spit it out, Harrington.”

“You play your music really loudly. And no offense but I can only do so much Bon Jovi before I want to stab a fork in my ear.”

“That is absolutely offensive and also blasphemy but I accept it. Put it on the list.”

A silence settles over the two as the morning sun rises above the horizon, throwing long rays of autumn sun through the windows. A scene quite serene and calm. If it wasn’t for the fact that (Y/N)’s ass is almost numb from sitting on the freezing cold floor.

“We need a fucking couch.” “ We really do.”

(Y/N)’s eyes fall towards Steve’s figure sitting next to her. His chest still bare. His legs still bare. The guy is still in his boxer briefs and one lone sock.

“Put some clothes on man.”

3. No walking around in underwear.

A shrill beeping sound wakes Steve from a dreamless slumber. For a second his mind travels to bad places. Dark memories clouded in fear. Sounds from a world like this but different. Warped and disfigured and wrong.

Then his mind fog disappears slowly but surely and he realizes that he is in fact not in the upside down but at home. At home in his own house in his own room in his own bed.

And the sound? That’s the fire alarm.

Oh shit, the fire alarm.

Throwing his blanket off of himself, Steve hurries out of his room and rounds the corner expecting the worst. Ever since — things started happening, he always expects the worst.

He’s not greeted by flames. There is no fire. Nothing is ablaze.

But there’s (Y/N), looking down sadly at a tray of what he thinks might be muffins. If they’re supposed to be dark chocolate they look perfect. If they’re supposed to be anything else they’re badly burned.

“ What the hell is going on? “ he asks as he pushed the button, turning off the horrible beeping sound.

“ I was stress-baking and ended up forgetting about the muffins while they were in the oven. I blame that fancy-ass wine yours.”

When he left home, Steve took a few bottles of the expensive Cabernet his parents keep in their wine cabinet. Not because he likes to drink it, in fact, it all tastes like bitter, overpriced grape juice to him. No, that was purely out of spite.

“Why are you drinking wine and baking at — “ he glances at the clock on the microwave, “midnight? “

A strand of hair falls in front of her face and for a split second, he wants to push it away, comb it behind her ear. Then he reminds himself that he hardly knows the girl. You don’t go around brushing people’s hair off their faces if you don’t know them. That’s something intimate. Like kissing the top of someone's head. Like tugging them in when they fall asleep on the couch.

“Just — everything with the record store is stressing me out. I’ve never had to manage a whole store by myself. I don’t know the first thing about owning a business. And right now it’s still going alright but what if I mess up? What if people stop coming by and the store stops making money and then we will never be able to buy a couch.”

He’s not seen her like that before. Sad. He hates it. Her mouth is pulled into a frown and where her eyes usually glimmer with mischief and excitement, they look dull and glassy now.

He wants it on record that the glimmer in her eyes was something he discovered purely by accident and not because he looks at her that much. It’s all purely circumstantial.

“So I don’t know anything about owning a business. But I do know one thing.”

“ Yeah? And what’s that?”

“ No matter what happens. People will always need music. People will always need a record store.”

Many times in his life, Steve found himself in situations knowing he said the wrong thing at the wrong time. Stupid intrusive thoughts have tumbled from his lips too many times to count.

This time, he thinks he might’ve said exactly what needed to be said. At least if her smile is any indication of it.

“ Thanks, Harrington. That’s a very sweet thing to say.”

He shrugs his shoulders casually as if it’s no big deal.

It’s a little bit of a big deal.

“And about that couch? We’ll figure that out, I promise. In the meantime — “

He squats down to the floor, opens the cabinet beneath the kitchen sink, and pulls out the thick roll of shiny silver duct tape.

“What are you doing, you weirdo? “

“I’m planning.”

“Planning what? “

“ Our future.”

With a determination that’s even foreign to himself, Steve struts into the living area and kneels down on where the couch would be.

“Come on, come sit on our couch.”

Slowly but surely he creates a, someone lopsided and imperfect, duct tape outline on the wooden floors.

He can almost see it. A cozy L-shaped sofa in the middle of the room. Maybe a nice forest green. Maybe shiny brown leather.

It doesn’t matter really. It will be theirs. In his own home. That he pays for with his own money. Where disappointment doesn’t try to grab and pull at him from every corner. Where he is just Steve and that’s enough.

"Hey, (Y/N)?"

"Yeah?"

"No more midnight baking, okay? Can we put that on the list?"

She laughs and nods.

"Yeah, that's okay with me. Hey, you know what?” (Y/N) asks as she drops down on the floor next to him, crossing her legs and handing a glass of wine to him, keeping one to herself.

“What’s that?”

“I really enjoy living with you. I think we’re a good team.”

“Yeah, I think so too.”

“You know what else?”

“Hmmm?”

“I can’t wait to decorate our house for Christmas.”

Our house.

Steve nods and takes a sip from the glass. Yup, still bitter and overpriced grape juice.

“Maybe by winter we’ll have a couch.”

Laughter echoes through the halls of the little house as it stands nestled between elms and maple trees. The night is inky black but the little light that comes from the house casts a glow into the dark.

There is no pain in this house. It doesn’t live here anymore. There is only laughter. And friendship. And the promise of something more. Something grand. Something that is entirely their own.

Sometimes a maybe is more than disappointment wrapped in a pretty bow.

Sometimes maybe is a chance.

Sometimes maybe is the beginning of something wonderful.

#steve harrington x reader #steve harrington x female reader #steve harrington x f!reader #steve harrington x you #steve harrington x y/n #steve harrington imagine #steve harrington imagines #steve harrington fanfic #steve harrington fanfiction #steve harrington writing #stranger things imagine #stranger things imagines #stranger things fanfic #stranger things fanfiction #steve harrington x fem!reader #borrowedandbluefic

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twicearoundthesun · 2 years

Text

[Single Parents MiMo Au]

“Fancy seeing you here.” A smooth voice cut through the park’s laughter and the rustling of the fall breeze.

Mina glanced up from her phone and smiled as Momo and Chaeyoung made their way up the path towards the playground. Dahyun squealed from the top of the playset, and Chaeyoung turned to her mother. Momo nodded, and Chaeyoung bolted towards her friend.

“Your kid also want to go to the park very abruptly when she realized it was after noon?” Momo laughed, sitting next to Mina and leaning back against the picnic bench she’d been at all alone.

“No, my kid asked me very specifically if we could go to the park at noon on Saturday for ‘no reason’. And then made sure we were fifteen minutes early.”

“Well, I didn’t raise Chaeyoung to be very on time, I guess.” Momo chuckled. “And I guess we should tell them that if they want to see each other they can just ask.”

“Eh, let them have their little secrets.”

“Yours might be able to have her little secrets. When mine keeps too many secrets it winds up with something on fire or broken in half.”

Mina chuckled. “Well, I’ll keep that in mind for when she comes over.” She froze. “I mean- if she wants to and you’re okay with it.”

“She hasn’t stopped talking about Dahyun once. I think she’s got a little friend crush. I’m sure you’ll be hosting my little monster soon.”

“Dahyun would be delighted to hear that, I’ve heard just about every knock-knock joke Chaeyoung’s told her in the past week. Twice.”

“Oof.” Momo wrinkled her nose. “Sorry, that’s my sister-in-law’s doing. Nothing that woman loves more than a dad joke.”

“Your sister in law… Would that be Jihyo’s wife?” Mina thought back to the short woman she’d been introduced to when she’d seen Momo on her run a week or two ago. She’d realized too late she’d interrupted something – both had obviously been crying before she’d gotten there. Mina was no extrovert, but even she could usually read a situation better than that. She’d blamed it on her excitement to say hi to her new friend.

“Yes it would. Jeongyeon.” Momo smiled. “I mean… Technically Jihyo’s my sister-in-law, too. But she’s not as awful with the dad jokes. Jihyo’s more of a mom joke kinda gal.”

Mina paused. Sister-in-law… So there is, or was, a spouse involved. Momo and her had commiserated about doing everything single-handedly, but she realized now that Momo had never actually referred to herself as single. Had she mistaken the woman’s friendliness for something more? Did Momo have a spouse, off in the army or studying abroad or… Mina felt a little bit of her deflate. She shook it off.

“Are they parents?” She continued the subject. “Jeongyeon and Jihyo. I mean, those jokes are certainly corny enough.”

“Not yet. Trying.” Momo nodded. “I mean – they’re trying to adopt. They’d be amazing parents. They helped me so much with Chaeyoung, in the beginning, when everything was so… much. You’d really have a hard time finding two people with more love to give. But…”

“But…”

She frowned. “You know how it is. People are prejudiced, even now, even when literally the two most kindhearted and responsible people on the face of the planet are sitting in front of them telling them they’re willing to do whatever a kid needs and more.”

Mina nodded. “Unfortunately.” She whispered.

Momo took a breath. “Sorry to bring the mood down.”

“No, I asked.” She said lightly. “Well, she seems lovely. I hope that works out for them.”

“Thanks. Me too.”

They settled into a comfortable silence, watching Dahyun and Chaeyoung chase each other around the playground. Mina winced as Dahyun fell off one of the lower platforms. Chaeyoung was quick to throw herself on the ground next to her so she wasn’t alone. They seemed fine.

When she turned back to Momo she looked deep in thought, brows furrowed slightly. Maybe a little conflicted. Mina tried not to stare at the woman’s beautiful side profile, finding the rosebushes beyond the fence suddenly very interesting as she looked up.

Momo cleared her throat and Mina’s eyes snapped back to meet hers.

“Hey, uh.” She said suddenly. “I know you’re sorta newer to town and…Do you want to grab some food sometime?” Mina couldn’t help but find it cute how her cheeks turned rosy, the confident Momo she’d met all but disappearing. She couldn’t have misread the situation, right?

“I’d love that.” She smiled. “Maybe you could show me where to get a good coffee, too? I haven’t found a favorite shop yet.”

Momo beamed. “Of course. I know just the place.”

“Perfect. I’m free tomorrow morning, and I’m sure I could get my sister to watch the kid.”

“It’s a date, then.” There was a twinkle in Momo’s eye as she said it.

“A date.” Mina nodded. She turned back to the playground, attempting to hide the blush creeping up her neck. She felt Momo’s eyes on her, but when she looked again, she was looking ahead, barely containing an excited smile.

#Mimo au #:)#mimo #mina #momo #twice au #twice fic #little bb dubchaeng too

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lizisshortforlizard · 1 year

Text

Living Dangerously - Chapter 23

Jurassic Park’s animal handlers: none of them ever mentioned by name in Michael Crichton’s original novel. Who were they? What were their lives like on Isla Nublar? Did any of them survive the disaster?

A year in the life of those responsible for the care of the dinosaurs. Many people would kill to have their jobs.

But would they die for it?

Jurassic Park novel/Jurassic Park film (1993)

Viewpoint: 3rd person female oc

Wordcount: 70.7k (23 Chapters) [incomplete]

Warnings: dinosaur attack/car crash, brief mention of parental abuse, alcoholism, f-bombs and other bad language

Tagging: @heresthefanfiction @ocappreciation @arrthurpendragon @howlingmadlady @wordspin-shares @starryeyes2000 ( @themaradaniels are you interested? Totally fine if not!)

Read on Ao3

Chapter 22 | Chapter 24

Owner of a Lonely Heart - Yes

"Are you feeling better?"

"Yes." A blatant lie. How could she be? Her heart was broken. Lizzy blinked wearily, her eyes were puffy and sore from crying most of the night. She was running on empty. "Are you? When was the last time you had a day off?"

"I honestly don't remember." Muldoon answered after thinking for a moment. "Every time I have a day off something bad happens. Usually involving you. Now, Sorna."

He explained the situation to her, in full. Site B was experiencing behavioural problems with a new species, someone had gotten an involuntary dactylectomy, could the resident ethologist arrange a visit to work it out?

”Did they take?” Lizzy asked.

”Take what?”

”Dr Ruso’s fingers, did they take? Is she alright?”

“The raptor ate them.”

”Oh, bugger.” Lizzy went faintly green, not helped by her excessive caffeine intake that morning. “Down in one or did she chew them first? Never mind, I don’t want to know.”

“The wording in the report is ‘consumed’, I believe.”

“Outstanding. This wee troublemaker does sound interesting." Lizzy admitted. "Even though I much prefer herbivores. Why can't the baby come here? You know I hate flying?”

"Like I told Baker, the paddock isn't ready."

"So she doesn't go in the paddock, right?"

“I draw the line at you keeping a dinosaur in your room, Armstrong.”

”Not my room!” She scoffed. “…Kathy’s room.”

”They won’t send the damn thing here without an action plan. And I want you prepared if and when you fly over. So, any ideas?”

"I'm a bit stumped." Lizzy admitted. She was so tired and scrambled she just couldn't think. "But I know someone who might be helpful. Someone who thinks outside the box. You won't like it.”

”Why not?”

”Because you already know her too.”

***

“You ring h-“

“No, you ring her.” Muldoon frowned at Lizzy. They were both sitting on couches in front of the phone in Hammond's bungalow. John-dear-call-me-John was back on the mainland, so they’d commandeered somewhere more private for the top-secret matter, where they wouldn’t be interrupted.

Lizzy wrinkled her nose. “She doesn’t like me.”

“And she likes me even less. The feeling’s mutual. Do it.”

“Gerry could-“

“This isn’t a family reunion. Go on, pretend she’s your best mate."

"Oh, no bother! While I'm at it I'll see if I can fake a Scottish accent too!” Lizzy pulled a face at him but sighed in resignation and dialled the number of Dr Sarah Harding’s last known whereabouts.

“Put her on speaker.” Muldoon insisted.

“Why?”

“I want to know if she's being uncooperative.”

Lizzy rolled her eyes. Bullshit, you just want to know if she calls you names.

It took so long for Sarah's team member in Kenya to track her down that they started to wonder if she was keeping Lizzy waiting on purpose as a power move.

“Well, well, well. Lizzy Armstrong.” Dr Harding the Younger did not sound at all pleased, when she eventually deigned to answer the phone. “What has it been, three years we’ve managed to avoid each other?”

Lizzy laughed, trying to sound brave and not at all like she was going through a break-up. “Hey, Sarah-“

“What’s Costa Rica like? Loud, I imagine.”

“Oh-“ The insult wasn’t lost on her. “It’s great. Just great.”

“How’s Dad?” Sarah asked in her West Coast drawl.

“A flirtatious nightmare.”

“Sounds about right.” She replied dryly. "Hey, don’t fall for it, okay? I’ve already had one stepmom. Though I should let you know, he prefers blondes."

Get to the point Muldoon mouthed at Lizzy.

"Listen, I need a favour."

“You need a favour?” Sarah mimicked her voice. “You want my advice? Why is that?”

“Got a Carnivore problem. I’m Herbivores. Always have been."

“Not everyone on that island is." She said accusingly. "Are you telling me that Robert Muldoon is clueless too?”

“I will go back to Kenya-“ Muldoon said quietly. “And I will throttle her.”

“I heard that.” Sarah crowed triumphantly. “He’s there, isn’t he? Hi, Robert!"

"Just answer her questions, Harding."

"Aw, you're getting mad at me already, this is like old times!”

“What happened between you two?” Lizzy whispered, how had she ended up in the middle of an international argument?

“Hurry up, this is costing money.” Muldoon dodged the question. “Get it out of her somehow, threats, blackmail, talk her to death-"

"Right. Sarah, someone had their fingers bitten off."

"Then just euthanise the damn thing and be done. You're working with zoo animals now, Lizzy, get used to it. At least if you’re chomped, you already have a lawyer.”

The sharp ache in her chest took her by surprise. Not anymore she didn’t.

"No, listen-” Lizzy felt she was about to snap any moment, which her fellow ethologist would simply revel in.

“Sarah…” Muldoon warned.

“First name? Shit! You are annoyed.” She chortled. “Okay, fine, I’ll cut the bull. Shoot.”

“The woman who lost her fingers, she maintains the animal tricked her. It's showing unprecedented intelligence. More than they anticipated. They-“ Lizzy hummed, then decided to trust Sarah with more information, even if it made InGen look bad. She had to give if she wanted to get. “They can’t manage it. And we can’t euthanise either. Not an option-“

“Right, I’m going to stop you there.” Sarah interrupted. “I don’t even want to know what kind of science experiment Dad’s fallen into over there, God knows John Hammond's a tricky devil, but you gotta nip that in the bud.”

“Why, what is it?”

“It’s dominance hierarchy.” Sarah Harding announced, as if it were obvious. “Dominance gone way too far.”

“But that doesn’t make sense, this is a female.” Lizzy countered. Females normally didn't have the hormone levels which led to aggression of this scale.

“Female raptors-“ Sarah started.

“Raptors?!” Lizzy squeaked. How did she know?!

“-as in a bird of prey; what did you think I meant, doofus?” She could hear the disapproval positively dripping from her tone, all the way from Kenya. "Female raptors are the most dominant sex. And usually bigger than the males. Ha, lucky for some.”

”But it can’t be, she hasn’t anyone to be dominant over!”

”Except her handlers. And there aren’t any males at all, so…” Muldoon shrugged. “I suppose Harding might be correct.”

“Do you think-“ Lizzy started, then stopped, shaking her head. It seemed pretty far-fetched.

It was known that reptile embryos could change sex while still in the egg, depending on the temperature of the outside environment on the other side of the shell. The difference between male and female was less than a few degrees Celsius. Furthermore, Lizzy had a fact niggling at the edge of her thoughts, just out of grasp. Something about adult females of certain species being able to change sex in the absence of males. Was it fish? Or maybe amphibians?

Could dinosaurs change their sex in response to either temperature or an uneven breeding ratio?

Increased testosterone would explain some of the baby raptor’s aggression.

Were the embryologists, was Dr Wu really positive beyond doubt that the infant was female? Had anyone actually checked? But these animals were custom-designed in a lab, with all their genes carefully selected, so realistically, what were the chances?

Sarah spoke again, distracting Lizzy, and the thought was simply gone from her foggy brain, messed up from lack of sleep and heartache.

“Uhhh, still here, losers. But your reaction when I said raptor made me guess this is a bird species you’re talking about. Maybe a super-rare one. I’ll get it out of Dad somehow, even if you won’t tell me.”

Close, but no cigar, Sarah.

”Let me guess, captive-bred? Single infant to survive past hatching? Spoiled only child syndrome?” Sarah kept questioning.

”Correct on all counts.” Lizzy confirmed.

“Hmm. Has it imprinted?”

"Huh?"

"Im-print-ed." Sarah spelled it out. "It’s a bird. Don’t make me spell it out here, Lizzy."

"Hang up." Muldoon told Lizzy. "No more details."

"No, no, no, c'mon-"

Lizzy panicked and slammed the phone down with a quick bye Sarah, thanks!

"Interesting input. Even for her.”

“Oh, she is very good. It’s infuriating.” Lizzy wondered if her fourth cup of coffee in two hours was overkill. So tired.

"Your first idea paid off, so what's the next one?"

“I need to talk to Isaac.” Lizzy decided. “About this raptor behaviour, and imprinting. He's our resident bird guy.”

”Too many people know about this already. We probably should have gotten Harding to agree to an NDA.”

”Take too long. I’ll tell Isaac as little as possible. Casually drop it into the conversation. Oh-“ Lizzy snapped her fingers. “Larry worked with herps. Back in Oz. I could speak to him, too.”

He was such a fountain of knowledge on reptiles, Lizzy hadn’t been able to resist calling him Crocodile O’Reilly.

“Harris first. One at a time. I’ll leave it with you.” Armstrong looked better now, he thought. She'd started in Hammond's bungalow paler than usual and subdued, but arguing with Harding about behaviour had brought a bit of colour back into her cheeks.

Good.

Their radios crackled, echoing through the empty rooms.

“Robert, are you around, over?” Richardson sounded anxious. "That depends." Was the answer.

“Got a slight issue in the Triceratops paddock that requires your…considerable expertise.”

“What now?”

“Trikes charged Harding’s Jeep. He and Julian are stranded in the paddock, no radios. Could you, eh- could you go in there and rescue them?”

"Oh, right enough, look." Lizzy stared and pointed at one of the video monitors in Hammond's living room, displaying an overturned Jeep in the middle distance.

“Do it yourself, bloody prat.” Muldoon muttered under his breath, before replying to Richardson with something much less insulting, then to Lizzy. "Why is it my job to fix everything?"

"Maybe stop being so good at it?" Lizzy shrugged as she grabbed her water bottle, assuming she'd be tagging along to lend a hand.

"Well, congratulations, Armstrong. For once, it’s not you causing mayhem.”

Lizzy groaned as she followed him out of the bungalow. “They better be okay. I really, really don’t want to phone Sarah twice in one day, 'specially not to tell her that Gerry’s been gored by a Triceratops!”

***

Tom cornered them as they were quickly loading the tranquiliser guns into the Jeep before heading out on the rescue mission.

“Where have you two been?” He looked them up and down suspiciously. "Kathy put me with Liz again today, but I haven't been able to find her for ages."

“Obviously weren't trying hard enough.” Muldoon looked less than thrilled. "You're coming too, then?"

“We’re the only others that can fire these dang things, since your Team Leader refuses to learn how to use one.”

“Not for lack of trying.” Lizzy muttered. She’d done her best to persuade Kathy to take a few practice shots as a bare minimum, but she wouldn’t hear of it. Guns were dangerous. And that was that, as far as the pacifist from Minnesota was concerned. "Oi, get in the back, you."

Tom narrowed his eyes but didn't argue. Time was wasting.

"Got any guesses why the Triceratops have taken such an intense dislike to our park transport?" Muldoon asked as they gunned it down the maintenance road to the paddock. “They’ve been fine until now.”

Tom yelled up front to them. ”Travis said they mixed in two juveniles a few days ago. There’s eight in the group now. Told me they got protective of the kids. Made a ring around them pointing outwards.”

”Like-" Lizzy started.

"Elephants." Muldoon finished for her. "Fan-bloody-tastic."

"How fast do these go?" Lizzy asked, tapping the Jeep door beside her.

"Probably not fast enough. Fast costs extra around here." Muldoon reminded her of Hammond's rather ironic go-to phrase.

"Oh." She replied with little humour. "Oh, wonderful."

***

"This way seems really stupid." Lizzy protested.

"Oh, I agree. But this is the way I've been told to go about it, since I'm not in charge of this species, he is. You two can still leave if you want to." Muldoon said dully as Richardson opened the paddock gates for them.

Lizzy and Tom looked at each other, but neither of them moved a muscle. They knew the risk but neither of them were willing to let Muldoon go it alone. It was madness but they had no other choice if they wanted Gerry and Julian out of the paddock any time soon. Help was a long way away.

"Seatbelts off, then."

"Why?" Tom asked.

"Just have a feeling. If they attempt to flip us..."

Better if you're able to get out of the way sharpish. Lizzy knew the end of that sentence. There was a reason you never bothered with a seatbelt in safari vehicles.

Kathy's quiet voice addressed them over the radio as they proceeded through the gates.

"Muldoon, I don't suppose-"

"Yes, she's with me."

"Oh, balls. Of course she is!" Kathy very nearly swore. "Bring her back in one piece, or don't bother coming home, over."

"What about me?" Tom grumbled.

Some distance downhill, the trikes had gathered around their watering hole towards the rear of their enclosure. Destroying InGen property was apparently thirsty work. Lizzy grabbed the binoculars out of the glovebox and counted. Sure enough, six adults, one significantly larger than the others, and two little ones in the middle. All accounted for.

"We still haven't had any radio contact from Yamada and Harding, either their handsets are smashed, thrown on the ground, or still in the Jeep I suppose, but I'm fairly optimistic-"

"Ha!" Lizzy's laugh escaped before she could stop it.

Muldoon gave her a sharp look. "-fairly hopeful, they've made for those trees over to the right. Bit cramped for the adults to get in amongst them. Kennedy-"

"Way ahead of you, boss." Tom was loading up, checking the sights, ready to discourage any dinosaurs from approaching them.

"How's your aim?" Lizzy asked. She'd heard 'pretty darn good' but not seen for herself so far.

“Listen here. I can hit a playing card side-on from fifty feet."

"Fortunately, trikes are quite a lot bigger than playing cards." She couldn't help teasing him.

"Shut up."

"Quiet, you two." Muldoon drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. "Let's get closer to the trees, it's our best bet. Harding and Yamada can run to join us, before the herd gets suspicious.”

”And then we make our way out slow and steady so as not to piss them off again?”

”That’s the idea.”

They trundled closer, but their destination was still a good half kilometer away. As she got a better look into the dip of the land where the water was situated, Lizzy spotted the wreck of the other Jeep.

"Oh, shit." She whispered. "They've really gone to town on that."

"See anything else?" Muldoon asked. Any bodies? was what he meant.

"Nope. No sign. I'll keep an eye on the herd until we reach the trees." Lizzy confirmed.

They were halfway there when through the lens she noticed the larger trike raise her head at the sound of the Jeep rumbling closer. The dinosaur’s frame visibly stiffened, and Lizzy swore she saw the nostrils flare as the frilled head sway slightly back and forth. They were upwind from the herd, the dinosaur could smell them and her body language meant only one outcome. Lizzy had spent enough time in Africa to know what was about to happen.

"She's going to charge." She warned.

Muldoon instantly hit the brakes and cut the engine in one movement. "Are you sure?"

The next few seconds were critical.

Lizzy didn't dare blink, holding her breath. Nothing else happened, and for a moment, she thought they might have gotten away with it.

Then the big trike tossed her head and snorted angrily, moving forwards in their direction. First at a slow amble, then quickly switching to the deliberate trot of a bull elephant who was going to teach you a lesson for daring to trespass on his land.

"Definitely charging!" Lizzy threw the binoculars on the floor and looked for something to hold on to. "Move!"

She was thrown back against her seat by how quickly Muldoon got the Jeep going again, bouncing over the uneven ground.

Have to get the trees between us and her. Circling back to the gate will take too long.

"I can take her down." Tom matter-of-factly said and got ready to stand up in the back of the moving Jeep.

"Too late for that." Lizzy yelled back at him. "She's mad. It'll make things worse."

If Triceratops were anything like their modern-day counterpart, the rhinoceros, attempting to tranquillise could just fuel them with more rage before they finally collapsed. And it was unlikely the dose Tom was using would be big enough to drop her. The trike was simply too angry. But she could do a lot of damage with a few extra seconds of berserker-mode. Shooting at her now could cost lives.

God, she moves quick. Lizzy felt her stomach rising into her throat when she realised they might not make it to the trees in time. It occurred to her that nobody on the island had seen the trikes at full speed before. It was just assumed they weren't fast enough to be that dangerous. Then again, hippos didn't look like they were built for speed either, they were soft wobbly herbivores. But they were one of the most deadly animals on the African continent.

"Uh, you might want to step on it, boss." Tom was rapidly losing his cool.

"Good, because I've been watching my speed until you said something!"

The trike disappeared from view as she pursued them up the hill, and in a way that was worse, not knowing where she had gone. Wondering if she had given up or would suddenly appear ahead of them, cutting them off.

Then the head frill, followed by the rest of the dinosaur appeared, now at an angle, side-on to the Jeep instead of behind them. The hill hadn’t slowed her down at all.

Muldoon knew it was far too late to change direction, he'd end up wrapping the Jeep around a tree trunk. But she was headed straight for intercepting the passenger side, where Lizzy was sitting.

"Guys, guys, guys, watch out-" Arnold's voice reached them over the radio, for once sounding alarmed, along with him was Kathy's desperate cry of do something, Ray!

The Jeep was trapped between the dinosaur and the trees, but the trunks were too close together, too sharp an angle for the vehicle to fit through to safety. And slowing down was not an option.

They could only hope to outrun her, but she was close now, alarmingly close.

Time ground to a standstill in the few moments before the crash. Lizzy saw the lumbering shoulder of the Triceratops in slow-motion headed straight for a collision course with the flimsy metal door beside her. She could see every detail of the dinosaur's skin, dusted with red river-mud, before-

“Liz, move!” Tom yelled at her.

“Oh, shi-“ She leaned away, scrabbling at her seat, but it was too late. The Triceratops tossed it’s head and-

BANG

A hellish screech of dinosaur horn on metal and the whole Jeep rocked, the horizon skewed sickeningly and vertigo rushed in as their ears popped from the impact.

…

Lizzy blinked and shook her head, registering there was broken glass everywhere, all over the Jeep floor and the dashboard, in her hair. The windscreen was completely gone. She wasn’t on the passenger seat anymore, and the space where her thigh had been, moments ago, was now occupied by the crumpled-in door. She hadn't hit her head and blacked out, but she appeared to have teleported two feet to the right.

Her legs were still hanging over the central console, miraculously unharmed. And the rest of her body was wedged between the steering wheel and Muldoon. They'd been spun around by the impact and were facing into the trees, low branches poking through the non-existent windshield.

“Come in guys, come in, aw jeez, aw shit-“ Arnold’s voice jolted them back to reality. Still alive. Still on Nublar.

"Are you two alright?"

Tom managed a shaky Jesus H. Christ from behind them. He’d scooted to the driver’s side in the nick of time, grabbing hold of a seatbelt and pulling himself.

Good thing we didn’t have our seatbelts on.

Lizzy quickly took stock, she could thankfully move all her limbs. Everything important was where it was meant to be. "Think so." She pointed at the branches in front of them. " Hey look, we made it.”

“Get back with Kennedy, can’t bloody move.”

Tom reached over, grabbing Lizzy around her waist and yanking her into the back seat. They huddled together, the rear passenger side had also taken a thrashing and was practically concave, half as long as it was before.

“Just a scrape, I think. As long as the wheel arch isn't knackered…” Muldoon was muttering.

“Just a scrape?” Lizzy was incredulous. “You call that a scrape?!”

"Sshh, quit yelling." Tom elbowed her. Her ears hadn't popped back yet. "Goddamn, where'd she go, anyway"

All three of them searched, looking around the paddock frantically for the dinosaur.

But the big trike seemed satisfied by their lack of movement, deeming the Jeep no longer posed a threat. She was trotting off jauntily back to her herd, grunting as she went.

"So how do we get out of here now, hm?" Lizzy asked. "Two Jeeps and five people down. Think Richardson will give it a try next?”

”Not bloody likely.”

“You folks okay down there?” Came a faint yell from somewhere above them. The West Coast drawl of Gerry Harding, thankfully alive.

"Armstrong?" Muldoon turned around. "Do me a favour and put that ridiculously loud voice of yours to good use."

Lizzy yelled for Gerry and Julian to come and join them. Now.

After a moment there was rustling and thumping from a short distance away and both men dropped to the ground from where they’d been perching in the trees waiting for rescue.

“Hold on, make sure I can turn the damn thing first, or it might be a sprint back to the gate after all.”

Lizzy recalled the mistake she’d made of walking through a field of cows on a school trip. Most of them had calves, she and her friends had feared for their lives and ended up throwing themselves over the gate at the other side. But getting out of the trike paddock could be so much worse.

The Jeep reversed and then limped around in a large circle, making an ominous crunching noise every few seconds.

Lizzy leaned over. “Are you sure we shouldn’t walk? They clearly don’t like the Jeeps anymore.”

”Oh, undoubtedly. But it’s not you that gets a bollocking for losing two Jeeps in one day. Richardson will find a way to blame me for the other one, somehow."

"But - he's the one that told you..." Lizzy pointed out.

"Yes, I know. Everybody in."

“In where?” Harding complained. “You’re missing half your seats, Muldoon.” “Hang off the back.” Tom said, helping Julian up and keeping hold of his arm. “Hitch a ride, boys."

"For Christ's sake..." Harding muttered.

"C'mon Gerry, hurry up!" Lizzy tried to move things along.

"She's heard us." Tom stared into the distance. "Incoming."

"Guys, you gotta make a move-" Arnold warned at the same time.

Sure enough, there was the faint sound of thundering feet, and it was all systems go.

Muldoon started to move off while Gerry was still reaching for Lizzy’s hand, trying to climb her side of the Jeep.

She grabbed for him before he was left behind and attempted to haul him onto the vehicle, but he weighed significantly more than she did, and missed his footing on the way up. Lizzy was pulled clean out of her seat.

“Fuck!” Lizzy shrieked as her feet were suddenly waving in the air. She tried to hook her knee on something, anything for traction but she was slipping anyway while Gerry continued to overbalance, the material of the seats leaving scorch marks on her legs.

“I got you-“ Tom fumbled and grabbed at her belt with his free hand before she slid out of reach, roaring at the effort of having to keep three bodies from flying to the ground.

Lizzy’s bad shoulder was screaming as they raced along. She could hear the trike bellowing from dangerously close by, feeling rather than hearing her feet pounding the Earth beneath them through the Jeep tyres.

She couldn't bear it, the pain was so bad that she just closed her eyes and hoped. Prayed she and Gerry would make it out alive.

Can’t let go, can’t let go. Can't let him fall.

Gerry mistook her pain for fear and started telling her over and over: it's okay, it's fine honey, we're almost there- while wondering himself if he was about to feel a trike horn in his undercarriage.

And then, safety. The reassuring rattle of one set of paddock gates closing behind them, and then the second. Kathy and Ray cheering over the radio. Richardson yelling something about them all being stupid bloody idiots, and Muldoon replying with a few choice words that silenced him quickly.

They had made it. Somehow.

Lizzy just hung limply over the back of the seat even after Gerry had let go of her hands, willing some life back into her frozen arms.

"Oh, boy-" He dismounted the Jeep bed with an effort and doubled over once he was back on solid ground, hands on his knees. "Ol’ pacemaker’s getting a workout today. I haven’t climbed a tree in years.”

"Everything alright? Still four of you back there?" Muldoon asked, sounding thoroughly annoyed.

"Oh Christ!" Lizzy finally got out of the Jeep herself, thinking she might topple over, her knees were shaking so much. "Let's never do that again."

”Agreed.”

“Still in one piece, Liz?” Tom patted her shoulder, and she nearly threw up. Lizzy winced before she could hide it, hoping nobody had seen.

“Just about.” She fibbed through clenched teeth, trying not to think about how she would be in agony the next morning if she didn’t get hold of some ice soon. Her joint was complaining mightily after the effort of stopping fifty-something Gerry from stumbling to his doom.

She leaned on the un-wrecked side of the Jeep, trying to make the world stop spinning.

“What’s wrong with that shoulder?” Muldoon had noticed and confronted her.

Tears pricked in the corners of her vision and she hastily blinked them away. “It’s fine. Just playing up again.”

He wasn’t convinced. ”You aren’t living up to your family name.”

“Ha-ha! Have you tried to lift Gerry recently?”

“Hey!” Came a yell from nearby. “Have you tried María's ice cream?"

They squared up to each other, but Lizzy was the first to look down.

“Leave it.” She warned in a low voice, tired of keeping up the fight today, of all days. “Please. It doesn’t matter. Leave it.”

"I'm serious, Armstrong. You're not alright, are you?"

She yielded. "I need a bit of ice. Maybe a lot of ice."

"Let’s get you back then. Won’t find any out here.”

***

They’d abandoned everyone, still arguing over who was going in which Jeep back to base and whether to bother retrieving the smashed vehicle or leave it in the paddock as a sort of Triceratops stress toy, 'enrichment' they would call it.

Muldoon had given up on trying to find ice cubes in the kitchen, since they would melt too quickly anyway, and was trying to chip a small glacier out of the upright freezer with a knife while Lizzy waited perched on the countertop, cradling her arm.

“That’s the shoulder you injured when you were in school, and you wouldn’t tell me how.” “Uh-huh.”

“Do you want Harding to check it? I’d dare say he owes you.”

“No. I’m fine. What’s next, inside leg measurement?” She grumbled.

“I have the same problem. Mine is from years and years of shooting. Go on, why does yours ache when it rains?”

Lizzy was exhausted. She wanted to take her ice, and go find a nice bit of floor to lie down on for a while. It didn't even have to be clean. Talking to Sarah and the trike incident had distracted her temporarily, but now she had time to think, her heart was hurting again.

But maybe this was as good a time as any to tell someone other than S-...her now-ex, as much as she hated reliving it. How much more traumatised could she possibly become in one day?

“My mother did it. Dislocated it.”

“Your own mother?”

“Yep. Popped it right out of the joint. Made a horrible noise.” Lizzy was terse, clipping her syllables. “She was drunk at the time. I’d like to say it was an accident, but...-“

Well, that complicates things. Muldoon realised.

Lizzy kept talking. “-I didn’t look after it properly once it was popped back in, cue me shooting from the wrong side for the rest of my life.”

“Bloody Hell, Armstrong…”

”Happy? That you finally got it out of me?”

”Not sure.” That was true enough. Maybe he preferred the not-knowing.

”Don’t worry, now we can both pretend it didn’t happen.” She smiled tersely as she held out a clean tea towel for her own personal iceberg.

“Will that last you?”

”Maybe half an hour.” Lizzy nodded.

“Anything else I can do?” To him at least, the sentiment fell a bit flat. Muldoon wasn’t sure he’d be up for telling anyone about an experience like hers either.

“Forget I ever told you that. Thanks for the ice.” Lizzy hopped down from the counter and hurriedly made her escape, in search of a flat surface to collapse on.

***

Thanks for reading!

Remember that seatbelt safety is very important if you *aren’t* on a dinosaur island. Please buckle up

#jurassic park oc #living dangerously #welcome to jurassic park #oc: dr lizzy armstrong #jurassic park female oc #jurassic park #jurassic park fanfiction #my writing #my fanfiction #gerry harding #ray arnold #robert muldoon x female oc #robert muldoon #sarah harding

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familyvideostevie · 2 years

Note

sorry...... 19 with Steve plz your work is great

no need to be sorry! thank you :) a little flirty at the end, so 16+ please!

“if we get caught kissing we’re dead but let’s risk it” __ "This is a pretty dark corner, don't you think?"

You jump a little bit, barely keeping your grip on the tape in your hand. Steve's grinning at you from where he leans on one of the romance shelves. He kicks your cart of returns to be sorted and you frown.

"Steve," you chide. You've only been seeing each other officially for a couple of weeks, so you haven't told Keith yet. It's made work more fun and much harder at the same time. More fun now that you're not pining over Steve constantly. Harder because now you have to deal with your heart fluttering every time he's close and not being able to touch him.

"Steve," he mocks. "Glad you haven't forgotten my name."

"Can I help you?" If you look at him too long you'll have so much blood in your cheeks that you'll topple over. He steps closer to you and your breath hitches. He hears and is delighted, eyes sparkling and nose wrinkling. He looks so smug you can hardly stand it.

"You sure can," he says. "See, I've been up at the desk while you've been sorting for, let's see --" he checks his watch "--two hours now. Which means I haven't touched you in two hours."

"You're such a flirt, Steve," you say. "We're going on a date after closing."

"And you expect me to wait till then? When you're looking like that?" His eyes run the length of you and you huff, considering you're in your Family Video vest and jeans. But damn if he doesn't make you feel wanted.

"You look good, too," you mumble. And he does -- his long sleeve cream shirt that's unbuttoned just enough at the top so you can see his chest hair. And those jeans that fit him so well it's almost a crime. Steve always looks so pretty you could cry.

"What was that?" he asks, just to be annoying. You glare at him. He winks and steps into your space after a quick glance around, his hand coming to rest on your hip. You set the tape down on the cart.

"Now, hear me out. I had an idea." He licks his lips and you can see right through him.

"Steve, if we--"

"If we get caught kissing we're dead, I know," he murmurs. "But let's risk it." Despite his bravado, he doesn't move closer until you nod, eyes already closing by the time he's finished talking. Steve would never make you do anything you didn't want to, and oh, how you want this. Keith never comes onto the floor anyway.

You swear you lose time when Steve kisses you. He sucks on your bottom lip gently, tenderly, swallowing the small sounds you make before he licks into your mouth. Sometimes you give as good as you get, but today you just let yourself be kissed. You let Steve do all the work, running your hands through his hair as he languidly explores, experiments, discovers you.

"Does anyone work here?" You pull away from Steve with a gasp. His lips are a little puffy and slick with your spit, his hair a riot from your fingers.

"Be right there!" you call to the customer at the front and it comes out hoarse. Steve's hands straighten your vest and hair, thumbs gentle on your face as he tidies you up.

"Sorry," he whispers, grinning, not sorry at all. "Want me to take care of them?" You roll your eyes, your heart still beating fast.

"You need to get that under control first, I think." You send a pointed glance below his beltline where you can see the strain of his denim. He sputters, cheeks flushing even deeper. You plant a quick kiss on his cheek before heading back towards the desk.

Yeah, working with your boyfriend is going to be fun.

#steve harrington fanfic #steve harrington fluff #steve harrington x reader #steve harrington x y/n #steve harrington x you #steve harrington x gender neutral reader #steve harrington x gn!reader #steve harrington blurb #blurb #emma's asks #steve harrington imagine

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gracefulsouffle · 9 months

Text

Is this a thing now? Am I making this a thing?

New chapter excerpt below the cut.

Excerpt:

“I have to die.”

Gus hurriedly shakes off the words that flash through his mind once again.

Hunter doesn’t actually have to die to time travel… right? That would be too…Too horrible!

It’s just another misunderstanding they have to clear up. There has to be some other meaning.

Nodding to himself Gus continues to fly, just a little bit faster.

He reaches the edge of the clearing and pokes his head in about to call out for Hunter, but stops in his tracks when he catches sight of his friend.

Hunter's eyes are red and puffy and he has tear stains on his cheeks- he'd obviously been crying, Gus realizes stomach twisting up, but it’s worse than that.

There’s this… look, in Hunter’s eyes. Like hopelessness mixed with determination, mixed with desperation, mixed with emptiness. It’s unsettling.

But worst of all, his current state is probably all Gus's fault for running out and leaving Hunter alone after a confession like that!

He should've at least least told Hunter that he didn't care what he was or what he's done since they'll always be buddies.

He could've at least checked to see if Hunter really doesn’t consider himself a person…

Gus shakes the thought off again. He must have read that wrong! It's just another misunderstanding that all they have to do is talk about to clear up!

“Hey BQ. Can you do me a favour?” Hunter’s voice rings across the clearing, raw and scratchy and dull as it catches Gus's attention.

The Bat Queen raises an eyebrow and tilts her chin up, inviting him to continue.

“I messed up. I really really messed everything up this time,” he starts, donning a shaky smile, voice quivering, “But with your help I- I think I can fix it.”

He takes an imploring step forward, but stops when she wrinkles her nose in disgust, as if smelling something vile. He shakes it off, appearing to gather his courage to try again.

“I’m too weak,” he tries, “I thought I was ready for my friends hating me forever once they found out what I am, but I’m not… I know it’s selfish. I-I know it’s wrong a-and twisted, but just for a little while longer I want to stay by their side.”

Fresh tears start falling to the ground, Hunter looks terrified.

“I have to go back. Bat Queen, please… I need you to kill me.”

What is he-? No, no it’s gotta be some type of metaphor right? Right?

Squawking in alarm, Flapjack starts to frantically flutter around Hunter’s head, but Hunter doesn’t even acknowledge the distressed bird keeping his gaze locked with the matriarch’s.

She frowns, a mixture of confusion and… something else on her face, “I have the power to break your curse, Golden Guard, to give you a permanent end. Is this what you are asking of me?” She shakes her head, puzzled and… disappointed. Disappointment- that’s the something else Gus sees. “Flapjack chooses you, you ended trials, you say you want to stay by their sides, yet… I expected more than giving up from you.”

He recoils as if she slapped him.

“No!” Hunter exclaims, appalled, “I’m not giving up! I’m never giving up!” He hesitates and glances to the side, “This… this isn’t me giving up, okay?”

“I just need another chance to do this right or- or take it all back!” He spreads his hands out in front of him, desperately pleading, “Kill me like you did in your trials. I can take it! Please!”

He’s begging, but he’s terrified.

Having finally had enough, Gus decides to quit eavesdropping and step in, besides even if Hunter’s actually asking the Bat Queen to kill him she wouldn’t actually-

“Okay,” the Bat Queen nods.

…What?

“Even though you have not finished paying for your sins or sins of those before you, I acknowledge you have done great service for forest in returning the lost to my care. I trust that you can continue to do so,” she proclaims, spreading her wings outwards.

Doubt and denial transform into dread and Gus is finally certain.

Hunter has to die to go back in time, he’s trying to time travel now.

The Bat Queen’s going to kill him.

In the next moment, three things happen: The Bat Queen’s eyes start to glow bright white, Hunter bows his head and clutches his shirt above his heart, as if bracing for an excruciating pain, but chokes out a ‘thank you’ anyways, and Gus…

Gus’s body moves on its own.

#the owl house #toh #toh hunter #hunter toh #hunter noceda #gus porter #hunter the golden guard #hunter toh fanfic #toh fanfic rec #toh fanfic #the bat queen toh #the bat queen #my art #yes I used whiteout for the eyes #I also coloured it a little #I've had this chapter written for like a week whoopsss

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harrylee94 · 2 years

Text

In the Footsteps of Luminous Beings - Chapter 13

You can also find this on AO3!

Summary: “What do you want from me?” he asked of the sands. “I only try to keep my people safe, keep them alive and free, but you send your people after them. There are more graves here than there are the living… What am I supposed to do?” He curled his head forwards, almost touching the ground. “What do you want from me?”

“... Sometimes there is more to things than what meets the eye. ”

Notes: Slightly shorter chapter today!

TW for mentions of death and slavery

Chapter 12

——————————————————————

Ghost in the Desert

Cobb threw the broom handle out into the sands with a shout of frustration. They’d lost more people today, more lives lost because of those creatures out there, hiding behind their masks and robes, killing his people for no reason. More graves dug and stories told. He couldn’t understand it. Why? Why couldn’t they leave them alone? All they wanted to do was live in peace.

And that wasn’t even mentioning that the krayt dragon had travelled beneath the structure that had once been the town hall, reducing it to rubble and splinters. It felt like no matter what he did, no matter how hard he tried, there was always something fighting against him.

He tried to work through his anger by running through some exercises, running through the steps that had become little more than muscle memory now, but it did nothing. He couldn’t even bring himself to meditate. Everything just made him so angry !

He kicked at the sand before falling to his knees, clutching at the desert with both hands, as though that could help him pull everything back to where it needed to be.

Why did everything have to cost so much?

He threw handfuls of sand, some of it blowing back into his face, until his fingers felt numb, and he looked out at the desert with an empty feeling in his chest.

He’d had so much hope once, believed he could free everyone, believed he could fight the fight and win, but now he knew differently. Now he knew that there was no winning, there was only surviving, and doing the best you could with what you had.

The people of Mos Pelgo had named him their Marshal, and he’d almost laughed when they’d given him that title. He’d been a slave, and then a rebel, and never once had he had any consideration for any laws or rules. Running by his morals seemed to work pretty well, but it still felt like they were asking more of him than he could give.

A sentiment that had only been reinforced today.

“What do you want from me?” he asked of the sands. “I only try to keep my people safe, keep them alive and free, but you send your people after them. There are more graves here than there are the living… What am I supposed to do?” He curled his head forwards, almost touching the ground. “What do you want from me?”

“... Sometimes there is more to things than what meets the eye. ”

Cobb frowned. He knew that voice, heard it in the strangest of times, an echo, he’d thought, but this one felt more substantial. “Ben?”

“ I’m here, young one. ”

Looking up, Cobb was surprised to see that he really was there. Mostly.

“What…?” he said as he looked over Ben’s form, shimmering in an almost blue light before him. “Ben? How’re you…? What happened to you?”

The older man — now most definitely looking like his old moniker of ‘old man’ with his almost white hair and face covered in wrinkles — sat before him with a sad smile. Close as he was, Cobb could see that he was more like a projection, and yet his form still affected the sand beneath him, pressing it down under his impossible weight.

“ I have become one with the Force, ” Ben replied.

“You… You died?” Cobb said as yet more of the galaxy came crashing down around his ears.

“ In a manner of speaking, ” Ben replied, a spark of mischief in his words, even if Cobb couldn’t bear to understand it.

“But you’re… a ghost now?” Cobb reached out to try and touch him, but his fingers went through the image. “When? How?”

“ A little before the Death Star blew up, ” came the reply. “ I faced my failure, and while they may have beaten me, I have the feeling that I may have won. ”

“Ben, hallucination or not, I don’t have time for your riddles,” Cobb said with a groan. “I don’t… Please, speak plainly.”

Ben was silent for a few moments, perhaps taking the time to actually look at Cobb and not just to confuse him with his double meanings, and sighed. “ I apologise, Cobb. You have not been dealt a good hand. ”

Cobb snorted. “I just… I keep losing people. Why won’t those monsters just leave us alone? All we want to do is live out here in peace.”

Ben hummed, his hand rubbing at his bearded chin as he looked out at the sands. “ The Tuskens rarely attack without reason. ”

“And how am I supposed to discover what that reason is?” Cobb asked. “You can’t talk to those people. They’d sooner kill me than sit down and talk, an’ it’s not like we talk the same language. What am I meant to do, howl at them until something happens?”

“ That sounds like it would be rather counterproductive. ”

“Things’re already ‘counterproductive’,” Cobb said with a wrinkled nose.

“ Have you ever attacked the Tuskens? ”

“Only when they’ve attacked first, but after today I’m thinking of changing that.” Perhaps he should have changed that years ago, maybe then they wouldn’t have lost Virnen and his boy.

“ To follow your anger is to allow it to lead you to the Dark Side, ” Ben warned, his brows pitching into a frown.

“What do you care?” Cobb asked, rising to his feet. “It’s not like you ever thought about anything other than that kid? Oh, and where did that get him? I saw what happened. I saw the graves.” He could still remember the lingering smell. “You were supposed to protect him, and even then you got people killed!”

“ Are we speaking of my failures or your own? ”

“Shut up!” Cobb cried, pointing his finger at the spectre. “You turned your back on me! I asked you for help and you left!”

“ Perhaps that was a mistake, ” Be conceded, “ but I cannot bring myself to regret my decision. ”

Cobb scoffed, picking up the broom handle again. “The galaxy doesn’t revolve around one moisture farmer!”

“ Would it help you to know that he was the one to blow up the Death Star? ”

Cobb paused, his angry thoughts stuttering at the new information, but still… “Good for him.”

“ For all of us, ” Ben said. “ If he hadn’t stopped it, then Alderaan would not have been the only planet to have been destroyed. ”

“And the years before?” Cobb asked. “Before his home was attacked, was Luke ever in any danger his family couldn’t have handled?”

“ ... An Inquisitor came for him, once, ” Ben replied. “ It wasn’t long after you’d recovered. Things were… precarious, for a time. ”

Cobb took a deep breath. He could understand why that would make Ben wary of leaving Luke without his protection. “You never told me.”

“ I wanted to help you, ” Ben said. “ I hope I did, in some ways. ”

Cobb hummed and sat back down in the sand. “Do you remember, back when I left that first time, and you gave me this,” he patted at his hip, where his blaster pistol was, “and you said you wished you could give me a lightsaber?”

“ You said that maybe, one day, you’d get lucky. ”

“And then you said that I would,” Cobb said, twisting his hands around the handle. “You think that day’ll come anytime soon?”

“ I think… that it might be a good thing you don’t have a lightsaber yet, ” Ben said after some thought. “ The Tuskens have a story, one of a demon the sands set upon them as punishment for past wrongdoings. This demon came to one of their camps one night after a good hunt, and it killed everyone, cutting down every one of them, the children as well, with a sword made of blue light. ”

“A sword…”

Ben nodded. “ I know that your people are suffering at their hands, but if you could discover why they attack you, perhaps then things will improve. Having a lightsaber will not help matters. ”

“How do you know this?” Cobb asked.

“ I… spoke with one of them. ”

Cobb shook his head. “You’re crazy.”

Be shrugged.

Huffing again, Cobb rolled the handle between his hands. “I take it figuring out how to come to terms with the Sand People is somethin’ I’ve gotta figure out on my own.”

“ Something like that. ”

Cobb narrowed his eyes at him. Everything he ever said seemed to be a riddle or a non-answer to a question with a simple yes-or-no result. Maybe it was something to do with being dead.

“Why are you here, Ben?” he asked. “Actually, before you don’t answer that, why don’t you shimmy around an answer for how?”

Ben chuckled. “ Did you want the short or the long answer? ”

“Take a guess.”

The ghost hummed. “ I was taught how to retain most of my identity in death instead of allowing myself to dissipate into the Force. ”

“Huh.” That sounded like a simple explanation for something that would have taken a lot of hard work and patience to master, plus a lot of complicated, annoying reflection and stuff like that. “Why?”

“ So I would be able to continue teaching my students after I’d passed. ”

“Students?”

Ben smirked. “ Did you really think you’d learned everything you needed to know? ”

No, he hadn’t, but how had he been supposed to learn while his only possible teacher had been busy with his babysitting, and he’d been off starting a revolution and protecting this town from Raiders?

“What were you planning on teaching me then, oh great teacher?” he asked.

“ Why don’t we start with a lesson in diplomacy? ”

Cobb groaned; he was regretting this already.

——————————————————————

Gosh darn it Ben! I think Yoda's been rubbing off on you.

Chapter 14

#writing #fic #fanfiction #fanfic #the mandalorian #mandalorian fic #star wars #cobb vanth #ben kenobi #obi wan kenobi #force sensitive cobb vanth #tw death #tw slavery

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