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spvce-cowboy · 4 years

Text

reunion

ch. 3 of i’ll be here in the morning (the mandalorian x fem!reader)

previous-ch. 2: “gentle things”

next-ch. 4: “songbird”

rating: mature

8k words

warnings: alcohol, drug use mentioned, jealous/protective mando, animal cruelty, descriptions of gore

summary: the luxurious rot of Canto Bight is enough to put anyone on edge. Mando is forced to ask for your help in finding a high profile quarry.

Mando leaves the fighting ring before the caterwauling nexu is able to deal the killing blow.

He can still hear the sound of the gore spraying against the floor as he climbs the stairs towards the exit, the roaring jeer of the crowd obliterating the speakers inside his helmet. The inevitable outcome of the fight was clear from its onset given the state of the nexu’s opponent, some kind of sand-bear, who was already injured upon entering the cage-like structure.

This wasn’t the Outer-Rim fighting rings he was used to. This place has carpets and a fucking chandelier suspended right above the blood clotted, dirt floor of the pit. It has pipe smoke and dark liquor, the low rumble of voices that only rise in tandem with the progression of the fight. There’s a strange reserve among this crowd that Mando has never seen before, not in this context at least.

The patrons still had that starved look in their eyes though—bloodlust, pure and simple. Somehow, all the tuxedos and hair gel makes it far more sinister than it normally would be.

Karga sent him here to gather information about the quarry, but after an entire day spent searching along with the past hour he’d spent floating around the fight hall where the informant was rumored to be, he knew to give it up before he wasted any more time.

Mando exits the underground arena, stepping into the late afternoon heat just as it begins its gradual descent towards an oncoming chill. Upon arriving at Canto Bight, he had learned very quickly to avoid the main streets. There were too many eyes and whispers for a bounty as high profile as this one for him to be spotted on his own like this, obviously searching for something.

There’s something about this city that makes him absolutely revolted. It’s not the strongest testament to his resolve or his character, but, at the same time, it’s not something he can necessarily help.

Mando still has absolutely no clue what Karga was thinking, but here he is, regardless if it made any sense or not.

He returns to the Crest, deflated after a second unsuccessful day of trying to gather information about the quarry’s whereabouts. He is desperate for a lead, two of three informants proving to be completely useless and his patience growing thinner every second he has to stay on this forsaken planet.

Closing the ramp behind him, Mando heads straight for the cockpit, needing a moment to regather his thoughts. To brainstorm a better plan of action before it becomes too late to rendezvous with Karga’s third, and last, possible informant.

The problem was that there was absolutely no way he was going to be able to get into the racetracks on his own. Getting into the fighting pit—which was considered “seedy” by Canto standards--was already a total hassle, costing him far too many credits and straining what limited negotiation skills he had.

The second problem was that he’d rather take a blaster to the leg than involve you in one of his missions. But now that was kind of his only option.

Mando rubs a hand over the forehead of his helm as he paces. When that doesn’t work, he settles himself in his pilot’s seat, hunching over slightly against the weight of the beskar against his bones. Maker, he is fucking tired.

Swiveling his head to the side, he notices a pile of something on the console that he can’t exactly make out until he leans over it.

Resting on the command board is a leather string, a few palm-sized pieces of stained glass already fashioned to hang from it by smaller loops of the same material in varied lengths. It looks like you were in the middle of working on it when something else distracted you, several more discs of glass piled onto one another to the right of the unfinished project, and a few loose scraps of leather in a pile on the copilot’s chair.

Mando allows himself to admire it for a moment, rubbing his gloved thumb over the glass’s surface. By the time he glances up through the windows of the cockpit, looking at all the people milling about outside, his breathing has somewhat evened. It’s easier to think straight, at least.

He stands and climbs back into the hull, rounding the corner to peer into the space you’ve made for yourself.

It takes him a moment to see you over the pile of blankets you’ve kicked off your mattress. You’re asleep. Under the table. The kid taking a nap with you. Of course that’s where he expected you to be if you weren’t in the cockpit but—but.

You’re on your belly, head buried in your folded arms. You have one, bare leg hitched up over pillow. The length of your calf spills over onto the floor, socked foot delicately pointed. That’s not really what stops him in his tracks. Well, it is in part.

But you’re wearing one of his shirts.

It must have just been a mistake, he knows that. He’s seen you in one of your own that’s the same general color and cut, but he knows this one is his because of the hole in the elbow where it had caught on an exposed screw and torn a few days previous. He’d been too busy to mend it.

Mando tries to wake you before his thoughts could go anywhere else. He says your name quietly, then a little louder. It wakes the kid, who yawns and blinks up at Mando, making happy sounds up at him from where he’s snuggled into your side.

When that doesn’t work, Mando nudges your calf with the tip of his boot. You startle awake, a protective hand shooting out to automatically bring the child against your chest, blinking rapidly up at him.

“Oh,” you wince slightly at the light coming into the cabin but otherwise doesn’t visibly react when you realize it’s him. Your arm loosens from where it had wrapped around the kid. “You’re back. I thought you’d be gone a while longer.”

“I need your help with something,” Mando crosses his arms in front of his chest. It gives him something to do with his hands and how awkward they feel just hanging at his sides as you prop yourself up into a sitting position to listen to him, the loose material of his shirt pulling up to reveal little glimpses of your lower back and belly as you do. “I have to have a companion with me, to go into the racetrack. They won’t let me in if they think I’m looking for a quarry.”

You nod, rubbing your eye with the heel of your palm, voice croaking and still hazy with sleep. “Yeah, yeah sure. I wanted to check it out anyway. Just lemme get changed and we can head out.”

You pick the kid up and place him back on the floor of the hull. He toddles over to Mando, nearly falling—your hands automatically reach out to hover over his sides--but he manages to catch himself on Mando’s pantleg, tugging the fabric in a determined up, now.

Your brow furrows. “What’re we gonna—”

“There’s a nursery. Karga cleared it,” Mando reaches down and scoops up the kid.

“Gotcha,” your voice already sounds clearer. You reach out a hand for Mando to pull you up, he obliges. The blankets fall from where they’ve pooled around your lap as you do.

You pad down the length of the hull towards the fresher, your hips sway with the movement as you lift an arm to continue rubbing the sleep from your face. The shorts you’re wearing are a few sizes too big, you have them rolled twice at the waistband to keep them up. Mando looks away sharply once he notices.

“Alright womp rat, how does some dinner sound?” Mando smiles to himself when the kid gives an impatient squeak. “Yeah, yeah okay alright. I’m the worst caregiver in the galaxy, I know.” The child keeps giggling as Mando makes his way into the cockpit.

Mando is running through some of the Crest’s vitals on the command board when he hears you climbing up the ladder.

“Do you think this would be okay, for the racetrack?” There’s a certain timid quality to your voice he doesn’t think he’s heard before. You have also literally never asked him for approval on something, so he’s already a bit surprised before he turns to look at you.

The clothes you chose were simple, a fitted long sleeve and a pair of loose-fitting pants long enough to at least partially conceal your work boots. It shouldn’t have felt like much of a departure from your usual roster of outfits because it really wasn’t, but for some reason there’s something different about it that he can’t put his finger on.

You have your hair piled on top of your head in a bun. With it pulled back like that, all attention is drawn to the canvas of your neck, your delicate throat that gently eases into the soft planes of your face. There’s a nonchalant beauty to you that sucks all previous thoughts straight from his head.

“You might want to bring something warmer, a jacket or something.” He turns back to the command board, desperate to look busy and hide how long he looked for. “Temperatures drop on Cantonica as soon as the sun starts setting.”

“Oops—yep. Desert planet. I forgot,” you sigh. He hears the sound of your boots scaling the ladder back down.

He purposefully doesn’t look up when you enter the cockpit again, when you announce you’re ready he nods curtly, making brief but direct eye contact with you before setting a quick pace out of the Crest and into the streets of Canto Bight.

The nursery is tucked away, out of reach and notice, protection guaranteed. He leads you through a series back-street passages to get there, too nervous about the attention the three of you would get with the kid and the main roads. You carry him against your hip most of the way, occasionally adjusting the little hood you’ve fashioned to cover his most distinguishable features with every person you pass.

The door is nondescript, positioned in the alleyway behind a semi-busy restaurant. Mando can sense your apprehension the second he steps up to press the buzzer. Within seconds, there’s the sound of a series of bolts unlocking.

A warm faced woman opened the door, wearing the clean white uniform of a nurse. “When Karga called in I hardly believed it,” her voice is light, but there’s a grating, nervous squeak to it that makes Mando scowl. Maybe it was just the day he was having, but just about anything was able to set him off.

Mando and the nurse exchange a few blunt words about pricing and care. He winces, slightly, at the cost, but it’s not anything either of you could notice. Right as Mando is about to turn to take the kid from your arms, you speak up.

“Is this… safe?” You ask again, holding the kid a little tighter to your chest. He realizes that it’s the first time since you’ve joined them that you’re separating from the kid, Mando thinks his anxiety is partially feeding off of yours.

“Karga gave me his word. It’ll only be for a few hours.” Mando glances at the nurse, who was giving the two of you her very best customer service smile. “C’mon pal,” Mando nods towards the nurse. The child’s big eyes stare apprehensively up at you, then at Mando. One of his small hands unfixes itself from your shirt to reach out towards the bounty hunter. The nurse clucks her tongue, her hands on her hips.

“Someone seems like he’s already gonna miss his daddy.”

His stomach drops without warning. “I’m not his father.” The correction is biting in a way he doesn’t intend it to be. He’s vividly aware of your sharp inhale at his words. The nurse looks startled for a half second before blinking her eyes and retaining composure.

“Yes, yes of course,” she stretches out a hand as an offering of assurance towards the child, who has resumed clinging to the fabric of your shirt. “Hey little guy, c’mon. I’ve got a lot of friends for you to play with, and some snacks. You like the sound of that?”

Mando catches your smile at the child’s ears flicking with interest, despite the fact that his hands are still firmly attached to you. Mando mutters something under his breath before taking the child from you, handing him off to the nurse and trying to push down the terrible feeling it gives him hearing the kid give a small whimper as the two of you walk away.

The racetrack is down a major boulevard, towering sandstone buildings line either side, their circular doors illuminated by bands of glowing yellow neon. The streets are a different kind of polished stone that makes Mando’s skin absolutely crawl for not discernible reason.

He thinks you’ve caught on to his worsening mood because you try to keep the conversation warm and light in a way he’s never seen you do before. Your eyes are fixed to a constant arcing movement, taking in as much of it as you can, but your mouth keeps moving about anything but Canto Bight. You avoidance just draws more focus towards the situation at hand, but he appreciates the effort.

When the two of you reach the racetrack, you stop talking completely as you scale the stands. You and Mando settle on two chairs pulled up to a tiny table, overlooking the standing room crowd below. Mando faces the crowds more than the track itself, however you angle your chair so that you can look at the racing fathiers with ease. Eventually you turn away, grimacing.

“What is it?” He asks, out of curiosity as well as a desire to fill the silence.

“They’re so beautiful,” you cast one more glance over the track as the group rumbles past to the sharp roar of the crowd. “But they look so sad.” You keep looking at the beasts for a beat longer before fixing your gaze to your hands clasped in your lap.

Mando finds his words slowly. “This planet… this amount of abundance. There is always a cost. They always make someone else pay.”

You wince, shifting your body so you’re only facing Mando and the expanse of the crowd that’s over his shoulder. You don’t look at the track for a while after that, purposefully keeping your body turned to keep your gaze away.

Mando finds fleeting solace in the fact that he was at least able to keep you away from the fighting ring, which is quickly replaced by guilt in exposing you to a similar cruelty in a less bloody form. He does his best to remind himself that you mentioned wanting to see the races previously, that the indecipherable emotion on your face was not entirely his fault.

The wait spans an hour. The tension in Mando’s shoulders grows with each passing minute.

“He isn’t coming,” Mando eventually grits out. “It’s… Maker I—”

Jobs have started off way worse than this, he’s not sure why he’s allowing all of it to get under his skin. It’s this damn city, something about it makes him feel like there is a knifepoint digging between his ribs.

You tap his hand lightly. Twice, with your index and middle fingers. It happens so quickly he’s almost able to believe he’s imagined it if it weren’t for the fact that you were still adjusting your hands in your lap after your hand had retreated. As if you didn’t know what possessed you to do that, either.

“Hey. It’s fine. It’ll work itself out, yeah?” You maneuver your head to stare directly into his visor. For some reason that alone is infinitely more intimate than your brief touch. “We can just stay here for a bit longer in case the informant shows up, then pick up the kid, grab something to eat and hunker down in the Crest. Tomorrow’s a new day, or whatever.”

Mando looks you over, then nods.

The sun is setting on the horizon, the tracks illuminated by the last vestiges of its light. This is the beginning of most everyone’s day, yet the drinks are already flowing, and have been for quite some time.

There are far too many extravagant outfits, ridiculous little hats barely teetering on large skulls. The roar of the crowd grows with their drunkenness, the races becoming crueler the more the stands fill. Mando will never understand the value in any of this and he’s genuinely not sure what’s worse—the icy coolness of the fighting rink or whatever all this is.

“Who’s the quarry?” You blink up at him. “If you don’t mind me asking.”

“Tyreus Cavill. Some filthy rich kid who doesn’t know how to keep his damn mouth shut. He’s taunting the Gild to the point of insult,” Mando rubs his hand over the brow of his helm. “It’s been confirmed that he’s supposed to be at some kind of party tonight. That was just about the only information I could get.”

“Was that why Karga mentioned deep cover?”

Mando nods. “He said it would be my most viable option, which doesn’t make any kind of sense. Especially with no pre-existing contacts that could get me any intel on where he’s hiding.”

You speak up after a while. Mando isn’t sure how long, too comfortable in the silence as is.

“You know my mother worked for the Alderaanian court?” You say it softly, quickly looking at the racetrack to avoid drawing attention to your words. You’re kneading the hem of your sweater, a nervous tick of yours he couldn’t help but notice. “I still remember all the things she had to teach me when we went to dinners at the homes of the survivors, the etiquette and everything. I’m positive it’s much of the same, here. All this,” you twirl your index finger in the air, gesturing to the whole of the track and presumably what lay beyond. “Seems very familiar. I could help, if you need it.”

“Your mother?”

“She was the court singer--or, well, one of them,” your voice is tense. “My father was a professor. I don’t remember a lot, just that they loved me very much.” Your eyes are searching the crowd in some desperate search for something, he’s not sure what. Probably for any kind of distraction, or any reason to keep your eyes away from his. He waits in silence, patiently. “They moved to a different planet to have me, a few years before the annihilation, there were a few other survivors who were off planet when it happened. I remember my parents hosting them, and they us, on a few occasions. It was always a multi-day affair of trying to remind me what proper manners were.” You wrinkle your nose. “It’s all very stupid, if you ask me. But,” you turn your head finally and look at him evenly. “I can—”

Mando watches as your gaze floats to a space just above his left shoulder. Your entire body visibly tenses, lips parted in what he can only think is total shock. Your hands drop the edge of your shirt and hover in your lap, as if you don’t know what to do with them.

Before Mando can ask what is wrong, you’re getting up from the table and pushing through the crowd. It takes him a beat to register what has just happened before he is up and following after you, making considerably better time in catching up given the fact that the crowd seems to naturally part for him. He almost reaches out to touch you, but instead settles for aiding your pursuit by keeping pace and staying at your side, clearing a path for you with his body and an outstretched arm to motion people to the side.

“What is it?” He tries to keep his voice low enough to not be overheard, his head in a constant survey of the crowds before you. You shake your head and keep pushing forward, higher into the stands, swerving around servers with platters stacked high with strange looking drinks. “Hey—if we go any further we’d need clearance—" the higher in the stands, the richer the patrons get. They wouldn’t let either of you in without identification after the eighth flight, which you’d just swiftly pushed past. Mando checks over his shoulder and, sure enough, a server is murmuring something to a guard droid, pointing up at you.

You’re so far up by that time that you have at least a minute until the droid catches up with the two of you. You climb onto one of the raised platforms dotted with various aristocratic parties, dining over bright white table cloths, centerpieces of bizarre orange flowers bursting through the tables. You make a beeline for the centermost table, where a Twi’lek woman is dining with an Abednedo and a human male.

You approach the Twi’lek in three swift strides, grabbing her shoulder. “Febhana.”

When the woman turns, standing, there’s a kind of wide-eyed shock of absolute wonder that immediately turns into pure joy. The two of you leap into one another’s arms in a cacophony of ecstatic, indistinguishable sounds. One of some long awaited reunion.

The Twi’lek woman, Febhana, holds your face in her hands, yours slide over hers. There are tears in her eyes as the two of your chatter over one another in breathless delight.

“I thought you—”

“I had no idea that—”

“I’ve tried to find—”

You both cut each other off, staring into one another’s eyes before laughing again and embracing tightly.

From over your shoulder, Febhana gives Mando one of the quickest, scathing once-overs he’s ever received. He can’t help but automatically have a little bit of respect for it, especially compared to the terrified, diverted eyes of her companions.

“Who is this?” She asks, pulling away from your embrace slightly. You open your mouth to respond but she’s already babbling over your warmly. “Oh! No. Don’t tell me. Not yet. Let’s do this over drinks at mine—please. Please indulge me. Maker, look at you.”

You let loose a laugh Mando doesn’t think he’s heard before. A certain tonal quality of complete release, familiarity. You nod as Febhana clasps your face between her hands again, in marvel. Mando doesn’t blame her, with that look of utter joy on your face he’d—

Well.

“Do excuse us,” Febhana swiftly addresses her dinner mates, they nod and mutter forgiveness, eyes still fixed to the ground. Mando knows for a fact that at least one of them has a fob on them by the tight anxiety exchanged in their brief glances towards one another. He ignores it for the sake of maintaining the moment between you and your friend.

Mando trails behind the two of you by a few paces. As Febhana guides you through the crowds, she waves off the guard droid with an elegantly manicured hand.

Febhana’s apartment could be considered a house twice over by Mando’s book. She leads you and him through so many tall-ceilinged hallways and rooms to get to the… lounge, he guesses would be a proper term for it… that he genuinely can’t remember where the entrance is.

The room contains a bar stocked better than any cantina on Nevarro, a few odd pieces of furniture, and a large fireplace. Heavy, dark blue curtains hang from windows so tall he has to crane his head upwards to see the top. He guesses the luxury is communicated through the refusal to occupy the space with much else, despite the fact that it could be considered a small banquet hall.

Febhana makes you and her drinks while you settle on one of the sloping, white couches, scanning the room in the same way Mando has been, with a little more plain wonder in your eyes.

Mando hovers on the periphery, unsure of where to place himself until you motion him over to sit on one of the opposing chairs, equally abstract as the rest of the furniture. Febhana settles across from you on the couch, handing you your drink before leaning back and kicking off her heels.

The two of you are in a constant chatter that has so many names and dates and overlapping speech that Mando has a difficult time keeping up. What he does catch is limited and mostly inferred: the two of you escaped from the same warlord at different times, Febhana was able to scale the social ranks of Canto Bight with ease and an inherited wallet--most importantly, the two of your missed each other very much.

It’s been at least an hour since the three of you sat down when Febhana directly addresses Mando for the first time.

“And what are you doing here, Mandalorian?”

Mando feels your eyes on him, burning, as you take a sip of your cocktail.

“She saved my life,” he manages as a straightforward reply. “I’ve hired her as a medic.”

“Febhana,” you say. When you’re slightly tipsy like this, you have a breathless wonder in the way you go about describing things. “It’s… it’s been so good. I’ve been practicing all these languages and… Maker, all the places I’ve been. It’s just like you described, when we would tell each other stories to go to sleep. Everything’s so big and there are so many people.”

Febhana throws back her head in a laugh, nodding. “Well I know that, darling. Oh, stars, it’s so good to look at you again.”

You and Febhana go back and forth a while longer still, Mando happily settles into the rhythm of it. There’s the warm, familiar way women get so engrossed in one another that he finds completely novel, if not enviable. It softens something in him to see you so relaxed as you prompt Febhana to detail her exploits, the excited yip you make when she flashes you the wedding band strung on a series of thin gold chains looped around her neck.

Then again, the way the two of you seem so physically intimate occasionally makes something in his chest constrict uncomfortably. He isn’t sure where it comes from, all the little touches you give each other seem to come from a place of purely platonic joy in reunion. But there’s a little jolt in his stomach whenever he sees it happen. He doesn’t want to acknowledge it as jealousy, but… she gets to feel you. So unabashedly.

At some point there’s a lull in the conversation. You take this moment to stretch your arm across the couch, clasping Febhana’s hands in your own. “We’re actually here for a specific reason,” you say. “And I’m only asking you out of genuine, pure desperation—Mando… has a job, here. That’s gotten a little tricky. The bounty is on the head of Tyreus Cavill.” Febhana’s eyes widen considerably, but other than that she maintains composure. Taking a deep breath, you continue, “He needs to find him, Febhana—there’s intel that he’s supposed to be at some kind of event. Possibly tonight.” You glance up at Mando to check if you’re getting the details right, he gives you brief nod of assurance when you do. “Do you know anything about it?”

Febhana scoffs, shaking her head and withdrawing her hand from yours to grab her drink resting on the low glass table in front of you. “If you’re referring to what I think you are, it would be the Gathering of Rams, one of the most exclusive events hosted on Canto. I’d imagine that’s why he’d dare show his face, even with the price on his head. Unless you already have an in, you’re fucked, Mandalorian. That place is more fortified than a warship.”

You visibly deflate. “What do you mean?”

“It’s an old, and I mean old, money tradition. A dinner for just about every despicable person in the galaxy. I’ve only heard rumors about what goes on, definitely some serious cult-y type shit, oaths, rituals, the like.” She chews on a nail as she thinks. Something in her eyes lights up. “Wait. I think I… yes! Yes, I got the announcement a few weeks ago. Stars I think—” she looks down at the device on the inside of her wrist, tapping on it until—“Christ you two are the luckiest couple of bounty hunters in the galaxy, you know that? The Tagges are hosting the afterparty, tonight. The most eligible of all of Canto Bight will be there, and then some. I was invited a few weeks ago, I’d completely forgotten. With any luck he’ll be dumb and drunk enough after the Gathering to go.”

“The Tagges?” Your voice is filled with apprehension. You glance to Mando, then quickly back to your friend. “Febhana, there’s no way he can get in.”

“Hm, I’d think so too but there could be a chance…” Her eyes narrow, her face breaking into a toothy grin. “No, I’m a complete idiot. Maker, this is gonna be perfect--most of the ladies in waiting here dress their guard droids as glorified curtains. It’s a new thing if you get what I’m saying. If we go in together and disguise the Mandalorian as even more of a hunk of metal than he already is—” Mando grunts at the slight jab—“all one of us would have to do is get the target by himself with a little eye-batting and it would be a done deal.”

You and Mando speak in unison.

“I am not going to be a honeypot.”

“She will not.”

Febhana raises a brow, one side of her mouth pulling up in poorly concealed amusement.

“Oh I suggested no such thing, I’d happily volunteer. But I do need a wing-woman, for appearance’s sake. I am taken, you know,” she flashes the wedding band again, pulling the collar of her dress down a fraction to do so. “Would be unbecoming to go on the prowl in public like that without pretending like I was just assisting.”

Mando glances over at you, trying to gauge your reaction to her proposal before he came off as to overbearing. He didn’t have the right to, he knows that. But there’s some raw part of him that winces at the very thought of you and your safety getting involved in one of his jobs. Maker if you got hurt in any way—

Febhana’s voice breaks his thought before it can be fully formed. “Oh, this is going to be excellent.” She practically purrs, jumping off the couch and extending her hand towards you to help you up. You comply, giving Mando a raised-brow glance of well, let’s see where this goes.

As Febhana begins leading you across the room, Mando stands.

“Should I contact the nursery to let them know to keep the child overnight?”

“The child?” Febhana’s eyes flick between you and Mando quickly. “I’m sorry, what?”

You curse under your breath, pressing your hand against your forehead. “A kid we’re looking after,” you clarify for Febhana. “I’m so sorry Mando, I got excited so it completely slipped my mind. I…” you bite your lip. “If you feel like it would be safe doing that I… guess that should be fine.”

“My wife could also look after it,” Febhana regards Mando evenly for a moment. “If you’re worried about safety. Would that be sufficient?”

Your eyes brighten slightly, glancing at Mando, tilting your head in question.

Mando nods, addressing Febhana directly. “If she trusts you, I do. I can travel back and get him while the two of you get ready.”

“I’ll send a car for you,” Febhana throws the remark over her shoulder, already busying herself by flinging the double doors that lead into the hallway back open.

You inhale sharply as if remembering something, tapping your friend on the shoulder before she begins to walk down the hall. “Wait, Febhana—the car, is there maybe a taxi service you could call? With an actual driver? He… we don’t really ‘do’ droids, if possible.”

“I have an ‘actual’ driver, darling,” Febhana playfully chides. Her eyes flick towards Mando. “I’ll ring him, he’ll be downstairs in a moment. You remember where the entrance is, right?”

Your delicate rephrasing, that “we,” rings in Mando’s ears for the entire trip back to the nursery.

Mando quickly returns with the child, slightly weirded out by the enclosed landspeeder Febhana sent for him. It’s unlike anything he’d seen before, more like a carriage than any hover-craft he’d ever set foot in. There’s a dividing curtain between the passenger cabin and the driver’s seat, which he has pushed away to make sure the silent man at the wheel doesn’t try anything.

The driver has a stony demeanor that seems very similar to Febhana’s—she clearly wasn’t one to suffer fools, and the people she surrounded herself with seemed to reflect that. Thinking back to the way you initially interacted with Mando, he could potentially see how your shared history with Febhana could have informed that. The characteristic briskness, the unflinching resolve.

The child spends most of the returning trip chattering in relief, little hands reaching out to touch Mando’s beskar in a continuous greeting.

“Right here, kid. Always right here,” he affectionately rubs the corner of the child’s ear. There’s a heavy guilt that had settled itself in the bottom of Mando’s stomach since dropping him off.

He wants to apologize in some way, to blame it on his mood or the mounting anxiety surrounding the job, but he doesn’t know how to phrase it in a way that wouldn’t make him sound like a complete jackass. So he settles for bowing his helm to bump foreheads with the kid in a small display of reassurance. It seems to settle something in both him and the child almost immediately.

Mando glances up sharply, nearly forgetting the parted dividing curtain. The man, a wiry looking human male, glances back at the two of them through the thin pane of the rearview mirror, then returns to chain smoking while wildly maneuvering his way through traffic.

The hover-car’s abrupt stop breaks him from his thoughts. He glances out the window, recognizing Febhana’s apartment building. The entire block is in a similar style as the boulevard you both had walked down earlier, circular doors outlined by bands of glowing yellow light. The only difference were the towering, wrought iron gates in front of each building and a set of tall stairs made of the same sandstone leading up to each house. The driver gets out and opens the landspeeder’s door for Mando and the kid, then steps forward and unlocks the gate, holding it open for the two of them.

“Sir.” The driver’s voice is more of a growl. If it weren’t for the enhanced settings of Mando’s visor, it would be too dark to see the mass of scar tissue that formed a jagged line across the man’s throat. The old wound is only partially concealed by the lapel of his coat pulled up against the drizzling rain. He’s abnormally tall, so thin that it looks as if his skull is actively attempting to escape his face. “Febhana’s apartment is the third buzzer. The service droid will let you in. She told me you should follow it.” The cigarette balancing against his lip bobs as he speaks, his heavy drawl disrupted only in part by his eviscerated voice box.

Mando’s lip curls slightly but he nods, thanking the driver, ducking out of the hover-car and climbing the steps leading to the apartment’s door.

Just as the driver said, the front door of Febhana’s apartment is opened by a droid. Mando stiffens despite the fact that the thing just barely reaches his knee. It gives off a series of little sounds before turning away and maneuvering down the front hall. Muttering something unsavory about Canto Bight under his breath, Mando follows it inside.

When he arrives at the threshold of Febhana’s dressing room, she’s only just started pulling out dresses for you to try on. He deflates slightly, really hoping that the two of you would have gotten this part over with so he could begin scoping out the Tagge mansion as soon as possible.

Mando accepts his fate and seats himself for the time being, placing the kid on the ground to let him toddle over to you. You lean down immediately and scoop him up, lifting him in the air with a happy: “Hey, stinky!” The child giggles as you snuggle him to your chest, pressing kisses all over his face in reunion.

You keep gently playing with the kid as you and Febhana resume your conversation: wiggling your fingers over his face for him to grab, tickling his tummy, gently pinching his socked feet. It’s something you sink into so naturally Mando can’t help but be mesmerized by it. It calms something in him, to see both of you like that. He pushes the implications of that feeling away for the time being, as he always does.

Febhana gives the kid a bit of a once-over but looks overall disinterested, turning her attention back to rummage through her closet. “So it’s supposed to be a formal dance, but if it’s anything like the similar things I’ve gone to, that shit quickly disintegrates. But it’s still weirdly important for them to keep up the illusion of appearances, even though most rooms with closeable doors are occupied by people railing lines or fucking. Or both. Usually both.” The Twi’lek woman plucks out some kind of red, silken shift, holding it in the air then shaking her head and returning to her hunt. “I’ve been to enough Tagge parties to be a familiar face, we can play you off as an old friend of mine, some kind of lady-in-waiting thing or whatever. Crowds like these don’t tend to prod too deeply into personal histories, and with tits like yours I don’t think they’ll be interested in asking too many questions.”

Mando clenches his jaw so hard something starts hurting. You give a bit of an embarrassed laugh, quickly diverting the conversation. “So how do we get introduced to Cavill?”

“Honestly? The easiest thing to do would be getting you to snuggled up with one of his friends. He runs around with a group of bachelors who are not… pleasant company by any standards. Snotty rich kids,” she makes a face. “But if that’s not an option I could try to push some of my contacts there to get us into their circle. Seriously, darling, with men like this involved it is probably going to be one of the easiest bounties he’s ever going to collect.”

The strain being placed on every cell in Mando’s body in response to this conversation alone says the exact opposite.

Febhana continues pulling out dresses, layering some over a bench and discarding others all together.

“Febhana, will they know?” You ask it suddenly, your tone—not tense, necessarily, but definitely controlled, as if you were expecting an answer you didn’t want to hear but were willing to take regardless.

“It’s the Tagge family, so of course they know what happened to that fucker, but I don’t think they would care,” she waves off your fearful tone with a shake of her head. “Just as long as we make a bit of an effort to conceal your identity, for formality’s sake, it’ll be fine.”

“What happened to who?” Mando asks. Once he does, all the air is immediately sucked out of the room.

After an extended moment. “You didn’t tell him?” Febhana’s head cocks, you visibly swallow.

“I um…” your nostrils flare with the sharp inhale you take as you search for the right words. “When I escaped…”

Febhana interrupts. “She stabbed the shit out of the warlord who owned us. All his wife found was pulp. Didn’t take it well, the cunt. Nearly catatonic. The rest of us were able to practically waltz out of there because of this one. Owe this gorgeous bitch my life. All of us do.”

You smile at Febhana, reaching out to squeeze her hand. She winks at you, covering it with her own before turning to go rifle back through her closet. You keep your gaze to your hands when she does, lips pressed together. Mando doesn’t remove his eyes from you as Febhana continues.

“So it might be a little difficult getting her in there, but to be honest the Tagges hated him anyway. Rival business type stuff, though, not the whole holding women captive or worker’s rights violations and debt bondage thing,” her voice drips with a kind of contempt that Mando prays he’ll never have directed his way. He notices your hands tighten slightly from where they lay in your lap, your arms loosely looped around the kid who now sits upright in your lap. “I know someone who can forge some papers well enough to present to the guards, he owes me some favors anyway,” Febhana continues. “They’ll be ready by the time we have to leave. Doll you up enough and I’m sure it’ll be fine—ah!” It is only then that Mando looks back over to the Twi’lek woman. Her eyes are lit up, fanged mouth pulled upwards in a triumphant smile. The dress in her hand is a deep plum color, fabric so thin he cannot make out what it actually looks like without a form to fill it. You reach out to it, rubbing the dress between your thumb and index finger.

“Perfect.” You and Febhana say it in unison, your widest smile of the night parted up at her. There’s a delighted, mischievous tilt to your mouth he’s never seen before.

Mando swallows, despite the sudden tightness in his throat.

He waits outside while the two of you change, sitting on a strange tufted seat pushed against the hallway’s bay window. It’s piled with an obnoxious amount of silken pillows—it seems the longer you’ve been with him, the more surfaces his beskar encounters that it never would have otherwise. A part of him is able to find the humor of that, despite the discomfort of feeling wildly out of place in your friend’s luxurious home. He settles with his legs slightly spread, back hunched to brace his elbows against the tops of his beskar-clad thighs.

After about thirty minutes, a woman comes down the hall, absentmindedly cleaning a pair of large-framed glasses with the corner of her sweater, a thick, leather-bound book tucked under one arm. She looks as out of place in this hallway as he does—more like a Galactic librarian than a resident of an apartment like this. She puts her glasses back on and stops in her tracks once she sees him.

“Who are you?”

Mando clears his throat. “A friend of Febhana’s.”

“No you’re not.”

“Yes, I am--well. A friend of a friend.”

Her eyes narrow quizzically. “I’ve been married to that woman for five years now. I think I would know if she had a Mandalorian as a ‘friend of a friend.’”

As if on cue, Febhana emerges from the beaded curtain suspended over the entrance of her dressing room, barefoot and wearing a blue gown. She pads over to the woman, something bulky tucked under one arm, the other carrying the child in a sleeping bundle. Febhana places him in her wife’s arms delicately. “Lovely, we’re just getting ready for the party. Don’t mind her play-thing,” she tilts her head towards Mando without directly looking at him. “He’s just here for decoration.”

Mando physically bites his tongue.

Febhana’s wife glances at Mando, before leaning up to gently kiss Febhana. “Alright, I’ll be in the study. Wake me when you get back.”

Febhana cups her wife’s face gently. It’s such an intimate gesture that Mando looks away, feeling as though his presence alone is an interruption. The couple talks quietly for a moment, then her wife exits through the same door she came in from.

“Here is the guard’s uniform. The measurements should be right,” Febhana stands in front of Mando, handing him folded pieces of dark fabric, and then a helm. It’s two halves of a black metal shell meant to fit and tighten over the face of a droid. There’s a thick pane of darkened glass cutting through the middle of the mask, presumably to not disrupt a droid’s sensors but it will render Mando’s absolutely useless. This night just keeps getting better and better.

The whole thing is not something Mando has ever seen before, though he was never one to frequent circles like Febhana’s. The only distinguishable features are symmetrical dips cutting severe cheekbones into the object’s silhouette. Two fixed pieces of gilded metal form a swooping triangle that hovers just over where his nose will be under the helmet’s featureless surface. Looping, thin chains dripping from the decorative structure to partially conceal the mask’s lower half. When he holds it up in the low light of the hallway, their movement creates glinting waves of light.

All of it is purely flare, for the most part. At least the tailor made plenty room for armor beneath the--as Febhana put it--glorified curtains usually meant to conceal a droid. He heaves a sigh, taking the uniform from her. “This is the only option?”

Febhana shrugs. “Unless you want me and your girl going in by ourselves and trying to lure him out to you--which is certainly an option--yes.”

“She isn’t ‘my girl.’”

“Oh, trust me,” her smile is biting. “I know that.” She tilts her head towards the dressing room. “C’mon, the pretty one is almost done. You can use my room to change.”

When he enters, you’re seated at Febhana’s vanity. All the air is sucked out of his lungs.

The dress is really nothing more than a series of gauze-like drapes that spill from your body and pool onto the floor. The expanse of your back is completely exposed, the dress only resuming to cover you right above the base of your spine. One long piece of fabric serves as the illusion of sleeves, cinched at the swooping neckline by delicate, medallion-like embellishments that rest at the dip of both shoulders. The sleeves’ near-transparent fabric are fixed to ovular gold rings you have on the middle fingers of both hands.

Mando watches the fabric shift over the bend of your arm as you use said finger to swipe a little pigment on your lips. It glistens in the mirror he looks at you through. In that initial moment of deep focus, you have the severe look of a high official’s wife. Utterly untouchable. The most beautiful creature he’s ever witnessed.

His entrance breaks your concentration, you smile up at him, warmly, through the mirror.

“I’m almost done,” your voice breaks him from his stupor. Your other hand dips a small brush into a pot of powder. You dab it under your eyes and then stand, going to a crystalline bar cart and spraying some kind of perfume on your neck.

Febhana steps into the room behind him. After a moment Mando finds his voice.

“And you said she isn’t supposed to be the honeypot?” It’s hard to keep the pain out of his voice as he says it. At this point it’s like the two of you are actively trying to kill him.

Febhana laughs, and the smile you give him is expansive yet strangely private at the same time. As if you and him were in on some secret, some inside joke. You cross the room and pat him lightly on the shoulder twice, before moving him aside in order to link arms with Febhana.

The two of you leave the room, picking up whatever conversation you were having before Febhana left to give Mando his things. He stands there until his heartbeat steadies, then moves behind the wooden room partition to put the uniform on.

It’s going to be a long night.

a/n: mando, babes, u don’t even know the half of it

jokes aside i am so excited for the next chapter you guys have no idea how much fun this is to write !! love a good ol’ fancy party w a bunch of degenerates.

tag list: @im-the-nerdiest-of-them-a11 @walkingthegrounds @roseallisonparker @kaitlyn2907 @dinsbeskar

please let me know if you would like to be added/removed!

#the mandalorian #the mandalorian x reader #the mandalorian x you #din djarin #din djarin x reader #din djarin x you #din and grogu #mandalorian and grogu #grogu #reader insert #i'll be here in the morning #i'll be here in the morning ch.3 #fanfic #star wars fanfiction

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himbodjarin · 3 years

Text

LUNAR; CH14

18+ EXPLICIT Content: Gore, general violence, Din/Third person POV. MANDO'A TRANSLATIONS AT THE BOTTOM Word count: 16,019 Pairing: Din Djarin/F!Reader - no y/n

The Mandalorian is a driven warrior — traversing the galaxy in search of the ancient Jedi — but everyone has their weaknesses, and he’s no different. The Bounty Hunter possessed three in fact. One he’s discovered—The Child. The remaining two, though, he wasn’t aware of their existence. At least, not until he meets a valorous Sharpshooter underneath a moonless night sky; then he’s plummeting down a dark mission of self-discovery, questioning his morals and his Creed while the moon taunts him, the phases of the satellite corresponding to his personal revelations. However, the Girl has a dark past that may come to inflict hardships on the Mandalorian and the Child; it's up to the Bounty Hunter to decide her fate. Read on AO3 / Series Masterlist / Playlist

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: THIS IS THE WAY

The Sun stands off to Din’s side, silent in a comforting way, a placidness he’s unable to recover within himself, and he savours the company with a gloved hand roosting on a curve. She twists to face him, bestowing a grand smile of rays that encapsulate inside and furnaces his figure until he’s blanketed in a toasty buzz, a swelling in his internal organs that he’ll just never become accustomed to. Din reacts to the sensations the only way he knows how and drags her into his side, a hand slithering to her hip to steady her there; little engagements that he’d never considered partaking in before the Girl.

Hands carved of dormant radiation fuss with the makeshift strap slung across her shoulder; one of the more unfortunate after-effects of her victory. Din had to utilise his craftsmanship to gift her with a lash capable of taking the weight of the disruptor rifle—the harness he relied on was built into his bandolier with a small metal clasp. He cares for the Girl but she is no charity case; the rifle against her back is plenty more than he would’ve ever thought of parting with.

The meddling persists, tinking the steel of the barrel against his vambrace.

“What’s the matter?”

Her head shakes and sinks to indolently survey the turf beneath their feet.

He glances at her hand. “I thought you wanted it?”

She buckles into submission from his queries, not that it took much effort on his part, and drags a hand down the front of her face. “I did - I do but it doesn’t feel right. It’s not mine… With your religion and all this feels awry. I shouldn’t have this.”

“I want you to have it.”

It’s the truth. He wants to be endowed with the ability to watch her manipulate something that’s been with him for so long. He wants to bookmark how it frames her body—he doesn’t know how but it does and he’s eternally grateful for that—but most of all, he wants a part of him to be forever touching her.

Nonetheless, it still doesn’t satisfy her scepticism and she scratches into the leather strap until it weathers and flakes.

“It’s just—”

“What?”

A relieving puff of stale carbon dioxide dispels from her slim parted lips. “I don’t want you to think I’m using you for your rifles, for your protection.”

Helmet inclines enough for the tip of his T to connect with her eyes; a small shake of his head as if to enquire what she’s talking about. She’s more than capable of protecting herself. She’s demonstrated it time and time again and Din is the last person who’d assume such things from her.

“I mean it’s the only reason I hitched a ride from you in the first place. I felt like I deserved compensation for my rifle and I needed a way off that damned planet.” She stiffly eases her eyes to the ground and scrunches a stone beneath the toes of her boot. “I never could’ve anticipated all of what’s happened...happening to—to happen…”

Jumbled and stuttering as if she’d downed six flasks of spotchka is a new look on her. It spawns a bounce in his lungs but he stifles the deep chuckle in the interest of not distressing her more than she obviously already is.

Serrated seams etch into the ridges of her eyebrows laced with insecurity, as though peering through a distorted mirror; one concerned expression switching with the other.

She elaborates, with such a hushed volume he almost activates his sonic detectors to register the mumbling, “It just feels as though if this is in my possession there’s no need for me to stick around. You’ve cleared your debt. I’m of no use to a reinforced Mandalorian like yourself. I appreciate the offer, I do, but…”

“What about…” he suggests, two fingers tilting her chin upwards, “you just keep it warm for me.”

It’ll technically remain hers—radioactive fingers having tagged the trigger with her insignia, the rifle imprinting its framework into the soft flesh of her back whereas it never could nestle into his beskar—even if Din is the only one who believes so. His proposal appears to hit the nail on the head of her insecurities and she allows that pesky hand to cease its unjustified carnage on the strap once and for all.

He’s entrusted with a significant smile that he cradles in his palms gently, nurturing it to ensure its growth and progression—a curve of her lips he’s not worthy of possessing but she donates it nonetheless.

“I can do that.”

It’s a witless justification to continue this worldless pact they’ve got going on and they couldn’t give a damn whether it was a phony excuse or not. She’s deciding to stay as opposed to leaving the parsec with pieces of himself attached to her back and around her neck; she wants to stay. Peradventure, it’ll only be for a little while—Din wasn’t accommodating enough for people’s liking and they’d always leave eventually—but maybe she’ll outride his past acquaintances and remain.

Din silently sighs and glances down the path they’re idled along. Caben and Stoke should’ve returned by now, though he suspects they did and that they might have been accidentally exposed to his fixation on the Girl. They weren’t exactly being quiet in the Crest after all.

Still, it provokes an irresistible grin; she’s his and only he could arouse those sounds from deep in her stomach.

“Sweet girl.” His finger pets the peak of her cheekbone. “I think we’re going to have to walk back.”

She groans. “So much for an easy-going day.”

With their intended excursion back to the settlement coming up empty-handed, the two set out from the Crest and follow the path they’d been adhered to for the past hour.

It’s nearing dusk; vibrant blues and greens numbing to darkened blends of orange and purples. The Eclipse formally so highly spoken of from their taxi service approaches as the moon makes its tiresome journey above.

“D’you think we’ll get to see it?” The Girl’s questioning disrupts the flow of crunching gravel underneath their synchronized feet.

The sky is victimised by a leering tinted slit of transparisteel, analysing the steadiness of thick clouds rolling across the surface of the dual spheres. It scales inwards to observe the shadows of craters beneath the puffs. Sorgan’s secondary moon, much smaller in size or perhaps simply further away, is smothered in the overcast and lags behind its twin, silent and colourless.

“Clouds are moving fast. It should be okay.”

She nods. “Never had the pleasure of seeing one before. Heard they’re real pretty, though. What about you?”

“No. I don’t frequent a planet long enough.”

There’s a fork in the road, diverging off into three different paths but he’s got it all memorised in the back of his mind and continues onwards without a falter in his steps, the Girl to his side with a bounce in her step as she mulls over his candour approach.

“That’s too bad. Not one for settling down, huh?”

It’s a rhetorical question but Din doesn’t want to leave her hanging regardless, “No.”

“Yet here you are—” She prods a finger at his unarmoured side prompting a light swat to her hand. “—settling.”

“...I’m not settling.”

“No?”

His shoulders broaden and he hooks a thumb in the front of his belt. “No.”

She chuckles at him but mercifully leaves it at that, well aware what he says isn’t true but she’s none the wiser to what he’s settling down for—and it’s not Sorgan.

Leather clings to her hip for dear life, refusing to surrender its residency even when they drift from one another to avoid a dip in the path; fingers merely burrow into the cloth and drag the warmth straight back once they’ve passed. Din exploits the absence of inquisitive glances and looming queries to dedicate cloying touches and he’s not afraid to demonstrate it. Where, even a week ago, he couldn’t express these emotions without the adrenaline coursing through his veins, the arousal pulsing in his core, but circumstances have changed—evolved into something fresh.

Something untouched that he wants to corrupt with his obscene hands.

It’s short-lived. Snooping eyes return.

Lanterns emitting orange hues reflect off the waters of the emerging krill ponds, softly rounded fluorescents mirroring against his polished beskar as he sweeps through the troughs. The majority of the inhabitants surround the central campfire, its flames a worthy competitor to the lanterns mellow gingers. They lick and lick and lick at the sky, the scorching embers puffing into the fading purples upwards; laughter and the tinking of spotchka-filled flasks circling the bonfire.

Leather collapses resembling the Crest plummeting through the atmosphere. Heavy, fast, and everything in slow motion while he processes he’s losing traction, a small hitch in his chest upon striking his own thigh. She’s right beside him, an inch away from brushing elbows, yet she’s still too far.

It’s not in his nature to act so possessively in front of people—out in the open for whoever to gauge thoughts, to probe his emotions—and he won’t start parading around now, in spite of the fact she’s accumulated fresh bruises that haven’t been fortunate enough to receive time to heal; or even grant the red inking to mollify into something a little less salient.

They’re the one factor he can pardon from his public displays of affection regulation. It’s simple and clean. An honest indication of what’s between them without needing to flaunt it, simply a demonstration to not infringe on their relations.

Din is accustomed to the turned heads, the watchful gazes as they make way to the midpoint, but the Girl still finds it intolerant; the exposure too confining and she slinks back a few steps. He continues onwards not wanting to draw further attention to her and they pass the spectators, eyes stooping and communication commencing after they’ve had a gander of their guests—their clothes and the Girl’s dishevelled hair evidence enough.

They’re really not as discreet as they pass themselves off to be.

Omera interrupts his motion with a sidestep onto their path. She offers a courteous smile. “Did you have an eventful day?”

“Yes.”

“Can we expect your participation tonight? It should only be a few more hours before the eclipse commences.”

Din nods, somewhat reluctant to agree. Social settings weren’t in his favour but there’s a persistent woman on the heels of his boots who longs to see the phenomenon, and whatever she wishes he will grant with a simple please Din.

Omera gleams at his accepted invitation and gestures past the campfire to a stationed bench compiled of dishes and brimming glasses of various liquids. “Help yourself to our delicacies. It’s all traditional for the celebration.”

He softly sighs, not enough for anybody to hear him over the uproar but it’s sufficient in getting his unimpressed thoughts regarding the taunting dishes—at least, the Girl notices. His helmet pans to the heft on his pauldron, caf-coloured eyes trailing along the limb and jumping to its partner gesturing in the direction of the hut.

“I’ll get you something to eat, all right?”

She doesn’t entitle him the opportunity to oppose her proposition before bounding through the crowd to collect a platter of high-grade Sorgan nourishments. He scouts for a moment, considering her with a slender tilt of his helmet; riveting, how enthusiastic and adaptable she is to the liability of his Creed.

The Way had forcibly distanced him from so many potentials, pulverised them before his very visor, and here she was, dirtying her faultless hands with the soot of his decisions simply to cater to him.

It wasn’t all that long ago he’d be seated up in the Crest’s cockpit, a helmet on his lap, a bowl of nutrients in his hands, a deadpan expression etched into his face as the stars skim past the viewport. Silence, he so often told himself he favours, accompanying him like a prodding rod at the back of his ears; loud and exhausting despite its very name.

It has been quite a while since he’s succumbed to the silence with the Child and all. While he wished the kid would actually comply with his requests, Din has a preference for the cooing and squealing of a baby than the hum and buzz of his haven.

Perhaps it won’t last long—the Child will be returned to wherever he originated and the Girl will journey on after some time—but at least he can savour the atmosphere until then; anything ranging from the snarky remarks to the comfortable quiet in contrast to the loud, resonating one he’s been inflicted by all these years.

“I’ll leave you to eat,” Omera announces, “I’m sure your boy would like to see you when you’re done.”

Another nod on behalf of him, another burden on his pauldron from her; a fleeting touch of her hand but it’s cold and sharp and Din yearns for the Girl’s radiation to cleanse him of the hypothermia.

He sighs and makes his way to their hut.

Their quarters are overfamiliar. The littered blankets untouched, the way Din liked it, lasting evidence of what occurred. The flimsy dress she despised neglected and long forgotten, though it resurges the crisp memories regarding Din’s Honour; how he nonchalantly stripped himself of what he’s constructed himself around simply to feel a smidge of liberation with the Girl—to highlight their connections in the cracks of their implicit relationship.

To show he’s more than just a rusting Creed.

Din exhales through his filters and sinks to the cot’s mattress. It’s not nearly as comfortable with all the beskar on but it’s not as though he’ll be inside long.

“Oh yeah, you just relax there why don’t you?” The Girl grumbles from the doorway, balancing an assortment of bowls and plates in either hand and the crooks of her elbows—she would’ve made for a poor waitress in another life.

He makes no attempt to aid her. “That’s too much.”

“It’s not all for you. Other people eat, too, you know.”

Oh, he knows all too well. The sugary goodness of a thick syrup running down her fingers and onto his tongue never strays far from his mind.

She tries for a bend of her knees to ease the dishes onto a surface but they more or less topple out of her grip, scattering pieces of fried foods across the burnished wood. “Shit...ah, it’s just yours.”

“Funny.”

“I like to think so,” she cracks.

Din strains from his position to observe the variety of consumables she’d pinched from the community; bone broth, assorted krill, an unidentified pastry of some sort—Din crosses it off his list, far too dry looking for his taste—among snacking foods.

They’re not worthy of the title ‘appetising’ but Din’s acquainted with tasteless stock; he only ever eats it for the nutrients anyways.

She hoards a bowl of bone broth to her chest. “I’ll be outside. If you want seconds just call me, yeah?”

Leather wraps around her wrist before he properly registers her words. “No—you can stay. It’s not like I haven’t taken this off around you before.”

“I thought you might’ve wanted to eat in peace.”

Din exhales a laugh out of his nose. “A girl of your build should be smarter than that, no?”

It rises a simper out of her, a roll of her eyes and a shake of her head. Din retrieves the extended plate of krill prepared in a vast abundance of methods—fried, broiled, roasted, sauteed—he unenthusiastically considers a crustacean between two gloved digits.

Vibrant cobalt had grown to a dim grey underneath the golden breading, a fine sheet of oil coating leather skin and a drop of grease slipping down the curve of his thumb. Reluctance and dissatisfaction are apparent in his mannerisms and vocoder, emitting an exhaust laden sigh that crackles into the quiet lodge.

The mattress dips with her weight, the press of her back against his beskar. “Not one for krill?”

“I think I’ve had my fair dose,” Din broods.

“Still pent up about getting a little bit of water in your circuits?”

Another cheesy droid joke that pushes his eyes into the back of his skull but he lets it slide. Din’s famished. It’d been a while since he ate; well, not exactly but the Girl wasn’t much of a meal more than a treat. If he could draw out sustenance from her he’d never have to endure another stale dessert or salty meats from who knows where.

Their backs are pressed firmly together, practically leaning on each other for support, and Din doesn’t need to verify whether she’s looking away for him to unlatch his helmet. Its casual hiss signals for her to keep her eyes trained forwards and he lays the steel to rest beside him.

It’s the first time her eyes are open while the helmet is detached. Well, maybe not the first—he had lifted it the slightest back on Tatooine, in the cockpit while she busied herself with his Crest’s maintenance. The circumstances don’t much differ from now; both scenarios involve food of some sort and resolute trust.

Cobalt of the sweet dessert transferred to a chewy crustacean that’s comparable to grinding tar in his mouth, tough and fudgy but in all the worst ways. Din isn’t a selective person; he can consume the coarse flavourless product without a second’s worth of hesitance but he’s had the best of the best—jatnese be te jatnese, he’d said so himself—a gluttonous intake of the Girl’s taste and nothing will ever equate to that.

The mound of unchewable meat slips down his pipes, buttery and peppery but overall bland. Nutritional enough. He crams another cluster of the crescents into his gullet to appease his appetite.

The Girl sips on the pale cream broth behind him, head tilted against his as the liquid leaks from the carved bowl and between her lips. Din can’t imagine the taste is much better than the krill with the colours being so dull—as though they were eating the incarnation of unstimulating hues of greys and blacks.

“Do you want to try some?” she asks, extending the half-empty bowl to their side.

Din retrieves the grub with a low hum in his throat, uncertain, but ultimately decides it can’t hurt to give it a try. It’s obviously edible if it’s a Sorgan delicacy—how wrong he was. It’s saltier than the oceans with chunks in it; he doesn’t even want to think what they could be. He refrains from spitting the soup back into the bowl or onto the cot and feebly swallows the lukewarm puddle, a nubby leather wrist wiping the residue from his lips with disgust.

She bellows at his reaction, the back of her shoulders bouncing against his pauldrons as she struggles to contain herself.

The base of the bowl knocks against the closest surface available, a flimsy stool that accompanies the table, and he scowls with his arms crossed against the hump of his chest. “You’re wicked.”

“Seemed like you wanted a taste with the way you were looking at me.” Din’s head slightly tilts as he watches from the corner of the visor. “I can feel your eyes. Not sure how you ever catch bounties when all you do is stare.”

Bounties are intimidated by my staring, they’re smart, he wants to retort but saying bounties and smart in the same sentence is comical.

Appetite long gone, by consequence of broth that would serve a better purpose as blurrg feed, Din clips the rim of his beskar between two fingers and considers it among his lap. There’s no intent to lift it up and over his face. No intent to distance himself from the Girl just yet. It gawks at him; captivating in its own methods but still so ransacked of life. The black void of his false eyes darker than that of Space’s vacuum.

Din’s eyes ricochet from the slit to the back of the Girl’s head like a blaster bolt within a room of reflective duralloy and nowhere to go; pondering the morals of his very character as he aligns the crown of her head with the vacancy in his clutch.

She noticeably stiffens as his helmet envelopes her, the rim slack around her neck with nothing to latch onto. Fingers dismiss the fried krill she’s been feasting on and orbits the surface; Din amicably smacks them away and lays his hands on her shoulders to loosen the knots.

“Greasy,” he simply explains his reaction.

One would think such a valuable material as beskar could be cleaned with a small wipe of a damp cloth. One would be wrong. It’s a nuisance to maintain its condition and he’d been lagging behind with its upkeep as of recent—he couldn’t afford greasy fingerprints.

Soft vocals are replaced with a crunchy crackle, an unnatural graininess as if she digested a bucket’s worth of Arvala-7 terrain; sand and grit forming lumps in her ducts and spluttering into the internals of beskar, “What are you doing?”

His fingers rub into the base of her neck, the deepness of his unaffected tone eliciting a hum within the helm. “The rifle won’t be used to its full potential without the helmet.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“Don’t worry, I’m not giving you the helmet. I just want to show you what it can do.”

“Is this...allowed?” She goes to scratch the back of her head but knocks against the steel and limply drops her hand. “It doesn’t feel like this is allowed. I’m sure there’s a rule in that big ol’ Manual for Mandalorians you’ve got hiding around.”

He scoffs. “Do you want to see it or not?”

It dips to a dainty nod.

“Gods, this is heavy. Don’t you get a sore neck?”

Din neglects her questioning and extends his vambrace before her, his other arm reaching around to point at the buttons—effectively sandwiching her between his gauntlets—and his finger focuses on one in particular. It’s a small circular button, a clone to all the others, but more weathered from the abrasive leather. “Click this,” he instructs.

She complies, her digit dainty beside the stocky hide, helmet perking up once the thermal activates and submerging her vision in cool hues of blues. Her curiosity matches that of the Child’s as she twists and turns her head side to side, surely discovering the warm tones of candlelight and heat signals radiating from their hands before her.

“Wait a damn minute—” The Girl aims to toss a suspectful glare in his direction but quickly dismisses the desire, his exposure never far from the forefront of her mind, “you cheating-”

“I told you, Cyar’ika,” Din coos against the side of the helmet. “Not a gentleman.”

“I...I demand a rematch.”

Din chuckles into her, the leaps of his laughter ricocheting against her back but he pays her decree no attention. There’s no way she’d reign successfully in a no holds barred condition, not when his visor contributes half of the rifle's potential of force. Then again, if things were to pan out the same way it did earlier perhaps he’ll take her up on it—just for fun.

“Good for calculating how many threats there are--”

“Yeah, that, or being a little-”

“Next,” he navigates her hand to a second preset.

The thermal deactivates with one push and the sonic detectors engage with another.

It must be disorienting for her to focus on all the surrounding sounds of the settlement, the steel swallowing her senses, Din remembers the first time he donned a helmet—one much smaller and lighter than his current but all the same in terms of abilities and desensitising him from the outside world. Pair that with the power to be able to hear a whisper from over a hundred metres away, it can turn situations sticky and muddled if not appropriately centred.

“What do you hear?”

She’s mute and motionless, suspended in the limbo of space and time.

Din presses a kiss to the nape of her neck in an attempt to declutter her mind but it does very little; sharp claws of concern grasping at the back of his head and scampering upwards until the pressure against his temples is unbearable and it finally conquers him.

He shouldn’t have imposed this on her. He of all people should’ve known better. It takes years of getting accustomed to it.

“Hey. Hey, okay, no more.”

It’s eased up halfway before she interrupts and pulls it back down. “I’m fine. Just trying to focus. There are too many conversations, it’s distracting.” She chuckles. “Good thing I didn’t have it this morning. You snore, you know. Would’ve rendered me deaf.”

Din grumbles beneath his breath—something even the detectors can’t distinguish with the crackles in his vocal cords—and sharply flicks the back of the steel with his forefinger, grinning when she compresses a hand against the side where her ear resides.

“Ow,” she whines. “Okay, okay, turn it off. I’m sick of hearing you breathe down my neck.”

It disables with a final push of his vambrace.

The Girl explores the surface of the beskar with either hand and Din subconsciously annotates how dilatory she is with it—her fingers dipping from the cheek ridges to the face and around the ear caps before resting against the sealed cooling vents at the back—solely dedicating the time to recognise the only face she can put a name to but from his perspective.

Combine that with being endowed with the pleasure of seeing her in his shirt and helmet provokes Din’s heart to stammer against the bones, his jaw to tighten and he seizes the beskar by the edge and twists it to face him. He enables virtually no time for her to comprehend what he’s planning and it’s undetermined whether she managed to shut her eyes before his face is frontwards, but he trusts they are.

It’s outlandish to gaze into the cold dark visor when there’s another lifeform beneath it. Sure, he’s encountered incalculable Mandalorians in his lifetime but never has anybody worn his helmet—it’s a fragment of his Creed, of Him, and he’d rather fall victim to a sarlacc and endure the agony of being digested for millennia than to witness another being wield his persona.

Omitting the Girl from the equation, naturally.

She could carve out his heart with his vibro-knife and he wouldn’t complain one bit. It’s incomprehensible what she does to him. Just a touch of her finger on his face and he’s primed to brandish a blaster and confront her greatest enemy even if he’s incapable of victory.

Nonetheless, it astonishes him how she can gaze into the nullity of a slit and not request—demand—for more. She’s more than deserving of it and yet she doesn’t wish for it.

Perhaps she sees a mirrored image of what’s before him. Not a slab of shiny steel nor a devout Creed but merely the living tissue, the pumping blood, beneath it.

Din trails a digit along the steel jawline and lifts as he reaches the transparisteel visor connecting to the curve at the bottom. It lifts only a little, just enough for her lips and the point of her nose to peek beneath. The soft hills separate instinctively and he wastes no time slotting his own in their place, cupping the back of her neck with his free hand to drag her in close.

Those damned words. They utterly refuse to vacate his mind—duplicating by the dozen and submerging his thoughts and sensations with foreign statements. It links together into a lengthy chain made of high-grade alloy, fortified greater than freshly smelted beskar, and packages his consciousness into overburdened disarray.

Ni kar’tayl gar darasuum.

Ni kar’tayl gar darasuum. Ni kar’tayl gar darasuum.

Din needs her to know; needs her to hear those words tumble out of his vocal cords.

He needs to enunciate them—to listen to himself admit the feelings hidden within him aren't pseudo.

But he can’t; his lips cease their endeavours against hers yet he still can’t discover the courage to say three little fucking words. Thank the stars he disabled the sonic detectors because he wouldn’t be able to take the speculative questioning upon hearing the thumping in his chest, deep and muffled pulses of his heart struggling to compete with his nerves.

“Din,” she whispers. “You’re overthinking again, aren’t you?”

“No…”

“Come on, you need to get some fresh air. Let’s go see the kid.”

No, not yet, he thinks. Please, just a little while longer.

She hoists the beskar from her head slowly, inches of her impeccable face unmasking at a time. He cups her jaw and tilts her head to peck at her chin, her cheeks, and forehead as the helmet is relieved from each section.

Din records the movement of flesh underneath his lips as she smiles against his intimacy and it urges something intense and unexplored in his centre, his core, and the helmet bounces off the cot and crashes to the floor below with a small push of his three fingers; his lips refusing to curb their hunger for cushiony skin and his weight slowly applies against her until she inclines onto her back with him above.

“Din.”

“Mmm,” he hums, leathers stroking the strands of hair out of her face before reconnecting his lips to her cheekbones.

“We—we can’t. The kid is waiting for you.” Her actions overpower her words; a hand slides down his cape feebly, her fingers catching on the folds to thrust him closer.

“You’re addictive.”

“Not so bad yourself.”

Din emits a gravelly groan and slides a knee between her legs, the edge of his cuisse brushing against the peak of her groin. “Can I have a taste, Cyar—sweetheart, please?”

They don’t have the privilege of time on their side, Din’s more than aware of this fact and yet he can’t stop the glove from slithering down her neck and the curve of her chest to idle at the hem of her pants.

“You’re insatiable,” she says, fingers firmly rooted within the scratchy cloak.

She’s hitting the nail on the head with that proclamation; he’s utterly unsated and deprived of her sweetness. Din requires it like sustenance—like medicine.

“Don’t you think you’ve had enough?”

“Never.”

The aftertaste of her slick is on his tongue and he needs more. He wants to binge on her for eternity and, maybe, then he’ll finally be content; a belly full of her translucent flavours, the gums of his throat and mouth coated in the thickness to the brink of suffocation.

Din’s fingers toy with her buckle loosely, queuing for approval.

“Can’t,” she whines pitifully. “We’ve already made our presence known. They’ll be expecting us out there. Besides, you should spend time with the kid. I’m not going anywhere.”

“No?”

She grins. “Well—maybe back to the Crest. Has that offer got an expiry date?”

“Offer?”

“Already forgotten, huh? If I remember correctly, you said you’ll fuck me in your bunk whenever I want.” She mimics his words, “Name the time.”

Shit—it wasn’t just pillow-talk.

“Why didn’t you mention it while we were there?”

“Oh no, Din.” He’s dragged inwards, his lips brushing the tip of her ear as she diabolically whispers into his, “I got something special planned for that.”

A chill runs beneath his beskar, brandishing his flesh with a bumpiness the dunes of Tatooine would envy. There are endless possibilities for what she’s got in mind but Din’s been excluded from her brainstorming. It doesn’t cease his imagination to run wild with disgusting thoughts of deviancy; ones involving her bent over on that shitty cot of his, the familiar manacles capturing her wrists, shameful noises slipping past those beautiful lips as he takes her night long and into the rise of the sun.

It had to be bigger than that. Don’t get him wrong, he wants to give her all of that, badly, but she could’ve done it earlier. They would’ve had the equipment on hand, no preparation necessary. No, she’s suggesting something else. Something bigger.

But she won’t indicate anything further, won’t give him a little taste of what’s to come, and cruelly urges him back onto his feet to recollect his helmet with a heavy hand.

She observes him upon hearing the click of his locking system inside the helm, either hand on his hip with an inclined head that just reads don’t leave me hanging.

“Suspense makes it all that much better,” she sweetly says.

He’s beginning to realise that sweetness is all exterior, a disguise for all the hot and heaviness she possesses within. A decoy that he’s fallen victim to. He’s like that of a fish foolishly nipping at a too good to be true enticement, the Girl laying in wait for him to latch on and reel him into his doom.

But she’s inexperienced. Unsuspecting of his abilities. Oblivious to his attachment to her lure.

She’s sweet but she’s also sour.

Salty in the heat of the moment.

Bitter in times of hurt.

Saliva constructed of pure savoury goodness.

She’s got all the nourishments he requires and there’s an endless supply; flavours he can taste straight from the source.

So, one can assume the agony, the clenched fists in his gloves, as they saunter through the chatty crowd, her hips swaying ahead of him a little too provocatively. She knows what she does to him, he’s demonstrated his need in various positions, and she’ll go above and beyond to find one way or another to fuck with him—to poke and prod to test his self-control before he drags her behind a hut and fucks her against the walls, whether it was outside or not he couldn’t care.

To fuse her fingers with the puppet strings attached to his pauldrons.

“This should be quiet enough,” she announces and throws herself onto the handcrafted bench, tossing a leg over the other and patting the empty space beside her. “I know you like quiet.”

Din plops down with the Child on his lap, a slothful hand massaging the green wrinkles at the summit of his head. There’s a handful of farmers in their own respective groups scattered around them, producing enough noise that allows thoughts to wander without concerning themselves with maintaining a conversation.

Sorgan’s moons are at their pinnacles, puffy grey plumes illuminated into off-whites from their luminescence. One sphere perches in the vast black, performing as a repellent to the swarms of haze, while the other is blinded by the thickness of the clouds; a circular radiance perceived through the fluffiness the only indication the planet possessed more than one.

A vague shadow surmounts the moon’s edge, the dawdling process of the eclipse having commenced but it’ll be quite some time before anything worthwhile transpires—Din sullenly groans at the missed opportunity to give her his tongue back on the cot. It’s not as though they were missing out on anything. It would’ve only taken him a couple of minutes to work her up to the brink, a couple more to—

“I never asked,” she says. “What’s the deal with you and the kid?”

“What do you mean?”

She shifts in search of a comfortable position among the splinters. “He’s a bounty and you’re a bounty hunter; please don’t make me explain further.”

Din sighs and swipes a finger across the leafy brim of his ear, provoking a gentle burble into the Crest’s gear knob. “I handed him over but they were doing experiments on him and I couldn’t leave him there. Things didn’t go to plan--”

“Because you don’t plan.”

“--and there was a shootout with the Guild.”

“So,” She ponders, “you’ve got a bounty of your own now.”

He scoffs. “Don’t get any ideas.”

“Too late.”

Din entertains her amusement with a quiet huff of air through his filters, soft enough for her to register it’s not an annoyance. The subject of the Guild raises some questions he’s not wanting to voice—they’ll only ruin the mood and he doesn’t want to admit defeat—but he’s to play the hand he’s been dealt.

“We need to discuss where we’re heading next,” he says.

“So soon? It’s only been two days.”

“Should consider ourselves lucky we’ve managed to survive this long here. There could be hunters stationed from the last time I was here.”

“Right—and the Crest would’ve got their attention,” she agrees. “Okay. Where are you thinking?”

Somewhere reclusive. An isolated backwater planet much like Sorgan but one where nobody knows their names or reputation. Although discovering a planet with the aforementioned qualities is easier said than done, especially with the threats of audacious bounty hunters on their thrusters. Idling in space until they stumble across a safe-enough planet—or if pirates picked them off—was always an option.

Din sighs.

The Girl was right; he doesn’t plan. He’d just been traversing from parsec to parsec all his life, picking up commissions for fuel and a bite to eat, partaking in activities that simply aided his survival. Now with the Child, he’s expected to have a procedure—to shield him from the dangers Din automatically puts him in upon rescuing him from the client. But he doesn’t have the scheme to save their lives, literally.

“I don’t know,” he admits.

“Nothing wrong with not knowing. With my skills behind a rifle and your—uh… Point is, we’ll figure it out. Lighten up a little, you’ll wrinkle that pretty face of yours.”

With a roll of his eyes behind the visor, he settles for her words of reassurance and heeds her suggestion to relax his forehead.

“Mandalorian—Mando,” Omera’s abrupt panic-stricken tone is plenty for both of them to straighten their posture and bury the quips. Din twists his helmet to where she stands behind him, noting the fumbling hands before her lap, the twitch in her eyebrow ridges.

Din deposits the Child into the Girl’s arms and stands. “Is there something I can help you with?”

“Caben and Stoke...they—they weren’t with you?”

“No, they never returned for us.”

The Girl interjects, “We assumed they headed back before us.”

“No, no. Nobody has seen them.”

Shit—he should’ve realised something was wrong when they failed to show up. Raiders? There was no sign of them on that trail—but Din wasn’t exactly in the right mindset, being too haunted by the Girl’s temptations.

“I’m sorry to ask this of you...at an unfortunate time, no less, but-”

“I’ll go trace their route and see if I pick anything up,” Din says.

“Thank you, thank you.” Omera clasps his hands in gratitude, her thumbs brushing along the stitching.

“It’s not a problem. If I don’t come across them on the trail, I’ll question the neighbouring settlement. They should have some information.”

“I’m coming with you,” the Girl pipes up.

“No. Stay with the kid here.”

She shoots him a curved eyebrow and places a hand on her hip, her other cradling the Child into her side. “I hardly think watching the moon is of importance right now. I won’t let you go out there alone and it’ll be quicker if there’s two of us looking.”

“I don’t want-”

“Don’t want, what, to drag me into this? I think we’re far past all that, no?”

Din sighs. “Fine.”

No use arguing with someone so cocksure like her. Besides, when push comes to shove she’ll be resourceful with the rifle.

The Child isn’t happy at the circumstances, to say the least. He finally finds serenity wrapped in cold beskar edges and has been stripped away so soon—he glares at his guardian in the warmth of poncho-clad arms while Din and the Girl retreat into the woods once more. He’ll make it up to the kid when he gets back; Din’s certain he’ll face the wrath of a foot-long baby if he doesn’t.

“I think you should take the rifle. Just in case.”

“No. You need something to protect yourself.” Din brushes her suggestion off and activates the thermals on his vambrace.

“I’ve got my blaster.”

“That’s not enough. Here, hold it up. Press that. Be careful with the bayonet.”

She glances at him with questioning eyes and rests the rifle against her hip. “What’d you do?”

“It’ll administer electricity to anybody who touches it. There're only so many cartridges—” Din presents a cluster of steel cylinders in his glove and she shoves them in a pocket in her pants, “Pair your blaster with the bayonet and use the ammunition sparingly.”

“You think we’ll need them?”

“Just be prepared.”

They fall into a sharply cold silence, Din utilising his sonic detectors as they trudge through the bush to discern any commotion that may be of use. The Girl retains a pace a few steps behind his own, purposefully slotting her boots into his prints to avoid a stray twig snap here or a tumble there. It’s wordlessly recognised if there are raiders in these parts it’s best not to disclose their presence, especially not when there’s two of them. It supplies them with a lead on their opponent, at least until they identify how many there are.

The thermals are nothing but counterproductive. If they had passed through recently the track would surely be lit in fire-orange but it’s all blues and greys; Din thumbs the button to restore his vision, relieving the burden of having to focus on where he steps and clicks another for his sonic detectors. His vambrace was really getting put to the test today.

“Where——or….hurt you.”

Din freezes, the Girl sharp in his guide, and adjusts his helmet to pinpoint the muffling in his sensors. It’s quiet. Shallow. It could be flooded with a singular flask of water.

“Does….Child,” It’s speech tears.

East, about ninety metres out. The forest is thickened around these parts—too dense to trace any campfires or shadows—but there’s somebody there and they’re referencing a child; there’s not a doubt in his mind it’s The Child.

They’re not raiders. They’re not people who’ll go down without a fight.

“Guild members,” Din slips.

“Any clue how many?”

He hones in on the vocals, isolating each individual muffle or change of tone that could indicate there’s more than just the one. Even if he’s wrong, it’s best to be over-prepared. “Two. No, wait...three. I think.” She quietly mulls the possibility over, the strap of the rifle flinging over her shoulder as she makes way inwards. Din seizes her wrist and suspends her movements. “What are you doing?”

“I’ll get the high ground and see if I can spot Caben and Stoke. There’s no point starting something if they’re not there.”

“High ground?” Din questions.

She grins and breaks his grasp. “How’d you think I got those targets up in the trees?”

The Girl cracks her knuckles, the clicks and pops of joints puncturing his eardrums through the detectors like a bubble underneath a needlepoint. Either of her hands sprawls on the sides of a trunk, fingers dig into the bark for traction, and she hoists her feet up—she’s like the Crest in its ascent, agile and coordinated as she frog-kicks herself up into the branches.

Din’s eyebrows raise in dismay; he didn’t know what he was expecting but it wasn’t that.

The potential one possesses outside a suit of steel is still an astonishing concept to Din even after all these years of branding himself to the insides of his helmet. There’s an endless list of skills he’ll never be able to master—untapped aptitudes that have greyed into a colourless nothing.

Steel platings obstruct his movements, the helmet an obstacle to his sensations; his birthrights.

Brittle tree arms creak and whine above him, the leaves rustling as she navigates the long-arm’s lens to her sight. He’ll be left in amazement if she can distinguish the bodies from the swaying of blunted foliage. The land is too compact with trunks reaching the clouds, even with the magnified scope it’ll be near impossible to identify how many there are or whether the missing duo is being held captive.

His thermals would come in handy right about now for her; with her height advantage and his helmet, she’d assuredly recognise their precise positioning. Hell, she’d be an unstoppable force—a marksman even the greatest of bounty hunters would shake in their armour witnessing.

The Girl’s low tone sails through the treetops, gliding with the bitter night edge, and into his sonic detectors, “I see them—they’ve got them in the middle of the camp. Minimum six hostiles. All equipped with blasters. I can take two of them out from here.”

Well, he’s definitely left in amazement.

That’ll leave him with the remaining four, so long as there’s not more concealed within the shadows.

A lack of communication between them serves as nothing but an impediment, but time isn’t on their side and Din can’t waste any more of it to collect the comm units from the Crest. Weapons locker, second drawer, to the left.

If only he had thought of it earlier.

Din’s helmet inclines skywards, his visor scaling in and outlining her frame.

They’ve got each other's credibility and that, strictly, is sufficient for Din to jump into action; cutting through the undergrowth and stealthing between pillars of wood, each succeeding stride premeditated.

His scanners crackle against his ears, a gruff voice laced with croaks and coughs slipping through the beskar, “Where is he? Look at me! You’ll tell me where he is, boy, otherwise I’ll gut you right here. Perhaps watching you die will encourage your friend to speak, yeah?”

Caben and Stoke quake ahead of the lambent light illuminating their features; previously happy expressions replaced with terror, identical to when the AT-ST had broken through a dozen sturdy trees to gaze upon its victims with hollow eyes.

A burly Weequay paces before them, twin thumbs hooked on the hoops of his trousers in an attempt to appear stockier.

Fuckin’ Weequays.

Din’s blaster will come up short in a confrontation with that layered flesh of his and, with the lack of communication between them, he can’t depend on the Girl on being able to snipe him—he may not be one of the two she can manage. Another Guild member sits off to the side of the farmers, intimidatingly polishing a small vibro-knife in his fist. The remaining four she spoke of patrol their encampment; all either human or made with skin he can puncture.

It won’t be easy and the Weequay has the advantage; Din will need to take him out first and foremost.

He’ll put his faith in the Girl’s abilities that she can ward off the other’s long enough.

Din shovels a cluster of rocks into his hand and hurls them overhead and into the copse recesses, the rustling effectively tearing the hunters’ focus from their posts—Din springs to action and leaps from behind the greenery boscage, blaster pistol in his dominant hand and vibro-knife in the other.

The Weequay’s back faces Din and he exploits the factor, pouncing like a predatory loth-cat onto him and slicing a gash into the leathery hide of his neck. It does minimal damage, a small notch for a dribble of blood to meet with the neck of his shirt. He’s thrown off of the hunter and stumbles backwards into a tree, grunting and raising his blaster outwards; the trigger snaps against the alloy hold, a burning beam of cherry drilling into a fleshy build. It drops to the dirt, blaster bouncing astray.

“Mandalorian!” Caben exclaims into his detectors.

Din doesn’t reply nor impart his eyes to analyse their condition - they’re alive and that’s all that mattered while in the midst of battle.

The Weequay restores his attention to his surroundings, scowling at the Mandalorian before him and dipping calloused fingers into the wound of his neck. He snarls at the amassed blood on his tips. “You’ll pay for that, Mando, just as soon as you tell me where the bounty is.”

Child--bounty.

Any doubt that he had about them being after the kid is shattered, obliterated entirely.

Din’s vibro-knife pulses in his fist, his finger planted against the trigger in his other. The four scrawnier minions gather around his position against the tree, brandishing arrogant smirks as they languidly handle their blasters.

“I said-” The Weequay spits between his boots. “-tell me where the bounty is. You may have taken one of us but there are plenty more. There’s only one of you—your friends here aren’t much fighters.”

One. He scoffs.

A henchman, typically made of flesh and bones and blood, pops beside the Weequay; organic matter dissolving to flaky dust onto the forest floor. It leaves nothing behind that proves it was once a humanoid, barring the hunter’s blaster which plummets to the soil and knocks against the boot of his partner.

“What the pfassk!” One of them cries.

His detectors pick up the familiar whistle of a rifle pellet.

The Weequay raids his surroundings, concluding Din’s ally to be the in the only place that’d see them from this distance: “In the trees! Go!”

The hunters follow their orders but abruptly stop; a second member obliterating the moment his boot sole leaves the ground. Particles scatter with the breeze through the leafy canopies. They lie in wait, suspecting of another incoming granule but Din knows it won’t come—they’re well out of her sight.

But he can’t let them head in her direction; Din flicks the point of his blade between two fingers and slings the knife through the air and into the Weequay’s gullet once more—deeper and thrumming out splotches of plasma, an unnerving outcome of the intensity the knife is throbbing.

He staggers backwards in shock but Din focuses on the others, administering two perfectly aligned bolts into either of their unsuspecting chests; they nosedive into snapped twigs and gravel where sticky liquid accumulates underneath their bodies.

One to go.

Din didn’t act in accordance with his plan—the Weequay winding up as the last he’s to tend to—but this works, too.

The blade is ripped from his gullet, a spurt of hot blood following its dislodging, and the Weequay balefully boasts the dagger in his clutch. “Come now, Mandalorian. It’s going to take more than that,” he snarls.

He scoffs to himself in response and edges closer to one of the hunters drift melee weapons, footsteps precariously slow to ensure he doesn’t allude to his intentions—the bushes swish, a deep crack of a stick, and they freeze as one.

Visor and darkened pools of black sharpen against the lightless forest, apparently having forgotten about each other’s threat to concentrate on their snooping bystander.

The Girl steps out from the dusk, amban rifle hoisted forehead level with the Weequay. She stands stout on her feet, the wooden stock butting into her shoulder, eyes perfectly trained on her target before her. She doesn’t shoot, she won’t without his expressed permission.

The hunter recognises defeat and tosses the Mandalorian’s vibro-knife before his boots.

Din decompresses somewhat, allowing a sigh to flee from his filters and swoops up the knife and creeps past the defeated frame to shred through the rope bindings around Caben and Stoke’s wrists. “Thank—thank you,” Caben hisses and rubs the rash they’ve left in their wake.

Stoke imparts a gratified nod and smoothes out his clothing. “We’re sorry. They ambushed us on our way back---wanted to use us as leverage to draw you out. We’re just glad they didn’t track us back to the settlement.”

“Are you okay?” Din asks and quickly glances over their appearance. Some creased clothing and maturing bruises but for the most part untouched - no blood, no wounds.

They nod their heads in unison.

“He’s--” Caben glares at his captor warily. “He’s after the kid—your kid.”

Din suspected as much. “We’ll deal with him. Where’s the speeder?”

“Destroyed!”

He sighs and contemplates his options as if he had any. No speeder, no ride. “Follow the trail back to the village. We’ll be right behind you.”

They share a concerned look between each other but heed Din’s instructions, slipping past the growling figure and bounding through the bushland towards their escape route without glancing back.

“Quit wasting moonlight, boy. Get your hands dirty,” the Weequay sneers.

Judging by the bravado performance he puts on, he reckons he won’t suffer at the hands of an irritated Mandalorian tonight—he couldn’t be more incorrect even if he were to claim Din was of another species underneath his armour. A nettlesome Gungan. A hard-headed Klatoonian. An emotionless droid. He’s heard it all and they’re all closer to being more correct than he assumes of his safety.

There could be a message to send; violate every bone in his body to signify not to challenge the wrath of a well-equipped storm.

He’ll be in pain, Din’s sure of it, only, it’s undecided to what extent.

The Weequay grins, a sharp menacing clenched-teeth smile that puts Din back in his place, a guffaw that transmits a surge of electricity down the bumps of his spine; sounds of self-assuredness he shouldn’t possess in his perspective, unless...

No—he’s laughing at their idiocy. He’s pending for the upper hand.

Din spins on the heels of his boots, blaster pistol scanning the thicket. There’s more. There’s fucking more of the bastards and they’re smart about it; they laid in wait and let Din kill their teammates, let Din think he had the advantage, and only to fucking swoop in once they’ve noted all of his abilities—his sonic detectors. They’re too quiet for him to sense.

He thumbs his vambrace to activate his thermal but he doesn’t get the opportunity before he’s kicked in the back, staggering a few steps before crashing to the ground in a heap of steel. Grunting and groaning, he surveys behind him for the abruptness. The Girl is preoccupied in a feud of her own with three ambushers, applying his previously described strategy of paralysing with the bayonet before finishing them with her pistol.

She’s tossed around a bit; slammed into the trunks of trees and thrown onto the ground but she recovers and snaps the trigger of her sidearm with such ease. She’s capable, she’ll be fine.

Din needs to focus on this fucker—he needs to kill the scumbag.

Who knows how many of these guys there are. They literally came out of the fucking woodworks; the Girl wasn’t the only one who thought of taking the high ground and with it being so dark out Din hadn’t even thought to assess the treetops.

But they still didn’t know the extent of his capabilities. The hidden gems implanted in his vambraces. They weren’t just for show, after all.

The lurkers are dismissed for the time being—they’re distant, patient until he makes a miscalculation, and he can work with that—his attention focuses on the leathery neck oozing taunting blood. Din’s fingers curl around the vibrating hilt of his blade and lunges while the Weequay is empty-handed, delivering another slash across an arm this time.

It’s too protective, too tough for him to pierce and really leave some damage.

If Din can get one good stab in his throat, he could fucking skin him alive.

But he’s being surrounded. Hunters making their debut from behind bushes and circling him as if he were a fire in the midst of a snowstorm. It just doesn’t end; this was supposed to be a calming few days away from combat and here they were. Din anticipated this happening—tranquillity scarcely presenting itself to him—but he didn’t expect it so soon. The last he was on this planet, he’d been endowed with a few weeks at the least.

A shrill scream erupts, resonating through the forest and waking the creatures dormant in their hides, but it’s so much louder within his helmet on the account of his detectors. His ears pulse with frigid blood. His windpipe snaps closed, lungs thumping against his ribs.

He doesn’t want to look, he doesn’t. But he needs to - needs to reassure himself that it wasn't the shriek of a girl who’d just obtained something severe, something that makes her screams force time to fall dead.

It’s blurry and hazy, his cloddish eyes simply refusing to cooperate, like observing the scene unfold through a brimming glass of steaming caf. Din manages to discern a pillar, mobile with a rifle in its arms, but it’s not the Girl. Din’s learnt her figure greater than the Creed he wears. He’s felt all of its curves and bumps underneath his callouses. He’s dedicated the inches of his tongue to its sweat.

Din could sculpt her physique out of a slab of concrete with nothing but his fingernails.

That pillar isn’t the Girl—so why does it have her rifle?

Eyes stoop lower, the haze clearing and the Girl becoming so clear-cut it aches his retinas. She’s on the ground—the dirty fucking ground—being suppressed with a boot on her midsection; her hands claw at what little shin she can reach but her efforts are depleted, slowed and weak.

The knife thrums intensively and numbs the tips of his fingers, complementing the tingling billowing through his veins, his organs, wrapping around his bones and urging his legs towards her but a hunter steps before him to block his view.

His heart stutters inside his ribs. Stopping and starting. Leaping and dropping.

Pull your head in and kill these assholes, Din demands himself the willpower to snap his scrutiny around the four hunters caging him in a circle. He’s not in the mood to entertain their wishes for a brawl and triggers the flamethrower in his gauntlet, swirling on his feet to enkindle them with orange heat that’ll leave a mark if not end them.

Clothes of two of them ignite, hastily engulfing their frames and biting its brand into their flesh.

Din relishes in their screams, their desperate tries to distinguish the unforgiving flames, and, in his foolish stupor, he’s forced onto the ground—two thickset weights on either of his arms, the front of his helmet slamming against the dirt and knocking against his nose with a vengeance.

He struggles underneath their grip but hardly moves an inch.

The Girl whimpers, faint but oh-so lively with his detectors. Din’s helmet scrapes across the ground as he cranes his neck to peer at her—the hand that’d been working at a shin now flat against the ground, her writhing the only indication she’s still conscious.

Din wants to look away, wants to shut off his sonic detectors and close his eyes.

It hurts to look at her; that pain he’d receive the day after a tussle with a high-end bounty but intensified by a dozen and stripping away at his internal organs as opposed to muscle tissue.

She’s being brutalised. A boot on her abdominals milking her of pained mewling.

“You’re impudent, Mandalorian,” the Weequay gurgles. “Should teach you some manners. Oi, bring her ‘ere.”

Din’s muscles tense. No armour can conceal the visible discomfort those words bring to him but he tries for his voice anyways, “What is it you want? To take me back to the Guild? I’ll go--leave her alone, she’s not a part of this.”

“She killed my men.” Leather-face huffs a breath. “Bring her ‘ere.”

The lackey complies, rugged gloves tearing into her skin and thrusting her in their general direction. Din scans her body for injuries, the spotlight of his eyes staring at the dark vermillion patch seeping through the black of his shirt at her belly. He struggles for a breath. Struggles to swallow the rising liquids that burn the back of his throat. Struggles to not implode with cusses that’ll only edge their retaliation over the brink.

Fucking vermillion.

A colour that looked fantastic on his foes but so fucking unsettling on His Girl.

Her competitor wears the same colour as her, a circular bolt wound in his shoulder and it doesn’t take a genius to piece them together. She must’ve been fooled. She must’ve been attacked with the knife in his hand while tending to the other hunters that now lay dead among the bark.

She can’t stand upright without the arm fisting her shirt and she drops to her knees and successively her stomach before him. They’re both a quivering mess, though for wholly different circumstances, and Din can’t fucking take the look she gives him. So painful. So devoid of that sweetness.

“Sorry, Me’suum’ika,” she whispers.

She feels as though she failed him—that somehow her getting injured resulted in him immobile, anchored to the forest floors and staring at his companion face-to-face while she bleeds out unattended to. Not the fact he can’t control the emotions that overwhelm him. Not the fact that it’s his own incompetence.

“No—pretty girl, look at me. Look at me.” Din trashes his weight against their hold but the position is awkward and his legs are unable to administer any power into his core. He’s as hopeless as captured krill, simply flailing about in hopes it’ll get him somewhere.

The Weequay wipes blood from his neck and nudges a foot into her side, squirming it underneath her stomach and flipping her onto her back to expose that hellish colour tainting her midsection. It melts through the shirt and adheres the fabric against the invisible wound beneath; Din’s eyes refuse to cut away.

It’s painful. Identical to those atrocious holodramas that’d screen late at night in the sketchy areas of town—it’s a shootout of a mess and he just can’t look away.

“She’s dying,” the Weequay announces. “There ain’t no medicine out in these parts. She’ll be gone before you can even lift her off the ground.”

Din’s stunned into silence. What’s he to do? His Girl is an arms-length away from him, bleeding out and moaning in pain, and he can’t do so much as stroke the hair out of her face and reassure her that she’ll be okay.

The Weequay snatches her rifle from his men, twisting the framework in his arms and hovering the prongs directly over her forehead—barely an inch of space between beautiful soft skin and a fatally paralysing influx of electricity.

“Don’t,” Din warns, tone more emotional than he wants to display. “Touch her and I will never stop looking for you.”

“I can end it all for her right now. Turn her to dust. Take mercy on her. Look at her, she’s in agony.”

The Girl’s mouth opens and closes rhythmically, an arm strewn across her front to stop the gush of blood—it’s fucking bad. It worsens when she looks at him, the angle causing tension to find a path along her neck and down to her belly but she shuns the idea of glancing away. Din’s throat tightens.

“All you need to do is point me in the direction of the bounty.”

The fucking choobies on this guy.

“Get her assistance and we’ll talk,” he bluffs.

They’re not impressed by his demands, a singular knee from either of the hunters digging into his forearm. The vambraces support a majority of the weight but it’s still hefty, still——

Vambraces. He’s exhausted what little fuel remains for his flamethrowers but there are still a few tricks in wait up there—techniques that they’ll never anticipate.

Din strains his arm beneath the hunter, flicking his fist as best as he can manage for specks of bright blue to ignite within the cavities of his wrist. A handful of the explosive tips dispense into the still air above him. The birds sing their tune as they coordinate their attacks, dedicating themselves to targeting each individual quarry. One dives into the side of a hunter to Din’s left followed by another to his right, the muscles pinning him down becoming limp, the third impact into the chest of the Girl’s half-defeated foe.

They lay lifeless among the forest; scorch marks where they’d been touched with his beskar sparrows.

Two birds remain circling overhead.

Two?

One dips through the air targeting the Weequay like a missile with his name written on it but Din conducts a staredown with the last, his eyes swiftly tracing the projectile. It makes its move—identifying the bleeding woman coiled on the floor as a threat to his safety, but Din matches its tempo and hurtles himself atop of her body.

His weight stimulates a displeased groan from her throat.

“Sorry. I’m sorry,” he says.

Din cages her head in with his arms and tucks her face into his cowl before caving in on himself, a poor attempt to cover every inch of soft flesh with reverberating beskar and it works.

He feels the menacing tink through his spine as it bounces off the steel and into a tree.

He peels himself from her, cherry liquid having been smeared across his beskar platings, and examines her condition—the shirt drags up and tracks the blood to her ribs, a wide three-inch chamber in her stomach that convulses with each unsteady exhale.

She grunts incoherently and latches her fingers onto the perimeter of his vambraces, beseeching eyes demolishing the resolve within him. “We’ll get you fixed up, all right?” Din examines the incision with trained eyes, plush grey-purple tissue beneath all the vermillion causing his heart to drop.

It’s not that she was trying to stop the bleeding; she’s trying to prevent her fucking intestines from spilling out.

They’re still tucked away inside, where they belong, but if she moves too much they’ll slip out with ease.

His glove compresses around the fabric, wringing out the garment of her insides. His helmet sharply tosses in the direction of a small explosion by his final whistling bird. Weequay remains upright. Din’s insides boil.

This fucker. This son of a bitch.

This is his fault.

His Girl lays beneath the stars, her essence draining from her disoriented body, all because a handful of good for nothing guild members needed to get their hands dirty for a lousy couple thousand credits.

Din’s knees crack as he raises to his feet, his shoulders contracting and fingers crunching around a blade’s hilt. She sputters for a breath, her lungs failing to cooperate with her demands; the distressing audio flourishes the growing rage within him and he scowls under his visor.

He wishes it wasn’t there—wishes he could pluck the damned steel from around his face to burn the Weequay’s leather hide with stewing caf; a tribute of his ire. To permit the one who attributed so much agony on his beloved to gaze into his eyes as he snips his vocal cords through the wound in his gullet; darkened eyes that haven’t touched daylight in decades to swallow him whole in their shadows.

Like a hibernating beast longing for its first meal upon awakening.

Din cocks his vambrace controls and fires out his grappling cord, cleanly winding it around the maimed throat of his opponent, jerking forwards and concurrently rushing into his physique so they tumble to the turf and fend off each other’s clamouring.

That message he had been planning on distributing for the galaxy’s eyes is burnt to ash, much like that of the Weequay’s comrades. Din simply wants to murder the bastard—murder. An act far worse than killing. Killing somebody had always implied his survival, a requirement to take matters into his own hands so that he returns to the Crest with a beating heart.

This wasn’t survival.

This is harsh tidal waves crashing against the foundations of a lighthouse.

This is the crack of lightning in the sky in an unstoppable catastrophe.

This is a whole new side to Din that he’s never witnessed before. Anger that drowns him from the inside out. A bitterness that prods his taste buds. Overheating caf scorching holes through the visor.

Din registers the whipcord and how his fingers hook around the thread.

Din registers the dire clawing at his helmet, the Weequay’s desperation urging him on.

But what Din can’t register is anything in between; his consciousness, usually so clouded with his own grievances, is utterly blank as if he were a wiped droid. All circuitry and no sentiments.

“Ash’amur,” Din spits and applies every pound in his build.

The whipcord is constructed of refined shivs that slice through the thick neck and into Din’s gloves, drawing blood from his palms and fingertips.

It’s the gurgling that does it for him. That vile bubbling of blood and saliva in his pipes as it rises upwards and leaks from clenched teeth down his frilled jowls. It’s too horrendous to sustain—Din cringes and seizes his vibro-knife, only to be punched in the side of his neck the moment he removes a hand from that rubbery fucking throat.

Din groans and slams the cord-entangled hand into his jaw, roughhousing his cranium into the dirt and presenting the vulnerable wound like the perfect target to practice his precision. The blade dips through the seams and excavates deeper through the muscles, intensifying his suffering and crackled spluttering. Coriaceous hands fumble at slippery beskar, mouth belching and spraying ruby drops across the surface of his Creed.

He digs his knee into the fleshy stomach beneath him, extracts his knife and plunges it directly through the crevice once more.

The appendages slink down his torso and thighs, accumulating in a motionless mound atop of twigs and stones—dull eyes rolling into the back of his skull.

That filthy noise pollution continues—fluids frothing and popping in the oceanic limbo of fucking somewhere. Din’s mouth reshapes into a sneer and he impales the blade through the muscle again and again, but the ruckus persists; striking his eardrums with more zeal than his efforts to numb it.

It’s too loud, too distracting, his senses simmering down to solely auditory perception as it spikes in volume. It needs to be stopped, he needs to vanquish it.

Din white-knuckles the rubber hilt and repeatedly thrusts the blade in and out of the wound with rigid movements, his chest heaving with floundering breaths as he falls into a mania of knife-plungings.

The Weequay is long-lifeless but its body rocks with each frantic stab, the blood squelching within the open wound, and Din doesn’t realise the chilling mass beneath him isn’t the cause of the carnage on his sonic detectors until it’s splintered and calling his name between cracks and coughs.

He visibly recoils.

That agonised suffocating on blood wasn’t him at all.

The Girl coughs again, liquid gargling in the deep of her throat.

Vibro-knife rips through the skin as he withdraws the blade and reverts back to the Girl’s aid, flipping her onto her side and smoothing out the hair. “Spit it up, Sweetheart,” he instructs. Vermillion amasses into a puddle beneath her mouth and floods the forest floors. “That’s it, keep going.”

She mewls, incapable of urging up the last swish of metallic liquid—Din intervenes and slips his hand free of his glove to wedge two fingers into her mouth, sweeping out the remainder of accrued blood and clearing her airways.

“Breathe in, there we go, and out.”

She exhales and nods to her wound. “Didn’t—didn’t see the knife in time. Thought I-I killed him.”

“It’s okay. You’re going to be okay, all right?”

There’s disbelief written on her face, her eyebrows and teeth tense as she chews on soft gums, but she gives him the faintest of smiles and a nod that’s more to reassure him than it is her.

She’s lost too much blood and the volume is only ballooning with time. Din acts fast and slashes a load of his cloak with his knife, again, the woollen trimmings serving as a tourniquet around her midsection; it’s a shitty solution and functions more to irritate the wound than anything—the fibres of the garment eating away at the uncovered pulsing muscle—but it’s all he’s got. They’ve got nothing going for them here and the Crest had to be a decent twenty minute trek outwards on a good day which this is fucking not, maybe thirty with her condition.

It has to last until then. It needs to.

If he can make it to the Crest in time and without dumping her guts out she has a chance—a chance, not a high one, but a fucking chance—of survival but he needs to go now.

“I’m gonna pick you up, okay?”

She’s light. All that weight sitting on his shoulders mere hours ago is replaced with a floatiness that makes her feel non-existent, like a figment of his imagination. She compresses against the beskar while he zips through the forest like the pellets she’d administered to the hunters; agile, coordinated, but his concentration bounces from his path to her face every few leaps.

“Hey! Hey. Open your eyes. Show me your pretty eyes, sweet girl...there they are. Keep them open for me.”

She strains, “Sorry.”

The syrupy goodness of her tone he starved for—binged on—has boiled over to a sticky mess that only drags him in closer at the touch of his heart. It coats the organ like tar and hardens until it struggles to continue beating, slinking downwards and catching along the walls of his lungs to harass his breathing.

Din chews on his lower lip, his teeth burrowing into the pillows with each step of his boots and shredding them with his enamel until he tastes his blood at the back of his tongue.

She hums and allows her head to roll into the soft bicep beside it, situating her lips against the flight suit to commit a forceless kiss onto the only part of him that she can reach.

“Guess - guess I won’t be taking you up on that offer.” She smiles and exhales a breath—a laugh but she’s too weak to give anything more.

“Don’t… Stop acting like you’re--”

“Dying?” She scoffs. “Well, I-I am, aren’t I?”

No, you can’t Din thinks, you can’t fucking leave me here.

The urge to vomit creeps upon him; disguises itself among the churning of his stomach and the soreness in his throat. Perhaps he would empty his stomach right here and now, discount the concealing of his identity before the Girl just to have the opportunity to bend over and heave until there’s nothing but saliva expelling, but he doesn’t have the luxury of slowing down. In fact, he needs to pick up his pace.

He does just that—albeit not by much but every difference counts.

Din risks another glimpse at her; skin all pale and face scrunched to not let the pain escape from her throat or eyes. She struggles to restrain herself from allowing her eyelids to snap close, to let that twinge in her retinas finally rest—because Din asked to see those pretty eyes and what Din asks, Din receives.

She takes notice of his lack of reassuring words, the shortage of comforting glances, the cold absence of her Mandalorian as he distances himself from his emotions.

“Me’suum’ika.”

He regrets teaching her that word. It sounds so pleasing coming from her vocals, all soft and bouncy like a mattress he wishes to rest on, but currently, it’s pained. It’s croaky and poorly pronounced. It sounds dreadful—tainting the beautiful memory of exchanging nicknames.

She tries for his attention again, “Me’suum’ika…”

No. No, no. Don’t say it. Do not fucking say it.

“Din.”

Their motion suspends as fast as a string snaps. Boots kick pebbles ahead of their path. They’re in a wide clearing, the firs having been repelled at least a twenty-metre radius around them. Quiet. Open. Peaceful.

Forearms quiver with her maturing weight, mysteriously so fucking heavy like he was supporting a thruster of his Crest. The helmet is inert on his shoulders, staring off into the distance where the path narrows between rows of evergreen. Fingers on her waist and the underside of her thigh tunnels into the flesh, his one ungloved hand perceiving her dwindling warmth.

Despair overcomes him like an explosion. No ticking to warn him, no preparation. Just one big fucking detonation that blasts against his calves, staggering his stance and plugging his lungs and helmet with clotted smoke particles that stings his eyes and throat. His tongue liquefies and slips down his pipe where he gags on his own muscle.

“Put me down.”

“No,” he chokes. “I can do it, we can make it. I just—”

His vocals fissure. They crack and pop and it’s not on the account of his vocoder.

The hook underneath the rim of his helmet drags it downwards and every bone in his body tenses at the sight. The sight of His Girl so emptied of expression that she can barely hold eye contact with his black slit. The colour deficiency in her face leaves a sharp taste of salt on his lips, streaks on his cheeks.

Din she says softly, no—not softly but so devoid of strength that it comes out oh-so weak and quiet, put me down Din.

His knees buckle. His arms quake. He sinks to the gravel brutally.

The stones poke and prod against his caps, sharp edges cutting through his garment but he’s completely numb except for his hands and face—enduring the physical touch of a falling star versus the tides that roll beneath the steel.

He doesn’t want to drop her.

He doesn’t want to let her touch the planet's crust because he knows she won’t get back up.

“Me’suum’ika.” She wipes at his armoured chest with her sleeve. “You’re all bloody.”

Din shakes, scrambling not to cave into the overwhelming itch in his forearms—to not permit her perfect figure to be tainted with more grime than it already has been subjected to—except she’s made of duracrete, weighing him down like an anchor on a flimsy rowboat and he can’t come out victorious.

It’s a sluggish descent, all slowed to record each millimetre until she’s flat on the ground. A vermillion reservoir spawns beneath her and trails to seep into his flight suit, his ungloved hand gently laying rest on her concealed wound—the cloak lumpy and outlining something soft, squishy.

He retracts his hand as if it were in the mouth of a rancor.

There’s an unspoken statement that floats above them, circles them and weighs their shoulders down.

She’s dying.

Din knows it. He can see it. He can see her life vacuuming out of a three-inch slit in her abdominals and there’s nothing he can do to delay the inevitable. There’s nothing he can do to save her life. He’s never felt more incompetent but there’s a flicker of hope that she’ll make it. That she’ll just reabsorb the sticky liquid and suture her tissue back together—denial. He’s in utter fucking denial.

“Come here,” she breathes, fingertips stroking the scruff of his jaw underneath his cowl.

His teeth clench. “No, Cyar’ika. Sweetheart, please. I can make it. Just hold on for a little longer.”

“I can’t.”

Eyelids pinch together behind the tint but it doesn’t stop the nipping at his retinas. Gloved hand remains at the rear of her skull, cushioning it from stray rubble but he clenches around air when she hoists herself onto her elbows—approaching him since he’s too shaken to go to her—and knocks against the front of his helmet.

Din forces his eyelids to peel back and it’s a huge mistake.

All he can see is the bottom of her chin, the curve of her jaw, but he’s clever enough to string the clues together; the diminishing heat of her breath warming him on the inside.

The gentle press of her lips against the summit of beskar.

She doesn’t allow him to think, to speak, she does it all for him. But they’re not words he wishes to hear. They’re not I’ll be okay or let’s go home.

“Look.” She nods upwards. “Me’suum’ika.”

She’s not referring to him, but the real moon; its silver-white glow snuffed out and overtaken with oranges as warm as the sunrises that’d rebound off his beskar as he strides back to the Crest, a bounty in hand and dark crescents forming underneath his eyes. Reds as deep as the blood besmirching her gorgeous soft skin.

“Pretty, ain’t it?”

Pretty?

It’s obscene. It’s nauseating. It’s not fucking pretty.

It’s mocking them—mirroring the scene laid underneath it reminding Din of his foolish missteps; she’s all red and bloody because of you; she looks like me because you allowed her to tag along.

Din wants to pilot his Crest all the way up there and put an end to the disrespectful satellite.

How dare it look so full, so complete, while he’s disintegrating before it.

The Girl said he was one and the same with the moon—she fucking said that—so how can it be so unaffected by the loss of life beneath it?

The loss of their Girl.

Din isn’t the moon. He’s the abyssal milky ways that attract eyes at first impression only to exploit that and drag unsuspecting victims into the black holes in the galactic centre of his chest—he’s destruction and chaos and unrelenting, his gravitational pull too great for escape and it only ever ends one way.

“Don’t...don’t look like that.”

“Like what?” he snaps.

It’s unintentional. An overload of emotions that’s been festering for too long and shows its ugly face in the form of a pitch curated with venom and tears.

“You can’t even see me.”

He’s going about it all wrong except he’s right—she can’t see him nor can she feel his warmth but that never intimidated her. She’d found ways to adapt; ways to read his mannerisms and speech rather than facial expressions.

Din has the opportunity to seize that from her; to show rather than tell.

Explosion smoke splutters from his lungs and his fingertips ache as they fumble for the switch beneath the rim, the Girl’s blood soiling his clothed throat and the insides of his Creed. It unclasps, detectors maximizing its violent hiss. He has it maybe below his lips before she pulls and pins it down.

“You’re not ready.”

Din’s heart fractures; the beskar steel of his organ—that’s made to withstand a lightsaber—cracking and creaking at her words.

“No! No, no. You told me you weren’t going anywhere—you said that. You said you would look if I wanted you to see and, Mesh’la, I want you to fucking see.” Din’s fingers tremble against the back of her hands. “Sweetheart, please look at me. Let me do this...I don’t have anything else to offer.”

“Din…no.”

“Let me,” he demands but all the authority is suppressed with a heartache that chews him up and spits him back out.

There’s an attempt to conceal the groans and hisses—an attempt—as she breathes in deep, gathering as much fresh oxygen in her lungs as possible.

Din tries for his helmet again, employing her hands beneath the rim to lift, but she overexerts herself to stop him; tight fingers latched on the insides, knuckles brushing against a sharp jawline and collecting the wetness that streams directly into her grasp.

“This is the Way,” she says it as a reminder and a reassurance that she’s content with never seeing his face because This is the Way, but it only frustrates him; boils the tears on his face until they convert into vapour that attacks his visor, leaving only the crust of salt residue on his cheeks.

You’re dying in my fucking arms he thinks the least I can do is desecrate my Creed.

It wouldn’t even be a desecration, not really. That would imply a disrespectful act was to occur and this was anything but. It’d be an honour, a homage of an unspoken pledge uttered in the dead of the Crest that outweighs the one he took among tinted visors and enkindled torches.

Din’s taut. Rigid muscle constructed of resolute alloy.

It’s not comfortable to rest among sharp edges that prod into her sore skin but rather than peel away—rather than let her breathe without the weight of steel to her side—Din cradles her against his chest, transferring the most minuscule amount of body heat that slips through his seams into her.

His hand is glazed with sticky deep vermillion that oozes from his fingertips, the gravity magnetising droplets onto the beautiful cheek it hovers above. Din wants to touch her, wants to feel the sun warm his flesh and blood, but he’s scared that if he touches her he’ll ruin her iconic softness with coarse fingers.

Blood smears onto her face and fills her sinuses with metallic scents to match those flavours in her mouth, her cheek gluing itself to his hand for him. She offers him a weak smile and entitles herself to a moment to browse his solid face, following the edges of his cheeks and swiping a thumb across the chin’s rim.

“Kiss me,” Din requests. “Just—just once.”

“Just once?”

He nods. “Just once. Do—can you manage one?”

The Girl chuffs out a laugh but cringes at the disturbance in her core. “I might have one in the bank for you.”

She elevates the beskar to the dip in his nose, scenic eyes securely held shut to preserve the Creed he’s already decided he would renounce for her if she would just let him. She deserves to see him, to gaze into his simmering caf. His thoughts range from disloyal alternatives that scour against the sincerity of his mind, wiping him clean of the trust he’s built around himself, all the way to options where he doesn’t go against her words—thoughts where the beskar lifts no higher than his mouth.

He condemns both of the options; either tricking her into seeing him for his own greediness or listening to her pleas despite how much it fucking hurts.

It’s not fair.

Din’s lips hurtle themselves into her; hungry and distraught, a false hope that if he engorges on her taste alone it’ll dispel those macabre thoughts from his consciousness. All he can fucking taste is salt and metal that’s been left in the rain. Her zest, her sweetness, the flavours that taste of her, is gone.

It doesn’t stop him.

He compiles it in the back of his throat simply to have something of her inside him. He’s indulged in her tasteless saliva, the saltiness of her sweat, the syrup of her slick, and now the rancid warmth of her blood.

He can’t hear. He can’t see. He can only feel and touch.

She’s hardly lukewarm, the sun’s rays disappearing over her horizon.

“Ni kar’tayl gar darasuum.” Din brushes the hair out of her face. “Not a minute passes where you’re not in the forefront of my mind, Sweetheart. I’ve never encountered somebody so...extraordinary as you. I just need you to know before—before…”

“Din…” Her voice pops, tears of her own brewing.

“I love you,” he confesses, wet beads plummeting from his jawline to her neck. “You taught me how to love; you are my love and that will never change. I love you, ner Cyare—my beloved.”

Din recoils like he’s poked in the chest. The snuffling and mewling that erupts from her vocal cords upon his confession burn him—singe his lungs until they’re tender with each inhale. Nothing could have prepared him for this reaction; the unmasked sobs and vulnerability she’s never shown, not to this extent.

Fingers that dig into his flight suit feel like minuscule vibro-knifes in his biceps. Statements that gush out of her mouth and landslide his heart into submission—I love you, Din. I love you. I love you.

A star and a satellite falling in love; it’s an implausible outcome bound for disaster.

The sun manipulates its flames that allows colourful flowers to bloom or for lively forests to ignite. The moon pushes and pulls the tides fit for a gentle roll across a beach or to capsize rigs with a single flick.

The Sun and the Moon.

Fire and Water.

They’re polar opposites and, despite everything in the universe working against them, they’ve merged as one. Two equally fractured vases exchanging their missing pieces for compensation; a bright orange that’s warm to the touch in Din’s heart and within her lies a sparkly silver shard, a piece of his beskar residing within her to ward off onslaught.

He’s trawled inwards, naked cheek against naked cheek; scruff pricking against the bone of her jaw. Their tears fuse as one and wedge between their pressed flesh. She sobs against him, the hand on his helmet dipping underneath the silver to tangle her fingers within his knotty locks.

I’m fucking scared Din she breaks, I don’t want to go.

Din’s lip trembles. He can’t paralyse the pain that brings forth the donning of a brave face when confronted—that crinkle in her brow isn’t fooling anybody—but, perhaps, he can distract her. Draw her attention away from the gnawing of her intestines against scratchy wool.

“I know, Darling, I know.” Voice so soft and comforting it encourages her fraught muscles to slack and abandon her awareness. “Focus on me, okay?”

Her lips part when he nudges against them, accepting the tongue that requests entrance. It’s one final deliverance on both sides; a diversion for the Girl and a concluding act of love for Din—something to burn into his lips for decades to come, something to remind him he’s deserving of love.

He takes it slow for her sake, concerned that his usual greed would be too overstimulating. They’re lackadaisical; movements so weakened they’re hardly moving, simply holding each other as they quietly sob into the others mouth.

His scalp is heavy with her fingers and he synchronises his own to the nape of her neck, dirtying her pretty hair with sticky plasma. Pretty hair he’ll never be able to touch again—he’ll never be able to feel the strands between his knuckles as he tilts her head back and deepens their devout kisses. Kisses he’ll never be blessed with again.

Fuck.

He can’t stomach it, can’t bear the thought that he’s going to be abandoned all over again.

First, his parents and now his beloved girl—everybody he cared for is slipping through the gaps of his fingers.

It’s not even a gradual process; there’s not enough time for him to tell her how much he loves her, how he’ll never love another lifeform a fraction as much as he does her.

It’s as rapid as a waterfall, a suffocating surge that’s stern against his protests; his silent pleas of please don’t take her away from me.

Din feels the pulsing in her tongue fade; acknowledges how her fingers lax against his scalp, registers how he’s been deserted despite their tongues intertwined. Beskar slips down the slope of his dewy face as he recedes within himself.

The Girl is static, still, silent.

She’s not got a fingernail’s worth of oxygen in her lungs, not a twitch in her eyebrows.

Din’s beloved Girl is gone.

The sun’s solace warmth has been wiped from the face of the galaxy, leaving residual liquid flames that paste in thick layers to his armour. Only an odious sphere of blended carmines remains perched in the celestials—a blood-red lunar eclipse that penetrates through the solid of his heartplate and devours his internal organs.

Din remains idle for what feels like a century, his consciousness paralysed with a stab of her amban rifle’s bayonet. Deprived of sensation—drained of emotion and thoughts—the tears have stopped and left behind an ache beneath his eyes.

When he does eventually move it’s wearisome. The momentum of a dawdling crawl; a by-product of the corpse in his arms and bedrock in his boots.

It takes him longer than it should to reach the Crest.

It takes him longer than it should to lay her body to rest atop the hold’s crates.

Din tries to tell himself she looks peaceful, that she’s somewhere better, that's what people said to others in times of grief, but what could be better than roosting between his arms in the comfort of a secure body of beskar?

The Razor Crest’s lethargic humdrum probes his sockets, the absence of a thumping heartbeat so fucking apparent that it’s harrowing and Din can’t tolerate it for another second. His Creed rips from his head and hurtles through the air to slam into the duralloy walls of his supposed sanctuary, denting a dome where the summit of beskar impacts but it’ll never be enough to damage that fucking helmet.

His trademark steely stoic persona is substituted for tan mien; his inability to conceal his expressions from years of never needing to palpable at the faintest indication of an eyebrow twinge.

Din presses his lips against her forehead, a frigid and stiffness that transfers to his mouth. He luxuriates on her, delivering docile pecks across her face that burns his lips. Din surrenders the last of his breath to her but he’ll never receive any equivalent ever again.

Memories are all that remains—reminiscences that tug on his lungs. They obscure his mind's eye with dull images of the individual circumstances he’d separated the man from the religion.

He wasn’t to ever remove his helmet. His heart sinks. Din had never contemplated the impact of the decree—the implicit statement that it included whether one’s eyes were shut or not.

His heart’s arteries melt into the muscle and flood it until it capsizes within itself.

Din had been subconsciously unearthing methods and plot holes to eliminate beskar from the equation to indulge in the Girl’s temptations—to permit him the opportunity of a lifetime and experience affairs that scarcely presented themselves to him—but it had backfired.

The helmet was removed, whether her eyes were shut or not it didn’t matter.

His Creed was tarnished the moment he even thought about being with the Girl and it only continued downhill from then on—a terminal illness that burrows its relentless claws into his core and carefully conquers each inch of his body without ever drawing attention to itself.

“Cyare.” His vocals crack and pop. “Open your eyes.”

Look at me. I’ve dishonoured my vows for you. Open your eyes and look into mine—savour the caf you were so curious about. You have to look at me. You need to. Please don’t let my sacrilege go undervalued.

They’d been wasting precious moments this entire fucking time. Din’s Honour was non-existent and he could’ve bestowed her with the knowledge of how his eyes brightened whenever she glanced his way, how indentations of shallow dimples formed in his cheeks when he’d smile at her snarky remarks.

His fist slams against the crate beside her. “Stubborn girl.”

Why couldn’t she be like the no-good schemers that yearned to see beneath the steel?

Why did she have to be so protective of his oath?

She died never knowing what the man who loved her looked like.

A sparkle beneath her shirt catches his eyes, solid alloy beckoning his hands. Beskar is still warm to the touch from her sternum. Din rubs the face of the pendant's skull raw, dried blood flaking off onto the steel, his thumb heating with the friction. It’s not much, hardly anything actually, but it’s something that she claimed ownership of—something physical that he can touch and hold that was once pressed against the beat of her heart. With nothing else in her possession of her own, it’s all Din’s got.

It’s knotted around his neck, the thread weighing like a bantha and the pendant torching a permanent mark into his chest. He welcomes it, remains stoic and unflinching as it intensifies and scars over—he wasn’t afraid of being burnt, after all.

Din wipes away the scarlet meadow of clumped hair adhered to her cheek and sets the hem of her shirt as low as it'll reach, concealing the hump of soaked wool. He believed himself to be incapable of shedding more salty liquid from his ducts but tonight is full of surprises. Their foreheads pin against each other, wetness streaming down the curve of his cheekbones and into her hair.

He’s uncertain where he stands with his Creed—it’s not of importance right now—but he was raised on their culture, their words so beautiful that it only felt right to say a final remembrance.

My Sun, Ni su’cuyi, gar kyr’adyc, ni partayli, gar darasuum.

----

jatnese be te jatnese - the best of the best ni kar'tayl gar darasuum - i love you me'suum'ika - moon choobies - testicles ash'amur - die ner cyare - my beloved ni su'cuyi, gar kyr'adyc, ni partayli, gar darasuum - i'm still alive, but you are dead. I remember you, so you are eternal.

A/N: i'm so sorry. there might be an epilogue if you guys are interested in that.

taglist: @ohhersheybars, @greatcircle79, @northernpunk, @tanzthompson, @djarrex, @omgreally, @spideysimpossiblegirl

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bellatrixobsessed1 · 3 years

Text

A Spark In The Snow

Was gonna go for straight comedy but this wrote itself into fluff. Also it was gonna be a one shot but I decided to leave it open to possibly becoming a multi-parter if I have the time. But I tried to leave in the Azula/Daniela chaotic duo aspect I mentioned.

Summary: Azula is a fire in Alcina’s otherwise cold and desolate world. She brings a certain spark to the castle that is as vexing as it is endearing. Anyways, her daughters are fond of the girl so how bad can it be?

A simmering summer, Alcina decides, is more chaotic than a merciless winter. Fire is wild, uncontrollable, unpredictable. It leaps from one thing to the next, searing away all that which it touches. Winter leaves a frosty kiss but it can be dispelled and warded off. Winter is predictable, summer is strange, feral.

Winters is predictable. Azula is anything but. Winters has a knack for smashing windows--breaking anything with a glass surface, really. Azula sets fire to everything that will burn. Winters does it out of spite and malice. Alcina is convinced that Azula does it for the thrill or attention. She knows that attention is Daniela does it for chaos and companionship.

Alcina pinches the bridge of her nose as another thunderous boom resounds down the expansive hallway. She takes a hard and generous swallow of wine, this particular boom had sounded rather expensive. The shatter of porcelain, perhaps her favorite bathtub.

“What are you guys doing!?” Bela screeches. It is a noble thing that the girl is trying to do. Noble but pointless. Alcina has come to find that Azula and Daniela have become quite an unstoppable duo. A duo with such ferocity that even Winters has stopped coming by.

She isn’t sure where the girl had come from nor what sort of mutation has granted her the ability to wield fire in her hands but she is here and Alcina can’t help but feel a fondness for her. She is a small thing, absolutely teeny--even by comparison to someone who isn’t as tall as she. And mostly she is a charming and poised girl. Elegant and well-mannered. Even tempered, a break from the chaos. A refreshing break.

But with Daniela there comes to the surface something wilder. The girl’s laugh is far less than refined when Daniela points to a large crate and yells, “oh, what about that! Set that on fire!” There comes another loud bang and Alcina flinches. She is almost certain that, that had been a crate of clothing that she has been meaning to look through. She grits her teeth and grips the armrests of her chair. She loves her daughters, loves them more than anything else. But if she hears one more explosion…

.oOo.

Azula chuckles to herself as the flames lap at the wood. Her own mother would never let her get away with such a feat. She scrambles her way up a chair. Castle Dimitrescu is somewhat intimidating in its impressive size. There isn’t a single thing that she doesn’t have to ask one of the Dimitrescu sisters to help her reach.

When they aren’t around she has to quite literally scale counters and furniture. And the bed...she had thought her bed at the palace was large. The one she sleeps in now has room for several of her as well as a mongoose-lizard or two.

And it is no wonder, she hears the thunder of Lady Dimitrescu’s footsteps.

“OhHHh fUcK!” Daniela shouts. Before Azula’s reflexes have a chance to kick in, she snatches her off of the chair she had worked so hard to ascend. “She’ll never catch us.”

“And what if she does?” Azula asks.

“Then we’ll just burst into a cloud of flies and...oh wait you can’t do that.” She slows her pace to tap her chin. “Then we’ll just have to...set MORE things on fire!” She throws her hands up. Azula gives a yelp of surprise as her body is tossed into the air.

She catches herself on a chandelier and pulls herself onto its fixture. It bobs precariously though she can’t imagine that she weighs anywhere near enough to bring it down.

“Whoops.” Daniela winces from below.

Having successfully launched her partner in crime to oblivion, she is left to fend for herself.

“Where is your sister?��

“Which one, mother?”

“The fiery one.”

“Cassandra’s is in her room.”

Alcina inhales deeply. “Azula. Where is Azula.”

“Oh, right, yes. Well you see, she’s really small and so I may or may not have thrown her clear across the castle.” Perhaps her lie would have had more success if she hadn’t offered the chandelier a wink. Alcina reaches up in an attempt to pluck her down. Azula ducks under the woman’s hand but one misplacement of her hand has her tumbling to the ground.

With a most devious grin, Daniela lets out a screech and catapults herself into the air. She practically bodyslams Azula as she catches her and takes off into a full sprint. “Daniela, you get back here!” She hears Alcina groan. “Bela, catch your sister!”

Daniela takes Azula’s arm and positions it out in front of her. “Make fire!”

“Do you think that your mother will finally replace this hideous wallpaper if I just…” she holds the smallest candle wick of a flame to the wall and lets Daniela’s sprint do the rest.

“Our mother won’t have a choice. Oh! Maybe if we set all of...everything on fire we can finally redecorate the house. I was thinking of something more daring like…” she trails off. “Like we can take a whole bunch of man bones and string them up on the balcony like wind chimes. Oh and I saw this neat thing at Karl’s factory. I heard minimalist is in...which is exactly why we need to clutter this place up. I was thinking sofas in the middle of the hallway and lamps hanging form the chandeliers.

“Daniela, that sounds awful. Let’s do it!” Though she is nearly certain that it will end up driving her just as mad as it will drive Lady Dimitrescu.

Daniela comes to an abrupt halt and bursts into a cloud of flies as she collides with Bela who erupts into her own separate cloud. Azula lands with an oof. The fire, a testament to her success and thrill, crackles behind her. Bela reassembles with her hands on either side of her head, “what have you guys done!?”

“We don’t like the decore and wallpaper so we’re remodeling!” Azula declares more boldly than someone who has landed flat on the floor ought to.

Daniela lifts her off of the floor and turns her around to face the fire. “It’s…” she wipes a tear from her eye “...glorious.”

“You guys are the worst.” Cassandra grumbles. “I think that my favorite seat cushion was down this hallway.”

Daniela rolls her eyes. “Who actually bothers to pick out a favorite seat cushion anyways?”

“I do, Dani!”

Azula shrugs. “If it was in this particular hallway that it was an abomination to upholstery.”

“It’s not about the aesthetic! It’s about the feeling it gives your buttcheeks when they sink into it’s plush fabric.” Cassandra explains. “Haven’t you ever sat your ass down on something so fluffy it transported you to a new dimension?”

Azula shakes her head.

“Then how’d you get here?” Daniela asks.

Bela rolls her eyes, “because obviously comfortable seating is how you move from one universe to another.”

“The right level of booty comfort can go a long way.” Daniela insists.

“I hate to say it, but I think Daniela is right, Bela.”

With a fire blazing wildly behind her, Azula sits back and watches the siblings bicker. Such is the pattern that she has fallen into. It is thrilling, fun, and exhilarating. This world, wherever it is, is bizarre and uncanny. Messy and wild, and there is a sense of freedom in the chaos. In becoming part of the chaos. Something liberating that she can’t find in the Fire Nation. Something that compels her to shake away what remains of her overwhelming need for perfection.

.oOo.

Alcina finds that the fire child is much easier to manage when she is sitting upon her shoulder chattering away about the politics of her own realm and how she rather enjoys having three sisters instead of one aggravating brother.

And upon her shoulder, away from Cassandra and Daniela, Azula retains her more soothing, soft spoken demeanor. The one she takes up when looking over books with Bela. This is the topic of discussion today, “I’ve never read anything like this. The history of your world is quite intriguing.”

“I am glad to hear that you are getting comfortable here.” Alcina takes a seat, picks up her kiseru, and has a drag. The smoke trails up and Azula fans it away.

“It would be wonderful if you could get some smaller chairs, climbing these is just about as tiresome as some of my firebending katas are.” She absently kicks her legs at the air, offering Alcina’s chest something of a massage.

“I suppose that I can do that for you.”

“Perfect.” Azula claps her hands together.

For some time they sit in silence and then the girl speaks. “I’m glad that I found you. I don’t...I don’t feel like a monster here.”

Alcina furrows her brows. She has been around many a monster. By all means, she thinks it fair to call herself one. But the girl, this small, delicate thing… “why would you think that?”

“Everyone else does. My own mother…”

Alcina’s heart pangs again. Suddenly she doesn’t feel quite so much like a monster, “a mother who can’t love her child is no mother.” And for a moment she isn’t sure if she is speaking of Azula’s mother or of Mother Miranda. “A mother who makes her child feel insignificant is a monster.” She reaches up to stroke Azula’s hair.

“You don’t think that I’m a monster?”

This girl, this beautiful girl has been made to feel unloved and unlovable.

“Why would I think that, dear?”

She shrugs. “Daniel and I have set everything you love on fire.”

She pinches the bridge of her nose. “You haven’t set yourselves or each other on fire.” She sighs. “I suppose that this castle was due for some renovations anyhow.” This seems to delight the girl.

“My mother had a fit when I set a single, withered rose on fire.”

“Things work differently here, as you are finding.” She rises to her feet. “It has been a while since I’ve had company on my strolls through the courtyard; my girls are unable to tolerate the cold. Would you join me?”

.oOo.

“Firebenders don’t much like the cold...mother.” It sounds strange to say on her tongue, but it feels perfectly correct. The woman’s face seems to fall. “But I’m sure you have something warm for me to wear while we’re out.”

“Of course, dear. I’ll fix you a cup of wine--if I remember correctly you prefer it without blood--and we’ll head out.”

“No blood, that’s correct.”

“Strange girl.” The woman chuckles.

She isn’t sure that she is the strange one here but she keeps it to herself while Alcina sets her back on her shoulder and makes her way into the dining room. Minutes later she finds that Alcina hasn’t any winter clothing that is even remotely her size. Instead, the woman bundles her up in a nest of blankets that very well may be Alcina’s own winter coat.

The outside world is cold on her cheeks. She finds herself pressing her hands against them as Alcina points out her favorite places in the courtyard, her favorite flowers and her favorite statues. Much like all else in this world, Azula has never seen anything quite like it. It is grand and elegant place as cold and grey on the outside as it is warm on the inside. It has many twisting, sharp spires and stone gargoyles to top them. In places it is broken, ancient. Gloomy and depressive in a haunting way that Mai would appreciate. “Your castle is beautiful, mother.”

“Thank you.” She smiles. “I am pleased to know that you don’t find it off putting.”

.oOo.

Azula burrows further into the blankets.

“Are you getting cold?”

“I’ve been cold.” She replies.

“I suppose that I’ve had my fill of nightair.” She cups her hand over the girl’s head, hoping to provide her with even just a little more heat. “I ought to check up on Daniela.”

Azula nods and leans into her chest, pulling the blankets tighter around herself as she does so. “Thank you.” She mumbles. “For letting me stay here.”

Alcina ought to thank her for staying. She can’t remember the last time that she has had company, human company that she found pleasant. Human company that didn’t find her terrifying and monstrous. She just hopes that the girl will never have to see her in her second form. She shouldn’t like Azula to look upon her with fear and disgust. She thinks that it is an inevitability. Everyone leaves her eventually. Everyone save for her daughters. This girl, she reminds herself, is her daughter. She likes to think that she wouldn’t leave.

“It is no trouble at all. I do hope that you will stay with me for a long time, dear.”

#Avatar The Last Airbender #Resident Evil #Azula #Alcina Dimitrescu #Lady Dimitrescu #Daniela Dimitrescu #Bela Dimitrescu #Cassandra Dimitrescu #Fanfiction

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hoekageyama · 4 years

Text

inarizaki + hand holding pics

warnings: gn!reader,, uhh very bad hcs???

a/n: obviously we back at it again with the shitposts, yk how it is <3 also !! ignore the skin tone in the pictures. these are just the pics that i feel fit their vibe.

kita shinsuke

⇝ a true gentleman to the core

⇝ will hold your hand so delicately

⇝ probably worries that he’ll hurt you if he doesn’t treat you like he’s handling glass

⇝ not super into pda (because he likes to keep his love life private), but will always hold your hand

⇝ especially if the two of you encounter large crowds

⇝ ‘must keep them safe at all times’ is what his first thought is when this happens

miya atsumu

⇝ loves holding your hand, loves pda, he just loves you!

⇝ totally understands if you’re not really into pda

⇝ his first priority is always to make sure that you’re comfortable (thoughtful king!!)

⇝ he likes to look at your hands and see how much smaller yours are compared to his

⇝ definitely teases you about the size difference hehe

⇝ he’ll hold your hand any little chance he gets

miya osamu

⇝ not really into pda, but won’t deny you of it if you’re into it

⇝ he loves small romantic gestures

⇝ even though he isn’t really into pda, he will always hold your hand. no matter the setting.

⇝ he likes to squeeze your hand to get your attention

⇝ you two have an unspoken understanding that when he squeezes your hand a few times to a certain rhythm, it means ‘i love you’ or ‘i’ve got you’

⇝ also really enjoys when you play with his fingers absentmindedly <3

ojiro aran

⇝ i hc aran as having the veiniest hands out of all these boys,,,, king pls omg

⇝ he doesn’t mind pda whatsoever, but like osamu, he really enjoys small romantic gestures

⇝ absolutely loves holding your both of your hands in his when he tells you that he loves you

⇝ it just feels like the two of you are completely connected in the moment

⇝ always rubs his thumb over the back your hand; it calms him down <3

⇝ loves warming up your hands with his when it’s cold out

suna rintaro

⇝ rlly feel like this is biased now pffttsjklfd

⇝ king of pretty hands !! sorry sumu <3

⇝ will always hold your hand when he’s driving

⇝ not into pda much

⇝ like if you’re in public he probably will only hold your hand or kiss the top of your head lightly

⇝ but around friends, he really doesn’t care. he’ll hang on you the entire time.

⇝ absolutely loves playing with your tiny little fingers and teasing you about just how minuscule they are compared to his long digits

———————————————————————

#shitposts;#kita shinsuke #kita shinsuke x reader #kita shinsuke headcanons #atsumu miya #atsumu miya x reader #atsumu miya headcanons #osamu miya #osamu miya x reader #osamu miya headcanons #aran ojiro #aran ojiro x reader #aran ojiro headcanons #suna rintaro #suna rintaro x reader #suna rintaro headcanons

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agayobsessedwithmurder · 3 years

Text

Small town boy

runaway!mike au

inspired by @lilithisamess

The wheelers household, 1987

"Mom! it's Wills birthday! i have to go, dustin and lucas are busy this weekend and he can't be alone!" Mike yelled, standing up from his kitchen table.

"maybe you should have thought about that before joining that demonic cult." Ted argued.

Cult? are you serious dad?

"Mike, I know your bestfriend's and girlfriend's moving away really upset you but you can't keep acting out and expecting no punishment in return. Nancy's boyfriend moved away but shes still attending college, and not failing every class and skipping school." Karen scolded him.

Of course, bring up how nancy is better than me in every fucking way.

"You cannot talk about no punishment in return mom! i know what you did, or more like who you were doing!" Mike yelled catching everyone by surprise, but Ted was oblivious so just took a bite of the rotisserie chicken.

"Michael Wheeler! go to your room. NOW!" Karen screamed and made him flinch a little.

He started walking towards his room but hesitated to hear what they had to say.

"You should just tell him he shouldn't be seeing that boy, i never thought we would get rid of him. I tell ya he was changing mike, making him go through that phase." Ted said, not knowing mike was in hearing distance.

Thunder struck the outside of the house, just as Mike ran up his stairs. Once he got into his room he slammed the door shut and sat on his new queen sized bed in replace of his bunk bed he had whenever will would stay over.

Mike grabbed the binder of Wills drawings and opened up to a random one. He started flipping through the pages, tears falling down from his pale skin onto the artwork.

Shouldn't i be missing El alot more than Will? Shouldn't I still be mad at him for calling El st- no. i can't be mad at him. He's too precious, plus he was being ignored and it was the heat of the momment so i guess he had a reason to lash out.

I can't believe i can't see him on his birthday. hes going to be fifteen! Nancy can see Jonathan whenever she wants, it's not fair.

wait? Nancy seeing jonathan isn't like me seeing will right? because they are dating, me and will are just friends. yeah, friends. i need to stop overthinking my own thoughts.

I need to see him, but mom won't change her mind. Nancy wont drive me there.

wait. that bus stop! it goes to California!

Mike smiled, not bothering to wipe the tears that were stained on his cheeks and ran to his dresser. Mike grabbed a sweater that was always Wills favorite and grabbed some socks and converse shoes.

He put the socks and shoes on and grabbed his bookbag and put the binder in there, and a walkie talkie, and a red and orange colored wrapped present along with a picture on his nightstand.

a picture in two pieces held together by a piece of see through tape. a picture of the party on the Halloween mike told will they would go crazy together.

without really thinking he put the backpack on and opened up his window and felt the rain and cold air hit his face.

He held on tight to his window sill and moved his legs to the point were hes dangling from his window.

Mike jumped down onto the smaller roof and closed his window from there. Then he sat down, ignoring the rain pouring onto his body, and then jumped down onto the sidewalk.

He kind of was surprised it was that easy. He then walked to the garage and tried to open it but it wouldn't budge. "Shit." He cursed but decided he didn't need his bike, he could walk.

He started running down the street until he got to a certain distance. He pulled out the walkie talkie and set it to a certain channel.

"Lucas, dustin? do you copy?"

static.

"Lucas and Dustin do you fucking copy?" Mike screamed as he kept walking.

"Oh my god what is it! im hanging out with max." Lucas said through the walkie talkie.

"Okay, I'm going to be gone for a little bit, tell dustin, and max i guess that im safe. make sure my parents know too, but do NOT tell the cops I'm calling you. I just need to see someone, but i promise im safe so don't let my family freak out too much, or atleast nancy. Okay thank you, bye!" Mike carefully explained and turned off the walkie talkie and put it back in his backpack.

And with that, mike started walking.

Mike finally reached the bus stop just as the bus was getting there.

literal, great timing.

The bus' doors opened and he walked in, the rain dripping onto the bus steps. He said nothing but continue walking and sat down in a seat across from this old, sweet looking woman.

Mike looked down at the bookbag he took off and put in his lap.

I wonder how Will is going to react when im there. Do you think he's going to hate me? who am i even talking to? oh god i hope he doesn't think im fucking crazy. i just, i haven't missed one of his birthdays yet. im not going to let that happen, ever. I know friends grow apart but, but Wills diffrent. Me and him, we are different. On August 27th we will have been friends for ten years. I can't, i can't lose him. I wonder if he was kidding when he said he would run away with me to California, or a warm state. We did promise to do that, anyway. But we promised alot of things. Like that we would never have girlfriends. But I can't talk, i do have a girlfriend. speaking of el, I haven't heard from her in weeks. I should probably talk to her.

His thoughts got cut off by that sweet old woman. She was wearing a green cardigan with mushrooms on the bottom and a long brown skirt and a heart necklace with a rose on it. She had white long hair captured in a low bun and a leather bag that was open that showed a knitted blanket and a book. The bag had a few buttons on it and a knitted heart on it. She had wrinkly skin with light freckles on her face, she wasn't the societys definition of beautiful but she definitely was beautiful to mike.

"Hello pumpkin, may i sit down?" She asked. Of course, he said yes and she took a seat next to him. "So where are you heading?" She asked him.

Mike recalled almost all of the memories he had with Will.

"Home." He smiled. He noticed that was extremely weird without context. "Oh uh, I'm going to see a friend." Mike said. "It's his birthday, or it's going to be in a day anyways." Mike smiled.

"Oh hunny, that's adorable. Tell me about him, and how you got all the way here." She asked, obviously worried about this cold, distressed, underage, alone boy.

Shouldn't I not be speaking to strangers?

"I-im sorry i don't even know you." He said in the nicest way possible so he wouldn't get killed.

"Oh, no. I'm not trying to attack you, or anything darling. I'm just worried, you seem young and there's bad people out there. I don't want you getting hurt." She said, and anyone listening would have known she was sincere.

"oh. well his name is Will, we have been best friends since kindergarten, and I was a total jerk to him this past summer. and I need to make it up to him, I care about him so so much and I can't have him being alone on his birthday. he deserves better than that. I got into a fight with my parents and they talked bad about him and wouldn't let me see him on his birthday, so I walked about one and a half miles to here, just so I can get on this bus. I can't leave him, he's my cleric, after all." Mike spilled out his heart.

"wow, you seem to really miss him." She chuckled. Mike takes some seconds to answer, but then does. "Yeah, i really do."

"just from what I know, be honest with him. you really care about this boy, and I know you said you were a jerk but, just talk to him. I'm sure he cares about you too. and your girlfriend will understand, she cares about you, and your happiness but you can't keep lying about and to her. You know she hates that, and Will, will love his present." She smiled.

"I will, thank you...and how do you know all this, you're really good at advice." He asked.

She laughed and pulled up her sleeve to see her arm that had a tattoo on it. '003'

"holy crap." Mike whispered.

"or because I'm going to visit my wife for fifty years." She chuckled.

Mike was stunned, shocked at the fact people could be married for fifty years.

I think i understand how they could have been together for fifty years, if you truly love someone, you wouldn't hate being in their presence. maybe that's why.... maybe that's why my parents aren't that close anymore. or why it's so awkward when I call El.

And if mike wasn't too busy thinking, he would notice the sign they just passed, he was leaving hawkins.

#stranger things #will byers #mike wheeler #byeler #byler #fanfiction #byler fanfic #smalltown boy

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baby-bearie · 4 years

Text

take me home - part 3

(not my gif)

jj maybank x reader

a/n: literally 3k+ of fluffy fakeness lol. i promise next chapter is a little more exciting. also, sorry about how late this one is.

“The Dating Things”, as JJ called them, turned out to be the easiest part of having a fake boyfriend. JJ’s hands felt comfortable, almost familiar on you. Around your waist, your shoulders, on your thigh.

“Here, Kiara’s looking.” After only a week, you were used to cueing him into Rafe and Kiara’s angry glances. For the first couple days, he was a little clueless. You would have to pick up his arms and drape them over you before their eyes turned away. Eventually, he got the hang of it. Once you pointed out the looks coming your way, he was automatically more than a few inches closer.

Soon enough, he became insanely good at noticing the stares and glanced even before you did, and startled you whenever he suddenly tugged you towards him.

You were currently right by his side on a log. The bonfire in front of you was roaring already, illuminating the faces of the people sitting around it. JJ chattered eagerly with a couple of tourons near you two. You glanced up from the fire but immediately shot them back down when you met Kiara’s blazing eyes. The fire just made them that much more intense.

You jammed an elbow into JJ’s side. He winced, turning to you in annoyance before you gave him a look. He immediately recognized the meaning behind your glare and subtly snaked an arm around you. Kiara diverted her eyes then, down to the sandy earth again.

“Success,” you whispered. JJ smiled and turned back to his momentary friends. You elbowed him again to get his attention once more.

“Ow! Would you stop doing that?” He yelped.

“JJ, you remember how I said my mom wanted to have you over for dinner sometime?” You whispered. Now is as good a time as ever.

“Yeah? Why?”

“Well, sometime is tomorrow.” You sheepishly smile.

“What?” JJ’s eyes turn into saucers.

“Yeah, she’s making a whole chicken. She’s very excited.”

“Tomorrow night? Why are you telling me this now, there’s no way we’ll be able to pull this off!” JJ’s voice is getting a little too loud for your liking, but he notices too.

“C’mon, we’ll talk. I’ll walk you back to your place.” JJ grips your hand abruptly, yanking you up and pulling you away from the bonfire.

“JJ, it’s really not that big of a deal. The only one in my family who would be angry about me and you would be my dad, and he’s in California on business. You have nothing to worry about.” “I have everything to worry about here, Y/n!” JJ drops your hand as soon as you’re out of sight from the pogues, walking nearly sideways to face you as he talks. “First of all, you have a little sister. Isn’t she like eight? I’m not exactly a little-girl type of likable.”

“She’s nine.” You correct him.

“Second of all, the whole point of this was to make Rafe think we’re some super cutesy couple, right?” He gesticulates wildy.

You don’t answer, wondering if that was really what was behind you and JJ’s relationship.

“Right?” He tries again.

“Okay, maybe it was. So, what?”

“So, if I mess up in front of your mom, it’ll eventually get back to Rafe, won’t it? He knows you well enough, Y/n. I’ve seen the way you guys used to look at eachother. He’ll see right through our bullshit!”

JJ’s accusation stops you in your tracks. “What does that mean?”

“What?” JJ gets a little bit further before realizing you’re not with him. He turns around to face you.

“What?”

“What does that mean?” You crinkle your face.

“I mean, you know.” JJ raises his eyebrows and gives you a look.

“No, I don’t know! What does that mean?” You’re getting defensive. You don’t mean to, but you know what JJ means. And you don’t want to.

“C’mon, Y/n. It’s obvious you and Rafe have, I don’t know, unfinished business?” JJ finishes his sentence slowly, trying to not set off any fuses.

“Okay, fuck you, JJ.” You scoff.

“C’mon, Y/n! It’s nothing bad, you guys just have a history! All I’m saying is he still knows you really well! Probably better than I do!” You start walking again, a lot faster this time. JJ jogs to catch up to you.

“Maybe, but what Rafe Cameron and I did or didn’t have isn’t any of your business. And it’s definitely not yours to shove in my face when I’m obviously trying to put it behind me and get away from him.” You draw your brows together. You know your anger is bordering completely unjustified, but JJ makes it seem like Rafe Cameron knows you inside and out.

You hate the idea of that. The idea that the you that Rafe could read like the back of his hand is the same you that he aggressively flirts with. You hate the idea Rafe doesn’t see you any different than he used to.

You hate the idea that Rafe became a whole new person, and you stayed the same.

“Yeah, okay, trying to put it behind you?” It’s JJ’s turn to scoff now. His voice is edged with annoyance. He walks backwards to stay in front of you, his whole body tense. You keep your eyes trained straight ahead, refusing to look at him as he glares at you.

“Right, so if you’re trying to put it behind you, then why are you trying to act like you’re with me? You’re obviously not over fucking Cameron if you’re throwing you and I in his face like this.”

All the anger falls off your face and is replaced by hurt. Fucking Cameron? Is that why he is so certain about your history together? He thinks you slept with Rafe?

If JJ thinks that, how many more people do? “Fucking Cameron?” You whisper.

The way you pause again seems to make JJ realize what he’s just said to you. His whole face washes over with regret, his mouth opening, then closing again in surprise.

“Y/n, I didn’t mean it like that.” He shakes his head.

“Right. Right, of course. You have a nice night, JJ.” You begin to speed-walk again, trying to put as much distance between you and JJ as possible.

“Y/n, wait! Y/n! Where are you going?” JJ yells after you, but he doesn’t follow you.

You turn around again, forcing a small smile.

“I’ll meet you at two tomorrow by the ferry, okay? If you’re going to ruin my dinner tomorrow, you should at least do it in a nice suit.”

JJ laughs, exasperated, and shakes his head. He rubs his forehead for a second, looking anywhere but you.

When he finally meets your eyes, he looks tired.

“Yeah. Yeah, okay. I’ll see you at two.” He nods.

You press your lips together and nod, folding your arms and continuing your walk back home.

This time, alone.

The next day at two, JJ is already waiting for you when you get to the port. He has sunglasses on, but judging by the logo on the side, he definitely shoplifted them.

His tank top is thin, but he’s shaking the bottom of the shirt up and down, as if he’s fanning himself. It’s scorching outside, the sidewalk could be frying you.

“Hey,” he pushes himself off the railing he was leaning on. “You ready?”

JJ’s smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes, which are searching your face apprehensively.

He thinks you’re still mad at him.

“The real question is are you ready, Maybank. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but I’m kind of a makeover queen around here.” You bump his shoulder and he puffs out a breath. He grins again, and this time, it’s a genuine smile.

“Makeover? What do you mean, makeover?” The smile falls as he processes your words.

You grab his arm and pull him up the ramp onto the boat.

“You didn’t say anything about a makeover, you said I just needed new clothes. Y/n, what do you mean makeover?” JJ frantically presses you with questions.

He complains the whole ride over to the mainland, pestering you about what exactly you have in store for him, but you refuse to show him the list you’ve made. You have to move your hand far away from him whenever he reaches for the little piece of paper.

You know JJ could easily overpower your smaller arms and take the list if he really wanted to, but he won’t. He just likes reaching for it and watching you giggle at his grabby hands.

When you’re finally on the street, you uncurl the paper you’ve been tightly clutching onto this whole time. JJ peers over your shoulder, glimpsing at the list. You lean back, holding the paper close to your face.

“Okay, well, lucky for you, first things first is just the fit. Let’s go, I know a place.” You stuff the paper into the pocket of your jeans, setting off to the small shop where your mom bought your dad a new suit for his birthday.

“Okay, are you trying to make me feel poor?” He stares at the shop window in front of him, mannequins displaying expensive button ups and shoes.

“Settle down, I’m paying.” You pat his arm.

He raises an eyebrow as he looks at you. “You are?”

“Yeah,” you nod, “the one with the balls usually pays on a first date, right?” You smirk, swinging the door open and rushing into the air-conditioned store. JJ follows.

“What? What did you just say?” JJ follows you around like a lost puppy. You sift through a pile of stiff, collared, button up shirts stacked on a table, draping a few over your arm.

JJ leans forward over the table of shirts. “Did you call this a date?” He smiles knowingly.

You blush a bit, but keep your face focused down. “You know what I meant.”

JJ hums in agreement, pressing his lips to keep his smile small.

“You see anything you like?” You ask him.

“I don’t know what I like around here, you’re paying.” He follows after you as you scan through black trousers. You pull a pair out and unfold them, holding them up to JJ’s hips.

He jumps back, startled.

“Hold still,” you mumble, putting the too-short pants back and pulling out a bigger size. JJ raises his hands so you can hold the longer pants up to his legs. “Hold these here?”

JJ huffs, but puts his hands on his hips to hold the trousers up. You lean back to check the sizing, then realize how stupid he looks. Before he can move his hands and drop the pants, you whip out your phone to snap a picture.

“Delete it.” JJ drops the pants into a bundle in his arm and points at your phone. “Now. Delete it.” You clutch your phone closer to you. “But what if I need to get them altered or something?”

“Y/n.” JJ’s voice is monotone, but his eyes are dancing with joy. He lunges for your phone and you squeal, jumping back and darting behind a shelf of cologne. JJ maneuvers around it and runs after you, rushing through racks of sweaters and khakis. He catches up to you quickly, his stride surpassing yours.

He flings an arm around your stomach, yanking you back against him before he swiftly grabs your phone. He keeps you pinned to him as he holds the phone up, out of your reach and deletes the photo.

He releases you and you stumble as he tosses his phone for you to catch.

“Asshole,” you grumble, picking up the pants you dropped running from JJ.

You wander the store for a while, gaining odd looks from the other shoppers as well as the cashier ringing up clothes.

Once you’ve been satisfied with the enormous mess of clothes JJ is cradling in his arms, you shove him into a dressing room. You crash in one of the comfy leather chairs outside the rooms.

After a few minutes of JJ crashing around and the sounds of hangers clashing, the room falls silent.

“JJ?” You knock.

“No.” His voice is firm.

“No?”

“I look horrible. Like someone’s grandpa.”

“I don’t trust you to judge fashion. Come out here.” You back away from the door, and JJ begrudgingly shuffles out.

He’s wearing a maroon crew neck over a white collared polo and khakis. He turns to face the mirror, tugging at the collar of his shirt.

You suck a breath in. “No, you do look like my grandpa.”

JJ gives you an unamused look through the mirror.

“In the best way possible!” You follow up.

“You’re not making me wear this.” JJ points a finger at you, retreating back into his dressing room.

“Wait,” You push the door open just as he’s about to close it. “Here.”

You pull out the black trousers and a black suit jacket. You shuffle through the huge pile of crumpled clothes he’s dumped there. You eventually find what you’re looking for - a navy blue button down. You push the clothes onto JJ’s chest.

“Try those.”

JJ rolls his eyes, but accepts the clothes and pushes you back out.

“Y/n, this is even worse.” He groans as he pulls on the jacket.

“Would you stop complaining and let me see you?”

JJ keeps grumbling but comes out of the dressing room.

You had expected the outfit to look good, but you weren’t expecting it to look that good on him.

“It’s, um, it’s alright.” You nod slowly, blinking away you thoughts.

“Alright? That’s all? No rude comments?” JJ smiles. “Who are you and where is my Y/n?”

You try not to react to JJ calling you ‘My Y/n’ as you stand to fix the way he’s bunched up the shirt to tuck it in. You smooth out the wrinkles in his jacket when his hand catches yours.

You meet his eyes. They have the same look in them that they did last night.

“Hang on,” he speaks quickly and quietly. “I’m sorry.”

“What?”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry about last night. It was out of line for me to say that.” He holds eye contact as he talks.

“It’s okay,” You break it first and focus on the jacket again.

“No, it wasn’t. Rafe is just a,” He pauses, “sore spot for me. I’m sorry.”

“JJ, it’s alright. I was getting angry over nothing, really. I overreacted. I guess it’s a sore spot for both of us.”

JJ lets go of your hand then, letting them fall back to your sides. He purses his lips as if he’s thinking, but simply nods and leaves you outside alone once again.

After he’s taken the outfit off and returned himself back to normalcy, you take the clothes from him.

The cashier gives you some more looks as you pay for everything. Your family has been shopping at this store for decades. You’re sure they’re not used to the ladies of your bloodline dragging in boys with muddy sneakers and thin tank tops.

JJ lugs the bag along with him to more shops as you move down the list. Shoes first. You browse a few watches in a jewelry store but ultimately decide you can easily give him one of your dad’s many old ones. You nearly convince him to let you take him to get a haircut but he’s too stubborn and oddly protective of his hair.

After you’ve dragged JJ around for a couple of hours, and his arms are sufficiently dragged down with shopping bags, you usher him back onto the ferry back to the island.

Your legs are tired, and JJ’s arms are tired.

To keep him occupied and from complaining, you point out obvious tourists on the boat : an obscene amount of sunscreen, usually carrying bags and always wearing such fancy outfits. JJ turns it into a game: you sort each person on the boat into either pogues, kooks, or tourons. Or at least which category they would fall into if they lived in the Outer Banks. You take the game another step, and begin to create elaborate life stories for the people.

You’re mid-monologue, trying to explain why the little lady with a large Sunday hat and a string of pearls obviously murdered her three ex husbands and now finances the wealthy lifestyle of her and her poodle’s with the inheritance money when JJ’s head lolls onto your shoulder.

He’s fallen asleep. Your heated speech trails off and you sniff for a second. Do you wake him up? You consider it for a second, but he looks peaceful. There’s a serene look on his face that you’ve never been able to see when he’s awake. Instead, you lean your head against his. You mean to just close your eyes for a moment, but you black out before you know it.

You’re suddenly shaken awake by someone grabbing your shoulder. It’s the elderly couple that sat a few rows in front of you. JJ had claimed that he was certain they were high school sweethearts that went on to rob banks together. The woman shook you awake, and is smiling sweetly down at you.

“Hi, sweetheart, we’re unloading.” There is no way this sweet lady was a bank robber.

JJ wakes up as you stir.

“JJ, get up, we’re here.” You shrug your shoulder a little, and JJ picks his head up.

The old couple begins to leave again. For a second, the old lady leans down and whispers to you. “You two make a very sweet couple. Remind me of us when we were that young.”

She pats your shoulder and follows her husband.

“Bank robbers,” JJ groans as he stretches besides you, obviously not having heard what was just said.

A sweet couple? You know you’ve been playing as a couple, but do you really look the part even when you don’t need to be seen?

Once you’re on the dock and wide awake again, you deposit all of the bags onto JJ.

“Ask Kiara for help getting ready if you need it. That’ll make her insane.” You smirk.

“Genius. You make sure Rafe hears that I’m coming for dinner.” He points out in return.

“Look at us! We make a pretty good fake couple.” You raise your hand for a high-five and JJ slaps it.

“Okay,” You check your phone for the time. “It’s 6:45ish now. I’ll see you at eight at my place, alright? Don’t be late!” You emphasize the last part. “Late? Who, me? You must have the wrong person.” JJ fakes confusion. “Oh, shit, did you say 6:45? I told John B I’d be back by 6:15!” He yelps.

“Bye!” You yell after him as he runs further and further from you.

He would definitely be late tonight.

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566 notes · View notes

crystalglassjar · 4 years

Text

🦋 Butterfly Baby 🦋

-🦋 Butterfly Baby 🦋-

this isn’t exactly a fanfic but not exactly a list of headcanons either. it’s basically an “I suck at writing but I’ve already planned out an entire story”. is there a beginning, climax, and satisfying ending? no lmao

-📋 story description 📋-

xiao and hu tao get together and have a family. hu tao is 19 at the start of this fic if you’re wondering. I just really needed to get this story out my system...hehe...and reply to this post if you can figure out why the story is called Butterfly Baby

-‼️warnings‼️-

mild spoilers, also this was written on 2/7/2021 so some stuff might seem incorrect after more story quests come out. also major character death if you read the alternate ending

-📜 the actual writing 📜-

• hu tao and xiao start hanging out together (aka hu tao comes to bother xiao and eat almond tofu with him whenever he stops by wangsheng inn)

• xiao eventually grows fond for hu tao but makes many attempts to keep her at an arms distance, all of which were in vain

• xiao and hu tao are both in denial about being in love but obviously xiao takes his denial to a whole other level

• xiao doesn’t visit the inn for 2 weeks but eventually caves and goes back because he missed hu tao the silky texture of almond tofu

• ganyu finds out after overhearing verr goldet (desk lady at wangshu inn) reporting back to ningguang about her observations

• ganyu thinks it’s an exaggeration until she goes to wangshu inn for some business affairs sees xiao and hu tao chatting over some almond tofu and tea

• xiao pretends to not notice ganyu peering from behind a wall

• xiao brings it up during ganyu’s adepti training (ganyu story quest) and she just looks away and apologizes

• xiao knows she wouldn’t tell anyone so he doesn’t bother making her feel even worse than she already does

• xiao and hu tao start actually dating (in secret) but it’s hard to keep at least a few people from noticing an adepti and a funeral parlor director walking near the outskirts of town

• xiao once again tries to distance himself because he feels like he’s not worthy of her love after all the people he’s killed and that an adeptus can’t be with a mortal, hu tao shuts that argument down with “but I don’t care”

• hu tao is a bit hurt that he thinks it matters if she’s a mortal

• she laughs at the rumors that she’s dating an adeptus even if it’s true

• zhong li eventually hears about the rumors and is pretty sure it’s true because hu tao comes to his statue everyday and recently brought up questions about love

• fast forward 10 months of hush hush dating and he finally proposes. no ring or anything fancy, just a simple “do you want to get married?” while they stood at the peak of guyun stone forest

• hu tao says yes without even thinking about it and immediately kisses him and starts excitedly talking about wedding plans that she totally hasn’t been thinking about for the past 3 months

• xiao comes to ganyu to ask for help with wedding planning and ganyu nearly looses her head when she hears him say “so I’m engaged now..”

• hu tao somehow convinced zhong li to help her with planning

• zhong li isn’t too shocked about the engagement but hopes that xiao knows what he’s getting himself into

• hu tao, with a lot of effort, convinces xiao to move into the wangsheng funeral parlor with her

• xiao has a tough time adjusting to mundane life (haha get it because- no? not funny? ok I’ll stop)

• it doesn’t take much negotiation with ningguang to secure a venue at yujing terrace

• xiao would’ve preferred a private wedding at jueyun karst but didn’t know how to ask cloud retainer about it

• one month of planning later and they get married at yujing terrace

• basically everyone in Liyue attends the wedding including traveler

• the adepti got their invites delivered from ganyu and watched the wedding from afar

• I know nothing about Chinese weddings so uhhhh that’s for the reader to dream about

• hu tao throws a flower ball made of silk flowers into the crowd (customs of liyue, volume 1)

• may or may not have forgotten about contraception during their wedding night.....

• too embarrassed to go down to bubu pharmacy get morning after medicine

• hu tao prays to rex lapis that she won’t get pregnant

• zhong li, sipping his tea: I pretend I do not hear

• xiao doesn’t know if he should tell hu tao about zhong li being rex lapis so he just hopes he’ll never have to reveal that secret

• xiao nearly breaks his skull on the wall when he realizes what he’s getting himself into

• people of Liyue are still in shock about an adeptus marrying a mortal (since they were never confirmed to be dating beforehand) and nearly explode with buzz when the funeral parlor director starts growing a baby bump

• “have you seen the wangsheng funeral parlor director? last time I saw her, it looked like her belly was growing a bit. do you think she’s pregnant? oh my archons, a half adeptus baby? I can’t believe it!”

• xiao asks zhong li if he can go out an order a crib, rocking chair, baby clothes, etc for him

• zhong li obviously says yes

• fast forward 9 months and hu tao goes into labor just an hour before the funeral parlor was closing for the day

• zhong li rushes hu tao to her room and tells the undertakers to fetch the midwife

• hu tao calls for xiao and of course xiao is there within 10 seconds

• midwife nearly shits herself when she walks into the bedroom and sees an adeptus

•the midwife nervously asks if xiao was the father

• there was a popular (false) rumor going around that hu tao had an affair with zhong li and the baby was his, mostly because people refused to believe that hu tao was pregnant with a half adeptus baby. these rumors were only fueled further when zhong li was overheard asking a shop keeper if he should order multiple sizes of baby onesies just in case.

• zhong li just nods his head and xiao looks away in shame

• midwife gives helps deliver the baby while thinking “if I fuck this up, this adeptus is going to kill me”

• surprise! the baby is completely fine and healthy

• ganyu asked the qixing if she could take a day off (much to the shock of everyone who knew she wouldn’t even take her yearly vacation leave)

• ganyu has never ran so quickly down Liyue’s streets and nearly kicked down the funeral parlor door

• she’s super excited to know that there’s going to be another half adeptus in Liyue but is also incredibly worried about the idea of a half yaksha child

• I can’t come up with a name for the daughter so ill just call her daughter

• zhong li is named the god father and ganyu is the named god mother

• xiao and hu tao take the baby down to jueyun karst

• ganyu and cloud retainer both think the baby is such an adorable and precious little thing

• the rest of the adeptus are just like “xiao wtf...but ok”

• refer to my posts about xiao as a father if you want some more cute details but I don’t wanna just write a copy paste of my past post

• everyone at Liyue harbor is gossiping about it

• hu tao is a very fun and free mom and teaches the kid to become a tiny ball of chaos with the pyromania of klee and the sneakiness of yaoyao. aka the kid is now unstoppable

• pyro vision because of course

• hu tao teaches her daughter how to master pyro, how to write poetry, and most importantly, how to become a funeral parlor director

• the daughter actually prefers swords over poles and gets classes from the guhua clan, and more specifically,

• zhong li was very eager to give the kid a vision and was managed to get the pyro archons permission

• xiao confronts zhong li about the vision it in secret

• xiao: you gave her a pyro vision. do you know how destructive she will be?

• zhong li, taking another sip of tea: ✨ I pretend I do not hear ✨

• hu tao overhears the conversation and puts two and two together

• hu tao and xiao have their first ever argument ever since they got married

• “why didn’t you tell me before?”

• “because it was a secret!”

• back and forth until they hear the baby waking up and crying

• they agree that there’s no point in arguing now and go off to calm down the baby

• they end up living a happy life as a family of three, and after hu tao’s death, xiao continues to raise the child as much as he can (with the help of zhong li and ganyu)

• their daughter becomes the 78th director of the wangsheng funeral parlor

~the end~

-↪️ alternate ending ↪️-

• osial somehow wakes up during one lantern rite

• xiao was distracted by a different, much smaller, demon

• the guizhong ballista and jade chamber had been repaired by now and were better than before, and they were able to defeat osial without sacrificing the jade chamber again

• however they didn’t get to the jade chamber fast enough and a small part of Liyue was destroyed

• one place in that part of liyue being the wangsheng funeral parlor

• xiao is overcome by grief because he believe it was his fault that he wasn’t able to protect this family

• he finally succumbs to the corruption

• what he didn’t know what was that hu tao did indeed die in the destruction, but his daughter (currently age 12) was still perfectly well and alive

• ganyu takes in the daughter

• zhong li took over the post as director after hu tao’s death and became the 78th director

• zhong li continued to teach the daughter about how to properly run a business and conduct flawless funerals

• the daughter becomes the 79th director of the wangsheng funeral parlor when she’s 18

• she also becomes the new demonslayer of the adepti, following in her father’s footsteps

• even through the trauma of witnessing her mother’s untimely death and being given the news that her father’s had also died, she made it through and raised a happy family of her own, while wearing the hat that her mom passed down.

~the end~

-📝 author’s note 📝-

ok...so that was longer than expected. let me know what you guys think! see any typos or anything off? please mention it! if you guys have a header for hu tao please do share~

#hu tao #Xiao #fanfic #fanfiction #Genshin impact fanfic #Genshin impact fanfiction #Genshin fanfic #Genshin fanfiction #hu tao Genshin impact #Xiao Genshin impact #Xiao x hu tao #Xiao tao #hu xiao #hu tao x xiao #i know its very shitty #fanfics-!

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cancerbiophd · 3 years

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Why am I so afraid of professors? They're all so smart and cool and I always feel like I'm not good enough, especially when they appear to be irked or treat me coldly/with hostility. It makes me feel stupid and unadequate and unworthy. I'm terribily uneasy every time I have to interact with them. Even if I studied hard and I know I'm saying something correct i tend to get unsure and submissive, like in a very 'i-hope-i'm-doing-this-right' and 'please-don't-hurt-me' way. Of course this affects my exams because it looks like I'm not sure of what I'm saying... and the professor gets irked even more because they obviously think I haven't studied and I'm wasting their time. I hate myself for it. Please, do you have any tips to overcome this?

Hi Anon, ohh I know that experience very well. I also used to be absolutely terrified of professors when I was in college. Raising my hand to ask a question in lecture? Nuh uh! Going to office hours? NUH UH. I had huuuge anxiety regarding all that.

But it slowly got better (though it took longer than I--and my grades--would’ve hoped), so I have some ideas on how you can also become more comfortable around professors. Feel free to try any you feel comfortable doing, and also keep in mind this is in no way a comprehensive list of ideas, and that everything will take baby steps and most importantly, time.

Firstly, know it’s not your fault. I’m not a therapist or anything so take this with a grain of salt, but it seems to me that something traumatizing may have happened in your past/still happening in your present to create this current feeling of fear around authority figures, especially if one of your constant fears is being physically hurt by them. If that seems to ring true, I highly recommend seeking the advice of a professional therapist, as they can help you find more permanent solutions through these types of obstacles. I think seeking a therapist would be a very kind thing you can do to take care of yourself because, most importantly, you deserve to live a life free from fear, and secondly, it’s affecting your day-to-day life (ie. your grades and mental well-being).

Secondly, I really hope you have a really good experience with a professor one day. A professor who is so kind and so passionate about helping you that it’s a huge step in healing and growing. To get you started, I highly recommend following one of my favorite blogs and professors on tumblr @xiaq. They’re seriously amazing and just, an all around good person.

Sit near the front of the classroom/lecture hall. Not only will this help in paying attention/retaining information during class, but just by being closer to your professor will help slowly ease you into being more comfortable in their presence. You may also feel more comfortable asking questions in class, as you won’t have a wall of students turning around to look back at you as you speak (I know this gave me huge anxiety).

Have a study-buddy for each class who you can go to office hours with. Experiences are always less intimidating when you’re with another person. Another bonus of a study-buddy is that you can also ask them any questions you have, and thus possibly skip having to interact with the professor all together (which would be a good thing if the professor really is being unhelpful and rude).

Going off of that, surround yourself with people who inspire you, specifically those with are very comfortable around professors. As social creatures, we oftentimes will passively pick up the mannerisms of those around us. I used to be suuuuper timid and shy, but my confidence grew during high school and college after I became friends with more confident people.

Seek out a TA first (if possible). TAs are students too (they’re just in graduate school), and they may come across as less intimidating. Heck, I could’ve been your TA :)

Spend more time with professors or TAs, even passively. Regular exposure is the fastest way to having something feel “normal”, after all. Ideas of doing this include: volunteering at a research lab, getting a part-time job on campus somewhere that has regular interaction with professors or TAs, volunteering at university-sponsored events with professors, hanging out at community learning centers where TAs volunteer as free tutors (if your university has them), signing up for smaller-sized classes (more professor interaction), or even doing homework in public study lounges near professor offices (these areas have the bonus of usually being more quiet than libraries).

Do something even more intimidating than interacting with a professor. Ok here me out: Once you accomplish something that’s even scarier, your newly gained confidence will be like, “Wow, if I could do something that’s so much more intimidating, then talking to my professor isn’t so bad in comparison!” What you do is up to you, but it should be something that’s obviously safe, but challenging enough so that it’s just a little bit scary, and in the end you’ll be more confident for having accomplished it. Like performing in public, or running for a leadership position for a club you’re in, or working a part-time job/volunteering opportunity that gives you the chance to interact with lots of diverse people.

Know you are not being a burden when you ask a professor for help. A) It’s their literal job to teach. You are no more a burden asking a professor for help on their class than you are going to the doctor’s office when you’re sick. As a student who is paying thousands of dollars in tuition (or someone is paying that for you), you are the reason why that professor has a job and a salary. So they need to do their job well, right? B) Teaching is also their passion. There are a variety of career paths they could’ve taken (especially for those with a PhD), and staying in academia is usually by far one of the hardest and most competitive paths, so the fact that they’re still there means that they really do enjoy what they do.

But know also that professors are human. Sometimes they may be having a bad day that’s unrelated to their students, and may seem a bit more tense and terse. We’ve all been there, right? If a professor or my boss seems a bit snippy that day, unless they explicitly say to me “Julia, I am so mad at you right now”, I chalk it up to something else happening in their lives that has nothing to do with me. My mental wellbeing has greatly improved by adopting this way of thinking: “never assume another person’s intentions and only accept what they explicitly tell you.”

Say more “thank you”s instead of “I’m sorry”. This moves things away from erroneously putting all the blame on you towards being appreciative of the other person’s time and energy. Instead of “I’m so sorry I don’t understand this from class” try saying “Thank you for taking the time to teach this again to me”. See how different the vibes are? And how much more positive you feel by saying the second one? The other person will also feel more positive about the interaction too. If you catch yourself instinctively saying “I’m sorry” (because I know it’s a habit that’s hard to shake), quickly follow up with a “thank you” as well: “I’m sorry I don’t understand this from class but thank you for taking the time to teach this again to me.”

Lastly, be patient and kind with yourself as this will take time. Overcoming something that gives us anxiety takes exposure, patience, and time; it won’t happen overnight. Take baby steps at first, and it’s ok if you just can’t do something today. That’s alright, you can try tomorrow.

Also, if anyone who has gone through something similar has any advice or words of support to share, please feel free to reblog or leave a reply!

Good luck anon, I hope things get easier for you ❤️

#Anonymous #college advice

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lenacker · 4 years

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Do you have any personal headcannons for Levi x Petra? I like to think they have dates where they just go out for tea together. I also like to think if either one gets sick, the other will take care off them.

Wow, it’s been a while since anybody sends me an ask!

I have a lot. Here ya go:

Rivetra Canon-verse Headcanons

First: their ages. Petra was 23, Levi was 31. And no, I won’t elaborate. Just because she looks young doesn’t mean she’s a minor.

Tea dates and late-night conversations ft tea + paperwork

Petra was the medics of the Special Operation Squad, she takes some time while training to learn additional medical skills,

Every time Petra cleans, she repeated it 3-4 times to impress Levi to avoid the classic ‘you call those clean?? Repeat!’

Levi used to treat Petra differently than her other squadmates (you know because she’s a woman and smaller than the others). Petra saw this as an insult and confront him about it, and that’s how Levi helplessly fall in love.

Levi didn’t have any fashion sense (the only thing he ever wears is the uniform and the white shirt with black trousers), so every time there’s a gala or important events with military higher-ups, he ordered Petra to choose a set of suit for him (also he hates shopping, so he just tell her to pick one about her size)

Her interaction with new recruits and children reminded him of his own mother

I said this too many times and I will do it again: Hange and Erd are the ultimate shippers

However, Gunther was the one who always there for their peak sexual tension moments

TOO MANY ALMOST-KISSES TO COUNT

They chatted about what they would do in a world without titans, Levi wanna have a tea shop (obviously), Petra wanted to do too many things from teaching to cooking to write a novel

Petra’s the only one trusted to choose, buy, and make black tea

Every time she writes or talks to other people, the word ‘Heichou’ is the most repeated word lmao

#rivetra #levi x petra #petra ral #levi ackerman #headcanons #canonverse #erd gin #gunther schultz #special operation squad #lena answers

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lunarreaper-ut · 3 years

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Oh, I had an idea for an ask yesterday, but forgot. Now I remember though! In a completely hypothetical situation, if the whole cast of Kingdomverse? were to get wings, what do their wings look like, and how do they react? And how fast do they learn to fly, if they are able/want to?

I just like wings, and this would obviously not be canon.

Oh this is really nice to think about! I love wings too, so I'm absolutely happy to do this. Though it might be hard for me to actually describe them... Let's give it a shot!

(NOTE: These descriptions are NON-CANON to Kingdomverse?, but if you guys like them, feel free to draw them! I might do so too, I like wings >w<)

I'll do the Royal Court last this time, so let's start with...

Red

His wings would be on the larger side. They'd be a dark red with black and red speckles around his shoulders. He's freaked out when he develops the wings, but he thinks their hella cool. He has troubles with flying at first, and honestly even though the wings look cool, they're a lot of work.

They look cool, but Red hates the upkeep they require and the energy it takes to fly. He still likes flying though, he just won't do it often.

Edge

His wings are also on the larger side, but they're more lengthy than Red's. He's also developed what seems to be tail feathers! His have a similar coloration (A bit brighter base color), but the speckles are concentrated at the ends of the wings rather than around the shoulders. Edge is surprised when he gets his wings, but he doesn't let it show.

He practices flying in private, and he soon finds he rather likes how majestic his wings make him look. He doesn't much care for flying, he doesn't really need to go anywhere. He learns how to fly far quicker than Red though.

Comic

His wings are on the smaller side. They're a grey-blue coloration with a white ombré towards the tips of the feathers. He, for the most part takes getting wings in stride. Much like with his Guardsman training, he seems to just know how to fly soon after getting them. He's too lazy to do it that often though.

He likes his wings, they make good blankets.

Pyrus

His wings are lonngg! They also have tail feathers, but they're longer than Edge's. The underside of his feathers are a pale yellow at the center, turning more orange as they reach the tips, and the backs of his wings are just orange. They have the same light yellow color as a few speckles across the backs of his wings too.

Pyrus had a bit of a freak out when he developed wings. Why did it happen? It happened to you too Comic?! Is it a sickness?! Are we dying??? No he doesn't know why a disease would make them grow wings before they die, but it's an option!

He eventually calms down, don't worry. He has a little bit of difficulty learning how to fly, but with Comic's help he learns pretty quick! He loves flying, and will take any excuse to do it.

Lust

Lust's wings are also on the smaller side, but they're much more elegant. They have some pale purple, almost white feathers at the shoulders. His feathers lightly curl at the ends, and there are a couple longer feathers that come from the base of his wings that appear to be just decorative. His wings color is reminiscent of a purple sunset.

Lust is startled at having gained wings, but is immediately overjoyed. They're so pretty! Lust gets to work at making sure they have the perfect outfit to go with them. Lust has difficulties learning to fly, but eventually gets the hang of it. They love flying, but don't do it often.

Ardor

Ardor's wings are the same length as Pyrus's, but also with an elegant flair. They're more pink than Lust's wings, and seem to have a cloud-like pattern across them. Ardor has long tail feathers that seem to have a rough heart shape at the ends.

Ardor is extremely startled when they see that they've developed wings. Seeing that Lust has also gained wings eases their worries a bit, but they're still nervous. He's too anxious about even having wings to try to learn how to fly yet. It takes him a while. Ardor doesn't want to fly.

Stretch

Stretch's wings are the most similar to Pyrus's in shape, but in size they're the smallest of the Papyri. His tail feathers are also the shortest. His wings are colored like a flickering flame, various shades of orange and yellow melding together. The base of his wings at his shoulders are a more brownish color on the back, and the brown speckles across the back of his wings.

Stretch is similar to Comic, he's surprised but not all that concerned about having wings. Stretch learns to fly so he can encourage Blue to learn as well, though honestly he'd rather stay on the ground too. Flying is hard work.

Blue

Blue's wings are similar to Comic's in shape, but they're larger. They're a light blue with white stripes at the ends. The base of his wings are also white. Blue is startled when he sees he's gained wings, and goes to the Kings to figure out what's happened.

Blue... doesn't want to learn to fly. He's afraid of heights after all. He does try though! Stretch helps him with the basics, and he can get off the ground... but honestly the ground is nice, and he'd much rather stay on the ground.

Geno

Geno's wings are similar to Comic's in shape and size. His are a white color that fades to grey and then red at the tips. He's surprised about gaining wings, and can quickly tell they won't be any use beyond being decorative. His wings feel heavy, like weights.

Geno is unable to use his wings to fly, and his disappointment shows. Reaper is quick to comfort him, assuring Geno that he'll still take him out flying, wings or no wings. Geno will stretch his wings out on these trips now, and the feeling of the wind through his feathers is wonderful.

He's kind of relieved he can still be held by Reaper like this.

Reaper

Reaper already has wings, so I'll just describe them. His are a deep pitch black with splotches of a dark grey on the undersides. They seem to almost fade to smoke at the tips.

Error

Error's wings appear to be much more... sharp I suppose is the word? than the others'. They're black, and the very edge of his wings have three blue streaks. (I don't mean the tips of the feathers, I mean the ends of the wings, like when he extends them... Describing things is hard T^T)

The tips of his feathers have a faint red and yellow ombré, similar to his fingers. His and Geno's wings look rather similar actually, just different colors. (and a few minor detail changes for Error)

Error heads to the Kings immediately when he develops wings, and then goes to check on Geno. He learns to fly on his own, but he struggles with it quite a bit. He doesn't really fly much, since all his work is on the ground.

Ink

Ink's wings are white, and have a pale, cloud-shaped rainbow pattern towards the tips of his feathers. His wings are rounder than the others', and he also has decorative feathers like Lust.

Ink is excited when he sees his wings, and immediately starts trying to learn how to fly. He loves flying, and will also look for any excuse to do so. Sometimes he won't even wait for an excuse.

Dust

Dust's wings also have a sharp look to them. They're an ashy grey with an almost purple tint, and a white splattered pattern at the tips of his feathers. Dust has a mini-freakout when he sees he has wings. He's another one who heads to the Kings for answers.

Dust doesn't actually want to learn to fly, so he doesn't. He's fine staying on the ground.

Horror

Horror's wings are a grey color as well, and appear to resemble fog with their pattern. Mixes of various greys make them look smoky and cloudlike. His wings are also the largest of the Sanses. Horror is probably the most undisturbed about gaining wings. He does think to go and ask the Kings about it, but he doesn't mind them.

Horror can't fly either, unfortunately. Much like Geno, his wings are more like weights. He doesn't mind. They're fluffy and warm. He does learn, however, that even though he can't fly, he can glide. He figured it out when he was hunting. He's far faster on the ground now, using his wings as a way of getting short bursts of speed.

Cross

Cross's wings are white, and the tips have a black X pattern across them. His wings are almost as large as Horror's. His wings have a regal, almost angelic look to them shape-wise.

Cross is surprised of course when he develops wings, and is the first one to talk to Dream about what's happened. He learns to fly thanks to Dream, despite his initial nervousness about it. He flies whenever Dream wants to go flying.

Killer

Killer's wings are a deep, almost black, red. His feathers have a red ombré at the tips. His feathers look sharp, and his wings are sleek, built for speed. Killer is confused when he sees his wings, but shrugs it off and heads to Nightmare to see if he knows what's up.

He learns to fly with few hiccups, and rather likes it. He sticks to Nightmare most of the time, but with permission he likes to fly around a bit.

Dream

Dream's wings are in a word, magical. They appear to be made of pure light. He actually has four wings, two small ones on the bottom, two large ones on the top. The feathers seem to glow, and almost sparkle. When light touches them, they seem to reflect a pale rainbow.

Flying seems to come naturally to Dream, and he rather likes it. It's freeing. He encourages Cross to fly with him. Honestly, if Dream had wanted previously, he could have given himself wings using his magic. He'd never thought to do so, and it certainly wouldn't have been permanent. He couldn't have dreamt of making them this pretty either!

Nightmare

Nightmare's wings, while just as impressive, aren't as eye catching as Dream's. His are dark, shadow-like, and seem to be constantly shifting. He, unlike Dream, has six wings. His wings are much more... malleable than any other's. They can almost lay flat across his form like a cloak of shadows.

If he spreads his wings completely, it's then you'd notice their pattern. The underside of his wings seem to resemble the night sky, a galaxy of faint shimmering stars glittering across the feathers.

Much like Dream, flying comes naturally. Nightmare has actually given himself wings before, purely out of curiosity. They weren't as pretty as the ones he has now though, and he couldn't fly with them. Nightmare needs a bit of convincing from Killer to actually fly now.

#answered asks #Kingdomverse?#Kingdomverse #KV!Cast #This was fun to think about!#I tried to make them all unique!#I'm bad at describing things TwT

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runrundoyourstuff · 4 years

Text

Seasons

(A Steven Universe Fic, 2632 words)

Written with love for a holiday exchange with the wonderful @mimik-u !

Prompt: Steven teaches one of the Diamonds about something beautifully mundane (a la Peridot learning about rain.)

It’s almost comical how the Dondai pales in size when compared to the Arm Ship—and the magnitude of the difference only grows as Steven descends the ridge. There are some items, both of human and Gem origin, that seemed larger when he was smaller—when he was younger—when everything mysterious in the world, every new thing he learned about himself, filled him with wonder. The Diamond ships, however, are not among these items. They’re as large now as they always seemed to him, if not quite as foreboding. As are the Diamonds themselves, and he is reminded of this, as Yellow disembarks from her spacecraft.

She doesn’t see him right away. Or if she does notice the car, she doesn’t have the frame of reference to recognize it as his, and even after he parks it beside the ship and gets out, it’s several moments before she turns around and acknowledges him standing there.

“Steven!”

“Hey, Yellow.”

“When I called, I hadn’t realized…” She sputters. “Your...your family returned my message to inform me that you were leaving on a conquest—”

“A conquest?”

“Yes, they said that you were going to travel—”

“Yeah, but not on a conquest!”

“Of course, of course, a scouting mission, then—”

“No! Nothing like that! Just a trip! I just...needed to hit the road for a while. Figure out what’s next.”

“I...right, of course. Your—I mean, the Pearl said that you would be taking a hiatus from your Diamond duties…”

At this, Steven chuckles. “Pearl wants me to.” But then he becomes serious. “I shouldn’t laugh. She’s trying to make sure that I take care of myself. She—all of them really, want to make sure I know that I don’t have to be involved in any Gem stuff if I don’t want to. That it’s my choice. And ya know, it’s true that I don’t want it to be my whole life, not like it was when I was a kid. And because there’s no hierarchy anymore, I do want to give other Gems a chance to manage things on Earth if they want to—to show them it doesn’t always have to be a Diamond, and I’m not a Diamond anyway—but I do want to be involved, ya know? Or at least know what’s going on! I put so much work into everything, and not all of it was bad. I was really proud of a lot of what we did, and the Gems are my family…” A pause. “Anyway, that’s all to say that I routed some of the messages from the Base to my phone.”

“I see. I…” She pauses. “I didn’t intend...You did not need to come. I merely called because I didn’t want to catch you off guard. Give your...our...Given my history, I thought if I showed up on your planet unannounced—”

“It’s not my planet.”

“No, of course not. I meant the planet on which you reside. I’ve already...I did not intend to make you feel that…that you needed to come fix—”

Steven raises a hand. “I know. I just happened to be in the area, so I thought I’d stop by. Say hi.”

“Ah. Alright.” The silence resounds. Yellow’s eyes flit away.

“So,” Steven says after a moment—looking for something, anything, to cut through the quiet. “Why Zona?”

“Is that what this place is called?” Yellow glances around. “I needed an area of the Earth where I would cause the least disruptions, where I could dig a sufficiently large hole such that I could access the Cluster. I initially planned on going to one of the Kindergartens, as we’d already irrevocably destroyed all hope of organic life thriving there—I thought I could minimize the destruction. But each already has a fairly extensive subterranean framework that makes it impossible for me to dig deep enough.” She sighs. “I realize this place isn’t perfect. My digging will certainly disrupt some of the plant life. But it appeared at least that there were few humans in the vicinity…”

“Mm.” Steven leads against the hood of his car. “I’m surprised you brought your ship out here and didn’t just Warp. We’re not that far from the Beta Kindergarten, and there’s a Warp there...”

“Those Warps weren’t built for us. We’re much too large.”

“I guess that’s true, but you could always shapeshift.”

“Hmm. I suppose. But there was also the equipment to bring.”

“Equipment?”

“Yes, I...There are...billions of shards in the Cluster. I figured...if I am going to dismantle it and reconstruct each of the Gems whose shards it conatiend, it would likely be easier for me to do it on Earth, rather than bringing all the Shards back to Homeworld. I don’t want to risk losing any of them or damaging any of them even further in transit…And while I may need to ultimately to transport some of them back to Homeworld to locate all the pieces, and though it may be disconcerting for the other Gems to reform on Earth...I…” She leaves the syllable hanging in the air, turns her head away. Steven can just barely make out her tense jaw as though she is gritting her teeth. Sparks radiate from her skin.

“Yellow? Are you...okay?”

“I’m fine!” But then she bows her head, inhales and releases, murmurs: “I apologize, Steven. I am not angry with you. I simply…It has been difficult enough for me to face each of the Gems I have reconstructed on Homeworld. Once they recover from the shock and the terror, they have each looked at me with such disdain. And those Fusion experiments, while they were certainly terrible, pale in comparison to the Cluster. I can only imagine what each of the Gem’s contained within it will feel. And I will deserve it. I hurt so many Gems in the service of the Empire.”

Steven opens his mouth to respond, but before he can, Yellow continues, speaking ever rapidly, ever louder, as though desperate to expel the words. “Do not try to assuage my guilty conscience! That...is not your responsibility. I shouldn’t have just put you in a position to think that it was.”

Another tentative backpedaling, Steven thinks. A walking on eggshells moment, like he’s witnessed with the Gems and Dad over the past several months. And difficult though it is for him to sometimes believe, it’s not as though Yellow is wrong, at least not if he trusts his therapist. But there is a distant look in her eye, a panicked tension in her cheeks, which, when coupled with the fact that this is the first time he’s seen her since his breakdown, makes Steven wonder if she is remembering that day on the beach.

His own memories of it are fuzzy-to-nonexistant; he remembers the pain, and the panic, and the anger he’d held despite knowing that he shouldn't. Then, he has a vague impression of multiple embraces, of Connie kissing his forehead, of crying hot, cathartic tears...And then he’d woken up in the Cluster’s hand, with the eyes of most of the people he loved and almost everyone he’d ever fought all on him.

Despite his own lack of recollection, however, Connie assures him that she’d given everyone—the Diamonds included—something of a blunt talking to that day, a rallying speech, but she won’t elaborate on the specifics of what exactly she’d said. Might that—whatever its contents— be behind Yellow’s hasty assurances now?

“Okay,” Steven responds finally. “I won’t try to make you feel less guilty. But can I show you something?”

Yellow furrows her eyebrows. “Very well.”

“It’s just on the top of the canyon.”

They deliberate for a few moments on the details. Yellow offers to carry him, but even if she’s not White, Steven declines being held in a Diamond’s hand, and while she could shapeshift to fit in the passenger seat of the Dondai, she ultimately elects to simply follow behind the car as Steven slowly drives it up the cliff.

They reach the plateau just as the sun begins to dip in the horizon, casting a golden glow over the grass, over the Autumn leaves, just starting to paint themselves with the vibrant shades that return year after year.

Steven opens the door and steps out. “You never spent much time on Earth, did you?”

Yellow considers. “No.”

“Do you know what I think my mom fell in love with about this planet?”

“Organic life, of course. Humans.” She gestures to Steven. “Obviously.”

“Well, yeah, but not just them. Us. I think it was this stuff too.”

Yellow squints. “These weeds?! These...dying outgrowths?!”

“With things that change. Things that grow. There’s so much of it here.”

“Hm.”

Steven paces over to the grass, then sinks down onto it so that it brushes against his bare calves. It’s mostly soft on his skin but there are dryer patches too, scratchier places on the ground as some of the longer areas start to dry out for the season. The sun dips lower in the sky, and it leaks hues of pink and orange onto the daytime canvas of darkening blue. Yellow looms behind him.

“Feel this.” He pats the ground next to him, and tries not to wince as Yellow’s gargantuan hand settles down on the grass. “You might not be able to tell, but it’s growing. Even right now. By the time the snow—frozen water that falls from the sky—starts to cover it in a few months, it’ll probably be a few inches taller than it is right now. And then it’ll take a break for a while, but when Spring comes next year—when the weather gets warmer again—it’ll start again.

“The trees too. Look out there—they grow taller every year, and every year the leaves change into those beautiful colors you can see. And the shades are similar every year, but never exactly the same. Then the leaves fall off, and then bud again and come back. And the trees keep getting taller. And every time the leaves return, the whole tree is a little bit different too.”

Yellow hesitates. “These are familiar to me. Someone, I believe a Peridot—your Peridot—”

“She’s not my Peridot, but I know who you mean.”

“Yes...Well, she brought some of these...trees...from Earth to Homeworld, and determined how best to make them grow there. I’ve been gazing at them through the windows of the palace ever since, but I hadn’t realized how elaborate, how ever-present, their growth cycles were…”

“I’ve lived on Earth my whole life, and I only just started thinking about it recently. It’s easy to take for granted, but it’s really incredible when you stop to think about it.” He angles his head upward. “And it’s not just the plants. Look at the sky. It changes like this every day.” A pause. “Well, it’s really not the sky that’s changing—Connie told me that it’s an effect of how the planet moves around our sun. But from down here on Earth, it looks like it’s always changing. In a different way every day. I don’t think it’s like that on Homeworld.”

Yellow settles next to him at last, squatting, and then kneeling. “It isn’t. Things are constructed on Homeworld—not grown. We have a sun, but our sky does not transform like this.”

“Exactly. And I think that’s why my mom fell in love with the Earth so much. She was so in awe of how everything naturally grew and changed here.” Steven sighs, clenches him gemstone beneath his hand. “I’m still angry at her a lot of the time, but, like, I get it. She saw herself as this monster.” Here Steven pauses, glances away for a moment before finally letting the words return. “And she didn’t think that she was capable of growth or change. All she thought she could do was pretend to be someone else. And then she found herself on this planet where all anything did was grow for real, and she wanted to be a part of that even in some small way, so she made me.”

“Steven…”

“But the point is, she was wrong. She could have grown as herself. I think she did, even if she couldn’t see it. And she and I aren't the only Gems that grew. All of my friends and family have. None of us is the same as we were when I was a kid. Maybe it just took coming to Earth to see that, ya know? Gems can grow and change, just like the trees can, and the grass, and the sky.

“So yeah,” Steven continues. “White hurt you, and you hurt Mom, and Mom hurt Pearl and Garnet and Amethyst and Spinel and you, and everyone she hurt hurt me, and I hurt Jasper and Dad and a lot of people and could have hurt a lot more, and you hurt all the Gems who were corrupted, and who became the Fusion experiments and the Cluster...and that’s all true, and we all have to deal with that and make the things we did wrong right the best that we can. And it’s hard, and it sucks. But the ways we’ve been hurt and hurt other people aren’t all we are. We can grow and change too. As ourselves. I think the Earth is just one big reminder of that.”

Yellow’s brows are once again furrowed, her jaw agape. “I…”

“So, yeah, it’s going to be hard to face all the Gems in the Cluster as you put them all back together. But it’s the right thing to do. And if it ever becomes too much, you can always come up here, and watch the world change and grow to remind yourself that you’re growing too. You’re better than you were, and if you keep working at it, you’ll keep getting better.”

Then, without waiting for Yellow to respond, Steven stands, walks back over to the Dondai. “Now, I gotta hit the road. I want to get to Vegas by tomorrow. It was nice to see you, Yellow.”

“You as well, Steven.” Yellow rises to her feet.

“Good luck,” he calls out the window as he pulls away, and glancing in the rearview mirror, he sees Yellow’s arm raised in farewell, something like a small, apprehensive smile on her lips.

Six months later, after a sojourn up and down the West Coast, Steven returns to the ridge en route back to Beach City for a visit. He pulls up just as the sun is rising over the canyon, glinting off Yellow’s arm ship, and off of the chest and arms and backs of the little gaggle of Gems gathered next to the ship and the adjacent hole. Yellow is not among them, though. She stands on the crest of the cliff, gazing at the trees, at the little buds beginning to spring into being on each branch.

“Steven.” She turns to him in greeting as he gets out of the car.

“You’ve been busy!”

“Yes, we’re progressing nicely.”

“We?”

Yellow nods. “Some of the Gems I reconstructed from the Cluster decided to remain here to help. Then others in Little Homeworld—and even a few on Homeworld itself—learned about what we were doing, and traveled here to volunteer.” She pauses. “They’re here for the sake of the Gems inside the Cluster, not for me. Still, it is nice not to be alone.”

“Mm.”

Yellow turns from the trees to the canyon, in the direction of the rising sun. The growing orange light catches her Gemstone too, and it glimmers in it. “It’s a beautiful morning.”

“Yeah,” Steven says. “It is.”

[ao3]

#my fic #su #yellow diamond #steven universe #the cluster

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thecandywrites · 3 years

Text

The Beginning of Stormbreaker Part 2

So cute.

Part 2

Rhosland woke up just before sunrise, bright eyed and energized and couldn’t wipe the giddy smile off her face if she tried as she and her twin sister left right at sunrise just as their mother finished baking the overnight bread, and also conveniently just after Drad and Sarg came and delivered more “gifts” to them, Sarg gave Esri a fishing net and fishing lures and lines along with a big set of big baskets so they could keep the fish and whatever else they foraged together as Drad gave each of them the stone timber axes, and a large, thick quilt blanket, so large it would cover three bedrolls. Each square was stuffed with cotton, wool and down feathers so that each square was puffy in the quilt so that they would not get cold in their tent just in case the bitter cold of fall and winter came early, which the girls happily took and hugged those men goodbye as Drad and Sarg helped push as the girls pulled their rowboat to the biggest stream as the women rowed their little boat down the stream that cut through the village, underneath all the bridges and soon were out to sea before they rowed it north towards Hurricane Breaker until they found the estuary between Skull Screamer Clan and Hurricane Breaker and rowed upstream, happily finding all kinds of fish and seafood in the creeks before they found the perfect camping spot right on the edge of a forest next to a fallen tree that was the perfect bench height and set up camp and ate the fish they were able to easily catch for breakfast with their bread that thier mother had sent them with.

“So you must have had really good dreams last night, you won’t stop smiling.” Esri teased her sister even though she was in a similar state.

“I did,” Rhos nodded.

“Well go on, tell me about them.” Esri requested as she scooted closer to her sister as they sat on a fallen log by their camp fire since they had pulled the little row boat up on shore and the log had been covered in wild, edible mushrooms which the girls readily cut off and were in the process of drying them to preserve them while eating a few of them, cooked in their pot over the fire with their breakfast since one of their bride gifts from the clan had been a few logs of smoked and preserved fat as they had sliced off a few pieces of the cow and hog fat and fried the mushrooms in that in their pot which only made the mushrooms taste even more meatlike.

“I had a dream that Drad came back from the raid and claimed me as his wife instead of Tar and we built the most perfect house together and we had so many kids and we were just...so happy. And it’s like my intuition is telling me that it will come true.” Rhosland whispered, afraid that if she said it too loudly it would tempt the fates and not come true.

“That’s funny, because I had a similar dream about Sarg.” Esri beamed.

“Oooh, and?” Rhos giggled.

“Oh, very good, I had a dream we sailed out to sea on this big sailing ship and that rocking of the boat made the rutting so much better.” Esri giggled in turn.

“Do you think it will come true?” Rhosland asked.

“It better! Cause my mind and heart keep telling me it will come true, plus they were both there to see us off and got us both gifts to help us on this hunting and gathering trip and just hugging Sarg this morning felt...amazing.” She insisted with a wistful sigh.

“Me too, but with Drad obviously.” Rhosland confirmed as the girls continued to eat to their satisfaction for the first time in a long time.

“Come on, I have a good feeling that we will kill some deer today, we should build a smoker to smoke the meat.” Rhos suggested as they used their new axes and chopped down a good stone timber tree and other kinds of trees and began building a really good smoker out of the wood before they fashioned the bigger baskets to hang off of their hips and immediately started finding all kinds of wild edible berries, cattails and other wild edible plants, edible mushrooms all around them and so many different kinds of herbs for seasoning and medicine and even an abandoned bee hive full of combs, thick with honey which they gladly took all of it that they could reach and harvest before they shot down a couple of deer and drug the deer back to camp and immediately got to work dressing them and putting their meat in the smoker and tanning their hides and then used the net and caught a bunch of fish, gutted and cleaned them and put those in the smoker too.

It was single handedly the best day they had ever spent gathering because this spot had an overabundance for them and they quickly had to use the dried grasses to make bushel sized baskets for all that they harvested since all the baskets that they had packed were now full as they sat on the log, watching the gorgeous red sunset and just about the time they got done weaving their new baskets and organizing everything into those baskets and put it all inside the tent just as the sun went down- a very thick fog came in from the sea with a chill and settled over them as Rhos and Esri both instinctively went into their tent and rested and for dessert, dined on the honey that they dipped their wild berries into before falling into a restful, sweet sleep, curled up under the wonderfully big, thick, and supremely warm blanket that kept the cold completely off of them as suddenly the winds kept changing in the most bizarre way, blowing in different directions so that it felt like it was blowing in from all sides and picking up speed, making the smoke of their fires take up an odd pattern within the fog itself before it blew in heavily towards from the west again, inland from the sea.

Meanwhile Tar was disappointed that “his Rosey” had already left for a hunting and gathering trip, so he couldn’t try to lay with her real quick before the raid, he was celebrating as if he had already had a successful raid and noticed that a thick fog blew in that evening but that didn’t deter him or his father or the rest of his family. The next morning, the fog was still excessively thick. So much so that they could barely see the road from their houses but Zash and his sons felt confident in their ability to still use their inner compass and that the fog would conceal them and that they would attack the Rush Fang Clan completely by surprise and it would guarentee their victory over them and set off with their men that morning and disappeared into the unusually thick fog while Orcoth had promised Sarg and Drad that he would keep a careful watch over their mother Grat and Rhos’ and Esri’s mother Shari and assured both women that they would see their children again soon as the three of them kept to themselves as Grat invited Shari to stay with her while her daughters would be away so the two would not get lonely which Shari greatly appreciated as Grat also invited Orcoth to stay as well, to play games and enjoy each other’s company since Grat’s house that Wolvish had built her was still big enough to fit all of them comfortably.

However- Zash and his sons got hopelessly lost and turned around several times, not even recognizing their own walking paths in the tall grass in the thick fog that soon enveloped them and their raiding party as Zash and his sons were adamant that the fog would clear and that they would find Rush Fangs and ignored and rebuked and rebutted any who had left signs along their path to show that they had been walking in circles before Zash felt confident that he was turning Southeast, when in fact, he was turned Northwest and heading straight towards the much bigger and more fearsome Hurricane Breaker.

And when the fog did partially clear, they found Hurricane Breaker, their bright golden bronze breast plates glinting in what little sunlight finally was able to push through. Whose shaman had sensed that they were coming and were ready for them and were outnumbering them twenty to one as Drad and Sarg both looked worriedly at each other when they saw that their comparatively smaller raiding party was completely surrounded before the fog quickly enveloped them all again as the clash of warriors played out as Drad did everything in his power to keep Sarg by his side after he saw Tar and everyone in Tar’s family fall to the ground dead from the fatal blows, before he smelled...smoking venison with a hint of smoking fish as the words of his new adopted father Orcoth replayed in his head but it was like he was the only one who could smell it and by this point Sarg and Drad were both injured, almost fatally so and knocked off their horses, as Drad took Sarg on his injured side while Sarg did the same, pushing their injured sides together so they could use their good sides to manage to get out of there and Drad followed his nose in the smell, as the scent itself seemed to be in a wiggly pattern but the wiggly pattern helped both of them avoid the other warriors of Hurricane Breaker as the fog itself was so thick they could barely see their hands in front of their faces but kept them practically invisible as Drad continued to slowly and as quietly as possible, follow the smells as Drad could pick up more on the scent of smoking venison while Sarg could smell the scent of smoking fish stronger as they both followed the same trail of scents until the scent led them out of the warzone and the father away they got, the lighter the fog became so that they could see more and smell more and by now, the scent was very strong and it gave them hope that they were close as they both hobbled towards it and just as the fog thinned out even more, they saw a camp sight, just as Rhosland and Esri were leaving a tent and Drad had never thought Rhosland looked more beautiful in his life.

“Drad?” Rhos asked when she and her sister were brave enough to leave their tent when they woke up to the sounds of a battle as their instincts told them to stay in the tent because it sounded like it was very close by before the sounds faded as if the war zone was traveling farther and farther away before they ventured out, only to be met with the sight of Drad and Sarg, both trying to hold up the other and trying to walk despite their injuries.

“Rhosland! Help me!” Drad called out to her as she and Esri quickly dropped their axes and ran towards them and helped them back into their tent as a pop up thunderstorm came and started raining and washing Drad and Sarg’s bloody trail away before moving towards the east on the western wind again as Rhosland and Esri both got to work cleaning and dressing Drad and Sarg’s wounds with the herbs that they had found and were turning them into poultices.

“What are you doing here? I thought you guys were supposed to be raiding Rush Fang.” Rhos asked worriedly as she worked on stabilizing Drad’s wounds and to stop him from bleeding out right there in their tent, calling on all of her medical knowledge she had acquired up until that point to help her do so.

“We lost our way in the fog, got turned around several times over but Zash and his sons wouldn’t listen to anyone about it and the fog was so thick, we couldn’t tell where the sun was, let alone where we were going.” Drad answered in staggered breaths.

“The fog was so thick we couldn’t see our hands in front of our faces and Zash wouldn’t hear of any objections to waiting until the fog cleared to go raiding because they were sure that the fog would help us, instead of hinder us.” Sarg added as he hissed and then grunted and whimpered as Esri set his arm back into place then used a piece of wood and a strip of cloth from her skirts to tie it off to keep it straight as she then used her fishing line to sew up the bigger wounds after cleaning them off through the poultices and their left over cleaned water that they had boiled to make tea with as Rhos was doing the same to Drad’s ankle that he had somehow rolled and twisted.

“So how did that turn out?” Rhosland asked.

“I watched as Zash and all of his sons fell, their heads rolling away from their bodies. It was only the smoke of your smoking the venison that I smelled that I followed that saved us, I don’t know if anyone else will survive.” Drad answered honestly as he was hissing and biting back curses as Rhos was doing her best to heal him and set his ankle right and stitch up his bloody leg that had been hacked almost to the bone as she tried to put the blood vessels and veins back together as she pushed them together and stitched it shut.

“The venison.” Rhos and Esri both said in unison as they realized that that scent could lead Hurricane Breaker to them too before they heard hoof beats in the distance.

“Don’t make a sound.” Rhos and Esri both breathed in a whisper to Sarg and Drad before they quickly left the tent and took the fishing net and ran towards the river to wash the blood off their clothes before they were surrounded by a group of shield maidens only moments after the blood washed away from them and their campsite and was carried downstream, the blood dissolving completely into the river. Once they saw that Rhos and Esri were unarmed but simply in water up to their chests and barely grunt sized orcs, they assumed that Esri and Rhosland were younglings, barely subadults, struggling with a fishing net as they came to the conclusion that Rhos and Esri posed no threat whatsoever and noticed the axes were purely for cutting down trees, not warfare and thus, they were unarmed which put them at ease.

“Who are you and what are you doing here?” The captain Tilge, a shieldmaiden herself demanded.

“My name is Rhosland and this is my twin sister Esri, we are on a hunting and gathering trip, we are from the Skull Screamer Clan, but we didn’t see any markers on this land and thought this was unclaimed and neutral land, did we miss a marker or something?” Rhosland asked innocently enough.

“No, this is unclaimed and neutral land, because mosquitoes and malaria are thick here. So you should be careful. But are you aware that the Skull Screamer Clan attacked us?” Tilge asked them.

“Who’s us? I assume you’re talking about Hurricane Breaker? Skull Screamer was not supposed to attack you, everyone knows you are much bigger and fiercer clan than even Typhoon Breaker, Zash and his raiding party were supposed to raid Rush Fang which is in the Southeast, that’s what Zash and all his sons were talking about in the great hall two days ago when we left Skull Screamer to come here to go on our fall hunting and gathering trip, we specifically chose this spot because it was in the opposite direction they were supposed to be headed, you can ride to Skull Screamer now and ask our mother, Shari- she is a widow and has no husband or son to raid so that just leaves my sister and I to take care of her, she lives in the mud and mud brick hut right on the outskirts of town. If Skull Screamer came against you, the only thing I can think of is that they must have gotten lost in the fog, once the fog came in from the sea, my sister and I took shelter in our tent and we’ve only come out once we heard the roar of the fight die down.” Rhos explained nonchalantly as Tilge could tell by the way Rhosland was speaking along with her body language that she was speaking truth and trusted her words.

“We are Hurricane Breaker, and my name is Captain Tilge, and you’re correct. Skull Screamer did attack us and they were clearly lost and must have been out of their minds to do so. Have you seen any of your warriors come towards you? Because the scent of the smoking venison is what brought us to you.” Tilge answered.

“No, only you, at least so far.” Esri answered as she and Rhosland both shook their heads no with a shrug as they focused on getting the net into position to try and catch something in the water.

“So since we pose no threat, might we be friends? The fish that we caught earlier should be done smoking by now, would you like some?” Rhosland asked as she and her sister managed to catch a school of fish in their net before they came up on shore, dragging their catch behind them in the net so that Tilge and the other shieldmaidens could see that they were small, still developing and obviously young and far from dangerous.

“Yes, thank you.” Tilge smiled as she and her group dismounted and let the horses graze nearby as they all took a seat on the big log by the fire as Esri and Rhosland took out the now smoked fish and the smaller pieces of smoked venison replaced them with the new fish they caught after quickly gutting them and gave the shieldmaidens the smoked fish and the smaller pieces of smoked venison as they all enjoyed a nice impromptu meal, using the big, broad leaves of a nearby plant as plates as Esri and Rhosland were sharing what they had gathered so far and casually picked up their stone timber axes and let them lean against the log, between them and the tent and sat with the shield maidens, and felt an uncommon ease and calm in their beings so as not to give any suspicion that they were hiding anything.

As they shared a meal, Tilge and her other shieldmaidens began sharing with Esri and Rhosland more secrets about the land that they were on, about where to find good mushrooms and what they looked like and what they tasted like and herbs and especially where to find the best shellfish which was in the biggest river more north, closer to Hurricane Breaker as Tilge promised Rhos and Esri that they would tell the rest of the army and the clan that Rhos and Esri were here and to leave them alone and to give them a wide berth in order so that they could hunt successfully and take care of their widowed mother and that they meant no harm which Rhos and Esri greatly appreciated.

Tilge even told Rhos how there was a wild rose bush nearby that should be blooming and a special group of trees that had special nuts that were very oily, that they called Butternut because once you ate the delicious fruit and found the big nut inside, and crushed and ground up the nuts into a paste and cooked the nut paste, their oil would come pouring out and once it got skimmed the oil from the paste and the oil got cold and solidified, it looked like butter and it was really great for making soap with and that they could make wild rose soap with it since that’s what Tilge and the other women in Hurricane Breaker did when they wanted to smell nice and also found the wild citronella weed and told them about the five other bee hives around them that they could get honey and then use the wax from the hives and the crushed up citronella into an oil to make a special candle that would keep the mosquitoes away too before they told Rhos and Esri about the old cursed cave made of stone that was nearby that was most definitely haunted and not to go anywhere near there and Rhos gave Tilge one of the pearl necklaces she was wearing to signify their friendship and alliance that Tilge happily accepted as Esri gave Tilge one of her carved shell totem bracelets as Tilge gave them a citronella candle to keep them safe from the mosquitos and the malaria that the mosquitos carried and agreed to the alliance as well before Tilge and her warband of shieldmaidens left in peace and happiness with full bellies as the fog soon fully lifted and cleared as they went back to the warzone to pillage from the fallen as those who didn’t fall had run home to tell everyone else the news of the defeat as Rhos and Esri came back into the tent.

“Thank you so much, you handled them perfectly, I doubt they suspected a thing.” Drad thanked Rhosland once she came back in to see him sitting there, with his weapons in hand just in case Tilge and her shield maidens had poked their noses into the tent and once he saw that it was Rhos and Esri, he and his brother put their weapons down and off to the side.

“You’re welcome, how are you feeling?” She asked.

“Much better, those herbs are helping so much, they’re taking most of the pain away. We would have been lost for sure without you. Thank you.” Drad thanked her.

“You’re welcome.” Rhos offered as she continued to dress his remaining wounds as Drad and his brother tried to take off their broken armor and most of their clothes so that their many wounds could be attended to before Drad got into his pack and gave Rhosland the rose scented soap.

“For you.” He said as he offered it to her as she took it and unwrapped it and smiled when the wonderful scent soon bloomed in their tent as she could clearly see the dried pink rose petals in the soap itself.

“Rose scented soap.” Rhos smiled and couldn’t help but laugh before she used it to help clean his wounds so that they wouldn’t get dirty as the cloth it was wrapped in made the best wash cloth, soft and fine enough to wash the wounds without ripping or damaging them.

“Thank you.” Rhos offered as she was cleaning off his back.

“You were supposed use it on yourself though.” Drad offered even though the scent was heavenly and having her dress his wounds was surprisingly intimate this time since it was just the four of them.

“I will, but your wounds need to be cleaned first, I can’t lose you to infection or gangrene.” Rhos gently countered.

“If I survived an unwitting attack on Hurricane Breaker, I doubt anything can ever take me from you from now on.” Drad managed to say as Esri’s jaw was on the floor of the tent as she looked to Rhos who was frozen again, but instead of it being fear, it was just pleasant surprise before Rhos simply smiled and leaned forward and pulled him back so he was leaning against her chest and pulled his face to the side and claimed his mouth with her own as her answer as that seemed to settle the matter before she had him sit back up so she could finish cleaning him up as she brushed off any dirt or debris from the bed so he could lay back down and rest as Esri had done the same since the bedrolls were side by side before she got out and went to gather more water before she heard Esri’s giggle before Esri came back out.

“And?” Rhos asked as they came back to the river to get fresh water and dump the now dirty water away.

“And my dream came true, just like yours did.” Esri giggled as they got their new empty baskets and went over to the bigger river with the net and found it was teaming with giant mussels, scallops, clams, little lobsters and crabs and other shellfish as both girls used their hunting knives to knock the mussels free from where they were anchored and put them in the baskets that were now practically overflowing before they found a giant catfish in a hole in the water and caught it and killed it and dragged it towards their camp site and started cleaning them up.

When they opened the giant clams and mussels and found all of the mussels completely laden with all these huge, beautiful, bright pearls of all colors but mostly of gold, peacock, black, purple, pink and blue pearls, pink pearls were a sign of passion, but also the deeper the pink and the closer to red, meant signs for a male child, made in love and passion. Purple pearls were was a sign of prosperity and wealth of resources like food, clothing and shelter, gold pearls meant tangible wealth, like gold and other riches. Peacock pearls meant multifaceted protection and care, especially between a bonded pair. Blue pearls were a sign of wisdom and insight, black pearls meant independence and strength, as even most of the clams had pearls too as both girls happily took them and quickly put all the pearls into their pockets which were threatening to overflow before tossing the meat in the pot to cook up a seafood stew again, using what was left of the herbs as flavoring and the other smoked fish to make a good broth before they loaded up their bowls and brought it inside to Drad and Sarg gratefully ate it and sucked it down but refused to eat any more until the girls had their fill which Rhos and Esri appreciated as they did and Drad and Sarg happily ate the rest as Rhos and Esri washed all the pearls that had been in them before they each presented the biggest and finest of the pearls to Drad and Sarg so they wouldn’t have to go home empty handed which Drad and Sarg happily agreed to accept before the girls brought the deer hides into the entrance of the tent to sleep on those so that Drad and Sarg could continue to sleep on their bed rolls comfortably while the large blanket was barely big enough to fit over the four of them sleeping like that.

“Drad?” Rhos whispered once Sarg and Esri had fallen asleep and were softly snoozing.

“Yeah?” He answered, keeping his voice to a whisper too.

“How did you know to follow the scent of smoking venison?” Rhos asked.

“Rhos, I care for you enough to never lie to you.” Drad began.

“I trust you enough to know that you never would either.” Rhos answered as Drad smiled as softly as Rhos did the same in the darkness.

“Two nights ago, right after we parted from the marsh, an old shaman by the name of Orcoth came into the village, he was hobbling and obviously in pain as he walked and I helped him, I took him to my home and he gave me that rose scented soap and he said that it was what I had promised to give you in my heart which only a shaman with great magic could have discerned that, even though I had wanted to give you more than just one bar, I had wanted to get you a whole case but just that one bar was all I needed at the moment and he told me that the day of the raid, that it would be so foggy that I wouldn’t be able to find my way, but that the scent of smoking venison would, and that if I followed the scent, I would find salvation. And that’s exactly what happened. Zash and all of his sons were arguing and bickering the whole time and our whole party got turned around several times so that we didn’t know what way was up and the others were getting irritated by the confusing leadership and then when the fog cleared up partially, it revealed that we were completely surrounded and outnumbered at least twenty to one and then the fog closed in on us as did Hurricane Breaker. And I was just swinging blindly before I got knocked off my horse as did Sarg and once I was on the ground I just kept trying to keep Sarg at my back and when we both got partially cut down, I caught the whiff of your smoking venison and Orcoth’s words were called back to my mind and so Sarg and I followed the scent of the venison, it had the most bizarre route in the fog but in hindsight, the route kept us out of sight and sound of the rest of Hurricane Breaker and just as the scent got strongest and straightened out, we were far away from the warzone and when the fog partially lifted, we were here.” Drad confessed as Rhos remembered the wind in the fog the night before and how the wind had seemed to come in from all sides as she realized now, that it was fate, that even when Zash and Tar led their raiding party astray, that Orchoth knew how to save Drad and knew that because Drad had been so kind and hospitable, that- that, is what saved his life and Sarg’s life and led them straight to Esri and herself. And only a shaman with the gift of true prophecy would have been able to predict that.

“Well when we get back, I’ll have to meet him and thank him for giving you a prophecy that saved not just your life but Sarg’s as well which I know Esri would be lost without him.” Rhos offered.

“You will, we adopted each other. He said he had already lost all of his sons and readily adopted me and I- him, after he gave me the soap and told me about today.” He answered.

“Do you think anyone else in Zash’s raiding party made it?” Rhos asked thoughtfully.

“I don’t know, I don’t think so.” Drad answered.

“Well I hope Shadi and Baka have sons then, because otherwise Skull Screamer will be leaderless.” Rhos pointed out tiredly as Drad realized she had a point and realized that if Sarg and himself could get back and as long as no one else in Zarsh’s personal warband had lived, since Drad was himself second in command to Tar who was first born, that he was now the highest ranking survivor and they could claim the status of Warchief and Warlord of the clan and Orcoth would be the clan’s shaman since the other had been killed since Zash had taken his own with him and had died right alongside him.

Drad realized he could actually start a new clan, with whatever was left of Skull Screamer and whoever else wanted to join, with Rhos as his wife and warchieftess, his one and only. Even if Shadi and Baka ruled in Tar’s place until their sons grew of age. He could start his own clan. All he needed was a name. It needed to be big and grand and fill those who were part of it- with confidence. And those who weren’t, with fear. Something not at all realated to Skull Screamer but something Breaker. Hurricane Breaker was already taken. So was Typhoon Breaker. So...storm? Stormbreaker? Yes. Stormbreaker, that sounded right in his head as he smiled happily and fell asleep to a dream like fantasy of being Clan Chief or even a Warchief, of Rhos being his Clan Chieftess or even Warchieftess and felt confident that it would work, all he need to do was heal, which judging by the way his wounds were already healing faster with Rhos’ medicine than they normally would was the best sign that she would continue to heal him and care for him.

#Of Heaven and Fire Prequel #The Beginning of Stormbreaker Part 2 #orcs #orc love story #orctober 2021

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angst-king · 3 years

Text

Stuck in this Static Void pt 6

(TW: mention of hanging) Fuyumi had done her packing while Enji had been detained. She’d also found herself a place to stay that could keep her safe from Enji. She was bringing Shouto’s suitcase in to be checked to make sure she packed items that wouldn’t be taken away from Shouto. “I think all of these will pass the bag check. So are you already Shouto?” Asked the doctor, Shouto had been allowed to dress in his casual clothes once his iv’s were taken out and his arms were rebandaged. He had on jeans, a white t-shirt and a zip up jacket that was a little over sized and tennis shoes with straps no laces. Nodding, Shouto looked at his brother and sister with a small smile. They both embraced him warmly, one sibling on his left, the other on his right. “We love you so much Shouto, we will try and visit as much as we can alright.” Spoke Fuyumi who brushed her fingers through his hair. “Yeah we’ll try and find time okay, you just focus on getting better and we’ll try and find a way to keep you away from him” Natsuo vowed while nuzzling his younger brother sweetly, Shouto replied with a quiet “Okay, just be careful..please.” He was still obviously worried for his sibling’s safety hoping his father wouldn’t seek revenge but. They all knew how ambitious Enji could be when he wanted something. “We will Shouto, we promise we’ll be careful.” Fuyumi reassures him with a loving smile as Natsuo pats his head.

The paramedics came over with a bed ready to take Shouto. He’s helped onto the bed after his last goodbye and he’s whisked away into the ambulance that is destined for the psych ward. Taking Shouto’s bag they put it next to his gurney and strap it down to keep it from sliding around while Shouto lays on the cot. The ride is silent and it gives Shouto time to think. ‘What medications would they put me on?’ ‘Will they watch me shower….like come in the bathroom with me?’ ‘Will they be in the room while I change?’ ‘Will I have a roommate?’ ‘Will I have to talk to them? Probably not, I hope I don’t. I don’t need to make friends, I need to get in there, get better as quickly as possible and get out.’ ‘How am I gonna do classwork? I’ll fall way behind if I can’t complete my assignments.’ The more the thought the quicker time went by and soon. He was interrupted by the doors of the ambulance opening. He was helped down from the ambulance and down its small ramp. One paramedic followed him up to the door, opening it for him and letting him inside.

It looked like the waiting room of an urgent care, cream colored walls in the corner there was a desk with a nurse sitting behind it, three major hallways leading towards many others. There were chairs and small benches along the walls of the main entrance towards the front desk. Pamphlets neatly placed on small tables between the benches with small summaries of who knows what and they seem to be untouched. The paramedic who escorted Todoroki inside told him to take a seat while he went to talk to the nurse. Sitting down Todoroki relaxed into the seat, it really was setting in that he was being admitted into a psychiatric hospital. It was really setting in that he was getting away from his horrible excuse of a father, and that...he was gonna go through the same thing his mother had. But maybe he’d turn out better, maybe he’d turn out completely fine? Maybe he won't even be here that long? Maybe-Oh here comes the nurse, she walks over and kneels down a little.

“Hello you must be Todoroki Shouto, hi I’m Jitkimi, I am one of the nurses on the floor and will be taking you to your room.” Looking up at the woman who introduced herself he listened tentatively. “O-okay then” “Now I’m just going to warn you, you will have a roommate, both of you actually new to the psych ward...well your roommate has been here for a week but in a different wing. Still a doctor will come in to you both and will explain to you the rules of the psych ward and the schedules. Now why don’t we get you to your room.” She says as an invitation for the peppermint haired boy to follow her lead. Getting to his feet, Shouto nods and grabs his suitcase of items.

She guides him down a hallway that’s blue in color with various shades of the hue. As he walked he noticed many doors that were spaced out like apartments, they had the names of their patients. Five sets of doors that were opened not all the way but cracked open enough to poke your head in. Five sets down and Jitkimi stops at the sixth set of doors, she knocks on the one to her left. Even though it was partially opened she knocked which showed she had some sort of decency. “Hello Mr Midoriya, I’m coming in with your roommate.” She warns before opening the door completely.

The room was a little bit better than what Todoroki assumed it would look like.

It had two beds separated by a large cubby-like night stand with four cubbies and charging ports for devices they’d been permitted to have. On his roommate’s side there was a large window that had blinds that could be pulled by a turning stick. There are duplicates of desks, and closets, one for each person. Of course the desk had chairs and the closets weren’t huge but it's not like they’d need something too big right? The beds were plain, no back board but the base was a completely smoothed wooden bottom. The floor was a series of light blue tiles like the hallways. The bathroom door was left open and Todoroki took note of the top of the door being slanted off. He was confused as to why that was but had a feeling that he knew why.

Sitting up a boy with a mess of dark, mossy green and black hair, and sunken in matching colored eyes stared at him tiredly. He was wearing headphones that he’d slipped off his head to show he’d acknowledged the presence of Shouto and Jitkimi. Jitkimi took this as the cue to introduce the two. “Izuku, this is Todoroki Shouto. Shouto, this is Midoriya Izuku.” Izuku gives a shy wave to him, Shouto just gives a small nod to him. “Go on and get yourself settled in, the doctor should be in soon the both of you will meet with them and will talk about rules and routines and such. There are emergency call buttons around the room in case of emergencies like one of you having an anxiety attack or something…I'm gonna leave you alone now” Jitkimi says soon leaving the boys alone only closing the door a little bit still leaving it the majority open.

Making quick work of himself he organizes his belongings, he was a little surprised to find a small tablet in the bag with a short charging cord. Still he appreciated it, and went on exploring the bathroom and deciding to keep his body products in the closet, there wasn’t anywhere to put them in the bathroom anyway. He went back to his bed and went through his suit case finding a comforter and a soft fuzzy blanket. Running his hands along the fabric, it felt so warm and inviting, he was tempted to wrap himself up in it. He was still tired, drained from his short trip here, exhausted from the weight of depression holding him down.

Not only did he feel the weight of his depression but he also felt that someone was staring at him. He felt a pair of eyes watching his every move, and he knew there was only one person in his room. Looking up at his roommate from his position on the floor from his suitcase he catched Midoriya watching him. Todoroki delivered a glare, why was he watching him? Did he want something? Did he want to be friends or something? If so then that wouldn’t work, he wasn’t here to make friends, he was here to get better and out as soon as possible.

“What do you want?” He asked, making the other pale a bit, the smaller was about to open his mouth but was interrupted as Todoroki got to his feet. “Look, we don’t have to talk, and we’re not going to be friends. Cause I’m not here for that. I want to just get in and get out as fast as I can. So just keep to yourself and whatever is wrong with you and I’ll keep to myself.” It came out sounding rather harsh and made Izuku freeze up, as if answering to a strict boss at work, he silently nodded. Sighing Todoroki goes back to unpacking which didn’t take long. As soon as he was done there was a knock on the door and then the doctor walked in. Todoroki’s eyes immediately darted towards him. “Hello, you must be our new patients here, Midoriya Izuku, and Todoroki Shouto?” They nod at the same time, another man comes in, he has messy black hair that is put up into a half ponytail leaving some of it down around his shoulders. He has a scar underneath his left eye lid just above his cheek bone. He’s a bit pale and his eyes held an exhausted look as if this man had hardly slept in days. His lips couldn’t hold a smile but he still had some sort of warmth to him. “Hello I’m doctor Diasuki, this is Mr Aizawa, he will be your 1-1 nurse. He will check on you during showers, nights, and during the day. You will also have another 1-1 nurse. His name is Toshinori, he isn’t here today but will be here soon.” As Dr Diasuki spoke the boys were quiet, their eyes remained on him giving him their full attention.

“We have rules here and we have reasons for the rules especially considering you guys are on 1-1 right now. Your door must remain open, it doesn’t have to be wide open but, enough for a nurse to peek in and check. When you are going to take showers or use the bathroom, you are welcome to close the bathroom door. The only reason that door is allowed to be closed is because it does not have a lock and. That large cut out slant over there allows a staff member to be able to check in on you without having to open the door.”

The doctor continues to explain more things, explaining that they will have a schedule to follow throughout the day. That they will have different types of therapy offered to them along with normal therapy sessions and groups. “You also will have your vitals taken daily at least three times a day. Mornings, afternoons, and nights. That will usually happen after medications are taken. Getting your vitals checked is just your basic, blood pressure test, temperature, heart and breathing check. For some it may include checking your blood sugar, weigh-ins. Though weigh-ins for those who need it, like you Midoriya will get that twice a week and as you make progress that will soon be downgraded to once a week.” Midoriya blushes as he’s pointed out but doesn’t say a word. More rules and things are explained to the boys until over the PA system a soft chiming sound rings. Midoriya jumps, seeming startled but the doctor explains. “Calm down kid, it's just the PA bell, it's dinner time right now. Come on, we'll show you to the cafeteria.” Quickly Izuku got off his bed to go with the adults while Shouto tiredly got off of bed.

Dr Diasuki opens the door, Aizawa is the first one out with the two boys close behind him and the doctor follows suit behind them. As they walked Diasuki asked the boys questions, some both could answer, some were targeted towards them as individuals. “Midoriya, do you still have your feeding tube?” Izuku quickly answers “y-yes” “You’ve been in the ED for a week, you’re still on a liquid calorie diet?” “mhm” “Alright so I assume you know what you’re getting for dinner?” “y-yes” “That’s good, have you been put on medication yet?” “I-I...um..” Izuku was starting to get anxious about being questioned and was having a hard time getting his words out, afraid of what the reaction would be. Aizawa senses this and stops. He turns around to face the teen and says in a soft voice. “Look kid no need to get scared, now just answer the question.” Izuku just shook his head and quietly said “Th-they haven’t y-y-yet, s-sorry.” “Hey don’t be sorry Izuku, this isn’t something you’ve done. It's not like you have any control over that. They usually aren’t this slow in medicating patients.” The doctor mutters the last part as if thinking out loud before he speaks more directly to Izuku. “If they don’t have anything prescribed to you by Sunday let someone know okay.” Todoroki was next “Also Shouto if you’re not talked to by a psychiatrist or psychologist by monday don’t hesitate to ask Aizawa or Toshinori who can see if they can get you in.” “okay, thanks''

The walk to the cafeteria wasn’t too far, and boy was it big! It looked like a large high school cafeteria filled with kids of different ages. At the front there serving stations and cafeteria assistants, nurses were scattered about to keep the chaos to a minimum. “Alright boys go ahead grab something to eat and find a table. I’ll see you around sometime.” Dr Diasuki says before leaving Aizawa with the two boys who look around. Sighing Shouta starts walking towards the serving stations. “Come on you two, lets get dinner,” Although Todoroki didn’t feel hungry at all he listened and went with Midoriya and their nurse. Waiting in line Todoroki kept his guard up in case something went down. He could see how fidgety Midoriya was, he took more notice of his features.

He was still a sickly pale color, even if he was on a liquid diet, he shouldn’t be sick looking. There were purple-is grey rings under his eyes, his tired eyes that held an anxious look in them. His lips were pasty and being nibbled on, his teeth pinning down his lower lip. The pants Izuku had on really showed how thin he was. His bony fingers grasping tightly onto the cuffs of his sweater making paws out of them. As well as the feeding tube that dangled from behind his ear and above his shoulder.

The line didn’t take too long, and soon the three of them were next in line. Midoriya knew what he needed to get, so he grabbed a bottle of juice then waited for Todoroki and Aizawa. Even seeing the food in front of him, Todoroki couldn’t feel hunger but. He knew he had to eat, so he got a couple of things to satisfy the nurse and keep concern low. They found a table and sat down together, the table was quiet as Aizawa could tell that his boys didn’t seem to be conversation makers and. This was their first day in the psych ward unit so he was rather patient. Todoroki forced down what he’d gotten for dinner, it was good but he just didn’t care. Sitting at the table without the worry of being screamed at did make him happy.

After dinner Aizawa walks the boys out of the cafeteria and leads them down to a larger room filled with kids and teens. “This is more of a lounge area and a place to hang out during free times after meals. It's to monitor you guys in a less invasive way and allow you to interact with people. Also it keeps anorexic patients from trying to go and purge what they eat.” He states the last part bluntly making Izuku blush but he still says nothing, keeping his hands in his pockets as they walk. “You’ll only be there for maybe only thirty minutes to an hour.” Izuku nods and goes to find a place to sit, Todoroki is a little more awkward but he goes to do the same.

Izuku sits himself on the floor, he brings his knees to his chest getting himself comfortable. The room wasn’t quiet yet it wasn’t unbearably loud. Still being around people, Izuku was on edge and uneasy. Arms wrapped to keep himself as small as possible, hoping no one were to notice him. Izuku would rather be invisible to the world than be noticed. Being noticed was never usually a good thing so keeping to himself and remaining alone should get him through this. Izuku didn’t have anything to distract himself with though, no tablet, no pencil or paper. He just sat there with a tired yet blank expression on his face. Time went by slowly, it felt like they had been there for hours when they’d only been there for a few minutes. They both just sat there, looking around and watching others interact or do the same thing they were doing, or even do their own activities. This room was orange and blue, with other colors that weren’t the main focus.There were kids playing board games, cards, or just talking, or even keeping to themselves with their own agenda. Izuku struggled to interact with people out of fear and so he’d much rather keep to himself even if he wanted friends, he knew that wish was a selfish and suicidal one. Shouto never was very social at all, he didn’t really know how to interact with kids his age after a long history of abuse. He was never allowed to play with any of the kids in school, or after school, it was focusing on studies and being Enji’s strong protege. So interacting with people was out of the question, he’d rather observe those around him besides he’s not here for friends anyway.

Todoroki noticed his roommate didn’t interact with anyone either, and he also was rather curious as to why the boy had a feeding tube and was on a liquid diet. It must be because of how skinny he was and they were trying to re-feed him without hurting him, yet. Why did he only have juice at dinner? He consumed that by mouth so why not just give him a liquid substitube drink? Why was he even thinking about his roommate’s needs, they weren’t his concerns or business. Maybe he was just bored? Well finally the time had come where Aizawa arrived and came over “hey, let's go back to your room.” He’s rather quiet but both boys can hear him, so they get up from their spot in the room and head over to Aizawa. Following the man together back to their room, back down the multicolored hallways that soon became different hues of blue once more. Blue, the color of the sky, water, blue sometimes represented sadness, it also represented freeness yet. To the boys blue was their hallway, these blue walls would be their home whether they liked it or not.

In their room Todoroki saw an IV pole next to Izuku’s bed, it held a small machine on it and next to it was a cart. Todoroki didn’t have any time to truly question this when Aizawa suddenly asked “Alright, who's taking a shower tonight?” Todoroki raised his hand, he usually took his showers during the day but he felt gross from not showering much at the medical hospital. “Alright then, Midoriya you showered this morning right?” Izuku didn’t even look at Aizawa and just nodded. Oh great Midoriya is a morning showerer too?! Another thing Todoroki and he were gonna have to deal with. Todoroki was hoping for little interaction with this guy but if they keep clashing with schedules they might have to. “Todoroki, why don’t you get into the shower take care of all your bathroom needs, then Izuku since he will shower in the morning.” Todoroki just sighed and agreed, grabbing some pajama clothes, a tooth brush, tooth paste, and hair brush, he headed to the bathroom wordlessly.

Which left Izuku and Aizawa but well, Aizawa had to stand guard of Todoroki while he was in the bathroom. Todoroki knew the other had to somewhat ‘watch him shower’ yet Aizawa didn’t stare at him through the open door, more so he would watch the other every so few seconds before looking at Midoriya who was changing into his own Pajamas in the corner. Either way neither boy tried to do anything to harm themselves while doing either activity. The shower was special to say the least, it wasn’t a normal shower. It didn’t have a true shower head, more like a rounded spout system like shower that wasn’t very big yet did produce a good flow of water. The lack of a real shower curtain set was brought to Shouto’s attention when he accidentally took it down while getting in, the shower curtains were held up by magnets. Hearing the clattering sound Aizawa looked over seeing an apologetic boy looking at him bashfully. “It's fine” The man sighed “you just have to push the magnets back to the ceiling….can you reach?” Aizawa asked as he stood up, yet was a little surprised that Todoroki could put the curtain back up, he wasn’t all that tall, then again the ceiling wasn’t all that high either. So now Todoroki could continue his shower, closing the curtain was rather see through for the adult who never watched for too long since he had another patient to look after.

Shouto wasn’t a person to really bask in the shower even if it felt great to see the hot water against his skin that felt so oily and gross from not being able to properly clean himself since his medical admission. The soap washing those gross disgusting feelings away would be a dream come true, yet it did wash away the sticky from the bandages during his hospital stay. When he got out, he quickly dried off and washed his face and brushed his teeth. He decided he’d brush his hair when he was in their room. He didn’t need to take up anymore of his roommates time being in the bathroom, he tried to be a considerate roommate.

When he got out, Midoirya grabbed what he needed and quickly went in. Shouta spoke to Izuku and Shouto as they continued their nightly routine, “Izuku once you’re done I’m gonna set your feeds, then I’ll check your guys' vitals.” Izuku quietly nodded and Shouto gave an “okay then” as he brushed out his wet hair. Izuku only had to brush his teeth, and wash his face. So he was done quicker than Shouto, getting out of the bathroom, he heads over to his bed and goes through one of the cubbies where his art entertainment stuff was. Sitting his stuff out onto his bed he organised everything while Aizawa got started on Izuku’s feeds. Going through the car Aizawa grabbed a feed bag, one can of meal real placement ‘drink’ and one can of electrolyte replacement. Taking off the blue seal of the feed bag, Aizawa then opens the cans and pours them into a the small feed bag, mixing them together he closes the bag and hangs it up connecting it to the small machine before priming the pump until it was ready to connect to Midoriya’s feeding tube. Once it was hooked up Aizawa adjusted the IV pole’s placement before going through the medcart and then bringing it to the between area of Shouto and Izuku’s beds.

Mr Aizawa started checking vitals, he had everything he needed on the medcart to do it. It was like when you go to the doctor and the nurse checks you over with the thermometer, then the heart rate finger clamps, then he listens to breathing, before taking blood pressure. It was a very long process, just a little awkward seeing as they were mainly silent during this but. It was fine, there wasn’t really much to be said. Izuku did flinch a couple of times but he was okay after a little bit of reassurance. Aizawa was very patient with Izuku seeing as he seemed to have a little more difficulty with being around people than Shouto.

Once vitals were done Aizawa told the boys that lights would be out at around 10:30. It was only 9 oclock by now so this gave them free time to settle in and relax. Leaving the boys to their own devices, Izuku went back to drawing, he was using his tablet for a reference picture of something he was drawing, he seemed to be rather focused. While Shouto just played on his tablet, it had a few games on it which did preoccupy the red and white haired boy for a while but. It still wasn’t enough to last him the whole duration, yet he wasn’t all that tired. He couldn’t help but watch his roommate. He didn’t understand why his eyes always wandered towards Izuku, maybe it was because he’d never been able to be alone with someone his age and allowed to interact with someone? Maybe he wanted to talk to Izuku but he didn’t know how to? Maybe he didn’t wanna try and make friends only to find out the other would take advantage of him? Whatever the reason was, Todoroki didn’t take his eyes off of Midoriya who sketched away in his book.

Those tired emerald eyes went from the screen to the paper as his hands scribbled and flowed across the page with his pencil. Wondering what the other was drawing, Shouto was close to asking the other but, then he remembered what he’d said earlier to the boy about not having to talk to each other, and not making friends. Maybe he was being a little cold towards Izuku who hardly could say a word to anyone? But it was too late now, he may have already scared his roommate away.

#my psych academia #bnha psychward tododeku #depressed todoroki #depressed deku

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