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arguablysomaya · 6 months

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Nightwing's weird fem-coding

! LONG POST !

Finally got around to jotting down my thoughts on the weird way that Dick Grayson (Nightwing) often occupies female-coded roles without being a particularly feminine guy. This is entirely due to me procrastinating on my finals. Okay!

Dick has often been cited as the hero who plays into the "female gaze", and he takes up some key roles that are typically reserved for women characters.

A large portion of Dick's fem-coding is contingent on his being with his family, and when he's not with them, this fem-coding kinda drops away, such as when he's with his various teams or acting solo.

His most prominent (and imo, complex) femme-coded role is:

-> Eldest Daughter + Widow

Eldest daughter syndrome means " frequently feeling like you’re not doing enough, like you’re struggling to maintain a veneer of control, like the entire household relies on your diligence." It's born out of the unique way that first-born girls are expected to take on adult roles around the household before they've had an opportunity to fully experience childhood (an opportunity their younger siblings will have, in part due to this sacrifice). It creates a strong sense of independence and a desire to be a good role model, but also leads to undue pressure and perfectionism.

Dick acts as a central emotional pillar for those in his family. To the point that when he fakes his death, it breaks something fundamental in the family dynamic:

Not only is it repeatedly made clear that Bruce depends on Dick to act as a lifeline for his own mental struggles, but moreover, his siblings do as well. In a very literal sense, the maintenance of the batfamily rests on Dick's shoulders. Bruce is so rarely available for emotional support that these children turn to the next best thing, which, to be fair, is better than what Dick had growing up. He has to clean up so many breakdowns, it's honestly pretty staggering.

As the OG sidekick, Dick receives quite a bit of hero worship, particularly from younger heroes/sidekicks, who look toward him for guidance. As a naturally upbeat and welcoming person, Dick ends up in the position of bringing light to everyone, not just Bruce. For example, here's Cassandra:

This balancing effect is unique to Dick's skill set. However, this can (and does) backfire very easily. The same pragmatism Bruce engages in hurts extra bad when coming from Dick: like when Dick had to take Robin away from Tim. Not to mention just how intimidating Dick's legacy is, which can create resentment when his successors aren't able to play this role so easily. For example, Jason both before and after his death expressed insecurity that he felt he was constantly being compared to Dick, and falling short.

As the original character that people think of when they think "sidekick", DG Robin (and his successors) had the advantage of not losing prominence even as his contemporaries (Kid Flash, Aqualad, Wonder Girl, etc.) were de-prioritized in favor of independent teenaged heroes (like Cyborg, Beast Boy, Raven, and Starfire). But that means Robin as a concept now has to deal with questions that weren't so prominent in the earlier decades, such as: "How do we justify a grown-ass man using a child (and in fact, children) as emotional crutches?"

It's icky to think about, but there's no denying that early Batman and Robin got side eyes for homosexual subtext. I mean, they literally call each other "partners". So while that "subtext" was, and remains, just audience speculation, given Dick is literally Bruce's adopted son, there is room, I believe, to call into question how healthy it is for Bruce's oldest kid to be taking on a nearly-parental role and be a core pillar of Bruce's emotional regulation.

Hot take here, but I think Dick's relationship with Bruce was/has been pretty emotionally incestuous for a long time.

-> Emotional incest

"Emotional incest[...] is a type of emotional abuse performed by a parent. In cases of emotional incest, parents rely on their children for significant emotional support, which is a reversal of roles. Emotional incest is more than just relying on your kids on occasion—rather, it is an extreme dependence on them." (There's a pretty good argument to be made that Bruce has been emotionally incestuous with all his Robins, especially Dick and DEFINITELY Tim, but y'know. Small steps.)

Emotional incest is a semi-common consequence of eldest daughter syndrome; the natural conclusion of deputizing a child to manage the other children combining with an inability to see the child as a child, still in need of emotional guidance, but more like an adult capable of shouldering the burdens of grown-ups dumping their traumas on them.

To be clear here, while emotional incest may not be incest in the most traditional, taboo sense, it is still abuse. It's putting a burden on a child they shouldn't have to carry, even for children that aren't dealing with such extreme burdens as "grown-ass man running around in a fursuit needs me to keep him from getting himself killed". It's a perversion of a healthy parent-child relationship, where the child is treated more like a partner than a child. In Dick's case, it further exacerbates the parentification he already experiences. This is made more explicit when Bruce "dies" and Dick is cast into a sort of "Widow" role.

Dick reluctantly dons the cowl in an attempt to bring order to his family members. He's also left to parent Damian, alone. He has to make the decision to take Robin from Tim, and try to deal with the fallout from that decision. He has to put a stop to Jason's fratricidal rampage. He's made into the de-facto head of the family.

And the thing about this is: Dick's not even bad at it. In comparison to Bruce's litany of disasters-in-parenting, Dick does a pretty bang-up job of managing his siblings, heading the Justice League, and being Batman. But the crucial point is that he does this at the expense of his own mental health, which is the crux of eldest daughter syndrome. There's no denying that at the time, Dick was most certainly the best choice for New Father Figure, but it was a choice he was pushed into, and a sacrifice he had to make. When this sense of responsibility to the point of self-sacrifice is pushed to its logical conclusion, it has the effect of making Dick a Martyr-type figure.

-> Protector/Mama Bear/Avenger

Dick has shown repeatedly that his hot button is his family. From Tony Zucco to allowing Blockbuster to be killed after the villain targeted Haley's Circus, going after Nightwing's family is a pretty good way to earn yourself an asskicking. Probably the most infamous example of this is when Dick thought the Joker had killed Tim, beating the clown to death to avenge both Tim and Jason.

And while this role isn't particularly feminine, I do think it's interesting that Dick protects his family members from each other with almost the same frequency that he protects them from outside threats. He's pretty notorious for wrangling Damian and Tim, foiling Jason's murder plans, and most importantly, beating the shit out of Bruce whenever he crosses a line, such as when Bruce asks Dick to conceal being alive from their family to join Spyral or when Bruce wanted to abandon the Bruce Wayne persona after the murder of Vesper Fairchild. Or of course, more recently after Bruce's latest MK-ULTRA shenanigans.

This basically puts Dick in the position of being the glue that holds the family together, at basically all times, but especially in times of conflict. This also means he's put in the dangerous position of bodily defending his younger siblings from Bruce's wrath or irresponsibility, a position made even more awkward given the whole emotional incest thing.

That's not to say that Dick's relationship with his family is 100% unhealthy. Dick and his family members (including Bruce!) feel legitimate affection and care for each other. There are times when the dynamics here are indeed healthy. And like most people with eldest daughter syndrome, the unhealthy nature of this dynamic is usually understated. Oldest sibling syndrome is often just an unavoidable consequence of how parenting works. So while I am of the opinion that this dynamic is often unhealthy, hot take: I'm fine with that.

Now, though I've just listed some tropes that he only falls into around family, Dick also falls into some fem-coding all the time, regardless of who he's with, and these have to do mostly with his sexuality.

-> Sexual Assault & Harassment

Yeah, so nobody is surprised that this is a factor. Look up any list of the top ten hottest/sexiest/most attractive male superheroes, I guarantee 9/10 times Nightwing is number 1. However, unlike his father, whose attractiveness is usually played as a part of the male wish-fulfillment fantasy, something people aspire to be, Dick's attractiveness more often makes him an object of desire- very similar to how most attractive female characters are perceived.

And as an object of desire, Dick Grayson is constantly having to deal with being objectified.

Now, Dick Grayson being an attractive character is not the problem. Dick Grayson being sexually assaulted isn't even the problem. the problem is that he keeps being harassed, assaulted, and raped in ways that are flagrantly nonconsensual, and yet it's not treated with the seriousness it deserves. In fact, it took a full decade for Devin Grayson to retract her previous statement and admit that yes, the rooftop scene with Catalina Flores was in fact rape, and it's never been acknowledged in-universe (though, comics have always been atrocious at calling out sexual abuse of all kinds, let alone that which targets men).

Hell, even when he in-universe calls it out, he's dismissed immediately and the story continues like nothing happened.

Like???

Dick's adult sexcapades (which were consensual and enthusiastic) have long contrasted with the numerous times he's been harassed; times in which he comes across as bored, exasperated, and even frustrated with his own attractiveness and the vulnerable position it often leaves him in.

This puts him in the rare (in comics) position of being a male character who consistently and near-exclusively has his sexual agency and boundaries violated by women - a position that authors uniformly refuse to examine despite writing him into it all the fucking time.

Other characters around him frequently make comments passing off this harassment and assault as a natural consequence of Dick's own attractiveness, making "jokes" that essentially amount to "I understand why someone would want to assault him". Which- UH?

There is also, of course, the unavoidable reality that as an acrobat and an aerialist, he receives a very specific type of sexual harassment

the nature of nightwing's fight style necessitates a type of tight-fitting suit that male heroes typically don't go for: an extremely slick suit with bare-minimum armour that again, makes him vulnerable in a way most male heroes aren't, but a style female heroes wear all the time, whether it makes sense for them or not. This of course then allows artists to draw attention to this fact by posing Nightwing in poses usually reserved for femme fatales:

And unlike the Hawkeye Initiative, these poses are (largely) unironic, and not played for jokes. Dick isn't arching his back or looking over his shoulder to poke fun at how female heroes are treated; he does so because the artist (clearly correctly) sincerely believed these poses would play into the unironic gaze of the audience, and also probably thought it was hot. It's the same line of thought artists use when posing femme fatales.

He's even been known to use his sexuality as a bargaining chip, much like more traditional Femme Fatales. In Batman and Harley Quinn (2017), he refers to sleeping with Harley Quinn after being kidnapped by her as one of "the things I do for Gotham", to which she responds "I'm taking that as a 'yes'." And that's uh- not how consent works.

And this particularly sucks because- HELLO? The opportunity to explore the very real and tragically underacknowledged phenomenon of sexual violence against men is literally invaluable, especially with such a prominent character. It's one thing to ignore that men face sexual violence, it's another, entirely more unforgivable thing to continuously and explicitly depict such scenarios and play them off as jokes or not as serious as they clearly are. But what did I expect from an industry that has never had a good track record on sexual violence anyway.

-> Queercoding?

There's also of course the fact that DC has been, as of late, dropping hints that Dick might be bisexual.

That on it's own doesn't mean anything, but when paired with the fact that DC has been angling toward giving Dick a similar playboy persona that Bruce has, just with men included, it's just very interesting.

(BTW: The likelihood DC actually commits to making Dick bi is, uh, not a lot, but if they're gonna stick with this weird closet stuff for a while, let's hope they do so in a way that doesn't make him sound like a cross between Donald Trump and Harry Styles next time? Please?)

Anyway, all of this is basically to say I am forever fascinated by the gender dynamics of Dick Grayson, likely due to the fact that I'm projecting all my eldest daughter traumas onto him, and that someone who's background is in Gender Studies needs to get on this shit if they haven't already. I just love this character sm.

#this ended up taking/being way longer than I thought it would #but its done now so i can stop procrastinating yayyyy #shut up somaya #batfam #dcu #dc universe #batfamily #batman #dick grayson #nightwing

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cheriecelestial · 25 days

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Angel Series Chapter List

pairing *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ Red Hood!Jason Todd X fem!reader

disclaimer *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ mild angst. fluff. suggestive content. age gap(jason is 19-20 reader is 26). eventual sexual content. MDNI (18+ rated chapters). yandere themes. swearing. canon typical graphic violence. mild gore. mentions of domestic and child abuse. slow updates. non-canon complacent.

synopsis*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ It had been almost a decade since he had gazed into those warm large eyes—a fragment of his childhood that he had long relegated to oblivion. Jason Todd had what most would call a troubled childhood. Amid the darkest moments of his youth, one saving grace remained —his angel, Y/N L/N. One he completely forgot about when he assumed the mantle of Robin. Fates had been kind enough to reunite him with his angel and he’d be damned if he let her get away.

╰ ┈➤ ·:*:·゜ Angel pt.1

╰ ┈➤ ·:*:·゜ Angel pt.2

╰ ┈➤ ·:*:·゜ Angel pt.3 - coming soon

╰ ┈➤ ·:*:·゜ Angel pt.4

╰ ┈➤ ·:*:·゜ Angel pt.5

╰ ┈➤ Masterlist

╰ ┈➤ Tags: @thisisafish123 @ceramic-raven @millyhelp @blamedbisexual @trunkswithlonghair-blog @jasontoddthings @deans-spinster-witch @12134z03 @sophiethewitch1 @johnnysilverhandeeznuts @yasmin-oviedo @rosecentury @pierayanna @jinviktor @crybaby-21 @solarrexplosion @sahana28banana @ari-sama21 @hana-no-seiiki @princessbl0ss0m @fictionalwhor3 @leeleecats

╰ ┈➤ Cred: @cafekitsune / mdni banner

©️ cheriecelestial - arabelle | 2024

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kentopedia · 9 months

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hi~! can i rq a scenario with dazai where his s/o finds out he abused akutagawa in the port mafia and gets super pisssd at him because they themselves were abused? thank u!

color me blue

FEATURING. osamu dazai x gn!reader — wc: 3.1k

SUMMARY: mori reveals dazai's true nature as a mentor to akutagawa.

CONTENTS: references to past abuse, arguments, pm!reader, ada!dazai, angst, typical dazai warnings lol, comfort at the end

notes: thank you for the request !! i hope this is okay <3

It’d begun like any other morning. Already exhausted, you woke with an overwhelming list of things to do, tasks that needed to be completed by the evening.

It was a typical routine for you, these days. As a high-ranking member of the Mafia, you never got a break. Not from your job, nor the menial chores you needed to suffer through in your personal life. The laundry, it seemed, wouldn’t do itself, no matter how much your boss paid you for all the illegal actions you’d committed.

And though it was wearisome, everything had been fine. The sun began to set, and you realized that for the rest of the day, you would be free.

That was, until your routine check-in with Mori somehow led to a disclosure of what had been years’ worth of private information.

He’d greeted you as normal, sat you down before his desk with his oily smile, and had you review everything you’d accomplished that week. Though you believed you would be free to go within half an hour, when you stood to leave, Mori released an oh, by the way, and reiterated the unanticipated torment that Dazai had put Akutagawa through.

For the entirety of his story, you sat without so much as a twitch of the muscle, but you couldn’t comprehend why Mori was telling you now. It had been nearly four years since Dazai left the Mafia, and though the Boss had been aware of your relationship as teenagers, he’d never given you any sign that he knew it’d continued after Dazai defected.

You’d both been careful, secretive. You never did anything to draw any suspicion or be labeled as a traitor, and the two of you were successful.

At least, you thought you’d been successful.

Mori had never once mentioned it, had never so much as batted an eye when you spoke about Dazai from time to time. Though, now, his grin was much too conniving, the words made of steel as he drew them out, directing them in a sharp point towards your chest.

He had no intentions of going after Dazai, that much was clear. Nor did he seem intent on killing you for your misdeeds. Already, he’d spun a vile web, knowing exactly how to use you as his best asset. With you still under his command, he had some sort of advantage over Dazai and the Agency.

Perhaps, his comments were just a test of your loyalty. If Mori laid that one tiny seed of doubt in your mind, would it be enough to fracture the bond between you and Dazai that had been unsevered for years?

You wanted to convince yourself, fervently, that the answer was no. You’d been by Dazai’s side for this long and nothing he’d done had turned you away. Yet, you were unprepared for the anger that had risen in you, burning so hot and ravenous that you were unable to think of anything else.

It was all that was on your mind as you returned to the apartment, a barren space that had been used for nothing besides meetups with Dazai since the two of you purchased it. Each wall was entrenched with years of as much sin as there was love. Items that belonged to both of you were scattered across the surfaces, but there was never anything too important.

At the end of the day, neither of you could stay there long.

You paced the apartment, thinking through everything that Mori had said, over and over again. An ache of sorrow fought against your warranted rage, and you stood by the door waiting for Dazai to enter.

As angry as you were with him, as horrified as you wanted to be, there were still years and years of comfort and gentleness that placed a cooling balm over your burning wounds.

Still, a part of you had always been envious that Dazai had managed to escape into something good, and you’d become the enemy to his organization. Now, it seemed, you were the only thing holding him back.

In some other universe, surely, there was a life better for the both of you than this.

Despite your affection, you inhaled, fortifying yourself for a regrettable conversation. You channeled your resentment into logic, rephrasing sentences in your mind until they were perfect, forming an argument that couldn’t be so easily shut down by Dazai’s soothing words.

The door clicked, unlocked by the only other person that held a key to the salacious space. He was humming to himself, an upbeat song that had been stuck on the radio charts for weeks.

Something about that simple action startled you, set you off kilter, and you crossed your arms, protecting yourself. You came here with a purpose, and you refused to diminish the weight of the conversation. A puff of steam left you on a heavy exhale.

Dazai threw the key on the counter and smiled, his eyes softening the moment they caught a glimpse of you. “You got here faster than I thought.” His tone was cheerful, and he seemed relaxed, without the foreboding cloud of misery pushing down on him. It was so unusual that you, almost, regretted bringing up what you’d learned from Mori at all.

Though, it wasn’t something you could just ignore. You straightened, making sure not to deflate under his undeniable warmth.

For a moment, Dazai didn’t realize that anything was wrong. He hung his coat up, stretched his limbs, and talked without facing you. “It’s been too long since we’ve seen one another. I thought about you all day,” he said, drawing out the syllables with a short laugh. “You’re always such a distraction. How will I ever get my work done?”

Dazai seemed so happy, and in all your years together, you’d never thought that would be a word used to describe him. It pained you to ruin that, even as your nails dug into your palm, trying to reconcile the two versions of Dazai that you knew.

You looked away. If you wanted to say what you needed to, you couldn’t bear to see the way his soft expression turned into one of animosity.

For a few more moments, he rambled on to himself, before realizing that you hadn’t said a word at all. You felt frozen in the middle of the room, your mouth dry as you tried to think of the best way to segue into the conversation.

“Hey.” Dazai had grown quiet, and he stopped mulling around the apartment, finally focusing all his attention on you. “What’s wrong, pretty?” There was a pout on his lips, his expression already falling from the bright, joyful one he’d worn when he’d entered. “I still haven’t gotten a kiss.”

You were weak for a moment, questioning if your anger was even worth it. A minute passed of your own silence before you resolved yourself, ending your hesitance. What you’d heard had upset you tremendously; you couldn’t just brush past it like it was nothing.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Dazai’s face screwed up, eyebrows pinched, as he tried to remember what he could’ve possibly done to upset you that week. Though you often bickered about ridiculous things, it was rare that either of you lashed out in anger at the other.

Your expression was enough to let him know that this was one of those times. He hesitated. “I’m… not sure what you mean, love. Did I do something wrong?”

At that, you laughed, amused that he could play so innocent. He’d changed while in the Detective Agency, that much was certain, but you knew every bit of his soul and he certainly hadn’t been purified of his sins. “Mori told me about Akutagawa today. I doubted how much of it was true until I thought about it, really thought about it, and it makes sense.”

Dazai stared blankly back at you, his eyes searching your face for any more context. They flicked back and forth, round brown irises full of an uncertainty you weren’t sure was genuine. He was a master of manipulation, and you refused to ever be a pawn in his schemes, no matter how small. “I haven’t seen Akutagawa in weeks. Whatever’s happened to him—”

You stood straighter, keeping your hands tight at your sides. “I’m not talking about now, Osamu. I’m talking about years ago; back when you were training him.”

A moment passed; he didn’t blink. Nothing in his eyes betrayed him. “Would you care to provide me with some context?”

“You know what I’m talking about.” You scowled, clenching your teeth so hard that it hurt. “How could you do that to him? All those years, you and Oda kept it a secret from me. You hurt him. You were so cruel.” Your nails dug deep into your palm. “I told you everything that happened to me before I came to the Mafia. Every way that I was hurt, and you told me you understood. You promised me, and you turned around and did the same thing to him.”

Dazai held his body loosely, surprised by your sudden outburst of emotion. It seemed he was unsure what to do with the confession you’d just handed over. Dazai licked his lips, wetting the dry skin, and searched deep into your soul for the best way to soothe you.

But the betrayal, the hurt, was buried deep within you, and the anger wouldn’t fade so easily.

“I never kept secrets from you,” he said, instead of answering any questions. His tone was cool, unaffected, like you hadn’t just raised your voice as your countenance changed into one of distress. “You just never bothered to ask.”

Silence. You swallowed, hard, each notch of your spine stiffening. “That’s not fair. How was I supposed to know his training was any different from mine? Should my first suspicion have been that you were mistreating him?”

Dazai grew grim, the first twinge of emotion you’d seen since you’d spoken. He rubbed his temple. “You’ve got a right to be angry, but I never hid anything from you on purpose.” He reached out for you, his touch soft as he rubbed your bicep. “I just don’t know what you want me to do about it now, sweetheart. Why are you bringing this up?”

You didn’t want to tell him about Mori, not yet. That was a conversation for another time, and he wouldn’t hesitate to claim that bit of information was the more pressing matter.

Instead, you inched out of his hold, gazing back at him with contempt. “You can’t be serious, Osamu.” His audacity shouldn’t have been surprising, but it shocked you, nonetheless. “That’s all you have to say?”

“What do you want me to say?” Dazai held his hands out like you would hand him over a script, a typed apology just for him to repeat back at you. “Never once did you show any concern for Akutagawa’s wellbeing when he joined the Mafia. Suddenly, you care, and I’m not sure why.”

“That’s not true!” you said, your cheeks hot with frustration. “We we’re friends—”

Dazai laughed, though it was mocking, without any true humor. “You expressed an interest in him that wasn’t ever reciprocated.”

You scrubbed your face, drained from his rebuttals, and put enough space between the two of you so that Dazai couldn’t touch you.

“Fine. Maybe we weren’t friends, but I wantedto be because I knew he understood. I thought we could get to know each other well. Then one day, he wouldn’t even speak to me anymore. He looked at me like I knew so much more than he did.” A finger was in Dazai’s face, scolding. “You fucked it all up. We’re just a year apart, Osamu. I didn’t want him to treat me like that just because I was dating his mentor.”

There was a break of silence. Dazai sniffed, recovering some sense of power in the conversation. “I’m sorry.” he said, but it was merely to appease you, no sincerity in the words. “Perhaps my methods of training were inappropriate and unethical, but it’s the Mafia, my love. What did you expect?”

Frustrated tears welled up in your eyes. “And if it had been me? If I had been under your command, would you have done the very same?”

At that, Dazai softened, his lips curling down. The light in his eyes flickered and faded, any happiness in his face muted. “It would never have been you. You know I could never bring myself to hurt you.”

You buried your face in your hands, his sweet comment doing little to soothe you. “He was just a kid—”

“I was too.” Dazai held your wrists gently, prying them away. He was frowning, dark eyebrows pinched together as he looked at you with both concern and betrayal. “You’re going to blame this all on me, when I was a child too, doing what I thought was right?”

“No. But you’re an adult now, and you still treat him the same way.” You shoved him away, putting space between you, never before having felt so cold in Dazai’s embrace. “He’s nothing more than a chess piece to you. That’s something I can’t accept.”

“Is that the case?” Dazai turned hard; suddenly he’d lost the upper hand. “You’ve got a lot of opinions on what’s right. Yet, remind me who’s the one still in the Mafia?”

It was meant to hurt you, a low blow that stung and went straight to your chest. You hadn’t wanted to stay in the Mafia, but he’d never given you the choice. Dazai had left you with nothing more than a note and a promise, and you were too stupidly fond of him to ever let him go completely.

“It’s so hard to love you sometimes, Osamu,” you said, quietly, trying to keep your emotions at bay. “Your new friends at the agency get to be ignorant about the man you used to be, but I know just how cruel he was. I see him every time I look at you.”

Dazai stared back at you stunned and hurt. He flexed his fingers, but for once, he didn’t reach out for you.

You couldn’t bear to look at him anymore.

The bathroom door slammed behind you, and you stood in front of the mirror, watching splotchy patches form on your skin from unreleased emotions. The sink ran, a steady stream with no end, to tune out your deep, calming breaths until you no longer felt that immense amount of anger.

You knew what you were getting yourself into by falling in love with a man like Dazai. You’d known it from the beginning. He was no different than all the people that had hurt you, the reason why you’d come to the Mafia in the first place.

Yet, he was so much more loving with you, gentle and patient, and you knew that under every layer of bad intent and regretful crimes, Dazai was a good person.

With a sigh, you turned off the sink and crept back into the room, feeling remorseful and miserable. The knowledge of what he’d done to Akutagawa was something you couldn’t forgive him for. It was horrible and traumatizing, but so were so many other things that he’d done.

You couldn’t place double standards on him for his previous actions. If you had loved him despite all of those things, you weren’t going to be able to stop now.

“Osamu?” you said in a quieter voice, creeping out of the bathroom silently, slinking within the shadows.

He was spread over the length of the couch, his head resting on the arm of it as he stared up at the ceiling. When you approached, he shifted into a seated position, waiting for you to speak.

“I didn’t mean what I said,” you began, walking slowly towards him, drawn to him easily. “You’re not a difficult man to love. I’ve never felt that way.”

Dazai smiled, though it was half-hearted, and extended a hand to you. You took it quickly and he drew you into his lap, squeezing you tight. “Well, I certainly don’t make it easy on you.”

You were silent. He kissed your forehead, running a delicate touch across your back.

“I can’t take back what I did to him.” Dazai sighed, dropping his forehead to your shoulder. “The damage is done.”

“I know that.” You breathed, his calming scent wrapping around you, reminding you that no matter what, he would always be your home. “It’s not fair for me to judge you when I’m still in the Mafia. My crimes are no better than yours. Even if what you did…” you trailed off shaking your head. “No. You’re right, Osamu. It’s not fair.”

He guided your fingers to his lips, kissing each of them lightly with the beginnings of a smile. “I’ll never be a perfect man, but I’m trying to be a better one.” Though he refrained from showing vulnerabilities to most people, he was more open with you, more willing to reveal the parts of himself he despised the most. “I… hope you know that. It may not seem like I’m trying, but—"

“I know you are.” You ran a hand through his hair and swallowed, resting your cheek on top of his head. “Osamu, you’re already so different than you were when you left. You’ve changed much more than I have. It was horrible of me to diminish that.” You squeezed his hand. “I’m sorry I said that.”

A minute passed before he spoke again, his breath so steady, a reminder that he was still there, with you, despite all attempts he’d made to leave you behind. We’ve seen every ugly side to one another. It makes it far too easy to be unkind. Doesn’t mean I’d ever love you any less.”

You smiled, though it was sad, but through your hurt you were still devastatingly devoted to him. It was just easier to ignore the damage he’d caused when you weren’t staring it right in the face, a walking, breathing reminder of the person he held inside him. The very type of man that had once hurt you.

You squeezed him tighter, blocking out the cruel memories of your past. Dazai had never laid a punishing hand on you, had never spat demeaning words at you that could never be forgiven. Through it all, he had adored you, treated you with a gentleness you’d desired, and loved you without conditions.

Brushing dark hair away from his forehead, your eyes softened, the darkness in him cracking as the light began to shine through. “I know, Osamu,” you said, your cheeks pinching, warm. “Despite it all, I will always love you without regrets.”

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sheathing · 4 days

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The entire argument of "how did the Ravens not know the full extent of Riko and the moriyamas abuse" is in itself ignorant and if you try to say it isn't just actually read through this post;

Those in a cult and cult environment often do not know every single thing the cult leader is doing; and if they do, they aren't aware it's wrong. Cultists are decieved and manipulated: that is literally what cult leaders do. Wether that manipulation is downright lying or literally brainwashing and cognitive rewiring depends on the cult and is so much more complex than you know but the belief that cultists are just? aware of every little thing or even aware that what they're doing and what is happening to them is wrong is a direct contradiction or what is publicly and factually known about cult dynamics and how they work.

When you are abused and manipulated in a hivemind of collected individuals you all think act and respond the same, abuse from the leader is often not seen as abuse but as divine punishment or behavioral correction. The ravens would not know the extent of Rikos abuse because to put it simply; they didn't fuckin see Riko as abusive and they had no right or place in Rikos design to know the extent of his power and abuse (or that he himself was being controlled and abused). Every single person in that cult INCLUDING KEVIN AND JEAN(especially) (mind you both received the most severe of it and KNEW EVERYTHING) saw Riko and Tetsujis actions as Just and Righteous because they viewed them as masters, leaders and higher beings who would get them farther in life. Just because the ravens were scared of Riko/The Moriyamas doesn't mean they viewed the abuse as abuse it just means they feared recieving punishment; punishment wasn't abuse to them, as a whole abuse probably wasn't even something they ever thought about.

I need y'all to get the idea that the ravens "couldn't have not known" or "were just turning a blind eye" to Rikos actions out of your heads and do some actual research on how literal cults work, because I think some of you believe a cult is just people being charmed and manipulated on a typical abuser level but it is genuinely deeper and more complex than that and the manipulation is a lot more intricate and specific than an average abusers.

#aftg #all for the game #the foxhole court #tsc #the sunshine court

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borathae · 5 months

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“They were brothers brought together by tragedy and best friends separated by destiny. Seokjin, now freed of his Raven mark and unaware of his little brother’s whereabouts, visits the Queen’s castle with promises of healing the other freed Ravens. Jungkook, now living his life as the Queen’s Consort and uninformed of Seokjin’s fate, doesn’t know that today will be the day he will finally reunite with his bigger brother.”

Pairing: Best Friends!Jungkook x Seokjin | Seokjin x f.Reader OC 1 | Jungkook x f.Reader OC 2

Genre: Fantasy!AU, Slice of Life, Childhood Best Friends!AU, Found Family!AU, Royalty!AU, Queen Consort!Jungkook, Healer!Seokjin

Warnings: there is plot hehehe, they're best friends who got separated only to reunite again!!, they're like brothers, they share & talk about past trauma, hinted child abuse (they experienced it), but more than anyhing this is so healing and soft and lovely, Jungkook shows Seokjin the castle and Seokjin is all like "my lil bro is royalty now <3", they love each other so much like you guys they're brothers!!, they also bicker in typical jinkook fashion <3, i love this story so much you guys

Wordcount: 11.1k

a/n: because this is based on (and set after) their main stories, the boys each have a female lover which i won't name here because in their main stories it's supposed to be the reader but as a different OC each, you get me? i know you do. if you don't, just read their stories and come back to this. okay then, enjoy besties! istfg i love this universe so much :(

𓄿 Index 𓄿

Seokjin is nervous. It was his idea and yet he is still terribly nervous. He hasn’t been back in the castle since he climbed the walls and fled. It has been thirteen full moons since then and also thirteen full moons since he found his true destiny. She is with him today, because she will do most of the talking and work while he will assist her. She found him washed up by the riverbank next to her house and took him in. He was lucky because she was a healer – the trusted healer of the Queen even – and despite his past, she nurtured him until he felt whole again. His past, Seokjin aches in guilt when he thinks about it, is also the reason why he felt so nervous about today despite it being his idea.

He was a Raven once. A Raven of the Black Forest. The Ravens are a group of young boys and men poisoned by the twisted worldviews of their cruel leader Rafkan. He is one of the Nïuri, a peaceful people which use their immortality to nurture the earth, but not Rafkan as he uses his immortality to ruin young boys’ futures and kill innocent people. A black tattoo of a raven brands the members of Rafkan’s group and lets everyone know that the wearer was unlucky enough to fall into Rafkan’s hands.

Seokjin thankfully escaped his claws and managed to free himself of the marks which once ruined his chest.

The reason for today’s visit to the Queen’s castle was based on this exact mark. Most Ravens didn’t want to get tattooed. Most were not older than five when Rafkan drilled the tattoo deep under their skin, ignoring their screams of pain and cries for mercy. Seokjin still remembers how he screamed and cried as the thick needle repeatedly punctured his skin. He was seven.

With the help of Seokjin’s true destiny and forever partner, he was able to rid himself of the mark and he wants to grant the same opportunity to his fellow freed Ravens. It is well known in the Queendom that the Queen’s castle serves as refuge for many Ravens, who were lucky enough to escape Rafkan’s poisoned grip. Although Rafkan still tells his boys that the Queen and her late mother kill Ravens for sports, it isn’t the truth. Ravens get a second chance at the castle. They are free to stay in her castle and they are free to leave to wherever they crave to go. Seokjin could have stayed as well and he could have left if he wanted to, but back then he was still too stubborn to see that. So he fled in the dark of the night, swearing to himself never to return to the castle.

And now he is back. He is back at the place he swore never return to, but he isn’t guilty, he is just so very nervous. What if his idea fails? What if the marks of his freed brothers won’t fade? Seokjin watched it with own two eyes as his love removed it from his chest and yet he is scared that somehow the healing spell won’t work today.

There are also other worries plaguing him. He worries that he won’t be welcome at the castle anymore. That he will be captured and thrown into prison. His love assured him that this won’t happen, as she knows the Queen to be of very forgiving nature, but Seokjin was still nervous. He has been clutching his love’s hand ever since the castle gates came into view.

“Don’t be scared, my dearest”, she tells him, giving him a reassuring smile.

“I know, but I truly am. I do not want to be thrown into prison”, he says.

“There is no reason for that. Yes, you left in secrecy, but if the queen sees that you used your freedom to find happiness and a purpose, she will be happy”, she says and pulls him closer, “you will be alright, my dearest. And perhaps if we are lucky, Jungkook will be there as well.”

Seokjin smiles at the mention of his lost brother. He is happy, but he also aches. This is the last worry which plagues him and which makes it difficult for his heart to beat normally.

What if Jungkook wasn’t in the castle? What if he is still caught in Rafkan’s fangs? What if he didn’t find freedom? What if he died?

Seokjin spent his night sleepless and repeating the worrying questions over and over again. He is so scared. So, so scared that today’s journey will bring news of grief for him.

The Queen knew of the healer’s visit to the castle. She sent a letter a week ago, telling her that she had a cure for the Raven mark and that she can offer her services to the freed Ravens living in the castle. The Queen instantly agreed and sent word to all neighbouring villages that whoever wanted to rid himself of his marks may do so in one week. The halls and courtyard are buzzing in life. Ravens, who haven’t seen each other in years have come to the castle, celebrating their near future of true freedom. The emotions were high and food was plenty.

Jungkook has been excited all day. He was the first to know of the healer’s arrival. The letter met his love at night when they were already in bed, getting ready for sleep. She opened it next to him and then began crying in happiness.

“What’s the matter, my destiny?” Jungkook asked her back then, feeling worried until she told him of the good news and Jungkook joined her in her tears of happiness. Being freed of the mark was all he dreamt of ever since he escaped Rafkan and in a week he will finally make his dream a reality.

Today was finally the day. The healer will arrive any second now and Jungkook will finally be free. Truly and visibly free. He has been spending his day talking to all his fellow Ravens. Many still lived in the castle and became his friends, but many came from the villages and towns and felt more like distant relatives to Jungkook. Today however they all felt connected and high in spirits.

Jungkook has already drunk two mugs of mead and ate way too much of the flavourful pork belly. He feels overjoyed, but also very needing of the bathroom.

He excuses himself from the courtyard to hurry inside.

“My starlight, there you are”, the Queen - and his fiancée - greets him inside, taking his hands, “I looked everywhere for you.”

“Forgive me, I was in the courtyard talking to all of my brothers.”

Jungkook gives her a kiss on the cheek because he loves her a lot. She leans into the kiss with her fingers squeezing his hands.

“Don’t apologise. I merely wanted to tell you that the healer and her apprentice will be here soon. Our warriors saw them coming up the roads.”

“Really? Oh heavens, I need to hurry up then”, Jungkook says, slipping his hands out of his finacée’s loving hold.

“Why? What are you doing?”

“I need to relieve myself. I drank too much and my bladder is going to burst.”

“Oh heavens, well”, she chuckles, “hurry up then, you precious boy you”, she says and gives his butt a gentle pat as if too speed up his steps.

“I will, worry not”, Jungkook says and hurries away in hasty steps.

He will reach the toiletries in time with the healer and Seokjin arriving at the castle. He will be relieving himself as the Queen welcomes them with smiles and music. And he will wash his hands thoroughly as the healer and Seokjin set up their healing station and the Ravens begin lining up for their freedom. He doesn’t know of Seokjin yet.

Truly, it is such an awful twist of fate that Jungkook’s bladder decided to give up mere seconds before Seokjin entered the courtyard. The dark haired healer scans his eyes over the dozens and dozens faces, hoping to see the face of his brother in them. He knows most of the Ravens gathered here and the joy of seeing them is grande, but none of them was Jungkook. Jungkook was special to Seokjin. Jungkook was like a little brother to Seokjin.

Only five years younger than Seokjin and with fear in his big eyes, Jungkook became a Raven when Seokjin was ten years of age. Jungkook hid the moment Rafkan and the older Ravens left him at the camp to hunt for food. Jungkook refused to come out of hiding for hours. Even when dinner was promised, he didn’t leave his hiding spot, which ended in Rafkan punishing him for “ignoring his body’s needs”.

Seokjin and the other boys always had to watch when one of them was punished and Jungkook’s punishment was no exception. Seokjin always felt terrible when he watched his fellow young brothers cry because of what Rafkan did, but there was something about Jungkook crying that night which hit Seokjin especially hard. The poor, frightened boy hid again the second the punishment was finished and only his small, pained sobs were heard in the camp. The other boys were too frightened to check up on him, but Seokjin was overtaken with a sense of protectiveness and so he crawled under the thorny bushes Jungkook was hiding in and offered the younger boy a hug. Jungkook didn’t want to take it at first, but all it took was one smile from Seokjin and he fell into his arms and cried his broken heart out.

Ever since that night, Seokjin and Jungkook shared a special bond and a deep, honest love. They hugged each other when they were sad or scared or in pain, they shared every meal with each other, shared blankets when the nights were cold, shared laughter when the days weren’t as dark and shared every stage a young boy goes through as he grows into a man. They would have shared adulthood as well, but Seokjin decided to leave to kill the Queen and till this day he regrets leaving without Jungkook.

Their last conversation ended in anger and hurtful words. Rafkan managed to influence Jungkook and poison his mind. Seokjin never truly allowed the poison to take hold of him and wanted to use the opportunity to flee together from Rafkan. So he told Jungkook of his plans and had to realise that his younger brother met it with anger and resentment. They fought, Jungkook called him hurtful things and Seokjin left without Jungkook. Until this day, Seokjin regrets that he left that night, that he didn’t try harder to convince his little brother and that he left even when the last words they shared were of angry nature.

If Seokjin has to realise that Jungkook wasn’t at the castle or that he had already died, he won’t ever forgive himself and he might never truly be himself again.

Seokjin shifts in his seat restlessly. He and his love have already healed ten Ravens of their marks and yet he still hasn’t spotted Jungkook. He asked each of them if they knew of Jungkook, but most were too old to know of him. They must have been Ravens before their time. Perhaps the Queen’s mother rescued them when she was still alive.

The Queen hasn’t come back either. She excused herself once she exchanged a few friendly words with Seokjin and his love and hasn’t returned since. Seokjin grows worried that she had went to get her warriors. After all, she looked at him as if she saw a ghost and then spoke of needing to go.

Seokjin keeps scanning the crowd for warriors out to get him and for Jungkook. Truly, he might need to excuse himself to the toiletries soon for his stomach keeps twisting in nervousness.

He sees the Queen then. She is hurrying over the courtyard with a man by her side. His face is shielded from his vision, but he can see that she is holding his hand. Seokjin gulps. He can’t explain it, but he feels uncomfortably nervous all of a sudden. Anxious even.

“Hello.”

One of the freed Ravens drags his attention away. He sits down in front of him and presents his bared chest to him.

“You have no idea for how many years I dreamt of ridding myself of this cursed mark”, he says.

“Oh, I know how you feel”, Seokjin says and begins spreading the purple cream on the man’s chest, “what’s your name?”

“Bartholomew.”

Seokjin gasps, looking at him with widened eyes.

“Bartholomew?”

He laughs, “you didn’t recognize me, did you? I blame the good food in the castle. I eat wonderfully these days”, he says and slaps his belly as a happy laugh shakes his shoulders.

“I didn’t recognize you. You look so healthy”, Seokjin says and bites back tears, “I can’t believe my eyes. You survived.”

“As did you, sweet boy”, Bartholomew says and caresses Seokjin’s cheek, “you look healthy, my boy.”

“I am. I am so healthy and I’m in love”, Seokjin says, sending his love a chaste look.

Bartholomew smiles, “this is good. Yes, love makes the life sweet. I’m in love as well. His name is Derrec. He’s a weaver in town and we met as I shopped for fabrics.”

“This is so wonderful. Oh, I am so happy for you”, Seokjin says and pulls his hand back, “you can go to my love and she will activate the magic. Your mark will be gone once you wipe the cream.”

“Oh, I can’t believe that I can still witness this day”, Bartholomew says and stands up from his chair.

“Bartholomew?” Seokjin calls his attention one last time.

“Yes, Seokjin?”

“Did you…” gulps in nervousness, “did Jungkook come here?”

“Jungkook?” Bartholomew says and widens his eyes, “my sweet boy, you do not know yet?”

“Know what?” Seokjin jumps off his chair, “what happened to him? P-please what happened?”

Bartholomew shifts his eyes to his side. Seokjin follows his line of sight and feels hit in shock.

The Queen is before him and the man holding her hand is Jungkook.

“Brother”, he presses out as his eyes fill with tears.

“Brother”, Seokjin gets out and sobs, “are you real?”

Jungkook nods his head vigorously and sobs.

“Jungkook….”

“Seokjin….”

Seokjin rounds the table, Jungkook breaks away from his fiancée. They fall into each other’s arms, crying miserably as they tighten the hug as best as their bodies allow it. Seokjin forgets all about the cream on his fingers, smearing it into Jungkook’s hair as he holds his little brother closer. Jungkook doesn’t care about the state of his hair as he sobs into the crook of Seokjin’s neck and cradles the back of his older brother’s head.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for everything I said that night. I’m so sorry”, Jungkook wails.

“It’s okay. It’s okay. I’m not angry. Oh, I’m sorry for leaving you. I’m so sorry, I never should have left”, Seokjin cries.

“It’s okay. I’m not angry at you. Not anymore. Seokjin”, Jungkook sobs and pulls him closer, “oh Seokjin, you’re real. I love you so much.”

“I love you too. Oh Jungkook, my brother”, Seokjin sobs and turns his head to kiss Jungkook’s ear. It is the first thing his lips grazed and Jungkook leans into the kiss as a sob and laugh leaves him at the same time. Seokjin laughs with him just as much as he sobs.

All his worries turned out to be exactly that. Worries. Jungkook is alive. He is well. He is free. And he is finally by his side again. Seokjin has his little brother back.

He has to take a step back and cradle Jungkook’s face. The latter leans into the touch. His face is contorted in sobs, but the happiness practically bounces off of him. Seokjin mirrors his state, rubbing his thumbs over Jungkook’s teary cheeks over and over again.

“You’re real”, he gets out, “and you look so healthy. Oh Jungkook, you look so healthy.”

“You look healthy too”, Jungkook answers him, cupping his cheeks, “brother, your cheeks are actually soft. Not fallen in from hunger.”

“As are yours”, Seokjin squishes Jungkook’s cheeks, “are you eating well? Are you warm? Can you sleep in peace?”

Jungkook nods his head vigorously, “yes, yes. Yes to everything. And you? Are you living well?”

“Yes, oh yes I am.”

Jungkook whimpers and smiles, spilling tears.

“I’m so happy”, he confesses in a squeaky voice.

“Me too. Come here”, Seokjin says and pulls him back into a tight hug.

Jungkook squeaks in laughter, hugging him back. The two men stumble as they hug, painting a little circle with their feet as if they were dancing. Their bodies were filled with too much happiness. Only moving around could help them relieve it.

It is Jungkook who breaks the hug, holding Seokjin’s cheeks.

“Did you become a healer? Is that your destiny?”

“Yes. Yes it is. Oh Jungkook, I am so happy and I’m in love.”

Jungkook’s eyes lighten up, “you are?”

“Yes. Jungkook, please meet my love”, Seokjin says and turns his little brother to his love. He tells him her name and Jungkook repeats it with a smile.

“I know you. My fiancée talks greatly about you and I truly love your bathing oils when the sickness season arrives”, Jungkook says, bowing his head at her.

“Oh thank-”

“Your fiancée?!” Seokjin falls into her words accidentally for Jungkook’s confession shocked him greatly, “you found love as well? Who is she?”

“That would be me”, the Queen says and for just a moment, Seokjin feels unable to speak. He gawks at the Queen, knowing that it was rude to do so, but he couldn’t help himself.

“What?” he gets out and parts his lips.

The Queen smiles fondly, while Jungkook lets out a giddy giggle.

“Yes, you heard correctly. We are soon to be married”, he says and hugs her waist as he squishes his cheek against hers, “she asked me to be her husband a month ago and I said yes. We ought to marry in autumn, but don’t spread the news yet. We want to announce it soon.”

“I do not know what to say. Jungkook”, Seokjin steps closer, “my dearest Jungkook, you are engaged and, and. And you’re marrying the Queen?!”

“Yes. Yes, I am”, Jungkook giggles.

“Oh Jungkook”, Seokjin tears up, “I am so happy for you.”

“Don’t cry”, Jungkook says even if his own eyes are glassy. He lets go of the Queen to take Seokjin’s hands instead, “it was you who made it possible. If you hadn’t left that night, I never would have left as well and I never would have found my destiny.”

“What do you say? I barely did anything.”

Jungkook shakes his head, “I volunteered to leave because I wanted to find you”, he confesses and tears up, “I was frightened without you, I regretted our last night together and I was scared that I would never see you again, so I volunteered to be the next to leave so I could look for you. I am sorry that I never found you.”

“Jungkook….”

“Seokjin”, Jungkook breathes.

“Oh my little one”, Seokjin says and cradles Jungkook’s cheeks. Jungkook leans into his touch with sparkly, half-lidded eyes, “you do not apologize to me. Please, allow me to get rid of your mark. It is the least I can do to repent for leaving you that night.”

“I dreamt of this day. I dreamt of ridding myself of the mark”, Jungkook confesses.

“And it will become reality soon. Sit. Sit right here and I will free you.”

Jungkook allows Seokjin to sit him down on a chair and because it was Jungkook, Seokjin sits him down on his chair behind the table. He prepares the cream while Jungkook unbuttons his expensive tunic.

The Queen is by his side, caressing his shoulder. Jungkook places his hand over hers’, looking at Seokjin with his chest bare.

“Are you nervous?”

“No. I can’t wait for it.”

“It will become very warm. Hot almost.”

Jungkook squeezes the Queen’s hand, “I can take it”, he says with a smile.

Seokjin moves his fingers closer to Jungkook’s chest. He is trembling. Jungkook meets his eyes

“Are you nervous?” he asks Seokjin.

“I am.”

“Why?”

“I am frightened that it won’t work all of a sudden.”

“I am certain that it will”, the Queen throws in with warmth in her eyes.

“Yes, me too”, Jungkook agrees and smiles, “I trust in your abilities and that of your love”, he says and looks at the healer with a smile.

One she retorts. Work at the table has stopped ever since Jungkook arrived here. Everyone understood. Not only because Jungkook was soon to be Queen Consort and therefore important, but also because the emotional reunion between two separated brothers moved many Ravens to tears. They shared their emotions well. Some knew exactly how such a reunion feels like, while others still wished for the experience.

The Ravens closest to the table are watching as Seokjin spreads the purple cream on Jungkook’s chest.

“It is done”, he says and turns to his partner, “my world, may you do the rest, please?”

“Of course”, she says and stands up. She bends down in front of Jungkook, meeting his eyes.

Jungkook spots warmth and comfort in her eyes. He understands why Seokjin loves her, because goodness surrounds her. Seokjin has always had a good heart, of course he would fall for someone with a kind heart.

“May I?” she asks.

Jungkook turns his head to look at his fiancée. She smiles, squeezing his shoulder gently. Jungkook retorts her smile and looks back at the healer.

“Yes.”

With his consent, she hovers her hands over his chest and whispers ancient words of healing. The cream begins heating up on his chest.

“Oh?” he lets out, furrowing his brows in surprise.

“Is it bearable? It will still get hotter”, she makes sure.

“Yes, it’s just really warm”, Jungkook says and shifts. The Queen gives his shoulder little caresses of encouragement, “oh. Oh, it’s getting very warm. Oh, it feels really hot.”

“You are almost done”, Seokjin says and holds his hand, “you are very brave.”

Jungkook forgets all about the discomfort and looks at Seokjin. The familiarity of those words. It tightens his throat in emotion. Seokjin said them to him countless times before when they were children and Jungkook needed comfort. When he woke after a nightmare about his dead parents and cried in Seokjin’s arms, he always whispered them to him. When he hid and sobbed after a punishment, Seokjin always found him and said them to him as he mended his wounds. When the Black Forest shook his body in fear and the two boys stayed with each other for support, Seokjin repeated them like a mantra until the monsters didn’t feel so scary anymore. They fell often between the two boys and yet they never lost their meaning. Jungkook missed hearing them and in this moment he feels as if he could do anything.

“It is done.”

“Really? Already?”

Seokjin nods his head.

Jungkook looks at the piece of cloth Seokjin offers him.

“Wipe the cream away.”

Jungkook slips his hand from the Queen’s loving hold and accepts the cloth. He looks at his own chest as best as possible and wipes at the cream. It is an easy task to remove it.

“No”, Jungkook gasps, tearing up, “the mark is gone”, he whispers and looks at Seokjin, “it is gone”, he gets out and looks at the Queen, “my mark is gone!”

“Truly?” she gasps and rounds him so she could look at his chest, “Jungkook”, she chokes out and cups his cheeks. She spills tears, “your mark is gone.”

“It is gone”, he repeats and cups her face. He stands up and pulls her into a kiss.

Seokjin turns away for now, wanting to be respectful. He closes in on his own love and rests his chin on her shoulder, hugging her waist gently. She rubs her hand up and down his lower back, resting her head against his’.

“We are doing something good here”, he whispers.

“We are”, she agrees and turns her head to give his lips a chaste kiss, “are you happy?”

“Yes”, Seokjin smiles a soft smile. The kind which lifts his cheeks, “I found Jungkook.”

“I know. I am so happy for you that I feel like crying.”

“Seokjin”, Jungkook interrupts their moment, “my mark is gone!”

Seokjin breaks away from his love and looks at Jungkook. The younger man is smiling brightly, bouncing on the spot.

“I know. How do you feel?”

“Free. I feel finally truly free.”

“You are.”

Jungkook laughs and falls around Seokjin’s neck, “we are free.”

“We are. We are free”, Seokjin agrees and hugs his little brother.

“You will all be free soon”, the Queen says to the waiting Ravens, “now come my friends and get your marks removed. We held up your freedom for too long.”

“We didn’t mind, my Queen!” one of the Ravens screams from the back. The others agree with nods of their heads and smiles on their faces.

The Queen claims the chair Seokjin sat in before and picks up the bowl of purple cream.

“Come now, come”, she calls the next Raven to the table.

“My Queen?” he seems confused, but she merely smiles at him.

“I am certain that Seokjin and Jungkook have lots of catching up to do”, she says, grinning at Seokjin and her fiance.

Jungkook nods his head, while Seokjin looks at her shyly.

“I will take over for Seokjin so he can talk to my starlight”, she explains and points at the chair opposite of her, “now sit down and receive your true freedom.”

“Yes, my Queen. Oh, I feel honoured”, he says with a giggle, “I am helped by the Queen. I will tell my Mahryon about it.”

“Yes? How is the sweet woman?”

“Same old, same old. She started…”

Their conversation dies out in their ears as Jungkook turns Seokjin to the healer.

“Can I steal him away?” he asks her.

“Of course. You two have lots of catching up to do.”

“Are you certain? I do not want to burden you”, Seokjin makes sure.

“I am certain. Go, my beloved. I have my friend helping me”, she says.

“Thank you so much”, he says and kisses her lips, “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

“I promise to return him by nightfall”, Jungkook jokes, making her laugh.

She rubs his arm sisterly, “I am certain you will.”

He gives her one last grin then turns to Seokjin.

“Do you want to see my rooms?”

“Of course I do.”

“Come, follow me.”

The Queen and the healer watch as the two men hurry over the courtyard. They managed around half of the way when they watch Seokjin take Jungkook into a gentle headlock, which the younger man fights off with gentle punches into Seokjin’s side. The two men continue to stumble to the castle as they playfight each other. It is as if no time had passed between them.

“I am happy that they found each other again”, the Queen says.

“Yes, me too. Brighter days will be on the horizon for them.”

“Indeed, there will be.”

Jungkook turns, holding the golden door knob between his fingers. Seokjin is looking at him after having scanned the hallways. The castle hasn’t changed since the last time he was here. At least not what the eye can see, the heart can sense times of love in those hallways. Jungkook and his love must have filled them up day by day.

“Welcome to my chambers”, Jungkook says and opens the door. He steps inside the room. Seokjin follows, letting out gasps of utter bafflement.

Jungkook closes the door and bounces as he rounds Seokjin.

“And? What do you think?”

Seokjin doesn’t know where to look first. Jungkook’s room looks like a golden dream of riches and wealth. The stone walls were covered in oil paintings and hand-woven tapestry. One even showed Jungkook’s portrait in warm colours. Golden thread framed the portrait in shapes of ornamental flowers and leaves. The otherwise cold stone floors were covered in thick hand knotted carpets all held in shades of red, green and gold and warm furs truly managed to keep the cold from meeting the feet. Thick curtains framed the windows and the same fabric - it looked expensive - also served as curtains for Jungkook’s bed.

The bed was of impressive size. Made from the sturdiest of wood and with a canopy. Countless pillows covered the head end of the bed and a warm blanket was placed neatly over the mattress for later use.

“I don’t know what to say. This is….”

“Do you like them? These are my chambers. I spend some time here, but I must confess that I spend more time in my fiancée’s room”, Jungkook explains and giggles, “I love to hold her as we fall asleep.”

“I understand you so well. I love to hold mine as well”, Seokjin says and continues to scan the room, “I can’t believe my own eyes…”

There is a fireplace in one corner of the room. A red chaise lounge asks to be used right in front of it and a small side table made of sturdy wood offers jugs of wines and meads. In another corner, a working table offered heaps of books and stacks of drawings. Jungkook seems to use it for art and studying. Sturdy bookcases were filled with books, art supplies and expensive trinkets and in handmade wall mount, Jungkook’s swords were presented.

“Do you like it? You are so quiet”, Jungkook asks, fumbling nervously.

“Because I am lost for words. All of this…it looks so…so expensive.”

“It is. I think. She doesn’t tell me how much she spends on me”, Jungkook shies away, “I think it’s a lot.”

Seokjin meets his eyes. Jungkook’s cheeks are flushed. Seokjin smiles.

“Good. You deserve all the riches in the world.”

“Oh, uhm”, Jungkook flusters. He clears his throat, “I want to show you more. Look what I have.”

Seokjin follows him past some sturdy curtains of red fabric into a spacious bathing room.

“This is bigger than both our bedroom and bathing room together”, Seokjin gasps, widening his eyes.

“It is so big, isn’t it?” Jungkook agrees with a laugh, “and look. In all these shelves I store my jewellery. She always gets me stuff, even though I never ask for them. I don’t store my clothing here because I have my own room for them and Bartholomew tells me that it is important to keep fabrics away from moist bathing air because of mould, but I like to keep my jewellery here because then I can come here and look at them.”

“This is just….wow…”

“Then over here is where I take care of my skin”, Jungkook says and sits down in front of his mirror table. He mimics applying cream on his face, pouting for it, “like this. And then I go like this and pat it in”, he says, slapping his own cheeks gently, “and then one of my servants brushes my hair or I have my love brush my hair. I really like it when she does that.”

Jungkook stands up and hurries to his bathing room chaise lounge. He lies down on it, stretching out his legs.

“This is where I lie when I do a facial pack and someone massages my feet”, he sits up, “did you know that all of your body’s zones are connected to your feet and that by regularly massaging them, you become healthier?”

“I did. I learned about it during my apprenticeship”, Seokjin says.

“Isn’t it remarkable?”

“It is”, Seokjin says and looks at the bathtub, “you even have a tub. You truly have everything, haven’t you?”

“Ah yes, this is my tub”, Jungkook says, scrambling to his feet. He runs to it and slaps his hand on its edge. It makes a metal sound of impact, “I take baths with my love in here. We love to use your bathing oils.”

“You do?”

Jungkook nods his head excitedly, “my favourites are vanilla and wolf lily. I think they smell really nice.”

“Thank you”, Seokjin says and lowers his head as he studies the bathtub. He strokes his hand over the edge.

Jungkook gnaws on his lower lip nervously, taking a small step closer.

“Do you not like it?” he asks quietly.

“No, no it’s not that”, Seokjin says, shaking his head.

“But?”

“I always wanted to have a bathtub.”

“Do you not possess one?” Jungkook gasps.

“No. Well, at least not yet. We are trying to save up as much as possible, but a good bathtub is expensive these days. We want one in which we both fit.”

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” Jungkook says and takes Seokjin’s hands so he can sway them excitedly, “I can buy you whatever bathtub you wish for.”

“What? No”, Seokjin shakes his head, “no, you don’t have to do this.”

“I want to.”

“No, Jungkook no. This, this”, Seokjin exhales sharply, “these are your riches. I do not want to rob you of them.”

“Rob me?” Jungkook snickers, “you could never rob me. You’re my brother”, he smiles sweetly.

Seokjin feels his heart warm at the sight.

“And I want you to possess the grandest, most luxurious bathtub in the whole Queendom. No”, he grins, “the whole continent.”

Seokjin smiles, letting out a breathy chuckle of fondness. Jungkook snickers, scrunching his nose.

“Sooo? What say you?” he asks, nudging Seokjin’s chest as he wiggles his brows.

“You won’t accept a No either way, will you?”

Jungkook shakes his head, smiling with his eyes so brightly, they sparkle.

“Fine”, Seokjin gives in, “fine, I’ll allow you. By Frenya, how should I bring the news to my love?”

“Tell her that your little brother wants to treat you”, Jungkook says and leads Seokjin out of the bathing room with an arm around his shoulder, “and that I find great happiness in the thought that I can make it possible that you and her share warm baths.”

“Oh Jungkook”, Seokjin says and sighs, “you truly grew up so much. Look at you and, and look at this room.” They are in Jungkook’s bed chambers again. It still feels like a dream of riches to Seokjin. “You deserve all of this. Yes, every single treasure in this room.”

Jungkook leans his head on Seokjin’s shoulder, “thank you. Oh my brother, you’re so…” he turns and hugs Seokjin, “…I missed you so much.”

“I missed you too, little one”, Seokjin says and rubs Jungkook’s back, “now I have to ask. Can you show me your clothing room?”

“You want to see?” Jungkook looks at him excitedly, “I didn’t know if I should ask, because I don’t want to seem as if I am boasting.”

“You aren’t. Please. Show me where you store your clothes.”

“Okay, so follow me”, Jungkook says and skips to the door.

Seokjin follows him with a fond smile on his lips.

“You will really like the room. It has a mirror and a seat to relax on. Also, so many clothes”, Jungkook tells him excitedly.

“You never struck me as a clothing person.”

“I’m not. I’m really not, but my love likes to dress me up”, Jungkook says and giggles, “she always gets me the latest fashion and compliments me when I wear it, so I really like it that she does. And Bartholomew always makes me clothes in black. I really love black.”

“I know. You always did. It fits your skin tone so well.”

“Yes, I agree”, Jungkook says and opens the door next to his chambers, “now don’t judge me, but it is a little messy in here, because I needed to pick out an outfit for today. I didn’t have time to put my clothes away yet.”

“Do not worry. I don’t judge.”

“Yes, well then. Come in”, Jungkook says and leads Seokjin inside.

“Jungkook, by Frenya”, Seokjin gasps, widening his eyes as the beauty of the room overwhelms him.

It is smaller than Jungkook’s bedroom and its walls are covered in ceiling high wardrobes all bursting in the finest of clothes. On one wall, more jewellery is presented and on the lower racks, Jungkook stores his shoes.

“It is unbelievable, isn’t it?” Jungkook says and laughs, “I always have to pinch myself when I realise what life I am living these days.”

“Understandable. You are living in dreams.”

“Yes, I really am. Oh, I love it here so much”, Jungkook says as he is busy clearing the seat of his clothes.

“It is such an improvement to the Black Forest, isn’t it?” Seokjin asks.

Jungkook laughs, “yeah”, he agrees with a nod of his head, “it truly is”, he says and looks at himself in the mirror, “and now we are actually free of the mark”, he meets Seokjin’s eyes in the reflection, “aren’t we?”

“We are”, Seokjin says and smiles.

Jungkook retorts it, closing the distance between him and the mirror afterwards. He stops in front of it and opens his tunic. Seokjin watches him. Jungkook traces his chest. His fingers still know which paths to take to replicate the tattoo. His skin is unmarked however. Sunkissed and velvety just like the rest of his body and finally unmarked.

“It is truly gone”, Jungkook whispers.

“It feels unbelievable, doesn’t it?”

Jungkook nods his head.

“I know. I spent the first few days after the removal staring at my chest in disbelief.”

“I will do the same. I cannot fathom that it is really gone”, Jungkook says and does a little twirl so he could sit down on the two-seater. He lets out a heavy sigh.

Seokjin sits down next to him, looking at him. He can sense that the emotion in the room changed, he can see it on Jungkook’s features as well.

“Do you remember how it felt?” Jungkook asks.

“The removal?”

“No. Getting the tattoo.”

“Ah. Yes, I remember.”

“I wanted him to stop.”

“I know. I did too.”

“But he said that I had to keep going because I needed to be strong and make him proud. I wanted to make him proud.”

Seokjin studies the regret on Jungkook’s features.

“You were five of age and lost your parents. Of course you wanted to make him proud”, he says because he knows that Jungkook blames himself right now, “he was the adult taking up the role of a parent for your young mind, so do not blame yourself.”

Jungkook looks at Seokjin as if he hadn’t expected to hear such words of comfort and understanding.

“Do not feel ashamed of it. Instead feel anger at Rafkan for giving you such a nightmarish parental figure to lean on.”

“It is hard not to feel shame. I never should have seen him as my father.”

“I know. It is easy to blame yourself, but don’t. You were a child. Every child needs parents. Do not blame your young heart for doing what every young heart would have done.”

Jungkook nods his head in understanding.

“I try not to think about everything he did for too long”, he confesses.

“Why?”

“It makes me feel helpless.”

“Helpless?”

“Yes. Helpless. Helpless because I feel so many emotions at once and it is as if I am drowning because not one of the emotions is good.”

“I understand how you feel. I felt the same as you and sometimes when the day is darker, those feelings return. I cannot tell you a cure to the helplessness because time healed me more than anything else, however I can offer you my shoulder to lean on.”

Jungkook leans in, resting his head on Seokjin’s shoulder just like he did a million times before. There were many nights in the Raven camps where Jungkook fell asleep with his head on Seokjin’s shoulder, while the older brother watched over him. The days after such nights were exhausting for Seokjin, but he never showed his tiredness to Jungkook even if Jungkook already knew. He felt guilty whenever it happened, but life back then exhausted him so much that oftentimes he didn’t realize that it was happening.

Jungkook doesn’t feel guilty right now. He feels tranquil. His eyes are closed and his heart beats at a normal pace. Seokjin rests his head against Jungkook’s.

“You can always talk to me about what plagues you, Jungkook”, he speaks quietly, “I managed to heal as much as I did these days because I had my love listening to me. Does the Queen listen to your griefs?”

“She does. She helped me heal a lot, but I think….” Jungkook takes a shaky breath, “I think that there is still a lot to do. I feel so happy, but sometimes the memories come back. I think about everything he did and said and I look at them in a new light now that my mind is cleared of his lies and I get so inexplicably angry. Then I get sad. Heartbroken. And helpless. Does this happen to you? Are you sometimes doing something which brings you joy when suddenly the memories come back again?”

“Of course. This is how one heals from traumatic events.”

“Really? So I am not broken?”

“Of course you aren’t broken. You are doing everything right.”

Jungkook shakes his head, “I feel as if I could do more.”

“You are doing everything right. You are healing at the perfect speed.”

Jungkook inhales and it sounds steady.

Jungkook exhales and it sounds relieved.

“I missed you so much”, he whispers and throws his hand over his own eyes.

Seokjin kisses the crown of Jungkook’s head.

“I missed you too.”

“You always know what to say.”

“I try to at least.”

Jungkook laughs. Seokjin laughs as well. Jungkook lifts his head and meets Seokjin’s eyes. Seokjin cups his cheek and wipes his tears.

“I love you so much”, Jungkook whispers.

“And I love you, my little one”, Seokjin whispers and smiles.

Jungkook retorts it, “I feel as if all I do is cry. I promise I am not like this on normal days.”

Seokjin laughs, “you do not have to explain yourself. We are all humans with emotions. Today is an emotional day.”

Jungkook studies Seokjin’s features. He always knew that his big brother was wise and knowledgeable beyond his age even if he oftentimes hid his wisdom behind silly jokes. Jungkook could always rely on Seokjin and his words of wisdom were perhaps the reason why the Queen spotted goodness in his eyes all those months ago. Jungkook is certain that if he didn’t have Seokjin by his side, comforting him and guiding him secretly when Rafkan wasn’t looking, he would have become as rotten as some other devoted Ravens. It was Seokjin’s guidance and love which kept the goodness in Jungkook’s heart. He is certain of it.

“I want to show you something”, Jungkook says.

“Yes? Show me.”

“We have to get to the woods for it. I know the way”, Jungkook says and stands up, “follow me.”

And so the two men hurry through the castle until they reached the courtyard again. The sun has travelled quite some distance on the sky as the two men chatted in Jungkook’s room. Their loves are talking to each other. Seokjin and Jungkook pay them a visit before they leave.

“I want to show Seokjin the Life Oak”, Jungkook says.

“Oh yes, please do”, the Queen says and smiles, “you will find great healing in this place, Seokjin.”

“I, uhm”, Seokjin doesn’t quite know what to say because it is still unbelievable to him that he is talking casually with the Queen. Yes, he did so before when he was her guest back then, but this is different. He is a free man and her people and his well-mannered heart tells him to speak respectfully.

“Have fun, you two”, his love tells him and gives his hand a little kiss, “try not to stumble over roots. The tree fairies are especially naughty around the Life Oak.”

The Queen giggles, leaning into her friend, “indeed they are. Oh, how wonderful.”

The healer snickers, sharing in her laughter by touching her knee.

Jungkook and Seokjin soon bid their goodbyes with smiles on their faces, kissing their destinies on their lips because they loved them.

“I still cannot fathom that you are to marry the Queen”, Seokjin says as he and Jungkook hurry to the gate leading to the woods.

“Me neither. I feel so lucky. She is too good to me”, Jungkook says and sighs dreamily, “I love her so much.”

Seokjin smiles, “it feels good to be in love, doesn’t it?”

“Yes. Oh yes, it does. My heart races all the time, I feel warm all over and when I listen to her talk, my tummy flutters.”

“I understand you. I feel the same with mine”, Seokjin says and sighs, “she is the most wonderful person. The first thing she taught me was how to read and write.”

“Yes? Oh, this is exciting. So you can read as well?”

“You too?”

Jungkook nods his head, “my love taught me. It was very difficult at first, but she told me that I learned insanely fast.”

“Of course you did. You are such a fast learner and you are good at everything.”

“That isn’t correct. I hate maths.”

Seokjin laughs. Jungkook joins him.

“I hate it as well. Frustrating business indeed.”

“Yes”, Jungkook agrees in snickers.

Seokjin retorts them. Their eyes meet seconds later. There is a certain emotion in the air. One which makes both men shy away. Jungkook is brave enough to break the silence.

“Did”, he begins, “did your love also teach you what…what bodies can do?”

“Maybe”, Seokjin confesses and blushes.

“Mine did too”, Jungkook confesses with his cheeks just as flushed.

“Really?”

“Yes.”

The two men giggle in coyness, drawing closer as they share in the naughty secret.

“It feels good, doesn’t it?” Jungkook asks in a whisper.

“It does”, Seokjin whispers and covers his own eyes, “this is so embarrassing to talk about. Oh by Frenya.”

“Yes”, Jungkook agrees and covers his own ears as he scrunches his nose, “we’re such men these days.”

“Oh Jungkook, will you stop”, Seokjin whines and slaps his arm gently, “you are making me burn up.”

Jungkook giggles, burning up himself.

Jungkook knows the way to the Life Oak like he knows his way to the courtyard. He walks the paths regularly, finding healing in nature and the quiet of the forest. Seokjin feels the powers as well. Ever since he set foot into the dense forest, breathing feels easier to do.

It takes the young men around thirty minutes to reach their destiny. They spend the time greatly, talking and joking with each other every passing second. There wasn’t a second of silence between them as new stories of their lives came to their minds over and over again.

They grew silent however once they reached the clearing where the Life Oak fills the space with her presence. It happened naturally that the two men became silent. As if the Life Oak makes one do so.

“This is it”, Jungkook says quietly and closes the distance to the oak tree.

“This is it?” Seokjin whispers and steps closer to the oak, “it is…so tall. And beautiful. Why is it bleeding black…substance?”

“It’s not hurting. Not right now. Those are marks that She is happy. That She is crying tears of joy because Her earth is healthy.”

“Her earth?”

Jungkook nods his head, “touch Her.”

Seokjin places his hand on the oak tree’s trunk, flinching back in shock.

“What?” he gasps, touching it again, “what is that? Why can I….I-I feel a heartbeat.”

“Yes”, Jungkook says and places his hand next to Seokjin’s, “this tree is life itself. She gives this Queendom nourishment and makes it live. She can talk to every plant, animal and nature itself through Her roots.”

“This is”, Seokjin blinks his tears away, “I don’t know what is happening”, he says and wipes his eyes, “oh by Frenya, why am I crying?

“It is okay to cry. I cried the first time as well”, Jungkook assures him, rubbing his upper arm gently, “it is overwhelming to touch life itself. Don’t hide it and let it happen.”

Seokjin sobs softly, lowering his face into his own palm. Jungkook touches his shoulder in comfort, rubbing small circles with his thumb.

“I am not sad. I just haven’t felt like this before”, he explains.

“This is normal, let it happen. Give Her a hug if you want to”, he tells him and because Seokjin is overwhelmed in life, he does.

He hugs the ancient tree and he sobs as he does. His arms barely take up space on the thick trunk, but Seokjin still feels cradled. As if his mother was holding him and rocking him to sleep. The oak tree sings to him just like his mother would in the rustling of its leaves and croaking of its branches.

“This is life itself, Jungkook. It has a pulse as if it was alive”, Seokjin gets out, “and, and it feels as if…as if…I can’t describe it.”

“As if you are hugged by your mother”, Jungkook says.

“Yes. Oh Jungkook, I miss my mother”, Seokjin sobs.

“I miss my mother too”, Jungkook says and whimpers, “oh Seokjin, come here”, he chokes out and hugs his brother from behind, caging him in between the tree and his body.

He rubs his hand up and down Seokjin’s tummy, resting his chin on Seokjin’s shoulder.

“I’m here. You aren’t alone.”

And as they cry for their lost mothers, the Life Oak cradles them like Her sons, swaying Her branches and filling their hearts with new hope. Their mothers might have left the earth already, but She will always be there for them and in Her, their mothers will live on eternally. For every life form, no matter how small, will find its place in Her endless roots, Her never rotting foliage and Her countless branches. So in a way, as the two men hug Her for comfort, they are hugging their mothers.

“We still have each other”, Jungkook comforts him.

“We do. Oh Jungkook, thank you for showing me this place. I haven’t felt such a hug in years”, Seokjin says and turns to cradle Jungkook’s cheeks, “it felt as if my mother was holding me.

“I know. She is beautiful, isn’t She? I come here and talk to Her often, I hug Her and find comfort in Her. I believe that our mothers are continuing to live through Her.”

“I love this thought ”, Seokjin meets Jungkook’s warm gaze, “it is so beautiful and I can feel my mother. We can feel them, Jungkook.”

“We can”, Jungkook says and hugs him.

Seokjin hugs him back, combing his fingers through his hair.

“Thank you. Thank you for showing me this place”, he whispers.

“There is so much more to show you”, Jungkook whispers.

“There is?”

“Do you want to see?”

“Yes. Yes, of course I do. Oh Jungkook, please show me everything in your life.”

Jungkook steps back and gives Seokjin a loving smile before turning his back to him. He takes a deep breath and calls into the silence. Seokjin watches him with parted lips.

Jungkook finishes his calls with a content sigh and his eyes glancing at Seokjin bashfully.

“What did you do?” Seokjin asks him.

“I called for them.”

“For who?”

The forest grumbles and cracks. The small trees and thick shrubs begin dancing. Seokjin inches closer to Jungkook in fear.

“Someone is coming”, he whispers.

“I know. It’s them.”

“Them?”

Woltron steps out of the shadows. His pack follows. They build a circle around Jungkook and Seokjin, growling deeply.

“What is that? Jungkook, we need to flee”, Seokjin gasps and tries to tug Jungkook away.

Jungkook stumbles and laughs, tugging Seokjin back.

“Don’t be frightened. They’re my friends.”

“Your friends? Jungkook, this is Woltron and His pack, he will eat us.”

“No, he won’t. Look”, Jungkook says and slips out of Seokjin’s tight grasp to walk to Woltron.

“Jungkook. No”, Seokjin gasps, reaching for him but grabbing air. He has to watch with horror as Jungkook places his hand on Woltron’s nose, “I can’t watch this”, Seokjin chokes out and squeezes his eyes shut.

There is silence for a few seconds, then Jungkook speaks all of a sudden.

“Open your eyes.”

Seokjin follows even if he is scared.

“What?” he gasps.

Jungkook is sitting atop of Woltron, carrying a smile on his face.

“They’re my friends”, he says and taps Woltron’s shoulder, “Woltron, this is my big brother Seokjin.”

Woltron closes the distance between him and Seokjin. Seokjin tries to stumble back, but collides with the nose of another wolf.

“Forgive me!” he squeaks and jumps away, which makes him collide with Woltron’s nose, “ah! Forgive me! Please, don’t eat me!”

Jungkook laughs, “calm down, brother. They don’t want to eat you. Take a deep breath and look into Woltron’s eyes.”

“But-”

“Trust me.”

Seokjin studies Jungkook’s features.

“Trust me”, the younger man repeats and smiles.

It gives Seokjin enough strength that he takes a deep breath and then meets Woltron’s piercing gaze. The wolf growls deeply, keeping Seokjin hostage. Seokjin trembles and shakes, forgetting all about breathing until Woltron breaks eye contact. The wolf lets out a low grumble and lifts his head. He turns his side to Seokjin.

“See? You’re their friend now as well”, Jungkook says.

“What? What do you mean?”

“Woltron and his pack are old gods. They have been on this continent long before humans lived on the lands. Woltron can look into people’s hearts and see their truest truth in them. He accepted you in His pack, which means your heart is good.”

“Good?” Seokjin gasps, “and if it wasn’t good? What would he have done then?”

“It doesn’t matter. I wanted to show you this place and introduce you to Him because I knew you were good. I also passed their test when I first came here and I only passed it because I had you secretly guiding me. You kept the good in my heart, so I knew that you would pass.”

“But if I hadn’t?”

Jungkook shakes his head, “this never would have happened, but if you hadn’t then Woltron would have eaten you.”

“What?!” Seokjin squeaks, “and you didn’t tell me? Jungkook, how dare you?!”

Jungkook snickers, “I didn’t tell you because I knew that you would have been way too scared. Now climb onto Eudora’s back and let me show you one last thing.”

“You are such a trickster. You didn’t change one bit”, Seokjin murmurs and turns his back to him.

The wolf whose nose he accidentally collided with, lowers herself so Seokjin could climb onto her back.

“Hello Eudora, will you bite me?” Seokjin says quietly, taking cautious steps closer.

Eudora stays quiet, watching Seokjin with half-lidded eyes. Her eyes are emerald green just like Woltron’s.

“She won’t bite. Trust Her”, Jungkook assures him.

“Don’t talk to me. I don’t trust you anymore”, Seokjin jokes, making Jungkook laugh, “okay, I am doing it. I am getting on your back, yes?”

Eudora stays still and allows Seokjin to climb on top. Once he is safely on top, she stands up, forcing Seokjin to squeak and twist bundles of her fur.

“This is so scary”, he squeals, “I’m sorry, oh heavens, eek.”

“Calm down, you are tugging her fur”, Jungkook laughs and reaches over to caress his shoulder, “don’t be too scared. You know how to ride a horse, don’t you?”

“Yes, but this is insanity. We are on top of gigantic wolves.”

“They’re such better runners. Ready?”

“What? Runners? Jungkook, what are you planning to do?”

“I will show you my favourite place.”

“What do you mean runners? Jungkook, talk to me”, Seokjin asks nervously.

“The wolves will bring us. Don’t worry, it will feel as if you are flying”, Jungkook assures him and pets Woltron’s back, “can you takes us to the plateau, Woltron?”

The wolf straightens his head and howls. His pack answers him.

“What is happening?” Seokjin yells over their howls, looking at Jungkook.

“Hold on tight”, he says.

“What? Eeek!” Seokjin squeals and falls to the front in a desperate attempt to hug Eudora as she takes off with her pack, “this is the scariest thing I have ever done!” he screeches while beside him, Jungkook squeals and squeaks in laughter.

He looks at his little brother and how happy he looks riding the giant wolf. His dark hair catches the wind, his clothes dance in it and his face is crinkled in laughter.

“This is so much fun!” he calls out and looks at Seokjin, “sit up, trust me.”

“I hate this! Why are you doing this to me? Ju-Ju-Jungkook”, Seokjin screeches.

“Sit up, trust me”, Jungkook laughs.

Seokjin sits up even if his heart was racing in fear. The wind makes his eyes tear up instantly and messes up his hair. He feels it on his skin and smells the freedom in the air.

“This is insane! Jungkook you rascal, this is insane!”

“No, this is freedom”, Jungkook calls out and lets go of Woltron to stretch his arms far away from himself. He closes his eyes and laughs loudly.

Seokjin looks at the wolf under him. Her fur is reflecting the sunlight, glowing like ambers in a fire. He barely feels her movements, except her shifting muscles under her thick fur.

The wind is dancing around them. The world feels so vast. Seokjin doesn’t feel as if he will fall off. He lets go of her fur and stretches his arms from his own body. It feels as if he is lifting off the ground. Freedom, Jungkook called it. This is freedom.

“Hah!” Seokjin lets out and looks at Jungkook. He laughs, “I’m riding a wolf!”

“I know! Isn’t it so much fun?”

“Yes!”

Jungkook laughs and holds onto Woltron again as the wolf speeds up. Eudora follows, speeding up with Seokjin on her back. Seokjin squeaks in laughter, throwing his head back as the world passes him in blurs of colour.

The wolves take the two giggling men all the way up the Snowy Mountains. They climb the steep stones easily and while Seokjin screeched and clutched Eudora in fear, Jungkook laughed and assured him that nothing will happen to them. And he was right. Except for wobbly knees and his nerves stretched thin, Seokjin arrives atop the plateau unharmed. He slides off of Eudora, colliding with the ground as he catches his breath.

“Hey, are you alright?” Jungkook gasps, jumping off of Woltron’s back. He kneels down in front of Seokjin, touching his arms, “what’s the matter?”

“This was insanity. We just climbed a mountain”, Seokjin gets out and wheezes for air, “I think I might pass out. Did this actually happen?”

Jungkook chuckles and strokes his hand down the back of Seokjin’s head.

“You did well. I know the first time is really frightening. I thought I soiled my pants the first time my love took me here.”

“You did?” Seokjin gets out and lifts his head to look into Jungkook’s eyes.

“Yeah”, he snickers, nodding his head, “but I promise you that it is worth it.”

“I truly hope it is because I think that I might have shat myself right now.”

Jungkook laughs, “you are fine. Now come on, I need to show you”, he says and helps Seokjin to his feet.

“You will kill me one day, I am telling you. I’m too old for such adventures.”

“You are twenty and six of age, brother. You are not too old”, Jungkook laughs as he leads him to the edge of the plateau.

Seokjin stumbles back, squeezing Jungkook’s hands.

“Jungkook, you madman what are you doing?”

“Don’t be scared.”

“This is so high.”

“I know, but don’t be scared. Look. We still have five steps to take before it becomes dangerous.”

“You”, Seokjin exhales deeply, “you have always been fearless. No, I have to sit down.”

Jungkook laughs, joining him on the ground. He stretches out his legs while Seokjin sits with his legs crossed.

“You are okay, brother”, he assures him.

“I guess. Oh, you made my heart race”, Seokjin says and sighs deeply, “first you tell me that a wolf god could have eaten me, then you make me ride on top of one and climb a mountain and now this. Do you want to kill me? My heart is too weak for all of this.”

Jungkook snickers, giving Seokjin a small look before he lets his eyes drift at the view before them. The Queendom lies before their eyes. The Black Forest in the far distance, the Singing River reflecting the sunlight and the Nourishing Fields as green phantoms in the distance.

“But I must say this view makes up for it”, Seokjin says.

“Doesn’t it?” Jungkook agrees, “my love tells me that this is the whole of the Queendom and even more”, he says.

“It is?”

“Yes. Look, the green in the distance are the Nourishing Fields. The river over there is the Singing River. These are the forests of the Castle, the Life Oak and my home and back there in the distance is the Black Forest”, Jungkook explains, pointing at everything so Seokjin could see.

“Wow”, Seokjin whispers, “so this is everything.”

“Yes it is and when you look beyond the Black Forest in the really, really far distance you can see the Glass Mountains.”

“Glass Mountains?”

“Yes, Glass Mountains. They’re a foreign queendom. Their lakes are emerald coloured and all their valleys are filled with trees with ruby coloured foliage. Their Queen fell in love with her warrior and possesses healing magic”, Jungkook explains and looks at Seokjin, “like your love. She can heal with just a touch.”

“Oh. Oh, no. My love can’t heal with a touch. The queen of the Glass Mountains must be a Mender.”

“A Mender?”

“Yes, Mender. They posses magic in their blood, which they can use to heal all wounds and aches. My love needs potions and creams to heal.”

“I see. Menders. I didn’t know about them yet”, Jungkook says and sighs in contentment, “it is so wonderful to learn. We were kept so blind to the world, weren’t we?”

“We really were”, Seokjin agrees, “but we are free.”

Jungkook touches his own chest. Seokjin does the same to his’.

“We’re free”, Jungkook whispers and smiles, “and we can learn all the knowledge in the world.”

Seokjin does the same, “indeed we can.”

Jungkook lifts his hand, pointing at the Queendom.

“Where exactly is your home?”

“I don’t know. I have never seen the queendom this way”, he says, “but I think it has to be around there”, he says and points at a forest in the distance. The Singing River digs its path close to it and a small town neighbours it.

“In this town?” Jungkook asks.

“No, through this forest. There is a clearing next to the river and we have our cottage there. The forest is filled with tree fairies which like to play tricks by growing roots in front of your feet or dropping acorns on your head.”

“Really?” Jungkook snickers.

“Yes, really”, Seokjin chuckles.

“And have you ever encountered such a tree fairies before?”

“Indeed I have. One dropped snow on my head in winter and another grew a branch directly in front my face. I swallowed leaves that day.”

Jungkook laughs, leaning back as he does. Seokjin joins him. Their heartfelt laughter echoes through the whole queendom. At least it feels like that to them as they sit and overlook everything as the mountains play catch with their voices.

“Ah this is so funny”, Jungkook says and sighs.

“Indeed it is”, Seokjin agrees and exhales in contentment.

The two men dance their eyes over the endless view. And while Seokjin tries to take in everything as best as possible, Jungkook studies the area where his brother lives. It isn’t that far from the castle. He will be able to visit his brother often and in return, Seokjin can visit him as well. Jungkook feels his heart flutter in happiness at the thought.

“A cottage”, Jungkook whispers and sways from side to side as complete contentment fills his chest, “is it a nice home?”

“It is the best home I could have ever wished for. We grow flowers and herbs for our healing potions and in the warmer months, our garden is filled with vegetables and fruit we can eat”, Seokjin explains excitedly, “and we have chickens. They lay so many eggs that we can always have fresh eggs for breakfast. The river is always filled with fresh fish and sometimes we go to the market in town and buy meat, which will last us for days.”

“This sounds like a dream.”

“It is a dream. We even have a cat.”

“A cat? Really?” Jungkook gasps.

“Yes, really. His name is Kukuruz and we can talk to him.”

“What? Talk?”

“Yes, talk.”

“How?”

Seokjin lifts his arm, showing a delicate leather armband to Jungkook.

“There is a sorceress in town, who can make these animal talking bracelets and we each got one.”

“Wow”, Jungkook says, touching it gently, “and it works?”

“It does.”

“So you can understand Woltron and his pack?”

The two men look over their shoulders at the old god. He and his pack are slumbering peacefully behind them.

“No”, Seokjin turns back around, “no sadly, you can only choose one animal. We chose a cat.”

“I understand”, Jungkook looks back at the view, “it is still so amazing. I want to be able to talk to animals. I imagine that it must be so interesting.”

“I can tell you from experience that most conversation with Kukuruz are about him wanting more food.”

Jungkook laughs. Seokjin joins him.

“I see. Well, this does sound like what a cat would talk about most.”

“Yes, indeed.”

Silence replaces their laughter like sunlight replaces rain. It comes because it always follows and it feels natural. The two men looked forward to the silence like people look forward to sunlight after long rain. And as they share in the wonderful silence, they take in the views. Their world once reached to the borders of the Black Forest and not one step beyond and now they are sitting atop the Snowy Mountains, overlooking their freedom.

“Should we visit the Nourishing Fields together?” Seokjin asks.

“We could, couldn’t we?”

“We could.”

Seokjin drapes his arm over Jungkook’s shoulder. The younger man leans into him.

“Then we will.”

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rhimestonetalks · 4 months

Text

White Raven

Warnings: Dark content, spit kink, creepy behavior, non-con, cumming like everywhere, overall shitty Leon, mentions of stalking, he's rough with it, mentions of previous non-con, mentions of kidnapping (only at the end), breaking n entering, borderline somnophilia, abuse

A/N: I've shared this idea with someone b4 but now i'm going into FULL description bc yummm icky Leon

For the past two weeks, you've been waking up every morning with drool leaking from the corners of your mouth. You assumed you just had a habit to drool a lot in your sleep so you started leaving tissues on your bedside table so you can wipe that drool away when you wake up. It became a recurring thing that you just got used to. You saw nothing wrong with how much drool there was when you woke up, it seemed normal to you. It became normal to you. Unfortunately, it was anything but normal. The truth was much more sickening that you could possibly imagine, more sickening than anyone could imagine, and you were about to find out that truth in the worst way possible. At 3:00AM, the time typically associated with demons. They aren't far off on their assumptions honestly.

You barely awoke to the sound of your bedroom door creaking open. You were only half awake, your eyes still closed but your ears listening to the sounds in the room. Think of it as a defense mechanism, a safety protocol your body had set in place. Not like it would ever help you. It was only when whatever was in here started walking towards you did your eyes open just a little. All you could see in the darkness was a figure slowly starting to creep onto your bed.

You closed your eyes again, assuming it was just some sleep paralysis demon your brain conjured up to scare you. You've experienced this once or twice before and you knew you could ignore it to make it leave so of course you'd close your eyes and silently prayed it would leave. It didn't go away though. It wasn't going to go away. Not yet, not now, and probably ever. It's hand gripped your jaw and forced your mouth open. Why could you feel it? They've never touched you before and you really didn't expect it to be this realistic. In fact, it was unnerving. Your heart rate picked up and you tried not to breathe. You were sure it would disappear if you displayed no reaction.

but it didn't. It didn't go away. and now you were terrified. In a panic, you opened your eyes only to see a man. This wasn't sleep paralysis. Someone had broke into your house and was now on top of you. Out of nowhere, he spat into your mouth which he held open with his rough hand and suddenly everything clicked. You haven't been uncontrollably drooling for the past two weeks. This man had been entering your house and spitting over and over into your mouth.

Now your brain was in fight or flight mode. You weren't just going to sit back and let him do this because what the fuck? You were quick to try push him off but, unfortunately for you, this guy had a quick reaction time and he was incredibly strong. You didn't even have time to react by the time he had your arms pinned down with just one hand. You kept trying to struggle free, not wanting to see what happens next.

"Stop fucking struggling, it'll hurt more," he says with anger evident in his tone. You recognized that voice. Where did you recognize it from? Who knows. Who cares, frankly, he's clearly a sicko. "Get off of me!" you yell out and all you get in response is punched and fuck it stung. It dazed you for a few short seconds and all you could feel was blood slowly falling from your nose.

The daze didn't last long because you snapped back to reality when he started pulling your pants down. Oh fuck no. You started struggling again and, in response, he wrapped his hand around your throat, choking you. It wasn't long before both his and your pants were off and you knew that meant only one thing.

"It's your fault for struggling, if you had just sat there and taken it like a good girl we wouldn't be here," he says but you're too dazed to process what he's saying, you're just trying to breathe. He wasn't gentle at all. He had no respect, no moral, no fucks to give. He had been through hell and he believed he deserved all the gifts in the world, including you.

He thrusted in without any prep and, god, it hurt like hell. He was rough, and cruel, and he only cared about his own pleasure. His hips were ramming against yours and you were incredibly overwhelmed. Maybe you should've listened to him, maybe you should've just sat there and taken it. At least then he wouldn't do this and you could've just moved countries the next day. Oh god, now you were being manipulated into blaming yourself. You couldn't help it, not when all you could feel was him fucking you with no remorse while choking you to the brink of passing out. Could this count as torture? It should.

"I'm gonna make a fucking mess of you," he spoke through grunts while keeping his fast pace. You were sure you were about to cum but that was short lived when he pulled out and stroked his cock a few times before cumming all over you. Fucking.. gross. "I hope you didn't think you'd get to cum, you've been nothing but a bitch to me," he spoke again while looking down at you. Maybe he was a sleep paralysis demon, he certainly was a monster.

He spat again, right on your face and even had the audacity to use his hand and rub it around. You felt disgusted, humiliated, and worthless but, at least it was over, right? Wrong, his hand around your neck suddenly tightened and you started seeing black dots in your vision.

"I'm gonna keep you locked away with me so I can use that tight little pussy everyday," he said and the last thing on your mind was how absolutely fucked you were before you felt him thrust right back in.

Link to my profile :3

#leon kennedy #resident evil #smut #leon kennedy smut #leon s kennedy x reader #leon s kennedy x you #leon x reader #leon kennedy imagine #leon kennedy fanfic #resident evil smut #leon s kennedy #re6 leon #re6 smut #dead dove #nasty fic #rhimestone talks

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genericpuff · 2 months

Note

Since you have mentioned your own original webcomic has time travel, do you have any advice for people who want to make comics or simply write stories that deal with time travel?

Could be any kind of time travel, like time loops, characters traveling to the past/future, dealing with paradoxes, etc.

Short answer: don't LOL

Long answer: Obviously if you wanna tackle time travel, go for it, but the first and most important rule of any time travel is to establish your rules. How does the time travel work? And how will you commit to consistency?

Some basic time travel rule structures include:

Clone travelling - This is the most common form of time travel that's used the most. When you go back in time, your past self is present alongside your present self. Examples include Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Doctor Who, and Austin Powers.

Singular consciousness travelling - This is one I've only seen used a couple of times, and the only one I can think of off the top of my head is Life is Strange, but what I like to call 'singular consciousness travelling' is the form of time travel where instead of travelling to a point in the past, you return to a version of your past self, fully aware of the future that awaits you but 'stuck' within that past to live out the timeline in real time again. Though it's not as commonly used, it's one that will typically present less paradoxes as there are less moving parts to worry about. Prophecy storylines also use a similar philosophy to this, albeit without the literal time travel and more so 'time travel' via premonition (could we call Raven from That's So Raven a time traveller?)

Loops - This is a form of time travelling seen in media such as Groundhog Day, where a person continuously travels back to the same point in time over and over again to relive the same events until they can somehow break the loop.

There are loads more of time travel structures I could go over, but those are three of the most basic. Regardless of which structure you use, you have to be willing to commit to it. It's like choosing a writing perspective and tense, if you choose third person past tense ("he said, she said, they said"), then suddenly switching to first person present tense ("I say", "I do", "I feel") without any context to establish that switch will be jarring. Make your rules, and if you have to break them, make sure they're broken for the sake of the story (ex. if you present some sort of plot twist to reveal the 'true nature' of the time travelling plotline).

Here's a great video that goes over some different time travel plotlines from movies/books/etc.:

youtube

As for my original comic, we go for the time travel = multiverse theory approach, where any changes made to a timeline in a past state will not change that timeline's future, but rather, create a new timeline where those past changes are true and written into the script, essentially relegating every single new timeline to a parallel universe. This is essentially how it's done in Avengers: Endgame , but instead of characters abusing the laws of quantum physics to travel back in time, it's characters abusing a magical book of diary entries that are primarily used by the main character to help him control and guide his time travelling abilities. Every diary entry essentially serves as a roadmap for him to find his way back to his home timeline from which he disappears every time he jumps. Much of the story is written entirely atop a paradox, specifically the bootstrap paradox:

(because if there are gonna be paradoxes no matter what you do, may as well have fun with them!)

There's a lot more I could go into regarding that, but for the sake of sparing the handful of Time Gate readers here of spoilers, Time Gate's laws of time travel dictate that you can't really change your past, just the future for other versions of you that you create when you try to change things.

All that said, I will say that in most cases, thinking too hard about any time travel story will cause it to fall apart, because time travel is a fictional trope that relies a lot on logical sequencing of events to work. So you kind of do just have to 'let it go' and have fun with it - but having rules to stick to will make things less of a headache for everyone, especially when it comes to telling a coherent story. Even my own criticisms of LO's time travel really don't matter in the end, because LO's problems go far deeper than some cheaply-made time travel and any of the time travel problems in the story will undoubtedly be explained away as "timey wimey shit". I'll still be pissed about it, but time travel isn't real (at least not for you) so it's not worth getting too bogged down by. Just do your best to tell an entertaining and coherent story.

#ask me anything #ama #anon ama #anon ask me anything #time travel

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netherfeildren · 9 months

Text

The Cassandra Complex : Chapter II : Prometheus

Series Masterlist

(Din Djarin x F!Reader)

Content Warnings: Canon typical violence; Blood and gore; Mentions of drug and alcohol abuse; Description of injury; Angst; Possessive behavior

Rating: Explicit 18+

Word count: 6.7K

Read on AO3

CHAPTER II : PROMETHEUS

What is mortality after all but divine doubt flashing over us?

-Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red

As the days turned to weeks turned to months since that moment in the dark with the Mandalorian, there had been a steadily rising thrum of tumultuous, frenzied energy coiling within you. A ball of hissing, ravenous snakes ready to strike at any moment. Desire turned to want turned to a demand that you were ill equipped to deal with – emotionally and mentally.

You’d had many things in your life that you’d wanted but had not been able to have, and yet that did not mean that you’d ever been good at not getting them. Impulse control, a staying hand, were not things the Maker had blessed you with.

You’d met an old Ugnaught female with a penchant for loving spotchka and Sabacc a little too much. More than she’d ever enjoyed keeping steady work or following the rules or anything else really. You and she had some things in common when it came to that pesky little issue of impulse control. After a brief acquaintanceship, she’d put you on to a group that met sometimes on Nevarro to… support each other… or better yet, to sit around and discuss your issues and vices together in some pseudo imitation of self improvement – the art of staying one’s hand, or whatever you wanted to call it – and if it was not with much success, it was with intention, which you thought was, in the end, just as significant. She said she found the meetings understanding or companionable or something you pretended to tell yourself you didn’t care about.

And sometimes you went.

If for nothing else, to feel as if there were at least a few people in the entire galaxy who knew your name, who knew you were alive, who knew you were alone. You sat there amongst the old and weathered humans and the other ragtag team of varying organics and even the occasional droid, and listened to their stories and their losses and their fear during the reign of the Empire – their struggle, their fight, their apathy now, to survive, to stay afloat in the bleak imperial aftermath.

One such survivor with a nasty love for Spice, needled you the worst. His face was haggard, tired, and there was something so forlorn about him, something that sent a sudden flash of fear through you. Is that what I will be one day? Is that what I already am? I am a person, you think wearily, aren’t I? His voice was tough and ragged, as if he’d gone out into the lava fields and swallowed a chunk of ashen rock to fill his belly, savaging his throat in the process, grating your ears and your nerves.

“Nothing really feels better than when I’m drinking a bottle of spotchka, Spice humming through my veins, watching the sunset. My worries, my fears… they don’t weigh as heavily on my shoulders. And what else is there to do? This is easy. I am good at this. It is a simple thing, even if I must forsake all the rest. And I am tired. I want peace.”

You could understand this.

What else had there been to do under the subjugation of a darker and more powerful force than you could have ever been? You had been young and alone and terrified. In possession of a power beyond your understanding. You had been enslaved, trapped, abused, and then, for a moment, on a precipice. One which you’d taken a leap off of at the first chance. Now though, you were tired, and you too, wanted peace. Even if you weren’t entirely sure if you still believed in the concept. Once, it had seemed easy to lay down and take it, do as you were told. Until it wasn’t, or… until there had been the opportunity for something different. When the Sith lords were crumbling into obscurity and failure one by one, until only you and your master remained. A singular darkness in the galaxy. A lone chance, a step too far, to run had been all you’d needed. A flash of beskar in your mind – screaming, the snuffing of a silver flame – you blink the nightmare, memory, away, be honest with yourself, eyes pressed together tightly, spiky lashes crinkling between your lids.

And you, girl? What about you? What do you have to tell?

Me? Nothing. Nothing to tell – nothing you’d not burn me for.

Or the truth: it was discovered that I could wield the Force when I was a young child. I was hunted, my parents were slaughtered, and I was stolen. Turned and enfolded into their cult. I never had a chance. I never had a choice. I am trying to find my choices again.

The Jedi, the Sith, the Empire, they all fell a long time ago. I need to let the past die, but I will not die with it. So, you do not share that which would get you killed. You could very well be taken for an Imperial remnant and hunted, executed. No matter that you’d been just as powerless, despite everything, just as tortured, just as subjugated as anyone else, in all the ways that really counted. Despite everything – sometimes this great power counted for very little.

They had wanted to make you a God, but a God muzzled, a God restrained.

God struck, God swept, God nonsensical.

Your dreams are always strange and violent now – nightmares of a terrible past coalescing with hopes of a better future. How to reconcile that hideous thing you had been once before with the better thing you were trying to be now? Too difficult to conceptualize. No matter how many times you listened to your strange group of fellow survivors and vice-havers – a funny thing for what would they say, do, to you, if they knew that unlike their spotchka or Spice addictions, your predilection was of a darker nature – to kill, to maim, to destroy?

You leave Nevarro for a time, after that realization. That no matter how much you might ingratiate yourself, no matter the connections you may pretend to make, there is still that, there is still the truth of you.

The second time you meet him, you are where you should not be.

You’d come to Corellia. Filled with a sick and twisted sort of glee that you could roll around in the worst underbelly of the galaxy and survive, hold your own. It was an exercise in restraint and brawn and arrogance, too, perhaps. The crime syndicates running untethered, spice trade, and the harsh reality of industrial life made for a cesspool of the worst sort of cretins.

In some ways, it was exciting for you, and you knew you were looking for something. Something to whet your appetite, quench your thirst, fill the void.

After all, it had been two months, what felt like millenia, since that dark storage alcove where he’d imprinted himself in you. Weeks of having the ghost of him haunt you, the memory of his rough voice whispering phantom-like in your ear, seeing him in your dreams, your nightmares. Desperate interludes in whatever cold and lonely bed you’d claimed for the night, your fingers rubbing frantically at your slippery, swollen clit, trying to chase that feeling he’d pulled out of you and failing. Mandalorian, Mandalorian, Mandalorian. And then, one late night, when you’re on the trail of one such lead towards self destruction, masqueraded as a good time, there, around the corner, in the distance – like a wound of beskar looming in the night – it’s your Mandalorian.

You pause your skulking, stepping back to wrap yourself in the shadows, away from prying eyes. You take him in. Fucking tall and broad, outlined in pale flickering silver. He’s arguing with a young Corellian, sticking his finger in the male's face threateningly, other hand hovering menacingly over his blaster, and you can’t help but snicker. Surly beast, that he is. There is a large part of you that does not want him to see you, who had hoped you’d never again come across him, and then a quieter, but infinitely harder part of you to ignore…

The helmet snaps towards you suddenly, as if sensing your attention, cocks to the side – very much like some predatory animal casting sights on its next meal – his next bounty. You don’t need further warning, you spin on your heel and start in the opposite direction. Heart knocking on the walls of your chest to be let out, let me out, let me out, I want to go with him, cunt going tight and wet, ridiculous, desperate.

A chant that sings: again, again, again, chase me again. Catch me again. I don't know you, but I missed you anyway. I remember you, and I want you.

That dark, red thread snaps taut again, humming with the song of your fates. You already know how this is going to end. How you want it to end.

You always know how everything is going to end.

You pick up your pace, trying to confuse him with your turnarounds, sliding through the alleys and archways and scurrying around corners quickly, and then on one particularly slippery turn, there he is. An impenetrable wall of beskar that you’re slamming into, jarring your brain within your skull, shaking your heart in the cage of your ribs, jostling an impish little giggle out of you.

A pause to catch your breath, he’d cut around and surprised you somehow, “Mandalorian.”

“Brat.” You laugh, his voice is still the same. The depth of it, not a figment of your imagination.

“Fancy meeting you here. On holiday?” You croon, dragging a single, provoking finger across his chest plate, stepping closer to him, pressing up on your tiptoes to grin up at him. You listen to his huff of vexation through the modulator. Oh, don’t pretend, shiny. I know you love this too.

“What are you doing here? Corellia isn’t safe.” Stern, stern tone. If you’d let him huff and puff at you, you’re sure he would.

You roll your eyes at him, as if anything on this planet could do any real harm to the likes of you. “Oh, don’t I know it. I’ve caused the greatest trouble while I’ve been here. It’s been terrible fun.”

He shakes his head down at you disapprovingly, one hand propped on his hip like he’s gearing up to chastise you, readying that menacing finger to shake at you too. You shimmy up against him some more, pressing your breasts up against his chest plate, and you listen to a whisper soft groan vibrate through that impenetrable mask. Not so impenetrable as to keep you out, though, so it seems. You tuck the tips of both hands into the top edge of his breast plate to pull your own face up towards his, and even then, he still has to crook his neck down to look at you. He doesn’t buckle, not even a little bit, under the weight of you trying to hang off of him. You feel one of his hands come up to cup the sharp edge of your elbow, and even through the thick fabric of your dark tunic and the leather of his gloves, his touch feels like fire, like the Force. Stronger than anything else in the whole universe. For some reason, you can feel that deep well of power within you stir at the sight of him, at his touch, like a swirling pool of magma, waiting to rise up and spill out unencumbered. You feel on edge, stretched thin and held together only by frayed seams.

“Did you miss me, Mandalorian?” He tugs you slightly further into the shadow of the building’s side looking up and around the two of you for one moment, oh, yes, yes, yes, again, again, making sure your surroundings are clear.

“You like to be chased,” he says back.

“I like to be caught.”

“By me.”

“By you.” Truth.

“Only me.” It seems he’s finally learned to flirt.

You step up onto his big boot with the tip of one small foot, really trying to climb him in earnest now, bringing yourself up even closer to him, and he wraps his other hand around your waist beneath your cloak, the tips of his long fingers splayed over the top swell of your ass to press your pelvis into his. You bury your nose into the folds of his cape around his throat, breathing in the warm, masculine scent of him, hooking an arm around the back of his neck. You want to kiss him.

“Last time, you said, maybe next time. Is that now?” You breathe into that dark space beneath his helmet’s edge.

You listen to his soft groan, the two of you pulling each other in even closer, trying to meld yourselves to each other, liquid metal’s mixing, beskar melted and writhing amidst fire and flame, and as you’re about to beg him to find another dark alcove for the two of you, you sense them at the same time that his helmet snaps up and to the side, right as they’re descending upon the shadows where you’re hidden, too late to block their blaster fire as they open upon the two of you without any sort of protection to shield yourselves with. Your reaction time is delayed blocking their attack, distracted by him, by his touch, and too long since you’ve openly and freely wielded your power, and he spins, suddenly, huge frame hunching over your smaller one to protect you from the onslaught, to shield you. You hear the bolts of plasma make contact with the beskar over his back, and then his harsh, pained groan as they meet the unprotected places between the gaps in his armor. You spot the Corellian he was arguing with before, over his shoulder.

A savage growl rips from his throat as his knees buckle, and you wrap one arm around his strong waist, trying to hold him up as he struggles to remain upright. He’s been hit badly in the side, you feel the hot seep of his blood spill. You raise your other hand over his shoulder then, a furious seeping coil starting to move through your body.

“You’re hit,” you whisper up at him. One of his hands claws at your shoulder, he’s so heavy, while the other braces against the wall behind you, trying to remain upright.

“My blaster,” he snarls, “Take my blaster. Run.”

“It’s alright,” you say calmly, even though you feel anything but. You can feel his life force literally seeping out of him, and you’re hit, square in the face, with the realization of how truly strong he is. He is so potent, so alive, that his presence in the Force is almost a physical thing despite his lack of powers. The Force lives through us all, and he is powerful, all in his own right, purely for the vitality of him.

He is strong and good, and that seeping coil turns into a ravenous howl.

There is a group of five organics of varying species surrounding the two of you, frozen by that lifted hand of yours. It closes into a fist, and three of them fall instantly dead, minds pulverized under the force of your power. The edges of your vision go slightly dark.

“It’s going to be alright,” you say gently to him again. His hand on your shoulder is twisting painfully into your clothes, your joint straining beneath his strength, and he shakes you sharply, trying to push you away. “Fucking go. Why aren’t you moving?” One of his knees buckles, his voice wavers. He’s bleeding out so fast. You grip him beneath his elbows and start to slowly help him lower to the ground. One of his knees suddenly gives out, cracking harshly against the hard ground beneath. “What are you doing?” There’s a flavor of desperation infusing his tone. As if he’s worried for you. As if he is worried for you. “There are too many of them, and I’m–” His voice cuts off with a choked snarl of agony. He’s hurt, he’s hurt. You need to move quickly, or he’s going to die.

“It’ll be alright, Mandalorian. Wait here. I’ll be right back for you.” He says something more, something growled that sounds suspiciously like, fucking hate it when you say Mandalorian like that, can’t kriffing do as you’re told, but your attention is no longer on him. You step in front of him, blocking the sight of his fallen form from the two remaining, soon to be dead, males. You cast a wide net of the Force around the four of you. Besides the three dead bodies, there is nothing else awake and lurking in the shadows for about a two kilometer radius. Lovely.

The Corellian is obviously the leader. You look towards the other first, a big, ugly Trandoshan, and as you set your sights on him, you release him from his paralysis, giving him a moment to get his bearings and reach for his blaster. He scrambles to pull it from its holster and fires directly at you. And at your once again raised hand, the beam of plasma freezes mid air in a thrumming, angry screech of red magma. You listen to the Trandoshan’s horrified gasp, watch his eyes go wide and terrified through your splayed fingers, “You’re–”

“Yes. I am.” You send the blaster beam back in his direction with a slight flick of your wrist, piercing him directly through the throat, and leaving a wide, smoking hole of charred flesh clean through its ugly neck. The body falls to the damp street with a harsh thud.

“And you?” You turn toward the Corellian. “Were you his bounty?” His eyes are frenzied, manic, terrified, “Ah, Sith got your tongue?” The acrid scent of urine permeates the air, and you let out a barking little chirp of a laugh. You can feel the Mandalorian fading behind you, struggling to stay alert. No time to play with your food. There is a part of you, small or large, you can’t tell now, in the haze of the Force overwhelming you after not having used it like this in so long, that is worried that this is a step in the wrong direction. You haven’t killed in a long time – not since that last one. No – don’t think of it. Not now. Not with him here. And perhaps, this is a step in the wrong direction, a step backwards, but there’s really no choice. They’ve hurt him.

You have no choice other than this.

You reach for your lightsaber strapped into a holster low on your thigh, an inconspicuous place where you can hide it in the dark folds of your clothes. You’ve not wielded one since your escape, since that last time. Your heart beats painfully in your chest, and you can’t tell if it’s more of a blood hungry sort of excitement or out of fear for him, lying wounded behind you.

“No… I’m just kidding.” A girlish little giggle, “I’m not a Sith anymore. Don’t worry. If I were still that, I’d draw this out. Make you suffer for a very, very long time for hurting him.” You pull something from your person then, and the night is filled with the crackling hissing sound of an igniting lightsaber. He’s never seen one in person before – only heard of them in stories. The dark street illuminated with the bright light of a violet colored plasma cross guard that sputters and wavers furiously, unstable, like the sound of metal being clawed to shreds. Despite the protection of his helmet, Din squeezes his eyes shut for an instant, afraid that the bright light would blind him, sear his retinas from their sockets.

You are a burning effigy washed in the violet light of righteous fury as you stalk slowly towards his, soon to be dead, bounty. Din has no power, but if he did, he is certain that he would be able to feel your presence in the Force as surely as he feels the blaster hole in his flank. Even powerless, he’s sure he can feel the humming waves of your strength brushing up against his armor clad form.

“She’s never been wet before.” Your voice is inexplicably lovely, soft and lilting. It had been the first thing he’d noticed about you, after those hypnotizing eyes that had terrified him for the intensity of feeling they conveyed, the two warring colors, one lighter than the other, one cast in perpetual darkness and the other so vibrantly bright it almost glows. The way they’d enthralled him, forced him to go after you that night on Nevarro, if only so that he could look into them one more time. “You’ll be my first blood with this – I made her just recently…” You say casually, lifting the lightsaber up to appreciate it between the two of them. The Corellian is frozen still, and Din assumes that you’re holding him so. You’d killed all the rest without so much as a blink. You’d stopped the fucking blaster bolt mid air. Din has never witnessed such a thing in his entire life. He thinks, for a brief moment, that perhaps, he should be frightened, or worried. He’s bleeding out, he’s dying, prone on the ground and vulnerable, and this girl is of a capacity he’s never encountered thus far in all his travels through the galaxy.

But he is not.

For some reason, the Mandalorian is not afraid.

“Pretty, no?” You croon at the Corellian, and if Din was of a sound mind, and not currently delirious from blood loss, he’s sure he’d not have felt that twinge of ridiculous jealousy twist through his gut at hearing you give that soft voice to another male. You twirl the blade so fast he scarcely catches it, then lets your wrist fall, the angry buzzing tip of plasma touches the ground so it screeches and hisses. You seem to deflate for a second, arms hanging limply at your sides, and shake your head at him. “You hurt him,” you say so softly he has to strain to hear through the haze of blood loss. He’s fading. He does not want to leave you alone. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

You should not have to face this alone.

Another lightning fast twist of your wrist, the violet beam an arc of pure light through the night’s dark air, and then: “He’s mine.”

You slice the Corellian diagonally from hip to shoulder. Din does not think the creature even has a moment to realize what’s been done to him before the two halves of its body are sliding clean and wet against each other and crumpling to the ground with a sickening thud.

When you turn back to look down upon him, your eyes are filled with so much fear and hurt and desolation, and Din must close his own eyes to shutter himself away from the terrible sight of your pain. He never wants to see that look in you again.

You seem to be a complicated amalgamation of a woman. At once strange and mercurial and violent. Wholly unreachable, unknowable. And then at the next moment: frightened, tender, soft. With a vulnerability that brings every protective, fighting instinct out in Din. Everything that makes him a Mandalorian. Everything that he holds so dearly within his Creed, you call to, after only one meeting in the dark. To protect you, to care for you, to venerate you. And the shroud of loneliness, the air of other that surrounds you, as if you’d never known the soft touch of a caring hand, the loving embrace of a mother – calls to the very same things within Din’s own soul. The same things he’d never had but always wanted. They were the same, and yet, so vastly different. Existing on two separate ends of the galaxy's spectrum. Creatures meant to be enemies, perhaps, to kill each other. And yet here he found himself, prostrate and bleeding on the ground as you defended his life. Entirely at you mercy.

And now you’ve saved him.

His eyes flutter shut once again, consciousness winking away.

He’s as heavy as a star blasted bantha, and you feel that your bones will surely crack and crumble to dust beneath the weight of him leaning over your shoulder while you try to get him coherent enough to move his legs and walk. While at the same time, as inconspicuously as possible, trying to use the Force to support him on his other side, a tendril of power applying pressure to the ragged, bleeding hole in his side without drawing too much attention to yourselves. And then, also, of course, with the added strain of tugging the two separate halves of his bounty behind you, wrapped in some discarded tarp you’d found because even bleeding out and two paces away from dropping dead he’d still had the wherewithal for a muttered, don’t leave my bounty. If you roll your eyes at him any harder they’d surely fall right out of your skull.

You are a small human, and he is a big, big man. Who is currently providing absolutely no help.

“Kriffing come on, Mandalorian. You’ve got to help me out here. You’re heavier than a fucking rancor covered in all this metal.”

You see him shake his head out of the corner of your eye, trying to stir himself into coherence, “How did you do that?” He slurs.

“You’re fucking heavy,” you whine, drawing out the vowel at the end and ignoring his question.

You hear a small huff of air pass through the modulator, “You’re just too– too small.” His words are too slow, his voice too weak. You try and propel the two of you forwards faster.

“Psshh, don’t provoke me, or I’ll drop you.”

“How’d you– you do that? T– Too small…” A pained, savage snarl as he stumbles. You exert more of the Force to prop him up. Fuck it, if someone notices the two of you, you’ll just kill them. What’s one more after you’d just gone and done away with five in one fell swoop after months and months of nothing – of peace?

You’re sure your mind, and that disgustingly soft heart that’s been trying to force its way to life inside of your chest recently, will make you pay for this later.

“I’m a wizard,” you deadpan. You’re sweating beneath your heavy layers, slightly dizzy from exerting so much power so quickly. You’re beginning to think that going completely cold bantha steak and cutting yourself off from the Force had been a mistake. You feel wrung out and stretched thin and weak.

“No– not, little one,” he stutters.

“That’s it. I’m dropping you.” But you clutch your arm tighter around his waist, pressing your cheek up against the space between his shoulder pauldron and the edge of his chest plate. You can feel the sweltering heat from his skin steaming through the heavy material of his underweave.

“Are not.” You can hear the wet gasps of his panting breath under the helmet, and the sleeve of the arm you have wrapped around his waist feels soaked through with his blood. You don’t know how he’s still conscious and making the best attempt he can to walk after all this.

“Maker, what do you eat, beskar for breakfast also? Just tell me where your damn ship is before more of those mudscuffers find us.”

“Landing bay seven,” And you thread your fingers through the hand of the arm he’s got slung over your shoulders, tightly. You have to move faster. You have to make him be okay. But despite your anxiety and desire to rush, the two of you make your way slowly through the Corellian alleyways. Him, struggling to remain upright, you, trying desperately to not make your invisible strength entirely obvious.

And you fail to notice the slithery little Twi’lek, watching the two of you from the shadows, completely unaware that she will await your return to Corellia for a long, long time to come.

Dragging his heavy ass in through the open hatch of his, believe it or not, piece of shit pre Imperial gun ship, with a grumbled, nice hunk of junk, that all he’d been able to counter with was a defensive hiss, as your arms were about to snap off under his weight, feels like a singular sort of victory after what the two of you had just gone through. His feet stumbling over one another, he’s just on this side of consciousness when you finally make it within the safety of his ship. He melts into a crashing heap of beskar on the durasteel floor, and you finally let go of the disgusting weight of the dead Corellian, as you move quickly to shut yourselves inside, engaging the security system and motion sensors, lest someone else decide to catch the two of you unawares. Spinning quickly back towards him to start ripping the beskar plates off his chest to get to his injury. You quickly realize that the armor is held together by complex magnetics hidden beneath each piece and swiftly disengage those over his chest and abdomen. He’s got on a thickly woven underweave beneath the underplates, and you make quick work of unfastening the closures on that, as well, but when you’ve reached the last layer of his clothing, a thin, dark undershirt, you pause. The material is warm and soft and worn, something you’re sure he must don all the time and meticulously maintain and care for, like all the other pieces of the intricate uniform of his Creed. A Creed which you’re not certain you’d be breaking by looking upon the uncovered skin of his chest and abdomen. But he’s dying, you think, and you have to save him, and you can feel the physical and intangible manifestations of that slow crawl towards death in the spill of his hot blood on your hands, slowly drooling onto the metal floor, as well as the slow seep of his life force out into the ether. He’s dying, and you have to save him.

You push the last layer, keeping him covered from your eyes, up his chest. The blaster wound is a ragged mess of blood and charred flesh, to his right flank. The trajectory positioned high in the upper quadrant of his abdomen so that you’re fairly certain it must have nicked his liver. You probe gently at the wound inside with a tendril of the Force, and your panic ricochets up to a shrill crescendo within you – yes, he’s hit badly, a laceration to the uppermost corner of the organ. You move to stand quickly, sweating and stumbling in your panic towards the compartments along the walls of the hull, ripping open drawers and cabinets until you come across his med kit. There are bacta injections, hard to come by, but of course he’s well supplied – you can only imagine the collection of injuries he must have gathered throughout his travels, and patches inside, and you return to kneel at his side, knees cracking painfully against the cold, hard floor as you fall next to him. Hands shaking, vision slightly blurry, you pop the cap off of the syringe, and try and take deep steadying breaths as you pull down the neck of his shirt to get at the uppermost part of his shoulder. When you press the aggressive looking needle into his skin he jerks, and the sound of the helmet rolling against the floor has your eyes shooting up to his face, “It’s okay,” you try and soothe. “You’re going to be okay. I’m going to fix this.” You press down on the plunger slowly, watching the bacta slowly make its way from the glass barrel into his arm. He gives a low groan of pain as the thick substance enters his muscle. Please, please, work. Please, you have to be okay. You pause for a second once the injection is done, watching the shallow, quick hiccups of his breath, the rapid dip of his abdomen, as if he’s struggling to continue the act, in pain. Fuck. You rip open one of the bacta patches and carefully place it over the gaping wound, reaching for two more after that to make sure the entire large circumference of the hole in his side is covered, and then go still. His breathing is still rapid and shallow, almost gasping, and you take in, for the first time, the entire vision of his naked chest and abdomen. Thick, strong waist, tapering down into slim hips, smeared in the dark vermillion of his blood, you watch the shifting of his abdominal muscles beneath his smooth, golden brown skin. You’d pushed his shirt high up on his chest, but you grip the edge to pull it down a little lower, making sure he’s only as uncovered as necessary. You’re not entirely sure how quickly the bacta should work – why isn’t he waking up, why isn’t he saying anything, why isn’t his breathing normalizing?

“Mandalorian,” you whisper, and the helmet shifts the tiniest bit towards the sound of your voice, the fingers of his left hand twitch and curl inwards. You place your other hand low on his belly, the edge of his shirt still gripped in your hand and scoot closer to him, your bent knees pressed into his hip. “Please–” you whisper and you realize your cheeks are wet, tears making a slow stream down your face. Your voice breaks, “Please, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” You don’t know why you’re apologizing, but you know that this is your fault. You distracted him, led him on that ridiculous chase. He’d have captured his bounty and been safely on his way if it weren’t for you. “I’m sorry. Please, I’m so sorry.” Not again, please, I can’t have done this again. You let your head hang forward, your torso bending slightly so that your forehead is pressed into his hip as you let your desperate and pathetically terrified tears fall. This is your fault. One more terrible thing come at your hands.

If you could only – don’t even think it, you do not possess the capacity for that sort of goodness – but the hopeless thought worms its way into your mind anyway, if you could only heal him with the Force. But you’d never possessed that sort of ability, only the strongest of Force users could wield their power for healing, and despite the fact that you can still feel the deep well of your power churning in your veins right now, after your brutal display on the streets of Corellia, you know that such a thing is beyond your capability. Such an act only possible to those with great aptitude for light wielding or those dark siders who were willing to pay a great and terrible price, that of stealing vitality from another being to enact such a power.

And you hate yourself more in this moment than all the others. You wish desperately, painfully that you could be a different sort of person, a different sort of monster. That you could be good. That you possessed the ability to do good with this Force that roils through your veins, and that should have helped you, but had only ever truly hurt you.

What is the point of this great power within you, you think, if you cannot wield it in this most necessary of moments? In this instance when, more than any other, you wish you had the strength of the Force to heal him. With your head still pressed to his hip and your hands still on his chest and belly you open your eyes to watch your tears roll over his tan skin. I’m sorry, you think again, I wish you had never come across me. You watch the slow journey of your tears as they slide across his hip and drip silently down onto the floor of the hull, mixing with the dark crimson of his spilled blood.

You’ve never been one for much faith in any sort of higher power, too many times in your life when you’d wished for something greater than you to come and save you gone unanswered, but you pray to the Maker in this moment that the Mandalorian survive this, please, please, he is good, please, let him survive this. Your eyes flutter closed, you feel the sweep of your lashes against his warm skin, and you pray to the Force and the Maker and any other entity out there in the vast, unending galaxy that a creature such as this, one who is strong and valiant and good, not be felled by an association with the likes of you. And as you think, please, just this one thing, just this one time, I’ll never ask for anything else ever again if you only save him now, you feel that space deep within you, where the very nectar of the Force lives in your soul, shift and churn, and it is as if one of the very building blocks of the core material that makes you what you are, slides out of that place and slots itself into him. Plugging away at the gaping, life threatening wound and mending his torn flesh and healing that which had been savaged. You feel the very fibers of him stitch themselves back together at that outpouring of yourself into his own body, and he has a piece of you now, even if he is unaware, even if, perhaps, he would not want it, you’ve given yourself to him in a way you’ve not ever done with anyone else before. Slotted yourself within him and plugged his wound away to heal him.

You feel your body sag into his, all strength suddenly leaving you, but you force your muscles into movement and push yourself up off of him so that you can look up at his helmet covered face. His breathing suddenly stutters, and you freeze, your heart screaming in panic, but then he takes one long, deep breath, the wings of his rib cage flaring wide, and the rhythm returns to a slow, measured cadence. You take in the expanse of his strong abdomen, muscled, but also slightly soft around his belly button, the tantalizing trail of hair that disappears into his trousers. There are old scars and rough patches of poorly mended skin scattered across him, but his skin is also still soft and smooth and warm. His body is a weapon all on its own, battle hardened and made strong and resilient out of a necessity for survival, and beautiful. Above all else, he is beautiful. His long limbs are splayed wide on the durasteel floor. His cape is tangled around his throat and shoulders, and you move to pull the trapped folds from around his neck, giving him more freedom to breathe deeply. You tug the fabric down to spread out at his side so that you can lay on top of it. Your head is spinning now, your heart beating so fast you feel the rebounding rush of your blood in your eardrums. You’ve overexerted yourself, drawn too much power too quickly. Head spinning, vision going slightly dark at the edges, you feel a sharp, piercing pain behind your left eye, and your arms give out as you let yourself curl into a ball at his side, tucked into the crook of his underarm beneath his splayed limb. Right before you lose consciousness, you remember to pull his shirt down the rest of the way. He should be covered when he awakens, you don’t want him to worry that you’d violated him in any way, looked at his face or seen more of him than was absolutely necessary. He should feel reassured. You do not want him to be worried or afraid.

When consciousness finally winks away, like a singular dying star in the vastness of space, your fingers are still twisted in his shirt over his belly.

Chapter III

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#TCC fic #din djarin #din djarin x reader #din djarin fanfiction #din djarin x you #din djarin/reader #din djarin/you #the mandalorian x you #the mandalorian fanfiction #the mandalorian #star wars fanfiction #pedro pascal #pedro pascal characters #din djarin smut #din djarin angst #din djarin imagine #the mandalorian smut

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preciouslandmermaid · 4 months

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of songbirds, swords, and spice masterpost

tags: slow burn, slow build, friends-to-lovers, trauma, eventual sexual content, angst, humor, canon-typical violence, found family, polyamory, falling in love, POV multiple, reader-insert, action/adventure, past abuse mentioned, eventual romance, touch starved, PTSD, battle couple, devil fruit reader, hurt/comfort, mulit-chapter fic, no use of Y/N (future chapters will include tws + additional tags)

rating: mature/explicit

🏴‍☠️ read on AO3 🏴‍☠️

summary: You've performed at Le Cupidon Doré, your "grandmother" Estella's business, for the past four years. Every full moon, you step onto stage and enchant the patrons and collect their hard earned berry. Tonight is no different. It isn't.

Until you realize another devil-fruit eater is in the crowd. Fate, as you've learned, has a bad habit of mucking things up just when you were starting to get comfortable.

🌙 chapter one: Nightingale Island! Performance of the singing moon! 🌙 chapter two: Performance cut short! Arrival of the Bloody Bandits! 🌙 chapter three: Estella's Dream! The Straw Hats Look for Pandora's Box! 🌙 chapter four: Journey into Raven's Crag! The Puzzle Box's Deadly Protector! 🌙 chapter five: Celebration Aboard The Going Merry! 🌙 chapter six: The Songbird's Enemy Returns! 🌙 chapter seven: 🌙 chapter eight: 🌙 chapter nine: (other chapters/titles to be added)

extras: moodboard //

#one piece fanfiction #reader insert #zoro x reader #zoro roronoa x reader #zoro x you #sanji x reader #sanji x you #vinsmoke sanji x reader #vinsmoke sanji x you #zoro x sanji #zoro x sanji x reader #zoro x sanji x you #sanji x zoro #sanji x zoro x reader #opla fanfic #one piece live action fanfic

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skyistheground · 4 months

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DIVINE INTER RETRIBU TION

or: random times random gods screwed themselves over with their own actions

iterators featured: (1) three star songs (mine) (2) lost in the dark @meatcatt (3) old wisdom waltz / pearl for a tale (mine) (4) prismatic dream @meatcatt

thought process behind this below because i am normal

all of them needed halos, because that is honestly one of the most godly looking part of their puppets. i wanted to play around with the positioning and look to display each of their demises

three star songs: She was specially built for bioengineering, and she gave herself the rot by carelessly experimenting on her own cells (swapped some of her cells with a slugcat's-- everything grew out of control and turned into rot). When the rot was small, she ignored it, thinking it would be fine, and take care of itself. It didn't. She dies for her own mistake. her halo is fading away, symbolizing her slow death

lost in the dark: lost once came into contact with a being known as void shattering star, a sort of manifestation of the void. she ended up being coerced into doing experiments with vss, being granted knowledge and incredible power, but having to deal with the attitude of a ravenous, barely conscious void being. her seemingly erratic behavior and self modification terrified her ancients, and they tore her puppet from the structure. lost is now a body without a brain-- unthinkingly preforming its structure functions. her halo bleeds away into the void, taken away by it

old wisdom waltz / pearl for a tale: waltz created pearl for a tale, an iterator virus who was originally indented to dispatch an abusive senior, but grew sentient and turned back on waltz's entire group, then themselves. pearl decided to keep waltz alive, puppeting them to try and infect more iterators. at some point, pearl wanted to be a more permanent part of waltz, to discourage their removal. so pearl took over waltz's living functions (hence the heartbeat sound behind them). the halo belongs to pearl now, because of the takeover

prismatic dream/shard: prismatic is an experimental iterator built with two personalities (prismatic shard, prismatic dream). they primarily made purposed organisms. shard was often the one to make the creatures, while dream took care of the creatures and recorded them. their city begun to think of them as a deity to be worshipped. one of their ancients, known as the administrator, manipulated prismatic in order to climb the power hierarchy in their city. dream is damped by the administrator, deemed too soft to fit his image of a god. at some point, the administrator wants taboos taken from prismatic in order to preform more functions. at a certain point, sick of the abuse, dream kills the administrator. the two then spiral into an actual god complex (along with a different incident, but no time for that), which they feel incredibly pressured to keep up. their halo is very large, radiant, more typically "divine"

divine intervention! gods (iterators) did things. divine retribution! it backfired.

#rain world #rw #oc: tss #oc: litd #oc: oww #oc: pfat #oc: psd #my art #my ocs #lets goooooo i drew #id in alt #body horror #death #eyestrain #eyes #scopophobia

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shorthaltsjester · 8 months

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honestly as someone who has been in various fandoms for a long time now and who also watched campaigns 1 and 2 without really getting into cr fandom it isn’t Shocking but it is annoying how often people will look at the stories that cr tells and make absolute claims about the goodness of characters (goodness here meaning Moral goodness, not I Like This character and think it’s well made goodness, which is a separate post entirely). particularly regarding the gods and pc parents. and honestly like, typically in fandom i get annoyed by people bending over backwards to woobify characters who are active in their choice to be unkind and generally horrible but in the cr fandom it’s tended to be the opposite where like. a character is just. a human being (in the sense of being Average not in the sense of Fantasy Races) and huge swaths of the fandom act like that’s the most unforgivable thing someone can be. and maybe it is, but one of the most powerful things about fiction is that it tends to encourage people to expand their empathy and exercise their ability to forgive. because fictional characters, no matter how much people like to project onto them, tend not to cause anyone harm, so it’s easier to learn how to forgive and accept things you don’t understand without also villainizing them.

this is mostly prompted by the recent 4sd and the fact that matt’s response to what’s up with the dawnfather was a very insistent “He’s not bad!” and also seeing the online reaction to the mention that the matron would punish vax for saving keyleth that has taken the as usual completely bonkers tune that the raven queen (Who When Met With A Brother Asking A God To Kill Him In Favour Of His Sister, Gave Him A Job, and Later Extended His Natural Life To Help Protect The World And Have More Time With His Family And Allowed Him To Visit His Sister On Her Wedding Day) is a horrible evil abusive bitch of a god. like. can we grow up? can we understand the world and fiction that represents the multitudes of experiences found in it in shades of grey? is that too much to ask (i know it is).

but also specifically the like Extremely Adamant way that both matt and laura were like no no no no relvin isn’t Horirble he’s average. he’s not good he’s just. he’s A father, not a good or bad one. and on the surface it’s hilarious that they’re both so like. enthused to point out that he’s Average because typically when people respond to a claim of a characters badness with the level of immediacy they both did it’s a rebuttal of “no, this character is good actually.” but it was just to affirm that relvin did harm imogen, but not because there’s some aspect of his character that is inherently cruel or especially Bad. and like. yeah actually. yeah you should react like that to a claim that this average person who Has hurt someone, the way that nearly every single person has hurt someone in a way they cannot repair, with immediacy to say this person is a Person and thus imperfect and capable of great harm, but that isn’t some all encompassing judgment on their morality or capability to also do good or be fine.

anyway this is kinda just a rant post but also is just me saying i’m very grateful that when surrounded by a fandom that tends to paint characters as Good or Bad and even while using a game that can encourage that with its alignment system, cr has always told stories that see goodness as a persistent choice that might sometimes falter and that can be chosen even after a lifetime of Badness. i can’t remember exactly what the quote was so forgive me if it’s incorrect but when jester is talking to caleb after he claims he’s not a very good person and she says “good people do bad things sometimes. even bad people do good things.” that’s it! that’s one of the most consistent themes across campaigns. and yet.

#on fandom #cr tag #i just. maybe it’s the philosophy major in me but. good grief the shit some of y’all say about morality and then turn around and ignore #what you’ve just said. good grief #lately it’s specifically been the people who support liliana (i too love evil women) and act like she tripped and fell into her current #position. and then turn around and call relvin an abusive devil #like. sorry which one has been manipulating imogen. which one abonded her?#that’s besides the point. my point is. the words good and bad are meaningless.#the good placeism. is this character trying to be better today than they were yesterday #this is the imogen temult problem actually. like yes she Chooses to be good. but that is only a choice because we have Seen her be selfish #and cruel and manipulative. if i had to choose to call imogen good or bad i’d of course choose good. but that undermines so much of #what makes her ‘goodness’ actually compelling.#honestly same with fjord. like his character as a charismatic paladin who fights for Good™ is comtextualised by having seen his journey #like. otherwise he’d be boring.#like. if any cr main character was just Good or just Bad. i promise it would not be as popular as it is #critical role

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stick-ball · 6 months

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Hi! I'm about to end my whole career!

Here goes the Riko rant that dear @capcavan asked, demanded and begged for.

You know, I get it.

So here's the thing. I get it, Riko sucks. He is the bad guy we all got hung upon. Why? Because he is a rival for our protagonist. He is an angsty, young guy, born into wealth that came from money laundering and human trafficking. It's despicable, the Ravens are bullies and he himself makes lots of bad things happen. Yeah sure, I get that, whatever.

Being raised as a superstar must've been really, really difficult for you.

But I want to really dig deeper right now, this is a Riko rant after all, and you need to really know your fighters. So, to start: a huge trap in toxic families is that the children, even when grown up, will refuse to identify their parents and guardians as negative and toxic people. Not even outside influence can really sway them, usually. Kids that get away from a sinister situation can later tell they were abused, that it wasn't right, but still, they don't get the specifics of what and why, and they are doomed to repeat the same abuse and call it good. Call it right. And sometimes that's substance abuse, sometimes thats domestic abuse, sometimes that's racism and sexism and xenophobia they will grow into believing as the way the world works. Sometimes, thats nepotism and sadism. Only thing that can help is therapy and an environment removed from the control of the original abuse, lots of therapy, lots of space, years of it. A perfect case of a typical toxic family is Aaron.

A perfect case of that could also be Riko.

And here you can call bullshit because Neil had such a fucked up, abusive father and he *knew* it was wrong. Yes, he knew it was wrong for his father to hurt him to the measure he went. Why? Because his mother protected him, because his mother feared his father, not adored him. Because his mother took him away and kept running. A mother, a role model a child feels very strongly about, subconsciously.

Riko was taken from his mother. He was pushed aside by his father and left in the care of a family member, who was easy to glorify for an impressionable child. Because he was a legend. In fanon I often see Tetsuji's character taking a very background role in everything, and sure, he seems pretty background to Neil, because every bad guy seems background to Neil in comparison to his Father - besides Riko, who is the one dangling that threat in front of him. Tetsuji just wants his property back, Riko is playing with fire though. So yeah to us, reading the story, Tetsuji is a total asshole among many such men in the book.

But to Riko he must've meant almost everything for a long time. A crucial thing about Tetsuji is, he is a sadist. Oh sure, sorry, it's only called sadism when done against his team, right? Against Jean or Kevin or Neil? When it comes to Riko, who was in his care for all of his formative years, it was just strict childbearing right? He is a Moriyama after all, so he is evil from birth.

Yeah, I must've mixed something up about Riko being beaten to unconsciousness several times being mentioned in extra content. You think that was a one, two, third times the charm occurance?

Always a commodity, never a human being, not a single person in your family thinking you’re worth a damn off the court— yeah, sounds rough.

I always wondered how sarcastic Neil was saying this. I mean, he definitely meant to land a punch where it would hurt. And he actually knew Riko as a little kid, so he knew more than most.

Stockholm syndrome is very common among victims of childhood abuse. I would know, anyway. It's like the most logical option - the survivior is living in a dual reality. These people are my family, the care for me. They provide for me. They want me to be the best. They also abuse me. They hurt me, but it's for the best. Hurting me is a expression of love. I am grateful to them.

I often wonder how many people who read the books know what a commodity is. A commodity, in the most basic terms, is a basic good that can be used in ccommerce to interchange with goods of the same type. A commodity is not a king, or a queen, or a bishop or a knight, or even a rook. It's a fucking pawn. It's cannon fodder.

Riko is worthless to his family. Riko is just a tool to Tetsuji to generate profit. Riko wants to be worthy to his family. Riko most likely loves his uncle and is ready to do the most insane thing if only it gives him the one thing he desires, which is being seen as worthy by his family.

Kevin and I talk about your intricate and endless daddy issues all the time.

Then there's grooming. Grooming is more obvious when it's done by a stranger who sees the child randomly or in some intervals of time. It's much harder to resist when it's constant. To Riko, Tetsuji is a good person, he is a hero, he is his family, he cares for him, they have a common goal. Riko wants to be what Tetsuji wants him to be. There is a price to pay for it, of course. There is a price for everything. But the price doesn't matter. Riko wants to pay the price he has to pay, to be what Tetsuji wants him to be.

And the thing is, do you think Riko learned how to use his money and crime connections to control others? How to gain power through fear and pain? You think spending his whole life locked in a fucking stadium he taught it to himself how to break people in body and spirit? That torturing them was his special interest? Or maybe are you forgetting that amongst valid responces to trauma, besides fight, flight and freeze there is also fawn? Don't you think it's much more likely, being groomed and enamoured with his captor (bcs thats what Tetsuji is to me, their captor) he impersonated him to the best of his ability? That he learned every leaf in the book from him, because he was his only connection to the family, to his father, to his brother. He was a legend, the creator of exy. Wasn't he always trying to be worthy of him? To be good enough to be loved and wanted? To be great full enough?

I am not saying this absolves him of any of the things he did, but people do insane things under lesser influence, things they would never do otherwise. And I am not talking of people groomed from early childhood, I'm talking of sane adults, being dragged into dangerous and destructive ideologies.

I know it’s not entirely your fault that you are mentally unbalanced and infected with these delusions of grandeur, and I know you’re physically incapable of holding a decent conversation with anyone like every other normal human being can, but I don’t think any of us should have to put up with this much of your bullshit.

Because it isn't, is it? The things HE does ARE his fault, definately. But the reason why? That is not that easy to pinpoint. And Riko is so unstable it hurts. He is so far removed from real life he is completely incapable of conversation. He is a child brought up in a grave, but...

Pity only gets you so many concessions, and you used yours up about six insults ago.

To me Riko is besides all other things, wasted potential. All the things he dreamed of? He could have had them. He was talented, he was determined and had a lot of courage, but all of that was utterly wasted in the violence and malice he was soaked in. In all the violence and malice he created in return.

So please, please, just shut the fuck up and leave us alone.

The most interesting thing about All for the game though is, that in every other book Riko dying would've been the big bad wolf being defeated. But here, that's just a bleep on the radar. Because Riko was a product, not the producer. What I love about All for the game is it shows none of the madness and evil in life started or ended with me or you, with Riko or Neil. Not even with Keylight or Tetsuji. Fuck it did not even end with Nathan dying. It all ends how it begun. With a deal with the devil made in the back of a car, bought with blood money.

#i said what i said and you can cry about it #no vacuum storylines here thank you good-night l #this one is gonna make me so popular with enemies of the state i can feel it #riko moriyama #riko moriyama headcanon #aftg #all for the game #tfc #the foxhole court #aftg headcanon #aftg rant #trauma discussion

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withlovewriting · 5 months

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All I Ever Knew, Only You 9: When The Party's Over

Chapter Nine.

I wanna feel something, I wanna feel something, I drink to feel something, I sleep and feel nothing, Maybe that's where you come in, Maybe that's where you and I begin

Summary: Hawkins was your typical quaint, mid-western town where nothing ever happened. People were born here, lived their entire lives within the town limits, and eventually died here, peacefully in their sleep. But one cold November evening in 1983 would change everything.

Despite a child with psychokinetic abilities and ravenous monsters that lacked faces, stranger things had definitely happened in the small town in Indiana. One of them being your reluctant and slightly imposed friendship with Hawkins High’s own King Bee, Steve Harrington.

Characters: Steve Harrington x Non-descriptive F!Reader (eventual)

Words: 5,839

Chapter Warnings: Mentions of menstruation (not really a warning, but here you go), mild Nancy slander, Billy Hargrove getting a little too comfortable, derogatory name calling, strong language, mentions of scars, and insecurities regarding them, heartbroken Steve, reader is wasted, but more bonding.

Season's greetings, babes.

Series Warnings: Strong language, mentions of underage drinking, mentions of drug use, canon-typical violence, mentions of alcohol abuse, mentions of possible mental health disorders, child abuse, slow burn, kinda enemies-to-friends-to-lovers, I like to call it ‘two idiots who begrudgingly befriend each other only to realize… ‘wait a damn minute…’, eventual sexual content, no use of y/n, canon-typical time-period bullshit. 18+. Minors DNI.

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Chapter Nine: When The Party's Over

The exhaustion had finally got to you. That was the only plausible reason you had for entertaining Billy Hargrove for so long without swinging at his annoyingly pretty face.

You’d only approached him that morning to speak to Max as she exited his Camaro, but the boy had leered at you over the roof of the car the entire time as he puffed away on a cigarette. Unfortunately, he seemed to take that as an invitation to pester you for the rest of the day.

“I don’t have time for this right now, Hargrove.”

The sound of his boots hitting the linoleum flooring told you he wasn’t giving up any time soon, “It’s cool, I can walk and talk. I ain’t got nowhere to be.”

“I’m pretty sure you have a class to be in, actually,” you rolled your eyes, continuing your march to your destination.

“You know my schedule already? How sweet. But look, it’ll be my first party here in Hawkins, you gotta make it.”

Scoffing, you pushed onward toward the library. Somewhere you weren’t sure Billy knew existed, “I haven’t gotta do anything. Plus, Hawkins' parties are all lame. I wouldn’t hold your breath for this one to be different.”

“It’ll be a whole lot less lame with me there, sweetheart,” Billy was on your heels, practically trying to mount your back as you finally pushed through the doors, halting a little too quickly as the door hit the wall, which caused the boy to bump into your back as all eyes cast over you as he laid an arm over your shoulder, “Who knows, you might even crack a smile.”

Spinning on your heel and effectively removing yourself from the boy’s grip, you pushed at Billy’s chest — frown deepening when he barely moved an inch — and huffed, “I’m not in the mood, Hargrove. So leave me alone.”

Stomping off, your fingers dug into your bag as you held it against your chest as if it would magically stave off the unwanted attention from the surrounding students. Especially the attention of the boy with the coffee-colored eyes that you could feel boring into you from the moment you barreled into the room.

You hadn’t been actively avoiding Steve, per se. But with the embarrassment you felt last night still running hot under your skin, you didn’t have the willpower to be around him. You’d felt disconcertingly vulnerable under his unwavering gaze last night, and deep down, a part of you still expected to find him in the cafeteria with his old posse of jerks giggling at your expense.

Sure, he hadn’t bothered with Tommy or Carol since last year so your paranoia seemed unjust, but you knew old habits died hard.

“It’s not my fault you’re on the rag or something,” Billy shouted crudely across the library, clearly not trying to be subtle or considerate, before turning on his heels and making his way toward whoever his next victim was, ignoring the annoyed hissed whispers of the librarian.

You’d kept your head down throughout your free period and you could only be grateful that both Nancy and Steve had kept their distance. You had a history project to finish, and truth be told you hadn’t even started yet, and the distraction of Romeo and Juliet wouldn’t be much appreciated.

Once you were settled, you swiftly made your way across the room and toward the small supply office to browse through the encyclopedias, however you skidded to a stop when you pushed open the door only to come face-to-face with the boy you were absolutely not avoiding on purpose, and his girlfriend.

“Jesus, is nowhere in this school sacred to you two? Can’t you just go make out in the back of Harrington’s car like normal teenagers?”

The boy rolled his eyes at you as Nancy stepped out of his grasp, “I think we should tell Barb’s parents-”

With wide eyes, you scrambled into the room and shut the door behind you, already shaking your head, “Are you insane? We can’t tell Barb’s parents. We can’t tell anyone.”

“You were there, you saw what it’s doing to them.” Nancy was clearly in distress and although your heart went out to her parents, you couldn’t even begin to imagine the repercussions you’d all face if you were to open your mouths.

“I get it, Nance. Really, I do. But we can’t tell them anything. God knows what the Lab would do. What the government would do. The Byers and I would have to pay back the hospital fees and-”

“This isn’t about the money,” Nancy huffed, her head shaking as you stared at you with indignation, but you cut her off quickly,

“That’s because you grew up with a silver spoon shoved in your ass, Wheeler. Do you know what it would do to Mrs. Byers? To Will and Jonathan? To me? When you don’t have money, it factors into everything.”

Nancy was on the verge of tears, but you could flip a coin for which one of you was on the verge of hysteria, “We don’t have to tell them everything.”

This time, Steve spoke up, making his way to stand in between you both, “This isn’t some game, Nance. If they found out we told anyone… They could put us in jail, okay? Or worse, they could destroy our families. They could do anything they want, okay? Just think about what you’re saying.”

As Nancy’s bottom lip wobbled, you couldn’t help but feel guilty. But she knew — just as well as both yourself and Steve did — that she couldn’t tell a soul.

“It’s hard, but let’s…” Steve perched himself back on the table, a hand soothingly running up and down Nancy’s arm, “let's just go to Tina’s stupid party, wear our stupid costumes that we’ve been working on for a stupid amount of time, and just pretend like we’re stupid teenagers, okay? Can we just do that, just for tonight?”

Despite Steve’s attempt, Nancy didn’t seem pacified. In fact, she seemed dejected as she agreed to his plan before making her way out of the small room, not bothering to send you a second glance.

Releasing a deep sigh, the boy stood and ran a hand through his hair, leaning against one of the bookshelves as your shoulders sagged, “She’s going to get us all killed.”

“Don’t say that, alright? She’s just… She’s hurting.”

Clenching your jaw, you shook your head at the boy as you looked off to the side. Noting his thoughtlessness, he squeezed his eyes closed for a moment, “Not to say that you’re not too. But Nance just…”

“She feels guilty, Harrington. She feels guilty because she left Barb that night to shack up with you,” lifting a hand, you stopped him from interrupting you, “I’m not blaming her. Like, at all. Okay? I shouldn’t have left, and Nancy shouldn’t have let her leave. But we did, and telling her parents, putting everyone’s life at risk, isn’t going to change that.”

Steve remained quiet, but his eyes softened, and you knew he had to bite back whatever reassurance was sitting on the tip of his tongue. You didn’t want it, and you didn’t need it. It would only fall on deaf ears, anyway.

Instead, Steve’s head fell backward, a quiet thump that barely shook the rickety bookcase behind him.

“I think the party would do you some good, too. The new guy seems pretty insistent that you’re there.”

Scoffing, you moved toward the boy, leaning up to grab at the first encyclopedia your fingers grazed, unbothered by the letter. You watched as Steve’s Adam's apple bobbed, his eyes remained focused on you until you turned, strolling out of the small room, throwing the encyclopedia into your bag before making a hasty exit. The list of people you definitely weren’t purposely avoiding was growing by the minute.

“Hop, hey Hopper!” You called out, chasing down the man as he marched out of the station.

He stopped in front of his car, waiting as you pulled up on your bike, sans helmet. Again.

“Can this wait, Kid? I’m in a hurry-”

“I just… I wanted to double-check about the trick-or-treating thing tonight. I can make sure-”

“Aren’t you supposed to be in class?” Jim asked, peering down at his watch.

Chewing your lip for a second, you cleared your throat, “I have a free period.”

Cocking a brow, Hopper watched you silently for just a moment, “So if I called the school, they’d confirm that, right?”

“Confidential, I’m afraid. You’re not my parent or guardian so…” You sent him a haughty smirk, relishing the way his face pinched slightly.

“I’m the damn Chief of police, Kid. I can-”

“Trick-or-treating. Yes, or no.”

“If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a million times. No, and that’s final.”

Rolling your eyes, you pushed forward on your bike slightly and lowered your voice, “C’mon, Hop. You can’t treat her like a prisoner of war. You know what happens when you cage a dog?”

“The hell are you talking-”

“They start to bite. And when they finally get out, they start to run.”

Hopper lifted his hat to run a hand over his hair, a long, irritated sigh falling from his lips, and you knew he’d had this argument a million and one times with El, “I said no. End of. Now get back to school.”

“The hell is that smell?” you questioned, nose scrunched up as you tried to breathe through your mouth instead.

Pulling back the cover of Eugene McCorkle’s truck, you found yourself gagging as the awful, pungent smell of decay finally filled your nostrils, “That is why I’m in a hurry. Now if that’s all, I gotta go. And put a damn helmet on.”

Jonathan Byers didn’t cancel on you. In fact, he even offered to pick you up after finally deciding to allow his brother to trick-or-treat alone with his friends.

“She’s evil, I swear.” You told him as you searched through your mother’s chest of drawers, thankful she was out.

“She’s like… ten.” Jonathan laughed, leaning on the door frame, politely refusing to enter your mother’s bedroom.

Rolling your eyes, you continued to dig, “She’s actually nine, but still… Evil. We hit Cherry Street, and she managed to bully Mr. Benson into giving her three full-sized Butterfingers bars.”

Despite not seeing the boy's face, you could almost hear the amused smirk in his tone, “Oh, wow. I better call The Hawkins Post, let them know there’s a new Stalin about town.”

“Shut it, Byers.” Snatching up the yellow button-up shirt that you knew was hidden somewhere with a devilish smirk, you pushed yourself upright and almost skipped back to your room, the door shutting in Jonathan’s face before you began to change.

“You know, you don’t have to dress up, right?”

Jonathan didn’t hear your mumbled response as you pulled your black vest over your head, but a small huff of laughter fell from his lips when you finally opened the door, “Black Christmas?”

“You know that we still have time to ask Bob if you can borrow his Dracula costume, right?”

House keys half-shoved into your back pocket, you clambered into Jonathan’s Ford, already rummaging through his glove compartment to find whichever tape picked your fancy. The boy waited until you settled on a familiar yellow and black cassette.

Waiting until he pulled out of his driveway, and the second verse of Burning Down The House transitioned into the chorus, Jonathan — who had most definitely not asked Bob for his costume — finally asked the question that he had been swallowing down since his arrival at your house,

“Are you okay?”

His troubled glance burned a hole in the side of your face, but you refused to meet his eyes, “I’m fine, Jonathan.”

“This just… doesn’t seem your kind of thing.”

“And what, it’s yours?” You didn’t mean for it to come out so harsh, “Didn’t realize you were such a social butterfly, Byers.”

Sighing, Jonathan’s fingers tapped at the distressed steering wheel as he returned his gaze to the road, “I don’t know why the hell either of us are going. I mean, we’re going to hate at least 90% of the people there, right?”

Unable to hide the stretch of a smile from your lips, you finally chanced a look at the boy, grateful that his eyes remained focused on the road out ahead of him, “90%? Have you made friends that aren’t me?”

The boy shook his head, a small smile tugging at his own mouth as you grabbed the orange paper invitation that was sat on his dash, “And we’re going because we’re gonna be stupid teenagers, doing stupid things, at a stupid Halloween party. Plus, we’re gonna get sheet-faced, Byers.”

The party was in full swing by the time you’d arrived, and since you’d promised Jonathan that you’d be ready to leave by 9pm to pick up Will, you didn’t plan on wasting one second of your time.

Tina’s family home sat on Oak and First, and much like Steve Harrington’s house, it was huge and surrounded by the woods. Whilst it was great to know the chances of any neighbors calling the cops were minimal, one glance at the vast, dark treeline set you off enough to refill your cup. You didn’t know how much you’d had to drink, nor did you have any idea as to what was in the punch, bar Drew practically burping in your face that it was pure fuel. All you knew was that it tasted like grape juice. Grape juice with a lot of Tina’s parent's expensive vodka.

Turns out, Nancy was also on a mission to get absolutely wasted.

A loud cheer came from outside, and the chants of the new boy’s name could be heard even over the shredding of guitars of Motley Crew. You weren’t sure who had jacked Tina’s record player, but you were at least grateful that it was a break from back-to-back Madonna.

Ignoring the way Billy stared at you as he passed, making his way toward Steve and no doubt attempting to start trouble, you wobbled toward Jonathan, a drink in each hand.

“Oh shit, Siouxsie Sioux, right?”

The girl, Samantha — with whom you shared art class together — nodded, sending an amused, but tight smile, “Yeah. What are you?”

“Drunk,” Jonathan’s voice was loud next to you, “She’s drunk.”

Rolling your eyes, you purposely gulped down a large mouthful from your solo cup as you offered the other to Jonathan, “And you are sober. Time to catch up, Byers.”

“I’m driving,” shaking his head, Jonathan’s eyes darted around the party, and even in your drunken stupor, you knew who he was looking for.

So instead, you shrugged and took a sip from his cup, “Sucks to be you. Have a good night, Siouxsie.”

Stumbling around the party like Bambi on ice, you almost dropped both of your cups as Drew pushed past, his once rosy, alcohol-flushed cheeks now appeared to be tinged with the slightest shade of green as he rushed out toward the garden,

“Hey, Dipshit!” You halfheartedly yelled after him, eyebrows drawn together as you tried to decipher which one of the two Drews you were currently seeing was the real one, “Watch where you’re going!”

“Jesus, how much have you had to drink?”

Face still pinched, you turned to face the familiar voice, barely holding back the sigh that threatened to fall from you lips, “Oh God, it’s you.”

“Charming,” the boy scoffed, eyes darting around the room to find his girlfriend — who was merrily dancing away, her own drink high above her head — before he returned his attention to you, “Seriously though, you good?”

“I am great.”

Steve was certain it was the first time he’d ever heard you giggle.

Watching you like a hawk, Steve grabbed hold of the half-full red solo cup just before it met your lips, “I think you should slow down a little.”

“I think you should mind your own business, Steven.”

Finally managing to wrangle the cup from your grasp — which really wasn’t that hard considering your state — he placed it on the side, allowing his eyes to dart toward his girlfriend once more, “Is this about the other night? About the nightmares? Because I swear I didn’t-.”

“So you decided to show,” Billy’s smirk was wide, his eyes leering over you despite your outfit being pretty conservative, “You wanna try out the keg? You’re looking at the new King of Hawkins High.”

Your face remained stoic, unsure as to why Billy thought that would impress you, “I’m fine, thanks.”

“You wanna dance then?”

Nodding, you pointed at Billy, “Now that… That is something I wanna do.”

Steve watched as you took a large gulp from the cup he hadn’t seen, allowing Billy to begin to lead you toward the crowd. He called your name once, twice, three times, before you stopped, turning to watch him approach you with concern etched over his features, “C’mon, this isn’t like you.”

Sending the boy a sardonic smile that didn’t quite reach your eyes, you peeled his gentle grip from your elbow, “That’s the thing, Steve. You don’t know me. You don’t know me, at all.”

Even as you turned to walk away again, Steve called after you, his voice full of hurt, but Billy was the one to intervene this time, a condescending smirk tugging at his lips, “You heard the girl, Harrington. Go find your girlfriend.”

Lips pressed tightly together, Steve huffed and decided that if you didn’t want his help, he would in fact go find his girlfriend. Turns out, it wasn’t exactly hard as Nancy was standing by the punch bowl, helping herself to another drink.

The party was fun for a while, you wouldn’t bother to deny that, but it was only so long that you could handle feeling so out of control. The room was spinning, and you couldn’t tell if things were moving too slowly, or a little too fast, and you felt like you didn’t know up from down. The only grounding force you had was the chest pressed against your back as Billy held you against him, hips gyrating a little too promiscuously, not that you were in any state to notice.

The smell of sweat, smoke, and aftershave that was just a little too strong for your liking hit your nostrils before the pungent, overwhelming smell of alcohol covered it, “So who’d you come as?”

“Jess Bradford,” you mumbled, eyes closed and head resting against the boy as you swayed clumsily to Duran Duran, scoffing loudly when Billy questioned who that was, “You know, from Black Christmas? 'The calls are coming from the house.'”

“Why the hell are you dressed as someone from a Christmas film?”

Out of all the times you’d wanted to slap Billy, this might’ve been the one time you would’ve, had your hand-eye coordination been any good.

“I thought you might’ve come as something a little sexier, you know?” Billy’s lips grazed the side of your neck, the hairs from his mustache tickling you in the worst of ways, “Maybe a little pussycat, or a-”

“Why would a cat be sexy?” You slurred, body no longer moving to the music as you tried to clear your bleary vision, completely unaware of the argument that was going on back in the kitchen, “God, you’re so weird-”

The words died from your mouth as your whole body stood still in shock, one hand clutched against Billy’s wandering one as it grazed over your abdomen, hand shoved between your vest and your shirt. Pushing his hand away, you tried to create some kind of distance, but the boy wouldn’t allow for it, turning you in his grip instead,

“Hey, c’mon, don’t be like that.”

“I’m not being like anything, just get off of me. I wanna go home,” when the boy moved closer, a haughty smirk pulling at his lips, you shoved your hand limply to his chest as if to move him back, “Alone. I wanna go home alone.”

His smirk dropped instantly, eyes narrowing as he looked over you, “The hell is wrong with you? One minute you’re all over me, the next you’re acting like a total prude.”

“I wasn’t-” slurring, you wobbled slightly where you stood, expression pinched, “I wasn’t all over you. You… You were all over me.”

“Last I heard, a little bit of alcohol and you turn into the county slut-”

His words stopped abruptly as your hand connected with his cheek. Even though you were wasted and your arms felt like cooked spaghetti, the darkening in both his cheek and his eyes told you it had at least hurt a little,

“You wanna go home, then fine. Go. Nobody here gives a shit.”

Refusing to allow your bottom lip to wobble until you were outside and far enough away, you stumbled out of Tina’s house, refusing to make eye contact with any of the passersby. However much of a dick he was, Billy was right.

Nobody in that party cared. Jonathan was here for one reason, and whilst you couldn’t blame him, you knew you were just along for the ride. The only friend — the only true friend — you’d had, had been dragged into the pits of Hell by some monster. The same monster who’d left a permanent reminder on your body in the form of three large, ugly scars along your abdomen. The same scars that Billy had — albeit, unwittingly — ran his hand over as he tried to feel you up.

Making your way to the end of Tina’s drive, you plopped yourself down on the curb, cursing yourself as you rummaged around in your pockets for a cigarette, only to come up empty-handed.

The first tear fell, but you wiped it away almost viciously, refusing to allow any more to fall. But you were drunk and tired — both emotionally and physically — and you just wanted this night to be over. This year to be over.

A pair of white Nike trainers came into view, stopping directly in front of you and causing you to crane your neck.

There, with bloodshot eyes and flushed cheeks, stood Steve Harrington, his large hand held out in front of him, waiting to assist you up, “C’mon, I’ll drive you home.”

You both remained silent for the most part, your eyes drooping every so often, before shooting open when your head would bump the window, a quiet murmur of ‘sorry’ from the boy next to you.

Groaning, you forced your eyes shut, the image of the passing trees making you feel nauseous, “You’re not gonna hurl, are you?”

“No,” you hiccuped, swallowing down the excessive saliva that was building up in your mouth, “I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine,” the boy said quietly, eyes darting toward you as you curled in on yourself, sending him a half-assed glare.

“Yeah, well… Neither do you.”

A short, humorless laugh fell from his lips before he wiped at his nose, pinching the tip of it, “Yeah well, not everyone had as good of a night as you, I guess.”

“I don’t think having Billy Hargrove grinding against me is my definition of a good night.” Sighing, you ran your hand over your face, ignorant of any makeup you had probably smudged.

“Sure looked like you enjoyed it,” Steve’s eyes darted toward you, squeezing his eyes together for just a second, “I’m sorry. That was… Look, it’s none of my business, alright?”

Folding your arms over your chest, you leaned your head against the window, “You’re right. It’s not.”

Pulling up to your house, you noted your mother’s car gone from the small driveway, and you were willing to thank whatever higher power was out there until you stood patting your dark pants in an attempt to find your keys,

Thankfully, Steve was waiting until you were safely inside the house to pull away, but when you came up empty-handed he sighed and quickly exited his car, following you as you fumbled with the front room window, eventually turning your attention to the overgrown garden, “Just… Just get back in the car.”

“I’m sure I can get in through at least one window-”

Steve’s eyes widened, grabbing hold of your wrist as you lifted your arm, ready to throw a large rock you’d found straight through your bedroom window. Drunken logic, he assumed,

“Look, we don’t need to add breaking and entering to your charge sheet. Just… get back in the car. You can stay at mine.”

“It wouldn’t be breaking and entering if I’m breaking and entering my own property, dumbass,” you scoffed but allowed him to gently pull you toward his car once more, stumbling over your Converse.

Within the blink of an eye — or maybe you’d just had a five-minute nap — you were pulling up to Steve’s familiar house, the bright red door almost taunting you at the one memory you had of this place, and the stark reminder that things would never be the same again.

“My folks are home, so you’ve gotta be quiet, alright?”

Steve cringed as you slammed his car door accidentally, eyes widened as you turned to him, “…Sorry.”

After assessing the top floor windows, thanking his lucky stars that his parents seemingly remained fast asleep, he helped you into the house and up the stairs.

Delicately closing his bedroom door, Steve finally turned to you, rolling his eyes as you fell face first onto his bed, before making his way toward his chest of drawers and pulling out an old shirt, “Here, you can wear this if you want.”

Your head popped up, face pinched in disgust, “When did you last wash your sheets?”

Steve was certain that by this point, he’d seen the back of his eye sockets a million times, “Calm down, they’re clean. Just… change into that, and I’ll be back.”

Eventually pulling yourself upright, you managed to wrestle yourself out of the black vest as you grumbled to yourself the entire time before flopping back down onto the bed, unable to care that sleeping in your slim-fit yellow button-up shirt would be mildly uncomfortable at best. When Steve finally made his way back to the room — a gentle, wary knock before he reentered — he found you tucked under the navy blue comforter, his spare shirt still on the edge of the bed where he’d left it. Steve placed the cold glass of water down on the bedside table, along with the bottle of aspirin he’d brought up. Placing his hands on his hips, Steve let out a long sigh as he looked around his room, unsure of what to do.

It had been a long night, and despite Steve wanting to go to bed, he was somewhat grateful for the distraction you’d given him. He’d been warned a long time ago when he was much smaller, that crying was a weakness, even in the privacy of his own bedroom.

“Steve,” your voice was barely above a whisper, but it made him jump a little anyway, “I’m sorry I was a total bitch earlier.”

A small huff of laughter fell from his lips as he grabbed a pillow from his bed, throwing it to the floor before making his way to the cupboard, grabbing his summer comforter, “After the night I’ve had, it’s nothing.”

Flicking off the light switch and making sure his bedroom door was locked, Steve finally made himself comfortable on the floor beside the bed, his foot knocking against his desk every so often as he shuffled in an attempt to get comfortable. Releasing a sigh, Steve rolled back onto his back, gazing at the moon outside his bedroom window.

He used to have everything.

The popularity, the friends, even the girl. And now, everything was in turmoil, ripped out like a rug from under his feet, and Steve felt like he was forever falling. He was stupid to think that tonight could’ve been the night he finally felt normal again.

Rolling onto your stomach, you peered down at the boy in silence, watching as he became lost in his own thoughts. Despite the remainder of his previous summer's sunkissed skin, the moonlight washed him out, betraying the dark circles that nestled under his red-rimmed eyes. Eyes that appeared much darker.

You wouldn’t pretend that you knew Steve well. In fact, most of the things you knew about Steve could be counted on one hand. One thing you were learning, however, was that when Steve was upset, he’d become pensive. Quiet. Un-Steve like. Watching him like that — in an almost silent trance as his eyes grew dull, losing focus — tugged at your heartstrings in a way you didn’t appreciate.

“Why are you sad?”

Blinking a few times, Steve managed to pull himself out of the never-ending spiral that long, quiet nights alone seemed to inevitably end in, his eyes instead turning toward you as his brows pushed together, “I’m not sad.”

“Tell that to your face,” you didn’t have it in you to roll your eyes, instead remaining laser-focused on the boy, “because you look like a kicked puppy.”

Steve, however, did roll his eyes. Releasing a sigh, he crossed his arms over his chest, wriggling a little to get comfortable, “I’m not sad, I’m just… It's been a long night.”

A long year.

His tone was final, evident that he didn’t intend to divulge you any further into his problems, so you remained silent, still peering at him over the edge of his bed. Eventually, the pinch between his brows settled, eyes gazing back toward you, “Why were you crying?”

“I wasn’t crying,” you grumbled, burrowing yourself into the soft comforter, “I just… Also had a long night.”

“Hargrove?”

Your silence, only interrupted by a long, deep sigh, told the boy that he was correct.

“He’s an asshole.”

A short silence, followed by a slight sniffle and a defeated ‘yeah’ caused the boy to furrow his brow, hand slowly moving toward where yours hung off the bed slightly, fingers grazing your wrist as he tapped it to get your attention back, “He didn’t try anything, did he?”

Your glossy eyes refused to meet his, focusing on the moon that looked like it was about to roll right across the sky, “It’s Hargrove, he’s always trying something.”

Watching as you gnawed your bottom lip, knowing it would be sore by the morning, Steve waited patiently as you tried to rearrange your thoughts.

If you hadn’t drunk so much, you probably wouldn’t have entertained his curiosity, and Steve knew if Nancy hadn’t ripped out his heart in Tina’s bathroom, he wouldn’t have grasped at someone else’ tribulations, needing to do anything to keep his mind from imploding in on itself with questions he didn’t have the answers to.

“Last year,” your voice was as quiet as a mouse. Trepidation and dubiety wound tight on your tongue, burning like acid as you dug through the memories you’d been trying so hard to repress the past 11 months, “when that thing attacked me… Well, let's just say it left a pretty gnarly scar.”

Remaining silent, Steve watched as your throat bobbed, taking in your words even if they were still slightly slurred. Steve had a scar on his left knee from falling off his bike when he was younger, the thin, white line had become nothing more than a passing thought throughout the years, but now, watching your chin wobble slightly as you tried to find the words, it felt like the most important information he had.

“I just… Billy grazed over it, you know? He doesn't even know it's there, but… I see it every morning, and it makes me… It makes me sick. And then I realize that I’m so lucky that all that monster did was leave a scar because, for all we know, it ripped Barb apart. But I… I just hate it, and I hate that fucking Demogorgon, and I hate that I will forever have that reminder on my body. ”

Wiping your eyes with the comforter, you shook your head, “I’m sorry. It’s so fucking stupid.”

“When I was seven, my Dad tried to teach me how to ride a bike,” his words were enough to pull you from your downfall, tear-filled eyes finally connecting with his, “he gave up pretty quickly, didn’t like it when I wasn’t automatically good at something. Every afternoon after school, for like, a whole week, I’d force myself back out on that bike. I knew I had to learn because I had to prove my Dad wrong.”

Your eyes remained on him, feeling comfort from his warm, soft gaze, even if his sudden switch in conversation had thrown you through a loop, “What happened?”

“I fell off, busted my knee on the driveway. Got a pretty badass scar myself-”

“-Harrington-”

“-But, I kept going. Picked myself up, dusted myself off, and carried on. And then one afternoon, I just… I did it. Pushed off and sailed down the street.”

Sniffling a little, you watched him with a furrowed brow, “Does this story have a point, or are you just trying to send me to sleep?”

The shadow of a smirk tugged at the side of his lips, but he did his best to repress it, “What I’m trying to say is… Actually, I don’t really know what I’m trying to say. But I do know that your scar, it might be a reminder of all the shit that went down last year, but it also shows that you survived it, came out the other end, you know? And you shouldn’t… You shouldn’t care about what anything thinks about it, especially not Hargrove.”

Blinking away the tears that had settled along your lash line, you remained silent as you watched the boy watching you. Never in your wildest dreams would you expect Steve Harrington — Hawkins's own knockoff version of Tom Cruise, if you asked him at least — to be the one to comfort you over a deep-rooted insecurity. You’d heard the ways his gaggle of friends would loudly mock other students — yourself included on occasion — everything from their hair to their music taste, the acne on their forehead to the braces that lined their teeth. Like sharks, they were able to smell insecurity from 3 miles away and didn’t hesitate to go in for the kill.

But from your position on the comfortable bed, peering down at the boy who somehow looked much younger and much older all at the same time, you realized that the Steve Harrington you thought you knew was slowly but surely evolving. A caterpillar that had entered the first stage of metamorphosis. And only time would tell if he came out a moth or a butterfly.

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