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still-busy-being-mortal · 4 years ago

Text

the rising of the moon

word count: 4544

rating: G

fandom: the mechanisms

warnings: major character death

summary: They've lived so long together, perhaps it is only fitting they die alone.

story notes: so this came about as a result of wanting to cry MORE about the mechs. don't ask me why.

features raphaella spouting unnecessary science jargon, ivy being emotionally repressed/depressed, drumbot brian holding a conversation with himself, and the toy soldier being actually emotionally intelligent.

——————

JONNY

It’s a quiet day aboard the starship formerly known as The Aurora. Most of the crew is out, and she’s drifting slowly through a dusty asteroid field. Ivy has stayed aboard to read, and Drumbot Brian was designated ship-sitter, so he’s stayed on as well. When enough time has passed (Is it days? Or decades? No one knows anymore, and no one cares. They are all so tired.), Brian hits the alert switch that will tell the Mechanisms to come home.

Ivy feels the gentle vibration in her brain --the pulse of The Aurora’s beacon-- and she puts her book down before walking slowly to the navigation bridge. Marius’ hand starts to buzz, messing up his note-taking; he apologizes to the rather fascinating asteroid-dweller he’s interviewing and takes his leave. Ashes feels their chest hum, and they turn away from their beautiful, fiery meteor shower.

[read more on ao3, or continue below!]

One by one, the Mechs find their way home. It takes some longer than others, but they all return eventually. Or they should; right now, there are only seven crewmates in the navigation bridge.

“I’m sick of waiting--where the hell is Jonny?” Tim whines.

“I guess he decided to stay in the asteroid belt?” Marius says.

“Woulda been nice to let us know,” mutters Ashes, “So we’re not all sittin’ here for ages.”

Brian stands and raises his hand. “All in favour of leaving and returning in a few decades?” They all agree, so he pilots Aurora away from the asteroid field.

Time goes by, and they do not hear from Jonny. Of course, members of the crew sometimes stay away for long periods of time, but that doesn’t mean their absence is not felt. And Jonny hasn’t appeared to try and contact them at all.

After a while, they vote to return to the asteroid belt. When they arrive, they split up, communication devices in hand.

Ivy combs through her memory, trying to summon any knowledge she has on Asteroid Field 01.18.20. The Toy Soldier moves methodically from meteor to meteor, searching for their lost comrade. Raphaella interviews any inhabitants she comes across, axially coding their qualitative responses to identify patterns in the data. Tim goes to a bar for a drink, irritated at Jonny’s latest antic.

He walks into some nameless, backwater joint and sits at the counter, flagging down the bartender with a lazy wave. He orders and waits, mechanical eyes roving the establishment. And then he freezes.

On the far wall hang a few dozen photographs, all dusty and poor quality. Above the photos is a crudely-done banner that simply reads “Cheers to Our Past Patrons.” One of the pictures is of Jonny.

When the bartender returns, Tim asks: “What’s the deal with the wall of fame, then?”

“Oh, that,” they answer tiredly. “Just sum dark joke the old owner thought up. Them’s the folks who kicked it in this here bar, you see.”

Tim was confused. “You mean those people died here? That can’t be right; my friend’s up there, and he can’t d--he’s alive.”

The barkeep shrugged. “Don’t know, pal. We had to bury most of thems out back, if you reckon you want to check.” He chuckled darkly and went back to drink-making.

Tim quickly finished his drink and went out the back door. He debated alerting the other Mechs about this development, but decided he might as well see for himself first.

He found the makeshift graveyard quickly, small rusty mounds amid the equally rusty asteroid outback. Some displayed names on roughly carved wood planks, but obviously none of them said “Jonny d’Ville” (Tim laughed at the idea of Jonny carrying around an ID). Most were unmarked, however, so he started to dig.

He used his hands, too impatient to try and find a shovel. He came across bodies and bones in various stages of decay, but none that had any chance of being Jonny. About fed up with this ridiculous idea of his, he decided to dig up one more grave. He shovelled dirt and rocks out of the way, until his hand hit something hard and cold. Something metallic. He pulled on it, and came away with a belt. Christ , he thought.

He quickly scooped away the rest of the dirt, revealing the corpse of Captain First Mate Jonny d’Ville. Dead. Tim stumbled backward, hand fumbling for his comm. “Um, mates, I-I found him.”

The Mechanisms were different after that. Yes, Nastya had gone Out long ago, but they had never actually come across her dead corpse , so it wasn’t the same. Marius had examined his body and declared him fully, completely, and irrevocably dead. They had held a funeral, but they were all too much in shock to really remember it. All they knew was that they were down a crew member, without a captain first mate, and terribly aware of their own mortality.

ASHES

About half the crew was in Raphaella’s lab, helping her with some complex kind of experiment. Raph was mixing two viciously green liquids together, while Marius was unspooling wire from a large bobbin. The Toy Soldier was holding an ultraviolet light against a motherboard, and Ashes connected the motherboard to the chartreuse concoction using the wires. After pouring all of the chemicals, Raphaella pulled on some rubber gloves and pulled out a small pocketwatch from her shirt. “Are we ready?” she asked gleefully. Without waiting for an answer, she started the countdown. “Five! Four! Three! T--curses!” The pocketwatch slipped from her gloved grasp and fell into the churning beaker. All at once there was a flash and a bang, and the lights went out. They stood in complete silence for a minute, before the backup generators flicked on.

The Toy Soldier clapped its hands, “That Was Jolly Good! Can We Do It Again?”

“No, TS, look, I got goop on my--wait!” Marius shouted, “Where’s Ashes?” They all turned to look at where the quartermaster had been just moments before. The floor where they’d been standing was a scorched, intricate, dark pattern of swirls. “What the hell is that ?”

“I Do Not Know, But I Will Go Get The Archivist!”

TS returned with Ivy, who took one look at the patterns on the floor and asked: “Who is it that has been time travelling?”

“Time travelling?!” Raph exclaimed.

“Yes,” Ivy said, “Those marks are a perfect exemplar of the evidence left behind when one has been forcibly transported forward or backward in the time continuum. Which one of you did it? Did you happen to bring back any books?”

“It wasn’t us: it was Ashes.” Marius said, “And we don’t think they’ve come back yet.”

Ivy grew very pale. “That is highly alarming. There’s a less than 0.1% chance that a time traveller ever comes back if they do not return instantly after the outset of their journey.”

“Y-you mean Ashes might not...” Marius trailed off, “...Wait a second! That doesn’t make sense! We don’t experience time linearly!”

“That may be true, but we are not forcibly moved through it either. We are at the whim of the narrative flow, and any alteration to that usually produces negative results.”

The Toy Soldier flashed through many emotions at once, though its face never changed. “So Quartermaster O’Reilly Is...Gone?”

“We can’t prove that yet!” Raph cried, fluttering around the lab and grabbing various scientific instruments. “Maybe if I can pinpoint when exactly they’ve been transported to, we can...we can bring them back.”

“That’s quite a long shot,” Marius said.

“What is science if not a shot into the ignorant dark?” Raph replied, rigging up a technological monstrosity. She aimed the thing at the charred spot and clicked a button, causing the machine to emit a pulsating, whirring sound. “Oh, you all might want to close your eyes.”

With a burst of green and a harsh dial tone, the thing spit out a strip of paper. Raph grabbed it and read it intently. She dropped it suddenly, eyes distant and empty. “They are gone.”

The room burst into a cacophony. (“What do you mean?!” “Gone How? Gone Forever ?” “It was statistically unlikely that they could have returned.”) Raph picked up the paper and pressed it onto the lab table. Most of it was meaningless words and numbers, but Raph pointed out a string in the center: “RESULT) DATE: %& INFINITE ROUNDING ERROR $! _ LOCATION: SINGULARITY!UNIVERSAL IMPLOSION. ANALYSIS) CHANCE OF TERMINATION: 100.0% +-0.0 R = 1.0”

“They’re gone.”

RAPHAELLA

The crew was far more disorganized after Ashes left. With no one to maintain inventory or keep the crew in line, The Mechanisms started to fall apart. Raphaella tried for a while to build some kind of time-travelling device, some way of defying the inexorable march of the story, but it was in vain. She was left with only one option; one experiment she hadn’t tried yet.

She carefully laser cuts some metal from the starship once known as the Aurora. She sits in Nastya’s former workshop for hours, bending and twisting and fabricating until she is left with wings; wings more breathtaking than any she has possessed before. Once on, they fan out behind her in a starburst of blue and metallic grey.

But her crew will never see them. In the cover of darkness, she steals away to the airlock. The ship is currently sailing past a black hole (Raphaella has the Messier number and NGC identification memorized, but that’s not her concern now). With one final look backward at the place that had been her home for millennia --the place she thought she would call home forever -- she casts herself into the black hole.

Ivy finds the note she left, succinct and unmincing as ever:

“Addressed to whoever finds this first:

After a brief review of prior literature, I have found extensive holes (no pun intended) in the study of singularities, specifically as it relates to a singularity’s effect on a humanoid body and mind. I seek to rectify this, as well as explore the possibility of horological manipulation, though perhaps my methods are not entirely replicable. It is every scientist’s dream to be on the cutting edge of research, and so I initiate this experiment joyfully. Also, black holes are hypothesized to have magnificent magnetic fields!

Yours,

Dr. Raphaella La Cognizi”

TIM

Tim, Marius, the Toy Soldier, Brian, and Ivy wait. They do not wait together, and they do not know what exactly it is they’re waiting for, but they wait nevertheless.

Time passes.

Brian pilots the ship towards various planets, pointless battles, dying stars. One day, the remaining Mechs arrive at a lawless sea-based war occurring on a planet composed entirely of liquid obsidian. They commandeer a ship (which they dub the ‘Dawn’) and spend decades wreaking havoc as the most formidable group of pirates. But Tim knows something is wrong.

“Tim, take out that vessel off the starboard side.” Brian orders from the prow of the Dawn.

Tim smoothly preps, loads, and positions a cannon to aim directly at the enemy ship in question. He lights the fuse, and the cannon fires. The crew watch as the projectile hurls through the air, arcing like a cold meteor into the distance. They watch it come down towards the enemy vessel. And they watch it miss.

The crew turns to stare at Tim. He’s not nearly as mortified as they expected. In fact, he’s perfectly serene.

“Um, Tim…” Marius starts slowly, “D-did you know you, uh...missed?”

“Yep.” he responds, popping the ‘p’.

“Did you mean to?”

“Nope.”

“And...you’re not upset by that?”

“Not especially.”

(“That’s a fascinatingly abnormal psychological response,” Marius mutters under his breath, jotting something down in a notebook he appears to have produced out of nowhere.)

The crew continues to stare as Tim goes below deck to his bunk, humming slightly.

Tim has known something was off for a long time now. His aim started to err by nanometres, then by millimeters, then more, until he was missing entire ships like today. He’d panicked at the beginning, of course, but now? Now, he was ready to be done.

He’d felt the pressure building up in his head, behind his eyes. He got spurts of tunnel vision randomly, and sometimes his vision just went to static. He gradually lost the ability to see some colors, as the electronic rods and cones went out one-by-one and refused to self-repair. But he wasn’t nervous or distressed or alarmed; he was excited.

You see, he’d been saving something for a special occasion. He didn’t know what ‘special occasion’ entailed, since the Mechs never consistently celebrated holidays or birthdays, but permanent death seemed like a pretty good one. He rooted around in his rucksack, and withdrew a set of shiny silver keys; keys he’d stolen a long, long time ago. These were the ignition keys to the largest gunship existence will ever see, and Tim planned to go out with a bang. That evening, he told the crew he wanted them all to return to the starship so he could be dropped off somewhere. They all agreed, since they didn’t have any real cares anymore, and they set off for the planet Tim had etched into his memory.

Tim sits in the cockpit of the gunship, the planet itself already ruined and smoking from fighting his way to get here. The Mechanisms were long gone, as he’d told them to leave without him. He hadn’t exactly said he wasn’t planning on coming back, but he thinks they understood. With one last grin of pure, unadulterated madness, he kicks the gunship into gear and blasts off.

The ship goes too fast to comprehend, and in an instant he’s shooting across the cosmos, shattering stars and razing entire systems of planets. The universe has never before witnessed such complete and utter desolation. Tim doesn’t process much during this rampage...until he starts to die.

He doesn’t know what he hit, but something has jolted the gunship just right, and he’s flung out the front glass. He knows he should die instantly, and he is, but his eyes are moving faster. They’re replaying his life, backwards, and he wants to groan with the cliché-ness of it all. But then it’s over. Or, almost over. At the very end, so fast, so short compared to the millennia he has lived, he catches sight of a young man in a trench. Bertie. A face he will never forget no matter how much longer he could have lived. And in the moments of blackness before he stops forever, he thinks about Bertie, about what comes next.

Faith is a moot point when you’re immortal, since you’ve quite literally come into contact with gods and demons, eldritch horrors and cosmic powers. But here, at the end of his wretchedly long existence, Tim wonders if he will ever see Bertie again. If he will ever see Jonny, or TS, or Ashes, or anyone ever again.

He dies blind, with their names on his lips.

IVY

Exposition: Ivy is quite spectacular at suppressing her emotions. She’s also skilled at identifying patterns, so by the time Raphaella left, she knew what was going on with 98% certainty. Without much fanfare, she packed her bags (5 for books and 1 for everything else), said goodbye to Marius, Brian, and the Toy Soldier, and left.

She rifled through her memory archives for the quaintest library she knew of, and headed there.

Rising Action: And so time passed.

Ivy read, and organized, and wrote, and...existed. Nothing happened, and nothing changed. Carmilla must have made an error in her mechanization because she’d never been the best at processing feelings, but she was happy, she thought.

Climax: A war came, and her library was attacked. With the numbest, most detached sense of purpose imaginable, she loaded an escape pod with random books she thought should be preserved and fired it out into the void. She didn’t even know she’d been hit until she’d fallen to the floor, blood streaming from a massive wound. She knows she is dying; she’d seen the patterns.

Denouement: Her brain whirs slower and slower, until it stops. The end.

MARIUS

They are not a crew any longer. Brian has firmly rooted himself on the bridge, more robot than man now. The Toy Soldier wanders the ship, searching for its friends who are playing the best game of hide-and-seek that the universe has ever seen. Marius putters along, doing some maintenance, writing down his thoughts, and waiting for his death.

He’d always known this life of theirs couldn’t last. Besides the conceptual and moral implications of an eternal existence without consequences, it didn’t even make sense physically . There was no such thing as a perpetual motion machine, and he was surprised his more rational-minded crewmates didn’t question it more. But now his theory had come to fruition, and his crew, his family , had slowly dropped off one-by-one, like leaves from an autumnal tree.

He’s at a bit of a loose end now. With no people left to talk to, no minds to pick, he doesn’t feel any sense of purpose. It’s not depression--he knows that; it’s more of a...cosmic futility.

He feels one last pull, one last tug of the all-pervading narrative, a tide of finality, urging him towards a certain door. He knows this door, knows what it means when he opens it. But he also knows all things come to an end eventually, so why not go out doing what he always did? Providing the comic relief.

“Time this for me, will you, Aurora?” he calls out. He turns the handle and steps inside.

BRIAN

Since Jonny’s death, Brian has been at war with himself. He supposes he’s always been at war with himself though, and his current moral quandary reminds him uncomfortably of his first.

Sitting on the bridge alone, he decides to have a conversation.

“So the crux of the problem is that we can bring people back from the dead, correct?”

He flips his switch. “Correct.”

He flips it back. “But the dilemma is whether we should bring the Mechs back or not.”

“Also correct.”

“Which we shouldn’t, because they wanted to die.”

“No, we should. We want them alive, right? Using magic is definitely the easiest way to achieve that.”

“But we need our family to be happy. God knows how long it’s been.”

“Is the end goal their happiness or our happiness?”

“If I answer that, will I change your mind?”

“Is altering the end goal really the moral way to win this argument?”

“You know what? Damn you.”

Time passes, and each crewmate’s departure only makes Brian’s contempt for his own inner hesitation grow. He spends years staring out into the cosmos, thoughts whirling just as fast as the dust and gases beyond the glass. He wonders if he will ever die and join his family, or if the degree of his artificiality will render him truly immortal. He hates that thought more than most anything else.

He stops smelling the smoke of Ashes’ fires one day, and wonders if his olfactory systems are shutting down.

He stops feeling the rumble of Raphaella’s experimental explosions, and wonders if his nerve endings are rusting.

He stops seeing the flash of Tim’s gunshots bounce around the corridors, and wonders if he’s gone as blind as the gunner himself.

He stops hearing Ivy’s narration, and wonders if his auditory fluids have finally trickled away.

One day, the lone violin that has been echoing throughout the empty starship fades out, and Brian feels his heart stop.

It restarts of course, but Brian knows.

He knows that it’s finally, finally time. Soon, very soon, there will be no more life aboard this ship. No life, where there had been life for eons. No life, where there had been life immortal.

His sense of taste has never come into doubt, because he can still taste the acridness of the Toy Soldier’s cooking wafting on the air. He decides it’s only right to bid goodbye, so he makes his way back to the kitchen. On the way, he passes the Doctor’s old laboratory. He briefly considers destroying it, bringing down the whole ship in a blaze of fire and brimstone, but he knows that isn’t right; it wouldn’t fulfill anything.

In the kitchen, the Toy Soldier is pulling something pink and grey and on fire out of the oven. “Hey, TS,” Brain says gently, leaning against the doorframe as his heart falters again. “I-I’ve got to talk to you.”

The Toy Soldier spins around. “Drumbot Brian!” it shouts joyfully. “How Have You Been, Old Chap! I Have Been Playing Hide-And-Seek With The Rest Of The Crew For A While Now, And They Are Definitely Winning! Have You Seen Them?”

“Oh, TS,” Brian says sadly, “We’re all who’s left now. Don’t you know? The others have gone.”

He sees the Toy Soldier’s wooden eyes soften, betraying an agedness he’s never seen before. “Of Course I Know, Bean. But What Have We Been Doing This Whole Time, If Not Pretending?”

Brian smiles sorrowfully, and TS matches it. “I just wanted to let you know, TS, that now it’s my turn to go.”

“I Know.” It salutes him. “Goodbye, Drumbot.”

Brain gently returns the salute, and leaves.

He stumbles through the ship, heart failing rapidly now, but he makes it to the airlock. He knows deep down that there’s only one way his story could end. His whole existence has been framed by empty solitude, with his family providing the best aberration one could wish for. With his body more an empty metal frame than a robot now, he opens the airlock and casts himself back into the cosmos, from whence he came, and where he would die.

THE TOY SOLDIER

Its friends are all gone away now, and it knows this. There is no more laughter aboard the starship once known as the Aurora. There is no more gunfire or explosions. There is no more music. The cold mass of metal drifts through the void of the uncaring cosmos, with no living being aboard.

But The Toy Soldier has to be sure; it has to guarantee that it is truly all alone now. So it visits its friends’ final resting places.

It spends some years gazing out the front windows of the ship. The thrusters have been broken for a long time now, and the Toy Soldier doesn’t know how to repair them, so it just sits and watches. It wants to see the Drumbot, so it pretends that it does. Soon enough, out the starboard porthole, it spies him. His metal is rusted and warped, frost rendering most of his face unrecognizable. A drum is still looped around his shoulder. The Toy Soldier tethers itself to the ship and goes outside for a moment, drifting towards the robot. It lays a wooden hand on his deformed chest, and feels that his heart beats no longer. It carves off a long curl of wood from its side, and places it in Brian’s frozen hand.

It returns to the ship. It hadn’t known where Marius had disappeared to, but now it feels the force of the narrative driving it towards a certain room. It opens the door, and a handful of mangy octokittens hiss at it and scurry away. There’s nothing in the room besides a pile of crumpled clothes, a broken violin, and a metal hand, but the Toy Soldier could recognize that style anywhere. It gently twists one of its own wooden hands off, and lays it on the mound.

The Toy Soldier knows that Ivy went somewhere far away, so it closes its eyes and pretends that it’s there. When it opens them again, it finds itself in the charred ruins of some great marble building. At its feet lay bones, a metal flute, and a mess of circuitry, untouched by the ash. The Toy Soldier reaches up, removes a piece of wood from the back of its head, and lays it besides the flute.

The Toy Soldier has a harder time finding the gunner. It’s drawn this way and that, chasing an intangible trail through the stars and galaxies. All of the planets it passes are devoid of life. Finally, finally, it stumbles across an enormous, gaping wreck of a starship, all mangled and smashed to pieces. The ship is so large, it’s drawn smaller asteroids into an orbit around it. On one of these rocky satellites, the Toy Soldier spies a body: a skeleton covered in a long brown coat with a guitar slung across it. A pair of mutilated, metal eyes rest in the skull. The Toy Soldier smiles sadly, removes one of its own wooden eyes, and slips it into the pocket of the coat.

It knows it cannot follow the science officer into a black hole. It does manage to find the sketches of the wings Raphaella designed, so it gathers them up, takes two chunks of wood from its back, finds Raph’s keyboard, and casts everything into the nearest singularity.

After pretending to be at the end of space and time, it finds itself there. There is nothing, absolutely nothing. It removes two segments of wood from deep within its chest and places them in the nothingness, along with the strings of an old electric bass it had found. As it winks back to the ship, it catches the faintest scent of gasoline.

It returns to the asteroid Jonny had died on, the start of their ignoble demise. It visits his grave, in the taupe dirt of the desert behind the backwater bar, and sees all of the trinkets and mementos the crew had left behind. It knows none of them left anything during their makeshift funeral, so that means each of them must have slipped away at some point to come here on their own. Ashes has left their best lighter, Tim a pair of dogtags. Marius left behind all of his notes of Jonny’s disaster of a brain, and Brian has deposited some sun-scorched piece of space station. His harmonica has also found its way here, somehow. The Toy Soldier slowly, slowly reaches into its chest and removes its wooden heart, laying it down atop the mound of dirt and memories. It walks away, and knows that it can finally, finally stop pretending.

AURORA

There is no record of where the Toy Soldier went next. It certainly did not return to the empty ship once known as the brilliant Aurora. The lifeless, soulless, music-less ship drifts on alone through the cosmos, rusting and warping until no one could tell it had ever been a ship at all. Eons pass, and whatever memory the universe might have had of The Mechanisms has been utterly lost.

Until the misshapen mass gets stuck in the orbit of a planet. Molded and formed by the planet’s gravity, the ship is reborn as a moon. And all at once, she comes to life.

As dawn washes over her, the young moon hears a voice. “Hello, dear,” a woman coos, “My name is Dr. Carmilla.”

#hi please read my fic #am i posting it yet again? yes #the rising of the moon #the mechanisms #fiction #ao3

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restingdomface · 5 years ago

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Wei Wuxian: *sitting in the living room with LWJ after their third date for lunch at the park, listening to WN wander around the kitchen while they talk about life after college* -anyways, so I learned to knit and she never called me that again.

Lan Wangji: *whos been hearin some wild shit but can’t back out now cause he’s known this man was a mess since he fell in love with him when they were 15* Interesting. So you knit?

Wei Wuxian: *excitedly* Yeah! I made this throw blanket on the back of the couch, and I make socks and sweaters the most, but I make tons of stuff. Want to see my favorite thing I’ve made yet?

Lan Wangji: *nods, before following him out of the room when WWX leaves, down the hallway, and into a sunny room that must have been WN’s, since the only two others in the house were too goth to have a room this cute*

Wei Wuxian: *goes to the corner of the room and lifts something out of a previously unseen bassinet there*

A-Yuan: *squirms in WWX’s arms and makes excited sounds at seeing his favorite person*

Lan Wangji: *nearly having a heart attack* 0.0!!!!!

Wei Wuxian: *points to A-Yuan’s little feet* These booties, aren’t they cute? I got handspun wool yarn for them and even made him a little hat too. I’ve made him blankets and stuff too of course, but the booties are just so cute, every time I see them it kills me.

Lan Wangji: *calming down a little now that he realizes WWX is talking about the booties* Oh. They are quite nice.

Wei Wuxian: *grinning* Thanks! Anyways, this is A-Yuan, he’s almost five months old, I fully adopted him about a month ago, isn’t he just the cutest little bundle of joy you ever saw?

Lan Wangji: *possibly having another heart attack* Ahhh. Um. Yes. He’s adorable, very much.

#the grandmaster of demonic cultivation #the untamed #mdzs #incorrect untamed quotes #incorrect mdzs #wei wuxian #lan wangji #wangxian #a yuan

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lostincorrectquotes · 4 years ago

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I posted 293 times in 2021

293 posts created (100%)

0 posts reblogged (0%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 0.0 posts.

I added 1,678 tags in 2021

#lost - 289 posts

#incorrect quotes - 288 posts

#lost tv show - 287 posts

#lost incorrect quotes - 286 posts

#kate austen - 143 posts

#jack shephard - 138 posts

#sawyer ford - 115 posts

#charlie pace - 51 posts

#hugo reyes - 48 posts

#juliet burke - 33 posts

Longest Tag: 54 characters

#not an incorrect quote but i thought i should share it

My Top Posts in 2021

Jack: I brought reinforcements.

Sayid: You brought Locke?

Jack: Um no… but I brought the next best thing.

Sayid: Sawyer? You brought Sawyer? The next best thing would have been Kate!

Sawyer: Normally, I’d be offended, but she is freakishly strong.

49 notes • Posted 2021-05-19 15:30:55 GMT

Sawyer: The stars look beautiful tonight

Kate: Yeah, but do you know what’s more beautiful?

Both, at the same time: Juliet

61 notes • Posted 2021-04-12 15:30:43 GMT

Rousseau: Welcome to the Fuck Ben Linus club where we discuss how he is a terrible person who deserves to die.

Jack: Before we start, does our newest member want to say anything?

Locke: I, um, may have misunderstood the purpose of this club.

81 notes • Posted 2021-05-17 15:31:19 GMT

Jack: Alright, Sawyer, while I’m gone, you’re in charge

Sawyer: Yes!

Jack, whispering to Sayid: You’re actually in charge

Sayid: Obviously

112 notes • Posted 2021-03-04 16:30:27 GMT

Locke: Something brought us here. Call it what you will. Fate, destiny-

Jack: A plane.

138 notes • Posted 2021-02-09 16:30:54 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

#my 2021 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

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heartless-error · 5 years ago

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Love-Struck

Fandom: DC comics, Batman

Pairing: Jason Todd x Timothy Drake (JayTim)

Rating/Tags: JayTim Week 2020 - Day 1: College AU, Family Feels, Fluff and Humor, Secret Crushes

Other(s) links: AO3

"Okay." Jason sighed, gathering strength to himself. "You remember… That guy?"

"That guy?" Roy asked back.

"Yes."

"The one you have a crush on and look at him from afar, but you deny it and never take the first step because you’re a dramatic bitch?"

"Yeah."

"What? You have finally talked to him?"

"No."

"Then what?"

"I hit him with the bike."

Roy was silent, looking at him and blinking a few times at the news. But he didn't have to say anything, Jason knew he was totally fucked.

OR:

Based on the prompt "I was distracted looking at my crush and accidentally hit him."

Love-Struck

It happened on a Tuesday, during the break.

Tim met Conner and Bart outside his classes to head to one of the coffee shops near the campus, between his mathematical analysis class and his computing class, because he wouldn’t be able to survive that day without a third coffee and in addition his friends would be nearby to make sure he didn’t fall in the temptation to drink a fourth.

Everything was going well, Bart received him with an effusive hug and Kon patted his back like always. All started walking towards their destination while talking about their classes, how close they were to the finals, Kon’s new game, where they could go to celebrate when they finish the semester, generally normal things that made Tim forget about how he had slept an hour and half, still had four assignments to do, and his parents were waiting for his presence at tonight’s dinner after they returned from their business trip to Dubai.

Maybe it was because of that hour and half of sleep, or because the little conversation of his two best friends about how Conner was a coward who couldn’t ask Cassie out caused him a slight smile, a warm emotion, and distracted him from his problems and everything around him. But when he crossed the street to the cafe, happy and absent, he didn’t have time to react to anything.

“Watch out!”

“Tim!”

Something hit him and before he knew what, fell unconscious.

~0.0~

“He's alive!”

That was the first thing he heard when he started waking up.

Tim found himself confused as he regained consciousness, his whole body hurt, a lot, but at the same time he was somewhat sleepy. He realized he was lying on a bed that smelled of antiseptic and medicine, around him he could hear bustle and people talking next to him, couldn’t feel his leg either.

“Of course he's alive, calm down.”

That was Kon's voice. And previously was Bart's. If he remembered well, he was with them on campus, just heading to one of his favorite coffee shops before something hit him on the side and everything went dark. If he had to guess, he would say that he hadn’t passed out from the lack of caffeine but had been run over.

Tim growled annoyed, opening his eyes heavily and blinking because of the whitish light of the hospital room.

When he was finally able to focus and wake up properly, the sight that received him was his plastered leg held high and his friends hovering over him with a worried gaze.

“Tim!” Exclaimed Bart, who seemed to be on the verge of tears.

“What's up buddy? How did you sleep?” Conner asked with a relieved smile.

When he tried to answer, he realized how dry his throat was, as well as how overwhelmed he was because of the medications and sedatives that would have been administered to him when had been treated. His friends, realizing this, soon helped him to lean him over and give him the bottle of water that was on the next table.

“What happened?” He ended up asking after recovered himself.

“You got hit by a motorcycle.” Conner answered bluntly. “And you scared us, man.”

“Yes! I almost have a heart attack!” Bart exclaimed. He could tell he was holding himself back to not hug him until crush him because he was benched. “We were talking and suddenly you were flying!”

“Really?” He asked, surprised.

It wouldn't be strange if the hit had thrown him a few meters away, but he felt the most serious wound he had, was that broken leg, so he didn't think he would have fly for real.

“No.” Conner denied instantly.

Yeah, he thought so. What a disappointment.

But now that he was more awake, he remembered certain things clearly.

“I think I remember listening to the ambulance.” He frowned, trying to remember well.

“No, that was Bart screaming.”

“It scared me! Okay?” The redhead excused himself immediately.

“We could hear you better than the sirens.” His other friend started teasing.

Tim couldn’t help to smile amused at this, fondly too. Bart used to be loud in general, but him being so concerned about him was very touching. Also, the fact that his two friends had taken care of him, had accompanied him, waited him to wake up and now were there, receiving him, made him remember why he loved and appreciated them so much.

“I thought it was serious!” The redhead excused himself again.

“Obviously not.” Kon replied, still amused. “Tim is stronger than we think.”

“I'm fine, Bart. For real.” He tried to reassure him, he felt it could have been worse anyway. “I'm only a little numb for the medicines, can you call a nurse?”

As much as he appreciated the ride to the hospital, the treatment and all, he wouldn't like to spend the night there. He didn’t consider his condition serious enough to do so, so he would like to be discharged immediately. He also wants to sleep in his bed, those four assignments weren’t going to be done magically and no nurse was going to allow him to drink a decent coffee. So, hearing his diagnosis and going home was all he wanted now.

However, when Kon and Bart exchanged glances, something told him that it wasn’t going to be that easy.

“What?” He asked immediately.

They didn't answer, just looked at each other again with a slight hint of panic. Which was not cool at all, because it made thousands of unpleasant possibilities run through his mind.

And the worst, the worst of them entered the room before he could ask again.

The temperature in the room dropped suddenly to below zero as soon as Janet Drake, as beautiful and noble as ever, entered keeping her formal, elegant, and polite composure characteristic of her as the sound of her heels echoed in the room harshly. Her pristine appearance contrasted with her icy eyes -identical to his son’s- and his aura in itself, so cold, lethal, and furious that she seemed to freeze all those who dared to look at her directly.

Everything was quiet and it seemed like the death itself, ethereal and deadly, had entered the room. And Jack Drake, who warmly greeted his son and his friends after saying goodbye to the nurse they had been talking to.

“Timothy.” His mother said calmly, firm, approaching the bed with safe steps. “Glad to see you’re awake.”

Tim swallowed hard. He didn’t know what to answer, because now he understood and shared the same panic as his friends. Janet looked angry, was she? God, why he hadn't thought it before? Of course they were going to call his parents after being struck by a bike, and of course it wouldn’t be pleasant for them to receive such news while they were unpacking and planning their dinner tonight. She was angry, right?

“Thanks for being with him, guys.” Said his father to his friends.

Conner tried to smile naturally, but it looked like he had just sucked on a lemon. Bart didn't even try; he was as stiff as a board and looking at him like a deer about to be run over.

Sometimes he found fascinating how his mother -yes, only his mother- still had the power to scare them in this way as if they were still the noisy children he met at summer camp and used to visit him. Anyone would think she hated them, seeing the disinterested attitude she always has maintained, he knows they think so too, but after learning the scholarships of both to enter the best programs of the Gotham University were slightly orchestrated by her, he knows it’s not true. Or maybe it was, and she was just doing him a favor by keeping his best friends close to him. He will never know.

Of course, that doesn't take away the fact that his mother seems furious right now and can effortlessly rip someone's arm off just for the pleasure of doing it.

“N-Never mind…” Conner tried to say with that nervous smile. “Anything for Tim.”

“We’re lucky it wasn’t anything serious, was it?” His father said looking at him directly. “The doctor said is just a few bruises and your poor leg, you will recover without problem, son.”

Tim was a little relieved that the diagnosis was so simple, despite already suspecting it, confirming it didn’t hurt. He saw how his father winked at his friends so they wouldn’t be worried, though they hesitated for a second.

“U-Um... We...” Bart tried to say.

“I’m sure you still have classes to attend today.” Janet cut him off. “Don't worry about Timothy, we’ll take care of it.”

All of that, even from her tone, would have sounded kind if her eyes wouldn’t have been piercing them to the depths of their being, as if she were throwing ice daggers into their hearts. He swears he could see Bart flinch.

“Ok, see you later Tim!” Bart said trying to hide his panic and saying goodbye with a nervous smile.

He could have sworn that if Bart could run at super speed, he would have done it to get out of there. Connor, on his part, reached out to him and lifted his hand to ruffle his hair in that loving, gentle way he used to do, but stopped halfway as soon as he felt Janet's murderous aura grow wild and out of control.

“Get well soon.” He said before turning around and run away like a coward.

Well, he couldn’t blame them. He will text them later.

But now he had been left alone, drugged, hurt and with his parents, one trying to be positive and the other willing to kill someone. Who? He doesn't know, but if he survives this, he vows he'll quit caffeine (he won't).

He felt her mother's icy gaze move from his leg to his face, and he had to swallow hard again to try to speak.

“We were going to the cafe and then…” He tried to explain.

“We know what happened.” She cut him off seriously. Of course she knew it, at this point it doesn't surprise him if she knows even the date the bike wheel was created. “Also know who was the responsible. We'll fix it.”

He didn't know how to take that. On one hand, if they didn’t know who had hit him, at this moment they would be tracing all Gotham with all the resources they had to find it out; But on the other, they knew it, and Tim could only feel sorry for whoever that poor soul was, because they had no idea what was going to come after them.

What's more, he was realizing how his father was compulsively sending messages right now, surely to their lawyers, or to public relations, or whoever, but that wasn’t promising anything good.

“I’m fine.” He said looking at his mother, hoping to appease the murderous hunger that was devouring her right now. “Seriously.”

It didn't seem to work, because she didn't move a single muscle and looked at his plastered leg again.

“I don’t see it that way.” She declared in a soft but deadly tone.

He didn’t have the will to refute her. He had never had it when it came to such a situation, after all he had always had a fragile and compromised health, which didn’t help to calm down his parents when he ended in the hospital again.

On the other hand, many people thought that Janet was someone extremely cold and severe to be a mother. Which wasn't exactly true, it’s just... She showed her love in other ways, a little differently. Tim knows when he was born, he was premature, very small, sickly and not the first baby Janet had carried, but the only one who could have born. For this reason, he knows that, although she travels a lot and not many people consider her a model mother, his mother possess an extreme and powerful sense of overprotection embedded in her, and when it’s active threatens to destroy everything and everyone around it. Which was now aimed at the person who hit him, who is going to have to deal with the Drake army of lawyers.

It’s somewhat unfair and exaggerated to waste such an amount of legal power against someone because of a simple accident, unless it’s a good reason, at least that’s what he thinks. He wishes he had said it, but he knows it will be in vain, they are already in it, and he’s also exhausted, the drugs are probably still working. So, before he knew, he was just falling asleep.

As he slipped into the dream world, he really hoped that the person responsible for the accident weren’t someone he knows or cares about, because they could end up hating him.

He also felt his mother gave him a light kiss on the forehead, but that only made him smile.

~0.0~

“I have a problem.”

“Yeah, I’ve figured out.” Roy replied across the table.

He had only raised an eyebrow and put aside his coffee when he saw Jason enter the room and sit in front of him in panic. Well, Roy couldn't do much after being called there so suddenly either.

“A big problem.”

“I felt it when I received your texts.” He said again, more than calm. “Very deep, by the way.”

Jason snorted. Right now, he was going to explode like a popcorn, many things had happened, so it hadn't been in his plans to write a text beyond the “Help, I fucked up” to his best friend.

“Roy, c’mon” He scolded him, agitated. Right now, he could feel his phone vibrating in his pocket for all the texts Bruce was sending him, that didn’t help at all.

“Ok, sorry.” The redhead raised his hands in an attempt to calm things down, then looked at him curiously. “What happened?”

Jason writhed uncomfortably in his chair at that question, it's not like it's the first time he asked that to him if the redhead was so calm at the moment it's because he was used to doing this. He had come to Roy because he’s his best friend, the one he trusted, who wouldn’t judge him, and the only one who has the privilege to know certain personal information, which had importance at the moment. The thing is, he had no idea where to start, there were so many things at once, he wanted to think about how to explain them all because he could see his friend getting impatient as he hesitated.

“Jay.” He said, it's not like Roy was very patient to begin with.

“Wait, I'm thinking.”

“You're a literature student, you're supposed to be good at words.”

He's right, but Jason's eloquence was absent since this morning.

“I don't know where to start, dammit.”

“From the beginning.” The other said, then looked to his phone. “I have to pick up Lian from school in an hour, so hurry up.”

Jason sighed and scratched the back of his neck, deciding to say it all at once. He said to himself he does it because he didn’t want to interfere with the single father duties from his friend and not because he was going to explode.

“Okay.” He sighed again, gathering strength to himself. “You remember… That guy?”

“That guy?” Roy asked back.

“Yes.”

“The one we saw on campus earlier in the semester?"

“Yes.”

“The one who's also friends with Kent, the quarterback?”

“Yes.”

“Nerd, short, pretty eyes, nice ass and very cute?”

“Yes. Yes.”

"Totally your type?"

“Yep.”

“The one you have a crush on and look at him from afar, but you deny it and never take the first step because you’re a dramatic bitch?”

“Yes.”

“What? You have finally talked to him?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

“I ran him over.”

Roy was silent. Completely silent, looking at him and blinking a few times at the news. Jason couldn’t avoid wondering if that was the face he did when he found out he was going to be a dad in high school, but he couldn't joke with that because he was too busy panicking right now.

“What?” The redhead ended up asking to make sure he had heard correctly.

“I ran him over, Roy.” He repeated, feeling the panic build within him again.

The other was quiet again, staring at him stunned.

“I. Ran. Him. Over.” He repeated once more, this time to internalize it himself, because since it had happened, he hadn’t even had time to do it. “During the break, with the bike.”

One, two, three seconds of silence before Roy dared to say anything, and when he did everything that came out of his bright and amazing mind was:

“He’s dead?”

“No!” He yelled in exasperation at that, causing some clients in the cafe to look at him.

He didn't even want to imagine that possibility, he already had enough.

“Well, that’s good.” The other tried to say to see the positive point of the whole thing.

“It’s not. It’s not!” He complained, none of this was okay.

“If you think about it, you've already broken the ice, Jay.” His friend joked to cheer him up. "Everything that follows is easy."

“What I broke was his leg.” He sentenced still agitated, he appreciated the attempts from the other for encouraging him but couldn't work for many reasons. “And wait, there's more.”

“There’s more?” He asked, intrigued, with that face he made every time he heard a gossip that interested him.

“There’s more.” He confirmed with a nod. “Now I know his name.”

“You know it?”

"Yes, I finally know it.”

“Tell me.” He asked, beginning to smile, like an exalted puppy.

“Do you want to know?”

“Yes.”

“Do you really want to know?”

“Yes!”

“Timothy Drake.”

Roy was quiet again, thoughtful. This time Jason swears that he could see how the gears in his head gave their all -which wasn’t much- to assimilate that name and think where he might have heard it before.

“Drake?” The redhead ended up asking with a frown.

“Yeah. Drake.”

"Like… Drake Industries?”

“Exactly.”

"Your father's competitors?!” He asked then, opening his eyes slightly.

He nodded. His adoptive father, Bruce Wayne, was in charge of the famous and multi-million-dollar company called Wayne Enterprise, which for the past few years had been surrounded by strong rivals in Gotham, such as Drake Industries, for example. Directed by Jack and Janet Drake, who apparently have an only child, a student, very attractive and easy to hit.

“Yes!” He exclaimed, taking his phone out of his pocket to show it to his friend, the object had started vibrating again nonstop, texts arriving over and over again. “And guess what: They are not happy!”

“I wouldn't be either if you ran over my daughter.” Roy said as if it was obvious.

“But you don't have a public image, an army of lawyers and a lot of money!” Technically he had it, because Oliver Queen is not exactly from middle class, but he was not rival of his family and the gossip magazines would not publish the minimum friction that they had. “They've already called Bruce and they want a meeting with those involved, they are going to eat me alive."

He was sure they would. The Gotham's corporate and high-society landscape had never been his thing, he was just a street boy who knew no manners and bored by math, it had been clear from the first and only sophisticated gala to which he was forced to go and in which he learned that high society were unscrupulous sharks.

Maybe if he had gone to more of those parties, he would have met Timothy Drake before and wouldn’t have to learn his name after struck him with his motorcycle, but you can no longer change the past.

"Well, yes, you screwed up." Roy finished saying as he nodded, totally convinced.

What a great support. Wise words.

“They're going to kill me, if Bruce doesn't do it before.” He thought aloud, they hadn't even made an appointment with the lawyers, and he was already stressed. “Or Fox with the public relations team.”

He could already see the headlines in the gossip magazines, overshadowing the ones that talked about his older brother's one-night lovers or the ones that mentioned the bad manners the little one had.

“Yes, you are fucked.” Roy said, nodding and taking in what he had just told him, although after a few seconds he frowned. “But… Bro, just one thing.”

“What?” He asked, rubbing his eyes, and doing his best not to pull his hair out.

“How did you end up running over the boy? You are not a bad driver; you are always focus.”

Now it was Jason’s turn to stay quiet and look at the table, blinking as he chooses an answer that didn't make him look like a fucking mess. He couldn't think of any, so he allowed the silence to continue.

"Jason?" Roy asked, beginning to lose patience again. “What happened?”

Still not saying anything, Jay looked down further and felt his cheeks begin to heat up.

"No…" Roy whispered surprised. Knowing him so well gave him too much of an advantage. “Tell me it’s not true.”

He couldn’t do nothing more than blushing stronger, cross his arms and shrug. He wanted to deny what he was thinking, but he couldn’t.

That morning he hadn't expected to see Timothy hanging around that part of campus with his friends as he searched for a place to park his bike. The boy was wearing a wide sweatshirt, but at the same time those tight pants that fit him so well, his blue eyes sparkled in the sunlight, the wind ruffled that ebony hair that seemed soft to the touch, and the soft and loving smile that was directed to his friends as they walked together caused things in Jason that he couldn't explain.

So, in one moment he was looking at him stunned and the next he had lost the course of the motorcycle and was hitting him.

Shit happens, right?

Apparently not, because Roy had started laughing. A lot. Had started with a weak and incredulous laugh that had grown to become loud laughter that made the tears jump of his eyes and the people in the cafe look at them again, annoyed.

“I can’t believe it! Jay!” Roy said loudly and laughing like crazy, he could hardly breathe.

“It's not funny.” He replied, his arms crossed and his face anger.

Yes it was, it was very funny indeed. If it had been Roy who had run over his crush for having been too distracted having a gay panic for him, he would have also laughed a lot and wouldn’t have let him forget it for the rest of his life. So, he was sure that his friend was not going to do it too.

“It's amazing!” The other answered trying to dry the tears away but still laughing. “Bud, you’re really fucked.”

Jason knew he was saying it just because being so attracted to a guy to the point of running him over unintentionally was a lot, but if they took into account that surely now that boy hated him, along with his parents, friends, and lawyers, whom he would have to meet soon to deal with the consequences of that, yes, that described his situation quite well.

Jason was fucked.

~0.0~

“I just have one question.” Bruce said to his side, also laying his back on the corridor’s wall.

One day, only one day had passed. 24 hours since he had committed the serious mistake of being too aware of a cutie with black hair and blue big eyes like a damn puppy, and he was already in the law firm wearing a suit, almost sweating and the man he could call father looking at him sternly. They were both in the hallway which was heading to the boardroom as they waited for permission to enter, and Jason had been trying not think about how he had destroyed his chances of dating the Drake boy before Bruce came up to judge him, again.

He didn't blame him, the man had spent the previous day receiving and making calls on his name, making the appointment as he could while containing his desire to give him a slap. He didn’t need the talk of "we are public figures, we have to behave" again, because he gave it that to him a lot at his younger times, so he had tried to stay out of it. This implied that Bruce didn’t have time to ask him anything before he had to get him up earlier to go to the Drake’s law firm. Knowing this, Jason continued looking at nothing, but he nodded to give him the opportunity to ask that question.

“There are more than eighty thousand students enrolled at Gotham University.” The man began to say still looking at him. "And of all of them, you have to run over Timothy Drake precisely?"

Jason seemed to think about it for a few long seconds, although the answer was obvious.

“Yes?” He answered. No one at the university had caught his eye like Tim had, so he doubted he could have been distracted enough by another person to run them over.

Bruce sighed deeply, exasperated, and lifting his hand to the bridge of his nose. He had seen him do that gesture of disappointment so many times throughout his life that he could no longer count them.

"Jason…”

“It was an accident.” He was also lost count the times he had said that since the day before.

"I know, son, but it's not me you have to convince.” He finished explaining, taking another deep breath. “It’s her.”

The tone in which he said that, was uncertain and with severe hints of fear, something he was no longer so used to hearing from Bruce and made a chill run down his spine.

“Her?” He asked, trying not to break his voice from the stress.

Bruce breathed again to try to calm down and nodded, the way he looked at him to reveal more reminded him of Alfred when he told him stories as they cooked together in the manor when he was younger.

“Janet Drake.” He let out that name in a low voice, as if it were forbidden to pronounce it. “You've never met her in person, and I was counting on you not have to.”

“Why?” This time he couldn't stop his voice from breaking slightly.

“Don't get me wrong, she is a beautiful woman, very intelligent and talented. Everyone knows that Drake Industries has come this far thanks to her.” He began to say, in a poor attempt to calm him that was not leading nowhere. "But do you know how she is called?”

“How?” His throat couldn't close anymore, he didn't like where this was going.

“The Ice Queen.” Bruce announced. “That's how she’s known, but I can assure you is not enough.”

This time he didn't want to ask anymore, although Bruce would keep talking. Because the ice queen, the ice queen, the ice queen, fucking seriously? No one who has earned such a name in Gotham's corporate and high-society landscape can be kind and understanding. Fuck.

“I have only seen Janet angry one time.” His father emphasized as he pulled out his tie, as if it were choking him. Maybe he was nervous too. “Many years ago, at a gala organized by the Dumas.”

It took Jason a few seconds. He tried to link that last name to some wealthy Gotham family, but unfortunately, he couldn't think of any.

“Who are the Dumas?” He ended up asking.

Bruce looked him seriously in the eye, returned to pull his tie out and nodded frowning.

“Exactly.” He replied annoyed.

Jason swallowed hard and looked back at nothing at the implication in that response. He was going to die, he was going to die, he was to fucking die, there was a beast in Gotham, a fierce and fearsome beast that apparently erased families from the business and social map and he had angered her, he had angered her a lot. He had awakened the beast by harming her puppy, and everyone knew that nothing was more dangerous than an angry mother.

“Mr. Wayne, you can come in.” They heard the voice of one of the mediators calling them from the door of the boardroom.

It's hot, why it’s so hot? He's sweating, he's sure he's sweating, or maybe crying, but he can't be sure because Bruce has put his hand on his lower back, trying to cheer him up and is directing him to the room followed by his own lawyers because they can't let the Drakes wait, but Jason felt like he was going straight to the slaughterhouse.

When he entered, he was greeted by the sight of another group well-dressed, very serious and sitting across the table, lawyers, public relations, and mediators, ready to work and do reach an agreement between the two of Gotham's biggest families with their friction. However, all of them and their greetings were in the background for him when he realized that in one of the chairs was the small, nerdy and adorable boy who had accidentally hit, who looked at him from his seat surprised by his presence and -surely- for being able to put a face to his attacker. He didn't expect him to be there either, he should be resting, but seeing him made the stress he felt ease at least a little.

Both seemed to stare at each other for a few seconds, recognizing each other, and after what seemed like forever, Timothy gave him a slight, almost imperceptible, sorry smile. Jason's heart jumped and he felt warm for a second, his nerves almost disappeared at that gesture, looking at the way in which the boy had combed different this time for the meeting, how pretty he was -as usual-, or how a dimple formed in his cheek when he was smiling, how beautiful that smile was. He would like to see him smile more, smile at him, and does that mean he didn't hate him? He would like to know, and it was all happiness and hope until he realized why of that sorry smile.

Suddenly he felt cold, so cold.

Janet Drake was also staring at him, sitting right next to her son in a straight and elegant posture, without taking her eyes off him. Black hair, smooth and shiny, delicate features, neutral and apparently calm expression. Beautiful, but unattainable, because her blue, icy eyes pierced him in a way that froze him inside. The woman sitting there seemed to be able to see his soul and rip it off, everything from him, that could split him in two and rip out every part of his being without any effort. And despite appearing calm and serene, her aura, everything in her posture, in her gaze, screamed danger and misfortune.

There’s no doubt, she’s the ice queen in all her glory.

He was wasted.

~0.0~

Tim was wasted.

When he had got up that morning, everything he had asked for was that the meeting was normal and went without any inconvenient. And as he prepared to attend awkwardly and without receive any help, because half a day was not enough time to get used to using crutches, he mentally reviewed what had been planned for that meeting.

His parents hadn’t wanted to reveal who had been the responsible for the incident, he didn’t know exactly the reason, but he sensed it must have been someone important, given the deployment of means that had been carried out, it’s not like they also gave him much opportunity to ask anyway. Both immediately went out to arrange the meeting and to arrange things with the hospital so they would give him discharged, and by the time he was allowed to leave he was too exhausted and wasn’t going to say no to anyone when they asked him to rest even more, because he needed it. Hopefully, he had already had an excuse to turn in those assignments later.

So, despite not knowing who he was going to meet, he had decided to do that unfortunate soul a favor and stay in the line that he was fine, surely it had been an incident, and they didn’t have to give it more importance than it had even though his mother wanted to cut heads and stick them in stakes to decorate the garden.

He was the more affected, his word had to count there... No?

Anyway, that's what he thought before he saw Jason Todd walking through the door.

Now, all crushed down, the meeting had started a while ago and he was quiet, serious and sitting in his chair with the Wayne's in front of him, looking at the fine mahogany table and barely listening to the legal conversation that was taking place in his name, although why he fooled himself? Nothing he could say would change anything or appease his parents. But the thing was, why? why is the world so cruel? Jason Todd? really? Of all people, of all motorcycles in the world, it has to be the one from his crush?

It's not like he'd ever thought he had a slight chance with him after all. Jason was tall, handsome, with that bad boy vibe that he likes too much for his own good, also smart, cult, while Tim was... Tim. They had only spoken face to face once at a gala where a 12-year-old Jason shared a muffin with him and never went to any of them again, sure he didn't even remember it. They also went to different faculties, he only saw him from afar on campus from time to time and they hadn't even spoken, but that didn't stop him from noticing him because he had eyes, thank you. No one knows, except maybe Conner, but beyond a curious sparkle in his eyes after realized that he was drooling over Jason in the distance, he never brought the topic up, so he'd always had that fascination with the Wayne boy in secret and under lock and key. He knew that his parents wouldn't be too happy to find out that he was interested in the son of his greatest competitor, or that he was interested in any boy in general, that topic had never come up anyway and he wasn't going to bring it up.

Until the boy walked into the meeting room with his father and Tim almost had a short circuit when he realized that what hit him was an attractive literature student in a leather jacket riding that incredible Ducati. Come on, it wasn’t fair, he had always wanted to ride that, and then the bike, but it wasn’t the most appropriate thing to think about when the other one was looking at him surprised that he was there. He was so busy panicking that he only managed to give him a nervous smile that he hoped hadn't ridiculed him, and then when they sat down he could only scream internally because Jason was so handsome in a suit, this meeting might not end well, Jay could end up hating him if he didn't already, and his mother hadn’t taken her eyes off the tallest as if she were a shark smelling fresh blood.

So, trying to regain his composure and recover from the revelation, Tim sighed, straightened up in his seat, and pretended to listen the meeting while trying with all his might to calm down.

But he couldn't do it, he couldn’t, because it wasn’t easy. The atmosphere wasn’t the most adequate to do it, he could heard his father laugh and trying to appear friendly and understanding when he knew that it was only a strategy to emphasize the coldness and seriousness of his mother, who, of course, kept looking at the Waynes as if they had committed the greatest offense known to man. He played with his fingers for a moment and peeked to assess the situation, Bruce, or Brucie, kept an eye on the mediator's talk, while Jason… Oh.

He turned his gaze away immediately, trying to control his blush. Jason was looking at him in a sneaky attempt too, but they had both failed when their eyes met across the table. He didn't know what to think about it. Did Jason hate him? He did? What was he thinking? He would hate him, of course. He was too nervous, and the possibilities started to suffocate him, he needed to get out of there.

Luckily, his beloved malevolent mother, the perfect model for being a villain in a Disney movie, possessed a sharp sixth sense that was activated at the slightest sign of anguish on his part, which caused her to divert the piercing gaze of the Waynes to center it on him, silently asking what was wrong.

The only good thing about being run over a day earlier by the guy you like is that he could excuse himself from these kinds of meetings without any repercussions or questions.

“Can I get out for a moment?” He whispered, lowering his head.

His fear of asking something like that wasn’t exactly small, but Janet seemed to consider it for a few seconds as she carefully analyzed him before giving his approval and nodding, not before turning his gaze once more to Jason.

Before deciding to worry more about it, he stood up as he could with the crutches and managed to leave the room ignoring the looks on him. His goal was to get to the water machine that was around the hall to pour himself a glass and calm down a bit, but that broken leg didn’t make it easy for him. It was a hard journey; he swears when he got there, he could hear the victory music of Mario Kart playing in his head.

It would have kept playing, he would even have sang it, if it hadn't been because while pouring that first glass, a voice behind him caught his attention and made him jump and turn around with all the speed he had, which wasn’t a lot.

“Hey.” Jason had said softly.

He had to put everything he had together so as not to drop the plastic cup or crush it in his hands. How had he also escaped from the meeting? So much time had passed since his trip to the water machine?

“H-Hey.” He replied nervously and looking down.

That seemed to make Jason nervous too, who already seemed to be it before too, as well as a little guilty, because he tried to look everywhere except him until he had no choice.

“Hi.” Said the tallest.

“Hi.” He replied again.

Eloquent. Inspiring.

They ended up looking at each other closely, at least for a minute before Tim began to fear again and prepare himself for the impending rejection he was going to suffer without even trying. That happened to him for crossing the street without looking before.

But then Jason sighed hard, he tensed and scream in his mind than he wasn’t ready.

“Listen. I…” He began to say, scratching the back of his neck and looking at him sadly. “I’m sorry.”

Eh?

“Eh?”

The other looked at him confused at his reaction. Although surely, he wasn't more confused than he was, he didn't expect an apology even though it was the most normal thing to do in those situations.

“I'm sorry.” Jason repeated, frowning in confusion. "It was an accident, really. And I'm glad you're okay."

If Jason Todd didn’t want him having a massive crush on him this isn’t the way. At all. He had no right to be so attractive to begin with, but neither so good nor kind to him. Before Tim could think better of it, he was already spitting out an unnecessary question:

“Aren't you angry?” He asked, he knew it sounded a bit stunned, but it seemed weird to him. “For all of this?”

Anyone would have been upset or angry about all the trouble their parents had been having over something like that, with the lawyers, the firm, and the notaries. If it had been someone else, they would have caused them a lot of trouble, he was aware of it. So, he couldn't help but wonder how Jason couldn't blame him for the legal mess.

“Shouldn't I be the one asking that?” Jason said raising an eyebrow and pointing at his crutches. “You were the most affected.”

Blinking, Tim realized what he was implying on that and he quickly shook his head effusively. Jason thought he was angry at him? That he hated him for this or something? That’s why he had been so tense with him?

“Oh no. It’s okay.” He hastened to explain. “I know it was an accident, I wasn't paying attention either, those things happen.”

Jason's shoulders seemed to lift as if a huge weight had been lifted from him, and his eyes shone at him in a way he couldn't determine, made him want to smile, this time from relief. Jason didn't hate him, or vice versa. That was a good sign, wasn't it? It meant he had a chance… Right?

“Thank god.” Murmured the other with a slight smile, clearly relieved.

“Unless you did it on purpose.” He dared to say with a playful tone, wanting to take weight off the issue. “In which case, it wouldn't be so good.”

Jason's smile widened and he let out a funny snort, relaxing him was a plus and made Tim compliment himself for that.

“How would I have met you then?” Jason blurted out, still smiling at him.

The atmosphere between them changed completely, it was no longer so uncomfortable or formal, but very different, embarrassed, and warm. Tim felt how his heart stopped before starting to beat faster, because that last one, the way he had said it, and the nervous look he was giving him now, was Jason flirting with him? It was real?

“A-Ah.” He replied mildly surprised. “I don’t know…”

If he continued like this, his brain would definitely fry, more than it already was. He looked at the hallway wall uneasily as Jason ruffled his hair, also undecided.

“I'd like to make it up to you.” He ended up saying, looking like he had come to an agreement with himself. “If you don’t mind.”

“Oh?” He asked, tilting his head curiously, his heart starting to beat stronger than before by the tiny possibility.

“I can invite you to a coffee, or something like that… It would be okay?”

This time when Jason looked up, still seemed impatient and nervous, but the slight blush covering his cheeks indicated why. Tim almost exploded right there, and he had to take all of himself to act quickly.

“Yes. A coffee would be fine.” He also nervously stated, trying to control himself. “It would be a date?”

The brief seconds Jason took to answer that question born from his desire to know, seemed like hours to him, the longest in Tim's life. But when he ended up nodding, scratching the back of his neck again and totally flushed, he couldn't help but smile excitedly and let his own blush appear this time, feeling warm and happy.

“Then I'd love to.” He answered laughing, he couldn’t help it.

“Yes? Really?” Jason asked in surprise again, as if it hadn't been clear from the start that he would say yes. Although by the way they ended up talking, it wasn’t surprising that he doubted his answer, not many people forgave something like a struck with a bike.

“Yes.” He nodded again, totally sure. “What about now?”

No, he didn’t want to go back to the meeting, he knew Jason either. It was no longer worth it. And maybe with this they could give the public relations team something else to work with.

Jason smiled at him in that warm and happy way that made him feel dizzy, but he looked to the hallway of the meeting room somewhat concerned.

“Bruce is used to me avoiding these things, but I don't think your mother would be very happy.”

After a moment of thinking about it, Tim almost went back to laugh again, happy, funny, almost touched.

Before that meeting and his departure from it he hadn’t been sure, but with Jason now in front of him there was no doubt. Her mother expressed her love in very different ways, and it was evident that she had an efficient and sharp mother radar, there was nothing that escaped her, there was nothing she didn't know, no matter how much Tim had tried to hide his panic at the beginning of the meeting, or his sexuality itself. He was very sure that by now she had to know, and if she wouldn't have wanted him or Jason to leave the room, she wouldn’t allowed it. If she hadn't wanted them to talk right now, Jason wouldn't be there. It was that simple.

“I think we'll be fine.” He assured him with a wide smile, taking his mother's actions as a kind of blessing.

When Jason's eyes shined and he smiled back, he confirmed it.

Yes, they would be fine.

~0.0~

“You look so pretty today, Janet. You haven’t changed at all since our last meeting.” Said Brucie with his usual smile.

“…”

“How much time has passed? Six years?”

“…”

“And look at you, beautiful as always.”

“…”

“Jack is a lucky man.”

“…”

“And Timothy? Oh, I remember when he was little, totally the cutest thing in the galas. Now is a man too, but he looks a lot like you.”

“…”

“Kids, uh? Grow up so fast.”

“…”

“Talking about kids, ours have left a while ago, maybe I should go to find th-”

“Sit down.”

Bruce sit down and didn’t speak again.

#myfic #jaytimweek #jaytimweek2020 #dc comics #batman #jaytim #timjay #tim drake #jason todd #red robin #red hood #college au

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join-the-joywrite · 5 years ago

Text

Hamish & Vera soulmate au headcannons

Lil headcannons for a colours soulmate au in which the S1 finale wasn't the first time Hamish had been hit in the face with the powder. Because why not? This version of the colours is the one where you can only see varying shades of the colour of your soulmate's eyes. Because why not?

Largely inspired from some of the vibes I gave myself in the telepathic au so here goes nothin (mild angst, I think) it's gonna be a long one 0.0

To give a time frame, Hamish has been a Knight for six years. Cassie's been dead for three years (I personally like the idea that Cassie died one year into Hamish being a Knight, but for the purposes of this au, we're gonna go with her dying in Hamish's third year as a Knight.)

It's late as shit and it's raining and Hamish is trying to get under cover because A) he just happened to choose today to wear a suede jacket and B) Tundra really doesn't appreciate the rain for some reason. [Now that I think of it, has it ever rained on the show??? Am I just forgetful or does Belgrave not see rain, like, ever?]

He spies an open door and rushes in side, dropping his bag and pulling the jacket off to shake the water away. Maybe he can salvage it. Or maybe, Tundra suggests, they can just rip it apart. For fun, obviously.

In the dark and with the loud pattering of the rain, the newcomer doesn't see Hamish and collides with him.

"Fucking shit weather," Vera complains to herself as she regains her balance.

"Chancellor Stone," Hamish recognises her in the very dim light of the building. The jacket might be ruined but it still has some weight and she's shivering in her pretty silk shirts.

Vera accepts the jacket and leans over to wring her hair out.

"Did you know that you're wearing three different shades of green?" "Your soulmate's eyes are probably green." "They are. But you are wearing three different shades of-- oh, four if you count your shoes."

Vera lifts her head to throw Hamish an annoyed look, as if he's being incredibly stupid, and notices everything isn't blue any longer. She's seeing colours she doesn't know the name for any longer. For the first time, she can see the colour of her own skin and she. Is. Entranced.

The nail polish bottle had said red and someone who'd already met their soulmate had once told her red nails make a person look powerful. But for the first time, Vera can see what red looks like.

She glances at a noticeboard beside her and runs her hand over a poster for some musical auditions. "I don't know what colour this is anymore," she whispers to herself.

"Pink," Hamish supplies, captured with the way Vera is seeing the world through new eyes. He guides her hand to a different poster. "Yellow." And a different one. "Lilac." And yet another. "Mint." And another. "Brown."

And then the novelty fades. "How do you know all of them?"

Vera hadn't been seeing colours before she the rain had come down on her and Hamish was the first person she'd met since she left her office. But if this was the first time she was seeing all the colours, shouldn't it be the first time Hamish was seeing them too?

"Ah. You . . . you're not my first."

"I see." The novelty has completely worn off and any excitement Vera had previously shown was deeply buried. "And where is this first?"

"Dead," Hamish admits bluntly.

"Oh! Oh . . . I'm sorry . . ." "Hamish." "What?" "My name. It's Hamish Duke."

"You should run before the rain starts coming down harder again." Vera looks out and notices that yes, the rain is slowing down. She moves to return the jacket. "No, keep it. It's ruined anyway, just toss it in the trash when you're in your house and warm."

"But you could use--" "I'll be fine, Chancellor."

Vera pauses, hand on the door. "Vera." "What?" "My first name is Vera."

Hamish stands in the middle of the building's foyer, hands in his pockets, and smiles. "Get home safe, Vera."

She does get home safe and she doesn't toss the jacket like he told her to. She fixes it up with some spell and keeps it in the back of her wardrobe.

For the next one and a half years, Vera is slowly getting more and more eaten up with the guilt that she's not telling Hamish about the Order. Little does she know, Hamish has several times thought about telling her about the Knights -- maybe even taking her down to the hide locker.

He does tell her about Cassie though. Explaining how he could identify all the colours because he'd seen them before. Vera asked what happened after Cassie died. "The world goes back to black and white, so I've heard." "But yours didn't." "Because of you." "Cheesy bastard." And then they're laughing again.

It's raining again. Vera can hear the rain drumming against the windows of Hamish's apartment windows.

"I need to talk to you." There is a pause where they both wait for the other to speak. Then Hamish gestures for Vera to speak when he notices her tightly clenched fist and the strange look in her eyes.

"I want to start of with I'm sorry. No let me finish." And in a single breath, Vera gets it all out. "I'm part of a secret society of magic practitioners called the Hermetic Order of the Blue Rose and is dedicated to preserving and passing on the art of magic but every breath you take in the Order could be your last because it is so fucking dangerous to be one of the disciples and I've never told you about it because I don't want you dragged into that world."

"Vera--" and then he's passed out on the couch they were sitting on.

Vera takes a few seconds to decide whether or not she's making a mistake before deciding that neither option seemed to be a very good one.

"Your name is Hamish Duke. You have never heard of the Hermetic Order of the Blue Rose. You have never personally met Vera Stone and you have no idea who your soulmate is."

By the time Hamish wakes, Vera has vanished. He feels fine, as if he'd just fallen asleep to the sound of the rain, something feels wrong about the apartment. Like it's missing something, like something crucial to making it a home had been ripped away.

Hamish starts staying at the den and his apartment sits and collects dust.

"Son of a bitch!" Vera cries when she figures out Jack Morton is a werewolf. She thinks she can't be further surprised ever. She'd bet Jack 20 dollars nothing could surprise her again.

Son of a bitch! She thinks as soon as she walks into the den. Part of her is glad she never vocalised that bet. The other part of her kinda wishes Alyssa had killed her like Coventry asked.

"I need a drink." Hamish is utterly appalled to see a stranger, let alone, the Temple Magus of the Order, his enemy, standing at his bar counter. But then he notices that she actually made a pretty decent drink for herself there.

"No killing." "No promises." Ah, just like old times -- except now with the looming threat of death hanging over their heads. Such fun.

At this point, you may put on Kathleen Edwards' cover of It Must Have Been Love -- and cry with me.

Vera would have assigned a disciple to Hamish, but she knee there was no way she would be able to go down into the den and watch the disciples clear it out without breaking and calling off the entire thing. It's not as if her task now is any better, but Hamish is a sight for sore eyes and she tells herself that if their roles were swapped, she would want him to come to her.

"Magus," he says when she approaches him somewhere near the temple. He notices she's wearing a suede jacket that surely can't be her own. He doesn't comment on it. "What can I do for you?"

"Part of me wishes it hadn't come to this." "Come to what? Coventry is gone, the book is gone, Jack's alive . . . most of the Order is fine. I'd say we're at a pretty good spot."

"You know, Hamish, there's a lot that I want to say to you but not enough words."

Hamish was pretty sure Vera Stone never called anyone by their first names -- at least, that's what he knows from Jack and Lilith. So what made him so special? "Like what?"

"I'm sorry."

"For?"

"Secrets," Vera says, turning away. "Secrets are terrible things. They ruin the best of things and can break down nearly everything."

"What sort of secrets?" Hamish stares at the back of Vera's head as she watches the students walk by in the distance.

Vera's hand shakes as she covers her mouth to keep her breath from shaking too. What's the point in hiding? He won't remember. "I love you."

Hamish gives a nervous laugh. She's not mentally afflicted ...... is she?

"I love you and I'm sorry." "You keep saying you're sorry, Magus, and--" "Please. My name is Vera."

Hamish is, at this point, fully confused. Did Vera perhaps smoke something? He goes up to her to ask her if she's okay. Her shoulder shakes under his hand.

"Vera--"

Vera drops to her knees with Hamish, stopping his head from touching the ground. And for a second, she allows a tear or two to fall. This makes twice.

"Your name is Hamish Duke. You're a TA at Belgrave. You've never heard of the Hermetic Order of the Blue Rose. You've never heard of thr Knights of St Christopher." Her whispering voice breaks and shudders. "Your soulmate's name was Cassie. She died in a car crash five years ago. You're dating Selena Durov." She pauses for a second, hesitating to say the words. "You've never personally met Vera Stone."

She stands up and waits for herself to calm herself before gently shaking his shoulders and pulling him up.

"Chancellor, wha--" "You passed out as I was walking by. Are you okay?" "Yeah, just . . . I don't know." "Well . . . um . . ."

"It was nice meeting you, Chancellor Stone." "Likewise."

And then she leaves because if she stands there any longer, she's going to break. Hamish calls for her as she's leaving. She pretends she can't hear him. Hamish picks up the necklace glinting in the sunlight. It's a simple and single letter H hanging from a chain. Perhaps it belonged to Cassie and he kept it in her memory? Must've been a nasty fall if his own memories are so foggy.

Vera watches from behind a concealment spell as Selena finally finds Hamish. He hurriedly throws the chain over his own neck and offers Selena his arm. He glances back once to see Vera walking away.

Part two

I had to break it up I'm taking a cry break

See the other soulmate aus I've done

#hamish x vera #hamish duke #vera stone #vermish #the order #the hermetic order of the blue rose #the knights of st christopher #the knights of the blue rose #soulmate au #soulmate #please just give me the soulmate au i want #netflix #mara-writes

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