#But i figured making a ''quick comm'' thing would be an easy way to get some money on top of my minimum wage teehe

[heademptie]

Thinking about Ghoap x Comms!Reader

(This is unedited ramblings at 10pm, this may end up being something, it may not)

(Also don't know if this is an actual job, but it makes sense to me that it would exist. But this is fanfiction so who cares)

Reader works for the military as well but their job is to monitor and transcribe communications during ops. Maybe they tried to be a soldier but got denied for some reason, maybe injury, maybe because they couldn't cope with directly taking lives or loosing them.

And readers been at it for a while, is good at thier job, keeps their head down, keeps what they hear to themself.

Reader is loyal, so they get a bit of leeway with their work. Gets assigned to monitor some of the 141's comms and becomes a detatched form of familiar with the team. They don't know who reader is, that they even exist, that most of their radio chatter is being heard by one person at a desk in a government building so far away.

Typically reader just zones out when working, purposefully trying to forget the confidential things they hear once they leave the building. But the 141 is... entertaining. The way they speak to each other with such familiarity and how they can make jokes without loosing sight of the mission, and how at the drop of the hat they hone in and get serious. They start to look forward to 'Price's paternal exasperation, 'Gaz's quick wit, 'Ghost's dry dad jokes, and 'Soap's cheeky comments. Occasionally they're graced with 'Laswell's easy verbal volleys with each member of the team. (Thinking about including Roach too)

And its obvious to reader, absurdly obvious, that Ghost and Soap are together. The thinly veiled, and the very not thinly veiled, flirting between the two is a giveaway. But what really sends it home is the panic. Reader was the one to transcribe the recoding from Las Almas. Right at the beginning, when Ghosts voice called out to Soap, he was calm in that call. But then Soap didnt answer. And reader heard the concealed panic when Ghost called out again, and they heard the relief when he did.

So reader figures out that they're together. Assumes as much. And takes a bit of joy from it. Takes some joy that people in such a brutal line of work have someone who understands and cares for them.

Maybe circumstances lead to reader needing to be saved. Or maybe they end up on base at the same time the 141 is there. And they run into the team some way. Readers smart, so they keep thier mouth shut about being privvy to their comms. Keeps to well known facts about the 141, the stuff soldiers outside of the team would know through reputation and minimal meetings.

Maybe they go out drinking, or maybe reader ends up bonding with the team some. They're all chilling somewhere together, and someone starts hitting on Soap and reader brushes it off. He's an attractive guy, charming too, its understandable. But Soap doesnt turn them down and reader looks over to Ghost who's watching the interaction too. And reader, without thinking says something about an open relationship. Ghost whips around on them in carefully concealed shock and asks them to repeat. Reader explains slowly, not yet realsing their error.

Its not until later, when Soap has left with the pretty thing who hit on him and Ghost had left quickly after readers comment, when Price is chuckling over his drink after reader has explained what they said, that they learn.

Ghost and Soap are not in fact in an open relationship. They are not even in any kind of relationship, romantic or sexual. And reader is shocked, if not a little disappointed, maybe even hurt. It's their own fault, really, they built up this false relationship between real people in their head only for it to remain in their head.

Later on, reader finds Ghost. Wanting to apologise for, stepping over the line? making the unsolicited comment? they're not entirely sure but they feel they should apologise anyway.

This is kinda where my thoughts end. I do have some I haven't mentioned but I don't know where to put them. Nor do I know exactly where this is going. Just some brain rot I've had.

[crash-bump-bring-the-whump]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY @friendlylocalwhumper!! My bestie!! My good friend!! I hope you like this, I love getting to terrify your characters!!

TWs: captivity, murder, kidnapping, gunshot wounds, fear

Laughter echoed through the hallways. The lights were dim, old. The place was drafty as the winter chill cut through the walls. According to Quinn's research, this was where Major was being kept before his final transfer to the permanent holding facility.

After looking all the research over, Mariano had to agree with them. It had been the only building that made sense. Nondescript while being large enough for their purposes, secure enough while being out in the middle of nowhere. Major had to be here.

Now Mariano crawled, silently, carefully, along the high ceiling. He'd cut through the mesh screen of one of the windows and slipped inside. It was easy enough so far to navigate, hand over hand, claw over claw. He passed through the corridors and towards where the holding cells had to be.

More chatter drifted up, and Mariano paused, watching two guards pass under him. There was no way of knowing what state Major would be in when he got there--knowing this group, he might not even be able to hold onto Mariano. That was the safest assumption.

These two had to go. He'd make it quick. One hand released the ceiling, and he relished the stretch that pulled through his shoulders and core as he aimed at their heads.

Two shots, two hits. Both guards dropped in silence as the smell of burning hair started to waft up. This late, there wouldn't be many people there to notice them for a while.

He swung his arm back up and kept exploring. Any guard that had the misfortune of being on shift was destroyed. Quietly. Mercifully. They never expected it.

It was kinder than they'd been to the warlocks that had passed through these walls.

"Quinn, Remy, Tank." Mariano whispered into his mask as he kept exploring the facility. He knew Quinn had their comms on and would relay things to the others. "Be ready to go when I get out of here." His teeth were clenched around the metal bit of his mask, muffling his words just so. "Once I have him, it'll be a run to the extraction point." He'd parked in a nice, secluded spot, prepped for an easy getaway as soon as he threw his car into gear.

"Understood." Quinn said. "We're keeping an eye out."

I"I'll let you know when we're on our way."

Mariano turned down a hall, eyes glancing around for what Quinn had described the holding cell area as. Strong enough to hold weakened warlocks, but not so permanent that they wouldn't be able to tear it down in a hurry if needed. Likely chain link. It brought to mind going to the animal shelter.

It made Mariano wish, for just a moment, that he'd been less merciful earlier.

But there was nothing to do. He was no necromancer, and there were only a few people here that night. There would be more opportunities in the future, he figured.

Finally, finally, Mariano saw chain link cages off to his right. They were small, grouped together in an unlit alcove that didn't even really count as a room. At least it was deep enough into the building that there was a chance that they wouldn't be discovered. Crawling closer, making his way to a wall for a quick descent, Mariano crept deeper into the darkness.

Alone in the awful cell block, slumped against the corner of his cage, was Major.

His hair was stained with dried blood. His skin was more bruise than anything. His clothes were so soaked with almost-black blood that they would be lucky if they regained their original colors when they were washed. He was so still that for a moment Mariano was afraid that Major was gone.

And then Major looked up. His eyes landed on Mariano. He squinted, as though not sure if he was seeing the human shape on the ceiling properly. Mariano lifted one gloved hand and raised his index finger, bringing it to about where his mouth would be on his faceless casting mask.

"What the..." Major mouthed, eyes slowly getting wider as Mariano got closer. "What the fuck is that...?"

Mariano crawled onto one of the walls before dropping onto the top of Major's cage with a quiet rattle. He crouched down, looking at Major. They couldn't meet eyes, not while Mariano was still in his casting mask, but he waved to the warlock before pulling his hunting knife from his belt.

"Don't, don't..." Major couldn't seem to find his words as Mariano's magic lit up his knife. He sliced into the chain link fencing, making an opening wide enough to slip through. "Fuck off!" Major barked, reaching to try pulling himself to his feet. "Hey--" He couldn't get the rest out as Mariano pressed a hand to his mouth.

"Shhh." Mariano said, low and steady. "Don't scream."

Major didn't seem to recognize him, kicking out and thrashing as hard as he could. His heel connected with Mariano's chest, most of the force getting absorbed by the padding of his gear's top. It sent him falling backwards anyway, and he caught himself with a grunt. "Major, hey--"

Major's fist caught his jaw next as the warlock pounced, and a moment later Mariano’s mask was ripped from his face. He couldn't strike back, and certainly couldn't flip them to pin Major. The mask was tossed away, hitting the chain link walls with a loud clatter. "Major, it's me--stop, you're gonna get us caught!" He hissed, glad that he hadn't dropped his knife.

Major got in another punch, one that caught Mariano's temple and sent the world spinning.

Mariano reeled, blinking hard as he tugged back the hood that hid his eyes from Major. "Major, it's Mariano. I'm here to rescue you." He hissed, catching Major's eyes. The warlock stopped, staring in disbelief before shakily getting off of Mariano.

"Why the fuck are you dressed like that?"

Major was still Major, at least. Mariano glanced down at himself. At gloves with lines that followed the bones of his fingers and ended in metal claws. At the sleek black silhouette of the pants and top. At the pockets and pouches that lined the strap across his torso and his belt, filled with first aid supplies. At the clawed boots and glossy black mask.

"Because I can't climb on walls without it." Mariano said, tugging the hood back up over his eyes. "No one checks the ceilings this late. Plus it freaks guards out." He reached for his mask, putting it back on and immediately feeling more secure with the conductive bit between his teeth.

Major laughed, harsh and acidic and familiar. "Makes you look like a freak." Even with that sentiment, he didn't move away as Mariano got back to his knees in a crouch.

"Well, freaks have more tactical advantage in my experience." He said, rolling his shoulders. "C'mon, on my back. It'll keep you away from my magic."

Major didn't argue with that either, even as he grumbled about having to loop his legs around Mariano's waist. As Mariano stood, he didn't miss how Major held on tighter, or how he turned his head away when Mariano's knife lit up. "Quinn. He's secured, beginning extraction."

There was a route that wouldn't take long. Three doors, three locks, then less than a minute to the car. Mariano started to jog.

The lights cut not two minutes into their escape, replaced with flashing red as alarms started blaring. "Shit--" Major yelped, clinging tighter seemingly without realizing. Mariano didn't stop, breaking into a run.

He heard footsteps behind them, turning and firing two blasts that cut through the darkness. Screams echoed through the hall, followed by the sound of a body crashing to the floor. "Face against my shoulder, it's going to smell fucked up!" He called to Major as he broke into a full run, and for once the man didn't argue.

More guards this time, up ahead. They fired their guns as Mariano fired his magic with a high, trilling whoop, the blasts coming from his mask this time. He felt one arm explode into searing heat just as the guards ahead dropped. That was fine, he'd get that looked at later when the adrenaline had a chance to subside.

He couldn't give any of them time to think.

More guards, more bullets, more magic racing a searing path through the hallway. His thigh lit up next, then his hip. He'd worked with worse circumstances before.

He heard Major yelp, felt him tense and shudder against his back. "Almost out. Almost there, don't let go!" Mariano said, one hand raising up to grip Major's arm. He felt something smear under his gloved thumb. They'd hit Major.

That was much less fine.

Mariano's next blasts hit home, and he raced through the haze of smoke and burning skin and cotton. The locks on the doors didn't need more than a blast each, thankfully, and before long they were bursting into the fresh, night air. Mariano darted towards the cover of the surrounding trees, retracing his steps to where the car was waiting.

"He was hit once, in the forearm." Were the first words out of Mariano's mouth when he yanked the back door open. Remy's and Tank's hands reached out as Mariano turned around, letting them pull their bloodied boyfriend from his back. He shut the door after them before hopping into the driver's seat.

"Were you hit?" Quinn asked as Mariano took his mask off and tugged his hood down.

Mariano twisted the key in the ignition, feeling the restored engine purr to life. "Three times, doesn't matter." He said, sparing them a glance as he started pulling out onto the old dirt road. "None of you can drive stick. I'm not bleeding too badly yet, I can wait a bit." Quinn didn’t argue.

Mariano glanced back through his mirror to where Remy was holding Major's arm, carefully, delicately examining him. Tank had settled him between both of them in the back seat. Between them, nestled under the blanket that Mariano kept back there, Major was almost hidden. Major was safe, there.

"Go ahead and get him healed before we leave the treeline, if you're wanting to. I have supplies if you don't." He motioned to his glove box, and Quinn caught on. They pulled his emergency first aid kit from it, passing it back as Remy's gentle thank-you drifted forwards.

Light shone up from the back seat, and Major's choked-back noises of pain went uncommented on. The trees swallowed the healing radiance. The CD that Bastian had left in the player, on a low volume, swallowed any hitching breaths that could’ve possibly been mistaken for crying.

They'd let Major be strong.

Mariano flicked on his headlights as he eased them onto the empty highway minutes later. Getting to speed, he glanced in his mirror again. Major's head had drooped onto Tank's shoulder, a small frown plastered on his face. Remy was locking the first aid kit again and passing it back to Quinn. Tank had his arm around Major, holding him steady.

Mariano ached, the bullets still in him crying to be pulled out. His shoulder burned, even as he drove using his good arm. But Major needed to get somewhere with a bed, and before that, he needed something greasy and fresh off a griddle. They all did. If he winced while reaching for his wallet in the drive through they'd found, Quinn was kind enough not to mention it.

The extra ten minutes wouldn't kill him by any means, Mariano thought as Quinn passed out the food. It would mean the world to the people huddled around Major in the back seat, and double-checking the route to his right. It was worth washing down any small, low groans or hisses from the road's inperfections with a cold soda.

"Wh...why the fuck did you get me a girl toy?" Major grumbled, opening his bag and seeing what had been tossed in by the fast food worker.

Mariano didn't falter, pulling back onto the highway. "I asked them for one of each for you guys. So you could trade." He explained, popping a fry into his mouth. "It's the best part of getting a toy."

"Fuck off, Mariano." Major snapped.

Mariano grinned, tilting his head to dodge a thrown fry from Major's bag.

It was nice to have Major back.

[eaotheelf]

Where has Eao been 2023 edition

Another year, another bunch of excuses from me about why I am not nearly as active as I was. The difference this year being whilst I may have kept to myself before but still logged in and enjoyed solo content in a limited capacity, the solo content stream has become a slow drip. Every day log ins have become once or twice a week to save my houses and resend out airships.

I can say that life has been hard, but that's an understatement. Expect PWYW pet comms to come back accordingly because of it, at least until I can get a promotion (more on that later). Health issues are abundant, going to a doctor with any family member (husband or child) feels a bit like running into traffic. My child is handling middle school exactly like I did, minus a few disturbing behaviors that I did but add in new disruptive behaviors that are uniquely her own. I myself am still fighting treatment resistant depression and I am often thinking of the quote "I am my melancholy and my melancholy is me".

It's not all bad, however. I am making a concerted effort to stay grounded in the real world. Whilst it would be so easy in theory to just run back off to Eorzea and hide from the real world for a break, I recognize this is not healthy for me.

I've instead been focusing on redirecting intrusive thoughts into home improvement. I've been in a constant state of renovating one end of my house or the other. I could have a pressure washing channel at this point for how often I have used it.

I've also made a steadier effort to connect to with my friends. Once a month hang outs have turned into random nights out on short whims and planned crawfish boils, cookouts, spa days, you name it.

I've been focusing on my job in a way I haven't in a long time. The efforts have paid off and within the next three months I should be receiving a promotion that would change my life. It would be a position offered to people with social work masters degrees, but I just stuck around and learned over the past three years. I am so excited, not for the raise (maybe not just for the raise) but for the real world impact I can make once I get there...

I've been almost most importantly focusing on the health of myself and my entire body. I am down over 60 lbs and it's been freeing. To go outside and touch the grass figuratively, I can't actually touch it because I am very much allergic to it. Walking has become my exercise of choice and I'm doing upwards for five intention miles a day which feels amazing. I'm proud of where I have been and where I am going, but also where I am.

All this to say.. I may be back, but at this point I may not be back in anywhere near the capacity I once was, and that's okay. To be the old fogie in the corner keeping to myself and just watching others in their adventures and silently cheering them on in my head. Or butting in occasionally on Alric and making quick friends for the night. My future in this community is one that is uncertain, but that isn't a bad thing. Merely a "I'll be there when I can."

Peace and love, my friends, peace and love.

[artdecosupernova-writing]

OC Kiss Week Day 1: Stars

WIP: Darkspace Portent Pairing: Warren x Thrive Timeline: M33 Arc CW: None, I don't think. Rating: T Words: 909

***

"Warren."

At the sound of his name, Warren broke out into a subdued dance, kicking up dirt at his feet near the edge of his favorite Tournaltis cliff. He popped his shoulders, swinging his hips around until he faced Thrive, who'd stopped in his tracks some feet away.

Thrive calmly lifted his eyebrows.

"I've decided that if I distract you," Warren said, getting a little more into his dance, "then you won't reprimand me for almost having to duke it out with Thoeala to get her to sleep."

The sounds of the distant city, bustling even in the middle of the night, filtered through the crisp air to the mostly-bare cliff and the desert lights did their traditional swaying on the beach far below. Waves crashing against the shore mingled with urban ambience.

"…I was unaware that you were close to fist-fighting our child," Thrive said slowly, a layer of amusing incredulity temporarily draped over his tone. "I merely wanted to thank you for putting her to bed in the first place."

Warren stopped dancing and placed his hands on his hips. "Well, yeah? Why wouldn't I?"

Thrive tilted his head. The three moons highlighted the brushed gold of his cape as he moved closer. "I suppose I didn't know what would come out of your presence this time."

"You expected me to leave it all to you again? Dude, I told you. I'm alive and able, and I played a big part in Thoeala's existence. I'm here for it, E.T."

Thrive looked at him, a refreshing lightness in his eyes that Warren still wasn't used to seeing. "It's been some time since you've called me that."

"Oh, you like that, huh?" Warren grinned, cockiness rising in his chest. "But you don't like the word, you kinky bitch."

Thrive laughed. "I do admit, the contradiction is a mystery even to myself."

Warren sidled even closer. "Is that the only reason you came all the way out here? So far away from the capital house?"

Thrive peered over his shoulder at their home, a little more than a hundred yards from the edge of the cliff. Close enough to see figures moving past the windows. "So far away," he echoed facetiously. "No, it's not the only reason I came out here, th'saiya."

"Then you better skip the dialogue and get on it quick."

"Very well," Thrive sighed. He gripped Warren's chin, tipped his head back, and planted a deep, lingering kiss onto his mouth.

Goosebumps formed on Warren's arms with each second that their kiss extended, doubly so when the tendrils of Thrive's mind reached into his, the glow of their psyches melding together as always burning behind his eyelids. Warren reached under the cape to tug Thrive to him by pressing his palms flat to his back, the golden silk running over his knuckles like smooth water.

"Mm-hm," Warren hummed when Thrive parted from him. "More of that."

Thrive smiled. "And what have the stars done to deserve this spectacle?"

"Oh, they've seen us do worse," Warren grunted, craning his neck to brush their lips together again.

Thrive dug the tips of his fingers into Warren's hair, into his scalp, setting off a shudder. Thrive's teeth nipped at Warren's bottom lip and his tongue soothed the spot.

"Christ," Warren groaned, his breath catching in his throat. "What you still do to me after twenty years..."

"I look forward to seeing what I can still do to you after a hundred and twenty," Thrive murmured.

Warren exhaled slow, his grasp on Thrive's waist firm. "You sure don't make things easy, do you?"

Thrive's eyes glittered with playfulness. "I was under the impression that I made things…the opposite of easy. For you, specifically."

After a beat, Warren snorted. "Wow. A pun? You're miles above that."

"You've been rubbing off on me."

"Not yet, I haven't." The sound of Warren's comm device chirping from his pocket interrupted him, and he pretended not to hear it for as long as he could before Thrive glanced pointedly downward. "Ugh, fine." He pulled it from his pocket and answered the call, gluing his gaze back to Thrive's in the meantime. "Corin, unless you're about to tell me Thoeala's awake or one of you guys has just lost an arm—"

"Thoeala. I'd take care of it but I've literally got my hands full of volatile chemicals. I mean, I've got a saw here somewhere, I could probably arrange the other thing, too, if you want."

Warren rolled his eyes. "You're such a drama queen. I'll be there in a minute."

"We'll resume this later," Thrive said as Warren hung up on Corin. "I will make sure you're taken care of by the end of the night."

"Promising..."

Thrive began to back away, trailing his fingers down Warren's arm. "Perhaps becoming natural for a while wouldn't be entirely out of the question…?"

A squeaky, desperate sound escaped Warren without him even knowing one was coming. He cleared his throat. "Cool. That's…cool. I'm down."

Thrive shook his head, amused, before they made their way back to the capital house.

Unfortunately for Warren, however, he fell asleep in Thoeala's room, cuddled up with her in his arms on the long, plush pouf stretched out on the floor beside her sleep pod. Thrive carefully leaned into the room, observing this for several minutes and contemplating waking Warren.

Instead, he silently turned off the light and closed the door behind him.

[sheizara]

May DWC Day 5 - Patience/Wrath

“Hey Shei, Farmer McGuckett said the elemental activity’s up again. Bunch of ‘em tore across his field this morning and ripped up a whole lane of corn,” her comm crackled nearby with Jonah Miller’s subtle drawl. 

Sheizara groaned and scooped the little device up off the nightstand, a hair over the edge of hungover. She fumbled with the button to activate the mic, her Thalassian accent thicker around the Common tongue, “Could have sent that as a text, Jonah. You send your balloon up yet?” 

“Nope, had to be a direct call. Just got the data back, I’m plotting it now but there’s already a curve shaping up the higher you go and it feels rough out here already with how humid it is. I wouldn’t be surprised to see cells starting to pop up in the afternoon. You gonna be able to make it out?” 

Afternoon gave her enough hours to choke down a greasy breakfast, shower, and trek all the way out to Westfall with all her gear. The high elf sat up and regretted the choice near immediately — almost enough to make her reconsider. Almost. She steeled herself and shoved a hand through her messy blonde hair to get it out of her face before responding back, “I’ll be there.” 

By the time she’d made it out the storm clouds had already started to bubble, rising quick on the hot updrafts. It always took a little patience, and luck, to set up in the right place. The plains west of Elwynn Forest were flat, and that made it easy to keep an eye on things and stay safe from the inevitable wind and hail. 

Jonah had already told her that he figured the worst of it all would track across the center of the region, based on the way the elementals had been gathering. She could see them through the viewfinder of her camera, the long lens magnifying them for her all the way up on her distant hill. Joe was planning on meeting up with a few of their other friends and chasing as close as they could. 

After that it wasn’t long for the first storm to become its own cell. Where hours ago the clouds had been airy puffs, now they were dark and roiling, menacing in the way they rotated. Sharp cracks of lightning struck down, and the whirling air spirits darted around as if they were trying to catch it themselves. She snapped pictures as the strange beings provided a strange escort through the wheat, anticipation making her ears stand up straight. 

Waiting. 

Someone had mentioned the strange concurrence to her shortly after she’d moved to Stormwind. There wasn’t a name for the phenomenon, might as well be a legend with the way people talked about it, but today felt different. There was malice in the hot wind that whipped at her and shifted the golden grass in waves. Eversong had been a place of placid weather, but you could feel the wrath of the elements here in the south where there was less magic to contain them. 

A shift in the elemental’s behavior caught her attention. One by one they formed a ring, and her shutter clicked. In tandem they started to move, their circle starting to spin under the angry sky. The dust kicked up between them, and their airy forms became harder and harder to see as their speed blurred them at all edges. A funnel spun and descended down from the clouds, intending to meet the summoning. 

It was a breathtaking and violent sight, the howling audible even so far afield. 

Her stomach flipped a little as she turned her camera on its stand, trying to keep the empowered tornado in frame. There were far flung farmsteads in the path, and wagon worn roads dotted with a few onlookers she knew to be other chasers. The population was low out here, but that didn’t make the potential for destruction any easier to swallow. 

She fished her comm out of her pocket and clicked it on before offering the only warning she knew she’d be able to give in time, “Jonah, you need to get further up that road.”

( @daily-writing-challenge )

[kenzicraw]

Back in the Saddle

Midvale, a few weeks post-Phantom Zone. In an attempt to remaster the powers Kara spent months without, she and her two most important people make a road trip home to test her flight.

Or, I just want Kara to be able to fly for the joy of it the way Clark did in Man of Steel.

Read with “Flight” by Hans Zimmer playing. You won’t regret it.

/////

Lena knows the moment Kara emerges from the house up on the ridge. Alex’s eyes flick up, back down, then up again in quick succession. An entirely smug grin alights her face before she pointedly looks back down at her tablet.

“We’re going to have to have a talk about your affinity for making my sister new suits at some point, Luthor,” she says.

Lena feels her face heat up. “No idea what you mean.”

“Sure you don’t.”

Lena scoffs. “She needed a new one,” she hisses at the smirking elder Danvers. “The one she had was wrecked and there was no fixing it.”

“Agreed,” Alex allows, smile growing. “But this is what? The fourth one you’ve made for her?”

“One other! With upgrades!”

“Mmhmm.” Alex types a few more things into the tablet. Pulls out a USB and plugs it into the side. “Sure.”

Lena feels her face go hot. “What are you insinuating, Alex?”

Alex shrugs. “Not insinuating anything,” she says. She glances back up and smiles some more. “Just thinking you’re making a habit of making suits for Kara and I kind of appreciate it.”

At Lena’s questioning look, Alex elaborates. “Winn made her first one,” she says. “And yeah, it did the job, but it was-“ she waves her hand in a so-so gesture, wincing- “not the best. Prone to wardrobe malfunctions.”

Lena snorts. “Patriarchy.”

“Fuck ‘em,” Alex agrees with a playful two finger salute.

After a shared grin with Lena, her eyes travel back to where Kara must have made it down to the beach. “They’ve all protected her, the suits you’ve made,” Alex says. Her voice has gone quiet. Gone is the light teasing. She holds Lena’s eyes for a moment. “And I... can’t tell you how much that means to me.”

Lena’s eyes suddenly mist over, and her throat works against the lump that forms there.

Alex looks pointedly back down at her tablet, where she pulls up a video feed from one of the comm pieces resting on the boulder she’s made her impromptu HQ desk. She clears her throat. “I’ve never made sure you knew that. So. Now I’m telling you.”

Lena absolutely refuses to cry, but fuck if it doesn’t take a Herculean effort. She wrestles with the hot gratitude and affection boiling in her chest as Alex fiddles with the settings on the camera feed.

Alex glances up again, and her smile turns warm in a way Lena knows is reserved only for her sister. “Looking good, sis,” she calls. “Little weird without the cape, though.”

“Thanks! Lena made it!” Kara chirps from behind Lena. “Even has pockets! And yeah, I was going to ask you about that. Is there no cape, Lena?”

She barely dares to turn, but Alex is giving her one hell of a challenging look, and she’s still a Luthor.

And Luthors never back down from a challenge.

She turns her face just enough to look over her shoulder and immediately curses that particular Luthor trait.

Sure, she made the suit. But that in no way prepares her for what it looks like when it’s wrapped around Kara. The dark blue, almost black throws her golden hair, shimmering in the late sun, in sharp relief. The smooth material sweeps over the dips and curves of her shoulders and biceps, the dip in the high collar exposing slightly below the hollow of her throat. She approaches silently on the sand, the soft and supple deep maroon boots smooth and soundless. Lena had left the pants a little loose, a little more comfortable, but that did nothing to hide the muscle that bunches and releases rhythmically as Kara walks across the sand.

And she’s looking quizzically at Lena. Head slightly titled, blue eyes somehow even bluer against the darkness of her suit, the blue and red accents, and the reddish tint of the setting sun.

Lena rips her eyes away from the subtle dips in Kara’s abs and desperately wracks her brain to remember what question was asked of her.

“Cape, Lena?” Alex prompts with a shit eating grin.

“Right,” Lena coughs. She turns fully to meet Kara, hand already pointing to the belt slung diagonally across Kara’s chest. “I figured, since you’re not wanting to be in the limelight just yet, I should make it a bit more understated,” Lena explains. “Did you see the crest on your left shoulder?”

“Yeah,” Kara nods. “I like that it’s so small.”

“Press it.”

Kara’s eyes dance with curiosity, not leaving Lena’s, as she reaches up to press on the tiny S affixed to the dark brown leather.

At the press of Kara’s fingers, the nanites immediately begin to crawl across the suit, gathering and extending down her back and around her chest in a long, deep maroon cloak. Kara lets out a startled sound of delight, swishing the thick material and stroking at it with near reverence.

“More nanites?” Alex smirks.

Lena shrugs, tossing the elder Danvers a smirk of her own. “I mean, I do have an MO at this point. No sense in ditching it.”

“It’s great!” Kara exclaims. She swishes the cloak again, grinning happily. “I can put it away if I want! This would have saved me so many headaches years ago!”

She bounces over to Lena and wraps her up in a warm hug. “Thank you,” she says quietly. Only for Lena. “I love it.”

Lena squeezes her around the back, hands fisting in the material of the cloak, feeling herself flush with happiness. “I’m glad,” she whispers.

“That’s actually a pretty good idea, Lena,” Alex says as they break apart. She’s back at the tablet, tapping and looking over some sort of read out. “She was always complaining how the cape got in the way.”

Lena arches an eyebrow at Kara. “What about your cape tricks?”

Kara grimaces. “Much less useful than I was led to believe.”

Alex snorts. “Understatement of the century,” she mutters. “Okay,” she strides over to a Kara and gently fits a comm around her ear. “That has a GPS and camera built in. We’ll be able to see what you see, know where you are, monitor vitals-“

Kara makes a face. “Wait, if you can track me, couldn’t someone else?”

Lena shakes her head. “The crest has signals built in to interfere with radar. Any signal that’s not Alex’s will get scrambled to cloak you.”

Kara surges forward for another hug, and over her shoulder Lena sees Alex smile with an exasperated shake of her head.

“Always protecting,” she mutters.

“What, Alex?” Kara asks as she lets Lena go and takes a step back.

“Nothing,” Alex says. She inputs a few more commands on the tablet, then looks up at Kara. “So. You ready?”

Lena glances over to Kara for what she thinks will be a quick confirmation.

But in those brief seconds, Kara’s easy smile and eager brightness had darkened.

In the red glow of the sun, she stands with her face tilted upward. She gazes at the sky with unfiltered longing, but her hands are trembling. Her whole being quivers, wound tight like a spring, as if she wants nothing more than to hurl herself up to the clouds. But there’s a tightness in her eyes, something there that just... won’t let her. She just stands there, shaking, looking up with haunted eyes.

Alex reaches out, rests a hand on Kara’s forearm. “Hey,” she murmurs. “You don’t have to do anything crazy. Whatever you’re ready for is all you have to do. The rest will follow.”

Kara nods, but still she hesitates. “But what if- what happens if I can’t- I mean-“

“I caught you floating in your sleep two nights ago,” Lena says gently and Kara’s eyes - desperate, scared eyes - whip to hers. “You can do this. But only if you’re ready to. Okay?”

The near manic desperation in Kara’s eyes cools as they hold each other’s gaze. She squeezes Alex’s hand, takes a breath, and nods resolutely.

“Yeah, yeah,” she mutters, giving her shoulders a shake. “I’m good. I’m okay.”

Alex squeezes her arm, then lets go. “Whenever you’re ready.”

Kara has her eyes on the sky again, gives her shoulders one more fortifying shake. She flexes her hands, rubs them on her pants once. She glances over at Lena and seems to brighten at the reassuring smile Lena gives her.

“Okay,” she breathes. “Here goes nothing.”

She stills, closes her eyes. Breathes in deep, then lets it out slow.

She breathes once more, the tense lines of her face relaxing.

Silently, her feet leave the sand.

Alex reaches over for Lena’s arm and grasps it tightly.

Eyes still closed, Kara rises higher in the air, straight up. She turns in gentle circles as she ascends, up and above the ridge.

Alex is looking over the read-outs on the tablet, eyes darting back and forth with near frantic energy. “Looking good so far, Kara,” she says distractedly. “Vitals are good. You’re at a hundred feet now.”

“Feels good,” comes Kara’s voice through the comms. “I’m not even trying.”

Alex’s smile is so proud Lena wants to cry. “That’s good, kid. That’s so good. Two hundred feet now.”

Alex is still gripping Lena’s arm painfully tight, but she’s rocking up on her toes happily, shooting Lena fervent looks of pure joy.

“Knew you could do it, Kara,” Lena says into her own comms, taking Alex’s hand away from her arm but keeping ahold of it. She squeezes as tight as her own bubbling pride allows.

Kara’s finally in the air. She’s flying. It’s one more step closer to conquering the giant mountain they’ve been climbing since she got back.

“How high now, Alex? I’m not looking.”

Alex glances at the screen, then up towards where Kara is becoming a dark dot among the clouds. “A thousand feet. Still feeling good?”

“Yeah. Really good, actually.”

“Have you opened your eyes yet?” Alex’s voice is teasing.

“No. What if I’m suddenly afraid of heights?” Her voice is childishly whiny, drawing a chuckle out of Alex and Lena.

Lena glances down at the video feed from Kara’s earpiece and has to stop herself from gasping.

“Kara, I think you should open your eyes,” she says slightly breathlessly.

“I’m gonna fall if I do,” comes Kara’s tight reply.

Alex is also staring at the camera feed, watching as the view of the water recedes farther toward the bottom of the screen as Kara rises higher and higher. “Kara, you want to see it,” she says. “Trust us.”

Lena knows the exact moment Kara opens her eyes. There’s a tiny gasp through the comms, and the camera arrests in place. Locked on to the brilliance of the shimmering water, the watercolor of the clouds in the light of the setting sun.

For a moment, Kara hangs motionless in the air.

Alex is anxiously tightening and loosening her grip on Lena’s hand. Looking up to where Kara is barely a speck in the sky, back to the camera, then back up again.

“Kara?” she says, a small break in her voice. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” comes Kara’s breathless voice. “Yeah, no, I’m good.”

There’s another moment of silence, then “It’s breathtaking. I... I’d almost forgotten-“ her voice cracks, and she clears her throat -“How beautiful this planet is.”

Alex squeezes Lena’s hand so tight it hurts, and Lena brings her free hand to grip at Alex’s forearm.

Alex sniffles, swipes her eyes against her shoulder. “It has its moments,” she rasps.

For a few long moments, they three stay silent. Lena and Alex on the ground, clutching at hands and arms in barely restrained joy with the waves lapping nearby.

And Kara, so high they can’t even see her, hanging in midair. Silent save for her gentle, easy breathing and the wind whistling around her.

And then, so suddenly both Lena and Alex flinch, she huffs a breath.

“Wanna see how fast I can get around the world?”

Alex barks a laugh, exchanging a fond and relieved look with Lena. “Your record is what? Thirty four seconds?”

“I can beat that,” comes the cocky reply.

And god, she sounds so happy.

Alex scoffs. “If you say so.”

Lena pulls out her phone and sets up a stopwatch. “On my mark, then?” she says.

“Don’t break anything, Kara,” Alex warns, though there’s no bite in her voice.

“And don’t break that suit,” Lena chimes in.

Kara’s voice has a tiny edge of Supergirl - the first since the Phantom Zone - when she replies. “Nothing’s getting broken here except the sound barrier.”

A shiver shoots down Lena’s spine. She does her best to ignore why.

“In three, two, one-“ she taps her phone- “Go.”

BOOM!

The noise vibrates through Lena’s chest. High above, the sky seems to part for Kara as she rockets towards the sun, leaving a trail in her wake.

Lena and Alex crowd the screen, watching wide-eyed as the ocean zips by far below, clouds whipping past, the camera quivering with the breakneck speed.

“Oh my god,” Lena murmurs almost by accident.

On the screen, a dark line of land rapidly approaches on the horizon as Kara hurtles toward it.

“That’ll be Japan,” Alex mumbles. She checks the read-outs and nods to herself. “Vitals are still good. Heart rate’s a little elevated, but considering-“ she gestures to the screen with a wry smile.

Lena nods, barely holding back happy tears.

On screen, Kara slows just enough for the sound to come back. Air whistles through the comms, her breathing slightly labored, and she ducks her head to watch the cities blink far below.

She won’t break her record by slowing like this, but Lena doesn’t mention that. And neither does Alex. They just watch as Kara picks up speed again, camera angling strangely as she dives.

She shoots west, weaving in huge slalom turns. The camera angles and tilts as she looks across the water, across the trees and grasslands and mountains as she passes them. Cities and towns flash past like street lights on a highway.

On the screen, her GPS tracks her through the rest of Asia, across India and into Africa. It’s a far cry from the speed she’d shot off at, but she doesn’t seem to mind as she dips and rolls through the clouds, hand outstretched as if to catch the swirling vapors.

Once she reaches the distant coast, Kara dips so low her hand reaches out to skim the water. She sails over the waves, fingers dragging, until she finds a pod of dolphins playing in the white water. For a moment, she flies just above the waves with them as they leap and dance.

The camera jerks toward the sky, and Kara gives a loud, delighted whoop as she shoots upwards. Spinning and spinning so fast the camera is blurring with the speed.

And through it all, Kara is laughing. Huge, joyous belly laughs, arms outstretched and head thrown back as she sails back into the clouds.

At 40,000 feet, she slows her ascent. Like a ball tossed in the air, she hovers at a stop for a split second before she starts to plummet. She turns, belly down and arms outstretched as the ocean rushes to meet her.

Still laughing with outrageous joy.

“God I missed that,” Alex murmurs. Her voice quivers and breaks.

Lena doesn’t take her eyes away from the screen. She doesn’t want to miss a single moment of this. But she does give Alex’s hand a squeeze in agreement.

Because hearing that laugh, being here and watching as Kara rolls and dives through the air, is healing pieces of Lena’s heart that she didn’t think would ever even scab over.

Kara’s joy is infectious, like it had always been. And Lena finds that she’s soaking it in like a woman parched.

On screen, Kara shoots off with another mighty BOOM. Her GPS shows her hurtling across the US at breakneck speed.

“Not even close to her record,” Alex laughs wetly. “Guess we’ll have to try again later.”

Lena swipes her hand under her eyes with a chuckle, catching tears that neither of them really acknowledge.

And seconds later, Kara lands with a muffled thump. Sand flies under her feet, and the ground trembles.

But her face is flushed, smile radiant, eyes glistening with tears.

Alex takes a step toward her, but pauses. “You okay?”

Kara gives a sobbing laugh, gestures helplessly with her hands. But her smile is wondrous.

Alex surges forward and wraps her in a tight hug. Kara clutches back, hands buried in her sister’s jacket and face pressed against her shoulder.

After a moment, one hand reaches out, fingers wiggling invitingly.

Lena takes that hand in both of hers and holds on tight. Over Alex’s shoulder, Kara’s eyes crinkle with her smile, sparkling and overwhelmed. She squeezes Lena’s hand, then tucks her eyes against her sister’s shoulder with a huge breath.

In a way, Lena feels as if they’re all breathing that same breath of relief.

“I wanna go again.” Kara’s voice is muffled adorably against Alex’s jacket.

Alex chuckles and rocks Kara back and forth happily. “We can stay out here as long as you want.”

Kara nods. “’Kay,” she says. But she holds on to Alex tighter, fingers digging into her jacket. “But in a minute, okay?”

Alex nods. Presses a kiss to the side of Kara’s head. “In a minute.”

And that seems to suit all three of them just fine. No one’s quite ready to let go yet.

/////

I'm a sucker for the angst just as much as the next nerd but I needed them to just... be happy and together. Just for a moment.

[homosexuality-at-its-finest]

3+1 (Avengers x Male!reader)

Plot: 3 times you saved the avengers and the 1 time they saved you

Avengers x Male!reader

Warnings: cussing, slight angst?, readers a selfless idiot

Y/N: your name

H/C: hair color

E/C: eye color

Word count: 1396

 1.

The mission was supposed to be a simple one, infiltrate a HYDRA base and get information on their current plans. The team had gotten word from and informant that HYDRA was planning something big, something that could endanger the world at large. The plan was rather simple, most of the team would distract the agents while Natasha snuck inside and hacked into their systems and got the information they needed.

It started off well, with everyone but Natasha distracting the agents as she creeped into the building, making her way towards the main server room. The trip to the server room was surprisingly easy, the red head only having to take down a few of the HYDRA goons. She had taken them down with ease and was now in the server room, eyes scanning over the words that ran past the screen in front of her. She plugged the flash drive in, hacking through the needed files so she could upload the documents onto the flash drive. She could hear the playful banter mixed with orders from Steve over the comm, a small smirk spreading across her lips when she heard Tony make a snarky comment towards their team leader.

In her moment of distraction an agent had snuck up on her, but before he could lay a hand on the assassin a cry of pain left his lips as someone hit him over the head. Natasha’s head whipped around, eyes landing on Y/N who was giving her a little grin.

“Next time watch your six Tasha.” The man teased, causing the red head to roll her eyes with a sigh. “I’m never going to live this down.”

 2.

It was a normal day at the tower, Thor was off in some distant place, Clint went back home to his family, and Natasha was off god knows where. Bruce was having a rather bad day emotionally, the feeling of hulk clawing at his brain was excruciating. He wanted to slam his head against the wall until the pain went away and hulk just shut up. He sat in the ‘Zen room’ as the team called it, it was where he could go to calm down and relax when he was having a bad day. Usually no one else other than him would come into the room, it was really his room, and no one wanted to overstep an unsaid boundary.

He was curled on the fluffy sofa, a cup of tea in his shaking hands. He could see the green creeping into his skin and it absolutely terrified him. He let out a shaky sigh, closing his eyes for a moment as his heart began to race. He felt like he was about to go over the edge, but a gentle and steady hand tore him from those thoughts. His eyes snapped open, his head turning to the side to see the gentle gaze of Y/N. The H/C gave Bruce a gentle and understanding smile, not one ounce of judgement on his face. “Bad day?” He questioned, his voice calming the unforgiving monster inside of him.

The scientist let out a shaky sigh, giving his friend a little nod. Y/N simply hummed and sat beside Bruce, squeezing his shoulder. “How about we watch a movie, I can make you some tea and make whatever you want for lunch?” He offered, wanting to do anything he could to relax his teammate. Y/N helped Bruce more than he had realized, calming the raging storm inside of the scientist, the big guy lulling into a calmer state. Bruce couldn’t be more thankful for it.

 3.

Tony wasn’t sure how he got in this situation, one second they’re fighting an alien threat and next thing he knew he was being thrown against the side of a building. His ears were ringing, and his vision was blurry, he could feel himself hit the ground with a ‘thud’. He could hear his teammates voices in the comms, the worry for him was clear. He tried to lift himself up, but his entire body felt like lead and he just fell back down into a heap of metal. The billionaire let out a groan of pain, his eyes falling shut.

He heard rapid footsteps but couldn’t bring himself to open his eyes. His head was pounding and every inch of him hurt, god he fucking hated aliens. He could hear what sounded like a fight, flesh hitting flesh and grunts of pain or horrifying screeches from the aliens. He forced his eyes open, seeing a blurry figure in front of him fighting off a small hoard of the creatures, but he couldn’t discern who it was. He gave up on trying to stay awake, slowly sinking into the abyss.

When he woke back up, he was in the med bay, pepper by his side and his fellow avengers scattered about. The only person he couldn’t spot was Y/N, which caused concern to swell in his chest. “Where’s Y/N?” His sudden words caused a few people to jump, but Pepper let out a sound of relief, her head resting against his arm. “Never do that again.” Her voice held steady and strict, but her red eyes spoke volumes of her worry. “Where’s Y/N?” Tony repeated once more, causing Steve to let out a low sigh.

“He’s being treated by Hellen right now; He sustained some injuries during the fight.” He explained to the brunette. Tony’s eyebrows furrowed a bit. “How? Is he okay?” You were the youngest avenger; he was going to worry about you till his hair went gray. (Even though he pretended to be annoyed by your presence.)  Steve rubbed the back of his neck with a wince, knowing Tony would blame himself. “He got hurt defending you after you were thrown, he saved you.”

 4.

Y/N was objectively the most important member of the team, always quick to think of a solution or putting himself at risk to save his team members. So, to put it lightly the team was protective of him, because he was stupid and selfless and so entirely Y/N. It was one of those moments of him being stupid and selfless, there was a bomb in a building to close to civilians and no one was close enough to be backup; so, he went alone. He knew the chances of actually disarming the bomb, he wasn’t as experienced as Tony or Bruce, so all he could do was hope to give the team some time to clear out civilians.

He knew he was fucked the moment he walked into the building, yet he still did it, and it baffled the team. He could hear Steve screaming at him to get out of there, yet he persisted and kept himself steady as he walked towards the explosive. He began working as fast as he could, he felt his heart pounding and could see how shaky his hands were, yet he pushed past his fears, for the greater good he told himself. The bomb itself wasn’t to complicated and with some work he was able to bump the timer up another minute, but he knew damn well there was no way he could get out of the building in time.

So he sat there, waiting for the time to run out, simply listening to his teammates speak, trying to engrave their voices in his head. They were his family, he could die happily knowing he did so protecting the people and his team. When the bomb did blow he could feel himself being thrown through a window, everything became a blur and nothing felt real except one thing, the feeling of cool metal catching him and then it was darkness.

He woke up to the rhythmic beeping of a heart monitor and his entire body felt like hulk beat the shit out of him, but he couldn’t find it in himself to care when he realized his team, his family was in the room, all strewn about. He could see all of them were sleeping, and he wouldn’t dare wake them up. He simply went back to sleep with a smile on his lips, because they had saved him.

[delimeful]

you cant go back (3)

warnings: panic, miscommunication, trafficking, non-consensual drug use, suicidal thoughts, food, mentions of torture, cliffhanger, these tags make it sound worse than it is tbh  

-

When Virgil first opened his eyes, jerked out of sleep by sharp instinctual alarm, he’d thought for a moment that he was still dreaming.

It was the same face, after all, even with how frighteningly close it was, even with a vastly different expression painted across it. He’d been confused, almost relieved-- had they gotten away after all?-- and then he’d realized just what the Deathworlder had in their arms.

He’d lunged and come up short, forced to watch as the Human kept their arms locked around Patch even as the creature made unhappy little noises he’d never heard from it before. 

It was so small compared to the Human, easily tucked under an arm and managed regardless of protests. Did they have no respect for the deadly grace of the other creatures on this planet?

They’d circled him from a distance, ignoring his warning twitches and outright hisses as thoroughly as they ignored Patch, and all he could do was watch, locked in place, hoping that Human prey drive wasn’t as high as all the rumors said.

And then the Human had left, taking Patch with them, and Virgil had been left to watch their fading heat signature and pray to Seryl that whatever the Human did would be quick. For both of them.

It wasn’t that easy, of course. The Human wanted something from him, badly.

He thought he had a fair idea of what-- or rather, who-- it was.

After all, he’d seen a near-perfect mirror of them, sitting bound and muzzled in their transfer ship’s holding cell where a Human absolutely shouldn’t be. Leond and her Second had been unnaturally gleeful for rotations before Virgil finally found out about the ‘successful pickup’, namely through stumbling across it by doing the routine security and safety checks that he didn’t trust the rest of these idiots to do themselves.

They’d cut him off before he could get to a comm to tell Janus, cornered him in the tight cell block hall, and offered him a deal: his silence for a cut of the immense earnings they would make from renting out a Human to any and all fighting rings.

He remembered the way the Human’s gaze had flickered between him and the others curiously as he argued, the way they’d struggled to bare their teeth derisively at Leond, even through the bars of their muzzle and the haze of whatever they’d been drugged with. It was one of the last things he’d seen before he’d ‘made a fuss’ big enough that his own crew had tranq’d him and ditched him on-planet to die.

“You’re right,” Leond had said, face smooth in the way that meant smug satisfaction for her species. “We haven’t fulfilled our half of the exchange, have we? We took an alien from that planet, so it’s only fair that we leave one behind.”

His limbs had been defensively raised since the beginning of the argument, but Virgil had fought side by side with these people before. They knew how to guard his blind spots, which meant that they knew his blind spots.

The Human had tried to speak through the muzzle, just before he’d heard the discharge sound of a tranq gun too close to dodge. He thought it might have been an attempted warning.

It hadn’t changed anything. He’d been the only one on that ship who’d opposed the Human’s abduction, and as a reward, he was going to be slowly interrogated to death by one of their clutchmates. The level of cruel irony was like something from one of Jan’s stupid operas.

Virgil felt another shudder of exhaustion. Stars, he hoped Janus would get out of there once he realized what they’d brought back. His best friend knew better than to fuck with Humans, and the crew clearly wasn’t going to listen to any interplanetary ethics lectures, so the best thing he could do was skip town. Better to rebuild than fall with the nest.

He hadn’t slept after the Human had left, flipping to his heat sensor vision and watching all night for their return, unable to relax after one of the most unpleasant awakenings of his life. And if it meant he didn’t dream about what could have happened to Patches, all the better.

The next day had come, and the Human returned, wielding that dull stick and asking more angry questions that Virgil couldn’t understand, let alone respond to.

The thing was, given enough time and exposure, he actually would be able to understand the specifics of what was wanted from him.

Like most long-term interstellar travelers, he had a Lator implant, and the more the Human talked at him, the more linguistic patterns and trends would be picked up and catalogued, making it much easier for him to put the pieces together.

Unfortunately, time wasn’t something he had an excess of.

Janus would have figured out at least the basics by now; in addition to being better with words, he’d gotten a more recent, effective upgrade to the implant’s software. Virgil had turned the offer down for himself, knowing that they needed to save money where they could, and figuring that he didn’t really need it. His job was to defend Janus. His First could handle the talking part of their missions on his own with ease, the chatterbox that he was.

It had seemed obvious at the time. A lot of good that logic was doing him now.

The Human said something at him, flashing his bone-white teeth as he spoke. Humans didn’t have guard plates over their mouths at all, and so every time this one turned to him, he felt as though they were either acting sickeningly overfamiliar or that they might lunge forward and try to bite him at any moment. He’d carefully kept his own plates locked, not willing to expose any teeth and have it mistaken for a challenge.

The Human was waiting expectantly. Virgil took a deep breath and replied, the same as he had every time he could, though he doubted Humans had access to translator implants.

“I am not here to harm anyone. I was abandoned here against my will. I can’t understand what you’re saying,” he recited in Guard-tongue, keeping the sentences brief and repetitive for easy translation pattern recognition.

The Human wasn’t extending him the same courtesy, his own sentences long-winded and full of unfamiliar concepts that kept tripping up the Lator programming. References, probably.

There was one Human word that he’d figured out fairly early on: Brother.

Clutchmate, family, the lookalike that was probably long gone by now.

He was almost glad that he couldn’t speak coherently. As it was, he didn’t have to be the one to break the news.

Almost, because the Human was stubbornly finding new and creative ways to freak him the hell out with each visit.

First, they’d figured out fairly quickly that he was slowly starving.

Virgil had flooded his plates right to pitch on their first meeting, and hadn’t been calm enough to stop the defensive reaction since, which had quickly drained what little hydration stores he’d had left. Between the drying out of his plates and the fact that he’d gotten too worked up and blacked out for a moment during an interrogation, his fading health wasn’t exactly subtle.

He’d panicked, because any enemy knowing his weakness was generally pretty fucking bad, let alone an enemy with personal motive and ability to twist that weakness like a knife in the spine.

The Human had verbally freaked out (a regular occurrence) and vanished for a while, before returning to the barn with an entire array of items (not a regular occurrence). They’d set the items out on flat fiber ‘plates’ and then slid them into range with that stupid stick.

Virgil had stabbed a few of them on principle before realizing that this was food, aided by the Human rolling his eyes pointedly-- a derisive gesture, he’d gathered-- and eating something from a plate of their own.

At that point, Virgil had been willing to risk poison. The way he saw it, he either died, or he ate something, and either way it meant stopping the slow, aching pain eating away at the pit of his stomach.

He’d even been willing to tolerate the Human staring at him, since apparently they didn’t have the manners to not watch a stranger eat. Or that wasn’t a thing on this planet. It didn’t really matter.

After a significant amount of time spent using his auxiliary limbs to delicately maneuver Human produce and meats into inspection range, he settled for what smelled the least concerning, avoiding any that smelled or looked too bright to be safe.

(The scrunched-up look the Human had given him after he’d crunched an egg in his throat had been hard to interpret, though.)

Anything he could safely ingest, he’d eaten. After the Human left, he’d even attempted the indignity of trying to lift the bowl of water in range with wobbly limbs, though he’d almost immediately spilled the majority of it all over himself. It didn’t matter, he could pull any and all hydration from what he’d eaten, though he didn’t dare get used to it.

This wasn’t his first time above the nest, and he hadn’t fooled himself into believing that this shocking show of generosity would last. The Human had only done it to make sure that their hostage wouldn’t keel over.

Starvation and dehydration were more-than-effective methods of hands-off torture, after all, and the Human really only needed to give him enough to keep him alive.

The impending mistreatment shouldn’t have shaken him as much as it did. He had the advantage of the Human’s ignorance on how much Chelcerae ate, and his own resilience, developed from years of scraping by on the barest of rations. He was lucky, really, to be one of the species with a water-storing organ.

Still, he spent the night wondering if it was worth it to keep fighting. There was no escape, so wouldn’t it be better to go out on his own terms, before anything truly horrendous could happen to him?

Probably. The real question was: would he have the fortitude to turn down food all the way to a slow and painful death-via-starvation?

He wasn’t sure, and he continued to be resentful of the fact that he even had to make such a choice all the way up until the next day, when the Human walked in with a plate covered in everything he’d eaten yesterday and slid it over to him, simple as anything.

“What?” the Human snapped after a moment of Virgil watching them for any indication of what to do, and he’d hurriedly flickered his heat sensor eyes in hopes of placating any offense. The Human had grumbled indistinctly, but didn’t attempt to remove the plate or even threaten to do so.

The next day was the same. Though the Human continued to try and interrogate and occasionally intimidate him, the food and drink was provided without stipulation or hesitation. It was… strange.

Virgil refused to read into it. Perhaps Humans just had meals so frequently that skipping a single day would be as barbaric as weeks of starvation for Chelcerae. Maybe once the Human had enough of his noncompliance, they were going to feast on his flesh and didn’t want a stringy meal. It was impossible to know.

The generous feeding schedule was nothing, though, compared to some of the other questionable tendencies the Human had.

They traversed the grounds in and around the barn with little wariness, apparently quite confident in their ability to defend themself on the Deathworld they’d grown up on. They brushed insects and plant matter alike off their person with little care for poisons or bites.

Their body language seemed to consist of every threat display in the wayfarer guidebook, and worse, only a quarter of these threat displays seemed intentional. Virgil was constantly tense, attempting to figure out which were intended to cow him, and how to keep his own body language from worsening the damage. Any signal of terrified compliance, even the obvious tremor of his auxiliary limbs, only seemed to prompt wariness and confusion from the Human.

They’d found his helmet and immediately put it on, which had made his fuzz prickle with hope for a moment, before remembering that the reserve battery of the headset was well and truly dead. No emergency translators for the Human, and no upturns in luck for Virgil.

Maybe it was better. Even if the Human could talk to him, he would seem just as guilty for their brother’s disappearance in their eyes. It wasn’t even an accusation he could reasonably defend against; if things had gone differently, if he’d made smarter choices, maybe he could have gotten the captured Human free.

Janus would have managed it. He’d always been a quicker mind than Virgil.

It’d been three days since the Human had found him, and Virgil had barely managed to parse a handful of imperatives and nouns from someone who was basically just yelling the same things at him over and over.

“You can’t ---- the ---- ---------, you ----- --------! I ---- what I ---- and --- ----- to it!” the Human yelled, essentially proving his point. Virgil resisted the urge to let his chin drop down to his collar in exhausted resignation.

It was difficult to focus past the old pains from the fight with Leond, and the new pains from being strapped upright for days on end. Even if he could bring himself to pay closer attention, it wouldn’t make it easier to parse words he had no context for. Lator technology worked best when both parties were exchanging words, or at the very least, when there was more than one native speaker prattling on at you!

The Human inhaled to continue and then froze, prompting Virgil to slink his shoulders up slightly, something that had worked to show his non-aggression once or twice before. The Human wasn’t focused on him, though, whirling around to face the barn doors with their body rigid.

Because he’d never been good at uncertainty, Virgil flicked his heat-sensor eyes open just as another Human-sized mass reached the doors, moving in a predator’s stalk.

Well, he thought as the door creaked open, I’m screwed.

[whythinktoomuch]

i. apocalypse now & then

Kara touched down, her boots meeting the earth with a metallic clunk that was promptly swallowed up in the dust and utter grayness of her surroundings. The warnings came immediately—insistent beeps, bright red numbers and figures flashing before her eyes.

“How’s it looking?” asked the tinny voice in her helmet, and Kara sighed.

“Yeah, you were right. Place is infested,” she said, studying the mess of debris and desolation that seemed to feed directly into the faint horizon in every direction. “Kryptonite readings are off the charts. There’s either a tower nearby, or mines just planted all over. Maybe even both, if i’m Iucky.”

Alex let out a harsh breath. “Look, I know you’re not going to leave until you find those people, but you better watch your fucking back out there, okay?”

“Hm… don’t I always though?”

“You ask that every single time, and every single goddamn time, I have to re-mind you of all—”

“All right, all right…” Kara said, rolling her eyes. “Just stop worrying so loudly already, jeez. I’ll keep you posted the entire time.”

“Like that was ever an option.”

“Love you too,” Kara said breezily, and she began her search.

She explored the area in proportioned sections, slipping periodically into x-ray vision, keeping her feet drifting an inch off the ground at all times. You just never knew these days. By now, Kara had stepped on enough lead-wrapped kryptonite mines for one lifetime, which coincidentally had been the same number of times it took to gray almost the entirety of Alex’s head. Or so Alex claimed anyway.

Apparently, over two decades of this sort of living could do that to a person: make them older, but also, steal away every last bit of their sense of humor. 

--

Whenever Kara happened upon a particularly extensive blind spot—jagged slabs of lead piled on top of each other—she took her time. Carefully sifted her way through all that rubble, with a spare bit of rebar or her heat vision from a safe distance. Calling out to any potential survivors that could have been trapped underneath. But as she steadily neared hour two of her search, it was starting to look like a lost cause. That whoever had sent that distress signal must have since succumbed to the environment, like so many others already had done before them.

Then Kara heard it.

Whipping her head around, Kara strained her ears to their very limit, all the while silently cursing how muffled everything sounded in this godforsaken suit of hers. It took a minute or so to hone in on it, but she finally made out the distant voice.

Help us. Save us. We’re down here.

Kara snapped into action, already hurtling full-speed toward the source of the cry. “Alex, I found them.”

“About fuckin’ time,” Alex said, but the note of relief carried through the speakers loud and clear. It always did, of course, given the scarcity of such a feeling as of late. “All right, get them out of there, and hurry your ass up. You’ve already been out there for too long.”

The voice grew louder and more distinct as Kara approached it, and eventually, she could even distinguish other people in the mix—their whispers, the muted beats of their heart seemingly punctuating every word, and all the shallow breaths of air in between. She counted at least five separate individuals, five more lives that she could potentially save from this impossible landscape.

But by the time Kara reached the point where the voice was sounding from below rather than from the distance, her excitement had all but waned, receded back into the ever present anxiety hanging in the air.

“… Fuck,” she huffed out, staring at the large swathe of broken rock and dirt and twisted metal beneath her, the letter K spray-painted all over the surface in a faded green. “Alex. They’re in a mine-rigged shelter.”

“Forget it then. Just get out of there,” Alex said, all rather predictably. “We can send an extraction team with defusers in the morning.”

“But that’ll take too long,” Kara protested. “It would take days, just for a task force to cover all that distance, and these people need help now.”

“No. I want you to put down a marker and come right the fuck back home,” Alex said. “That’s your last kryptonite filtration suit! If anything happens, if you sustain even the slightest bit of damage out there, you could—”

Kara cut the feed and swiftly locked her comms from all available channels, employing one of the few tips Winn had passed onto her before he died. Because Alex didn’t understand. How could she, when she wasn’t the one who had to listen to these desperate cries for help from people just barely out of reach.

She floated outside the presumed blast radius, planted her feet firmly to the ground, and went to work. Uncovering the buried shelter bit by bit, one sizable mass of charred rubble dug up after the other. It wasn’t easy. The kryptonite in the area, though not exposed, was much too close for comfort even through her suit. And it made the sun hotter, everything heavier, and Kara’s progress as slow as it could possibly be.

But all that—the sweat gathering on her brow, the soreness burning up her lower back—was a very small price to pay when weighed against the lives of at least five people in need. So, Kara kept going. She kept burrowing deeper into the earth with her bare hands, until the sun was but a small twinkle above her head and her fingertips were brushing against a patch of warmed metal.

And she could hear them better now. They were so close.

Kara pressed her palm against what had to be the outer wall of their shelter. “Hey, can you hear me in there?”

“Please help us!” came the frantic response, only somewhat muffled now. “Please get us out! We can’t breathe in here!”

“Okay! Okay… I’m gonna get you out, okay?” Kara shouted back, heart thumping hard in her ears. “Just… hang on.”

A quick once-over was all it took to determine that the wall before her—like most other surfaces nowadays—was naught but a few inches of commercial steel, coated in a thin layer of lead. And as such, all it would to take, of course, to break into such a structure was—THUNK!—a single punch from the Girl of Steel herself.

Kara ripped a hole in the wall, using her heat vision to melt down the edges as she tugged the entire thing apart. Eventually satisfied with her efforts, she was just about to crawl through her rather crude but functional doorway when the speakers in her helmet abruptly flipped back on.

“—him back to life, and just… throttle him for showing you that trick!” Alex was practically hollering in her ear. “Why would you ever need to do that anyway? The whole frickin’ point of the—”

“Whoa, Alex, Alex, it’s fine! I’m fine! Just shh!” Kara hastily cut her off. “I’ve pretty much got my foot in the door already, okay? So, I’m helping these people whether you like it or not.”

“Yeah, you fucking better,” Alex said with a scoff. “I want to look these people in the eye while you explain to me what was so goddamn special about them that you had to…”  

And Kara barked out a laugh, shaking her head in wonder as Alex continued to chew her out in a way that only sisters could, apparently. “Hey, you can do whatever you want, okay? Just let me bring them home first.”

“Fine. Just don’t kill the comms this time.”

“Oh, I would never.”

“Kara, I fucking swear to—”

But the rest of all that swearing quickly faded into the backdrop, as Kara finally poked her head into what should have been just another underground refuge from everything their world now had to offer. Because ten feet below from where she had burrowed her way in, was not a handful of dehydrated people waiting to be rescued—only masses upon masses of thick coils and plates of smooth black metal shifting about.

That’s when Kara realized that it’d been quite some time since she’d heard a cry for help. And soon after that was when a muted click! sounded, then somewhere down there in the midst of all that darkness and mechanical movement, came another loop of voices calling out to her.

“Oh shit…” Kara whispered, and at least ten sets of glassy eyes flicked up to stare at her. The pre-recorded voices immediately cut out, and the entire room lit up in a vibrant green as the machines all powered up with a collective hum. “Shit, shit, shit, you were right!”

“Right about what?” Alex demanded, but Kara was too busy heeding her long overdue advice of getting the fuck out there to respond.

Kara burst from the ground in a flurry of dust and clattering scrap metal, already heading for the horizon at full-speed. She needed to put as much distance as possible between her and the decoy shelter. It was nothing short of an honest-to-Rao miracle that her sudden escape hadn’t tripped any of the mines on-site, but now, it was only a matter of time.

Still hurtling away, Kara threw a glance over her shoulder just in time to see the first three drones break through the surface, already mindlessly chasing after her. Then the third and the fourth crashed right on through after them, which abruptly led to a series of rapid beeping, which abruptly led to a violent disturbance in the air that stole away all the sound from the world and knocked Kara right out of the sky.

(next part here)

[avengerscompound]

Small Gods: Patience - 1

Patience:  A Black Widow Fanfic

Patience Masterlist | More Small Gods

Buy me a ☕ Character Pairing:  Natasha Romanoff x F!Reader

Rating: E

Word Count:  1611

Warnings: Language, guns, (smut, angst, and canon typical violence on series)

Synopsis: Every day Natasha prays for more patience to deal with a litany of things from waiting for her target to make a move - to not yelling at Clint for putting empty milk containers back in the fridge.

When her prayers are answered, Natasha finds that having patience is easy, holding on to it is a little harder.

A/N: Reader is a minor god.

IF YOU WISH TO BE TAGGED IN THE REMAINDER OF THIS SERIES, EITHER ADD YOURSELF TO THE TAGLIST OR SEND ME A MESSAGE

Chapter 1

Natasha stood on the edge of the building watching the chaos break out below her.  The team was supposed to be infiltrating a new underground crime group to figure out where a drop-off was happening.  They’d had men on a street corner no one had managed to clock, and it had just happened to be the one Steve was observing, and they’d spotted him.  That had made the whole crew antsy and then they’d wanted to change locations for the meet.  That had meant a sudden scramble to relocate everyone, so they could keep monitoring the situation.  Tony had nearly been spotted as they did and ended up having to leave the area completely so it looked like another normal New York City Iron Man sighting.  To top that off, Sharon’s comms had just stopped working completely and so no one had any idea what the group was actually saying.  It had been a series of fuck-ups and she knew she would have to get down into the mess soon the way things were going, but she was waiting to see if Clint could salvage it as he bumbled along the street acting stupid so that he could ‘accidentally bumped into his old friends Sharon’ and get some ears back on the scene.

“God, grant me patience,” she sighed.  It was a prayer that had become commonplace for her.  She’d use it when she was on an undercover mission where she had to pretend to be much less intelligent than she was.  She used it when she helped patch up Clint’s cuts after he’d spent a whole day being incredibly agile and dexterous, only to trip over his doormat and land face-first into a cactus he didn’t even know he owned.  She used it when Tony went on one of his rambling stories that she already knew.  She used it when she had to watch Steve jump off yet another stupidly high point for no reason other than he had to be their first.

“I’m not sure, Natalia,” a voice coming from way too closer said.  “I’m not sure that’s what you actually want.”

She spun around, quickly assuming a defensive position.  You stood at the corner of the building, completely relaxed.  You had dark sunglasses on and what looked like a faux leather jacket and large black boots.  You were leaning against the wall slightly and twirling a lollipop in your mouth, and despite the fact that on just about anyone else she’d think they were trying too hard, you seemed effortlessly cool.

“Who are you?”  Natasha snarled.

“Patience,” you said simply.

“Don’t tell me to be patient when you’ve just snuck up on me in the middle of a mission.  Tell me what you want, or I’ll send that piece of candy through the back of your throat.”

You laughed and held up your hands. “Okay, killer,” you teased.  “Relax.  I wasn’t telling you what to do.  I was saying that’s who I am.”

Natasha quirked her eyebrow at you.  “So your name is Patience, and you sit around waiting for people to pray for patience and you pop out thinking it’s a funny joke?  You know how close to death you just came right now?  I’m in the middle of something.  Go away before you get someone hurt.”

Natasha spun back to look down at Sharon who was now talking to Clint.  She saw the quick sleight of hand as they exchanged mic packs.

“Patience isn’t my name,” you laughed.

Natasha rolled her eyes, hoping to cling on to the last remaining patience she had rather than breaking your neck. That would just lead to a lot of paperwork.  “You said it was.”

“No,” you said, straightening up and reaching into your inner jacket pocket.

Natasha pulled her gun and pointed at you.  “Don’t even think about it.”

You pulled your hand out with a business card pinched between your thumb and index finger.  You raised your hands and flicked the card up so it was held between your index and middle finger.  “I said I was patience,” you said, taking a few steps toward her.  Natasha’s fingers twitched on the trigger finger as she tried to read your intention.  “You’ve been praying to me a lot lately.  I thought I’d show up.  But - you’re obviously not ready yet.”  You offered the card to Natasha and she took it without taking her eyes off you.  “Now… count to two hundred, and then go down the fire escape.  Agent Carter will be fine until then, and that will get you there exactly when you need to be.”

“What?”  Natasha asked, now completely confused.

“Just a suggestion,” you answered and casually strode off to the stairwell, leaving Natasha alone on the roof, completely perplexed over what had just happened.  She looked down at the business card.  Embossed in gold on the glossy black card were your name, address, and phone number.  There was no mention of a job or business or even the word patience that you had kept bringing up.

Natasha furrowed her brow and tucked the card into her pocket.  She wasn’t a trusting person by nature, but she had enough experience with magic to know not to completely ignore what you said.  She counted to two hundred as she paid close attention to what was happening in the street.  As she carefully made her way down to the fire escape, there was a commotion and Sharon drew her gun.  People scattered as a large van pulled up and armed men spilled out.

Natasha cursed under her breath as the street broke out in utter chaos.

“How did you even get there so fast?”  Sharon asked.

Thanks to your warning, Natasha had gotten there at the perfect time to take out most of the gunmen before they’d even shouldered their weapons.  In the end, while the plan hadn’t exactly gone how everyone had wanted it, and they still needed to actually find where they were operating from, they had made a lot of arrests, and thanks to Natasha, lots of innocent lives had been saved from being caught in the crossfire.

“There was this woman…”  Natasha started, not quite sure how to explain your strange appearance and departure from the rooftop.

“Oohhh…” Clint teased.  “Nat got the hots for some hot Chiquita.”

“Gross, Clint,” Natasha snarked.  “Don’t be a letch.”  Clint held up his hands in surrender and Natasha let out a long breath.  “It was weird though.”

“How was it weird?”  Steve said, sitting forward in his chair.  “Anything we need to worry about?”

Natasha shrugged.  “I don’t know - maybe,” she said.  “She said she was patience.”

Clint snorted.  “You definitely need to find her then,” he teased. Natasha swatted him on the back of the head.  “See,” he complained, rubbing his head.

“So her name was Patience?”  Steve said, opening up a drop-down screen above the coffee table.  “FRIDAY, do we have any record of a Patience as a member of any known criminal organizations.”

“Her name wasn’t Patience,” Natasha said, pulling the card out of her pocket and handing it to Steve.  “She said she was patience.”

“What does that mean?”  Steve asked, typing the details into the computer.

Natasha shrugged.  “Your guess is as good as mine.”

Tony chuckled.  “I like the idea of anthropomorphic adjectives walking around.”

“Patience is a noun, Tony,” Bruce scolded.  “And so is Tony.”

“You know what I mean,” Tony said, waving his hands around.  “You can feel patient, you can’t feel Tony.”  He paused for a moment.  “Not unless you asked nicely.”

“Maybe she’s some kind of god,” Clint said.  Everyone turned to him and Natasha raised her eyebrow.  Sometimes Clint would say things that were so simple and so profoundly intelligent that she wasn’t sure if he just blindly stumbled into the answer or he was an actual genius.

“Is that a thing?”  Sam asked.  “Just random gods of emotions?”

Natasha shrugged.  “I have no idea.  It’s a pity Thor isn’t here, we could ask him.  But she did say I’d been praying to her.”

Clint snorted.  “Sounds about right.”

“But Thor’s not a real god, is he?”  Steve said.  “Wasn’t the theory that he’s just an alien that lives a long time and humans just decided he was a god?”

“The dude makes lightning, Cap,” Sam teased.  “Maybe he’s not the only place it comes from, but he can definitely create it and control it.  Why can’t there be the equivalent for something like patience.”

Clint snatched the card from Steve and shoved it into Natasha’s hands.  “I say you call her.”

“You just want Nat to stop smacking you on the back of the head,” Bucky snorted.

“No, I want to see my best friend get laid,” Clint said, folding his arms across his broad chest.  “I bet someone who can command patience would be great at sex.”

“And…?”  Bucky pressed.

“And I don’t want to get clocked on the back of the head anymore,” Clint muttered.

Everyone laughed and Natasha looked down at the card, spinning it around in her hand.

“You look like you’re considering it, Red,” Tony mused.  “What was she like?”

“Cryptic,” Natasha replied.  “Cool.”

“Was she hot?”  Clint asked.

“I think so,” Natasha said.

“So call her,” Sharon shrugged.  “She helped me out.  She can’t be all that bad.”

Natasha nodded.  “At the very least I might get some answers.”

“And who knows, Nat,” Clint said.  “Maybe she’ll be able to teach you a trick or two.”

Natasha bit the inside of her cheek trying not to laugh, and wishing she had a little bit of that patience right now.

// NEXT

[treesnutsandleaveswrites]

Rescue Mission

Pairing: The Bad Batch x Reader (Polyam)

Summary: The Batch agrees to help Hera save her parents; you encounter a familiar face

Warning: angst, TW: PTSD episode, TW: panic/anxiety attack, mentions of shooting and violence

Word Count: 2048

A/N: Won't be updating constantly, but sorry for keeping you all waiting

pt xvi, pt xviii

XXXXXXX

You and the Batch were looking over the city's capitol, trying to figure out what’s going on. You looked through one of your sniper scopes, having detached it from your rifle, and observed the heavily guarded area. Some people started to gather as Admiral Rampart made an announcement, which you listened to through Chopper’s satellite.

“Citizens of Ryloth, the shocking attack of your beloved Senator has left you shaken, but Orn Free Taa’s condition continues to improve and he will make a full recovery. The perpetrators of this heinous assasination attempt have been captured…”

Hunter looked up from his binoculars and over to Hera, “Assasination attempt?”

Hera shook her head, “That’s not what happened.”

You looked at Hunter for a moment before Omega spoke up.

“Hunter… Crosshair’s here.”

You took in a sharp breath as you looked through your scope and saw his familiar baster rifle and him in his new Imperial armor.

“Great. Just what we need!” Wrecker grumbled.

Hunter then gestured for the boys to huddle, so you took a bit to watch Crosshair before turning the girls.

“Keep an eye on the Capitol.” You ordered Omega and Hera, then put on your helmet before joining the boys.

“Ryloth’s not a separatist planet.” Echo said mid-coversation.

“Exactly my point.” Tech stated and went on about who knows what. You tried to listen to him, but you could see a change in Hunter’s demeanor.

“Wait here.” Hunter ordered as he rushed off.

You waited with the others before an Imperial probe droid came crashing down near all of you.

“Oh good… a probe droid.” Tech sighed.

“The Empire will know we’re here.” Echo announced.

“And so will Crosshair.” You said in unison with Hunter.

“Let’s move.” Hunter ordered, so everyone started following. Hera took a moment before being pulled by Omega with Chopper behind them. You were near frozen in your spot due to the thought of possibly reuniting with Crosshair. Echo was near the back, trying to make sure no one was left behind. He turned and saw you still in your place, then he went to you before grasping your hand tight.

“We can’t stay, mesh’la.” He insisted, which caused you to nod and follow him back to the Marauder.

You sat of the Marauder’s steps as the Batch talked with Hera.

“I told you… no guarantees. We’ll get you off world and take you somewhere safe.”

“Wait! Please!” Hera pulled at Hunter, “I’ll pay you double!”

“No money in the galaxy will matter if we’re dead! What you’re asking us to do is not worth the risk.”

Hera took a moment to look at him, “Not to you.” She rushed off. The boys started to head to the Marauder, but Omega stayed back.

“You shouldn’t have said that!”

“Being strategic means knowing your limitations, Omega.”

“She’s trying to save her family! I would do the same for you.” Omega retorted before following Hera. Hunter took a moment to process her words before turning towards the ship and seeing you still sitting on the steps. You hadn’t taken off your helmet since you got back to the base, but Hunter could sense the rigidness of your stature. He crouched down in front of you and placed his hands on either side of your helmet before gently lifting it from your head. You were pale and had tear streaks staining your cheeks. Hunter was surprised at first, but came to realise what was wrong. It was similar to your small episode in the fresher just recently. You were suffering from plasma shock… Hunter placed your helmet to the side and carefully caressed your wet skin.

“I know, cyare… I know…” He whispered before picking up your helmet, then hooking an arm around your waist to help you onto the cruiser. He sat you down and stood between your legs with his face in your hands. He did his best to coax you through the process of a plasma shock episode and made sure his attention was undivided just in case anything else happened. Once he sensed your calm breathing and heart rate, he moved away.

“I’ll be right back… just take your time, my love.” He hooked your chin endearingly before heading to the cockpit. You stay seated for a bit before Omega and Hera rushed onto the ship, straight into the cockpit. You were about the get up to see what was happening, but then D-5 rolled over to you quickly and bumped your foot.

“Star! S-s-s-star!”

You smiled weakly before picking him up and looking at him, “You haven’t broken anything have you?”

“All-all better!”

You hummed before placing him down and following his trail as he rolled into the cockpit. Yo stood at the threshold as Hunter spoke.

“Alright, you two go with Chopper as back up, but at a distance.”

The girls got excited, which caused Tech to speak up.

“By themselves?”

“Tech, Wrecker, wait until those canons are down, then move in. Echo and I will scale the Capitol wall and free Hera’s parents.” He looked down at Hera, “I guess we’re following your lead!”

Omega saw you at the threshold and grinned, “Did you hear that, Lodestar?”

You nodded with a smile, “Yeah. I know you’re just getting started with this mission stuff, but you’ve got clone blood in you. Just be careful, okay?” You approached her and cupped her face.

“Where will you be?” Hera wondered with excitement in her eyes.

“I’ll join Hunter and Echo at the Capitol. Freeing people is my thing, remember?”

Everyone looked to each other before dispersing to prepare.

*******

You walked cautiously with Hunter and Echo, approaching the walls of the Capitol. You nodded to Hunter as you all readied to scale the wall. Hunter crouched, offering you a boost before helping Echo and then jumping up himself. It was a fairly quick process and you climbed over the dursateel parapet as Hunter took out one of the guards. The other looked over the wall at Echo.

“A little help?”

Hunter got his attention as you looked at the small map of the Capitol you had downloaded through your holopad connected to your armor on your wrist. The others looked over to you before you nodded and gestured to the direction you should be going. The three of you arrived to the detention level and took out the guards then you found the cells before freeing those enclosed in them.

“What are you doing here?” Gobi Glie asked as he looked at all of you.

“Breaking you out.” Hunter explained.

“You know them?” Another male twi’lek asked who must have been Hera’s father.

“They are mercenaries, but I did not hire them for this.”

“Hera did.” Hunter stated.

“Hera? Where is she? Is she safe?” Her father asked.

Echo chuckled, “With Omega and Chopper? Let’s hope so.”

You were looking through your map again, “We should go soon, troops will be heading to the refinery by now.”

Hunter nodded before following you away from the detention level to find a safe exit. Everyone rushed down the halls but you stopped.

“What is it, Lodestar?”

“This… this is too easy.” You whispered.

“We have to go.” Cham insisted.

“No, no, I’m going to double back… see if the courtyard is clear.”

“That’s not the plan.” Hunter said sternly.

“Crosshair knows we’re here. He knows how we think. He isn’t a fool.” You argued, “I’d rather have one of us caught or killed than these innocent people we’re helping. I’m going to check the courtyard.”

You rushed away from the group before taking a detour for the upper wall again. There were troopers scouting out the exit, so you pulled out your blaster and stunned them before making your way around to get a better look. There was an overhead view on the farside of the courtyard where you could use your rifle just in case things went south. As you rushed over, you could see troopers lining up with shields and blasters, ready to attack the front gates.

“Hunter, do you copy?”

“I copy. We were just warned, we’re heading for Senator Taa’s private quarters. There’s a ship waiting there. Rendezvous back with the group.”

You stopped, eyeing a figure at the overview, “Go on without me. I’ll meet you back at the base.”

“Lode-”

You silenced your comm before pulling out the dagger you had sheathed in an underarm leather pocket. You approached carefully, trying not to make any noise. As you were getting past them, a shot near misses you. They approached out of the shadows and your heart froze. The person waiting there was Crosshair himself.

“So… Hunter has found another replacement.” He sneered through the modulator of his helmet. Your heart was pounding in your ears as he stopped just a few feet away.

“Silent too… How original.”

You gripped your dagger before sheathing it and standing there looking at him through the dark visor of your helmet.

“However, fairly stupid. Nothing like me.”

Says the one doing the Empire’s dirty work.

You took a step back as he raised his rifle again.

“At least give me a challenge.” He groaned, “You have no idea how good I am with a moving target.”

But you do…

You clenched your fist before rushing towards him and knocking the rifle out of his hands. He grunted before grasping your shoulders and tossing you into the wall. He approached you, looming over your body before pulling you by a piece of your armor and leaning you over the ledge, looking over you.

“You’re holding back… some soldier you are.” He commented quietly before taking your blaster from your belt and raising it up to the side of your helmet. Your breathing was fast and your whole body was shaking, but you still managed to raise your arm and take off your helmet quickly. Everything grew silent as he looked at you through the tinted green visor of his Imperial helmet. He dropped the arm holding your blaster and loosened his grip.

“How…”

You shoved him away forcefully before kicking the blaster out of his hands and picking it up, then shooting his rifle so it couldn’t fire. You then rushed away as he was down, making your way back to the base.

*******

It was nearly sun up when you arrived back to the valley where the base was. Omega was waiting with the Batch and Hera when she saw you. She ran up to you and hugged your midriff tight.

“I was scared you got captured by the Empire.” She admitted.

“I’m alright. Just had to make sure everyone was safe…” You replied before looking up at the others.

“We’re heading south to another city, away from Imperial scanners.” Tech explained as you approached the Marauder with her. You nodded, avoiding Hunter’s eyes and following Omega as she and Hera pulled you onto the ship.

You all arrived at the hangar of the small city before Hunter talked with Hera’s parents and the Batch was gathered around with Hera, occupying themselves. You stood to the side, still thinking about Crosshair.

“Lodestar.” Cham called and you looked up before approaching, “It has been an honor finally meeting you and working alongside you. We are all familiar with the work you have done.”

You nodded politely before Hera was called, so you walked away towards the Marauder. It was only a few minutes before the others joined you. You all filed onto the ship, but before Tech and Echo could go to the cockpit, Hunter stopped them and they all turned to you.

“What were you thinking?” Hunter pressed, crossing his arms over his chest, “You almost sabotaged the whole mission.”

You didn’t say anything, looking at him while he talked.

“You risked being caught by the Empire, Lodestar, don’t you understand that?”

You gave him a curt nod, seeing Omega’s worried eyes in your peripherals.

“Next mission, you’re staying on the ship--maybe even stay behind on Ord Mantell.” He ordered, before walking back to the cockpit. His brothers protested while following after him, but Omega stayed with you in the main Hangar.

“Lodestar? Are you alright?”

You looked at her with a nod before she went to sit as the ship started to take off.

XXXXXXX

Taglist: @darkangel4121

@lightning-wolffe

@alucas528

@rintheemolion

@shadowfoxey

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@incandescentlywarm

@echo-is-worth-more-than-2000

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[fictional-men-ruin-lives]

Come back (Crosshair x Jedi!Reader)

Part 1

Happening somewhen after the debt was paid back to Cid. Reader is a former Jedi who has worked with the Bad Batch during the Clone Wars and joined them again after Order 66.

Warnings: a bit of angst? other than that nothing but some swearing

Word count: 1.3k

Be ready for a lengthy story as I’m not known to make any of my one shots short

____________________________________________________________

“You know what? Fuck you, Hunter.” You spat out, unable to hold in your anger any longer. All this time you’ve been patient, understood, that there were more pressing matters like removing their inhibitor chips and then escaping the chase, getting Omega back from the bounty hunters. Hell, even being in debt.

You absolutely got that.

However, when all the Bad Batch has been focusing on lately had been to get other bounty missions done, get more money in the pocket while the elephant in the room remained unaddressed, the annoyance and disbelief kept building up in you. Snapping at one point was inevitable. It wasn’t like you haven’t touched on the topic multiple times already, several of them ending up in arguing with Hunter. All you’ve ever gotten were cheap excuses or a more pressing matters to address interrupting you.

Not this time.

“Listen, we’re not prepared for a rescue mission like this.” Sergeant tried to deflect it yet again while rubbing the bridge of his nose, earning a scoff from you. As if you haven’t heard that excuse before.

“Like we were ready for any of the rescue missions involving anybody else before. Echo. Omega. But you don’t even try to pretend like you care about Crosshair. We left him. Multiple times!”

Hunter stepped closer, towering over you and you could tell you stroke a cord right there. His eyes were full of anger, but you couldn’t care less. You were alone with him on the Marauder as Wrecker went with Omega to get some snacks after mission and Echo accompanied Tech to get new parts to repair the equipment. It was just you and Hunter.

“Don’t you dare say I don’t care.” His voice deepened as he was trying to control his emotions, his eyes boring into yours from underneath his furrowed eyebrows. If there was one thing Hunter hated, it was being deemed careless about his own team.

“Oh, but I think I just did.” You said mockingly.” And you know what? I’m fucking done. I’m just done. You changed. You’d never leave anyone behind but now…” you exhaled, resigned, as your voice lowered a bit, a smile appearing on your face as you shot a glance to the side quickly” Now I don’t think I know you anymore.” calming down, you just turned around to get to the sleeping area and collect your things. Arguing with him was going to be a waste of time as always, you’d much rather spend it on figuring out how to get to Crosshair and get him back in one piece. Kneeling, you were putting the spare clothes and your own tools in a backpack.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Hunter went after you, his armored body blocking the exit as he stood in the doorframe. “I know you and he were close, but we can’t do anything. He’s gone and surrounded by countless troopers and I’m not going to risk Omega. He’s way too dangerous.” At that the new wave of fury rushed over you as you stood up from the ground and turned to him, your voice way too intense, full of cold spite.

“Do you have any idea why we’re all still alive?” You took one step towards Hunter.” Because his shots miss. And Crosshair never misses.” One more step and you were right in front of him, in his face again. This time, however, he wasn’t towering over you as you stood confidently, challengingly spitting words in a low voice, speaking faster with every sentence.” I don’t care what it takes. I really don’t. Cross is there and he needs us, more than ever and do or think whatever you want to calm your conscience, but I can’t let it go on like this.” With a swift motion of your hand, you moved him away with the Force and proceeded to the exit from the Marauder.

“Enjoy your bounty hunting.” You threw over your shoulder and raised your hand in a goodbye as your steps led you to the city. You raised the comm to your face, calling for Tech to meet you at Cid’s as soon as possible. If you were to find Cross, the fastest way was through him.

“You sounded quite serious over the comm, what do you need my help with?” Tech’s voice brought you back from the deep thoughts that have taken over you as you were waiting for him. Fortunately, you managed to cool off while waiting for him and just felt… numb now. You smiled at the clone as he sat beside you by the bar, his eyes full of anticipation.

“I need you to tap into the Imperial communication channels, especially ones with orders and assignments for the troopers.” He glanced at your feet where your backpack lay, then quickly at your face before taking the holopad from you and focusing on it.

“Crosshair, I assume.” Tech stated as he was tinkering with the device. Your silence was the only confirmation he needed. “Hunter won’t risk Omega in this, the situation is too unpredictable to go in without…”

“I know, Tech.” you interrupted him, not wanting to have to listen another one of the Batch saying the same thing.

“… a proper and detailed plan. However, it’s not impossible if Crosshair is going to be able to fight the inhibitor chip as he’s done so far.” You looked up surprised as Tech finished the interrupted sentence, and your eyes met his briefly. He shrugged. “What? His accuracy rate is at 98.4 percent when he has time to prepare, 92 percent if he’s on the move. I’d assume it would be the safest for you out of all of us, considering the type of your… relationship.” Your heart skipped a beat, unwillingly recalling all the now painful, seemingly far away memories. The playful bickering with Crosshair, how he’d put his hand on your shoulder as he leaned over to grab something, the quick stolen glances when you were still a Jedi, his warm breath on your neck as he… You missed him. You missed him so much.

Hell, you even missed finding toothpicks in all the most impossible places.

Was he alright? The last you’ve seen him; he was chasing after the Marauder once you escaped Bracca. He had been so close to the engine firing up, it pained you to even think about what it could have done to him. Unconsciously, you hugged your arms to find some warmth and comfort. Just how much did Crosshair have to go through till now? What things was he forced to do? He was completely alone, too.

“… and I’m going to talk with Hunter later on.” You caught only the end of what Tech has been saying this whole time. You focused on him again, brushing off the feelings as well as you could and smiled at him weakly. Fortunately, he was too busy with tinkering with the device to really notice your distraction.

“Thank you, Tech. Really. If you don’t mind, I need to go talk to Cid.” He nodded and you stood up, heading to the back of the cantina where you knew the Trandoshan would be.

Getting a small ship was easy enough, considering you had two lightsabers and the black-market demand for them was quite high considering the fall of the Jedi order. Trading one for a functioning Mankvim-814 with some supplies and Cid allowing you to get a small debt for the supplies didn’t take a long time. Fortunately for you, someone has just placed an order for the weapon and getting rid of one of them had its advantages- it was well-known that the Jedi would never willingly part with their lightsabers and having yours circulating around created a possibility of you being considered dead.

After all, your lightsabers were your life.

_____________________________________

Next part

Taglist: @allamarisss​

[pascalpanic]

Mirdal’ika (Din Djarin x f!Reader)

Summary: Reader takes care of the Razor Crest and the child while Mando is out hunting. When Mando doesn’t return when he’s supposed to, the book-smart reader has to learn some street smarts and help her Mandalorian.

WC: 4.6k

Warnings: violence, cussing, mentions of blood

A/N: Okay, I’m a nerd, a certified nerd as if that wasn’t clear. This is my love letter to the nerds out there, to the ones who had their first kiss a little late, who stayed in and read books rather than partying. I love you, you’re cool. Italics are for emphasis and internal dialogue, but in some places also to show that another language is being spoken. Hopefully that’s clear! Oh, also: mirdal’ika is a word of my own creation. No Mando’a word exists for “nerd” that I could find, so this is my interpretation of the language using my best etymological skills!

mirdala= intelligent, clever -’ika = suffix meaning small or little mirdal’ika = intelligent little one; Mando’a slang meaning nerd.

Growing up, you were the kid who had her nose buried in a book at all times. You rarely interacted with the outside world. While the other children on Tatooine made sandcastles or played games, drawing in the sand, you read encyclopedias and fact books, learning about the other planets in your systems and other cultures. Your fixation at age 12 had been on Mandalorian culture, fascinated by the warriors that were like faraway, mythical knights to your young self. As a child enraptured by fairy tales and stories of intergalactic heroes like Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa, you’d somehow always been enchanted by the bad-boy type, the dark and mysterious man who reluctantly saves the day, more along the lines of Han Solo. Naturally, the fact that Mandalorians never showed their face was mysterious, and you’d admit that you dreamed of being swept away by the Mand’alor and having the privilege of being the sole person to see their face, of being a queen and finding true love. You later moved on to research other cultures, even teaching yourself various galactic languages should you ever get the chance to travel. That didn’t seem likely, growing up on a planet where the only claim to fame was Luke Skywalker’s brief residence a few towns over. Your knowledge of Mandalorian culture was part of what made you so special to Mando, your employer-friend-coworker-roommate-co-parent whose name you had yet to learn. You never asked questions of him. Never asked him to take off his helmet, never asked him what was under it, never asked anything too personal, understood that the helmet could only come off in front of members of his clan. You’d cut him off and finish a sentence when he’d explain something of his customs to you, stunning him with your knowledge. He liked it, and by association he liked you. You had bore much of your life story to him, and he gladly would’ve given you some of his. He had come to like you, to trust you even, but you never asked. For fear you wouldn’t want to hear it, he held back. You even spoke Mando’a, though he didn’t know that. It always brought a smirk to your face as he’d turn his back after calling you some sweet words in his native tongue, thinking you’d be oblivious. It shocked you at first; you didn’t expect such a stoic and silent man to be so openly flirtatious, but after a while it most certainly grew on you. You would tease him equally in another tongue, calling him handsome or dashing in Pak Pak or Bothese. It was fun, the way he’d try to guess what you were saying, usually assuming it meant something negative.

With your vast knowledge of languages, you’d both expected that you would be able to interpret the words of Mando’s adopted son, that his babbling would be easily deciphered into some species’ tongue. Eventually you realized that he wasn’t speaking a language yet, simply regurgitating syllables like any child would. He was a baby, after all. You set out to make it your mission to teach the child languages when Mando was away, and he had begun to identify the meaning of words, even if he couldn’t say them himself. He could identify body parts on himself, you by your name, and Mando by his; well, the name you called him, which you knew wasn’t his real name. Mando had taken you on as a crewmate for the Razor Crest a few months ago now, and you still knew next to nothing about the beskar-clad warrior. He was a forward man, so you assumed he would tell you things when he was ready. That’s about all you knew: he was a man, and he was a Mandalorian. He wanted to tell you everything, especially the fact that he had been enchanted by your intelligence and wit since the first time he met you, stopping on Tatooine for a bounty and encountering you when he asked a fellow villager who the most knowledgeable person around was. The tiny green thing he held was a menace, and you cared for him while the Mandalorian man went and hunted his bounty. The child was hesitant to leave you, getting attached after a quick few days of staying in your hut, and the man had decided you could be valuable. Just before he walked through the door, he turned and offered you a job. You were shy when you accepted, and had nursed a crush the whole time you two had traveled together. You couldn’t believe the situation, just like in those trashy novels you’d read when you were interested in his culture. Now that you lived with him and the tiny green thing, you stayed aboard his ship while he hunted and cared for the kid, cleaned, fixed up the piece of junk, and generally ran the almost-household. It was enjoyable; you liked the man, especially once you came to find his sense of humor similar to your own, and you absolutely adored the child in your care. Your little ragtag crew fell into a rhythm after the first month or so: Mando would leave on a hunt for a few days. While he was gone, you’d play with the baby, feed him and care for him. You washed the blood and dirt from the man’s clothing and the child’s bile from the clothing belonging to you and the baby, taught the child new words, and generally… well, raised him. The baby felt like your child when you two were alone, but when the Mandalorian came home, he was the only thing visible in that child’s round black eyes. It was all about him, sitting in his lap, babbling incoherent words to him, playing with him. Luckily for you, the Mandalorian is on a hunt. You and the child sit in the bed compartment; you lie on the mattress and the child rests in his mesh hammock above the entry. At the last port, you picked up as many books as possible to entertain both you and the child. He loved listening to your voice, and so you happily read aloud to him as you rest together. The Mandalorian should be home tonight, you figured, since he told you that this was a rather easy bounty and that it should take him no more than 3 days. It’s now a couple hours after the third day, but you’re sure it’s fine. The child’s eyes droop closed as you read to him, flawlessly translating the book from the Pak Pak it was written in. The Basic words pour from your mouth, and the little thing gives a gentle yawn before curling up with his favorite blanket and silver ball and passing out. Looking up, you laugh at the sight softly and transition to reading in your head. Not long after the kid falls asleep, you follow. It was unintentional, but reading soothes you, and the perfectly cozy bed that smells like Mando draws you in further and further until sleep washes over your body. You hug one pillow to your chest as you sleep, imagining it was the man’s body you cuddled up against. - Mando is 24 hours late. You’ve been pacing in the ship since you realized it’s officially a day later than he said he’d be back. Dammit, you’re going to find that man. You’re not unaccustomed to violence, having been in scuffles as a child and teen, fighting off Jawas or unsavory men in Tatooine cantinas. You need to track him down and find him. First, you go up to the cockpit and look at the comm watch he gave you. It has a two-way tracking device; one for him to find you, and one for you to find him. Mando has the technology to see where you are built into his vambrace. You, however, have nothing. After searching the cockpit, you find and crack open a tracking fob he used in the past. You open the back of the comm watch, finding the bit with the tracker and wire it to the fob. As you connect two wires, the fob suddenly blinks with light. Laughing at the fact that you made it work, you relax a little. Now you can track the Mandalorian man down. After slipping the fob into a pocket of your pants, you scoot back down the ladder and to the cargo hold’s back wall: Mando’s arsenal. You can do this, you tell yourself, and dare to open Mando’s personal armory built into the wall. You strap a holster to your thigh, adding a vibroblade there. A belt with two guns rests on your hips. An ammo belt drapes across your chest, settling between your breasts and pulling your black tank top tight, the back of the leather sash holding Mando’s backup pulse rifle. You take a look in the mirror of the refresher, and you have to admit that you look badass. Weapons and homemade tracker at the ready, you set out to find him. You leave the baby with a trustworthy woman at the hangar, one who has babysat him before for Mando, then enter the bustling city. - Following the blinking and beeping of the fob, you find your way to the opposite end of the city, to a building located near the outskirts. It’s run down and looks abandoned. It makes perfect sense that someone would hide here. As you approach, the beeping of the fob encourages you; the Mandalorian is definitely here. You disable the sound on the fob and slip it in your pocket, grabbing one of the blasters from your hip. As you approach, the building is silent. The roar of the city is quiet but present, and you slip through an open doorway quietly. You scan the rooms, blaster held in front of you and ready to shoot. You take inventory of the first floor and find nothing. The staircase looks terribly old, and you wince as you take your first step onto it and it makes a noise. Now or never, you tell yourself and quickly run up the steps, knowing the noise can’t be avoided, so you’d better make it quick. You reach the top of the steps, pulling out your other blaster, and find a male Twi’lek standing over  a pile of silver and black on the floor. Mando. He’s most definitely unconscious, maybe even- no, he can’t be dead, you can see his slow breathing and the way it makes his body rise and fall. “Fuck,” you say out loud, and the Twi’lek turns towards you. The man is large, much larger than you. He’s overweight and dressed in combat clothes, his face battered and bloody. Your heart sinks as you realize this man is the bounty Mando was going for. You need to start thinking on your feet, and quickly. The man starts to move toward you and you hold out both blasters. “Easy there, nerra,” you tell him in Twi’leki, calling him ‘brother’ to attempt to put him at ease. It doesn’t have the effect that you hoped. “Why are you here?” he asks back, also in Twi’leki, reaching for his weapon. “Don’t draw,” you threaten and inch closer. He was a bail jumper, Mando had informed you before he left, but not for a petty charge; he had escaped in order to avoid several charges of murder. He was a former bounty hunter, who Mando had encountered once. The idea strikes you. “I’m here for him,” you say and nod to the lump of beskar behind the man on the ground. “There’s a bounty on his head. I… heard whoever turns him in gets to keep the beskar too,” you say, raising an eyebrow as you look at him. “You going for him too?” The Twi’lek man shakes his head. “No. He was coming for me. Thought he could beat me.” You seize this opportunity. “From what you look like, I don’t think anyone could. This one is worth a lot of credits. Enough to run away to a pleasure planet… twice over,” you say, inching closer. Mando makes a soft groan and it breaks your heart as he gains consciousness. He must notice you; he starts to moan out words, but you know he can’t speak or he’ll expose you both. “Silence, Mandalorian,” you say again in Basic, words holding acid. “Twice over… let’s bring him in together. Find some wonderful planet to share that bounty on…” you offer, raising an eyebrow and slowly creeping closer to the man. “What’s your name?” You ask. He tells you his and you tell him yours, then give him a seductive smile. The man’s face falls into a smirk. You put both blasters in your belt once more and his posture relaxes fully. “Sounds wonderful to me, beautiful.” “Wow. For a jaded bounty hunter, you’re more foolish than one could ever believe.” Before the man can process your words, you’ve slung the pulse rifle over your shoulder and pull it into position. You shoot a pulse and it finds its target in his chest. He groans in agony and falls backwards, directly on top of Mando. Wincing for the man beneath the hulking Twi’lek, you grab a blaster, shooting the man in each leg. “Mando, hey, it’s me,” you tell him as you roll the behemoth from on top of him. “I’m here,” you murmur. He starts mumbling back, but it’s in Mando’a. That makes sense, you suppose, that he’s reverting in such a moment of crisis. “How hurt are you?” you ask, beginning to speak Mando’a to him in hopes he’ll understand you better. Mando’s brain works through the fog, hearing your words and recognizing that it’s you. “Real bad,” he groans out, speaking his native tongue. You touch his elbow, unprotected by beskar, and he whines. “No, no,” he whimpers, sounding almost like a child. You sigh. This was going to be harder than you expected. “Fuck, how am I going to get you out of here?” The brain function that the Mandalorian has left is your saving grace. “Speeder bike. Hidden down there. We can get on.” “Yes, but how are we going to get you downstairs?” He doesn’t respond, simply groans in pain. If this was going to work without immense pain on his part, some kind of miracle was going to need to happen. “I’m going to drag you down the stairs as carefully as I can, okay? We’ll let gravity do the work. Do you have a good arm?” “The left one… so clever, so smart, pretty girl,” he breathes out, words rasping. You blush at the words but chuckle. He’s in so much pain there’s no way he can think straight now. “I’ll go get the bike, then we’ll get you down there.” This is the hard part, you think to yourself. First, you run down the steps and search for the speeder bike Mando mentioned. You find it and sigh in relief. It’s a piece of junk, but it should do. You position it at the bottom of the stairs and then run up them again. “Okay, this is going to hurt. Can you roll yourself?” “No, shoulder’s all fucked up,” he mumbles and you groan. “Well, I’ll have to drag you on the good one. Get ready.” Taking his good arm, you begin dragging him towards the steps. He groans and you wince. “I’m so sorry, you’re doing so well,” you tell him as you move him. “Here we go.” Once he’s at the top of the steps, you hold him under his armpits, blushing at how close you are. He’s so strong, even injured, and you smile softly to yourself. You lower the two of you down the stairs with careful movements and manage to hold him long enough to get him seated on the speeder bike. He leans forward onto the handles. “One moment,” you tell him. Running up the stairs once more, you shoot another pulse into the bounty. He gives a dazed nod, clearly not understanding anything through the pain he’s in. You can’t let Mando leave this man behind. You’re sure he’s unconscious, so you repeat the same movements as before but with next to no gentleness. You toss him on the back of the speeder bike, where the gunner would sit, and tie him down with ropes before covering him with a blanket. “Alright, back to the ship as quick as we possibly can,” you inform Mando and get the speeder to a door wide enough to fit it through. Once it works, you hop on between Mando and the handlebar and start it up, moving as quickly as you possibly can. Soon enough, you’re back at the hangar that holds the Razor Crest. You enter the back way, using the speeder bike entrance. You hop off quickly and park it by the Crest. “Stay right there, I’m going to get this asshole into the carbonite,” you tell Mando. His consciousness hasn’t been clear for at least a day. He didn’t even process the fact that you had grabbed the bounty. “What? You got him?” “One of us had to,” you tease, enjoying the fact that the two of you are finally conversing in his native tongue. You’ve always loved Mando’a, the way the words sound rolling off your tongue. You untie the man, still unconscious, and haul him up the ramp of the Crest. You’ve seen Mando work the carbonite freezer once or twice, and you hope you press the right buttons as you force the man onto the slab. “Come on, baby,” you murmur to the machine, hoping it’ll work. With one final button, there’s a hiss and cold air blows from it, freezing him. You sigh in relief. You return to the main hold and pop out a cot for him to lie on. Running back down the ramp, you find the dazed Mandalorian in the exact spot you left him in. “I’m going to carry you into the ship,” you tell him, grunting with effort as you lift his practically deadweight body off of the side and into a standing position. You drag him up and immediately shove him onto the cot. “Fuck, I’m sorry,” you cringe as he moans in pain at the contact with the cot. “One more thing and we’ll get some bacta in you.” The owner of the hangar is waiting for you outside the ship, holding the kid, both confused by the commotion. You very quickly and hurriedly explain to her that everything is fine now, thank her and pay her a generous amount of credits, and rush back onto the ship with the baby. “Keep the speeder!” You shout behind you as you close the ramp. - A full day and a half later, the Mandalorian awakens from a deep slumber with a pounding headache. He sits with a jolt, which only makes the headache worse. He looks around to find that he’s in the Razor Crest, the familiar hum indicating that he’s in hyperspace. The events of the past few days begin to manifest in his memory and he groans, lying back down on the cot. You climb down from the cockpit as you hear him stirring and find him on his side. “Good morning,” you say softly as you sit on the edge of his cot, the kid in your arm. You set the child down and he toddles off elsewhere.  “You were out for a good day and a half,” you tell him and stroke his side softly. “How do you feel?” “Like shit,” he groans, rolling to his back again. He’s hyper aware of your touch, the way your fingers drag down his- oh shit, he’s shirtless, armorless- skin, avoiding the bruises. “You… thank you,” he says, gravelly voice soft. It sinks in that he’s wearing just a pair of shorts and his helmet. You must’ve undressed him, cleaned and bandaged his wounds. His breath catches in his throat. You nod and stroke his good arm. “Of course. That’s why you brought me on, isn’t it?” you tease. He chuckles, but it’s clear that takes effort. “Really, thank you. And you got the bounty too! Shit, mesh’la, I-” he says as he starts to sit, but you push him back down with a hand to his chest, caressing the side of his beskar helmet. “Nayc, stay down,” you tell him, chuckling softly. “Rest. I’ll bring you some water and go back up to the cockpit so you can take off the helmet,” you say with a soft smile, standing and going to where you keep the food and water bottles. As you move, he mulls over the events that led him here. He got knocked down and beat by the man that was supposed to be his bounty. That never happened. You came to rescue him and- wait. You just told him no, nayc, in Mando’a. In fact, you were speaking Mando’a to him the whole time you rescued him, reassuring him and directing him in his native tongue, which he had no idea you spoke until just now. You return with a nutrient bar and water bottle, setting them next to his side on the cot. “I’ll head back up-” you start to say, but he stops you by grabbing his wrist. “You speak Mando’a,” he says simply, looking up at you with wonder behind his mask. “Yeah,” you chuckle and admit, face flushing with warmth. His is equally heating beneath the beskar. He sits up slightly but instead you come to his level, sitting on the edge of the cot and pushing him down with a firm palm to his chest. He chuckles softly. “So you’ve understood me every time I’ve called you beautiful,” he says, a tinge of shyness in his modulated voice. Nodding, you tuck a stray hair back from your face. “I… yes, I have,” you nod, giving him an awkward smile. “I hear you talk in Mando'a in your sleep too, sometimes.” Even his chest is flushing with warmth now. You look away, at a corner of the ship “You talk about your life. People from your past.” The silence hangs between the two of you, your hand still resting in the center of his chest. You slowly drag it to his good shoulder, and down his arm. He clasps your hand in his when it reaches his fingertips. “Have you heard the name Din?” He asks in his native tongue, and you shake your head softly, truthfully. It never came out. “That’s… my name. Din, Din Djarin,” he admits to you, hand squeezing yours softly. You gasp softly, not expecting that information from him. A smile settles on your face after a moment. “Well then. Hello, Din.” You lean down and press your forehead to where his lies beneath the metal. A keldabe kiss, you know, the most intimate gesture a Mandalorian can do. It truly melts his heart, the organ pumping frantically in his chest. “Hello to you too, gorgeous. Wait,” he stops and pushes your face from his, gently. He returns to speaking Basic with a chuckle. “How many languages do you speak?” You look upwards, mentally counting. “Uh. 8 and a half. I’m still not finished with Ubese,” you say and turn back to face him, a shy smile gracing your face. “Wow. You’re a mirdal’ika,” he tells you, the smile evident in his voice even though you can’t see it through the mask. Separately, the syllables make sense. You understand the direct translation, but it’s odd, and you cock your head to the side as you look down at the Mandalorian- no, Din. “Little clever one?” You ask, unsure if you heard him correctly. “Yes, well, that’s the direct translation. It’s really more of a slang term.” “For?” “In Basic… I believe the equivalent would be… nerd.” “Din!” You squeal and laugh, smacking his good shoulder lightly with a backhand. “Excuse me, that’s rude,” you chuckle, the smile growing even wider on your face as you look down at him. He doesn’t respond for a moment and you give a soft sigh. “Well, you need to drink that water. I’ll head back up to the cockpit,” you tell him, really meaning to leave this time, the smile falling. Once again, as you stand and try to move, he grabs your arm. “I… I think I’m going to need help with that,” he admits, almost ashamed. “Please. Stay.” You nod, but then realize what it implicates. “No, Din,” you sigh, shaking your head. “I can’t do that to you, you and that helmet, it’s… it’s your everything, I couldn’t possibly-” “Please, cyare,” he asks in his native tongue again, and your heart melts. “I want you to see me. I need you to see me.” Heart pounding, you take a beat before you respond with a nod. You sit down once more, hands slowly tracing up his sides, then his chest and up to the base of his helmet. “You’re sure. Positive,” you ask. “Of course I am.” With a nod, you allow him to bring his hand to the side to unlatch the lock. Once it releases, he lifts his head just above the pillow and you slide off his helmet, catching the back of his head with one hand and easing it back down to the pillow. You make sure the helmet rests on the floor before you finally look at him. He’s gorgeous, truly. His tanned skin, which you saw when cleaning his wounds, is covered with dark stubble and a mustache on the lower half of his face, broken by two plush lips. Your fingertips trace his jawline as you take in his softly hooked nose, his dark eyebrows, his dark and messy hair, but most importantly, his eyes. His eyes are a beautiful chocolate brown, set gently into his face and looking at you like you’re a shimmering supernova, no, something even more beautiful. For a moment, you get caught up staring at him. “You’re absolutely beautiful, Din,” you mumble in Mando’a. He just gives a soft smile and murmurs his thanks. After you finish staring, you shake your head quickly. “Sorry, the water,” you chuckle nervously, turning to grab it from your other side. Din’s hand catches the side of your face. “The water is a secondary need,” he says softly in Mando’a, turning your face back to his. “I took this off for something else.” His eyes hold a question as he looks up at you. You bite your lip for a moment before breaking into a smile and nodding. The Mandalorian pulls your face down to his, and, ever so gently, your lips finally meet, real and warm and absolutely delicious. You sigh softly, putting a hand on the side of his face too. His lips are softer than you’d expected, while yours are just as beautiful as he dreamed about at night. You both continue for a moment, his hand drifting to your neck, completely lost in each other. A moment later, you pull back and giggle. “I have to admit something, Din,” you tell him and lovingly stroke the side of his face. “It better not be that you’re secretly engaged,” he asks teasingly, a soft smile on his face and raising an eyebrow at you. “No,” you laugh and run your hand through his curls, carding your fingers between the surprisingly soft locks. “That…” you gulp and look away before looking back at him. “Was my first kiss,” you admit and bite down on your bottom lip. He laughs softly but there’s love in his eyes. “A girl as beautiful as you never dated when you were younger? Never went out and flirted with her classmates?” You shake your head. “I was generally too busy at home, reading or teaching myself the language of the man who’d eventually be my first kiss.” You both laugh at that and you grin. His hand rests on the side of your face, gently sweeping his thumb across the skin beneath his fingers. “Of course you were. My little mirdal’ika,” he laughs, bringing your face to his to kiss you once more.

[stressedoutcanary]

Hold On - Jason Todd x Batgirl!Reader

Summary:

"Hey! I see a vent inside, maybe if we get to the roof-"

BAMMMM

"Of course, just shoot open the lock and alert whoever's inside. What a great strategy! Why didn't I think of it?! Oh I know, because it's dumb!"

Warnings: Language, Canon typical Violence, Occasional Angst lets be real it's Jason we are talking about, Kidnappings..?

Word count: 1.6k

A/N:- I...should be studying right now buttt I had fun writing this and yes, I took the title from the song Hold On by Chord Overstreet, I think it fits this perfectly.

I wasn't going for a series but here we are.

Part 2, Part 3

•°•°•°•°

It was a quite night for Gotham. Every person was busy with their own work and so were you, even if it was a little different from what people down below on the streets were doing. As of yet, you had stopped two muggings, busted a few armed two-face goons trying to rob a bank and were currently running across rooftops.

'Maybeee I can get off easy today, go home, microwave the pizza that has been waiting for me in the fridge, get a nice, warm shower and then straight to bed'

You hummed to yourself at the delightful thought as you sat on a gargoyle overlooking the city. You were enjoying the feeling of the light breeze on your face. It was soothing in a way. Not long after, you were startled by your comms crackling to life out of nowhere as you heard Oracle's automated voice in your ears.

"Batgirl I am going to need you to check out the area near Gotham Central Park for any visible strange activity. There are several missing persons reports filed this week that I have tied up to that particular region."

'So much for a warm bath and a good night's sleep, way to jinx yourself (Y/N), you dumbass'

"Isn't that park under construction or something? You know after the whole Justice League fiasco last month?", you questioned.

"Yep but people still go there, in the mornings for walks and at the nights for certain activities."

"Of course they do, I swear, people here are on a whole different level." You sighed. "Alrighty then Babs, I am on it."

•°•°

After climbing up a couple of fire escapes and swinging off of numerous rooftops you finally reached your target destination. There was a deafening silence when your feet landed on the damp grass. You took in the misted surroundings and decided to look around for something out of the ordinary. There was a broken bright neon sign by the corner of the street which caught your attention, you could only make out the last bit, it spelled Parlor.

'That seems awfully familiar. Something about it is odd but I can't quite place my finger on it'

You were lost in thought when you felt someone move behind you, there was rather little time for you to react so you choose the 'hit first ask questions later' option. You clenched your fist, twisted your upper body and delivered a quick, staggering blow to the shady figure lurking behind.

.

"OWW!! WHAT WAS THAT FOR?!"

.

"HOOD?!"

Sure enough, Jason was on the ground clutching his ribs looking like a hurt puppy.

You moved your hands up and massaged you temples. You do not want to deal with him. Not today and if possible not ever. Even though you never let it show, you always avoided a run in with him. He may have become a part of the family again but you were far off from forgiving him.

You watched with narrowed eyes as he got to his feet and and dusted off the grass from his jacket.

"So on a Scale of one to Demon brat, how much do you hate me?", the smirk on his face and the way he wiggled his eyebrows at you almost made you want to smack him with a crowbar yourself.

"What? Dami?! I don't-- I don't hate Damian, he just gets on my nerves sometimes, something you do all the time.", you enjoyed, maybe a little too much, the way Jason's smirk turned into a small pout. You smiled a bit as you shook your head at his childishness.

"Before you start chucking batarangs at me I want to make this clear; No, Oracle did not send me here to be your backup or whatever, I just happen to be investigating the same thing which obviously led me here to you. So how about we work on this together and watch each other's back", Despite the uncertainty of your rejection, he sounded hopeful. It seemed as if he was ready to build the old, worn out bridges of your relationship back up again. It sent an unexpected warmth through your chest.

"Just like old times?"

"Just like old times.", Jason repeated as you both did a rather unsuccessful fist bump and grinned like idiots.

•°•°

You walked up to the seemingly abandoned building, Jason examined the door for traps whereas you decided on taking a look through the glass window.

"Hey! I see a vent inside, maybe if we get to the roof-"

BAMMMM

"Of course, just shoot open the lock and alert whoever's inside. What a great strategy! Why didn't I think of it?! Oh I know, because it's dumb!", you whisper shouted with a scowl. Jason just shrugged and tilted his head to the side, pointing towards the now open door.

"Ladies first, so lead the way, unless you're scared.", it was a playful challenge on Jason's part, one that you were more than ready to accept.

"Oh you're on Red."

You stepped inside and it was all business from there on. You took in the condition of the room; dusty desks, broken glass, oddly placed mannequins and footprints leading up ahead into a long hallway.

"They seem recent enough", Jason gave a slight nod at your discovery.

Considering the darkness of the hallway, you and Jason shared a look and switched on your night vision lenses. You both started taking cautious steps, the occasional soft thud of your boots being the only sound in the vicinity.

The end of the hallway was forked up and there were two rooms at the end of each passageway.

"How is this place so big! it didn't seem this huge from the outside", you could hear the exasperation in Jason's voice. You figured not getting to hit someone might be getting to him or that he was just bored.

"Look I will take the right, you take the left, our comms are already connected, if any one of us finds anything we tell the other and remember we do not engage in a fight alone. Am I clear or do you want me to write that down for you"

"Yes ma'am, but just so you know you are starting to sound like The old man", you rolled your eyes at his comment and went on ahead towards the right as he went the other way.

•°•°

You scrolled through the torn down bookshelf kept in one of the rooms and you were making a mental note in your mind that there were a lot of medical journals in the bunch, when your comms buzzed.

"I am sorry", Jason whispered in a soft voice and you froze for a spilt second, eyes widening.

'No (Y/N) don't listen to him, he doesn't know what he is saying, just focus on finding those missing people and get this over with'

With that thought you tried continuing your investigation as if you had heard nothing.

"I said, I am sorry (Y/N). I know you heard me. I also know you've been avoiding me, cutting me out and you don't have to reply if don't feel like it but...I just wanted you to know..."

"Now is not the right time for this Hood and...for what it's worth I am not looking forward to a forgiveness session with you...", you felt awful for cutting him out the way you did, your heart clenched at the harshness of your words as you clicked off your comms, but you refused to have this discussion right now. If you were being more honest to yourself you just couldn't bear the emotions it would bring, so you chose the easiest way; completely shutting him out.

It was few minutes after the highly uncomfortable talk with Jason that a wall poster had caught your eye. You moved your hand over it, somewhat wiping off the dust, there was something scribbled on it making it harder for you to read the actual text. You squinted, trying to make out the words

"The people need...perfection...and that is what Pretty Dolls Parlor strives to achieve."

You scanned the area near poster for fingerprints and clicked your comms back on.

"Hood, get over here, I found something and I think this is the make or break kind of information", you were waiting for scan to complete, concern creeping up your mind when there was no reply from the other end.

"Red Hood? can you hear me?"

Nothing.

"Red?! Answer me Damnit!!"

A whole lot of Nothing.

As soon as you heard the chime of the scanner signaling its completion, you sped the other way towards the left corridor, towards Jason.

'Jay please be okay, please be okay, please be okay.'

By the time you reached Jason's location you were panting from the lack of breath and were already cursing yourself for bringing Jason along. To say that the man can take care of himself might be an understatement, he is basically a lone wolf, but still the thought of something happening to him while he was with you hurt like hell.

You looked around frantically and almost jumped out of your skin when you stepped on a gun. You heart almost stopped, it was Jason's. To make matters worse, there was no other sign of him or of were he went. You picked up the gun holding it securely in your hand. You could literally hear your heart pounding in your ears.

Suddenly, through the reflection from the glass window in front of you, you caught a glimpse of a man wearing a blank white face mask, you turned around, immediately switching to a fighting stance but that only did so much for you. A flashlight was switched on and shoved near your face, the night vision of your lens intensified the light, blinding you completely.

Before you could react, a metal pole connected straight with the back of your head and just like that you were lights out on the ground.

°•°•°•°•

Author's cute little extra Note:

*wiggling my eyebrows rn*

I might be a little too obsessed with the Arkham Knight game hehe.

Well that ended well for you, didn't it?? Jason's gone missing and you get a nice concussion to garnish your anxiety level? No? Okay I will stop talking now.

Tell me if you want to be tagged for the next parts.💕

[modx-reborn]

One word prompt: Webcams

Returning my C!Eret posts.

SMUT UNDERCUT! MINORS DNI!

You had many thanks to give a certain young goat hybrid for his little invention, especially seeing as Eret had to leave you, heading off to the far reaches for a few weeks to barter a trade deal or something along those lines. But with the little box you had attached to your com, you would still be able to see them, even if it was slightly grainy and dulled their features.

Getting it all set up was rather easy, plug this there and attach this piece here and now you're all set up, waiting for that ping from them that meant you would be able to try out the call feature. Eager to get to see them after the past week of just words scrolling across your screen in the morning and evening before bed.

Your screen lights up with their name and the small image of their crown that you had snagged before they left to assign to their contact, teasing them that it was more memorable than their face while dancing out of their reach when they tried to wrap you up in their arms to get you back for the comment.

That memory plays in your mind as you pick up, giddy as you call their name, cathing the soft look they cast at you when you do.

"Eret! Look see I told you it would work, now we can chat even if you are off across the server doing all your royal business!"

"I never doubted that it would honey, after all, you were so excited and we did test it before I left."

"I Knoooow, but you can never be sure..."

They hum in response, loosening their cloak and tossing it off out of the screen, rolling their shoulders and stretching their arms just out of the frame. Settling in on whatever they were stretched out on, white eyes more grey through the screen as they watched you excitedly go overall you had done while they were away, even stopping midway through your sentences as you remembered something scrambling off the bed and letting them listen to you as you shuffled in the background.

Coming back into frame dressed in a black dress that had arrived the day after Eret had left, no doubt that they had it commissioned for you, something to likely match one they had hidden away in their ever-expanding closet of beautiful gowns and suits. Sitting on the bed letting the slits expose your thighs and watching how their eyes refused to leave the path your hands had begun to take as you spoke about how well the gown fit.

"I knew it would look good on you my dear, it is a shame that I can't be there to peel you out of it though..."

Their words are quick to halt your rambling, leaving you to stumble slightly before you responded with a whined 'What?' sure you and the King of the SMP were close but you had not expected this when you had called them, the screen making them bold or mayhaps it was just seeing you in one of their gifts.

"You heard me, dear. After all this time you still can't see it, all these gifts and even the touches you know are not friendly and your still not getting it."

"Eret, I..."

"No, no little one I'm not done yet. You were so oblivious and here you are spread out on this little screen, dolled up in another one of my gifts, one I had hoped I would get to see in the flesh and finally get you to understand that you aren't just some friend of mine..."

There is a lot to digest as they continue to talk, listening to them make clear how they wanted you watching how their eyes were sharp like they were waiting for something, almost devouring you with their gaze. All you had exposed seemed like so much more now, the expanse of your thighs still filling their screen and the dip of the neckline showing off the bare length of your neck, the attention now making you squirm in a way that was new for when you spoke with Eret.

Sure you admired your friend, and sure there had been nights when you woke with their name on your lips and a flush high on your cheeks the following days whenever you laid eyes on them, so ignorant of how they looked at you always drapped in something of theirs or a gift from them.

But now it was all so clear and as your mind finally caught up with what you had been told there was no stopping the slight whine that you released, hoping that the mic on your com didn't pick it up only when the soft sound of Erets laugh fills your room you knew you were fucked.

"Figured it out now? Get why I love seeing you all dressed up in my gifts? How every time they get more and more revealing, and my hands would wander further and further across your skin? Well, have anything to say or are you just going to sit there all pretty and fucking silent?"

"I-I..."

Turning your head away from the still so consuming gaze of the king, your mind scrambles for something anything you could say in return, sure you liked them but how much did that go? Were the dreams and the intrusive thoughts you sometimes had enough to give in to this and give them a chance or was this a thing that would cost you your friendship should you say no? No, there was no way this would be something that could wreck how close you were to them, letting your mind simply follow what it thought best and looking back at the person sitting waiting on the other side of your screen.

"I understand... I-I think."

"You think? Well, then my dear let me show you just what you do to me, dressed up in my gifts, practically exposing yourself to me over these webcams. So sit still and Watch me."

It's easy to listen to what they had asked you when they let their voice dip low, even over the com speakers it sounds so nice, such a beguiling sound. Their camera frameshifting to show more of their body, their shirt parted and untucked from their pants, belt lose and left open as they tuck their thumbs into the hem, sliding the fitted material down to free their half-hard cock.

One hand pushing their shirt aside letting the frame be filled with their bare skin and wandering hands, only letting you watch and listen as they wrapped a hand around themself slowly moving back and forth, white eyes just barely visible in the top of the frame as they worked their cock. Their free hand pressed the hem of their pants, keeping them out of the way and letting you see everything that they were doing.

Ever thankful for your choice of living alone as your speakers began to fill the room with their sounds, deep groans and calls of your name a constant thing alongside the wet sound of Eret fucking their own hand, the whole thing almost like a fever dream. You watching them touch themselves as they watched you, your thighs shifting and twitching just within the frame, making them pant something that is lost to their comms mic.

It's something beyond magic to watch as their head falls out of frame, the length of their neck the only thing still visible as they speed up, bucking up into the twist of their wrist, their thumb swiping across the head of their dick smearing the pre that had beaded there down their length. It's eye-catching when their hand grips the base of their cock, letting the cam capture how it throbbed as they stopped touching themselves.

There is nothing you can think to say as they lift their head, checking to make sure you were still watching them as they returned to fucking their hand, not stopping this time as they finally began to work themselves to completion. Their eyes keeping you watching, hands gripping the edge of the gown they had given you, fingers twitching to do more than just bunch up the fabric covering you, but something about how they were looking at you through the screen was stopping you, keeping your hands still as they finally came.

What would be white strings dripping over their fingers as they slow their hand's movements, wringing out all the pleasure they can as they pant and call your name, their hand slick with their cum is something that would be haunting your dreams till their returned from this trip as would the sound of their voice, so deep and yet still breathy as it called your name.

The last words you hear before the call goes dead are something that you will have to remember, your comms battery going flat and plunging your screen into darkness, reflecting your deeply flushed face back at you, letting you watch your own chest rise and fall after having watched all that.

"Understand now sweet thing, I'll be seeing you soon. Oh and wear that dress for me, I would hate to leave you without your clothes when I take you back to the castle with me..."

[marvelsdc22]

Nightmares

Intro: Hello, lovelies!! I hope you guys are having a good day/night!! This one just kinda came up while I was sitting here, I hope you guys enjoy!! :)

Note: Y/N was put on ice like Steve and Bucky, only difference is, they made it through the war before they were put under, now they suffer from the nightmares of war, what happens when they keep it all bottled up?

Word Count: 3034

Screaming… That’s all you heard as you bolted awake, sweating as you looked around and realized that it was you that was screaming, quickly covering your mouth with your hand as you bit your lip, hoping and praying that you hadn’t woken anyone up, only to look at the door when a certain red-head rushed in Damn those thin walls you thought to yourself, knowing that even though Tony was rich, he had went cheap on the walls between the rooms in the compound, having figured no one would actually live there full time.

“Nightmares?” Natasha asked softly, her hair a mess and her oversized shirt slipping down one shoulder, her black shorts barely peeking out from under it, her frowning when you nodded before she went over to you and rested a hand on your shoulder, sending a spark through you but you ignored it, you had too much on your mind to worry about your stupid crush on the Russian Assassin “Do you want to talk about it?” She asked, knowing your answer would always be the same, a shake of the head before she sat on the bed beside you “Okay, that’s okay” she assured, moving her arm to rest on your back, giving you all the time you needed until you calmed down and finally looked at her.

Natasha was your best friend here, you had gotten here about a year ago with Bucky, you having gone through almost what Steve did, just for the villain and minus the super strength Steve had, you were given the power to control time, you could reverse time by a few minutes, freeze it, or fast forward by a few minutes, but the more you trained, the longer you could do… The nightmares you got came from the war, you having not been caught until afterwards, you saw your team being killed in front of you, you saw the man that used you, you saw all the pain and death, everything you wished you could just forget, but you couldn’t and it seemed to be getting worse the more you held it in.

Looking at Natasha, you bit your lip, you wanted to tell her about your dreams, about what happened all that time ago, but you couldn’t bring yourself to do it “I’m fine now” you lied, looking at her and watching as she seemed to read you “Are you sure?” She asked, able to sense that there was more you wanted to say “I’m sure” you assured, resting your hand on hers and watching as her brow furrowed before she sighed and nodded, knowing she couldn’t force you to tell her anything “Okay, you know where I am” she said, standing up and leaning over to kiss your head before she told you goodnight and headed out of your room, leaving you to lay there and stare up at the ceiling, knowing this was going to be another restless night.

The next morning, you made your way downstairs, already having a major headache from everything the night before “What’s going on?” You asked, seeing everyone with serious looks on their faces and discussing in hushed tones, them all looking at you when you spoke up “We found one of Hydra’s big bases… We need everyone onboard” Tony said, looking uncharacteristically serious as he explained it to you, giving you all the information you needed “We leave in ten” he said, looking at you and watching you nod before you turned around and headed back up to your room to get ready.

As you were zipping up your jacket, you turned when you heard a knock on you door and saw Natasha standing there, feeling your heart skip a beat as she looked at you appreciatively “You sure you’re up for this?” She asked, knowing you didn’t go back to sleep after the nightmare “I’m fine, Nat… You don’t need to worry” you assured, holstering your weapon, the one she had given you for your birthday a few months back “I always worry about you” she said, going over to you and reaching over, fixing your collar since it was sticking up like Elvis “You don’t have to” you said softly, feeling your face burn at her proximity and hearing her just make a small noise before she met your eyes “Y/N” she said, her leaning forward slowly, you unable to breathe as she leaned closer and closer until- “Time to go” Clint said, poking his head in the doorway and causing you and Natasha to pull apart, Clint looking oblivious as to what he had just done “You heard the man” you said, looking at Natasha and fighting back the disappointment you felt before the three of you headed to the elevator.

Getting to the base was the easy part, getting into the base… That was a different story “How do we get in?” You asked, looking at Bruce and Tony who were looking over the schematics, you guys having landed a little ways away to plan your attack “The only way in is through a series of vents… Clint, looks like it’s up to you to get us in” Tony said, looking at Clint who was grinning, fixing his hearing aid some before he grabbed his bow “You got it, where do I go?” He asked, looking over their shoulders as Tony and Bruce explained where he would go and where the rest of them would go.

“This would be easier with Thor” you commented, knowing he could just hammer smash his way in “He’s got his own thing to worry about” Natasha said, staying in step with you while the other three walked ahead, Bruce holding off on his Hulk form until you guys got inside “I know, but he always makes these things more fun” you said, running your fingers over the hilt of your sword, hiding the wince when your head flared up “You okay?” Natasha asked, having seeing the quick flash of pain that appeared “Fine” you said, unintentionally snapping slightly at her as you walked a little faster, leaving Natasha confused, you hadn’t acted this way since you first came in, why were you acting like it now?

After a bit, Clint let you guys in before you guys all split off, everyone going their own way but keeping contact with comms “There’s cells down here” you heard Bruce say, him having gone downstairs “Anyone in them?” You asked, slowing your steps in case you had to go help him free people “No… Just lots of blood” he said, causing you to sigh since you figured what had happened to all those people, continuing down the hallway as quickly and silently as possible “Ah!” You cried out, clutching your head as the pain increased tenfold “Y/N!” You heard Natasha call in the comms, but it sounded distant with how much the pain was affecting your senses, reaching your arm out and trying to hold yourself up with the wall, not hearing the footsteps coming towards you and looking up, seeing a blurry figure walking towards you “There you are” you heard a voice you didn’t recognize say, them holding something in their hand that seemed to be affecting your headache since the closer the figure got, the more your head hurt.

“Stop!” You cried, it feeling like your brain was about to explode and tears leaking out of your eyes as you fought to stay upright “Y/N! Where are you?” Natasha asked, sounding panicked and you knowing she would find you whether you told her or not “We’ve been looking for you” the man said, still coming towards you and you forced yourself to start moving, trying to get away from the man but he just sped up until the pain overwhelmed you and you collapsed, feeling nothing but pain before you passed out.

When you woke up, you found yourself in a room you didn’t recognize and your head aching “Hey!” You shouted, ignoring the protest from your head as you stood up and pounded on the door, trying to use your powers but unable to “Dammit, of course they took it” you grumbled, feeling for the earpiece that was no longer there and kicking the door, both out of rage and in hopes that it would budge… It didn’t “My friends will find me! You’ll be dead!” You shouted, not even sure if they could even hear you, but you didn’t care, you were cornered and you wanted to yell and no one was going to stop you, you continuing to protest until you heard banging and gunshots.

You waited with your arms crossed and smirked when your door opened and there stood Natasha, her breathing a sigh of relief when she saw you and going to take a step closer to you when your head flared up again “Ah!” You cried out, clutching your head and collapsing to your knees, her eyes widening and starting to rush towards you “Stop stop!” You cried, holding a hand up to stop her from moving since the closer she got, the more it hurt and looking up to see the crystal in her hand “It-it’s that thing” you said, pointing at the crystal in her hand and seeing her eyes widen before she took several steps back, watching as you visibly relaxed the further back she got until she handed it off to Steve, who stored it in the small compartment in his shield.

Once that was taken care of, she rushed towards you and carefully helped you stand before she pulled you into a tight hug “I told them you guys would come” you said softly, burying your face in her shoulder as you returned the hug “I know, he was complaining about ‘your annoying companion’” she said, chuckling some as she pulled back to look at you, you unable to hold back your small chuckle “Ladies, as much as this little reunion is adorable, we have to get out of here, the alarms were tripped” Tony said, poking his head in as the two of you pulled full apart “Come on” Natasha said, nodding towards the door before the two of you ran out behind the others.

“There!” You shouted, seeing the exit until you saw a swarm of backup run in through it “Shit!” You shouted, getting in cover as Tony flew up and Bruce charged in Hulk form, Clint going up into the rafters and Steve shielding himself while he thought of what to do, you and Natasha providing backup cover, her having tossed you one of your pistols since there was no way you could get in with your sword with how many there were, you guys making good progress… Until you weren’t and in came a dude in a mech, forcing Tony down and Clint to drop back, until you guys were cornered, you looking around and feeling the panic in you begin to build, this is what happened way back when, when you watched your team get slaughtered in front of you while you hid, which is exactly what you were doing now, having run out of ammo a while back.

You looked around and caught sight of Natasha, who was wounded from taking a bullet to the shoulder, but she was still shooting, you looked at Steve who still hid behind his shield, unable to fight back from the bullet fire he was getting, Tony was working with a faulty laser in one of the palms of his suit, Bruce was knocked out on a stack of broken crates, while Clint could barely shoot one arrow without immediately getting shot at, you guys were losing and all you could do was sit there in your cover, frozen in place “Y/N!” Natasha shouted, having noticed the sheer panic on your face as your eyes seemed to glaze over, the nightmare flashing before your eyes and you unable to hear anything around you.

Natasha waited until there was an opening, shooting a few shots before making her way over to you, firmly grabbing your shoulders and shaking you lightly “Hey, Y/N? Y/N, look at me” she said, watching as you blinked a few times before focusing on her, her reaching over and gently wiping tears from your eyes “You’re okay, I got you” she promised, peeking over the cover and seeing that there was no progress “We have to-“ she said, you watching as a bullet went right through her head and feeling her grip loosen on you before she fell over, dead.

You couldn’t breathe as you looked at the woman you loved, dead on the ground in front of you “No” you whispered, looking at the others and watching as one by one they were taken down “No” you said, watching as all the people you had considered family died “No” you said, feeling anger build up as you looked down at Nat’s lifeless body “No!” You shouted, standing up and watching as everything froze, you unable to stop yourself as time went back, you watching as everything reversed until Natasha was where she had been moments previously, freezing time once more as you pulled your sword out, you weren’t going to let it happen again, you couldn’t lose another family, not when you could do something about it.

You let anger and rage take over you, your body moving on its own accord as you sliced through the enemies, not even realizing the pain in your head as you moved through the enemies ranks, until there was no one left, time unfreezing and the others looking around confused until they noticed you standing by the exit, covered in blood and breathing heavy, turning to look at them “I couldn’t let it happen again” you breathed before collapsing, Natasha rushing towards you in an attempt to catch you before your whole world went dark.

When you came to, you weren’t sure how much time had passed, all you knew was that you were now in your room and in your bed, running a hand through your very tangled hair, you winced as your head flared, complaining about your overuse of power “Ow” you whispered, your head turning quickly to your desk when you saw a small movement out of the corner of your eye, earning another protest from your head but you ignored it when you saw Natasha sitting in your desk chair, sleeping with chin on the palm of her head and her elbow on the armrest, causing you to look at the time and see that it was almost three in the morning.

“Nat?” You whispered, not wanting her to sleep in that chair all night, you’d done that before and you did not feel great the next morning, reaching over and lightly shaking her leg, causing her to jolt before she looked at you “You’re awake” she breathed, taking your hand that was on her leg as she moved over and sat on the edge of the bed “How long have I been out?” You asked, looking at her as she looked you over, looking for any signs of pain “A week” she said, locking eyes with you once she seemed to confirm that you were fine “What happened back there?” She asked, that being one thing with your powers, no one else but you knew what went down when you messed with time, they would only see the aftermath.

You looked at her and bit your lip, fighting over whether or not you should tell her and deciding that you should, it’s what almost got them all killed “You guys died… It was my fault; I froze up and-“ you choked out “And it reminded me of what happened before going on ice… I couldn’t let it happen again” you said, feeling tears start to fall before you roughly wiped them away “Do you want to talk about it?” Natasha asked gently, gently pushing your hand away and cupping your face, wiping your tears with her thumb, you leaning into the touch “Yes” you breathed, closing your eyes and staying silent for a moment before you told her everything, what had happened to your team, what you’d seen in the war, everything and you felt like a weight was lifted off of your chest.

Natasha listened intently, not interrupting you as you told her what had all happened, neither of you sure when it happened, but by the end of it, you were sitting on Natasha’s lap while she held you, wanting to comfort you in any way she possibly could “I’m glad you felt comfortable enough to tell me… I’m sorry you went through all that” she whispered once you stopped talking, your head resting on her shoulder as she gently rocked you “It was all part of the job… But, I should’ve done more… Then my team would’ve lived, but I froze when it mattered most, just like I did last week” you said softly, a fresh wave of tears spilling out as Natasha tightened her hold on you and shook her head.

“That is not true, you acted like anyone would in that moment, don’t blame yourself, it wasn’t your fault… If you would’ve fought back, you would’ve been dead too” she said, pulling back slightly and cupping your face once more “Then you wouldn’t be here… With me” she said, knowing that sounded selfish, but she couldn’t help it, she loved you more than she loved anyone “Nat” you said softly, glancing at her lips before locking eyes with her, you not sure who leaned in first, but the next thing you knew, the two of you were kissing, you melting into it as she pulled you tighter against you “Stay with me tonight?” You asked when you pulled back, watching as she smiled and nodded, having you hop off her lap before she stood up and pulled her jeans off before crawling into bed next to you, pulling you close to her once the two of you were comfortable under the covers and for the first time in months, you slept peacefully through the night in her arms.

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