#Oh i need to let my lichen breathe when I get home from work

[phoradendron]

Some results of my earlier adventures with natural dyes. These are dyed with blue elderberry; I had read how red and black elderberry are not very light- or colorfast, but I dyed these two or three months ago and they are doing well! Could be chance, but maybe blue elderberry is more colorfast?

I want to try changing the PH in the future for more colors. These are alum mordanted wool embroidery thread, one is undyed the other is white. In the first photo, the fibers that were originally white are on the top, undyed on the bottom, and the one weirdo off to the side was white and went in late when I decided there was more room in the jar.

No heat added to the dye bath to keep the colors brighter. I prepared it by crushing the berries, adding just enough water to cover the plant matter, leaving them overnight, crushing again and straining out the plant matter, then left the mordanted fibers in for three days; very simple. Washed thoroughly, dried in the window lol.

The white fibers became a sort of soft raspberry color, the undyed became a sort of rose gold. The weirdo is a sort of Pepto Bismal color? To be poetic

[the-hilda-librarians-wife]

Fireflies Over The Wall - Chapter 3

Relationship: The Bell Keeper & Meiri (Original character)

Summary: "The troll brought with herself, every night without a fault, a baby.

Every night, she placed it upon the grass, and pointed upwards, showing her baby the stars and constellations. Showing her baby the fireflies.

Holding it tight. Cuddling with it. Making sure it saw the beauty the world had to offer. He had never considered himself a sentimental man. Yet this image, for some reason, never failed to make him return home feeling something gaping and void inside of himself.

Every one of his former coworkers must have returned to their families.

Who would Edmund return to when he could work no more?

What would give him a reason to get out of bed when the fireflies were no longer enough?"

An OC's origin story as well as a Bell Keeper character study, because this character is much more fascinating than I'd been giving him credit for.

Notes: Title from ‘Soap’ by The Oh Hello

Chapter title: Leech what's caustic

Read it on ao3

The second time it happened, the sun was up. Barely so, but it was, the golden rays hiding away the glimmer of the stars. It was early morning and while he’d only had twelve hours since the end of his last shift to rest, he actually felt good about heading to work that day. The fresh air of sunrise usually did that to him, even if he thought it was terribly corny. He had even started whistling before opening the door to the tower, when he heard the sound of a branch being forced to its full weight capacity and its leaves rustling with movement. As he turned around, expecting a large bird to have landed nearby or maybe some sort of squirrel, Edmund found he was actually not all that surprised to see Meiri dangling precariously from the tree.

“You again.” He said though his voice lacked (too much) bitterness. Even he couldn’t be an ass to a kid. Even if the kid didn’t partake in his code of conduct. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m looking at lichen.” Came her automatic answer. He couldn’t tell if that meant it was honest or a lie.

To her credit, she did seem to be looking at lichen. In the worst way possible, that was. Her legs were crossed over the branch she was hanging on to, both of her hands grasping it as the rest of her body was dragged down by gravity. Sure enough, there were light green patches on the part of the branch nearest to her face.

“I’m not even going to ask.” Edmund mumbled as he rubbed the bridge of his nose, even though the statement was irrelevant considering he had already asked.

And apparently, for some reason he was going to continue doing so. He walked closer, not feeling completely at ease with her suspended up in the air like that with only a branch which he wouldn’t be placing any trust on to hang on to. A fall from that height might not hurt someone his size, but it sure would her.

“Why is it you’re always climbing on something when I see you?”

Either his attempt to sound stern had been ignored or it completely went over her head. Both were equally likely, he thought. Meiri only shrugged, or did so as best as she could in her current position, causing her body to sway a bit. The branch creaked, making his breath hitch but seemingly having no effect on her.

“Not my fault interesting things are up high so often.”

He considered her answer as she seemingly went back to examining the lichen (and was it even healthy to look at them up this close?), not really seeing the fault in her logic. It sort of was why he kept his job, in the end. Maybe if he explained this to her he could beat the cop allegations.

“Oh, yeah?” Creeping even closer and telling himself that it was because even he wasn’t enough of a jerk to leave a child in a dangerous situation, Edmund hoped he looked unassuming as he took his hands out of his pockets and began calculating which would be the best position to keep them in order to catch her if needs be. “And what’s interesting about lichen?”

The kid let her head fall back in order to look at him, blinking in surprise. “They’re algae.” She said, even though she sounded unsure that she should be saying something. “And fungi as well. They’re in an obligatory mutualistic relationship; I mean, those two types of organisms exist by themselves in other situations, but the species that form lichens can’t survive by themselves.”

Edmund raised an eyebrow. “How exactly is that good for either of them?”

“Right? That confused me too. Needing someone else to survive in order to live seems like too much trouble. But they manage; you find lichen living in much more diverse places than just algae or just fungi. Even deserts! So they seem to be getting something out of it. Keeping each other alive.”

It was too damn early to be getting philosophical about plants’ twice removed cousins. Unfortunately, the kid didn’t look like she was planning on moving anytime soon.

“They need to reproduce by either the fungus part reproducing on its own and finding another algae or cyanobacteria, or a bit of the lichen gets torn apart and grows back somewhere else. There’s a lot more of them here than around the city centre, because of air quality, and I’m trying to get a look at the fruiting bodies on these ones.”

Edmund let his hands fall down, genuinely impressed to have heard her speak so much all at once. It was probably more words than she’d spoken during the entire time she’d been with him some nights before. He didn’t know what it was he was been waiting for, whether it was being told to sod off and leave her alone, to get annoyed enough to leave by himself, or for her to keep going on about lichen for some reason. But remaining there paid off when he heard a particularly loud snap, and automatically reached up to grab her in one swift motion.

“Oi!” She protested once she was in his arms. “What the heck?!”

The girl didn’t weigh much at all. The hardest work he was currently doing was controlling his breathing and heart rate after his reflexes had taken charge and thankfully spared the child from a two metre high fall.

Or at least he thought they had, but the branch was still holding strong.

Which probably explained the indignant fire to Meiri’s eyes and the way she seemed to be fighting against his arms to be let go off.

“Stop yer squirming, the whole branch was gonna go down!”

“Oh, really?” She asked with no small amount of sarcasm as she pointedly looked from him to the perfectly still branch.

Edmund already had a counter argument on his tongue when, like an actor who had missed his cue, the middle of that very branch cracked and the half to which she’d been clinging to fell loudly on the floor in front of them, making them both startle.

“Oh!” Meiri stopped her fighting, looking down at what could very well have been her causa mortis had it not been for Edmund’s quick thinking. “Really.”

“Yes, kid, really!” He put her down on the floor, noticing how she immediately went to touch the branch. “How on earth come ya haven’t gotten yourself killed yet?!”

The girl only shrugged and began touching the branch seemingly at random. Edmund sighed, his shoulders dropping in exhaustion - more so emotionally after the scare than physically - as he failed to will himself to walk away now that there was no immediate danger to that child anymore.

“You gonna take this one home as well?” He asked for lack of a better thing to say.

“No. I saw what I wanted to already.” She then turned to him and raised her hands. “Plus my hands are probably full of spores now! If I touch the right places I might create new lichen.”

Okay, you are weird, he thought but refused to say out loud. There were certain things you never told children, no matter how profoundly you believed in them. He had been a weird kid; he would know.

“Well, good luck with that, then.” One foot in front of the other. Yes, Edmund, good job. He began walking away, telling himself it was Saturday afternoon so she was probably on her allowed ‘wandering around town’ time, and right after that reminding himself that whether or not it was the case was very much not his problem. He had a long day of looking at grass to get to.

He wasn’t allowed to.

“Hey!” She called after him when he was already walking away, and he groaned. Turning back to look at her, he put on his most stern look with his arms crossed, trying to convey an obvious ‘I don’t have time for this’ energy. He came to regret it, though, when he saw that she actually looked the most apologetic he’d ever seen her. She was twisting her hands on one another and biting her lip, looking to the side rather than at him.

“Thank you for not letting me fall.”

The sentence sounded like it took a lot of effort to make it come out of her mouth, but she still made sure each word was clearly pronounced, and seemed to take his small nod as enough of an answer.

“AndcouldIborrowthatbookyouhave?”

That question was much more hurried, like she was afraid that it would either hurt to get it out or that she would be punished for asking it. Neither of which were very good signs, so Edmund blinked as he stared at her, his silence lasting longer simply because he was caught off guard by it.

“I don’t know which one you’re talking about, but sure. I haven’t gotten rid of any books recently, so it must still be here.”

When she brought her eyes back to look at his, there was no small amount of surprise on them. He didn’t quite get it; it sure was surprising that she’d come all the way here to ask (or all the way here to look at lichen and then took the opportunity to ask, whatever), but he couldn’t see why it was unexpected for him to agree. Even if it were only to get rid of her, what harm could it do to let her have a book he probably hadn’t opened in years?

Checking his watch to see if he still had time to spare (he didn’t, but what was going to happen during daylight hours? Reverse troll attack?), he walked back past her and to his cabin, keeping the door open in a gesture to allow her inside. She stepped in and walked purposefully to his bookshelf, easily selecting the volume she wanted: a relatively thin one on identification of the local arboreal flora.

“Thanks.” She said while looking down at it. “What would you like me to do when I’m done reading it?”

He didn’t really care.

“Well, where do you plan on reading it?”

Meiri looked at him and shrugged, scanning the area as if to look for a good shade to read under.

He took a deep breath, fighting back the unexpected idea of asking her if she wanted to read while he stayed in his post on top of the wall. But he didn’t need something to annoy him or distract him from the absolute Nothing he was supposed to monitor.

“Eh, you know where I live. Just leave it in front of the door inside a plastic bag or something in case it rains.”

That seemed to be enough, and she ducked her head in acknowledgement before walking away. His exhale was almost an amused snort as he turned around to do the same.

…......

She delivered the book back into his hands herself, in the end.

He had been off duty in his house, sitting on his couch and listening to the radio as he read the newspaper. It was now one day old, true, but surely that was an acceptable lag. He raised his eyes to the door after hearing two curt knocks, not having the chance to neither ask who it was nor tell them to come in before the door was slightly opened.

He saw nothing.

And then he lowered his gaze a whole bunch and saw Meiri looking at him.

“Oh, look at the time!” He gasped with mock brightness as he looked at the spot in his wrist where he usually wore his watch, currently bare. “It’s ‘little girls shouldn’t be out by themselves’ hours!”

Whereas she’d poked her head inside the house looking uncertain at first, Meiri began glaring at him immediately after that. He was getting used to that, truth be told. Wordlessly, she stepped inside with the book in her arms and closed the door behind herself, keeping her frown firmly in place as she walked towards him and handed him a piece of paper she’d been keeping inside of her hoodie’s pocket. Edmund only broke eye contact after taking it from her in order to read it. The paper seemed to have been ripped from a notebook and had a few sentences in cursive calligraphy.

“Dear sir,

We were informed that Meiri had a book that belongs to you and that she wanted to return it as soon as possible. As such, we made an exception and allowed her to go out after dinner tonight, seeing as she will be at school tomorrow morning. We trust that she will be safe in your presence, but feel no obligation to keep watch over her for any longer than necessary; she knows her way back.

In case there’s any need for it, have my personal phone number and also St. Anne’s.

XXXXXXXXX

XXXXXXXXX

Terry Hansen”

The signature was a sweeping scrawl Edmund was fairly sure no child could feign. Plus, now he had a means to contact her zookeepers, so that was a bonus.

What was not a bonus is that said zookeepers seemed to have as many brain cells as wild animals themselves. ‘We trust that she will be safe in your presence’, what bullshit was that? He had seen him exactly once, absolutely nothing guaranteed these imbeciles that Edmund wasn’t some sort of creep.

Unless they were trusting him on the grounds of him being a Patrol officer, in which case they were even bigger imbeciles.

“Fair enough.” He said, not mentioning any of that to the girl since none of it was her fault or under her control. “There’s no method to my shelf’s organisation, so feel free to leave it wherever.”

“I noticed.” He heard her grumble under her breath as she kneeled on top of the wooden chest directly underneath his shelves in order to reach them more easily.

“Yeah, and my best friend’s a librarian, can you believe it? Almost has a stroke any time she comes here.”

She blinked at him, surprised he had paid her any mind, and just… stood there awkwardly near the door, taking in the space even though she’d been there before, clearly uncertain of what to do. Deciding to take mercy on her, Edmund gestured to the empty spots on the couch and the chairs on the table. As she walked over to sit on the opposite edge of the sofa, he decided to see if he could break her silence.

“What did you think of it?”

“It was good.” She removed her white (well, grey) sneakers and turned to sit facing him, her legs crossed. “I took so long with it because I was writing down some notes about it in my notebook.”

He hummed, deciding not to comment on how her definition of ‘so long’ was four days.

“And are you already reading anything new?”

Meiri nodded, her voluminous hair bouncing slightly with it. “I was going to come earlier, but I began reading a book in the library and lost track of time.”

He was going to be a responsible adult. He was going to be a responsible and mature adult and he would not take advantage of the fact that she apparently frequented the library to teach her to mess with Kaisa.

He hated being an adult.

“Cool.” He put his newspaper down and got up from the couch, stretching his arms above his head after doing so. Her gaze followed him. “I’m gonna make tea. You want some?”

“Lemongrass?”

“You got it.”

This time he had actual lemongrass to brew in the kettle, so hopefully it would turn out better, even if she seemed to have enjoyed the first one. So maybe he should be hoping she’d like this one. You really never knew with kids.

“So-” He began as he took the leaves from their jar. “What’s yer book about?”

“Flower language.”

Edmund hummed. “And?”

“And?”

He turned his head back to look at her, finding her looking at him like he was displaying some sort of enigmatic behaviour she couldn’t crack. “What have you learned already? If ya don’t mind sharing.”

Edmund went back to pouring water inside the kettle, but not before seeing her blink in surprise. “You want me to tell you about it?”

“Well, if I didn’t I wouldn’t’ve asked, would I?”

“Why?”

Great question! He hated it.

“Flowers are cool.” And I wish I could have talked to people about what I liked when I was your age. “And I want some background noise; yer voice isn’t quite as annoying as I first thought.”

He turned the stovetop on and put the kettle atop of it, being showed her tongue as soon as he turned to her again. Edmund wasn’t an ass, at least he didn’t like to think of himself as one. But he had to admit that messing with this kid was pretty fun, especially since she was completely capable of giving as good as she got. Despite her indignation, true or otherwise, she began sharing what she’d learned so far when he sat back down. Reluctantly at first, but the more she realised he was actually listening the more she picked up in pace and energy.

“I don’t get why there are flowers that mean something as specific as ‘asking for forgiveness’” She said when they were both drinking their teas already; if she’d noticed any difference in taste from the previous one, she didn’t mention it. “Isn’t it much easier to actually go to someone and say sorry?”

Edmund rubbed the stubble on his chin. “I mean… kinda? It’s easier in the way that you don’t have to go looking for a flower and then give it to the person, but saying sorry can be hard sometimes, you know?”

That seemed to actually give her pause and make her think. “I’m not sure I do. Maybe it’s hard when you mean it. When you’re actually sorry. But usually when I apologise it’s just because someone is making me.”

He was not about to open that particular box right then and there, but he stored the information away for a later date. And then he got confused as to why he expected to ever see this girl again, anyway.

“That’s true. The more you regret something, the harder it is to face it. I think either flowers or a ‘sorry’ are fine. If someone wrongs you, it’s enough to have them acknowledge it in most cases.”

She tilted her head to the side. “In most cases?”

“Yeah. In some you do have to walk away from that person or relationship. But you shouldn’t worry about that, kid. It’ll come to you at the right time.”

Her head bobbed up and down as she nodded mindlessly, her gaze unfocused as she concentrated on whatever thought process she was going through rather than the world around her.

She actually looked a lot more calm than he’d ever seen her.

They finished their teas in companionable silence, having run out of flowers to talk about. Before leaving, she ducked her head in what he interpreted as a sign of respect.

He was probably just being delusional.

“Thank you for having me.” She said, clearly quoting a script but sounding genuine all the same.

“No worries. Can you do me a favour, kid?”

Rather than answering, she only looked at him, letting him know he had her attention.

“Ask Mr. Hansen to call me when you get home safely.”

He slipped a piece of paper with his number into her hand, and she nodded. The girl then went off into the night, and Edmund only closed the door when he could see her no longer.

…......

“No.”

“No?”

“Ya heard me.”

“Oh, come on! What would it even cost you?”

The grumpy witch crossed her arms and sat back against the back of her chair, upset that all of her neat and carefully presented arguments hadn’t had an effect on the man in front of her. Truly an ‘unstoppable force meets immovable object” kind of situation, but he was determined to be more resilient than she was insistent.

No small challenge, that was.

“Me? It’d cost me nothing.” She raised her hands above her head in clear frustration. “But it would cost you a lot. You can’t keep avoiding this, Kaisa. You need to talk to her.”

Kaisa slid down the back of her chair, groaning. “But I don’t want to!”

An eyebrow raised, Edmund twirled his cup so as to mix what’s inside - even though it was only pure black coffee - while he looked at the image in front of him. Had he known less about Kaisa’s life, he would have helped her in an instant. Asking an old lady to deliver a book to the library, how hard could it be? But he knew what she was really avoiding and couldn’t in good conscience enable that road she was going down.

“You don’t? I hadn’t noticed.”

“Do you want me to be thrown into the void?”

He was about to answer that yes, in fact, he’d have a blast if it came to that, when the cafe was suddenly filled with noise as a group of children swarmed in. They all wore the Edmund Ahlberg Elementary’s uniform and backpacks with multiple shapes, laughing, screaming, speaking over each other.

Kaisa had the exact reaction Edmund would have expected: cringing and clearly fighting (losing) the internal battle to resist the librarian urge to tell those kids to quiet down.

Edmund too groaned, looking behind himself as he had been facing opposite the cafe’s door to see what the fuss was all about. In a matter of moments they were both shooting the mass of kids their best Disapproving Adult Glares, which worked as well as one would expect (it didn’t work at all).

But they tried, they tried because they remembered having some respect (or fear) for adults when they were that age, so maybe the clout would come at some point and the kids would realise that they could still act like children, but keep it down just a notch.

They didn’t, but that attempt kept them looking and paying attention to the kids. It was clearly some sort of impromptu birthday party, since all of them were gathered around one child in specific, a boy with perfect golden hair, and trying to bargain a whole cake out of an unamused cashier.

“Popular kid.” Kaisa huffed with her arms crossed. “Can you even imagine talking to that many people in school?”

But Edmund was far more invested in the children’s conversation then Kaisa now, because one of the kids nearest to him - not close enough to the birthday boy to be their friends, nor disinterested looking enough to be loser kids, so likely bootlickers - began very loudly whispering for all in the vicinity to hear.

“Why did Meiri come along?” He asked the girl beside him. “Brannon doesn’t even like her.”

Whether that was his end goal or not, most kids in his periphery began giggling, mean comments of the sort spreading themselves throughout the mass of kids. Edmund frowned, scanning the group for a familiar pair of dark eyes.

And found them in the back, still near the entrance, clearly listening to everything that was being said and looking around at her peers like a caged animal that had nowhere to run to. And then she met his gaze.

Edmund only thought about what he was going to do for a split second. It wasn’t his problem, shouldn’t be of his interest, but the popular looking birthday boy began snickering along to the mean spirited comments and enough was enough.

“Meiri, there you are!” He said, cheerful like he usually only was when pretending and only loud enough to make it seem like it only interested him to be heard by the girl herself. He thought his acting was good enough. “We were waiting for you, come sit!”

All eyes turned to her, and even though she looked like she was clearly aware she hadn’t been left a choice, she hurried past her classmates to go to their table in the back, pretending to the best of her abilities that that was her plan all along.

“Child. At our table.” Kaisa said, very unhelpfully and even less coherently when Meiri was close enough to be standing practically by Edmund’s side. “Why is there a child at our table?”

“Because she walked here with her little child legs.” He answered, determined to be even more unhelpful.

Ignoring the argument, or the lack of one in front of her, Meiri glared at Edmund. “You didn’t have to do that.”

She sounded half like she was complaining, but oddly enough the other half seemed like she was acknowledging she’d been offered an easy way out of an awful situation. And Ed did keep in mind that she’d just been through a stressful couple of moments. It would be just normal for her to be a bit snappy.

“Of course not. But Kaisa and I were going to let a bunch of food go to waste as per usual, so you might as well sit down and help us out with that.”

Her eyes went first to the brunch spread, not really impressed at the amount of food but surprised that only two people seemed to have decided to share it. And then, her gaze went to Kaisa. The change was noticeable; her eyebrows rose and her lips parted slightly, clearly having decided in her young mind that the witch was the epitome of cool. Or, considering she was a regular library patron, she’d probably made that decision a long time ago and now was just amazed to be so close to her idol.

Edmund was not jealous.

“Meiri, this is Kaisa. She’s the friend I told you about. Kaisa, Meiri. She’s a nice little girl, that’s all you need to know.”

He wasn’t sure either of them had heard him. Slowly, without taking her eyes away from the librarian, Meiri pulled back the chair on Edmund’s side and sat down. Kaisa was also staring back at the child, and it was hilarious to see that he couldn’t tell who was more intimidated by who.

“I visit him sometimes.” Meiri added, as if finding the information he had provided to be unsatisfactory, and despite the fact that she had only visited him three times before.

Three times. That was actually a lot. How had that happened?

“You know, Ed.” Kaisa whispered, still looking at the now sitting child like she was seeing a ghost. Scratch that, she probably knew how to act more natural around ghosts. “When I told you to get yourself a child, I did mean legally.”

He groaned, rolling his eyes as he grabbed the cup that had been in front of Meiri’s seat to pour some of the berries tea that had come with their combo for her.

“I didn’t get myself a child.” He said, interrupting his explanation to put the steaming cup back in front of her with a ‘here, kid, this one is red berries flavoured. See if you like it and serve yourself to whatever, we’ve got plenty’. “She’s just a random girl who likes to play near my house. Nothing to it.”

Kaisa was staring at him like he’d gone insane.

“What the fuck?”

He immediately gasped, glaring at his friend just before turning to the girl who had been blowing on her tea, making her raise her brows.

“Don’t repeat that word until you are a teenager!”

“Ed, are you shitting me?”

“Or that!”

“Your name is Edward?”

Intentionally or not, she sure avoided the conversation escalating into an argument between the two adults. He opened and closed his mouth wordlessly, amazed that they’d gotten that far without her knowing his name. He cleared his throat.

“Edmund, actually.”

“Wow, your kid doesn’t even know your name?”

“You mean like the name of my school?” She tilted her head to the side. ���I’m so sorry.”

She didn’t even need to elaborate. Her face clearly conveyed her impression regarding the figure of Edmund Ahlberg. Edmund was about to say he didn’t mind it, when Meiri sighed and spoke up again.

“It’d be so much more fair if people got to pick their own names.”

And then, of course, Kaisa could not resist the sweet allure of being a little shit.

“But that’s the worst part.” She giggled, and when Edmund’s glare only conveyed an ‘I’ll kill you’ anger rather than a ‘please don’t tell her’ fear, she continued. “He picked. He did that to himself, can you believe it?”

He threw his hands up in the air, having been over this countless times with Kaisa.

“It’s supposed to be ironic and funny!”

“It is funny! It’s a hilarious joke, but it’s at your expense!”

“Oh, fuck you.” His eyes became the size of their saucers as soon as he said that, immediately whipping his head to the side (and tilting it downwards) to reinforce what he’d just said about that word. To his surprise, what he saw wasn’t something he’d ever witnessed before.

Meiri was holding back laughter.

And because of that, he let Kaisa off the hook.

“Whatever. Meiri, what do you like?”

She blinked her big dark eyes at him. “Hm?”

“What do you like to eat for brunch? We have basically anything you can imagine.”

“Well…” It was clear the question confused her, but she scrambled to find an answer, not wanting to disappoint them and not really understanding why she was being offered any of it. “I’ve never had brunch before, so I don’t know. I like dates?”

“Okay, store your imagination away for a bit. We don’t have that, kid.”

“But you said-”

“I know, I know, it was a big overstatement. Now, do you like pancakes?”

The plate with pancakes was usually left untouched or missing one pancake that Kaisa may or may not pick depending on her mood. Considering it was a very child friendly food, Edmund picked it up from near his friend, who was watching the scene in front of her with great amusement, and put it in front of the little girl. She informed them she’d never eaten pancakes (to which they’d both sent her looks of horror), since the orphanage’s head cook, who essentially chose their meals, was an immigrant from a country where they didn’t really eat them. She said their breakfast was usually fruit with a cheese and ham sandwich, so Edmund grabbed her some slices of banana and strawberry that he was reasonably sure Kaisa wasn’t going to eat - and if she was planning to, she didn’t complain - and put them on top of the pancakes, hoping the added fruit would make the flavours more familiar to her.

And also make it so he wasn’t feeding this child who he was in no way in charge of a complete sugar bomb. Come to think of it, St. Anne’s cook had a good point. Who the hell had decided fried cake was an acceptable breakfast food?

They talked some more, and Kaisa eventually stopped looking at the girl like she was an alien, even if the girl didn’t stop looking at her like she was a famous rockstar quite just yet. The group of kids had decided the place was too expensive if they wanted to buy an entire cake with their own allowances, and left soon after having arrived; after that happened, and Edmund asked what in the world they had all been doing at school on a Saturday, Meiri disclosed that they were all part of a special science program for people who either enjoyed it or had an affinity.

Which sounded cool as hell, but Meiri didn’t speak of it with much fondness.

“Your tea’s better.” She told him after the waiter had left with the money they’d given him to get their change.

“Of course it is.” He scoffed, feeling playful before noticing with no small amount of surprise that that girl had actually complimented him. Or, well, something he did, but it was all the same in the end.

Together, him and Kaisa left a very good tip to their waiter, and the three of them got up at the same time. Edmund and Meiri led the way, with Kaisa choosing to follow them closely so she could entertain herself with the pair.

“It was good to see you eating, for once. Must spend a lot of energy with how much you climb around.”

“It was good to see you eating food for once.”

“The hell is that supposed to mean?” They were already outside at that point, so Ed was able to raise his voice just slightly.

“Sandwiches aren’t dinner.” Meiri stated, holding to her chest a textbook she’d taken out of her bag at some point to show them. “It’s what you ate when I met you, and I saw your toaster plugged on last time I visited you. That’s not a meal.”

“It’s a perfectly reasonable meal!”

“It is not.”

“Don’t ya know that grains are the base of the food pyramid?”

“Whole grains. The bread you use is whiter than you are.”

He gaped at her in stunned and indignant silence for a moment. “And I suppose you know everything about that, do you?”

“Not really. But I must know more than you since I don’t eat sandwiches every night.”

“You don’t know that I eat them every night!”

She shot him a very level knowing look.

“Well, fine. What would you have me eat, then, if you’re so wise in the ways of nutrition?”

Meiri went back to facing forward, shrugging. “Tia Teresa usually cooks us rice and beans with some type of meat. And salad.”

Oh. Actual actual food.

“Well, I’ll be a son of a woff. How mad will this woman be at me for having fed you pancakes?”

“Not much, probably. She thinks you’re kind to me.”

“Wait, she knows about me?” He stopped walking in order to ask her about it properly, but this only made Meiri duck her head and walk faster, so he actually ended up having to pick up his pace. She was surprisingly quick for someone with such short legs. “You told her about me?”

“Shut up!”

“No, I won’t! Aw, kid, you do care!”

He kept on lightly teasing her for it as she vehemently denied ever having mentioned his name, in the aggressive ways of an awful liar who thinks they can convince other people simply by reinforcing what’s being said. Kaisa watched this from behind, letting them get more and more distant since she was actually headed to the opposite side. They were still arguing (or maybe they were just talking, she wasn’t at all sure) when she lost sighmeirit of the pair, and she chuckled as she turned on her heels to go back home. She might not have gotten what she’d wanted to out of Edmund, but she sure had found something much more interesting that day.

[nashibirne]

DESPERADO - 4

Ready for the next part of Desperado? Here it is. You will learn about Helen's past and August's feelings but it's pretty emotional and angsty so I hope you still like it. Let me know and leave me a comment, reblog or like 💜

Pairing: Augut Walker x OFC (Helen Nichols)

Summary: August has survived the fight with Ethan Hunt and the fall from the cliff. A few lucky coincidences saved his life and he ends up with a woman that saves him and gives him shelter in her little hermit hut. He is at a turning point in his life. What is he going to do?

Word count: ~ 3.3 k

Warnings: A lot of angst, mentioning of death and grief, mentioning of sex

UNBETA'ED! English is not my mother tongue, so expect bad grammar, wrong spelling, chaotic punctuation and clumsy language. All mistakes are mine…

Credits: I don’t own August Walker and anything related to MI:Fallout. Pics for the moodboard from pinterest, face claim Helen: Rooney Mara

You can find parts 1 to 3 and my other fics on my masterlist.

Taglist (please let me know if you want to be added or removed)

@lunedelorient @inlovewithhisblueeyes @willkatfanfromasia @hell1129-blog @mis-lil-red @agniavateira @kebabgirl67 @omgkatinka @legendarywizarddetective @summersong69 @taebfada @xxxkatxo @artandotherdelights @notabrobro @littlefreya @luclittlepond @eldarwen333 @meowpurrbooks @marantha @liliumdream @enchantedbytomandhenry @greensleeves888 @witcherfan @margauxmargaux07 @radaofrivia @m07belzen @a-little-counter-esperanto @starstruckkittyangel @mary-ann84 @sillyrabbit81 @emelinelovesjc @wheretheriversrunintothesea @lam0ureuxq

*************

Don't your feet get cold in the wintertime?

The sky won't snow and the sun won't shine

It's hard to tell the nighttime from the day

You're losin' all your highs and lows

Ain't it funny how the feeling goes away?

From Desperado by The Eagles, Lyrics: Don Henley, Glenn Frey

August soon lost count. They had sex often after he had been able to dispel Helen's worries regarding protection by revealing that he had a vasectomy years ago. So they fucked almost every day, but Helen wasn't up for more than foreplay and the sex itself. It was always the same, when they were done she got up to take a shower before going on with her daily tasks and it left him feeling strangely used and empty. 

After their first time he had mentioned that the folding bed seemed to be an unnecessary loan now and Helen's reaction had left him speechless. She had laughed out loud.

"I don't think so. I'm not planning on sharing the bed with you...August." His real name just wouldn't flow smoothly from her lips at this time.

"Why not? We've just fucked."

"That's sex, just physical. Sharing a bed is intimate. It requires trust and I'm sorry but I can't trust you as long as you don't tell me who you are and what you're involved in."

"I'm not going to rape or murder you in your sleep", he snorted, rolling his eyes.

"I know, but still…"

And so, since he still hadn't told her the truth about August "The Hammer" Walker and John Lark, they fucked but they didn't sleep together. August found it quite ridiculous but he couldn't do much but accept it.  He just wasn't willing to reveal the dirty truth, even after Helen had finally told him about the FBI guy that had nosed around in the village and about that file that proved that his enemies considered him to be dead. He was too scared she would kick him out of her house and out of her life. He wasn't ready to lose her. Not yet. 

Instead he got accustomed to the situation and in the next weeks they established a domestic routine that was new to both of them. Helen usually worked in the mornings. She was a journalist and writer and to his surprise August found out that in fact she was a bestselling author. She had published three books so far. One about her hermit life in Kashmir, one about the region as a destination for backpackers and an illustrated book that was dedicated to the beautiful nature in the Dachigam National Park and all three of them had been pretty successful in the US. So she worked on her new book till noon almost every day and August worked on his recovery, doing all kinds of exercises indoors and outdoors. 

After lunch they did anything that had to be done around the house and Helen often left for a walk to collect berries and mushrooms or to take photos in the afternoon. August usually read a book when she was gone but on this day he decided to join her. He had done some runs in a small radius around the hut but he had never really explored the surroundings and he felt like missing out on something. Plus, if he was honest with himself, he wanted to spend some time with Helen. Quality time. 

So they strolled through the woods on this beautiful, sunny day, enjoying the warmth of the sun and a light breeze that chilled their cheeks. Helen took a bunch of pictures, concentrating on moss and lichens that grew on giant rocks and gnarled, old trees. August was waiting for her to take a shot of an overgrown branch, leaning against a rock wall, his face turned towards the sun, his eyes closed. "Stay exactly like this." Helens soft voice made him smile but when he heard her camera click he opened his eyes with a frown. "What are you doing?" He turned his face away from her and started to walk on. "Taking pictures of you. You looked great in that light, all lost in thought." She jogged a few steps to keep up with him. "Oh yeah", he snorted, "I'm sure I looked like a supermodel." She stopped him by tugging at the sleeve of his jacket. "You looked like yourself. Confident and very handsome." Her smile touched him in a way that made his stomach flip and he really didn't know how to reply to her compliment. He just gave her a helpless smile and Helen placed a hand on his burnt temple, giving him a tender smile in return. August grinned the awkwardness away and when he turned around his eyes fell on a huge rock that was completely flat on the top , building a natural lookout point over the region. "Look", he said pointing upwards, "the view from up there must be fantastic." 

"Yeah. Maybe." Helen gave him a look he couldn't really read. "Let's just go back home, okay?"

"First I wanna go up there." August ran his hands over the rough surface of the stones, glancing up to figure out the best way to climb the cliff.

"No, that's a bad idea, August. It's too dangerous, and your ankle…"

"My ankle is fine, Helen. It's been more than 8 weeks now. It's completely cured."

"Still... you're not a climber, you could get hurt." She sounded strangely anxious and August had no idea why. The cliff was very rocky, so that natural steps could easily be found and it wasn't very high. It didn't seem to be dangerous at all.

"You don't have to join me. I'll climb up quickly and will be back in a few minutes. You can take pictures of me conquering the mountain." He winked at her before he put a foot on a ledge and started to climb.

"No! August, please…" Helen yelled at him, the despair in her voice making him stop immediately. He turned to Helen with a frown. "I'll be carful, I promise."

"No! Don't do this. Please don't." She sank down on her knees, sobbing, staring at him pleadingly, her voice weak and trembling. August hopped off the rock and kneeled down beside her, taking her in his arms. She was crying now, hiding her face in her hands.

"Helen, calm down. I'm here, I won't climb, okay?" She wasn't able to answer, she just clinged to his body, weeping uncontrollably. He hugged her in a tight embrace, cradling her, rocking her trembling body gently back and forth. To his own surprise it didn't feel awkward or forced, it felt natural, he wanted to comfort her, he wanted to hold her and to be the one to make her feel safe and sound and all this made him realize that he had slowly and somehow unnoticed fallen for her. 

He'd been in love before, of course, he hadn't always been a bitter, cold-hearted jerk, but that was years ago in what felt like a different life. So August Walker knew love but with time he had forgotten about the sensation, after far too many disappointments in his life, not only in love but mainly in his job, he had pushed all positive emotions aside and his heart had gone numb before turning into a stone. It seemed like Helen, with her tough, aloof but captivating and caring personality, was able to touch his heart, to make him feel again, to make him love again. The thought alone scared the fuck out of him but now was not the time to worry about himself, now it was time to take care of Helen.

"Shhh... it's okay. Everything is fine, Henny." He'd never called her that before, it was his secret nickname for her, he just used it in his thoughts, and when she heard it she lifted her head to look at him with a hint of a smile, her eyes still overflowing with tears. "I'm sorry," she sobbed.

"No need to be sorry. Just try to calm down." He smiled at her tenderly and gave her hair some soft strokes, still holding her in his arms. When Helen started to relax and her breath went back to normal, August pressed a kiss on her forehead. "Are you okay?"

"Yes." Helen gave him a sheepish grin. "I guess you think I'm totally nuts now." She blushed a little and August gave her a wink. "Don't worry. I've seen worse."

They didn't talk for several minutes, they just sat on the ground in the sun, snuggled up to each other.

"It's because of Allison", Helen broke the silence eventually, "she died like this." 

"She died climbing?" August asked softly and Helen nodded, a sad look on her face. "Yes, and it was my fault."

"You said she died in an accident."

"Yeah, but it was still my fault."

"Tell me about it", August asked and after a short moment of hesitation Helen took a deep breath and started to talk. She told him how she and Allison had been on a backpack trip 8 years ago, both of them working for a travel magazine, preparing  a report about Jammu and Kashmir, Helen as the writer, Allison as the photographer. They had stayed in the hut Helen lived in now, doing day trips to explore the region. Helen had heard of a special spot, a mountain that not only offered a spectacular view on a hidden lake but that also was kind of a biotope, a habitat for rare plants she wanted to write about. Allison had been hesitant about the idea of going there because they both were hikers, not climbers but Helen had persuaded her. When they had reached a plateau just below the top of the mountain Helen had backed out at the sight of the steep, exposed mountain ridge they would have to manage to get to the summit. She had refused to go any further but Allison wasn't willing to give up so close to their goal. Helen had begged her not to do it but Allison had insisted on trying. She had climbed only a few yards when she'd lost balance.

"I'll never forget the surprised sound she made when she fell. She hit a rock, hurting her head and she broke her back when she landed on the rocky ground of the plateau. It was terrifying." Helen was crying again, softly this time. August took her hand to soothe her and it seemed to work. She was able to talk again. "There was nothing I could do for her besides holding her hand. She had a fractured skull and internal bleeding. She died in my arms."

"I'm so sorry, Helen. That must have been dreadful", he squeezed her hand and he truly felt the sympathy that was showing in his eyes, "but this wasn't your fault. It was an accident."

"An accident that wouldn't have happened if I hadn't made her go on this stupid trip."

"You didn't know that it was dangerous. And it was her decision to climb on the ridge." August's voice was soft and tender and Helen was grateful for his sensitivity and his kind words. She rested her head against his chest with a sigh. "I know. The rational part of me knows that, but the irrational parts of my mind will never stop feeling that dreadful guilt. I just can't shake it off."

"Yeah, I know the feeling." August smiled at her and tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear. "Why did you stay?"

"I stayed because I needed a safe space to process what had happened and to mourn. I wanted to return to Maine when I felt ready to face the world again…"

"But you're still here."

"Yeah, I grew to like my hermit life and I fell in love with a man who helped me to deal with this tragedy. And so I decided to stay for good."

"Naseer?" August guessed.

"Yes. He was such a great support. He was always there for me, helped me to buy the hut, to renovate and furnish it according to my taste but our love didn't last. In the long run he wanted me to move to his farm, to become his wife and mother to his children, to live a traditional life as a married couple. But that wasn't my dream, not my vision of my future."

"But you're still friends."

"We are. Now. It took us a few years but after his wedding we found a way to leave the past behind and become friends. He's my only friend actually."

"No, he's not", August said softly and Helen gave him a grateful smile. "Thank you. For...all this. Listening and comforting me...and, well." She shrugged, blushing, gesturing vaguely at him and her and their surroundings.

"Of course. You took good care of me, today I take care of you, okay? Just tell me what you need."

Helen nodded. "I want to go home. Let's go back and watch a movie?"

"Sure. Haven't watched a movie in ages."

They got up and walked back to the house and Helen felt strangely happy when she linked arms with him and he let it happen. She knew it was foolish to become emotionally involved with a man she knew close to nothing about, who hid every personal information from her, who was bossy and cocky and way too stubborn for his own good, but she still couldn't help it. She was falling for August Walker and there was nothing she could do about it. It wasn't the sex, not only. He was a great lover, sure, experienced and skilled but what she really liked about him besides that physical component was his dry sense of humor, his cleverness, his confidence, his dignity and his passion. The way he had fought himself back to life, his willpower, the determination to work on his recovery as soon as he was able to leave the bed, ignoring all pain and exhaustion, had shown her that he was a fighter, a survivor. A strong, protective man she was so attracted to, it really scared her and it was also pretty embarrassing that she was so turned on by his alpha male vibes and the caveman attitude. But there was more to him. He had this broody, emotional side too and she was sure deep down inside he was pretty sensitive and maybe even warm hearted. And so over the weeks she had grown feelings for him, she'd tried to fight hard but unsuccessfully. Each time she went to the bathroom after having sex with August, it was a kind of helpless and futile attempt to wash away her emotions and pour the loving feelings down the drain. Unfortunately it never took more than one look into his eyes to resurrect them. 

An hour later August and Helen were sitting on her couch in front of the TV, sharing a blanket and a plate with fruits and berries, waiting for the movie to begin. She had chosen a film called "The Shape of Water" he had never heard of before. The cover of the DVD was pretty strange, showing a couple hugging under water, the woman looking ordinary but her partner seemed to be some kind of fishman. 

"It's a great movie," Helen said not for the first time, "very moving and romantic. The female protagonist is an outsider, a mute cleaner in a lab and she falls in love with an amphibian man."

It turned out she was right. The film was amazing and it left August extremely touched and with many questions running around in his head. They were eating the last berries, discussing the end of the movie, when he blurted out what he desperately needed to know. 

"Could you fall in love with a monster?"

"He's not a monster. Not to Elisa."

"But everyone considers him to be one."

"Yes, because they don't understand him and his nature, they don't even try. But she does and she knows what lies underneath his spiky appearance."

"So you could? Fall in love with a man who is considered to be a bad man, an enemy, an unscrupulous monster?"

Helen looked him in the eyes, taking her time to answer. "If he was honest with me...if he let me see who he really is...if he explained himself to me and let me draw my own conclusions. Yes, under these conditions, I could fall in love with a monster. I'd rather have an honest monster than a lying saint."

August closed his eyes with a sigh that was full of relief but also filled with fear.

"Well, then let this monster tell you its story."

"You're not a monster…", Helen turned to look at him with a deep frown.

"No, Helen, please. Just listen, okay? And then -as you said- you can draw your own conclusions."

She gave him a nod and August started to talk. He told Helen about his loveless childhood with physically and emotionally absent parents, his youth as the time he gained recognition for being an extraordinarily good athlete and how it turned him into a confident, popular jock. His career at the CIA, his life as an agent, doing all the dirty jobs efficiently, eliminating public enemies indiscriminately and without asking questions in the first years. He admitted that he was nothing less than an authorized assassin legitimized by the state and he described how he got more and more frustrated with time, questioning his job, the national authorities and politics. He pointed out to her that his disillusionment, the years of frustration and the feeling of being caught in an unjust and outdated machinery culminated in following the ideas of Solomon Lane and finally in writing a manifesto under the pseudonym of John Lark. The hardest part was to confess that he had planned on eliminating one third of mankind by letting off a nuclear bomb in the mountains of Kashmir to alter things for the better. After he had ended with telling Helen about Ethan Hunt and their fight he was anxiously waiting for her reaction, not daring to look at her. 

She didn't say anything for a very long time. When she finally started to speak, her voice sounded weak. "You would have killed me and all the wonderful people in this valley without the blink of an eye if Ethan Hunt hadn't stopped you?"

"Yes."

Helen nodded. 

"I see. And if you had another chance, would you try again? Do you still stand by what you wrote in that manifesto?"

"No. I don't. Absolutely not."

"Why not?"

"I've had a lot of time to think about it during the last weeks and I lost my conviction. You've shown me another side of life, of thinking. You have made me feel again. Feelings I haven't had for the longest time. Feelings of love, Helen." August almost whispered the last words, scared of her reaction but Helen just nodded again, her face blank, her expression unreadable.

"Say something, Helen. Please." He took her hand but she pulled away.

"I can't, August. Not yet. I need time to process all you've just told me. I need some time on my own." 

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means I'm going to return the folding bed to Naseer tonight and I'm going to ask him if I can stay with him and his family for a few days because I don't feel well and don't want to be alone. I'll return when I've made up my mind and when I have we won't need a second bed anymore. One way or another."

*****

[gardenergulfie]

Emptober Day 6: Struggle

Rating: G

Word Count: 2639

Relationships: Geminitay & MythicalSausage

Characters: GeminiTay (Video Blogging RPF), MythicalSausage (Video Blogging RPF)

Tags: Mage Sibs, Post Corruption Mythical Sausage, Magic, Jealousy, When you swear off dark magic but also have a really hard time actually swearing off magic, plus one of your closest friends who killed you to save you is a mage, Sausage is not having a good day, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Relapsing, Dark Magic

Sausage remembered nights spent with these very books, trying to learn to cast. There was this one spell about appearance altering that Kid Sausage had always wanted to cast. He found that spellbook quickly, its dark navy cover a familiar sensation in his hands. Now that he had magic he really should try and cast him again, he’d just have to ask Xornoth-

Wait, no. Sausage didn’t do magic anymore. He’d sworn it off after being freed from Xornoth’s control. No matter how tempting it might be he wasn’t going back on his word. No more dark magic from Xornoth.

With no small amount of regret, he put the tome in the “Donate” pile. Some other more magically gifted kid would have a better use for it. Sausage continued to work, trying to keep his mind away from the thoughts of magic and spell casting. It was really hard, being in a tower filled with magic.

Emptober Day 6: Struggle

--

AO3 Link

Fic below the cut

It was a good day for Sausage. The feeling of heavy exhaustion that weighed on him constantly ever since he’d been revived was mercifully light today. It had been so light that he had felt good enough to visit Gem and help her with rearranging her tower library. She had a lot of books she didn’t ever read anymore so she was cleaning them out and donating them. She’d been a bit hesitant to ask him for help because of how recently he was revived and her worry of him overexerting himself but he’d convincer that he was fine! She’d been visiting him almost every day for the past week and seen his improvement herself. Besides, moving books around couldn’t be that hard. Gem chucked when he said that out-loud and said he would need to reevaluate that once he saw some of her tomes on the theory of magic.

He was at Gem’s tower now. He had ducked into the building right after arriving, not wanting to spend too much time around the outsides or in his own memory. Gem had greeted him cheerfully from where she was levitating books into two piles.

“Sausage! You made it!” She said, ending her spell and walking over to green him properly. She’d stopped infant of I’m, not sure what the right greeting was for a friend-turned-enemy-turned-friend. He solved that problem by giving her a big hug.

“Its good to see you too, Gem! I’m excited to get to work here! It’s been a while since I left Mythland.” He said excitedly. Gem extracted herself from his bone crushing hug.

“I’m really glad you could make it.” She said genuinely. Sausage felt the same hurt he’d get for most conversations with Gem over these past few days since his resurrection. He’d hurt her and yet here she was, having forgiven him and back to being his friend. It was bittersweet.

“Yeah! I’m excited to get to work here. Was getting restless being cooped up in my home. What should I start with?” Sausage asked as a distraction from his own thoughts. Gem tapped her chin, thinking for a bit.

“Well I need to go a reread my Astrology tones to see which ones I need to keep and which ones I can give away. While I do that, can you sort the tomes in the Illusion section via author? I only want to keep the ones by Mia L Kracklewisp. They’re the best Illusionist and honestly I really don’t use Illusion spells a lot so the other ones are just gathering dust.” Gem explained. Sausage nodded.

“Can do! Just watch, I’ll be done in no time.” He promised. Gem started walking over to a table with a large amount of books on it. She turned her head back to call out.

“If you need anything just ask! I’m just over here, turning my brain into jelly as I try and pick which Astrology books I want to keep out of a decades old collection. Why did I buy so many Astrology tomes?” She muttered to herself as she sat down.

Sausage got to work. It was easy finding the Illusion spell section, just follow the smell of citrus. Most illusionists added secret notes between the margins of their spell books in invisible ink and most of that ink was made with a lemon base. Sausage remembered when he was younger, holding pages up to candle light as he deciphered the hidden messages. He’d read most if not all of Gem’s magic related books in his youth. Sausage remembered nights spent with these very books, trying to learn to cast. There was this one spell about appearance altering that Kid Sausage had always wanted to cast. He found that spellbook quickly, its dark navy cover a familiar sensation in his hands. Now that he had magic he really should try and cast him again, he’d just have to ask Xornoth-

Wait, no. Sausage didn’t do magic anymore. He’d sworn it off after being freed from Xornoth’s control. No matter how tempting it might be he wasn’t going back on his word. No more dark magic from Xornoth.

With no small amount of regret, he put the tome in the “Donate” pile. Some other more magically gifted kid would have a better use for it. Sausage continued to work, trying to keep his mind away from the thoughts of magic and spell casting. It was really hard, being in a tower filled with magic.

When he finished sorting, he set the books down on Gem’s table with a heavy thump. Gem looked up from the tome on Advanced Cosmology and Lunar Spell-casting she was skimming through and met Sausage’s eyes.

“That was rather fast.” She said, looking at the pile of Illusion spell books on the table. “I must not have that many Illusion tomes.”

“You actually have a pretty good library of them. Most of them are just written by that one author you like so I left them there.” Sausage didn’t mention the fact that he knew exactly what author she liked and that he admired the spellwork they did. Better not to think about magic right now.

“Huh.” Gem said, peeking over Sausage’s shoulder to see the other, much larger pile of books behind him. “Well you’ve finished that task. It’s getting close to midday and I need to finish skimming this book before lunch. You’re free to do whatever you like until then.” She paused before continuing. “I know we’re having goat meat wraps with a chorus fruit pudding. There’s more than enough for two, if you’d like to stay for that.”

“Oh free food? Yeah I’ll stay.” Sausage responded before his brain could fully catch up. He was given free rein of the library while Gem was busy reading and he was trying not to think about magic. This was a bad combination. Gem went back to her reading and Sausage started walking around. He wasn’t looking at the book titles, merely moving around as to distract himself better. It really wasn’t working. Sausage was seeing books labeled “Conjuring Cakes: a Guide to Summoning Edible Food” and “Moss, Lichens and Molds: the Most Fabulous Herbology spells” and “Boommaking: How to Crush Your Enemies with Explosive Magic” (he was pretty sure that last one was a gift from fWhip). He found himself grabbing interesting tomes as he went, ones that would be useful to Mythland or just plain fun for him. Reading them couldn’t hurt, he’d read most of them before. He just needed something to past the time.

Sausage curled up in an armchair with his pick of tomes on the table beside him. He quickly lost himself in the spellwork, reading about complicated equations and runes. It was all great stuff but very familiar. Sausage remembered spending hours with Gem reading these kinds of books while fWhip was out tinkering. The two of them would curl up together to read these thick tomes after school. They both would dream about magic and what they would do when they could cast.

Of course, only one of them got that ability in the end. Gem had been blessed and Sausage had been left behind, no spark of magic in him at all. While Gem trained under the greatest mages in the world, Sausage was stuck rereading the same books, knowing that he’d never be able to cast these spells. It had made him so angry and bitter then and he could feel those emotions rising up again. It wasn’t fair that Gem got lucky while Sausage didn’t. Sausage deserved that magic just as much as Gem did.

Sausage looked back down at the page he wad reading, the paper showing a spell of levitation, the same spell Gem had been using earlier. Sausage remembered how easy casting had been under Xornoth’s control. Even before he was fully taken over, Sausage had been given a book of dark magic that even someone with no inane magic ability could use. There had been a levitation spell in there too.

Sausage wasn’t supposed to cast anymore, he swore off magic, even going so far as to give Gem the Great Staff of Mythland, the one other thing that let Sausage use magic. He was powerless now because he had been corrupted by that power before. He knew he wasn’t supposed to use dark magic anymore but he just felt so angry now. One spell wouldn’t hurt. Just a simple dark magic spell, not even calling on Xornoth, a spell of his own power.

Sausage started mumbling the incantation under his breath. His blood felt warm, uncomfortably so, but the book in his hand began to rise. There was a sound, the sound of someone’s surprised shout, but Sausage hear it fully, too caught up in the magic. He laughed loudly in joy. He’d done it! The powerless Mythlander still could cast magic! He wasn’t even using Xornoth’s power, not really. Even with his blood burning, he still felt too much glee.

“-age! Sausage! SAUSAGE!” He turned around to see Gem, anger at her for interrupting him fading away when he saw her face. She was holding her staff in front of her, magic beginning to swirl around it, and her fave showed only fear. Fear that he’d lost it again, fear that the demon was back, fear that she’d have fight him again.

The force of his guilt hit Sausage in that moment and he dropped the spell. He’d done what he wasn’t supposed to. He’d used magic and scarred the one person who’d forgiven him, the person who killed him to save him. What had he done?

“Gem… I…” Sausage stuttered out, trying to explain himself before stopping. There was nothing he needed to explain, nothing that could excuse his actions. He’d broken his own rule of no magic and it was his own fault.

“I’m going to go outside.” He said, standing up. Gem’s eyes followed him as he walked to the door, only able to shake the fear away and call out after him when he was already outside. Sausage hoped onto the mountain popper and started walking through the snow. He avoided the hatchery, Gem certainly wouldn’t want him anywhere near it after the scene he’d just made. His boots crunched against the icy snow as he just walked. Eventually he grew weary and had to sit down, the exhaustion catching up tp him again. He sat there on a rock for a while, just feeling upset and mad at himself.

“Sausage?” Gem had finally found him, the faun wizard walking up to him. When he turned to face her she stopped, seeing his face. He hadn’t been crying but he was sure that he didn’t look great. The negative effects dark magic have on the body was surely not doing him any favors either. The two of them stood in silence for a bit, neither of them speaking or moving closer or farther away from the other.

“….what was that back there? You were just reading and then suddenly you were casting dark magic. Did the book do something to you? Was Xornoth controlling you again?” Gem asked hesitantly, still nervous to speak. Sausage took a deep breath in. Alright then, he would explain. She deserved an explanation.

“No Gem it won’t either of those things. It was just me.” He started. “I was just caught up in all the magic, all the things you can do that I can’t and I felt angry. I let that anger influence me into make a bad decision. I broke my promise. I said no magic and yet i still cast magic, even worse dark magic.” Sausage hung his head. “Its just so hard when I see you doing it so easily and I know that I can too if I just break my promise and give in.”

Gem listened to his admission, understanding crossing her face. “It must be hard, knowing that you can do it but not letting yourself. How long have you been holding that back? How long have you wanted to cast dark magic after you promised not too?” Gem asked, sitting down next to him. Sausage thought of the weeks since his revival, of the habitual casting of magic and only just managing to stop himself, the constant thoughts that everything would easier if he just let himself do magic, the childhood daydreams of him turning into a mage that he had repressed long ago returning in full force. Honestly it was a miracle that he hadn’t given into his urges before this and also that he’d been able to stop so easily.

“I’ve wanted to do magic forever, my whole life. When I finally could, I used it whenever I could. When I was cured, I promised that I wouldn’t do it anymore. But honestly, I still wanted to do it.” He explained. “There were so many moments where I barely managed to stop myself form using it! It’s been calling to me ever since I tried to give it up. Every day I go without it makes me want it more. And I know it’s bad, I know it has horrible side effects and could put me back under the control of Xornoth but even still I still want to use it!” Sausage’s voice raised as he grew heated about this. Gem listened, always nonjudgmental.

“It isn’t going to be easy to just stop using magic. There’s been stories of mages who start using it and can’t bring themselves to stop, not for long. But there have also been stories of mages who have been ale to give it up, this is something you can do Sausage. This bothers you, not being able to cast magic, and you feel like you can’t fight it. But you can!” Sausage watched as Gem spoke. Normally Gem talking about his struggles with magic and her encouraging him came off as bossy and made him upset, but he wasn’t upset now. It seemed that Gem really wanted to help him. “We can find people to help keep you accountable, stop you from relapsing. We’ll remind you of how well you’re doing and how far you’ve come. We’ll try and figure out other solutions to your problem of wanting to use magic. We don’t have to rely on dark magic and you don’t have to swear off all magic, we can find something that works for you. I couldn’t find a way to help you do magic in the past but I’m stronger now. We can do this. You don’t have to struggle alone.” Gem’s voice was filled with determination and passion. Sausage fully believed that she’d try and help him. He really didn’t deserve this, not after he hurt her so much. Sausage pulled Gem in for another hug, giving her a tight squeeze that he hoped conveyed everything he was feeling that he just couldn’t say. Gem hugged him back.

“This really means a lot, Gem, thank you.” Sausage said honestly as he released Gem from the hug and stood up. He helped the shorter faun to her feet as she spoke.

“Of course! You’re my friend! I was to help you!.” Sausage felt the same bittersweet emotions he kept feeling but this time they leaned more towards sweet. She’s right, he wasn’t alone. Maybe he could fix what he messed up.

“Yeah.” Sausage said. “Now that the emotional talk is over, can we go back and get lunch? You said they were going to have goat meat wraps and I am so hungry for those right now. I might even just grab a wild goat and eat it right now.” Gem laughed at Sausage’s joke and together the two them headed back towards the tower

[bigfrozenfan-fanfics]

Chapter 12 - The Escape

Links: Chapter overview, Character list, Map, Glossar Rating: M over all Publishing cycle: each Friday at 6:00 pm CEST dst/UTC +2:00 on (link)

Remarks: all my chapters contain carefully selected music tracks. It’s your own decision if you want to use them or not while reading. The purpose is to musically support the respective mood of the plot. If you can please use a browser for reading (not the Tumblr app) due to the text formatting and music.

Honeymaren had made her decision and she did not care if Yelana or her father would punish her. Elsa had to be warned, at all costs. Even if it meant exposing Northuldra's secrets. She set out on a search and ran all over the camp, and around it. But Elsa was nowhere to be found, and neither was her sister. They had to be together somewhere in the woods. This search could take hours, too long maybe and then it would be too late.

Fortunately, Myrtha ran into her and as luck would have it, the healer knew where Elsa was right now. Honeymaren thanked her briefly and hurried off. Myrtha looked after her, shaking her head.

Some time later she already saw the four large monoliths looming before her when Anna and Elsa turned the corner of one and apparently were about to return to the camp. She saw from a distance how Elsa looked up at the big stones and asked Anna something while gesturing. Anna apparently was about to answer her when she saw Honeymaren running towards them in haste. She paused in mid-word and stared at her in surprise.

Elsa followed her gaze and waved. Honeymaren waved back hesitantly, hoping that she herself was not one of the topics of conversation between the two of them. She shook the imagination off of her mind, for Elsa had promised that her nightly conversation would remain between the two of them. Then she reached the two sisters somewhat breathless.

She bowed briefly to Anna and said, “Queen Anna, Elsa, I ... I have something very important to tell you both and I'm afraid you haven't much time left.”

Both looked at her confused and Elsa asked, “Not much time? Time for what? What happened, Honeymaren?”

“You are all in great danger and must leave immediately.”

“Wait, what? Why in danger?” Anna asked and held on to Elsa's arm, her eyes wide open in concern.

Honeymaren briefly thought about how to explain it to them, but then chose the blunt variant. “There's someone after you. He is chasing everyone from Arendelle.” Honeymaren kneaded her fingers in excitement and took turns looking at them with pleading looks. “He's out for revenge and wants to kill both of you!”

Anna's grip on Elsa's arm grew stronger and she gasped for breath in terror. But Elsa ignored Anna's reaction and made a step towards Honeymaren. She took her hands in hers. “Who, Maren, and why?”  

Anna's head started spinning and she didn't know anymore what she should be more worried about now, the unknown threat or that Elsa was so familiar with Honeymaren and even called her 'Maren'. She closed her mouth and lowered her arm, which now hung strangely uselessly in the air when Elsa had released herself from her grip.

“Revenge for what and why such a hurry? We'll be leaving tomorrow morning anyway,” Anna added. “Can the Northuldra not protect us until then?”

Elsa let go of Honeymaren's hands again and walked back and forth a few steps, brooding.

Seconds later, however, Anna realized it and she slapped a hand in front of her mouth, but immediately lowered it again and said, “He's magically gifted, isn't he?” Elsa's head was spinning at those words.

Honeymaren nodded and then shrugged her shoulders, “Yes, most likely ... I mean, we don't know for sure. All we know is that he's very dangerous and may even have Ahtohallan trapped under a magical fog shell.”

“He did what?” it burst out of Anna a little louder.

“Ahto-who-what?” Elsa added uncomprehendingly and Anna had to grin involuntarily for a moment when she remembered the exact same question she once asked her mother.

Then Elsa suddenly remembered that Honeymaren had mentioned that name once before, when they were both sitting on that beach. She thought about it for a moment. She had to find out what it was all about, because it seemed very important.

Honeymaren's gaze changed from one sister to the other. “I am forbidden to say it, but I have already said too much. Then I might as well tell the rest, right?”

“Go ahead,” Anna and Elsa said almost at the same time.

“He is the son of our former fifth spirit, who was brutally killed during the dam construction. His name is Kolgrimr, and he believes that all your grandfather's descendants must die in retribution for this act. So you must leave here as soon as possible ... please!”

Anna and Elsa looked at each other, then Anna nodded and said, “Then let's go back quickly. I'll tell Kristoff to get the wagon ready for departure immediately. Turning to Honeymaren, she quickly added, “In the meantime, can you please let Yelana know that our plans have changed a bit? We want to thank her for her hospitality before we leave.”

Honeymaren pondered briefly if this might suggest to Yelana that she had revealed secret things, but then nodded to Anna. “Yes, of course.”

Then they walked back to camp together. Elsa put her arm around Honeymaren's shoulder and said, “Thank you for warning us and caring so much about us, Maren. She looked at Elsa smiling and just nodded without saying anything back. She had done what was necessary and right in her eyes. Now all that was left to do was to make the rest work and Elsa would be safe.

~~~

Gyda looked thoughtfully at her son, who was chewing the last piece of smoked meat with relish.

“We should perform the ancient ritual. It will bring you luck and give you the necessary strength and speed,” she finally said. “I still have the old sacred drum and most of the ingredients for it here, I only need a few certain things and they have to be fresh.”

Kolgrimr looked up. “Mother, please ...,” he said with a bored tone and with an incredulously gaze.

“No, my son, there is no excuse this time,” Gyda said, “You know ... I usually did these kind of ritual every time your father ventured on a dangerous mission and he always returned safely. Nevertheless ... the last time we spoke and I begged him to perform the ceremony, he refused. He was so upset and in a hurry. He wanted to warn all our people about the true intentions of that bastard liar Runeard and that was the last time I saw him alive. Kolgrimr, I loved your father so dearly ... if he had accepted my offer ... perhaps everything would be so different now. He only had trusted in his shapeshifter abilities and in the nature spirits when he left. I lost your father, I won't lose you too.” He stared at her and then nodded.

“Good. I'll be back soon,” she said, grabbed an empty basket and left the kota.

In the meantime, Kolgrimr lay down on his fur and crossed his arms behind his head. His thoughts turned only to his plan and he tried to imagine the scenery in the camp and plan each of his steps in advance. He swallowed the last shred of meat, closed his eyes and grinned.

~~~

Meanwhile Kristoff was in the camp with Olaf and kept an eye out for Ryder. He also wanted to check on Sven. His old buddy surely wondered if he had forgotten him; he thought.

He finally found Ryder on the large lichen meadows pasture and watched him feeding a carrot to Sven.

“Hey! Where'd you get that carrot, buddy?”

Kristoff came closer, scratched Sven's head and looked at Ryder questioningly. Ryder just shrugged his shoulders. “From your wagon, of course. Sven sniffed at it and then made me take a look. You must have overlooked the carrot, it was hidden under a blanket.”

“It wasn't hidden, Ryder. I was saving it for Sven on the way home. Now I have nothing left for him until Arendelle,” Kristoff accused him gesticulating.

Ryder made a face. “Oh ... I'm really sorry about that. I didn't know it, and Sven just wouldn't let up.”

Kristoff looked reproachfully at Sven and shook his head. “Buddy, buddy ... that's why I'm the only one who gives you your beloved carrots and no one else. Now you'll have to wait till we get back home.” Sven looked at him sadly and Kristoff made him answer in his unmistakable way, reaching under Sven's chin and miming in a deep voice, “Sorry Kristoff, but the smell of the carrot was just irresistible. Why didn't you bring more of it?”

Ryder laughed out loud and slapped Kristoff on the shoulder. “There you go, pal. Sven doesn't feel well taken care of.”

Kristoff grinned and rubbed the tuft of fur on Sven's head. “Sven, buddy, how could I have known in advance that we were gonna be here so long. Next time I'll plan for such eventualities, of course, I promise.”

Ryder's smile slowly disappeared and was replaced by a thoughtful expression. He sighed. Of course, Kristoff didn't miss that and asked, looking at him, “What's wrong? Was there something else going on with Sven?”

“No, no, that's not it. It ... well ... oh, I don't know if and how to tell you this,” Ryder dithered and Kristoff raised an eyebrow while he kept on stroking Sven.

Ryder looked at him seriously. “If you love your fiancée Anna and really care for her and her sister then you all have to get out of here, if possible today.”

“What? What are you talking about?” Kristoff's attention was now completely focused on Ryder, and he looked at him earnestly and with concern.

“I can't tell you any more, but please trust me, it's in all your best interests ... please.”

Kristoff just stared at him. Ryder looked back with a begging face. So they stood there helpless for seconds and Sven's gaze flitted from one to the other. Olaf, who stood between them at the side, did the same and his head bounced from left to right and back again.

“Alright.” Kristoff put his two big hands on Ryder's narrow shoulders and nodded. “I trust you. We'll leave today.”

~~~

Kolgrimr had already prepared everything in his mind and now it was once again time to let his mind wander and to see and feel what was going on in the camp. He sat up and took up a mediation position. Then he took a deep breath in and out and began to prepare himself mentally. He closed his eyes again and the first images and fragments of thoughts of the Northuldra, just doing their work, slowly took shape in his mind. But before he could really focus, the flap on the kota flew open and Gyda came in, wasn't exactly quiet and immediately started digging around in her things. He angrily pulled a face and opened his eyes again.

“You have disturbed me in my meditation! Couldn't this wait a little longer?” She was stooping down and looking for something underneath one of the furs. “Mother?”

She looked up briefly, but at the same moment found what she was looking for and held up a small wooden pestle. “There it is. It really just rolled under the fur.” Kolgrimr looked at her in annoyance. “What? You can do your meditation later. The ritual is important and I need the pestle to pound the herbs and spices.”

Then she gathered everything else together and put a small pot over the tiny fireplace in the middle of the kota. She sat down on her wooden stool, pulled out her sharp knife from the belt sheath and began to cut some of the herbs, all the mushrooms and other ingredients she had collected into small pieces in the pot with practised handles. She added some water from a leather bottle and then began to crush the rest of the herbs and pieces of dried lichen in her mortar.

“You start the fire,” she said without looking up.

Kolgrimr shook his head, but then did as she asked. The bone-dry wood soon began to crackle loudly and the flames licked around the pot. Gyda added two smaller logs and fetched a bundle of plant stems unknown to him, tied together from a hook on the wall of the hut. She held one end into the fire until it began to smoke, pulled it back and blew on the smouldering spots until more smoke developed.

She finally handed the bundle to her son and said, “Here, take this and wave the smoke in your face. Inhale it deeply.”

While Kolgrimr complied with her request, she poured the contents of the mortar into the pot and began stirring with a wooden spoon. An intense and anaesthetic smell spread through the small room. When the contents began to boil, she took the pot from the fire and poured some of the greenish contents into a small bowl, which she handed to Kolgrimr.

“Drink this,” she said, and at the same time took the smoking bundle out of his hand again.

He drank it and, disgusted, grimaced. Gyda nodded contentedly and fetched her old troll drum from the wall. She looked into her son's eyes and when she saw the first signs that it was working on him, she began to beat the drum softly and rhythmically, murmuring words that sounded so different from the Northuldra language. Meanwhile she slowly circled around him, never letting him out of her sight for a moment. At some point he finally began to sway back and forth, his eyes took on a glassy glow and his breathing went by in fits and starts.

Gyda smiled and her chanting became louder and more haunting.

~~~

They met almost simultaneously in the camp and each of them had a serious expression on their faces. They looked at each other and in the first few moments nobody spoke a word. Each of them had the vague feeling that his counterpart already knew about everything. Eyebrows furrowed in surprise and Honeymaren sighed, “Ryder ...” He was probably absent for a good reason. She shook her head, put her hand on Elsa's shoulder for a moment and said, “I'll go and tell Yelana.” Elsa just nodded.

“Well ...,” Kristoff said, “It all seems to be a done deal, but in case you two know more ...,” and he looked alternately from Anna to Elsa and back again, “... then I'd love to know what the reason for all this is.”

Anna nodded and repeated in short words what they had learned from Honeymaren. She asked Kristoff at the end that he should prepare the departure right now.

Kristoff's eyes had become wider and wider as he listened to her and his hands clenched into fists, but then he just nodded and answered, “Already done, the wagon and Sven are ready at the edge of the forest. What now?”

“We'll wait for Yelana, to say goodbye and then we'll leave,” Anna replied quietly, looked over at Elsa and put her hand on her shoulder for a moment. “Home at last.”

It was only a few minutes later, and Yelana, Myrtha, and Honeymaren turned around the next kota and came towards them. After a short greeting, the healer walked up to Elsa and took her aside for a short talk.

“So you decided to leave us earlier,” Yelana noted, leaning casually on her staff with both hands and looking around. “I hope you were happy with everything and nothing upset you?”

“Yes and no ... I mean, everything was fine and there was no cause for trouble,” Anna said, smiling somewhat crookedly at her bumpy wording. “We all just wanted to thank you for your hospitality and for all you've done for Elsa. Thanks also for putting up with us for so long. I hope we haven't disturbed you all too much.”

“It was our pleasure and you could have stayed as long as you wanted,” Yelana lied, waved away and put on her rare smile.

“Thank you very much, but I have urgent royal duties waiting for me, which unfortunately I only remembered this morning,” lied Anna back. “After all, we have been here a little longer than planned.”

“Then I wish you all a safe journey home. Now I have to get back to my duties. For anything else you may need, Honeymaren is at your disposal.” Yelana just bowed to Anna and nodded goodbye. Then she turned around and left.

Myrtha's conversation with Elsa was also over and she said a heartfelt goodbye to each of them. As she left she waved to everyone again.

“She's really very nice,” Elsa said, waving back.

“What did she want from you?” Anna asked curiously.

“She questioned me about my condition and seemed satisfied with everything. She wished me luck.”

Anna nodded. “The Northuldra really have a good healer in her. She has taken good care of you.”

Elsa smiled as she looked after Myrtha. “Yes, that's true.”

They stood like this for a little while longer, until finally Kristoff clapped his hands and said somewhat sarcastically, “Ladies, the wagon is ready. Shall we?”

Anna and Elsa nodded and Olaf ran ahead.

At the edge of the forest Anna and Elsa got into the back of the wagon and Olaf sat before them on the wagon floor. Kristoff sat in front and took the reins in his hand, even though he didn't really need them for Sven.

Honeymaren, who had come along, now stood there a little bit lonely and looked at Elsa one last time. She suddenly became very sad and pulled a face. What if Elsa never got her magic back and therefore stayed in Arendelle for good? It would be goodbye forever; she thought. A tear came out of her eye and ran down her cheek. She wiped it away quickly so that no one would notice it.

“Ready?” Kristoff asked and looked behind him.

“Yes, we can drive off, Kristoff,” Anna said.

“Everybody take care of yourselves, okay?” shouted Honeymaren and raised her hand to say goodbye when Kristoff let the wagon start to roll.

“You too, Maren!” called Elsa back and waved to her.

“So, Sven, take us all home,” Kristoff called to Sven and he joyfully made a leap forward, which carried Olaf with verve between the surprised sisters and made him laugh out loud.

“I love such carriage rides,” Olaf raved and grinned at them.

When they were almost out of sight, Honeymaren was still standing there motionless, her gaze directed into the distance. Then she sank to her knees and started sobbing unrestrainedly.

~~~

---

I hope you have enjoyed this chapter! Please leave a comment if you liked the story, I would be pleased to read your opinions, even criticisms. If you want to be tagged as soon I publish the next chapter please let me know, except you are already tagged :-)

Credits : Many thanks to HARU (@ xlayers) for the commissioned fantastic fanart! There will be some more from this outstanding artist in the coming chapters! 

Remarks: Don't be confused that Anna still wears her Frozen II outfit in this fanart. HARU haven’t created the outfit with her new jacket yet and i hope we'll see this one day. But Anna’s wearing it in my story.

Tagging: @karma26 @whether-near-to-me-or-far @annaofthenorthernlights @igotelsapregnanthelp

[adenil-umano]

12 Days of Spones Day 1: Snow

[Read on AO3]

Poeth Iawn IV was the coolest planet orbiting the trinary star cluster P-I VH10034. Temperatures on the surface averaged 50 degrees celsius at night, and a balmy 63 during the day. It was too hot for a human without about a liter of tri-ox coursing through their veins, and even vulcans declared it “shorts and a t-shirt” weather. The generational ship--sent from Earth in 2112 and arriving just last year--had, of course, not packed any of the tri-ox that would not be invented for another fifty years.

Records of the ship had been lost on Earth, so the Federation didn’t find out about the few hundred human colonists slowly melting on the planet until the distress calls started coming through. The first suggestion was to evacuate. Find a new home for the colonists and declare this planet unfit for human habitation. But humans are stubborn things, and although the colonists had only lived on the lifeless cinder of a planet for a year they had already decided to call it home. They’d scuttled their ship and dug into the ground, where temperatures were a few degrees colder and the air was a few oxygen molecules short of a full breath.

Underground was where Dr. Leonard McCoy found himself shuttling hyposprays back and forth in regular intervals, keeping the scientists and colonists alive as the Enterprise crew installed weather control towers that would hopefully provide a bit of respite. 

“Jim, you can’t just wander around shirtless. That’s not a heat reduction plan.”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about, Bones. I’m perfectly cool.”

“Perfectly sweaty is more like. Jim, you’re dripping. It’s disgusting.”

“You wound me.”

“‘Do no harm’ does not apply to your ego.”

“You don’t hear me complaining about your pit stains.”

“Don’t make me jab you with this,” McCoy said, brandishing the hypospray threateningly. “I know all the pressure points in the human body.”

Jim pouted and reluctantly tugged his shirt back on, offering up his arm meekly for the hypospray.

“Honestly,” McCoy muttered. “I should just leave you here to fester. You’d be singing a different tune in about three hours when the last of the HeatSync and tri-ox wear off.”

He slapped Jim’s arm and shooed the captain away. He worked quickly through the line of engineers waiting for their shots, and then the dozen grateful colonists. Forty-seven of them had died of heat stroke before the Federation could arrive with aid, and the remainder weren’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. Even if said-gift horse did require them to keep their damned shirts on.

When he’d finished he still had one hypospray sitting pretty in his kit. He didn’t have to consult his list to know who had missed their daily regiment. With a sigh, he packed up his things and took out his tricorder. He’d dealt with this problem yesterday, and the day before, and the week before that, so his tricorder was already set to detect Vulcan biosigns.

He followed the signal through the main cave system and past the clusters of engineers drilling support structures into the rocks. Later, the weather towers would have feet that thrust a full kilometer into the ground. They needed to stand firm and tall. Weather control was still an uncertain science, and the surface of the planet would be prone to bouts of extreme storms.

He found Spock hiding in a garden. The colonists had filled the caves with mushrooms and dark-loving plants. It was dim, with only a faint biolumenscent glow from some of the lichen to light the rows and rows of mushroom boxes. Spock stood along the far wall which swooped some three meters up to the curvedceiling. His tricorder beeped steadily as he scanned every inch with delicate precision. Even in the shadows, his body language belied intense concentration.

He thought about clearing his throat and startling Spock, but something held him back. McCoy merely watched him for a moment. Spock’s hair caught the green light from the lichen and his high cheekbones were even sharper than normal in the shadowed light. He finished his examination of the wall and closed his tricorder with a click.

“My apologies, Doctor,” Spock said, turning towards him. 

“Lose track of time? Again?” McCoy asked. He tugged on his shirt to get air flowing. It was a few degrees cooler underground but it still wasn’t pleasant, even while standing still. 

“No. I was merely...enraptured with a certain problem I believe I am quite close to solving.”

“Does your rapture allow you to get a booster shot? Or will that throw off your flow?”

Spock inclined his gracefully. With a laugh, McCoy moseyed over and pressed the hypospray against Spock’s arm. McCoy brushed his thumb over the injection site. Doctors hadn’t used needles in over two centuries, but he still indulged in a few comforting gestures now and again. He let his hand trail down and interlaced his fingers with Spock’s. A warmth infused him as Spock shared a wave of contentment with him.

“So, what problem are you working on?”

“One that I believe will provide a more lasting solution to the Poeth colonists’ weather problem.”

“Oh? Weather towers aren’t good enough for you?”

“Indeed, they are not. Even on Earth, where the use of weather towers is most mature, the technology has never successfully changed global temperatures by more than four degrees.”

“I thought you said the scientists were hopeful they could build a better system here?”

“Initially, yes, that is what I believed. However, even if projections prove to be accurate the global temperature will be reduced by a mere five degrees.”

“At least it would be livable, if not comfortable.”

“Then there is the issue of tower maintenance. For a new colony that has yet to establish a reliable food source this may  prove to overwhelm their capacity.”

McCoy sighed. He leaned in and rested his head against Spock’s shoulder, breathing deeply to steady himself. Spock was the only thing on this whole planet that didn’t smell of sweat. He just smelled a bit warm and a bit earthy, probably from hanging out with mushrooms all day. “Yeah,” McCoy muttered. “I was thinking about that, too. The Federation will have to establish a supply line.”

“Given how close such a line would come to the Romulan neutral zone that is not a guaranteed solution. Ships do not come this far often, and if even one were to go missing it could upset the delicate balance of supplies here.”

“So? What’s your grand, Vulcan plan to solve the problem and save all these people?”

“Simple. I will move the planet.”

“Move the--Spock, I think you’ve been spending too much time communing with the fungus.”

“Although it is no easy task, it is one we have accomplished before, albeit to a lesser degree. When we deflected the course of the asteroid bound for Amerind we utilized similar principles to the ones that may yet save the people of Poeth Iawn.”

“That was just an asteroid. You’re talking about moving an entire planet. And if I recall correctly it nearly blew out every circuit in the ship.”

“As I said, it is no easy task.”

“Mr. Spock you are the master of understatement,” McCoy said dryly. He leaned in to give Spock a peck on the cheek. “Well, can I help at all? What are your calculations looking like?”

“The calculations are complete. I know how to move the planet. I was merely scanning the cave structures to determine the likelihood that the underground system would be destroyed in the process.”

“Will it?”

“With the proper support structures in place I believe upwards of 83.2% of the cave structure will remain intact during the moving process.”

“That’s good. As dingy as this place is, it’s still these people’s home. I suppose I can let you get back to your study.”

“Not necessary, Doctor. I am ready to report my findings to the Captain.” Spock’s eyes flashed brightly in the dim light. “Would you care to indulge in one of your human traditions with me? I believe this calls for a ‘celebratory kiss.’”

McCoy laughed. “Why, Mr. Spock, I would be delighted.” He bounced up on his toes and met Spock in the darkness, sliding together with the ease of long practice, and with the ease of a rather gross amount of sweat. McCoy hummed as he felt Spock’s hot hand settle onto his lower back. They kissed in the sweltering cave among loam and mushrooms, a brief celebration cut short by the itchy heat. 

McCoy pulled away and tugged at his shirt again. “Sorry, Spock, but it’s a bit too warm for a true celebration.”

“A pity,” Spock said. He let his hand fall and McCoy sighed in a mixture of disappointment at the loss and relief at the removal of Spock’s overwhelming warmth. “Perhaps later, when it is cooler.”

“You took the words right out of my mouth.”

---

After that came the real work. Spock’s plan wasn’t easy, and it required a complete redirection of energy from everyone working on the planet and on the Enterprise. Not to mention the hours of negotiations with the Captain and the leaders of Poeth Iawn. Surprisingly--or perhaps not--the colonists were eager to try Spock’s plan. It was Jim who required convincing, and after a few late nights poring over Spock’s data he finally agreed to go through with it.

The towers, half-built, were dismantled rapidly and repurposed into support structures for the winding cave systems. Anyone who wasn’t working on supporting the caves prepared for a temporary evacuation. They harvested food, put their experiments in stasis, and said goodbyes to rocks that may be buried under rubble in a few day’s time. Humans were funny like that, McCoy mused as he continued the only job he was good for: administering shots. The colonists had developed connections to the planet, connections that ran deep despite their short time here. They had favorite underground streams and familiar crystal formations. Some loved this passageway or that the way one loves a treasured pet. Spock’s estimate of how much of their home was likely to be destroyed didn’t sit well with them, that much was clear. They wanted to say goodbye while they had the chance.

It took eight days to secure the underground caverns and to transport the colonists to the Enterprise. Quarters would be tight during the moving of the planet, but staying four or five to a room was safer than trying to stay standing on a planet that was about to be rocked. McCoy found himself rooming with Scotty and Sulu, and the three stayed up late toasting to future successes. McCoy awoke with a headache and a bad taste in his mouth, his skin tingling with anticipation for what the day would bring.

The whole ship was overtaken by a hush, despite the overcrowding situation. People passed each other with only a whisper, everyone’s thoughts on what would happen on the planet below.

McCoy found his way to the bridge with a headache hypo he discreetly delivered to a very-thankful Sulu. After that he loitered near Spock’s station, carefully out of the way. He could feel Spock’s nervous energy even without touching him and he radiated back as much calm contentment as he could. Occasionally Spock looked up from his calculations, his mouth pinching in at the sight of McCoy. It could have been called a smile, if McCoy had wanted to insult his partner. 

“We are ready to proceed, Captain.”

“Good. Captain to Engineering. Scotty, any final adjustments?”

“Not a one, Captain. We’ve got the hatches battened down firmer than drum.”

“You think the Enterprise will hold?”

“Aye, Captain. You give the order and she’ll hold, even if I do have to nurse her through it.”

Jim nodded, sitting back in his chair. A slight tinge of anxiety rippled through the bridge as everyone poised to act. McCoy wasn’t useful for this part of it, and he hoped to hell he wouldn’t be made useful by anything blowing up.

“Mr. Spock, you may begin.”

Spock’s hands flew over the controls. Sulu and Chekov both moved in unison to bring the Enterprise about. McCoy was certain he imagined the slight shudder as the ship crept into position. Through the viewscreen, the barren landscape of Poeth Iawn IV crept into view. Stark red rock broken only by dry riverbeds and the occasionally wispy cloud peered up like an eye examining the ship. 

“Begin tractor beam on my mark,” Spock said. His voice didn’t waver, but something about the way he said it made McCoy reach out one hand and light brush Spock’s wrist bone. “Three, two, one...mark.”

The entire ship really did shudder as the most powerful tractor beam ever conjured shot forward. It was a brilliant gold color, and the vibrations of it set McCoy’s teeth on edge. The beam fired in waves, each driving precisely into various points across the planet’s surface. They concentrated near the equator, tiny spurts of incredible force. The planet appeared to move, but in reality it was the Enterprise skirting around to improve the angel McCoy knew it was a delicate balance between moving the planet and not knocking it completely out of orbit or accidentally stopping its rotation. 

Spock’s gaze was fixed on his readings, so McCoy watched the sight of the tractor beam bathing the planet in gold with fixed interest, attempting to commit it to a memory that he could share with Spock later. Spock deserved to see all the fruits of his labor, not just the numbers and calculations. 

It took nearly eighty minutes for the dazzling light show to die down. When the last beam fizzled out, everyone on the bridge breathed a sigh of relief. Jim called down to engineering and found out that only a single switch board had blown; the engines were fine. 

“We could do it again if you’d like, Captain.”

Jim smiled. “No, Scotty. Once is enough.” He relaxed back into his chair. “Report, Mr. Spock?”

“Planet movement is within margin of error. The spin has been increased by approximately thirteen Earth-minutes, bringing the total length of a Poeth Iawn day to twenty-two hours and forty-nine minutes thirteen seconds. If the planet continues on this course it will move far enough from the planet to equalize to a temperature on par with pre-Industrial Revolution Earth. Most interestingly, we are seeing climate patterns emerge for the first time.”

“Look,” McCoy said. “Is that...snow?”

Even Spock turned to gaze at the screen. The wispy clouds dotting the planet had thickened and coalesced, coming together to form something which, form above, appeared suspiciously similar to a snowstorm. It was difficult to make out from this angle.

“Captain, recommend the deployment of a surface team to measure the effects.”

“Request granted. Assemble the team.”

Spock called for the ship’s climatologist and for two geologists. Of course, McCoy and Jim went as well, if only because they were curious. Based on Spock’s initial measurements everyone wore the winter uniform: gloves, hats, long sleeves, and thermal undershirts. It felt odd to prep for an away team that involved a scarf.

McCoy beamed down to the surface of the planet for the first time. It was quiet, almost eerily so. The stone beneath his feet was rough pumice, and although there was a faint chill in the air there was no snow here yet. He looked up and watched the clouds gather, twisting and turning. 

A few feet away Spock was scanning madly. After a moment he clicked shut his tricorder and turned to Jim. “Captain, I can report that the structural damage to the tunnel systems was minimal. We can begin reintegrating the colonists at this location immediately.”

“Shouldn’t we go to their cave system and see it ourselves?”

“We are at the cave system, Captain.” Spock pointed to few disturbed stones nearby. “This is the entrance.”

Jim looked down at the ground, perhaps imagining, as McCoy was, all the miles and miles of tunnels just beneath their feet. After a moment, he nodded. “Very well. Specialist Tian, coordinate with the shuttle bay and transporter room. Let’s get these people home.”

A breeze picked up as everyone scattered to their tasks. McCoy shivered, shoving his hands deep into his pockets. It took only a few minutes for the whine of the transporters to begin. It would be hours before everyone was back on the planet. The initial six that beamed down appeared to be a family: two mothers and their kids, plus an elderly grandfather, all gazed wide-eyed up at the sky.

McCoy looked up, grinning. There was a glint and then--yes, there. A single snowflake twirled through the air down, down towards the red surface. McCoy followed it’s path, entertaining himself with thoughts of snowflakes boldly going where no snow had gone before. 

The flake landed in Spock’s perfectly coifed hair and McCoy laughed, ambling over to brush it away. “Mr. Spock, you’ve prevented the first snowflake from landing. That’s mighty cruel of you; after all the hard work it put in to forming itself way up there you didn’t let it reach the ground.”

Spock blinked at him. “I do not believe snowflakes have an opinion about where they land.” As he spoke, more snow dusted his hair and his long eyelashes. 

McCoy watched him as he was slowly covered in snow, a grin on his face and warmth in his heart. It was falling faster now, the kind of fast, warm snow that he’d only seen during fall days spent visiting the Midwest. Behind him, the children began to shriek with joy and run screaming around the rocks.

All around them the world was slowly coated  in a layer of white. The red vanished piece-by-piece, replaced by a snow so clean that it hurt to look at. McCoy laughed and watched his breath crystalize in the air. He lifted his face towards the sky and threw his arms wide, welcoming the snow and the cold and all that it meant for this planet and its people.

“My god, Spock. Will you look at that?”

“I am looking, Doctor.”

He turned and felt his breath catch as his eyes locked with Spock’s. Spock gazed at him evenly, lovingly, and McCoy shivered even though he no longer felt cold. 

Spock slipped closer, reaching out to entangle their fingers and share a bright burst of happiness with McCoy. “Will you indulge me, Leonard?”

“A celebratory kiss?”

“If you would be so kind.”

McCoy laughed, and it was the easiest thing in this world or any other to lean in and press their bodies together. He felt all of Spock--his warmth and solidity, his stoic energy, the smoothness of his lips. McCoy let Spock pull him close into that warm embrace and kissed the dewy snow from his cheeks.

They kissed as the world turned beneath them, altered for the better, and as snow piled up around their feet.

[fairyqueenofthedragons]

Witch in the Woods

A bit (lot) late but life happens. Thanks to Library Forest for giving me the inspo to write more for this :)

(Find Chapter One with a search of “Fk ch 1″ on my blog) 

Come chat with me on discord: https://discord.gg/nwwcSQSUjh

OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO

Seth slunk through the bushes and trees until he reached a faint crooked path.

He was glad that there hadn’t been any brambles, that would’ve sucked. But he’d finally gotten on the path, even if it was just a small one. Barely there, like animals had wandered through here enough to cut a path but not enough to clear it.

He paused on the path, studying his sleeves for ticks. There didn’t seem to be any, he’d basically drenched himself in bug spray so hopefully that worked well enough.

He hadn’t seen any ticks so far, so high hopes!

He stooped then and stacked some rocks into a small pyramid to mark the point where he joined the path.

He was pretty sure he’d be able to find his way back regardless, but better safe then sorry. If he did end up taking too long, then he might get caught by Grandpa.

He hummed as he rummaged through his cereal box, studying the compass he pulled out.

The path seemed to be running northeast, though he’d started off heading east. The undergrowth was getting thicker though, so the path was a good reason to head off course a little. It would be far easier than trying to cut through the shrubbery with his pocketknife.

His dad said no to buying him a machete.

Life was unfair.

Seth straightened once more and studied the path.

He shivered despite the warmth, it seemed almost foreboding. The tall trees stood close together, letting through very little sunlight. The bushes waved, and he eyed the large spider crawling up the side of the tree. A gnarled black tree with thorny leaves almost seemed to reach for him.

The forest almost seemed alive, but that was silly. He wasn’t living in a fairy tale.

Seth straightened. It was fine! He was going exploring in a cool forest and he’d bring back a shiny rock or something to show Kendra that it was perfectly safe.

He paused, glancing at the rocks he’d collected.

Yeah none of them were shiny enough for Kendra, she liked sparkly, pretty things.

He’d find something.

He definitely did not jump when something rustled in the bushes but did dig out a small pair of plastic binoculars from his cereal box.

He scanned the area slowly but didn’t see anything interesting.

He shrugged and headed down the path, not making it twenty feet before an animal emerged from the undergrowth onto the path.

He froze, it was a porcupine. It’s bristles gleamed in the faint light and it’s eyes seemed too sharp and intelligent.

It studied him for a moment, then started towards him.

He quickly backed up, it’s slender quills shiny and sharp and very very close.

Weren’t animals supposed to be afraid of humans? Maybe it had rabies? That was bad right? Kendra would definitely tell on him if he got bit by an animal with rabies.

Maybe it just didn’t see him, he was perfectly camouflaged with his camouflage shirt after all!

He stopped backing up and straightened up, trying to look big. He stomped a foot hard and growled at the porcupine.

It stared at him for a long moment, seeming almost unimpressed a it’s nose twitched, but then it turned away and scurried off the path.

He let out a breath, that had been a bit scary. If he’d gotten bitten, or worse covered in those quills, he would’ve had no chance of hiding his excursion into the woods.

And worse, Kendra would stop him from coming back out.

He wished Kendra had come, she might’ve screamed, or spouted some boring fact about porcupines that would’ve made it seem tame. He could have made fun of her instead of being frightened.

Not that he was very frightened of course, but it felt… exposed being stared down by the porcupine with all those bristling quills. He should probably be careful to not step on one in the undergrowth.

He wavered for a moment, wondering if he should head back. He’d come a long way though, and if he went back with nothing to show for it Kendra would say she told him so and then make him stay in the yard for the week.

He nodded, he needed to find something interesting first, to show off to her. Then he’d go home. It wouldn’t be hard to find his way back.

Seth headed off down the trail again. He studied the trees and growth as he passed, noting the trees with moss and lichen growing on them (don’t some mosses only grow on one side of the tree? Or is that all of them? Or something else? He swears Kendra talked about it on the car ride). There was ivy twisting around some trees too, he’d have to be careful cause they might be poison ivy.

He frowned as the path forced, before checking his compass. The right one went northwest, and the other due east. Seth decided to stick with East.

Slowly the trees began to space out, and the shrubs grew lower and more spread out. The forest slowly grew brighter as well, and he was able to see around much further.

He was studying a cool red bird that was watching him from a tree when he noticed something strange.

There was what seemed to be a wall of ivy just sitting in the woods to the left of the path.

That certainly seemed interesting, maybe there was something cool there he could bring back to show Kendra. That would show her, she’d definitely come along next time and he could show her the ivy wall.

He grinned and headed off the path.

The dense undergrowth almost seemed to cling to his legs, the plants darker than the rest of the forest, and he was pretty sure that the one bush was covered in poisonous berries. He shoved through it all, pausing by a tree as he realized that the wall of ivy was actually some sort of structure, overgrown with ivy.

He shifted, something seemed off.

The forest was quiet.

He shook his head, it was fine, it was just some ivy. Honestly why was he so worried.

He trudged closer, studying the ivy. He wasn’t sure what the structure (a shed maybe?) was made of, probably wood but he couldn’t see it beneath the ivy.

He managed to walk around the shed, and faltered when he stumbled onto another path, with a circle that stopped right in front of the opening to the shed.

“Hail, young master,” crooned a silky voice.

Seth spun, looking into the shed and seeing an old woman.

He resisted the urge to shudder. She looked bad.

She was old and wrinkled, with matted white hair that almost seemed yellow. In her wrinkled hands she clutched a knotted rope that seemed to be covered in blood and saliva.

Seth wrinkled his nose as he glanced at his face, trying not to cringe when she smiled, showing missing teeth. Her filmy bloodshot eyes were locked on him and her smile stretched the purple scab on her face, which was matched by more on her arms.

She stood up, supporting herself on the stump.

“What brings you to my home?” the woman asked.

Her voice was lovely, like a song, and did not match her appearance.

He swallowed, noting how tall she was despite her state.

“I’m just out for a walk,” he said carefully. “Do you live out here?”

She nodded, “I do indeed. Would you care to come inside for some tea?”

Seth almost stepped forward, almost, but he caught himself.

Something was off.

“No, sorry, I need to get back in time for lunch or my sister will be upset.”

A fool proof plan: blame Kendra. It always worked for getting out of stuff at school.

“Oh of course,” she crooned. “It’s just been so long since I had a guest. Strange for you to be wandering about alone, what about your sister?”

“She’s doing summer homework,” Seth said immediately. “And it’s my grandpa’s land so I get to wander some.”

“Oh?” she said. “You’re old Stan’s kids then?”

“You know my grandpa then?” Seth asked.

“Oh, certainly,” she grinned. “He’s my landlord after all.”

Seth nodded sagely, “Well nice to meet you, what’s your name?”

“Don’t you know it’s rude to not introduce yourself first?” She chided lightly.

Something told Seth he shouldn’t give her his name, he was reminded of the old tales from his grandpa.

“I’m-“ Seth wracked his brain for a name. “I’m Aaron.”

Sorry Aaron his friend from school, first name he could think of.

“A pleasure, Aaron,” she said with gleaming eyes. “I do wish I had known you’d be stopping by, I must look frightful.”

“You look fine,” Seth lied. “Ms…”

She ignored his question, reaching behind her stump.

“Let me show you something interesting, in apology for being so unprepared for a guest.”

“I’ll send a note ahead of time next time.”

She smiled, somehow looking dangerous despite her appearance.

Seth blinked at what she pulled out from behind the stump. A little wooden man.

It was less than a foot tall and made entirely of dark wood. It was plain, not clothes or painted features, just wood held together with tiny gold hooks where the joints would be. It had a stick in it’s back, that the woman took hold of.

Placing a paddle on her lap, she began to make the puppet dance by moving the stick. It was rhythmic and reminded Seth of Kendra when she did tap dancing, before she picked up piano.

“That’s a cool… puppet,” he said.

He should really get out of here, it felt wrong.

A rat scurried behind her stump and Seth looked away.

“It’s not a puppet, dear Aaron, it’s a limberjack.”

“Where’s his ax?”

“Not a lumberjack, a limberjack,” she chided. “It’s known by other names, a clog doll, or a jigger, perhaps a dancing dan?”

Seth shrugged.

“Well, I call him Mendigo. He keeps me company in this old shack of mine. Why don’t you come over, I’ll let you try him out.”

“I better not,” he said, something was very off. Her eyes were too bright, her smile too sharp, the doll too smooth. “I need to get back; my sister won’t be happy if I get delayed by crazy old witches in the woods.”

Her eyes flashed, “Old witches in the woods give the most interesting presents to those that treat them with respect.”

Seth shrugged, “I don’t need any presents. I’m just wandering. It was nice to meet you-“

“Leaving so soon?”

“I’ll come by another time,” Seth offered, having no intention of ever coming back. “Bye, Ms…”

She didn’t give her name, “Perhaps one last game before you leave, Aaron?”

His instincts told him to leave now, “Sorry, no can do.”

“Just one moment,” she crooned. She put the wooden doll away and pulled out a box and a shining gemstone. “I’ll even show a prize now. Simply touch the back of this box, and you may have this gem.”

Seth hesitated, he could sell the stone, after showing it off to Kendra, and have a lot of money.

But…

But this lady seemed crazy, dangerous, unhinged. And she still hadn’t given him her name.

“I’d rather play with the puppet,” he said. “I have to go. Bye crazy witch.”

“So insolent,” she mused. “Children these days really do as they please. Should you leave on this note your journey home may not be so pleasant, young adventurer.”

He shivered, her tone was dangerous, the air seemed heavy.

“I’m in a hurry,” he offered as he inched around the shed. “Lunch is soon.”

She hummed, her eyes closing as she raised a hand.

He didn’t take his eyes from her though she made no move to follow, her mumbling making his hair stand on end even when she was out of view.

As soon as he reached the far side of the shack he bolted.

Plunging through the undergrowth he dashed back to the path, pushing past the poisonous and dark plants that seemed to mirror the shed of the witch lady.

He glanced over his shoulder and though he saw no sign of her he couldn’t help but shiver. She had looked so wretched and smelled so foul and her challenge…

It reminded him scarily of one of Grandpa’s stories.

A witch in the woods.

But those were just fairy tales, everyone knew they weren’t true.

Seth couldn’t help but feel unsafe as he reached the path. It didn’t matter that she wasn’t following, or that he knew she couldn’t be a witch because witches weren’t real. Something was off and he needed to get back to the house.

Compass in hand he hurried down the path, glancing down at it to confirm the path he winced at the sudden sting in his ear.

He spun, seeing a pebble fall to the ground.

Who-

He looked around, but no one was there.

Could it be the old woman?

Another object struck him in the back of the neck, making him spin again, just in time to find an acorn flying at him.

He dodged it, tense as he noticed a rat scurrying through the bushes.

That was from two different directions.

He flinched, jumping back as he heard a cracking noise, like wood splitting.

A huge tree limb fell where he’d just been standing, a few leaves and twigs swishing him as it did.

The blood drained from his face.

If he hadn’t jumped back-

That could’ve killed him.

He swallowed, looking around, but the dark forest offered nothing.

A large spider crawled up the side of a tree, a rat scurried through the bushes.

Vague murmurs seemed to follow him as he took off at a sprint down the path.

Whispers crawled up his spine, stones and acorns whizzed at him as he ran, stinging his arms, back, legs. He ducked and wove and then cried at as something snatched at his ankle.

His hands ached as he tried and failed to catch himself. Rocks dug into stomach, his cheek was wet, blood? He scrambled for his ankle, finding nothing there. His ankle throbbed with pain, did he sprain it?

That had felt like something hard and thin, like a strong cord. A trip wire? But how? There hadn’t been one earlier, and the woman couldn’t have done it even if she’d started running the moment he’d passed out of sight.

There was a cracking noise above him, and he rolled over just in time for a branch to hit the ground where he’d just been.

Stumbling to his feet he winced at the pain in his ankle, wiping his cheek and swallowing hard at the blood on his hand.

There was a rustling noise behind him, and something that sounded almost like a laugh.

The bushes seemed to stretch out, dark and foreboding.

He flinched at the cracking noise of a dry branch behind him, and then he took off again.

He tried to watch where he put his feet, flinching at ever stone thrown at him.

He raced past the place where the trail forked and sprinted back the way he came.

He wondered if the fairy tales held some truth to them and he’d angered a witch.

But no, those were just tales. This was ridiculous, the lady must’ve had a friend close by or else this wouldn’t be possible.

His breathing was labored, gasping for breath as he felt his lungs struggle to draw. No, not having an asthma attack now, worst outcome.

He forced himself to keep going, ignoring his own wheezing, the heat in the air, the seat on his forehead. He had to get to the house.

He stumbled to a halt, breath a strangled wheeze. He knew that gnarled tree on the side of the path. He’d seen it when inspecting the path.

He used it as a reference to find the pile of rocks, but they were gone. He knew this was where he’d made the pyramid…

Leaves crunched, a cracking noise echoed above him.

Seth took a quick look at his compass to confirm that he was heading West, then dove into the forest.

Earlier he’d walked this at a leisurely pace, studying all the trees and bushes and flowers and toadstools and every unusual rock he could find. He’d even saved one or two. Now he tore through the forest at full speed, his vision blurry and his breathing strangled. The undergrowth clawed at his legs, thorns that hadn’t been a concern before tearing at his pants. Branches whipped against his face and chest, more blood dripped from his face.

And that’s not even counting the continued pebbles striking him, nor the second time he fell (his ankle throbbing, definitely injured now, and the trip wire made of a hard cord sitting innocently in the trees).

Finally, wheezing and gasping and clutching his chest, the energy his panic wearing thin and his strength lagging, he glimpsed the house up ahead.

The sounds of pursuit faded away as he stumbled into the yard, safe at last.

OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO

The wall opposite the windows in the playroom had multiple rows of bookshelves and a few wardrobes.

She had searched the wardrobes, thinking of Narnia as she searched through them.

Though she found no secret passages, she did find some very nice jackets, a few even fit her!

There were also little drawers built into the inside of one of the wardrobes, and it held all kinds of jewelry, hair pins, and assorted beauty supplies. There was even one drawer that just seemed to have hidden weapons.

The one bracelet with a skinny blade hidden inside was very pretty and Kendra wanted. Seth would probably find them super cool too.

She’d thrown a few of the jackets that were his size there (there were even cloaks and she’d absolutely claimed one cause… cloak).

The books on the shelves looked very interesting, and Kendra was definitely gonna devote time to reading them, but they didn’t reveal a secret door either.

She’d searched with a stool tool, reaching even the highest shelves.

They did reveal something else though.

Now Kendra was holding a leather covered blue book, with gold letters on the front and edging the pages. The Journal of Secrets.

It was very fancy, and held shut by three sturdy clasps, each with a keyhole. The final key from Grandpa didn’t fit any of the keyholes, but the two she’d found earlier did.

She heard someone stumbling up the steps and quickly put the book back on the shelf and pocketed the keys. She didn’t want Seth joining in the puzzle, that was her thing.

Seth charged through te door and slammed it shut behind him.

She opened her mouth to chide him but faltered when she took in his appearance.

His face was bloody and so were his hands. His pants had tears in them, and his knees looked a bit bloody as well. He was covered in dirt with leaves and twigs stuck in his hair.

Most worrisomely, he was wheezing hard.

“Seth!” she hurried over to him. “What happened? Oh no, lets get some water, and bandaids. Can you breathe? Do you need your inhaler? Stars how did you get so torn up?”

Seth dug through his emergency kit, struggling to breathe and his hands shaking.

“Here,” Kendra said, taking it from him. “I got it.”

She found his emergency inhaler buried at the bottom, and the spacer and shook the inhaler before putting them together, then handed it to Seth.

He struggled for a moment, letting out a strangled cough as he tried to hold his breath.

In, out, in, out, in, and he breathed out all his air, then quickly put the mouth piece in front of him and hit the inhaler, breathing in.

He held his breath for a few seconds, counting silently, before he let it out and broke into a coughing fit.

After a moment he repeated the process.

Kendra turned away, digging through her own bag to find the heart rate monitor.

“How did this happen?” she asked, handing it to him to check his oxygen level.

“Uh, was in the forest-“ he coughed “-and found… found- old lady. Like a witch, she lives in the woods-- in this old hut-“ he paused to catch his breath, coughing more.

“An old lady living in the forest?” Kendra wondered. “Did she attack you?”

“No, but-“ he coughed “-seemed like… whatsername, from grandpa’s stories, the witch in the forest. Stars what’s ‘er name.”

“Muriel?” Kendra asked. “The old wife from like 160 years ago?”

“Yeah- the one locked, in a shack, with the magic rope. The lady, had a rope, and uh-“ he coughed and winced when Kendra shot a pointed look at his inhaler.

He shook it, then copied what he’d done earlier, letting out a breath after about ten seconds.

“Well uh, had a creepy doll too. Wouldn’t say her name.”

“You didn’t tell her yours, did you?” Kendra sked worriedly, checking his oxygen and frowning when it was at 92. That’s lower than it should be.

“No, I said my name was Aaron. But-“ he paused for breath “-but I left, cause she creepy with  creepy box and stuff, there was something, someone? Multiple people?” he broke into a coughing fit and paused to take deep breaths.

“People did something?”

“Threw rocks,” he got out. “Lots. And a trip wire… and branches fell, almost hit me. Big ones.”

Kendra frowned, Seth didn’t have asthma attacks very often anymore, so something definitely happened, and he’s bleeding…

“Did you see anyone?”

“Just some… spiders… and rats… no people- ‘cept her.”

He stood straight, and a check of the monitor said his oxygen was 93.

Good, he’s recovering.

“Do you think Grandpa Sorenson knows he has a creepy old lady on his property?”

“She mentioned him,” Seth said, his breathing still strangled but he could talk easier. “And if she is’a witch then-“

“Those are fairy tales,” Kendra argued. “She definitely sounds creepy though, you shouldn’t go back into the woods.”

“You should come with next time.”

Kendra frowned, “Next time? Seth you’re bleeding! You apparently got attacked by a creepy old lady!”

“Yeah but-“ he paused “-I found a cool thing. And you said if I found a cool thing-“

“I said if you found a witch in the woods you weren’t going back,” she pointed out.

“Okay she’s not’a’witch then!”

Kendra huffed, “Lets get you cleaned up.”

Seth frowned, “I wanna explore more later. I’m gonna.”

“If you come back again scratched up and bleeding and having an asthma attack I’m telling Grandpa,” Kendra said. “That’s dangerous.”

“Fine, sure,” he coughed. “I’ll stay ‘way from the place I found the lady.”

Kendra frowned, but pulled out a water bottle and some napkins from her bag.

Seth brought exploration tools, she brought medical supplies.

“Stay still so I can clean up the blood.”

“You wanna come next time?”

She hummed, getting to work, “We’ll see.”

OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO

Thanks for reading! Don't forget to reblog and leave a review, they feed my soul.

What did you think of Seth's encounter? What about Kendra's looking around the room? How about what they talked about at the end?

I had to cut out the treehouse scene, it didn't fit but I'll put it in a bit later.

[searchingwardrobes]

The Early Leaf’s a Flower: 7/11

In this chapter, Emma sets off on a search for home, but is she only running? Meanwhile, Killian learns that a voyage may be in order to stop Pan’s evil schemes. I promise, this is the last chapter that Emma and Killian will be separated! I think (hopefully) your wait will have been well worth it ;) At any rate, this chapter has some really important revelations. Oh, and don’t try to make this story fit canon. Just don’t. Storybrooke really is just a normal town, and the only Once characters in it are the ones I have named. I haven’t forgotten about Snow and Charming, I promise. You just have to trust me! (I’ve said that a lot, haven’t I?)

Much thanks as always to the mods of the csrt event at @captainswanbigbang. Also thanks to @optomisticgirl​ and @shippingtheswann for their beta skills.

Summary: She saw eyes that were the blue of the forget me not peering at her through the cracked door of the wardrobe. He saw hair as gold as the buttercups. Why does the wardrobe keep bringing them back to one another, if fate keeps tearing them apart? Or maybe fate has her reasons …

Rating: M for eventual sexy times, violence, canonical character death, and attempted rape

Trigger warnings: vague references to child abuse (physical and sexual), violence, and positive Millian

Words: About 3k in this chapter

** Complete and updated every Monday** Also on Ao3

Emma: Age 21

Emma wedges the last cardboard box into the backseat of her Bug, and Graham grunts as he slams the trunk shut. She’s honestly surprised he managed it. For someone with no roots, she sure was able to pack this car tight. Not that it takes much in a VW Bug, but still.

“Are you sure about this?” Ruby asks as Emma shuts the door.

“Yeah,” Graham says coming around the front of the car, “Tallahassee is an awfully long way from Maine.”

Emma shrugs. “There’s farther.”

Ruby rolls her eyes. “But you have a life here. Plus, if you stay, you get to be one of my bridesmaids.”

Ruby nudges Emma’s elbow, making her smile despite herself. “And I so want to wear those lovely dresses Bertie at Modern Fashions designed for you. What color was that again?”

“Salmon,” Ruby laughs, “but if you stay, I could convince her to do them in magenta instead.”

Emma chuckles too. “Now, that changes everything!”

“Now, Emma,” Graham cuts in, “it’s a long drive from here down to Florida. Pull over if you get tired, and make sure you check the oil regularly, and -”

“Would both of you stop?” Granny admonishes, shooing Ruby and Graham away so she can pull Emma in for a hug. “Don’t listen to them, sweetheart. You’re young, and you need to spread your wings.”

Emma nods against Granny’s shoulder, willing her tears not to fall. When the older woman releases her, Ruby claims a hug. When the brunette releases Emma, she clasps her by both shoulders and gives her a long, intense look.

“If you don’t find what you’re looking for, you’ll come home?”

Emma sighs. “I’m sorry, Ruby. Storybrooke’s been wonderful, but home is something I’m still searching for.”

Ruby shakes her head. “Or maybe you’re running.”

“Maybe. But when you really have a home, and you leave it, you just . . . miss it. I’m gonna keep running until I feel that.”

“Well, if you feel that for us -”

“Then I’ll be back.”

The two young women embrace again, and then Emma gets behind the wheel of the dilapidated yellow car she had saved for two months to buy in cash. Ruby’s ex, Billy, had done a ton of work on it for the cost of parts only, which had taken an additional two months in tips from the diner. Nevertheless, the Bug is now hers, and she has owned precious little in her life. She turns the key in the ignition, puts the car in gear, and waves goodbye as she pulls out of the lot in front of the inn. She watches Granny, Ruby, and Graham get smaller in her rearview mirror until she drives out of downtown Storybrooke.

There’s a stretch of countryside before she reaches the “Leaving Storybrooke” sign. For some reason, she glances in her rearview mirror again as she crosses the town line, but all she sees behind her is a long, lonely road. She sighs as she turns her gaze back out the front windshield.

She isn’t so sure the view there is any different.

Killian: Age 21

Killian picks his way gingerly through the thick foliage that runs along the ravine in the heart of Neverland. He shifts his grip on the parcels tucked beneath his right arm and swings his hook through the braken. Every time he comes to the island, the dreamshade is more prolific, daylight is shorter, and the trees drip with more lichen and moss. The scent of decay and death fill his nostrils. The fairies are right, the island is dying.

He releases a long breath of relief when he reaches the ravine and is away from the danger of the dreamshade. He ducks beneath the moss and vines covering the enchanted entryway, all of it thicker than it was on his previous visit. He taps his hook on the rock wall in the rhythm Tink had instructed, and it dissolves before him, revealing a tunnel lit with fairy magic. Finally he reaches a quaint wooden door covered in fairy runes. He touches them with his hook in the correct order, and then he hears the lock click. A greeting is on his lips, but he holds them back at the sight before him.

Wendy is in a rocker by the fireplace, singing a lullaby as she darns some of Michael’s socks. The boy himself is curled up in the bottom of the two bunks set into the wall, fast asleep with his thumb in his mouth.

She stepped away from me

And she moved through the Fair

And fondly I watched her

Move here and move there

And she went her way homeward

With one star awake

As the swans in the evening

Move over the lake

As the final line drifts over him, Wendy glances up from her mending and lets out a cry.

“Hook!”

She leaps up and races across the room, flinging herself into Killian’s arms. He lets out a grunt at the impact, barely managing to keep hold of his parcels. He glances over her shoulder and is shocked to see Michael sleeping through it all.

“What did you bring us?” she asks, eagerly taking the packages.

“Everything on your list,” he tells her proudly, “and one or two surprises.”

“Candy for Michael?” Wendy shakes her head when she sees Hook shrug. “You don’t need to spoil him.”

“And you don’t need to act like a little mother. How old are you now?”

“Thirteen,” she replies with a tilt of her chin.

Killian frowns. “You should be giggling with your friends and getting into mischief, not darning socks and worrying over how much candy your brother eats.”

“Or attempting to mother lost boys,” says a voice over Killian’s shoulder, and he turns to see Tink coming through an archway in the back wall with piles of blankets in her hands.

“Oh, the linens!” Wendy exclaims, taking the load from Tink far too eagerly. “It’s washing day,” she tells Hook.

“Don’t change the subject,” he reprimands, “what’s this about mothering lost boys?”

“Shh, Michael’s napping.”

“Wendy -”

“Ok, ok,” she huffs, dropping the bedding onto the small kitchen table, “so I sneak out sometimes into Pan’s camp -”

“Pan’s camp!” Killian exclaims, turning incredulous eyes on Tink, who just shrugs and shakes her head.

“When they’re all asleep,” Wendy clarifies, as if that makes it ok, “and I only go because the little ones cry for their mothers. I sing them back to sleep, you see, and -”

“And you could get caught by one of the older ones!”

“There’s no use talking to her, Hook,” Tink sighs, “Tiger Lily and I have already tried.”

Killian narrows his eyes at Wendy, but she avoids his look by ripping into one of the parcels he’s bought. “Lace!” she squeals. “Oh, Hook, you shouldn’t have!”

He turns bright red as she hugs him again. “Well, you said your handkerchiefs were shabby and needed lace, and the king’s navy was carrying this ridiculous gift for the crown princess from the Duke of Glowerhaven. Lord knows that woman doesn’t need any more frippery when her people are starving, so -”

“Just admit Wendy’s got you wrapped around her little finger and stop babbling,” Tink laughs.

He doesn’t even attempt to deny it. He can’t find a way to get Wendy and her brother home; the least he can do is brighten their days in some small way.

“Hook,” Tink says, lowering her voice so Wendy can’t hear, “we need to talk.”

“In my experience, I’m never in for a pleasant conversation when a woman says that.”

Tink just rolls her eyes and pulls on his arm. Wendy is too busy with her sewing basket and the new lace to notice as the fairy pulls him down the hallway and into her room.

“Why Tink,” he teases with a wink, “if you were getting lonely, you could have just said so.”

Tink scowls at him, crossing her arms over her chest. “Funny, but some females are immune to your charms, pirate.”

“Not many,” he can’t help teasing with an arch of his brow. It’s true. He hasn’t lacked for willing and eager company at any port, though none of his conquests have succeeded in filling the aching hole inside him.

“I need to show you something -” she lifts a hand and rushes to add, “in my books of fairy lore.”

Tink pulls a cracked and faded tome from her bookcase. It’s so old that a puff of dust billows up as she opens it. Killian chokes as he waves his hook in the air to clear it.

“Is this about the pixie trees dying?”

“The island dying you mean,” Tink corrects, “which means Pan is dying, too. He and the island are connected.”

“We knew all this already,” Hook says, shaking his head, “and the why really doesn’t matter, in my opinion.”

“What we didn’t know was the connection between that and the little ones the shadow kept bringing to Pan.”

“Like Mason and Michael.” Killian looks over Tink’s shoulder at the book. He can’t make sense of the fairy runes, but he does recognize a sketch in the middle of the page. “Is that a flower?”

“A buttercup, specifically,” Tink answers, “and according to this prophecy there will be a special child with this mark.”

Killian rubs at his chin. “Felix said Mason didn’t have the mark, and then Michael mentioned something about it as well.” He picks up the fragile book, balancing it gingerly on his hooked forearm so loose pages won’t fall out. “What else does the book say about this child?”

“That it will be a boy with the heart of the truest believer. That his lineage will be both royal and common, magical and non-magical.”

Killian lifts his gaze from the page before him to lock it upon Tink. The pale color upon her cheeks makes his heart sink.”What are you not saying?”

Tink moistens her lips nervously. “The worst part is . . . that the heart of this child can restore life to the dying. Renew magic that has been lost. That’s why Pan is looking for this child.”

“But the child dies so that bastard can live?”

Tink nods grimly as Hook slams the book shut. Fury rises in his chest as he thinks of Mason, now nine years old, a fine pirate already, looking more and more like Milah with each passing day. He thinks of Michael, only six years old and sleeping with such easy trust in the other room. He knows from experience how cold-blooded Pan can be, but this?

“Too long have I let this demon elude me,” Killian growls, slamming his hook into the wooden desk before him. “I’ll gut him like a fish; I’ll end him once and for all.”

“But Hook, you and your crew have had how many skirmishes with the lost boys?”

Killian’s eyes flash. “You doubt me?”

“Of course not, but we have to be realistic. Pan has magic, you don’t. It’s why he always gets the -” Tink breaks off suddenly, her face turning deep red. “That is, I mean.”

“You can bloody well say it,” Killian grumbles, “he always gets the upper hand.”

Tink winces, then tentatively reaches out to him. “What it comes down to is this - it’s time you and your crew went on the offense. You have to leave Neverland, and I don’t just mean to visit your favorite ports or wreck havoc on King George’s Navy. I mean leave. Use the pegasus sail to search the realms and find -”

“You’re leaving?”

Hook and Tink whirl to see Wendy standing in the doorway holding a tea tray in her trembling hands. The sight cuts him deep. For some reason, taking care of people is Wendy’s way of coping. She deserves better. Tears well in her eyes as she gazes up at him. She thinks he’s a bloody hero for some reason

“Hook, are you leaving? For good?”

He sighs as he reaches out gently to take the tray from her hands before she drops it. “Nothing’s been decided yet, lass, but I may need to take a lengthy voyage to find someone. A boy like your brother, actually.”

“What about us?” she asks, her eyes wide now and her breaths coming fast. “You said you’d find a way to get us home.”

Killian closes his eyes, silently cursing himself. It was a promise he never should have made. Tink and Tiger Lily have searched every book of magic they own, and he has inquired of sorcerers and enchantresses at every port. They still don’t know of an antidote for the waters of Rainbow Falls.

“This can be good for you and Michael too,” Tink puts in. “Searching different realms means a myriad of magical possibilities.”

“But how long?” Wendy whispers. He and Tink can’t answer that question. In the silence, Wendy does something that takes him completely by surprise. She flings herself at him, wrapping her arms around his waist in a tight hug. “I’ll miss you. Please don’t be gone too long.”

Killian lifts his good hand tentatively and awkwardly pats Wendy on the head. He looks up nervously at Tink.

“I don’t even know where to begin looking.”

“Well,” Tink says hesitantly, “all we have to go on is the words of the prophecy. He’ll be very young, like the other boys. He’ll have one royal parent and one who is a commoner. One magical parent and one non-magical. Wait, no, I read this wrong . . . “

Killian steps away from Wendy to look again at the page Tink is perusing. Not that it makes any more sense to him now than it did moments ago.

“Of both a land of magic and a land of none.” Tink murmurs.

“Like my home,” Wendy says casually.

“Wait - what?” Killian asks, his heart suddenly pounding.

“My home,” she repeats, shrugging one shoulder, “there was no magic there. That’s why Michael and I kept going to the window to see the shadow. John told us it was silly but -”

“Wait a minute,” Killian says, shaking his head and taking in a sharp breath, “I’ve been to a land with no magic, too.”

****************************************

Killian stands in front of the old familiar wardrobe for what feels like the millionth time. Not once in the last five years has it led him anywhere. Perhaps it was only waiting for this day . . .

Tink and Wendy had wanted to come with him to see it, but he feels that he has to do this alone. His fingers twitch at his right side, and he has to take several deep breaths before he reaches for the handle. He knows what this means. If he is to search Emma’s realm for the boy, he’ll have to test fate and see what happens when he lets the light that can take him back home fade. He also is unsure how he will explain this to Emma, not that anything about their friendship has ever made sense.

He closes his eyes, counts to three, then pulls on the knob just as he opens his eyes again. His breath rushes out when he sees nothing but an empty wardrobe. Swearing under his breath, he climbs inside, pounds at the inside walls, but finds them sturdy and unyielding beneath his fist.

Killian jumps back out in frustration, slamming the door of the wardrobe behind him. He stalks to his desk, shoving things aside to make room for maps and star charts. He’s heard the names of many of the realms: Wonderland, Oz, Arendelle, Camelot, Narnia. He’s even discovered star charts that can get them there with the aid of the pegasus sail. But a land without magic? There’s only one way he’s ever gotten to a land like that, and it is apparently barred from him.

No matter. Tink said the boy was of a magical land as well. He’ll simply have to start there. He breathes heavily as his gaze sweeps over the stack of maps before him. Ever since he and Liam were lads, he’s been fascinated with maps. They both were. The Brothers Jones, planning adventures across the realms.

“If you were here, Liam . . . “ he trails off, hanging his head as memories wash over him. Then he takes a deep breath and tightens his jaw. “If you were here, you would find this boy. You would be the hero.”

He taps his hook in agitation as he begins to plot a course. He’s no hero, but he’ll do this for Liam. For Milah. For Wendy.

Meanwhile, in a Land Without Magic . . .

Olivia Bridges has been a social worker for twenty five long years, and she’s seen a lot of things in her caseload. Yet she’s never seen a case like this. It should have been a slim volume of straight forward paperwork. Infants given up at birth were always immediately adopted. This one was especially ideal - the birth mother wanted a closed adoption. Those were rare these days. A successful, single woman had adopted the boy, taking him home from the hospital days after his birth.

Then she’d brought him back a month later before she’d even signed the final papers. Colic.

Olivia rolls her eyes remembering. The woman didn’t deserve to be a mother in her opinion. Not that anyone ever listened to her opinion.

Yet the boy’s file still could have ended there. Colic or no colic. But it didn’t.

Olivia pats the boy’s knee now. He is three years old and still has no home, despite his adorable mop of brown hair and large eyes like melted chocolate. The reasons have varied: colic, night terrors, seizures. None of it should have mattered.

She smiles down at him and reminds him that someone is adopting him today. He looks silently up at her, and she wonders if he’s already cynical at three. She rises, takes his hand in hers, and leads him into the next room.

A young man turns and smiles at them as they enter. An adoption by a single man as young as this one is rare, but in this child’s case, it may be the only option left. Besides, the man has gone through every government hoop necessary. He’s invested a considerable sum of money and passed physicals, psychological profiles, and home studies with flying colors. He’s also recently engaged to his boyfriend of the past year (who’s also passed every test). Honestly, Olivia’s only concern is that this one sticks.

“John Darling,” Olivia says, “meet your new son.”

Tagging:  @snowbellewells​  @kmomof4​ @whimsicallyenchantedrose​ @teamhook​ @bethacaciakay​ @let-it-raines​ @welllpthisishappening​ @wellhellotragic​ @winterbaby89​ @xhookswenchx​ @courtorderedcake​ @branlovestowrite​ @hollyethecurious​ @vvbooklady1256​ @profdanglaisstuff​ @carpedzem​ @ekr032-blog-blog​ @jennjenn615​ @tiganasummertree​ @lfh1226-linda​​ @ultraluckycatnd​ @spartanguard​ @shireness-says​ @scientificapricot​​ @stahlop​​ @resident-of-storybrooke​​ @superchocovian​​ @sherlockianwhovian​​ @snidgetsafan​​ @ohmakemeahercules​​ @thislassishooked​​ @ilovemesomekillianjones​​ @nikkiemms​​@delirious-latenight-laughs​

[miafic]

awsten getting overwhelmed bc geoff is being so nice to him and reading so calmly and letting him sit in his lap and overall just being a Great Dad™ 👀

this isn’t exaaaaactly what you asked for, but i hope that it’s close enough :)

---

“We’re goin’ home?” Awsten asked, swinging Geoff’s hand back and forth as they walked. In Awsten’s other hand was the handle of the red wagon that Geoff had gotten him a few months earlier so that he could be responsible for transporting his own books to and from the library. It was currently filled with fifteen picture books. 

“We are going home, yes.”

“For dinner?”

“Yes.” 

“And then we can read all my stories?”

“You may read as soon as we get home. I will need time to prepare dinner.”

“Yaaaaay!” Awsten crowed, hopping a little and squeezing Geoff’s hand. The wheels of the wagon banged noisily against the ground. 

Geoff gave him a smile. 

Awsten abruptly stopped walking. Geoff, however, had grown used to this and was hardly surprised at all when Awsten dropped the wagon’s handle in favor of smashing his face into the side of Geoff’s leg, which he squeezed tightly. “I love you, Daddy!” 

Geoff patted his back. “And I you.” He waited for Awsten to let go so that they could resume their journey, but Awsten didn’t, even after ten seconds (which was a very long time for him). Just when Geoff was about to ask Awsten if he was alright, he heard a sniffle. 

“Oh, dear,” Geoff hummed, but he knew that Awsten wasn’t sad. “Come.” He reached down and pulled Awsten’s arms off of his leg and lifted him up. 

Awsten began to loudly sob. 

“Hush now... Hush...” 

Awsten did not hush. 

Geoff reached down for the handle of the wagon and, with Awsten in one hand and the wagon in the other, resumed walking home. 

“IIIIII wanna pull my wagon!” Awsten wailed tearfully. 

“Shall I set you down?” Geoff asked without stopping. (He already knew the answer.)

“No!” 

“Then I will pull the wagon today.” 

“O-kayyyyy.” Awsten sniffed and wiped at his face and then laid his head back down on Geoff’s shoulder. Geoff felt Awsten press his forehead against Geoff’s neck, and he smiled. Next, Awsten’s thumb would slip into his mouth - 

Yes. There it went. 

“No napping, please,” Geoff warned him warmly. “It is almost time for dinner, and it will be bedtime shortly after.” 

“And bath,” Awsten piped up.

“Yes, and bathtime.” 

“And read time.” 

“Yes, reading time, as well.” 

“My new books.” 

“Yes.” 

“The one with the mad pinecone.” 

Geoff chuckled. “Yes. Whichever books you would like.” 

“All of them,” Awsten whispered. 

Geoff turned his head and pressed a kiss to Awsten’s hair. 

---

Artie, will you be my donut dog? Geoff read as Awsten laughed hysterically in his lap. 

Mr. Bing, I would love to be your donut dog! 

From that moment on, Artie and Mr. Bing were inseparable. Artie liked being a donut dog even better than he liked being a donut.

Awsten was laughing so much that Geoff had to stop reading to laugh a bit himself. 

When the book ended, Awsten clapped and bounced on Geoff’s knee. “That was the funniest book ever!” he declared. 

“I am glad that you enjoyed it.” 

“Can you read it again?” 

Geoff shook his head. 

“Pleeeeaaaase? Read it again! Read it again! Donut book!” 

“Tomorrow,” Geoff promised. “You need to relax, and the book will only wind you up.” 

Awsten frowned. “Awwwwww,” he whined. 

“Tomorrow,” Geoff repeated. “In the meantime, would you like to hear a poem?” 

Without verbally responding, Awsten clambered off of Geoff’s lap and held his arms up. Geoff got to his feet and lifted Awsten onto his chest, where Awsten molded instantly to him and laid his head on Geoff’s shoulder. 

“I thought the earth remembered me,” Geoff began, and he crossed the room to turn Awsten’s light off. 

she took me back so tenderly, arranging her dark skirts, her pockets full of -

“Lichens and seeds,” they said together, Awsten’s voice a whisper, the way that it always was when he joined Geoff in a poem. Liiii-kins. He didn’t react when the room plunged into darkness.

I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed, nothing between me and the white fire of the stars but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths among the branches of the perfect trees.

Geoff gently kissed Awsten’s temple, and he returned to stand at Awsten’s bedside. 

All night I heard the small kingdoms breathing around me, the insects, and the birds who do their work in the darkness.

His voice dropped to a barely-audible murmur.

All night I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling with a luminous doom. By morning I had vanished at least a dozen times into something better.

Geoff closed his eyes, smelling the soft scent of Awsten’s shampoo. There was quiet for several seconds, and then Awsten pleaded, “More.” 

“That is the end.”

“Moooore, Daddy.” 

“One more, honeybee,” Geoff whispered. 

“Okay,” Awsten whispered back. He lifted his thumb into his mouth and reached up to stroke the hair near Geoff’s right ear. 

At Blackwater Pond the tossed waters have settled after a night of rain. I dip my cupped hands. I drink a long time. It tastes like stone, leaves, fire. 

Awsten pulled in a shaky breath. 

It falls cold into my body, waking the bones. I hear them deep inside me, whispering oh what is that beautiful thing that just happened?

With that, Geoff carefully deposited Awsten onto his bed and pulled the covers over him. 

“I never heard that one before,” Awsten whispered to Geoff in the darkness. 

“Yes, I know.”

“What’s it called?” 

“‘At Blackwater Pond.’” Geoff leaned down to allow Awsten to hug him goodnight.

“Blackwater Pond,” Awsten repeated in wonder after he’d given Geoff a kiss on the cheek.

“At Blackwater Pond.” 

“And it’s written by Mary Oliver, too?” 

“Yes.” Geoff hugged Awsten and kissed his forehead. “Goodnight. I will see you in the morning.” He started for the door, but Awsten’s voice stopped him. 

“Daddy?” 

“Yes, Awsten.” 

He sat up. “Tomorrow, after we read the donut book again, can you tell me At Blackwater Pond some more?” 

Geoff smiled. “I would be happy to.” 

“Yay!” Awsten cheered, and then he flopped back onto his pillow. 

Geoff fondly shook his head and exited the room. 

[slow-smiles]

The plan to tell Emma’s parents about her relationship with Killian gets derailed when she is kidnapped by the Dark One. Captain Duckling. Revelations, reunions, adventures, and smut ensues. ~11.2k The grand finale to the My Princess, My Pirate series.

Read on AO3. Read on tumblr Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4

The Swan of Misthaven. Part Three.

It’s another day until they reach the lands around the Dark One’s castle. There is a slight chill in the air, being in the mountainous region of the Enchanted Forest as they are, but no snow has yet fallen. Despite the cold, the sun shines brightly upon the home of Rumplestiltskin. 

The old pile looks surprisingly unkempt. The massive walls, interrupted by large towers along its length, are overgrown with vines. The once immaculate front courtyard has become overgrown—bushes creeping out of the pattern in which they’d been planted, gardens escaping their raised beds and cracking through the brick containing them, and once-neat pathways made mountainous by growing roots from nearby trees. The state of the front of the manor is no better, lichens and mosses crawling across the surfaces. Many windows are shuttered, giving the place a different flavor of foreboding than it had before. Killian hasn’t seen it in many years, and to his left, he hears Regina’s breath catch.

He looks over at her and finds her eyes wide and her lips pressed together. He wonders how often she was at this castle when the Crocodile had been grooming her to cast the Dark Curse. He can’t imagine the memories she has of this place are particularly pleasant.

Regina catches his probing look out of the corner of her eye and quickly schools her features back to neutrality.

“Looks like the glamour has worked so far,” Killian notes—unless there’s some magical trap waiting to be sprung within if Rumplestiltskin saw them coming.

“Better to not linger any longer than we have to. We’ll see you both at the rendezvous point, yes?” Robin asks from next to Regina.

Regina nods. “Yes.” She reaches across the gap between their horses and takes her husband’s hand. “Please be careful.”

He winks at her. “Darling, you’ve always liked when I’m a little dangerous.” He leans down and kisses her knuckles, his expression shifting from cheeky to solemn. “You know I will be. You be careful, too.”

Robin jerks his head to the west side of the castle, where he says himself, Snow, and David will be able to sneak past the wall and through a window.

During their initial planning, they hadn’t wanted to split up. That always seems to be the first step in a bad plan poorly executed. However, once Regina explained that she’d only be able to get one other person into Rumplestiltskin’s vault with the protections he’d placed on it, and they realized their lack of knowledge on why he took Emma needed to be remedied, splitting their group in two became a necessity.

Regina and Killian would go to the vault and find what will be needed to either trap or kill the Dark One, while Robin, Snow, and David would sneak in and quietly search to see if they could find any hints on why the Dark One needed Emma. ‘Rendezvous point’ is a generous description on Robin’s part, because Regina can apparently find him via teleporting with unerring accuracy, so once they have the weapons they need from the vault, Regina will simply bring them all back together, and they will find Emma. Getting out is going to be more of an off-the-cuff operation, as Regina assured them once you get into the Dark One’s castle, there is no easy way out. They all pray that they’ll be able to rely on Emma’s ability to hurt the imp if it comes to that.

Just before they ride off, Snow turns in her saddle and says to Killian, “Be safe.”

He isn’t as caught off-guard this time by her show of care, and replies, “And you.”

“Your son-in-law is in good hands,” Regina quips, smirking.

“He’s not our—” David tries, but Snow just rolls her eyes and interrupts him.

“She knows, Charming.” A heavy look passes between the current and former queen, something like understanding and determination. They nod at each other, and Snow turns her horse towards the western wall of the castle. “We should go.”

Emma’s parents and Regina’s husband kick their horses to a quicker pace, and quickly disappear from their sight.

“Are you sure you’re ready for this, Majesty?” Killian asks. “This seems a bit like asking the addict to accompany me into the opium den, so to speak.”

Regina laughs at that, her expression free. “I haven’t needed magic in a long time, and I certainly won’t need it after today.” They both dismount. “I should be asking if you’re ready. Ever been teleported before?”

“Not as such, no.” 

He watches as Regina closes her eyes and stretches out her hands, translucent red ribbons of magic flowing around her fingers. Before too long, her eyes open. “Found it. Now I just need to—” With her lips pursed in concentration, Regina’s eyes slip closed once more. “Grab my arm.”

“What?”

“My arm. Grab it, and don’t let go.” Her voice has just the barest hint of strain in it, so Killian doesn’t question her further and does as she said.

Between one breath and the next, a magical vortex rises around them like smoke, obscuring their view of the castle and the forest beyond. The sensation of a hand grasping his stomach and pulling backwards throws Killian off balance, but in the next moment, the magical smoke dissipates. It leaves him feeling a bit light-headed and out-of-sorts, but he’s felt worse after a night of heavy drinking, so he’s well accustomed to functioning while ill.

The next breath Killian takes feels like the damp air of an underground dungeon—it certainly looks like one, but stuffed to the brim with magical objects.

True to his knowledge, the place has no doors or windows. It feels eerie in a way that suggests no other human beings have likely ever set foot in this space. Magical items are stacked with no discernable organization. Several shelves and cabinets play shepherds in the chaos, each housing more objects than it looks like they can safely carry. There are swords and urns, boxes and books, wands and stones; every manner of thing conceivable seems to have found a place in the Dark One’s vault.

Regina lets out a breath, one of her hands going to her forehead. “That’s going to be a hell of a hangover,” she says.

“Thank you,” Killian says impulsively.

Regina’s brow furrows as she looks at him. “Why?”

“For helping,” he explains. “I don’t know exactly what happened between you and Emma’s parents, but I’m grateful that you are willing to let the past stay in the past.”

She chuckles, a bit darkly. “I owe more to Snow than I’d ever care to admit to her face.” She turns away from him and runs a finger along a wand sitting on a nearby shelf, but she doesn’t pick it up. “I’m lucky she’s not the type to hold a grudge.”

Regina turns, a mask of professionalism firmly in place. “So what is it that we’re looking for, exactly?”

Killian runs his eyes over their immediate surroundings. “There should be a few things here that we can use to trap him. Killing him is a dicier game, but—” He cuts himself off when he sees a sword with a distinctive pommel and grip leaning against a large wardrobe, and then laughs. “I can’t believe it.”

“What is it?” Regina asks as Killian steps over to the sword, sheathed and upon closer inspection, he realizes he was right—it’s unmistakable.

“Dáinsleif, he says, picking it up. “Wielded by King Högni in the Neverending Battle. This blade causes wounds that never heal.” He slides the sword partially out of the sheath, revealing a set of glowing runes forged into the flat of the blade. “All blows delivered by this sword are fatal.” He looks back up at Regina and re-sheathes the sword. “This will be useful.”

Their search is surprisingly fruitful and efficient as the pair try to pick through the mess as quickly as they can—neither of them are willing to leave the other half of their group alone for long.

They eventually find themselves with four items of use—Dáinsleif; a few small vials of squid ink that can immobilize even the strongest of magic users; Pandora’s Box, the infamous magical prison that Killian is surprised Rumplestiltskin didn’t destroy; and finally, the Urn of Arendelle, another magical trap that can easily ensnare a magic user of even Rumplestiltskin’s caliber.

“We’re ready,” Killian says.

“But we need one more,” Regina says. “If all of us are going to have a weapon, we need one more.”

“Oh, I already have mine,” Killian says, and reaches into the pocket of his coat. He withdraws a vial that feels cold to the touch, despite being warmed by his body heat for the last day. The liquid within doesn’t look unlike the squid ink they’d picked up, but it’s more viscous, thick like molasses. “Dreamshade. The deadliest poison from Neverland. I doubt even a Dark One could withstand a shot of this to the heart.”

Regina quirks a brow. “I know better than to question the deadliness of something that comes out of Neverland.” She looks upwards. “We’ve left them to their own devices long enough. Let’s get—”

She never finishes her sentence because at that moment it sounds like an explosion goes off somewhere above them, violently shaking the walls of the vault around them. The blast lasts less than a few seconds, but it’s enough to thoroughly scare the both of them.

Regina looks over at him, wide-eyed, but determined. “We need to go.”

With a sharp breath of concentration and Killian’s hand wrapped around her arm, smoke envelopes them once more and they’re gone.

  Sneaking through a window makes Snow feel an awful lot like the bandit she used to be, though the way her hips and back feel after she gracelessly tumbles through it remind her that she is no longer as spry as she once was.

David and Robin follow not long after her, both giving similar groans of pained effort as they stand.

“God, when did we get old?” David asks when he reaches his feet again, adjusting his sword at his side.

“Well, our child is closer to thirty than twenty,” Snow points out as she too checks that her bow and quiver weren’t harmed in her clumsy entrance.

“And apparently fell in love with a pirate,” Robin chimes in.

Snow shoots him a look. “Is now really the time?”

“Hey, I’m married to the former Evil Queen. I have no room to judge. I’m simply weak for a bit of intrigue and a good story is all.”

“Well, when we get the full story ourselves we’ll be sure to fill you in,” David answers.

The hall they’d tumbled into is deserted and quiet, the kind of quiet that lets you hear the beat of your own heart and the rush of your blood. They entered at the corner of the manor—the layout of the castle above ground is relatively straightforward—so they’re at an L-shaped intersection, and Robin nods to the right. “The room I believe we’re looking for is this way.”

They make their way along the hall with soft steps and bated breath, each of them listening carefully for even a hint that something might be going wrong, but the silence prevails, and they eventually reach the room Robin had been referring to. 

“This is his study—wait!” he exclaims when Snow goes for the door handle, and she jumps backwards. Robin removes his bow from where it was slung across his back, nocks an arrow as quick as Snow has ever seen from someone else, and fires at the door.

Snow jumps back even further when fire peels over the entryway, a wall of flame burning across it that surely would’ve consumed her with how close she’d been. It burns steadily for a few moments, the heat of it blistering against Snow’s face, before it dissipates.

“Should be safe now,” Robin says after a moment, seemingly unconcerned by the trap.

“How did you—” Snow starts, but finds herself unable to finish the question. By the gods, if Robin hadn’t been there, she would’ve died just then. That protection spell would’ve killed her, and she wouldn’t have been able to do anything about it.

Robin answers, “I may have trifled with the Dark One on more than a single occasion. Are you alright?”

David’s hand finds hers then, his eyes searching her face. His steady presence pulls her back to the present, and she refocuses. “I’m fine. Thank you.”

His answering smile is kind, “You are most welcome.” He gestures at the door. “After you.”

Snow reaches for the door handle a bit more cautiously but finds the brass knob cool to the touch, despite the fire that had consumed it moments ago. She turns it and pushes it open, finding a circular library within.

The room itself is not large, perhaps twenty or twenty-five feet across. Tall bookshelves climb up to the ceiling, two storeys high, but there is no ladder to climb to the highest shelves. The floor is wooden, the paneling done like a sun radiating outwards. A single arched window that reaches as high as the bookshelves is the only light source. The wide blade of light it allows through falls upon a spinning wheel with a small pile of straw sitting next to it, as well as a wide table filled with books and potion bottles.

“Belle told me this was his preferred space to work,” Robin says, lingering by the door as she and Charming take in the room with measured steps. “If he’s recorded anything for why he needs Emma, it will be here.” He nods at the table. “Start looking, and I’ll keep watch,” he says, and moves to nock an arrow and stand with his shoulder against the doorframe.

Snow and David move to the table, starting on opposite ends and peeling through the papers and books gathered there.

“A History of Light Magic,” David reads absently from the materials in front of him, “Light Magic Application and Practice. This one is in High Elvish, but I think it says Traveling with Magic in the Light.”

“Sounds like he’s very interested in Emma’s light magical potential,” Robin observes. “Perhaps he’s found another way to achieve his ends without the Dark Curse? Something that requires light magic?”

On Snow’s end, she’s having a more difficult time discerning what is in front of her. Sheafs of notes that don’t seem to be organized are strewn about and covered in horrific script handwriting.

“Has Regina ever told you anything else about what she found out about why he wanted her to cast the Dark Curse?” Snow asks Robin, because if he wants Emma to finish what Regina started, what Regina knows could be invaluable.

Robin hums thoughtfully. “Only that he seemed to desperately want to get to the Land Without Magic. She noticed he was interested in adding a time travel component to the curse, but couldn’t sort out the particulars.”

David scoffs. “Time travel?”

Robin shrugs. “I know how it sounds.”

Snow scans over the most recent page of notes she’s piled up, but something trips in her mind. “I think Hook said he had a son.”

“Hook has a son?” This from David, in a tone at least four octaves above his normal voice.

Snow rolls her eyes at her husband. “No, he said that Rumplestiltskin had a son, a long time ago.” She leans onto the table, sorting through the jagged pieces of this story in her mind. “Maybe that’s what all of this has been about. Maybe his son was lost in the Land Without Magic a long time ago, and this is his way of finding him.”

David nods across the table. “While it’s hard for me to think of Rumplestiltskin as a parent, there’s nothing you wouldn’t do for your kids.”

Then it hits Snow the implications of this possible explanation she’s put together—it would mean that Rumplestiltskin has been trying to find a way to the Land Without Magic for hundreds of years. Gods, he could’ve been pulling the strings of her and Regina’s relationship without them knowing for their whole lives. How deep did his machinations run? And what about her and David? The number of times he’d helped them—

She shakes those thoughts off. She can consider the ramifications later, once Emma is safe and out of harm’s way.

Snow picks up the next page of notes, this one surprisingly legible.

WELL OF URD—no tt recorded, req light magic. +savior magic tt? In theory, tt possible w mechanics, need raw power

“‘Requires light magic,’” Snow discerns, and exhales heavily as she reads on. “This looks like he might be talking about Emma.”

There are no mentions of her daughter by her given name, but there are several places where he refers to the Swan in his notes. That’s been Emma’s nickname from the public ever since her coming out ball when she was sixteen. She’d stabbed the hand of an older duke with a steak knife who’d been getting much too familiar with the young princess, and the name stuck.

Fits w swan prophecy, POWERFUL,  Rumplestiltskin had written in between magical gibberish she couldn’t understand.

“Swan prophecy?” Snow mutters and reads on, hoping for clarity.

Instead, she feels her stomach drop out when she reads down to the bottom, where the letters are all caps, written over themselves several times to make them bolded, and underlined with several harsh lines.

HIGH PRICE—CYCLICAL CURSE ON USER NOT TRAVELER

“David, look at this,” Snow says, trepidation evident in her voice.

Her finger lingers on the requisite part of the note page when David comes over, and he reads where she’s indicated. His expression shifts from curiosity to tight-lipped fear.

“What is it?” Robin asks from the door.

“It looks like Rumplestiltskin may have found a way to open a portal with light magic,” David says. “And if he’s right, Emma is going to pay a high price. A cyclical curse. What is that?”

“And what is this Well of Urd?” Snow asks.

“Can’t say I know what either of those things are. Regina or Hook might, though. We’ll ask them wh—”

Before Robin can finish, the sound of an explosion rocks the castle. The window rattles in its frame, somehow not cracking with the violent vibration of the walls. Several books fall from their shelves, slapping against the wood floor. One level of a shelf gives way, and its whole collection falls to the floor in a cacophonous crash. The three room occupants are forced to grab onto something to keep their feet.

The shock doesn’t last long, a few seconds, but its effect is anything but minor. Snow meets David’s gaze, and they both seem to read each other’s thoughts in that moment.

“Emma,” they both say at the same time.

Robin seems to agree with their assessment. “Hopefully Regina and Hook have what they need, because it seems things are progressing at a precipitous rate.”

As if summoned, a whirl of magical smoke appears in the middle of the room, and Regina and Hook appear when it dissolves.

They must look panicked, because Regina asks flatly, “So I’m guessing you all felt that too?”

“We need to go,” Snow says. Who knows what Rumplestiltskin has done to Emma, and after that minor earthquake, she’s absolutely determined to get her daughter out of his grasp as soon as possible.

“Hold on,” Hook says, and both he and Regina distribute the weapons they’ve found. Snow ends up with two vials of squid ink, Robin with the Urn of Arendelle, David with the Dáinsleif sword, Regina with Pandora’s Box, and Hook with his own sword, treated with some sort of poison he seems confident could kill a Dark One.

Once they’re all outfitted and ready, Robin says to his wife, “Do you know—actually, just read this.” He snags the relevant note page and hands it to her.

Regina’s brow furrows, her eyes flitting quickly over the page. “Savior magic?” she mutters quietly, but quickly continues, “Urd is a well in Asgard, I believe. The water flows through every realm, like a unifying thread. It’s incredibly old and incredibly powerful. As far as I know, no one has been able to even touch it because everyone who’s tried gets literally blasted into oblivion.” Regina’s eyes widen at the implication of her words and she looks up at the group. 

Blasted into oblivion.

Snow says, “We need to find them before it’s too late.” Regina can tell them the particulars of a cyclical curse later.

Regina nods toward the hall. “Let’s go.”

  The room that Rumplestiltskin takes Emma to is a grand hall, and it reminds her more of the throne room at the palace than anything else. Massive arched windows stretch from floor to ceiling, and between those, standing silent watch with their backs against the stone walls, are a dozen golden suits of armor. At the very end of the room, at the foot of the long, rich, red velvet runner under their feet is a table holding what looks like a glass wine bottle with a clear liquid inside.

Emma views the innocuous item with unease. Since he awoke her magic, he hasn’t done anything else insane in trying to teach her, but she knows better than to trust the Dark One.

They come to a halt in front of the table. “Do you know why you’re called the Swan of Misthaven?” Rumplestiltskin asks, breaking the silence that had descended.

Emma scoffs. “Because of my ‘rare beauty and fiery temper when incensed,’ or so I’ve been told.”

“That’s what you might think, dearie, but the story is far, far deeper than that.” He carefully pinches the bottle by the neck and lifts it. “This is water from the Well of Urd.”

“Uh huh,” Emma says slowly. “So what do you want me to do with it?”

“The impatience.” He tsks at her. “The act means nothing without the story.”

Emma holds back the sharp retort on her tongue, and instead says, “Fine. Tell me.”

“There is an ancient well in Asgard, one whose water flows throughout every realm.” As he speaks, he uncorks the bottle and upends it slightly. He walks around her, creating a circle of spilled water about six feet across at Emma’s feet. She can’t help but notice that Rumplestiltskin does not step inside the circle he’s created. “With the right touch, one can use it to travel to these other realms.”

Emma eyes the water on the floor, an eyebrow raising skeptically, “And my touch is the right one?” If this water is magical in any way, it’s certainly not impressive to look at.

He grins that enigmatic smile of his that tells Emma he enjoys being the one who has all the answers. It’s really starting to grate on her.

“The swan who can drink of the Well of Urd will be born on the eve of a tragedy that will never come to pass,” he says, as though reciting something he’s read over thousands of times. “The swan will be born of the purest love, and will have stronger light magic than the world has ever seen. The swan shall be of Misthaven, and will have the power to ruin, or to build. The Destroyer, or the Savior.”

“And that’s… me?”

“Only one way to find out, dearie,” he says, and holds out the bottle for her to take.

Emma stares at him. “I have a thing about taking drinks from strange men.” Quips aside, Emma’s hackles are up, every instinct telling her to not touch this, not go near it, to run the other way and not stop until she falls into the Western Sea.

The Dark One barks out a laugh, louder and somehow more disturbing than his normal giggles. “You forget our deal, Emma,” he says after his guffaws have quieted. “You help me, or the pirate dies.” He shrugs, nonchalant. “It’s your choice.”

Emma’s jaw clenches against a scream. “Fine,” she grits out. She reaches out and grasps the neck of the bottle despite the pit forming in her stomach, despite everything in her screaming  no no no no no.

She looks at the remaining water, just a few small swallows. The pit in her stomach hasn’t abated, and now her heart is beginning to race.

“Bottoms up,” Rumplestiltskin says, almost playful, and in that moment, she can imagine herself killing him. Imagines setting him on fire, or pulling his heart out like she’s heard in the legends about the Evil Queen, imagines taking a greatsword and beheading him, imagines—

She jolts out of her startling reverie. She’s not normally a violent person, certainly not one who makes a habit of fantasizing about garishly killing someone. In the back of her mind, she thinks of all the cautionary tales she’s heard about magic in her lifetime—from her mother and father, from Blue and the rest of the fairies, from the people who remember all too well the cruelty of a queen drunk on her own power. She wonders if they were true.

“Anytime now, dearie.”

She shoots Rumplestiltskin a withering stare. He simply smiles.

Emma breathes in, tips the bottle up to her lips, and drinks. The water is cool and tastes a bit metallic, like the mineral water at the hot springs in the Southern Reach.

When it’s gone, she takes a step to the side and slams the bottle onto the table, the frame rattling from the force of it, but the bottle remains whole.

Despite the creeping dread she’d had, she feels surprisingly normal. A few seconds pass. She glances awkwardly around the room. Does this mean she passes or fails?

“So what’s supposed to happen here? Am I—”

Then she feels it, and she screams.

“I should have mentioned,” Rumplestiltskin says, “this part will be rather painful.”

She feels hot, like she is boiling, like her body is about to melt through the floor, and she opens her eyes and sees that she is literally radiating light.

Her body shines unlike anything she has ever seen before, the magic and power rippling over her like a tumultuous ocean. How is she even alive with this much power coursing through her? How hasn’t her skin separated from her body, how hasn’t every molecule of her existence been blown up and scattered?

There is a sun inside of her, burning from the inside out, and it’s going to get out. There is no way she can hold on, not with this. There’s a crushing pressure under her skin, pushing, expanding, demanding an exit that she cannot give it.

Emma can hear everything, the movement of the realms, the voices of the inhabitants, more voices than she can even comprehend, all blending together in a deafening roar.

Scorching heat slices through her bones, burning burning burning, and she doesn’t think she can do this, she made it this far only to die from a few mouthfuls of water, it’s not possible for someone to live with this much power, this much pain, this much burning. If this is what magic really feels like, if this is what power feels like, she doesn’t want it.

She barely hears Rumplestiltskin over the roaring in her ears. “Don’t let it control you, Emma,” he says. “You have the power. This little display is nothing compared to you.”

She looks up at him, her field of vision rimmed in light, and he stares back.

The sun is going to get out.

So Emma lets it, and the world around her goes white.

  They burst through the double doors Regina indicated, and find chaos. The large windows along the walls are all blown out, and the ceiling is missing in portions, letting in the light of midday. Decorative suits of armor in gilded gold lay strewn about in pieces. It seems like there was once a rug on the floor, but it only exists now in burned scraps. The air feels charged, like a lightning storm is just over the horizon.

At the end of the great hall, the Dark One lay crumpled against a wall, but Killian can hardly focus on that, because at the center of the destruction, laying on her back and glowing faintly, is the love of his life.

“Emma,” he breathes, and Killian runs.

He hears the rest of the group following behind him, and he continues heedless, stepping around the ruined suits of armor and soon reaches where she lay.

There is a faintly glowing circle around her that matches the hue her skin is giving off, but Killian steps over it and drops to his knees to lift Emma into his arms. She’s limp, but her body is hot to the touch, almost too hot to hold, but he manages. Her chest moves shallowly, and he can see her pulse firing in her neck. He doesn’t know what the Dark One has done to her, but it’s bad, whatever it is, and they need to get her out of here.

Her parents have come to kneel next to him, their helpless and scared expressions surely mirroring what’s on his face.

“Emma,” he says softly, his hand cupping the back of her head to bring her face up. “Come on, love, open your eyes.”

He turns to look at Regina, ask her what’s happened to Emma, but as he turns, he sees that the Dark One has risen from where he was thrown against the wall.

He looks rattled, an uncommon sight on the normally unreadable imp. When he realizes he has company, he readjusts his countenance into a sneer.

“Clever glamour,” he says. “A fancy bit of magic, that. Do I smell a six-leaf clover somewhere?” He snaps his fingers, and though Killian isn’t magical, he feels a faint sensation of the glamour being peeled away.

Rumplestiltskin’s face twists into a snarl when their true forms are revealed. Both of his hands go out in front of him, magic sparking across them, and Killian braces himself, preparing to be choked or flung somewhere or any other manner of magical violence, but is shocked when nothing happens. The magic sputters uselessly in the imp’s hands.

Rumplestiltskin appears quite startled as well.

Regina laughs.

The Dark One’s irate stare falls upon her. “Regina,” he says, taunting despite his own recent magical failure, “did you come back to prove that you’re worth something after all?”

Regina steps out between Rumplestiltskin and them. She has Pandora’s Box in one hand and a ball of flame in the other. “I have nothing to prove to you.”

Rumplestiltskin’s eyes dart towards the door.

Regina laughs again. “Thinking of making an escape? Save yourself the trouble. She’s weakened you too much.” she says. “You finally flew too close to the sun on this one, Rumple. She’s too strong for you to control, isn’t she?”

The Dark One smiles, and pushes a hand towards the doors. “Oh, Regina, have you forgotten?” He snaps his fingers and looks back at them. A spark of red magic shoots out across the room, not so useless now, and Killian realizes he wasn’t looking at the doors. He was looking at the suits of armor.

His grin is predatory. “There’s no such thing as someone I can’t control as long as they love something.”

The magic sinks into the golden soldiers, reuniting the scattered bits of armor and bringing the small army to life. They rise with the sharp sounds of metal on metal, drawing swords that glow with runes as they begin to lurch across the room towards them.

David and Snow are on their feet in a heartbeat, forming a loose arc with Robin around Emma with weapons drawn.

Emma stirs in his arms, a small sound slipping from her mouth. “Emma?” he tries again.

Regina hazards a glance backwards at Killian, keeping herself between them and Rumplestiltskin, and says, “You need to help them. There are too many for three of them to take. I can handle him,” she finishes, gesturing sharply at the Dark One.

“Oh, dearie, I might be weakened, but don’t mistake that for weak.”

Then, Killian feels magic force his arms from around Emma, and he and Regina are both hurled away from Emma and towards the advancing automatons. 

Killian quickly rolls to his feet and regains his bearings, drawing his sword just in time to block a harsh slash from one of the suits. The blow rattles his teeth, as heavy a hit as if it had been delivered by any of the strongest swordsmen he’s ever faced. He quickly parries, happy to see that while strong, the automatons seem to be slow moving, and his sword finds the joint at the neck of the armor and rends the helmet from the rest of the body. The body of armor takes another quivering step forward, then falls.

And just like that, their fight begins. Snow, David, and Robin join the fray; Snow and Robin stick to the flanks, their specialties being ranged weaponry, while David, rather impressively, dual wields his own sword along with Dáinsleif and falls in next to Killian and Regina.

Moments after Killian downed his first opponent, he sees Regina out of the corner of his eye blasting a suit of armor against the wall, rending the joints apart and veritably exploding the suit.

Their respective quarries stay down for a few relief-laden moments before the pieces begin to rattle, and then snap back together like iron to a magnet.

“Oh, you are kidding me,” Regina groans.

“How the hell are we supposed to kill something unkillable?” shouts Robin from across the room.

Killian doesn’t know the answer to that as he lops another head off an automaton.

Despite their lumbering slowness, the suits do an admirable job of cutting them off from where Emma lay, almost herding them backwards towards the doors to the hall.

“Don’t suppose the magic sword applies to gold suits of armor brought to life?” Emma’s father says as he cuts an arm from one of the suits with the enchanted blade. The glowing runes on the side of Dáinsleif indicate that the magic is working, but alas—the arm reattaches, the automaton continuing it’s slow, heavy offensive. 

“I’m guessing ‘having flesh’ is a prerequisite,” Killian replies.

Closer to them now, Killian is able to tell that the glowing runes on the suits weaponry is strikingly similar to those on Dáinsleif. If it’s a matching enchantment—well. That’s a worst case scenario he doesn’t wish to contemplate as she dodges another slow swing and parries another coming at his other side.

“Don’t let them cut you!” Killian calls out over the din of battle. “Their weapons are enchanted.”

“Regina!” shouts Robin, “what’s our play here?” He and Snow have the biggest disadvantage with their bows—without a means to decapitate the armor, it appears there’s no slowing them down.

“Give me a second!” she replies, hurling a fireball through the chestplate of one of the automatons. It shudders to a stop, the melted metal running to the floor in rivulets. It lumbers back to life after a few moments, but it’s slower, more ungainly than before.

“Got any fire arrows?” she calls over.

“We can make do!” Snow replies.

In a hail of fire and swords, they fight. It’s exhausting and they’re playing a defensive game—they have to get lucky on every dodge, whereas the automatons need only get lucky once.

Killian steals a glance back to where they’d been forced away from Emma, and finds her already staring at him.

  Her manner of waking is sudden. A gasping breath, a jolt through her body, and her eyes snap open to find Rumplestiltskin standing over her. Distantly, she realizes she’s still glowing, the power still coursing through her, but more like a great river flowing through a dam than an uncontained ocean in a storm.

“On your feet, Swan of Misthaven,” he hisses, and she scrambles to her feet to meet him.

Still standing just outside the circle of water he’d poured, glowing just like her skin, his unbearably cheerful expression makes another wave of anger course through her.

Then she hears her mother’s voice, a shout of we can make do, and she turns to find a battle happening before her eyes. The room is utterly destroyed, the rug singed beyond recognition, the windows on all the walls blown out, and sunlight leaking through cracks in the ceiling. The decorative armor that had lined the walls has come to life, fighting with—

Mom. Dad. Killian. Two others she does not recognize.

Emma meets Killian’s gaze across the metallic sea.

She realizes they’re here for her. They came for her.

Fear swiftly replaces her anger. “Let them go,” she demands, turning back to Rumplestiltskin, who watches the action and her with an idle curiosity. “If all you need me to do is send you to a different realm, just leave them alone, and—”

Quicker than a blink, Rumplestiltskin is in front of her, reaching across the glowing ring and dragging her towards him with his hand around her neck. “We have a deal,” he snarls, and in that moment he looks unhinged. She’s always known he’s at least a little bit nuts, but it’s this moment, this handful of seconds where he constricts her air flow with his own hand, that she truly sees the man Killian spent centuries trying to kill. “You open this portal for me,” he says through gritted teeth, “and the pirate lives.” He cackles a bit. “Since your parents decided to join the fray, well, I can’t guarantee their safety unless you stop dallying and do as you promised!”

“You don’t have to threaten them—” Emma chokes out, “I’ll do it if you—”

“That’s not our deal!” he yells, his fist shaking around her throat. The fear clenches harder around her heart. Feet away from her, her family is in mortal peril and she can’t do anything about it.

She hears her father cry, “Emma!”

Killian’s response is panicked. “Dave, no!”

In her periphery, she sees her father making a reckless charge for her. She sees Killian yelling, racing to push her father out of the way of an automaton’s sword.

Watches as the sword goes through Killian’s chest.

Time slows to a crawl.

Emma must say something, she feels something like words or breath or a scream coming through her throat, but the only thing she can hear is the sound of a high pitched whistle in her ears

He’s the reason she’s here. To save him.

It’s not fair, it’s—he’s the best swordsman she’s ever seen, he can’t just—

The automaton withdraws the sword. Her father recovers and knocks the golden armor back, beheading it decisively and dropping to his knees next to Killian.

She can already see the blood.

No.

No.

The power she couldn’t hold onto before rises, right next to the power she was born with. She’s stronger than this. Rumplestiltskin’s told her that she has the power to rip open the veins between realms—if she can do that when he can’t, then she must be stronger than him. Strong enough to save her family.

She flicks Rumplestiltskin away from her like a flea. She doesn’t spare him a second glance as he’s flung away from her, the sound of his body colliding with the wall a wet, heavy thud.

She turns and reaches out for the automatons, feels the dark magic threading the armor together into cohesive units. It feels like the sinew of an animal, thick, greasy, heavy, but with a quick gesture, her light magic flows out, snipping the threads like cutting puppet strings.

The automatons fall, the small army clattering to the floor. She clenches a fist, compressing them all like crumpled balls of paper and hurling them to the opposite side of the hall for good measure. Like children’s toys. Like nothing at all. She hates him, but Rumplestiltskin was right. This is child’s play.

Then Emma rushes to where Killian bleeds on the floor, her father’s hands trying to vain to staunch the bleeding.

“Emma,” Killian gasps, smiling in spite of what must be tremendous pain. “You’re so beautiful.” He coughs, a bit of blood trailing from one corner of his mouth. “Glowing like a star,” he murmurs.

She wants to laugh, then she wants to cry, because she loves him so much. Her hands find each side of his face. “I’m going to make this better,” she tells him. She doesn’t know how.

“You already have,” he says softly, his eyelashes fluttering against his cheeks.

“Stay—” she panics when his eyes slip closed, “No, you stay with me. Killian!”

“Don’t reckon I can walk anywhere,” he murmurs.

“I can—” her heart races, bringing her hand up to where her father’s presses down over his wound. She looks up at her father, vision going blurry with tears. “I can fix this,” she says to him, but it comes out more of a question. She only learned she has magic today, she has no idea what she can and can’t do. Why couldn’t she heal something like this? If she’s so powerful, she should be able to fix this.

David looks lost for an answer for her, his mouth opening and closing several times before he presses his lips together.

The dark haired woman that Emma doesn’t recognize drops down next to her, reaching a hand out. Her eyes close in concentration before she swears softly. “You were right,” she says to Killian, then raises her gaze to David and Emma. “The swords they had must’ve been enchanted with the same magic as Dáinsleif. I can’t heal it.”

Killian coughs a wet laugh. “So that’s why he had it.”

“Not funny, idiot,” the woman scolds, but Emma is furious.

She might not know what sort of limitations there is on this power of hers, but she decides in that moment that she will not lose him today. She will not. She won’t entertain the idea of failure. If she’s powerful enough to open a portal to a land that doesn’t even have magic, if she’s powerful enough to hurt the Dark One, she better damn well be strong enough to heal a goddamn enchanted wound.

“You can’t,” Emma says, “but I can.”

“Emma, darling—” there was her mother, just behind her shoulder. Her voice is soft, sad, grieving before he’s even gone.

“No!” Emma snaps.

“Emma,” Killian says, his face going pale, “it’s okay. It’s enough to—” he wheezes, more blood dribbling from his lips, “—to see that you’re alright.”

His breathing is getting shallower.

“No,” she says, quiet, resolute, “it’s not enough for me.”

It’s now or never.

Emma moves her father’s hand out of the way, and pulls every bit of power she can conjure. She can feel the lattice of the enchantment—transferred from the sword to leave the wound gaping and bleeding. It feels stubborn, slippery, more like slick mercury than the dark sinew of the spell holding the automatons together.

Magic is about visualization, so Emma imagines him how she knows him—clever, wickedly funny, annoyingly charming, steadfast, stubborn, passionate, loving. A good man beneath the rough exterior, a good man she fully intends to spend her future with if he’ll let her.

The feels the enchantment start to dissolve. She pushes harder. He is mine, she thinks. You can’t have him. He is her lover, her best friend, her partner, the person she wants to wake up next to as much as she can.

She pours everything she can into the wound, all of her love and frustration and anger and compassion and raw need, and finally she feels the enchantment give way.

She feels the skin beneath her fingers begin to knit together.

Killian gasps, his eyes flying open, and Emma finally pulls away with a sharp inhale. She did it.

  Regina knows that she is, on the whole, more of a cynic than an optimist, but what she’s watching Snow’s daughter do right now shouldn’t be possible.

Perhaps it has something to do with the water from Urd, or maybe Rumplestiltskin had been right about Emma being a Savior. A legendary breaker of curses, a purveyor of the strongest light magic. In all her reading, Regina hadn’t heard of a Savior existing in the last millennia, but—

Hook’s wound is gone, the only remaining evidence there was anything wrong with him at all is the hole through his vest and jacket. His color has returned, the blood vanished, and the pirate wordlessly sits up and throws his arms around Emma. She does the same, burying her face in the side of his neck. His hand goes to the back of her head, and Regina doesn’t have to be perceptive to feel the desperate relief in the embrace.

“You did it, Emma,” he murmurs.

“I—” Emma pulls away slightly. “I did.” She sounds more surprised than Regina is, and the glow in her skin than had been faint when they first arrived has grown brighter and more intense. Concerning.

Regina feels a flutter of magic around them, dark and twisted, and realizes Rumplestiltskin has rejoined them in consciousness.

Gods, she should’ve just trapped him when he’d been passed out. Regina mentally kicks herself for caring enough about the stupid pirate enough to check on him instead of finishing what they came here to do, which was trap or kill the Dark One.

Before Regina can turn back to where they’d left Rumplestiltskin, Emma is on her feet and shouting, “No!” With a swift, unpolished move, Emma forces the dark magic back with staggering force that even Regina can feel the echoes of.

She watches as Emma stalks toward Rumplestiltskin, radiating power and magic with every step. Beyond the glow of magic around Emma, Regina catches a glimpse of Rumplestiltskin. She had known him better than just about anyone, once upon a time. Or at least, she likes to think that she did, that she had some measure of equality in their twisted relationship. But the expression on Rumplestiltskin’s face as Emma comes to a stop right in front of him is one that Regina has never seen before. Fear. Uncertainty. Regret. The reptilian eyes that once haunted her nightmares with cruel words and visions of what-if are wide, his hands, capable of cruelty in the highest degree, held out in front of him in an appeal for mercy. His magic sparks over his fingers, but he is helpless in the face of the pure light magic going supernova in front of him.

Many years ago, Regina would’ve bared her teeth, come up next to Emma and told her, Good. Make him regret the day he was born.

Now, Regina just feels pity. This sad, sad little man whose very being is so toxic everyone he’s ever loved has left him. Destroyed his own life so catastrophically that the only recourse he has left is this. 

“You broke our deal,” Emma says, her voice reverberating across the demolished hall.

“The deal hasn’t been broken yet, dearie,” Rumplestiltskin explains hastily. “The pirate lives—”

Without fanfare, Emma plunges her hand into the Dark One’s chest.

Snow’s gasp from behind her echoes her own.

She sees Hook moving out of the corner of her eye, and he makes his way to where Emma stands without an ounce of hesitation.

Robin comes up behind Regina and takes her hand in his. She looks over at him, and she must be wearing something of a panicked expression because his own countenance softens when he takes her in. “You can help her,” he says, soft and trusting, and she’s struck again by how much she loves him. What would have become of her life after her last banishment had she not found him? 

Would she have reneged on her promise to Snow to not cast the curse and bury it where it could never be found again? Would she have gone insane by herself, steeping in her regrets and loneliness? And yet, even after everything she did, she was still lucky enough to find Robin, this compassionate man who believes in her goodness in spite of who she was. A man compassionate enough to believe that the Evil Queen has the power to help, to heal, to do good for others.

“Go,” he says, and Regina can tell it’s not just to her—Snow and Charming stand just to her left in a stricken, wide-eyed stupor as their only daughter threatens to pull someone’s heart out of their chest. Regina can only imagine what’s going through their heads. After all, her liberal use of pulling out hearts must’ve left a sour aftertaste; to see their daughter following the same road Regina herself had tumbled down can’t be easy.

Emma might have light magic, but everyone born with magic has potential for darkness in them. Regina knows that first taste of dark power.

Rumplestiltskin pushed Regina into embracing her dark magic—she won’t let him to the same to Emma.

  When Emma had been a child, she didn’t have many friends. Certainly, there were lords and ladies of the court who tried to wheedle their children into the palace and into Princess Emma’s affections, playing the long game of politics and gaining social capital. Emma hadn’t always been good at reading intentions, and after several tumultuous friendships gone awry, she’d learned to protect herself. Don’t let anyone in, and they never get the opportunity to hurt you.

However, loneliness had never suited Emma. As much as she liked to hide behind the Swan of Misthaven moniker, allow the lords and ladies who’d once jockeyed their children for position with her to comment snidely on her prickliness, she desired for friendship, for someone who wanted to know her because they found her interesting all on her own. So she’d begun to sneak out of the castle in the summer of her eighteenth year, dressed in simple clothing so as not to stand out, and found that she infinitely preferred the company of those who didn’t know her as the Princess and Heir Apparent of Misthaven.

In spite of all her secret-keeping, she fiercely loves her mother and father. Many of their senior staff have earned places in Emma’s mental tally of her family. Graham and the dwarves are like uncles, Ruby and her wife Mulan like aunts, and Granny Lucas, now retired from working in the kitchens, is the grandmother that she never had. Killian now has an unquestioned place in it.

The fact that Rumplestiltskin threatened them at all makes her want to put out his eye again, and with far more prejudice this time around. She’s never had to lose anyone, at least, not like this. The real rage comes from thinking about what could have happened. What if the enchantment had been too strong for her? What if she hadn’t been strong enough to stop the automatons? What if Killian hadn’t been there to push her father out of the way? What if the automaton had been faster and cut down her father as well? 

Gods, and for what? All for her to open a portal? The reckless disregard for life makes her see red.

Before she can really think over her actions aside from the blinding rage that’s gone from simmering to boiling over, her hand is in the Dark One’s chest, her hand gripped around his beating heart.

She feels the flutter of his magic attempting to push her back, but it feels as feeble as the flap of a butterfly’s wing against her glowing skin. Gods, is it her imagination, or is she getting brighter? The river of power surges behind the dam, the sun is rising again, and she feels utterly untouchable.

She pulls the heart out of his chest.

It’s an ugly, shriveled thing, crawling with darkness and telling of years of cruelty and evil. The darkness moves across it like a shifting web, occasionally letting one small spot of red shine through. 

“I could crush this right now,” Emma murmurs, “and you wouldn’t be able to stop me.” She wonders what it would feel like, to crush a heart with magic. Would it be slick and slimy, like if she’d taken it out with a sword? Would it vanish in smoke and fire, like a simple magicians trick? Would it dissolve into dust in her hand?

“Emma.”

Killian’s voice cuts through the fog of magical energy around her, ceasing her contemplations of crushing the heart.

She looks over at him. He’s right next to her shoulder, so close that she could lean into him if she wanted to, so it’s impossible to miss the expression on his face. She’s always thought it funny that a swashbuckling, larger-than-life pirate could so poorly fail to hide the heart on his sleeve.

He’s scared. Of her?

“Love, come on now,” he says gently. “This isn’t you.”

Oh, not scared of her. Scared for her.

“But this—” She’s about to say this is what you’ve always wanted, but realizes that that’s not accurate. Not anymore.

He shakes his head as though he knows where she was going. “Revenge is a road you don’t want to go down. It brought me nothing but pain and torment, and made me into a man that I would never want you to know.”

“But if I crush this, I end him,” Emma says. “Right here, right now.”

“It’s not easy to come back from,” another voice says. “Trust me. I know.” It’s the woman Emma doesn’t know, the one with magic who told her saving Killian wasn’t possible. She smiles wryly. “You don’t know me, but I know you. My name is Regina.”

The Evil Queen. She certainly doesn’t look very evil now. She’s much softer than Emma had ever imagined. Illustrators always made her look sharp, demonic, and inhuman. But Regina is older than Snow, her face creased and maternal.

Regina continues, “I was right where you are now. A heart in my hands and a choice. Magic makes everything you do different, Emma. More important. This isn’t just an enemy slain like you could do with a sword. Magic is balance. A crushed heart?” She exhales softly, her expression one of remembrance, her eyes downcast. “That tips your scales forever, because you learn that if you can do that, well. You can do almost anything,” she finishes softly. She looks up again, conviction in her gaze. “The only reason I’m here is because your parents chose to forgive me. There’s more strength in radical forgiveness than there is in this,” Regina points to the heart in her hand. “Be stronger, Emma.”

And Emma—

Emma doesn’t disagree with her, not entirely. Her parents were sure to raise her to value kindness over anger, to react with sympathy rather than suspicion.

But Rumplestiltskin is dangerous. Without a doubt, he is dangerous. Sure, she bested him this time, but what if that’s just a fluke, courtesy of the water from Urd? What if, next time, he doesn’t strike a deal with her, and just decides to murder Killian, or her parents, and she can do nothing about it? If she ends him, the threat of him ends right here.

“Emma, we love you,” this from her father, who stands next to her mother not far from Regina. “You don’t have to do this. We have plenty of other ways to deal with him.”

“Pandora’s Box can hold him forever. So can the Urn of Arendelle,” Snow adds. “This isn’t all on you to solve. We can help you.”

“Until someone inevitably lets him out,” Emma says, her anger simmering down but her rationale picking back up. “Maybe it’s not in our lifetimes, or even in your great-great grandchildren’s lifetime, but—” she swallows when she realizes how right she is. “The story of what’s in Pandora’s Box or the Urn will get lost. Someone will open it, and whoever does will end up right where we are.” She looks back at Rumplestiltskin, whose fear seems to have bled into resignation. Emma says, “I can’t—this is my responsibility. I can’t just kick it off for someone else to deal with. How could I ever be that selfish?”

“Emma,” Killian says again, and he moves closer to her, sliding an arm around her waist and resting his forehead against the side of her head. “I’m supposed to be the cynical one of the two of us.”

That nearly makes her laugh. A little huff escapes her. “I don’t want to kill him. But I have to. How long has the Dark One terrorized this realm?” She freezes.

Wait.

This realm.

“If I send you to the Land Without Magic,” Emma says, “will you be able to return?” She clenches his heart. “Tell the truth.”

“No,” Rumplestiltskin grinds out, “without magic, I will have no way to return.”

“Will you be able to hurt people when you get there? Will you still be the Dark One?”

“No more than any normal, mortal man,” he shares, still reluctant.

“Then why do you want to go there?” Emma asks flatly, staring down at the heart in her hand. When he doesn’t answer, her fingers tighten around the heart. It shudders against her hold. “Tell me.”

Another heavy second passes before finally gasps, “My son!” It’s a pained admittance, but now that he’s said it, the dam has broken. “I need to find my son! I lost him many years ago and I just want to find my boy. I just want to find my son.”

Emma looks up again. To her shock, the Dark One’s eyes are filled with tears. With his heart in her hands, she can feel the truth in his confession. The tears, like his words, are entirely genuine.

Emma trembles and says, “I would’ve helped, you know.” She says it softly, almost warm, but after everything, her tone doesn’t verge on kind. “If you had just asked for my help, I would’ve helped you.”

Before he gets a chance to respond, Emma shoves his heart back into his chest and turns away from him, breaking Killian’s hold on her and facing towards the glowing ring behind them.

In a single motion, she reaches out for it, letting herself move on instinct. The sun that has been burning hotter and hotter guides her motions. Her open hand closes in a fist, closes around the strands between realms, and she raises it swiftly towards the ceiling—tearing open a vein between realms. The action brings a long column of light up from the ring, and it blasts straight through the roof, the light of the portal so bright it’s hard to look at it directly.

She can feel the pulse of the worlds around her, feels like she can shuffle through them with ease like pages in a book until she finds the one she wants.

Let him find his child, she thinks.

Then reaches back, grasps Rumplestiltskin by the shirt, and throws him into it.

  In the Land Without Magic, Bae is spat out through the portal. He stands, turns, frantically searching for his father—even if it didn’t seem like he would follow him, he can’t believe his father would just refuse, would just abandon him—

Behind him, a white light that rivals the brightness of the sun flares to life. Bae stumbles forward before he turns, shielding his eyes from the glare. It dies as quickly as it came to be, and it takes a few moments for the spots in his vision to clear and his eyes to adjust but it’s—

“Papa!” he cries and throws himself into his father’s arms. “I knew you wouldn’t leave me!”

“My boy,” he says, thready and weak. “My boy.”

Bae wonders why his father’s embrace seems so desperate—they’d just seen each other on the other side of the portal, but his father is acting as though he hasn’t seen him in years.

Rumple eventually pulls away hands on his son’s shoulders as he looks him up and down. His eyes are red-rimmed and swollen, and it makes something twist in Bae. “You’re unhurt?”

“Yes, I—I’m fine,” Bae replies. He notices then that his father’s attire is the same as ever was, but his face is back to the way it had been before he became the Dark One. “Your curse. Is it—?”

“It’s—” Rumplestiltskin doesn’t hear the whisper of the darkness in his ear. Doesn’t feel the weight of it that he’d carried for hundreds of years. He reaches for the small sheath at his side where he keeps the dagger and withdraws it. He feels no pull to it, no compulsion to answer its call. There’s no call at all, not a whisper. It’s just a blade, and he is just a man. “It can’t hurt us anymore. It has no power here.” he says, and his eyes find the middle distance for a moment.

Bae has gotten too good at reading his father and knows something is not quite right. “What happened? What did you do?”

His father shakes his head, “It’s nothing. Someone with a kind heart helped me follow you.”

“You didn’t rip it out or anything, did you?”

“Of course not. Quite the contrary, actually.”

Bae tilts his head and narrows his eyes. “No one got hurt to get you here?”

Rumplestiltskin is a master of telling selective truth. He smiles. “Everyone was just fine when I left.”

  Now Killian knows it’s not his imagination, Emma is shining brighter now than she did when they’d first found her. Her shoulders rise and fall in deep breaths. As swiftly as she’d opened it and shoved Rumplestiltskin through it, one gesture with her hand collapses the column of light downwards, and it vanishes with little fanfare.

She makes a small pained, exhausted noise, and he steps toward her to take her in his arms, to celebrate because she did it. Gods, she’s amazing, and he doesn’t think he’s ever loved her more—

Regina’s hand grabs his elbow and jerks him backwards. “Wait,” she hisses.

“Regina—”

“There’s something wrong,” she says.

Emma turns around, looking battle-shocked and shaking. Killian’s heart drops when he realizes that not only is Emma getting brighter, but it looks like her skin is cracking. Like a ceramic vase that’s been fired at the wrong temperature, a single fissure slowly webs up Emma’s cheek, blinding light blazing through it.

“Emma,” David breathes, both he and Snow stepping towards their daughter like Killian had just tried to do. Regina holds out an arm, barring them from approaching.

“This is the price,” Regina says.

Emma whimpers as webs of cracks start forming across her knuckles. Killian starts forward again, “We can’t just let her—” but Regina stops him again with an arm across his chest. He’s tempted to push past her, because Emma is right there and she is hurting.

“What’s happening to me?” Emma asks shakily, and Killian desperately wants to hold her when she sounds like that—unsure and small and afraid.

“The cyclical curse,” Robin surmises from behind them, “isn’t it?”

Regina nods. “That first explosion you caused was only the beginning,” she says. “The water from Urd. It goes through phases, like the moon, waxing and waning. When it reaches its peak power—”

They all remember. Blasted into oblivion.

They’d all seen the HIGH PRICE written with emphasis in the Dark One’s notes.

“So I’m a bomb,” Emma concludes, “and I’m going to keep going on this explode-repair-repeat cycle.”

“Yes.” Regina’s expression is bleak, and Killian feels his heart breaking. There is no way their story ends like this.

“Gods, that’s fucking rough,” Emma gasps, almost managing to laugh. The cracks on her face creep down her neck. “Couldn’t have just been—” Another gasp, this one without any mirth, but Emma tries to smile through it. “Couldn’t have just been a sleeping curse, huh? That would’ve been an easy enough solve.”

“We need to go,” Regina says, “or we’ll probably be incinerated.”

“We can’t just leave her here!” Snow exclaims. “There has to be a way to save her!”

“She’s a whole damn storehouse of powderkegs, and the fuse is about to reach it,” Regina snaps.

Snow says, “Emma, we’re not going to give up—”

“We can’t find a solution if we’re all dead,” Robin says, and David responds with something heated back, but Killian can’t look away from Emma.

She mentioned an easy solve to a sleeping curse. Even before he met Emma, he knew the story of Snow White and her Prince Charming. Even before that, in stories and legends, they always said True Love’s Kiss can break any curse.

He knows what he has to do.

He pushes past Regina, catching her off guard as she argues with the Charmings over their retreat. He lets their exclamations of caution fall away, focusing only on Emma.

Stepping into her space is like stepping into a blacksmith’s forge. The heat radiating off of Emma is intense, heavy, a fitting companion for the amount of light she is giving off. The cracks are growing, expanding in a web across her body, and disappearing under her clothes. Her hands, her face, her arms, all covered in thin, glowing fractures.

“Killian, no, I can’t keep it in,” Emma protests, taking a step away from him. Another pained wince stops her.

He doesn’t pursue her any further, and instead reaches out for her, his hand extended towards her. “Is this a bad time to say that our chemistry is explosive?”

She manages a laugh, a smile, in spite of the magic splitting her skin. “The worst time,” she says, not meeting his gaze. 

Gods, his heart is racing, there is a steady thrum of fear in the back of his mind that he will somehow fail her in this, but if there is one thing he does know, it’s that he loves her. That will be enough. He just has to—

He almost laughs when he realizes that he just has to believe, just has to have hope, and if there is one thing he believes in, one thing that he is hopeful for, it is her.

“Look at me, love.” She does, and he smiles back. “Do you trust me?”

Her expression softens. She looks down at his hand. “Yes,” she replies. She reaches back, her hand fitting into his. Her skin is uncomfortably hot, but their fingers fit together like they always do.

He steps into her space, his hooked arm going around her waist. He releases her hand and runs a finger from her chin back to her jaw. His hand settles just behind her ear.

“I love you,” he breathes into the space between their mouths, as if there was ever any doubt.

“I love you,” she answers.

He kisses her.

And feels magic.

[doritopaw101]

Arc1, book 1: Chapter 9

It felt a little strange to be going in this direction since he hadn't been there since he joined Thunder Colony. Icepaw's vision was starting to blur and his ears started to ring. Icepaw sighed and padded on. Cautiously Icepaw crossed the narrow path into the pine forest. He sensed a movement from the ground with his paws. From the scent, it was a mouse, probably scrabbling through the pine needles. Icepaw dropped into a stalking position, keeping his weight in his haunches, his paws light on the ground. It thought about the distance the mouse was from him and trusted it would work.

It worked so well he almost purred, the mouse didn't have enough time to react as he leaped and bit into it's neck killing it in an instant. He buried it then carried on with his journey.

He traveled further into the Tallpines. The ground around here was deeply rutted by the tracks of the machine he couldn't remember the name of. By the scent of it, the machine had not been around for a while.

Icepaw followed the deep tracks, jumping across the ruts, slipping a few time in the process. They had been half-filled with rain which temped his thirst. He barley stopped himself from taking a few droplets because the thought of the machine taste in his mouth made him almost gag. But he was thirty and with his vision and hearing acting up he honestly will deal with machine water. It was awful but it helped, though he want something to get the taste out.

His wish was grated when he found a puddle and lapped up a few mouthfuls of water. As he continued he recognized sounds and scents familiar from his ol d watching place on the fence. He was very close to his old home now. Up ahead Icepaw could hear humans or 'Twolegs' yelling something, it sounded playful. It was a group of young humans, kids. He twitched his ears as he listened in on what they were saying

"Catch the ball Sammy"

"Go over there"

Icepaw stayed where he was, alert and watchful but not only for the humans sake but for his own as well, Tiger-roar might be somewhere near by. Out of the comer of his blurred eye, Icepaw sensed movement. His first thought it was Tiger-roar or Bluestar or worse both of them, that and he thought Dustpaw was playing a prank on him but then he saw a flash of brown and white. He stopped for a moment, crouching. The scent was familiar, his head was buzzing trying to remember who's it was. He felt his fur bristle with the instincts of a warrior.

He could see the outline of the intruder as it skittered between the ferns. He leaped onto the back of the intruder, it gave up easily. The intruder was a dark brown tom. Icepaw had to narrow his eyes then it came to him "Uncle?" he mewed

"Splinter" he returned the same tone

Icepaw felt his fur rise "What the hell are you doing out here?" he looked around "It's dangerous"

Henry rolled his eyes "Not dangerous enough for you apparently, why aren't you in the city?"

"I don't live with Bloodclan anymore" Icepaw said bluntly "I live with the forest cats"

"The forest cats?" Henry said with disbelief "I knew you were interested with the forest like your father but..."

"I know, I know but I'm happy here" he stepped closer to his uncle "How's house cat life?"

Henry sighed and opened his arms and Icepaw quickly went into the embrace, nuzzling against his uncle's neck.

"My joints don't hurt as often" the old tom replied "The food isn't that bad I suppose, Chocolate is a good neighbor, guess you weren't lying"

Icepaw chuckled, feeling a little smug "I was right, admit it"

"Never" he could feel his uncle's smirk

Icepaw suddenly remembered why he was out here in the first place "I have to go Uncle" Icepaw mewed "I know some cats of my colony who would love to use you as a practice dummy or just shred you in one blow for shits and giggles"

"I doubt they're more scary than Scourge, Bone, or Brick but I'll take your word for it" Henry jumped onto the fence "I'll be seeing you around my nephew, be sure of that"

Icepaw nodded and Henry disappeared into the garden.

Icepaw turned, his tail high, and started his way back home, sniffing the air as he went. He could try to find a finch or two here.

/

Icepaw returned with a chaffinch gripped firmly between his teeth. He dropped it in front of Tiger-roar, who stood waiting in the hollow.

"You're the first one back" the half and half tabby mewed

"Yep, but I have more than just this" Icepaw mewed quickly

"I know" Tiger-roar growled "I've been watching you, you missed some but managed to catch some as well"

"Better late then never" he replied with a smirk "Leopardfoot told me you were the same at my age"

Tiger-roar rolled his eyes at his words "You make me feel my age and need to have a talk with my mother"

Icepaw snorted "Awww but we have such great talks" he curled his tail "She told me about your days as a 'paw like me"

Tiger-roar let out a deep breath

Sandpaw and Dustpaw padded out with Bluestar and Redtail in tow. When they all gathered their prey, Tiger-roar led them back to camp.

Icepaw was proud to drop his kills in the kill pile. It was alot and he was glad that he got an even score with Sandpaw who he could tell was silently cursing him.

Icepaw padded into the nursery, the smell of milk filling his nostrils. He was told he should bring his kills to them, any excuse to visit.

He spotted Frostbite laying on her back with her kits asleep at her belly. He neared slowly getting a good look at them: Lichen was closest to her mother's plump belly while Bracken was more nestled in her tail.

Icepaw felt a sharp pain in his tail he whipped the upper apart of his body around to see Swift and Lynx thinking his tail is a chew toy.

"Oh Icepaw I'm sorry" he heard Goldenflower mew quickly pulling her kits away from his aching tail.

"It's fine kits will be kits-" he said cheerful only for it to be cut off as he let out a mild yowl feeling teeth fasten into his tail. He turned his head to see Cinder was awake "Why?" he said meekly "Is my tail that fun to play with?"

Cinder didn't answer only biting into his tail harder making Icepaw girt his teeth. "Cinder, let him go" Goldenflower said quickly but the kit seemed to ignore her

Mossthorn opened one of their blue eyes and saw what was happening and quickly picked up Cinder "Say Sorry" the white and gray patched warrior said resting the dark gray kit at their paws

"Sorry Icepaw" Cinder rushing over and nuzzling his foreleg

He couldn't help but chuckle "It's fine Cinder" licking the top of her forehead.

Frostbite rolled her eyes as she saw her other kits were making their way over to Icepaw. He chuckled nervously "Did I do something?" he was getting surrounded by all the kits.

"They're just curious seeing a new face Graypaw and Cranepaw were the same when Darkstripe visited the first time" Willowpelt mewed as she entered the den with Brindleface following.

"Kits are curious" Swanlight added, her tail wrapped around her kittens. "How was your assessment?"

"Alright though my eyes and ears decided to f-" Icepaw suddenly remembered he was around kits and not his foul-mouthed peers "mess with me and it messed up some of my hunts but Tiger-roar thinks I did and good and that's what matters"

"Good save" Goldenflower said slyly

Icepaw chuckled as Bracken fell into his paws, red orbs meeting amber.

"They sure do like you" Willowpelt purred

"I guess so I'm surprised they do" Icepaw honestly

"Well the fact their mothers approve helps" Goldenflower said nonchalantly

Lynxkit playful swiped at his ears and Sun and Claw found a good spot on his back to rest on while Cinder and Bracken curled around his paws.

"I guess I'm not going any where" Icepaw sighed

"Is it always this hectic in here?" Featherstone mewed, his voice slightly slurred as he poked his head in

Goldenflower nodded and motioned for Featherstone to sit "What brings you here?" she mouthed

Spottedwing appeared beside him, a white and gray kitten in her mouth.

"You finally kitted" Goldenflower mewed, she motioned for the tortie to rest in nearby nest who obeyed the head royal.

Featherstone nudged two kits forward, on was a black and white kit and the other was black with some white spotting

"Patchpelt?" Sweetheart mouthed with a roll of her eyes

Featherstone nodded though he pointed to the white and gray kit "Need milk"

"Give them" Sweetheart chuckled "I'll nurse them"

/

As was the usual now, he was carried to the gathering but by Tiger-roar. He held him in a way where he couldn't see straight ahead which he was thankful for. He needed to get his senses together. When they got to the opening to the clearing, Tiger-roar set him down surprisingly gently.

"You know who to find if your episodes start up" the tabby stated

Icepaw nodded "Does that include you?"

Tiger-roar nodded slowly "Of course, you're my apprentice"

"Come on, River Colony's here already" Emberpaw called

Icepaw looked up, Stormstar sat on the far west side of the rock, his face looked grim. He did wonder how it got his jaw like that. He could ask Bluestar since she seemed to know him well as well as Oakjaw.

Dappletail, White-eye and Smallwhisker headed straight off toward a group of elderly cats who were settling themselves below one of the oak trees. Leopardstorm and Lionheart strolled over to another pair of warriors whom Icepaw didn't know. He figured by their scent they were River Colony. He spotted Rosetail taking the spot with Oakjaw since Cricket-throat stayed back at camp due to an injury. 

"Hey Icepaw" He was glad to recognize the voice of White. He had a tooth in his ear.

"Hey White" he replied, he felt Sandpaw sit beside him offering her shoulder for him to lean on. "How's it going in Shadow Colony?"

White sighed "It's going" he perked up slightly "I got my warrior name, it's Whitethroat"

Icepaw smiled "That's great, where's Badger?"

"I'm here Badger mewed padding over, he bore claw mark over his throat and chest "I got my warrior name too Icepaw, it's Badgerfang"

"Congrats" Icepaw mewed "After your fangs"

Badgerfang nodded "Common suffix of Shadow Colony, I share it with Scorchfang, Blazefang, Flintfang, and I guess Appletooth"

"Yeah yeah" Wet padded over with a smirk on his face "I'm guessing you Thunders have been chasing squirrels all day" he sneered while Little shrieked, hiding underneath Badgerfang.

Icepaw wanted to spit but Sandpaw did it for him as she rushed beside him. "I'm guessing you were chasing frogs or eating crowfood all day"

That last part seemed to hit the Shadow cats harder than Icepaw thought. They thought they were being subtle but their body motions gave it away or at least to Icepaw, twitching ears and flicking tails. Being around Scourge and Brick taught him to focus on everything.

"Sick burn Sandpaw" Silverpaw purred coming up on Icepaw's left side. Rubbing herself against him.

A yowl made them snap their heads forward, it had been from Bluestar. Brokenmoon looked smug about something while Storm-moon seemed to be confused "While Wind Colony isn't here let's not waste moonlight and start this Brokenmoon you said you wanted to speak"

Bluestar stood back and let the dark tabby talk. "We all know that the hard time that leaf-bare brings, and late newleaf has left us with little prey in our hunting grounds"

Icepaw noticed White dug his claws in while Badgerfang looked emotionless.

"But" the Shadow Colony leader continued "we also know that Wind Colony, Thunder Colony, and River Colony lost many kits in the freezing weather that came so late this season, Shadow Colony however lost no kits"

Icepaw didn't know if he could trust those words, he was slightly unnerved with Brokenmoon and how his clan functioned but Icepaw became more unnerved when he saw a dark brown tabby molly near Brokenmoon, she had stars in her pelt and a scar lined her throat.

'What the? Raggedmoon?' He noticed the old leader was glaring daggers at her son. 'She's probably mad about what he's doing with Shadow Colony now' he thought

"We are hardened to the cold north wind. Our kits while small are stronger than yours from the moment they are born. And we find ourselves with many mouths to feed, and too little prey to feed them"

"or you not feeding some of your clanmates" Icepaw recognized Blazefang's voice

Icepaw stared at the starry form of the old Shadow Colony leader 'Vile traitor' Raggedmoon hissed

'Traitor?' Icepaw thought cocking his head to the side a little

The crowd of cats were silent, listening anxiously.

"The needs of Shadow Colony are simple. In order to survive and thrive we must increase our hunting territory. That is why I must insist that you allow Shadow Colony warriors to hunt in your territories"

A shocked but muted growl rippled through the crowd.

"S..SHARE our hunting grounds?!" the outraged voice of Tiger-roar ripped through the clearing, his voice loud and full of rage.

"You've got bees in your brain if you think Thunder Colony will share" Burrclaw added, his green eyes narrowing and his teeth bared.

"It is unprecedented" cried Greenflower "The colonies have never shared hunting rights!"

"Should Shadow Colony be punished because our kits thrive?" Brokenmoon yowled from the Great Rock, his kinked tail lashing "Do you wish to watch our cats starve? You must share your hunting grounds"

"Must?" Smallwhisker spat with disgust

"Must" Brokenmoon repeated "Wind Colony failed to understand, look what happened to them"

"Are you saying you drove them out?" Stonefur snarled with horror

"That and more" Mudfoot sneered back

Snarls of outrage burst through the crowd at Brokenmoon's words. Icepaw stared at the Shadow Colony cats, his fluffing up with horror as he backed away "How could you guys just drive out a whole colony?"

"They were weak" Whitepaw growled, claws unsheathed "The strong die and the weak perish, learn that well Icepaw"

Icepaw, Sandpaw, and Silverpaw all shared a look, something's going on.

"And if we have to we will drive you out of your territories in order to feed our cats" Brokenmoon warned

Silence fell.

"I don't ask for your answers now" Brokenmoon said breaking the silence, his voice calm "But you must bear in mind: would you rather share your hunting grounds or face the same fate as Wind Colony?"

Cats looked at each other in disbelief but it was broken as Storm-moon stepped forward, his head hung low "I have already allowed Shadow Colony rights to our river"

The River Colony cats yowled with rage and humiliation as soon as those words came out of the gray tabby's mouth.

"How could you Storm-moon!” Blackclaw hissed

"Without consulting us?" Echomist mewed in disbelief "Against the codes of River Colony!"

"How could my father do this!" Silverpaw hissed lowly, claws digging into the ground

"I wish not to shed blood when there is plenty of fish in the river to eat" Storm-moon mewed "River Colony has no need for death when the river can provide"

It seemed Silverpaw caught on to her father's words, Icepaw hoped the rest of her clanmates did too "Seems your fine for now" Icepaw muttered making Silverpaw slightly smile with joy

"But what of Thunder Colony?" Smallwhisker hissed "Bluestar, have you too gave in to this outrageous demand?"

"Don't tell me you've cracked like Goosefeather did" White-eye added

Bluestar held her head high glaring at Brokenmoon "I will give my choice to you now Brokenmoon, and it's a no"

Thunder Colony cheered at Bluestar's words.

Brokenmoon hissed while Storm-moon stood off looking away, perhaps in shame.

"You'll regret that Bluestar" Brokenmoon promised staring down Bluestar, teeth bared.

"We'll see" Bluestar replied her gaze never leaving Brokenmoon's, Icepaw could tell the tension was rising.

"I also have another announcement for the sake if your kits" Icepaw saw cats snap their heads to look at Brokenmoon as soon as he said kits

"A former Shadow Colony cat turned rouge. I exiled them, but we don't know where they are now. They're a mangy old thing, but they have the bite of Tiger Colony it self"

Icepaw's fur bristled. He's talking about Yellowfang.

"They are dangerous. I warn you don't offer shelter to them and" he paused "Until they are caught and killed, I suggest you keep a close eye on your kits"

Icepaw knew that the Thunder Colony cats thought of Yellowfang. Brokenmoon led his cats away in a rush.

White and Badgerfang glanced at him then followed their clan with Wet and Little close behind.

Icepaw could hear his clanmates hiss about Yellowfang.

"It has to be her" Smallwhisker growled

"She did snap at Lynx the other day" Dappletail muttered

Icepaw rushed away not looking to see if anyone saw him leave.

I have to get back to camp and warn Yellowfang

[01010010-posts]

— our love is a starred staircase; i jump two steps at time but you can only go one by one.

i. → becoming human. “and this is hen.” “mhh, very interesting.” “.... i hate you.” he unwillingly cracks up, slightly turning to the other side because, honestly, he’s not that bastard (maybe) “sorry–” he bites his lips, not wanting to be exposed, gosh, he really is such a bastard “it’s just that– well, how do i put it.... learning a new language from scratch, without any download, it actually is difficult.” there is it again, that devilish sneer “i swear to god, love” “okay, okay. i’ll say it. but please don’t be mad. it’s your handwriting. it’s hard to read. it’s so ugly you could be a doctor.” he’s doing his best, he vows, but since being deviant his sense of humour has highly been affected. you lose no time in emerging onto his jolly demeanor and begin smacking him “you’re not being fair! ouch– please! you promised to not get angry!” he refuges his hair behind his knuckles, while still enjoying taunting you “i’ve spent the past hour memorizing things with you and that’s how you repay me! and i didn’t promise that!” he lets you tease him for too little, and without even realizing it you’re in his grasp, frozen, sweetly pouting, a mouth that he kisses “you’re right, here’s your reward, teacher.” “did you at least learn something?” “ohh, yes, a wonderful lot. i learnt how to kiss you here, here, and here.” and saying that he follows his preaching, teaching you where he adores to leave lovebites. ii. → pieces of you between the pages. it’s not his fault. sometimes night shifts happen. but he hates them abysmally. why? because, as much as he gets bored when you’re sleeping, he can’t help but worship those endless hours he has available, basking in the lone presence of your body, recording each minute thing, with such limited time on this earth, then, he.... but tonight is a little different. he phoned you for a while (you had to force him to hang up), assured that you finished eating at a normal pace, didn’t steal too many snacks from the cupboard, watched something nice and got to bed at a reasonable hour. yes. he’s not your mom but he likes to remind you that his way of loving is varied. of course, soft words and i love yous and invisible smooching were not absent at the roll-call. he’s not only your mom after all. ahh, almost forgot. this is just routine. the deviant thing tonight is: a book. your book. your favourite book. you probably forgot it in his bag. but it’s not very important right now. he picks it up, the spine slightly visible from the black fabric incorporating it. it’s an ordinary book. he sits, and since he’s kinda alone, nobody prevents him from propping his long legs on his desk, relaxing in his leather ergonomic chair. reading a bit won’t hurt. the content, the plot, it’s not really important. what he’s actually reading is: your underlined parts. you normally don’t do that, you said one time. it ruins the paper, you said. yet in this one, this one, so important to you, you used graphite pencil to emphasize. mostly, about love. iii. → doing nothing. “i won’t stand for this!” he huffs in a bit of what appears to be the middle of an angry and annoyed tone. his arms hurriedly coming into a fold around his chest, he doesn’t really know how to react. you try to hide your benevolent smirk, an android this cute shouldn’t exist “why? you’re already doing it.” “that’s– that’s because it was your turn to choose what we should be doing this evening.” “so you’re peacefully protesting?” you urge him, now holding back snorting is almost impossible “.... kinda.” and at this point you’re nearly choking on your own laugh “you’re making fun of me?!” he finishes his retort and darts, indignant, sitting upright on the couch. so so so sorry but you have to cover your face with your digits and turn towards the other side because, honestly, you’re not that bastard as to burst into laughter in front of him (maybe) “gosh– it’s– it’s– pfft– i apologize i’m– ahahAHAHA NO PLEASE NO!” while you were, indeed, mocking him you lowered your guard and him, a weapon, took that as his advantage “PLEASE BABY” “ohh, we’re begging before i even get serious? my my, you’re quite weak.” his fingers carefully threading between your ribs, stroking your skin in a delicate manoeuvring until he’s satisfied with his revenge “you’re terrible.” he grins, both short of breath from being such imbeciles “i am.” he gently lowers down your crouched shape, half on the sofa the rest on the floor, and kisses your reluctant cheek “what’s the plan, then?” “don’t think i’ve changed my mind. i don’t want to do anything. i want to continue until i reach absolute zero.” iv. → your things // your place. he doesn’t need to shower, nor to bathe, and if he indulges in those activities it’s just to bond, he assures you. but suddenly it’s not so credible when you, wanting to surprise him, come back to your place without telling, sneakily unlock the threshold and tiptoe to search for him to no avail. you’re about to open your mouth and shout, to see some sort of shocked reaction, maybe a jump from the scare, but he’s not in the living room. and not in the compact kitchen. and not in the bedroom either. then, where could he be? you silently ponder, a tap of your shoe asking if he left to go shopping. but you know, the fridge is not that empty. could he be....? without letting out a sound you enter the bathroom, certainly not expecting the sight that presents to you. a single curtain separating you from his shadow. of course, you can’t resist the call. with a swift movement you pull the nylon and expose him, who can’t help but nervously shriek in distress “ah! what the fuck!” you cackle “surprise!” he sighs, exasperated by your childish behaviour, and turns off the water “is that my.... body wash?” your attention shifts rapidly, taking in the image of his fully naked anatomy but pointing an index at his palms “what–” he halts mid-sentence, his cyan eyes darting to his fingers “oh, well, huh–” “you’re using my body wash.” “i can explain.” “you always say you’re too upgraded for bubbles.” “.... my phrasing is not exactly that however i was just– curious.” “to try my body wash.” “yes. to try your pink velvet sunflower body wash.” “wait. how do you know the exact name. suspicious.” if his forehead wasn’t already shimmering from the droplets of your interruption he would be drenched in cold sweat “.... i analyzed it.” “you fucking ate shower gel.” “in my defense–” v. → what do you do when you’re happy. he longs for moments like these. for when you both come home, him entangling his arms around your waist as soon as the door closes, leaving a trail of tiny pecks from your shoulder to your lobe, slow as a snail, savouring each millimeter of skin, each little relaxed spasm your muscles have, each complaint you attempt to address to his figure, each tender giggle escapes your mouth. he longs for moments like these. the same as when your shared friends send a text at the last minute, asking if it’s okay to come over and then maybe go somewhere, drinking or eating doesn’t really matter, it’s just to be together. and you sweetly smile, a bit tired after work, but still willing to say ‘yes’, serene in the comfort of not even having the need to change into fancy clothes, only bustling with secret excitement, waiting to be in stitches in the back of a non-automatic car. he longs for moments like these. as that time you both got a couple days off and decided to spend them in a countryside house, clutched by vines of different species: virginia creeper, common ivy and climbing magenta roses. and as soon as the door closed you rushed, gliding on the worn burnt sienna cotto tiles, up the old rusty stone stairs, reached the top and opened the small cabin, only occupied by a toilet and a small painting (‘in bed’ by federico zandomeneghi. a girl with long auburn hair, facing a floral wallpaper, resting in a tranquil atmosphere while stretched out in her bed under light blue covers.). you promptly proceeded to push the wood window frame, letting light invade the whole space. he was right beside you as your head stuck out, inhaling the fresh air and remaining speechless in front of the sun, the sky, the clouds, the as much red roofs interspersed with yellow lichens and green moss, the rest of the panorama composed by infinite sweeps of earthy fields. he longs for moments like these. vi. → our things // our place. “don’t forget to brush your teeth.” he whispers from behind you, his face reflected on the mirror in which you’re admiring yourself in search of some imperfections. you absentmindedly chuckle “i know” your eyes fixated low, watching the drain of the pale china sink. logically, the most convenient way of getting the toothpaste to exit the tube, is to squeeze from the end and let it come out on its own. of course, he noticed, you don’t do that. you, as if reading his mind while he’s standing close, watching and mimicking a human nightly routine, do the complete opposite of what he’s thinking, pressing your thumb at the very start of the mixed aluminium-and-plastic bottle you’re holding. a tiny bubble forms where the cap should be and you hint a smile. infos bothering his vision at the corner of his irises: it’s some internet articles about teeth blackening, mostly persistent in asia. it’s somewhat fascinating to him, or at least, it’s different from the constant obsession with lightening. he wonders what you would think about it. he wonders if you even know about it. white gel slowly fills your tongue and coats the ends of your lips. you’re kinda messy, he admits, but finds it utterly adorable nevertheless. vii. → dying human. your hand. your hand is what kept him alive for so long. because, despite his appearance, he’s as old as an adult can be at this time of your life. your life. two parallels tracks that never meet, going their way, wanting to touch but never able to. you, growing old. him, growing and nothing more. because he can’t be old, can’t he. he will never be old. he must be about.... no, that’s stupid. no hypothesis could change anything. it doesn’t matter which numbers he should have in his ID – not that androids have any in the first place –, what matters is the inequity of your age “you’re always beautiful” you murmur “mh? look who’s talking” the end of your mouth curls up in a childish smile, wrinkles adorning all of your features “flatterer. i could be one of your grandparents for all you know” he gives you a lazy expression, lids half closed, nevertheless content, a bittersweet happiness. he takes your right hand in his and draws it near his cheek “it’s rough, c’mon” you’re a bit ashamed but he lets the warm rays of sunshine glimmer onto him, eyes slowly leaving space to complete relaxation “no, it’s tender, don’t worry, just as you.”

[lighthouseroleplay]

WILLIAM ‘WILL’ HARRIS BURKE

                          ( 22 ,  cis male, he/him )

♪♫ currently listening  ⧸⧸  drunk drivers / killer whales by carseat headrest

the graffiti-covered seat at the back of the class, sunglasses in every shade of the rainbow, band-aid covered knees. juggling baseballs with a careless ease, strawberries eaten by the handful, a laugh that ends in a snort. the teacher’s rolling eyes, joints tucked in a back pocket. phone calls that go late into the night, fresh flowers on a gravestone. always a scent of pine, a scrawled letter, stacks of books threatening to collapse at any moment.

    •  hadfield was the first neighbour you had in tenebrin who wasn’t a thousand year old angry man, and you appreciated that. you were determined to befriend them, and the fact that you were in the same grade made it even better. they were so new, so different from so many people who lived in tenebrin, people you’d grown up with, known since kindergarden. the familiarity was nice, sure, but this interesting new person got on very well with you, even if it was weird that your moms dated for a little bit. screw weirdness, you had a new friend, and you had a great time every day on the walk to/from school.

    •  lind-carter was someone you met for the first time in junior year, this tiny, insistent freshman, intent on going on the honors biology trip as if it would change her life. it made you laugh, originally, but on the trip, you became friends. you didn’t really know anyone in your bio class, and something about her intensity made you curious. it was a good choice, speaking retrospectively, because her whatever — you called it ‘bossiness’, she made rude gestures back at you — balanced out your indecision, your tendency towards laziness perfectly. she pushed you towards actually going to university, when your own mother couldn’t do that, and leaving her behind hurt you more than most things did.

taken by alexandra  ⧸⧸  joe keery .

i thought the earth remembered me, she took me back so tenderly, arranging her dark skirts, her pockets full of lichens and seeds.

William Burke was born on a rainy May morning, first baby-howls echoing through the hospital room, loud enough to rival the fat water droplets spattering against the window, and the dawn’s first light hidden between dark clouds. His father cried, as did his sister, though his mother was far too exhausted to join in, and all in all, it was a rather damp day.

He was a baby who had always been wanted, like his sister before him, with parents who had always wanted a pair to call their own. Jonathan Burke grew up in Tenebrin Port, but had little interest in staying there: which, as it turned out, was a rather good thing, as it was while working as a library assistant at UC Berkeley that he met Mary Slater, English literature PhD candidate with a love of King Arthur lore. They fell in love rapidly and deeply, buying an apartment together in San Francisco and planning a life together in that fog-filled, colourful city. Their first child was born there, named for the Guinevere of the stories her mother buried herself in while pregnant. She was delivered just after her mother finished her thesis, and they were, in the end, celebrated with equal enthusiasm and joy. They married soon after, and while many members of the Slater family were present, only a few of the Burkes did.

Mary was offered a position at Whitman College, assistant professor of English Literature, and she moved there, as did Jon and their child, where he embraced fatherhood with enthusiasm. He had no doubts in his mind at the concept of staying home and taking care of Gwen while Mary worked, and when she could support the family thus — why not?

Four years later, she became pregnant again, this time with a boy, and William Burke came angrily screaming into the world, completing their family of four perfectly.

    i slept as never before, a stone on the river bed, nothing between me and the white fire of the stars but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths among the branches of the perfect trees.

The family moved to Tenebrin when Will was only three, drawn more by responsibility than anything else, an illness in Jon’s family leaving his mother frail, and in need of her son nearby. Mary began research on a new book, surrounding the role of Uther in Arthur mythology. Will and Gwen were raised by their parents, yes, but also by their grandmother, a severe woman, strict about everything but more than a little willing to tell her grandchildren stories about Tenebrin — after all, she could do little else, stuck in bed as she was. More than one night, the pair would sleep with dream wreathed in swirling water, crashing waves upon a shoreline echoing in their mind. She wove a good story, and it was oh so easy for the children to find their way into the web, to the chagrin of parents who would so much rather their children didn’t have the screaming nightmares these stories inspired.

Though Will’s grandmother eventually died, four years later, her stories had an impact on him: while Gwen was made of stronger stuff, he grew terrified of water deeper than a bathtub, resisting the swimming lessons at the community centre to the point where even bribes of toys and post-swimming ice cream trips had little effect. He just wouldn’t do it, and so while his sister spent summers advancing up the rungs of the Red Cross Swimming levels, he was to spend his days at the outdoor camps, hiking and camping in the forest that surrounded the town, learning bear tracks and how to start fires and how to keep them from spreading. That he took to, spectacularly so, finding a love of the woods to match his fear of water. 

He threw himself into this love wholeheartedly, looking forward to summers spent in the Olympic National Forest, always begging his parents to let him climb trees. Will was up one such tree in the backyard of his house, all of nine without even the slightest fear of heights, on one of fall’s rare rainless days, when a police car pulled in, with two officers exiting the car to knock on the front door. Will was scared then, for a brief moment, freezing with the knowledge that this wasn’t normal, that maybe he was in trouble somehow, that something was wrong. He didn’t hear the discussion that took place inside the house, but when his mother emerged with the two officers, the group walking towards him, he knew he was right to worry. Her face streamed with tears, and Will scrambled down the tree, erring in a way he rarely did, and falling to the ground.

In the end: that was that. He broke his arm, and his father was dead, in terrible fluke of a car accident, on such a perfect day, no less. There was no one to blame but the cruelty of fate, and suddenly Will’s mother, an outsider to the strange, small town, was alone without her strongest link to it.

all night I heard the small kingdoms breathing around me, the insects, and the birds who do their work in the darkness.

Will Burke was not one for grief. It passed like it came, and though he’d make his way to the Tenebrin graveyard twice a month, a plaid-clad pilgrim carefully balancing flowers in the basket of his bike, and although he would always hold the memories of his father close to his heart, the pain left him. The first year, his grin was a little too wide, his laugh a little too loud, and if he disrupted the class with comedic antics one too many times, well, who could blame him. No child should lose a parent that young.

But it did pass, with time, and Will found himself settling comfortably into the role of class clown that he’d first taken on to hide his grief. It was so easy to make people laugh, and the grins on his classmates’ faces made all the punishments worth it -- especially when he managed to avoid those too! Let it never be said that he wasn’t smart: he just didn’t apply himself, said year after year at parent-teacher conferences. When he did try, though, he succeeded, and like his mother, Will found he excelled at English, though struggling more than a little with the more complex problems in Math. Biology didn’t come easily either, but he knew that to work in the forests he loved in a meaningful way, he’d have to work hard, and he did, pushing himself to seek out teachers after class, doing extra research online… It was perhaps the thing he worked hardest on, even if he didn’t know what path his life would take.

That was the problem, though: it all felt so theoretical, the idea of graduating, university, of getting a job. Being young was so easy, so peaceful, and Will didn’t want to trade away the crystalline memories of juggling strawberries in the cafeteria to generous applause, or late nights spent watching movies with his friends, for hard work and stress that seemed to come so naturally. Perhaps his mother had read him a little too much Peter Pan as a child, perhaps he’d simply observed her too well, but the result was the same. The effort was there, to do well, to succeed in school, but beyond that: it was easy to slip under the radar, especially with Gwen at a nearby university, and his mother increasingly busy, and easy to avoid planning and applications in favour of things that brought him more joy. Lind-Carter talked him out of that, in the end, forcing him to make plans for a future that was rapidly growing nearer, and while he frowned profusely at her at the time, somewhere in the back of his mind he was grateful.

all night i rose and fell, as if in water, grappling with a luminous doom.

He was one month graduated, the coastal chill of spring starting to burn off into summer’s warmth, Independence Day festivities past, looking ahead to university, to something different than the mundane existence he’d always known to be true in Tenebrin.

Will was just waking up when he got a text from Lind-Carter, brain fuzzy from sleep that had gone on a little too longer than it should, but hey, it was the summer! It was that first text that would always stand in his mind more than anything else, that concern, so immediate, pulling him sharply into the world. He’d biked over quickly, and it was all a whirlwind of memories after that, so fragmented and confused that he was never sure which was the memory and which was the dream. The water, Andy’s face as she leapt into it, the determination, and a haunting song that seemed pulled from his grandmother’s stories.

He made his appearance at the funeral, dressed in black alongside Gwen and his mother, shoulders down, eyes bleak, distant. He barely acknowledged the coffin as it was lowered into the grave, placing the flowers he’d brought next to the stone with vacant eyes. The next day, he fled to the woods.

by morning i had vanished at least a dozen times into something better.

He went north, in the end, fleeing Tenebrin and the loss that crushed him like so many falling rocks. It hurt too much to bear, and Will was grateful in a way he hadn’t ever been before that he’d decided to go to school so far away. It went smoothly, though he was reticent to make friends in a way he never had been before: it seemed easier to go without. He still laughed, partied, had fun, but it was all a little hollow inside. Some days he felt as though Andy’s death had affected him more than his own father’s: a fleeting, guilty idea, but one that was more than a little true. Maybe it was because he’d witnessed it, maybe it was because she was his age, but it had all felt so wrong in a way that stuck with him. Coming back to Tenebrin after graduating university felt like a homecoming, but it also felt like a resolution. He would use the summer to repair this odd, broken feeling inside of him, so he could leave again whole, and begin his new job in the fall with a clean heart. The trees had always felt like home to him, but perhaps the water would cleanse what they didn’t seem to be able to purify.

[feywildatheart]

Nenîth,

Oh gods, I haven't written you in days. I thought there was time, that nothing was going to send anyway until we got back to Haewood, at least, and so I had time to sort out my thoughts, and then-- well, this is what comes of praying, I suppose. But I didn't pray for this.

I should back up. We made it down onto the next level of the ruins, and we met a ghost named Ornelien Vedri who has been dead since before this place turned into ruins, and who took up residence in the library because there's an observatory there that he particularly likes. He has maps, too, and he let me look at them and take pictures of them with my LICD, and he gave us what information he could about this place, though he seems not to venture out from the library at all, so there wasn't much he could tell us about what's happened to this place in the last couple millennia. He seemed very distressed by the prospect when I asked if he'd seen any trolls or goblins or other such creatures passing through, and I felt a little bad for alarming him. Though he then proceeded to tell us about a secret door that led to a hidden room with a wardrobe, and a mimic, and I got my hand stuck to the thing for the whole of the fight that ensued. I think I believe him, that he didn't know that thing was in there, but I did feel a little less guilty, after that.

We found another ghost, too, a young woman who turns out to be the granddaughter of the sorceress who'd lived her before, and who seemed to be much more free-ranging than Vedri, and was able to tell us a bit more about the place and the sorceress -- and the goblins, a whole community of them apparently, several hundred strong, and not an army like Elyn had been calling it, and we were none of us too fond of the idea of killing non-combatants. Nor of facing down hundreds of them, either, so Elyn cast Tongues and we went to the door behind which we'd been told the community was living, and we... knocked. I had my head in my hands the entire time, but it worked out as well as we might have hoped.

The goblins seemed as bewildered by our actions as we were ourselves, honestly, and took us to meet their leader, a hobgoblin named Glel who spoke Common, thankfully, and who didn't seem keen on inviting violence down upon their community. And who also was surprisingly willing to forgive the scouting party we'd encountered and killed on the level above. They said that the scouting party probably would have done the same to us if we'd given them the chance, and agreed to let bygones be bygones, and then agreed to let the archaeologists come and do their studying in peace, in exchange for the three of us venturing into some of the tunnels that they'd blocked off, where they'd come from, and taking care of some creature within that had been killing them, and had been a large part of their incentive for moving into the ruins in the first place.

They couldn't tell us much about the creature, since everyone who ventured into those tunnels they never saw again, but we were all of us, I think, glad to do this in exchange for peace, and so we were kindly shown through the areas of the ruins that the goblins had taken for their own, so that I could add those rooms to the map of the place that I've been making for the archaeologists, and then past a series of locked doors into deeper areas of the ruins. We found a room that had been overgrown with flowering plants, and the sight of all those growing things down here underground, when we'd seen nothing but stone for days, nearly knocked the breath right out of me. There was another with vegetables left to grow wild and unkempt, and another, vast chamber that was practically covered with green, with shrubs and climbing vines and lichens everywhere one might look. Walking into there felt like a breath of air when I hadn't even realized I'd been drowning.

We continued on, through a corridor that had nearly entirely collapsed, though there was a long stretch of a small, tight space that we were able to squeeze ourselves through, with varying degrees of success. Cloudleaper and Elyn had a little more trouble than I did, and poor Squirt made it halfway through before he got stuck, but he blinked right to me when I told him too and saved us having to try to drag stones and rubble around to widen the way.

We all decided to rest there and catch our breath, after that, and Elyn and Cloudleaper pulled out their LICDs to write letters -- well, I assume Elyn was at least, it's anyone's guess what Cloudleaper was up to. And... I took mine out and I meant to write to you both, I did. I tried, but no words would come, and I just felt so tired and so worn down by everything. Before, when Elyn had been negotiating terms with the goblins, they'd agreed to take us to Glel so long as no one touched their weapons, and I said I wouldn't so long as no one laid a hand on anyone in our party, or Squirt, and... and Cloudleaper snapped at me that Squirt was a member of our party, obviously, and I should get with the program, and oh, nenîth, it was so unexpected and so patronizing and so incredibly, unbelievably tone deaf that I snapped something in reply that I shouldn't have, and it ate at me for all the rest of the morning. So I tried to write to you, I really did, but when I opened my LICD to start it, the only thing that I could coax out was a message to Pika instead.

She told me, when she first suggested that Cloudleaper join Elyn and me, to teach her how to be better with people, and if the weeks we've spent traveling with her have taught me anything, it's that I don't have the first idea how to do that. I'm still trying to learn how to be better with people, how am I supposed to teach someone something I barely even know myself? How am I supposed to teach someone who doesn't even respect me enough to be truthful with me? She's always lying, about the stupidest of things, about having seen trees or had coffee, and she thinks it's a great joke when I'm stupid enough to take her at her word, and-- why would she bother listening to me long enough to hear anything I had to say, when she's so obvious about how she feels about me?

I don't really expect either of you to have any answers for me. I'm sorry. I don't really expect Pika to, either, but it helped a little to write it down, to pull all those worries and doubts out of my chest and put them down on the screen. Well. A very little.

I was still tired and still run down and I still couldn't figure out how to start a letter to you both, and the longer I thought about just sitting there struggling to write to you while Elyn and Cloudleaper caught their breath, the more I kind of wanted to just start tearing at my hear in frustration. So I got up to my feet before I could really think about it, and I told the others I'd be back soon, and I told Squirt to take care of them, and I wriggled back through the collapsed hallway, back to the big room all filled with overgrown plants, where at least I didn't feel like I was suffocating under all this stone, and I found a little spot that I could clear away without disturbing the plants too much, and I knelt with my incense and my burner and I lit it and when the pine scent of it had filled my lungs I sent my magic out through the stone, into all the plants for as far as my magic would reach, and I coaxed them up thicker and fuller around me, and I... prayed. Poorly, I think, but I did it, and I think he heard me? When I was done, the air around me all of the sudden smelled like the Feywild does, in its deepest, thickest places, and it felt so much like home that it brought tears to my eyes. And when I wiped the tears away and opened them, all the plants around me had grown even more, dense and lush and green, and there were these lovely pink flowers climbing toward the driftglobes that hadn't been there before, that hadn't even been buds before.

I didn't know what it meant. I still don't, really, but it felt like I had been heard, and that's something, isn't it? I stayed a while longer, until the scent of the Feywild in my lungs had stopped feeling new, and then I went back and rejoined the others, and when I got there all at once there were wires sparking from the walls that I swear hadn't been there before I'd left, and there was LICD signal, and all those letters that I hadn't expected to send until we'd returned to Haewood took advantage of it and sent themselves out, and so if you feel like yelling at me over how much getting those letters and then none following them must have scared you, then you can yell at Cernunnos instead, because it's his fault.

Maybe don't, though. Cloudleaper was none too pleased by her letters going out unexpectedly, and started yelling, and I said that I was pretty sure it was my god who'd done it and maybe she shouldn't yell at him. I've only just started trying to doing this properly, I don't know that I've earned myself enough favor for him to forgive one of my companions swearing at him.

We continued on after that, because there seemed little else to do about the LICD situation, and we still had a promise to keep to Glel and the goblins. Elyn and I debated a little about using Pass Without Trace on us -- we were both, I think, justifiably cautious about the prospect of blundering heedlessly across whatever horrible thing it is that's been killing the goblins, but I can only cast it so many times a day before I'm exhausted, and we hadn't any idea how long we might need to travel to find this thing. We decided, in the end, to cast it once, and when the spell ended after an hour, to reassess then whether we should cast it again, or keep traveling a while first, if it seemed like it was likely to be a long walk.

I kept an eye out, while we traveled, for tracks that seemed like they might belong to the creature we were looking for, and some ways in, when the halls had given way to tunnels proper, found some scuttling tracks that I followed to a small cavern with a pool of water and two horrible lobster-looking creatures with tentacles for mouths.

Elyn had cast Greater Invisibility on me while I followed the tracks, and then Messaged me to see what I'd found and how we ought to proceed, which is a plan that would have worked a treat if the things hadn't apparently been able to sense the spell. The moment I responded to her, they whipped around toward me, and it was all I could do to quickly let Elyn know that I'd been noticed before we were fighting.

It was a quick enough fight, in the end, and really only Squirt got hurt, and only a little bit. Elyn healed him right up, and we quickly decided that we didn't think those things could be what had been killing the goblins. They'd have been a tougher fight for a goblin than for us, to be sure, but we didn't think it likely that they'd have been so devastating that not a single one would have ever managed to escape and return.

So we continued on our way, and eventually came to a split in the tunnel. I looked for tracks there, too, and didn't find any worth noting, but it seemed as though down one side of the tunnel, I could hear a bit of wind blowing. I wondered if that didn't mean that it was going to lead us back up to the surface of the mountain, but we decided that at least if it did, that meant that we would likely discover we'd taken the wrong route quickly enough, and could turn around and go down the other tunnel without having lost too much time. So we started down that direction together, and almost immediately walked straight into a face full of poisoned breath from a dragon. A dragon, nenîth, and we just wandered blindly into its cave, even with Pass Without Trace over all of us.

It hurt all of us except Cloudleaper, who seemed to shrug the poison off without a care, though Elyn worst of all, and I was grateful that it's so difficult to poison halflings, or I'd have been hurting even more than I already was.

As soon as I was able to get proper air back in my lungs, instead of poison, I scrambled away from the mouth of the cave where we'd all been clustered, and shouted a reminder over my shoulder to remember the lessons we'd learned from Peninth'zarthan, under the sands of Rugira Prime, and to spread out from one another. We fought it, and Squirt took a bite that would have been followed by a swipe from the dragon's claws, if he hadn't been so quick to Blink away. But then he ran right back in again, even though he was looking in frightening shape, between that and the poison he'd taken with the rest of us.

Partway through the fight, the dragon took off and flew from the cavern, out into the tunnel and down the direction we'd been heading, and Squirt took off after it like a shot, and Elyn ran after him when he started barking. I had gotten myself up onto a ledge at the far end of the cavern, with a slide of rocks at my back that didn't seem to end at a cavern wall, and I took a gamble and climbed up it, to see if luck might be with us and it might be a shorter way of getting to where the dragon had fled to than losing time by running after Squirt when I was already so far away, and my legs can only carry me so far so fast.

It was tricky getting up the rock slide, but at its top I was able to see into another cavern, and I could hear Squirt barking from just beyond another pile of rocks at its other end, and there was another pool of water here, but no dragon that I could see. It didn't take too much of a leap to figure that the dragon must have tried to take cover in the pool, but the water was too dark for me to make out any glimpse of it within it. And there I was at the top of a pile of rocks some thirty feet high, which I knew would take too long to try to clamber down, and there was a pool there below me, deep enough at least to hide a dragon, and really, what else was I to do? I jumped.

Cloudleaper had scaled the rocks behind me in the instant while I stood there considering the inevitable, a far deal more gracefully than I had, and I heard a snatch of her shriek when I jumped before the waters closed over me. Squirt must have gotten over his pile of rocks, too, or Blinked over, and either seen or surmised what I'd done, because in a moment he was there with me, churning through the water, and I held my breath and swam down as far as I could manage, searching for any sign of the dragon or where it might have gone.

I found it just as Cloudleaper came plummeting down into the pool with me, a darker shadow within the already-dark waters that looked to be a tunnel of sorts, angling back in the direction of the other cavern, and the other pool, and I supposed it must connect the two. I pointed it out to Cloudleaper, then came up to the surface to tell Elyn, who had wisely not followed us into the water and was standing at the pool's edge, looking equal parts alarmed and exasperated. When I told her what I'd seen, and that it must have swum through the tunnel back to the other pool, Elyn took off running, just in time for the dragon to reveal that it had been hiding in that cavern instead, by hitting Cloudleaper and Squirt and me with another gust of its poison breath. I was glad that Elyn had missed it, at least, and Cloudleaper still seemed unbothered by it, and then it retreated over the rockslide to the other chamber.

I knew it'd take me ages to get back up over the rocks the way I'd come, so I dragged myself across to the other side of the pool and raced after Elyn, as fast as I could manage, and came upon her in the corridor just beyond the entrance to the first cavern, just in time for her to splinter its head with a well-placed Shatter. It was a bit of a gruesome scene, but I climbed up onto the ledge it had died on and carved away a good amount of meat for our deal with the gnolls, and pried out a few claws and scales, too, to add to the ones in my bag that I'd gathered from Peninth'zarthan.

It was an easy decision, to stay the night here in the dragon's cave. We made our camp on one of the ledges, so that we might be better protected in case anything wandered by in the night, and I felt bad enough about the worry I'd caused Elyn and Cloudleaper that I meant to take the first watch, but Cloudleaper insisted that, as she only needed a few hours of sleep a night, she'd take not just the first one, but the first two. She seemed in no mood to be argued with, so I relented, but insisted that I'd take the last so that Elyn could sleep undisturbed, and in short order, Elyn and Squirt and I were all asleep.

And then we were all being woken up by Cloudleaper, who must have been more tired than she'd let on, or whose attention must have wandered, because a handful of fire snakes had come upon us in the night. We were all of us, I think, immensely grumpy at being disturbed, and at having to wake and fight instead of sleep, and honestly, we just killed a dragon. Having to fight fire snakes in the middle of the night just felt like adding insult to injury.

I'm taking my turn watching now, while Cloudleaper finally gets some sleep and Elyn gets back to hers, and taking the opportunity to write to you while I can, before you get too alarmed by those last letters. Maybe Cernunnos will take pity on your poor hearts and see fit to let this letter go out, too, so you won't have to fret for too long before it reaches you. I did ask him to take care of you both, after all. But if he doesn't, and you don't get this until we're back in Haewood, I hope you'll forgive me for worrying you so. I did my best.

I think we'd all like to hope that this was the end of it, with the dragon, but neither Elyn nor Cloudleaper looked particularly sure of that, and I have my own doubts. The dragon was tucked away down this little side tunnel here, sheltered in a cave, and didn't attack us until we blundered into its home. I know we're stronger than the average goblin, but it's still hard to imagine that not a single scout would manage to survive or avoid the dragon and return back to the community to tell the tale. And Glel made it sound as though, whatever it was that was killing their people, it came up from below. So tomorrow I think we're going to keep making our way through the tunnels, and hopefully whatever it is that we find, we won't walk face-first into it like we did with the dragon and its breath. I'll let you know, either way.

All my love,

Maliah

[royal-writer]

A week of spring showers

Let people (especially ppl who identify masculine) be emotionally sensitive and vulnerable without being called ‘weak’ 2k19.

Taking to a knee, Amon delicately placed the full bouquet of flowers on the grass. Freshly trimmed from the garden, they still had a heavy fragrance that perfumed the air around him. The damp smell of the earth and grass, accompanied by the aroma of mildew and rain was even heavier however. Although the sky had stopped shedding rain upon the earth, an overcast still blotted out the early afternoon sunshine.

He inhaled nature’s wonders. Letting it fill his lungs, and then letting it go. The only thing he could let go.

His hand was steadier than he thought it would be as he placed it upon the cold stone. Leather separated him from the texture of it, but his fingers traced the inscription knowingly. It was a bit worn from touch; smoothed out more than the rest of the of large fragment. Nevertheless it was well-kept; routinely cleaned with a frequent vigil. Unlike so many headstones in the cemetery which had grown lichen and decayed, this one and its adjacent almost appeared freshly plotted.

The warmest smile moved over his lips, but it did not reach his eyes.

Thunder far in the distance came over the hills. A likely sign of more rain to come.

Lord Amon remained there, knelt for some time, until the first drizzles began to sprinkle the soil once more.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“M’lord, you’re saturated.”

He grinned at his wife’s fuss and doting as she grabbed at his drenched cloak, dragging it off of his shoulders. Her troubled eyes moved over him with concern, but she said nothing as she worked on stripping him of his layers. The nearest maids of the house stood idly by, accepting some of the items passed off to them that would require being wrung out and hung to dry or later washed.

With a slight turn of his head, he pressed a kiss against Essätha’s cheek as she gathered up some of his garments. Her eyes sparkled up at him. An irresistible smile on her face that brought out his own as he sank into the surrender of her eyes. She stood on the tips of her toes, kissed his nose, and moved down the nearby corridor of the foyer after the other lady’s with his wet clothes.

Dropping to one knee as he was left in only his button-up and slacks, Amon began to unlace his mud-caked boots. He could hear the pitter-patter of quick footsteps rushing across the floor as he loosened the first boot, and sat it carefully to the side.

“Daddy! You’re home!”

Quick as a snake, a tiny body flung itself against his chest. Oh but he was still fast. Before she could collide with him, he snatched upon the attacker and pulled them into a great big bear hug.

Hepsiba squealed with childish delight, burying herself against his chest. Her little fingers held to the front of his shirt while nuzzling her face into his collar. The bubbling, innocent laughter was a lovely melody, and a shot of warmth to his heart from the inside out. Better than even the hottest coffee.

Pulling the giggling child away from his chest, Amon scrutinized her dark, bouncy hair that fell over her face. The simple lilac dress she wore was splotched with wet marks now from having aggressively hugged to him; soaked through to the bone.

“You smell like Caesar after he’s been let out in the rain, daddy,” the little girl giggled, reaching up to paw at his face. “And you’re starting to look like Caesar too!”

“What are you saying? Do you think my beard’s getting too scruffy?” he mused, snatching upon his daughter to drag her back against him.

“Daddy, nooooo!”

Kicking and squirming, Hepsiba howled with laughter as he snuggled his face against her. She shoved at him playfully, and he’d retreat, only to do it again. He pressed his lips against her cheek, and blew a raspberry that had tears streaking down her face as she went breathless.

“That tickles!”

“If don’t be nice, my beard my jump off, and attach itself on to you!”

Gasping, the young girl placed her hands on to her cheeks with shock as she reeled away. After a second of looking at him, she turned red, sticking out her tongue upon seeing his charmingly goofy little smirk.

“That won’t happen! Lady’s don’t grow beards. And gentleman’s beards don’t jump off!”

“But then how do the beards go away?” he mused, reaching out to fix her hair so that it wasn’t falling in front of her eyes.

“Daddy,” Hepsiba stressed, tapping her foot to the floor. “Gentlemen shave. I’ve seen you!”

His smile drew into his gaze, adding a glimmer to his softened features. He leaned forward, pressing a kiss against his sweet child’s forehead as he murmured, “Nothing gets past you, my precious Hepsiba. You are as clever as you are perceptive.”

Grinning from ear to ear, the wild-eyed child took a step back, quizzical as she asked: “What’s percy-eppy-chin?”

“Perception,” the nobleman pronounced slowly to the Illiad heiress, keeping his eyes fixed upon hers as he unlaced his other boot. “It means how you take in the world around you. The way I said it to you is a compliment. It means that you are able to look at what is around you, take in what you see, hear, taste, smell, and feel, and memorize those things very well. When I told you that you are very perceptive, I meant that you watched closely to the times I have shaved, and did a good job remembering me doing that.”

As he dropped his other sludge-covered boot down beside the other one, Hepsiba piped up with a tilt of her head, “So, that means I’m allowed to watch you shave?”

He chuckled gruffly. With arms open, he invited her back into another embrace, which she accepted with an overzealous squeak and thin little arms, wrapped around his neck.

“Of course you are, ‘Sibby,” he murmured, rubbing her small back gently. “It’s part of learning. You can ask me all the questions you want.”

Without pause, Hepsiba immediately spoke up: “Where were you at today, daddy?”

His entire body drew taunt and rigid. A shaky, slow breath of air expelled from his lungs.

“… Visiting someone,” the nobleman replied carefully, releasing his hold upon the girl.

Pleading eyes; full of the same butterscotch wonder her mom’s had, looked up at him as he got to his feet. Just as gentle, and unnerving in their love. Unwavering. It was almost a perfect parallel, and wrenched on his heart in the same manner.

“Is it a friend?” his daughter chimed innocently. “Is it the same friend you’ve been seeing all week?”

Amon fixated his eyes on his boots while removing his sopping wet socks. He was trying to find the words to say, but they would not come to him. A deep shame rose up like a vampire from his heart to feast once more upon him, leaving him feeling drained. Numb to the world, and disconnected.

“Can I go with you to meet them?’

He heard a soft gasp of alarm. His eyes snapped up, catching sight of Essie turning the corner. She had a hand over her soft lips in the shape of an ‘o’ as her eyes darted between him, and their girl.

“Hepsiba sweetie, sometimes people need privacy,” Essätha began in a shaky rush, ushering to the little girl with her hands. “Let’s give daddy some personal space right now, okay?”

The youthful child’s eyes looked up at him. They were a spectrum of emotion. Guilt, sadness, worry, hurt.

“Oh,” she softly whispered. “Okay.”

His heart shattered into a million fragments, hearing the deadened sound of his little girl’s voice for the first time.

“No, it’s okay, my Lady,” he rasped, forcing a tiny ghost of a smile as he peered down. The heartbroken face of his daughter glanced up at him, a shard of hope reigniting the flame in her eyes.

“Amon-”

Bending down to one knee again, he offered out his hand to the young girl. Her face was still full like a baby. In her eyes, he could still see the same curious look she’d had since the first time she’d opened them. There was a neverending series to her wonders, and she tried to test them all while asking a million questions.

They were innocent eyes. Unburdened and caring. Full of life and intrigue.

“The place I go is not exciting,” he acknowledged to Hepsiba with a gentle tone. “I sit; very quiet, for a long time. There are no toys, and nothing that can be climbed on. After I sit for a very long time, I leave to come home.”

The girl considered this for a moment. She looked into his face, and he shivered with awareness as though she was directly looking into his soul.

“I want to go,” she declared. Looking back at her mother’s face; poorly trying to disguise her horrified sorrow, ‘Sibby went on: “Can mommy come, too?”

He turned his eyes up from the girl’s pleading expression, to her mother’s horrified one. Essätha visibly swallowed as their eyes met. Her hand was still upon her face, covering some of the patchy scales on her cheek.

“My love, you don’t need to do this,” she whispered softly, turning her troubled eyes upon their daughter.

Their firstborn’s face looked torn. She was not so gullible not to pick up on the tension in the air, and it showed. Her head moved from the left to the right, staring at him and then her mother. Unable to decide if she was pushing the envelope too far with asking, but never really being in this new territory where people were not giving her the answers often handed so easily to her.

Pushing down the tortured feeling rising up his throat, Amon gave a short nod to the small child. His head felt numb to the motion. His mouth felt a bit dry.

“You may come,” he mumbled softly.

“We can all go?” Hepsiba gleefully asked, jumping closer to him. “Tomorrow? Like a family visit?”

There was a choked sound ahead of him, coming from Essie, but it was distant in the roar in his ears.

Wearing a thin, plastic smile, he rested a hand on top of his daughter’s head. Her face was a ray of sunshine. Engulfed in purity and awash with absolute love and goodness.

“Sure, ‘Sibby,” he agreed mechanically. “A family visit.”

His daughter’s eager grin stretched across her face. She was graced with love and radiance upon him. It felt like glue. The only thing holding him together.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

As they approached the gravesites, Amon could make out only his own boots in the still-damp grass. The others had stopped short. Tonight the sky was clear, and washed a sunset of pinks and purples that fell into the burning inferno of reds, oranges, and yellows that burned the horizon like a campfire.

He reached beneath his jerkin. Pulling out the locket, and the heavy necklace with the symbol of Pelor, he clutched both within his bare hand. His gaze cast upon the gravestones with heavy shadows beneath his eyes.

All was quiet. Yet he was aware of the presences not usually there. It made stiff his back. Crouching felt odd as he lowered himself, leveling his eyes with the name on the tombstone. To his lips, he brought the locket. His mouth moved, but the prayer were not uttered. Spoken from the heart, rather than his words.

They remained silent. The sky began to change colors further, as the sun moved lower. Their shadows stretched. The minutes ticked by.

Essätha made a hissing sound as Hepsiba wiggled her hand free from her own. Not daring to disturb the peace however, she did not move to bring her back as the young girl moved across the dewy grass to stand beside her father.

“What’s it say, daddy?”

Clearing his throat, Amon placed the two necklaces back beneath his shirt. The weight of his child’s gaze upon him was almost suffocating as he reached out. A tremble shook his hand that he couldn’t quite steady until he could hide it against the stable surface of the granite.

“Marie Farthing.”

Hepsiba was quiet for only a moment, before quietly asking: “Marie? Like my sister? Like Belle Marie Illiad?”

“Yes,” he whispered; words seizing up as he managed to continue on in a wavering voice: “Just like Belle.”

“What else does it say?”

“That she will be loved, and missed,” Amon uttered faintly; not daring his voice to transcribe the full length of the passage. He could not stare too deeply at the date of departure labeled on the plaque. It was the same calendar day, today. The anniversary of the most painful loss his heart ever knew.

“Who was she?

Part of him wanted to tell her not to ask anymore questions. They were simply too hard and too painful to want to answer, but she was still a babe. She had no idea of his ailments; his wounds. She did not understand her hunger for knowledge and understanding was like a knife, plunged into his heart.

“A young girl, years ago,” he acknowledged in dead monotone. “I raised her. She was like… like a daughter to me.”

The nobleman lowered his gaze respectfully to the mound of dirt. A light hand touched his cheek after a second, rousing his attention back to the child.

“It’s okay to be sad, daddy,” Hepsiba sagely murmured, placing her other hand over her heart. “Sometimes I go boo-boos on the inside. But they get better. Mommy say’s it’s okay to cry. It doesn’t feel very good, but it lets some of the sad out, and you’ll feel a little better.”

A well of tears brimmed in the corners of his eyes; blurring the figure out of focus in front of him.

She sounded so much like her mother. Wise and compassionate.

Her figure was almost a haunting silhouette of Marie’s, when he first met her.

He made a choking sound, and tiny little fingers rubbed the dampness beneath one of his eyes.

Reaching out, he grabbed hold of Hepsiba’s shoulders gently.

She stepped into his arms as he unhinged, falling completely to his knees.

Those tiny little arms wrapped around his neck, and held to him with an iron grip. The grief spilled out of him faster then he could dam it. Flooding from his eyes, falling in his daughter’s hair as she clutched to him.

Footsteps gradually approached his other side. A hand grazed his backside encouragingly, sliding against him.

Belle gurgled in her mother’s arms. Strangely silent the entire time on the sacred grounds, like she could sense the respects to be paid. Now cooing against his side, grabby fingers pulling on the cloth of his jerkin for attention.

Amon pulled one arm wound tight around his oldest daughter free, and placed it around Essie. She moved into him, a murmured word he couldn’t make out as a sob tore through him harshly. It clotted his throat. Life seemed to ebb and drain from him; through his tears cascading down into his beard.

He clutched to his family, and they held him as he collapsed. Even Hepsiba; all of them encircled in a tight embrace.

For the life that feel from his red, swollen eyes and stained cheeks, a replenishment was found in those warm loving arms.

They were pressed so tightly together, there was hardly any space between them. He could turn his face easily, from one to the other, and kiss upon their faces from one of his three beautiful girls to the other.

‘Sibby’s fingers tightened into his jerkin, and Essie kissed the tears collecting against his eyes.

It was impossible, to hurt so much and yet feel so grateful at once. But he felt it all. The tearing and the mending. The scars, and the elixir of kintsugi pottery that now healed his heart. The longing ache for his sweetheart Marie, who he would never get to hold again in this life and his ultimate joy, getting to hold those safely in his grasp now. The agony knowing he had so tragically failed one, and the determination to never, ever fail another.

“I love you daddy,” Hepsiba affirmed, as though she knew. Her words were muffled against his sobbing, and nearly lost in his coat, but by Pelor, it was there. A knowing beyond her age.

“I love you too, sweetheart,” Amon expressed in a cracked voice. Some way, some how, he pulled them all in closer. A huddled mass, with the knees of their clothes now grass-stained and hair wet with his tears as he pressed kisses against their cheeks and foreheads, over and over again.

Staring into the eyes of Isabelle Marie Illiad, as she grinned a toothless smile and gripped his beard. Looking down upon the top of ‘Sibby’s head, as she burrowed herself against him. Feeling the hum in Essie’s throat as she rested her chin on top of him, so that he was literally in every way, in every corner, surrounded by love and protection. Held with arms all around him.

“Daddy loves you; all of you, with all his heart.”

A docile, quiet little voice hushed against his chest, whispering: “Promise?”

The air sucked out of him all at once, and he grasped them all as tightly as he could to his body, his voice hoarse with emotion:

“I promise.”

[looptheloup]

(Belated) Whumptober!

Day 19: Exhaustion

Link to AO3

Fandom: Marvel

Characters: Loki (Marvel), Tony Stark, Bruce Banner, Thor Odinson, Jarvis

Warnings: Violence, Torture, Prisoner of war, Non-sexual bondage, Magical exhaustion, Near death, Vomiting, Broken bones

Other tags: Eventual fluff, Thor is a good bro

Summary: After running for months, Loki is exhausted and falls into Tony Stark's hands. He thought he'd experienced the worst the fates could throw at him but he was wrong.

[A/N: Still working on these :)  Many thanks to my beta, who is amazing. I hope you enjoy it! ps. I kind of see this as relating to the song ‘Brother’ by Kodaline, link here :)]

*

Exhaustion

Loki touched the cold concrete beneath him and choked on a bitter laugh. Sitting in a filthy alley that stank of rancid fat and urine, the cold digging needles into him; was this how it was going to end? He curled up tighter, wincing at the aching pain in his stomach where he’d taken a beating from a motel manager when he couldn’t pay them. His magic lay dormant, spent on teleporting across the world and back again, trying to escape Stark’s technology and the cell the man wanted to put him in.

But Loki was tired. He didn’t have the strength in him to run any longer, to flit about with his tricks and his quick anticipation of his opponent’s plans. It had been a year and he was buckling under the strain as his clever ideas became slippery, difficult to conjure up when he needed them, and then his magic began to slip. Now it was his body, which was nothing but a disappointment after Odin had made him mortal, colluding with the man of iron in a joined attempt to find him. Loki had shielded himself from Asgard’s prying eyes for as long as he could, but it was crumbling around him now.

Stark would find him first, though. His technology seemed to reach everywhere on this pathetic planet, a constant shadow looming over Loki, clinging to him like lichen.

“Fancy seeing you here.”

Loki closed his eyes. Perhaps if he were braver, he would have killed himself before Stark arrived, but he hadn’t been able to gather himself to do it.

“Sorry I’m late. The traffic was awful.”

Loki opened his eyes to see the red gleam of Stark’s metal contraption; the machine that worked with human magic to enable his flight. The mortal smiled down at him, his face arranged into an expression that ought to have been warm, but his eyes were cold as Jotunheim.

“If this is a bad time for you,” Loki managed, “don’t let me keep you, man of iron.” He stayed sitting on the concrete because he feared if he stood, he would only collapse. He’d overused his magic far beyond its ability to regenerate and without it he felt like empty rind, hollowed out and nauseous with it.

“And let you lead me on another wild goose chase? I don’t think so, reindeer games.”

Loki had nothing to say, no quick words to help him wind Stark around his finger and slip out of this Norns-damned mess he’d gotten himself into. So he just sat silently, shivering, waiting for Stark to kill him or take him away. He suspected the latter, and feared what they’d do to him.

“Cat got your tongue?” Stark said. “Fine with me, fucking pain in my ass.”

He tensed as Stark lifted his hand and then panicked when a sharp blue flash led to very small but very sharp metal spikes embedding themselves in his chest and forcing him rigid, unable to move, his jaw clenched shut as his muscles spasmed. Some kind of magic shock and, gods, it hurt.

“Nice. Let’s get this wrapped up, eh, Loki-poki, before anyone else arrives.” Stark came towards him and Loki couldn’t move, couldn’t much breathe. He didn’t know who Stark was expecting would arrive, nor why he wanted to take Loki before they did. Perhaps he wanted Loki to himself before he handed him over, Norns forbid it. Restraints snapped onto his wrists, and around his ankles and he growled low in his throat, hating Stark with a cold fire in his belly. If he only had his magic-

“Alrighty,” Stark said triumphantly and the paralysis dropped away all at once, along with the weird metal spikes, leaving Loki gasping at the damp air and trying to lift himself up, but lacking the strength to do so. He’d never felt so weak. “Let’s get this show on the road. You look like a wet mutt and I’d rather be in bed, in all honesty.”

Stark wrapped an unfeeling metal arm around him and before Loki could properly catch his breath, Stark had jetted up into the cold air above the city, leaving Loki shuddering in Stark’s icy grip. When Odin had turned him mortal, he’d taken his Jotun form from him; a body he’d hated, but he’d missed the damn thing when he was hiding out somewhere cold on this filthy planet, and he missed it now, as Stark took him higher and Loki could no longer feel his feet or his fingers as the wind stole what little warmth he’d had.

Stark flew for some time and Loki’s eyes fell closed as he shuddered, limp with exhaustion. He welcomed the cold, wished almost that it would freeze his stubborn heart, or that Stark would drop him and Loki’s worries would be done with. Mortal bodies were so fragile, he’d discovered.

But Stark brought him, if not fully hale then mostly conscious and in one piece, to what Loki presumed was his home, because it didn’t look like a prison. Stark dropped down to land on a platform, releasing Loki roughly, whose whole weight fell onto his elbow and he screamed as he felt it crack beneath him. The pain was awful and he curled up defensively on his side as he tried to drag air in through the stabbing agony that radiated all the way up to his shoulder.

“Jesus fuck,” Stark muttered and Loki tensed to be kicked, or roughly dragged, only for the metal arms of Stark’s armour to wrap carefully around his chest and lift him to his feet. The movement still jarred his elbow and he hissed, shaking. “Didn’t mean to break you. Sorry.” Stark manhandled him with unexpected gentleness inside the building, the door closing behind them on its own. Without the wind, the silence felt heavy and Loki’s harsh breathing painfully audible.

He was set down in a soft fabric chair, of all things, before Stark stepped away, pointing a finger at him. “Don’t move, princess,” he ordered. “Jarv, keep an eye on him. He’s a slippery prick, and not the fun kind.”

“Yes, sir,” a voice said from the ceiling. Loki was too tired to even startle and he stayed where Stark had left him, neither willing or able to stir himself. Stark left the room and Loki felt himself drifting, as the waves of pain from his arm and the empty ache of his absent magic washed over him, rough as an ocean storm.

Stark returned an indeterminable time later with a man at his side, a man Loki blearily and unhappily recognised as the mortal form of the great green monster; Bruce Banner.

“Is that really-?” Banner stuttered, staring. Loki exhaled, his jaw aching from how he was pressing his teeth together.

“Yup, the trickster asshole himself,” Stark said cheerily, though he sounded grim under his light tone. “Might have broken his arm a little bit.”

Banner turned to give Stark an incredulous look. “You didn’t,” he said.

“He did,” Loki muttered, exhausted and wishing they’d either throw him in a cell or knock him into unconsciousness. He didn’t much care which at this point.

“Oh,” Banner said. “Ah well I better look, then. Tony, if you could-?”

“Medical room?” Stark said. “Yeah, see you there, green bean.”

Banner headed out with an irritable huff, muttering under his breath in a displeased manner that Loki doubted boded well for him. Medical room? Loki didn’t like the sound of it and his head skittered away from imagining what Stark might require medical equipment for.

“Wow you look like shit warmed up,” Stark said. He was still in his red armour, but he’d removed his helmet and Loki eyed his face, trying and failing to read the mortal’s intentions. Stark clinically picked him up and Loki ducked his head as he tried to suppress a noise of pain from his elbow as he was moved.

Stark took him silently out of the room and into what Loki had learnt was an elevator, which carried them smoothly down several floors. Loki wished futilely that they wouldn’t be going underground. He loathed the cold and dark, even as the blue skin that lurked deep inside him thrived on the barren ice.

“He’s properly mortal, then,” Stark said and Loki stirred as he was set down, realising that he’d drifted again. His elbow sparked with pain.

“Yes, seems that way.” Banner was moving about with an intent expression, looking at screens and tapping them faster than Loki’s weary brain could follow. “You fractured his elbow, Tony.” Banner brought up a picture of the bones in Loki’s arm, or so he assumed.

“Oops,” Stark said carelessly. “My bad.”

Banner made a disgruntled noise. “Radial neck fracture,” he muttered. “But doesn’t look like it needs surgery.”

Together, the mortals attached Loki to the chair and, as much as he loathed it, there wasn’t anything he could do. Norns, he loathed feeling so weak.

“I shall disembowel you,” he snarled at Stark, when the mortal was holding him still so that Banner could stick a needle full of something into him.

Stark shot him an unimpressed look. “If you’ve nothing nice to say,” he said darkly. Loki tried to drag his thoughts together into a response, only for whatever had been in the needle to hit his systems, making his thoughts go fuzzy at the edges and leaving him limp. He vaguely felt Stark let go of him.

They were talking but Loki couldn’t make the sounds make sense. He felt his arm being moved and looked down at it in confusion, widening his eyes as gloved fingers cleaned a bloody gash on his elbow that he hadn’t even noticed.

Time passed and his head rolled back as his arm was moved and shapes moved around him. He knew he was fastened down but it didn’t worry him. He let consciousness slide away from him with a sense of overwhelming relief.

*

He woke groggy and dry-mouthed to a throbbing ache in his right arm, which lay across his chest, wrapped in white. A splint of some kind, he thought blearily, trying to make his mind work. He reached for his magic on reflex but found little, and what there was squirmed away from him. To take anymore of it now might be irreparable, he feared, and life without his magic wouldn’t be any life at all.

He was alone in a bare room, a cell he realised with a sigh. His left hand was locked to a metal loop on the floor, while his fractured right arm was rendered immobile with his injury.

“Good afternoon, Mr Laufeyson,” a voice said from the ceiling, making Loki startle. He twisted around to scour the room but could see no-one. One of those microphones he’d experienced, then, or something similar. He’d jumped violently when he first heard a voice come from the ceiling of a food store, but since the humans hadn’t seemed bothered by it, he’d realised it was considered normal.

“Who am I speaking to?” he asked hesitantly, unsure if the voice would even be able to hear him, or if it was only one-way.

“My name is Jarvis. I’m a type of computer that Mr Stark developed to help him with his work. I have alerted him that you are awake.”

Loki just nodded silently. A door slid open and Loki lifted his head slightly to eye Stark coldly.

Stark grinned. “Someone’s happy to see me,” he said lightly, coming forwards. Loki noticed a second too late that Stark was holding something in his hand and when Stark crouched down beside him, Loki couldn’t push him away, flinching with a growl when Stark lifted hands to his neck and fastened cold metal around his throat. A blue glow emanated from it and Loki sent Stark a look, trying to keep his terror from his face. He could feel something, the collar feeling icy against his skin, like it was sapping warmth from him.

“What is this?” he managed, attempting disdain and failing. Stark patted his cheek in such a way that Loki gritted his teeth and imagined crushing Stark’s throat under his heel.

“Just a precaution, reindeer games. Be a dear and have a go at some magic for me, will you?”

Loki blinked at him, the metal collar seeming to choke him for a moment as realisation rolled over him.

“It blocks my magic?” he murmured, horrified.

Stark gave him a cool look. “Don’t fret,” he said easily. “It might not work. Give it a spin for me, eh?”

Loki had already been reaching for his magic. It had been severely, painfully depleted, but it had been there, tingling and slowly increasing. Now there was nothing, just a barren nothingness when he reached for it. He stared at Stark in horror. This would kill him. To take his magic—Stark would strip him first of sanity and then his life, slowly. Stark’s face split into a satisfied smile.

“I suppose that expression means it works? Perfect.” He stood up while Loki stared at the ground. He felt sick. Did Stark know what he was doing? “Jarv, release Loki, please. I don’t think he’s going to be any more trouble for now.”

“This will kill me,” Loki breathed, glancing up at Stark. The man’s satisfaction faltered for a moment as he narrowed his eyes. Then he smiled slightly, almost puzzled.

“Don’t be a drama queen,” he said easily.

The metal cuff on Loki’s left wrist fell away but Loki only lifted his arm to shift it into his lap as he stared at Stark and didn’t do anything else. He kept reaching for his magic, straining to find it, hoping that he might feel some responding tingle, but there was just a vacant emptiness; an awful, endless nothingness.

“Come on, Lokes,” Stark said from the doorway of the cell. “Aren’t you hungry?”

Loki was, he realised, and also painfully thirsty. Mortals were almost constantly hungry, he’d found out, and it was something he hated, the way that his body was constantly clamouring for sustenance.

He got slowly, unsteadily, to his feet and when Stark led the way down a corridor, he followed. His hand came up to touch the cool metal around his throat and resolve hardened in his stomach. He had to remove this thing, and to do it he needed information, time, and as much strength as he could muster.

So when Stark placed some odd, cold food and a glass of water in front of him, Loki drank until his throat didn’t feel so raw, and then ate the offered food, finding it to be chilled fish and rice and pleasant enough. Nausea twisted inside him, though, and he felt slightly dizzy. He knew it would only get worse. Stark talked at him, half taunting and half inane chatter.

“…Since I’ve got you all nicely secure here, your brother’ll be dropping in tomorrow to say hi.” Loki paused with the chopsticks half-way to his mouth to meet Stark’s sharp eyes. Stark smiled slightly. “You’re rather good with those, for an alien, you know,” Stark said, tapping his own chopsticks together and Loki made a noise of agreement without thinking. The chopsticks were at least convenient in that they only required one hand, since his right was out of commission. “But then you spent several weeks in China, didn’t you?” Stark said, his voice going hard and Loki set his chopsticks down as he lost his appetite entirely. Stark had been on his tail for the best part of a year: they were captor and prisoner and the collar around Loki’s neck was only one of many reminders of how powerless Loki was.

But he would be strong again, he hoped, if he could just get this thing off. And even Thor, with his frankly abysmal understanding of magic, wouldn’t let Stark kill him like this; slowly going mad, wasting away, would he? Even after all that had passed between them, Loki hoped that Thor retained at least enough regard for him that if he wanted Loki dead, he would kill Loki outright. He hoped at least. Perhaps Thor was done with him, but if that were so then he wouldn’t come when Stark told him of Loki’s capture. Unless he wished only to taunt Loki for his fall, or to lecture him.

Loki’s thoughts spiralled sickening as he doubted himself and doubted again. Once, he’d been so good at anticipating other’s moves that it had become almost dull. Now he was alone and weakened in enemy territory and Thor, who he had once believed would never leave his side, was now an unknown.

“You look thoughtful,” Stark commented. He took some of the fish left on Loki’s plate and stuck it in his own mouth. That at least told Loki that there had been nothing in the food, something that he hadn’t even considered before digging in. His fingers came up to brush the collar. It was messing with his head. “Regretting your life choices?” Stark mused aloud. “Or just planning to murder me?”

Loki lifted his eyebrows silently and Stark looked innocently back at him. Did he know what the device he’d fastened onto Loki was doing? Did he just not care?

“This collar will kill me,” Loki tried again, searching Stark’s eyes, trying to gage whether the mortal had designed the device to block his magic so utterly that it would slowly kill him, or if he was just playing with things he didn’t understand.

Stark was impossible to read. His forehead tightened into a frown but he stubbornly pressed his lips together. “Yeah, you said that already. Doesn’t make me more likely to believe you.” Loki blinked. So Stark didn’t know. That was good, that gave him space to try to- “Oh no, I can see you thinking,” Stark interrupted as he stood, gathering the plates. “Don’t fucking start. You’re not called the liesmith for shits and giggles. That collar’s not coming off, Loki-poki and if you start harping on about it, you’ll only piss me off.”

Loki clenched his jaw. His balance was off so that when he turned his head too fast, a wave of sickness made him pause, dizzy. But Stark didn’t see, his back turned as he put the plates in the sink.

“Blocking my magic-” he tried.

“Loki.” Stark’s voice was hard but Loki pressed on, desperately.

“-is like cutting off blood-”

“Loki.”

“-to my brain. I will go-”

Stark slammed the plates down in the sink. “Enough!” he snapped and Loki broke off, falling silent. He had tried, it was the mortal’s idiotic fault for not listening. “You can’t help yourself, can you?” Stark turned to face him and Loki leaned back slightly, wary of the mortal’s power over him. Once he could have killed the man with a flick of his fingers, but now was not that time. “You’ve learnt nothing. You don’t give a fuck about the lives you took, you’re just a selfish dick.”

Loki clenched his jaw against the things he wanted to say and told himself to bide his time until Thor arrived, if Stark wasn’t lying about the visit. That was Loki’s best chance. And, if it fell through, then Loki would have to seek his own means to remove the thing himself.

Maybe Stark was right that Loki ought to accept the punishment as his due. But he was a survivor and he’d been damned if he went down like this, sick and weak and not even at the hands of mortals, which would have been tiresome enough, but by the work of a rudimental machine. If Loki was to die for his crimes, then he would die with honour, not like this.

“Get up,” Stark ordered flatly and Loki reluctantly did as he was told, struggling against the alarming dizziness when he came to his feet. “Move, go on,” Stark said and Loki started slowly down the corridor, back towards the cell. Loki didn’t relish the prospect, but what choice did he have? He had no doubt that Stark would best him in any physical confrontation, what with Loki’s broken arm and his sickness. “What would my dad say?” Stark sounded bitter and he pushed Loki in the middle of his back, almost sending him to the floor as his vision swung sickening before him. “You can go and think about what you’ve done. Maybe if you’re left for a couple of decades you might develop a smidgen of compassion for the hundreds you slaughtered, you fucking murderer.”

Loki was struggling to focus but he heard the underlying sharpness to Stark’s words and wondered, blearily, whether Stark wasn’t just berating Loki, but himself too, or perhaps his father, since he spoke so bitterly of him. At his best, Loki might have tried to dig his fingernails into that chink, to pull Stark’s vulnerabilities out into the harsh outside air, but he hadn’t the strength of mind to form words, let alone manipulate them.

A door slid open and Loki was nudged inside the same cell. Stark roughly took hold of his wrist and tugged him violently down so as to secure his left arm to the metal loop on the floor, where the shackle still lay, like an opened oyster. The wrench on his arm unbalanced Loki entirely and he fell hard on his hip as he collapsed to the floor, with the impact jarring his broken arm badly enough that he could nothing for several seconds but try not to cry out, dragging harsh breaths in through clenched teeth.

“Caught off guard?” Stark muttered. If he’d been surprised by Loki’s collapse, Loki hadn’t been looking at the man’s face to know. Stark closed the shackle around Loki’s wrist and Loki did nothing to stop him, because he couldn’t, and there was no point besides. So he just sat, breathing through the pain in his arm and the dizzy sickness in his head, as Stark looked down on him for a second and then left silently. The door closed behind him with a soft hiss that felt violent nonetheless.

Loki sagged back against the wall and closed his eyes, exhausted. The hypervigilance of being a fugitive had been a slow grinding down of his energy and his inner fortitude so that more and more frequently he’d found his mind invaded with thoughts of just handing himself in. And then he’d depleted his magic, fleeing from Stark’s mechanical eyes, which had somehow managed to track his magic, no matter what form Loki had twisted it into, or what shielding he’d placed on it. There had been a delay, but never long enough. He’d thought he’d hit the worst of it, in a mortal body and without his magic. But there was now this, this new torment, new pressure, and Loki was just so so tired. He would not roll over and accept his fate, he didn’t think he was capable of it, but Norns damn it, it was tempting.

*

The sickness worsened far faster than Loki had anticipated. The collar felt frigid against his mortal skin and even when he tried lifting it away from his neck, he felt the ache of its power in his fingers, down his wrist, sapping his power from him as surely as a burning candle wick.

There was a drain in the corner of the small cell and Loki moved sluggishly some time after Stark had left him, needing to relieve himself, only for his stomach to flip and with a sudden violence he threw up on the floor, retching until his throat was raw and he coughed, trying to rid himself of the vile taste.

He tilted backwards only for the cell walls to swing nauseatingly and he ended up falling hard against the wall as he closed his eyes and tried to regain his balance. It was futile, though, and even when keeping completely still, the cell still rocked before his eyes and Loki groaned, feeling sick and scared, as much as he loathed it. This was happening too fast and he wanted Thor. Norns, he wanted to see the idiot’s stupid puppy-like face and his golden hair. He didn’t want to die sucked dry of magic in a grey box beside his own vomit.

After a time, sitting up became too difficult and he lowered himself with great difficulty to the cold floor. His broken arm throbbed agonisingly and his stomach rolled, threatening to send him into retching again until his mouth was sharp with acid.

Lying flat was marginally better and Loki let his eyes close. He could feel his heart-beat slowing. He reached repeatedly for his magic, unable to stop himself, like a tongue worrying a sore tooth, but it was never there and it hurt every time.

*

“Loki!”

Loki couldn’t move. He wasn’t sure he could open his eyes, he had so little energy. His thoughts were as sluggish as tar. There was a hand on his shoulder and it shook him. He knew it was hurting his broken arm but barring a low hiss, he didn’t have the strength to do anything to stop it. He didn’t even care.

“Loki! For fuck’s sake-” There were fingers on his neck, then and Loki would have flinched, but he felt like he’d been set in amber, or ice: immovable.

“Brother,” the low voice, so familiar, stirred something in Loki’s gut and he blinked dizzily but he couldn’t see through a haze of grey and he closed his eyes again after a moment. “Brother, you must hold on. The man of iron is removing the collar.”

Loki struggled to couple the words with the meaning of them in his brain. It was like two boats in calmed waters trying to communicate with one another across a vast expanse of lazily rocking sea.

Something cold fell away from his neck and he released a harsh breath that he hadn’t been aware he was holding. He felt lighter, somehow, but he still couldn’t move.

“If he dies, I would advise that you leave my presence immediately,” Loki heard that warm voice rumble, the tone dark but the voice itself comforting. “I’m not certain I will be able to keep from killing you.”

“Roger that,” the other voice said grimly. Loki thought he might be sick again, but there was nothing to bring up and he hadn’t the strength to vomit. There was a painful pressure in his bladder.

“Brother,” he breathed. The warm voice was important, he knew, and he wanted them close, couldn’t bear the thought of them leaving him here, in the cold, unable to move for lack of strength.

Warm, solid hands stroked over his shoulder and over his back. “I am here, Loki. Can you take something of my energy? Come back to me, Loki, please brother.”

Loki wondered whether he could do as the voice, his brother, suggested and he reached shakily for his magic. Overwhelming relief flushed through him when it tingled gently and a tear slid down his cheek. Norns, he’d missed that. He reached for the frayed threads of his power, barely there after being so depleted and then battened down ruthlessly by the evil collar, and gently teased them out, reaching for Thor’s energy as he did so.

Thor’s power was something huge, a wonderous, electric thing that he kept barely contained, sparking inside of him like a thunderstorm inside a maelstrom. Loki tentatively touched the ends of his pathetic magic to the edges of Thor’s power.

It felt like an electric shock and he jerked upwards with a sharp inhalation of shock and pain. Thor’s energy was relentless and harsh like static and Loki broke off the connection quickly, before he overwhelmed himself, or drained Thor.

But it was enough and he sat up, trembling, only to be embraced by warm, strong arms, his nose pressed to Thor’s solid shoulder, breathing in his burnt scent and shaking with utter relief. Not even the pain in his arm could flatten his brief, sharp elation.

“Thor,” he choked, clutching at Thor’s back with his good left hand, which was no longer chained to the floor.

The memory of the chain made him tense and Thor pulled away as Loki turned to eye Stark warily. The man looked pale and strained and he looked back at Loki with a pained expression. Loki regarded him coldly.

“Come, brother,” Thor said, his voice loud in the small cell that seemed tiny with Thor’s bulk inside it. “Can you walk? You must eat and recover.”

Loki made no move to try to stand but moved his gaze from Stark’s tight face to Thor, drinking in the sight of him desperately.

“You’re here,” he murmured. “You don’t- you- Thor?” he broke, unable to express the depths of his doubt, his despair, his wary hope that Thor being here meant that maybe-

“Of course I am here,” Thor rumbled, looking at him with such love that it crushed the air out of Loki’s chest. He’d not imagined anyone alive, save Frigga perhaps, would look at him like that again.

“I’ve missed you,” Loki gasped. I’m so sorry, he wanted to say, I love you so much.

Thor smiled, his whole face lighting up like his lightning did when it split the night sky. “And I you, brother,” he said easily, like it had never been in doubt. “We will talk more when you are well.” Thor glanced at Stark with something dark flicking in his eyes and Loki felt a surge of vindictive validation in that look. He glared at Stark with malice. I tried to tell you, he hissed silently. Stark looked back at him like he knew exactly what Loki was thinking.

Thor looped a large but careful arm around Loki’s back and Loki let him help to his feet. He felt unbearably weak, but he was alive, and Thor didn’t hate him, still called him ‘brother’, after everything.

“We are not brothers,” Loki said as he let Thor half-carry him out of the cell. There was more sadness than bitterness in his voice and he knew Thor heard it.

“You will always be my brother, Loki,” he said solemnly and Loki swallowed thickly, telling himself that he was overwrought and that was why he felt damnably close to tears.

Stark silently led the way to a room with a bed and Thor set Loki down on it with a certain tenderness. He reminded Loki painfully of Frigga, for a moment, with his care.

“Rest, brother,” he said. “All will be well.”

Loki looked up at him, and then over at Stark, hovering in the corner with his arms crossed defensively over the glowing metal in his chest. Thor had a determined set to his jaw and Loki smiled, exhausted, but more at ease than he’d been in far too long.

“I believe you,” he said. The warmth of Thor’s smile was enough that he managed to smile back, just a little, and though he grumbled at Thor’s fussing as the Aesir laid the bedcovers over him, the care left him oddly pleased. He fell asleep with a half-smile on his lips, content in the knowledge that his brother would watch over him.

 Links to:

Day 1 - Stabbed, Detroit Become Human

Day 2 - Bloody hands, Marvel Cinematic Universe

Day 3 - Insomnia, Harry Potter

Day 4 - “No, stop!”, Altered Carbon

Day 5 - Poisoned, Supernatural

Day 6 -  Betrayed, Detroit Become Human

Day 7 - Kidnapped, Supernatural

Day 8 - Fever, Yuuri!! on ice

Day 9 - Stranded, Detroit Become Human

Day 10 - Bruises, Marvel Cinematic Universe

Day 11 - Hypothermia, Supernatural

Day 12 - Electrocuted, Rise of the Guardians

Day 13 - “Stay.”, Marvel

Day 14 - Torture, Original Work

Day 15 - Manhandling, Teen Wolf

Day 16 - Bedridden, Harry Potter

Day 17 - Drugged, Teen Wolf

Day 18 - Hostage, Original Work