#To become 'good' he must also become colorless

[adelrambles]

On a small note, Bishop's designs do something interesting in 03 that I don't think I've seen anyone mention? But his outfits between the main series and Fast Forward utilize a light/dark motif that highlights how his character has changed.

His main design is black with hints of white underneath. An evil person with good motivations underneath it all. His Fast Forward design is a white dress covering black clothes underneath. A seemingly good person covering up an evil history. I just think it's neat.

Also check out the 1870s fit

[deathbxnny]

Ik i already sent a request to you but.. once you said you’re also accepting JJK requests. I just had to. I hope you dont mind this

Ok so im not into JJK as much as i am into Genshin and HSR and all but im aware of season 1 plot and some of season 2. But can i request Gojo and Geto with an underclassmen who they have a sibling like relationship die and came back as a curse spirit? (While this request have them together, you can make them seperate if you want)

Here the context:

So the reader is a year below Gojo and Geto. After some time since you guys met, the two of them sees the reader as their cute little sibling and in return the reader sees them as their cool big brothers. All was fine until the reader died from a mission. How did the reader die? They dont know. Both of them werent told how the reader died but if there’s one thing they were sure of, the reader wasnt killed by Jujutsu. Because what other explanations do they have when they see you come back as a vengeful spirit? A vengeful spirit they need to take out.

So in the JJK wiki, it is said that “Sorcerers must also be killed with Jujutsu or they can become a vengeful cursed spirit after death” Which makes a very good angsty sceanrio dont you think?

Hope you have a great day/night!

- Flower Anon 🌸

Hey there, Flower anon!! I absolutely love this idea, and thank you very much for the tasty angst. I've been itching to write some jjk angst, haha. Also, regarding your other request for the second part to the Lyney x reader one-shot, just know that I will make it in a separate post to your ask due to formatting issues! But either way, I hope you meanwhile enjoy this!<33

Content: Heavy angst, platonic relationships, Geto is deeply depressed, Gojo is in denial, hurt/no comfort, reader is a year younger than both of them, vague descriptions of readers death, mentions of blood/injuries, vague descriptions of jjk canon violence, sfw

Reader has no set pronouns!

Inspired by the song "Death" by Melanie Martinez

((Not fully proofread))

Back from the dead.

At first, you appeared in the flickers of lights, in the corners of mirrors, in the shadows casted by trees and their own bodies, in reflections of windows and water, in gruesome, awful dreams.

And then you began being there in larger ways. You'd stand behind them, follow them around, no matter where they went, no matter where they looked, you were right there.

It was easy to ignore you at first, act like you didn't exist, like you were just a part of their traumatised, exhausted imagination. When was the last time they had slept properly? Perhaps the day before your funeral. Your face was plastered everywhere, a smile gracing it like it always did, an excited, pure one for a sorcerer. But there was nothing to be excited about anymore.

Maybe that's why you looked so sad now, as you stood in front of them in this classroom that was reserved for people a year older than you'll ever be.

Suguru wondered if you felt guilty for taking the color of their world away with you when you died.

"You know... denial never suited you, 'toru." You whispered quietly to Satoru, breaking this suffocating silence at last. Your body leaned against the desk a row in front of him. It all felt so casual, as though everything was perfectly fine. You never left. You simply came back a little different.

This was the first thing you've ever said since you've come back, Suguru then solemnly realised in his depressive haze. He nearly didn't hear you and wished he hadn't either. Your voice sounded distorted, like it didn't belong to you at all. But it was still you... wasn't it?

The only visible sign that Satoru meanwhile had even heard you was in a stutter of his hands that in turn messed up his text to Shoko again. He took a deep breath and exhaled shakily. What was he even texting her for again? Maybe for help? For a way out? "I'm seeing things again, Shoko. They're talking now." That's what your colorless eyes could read off his broken phone screen, which made you frown a little. You knew he'd never want to upset you. But he never wanted to face you again. Not like this.

It was so unlike him too, wasn't it? He hadn't been the same for a while now.

It was late in the afternoon by then, the orange hue filtering into the empty classroom through the blinds. An awfully nostalgic feeling that was now filled with tense bitterness. A past filled with laughter and joking now seemingly disappearing into the smoke of the burning incense sticks nearby.

Neither of them had said a single word for the entire duration of your little "hang out" session. Suguru simply leaned his head against his palm, gaze turned to a far away point in the darkening horizon outside, as the sun bid it's last warm goodbye. He took a deep breath, words shaky and filled with a deep exhaustion, not even his dear best friend could ever come close to feeling.

"Let him be... he'll come around eventually." The blackhaired boy muttered back to you, not bothering to look at your bloody, dead form anymore. He had come to terms with it a while ago. Or at least, visibly, he has.

Gojo just took a little longer in accepting your death, is all. Neither of them really knew who was handling the situation worse.

"Who are you talking to, Suguru?" There it was again, the odd denial the white-haired teen had drowned himself in. You never thought that he'd be the one to end up like this. You figured that Suguru would've had it harder, but perhaps this was just one of the many new things you've learned as a spirit. "Stop it, Satoru... you're not helping with any of this. It's just... making things worse." Gojo's teasing smile twitched, his head turning to look at his friend before he seemed to slowly deflate into his seat. You probably could only imagine how red and puffy his eyes were behind the sunglasses he refused to take off nowadays.

But in a way, you must've also understood why he was this way. How couldn't you?

Your death was untimely, unexplainable. No one knew what happened, and your body was never found either. One day, you were absolutely excited about going on a mission with your two favorite seniors, four hours later, you were missing, and a week later, you were declared as dead. The only proof they really had was a piece of your bloody uniform floating in a river nearby where the mission was supposed to take place. Other than that, there was no trace of anything else regarding you.

Suguru wished they would've at least had something to bury you with. Your casket was empty. And Satoru was ashamed to admit that he dared open the lid in a desperate attempt to see if you were in there after all. Just hiding, waiting to jump out and scare him. But seeing nothing made him break.

Everything got worse when you reappeared as this, however. A vengeful spirit that simply followed the both of them everywhere. You were relentless. And yet, neither of them could ever find a single trace of anger on you. Their guilt was heavy enough to make up for it, though.

It didn't help that Satoru refused to talk about it, even when they knew what they had to do. You only ever appeared around them, and both of them had made the unspoken decision to deal with you themselves. They felt like they had caused your death indirectly. The what if's kept piling up higher and higher until it eventually brought them here.

They thought that they were finally ready to move on, but oh, how wrong they were. It was so hard to see you as a simple spirit to exercise when you still looked like yourself most of the time. It just got bad when you looked dead. They couldn't hide behind their excuses and delusions when you looked like this.

Time ticked on and the silence was deafening again. You leaned in close to Satoru, glossy eyes staring into his side profile. "Stop ignoring me. I know what you're here for." You hummed, face devoid of any emotion. But the constant dripping of the blood that poured out of your nose and lips made Gojo close his eyes for a second longer and gulp down the painful lump in his throat. It was childish, absolutely stupid. But maybe... if he acted like you weren't there like always... then you wouldn't be. You were just a hallucination, surely. Neither of them had slept or eaten properly in months. He just had to pray that you'll go away, finally find the peace you were looking for.

But when he opened his eyes and you were still there, he just bit his lip. He couldn't take any of this anymore.

"Tell them to go away, Suguru. Please." "So you're finally done pretending now?" The blackhaired male asked, glancing back at his friend for the first time in hours. The great Satoru Gojo. The strongest of them all. Now reduced to nothing more than a miserable teen at your death. It would've been funny if he wasn't actually losing it right now.

Suguru shook his head at the lack of response before getting out of his chair and standing over the white-haired sorcerer. "Let's go outside." He said, not waiting for the other to agree before pushing past you. Or rather through you. He shoved his hands into his pockets to hide this really was for him. As expected, however, he heard Satoru's footsteps following behind him with ease. Typical.

The walk was silent and rather aimless. Neither of them knew where they were going. But their subconsciousness seemed to know. Suguru's body felt heavy, like he was dragging and fighting himself with every next step he took. He felt uneven and unbalanced. Like he'll fall over and break apart at any moment, and he doubted Satoru would be able to glue him together with shaky hands and teary eyes.

Geto pulled a hand through his black hair, strands unkempt and messy as they fell down hus shoulders. He caught a glance at his face in a mirror, the dark circles, even darker eyes staring back at him near accusingely. The anger and festering hate hidden under a thick layer of sadness.

"They weren't killed by a sorcerer." He suddenly said when they arrived at the schools courtyard. Satoru glanced at him, frowning a little. "Why does it matter now?" He asked, yet his best friend didn't bother answering. Why should he bother when the white-haired male was unwilling to wake up to reality. Instead, he stared at the Sakura trees filling the area, the ones you loved the most. And as expected, you stood right under them.

Your hands were clasped behind your back, smile so gentle and serene, that it made it look like you were simply waiting on them as always. And in a way, you were indeed doing so. Geto was thankful that your consciousness was strong enough for you to realise what was going to happen next. "Can you do it, Satoru?" He whispered, voice so soft, that it made Gojo actually consider it for a moment. But despite always having prided himself in being the strongest, he just stood still. Suguru couldn't help but smile tiredly at him. Perhaps the other boy would be happy about this if his smile didn't seem so bitter and exhausted. Like it took up all of his energy to force the corner of his lips to go up.

"I think they are the one thing I could never exorcize." "I'm glad you're being honest... I can't do it either." The two boys approached the empty bench next to your form before simply sitting down. There was a large gap between them, one reserved for you.

Your smile stretched wider as you took their silent offer of defeat and took a seat as well.

Gojo tensed when you leaned your head against his shoulder, a familiar melody leaving your lips. Suguru leaned his arms on his knees and listened to you, eyes closing with a tired sigh. Perhaps playing pretend was easier. Perhaps you were never meant to leave them in the first place. Maybe one day someone would free them from you, someone who was stronger, someone who wasn't ever going to be them.

You were back from the dead, and they figured it was better than you having left them for good.

If only they could ignore the mangled state of your body too.

Alright, I'm sorry this took so long! I also don't think it's that good, but I hope you like it anyway, Flower Anon! I've been super busy with work and everything else going on in my life, so I'm glad to post anything at this point. Anyhow, thank you again for this great request!<33

[macfrog]

all three dogs

Of course you must learn to love, to love always and love entirely and to be wounded by nothing so much as the violence of your own love. andrew kane, how to be a dog

inspired by this gorgeous post (good idea to read it before you read this), and this gorgeous ask (thank you @iknowisoundcrazy). also shoutout to @mrsmando for being the queen of character study. i am not sure what this is, exactly? is it about joel miller, or is it about some dogs? i do not know. but it was fucking cathartic, so here, i guess. here's how i see joel at his worst.

summary: "dog metaphors are all about devotion, devotion to a person, a concept, a place etc, to be a dog is to be devoted."

warnings: little graphic i guess? blood and guts. violent joel. sarah dies and joel shoots up a hospital to save ellie. angst. i think that's it

word count: 1.3k

main masterlist | follow @macfroglets with notifs on to be the first to hear when i post 🖤

he loves you, sarah says, fork digging into egg.

he’s dependent on me, joel quips, not the same.

i think it’s the same.

when the first dog is born, he gives his heavy head a shake, and his ears flick to life. his fur is still damp from the blood and fluid of his mother’s body. he still smells like her – looks like her, too. he is still connected in some way to where he has been; the umbilical cord coiled and dripping.

she licks and licks and licks until he is clean. watches contently as he pads off into some distant future, where he will lose that boisterous gleam in his eye, the gentle wag of his tail. but for now –

for now, he is brown-haired. brown-eyed to match. he has a daughter. he is bright, and alive, and he makes jokes when they bubble up to his tongue. he is good. he knows love like a first language, as if each swipe of his mother’s tongue on his coat melded it into his makeup.

he does not know the warmth of another man’s blood on his hands. he has not drawn the screams and howls of pain from another’s throat.

she is the sun – his daughter – the most radiant part of his life. his life, which spins on its axis around her. always looking for her, to her, at her. vitamin c, she tells him, and he accepts the glass of orange juice. she tells him to swear and he says, on my life. she tells him he’s lame and he says, i know.

he trots faithful and pliant at her heels. circles her legs and passes over her shadow, waiting to be told different. waiting to be shooed away.

only – when he is told, he doesn’t listen. he can’t. what is a planet with no sun to orbit? what becomes of day, when its light begins to drain?

she digs her nails into his skin. pushes and scratches and begs him with shallow gasps to take his hands off her stomach. to let her go. to go away.

i know, baby, i know i know i know i know –

he tells her she’s going to be okay. because what the fuck else does he know? he’s just a dog. he’s just her dog. all he knows is her.

the sun is being eclipsed. the world begins to darken.

i’m just gonna get her killed, joel weeps, i know it. i have to leave her.

when the second dog is pulled from his mother, he wails in a collapsed heap on the cold tile floor. the world is dim, colorless. the sun is gone. he does not know how he ended up here.

love is akin to violence. it speaks the same language, inflection and cadence blurring between words. he is only as strong as his fists are able to break bone. he has run out of road – a panting, ragged, old dog, tongue hanging lopsided and jumping. ears dented with the pieces of him lost to fighting.

something quakes within his chest, a deep, unstable movement. a shifting of the tectonic plates that make up his bones. he shakes violently, feeling for the thrash of his heart against his chest wall. something in the darkness commands him to act – to move, though it never reveals where to or what from. just fucking move.

and then – the eruption of his temper. like waves on rocks, breaching in violent and unpredictable bursts. spray of black ocean on the jagged cliff edge. i made this decision for your own good, he reasons, stood in the pink-papered bedroom. the snow flutters silently outside. his hackles slowly furl. she scoffs. she knows as well as he does: he’s as good a liar as he was a pet.

but for all his anger, for all the fear he misdiagnoses as weakness – there is a glimmer somewhere on his back. a pale light catching in the broken face of his watch; lighting the kinks of his dark coat. it begins to push him; to stir him like the tide.

something is controlling him again. pulling on his collar. someone is lighting the way.

where is she?

fuck you.

it takes as little time for the dog’s ears to prick as it did for his lungs to suck in a breath. his upper lip twists, canine glinting in the trembling fluorescent light. shining with saliva and the rusted tinge of blood. joel thinks it over less than once. his eyes flood black.

i don’t have time for this.

when the third dog rips his way into the world, he tears everything around him to shreds, too. his teeth are already bared; his claws are already swiping. his eyes are black as ink; he cannot remember that soft-footed pup he once was.

there is nothing left to hide. not anymore. he has existed in the darkness too long to try. his shirt and skin are stained with dirt and sweat and blood. his fur is matted; his fangs are brown and rotten. if she saw him, if her light cast its golden spill onto his bloodshot eyes and mottled coat – she would never know who he is. she would not recognize her own father.

but he was always this way, it seems: he has always loved catastrophically.

everything is red. saturated in threat; a screaming, nauseating red. it turns his stomach just to look, to peer down the chamber of his gun. the blinking of the alarm light. the maroon stains on his hands. the metallic smell seeping from the slumped vests. the thick pools he steps through, the footprints following him around every corner. they will catch up to him eventually. they always do.

his paws hurt. pads skinned raw from all the running. his lungs ache, now, too. his throat lurches for breath, closes in on itself and then sticks, choking him. he cannot remember the heat of the sun on his arms. he does not know when he last said her name.

he doesn’t remember when he last said anything. he speaks in growls and barks and bites. when his mouth opens, his lips curl by instinct. he swallows his drawl and replaces it with something sharper. something poisonous. there’s foam lining his gums.

all he has – of this he is sure – is his brute force and the quick snap of his bite. the shattering of bone, the mauling of flesh. the brawn and breadth of his body; the squeeze of a trigger with one thoughtless pull. all he knows how to do is swing.

and so, one heavy boot steps in front of the other. crunching over broken glass and scuffing over bullet shells. whereisshewhereisshewhereisshe. it loops through his head like it used to when he could see color and feel the wind in his ears. like chasing his tail. catchitcatchitcatchit.

where did she go – the moon? which cloud is she hiding behind? how many men do his maws have to tear apart to find her?

and what will she think when she sees him again? his collar missing and his claws dripping crimson. when she feels the rips in his ears, sees the scar on the side of his head. what will she do, when she runs her hand down his dirty coat, and in place of a loving lick or nuzzle of the nose, he sinks his teeth straight into her wrist?

swear to me. swear to me that everything you said about the fireflies is true.

the dog lowers his head obediently. his ears fall flat. tail curls between his back legs. the wind pushes hard against joel’s chest, threatening to take him with it. i swear, he says.

ellie’s gaze falls. she nods once. tightens her fist around the dog’s leash.

okay.

-

lots of inspo drawn from:

how to be a dog by andrew kane

grit by silas denver melvin

monster theory: reading culture by jeffrey jerome cohen [seven theses]

[worldsneverfilled]

Dreaming; Draft 1

She opened her eyes to find herself on a blanket, curled up against Orestes. The warmth of him beside her and the sun above were welcome against her cold—oh, she was in spring, not winter...

Regardless, it was soothing and left her feeling lazy and she sank into him.

Behind them was the Copper's orchard. They must have snuck in to take advantage of the fields beyond the grove; she doubted they would mind, anyway.

It was nice to have him in Knashthra with her for a change. The extra magic around them helped soothe her; Toril was so quiet and colorless compared to the Wilds.

Tipping her head back, she stared at him, drinking in the details she didn't want to forget with his absence. Was he absent?

He looked more like he did as a teenager than when she last saw him—not younger, but healthier in the face with no signs of exhaustion or the weight of knowing everything. His hair was the same earthy brown she remembered from his youth and before he—no, he's right here, not gone. It reminded her of soil after a good rain. Or rye bread...and now she regretted that they didn't bring any food for their outing; she's hungry. Maybe she could go swipe an apple.

He kept his eyes closed, basking in the sunlight with one arm tucked behind his head while the other was wrapped around her waist. Orestes seemed at peace, unbothered by the horrors of the things he had seen and experienced, and Enilasor wondered if this is what he would have been like had he never read the Book.

But if Orestes hadn't, maybe they wouldn't be here together. Their lives would have likely remained separate save maybe the occasional time her duties as the Wanderer took her through Cormanthyr. Even then, there was no guarantee that they'd cross paths again after their first meeting years ago, that she would ever need to meet with the Coronal.

She watched as he quirked a brow.

"I can feel you staring, 'Nilly," he mumbled. Orestes moved the arm from beneath his head to shield his eyes from the sun so he could peer back at her. His blue eyes, even squinted against the light, glimmered brightly, and Enilasor thought briefly of glacial caves and playful mischief.

She wished she had the chance to share what she'd written with him. Enilasor was terrible with words but she'd worked for weeks on it, writing and rewriting, hoping that maybe it might help him with how he saw himself. Maybe...

"...blue reminds me of ancient glaciers, their caverns that glow softly in the late afternoon sun with ripples on ripples that cast dancing lights through watery glass across the chamber..."

Too late now. She'd waited too long.

Enilasor realized she hadn't responded and shifted her attention back to the clouds above and the Giants' Shoulders ahead of them. "Just admiring the view."

Orestes snorted, a pause, and then he teased, "Your thinking looked painful."

Enilasor reached up and flicked his nose. Some thoughts hurt but they hadn't lingered this time, hadn't caused more pain than usual. "Was just wondering if we would have become friends if we hadn't traveled together...and also food. Rye bread and apples, specifically."

He slipped his arm back beneath his head and his blue eyes disappeared when they closed against the light. Orestes said nothing for a few minutes. He chewed on the inside of his cheek as he thought about it. "I don't know. Your mom and my grandmother were friends, so maybe it would have happened with us too...as for food, there's a whole orchard behind us. I dare you to steal something and see how well that goes for you."

He released her side long enough to lazily gesture in the direction of the trees.

"I'd pay the Coppers for whatever I took. I'm not a thief."

"Says the one I caught swiping one of my shirts."

"You were gone a week and I missed you," she said with a sniff, ignoring that it was a memory of something that never happened. Enilasor caught a glimpse of a smug but boyish grin and gently elbowed him. "Not a word, Gardener."

Orestes laughed and squeezed her.

They fell silent, Orestes dozing in and out, and Enilasor picking out shapes in the clouds.

"You know I'm proud of you, right?" he asked quietly, voice slow and sleepy.

"Hm?"

Orestes repeated himself. "You know I'm proud of you?"

"Don't know what I did but thanks." She started to tease him until she looked up and saw the soft but serious look on his face.

"For making it this far."

"I haven't been very useful. They're saving my ass more than I'm saving theirs."

Enilasor blinked and she was in an empty bed, laying on a damp pillow.

He just smiled and kissed the top of her head, his other arm coming to wrap around her too. "I'll see you soon. Promise."

---

No Orestes, no home, no Mepha or cousin, no uncle, no chance of bringing her mother back. Nothing. She felt like she had nothing.

.

Enilasor clutched at the blankets that still held his scent and tried not to cry.

She failed.

[Photo]

[masterwords]

stops and starts (1 of 2)

Summary: Pre-BAU, Hotch & Morgan are roommates at the TRP (SWAT training)...

Notes: I am creating all of the rules in this universe so please don't come at me with "that's not now this works" because it is exactly how it works here. Because I say so. If the CM writers can bend time and space for their canon/backstories, so can I. Reality has no bearing here. This story is part 1 of 2 but fits into a whole SWAT AU I'm working up, so I'll create a landing page for all of the one-shots that live in this universe.

Pairing: Hotch/Haley & Hotch/Morgan

Words: 2.3k

Warnings: consensual "cheating", food & alcohol

**

“I'm rooming with Mister Rogers...” Derek muttered to himself, poking around in the perfectly manicured framed photos stacked neatly inside of a box on Hotch's bed. He knew he shouldn't be so damn nosy but they were about to spend 19 weeks crammed into this tiny bedroom together and he wanted to know what he was up against. He fancied himself a people person, he could get along with just about anyone really, but 19 weeks is a long time...

Besides, the box was already open. That made it okay right?

Derek had already moved in the day before. His small number of personal effects were on display, his books were stacked on his desk, clothes in the tiny dresser and his toiletries neatly stashed in bins under the bed. It was always preferable to get in first, pick the bed you wanted, get to know the lay of the land. They were right at the end of the hall near the stairwell, and Derek made sure his bed was nearest the door so he could get in and out without disturbing his roomie...just in case. He didn't plan to have his nose in the books for the entire time, that was for damn sure.

He'd heard through the grapevine about a few bars that were good times, and a few houses nearby that would hold parties he could really let loose at. He'd already gotten to know all the right people to make sure that these few months wouldn't be absolutely the most boring time of his life. Derek was serious about his studies but he was also serious about balance. Pleasure and pain. Letting loose was as important as passing his tests.

But Hotch? His bed was just a mattress with a couple of boxes on top. Late didn't seem like it was in this guy's vocabulary, but around here not being early meant being late. When he finally had opportunity to lay eyes on Hotch, it all became clear. He looked flustered, a frustration thick and wild radiated from his otherwise neat facade. His eyes were radioactive amber sparking.

“Hey,” Derek greeted him with a smile, hoping to diffuse whatever bad energy the guy was trying to bring into the room. He wasn't into that. “I'm Derek Morgan...you must be Aaron Hotchner?”

“Hotch, please,” was the response, and just as Derek hoped, the sparks faded to smoldering embers and a small smile twitched at the corner of his lips. Apprehensive, a little shy, but not so angry now. An extended hand, a firm and textbook perfect handshake. The kind that dads practice with their sons before sending them off to law school, he figured. He wouldn't know, his dad was nothing but ashes and a headstone when he headed off that direction, but he could imagine. “Pleasure to meet you.” His eyes flicked from the open box then to Derek and a flush rose in his neck at realization that he'd left it open, that Derek wouldn't even have to pry in order to see right into his pathetic life.

“Can I give you a hand with anything?”

Hotch stared at him for a moment, lips pursed tight enough to become almost colorless. It was like he was being completely sized up right in that moment, and whatever move he made or word he spoke would be held on some sort of personal record. The scrutiny in those eyes was daunting. Derek didn't know much about him except that he'd been a prosecutor and was now running the Seattle FBI Field Office, but he'd wager there were a lot of people who were just as likely to piss their pants as shake his hand when they met him. His initial assessment may have been a little off...Mister Rogers he was not.

“No,” he said finally, his features softening. “Thank you for the offer, this is all I have.”

“Alright.” Derek stood up, arching his back and stretching his lazy muscles out. “Look. I'm not about getting off on the wrong foot...you good? Did I do something to piss you off?”

Hotch's eyes went wide, his eyebrows shooting up almost comically high. Derek had caught him completely off guard. “What? No, I...” but a sudden realization flashed over his features, and he sucked in a few breaths that expanded his ribs until they were at capacity beneath his too crisp to be casual navy polo. “I'm sorry if I'm coming on a little strong. It isn't you.”

Clearly he didn't want to talk about it, but Derek wasn't going to just walk away from that kind of opening. 19 weeks they'd have to sleep three feet away from each other...he couldn't have this dude carrying around so much baggage. In his experience, baggage turns into landmines and he really hated dodging landmines. It wasn't his style to side step them, he just jumped right on top of them.

“Wife?”

“I'm not married,” Hotch returned a little too quickly. It was fast enough that Derek knew he'd hit the target on the first try. Maybe not a wife, but a someone. Important enough someone to really get under his skin. Turning his back on Derek, Hotch began unpacking his few boxes, hoping that the topic would find its inevitable conclusion in his refusal to elaborate...but Derek wasn't having it.

“Someone pissed you off big time. What'd they do, starch your boxers? Put raisins in your cookies but let you think they were chocolate chips?”

Hotch didn't laugh, but he did smile. He wasn't entirely sure he liked Derek and his jokes or his prying, and still there was something about him that was so easy to just...talk to. “Nothing so egregious,” he replied finally, sliding his folded clothes into the dresser and closing up the box of framed photos without putting any of them out. He couldn't be more obvious.

“Well that pretty blonde lady must've done something to get you all worked up...cos she doesn't look like your sister.”

Hotch turned and regarded him seriously, folding his arms over his chest. This is when Derek thought people would be ready to piss their pants...he'd be lying if he didn't say he hadn't felt a little tingle down there the minute that frown was aimed at him. Although, that might be something else entirely.

Derek's game of twenty questions was met with stone cold silence and a frigid stare. A dare, maybe, to keep going or shut the fuck up. He decided on the latter...they had plenty of time for him to get all the nitty gritty details. “I'm heading out for pizza in a few, wanna join me?”

“Depends,” Hotch replied coolly, tightly coiled muscles melting beneath the crisp lines of his navy polo. “Are you finished with the inquisition?”

“For now.”

Pizza led them to common ground, but that had its limits for usefulness. Cheeky banter about law school quickly drove them down a path of comparison, good-natured but ultimately spiked with the intensity of competition. Hotch was shocked to find out how much pepperoni pizza he could consume with a pitcher of beer and good company, so when they found themselves kissing in the alley with greasy lips and desperate hands...no one was as surprised as he was. He would have put good money on that.

They didn't really talk about that night, but things eased up between them at least. Hotch's cold front had melted, and Derek tried not to ask as many questions. They had a long stretch ahead of them and this wasn't going to work if they pushed each other too hard.

Sitting cross-legged on Derek's bed after a week of brutal physical punishment on the training courses, they ate shitty cup o' noodles, slurping loudly while comparing their schedules and instructors, which parts of training they were most excited for, and when talk turned to what they planned to do with all of this after training was done, Hotch found himself already missing Derek. Barely a week in and he was already anticipating heartache. He got too attached to people too quickly.

“So, what's your plan? You got your sights set on FBI Director I bet...” Derek's voice was quiet, his mouth full of a pot sticker he'd crammed in whole. There was a small takeout box of them sitting on the bed between them and one set of chopsticks shared. He really had tried to bite into it, be some sort of gentleman, but it was still way too damn hot and the liquid exploded and started to burn his chin so he shoved it in quickly to avoid further humiliation. Hotch laughed, tearing his own pot sticker apart with the end of one chopstick to let the steam out.

“Someday. First I'd like to get into the BAU. They've got an opening now and another coming up soon, all those guys are retirement age...thought this might look good on my resume. Set me apart, those jobs are competitive.”

“You already run the Seattle Field Office, I doubt you need to pad your resume...” But Derek knew how hard it was to get those BAU oldies to even look at you, he'd had his eye on that prize a long time too. He was busy diversifying, as his mentor had put it in school after he blew out his knee and had to come up with some other career options on the fly. Diversify, make your skill-set unique and irreplaceable. He was working on it.

“What about you?”

Derek's face erupted in a smile that could light up a dark alley and poked a hole into his next pot sticker, following Hotch's lead. “Same. But I think my resume needs more help than yours.”

“Yeah, right, mister bomb squad...”

“Hey, you get in, you hire me alright?” He winked, and Hotch felt the flush beneath the collar of his shirt. His smile was shy, subtle, and Derek let out a booming laugh that made him jump a little with surprise. “I'm kidding, man. I'll get in, don't need any favors from a pretty boy like you.”

“I know...that's not...”

It wasn't. It truly wasn't. He had just found himself suddenly completely overwhelmed by the idea that this SWAT certification might lead them both in the same direction, and he might not have to mourn this loss. Too attached already but how could he say any of that? It would make him look insane, so he excused himself to call Haley. He didn't even want to talk to her, necessarily, he just needed to not sit here beside Derek.

What he needed was a cold shower and well...she would provide him with enough of that feeling. She'd been nothing but cold lately, and still he tried. He called her every day to check in dutifully and she, in turn, answered every call he made. But there was something strained now that hadn't been there before.

There were other calls to make, too, so he took a pocketful of change and made his way to the payphone in the hallway. Sure, his cell would have been fine but then he'd have to go outside to get any reliable service and it was really damn cold out there. The Seattle Field Office was still calling him for help, short staffed perpetually, so he'd have to call them after Haley. They were currently unattached, at her suggestion, busy deciding whether they really wanted to be together or if it was just more of an obligation because they'd already been at it so long. That whole high school sweetheart thing came with expectations that Haley was struggling with. He wasn't aware of how serious she was until she announced that she was already seeing someone. “It's casual,” she'd said as if it helped. “I barely know anything about him. We met at the gym.” He'd only been gone a few hours, was sitting in an airport somewhere in the center of the country on his second layover when she shared the news. Her openness was jarring and sharp, the way she smiled into the phone and said she was glad they were doing this. What he refused to think about was how long she'd actually been seeing this person and waiting for an opportunity to arise. He preferred the thought that she'd only been considering it until now, and as soon as he said he was okay with it (what choice did he have?) she made the call. It still felt terrible but not quite so bad. It was a sting he could live with.

“Trying new things...” she'd called it. “I still love you, Aaron, but this is good for both of us I think. I hope you try it too.”

“I don't have time to try anything, Haley,” he had replied quietly, defeated. The problem was that he was going to be busier than ever, doubling up on SWAT training and profiling courses while she was suddenly without anything to occupy her time for 19 weeks. That was an awful lot of time for her to explore. He had little hope that she would return to him, and maybe that was for the best. They had, perhaps, outgrown each other.

In any case, maybe he would have liked to do some exploring too but it ended there. Aside from that night, after pizza and beer...that night that was still a blur but brought a weary smile to his face. But nothing was going to happen there. Derek had better opportunities than whatever that might have been. Of that he was certain.

“Haley,” he said quietly into the phone when she picked up and tried his best to smile through the agony of knowing he was fighting a losing battle. He was losing her and there wasn't anything he could do to change that. “How are you?”

[defdaily]

‪[TRANSLATION] Arena Homme+ Magazine April 2021 Issue featuring JAY B

Translated by defdaily.

JAY B is free and starting again from scratch. That is what JAY B has in mind. GOT7’s leader announced that he would be leaving JYPE as the group stays together. JAY B is preparing to debut as a solo musician while planning to also release mixtapes and hold exhibitions as Def. We had a chat with JAY B, who has gained more freedom and strength, at the swimming pool about courage, depression, literature and aspirations.

Did you come here alone?

Yes. I took a taxi here. I was the type to go around freely even when I was in JYPE but catching the taxi to work this time around felt new.

All GOT7 members decided to leave JYP but stay together as a group. As a leader, you needed to make a decision, right?

Although we ended up leaving JYPE, we wanted to continue as GOT7. We all agreed to leave [JYPE] and try it between ourselves.The product made from me taking responsibility/taking charge was the single 'Encore’ that was released not too long ago. I was involved in the whole process with a new record label. I was happy to see a good response [to the single]. It was lacking in some areas but I was just very proud that we were able to show a different step. Since we showed through this single that “we did not disband”, what’s next is more important. When we left JYPE, Director Jung Wook mentioned "Your role as a leader starts now." I'm realizing it now.

”I wanted to learn everything about the process of releasing an album and how difficult it is. I wanted to start again from scratch.”

Your role as a leader actually starts now.

I used to find the role of a leader burdensome at times but now I feel a greater sense of responsibility. While supporting each person’s journey, I thought I needed to be the one to step up once we got back together. We also talk regularly in our group chat. Not long ago, Jackson went to China. When Mark went to the USA, I could see him off but when Jackson was leaving, we couldn’t be together because of a schedule. So I told him to have a safe flight, apologised for not being able to see him off and thanked him too. He replied saying he’ll take care and be back.

What motivated you to leave the large agency you've been working with for a long time?

The thought came to mind suddenly as we were promoting as GOT7. Am I taking all these benefits I get for granted? When a schedule is released I just do it, and when they ask me to confirm things I do, but what kind of long process has it gone through before it came to me? Who sends a request and how is it processed? Why am I only waiting until it reaches me and simply watching it unfold? I wanted to be directly involved in that process. I wanted to learn everything about the process of releasing an album and how difficult it is. I want to be humble and start from the bottom again.

Didn't you need the courage?

Of course I did. I was also afraid. My position has risen to all the way up here, but when it comes to my actual knowledge, I think I'm only down there. I was afraid that the difference would feel too big once I left the company. But I think I would have been more afraid if I stayed at JYPE. Since that difference would have grown bigger and bigger. My real self is here, so I should face it head-on a little faster. That's what I thought.

As JAY B or as Def. who releases mixtapes and holds exhibitions, you must have had the desire to do something new.

I want to do research and build it up step by step without haste. JAY B will show hip hop and RnB music that appeals to the general public and Def. will do activities that Def. wants to do. It could be mixtapes or exhibitions, or other different kinds of fictions. Def. is the nickname I used as a bboy before I became a trainee. It’s like air floating about freely. It could be house or soul or acoustic or even modern rock. In a way, you can say that Def. is close to my “main self” but since I debuted as JAY B, I’ll also show a devoted side of myself through JAY B. I want to be a person who can do both what he has to do and what he wants to do freely.

Listening to your mixtapes, and hearing that you like the styles of D’Angelo and Ray Charles, you seem to be attached to the Southern US rhythm and blues and soul music.

I do like them a lot. I like the entire hip-hop culture that originated from there. That culture also includes DJing, graffiti and even bboying. Since I started as a bboy, I would look up older videos to watch, study the culture and also look into what each dance move symbolizes, with my bboying crew and that's how I became fascinated. What captivated me the most was their obstinacy. I felt respect towards the conviction and obstinacy they carried with their culture.

Is that mood still incorporated in your music and dance?

Yes. For example, I don’t think choreography is dance. I think dancing is when music plays and you like the rhythm and start humming and bobbing your head and moving your body. I think dancing is a free act you do out of enjoyment.

What was the reason you joined an idol group after starting out as a bboy?

I gained an interest in music too, not just dancing. When I was young, I listened to D’Angelo’s music and wanted to become a singer like him. But I was rebellious when I first joined JYPE. Haha. I was even suspended for a month once as a trainee. I definitely said hello but they said I didn’t so they said "If you're going to be stubborn, then go home" and me with my young heart replied “Then I shall head home.” and left. Then I met up with my bboying crew after a long time, and in just a few months it turned into a different world. The crew members were above me and I was worried because I could feel myself far away by myself. Should I go back to bboying? Should I continue as a trainee? In the end, I wanted to do my very best in whatever I chose so I decided to focus on becoming a singer. Since I wanted to do music, it was a choice I made with no regrets.

You started as a dancer and ended up as a main vocalist. What was music to you back then?

It was a challenge. Trainees are divided into singing and dancing. I joined as a dancer but what I wanted to do was become a singer and not just do dance. But since I was put into the dancing division, I worked even harder with singing to break that prejudice. I often felt defeated. I still feel defeated with singing. Haha. But music is about endless research. Now it’s more about research than studying.

You grew up as an only child to your parents who did farming?

I was an ordinary kid. I enjoyed Haruki’s Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage and thought the “colourless” kid was just like me. I was a calm kid who helped his parents with their farm work. I don’t know if it’s because I don’t have any older siblings but they said I used to talk to myself a lot. My mother said there was a way she would know if I was home or not. If I was home, she would hear me talk to myself and be like “Oh really?” “Yes really” haha.

It’s extraordinary to read Haruki at that age.

There was an older friend that I knew and he was really cool. He looked really cool reading on the bus with his legs crossed. He said “Hey, Read a book and build up some knowledge.” As I was trying to be cool like him, I gained a favourite author and started reading more since I enjoyed it.

What kind of books do you like?

When I was a teenager I often read Kafka On The Shore. It felt like Kafka was just like me, and so while reading it, I even cried. The style of Murakami Radio was also interesting. The ending phrase “But I like that more…” was very witty. I’m collecting books from secondhand bookstores from authors who won the Young Author awards. I like Lee Jang-wook's short story Byeon Hee-bong. The main character knows the actor Byun Hee-bong, but the world doesn't know him. He would ask "Don't you know Byun Hee-bong from the movie The Host?" But no one knows. I like stories that don’t intend to be funny but they end up making me giggle.

What do you read these days?

I try to read poetry. I purchased and read the first volume that appeared on Moonji’s Poetry Collection, but it has too many Hanja characters. Haha. I started with Munhwak’s Poetry Collection. I have volumes 1 to 85. I also read poet Park Joon's collection of poems and poet Lee Eun-gyu's Affectionate Name. I even underlined and wrote things down.

Among the idols and musicians I’ve met, I think you are the most extensive reader.

We went on tours often and we would have a lot of time in my hotel room. When I went out I took pictures and when I stayed in my hotel room I read books. When I go on an overseas tour, I pack around 30 books in my suitcase. Then I bring back the books that left an impression on me, and those that didn’t sometimes I dispose of them there. These days, I look for independent publications too. I often look for independent publishing bookstores in Nakseongdae or Haebangchon. There are many books that contain honest stories that are not refined, and the power of those sentences is great.

How does reading influence your work?

The poetic expressions with poetic license help when writing lyrics. You read a new sentence and think “What is this expressing?” You receive inspiration from that image being expressed in a new way. I think of lyrics as poetry too. There are times I write how I feel honestly, but when I want to include a certain meaning I’d want to write the lyrics like poetry.

In your photo exhibition <ALONE> last year, you took pictures of objects and signs in the middle of the road.

Wouldn't it feel very lonely if you think about it from an object’s point of view? The camera captures just an instance but the object will stay there. I think each person has an insatiable loneliness. I like the artist Seonglib’s works, and I feel loneliness in his drawings. I don't know why I keep talking about loneliness, I guess I’m familiar with loneliness.

Seems like you take more pictures of objects and landscapes than people.

I don’t really like taking pictures of people. You can clearly see a person’s emotions in their eyes. I prefer hiding things rather than revealing them too much. I prefer objects, backgrounds, and natural objects rather than subjects that openly express 'It's me!'. Tranquil things, I like when you go past something and go “that’s how it was.” I try my best since my job requires being presented to people but that’s also how I am.

Who do you like as a movie director?

I like Woody Allen’s directing. My favourite is Match Point. It's a love story that goes beyond taboos, and it's electrifying. The face of the actor who secretly asks the reunited lover to give him her number remains in my memory for a long time. How could he direct such a real-looking, raw look in their eyes? When I was a theater and film major, I used to take directing classes rather than acting. If I were to direct a film, I would like to shoot an eccentric witty romantic comedy like Love Fiction directed by Jeon Gye-soo.

Are you self-conscious as an artist?

I’m interested in a variety of genres, and interact with crews often, but I think goofing off just because they are an artist is an arrogant attitude. Everyone is their own artist, no matter what they do, right? I'm not trying to be pretentious, I just think there's a difference in expression, and people who work in the office are also doing their own art. That’s why I’m a little shy about the title “artist.” Is there a need to be puffed up with pride because I’m an artist? I’m just a person.

While filming for “What's in my bag” and revealed your medications for depression and panic disorder. When did you face your depression?

I didn’t know I had depression. I thought I was being weak for a short while and let it pass. But on an occasion I got examined and found out I had depression. They asked how I lived by without going to the psychiatrist. I said I just thought I was the type to feel blue. Haha. I’m the type that doesn’t show [what is wrong] but they said I was in a state where I needed treatment. After going to counselling and taking medications, I’m much better now.

“I just wanted to talk about it. It may not show, but depression is both a common and dangerous illness.”

I think you’re cool for having the courage to talk about this.

I got diagnosed and looked at the people around me. There are friends who are ashamed of it and try to hide it, and there are friends who talk about it as if it’s insignificant. I just wanted to talk about it. It may not show, but it’s both a common and dangerous illness. A mental illness is an illness too. Among my fans, or those who read this interview, if there is someone who feels depressed, don’t be ashamed of it and I hope you receive treatment and overcome it. It’s not an embarrassing thing and it doesn’t need to be hidden. And I was filming content where I show what’s inside my bag; I can’t lie. I wish everyone would be healthy.

Are you bad at lying?

Yes. If I have to tell a lie, I think it’s just better to not say anything. Since I’m the type that’s honest and straightforward, I also don’t like beating around the bush.

Can you share a way one can take a step forward towards recovering from depression?

Look at the world in a broad view. Know that there are many places you haven’t been to yet and there are many things you haven’t felt yet. It's also good to take a walk and go off your usual route and take a path you've never been on. Small adventures can also be of great help. Just by leaving the house you’re already halfway there. I think there are more ways you can refresh yourself outside rather than inside. Also, I thought I was an honest person but after being diagnosed with depression, I thought I should be more honest with myself and more faithful to myself. At times like this, think of yourself before others.

What do you believe in?

I just believe in god. I don’t have a religion. I don’t know what kind of existence god is but I do believe that there is a god. When I’m thankful or am having a hard time, I pray. “Thank you.” “Please let me get through this wisely.”

What is the greatest motivation that moves you?

As long as I’m alive, I want to continue doing work that will leave a message. I believe that there is no next life. I think I should live this time diligently to the fullest. To have no regrets.

Translated by defdaily.

[americancowgirl19]

Acceptance

Summary: You find the love of your life in the middle of a highway.

Warnings: violence, soulmate, fluff, angst?, implied smut

Reader: Female Reader

Pairings: Bucky Barnes x Female Reader

Word Count: 3,680

A/n: This was requested by @fyeahtaylorp​ : Could you please do a Bucky Barnes x plus size female reader imagine where you see black and white until you meet your soulmate and they meet during the winter solider when he’s not really him and he’s protective of her and she works along side Steve and she has weather manipulation powers and they meet again and he’s still protective and there is smut please. - I am so freaking sorry that it took me forever to get this written and published and I didn’t get to the smut, so sorry. I also changed it just a little bit so I hope you still like it! 

Masterlist

“Hey, are you Sam Wilson?” You question, standing on the man's front doorstep. He frowns his eyebrows, crosses his arms, and sizes you up. You know you don’t look like much, but your mother always said that looks were deceiving. “Can I come in?”

“And who are you?” He asks, standing tall in the doorway.

“She’s backup,” Natasha states, coming into view. You instantly send a smile her way. “We can trust her,” She reassures him. Sam presses his lips together but nods and moves to let you in.

“You look good... All things considered,” You compliment her. She looked like her naturally beautiful self with only a couple of scratches and bruises on her skin.

“It’s been a rough few days,” Natasha tells you. “We could use your help,” You smirk and cock your head to the side.

“That’s what I’m here for. Where’s Cap?” Once the question leaves your lips, the golden boy comes into the room. “Heard you were in a tight spot,” You state when he looks at you with arched eyebrows. His eyes move from you to Natasha, who gives an innocent shrug.

“We could use her help,” Natasha states. “We can trust her,” She vouches. Steve looks hesitant but nods before giving you a polite smile.

“Rough few days, huh?” You mutter, looking at Natasha, sensing that her words were a bit of an understatement. “What exactly are we up against?”

Natasha and Steve both begin to fill you and Sam in on what’s been going on. You weren’t surprised Shield had been compromised. You didn’t trust anybody outside your small group. You preferred being on your own in a secluded area.

However, Natasha is one of the select few that has your complete trust. Therefore, when she called, saying she needed help, you came without hesitation.

“So, the question is: who in Shield could launch a domestic missile strike?” Natasha questions.

“Pierce,” Steve realizes.

“Who happens to be sitting on top of the most secure building in the world,” Natasha sighs.

“But he’s not working alone. Zola’s algorithm was on the Lemurian Star,”

“So was Jasper Sitwell,”

“So, the real question is: how do the two most wanted people in Washington kidnap a Shield officer in broad daylight?”

“The answer is: you don’t,” Sam states, dropping a military file on the table. Natasha pulls it toward her.

“What’s this?”

“Call it a resume,”

“Is this Bakhmala? The Khalid Khandil mission, that was you,” Natasha states. “You didn’t say he was a para-rescue,” She mumbles, looking at Steve.

“Is this Riley?” He asks, and Sam nods.

“I heard they couldn’t bring in the choppers because of the RPGs. What did you use, a stealth chute?”

“No. These,” Sam corrects Natasha. Steve flips through the file.

“I thought you said you were a pilot,”

“I never said pilot,” Sam smirks with a hint of smugness. It’s enough to get you grinning. You decide that you like him.

“I can’t ask you to do this, Sam. You got out for a good reason,”

“Dude, Captain America needs my help. There’s no better reason to get back in,”

“So, where can we get one of those?” You wonder, peaking at the pictures. “I don’t think Walmart has those in stock,”

“The last one is at Fort Meade,” Sam answers, an amused grin on his lips. “Behind three guarded gates and a twelve-inch steel wall,”

“Shouldn’t be a problem,” Steve assures him.

“I’m assuming you have a plan?” You ask, Steve. “Or is this a wing-it kind of mission?” Natasha grins a bit before they start laying out the plan.

Your part of the plan was to keep them from dying, basically. Nobody knew that you were involved. You were to stay in the background and only intervene if needed. Knowing Natasha, you would need to step in sooner rather than later.

You watched them from a distance. You smirked when you saw Sam flying around with his wings. They were a cool contraption; you weren’t going to lie.

Borrowing someone’s car, you followed them from a distance. You watched for anyone suspicious. Everything seemed normal until someone caught your eye.

This, someone, was dressed in black, but he stood out from everything around you. Like everyone else who had yet to meet the one they’re destined to be with, the world is dull and colorless. Only after meeting and accepting your soulmate could you see the world the way it’s supposed to be seen, full of color.

So, while his attire is completely black, his pale skin and silver arm stand out. You knew this was the man, The Winter Soldier, that Natasha and Steve had warned you about. You knew you should have warned them, but you were frozen by the revelation.

When he leaped from the car he was on and onto the one with your friends, you snapped out of your daze. Cursing, you sped up to try and get to them, but by the time you were able to weave around traffic and catch up, their car had crashed.

“Some backup you are, Y/n,” You mutter to yourself. You slam on the breaks and put the car in park before climbing out. You race down the highway and toward the men shooting at Natasha and Sam.

You stop a few paces away from the shooters and begin to conjure fog to cover their escape. Before long, Natasha can get away, and the attention is on you instead of Sam.

Able to see through your fog clearly, your search for your soulmate. When you find him, you send a powerful gust of wind in his direction. The force sends him flying back and through a car. You wince, but at least he’s not within the fog’s grasp any longer.

You move around as bullets come flying your way. You had given up your position, but it had been necessary. Once you find a safer place to stand, you begin to manipulate the fog once more. Your breath is now visible as the air around you drops rapidly in temperature.

To add to the cold, you begin to make the air thinner in their area. You see them shivering, and some drop to the ground due to the lack of oxygen.

In the corner of your eye, you notice one of the men had escaped the fog’s perimeter. He aims his gun at you but forces the fog to become thicker as you slip into its protective cover. Within the fog, you notice that more than one man has escaped.

You huff in annoyance, but at least you have eliminated a couple of the problem people. You see a few people standing at the edge of the highway shooting down where you assume Natasha, Steve, and Sam are.

Before you deal with them, you turn to the one that continues to hunt you just outside of the fog. Giving him an annoyed glare, one he doesn’t see, you point your hand at him. Like Palpatine, you release streams of lightning from your fingertips.

The man screams in pain and drops to the floor. You continue your ministrations until his screams stop. By then, however, the fog has dissipated, allowing the others to see you. Their guns turn to you, but before you can defend yourself, a stream of bullets lodge into their heads.

Your eyes snap to the source and notice the Soldier standing there. You both stare at each other before he stalks to the edge of the bridge and jobs down to the lower level. You race to the edge to watch him stomp off a crushed car and continue onward as nothing happened.

“Oh, no, you’re not getting away that easily,” You mutter. Lifting your hands, you manipulate the air around yourself. It lifts you off the ground and gently sets you down beside the car the Soldier had crushed when he landed.

You run in the direction the Soldier had gone. You see him locked in a fight with Steve. It looks like Cap finally met his match.

A groan catches your attention. Your breath catches in your throat. You jog over to Natasha and inspect her bullet wound.

“This is gonna hurt,” You warn her. She looks at you before closing her eyes. When she nods, you place your hands on either side of her wounded shoulder. You conjure enough heat to cauterize the wound.

“I hate it when you do that,” She mumbles. You smile at her.

“Well, stop getting shot, and I won’t have to do it,” You wink at her. “You’ll be alright,” You assure her before standing up. You turn back toward the Soldier and Steve. For the first time, you see him without his mask.

“Who the hell is Bucky?” He asks Steve before aiming a pistol at Steve. Your breath hitches again when Sam comes in and kicks the Soldier away from Steve. When he regains his footing, you notice Natasha aiming a grenade launcher at him.

“No!” You shout, shoving Natasha, forcing her to miss her target. When you look back, you notice the Soldier is gone. Before you can react, a collar is locked around your neck, preventing your mutation from working.

“It was him... He looked right at me like he didn’t even know me,” Steve mutters.

“How’s that even possible? It was like 70 years ago,” Sam states as Natasha stares at you intently. You avoid her gaze and continue to stare at Steve, wanting to know as much about him as possible.

“Zola. Bucky’s whole unit was captured n ‘43, Zola experimented on him. Whatever he did helped Bucky survive the fall. They must have found him and...”

“None of that's your fault, Steve,” Natasha assures him.

“Even when I had nothing, I had Bucky,” Steve whispers.

Great, my soulmate is a ninety-something supersoldier that’s in Hydra. You think sarcastically. Although, if he doesn’t even know who he is, how can he willingly work for Hydra? He protected me from his own men. Hydra soldiers don’t do that. There’s hope for him.

“Oh, you’re on our side?” You ask when one of the masked persons beats the sit out of the other two. “Oh, hey Maria,” You greet when she takes her helmet off.

“Ah, that thing was squeezing my brain... Who’s this guy?”

After making the grand escape, you’re all lead towards a hideout. There you find Nick Fury, who’s apparently not dead. After an argument on how to go about things, you prepare to take on Shield/Hydra once again.

“Are you going to tell me what’s going on, or am I going to have to start guessing?” Natasha questions. You glance up at her before looking back down at your feet.

“You’re smart, Nat... I’m sure you’ve already figured it out,” You whispers. Natasha doesn’t say anything for a minute. She then comes toward you and sits down.

“Can you stop him?” Nat asks. You meet her look.

“If I can... You won’t be seeing me for a while,” You tell her. She sends you a small smile.

“Do what you have to do... Just be careful,” She advises. You smile, bumping your shoulder with hers.

“You’re the one who should be careful... Once I find him, I’m going to get him to leave with me. You’ll be in the fight the whole time,” You remind her.

“I’ll be fine,’ Natasha whispers. “Just get him and go,” You smile and slowly nod.

With those words said, the two of you leave the room. You approach Shield with Steve and Sam. The two of them go their separate ways while you start your search for the Solider... For Bucky.

During your search, you take down as many Hydra agents as possible. You wanted to help the cause, but finding Bucky was more important.

It wasn’t long before you were officially labeled a major threat. This meant that their focus shifted toward you. Things were slowly getting out of hand, but you continue to literally take the air from their lungs and the warmth from their bodies until they died. You offered a foggy cover for the Shield agents that were your allies while shooting your enemies down with bolts of lightning.

When you began to get surrounded, someone came to your aid. He had found you before you found him. He didn’t waste ammo—a single bullet to the head of those around you.

You two shared another look. Instead of looking into sunglasses, this time, you were looking in his eyes. Everything around him would continue to be black and white until he accepted you. You wondered if he could see in color. Despite not knowing him and him working for Hydra, you accepted him. You wanted him. You hoped that he would trust you.

You got lost in the beautiful color of his eyes that you forgot what was happening around you. When he moved to leave you and continue with his mission, you shouted his name. He froze, and you moved a few steps closer.

“Look at me... please,” You whisper to him. He remains motionless. “Your name is Bucky. You were friends with Steve Rogers,” His head turns slightly to you. “I don’t know what’s happened to you, nor do I know what you’ve been through, but I can tell you that things don’t have to be like this. You don’t have to be their weapon, their machine,” You risk a few steps closer to him. “I’m your soulmate. I will never hurt you. I only want you to be happy... To keep you safe,”

He stays still for a moment. He’s so still it’s as if he’s a statue. Then, he moves forward as if the words you just said didn’t matter to him. They probably didn’t. You weren’t going to give up that easily.

“Bucky,” You say again, latching your hand around his wrist. He whips around and wraps your throat in his metallic hand. You tense but don’t move. He’s not cutting off your air; it’s a warning. Your free hand lifts and covers his metal wrist. I won’t hurt you... and I won’t ever let them hurt you again,” You promise him. “Who cares about what’s going on here? It’s not our fight,” You tell him. “Come with me,”

“They’ll find us,” He whispers. You smile brightly.

“They’ve been looking for me for over a decade and haven’t come close,” You tell him. “They couldn’t find me then, and they certainly won’t find us now,” You assure him. “Please, come with me,”

Miraculously, he listens. The two of your leave the battle fairly easily. Anybody who gets in your way ends up dead. You switch your methods between sucking the air from his lungs to overheating or sudden frostbite. Bucky, while amazed by your abilities, settles for a simple bullet to the head. You two work with each other fluently.

You both stay away from populated areas. It’s harder within the city, but once you borrow another car and head into the countryside, it gets easier. You tell Bucky to stay in the car while you quickly buy him some comfortable clothes. Then, you drive him to your home. With your abilities, it’s impossible for anybody else to find, let alone get into, your home.

There’s an intense fog almost a mile thick around your property. Within the fog are intense temperatures. Some temperatures are too high or too low for a human to survive. Outside the fog, everything is normal and up to mother nature.

“Welcome to my home,” You say before climbing out of the car. He hesitantly follows you. “Nobody can come in without my consent,” You tell him. You walk to the house before slowing and turning back to him. “If you really want to leave, let me know... You may be a super soldier, but I’d be surprised if you could survive out there,” Bucky looks at the woods. “Come on; you must be hungry,”

You and Bucky live in silence for a long time. He doesn’t want to talk, and you don’t make him. You try to fill the silence with your ramblings, but it doesn’t always work to make him relax. He has nightmares at night, during the day as well. You want to help, but it’s a complicated situation.

It doesn’t help that he continues to be the only thing in color. He hasn’t accepted you yet. It hurts, but you don’t give up on him.

It takes a month for him to start conversations. It takes him even longer to hold those conversations for more than a few seconds. At this point, he’s knows everything about you while he’s still a mystery. To be fair, he’s still a mystery to himself.

You introduce him to the internet. There he can research himself and Steve. He learns a lot, and you find him behind the screen more often than not.

Around the end of the second month, Bucky seems to be relaxing even more. He still has his nightmares, he still is trying to find himself, but at the same time, it’s like he knows he’s safe. He knows nothing can’t get to him while he’s here. Yet he still won’t let you in.

In an attempt to get him to accept you, you try to do more for him. The meals you cook get more complicated, and you try to be more romantic and supportive. He entertains you but still keeps his distance.

It isn’t until the fourth month you begin to lose hope. You’ve done everything you can to get him to accept you. You’ve given him space, you’ve set him free, you’ve protected him and supported him. You have given him clothes and home, yet still, you get nothing.

You sit on the front porch. You’re thinking through everything. You know, four months, in retrospect, isn’t that long. It’ll take years for Bucky to recover. You had just hoped that he would want you. He’s taken your help, but you wanted him to want you.

When he comes back from his midafternoon run, he pauses right before the porch. He can tell something is bothering you but hasn’t a clue what to do.

“Do you know what soulmates are?” You wonder. Bucky stares at you for a moment before slowly nodding his head. You get a bit frustrated. “Do you trust me?” He hesitates again but ultimately nods. “Do you not want me then?” You whisper. It’s subtle, but Bucky tenses. You read his posture wrong. “Alright,” You whisper, standing up.

“Wait,” He says, jumping up onto the porch. His hand grabs your wrist. You stop, look at his hand, and then up into his eyes. “You’re beautiful. You’re strong. You’re everything I could ever want,”

“Then why haven’t you accepted me?” You whisper. He sighs slowly. As if giving into a desire, he caresses your cheek with his hand.

“For decades, all I’ve known is fighting. I went from one to another. Before that, I never thought I’d see in color. Then you come out of nowhere and turn my world upside-down. As perfect as you are, that doesn’t change who I am. I’m haunted every day, and I know Hydra is hunting me. Just being here will endanger you, but I can’t find it in myself to leave. I don’t want to get to the point of no return. I don’t want you to get attached to me because one day I’ll have to leave, and I don’t know if I’ll come back,”

“That just won’t do for me,” You shake your head. “You see, Buck, I’m in this for life whether you accept me or not. If you leave, I’m just going to follow. Whether you go to Steve or Hydra or even Hell, I will follow you,” You tell him. “You distancing yourself is hurting us more than the potential of you leaving. I’m not going to let you go, Buck... You’ll realize that eventually.”

Things continued the same for a while as Bucky digested your words. Eventually, however, there was a change. It was a slow change, but it was progress nonetheless.

Bucky began to open up to you more. There were subtle touches and lingering gazes. He sat closer and spent more time with you. As the weeks passed, everything began to amplify. The subtle touches turned into handholding that eventually turned into cuddle sessions. The words exchanged turned into flirtatious whispers.

The day you could see everything in color was the day you pulled him into a kiss. You both were the happiest you’ve ever been. The kiss made you both feel as if you had been touch-starved. Neither of you could get enough of each other.

The kiss had started in the kitchen. You were making breakfast when everything turned from black and white to various vibrant colors. You whipped around to him. He had this lopsided grin on his face as he stared at you.

You marched up to him and kissed him without a second thought. He had been leaning on the wall the separated the kitchen from the living room, but he switched positions so that you were pressed between that wall and him.

“I love you,” Bucky whispers. You begin to smile even wider, your heart hammering in your chest. “You’re-”

“I love you too,” You whisper back to him before kissing him once more. Bucky smiles into the kiss and leans into you even more.

You breathe in deeply when he picks you up. He doesn’t hesitate to take you back to your room. The room he’s spent the last few nights cuddling you in. He lays you down on the bed with a tenderness that has your heart fluttering.

“I love you,” He whispers again. He would tell you that all night. He didn’t want to stop kissing you, stop touching, nor stop telling you how much you meant to him. You changed his world, and you became his world.

[acatnamedpusheen]

Le Parole Lontane Pt.1

Damiano David x reader

-

Pt.2

Genre: Angst/smut (in next part)

Warnings: Slight cursing and sexual content

Snippet: He made you feel like home, truly loved, truly special, but then came the fights.

"Give me one night to prove you I love you more than anything in the world and then you decide whether we get back together or not."

A/N: I don't even know if this is remotely good (or just straight up cringe) or if I'll stay consistent and actually write what I have planned for the next part but hey here have this!

------

You saw him again, after 2 months. You saw him again and you could feel a warmth deep within you, as if it was the first day of spring. At the same time, you could feel a sharp coldness piercing through your heart, like the freezing cold air of a snowy winter.

That's what Damiano always did. He shook things up in your life since the day he entered it. He confused you as he made you feel emotions you never thought you could experience. He made you feel like home, truly loved, truly special, but then came the fights. Those were the times you couldn't understand him and it hurt. It hurt because you felt inadequate, at fault. It hurt because small cracks would be created on the beautiful image of your relationship. And those cracks would be filled with feelings of guilt, regret.

"Just how much more insensitive could you be, Y/N?"

The concert was starting in half an hour and you two had picked up a fight backstage. Usually this happened when you were alone at home, but this time it was different and you could feel it all along.

"So now somehow I'm the insensitive one?!"

"I'm insensitive for trying to be there for you and not leave you drowning in your own problems?!"

You raised your voice not caring if anyone in the next rooms heard you. You've had enough of Damiano constantly snapping at you or even ignoring you the past few days while you were trying to be supportive.

"It was obviously of no use, so why where you so convinced that you were actually helping?"

There came the hurtful words and little did you know that this was not the worst. It pained you to see him like this because you knew he wasn't his usual self. Yet he made you feel like you weren't enough, that you didn't deserve him.

"I can't believe we're doing this..." you sighed trying to keep it together.

"I shouldn't have bothered, is that what you want to hear? Is that what you want to hear so we can stop this stupid fight?"

You could sense the tears forming in your eyes, but you held them back. You were willing to face him without breaking down, you were willing to prove that you were strong.

But what's the point of pretending to be strong, when you're gradually falling apart on the inside?

"I'd like to see you stop being a stupid bitch."

No, you must have heard wrong, he couldn't have said such thing to the person he so dearly loved and cherished. To the person he could hold in his arms forever, who's kisses gave him life, who's smile would bring the light.

But indeed those words fell from the lips of a man that had once shown you a new world.

You had no control over your trembling body as you gave Damiano a hard slap. Never would you have imagined yourself doing such thing especially to him, but that night proved to have been unprecedented in many ways.

"Alright then, you're not seeing me ever again."

were your last words probably 10 minutes before the show started. The show that you wouldn't be watching. The show after which you wouldn't hang out with the whole band and later make love to Damiano.

There was no way you could have stayed after he disrespected you like that. You needed time, both of you, to calm down and think it through, to decide whether you really wanted to be together or not.

And so days went by which turned to weeks then months. You decided to basically dissapear from Damiano's life, refusing to answer any of his calls or texts.

The first few days he seemed desperate, calling several times a day only to be greeted by the colorless beeping sound of the phone, in vain waiting that he'd finally get to hear your voice.

You'd be staring at the bright screen, phone in silent, reading his name over and over again that seemed somehow more and more alien to you.

And once he'd get tired of waiting for you to pick up he'd text you. Things like "I'm sorry", "Can we please talk?", "I never meant those words" "Y/N please answer me" had stayed in front of your glistening eyes, but not once did you respond.

You'd also cut off ties with the rest of the members at least for the first few weeks until you were feeling like keeping in touch with Victoria. But nothing more than texts since anything that reminded you of Damiano made your heart sink.

And that sinking feeling was indeed there when you saw him again after about 2 months. Oddly enough though, a part of you just wanted to run straight to his arms and never let go.

It happened at a random coffee shop in the city center. You saw him first when you had just gotten your order and tried to leave before he noticed you, but failed.

Once you locked eyes with each other, you found it impossible to move, giving him the chance to approach you.

"Can we talk now?"

Without uttering a single thing, you moved past him towards some table at the far end of the shop with him following close behind.

There was no room for further postponement of the issue. Whether you ended things or not you ought to have a discussion to clear everything out. After all you did still love him and wanted back that special spark he created in your life, but you couldn't go on if there was a price to pay.

"I missed you" he said with a pained smile once you were both sat across each other.

"Last time I checked, I was an annoying stupid bitch, what changed?"

He sighed, looking away. These words now coming from you, sounded heavier than he'd thought.

"Y/N, you have to understand I don't mean it, I never meant it! Sometimes stress just messes things up."

"Just?! This wasn't a 'just' Damiano. Do you realise what it's like when the person you love the most in this world is giving you the cold shoulder and then talks to you like that?"

"Am I still the person you love the most in this world?"

You saw the pain and longing in his eyes as you realised you'd used the present tense. Your heart was speaking louder than your mind and you couldn't hide it anymore.

"I-I don't know, I need time." you abruptly got up, feeling everything suddenly becoming too overwhelming for you to handle.

As soon as you exited the coffee shop a hand got a strong grip on your wrist forcing you to turn around.

"Give me one night." seeing confusion painted across your features, he continued "One night to prove you that I love you more than anything in this world. And then you decide whether we get back together or not."

"Okay..." you agreed hesitantly but were still quite eager to see what he had in mind.

"Alright then, dinner at my place tomorrow at 8."

[the-lighthouse-lit]

So a while ago I wrote a Miraculous Ladybug AU for BBxRae in which I explored what would be the Adrinette and Ladynoir sides of the square (Garchel and BBxRaven if you will). I always intended to go back and do the other sides of the square (Garraven and BBchel??), but I also started expanding it in my brain as to what would happen later, with reveals and such, and it became clear that it’s now unavoidably a multi-chaptered fic 😅

Anyway I’ve been fist-fighting the outline in any free moment I’ve had for weeks and it’s STILL being an asshole but I can offer a preview of the next part!!

Rachel had made a number of sacrifices in order to be a superhero. She had quit babysitting, because she just could no longer guarantee she could stay a whole shift without needing to run off to save the city. Her mom thought she’d suddenly become rebellious, having found her bedroom empty and a pillow under her covers a few times now. She walked around with those stupid earrings on, letting people think she was one of those cringey Raven fans who wore her knock-off jewelry merch. She’d had to watch Kitty Moth dress up as Raven for Halloween, making a mockery of the costume with a skimpy leotard and a cloak that barely reached her hips. And she couldn’t go on school trips.

She wondered if the others diligently sat out of school trips and cleared their schedule in case trouble arose. Holders, the League of Superheroes called them. It drove home the point that all of them were replaceable. Only special as long as they held the jewels. They were chosen ones, after a fashion—the League decided who got to fight. All Rachel knew was she wanted to continue being allowed to do good. So sacrifices must be made.

Her colorless thoughts were interrupted when the door opened, and instead of a teacher, Gar Logan came in. He saw her and cocked his head. “Rachel? You didn’t go on the trip either?”

[itsuki-minamy]

PROFILE: SUOH MIKOTO

Translation: Naru-kun Raws: Ridia

Real name: Suoh Mikoto

Terms of address: King, Wild Beast Mikoto, King of Homura

[PROFILE]

Birthday: August 13, Leo

Blood type: B

Age: 24 (At the time of death)

[APPEARANCE]

Physique: 1.85 cm in height. A tough block-like body.

Face, hair: His eyes are sharp and intimidating. Reddish lion hair.

Attire: A jacket with fur, accessories (chains, bracelets), after Totsuka's death he wears an earring.

Personal effects: He usually carries cigarettes.

[HABITS, SKILLS]

· Makes eye contact with a calm and close person.

· The method of attack is a blow that hits with an overwhelming amount of heat.

[IMPRESSION, OTHER NOTES]

· The image color is "red".

· A "bad boy head" that contains the urge to explode. The need to destroy is still entering the work.

· The image of “a lion that went crazy” and “a bomb about to explode”.

· Image of "unstoppable".

[POSITION, OBJECTIVES]

King of the street gang team “Homura”.

He was a lonely person, but thanks to the overwhelming charisma of him, Kusanagi, Totsuka and a dozen other people, he became the head of the street boys. After awakening as the "Red King", the boys were drawn to Suoh and did an installation test to see if they could accept the "Red King" flame, and he welcomed everyone who passed it.

Suoh, who has a need to destroy, has been struggling to control his power since he woke up as the "Red King". Suoh's Weismann deviation was erratic, and the sword of Damocles had many scratches.

The shackles that signified his bindings were removed after Totsuka's death, and he held the sword of Damocles, which was about to collapse, pursued its ruin towards destruction.

[PERSONALITY, CONDUCT]

In normal times, he is quiet and lazy. There is no coordination, but if he is interested he can show a side that is an unexpectedly good relationship. Individualistic, annoyed by social restrictions.

Basically, he is not obsessed with it, and does not pay attention to details.

He became the "Red King" because he was chosen by the Slate, and he has no intention of acting as a "king". He believes that both he and those who follow him will live as they choose.

He is like a feline beast that sleeps normally and is sober during battle. Kusanagi said: "He was happy to have been born as a lion in the savannah."

Although he has the urge to destroy and the desire to destroy it, he acknowledges that he does not want to destroy his fellow Homura and has lived by killing the urge within him. He often has nightmares due to the need to destroy and a sense of crisis that his abilities could escape. He is vague about his future, which is to destroy everything, and when he is about to be swallowed by his own power, he stays in the room and enters a lethargic state where his senses are dull and he is overwhelmed by that urge.

While he felt a sense of comfort with "Homura", he was eager to burn everything. There was also a side that was thrown into thinking about the feeling of loss due to Totsuka's death that was also the brake on Suoh's need to destroy.

[FATE, ENDING]

He killed the "Colorless King" who had killed Totsuka, knowing that his sword would fall. On the brink of the fall of Damocles, Munakata killed him.

[ABILITIES, TACTICS]

He manipulates a powerful flame. He has a fearsome power of destruction.

Basically, he destroys disturbing things with just a few moves, but when he fights Reisi Munakata, he develops a fist fight that combines light movements and flames.

Since the bad boy is awake, the action is basically that of a bully with a fighting method.

[POWER]

A (King class)

[LIKES]

Sake and cigarettes. When he's in a good mood, he doesn't hate the noise his friends make.

[DISLIKE]

Be patient, annoying things. Social restrictions.

[HOBBIES]

None in particular. It is not a hobby, but sleep well.

[FASHION]

T-shirt, jeans, fur coat. He likes accessories.

[BODY]

A slim and muscular body. A boy with excellent muscular strength before waking up as "King", who naturally trained during repeated fights.

[INTELLIGENCE]

Instinct is often used before head. However, his intelligence is really high.

[BELIEFS]

Impulse. He hates being bound by the social framework.

He has an attachment for his companions, and uses the bar "Homra" as his residence, but he does not want to run his group as a "King". He recognizes that a team is also an aggregate of individuals.

Beneath the desire to destroy him, he thinks that he must protect his friends, but he is also eager to destroy everything and burn his life.

[RELATIONSHIPS]

[EARLY YEARS]

His parents died early. He was raised by his impartial grandfather when he was a child, but died when Suoh was in high school. Since then, he has lived freely with his inheritance.

[TIMELINE]

· 1988, Suoh Mikoto is born.

· 2004, he meets Kusanagi and Totsuka.

· 2007, Suoh awakens as "Red King", Kusanagi and Totsuka become the first members of his clan.

· 2009, Suoh makes Anna a member of the red clan.

· 2012, December, He is killed by Munakata after killing the “Colorless King” in the Gakuenjima incident.

[ATTITUDE AND THOUGHTS TOWARDS OTHERS]

[TERMS OF THE ADDRESS FOR HIMSELF]

The first person is "Ore" and the second is "Omae" and "Temee". A sloppy tone. He doesn't talk much.

[TOWARDS REISI MUNAKATA]

He calls him "Munakata" or "Omae".

He really thinks he's a bad guy, but he's the first one who has rivaled Suoh since he became "King", and they have the same fighting spirit. Although he did not like him humanly and never agreed with him, he was saved by the existence of Munakata, the only person who could see the same scene and did not risk being destroyed by his own power.

It is possible that he always had the vague idea that Munakata would give up on his Damocles, which could come to pass.

[TOWARDS ANNA KUSHINA]

He usually calls her "Anna" or "Omae".

She is the niece of Suoh's high school teacher, Honami Kushina. He saved her from the place where she had been treated as inhuman by being a Strain, and he decided to make her a member of his clan. He may not have left her at all, he feels a bit guilty for making her a member of his clan at such a young age.

Due to Anna's responsiveness and Suoh's compatibility, there is a great deal of communication without words.

[TOWARDS IZUMO KUSANAGI]

He calls him "Kusanagi" or "Omae".

They have known each other since high school. His existence is more than a friend, a brother. Suoh is on top of "Homura", but Kusanagi actually controls the organization, and since he is also living in the Homra bar, Kusanagi's head is not upright.

[TOWARDS TOTSUKA TATARA]

He calls him "Totsuka", "Omae", "Temee".

Totsuka was a middle school student, while Suoh was a high school student when they met. From that point on, he was good at swinging around Suoh with freedom and acting, ventilating Suoh, who tended to accumulate depression. After Suoh became "King", he was responsible for containing Suoh, who after his death was swallowed by his own power.

Totsuka is the bright and happy face of "Homura", and Suoh's container.

[TOWARDS YATA MISAKI, RIKIO KAMAMOTO]

He calls them: "Yata", "Kamamoto", and "Omae".

As children who love themselves, as relatives, he thinks they are cute.

[TOWARDS FUSHIMI SARUHIKO]

He calls him "Fushimi" or "Omae".

Fushimi's transformation does not recognize it as a betrayal. There were many children who were drawn to themselves and left.

[reveriequill-rai]

Shroud: Withered Soul

A/N: Sorry it’s been a while. As of right now I’ve just been uploading stories I’ve written in my newspaper club, and now that I’ve graduated I hope that can now expand to short stories generally. I’m not gonna promise that posts from now on will be more consistent, but I would like to at least speed up my uploads a bit before they actually wind down, as I imagine I will be working on more stories in the future. Everything being uploaded right now is previous work, but nothing too old--probably like, from last year tops. This was completed sometime in May, I believe. 

This is an introduction to a character I created called ‘Shroud,’ an amateur self-proclaimed ‘detective’ who exclusively investigates occult-based crimes and malefic.

Content Warning: death, descriptions of corpses, graphic descriptions of violence and pain, cults 

[My blog will usually contain PG-13 stories, and as of right now I am writing some darker content, but I will tag anything that may be especially disturbing or uncomfortable. I’ll include this warning in my bio, too.]

----------

The corpse in front of me wasn’t all that disturbing by itself. I had seen dead people before–comes with the territory. I had been dead before. Murder rates in Twilight were, naturally, much higher than any other district in New Fable–especially further south of the district where I was–considering how much wild magic was around, and not even the police force sent here from the northern district of Bastion could do anything about it. So the corpse itself didn’t bother me, all things considered.

What did disturb me, though, was a number of other things.

For one, the corpse just being there was a problem. They weren’t stopping, and they were getting far too close to home.

Its eyes were still open, for another thing, and nearly colorless, and looking at me specifically, and I can swear to you that had not happened when I first laid eyes on it. Even worse, like me, the man lying dead in front of me appeared to be wearing a few bandages like I was, perhaps just recovering from an injury.

And for yet another thing, and perhaps the worst part of this, was the connection I felt with this dead man. Something about the state he was in struck a familiar chord that only I and a select unlucky others knew. As if we were kindred spirits–undergoing the same fate, yet with (probably) different outcomes.

I had been at this–whatever you would call tracking down cults as someone with zero prior detective experience with the help of almost no one–for…a few months now? And I’ve made a bit less progress than would be expected from someone who has seen just about everything the darker sides of magic had to offer. I did have one solid lead, though, and hopefully one that would lead me to exactly who I was looking for.

“Everyone move,” I ordered, pushing my way through the crowd.

Ignoring their complaints, I made my way over toward the body and began to examine it, hoping for any hint of who had done this, and more importantly, if it was exactly who I had suspected. There didn’t appear to be much damage, but what first caught my attention was the note tucked into the man’s pocket. I took it out and unfolded it, and immediately flinched.

Demon tongue.

Hellish whispers ran through my head, and I wasn’t sure if they were just in my head or not. It was hard to tell these days.

I honed in on the note, written on some old paper as if torn from an ancient book. The more I stared, the louder the whispers got. I ignored the throbbing in my head as best as I could–humans were not mentally equipped to engage with the infernal language at all, and I much less so. My hands shook as I read the brief message, which I must have read dozens and dozens of times already; I wasn’t counting and didn’t care to.

Some people studied demon tongue despite…well…everything, even the illegality. It probably didn’t matter to them. It didn’t matter to me, either, but someone had spoken to me in demon tongue before–though, in their defense, likely not out of their own volition–and the trembling and rapid heart rate was not worth the ability to communicate with infernals. (Nothing was, honestly.)

For these reasons–and also not wanting to be arrested or have my mage license revoked–I personally didn’t speak or write demon tongue, but I at least knew a little bit and could recognize some of the infernal runes. And those runes were enough for me to know that this was the exact same message that the abyss had been trying to send me in my last moments.

—

Can’t run home, I thought. They’ll follow me.

Just gotta run until I find a phone booth.

I ran until I finally spotted one on the street corner near a bridge. I let out a sigh of relief, taking a quick moment to catch my breath. Then, I quickly crossed the street and ran toward the phone booth, quickly dialing the police station.

“Hello?” I said into the phone as quietly as I could manage. “My name is [……………………………] I’m at the corner of Coral Avenue by the Armada IV Memorial Bridge. I’m being pursued by a group of kids in demon-charmed cloaks and shawls, please I need your help they have knives and they’re trying to kill me-“

The tears stinging at the edge of my eyes began to overflow as a human voice at the end of the line responded in perfect, uncharacteristically calm demon tongue. It was a short sentence, repeated over and over again, but with the little knowledge I *did* have, I could translate it by about the sixth loop:

“You are going to hell.”

I hung up the phone immediately, resisting the urge to yell, “I KNOW” directly into the phone.

Humans can’t speak demon tongue here. It’s illegal.

So how did an officer know demon tongue?

—

Unsurprisingly, the body was still in semi-good condition. After all, little damage was done to the body—only the soul. The only physical marks I could make out were marks around the wrist and neck, likely to restrain the victim. Couple of bruises here and there, too, but nothing was broken.

This…disturbed me, to say the least.

Cults around here were usually known to be violent. After all, a lot of them stood for violent causes–executing the ‘impure,’ plunging everyone into the dreams of a volatile eldritch creature, usurping the throne and forcing everyone to convert, rallying the youth to their bloody cause with claims that they alone possessed special powers…I had heard it all, all of them violent to some degree. But the ones that had gotten me…they seemed to worship oblivion itself. Or maybe whatever was in it. That was beyond even my knowledge.

But…even then, they still had arguably the least violent cause. The deadliest, yes–they seemed to just be destroying souls–but strangely not as bloody. Yet their means of carrying out this objective has historically been, well, bloody.

Or maybe that was just me.

Either way, this victim had certainly not gotten the worst of it. There were no twisted limbs, no bloodied nose, no wounds from blade or bullet, basically no magic-driven attacks aside from the terminating consumption of the soul…only marks of the initial restraint, bruises from the subduing, and the abyss claiming and destroying the soul.

I could almost picture it in my head: they likely jumped him in the middle of the street, kicking him around a bit to possibly weaken him, throw him off balance, but not too much as to rouse resistance, then restraining him–to the floor? A wall? I couldn’t tell, but there were no rope burns so they must have done this by hand–and calling, somehow, for their god, for lack of a better word, to devour its newest victim’s soul.

What did he see as he died? Did their eyes turn as colorless as his would become? Had they shown any sign of enjoying his torment? I doubt it; it didn’t seem like a very ‘fun’ kill. And likely not as personal as it was for me.

They were getting much better at their kills. It probably wasn’t as fun, but more precise.

And a lot less violent than I had gotten.

—

I caught a glimpse of the charm from earlier out of the corner of my eye, but just as I looked it vanished. Just then a cold breeze hit me as the door behind me opened, and I was yanked out onto the street, leaving the phone dangling by the cord. The book dropped from my hands.

The four delinquents appeared in front of me from nowhere, likely having turned off their Moonlight Shroud charms.

“Gotcha,” Ransley said, smiling as he picked up the book.

“Give it BACK!” I roared, lunging for him. Ransley hit me hard across the face with the book, sending me flying a few feet back onto the brick road. Quickly I realized that my safety was not worth keeping that book. I didn’t know where or how Ransley learned to hit that hard but I wasn’t going to stick around to find out. As he and the others examined the book, I began to scurry away as Ransley gave an order to the others:

“Get him.”

An instant later, I heard something click far behind me, and a sharp pain ripped through my knee. I collapsed to the floor, letting out an agonized cry. I examined my knee, and saw a hole much bigger than a bullet hole should be. I looked up at my attackers.

A gun?!

“What the HELL?!” I shouted. “You’ve already got what you want! LEAVE ME ALO-“

Ardent appeared behind me and punched me square in the face. I held my probably-broken nose as a muffled shriek of pain escaped me. Each of them vanished and took turns raining blows and slashes on me as I tried to step back and run. They gave me almost no chance to react. My body ached everywhere; the knife wounds, though shallow, stung just as bad, if not worse, as any bee. I could barely stand. I used my remaining strength to try and push them off of me whenever I felt them, but I stumbled each time I did, giving them room to knock me around further. Finally I collapsed, and Ardent grabbed my shirt and dragged me to the bridge.

“W-wait-“ I cried, still wincing and crying from my bruises and decayed knee. “STOP IT!-”

—

I examined the bandages on my hand and knee. The ones from that night must’ve been amateurs, or at least new to the cult’s way of doing things.

Focus, Shroud.

The victim’s eyes were still open, and almost completely empty.

Almost.

The body must not be entirely empty, then. This wasn’t exactly a kill—whoever this person was, they would not be dead for much longer, or at least depending on your definition of ‘dead.’

How long ago had this attack been, then? I touched the skin—still warm-ish. This had to be recent.

By that logic, if this was meant not as a lethal attack, but as one of induction into their group…

I wasn’t sure how long I had been out, but I at least knew it wasn’t for very long.

So…I didn’t have much longer, then.

I instinctively jerked away from the body. Would he come back? He wouldn’t be under anyone’s control, at least for the first few minutes–how long does it take to kill someone? Would it be long enough for him to kill me?–no, he probably wouldn’t go after me; I had barely any soul left for him to long for…unless he’s just that desperate enough to take scraps from a near-husk.

What would he do when he came back? Would he wander around, lost, confused, until they welcomed him with false promises of salvation and freedom from the ‘burden’ of having a judgement-tied soul? Would he be violent, as they had been to him?

Then again…I came back after one of their attacks, but with a will of my own. Did they want me to come back? Why would they want me of all people to come back?

—

“You know how much trouble you caused us, […….…]?!” Ransley shouted as he kicked me in my injured leg. “Don’t act like you didn’t have this coming, you little weasel.”

“I didn’t-“ I tried to say.

Ransley propped me up on the sidewalk, just by the edge of the bridge, right above the river. He placed his hand on my bruised shoulder, looking at me with a bone-chilling grin.

Again, I got a good look at his eyes. This time, everything except the pupils was entirely white. As I looked I almost felt like I was staring at something beyond; further, even. But the harder I looked the more I could see how much nothing there was. And yet, in spite of that, this nothing seemed to be staring back at me.

The others had the same white eyes too, looking on with a horrible satisfaction.

“What…” I barely managed to say, “…what are y-you…?”

“Free,” Ransley answered, without his usual cruelty and instead with an uncharacteristically sanctimonious tone. “And with our help, so too will you be free.”

With a hard shove, I was pushed off the bridge.

I grabbed onto the edge with my hand, barely having the strength to pull myself up.

“T-this is insane-!” I cried. “Ransley! Please! Y-you can keep the book; I won’t call the police, just help me up-“

Ransley frowned and put his boot on my hand. He leaned in as he brought his foot down harder, crushing my hand. Bone splintered and crumbled under the weight of the shoe, and I let out a shriek as a cold look crossed his face.

“You really should stop holding on so much,” he said. “That’s your problem. That’s why you’re here. Just let go, and face oblivion.”

Ransley took his foot off finally, but my hand had run out of strength. I slipped, and fell into the river.

—

Either way, I had to work fast.

“Hey, kid!” Someone from the crowd called. “What’re you doing? Leave this to the professionals.”

I turned around, and maybe it was the speed at which I had whirled around to face them, or he did just flinch.

Was it my eyes?

“The police won’t find them,” I explained. “I know what I’m doing. I’ve studied demonology for a few years.”

I went back to the body.

“You mean you know who did this?” he asked.

“Maybe,” I answered. ���I just wanna be sure…”

I pressed down on the bruises on their shoulder and arms. Hollow. I felt no bone or extra layer of skin or muscle underneath.

Just as I suspected, I thought. Soul devouring.

My only question now was, how much of the soul was left?

—-

The bridge wasn’t particularly tall; just enough for any small cargo ships to run under. But the fall felt much longer than it had any right to.

I never hit the water. I was swallowed by something but it certainly wasn’t the river. It was as cold and sharp but nothing wet ever touched my skin or clothes.

I did not fall into water. I fell into something foreign, something dark, something alive, something evil.

Its eyes were beady and attentive, focused, eager, and it had long rows of sharp fangs. It appeared to smile at me, expecting me, welcoming me. Whispers in demon-tongue surrounded me, and I overwhelmed myself trying to find a single word I could understand. The only thing I could catch was “going to hell” again…was this it? Was this hell? What circle was this?

I was immobile, unable to look away from the creature in front of me, unable to scream as it opened its fang-filled mouth. I couldn’t even let out a scream of protest; no, not against this, as it brought down its jaws and took a large bite out of a deep part of me even I could never access. The pain from my bruises and wounds no longer burned; only ached, as if the pain had been there forever.

I was hollow. If there was anything left, I barely even felt it. My wounds glowed a hot white color and became shallow. I felt nothing but an aching nigh-emptiness that seemed to have no origin I could place; no past; only a present and a long future.

I didn’t know how long I was in that void. But as much as I despised that thing for robbing me of my life, I was grateful that it chose to let me go.

—-


I took out my pen from my pocket and a couple of mini-candles from my satchel. I flicked a lighter and lit the candles, surrounding them at different points around the body. I began to draw an evocation circle around the body. I’m not sure what had stopped this cult from performing forced evocations as opposed to beating everyone into submission until they blacked out enough to face the abyss and have their soul devoured, but I wasn’t about to find any sense in a group of people who literally worship the abyss.

I took my time with the intricate webs of the circle, carefully connecting whatever remained of the soul to the points where I would draw in the runes, and connected those to the candles.

I then drew in symbols in the language of the spirits at the different sub-points that would draw up souls from the afterlife, adding a desperate prayer in each pen stroke that I evoke the right thing and not something unwelcome. I had to steady my hand as I did this, reminding myself that this was merely a human soul who was recently killed, so the chances of him having ended up in hell – was he that kind of person? – were slim; they had to be, of course they were; there was no need to panic so stop panicking. Yet knowing I was drawing the same symbols, the same webs, lighting the same candles as the deadly evokers around town who would break into people’s houses and draw evocation circles under their beds to call up who-knows-what from the pits of hell to torment the living…to think I was drawing the same circle that I checked for every night when I went to sleep…

The pen snapped in my shaking hand against the concrete, getting ink all over my hand. I swore, and rubbed some on my finger tip so I could start to finish the circle.

“What the hell are you doing, kid?!” someone cried, making me jump. “You’re tampering with evidence! That’s illegal!”

“You’re gonna screw up the investigation!” someone else shouted.

I steadied myself from being startled.

“This…this is the investigation,” I replied bluntly.

“Wh–okay…? Are you a detective or something?” the first guy asked.

I shrugged.

“I think so,” I said.

“You think-”

I could hear further shouts from the crowd as I turned the body over to draw the rest of the circle underneath, but I held up my hand to stop them from getting closer.

“Just let me work!” I cried without looking back.

That’s when I noticed some of the rapidly-decaying skin near the shoulder and side of the ankles. The skin had withered and given way to bone, the effect cutting through flesh and muscle. Even the bone had begun to decay.

Well, so much for minimal damage.  

I unzipped the victim’s jacket and pulled back the shirt just slightly to get a better look at the damage. The withering had spread further—the entire shoulder seemed about ready to decay. I took a camera out of my bag and took a picture of the decaying wounds.

With the remaining ink, I drew another sigil on the bandage of my injured hand, a heart-shaped eye-like symbol with two lines running up my index and middle finger. It was a painful process and I was just careful enough to have the pen not tear through the bandage, and I placed my shaking hand on the decaying shoulder and closed my eyes. I saw all of the injuries on the man’s body, including where he had been injured–he had a broken arm that had almost finished recovering, and a fractured foot that was also healing, but wasn’t as near completion as his arms. Either way, both of these had stopped healing, and had actually gotten worse, with the bones beginning to decay in both areas.

What was the point of beating people up, breaking them, letting them decay, and then expecting them to join you after you had broken them? My attackers probably went through the same thing as this man had–as I had, if this cult was larger than them. So why do the same thing to others?

But that was just it, though, wasn’t it?

They knew what it was like to be soulless, and only they knew not only how to recover from the injuries suffered, but how to disguise themselves as living to avoid trouble with the law.

I looked again at the bandages on my hand, and unraveled it slightly, careful not to let the crowd see. There, too, did my flesh begin to decay. This was the primary issue with not having a soul: without the very essence that gives us life, our bodies aren’t capable of self-healing anymore. Any injuries are permanent unless fixed by a doctor, or if we tend our own wounds.

Fortunately my bones—at least in my hand—hadn’t completely withered away. I managed to revive just in time, fortunately.

Just in time.

——

I don’t remember much about the day I woke up. Just the excruciating, aching pain.

What I did know was I had washed up on the shore of the city, and I couldn’t stand up for a very long time. A burning sensation enveloped my entire hand and knee, and I felt a throbbing sensation in both areas. The bruises from the beatdown stuck on me like a leech, but most vividly, my chest felt hollow. And it hurt. The emptiness gnawed at the inside of my chest, and it, too, burned and ached. Like a stomach ache in the wrong place.

With my good hand I crawled my way off of the shore until I found a lamppost. I grabbed onto it, and propped up my good knee. I swung my arm toward the lamppost, grabbing onto it with my bad hand, shocks of pain running through my body. I tried to haul myself up, but the weight of my body caved my knee in, and I collapsed. That’s when I got a good look at my hand.

Bits of skin had completely come off, seeming to have withered away. Pieces of bone underneath had chipped off.

I grew nauseous and I felt the blood drain from my face. I let out some inhuman noise that I reckoned was some attempt at a scream but came out as a cross between that and a moan of agony.

How had this happened?

It was a horrible sound, but at least I had been found. Otherwise, who knows what would’ve happened?

Or who else would’ve found me?

——

Finishing the circle grew tricky as my hand trembled, though I was unsure if it was from the injury or from the reality of the process itself.

“Kid, we don’t even know who you are,” the guy from earlier said. “Are you even a licensed detective?”

I ignored him and wiped some of the ink from my pen on my hand, pressing my hands together to activate the circle. As the soul fire candles flared, what little color was left in their eyes drained slowly, and a small, glowing, deteriorated wisp of a soul rose out of the victim’s body.

This was all that was left…

Somehow this dead man was just the same as I, who could still breath, still walk, still talk, still live—but only just.

What had this man’s soul seen before it was decimated? If, in fact, the same people who killed me are responsible for this, did he, too, see the same grinning face in the abyss that I had? Was he as afraid as I was? Or did he accept this as death?

I took my mage’s license out of my pocket and showed it to the crowd.

“I’m a licensed magic user,” I said, “is that enough?”

“…that’s not a detective license,” the same guy said. “I’m calling the police.”

“Great!” I said. “Tell them the Brotherhood of Abyss Walkers did this.” At this point it was all but confirmed.

“The…what?”

“The cult that keeps tormenting this forsaken town,” I explained. “The one behind all the unexplained murders.”

The guy—along with the rest of the crowd—stifled a laugh. Some of them couldn’t hold it in.

“There’s no cult in New Lumanore,” someone else said. “Our security’s airtight; no way they would’ve been able to form a guild without a license.”

“Just call the authorities, Aaron,” a lady in the crowd said. “This kid isn’t worth persuading.”

“W-wait-“ I said before letting out a resigned sigh. I packed up the candles and pocketed my pen, and took off. I knew who the culprit was. What the police had to say didn’t bother me.

They’ll believe me when I put the culprit behind bars.

—————

In previous investigations I managed to pin down the general area where the Abyss Walkers operate. Prior murders took place at least within a mile’s range of Eclipse Avenue, an area further south of New Lumanore. It was a relatively quiet and empty area; there were quite a bit of shops and buildings of unknown function that no one ever seemed to go into, not even during the day.

The entire place screamed occult activity.

Sure enough, just as I hit the corner of the avenue I caught a glimpse of a Moonlight Shroud charm, pinned to the outwear of a hooded figure. They were walking along the other side of the street, hanging close to the bare wall of a wide building.

Once they were some distance along I crossed the street quickly and began tailing them.

Confrontation wasn’t new to me, just…unfavorable. Is that why I trembled? Either way I knew the procedure: Walk with the same beat. Same path, same pattern of step. Stop when he stops. Walk like this until the shadow is close enough for contact.

Once I did I took out a capsule from my coat. It contained shadow ink, allowing me to either create my own shadow, or to hide within someone else’s. I didn’t have enough of a soul to perform any magical feats on my own–whatever I could do would probably just come out as sparks–so this was the best I could work with. Unfortunately the capsule was nearly empty, and I made a mental note to contact my supplier after I was finished. In the meantime, I used what was left to lather my hand in ink as I silently crept behind the lone cultist, and pressed my hand against his shadow. I latched on and eventually got pulled in. Inside the shadow realm, I had a black-and-white view of the street from inside the wall. I couldn’t breathe, though, and I couldn’t hold my breath for very long so I knew I had to jump him sooner rather than later.

I took a coin out of my pocket and tossed it outside behind the cultist. He stopped and turned around, as expected, and I took the moment to lunge out and grab him by the throat.

—————

The cultist narrowed his eyes, and an amused smirk came on his face.

“Hey…” he said. “I know you.”

I flinched. How?

He kicked me off and stood up.

“You…you’re the kid we got that book from!” He chuckled. “You don’t quit, do you? This is really what you chose to do after death? Vigilante work?”

I felt the blood drained from my face.

“…what are you talking about?” I lied. “What book?”

“The demonology book, stupid,” he said. “The thing damning you to begin with. You forgot already? Or did you lose your memories alongside almost all your soul somehow?”

I clenched my fist, resisting the urge to charge at him again. I couldn’t take him in a head-on fight. I was too weak for that.

“Tell me,” he said. “How’s it feel? Being so close to freedom, so close to ridding yourself of that moral creed weighing you down…no fear of rapture…just your life and your…well, I suppose now broken…body, and your heart and mind.”

“Shut up,” I snapped.

“Good thing you came back, though. We’ve been slacking on our initiations recently…Ardent went a little too hard on too many people. We’re behind on our quota.”

“Wait a sec…” I took a step back. “What do you mean ‘too hard?’ Aren’t they supposed to come back?”

“The idiot decided to use magic to slow the initiates down,” the cultist explained. “As if that wouldn’t damage the soul at all. I’m sure you of all people know. You’ve taken enough beatings form him, right, D–“

I punched him in the face. The second I made contact I realized I had used my bad hand without thinking. Bone snapped, collapsed, and even shifted through the hole in my hand. I let out a far-too-loud shriek of agony as I recoiled and caressed my hand, trying to relocate the bone.

The cultist looked at me and laughed, and I raised a finger on my good hand and threatened him:

“Don’t try that again,” I said. “I’ve still got one—ahh…—perfectly functioning hand.”

“Fine by me,” he replied. “You hit hard for a dead person…”

My hand still ached from the punch. I imagine it probably hurt me way more than it hurt him.

“Do you mean to turn me in, Shroud?” the cultist hissed. “Just try it. I know who you are. They’ll find out you’re undead and investigate you to hell and back. Whatever decimal of a soul you have left won’t save you. Not even close.”

“I can’t trust you with that information even if I let you go,” I said. “But even if you do…I’ll know sooner or later if you’ve said something. You best not try it if you don’t wanna die twice.”

The cultist grinned.

“I’m shaking,” he said, deadpan. “I’ll just come back again.”

“What, are there no revival limits in your little group?”

“Nope. He’ll bring us back again and again as long as he needs us.”

“That sounds terrible.”

“Oh, you’ve only been resurrected once, you big baby,” the cultist said. “You’ll get used to it.”

“I’m not joining you.”

“You have no reason not to,” the cultist said. “We can fix your broken body; make you look and seem as alive as the next person. Those remnants of a soul may not matter to the police, who’ll mark you as soulless anyway, but you know who it does matter to?” He pointed at the sky and at the group. “Them. Someone like you, who’s spent hours learning about heaven’s enemies…you think you have any chance of reaching heaven? HA!”

I fell silent. Just when I thought being registered as ‘dead’ to everyone you know meant they wouldn’t bother you about being a (rookie) demonologist anymore. That reminder worked my last nerve, yet every time it was brought up I could never muster up a proper defense.

“…I’m aware,” I mumbled.

“Besides, I’m sure you’re just livid at the police, who never caught who got you. I’m sure you’d like your vengeance against them for failing you…we can help you out with that, if you’d like. After all, why should we fear death, or judgement, from this life or the next? Like I’ve said, we’ve got no soul to weigh us down to heaven or hell. No death, no judgment. Just you, whatever you wanna do, and a welcoming oblivion who’ll spit you back out as many times as needed. As long as you keep it fed, that is.”

“It doesn’t matter if the police know or if they don’t know,” I said. “I know. And I’ll know more than they ever will. Besides, why the hell would I trust you to give me closure about my death–the death YOU caused?!”

The cultist frowned.

“And that’s just the trouble, isn’t it…you’re just about soulless, and the only soulless person New Lumanore who isn’t with us and…for what? You lose nothing by joining us!”

“First of all,” I shouted. “I am not soulless. Your stupid demon didn’t take all of it.”

“Yeah. Still not sure why that happened,” the cultist replied, “but who am I to question the great abyss–”

“Oh, shut up. And second of all–just in case you forgot–YOU KILLED ME! I don’t owe you loyalty, or gratitude, or mercy…I owe you nothing.”

“You may be upset now,” the cultist said, “but you’ll learn to thank us later.”

“I will not.”

His frown turned into a scowl. He took out a small cylinder from his pocket.

“I was gonna use this the day of the attack,” he said, “but I didn’t see any point. Seemed like the others were doing just fine without the staff.”

Sure enough, the cylinder popped open into a metal bo-staff. He walked towards me, twirling it through his fingers.

“You’ve been chasing the wrong thing, Shroud,” he said. “You think you need vengeance, but what you really need is security. We all know what being soulless is like. You’re weaker, you can’t heal your wounds, you can’t do magic, and it’s pretty obvious when you’ve just come back from the dead. I don’t care what three-percent of a soul you do have; it’s nowhere near enough for you to enjoy all the privileges of being fully human. Face it. You’re basically the same as us.”

As I stepped back, he stopped spinning the staff and instead gripped it with both hands.

“So you can either let go of those remnants you have the audacity to still call a soul, then come with us and let us give you the safety you so desperately need,” he said, rearing the staff back, “…or we’ll just break you further and let oblivion do what it wishes with your remains.”

He started to bring the staff down.

“WAIT!” I yelled, bringing my hands to my face.

Surprisingly enough, he actually froze, the staff a couple inches from my face.

“Okay…I get it…” I said. “You’re right. I won’t turn you in. Just…promise me you won’t tell anyone who I am.”

“What’s stopping me?” the cultist asked, cocking his head slightly and raising an eyebrow.

“Look. I didn’t turn you in,” I said. “You owe me.”

“No I don’t. I’m not tied to anything but oblivion.”

I let out an annoyed huff.

“Like I said. I’ll know if you exposed me,” I reminded him. “I don’t care if that scares you or not, just…let me go.”

“Let YOU go?! You jumped ME!”

“And I had—I…thought…I had the right to. Look…I’m backing down. You go about your night. I go about mine. We don’t speak of this.”

The cultist hesitated, then put the staff away.

“Fine,” he said. “But we’ll still come back for you. Whether or not your initiation goes smoothly is entirely on you.”

With that, he pulled out the same charm he had on the day of the attack, and vanished.

“See you around,” he said.

That was the last I heard of him that night.

Once I thought I was safe, I let out a loud groan of annoyance.

I had him. He was literally a few feet away. If I *just* had more shadow ink that would’ve been it for him.

But…he was right. I was at every possible disadvantage. And I couldn’t work like that. I shouldn’t have jumped him. I should’ve just taken note of his appearance and went from there. That was foolish on my part.

But…I did have his appearance now.

But he had my identity.

I still wasn’t at a complete advantage. And I couldn’t work like that. I had to lay low, and rebuild. My hand was wounded and I was lucky I didn’t get my skull bashed in. There was no way I could have recovered from that. But I wouldn’t give up. I had a lead and I wasn’t letting go of it.

I didn’t care about their ‘freedom’ or ‘not being tied down’ or anything like that. Fact of the matter is, they were hurting people, and their demon lord had more control over them than they’d realize.

They were beyond redemption. The demon didn’t bind them through any soul manipulation or contract–it was some weird combination of free will, gratitude, and the threat of permanent death.

These cultists had to go, and quickly. They had to pay, and dearly.

I know I’m weak, but once I’m back up and running I would do as much damage from the shadows as humanly possible.

They weren’t bound by any rules, so why should I have to be?

I didn’t care how many times I would get hurt. They ruined my life, and I was going to pay them back tenfold.

[x0401x]

Jeweler Richard Fanbook Short Story #5

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Iolite of Cloudy Skies

Iolite. Its Japanese name was “blue flower stone”. The gem was blue with a purple tint stronger than that of a sapphire and had a unique viscosity that made it seem as if it was coated with a bit of dew. The level of hardness was seven. It was called iolite when treated as a gemstone, but when treated as a type of mineral, it was also called cordierite. It was an eccentric stone, which also appeared to have a grayish brown color instead of blue depending on the angle that one looked at it. Etc., etc.

“What happened, Seigi? Your eyes are dead.”

“How can I put it...? Surfeit, I guess.”

“Haah?”

I couldn’t memorize the stones’ names. They were too many.

The client who left just now had come because they wanted to see many sorts of blue stones, so Richard’s treasure box was packed with a great variety of blues. There were sapphires, of course, and also tanzanites, lapis lazuli, blue chalcedonies and this iolite.

Half a year before I had started working part-time in Etranger, the image I had of gemstones was limited to things such as diamonds, rubies, sapphires and emeralds, I believed. Now I knew about the existence of a stone named zircon, which shone in the same way as a diamond, and also knew about the spinel, which was red like a ruby, as well as that the color of sapphires was not just blue, having a wide range from purple to yellow, and I had seen transparent jades that were impossible to tell apart from emeralds.

If I had as much knowledge of minerals as Tanimoto-san, I would’ve managed to sort stones inside my head by the differences the in chemical composition of each, but unfortunately, I was unfamiliar with such things, and I currently didn’t have enough enthusiasm or willpower to study them. If I were to explain figuratively, it felt like going out to hunt for clams at a beach, and when you innocently dove into the lake, you’d see the Mariana Trench spreading out below. It was a beautiful world, thus also too wide and too deep. And endless. To a terrifying extent.

When I told him roughly this, Richard laughed, the depths of his throat trembling with giggles. “It is not as if you are aiming to obtain a GIA or FGA qualification or anything, right? Isn’t it all right for you to observe as much as you like?”

“That might be the case, but...”

I found myself thinking that it was a waste.

After all, I’d be on my knees listening as Richard went, in earnest, through the trouble of introducing all kinds of stones to me one by one. I often heard from my senpais that “job hunting is a connection for people”, so I felt sorry that my connection with stones remained scoreless. Regardless, it wasn’t like I was suddenly going to get any smarter.

As I said this, Richard laughed again and beckoned me with a hand gesture. He then took something out of his suit’s pocket. One of those subdivision vinyl bags that I’d often see when he was handling jewels in the back room. It seemed there was an iolite inside. There was a label stuck to the bag packed with absorbent cotton, and something was written on it in horizontal letters. “Viking sunstone,” it read. Vikings? Like the ones that you’d imagine wearing horned helmets, carrying axes and coming from the sea on a ship? As I asked for confirmation, the jeweler nodded with a “precisely”.

“The words written on this label are associated with the former ‘purpose’ of the iolite. In the past, people used iolites as sun stones.”

“‘Used’ them as ‘sun stones’...?”

I didn’t understand anything from A to Z. What did that mean? For starters, why was gem of such a cold-looking color made into a stone of the sun?

Before I even had a breach to ask, the beautiful shopkeeper began talking, a smile ghosting his lips, “You might already know this, but a portion of the people residing in the current Britain are descendants of those who went through the Norman Conquest that began around the ninth century - in other words, of the Vikings. They were famous for having the skills to travel long distances, which was unusual at the time, so Seigi. If you were someone who travels the sea for long periods, how would you know your way?” Richard asked me.

A means to know the cardinal directions in the open sea. So it was a situation where there’d be no piece of land to act as a mark. The only thing I could use in such a case was a magnet. No, wait. Richard had said earlier that it was the ninth century. The compass would be invented only much later. I recalled memorizing that this was the invention that triggered the Age of Discovery back in high school for history class. If so, I recalled the words on the label. “Sunstone”. Yeah, it connected.

“They knew the directions by using the stone of the sun?”

“Good for you. Exactly. Isn’t it clear?”

“K-Kinda!”

“Then, what about under cloudy skies, when the sun is not visible, Mr. Enlightened Part-Timer?”

Speaking of which, the weather changed easily at sea. I had also heard that England was a country where the skies tended to be overcast. Bad weather must be frequent in those coastal waters. If the sky stayed cloudy for three or four days, what should I do? Was there nothing more that could be done at sea?

When I made a puzzled face, Richard smiled as though he had hit the nail on the head, his white hands displaying the iolite under a fluorescent light. “For instance, let’s try to put a mark on any of this iolite’s faceted sides with ink. Another one on a different side. On sunny days, we would record in which direction we can see the sun from one of these two points at given times, and on cloudy days, we would look for parts where the two points overlap. When doing so, since this stone can detect even the faintest light, we would be able to tell the sun’s position,” he said.

“So we can know the position of light with that stone...? Then couldn’t it be any other stone?”

“Light refracts. If it were passing through thick clouds, the human eye would find its shine in a different direction from the sun’s actual position. Iolites acted as polarized lenses, so to speak. By using this stone, the sailors could tell the correct position of the sun. Yet the most famous sunstone is not iolite, but a type of refraction stone called ‘Iceland spar’.”

A polarized lens. Now he was talking about physics? But I did remember the stuff about light refraction. Got it; so that was why it was a “stone of the sun”.

“I don’t get it very well, but I feel the gemstone romance from it. I like that kinda thing,” I said enthusiastically, Richard giving me a calm smile.

“You do get it. Just as you said, you ‘don’t understand stones very well but like them either way’. That is exactly why your eyes were open, so you thought only about how far your destination was and felt your teeth set on edge at it. You mustn’t expect to be able to understand everything overnight. Go steady, without rushing. Do not waver at the impatience stuck back-to-back to your ambitions. That is different from having no one to depend on due to not knowing where you are headed. The hardest times are probably the ones when you have no idea where you should go, but you know the exact position of the sun.”

So, in short, I knew exactly where I wanted to be?

While I remained quiet, Richard shrugged and added, “Of course, this is a metaphor. Even if little by little, the stones should definitely be leaving a trace inside you. Aren’t you supposed to be treasuring this instead of chasing after what goes away?”

Lastly, Richard threw in the trivia that, in the world of power stones, the iolite was said to be a stone that showed people the “right direction”. Taking the backbone of it into consideration, that was indeed a convincing talk. But more than that...

“It’d be great if you were by my side forever.”

“Hah?”

“You’re an expert at noticing what’s troubling other people, aren’t you? I really think you’re a handy guy, like a compass. Aah, ‘the world’s most beautiful compass’, huh?”

“Those are quite irrational words, on top of being illogical. You were born in Japan, raised in Japan and aspire to become a public servant of Japan, so why are you calling an English jeweler a ‘compass’?”

“Well, I don’t plan to ask you about how to prepare for the public servant exams, but I can rely on you when I run into bigger problems, right?”

Richard sighed with a face of thorough dismay. I could understand how he felt. This was like a child in nursery school saying, “It’d be great if my teacher could always be there to help me out.” Long story short, I was acting spoiled. Even though he was my superior at work.

“That’s right; about the custard pie that today’s costumer brought, it looks like it’s quick to expire. Wanna eat it? I’ll make some tea.”

“If you would. Aah, the sugar...”

“Holding back on it this month, right? I know.”

“Help me with half of it. The amount of sugar in it concerns me.”

“Leave it to me.”

This guy was truly good at leading the mood around, and the same applied for the not-too-straightforward way that he phrased himself when recommending gemstones to the customers. Apparently, he thought I was feeling down.

I cut the crunchy pie in half while the tea leaves boiled, then shared it with Richard in the reception room and we both ate it. Covered with powdered sugar, the pie was a dangerous white little thing, as the colorless powder could scatter around from the pie’s surface just by us breathing on it a tiny bit, so the snack time turned into a moment of silence. I felt like laughing at the much too surreal sight several times, but if I happened to cause a big damage to the beautiful shopkeeper’s high-grade suit by doing that, my pay would be reduced. In the end, I ate the pie entirely while looking at the wall.

On the way back home that day, as I looked up at the night sky, I thought about the Vikings of over a thousand years ago. It was said that they were after new lands. What about me? Where was I headed? Would there ever be a day when I would fall into a philosophical concern, like, “I have no idea where I’m trying to go”? Perhaps Richard too? I insolently prayed that the stones may help us out at least in times like those.

Stars were beginning to twinkle in the purplish-blue night sky. There was no doubt that the stars appearing in the sky had not changed ever since the Vikings’ era. Thinking about that as I walked, I mistook one of the streets I should have turned. I had the feeling that I heard Richard’s voice, telling me to mind at least my own steps. I get it, geez.

I decided to wait patiently for the benefits of the stone. It was best for something like that not to happen, but there was no guarantee that both of us wouldn’t lose our ways at the same time one day.

[heyitsyn]

Yellow

psa: okay i know yall are about to blast me on this even though i’ve put this warning up here, i know kuroo’s eyes are hazel or something like that. but i actually headcanon him to have somewhat yellow or even gold eyes so we’re sticking to that for now, okay? okay

kuroo x reader (tsukishima x reader in the end)

angst....

Look at the stars Look how they shine for you And everything you do Yeah, they were all yellow

I came along I wrote a song for you And all the things you do And it was called "Yellow"

all your life you thought he was the one.

growing up with kenma and kuroo, you naturally found your soulmate mark pretty early on. it was a normal Sunday afternoon when you noticed something seemed to be off the moment you laid your eyes on the rooster’s face. 

‘hm’

that was the first sound of curiosity that caught the attention of the man himself. a grin made its way on his face as he realized how deeply you were staring at him.

‘oya? am i cute, baby chibi?’

at the mere age of 10, kuroo was already the ultimate teaser he is today. the shameless and sarcastic grin has been carved on his ridiculously adorable face and kuroo tetsuro was never one to miss an opportunity to tease. combined with an older sister, kuroo learned the ways to flirt to a lady despite his initial shyness towards people in general. 

then you came.

with your signature f/s (favorite smell) scent, you were the only one he could smell as his own soulmate mark was the lack of scent. 

but there was one problem.

it is said that usually when you meet your soulmate, you would regain what you lost.

however, how come it was only a small part that he got back?

shouldn’t he be able to smell his mother’s cooking or the grass outside?

maybe that’s how he found himself drawn to you.

the questions and questions ended in one single answer.

he met you through kenma.

as a neighbor of the pudding head, kuroo often came over to kenma’s house to play since he was the only friend the older boy had. then maybe around the fifth time he came over, he saw you there.

you were standing in your tippy-toes and kuroo watched you try to get a box of fruit snacks on top of the fridge but obviously, you were too short. the poor kid felt himself freeze up at the sight of another kid in the kitchen but then he remembered kenma telling him the other day that a relative was coming over.

you must be the relative.

and a very good smelling one too.

kuroo’s ears turned red when he remembered what his sister told him.

‘it will come one day, tetsu. they will come one day. you will know it immediately when you see them’

it was like an invisible trail only seen by him trailed to you and he imagined it to be yellow.

there was no particular meaning to it but he just knew it was yellow.

‘come on!’

you mumbled repeatedly.

as much as tetsu found the sight amusing, he felt slightly bad for you the moment the 5-minute mark hit. even though he was nervous to speak to you, he mustered up all his courage and walked over, only to startle you with his voice.

‘watch and learn, chibi’

he cringed a little after he said it but he pushed it to the side.

in amazement, you watched as this boy effortlessly heaved himself on the counter and stood up to easily grab the box of snacks. you cheered once his fingertips touched the box but apparently, your noise of happiness scared him and his sock-cladded foot missed the marble top and instead sunk to the air.

‘watch out!’

you shrieked and dove to try and catch him but you didn’t realize how pointless it was as you both still fell and got hurt anyways.

the position was something your young mind didn’t register as anything suggestive.

but his intense gaze made you blink and fluster even more when he laughed and you found yourself comparing him to the cutest boy in your kindergarten.

this boy might be the first one to be cuter than akaashi keiji himself.

‘thank you’

you whispered in appreciation and tetsu nodded, moving himself up before offering you a hand to stand too.

unfortunately for you, colors were never in your life.

i guess you could say that your world was filled with black and white with the occasional appearance of grey.

it never bothered you until twice in your lifetime.

you wanted to see akaashi keiji in full color and you also wanted to see this boy’s eyes.

it looked sharp and reminded you of something your cousin and your cat had in common.

eventually, that desire went away and you went back to living your colorless life.

however.

the moment your 9th birthday hit, you noticed something different.

you were over at kenma’s while your parents were doing something (probably a surprise party). tetsu was over too and by now, he was already accustomed to you and he liked you, even more, when you helped get the volleyball whenever it strayed away. 

‘oh! chibi-chan!’

he greeted when he saw you lounging around on kenma’s bed, reading a princess book, while the bed’s owner was by your feet playing on his games.

‘oh! hello, ku-kun!’

you waved, not even looking up from the page, only for him to pull a sour face and whine.

‘aaaaaaa, call me something cute, chibi-chan! i want a nickname too! it’s not fair that kenma gets one and i don’t! and pay attention to me too!’

kuroo childishly complained and you opened your mouth to scold him for being annoying when your heart thrummed violently and your eyes found his.

they were very light.

you didn’t know what the color name was since you’ve been stuck with this problem the moment you were born.

but you were interested to learn just to know what color kuroo tetsuro’s eyes were.

right now, you had no name for it. 

all you knew was that they were very pretty.

as you got older, his eyes were the only thing you could see that was outside the black and white and grey spectrum. not even the apple you ate or the school uniform could be identified by a single color.

but his-his were yellow.

the perfect shade of not being too light and not being too dark, they evened out to be something as beautiful as gold.

oddly enough, he was the only person you could see yellow in.

added to the fact that you were still cursed of not having the full color wheel, kuroo’s yellow eyes were the only colorful thing in your life and your cousin even dyed his hair the same color to see if you could identify it on another person.

but nope.

just kuroo.

and that’s what made him so special.

sometimes, you could even see it glow brighter.

you reckon it’s just the lighting but what you don’t know is those short glowing pulses of his eyes were actually the times he realized that he falls in love with you.

so for every time they glow, it was his soul’s indirect way of saying he loves you.

‘chibi?’

kuroo snapped you out of your staring and you found yourself back to the rooftop of your high school while kenma was sipping his juice and playing at the same time.

‘oh’

you mumbled.

kuroo smirked and he scooted closer to peck your cheek before leaning close to your face. even he was flustered at the strongest smell of f/s and it was his own personal drug with no sense of limitation.

the same for kuroo, your scent would get stronger and it would happen occasionally at the most random times. 

like now.

but kuroo was a smarter boy and quickly connected the dots that with your strong scent and the clear scream of love in your eyes, your strong scent was your own indirect way that you love him.

and he swears to any higher being up there, that he would always love you more.

‘what were you thinking about, chibi-chan?’

he whispered and your eyes widened at the up-close view of his face and noticed they were glowing again. 

you wonder why.

your line of sight moved and you couldn’t help the way your eyes traveled downwards to his lips.

‘oh? you want a kiss?’

he teased and you could feel your ear bursting with how flustered you’ve become but thankfully, kenma decided to save you.

‘oi, kuroo. don’t suck faces when i’m here’

he chided and kuroo sighed heavily then pouted.

‘fine. i guess i can wait. but you owe me double the kisses’

this idiot knew what he was doing to you.

that was your kuroo.

he was everything you wanted and everything you needed.

yet the moment you laid eyes on the tall middle blocker of karasuno, everything faded away.

being the manager of the volleyball team meant you were obligated to go to practice matches with them and as you walked over to the entrance of the gym, you felt the world stop.

there, karasuno stood and your eyes settled on the tall player with the glasses. his height made his noticed quickly but to you, you noticed him immediately with the reasons of suddenly being able to see other colors and because his own hair color was this familiar shade of grey that only meant you couldn’t see the true color.

by the corner of your eye, there was a bright sight.

the hair of some other karasuno player shone brightly and his short height didn’t even register in your head as volleyball material, rather him being the confirmation of what just happened.

‘tetsu’

you almost sobbed and kuroo knew something was wrong by the way your scent started fading.

‘chibi-y/n’

he frantically asked and you looked at him, now seeing the bright color of his jacket.

his eyes still shone in color but now, they all blended with the rest of the colors.

it was all mixed--muddled.

‘kuroo’

you whispered and tetsu knew he should appear professional so he grabbed your waist and pulled you close by his side to silently tell you it was going to be okay.

but by god, it wasn’t.

as the karasuno players introduced themselves, you finally put a name to the tall middle blocker.

‘my name is tsukishima kei’

his velvet voice traveled to your ear.

you swallowed a lump in your throat and you asked kenma what this tsukishima guy’s hair color was.

‘yellow’ was all he said.

it was like thunder boomed in the distance.

it all made sense.

‘hey, y/n?’

kuroo quietly mumbled. you tore your eyes away from the sky and looked at the boy laying beside you with your arms around him to warm you both from the cold summer night at his apartment rooftop.

‘hm?’

‘how come,,,, why can i only smell you?’

your eyes stared at his face but his own refused to look at you.

‘why can i only see your eyes? its the same concept. and honestly, im too scared to find out’

you admitted and that was when tetsu finally looked at you and you might not be able to see anything else but his glowing yellow eyes made up for it.

‘i am too’

you smiled softly before leaning up to kiss his lips.

‘then we don’t have to find out’

you’ve heard from tetsu’s sister before about the taboo tales of twin flames and the differences between soulmates and twin flames.

your mind knew this would happen but your heart refused to accept it.

kuroo tetsuro was the boy you stayed up thinking about and dreaming of the simple wedding and the house with children’s laughter filling up the silence of the street. 

but then that grinning and handsome face of your tetsuro became replaced by the face of this person--this stranger.

and there was nothing you could do about it.

tsukishima kei may have given you the colors of the world.

but only kuroo gave you yellow.

okayokayokay i know this kinda sounds confusing so imma write out this quick explanation, okay?

so basically, this is a story about soulmates duh but also partially twin flames. so when you turned 9, you saw kuroo and you thought he was your soulmate immediately because he was the only person who you could see colors to. oddly, it was yellow (i know its supposed to be hazel but please bear with me!!) and so therefore yellow became kuroo’s special thing to you. and i also talked about how their soulmate marks were only partial like kuroo could only smell you and nothing else and you could only see his eyes and its color and nothing else. this goes along with the idea that you can have multiple soulmates in your life but only have one twin flame! as sad as it sounds, he isn’t your twin flame. and when you guys were questioning about it, that was my way of kinda showing this knowledge that not everyone with the soulmate prompt probably thinks about when they make soulmate fics. your twin flame is your endgame or your partner for life. they are your person and your soulmate are just people that are special to you like theyre right under twin flame.

tsukishima kei is your twin flame, not kuroo. kuroo is one of your soulmates that you’ll meet in your lifetime and he was your color of yellow. and i kinda mentioned that despite seeing all the colors in tsukki, you couldnt see his hair color and it’s grey, meaning its a light color but you can’t actually see it bc your soulmate curse blocks it. thats why you ask kenma his hair color and its yellow so you kinda make this connection like ‘how come i still see tetsu’s eye color which is yellow but not tsukishima? or even kenma’s hair?’. bc that color belongs to kuroo. it indicates and reminds you that he’s still one of your soulmates and essentially helped you grow and connected with you deeply. you mistook that connection for romantic love when it was only meant to be platonic love. i mentioned somewhere up there that the topic of twin flames is taboo so its not really known by like everyone so that would maybe explain you and kuroo’s ignorance about it. the same goes for kuroo. say your scent is lavender. he can’t walk into a store and smell a candle of lavender bc its not from you, ya feel? i dont know i suck at explanations but i hope i cleared the air with this one!!

[suca-loca]

it’s been a long year since we last spoke (how’s your halo?)

Read on Ao3

Words: 11.5k 

Tags: Hurt No comfort, Angst, No Happy Ending, No beta we die like Wilbur

Warnings: Body horror, Blood, Death, Suicidal Implications/Thoughts, Mentions Of Torture, Beating/Fighting

Author's Note: I tentatively present you all this fic as my ticket to board the Dream SMP Fandom. I took some creative liberties with this, such as hints of Niki and Wilbur being childhood friends, as well as Niki living near Techno's cabin, and making Niki respawning to restock her hunger bar during her spiraling/villain arc one of her canon deaths. Also, despite Niki wearing a new skin she has stated that her character still wears Wilbur's coat. Just adding that in here so people don't comment that I got her outfit wrong during a certain scene. And finally, even though I feel this is obvious, this is about the characters and not the streamers themselves. With that out of the way, enjoy the fic!

Summary: 

"Time down here is like stars, Niki. We're dead, dead for thousands of years, but to them," he points up, "we still shine. It'll take light years for them to realize they are staring at just a memory."

She tries to take a step back, but she's rooted where she stands. "Wilbur," she weeps. "How long have you been down here?"

He laughs.

(There was a time it made Niki's heart stop. It still does, but for different reasons now)

"Eleven years."

Niki covers her mouth to stifle a broken cry.

or; Niki tries, unwillingly may she add, the whole being dead thing. Oh, and Wilbur is there to "help"

The worst part about it is that Niki's whole life doesn't flash before her eyes. It doesn't happen in slow motion and neither is there some comforting, bright light for her to walk towards. It's simply this: one second she's at Church Prime and the next she's falling into pitch blackness.

Then again, she should have known better than to expect any of that dumb cliche stuff 'cause it's not like she died or anything. Not really. Her communicator may say she did, but she knows the truth. She was teleported.

So why does this feel like dying?

foolish girl breaking at the seams from using the same stitching of a burning flag to put yourself back together again. you think the afterlife cares how you arrive? the entry fee is the same for all

She comes in screaming and doesn't stop even when that's all she is anymore. Her body is unrecognizable to her, turned inside out, muscles stretching and bending and snapping in an attempt to mimic the shape she once was.

(She wishes her muscles luck in regressing back into a memory because oh primes, oh dear primes did she try, try again to be the girl wore a white and blue uniform with pride, but that girl only exists now in dreams and sometimes nightmares)

But they can't, for her organs and bones and flesh do not know what it means to not be confined (but they should know, they really should, because she still finds it hard to breath in small spaces ever since Schlatt caged her between iron bars and dirt and Sapnap left her in a hole in the ground over a fish) and so they shake. Convulsing and spasming until she is just sound, just an echo of shrieks that are happening in the past or the present or the future depending on how fast it travels down this tight, narrowed cave she lands in.

Wait, lands in?

She finds herself laying flat on the ground. She blinks. Then does it again for good measure to make sure she's not imaging having eyelids.

She touches her face. Feels the crook of her nose, the curve of her chin, and her soft round ears.

It's all skin. No muscle, no tissue, just her.

Still her.

(For now)

Her body is back. Not whole though - never whole - for she will always be a walking empty space within a solid object, but for now, her body is right. Her body is here. She closes her eyes in relief.

Someone is staring down at her when she opens them again.

"Hello Niki," Wilbur says. "It's been a while."

(It's Doomsday. His name shows up on your communicator and so you become a lit match. The fire eats you away just like the bark of a tree, like the walls of a bakery, two things you once loved most, and you're watching them both burn with his coat over your shoulders, which doesn't help you ignore who you must look like, who you're acting like, whose footsteps you're following in; and doesn't it hurt to know that what's before you isn't just a friend but a reflection?)

She's already scrambling back before she's even fully sat up.

She doesn't get very far, not with the way her wrists twist and bend before finally buckling under the pressure, and she can't find the strength to stand up and run. So all that's left to do is hyperventilate at the way his eyes land on her face, roaming, analyzing, absorbing, trying to read her like a book, unaware she's ripped out the pages long ago. At the way his shadow covers her and maybe once it felt like a blanket, but that time has passed, now all it is is heavy, suffocating, pinning her down. At the way he wears his Pogtopia outfit, pressed and cleaned when the last she saw of it it was covered in ash and black feathers and red, so much red.

But it never comes. In fact, her lungs don't move at all. Almost as if she doesn't need to breathe. As if she hasn't been breathing since she's been down here.

Is that why it was so easy to keep screaming?

"You're not here," she whispers. "Not really."

Wilbur tilts his head to the left.

(Does it in a way a predator would while observing its prey from afar, waiting for the right moment to strike)

"Oh? Where am I then, Niki?"

"My head," Niki responds, practically blurting it out. "Yeah - yeah, that's right. This is just my head playing tricks on me again. A horrible horrible trick, but that's all it is. I - I know it."

Wilbur hums. He sits down as if this will take a while. As if she won't blink and he'll be gone. "Well, that's a damn shame. I was hoping it'd be a beach. Mexican Dream has been talking a lot about La Jolla lately. Sounds like a nice place."

He smiles, suddenly.

(No, not smiles, more like baring his teeth. His very normal teeth that give off the impression that they should be very sharp and very large and very deep in her throat right now)

"Let's hope I don't blow it up."

(Niki is shouting for Wilbur over the chaos when her communicator pings in her pocket. It gets hard to breathe as she reads what it says, and it isn't because every inhale of smoke and pulverized concrete from the tumbling buildings poison her lungs. There's a ringing in her ears, and it isn't because of the TNT that just detonated in front of her. She feels broken, and it isn't because the force of the explosion knocks her back and she skitters across the field, hitting rocks and choking on dirt until she stops on her stomach, limbs bent at weird angles. Her communicator lands right beside her, the screen shattered and static flashing, but she can still catch glimpses of what is on the screen, as clear as day, like a taunt: WilburSoot was slain by Ph1lza)

Niki scrambles to her feet, presses herself as much as she can against the walls, and maybe, just maybe, she'll glitch and go through it and suffocate in a block.

She immediately throws herself away from it when she realizes what she just thought.

Wilbur stands with her. "I'm kidding, I'm kidding," he says. "I thought it would lighten up the mood. So, how are you?"

"How am I?" Niki echoes. "I'm imagining my dead best friend even though I thought I was getting better and I could have sworn I was, I was I swear I was, and this place, this place, I don't know where this is but it, it just feels - I don't even know why - so familiar and so - "

She pauses.

She looks around.

She was so busy panicking from Wilbur's presence that she never took in her surroundings. She stares at the smooth stone walls, the occasional hanging vines, the little aquarium in the corner right next to the entrance, and, finally, the stand. The stand with two signs on the front that read -

No. It can't be. It just can't.

She won't believe it until she's seen the whole thing.

She walks further in, each step hesitant.

And she notices the way everything around her seems so devoid of life. Almost colorless. Close to numb. She thinks it's her body shutting down, the stress finally getting to her, but no. This is worse. Something's going on. She doesn't know what it is exactly, but she knows it isn't her that's wrong here.

(This time)

Wilbur follows closely behind and, as if to prove her point, his footsteps sound muffled, distant, apart from him, like in the way you hear something underwater.

Maybe she is underwater because everything is getting blurry and her face feels wet.

(Or maybe the better comparison is like hearing something behind glass. She's been tapping against the window of a caravan for months as men in suits discuss a country she bled for just as much as them, if not more, without her. The tapping turns to banging, but it is not the glass that shatters. Not the glass that breaks)

She stills as she catches sight of the small wheat farm in the back room, dried and frail and unkempt.

(Like a flower shop)

It really is her bakery.

"No," she mumbles. Then, more stern, as if it'll blow this place away, as Wilbur should have done the first time. "No no no no this can't… this can't be true. I, I shouldn't be here I - it doesn't make any sense, how how how - "

She whirls on Wilbur, the tears coming in waves now. "What are you doing to me?"

(It's his fault she's back here. It has to be, he's the reason you wanted to burn the memories why this is all gone why this should be gone why isn't this gone gone gone gone)

foolish girl who has become like the nation she despises, you are a crater, there is a hole inside of you where a soul once was and it was caused by your own hands because the only destruction you're good at is your own. you couldn't even kill a child with a nuke, so what makes you think you can end a small room on the side of some hill?

"What do you see?" Wilbur says, and the voice in her head disappears. She can't remember what it said. She shakes her head as if the words will fall out her ears.

Suddenly she can't remember why she's shaking her head.

Her next words come out frail.

"My… my bakery. But how? This shouldn't be possible I, I destroyed it - I - "

"Limbo is different for everybody," Wilbur interjects. "For me, it's a train station."

"Limbo? What are you talking about? What is going on? I was nowhere near L'manburg I was - " Niki's mind blanks.

(Smooth quartz all around her and she feels safe there, that she remembers because there is no killing here, the one place bloodshed does not haunt her, and then crushing disappointment that turns into actual crushing as her body gets shredded, mangled, undone like a ribbon except it does not look pretty)

Wilbur gives her a slicing smile. It cuts her down. "This is the afterlife, Niki."

She blinks. She tries to take a step back, but she's rooted to the spot. "What?"

"The afterlife," he continues, eyes sparkling. "Hell. The void. Eternal darkness. Whatever you wanna call it. I call it home."

"Home?" She repeats, shakily.

foolish girl with no place, no one to call home because she's an expert at finding comfort in things that don't stay, of course he sees this place as home. Although if he really wanted to surround himself in emptiness so bad then he just needed to wait a few months for you to become just that

"I'm not dead," she mutters. She attempts to laugh, because if she laughs then this will sound like a joke. Wilbur would joke about such a thing. After all, he poked fun at exploding L'manburg just a while ago. So of course this is a joke. It has to be. It is, and she will not allow her breakdown to be the punchline.

At Wilbur's unflinching smile she says it again, with more conviction. "I'm not!"

"How else do you think you're talking to me? How your bakery is still in one piece? Sorry to be your grim reaper Niki, but you're dead. And now you're here, in the afterlife, with me!" He leans in close, close enough that she should feel his breath on her.

There is nothing. He is nothing.

(And maybe, so is she)

"Isn't that great? We're together again! You and me, just like the old days. And look," His eyes glance at what she wears. It's the coat. Specifically, Wilbur's coat, wrapped around her shoulders.

"We're even matching," he coos.

She thinks she might scream.

She throws herself away from him, almost throws the coat too, but into the furnace next to her.

('I gotta burn the memories I need to destroy it I need to destroy it I need to destroy it,' she once screamed to no one but herself. History repeats itself)

How she ever found comfort in this ratty, old coat she'll never know. And she'll never care to find out. Not when Wilbur is acting like this, like before, like a loose city wire, all dangerous and unpredictable, each word an electric spark, and Niki is trying not to get stung. She remembers how that story ended.

But her's will not end. Not yet.

"I can't be dead," she argues. "I don't remember that I would remember something like that so I - I can't be dead, and I have two lives left so, no, no I can't be I'm alive I'm alive I'm alive and I'm in bed I'm alive I'm alive I'm alive and you're not real, just a nightmare. I'm alive I'm alive I'm - "

"It's really me, Niki," Wilbur says, and the fire from the furnace roars in response as if his words fan the flames. It's the first time something in this wicked place has felt alive. "In the flesh. Or, rather, a close imitation of it. I think my corpse must have liquified by now, swelling up for months before bursting open, leaving nothing but a skeleton behind. What about you? What did you leave for them to find?"

She covers her ears. "Stop! Stop it stop it stop it!"

"Remember it. Remember your last moments."

"Wilbur, please - "

"Feel your wrist," he says. No, orders. And she does. Because she, at her core, is still his soldier.

(She says that she is loyal to him and he responds by saying he wants her to be loyal to L'manburg. She remembers being confused, for she saw them both as the same. Wilbur is L'manburg and L'manburg is Wilbur, one cannot coexist without the other. A few months later, amongst the wreckage of her nation and a father's anguished screams, she'll realize too little too late how true her statement holds)

She doesn't find her heartbeat.

For a second she thinks she made a mistake. That she has her fingers in the wrong place, but no. A soldier knows where to look for life so that they may snuff it out. She can't be making a mistake.

Still, she presses her fingers down, harder this time, nails first, that blood draws, and sobs as she's still met with nothing.

She has no heartbeat.

She is dead.

She chokes. She clutches her chest, not because it hurts to know what she lacks in her chest, but because she remembers. Remembers it so intently, remembers it happening in the snap of a finger, literally, from a smiling God (and maybe it is quite a fitting end, for she goes out the same way she lived, giving second chances to men who don't deserve it) and how the world tilted as the ground slipped away.

But what's worse is the realization that comes after.

"I didn't leave anyone anything to find," she says.

Wilbur raises an eyebrow. "What?"

"I didn't leave anyone anything to find because I didn't die," she says again, but weaker. More horrified. "I was teleported. I was on the holy lands when - "

"Teleported?' Wilbur interrupts. His features, just a second ago, eccentric and mad, turn curious. "Wait wait wait, hold on a second, are you telling me you were sent to Hell, Hell, on the fucking Holy Lands? "

Niki weakly nods.

It goes silent.

Suddenly, a snort. A snort that does not sound like it once did, back before the war for independence, before the election, before banishment, before it all, when all there was was a caravan and the worst of their worries was getting Sapnap a vegan hotdog. It's meaner, more shrill, and laced with a madness that seems to roll off his tongue so easily nowadays.

If she weren't watching how hard Wilbur's shoulders shake she'd have never guessed such a sound would come from him.

But there's something else about this snort that chills her to the core. Although she never could have imagined it coming from Wilbur doesn't mean she hasn't heard this kind of laugh before.

It's almost breathless, almost like something left on a stove, steaming, almost like the sound of  -

(Dream and Wilbur worked together, both wanted L'manburg gone, both almost killed a kid, both cut off attachments, both lost trust in others, all things Niki has done too, and if Niki is like Wilbur and Wilbur is like Dream then that means - )

(No. Please, no)

"That is -," Wilbur wheezes, wiping away a tear. "That is horribly ironic."

"DreamXD!" She shouts, head tilted up. "Take me back! Take me back right now!"

Wilbur shakes his head. "Oh, no need to try that. I've been there. The whole shouting for help thing? Yeah, will do you no good. No one can hear you down here."

"DreamXD! I'm here!"

"Scream all you want, prime knows you don't need to breathe down here so nothing's stopping you from doing it for forever, but when your screams are all you hear for eternity… well, it'll drive any person mad."

"DreamXD," she shrieks. And her lungs don't shake, don't even give a small quiver, she knows it. Nothing in her does, for the gears don't need to be turning to keep this machine of a body that's been on autopilot since an explosion knocked her off her feet alive anymore. "Please!"

"You stop talking after a few years of just endless screaming for your voice becomes a reminder of your entrapment. But then the silence itself, after a few years, is unbearable. Yet you don't dare speak or make any noise, so it's just madness of a new kind."

She pushes her way past him and makes her way to the exit of her bakery. "I - I liked the magic trick, DreamXD! I really did! You - you can teleport me back now!"

"Too scared to make a noise, but too scared to keep quiet. So you stand still. Your body deteriorates, muscles numb from lack of use, and all you do is use your nails to scratch marks onto the walls to mark how many years have passed since… since absolutely nothing."

She stills. She slowly turns around.

(L'manburg is surrounded by a wall. A wall so mighty and tall she never thought she'd see the day it'd be torn down, much less by its own inhabitants. But this wall right here, the one between her and this old friend, this is a wall that will never meet the same end as its predecessor)

"Wilbur," she whispers. "What do you mean by years?"

Silence.

Wilbur has a far-away look in his eye.  

(That look was born in a dirt hole on the side of a small hill and Niki doesn't learn that lesson for she builds her bakery in a similar place. Two places, so small, so cramped, started with hope, have become their worst downfalls, their unfinished symphonies. She parallels him in all the wrong ways)

"Time down here is like stars, Niki. We're dead, dead for thousands of years, but to them," he points up, "we still shine. It'll take light years for them to realize they are staring at just a memory."

She tries to take a step back, but she's rooted where she stands. "Wilbur," she weeps. "How long have you been down here?"

He laughs.

(There was a time it made Niki's heart stop. It still does, but for different reasons now)

"Eleven years."

Niki covers her mouth to stifle a broken cry. She was paralyzed before but now, with fear pumping through her veins, she runs. Fear is a more dependent motivator than strength or bravery could ever be, for fear, unlike any other heroic emotion, can't be beaten out of you. Can't be threatened out of you by a friend on your birthday as you try to stop him from pressing a button. Fear only grows, like a weed, you can try to get rid of it all you want, but it multiplies the more you struggle.

She finally gets to the exit, nearly throwing herself at it, only to find a stone wall staring back at her. It's been cemented shut.

She's trapped.

(She is in a cage, a zoo animal for Manburg citizens to point and laugh at. It is cramped, it is humiliating, and it is her home, her everything in wake of becoming nothing to people she once considered friends, Schlatt tells her. Until Quackity frees her. But there is no one to free her now. Except herself)

She pulls up her sleeves and begins mining with her bare hands.

She's been torn apart before, but at least it was quick. This, the way her flesh slowly peels off at each scratch is its own kind of torture. Not because it's painful, but the torture in knowing what you're willing to do to yourself just to see the sky again.

She keeps going.

(She does not throw up at the sight of chunks of flesh dangling where nail once was because she is a soldier and she has seen worse. Seen a child trapped in a box screaming for help and she's unfortunate enough to have a seat in the splash zone. Helped patch up Ponk's wound where his arm should be, afraid she might lose him to blood loss because whoever chopped his arm off didn't cut across the joint to avoid the bone and therefore had to hack again and again and again to get through the bone. Sewed Fundy's head back together from when Schlatt beat him over the scalp with a beer bottle before dying in the caravan; it took a couple of hours to finish because his fur made it hard to spot the bits of glass sticking out his skin. This is not the first or last time she will wash blood off her clothes, she just has to hope it will continue to be someone else's and not her own)

Wilbur comes up beside her. He doesn't even try to stop her, much less flinch at all the red on the wall. "Don't worry, you'll get used to it. Tommy did."

She snaps her head to him, her clawing ceasing. "Tommy was here?"

He nods. "Arrived a few years ago. I have to admit, when a space opened up here I thought it would be him again, not you. Not that I'm complaining. Don't get me wrong he's a good kid but, well, you know how Tommy gets."

(Everyone you've ever hated, everyone you've ever sworn to end; Schlatt, Tommy, and although you do not hate Wilbur or Jack you're relationship with them is complicated because they remind you of when you spiraled, you lot are all connected now, bound together from sharing the similar experience of death. She can never separate herself from them. Will be rever grouped in with the people she can't stand most)

"How long was Tommy here for?" She asks softly.

Wilbur clicks his tongue. "Two months I think."

She closes her eyes.

(She wanted to look deep into the crater Tubbo's nuke made and confuse Tommy's charcoal, burnt body for obsidian. She wanted to catch Tommy's choked last breaths in a bottle and get drunk on it every night. She wanted to leave spruce wood on his grave as a sort of flag marking her latest conquest. She wanted to stop thinking that if Wilbur was wrong for believing in Tommy then that means he might have been wrong for believing in her)

She doesn't want Tommy dead anymore and although they're still not friends even she wouldn't wish this on him.

"Two months," she says, and it sinks in.

Is that how long she'll have to wait until someone comes looking for her?

That is if someone even cares to look.

(Puffy doesn't respond to any of her messages after their first date. She turns Jack away when he tries to pull her back into the obsession of caving Tommy's head in. Everyone grieving L'manburg remembers her setting L'mantree aflame. Anyone in the Eggpire is too far gone to even care about themselves. She doesn't have a Tubbo. Isn't anyone's disk. She's just Niki, forgotten, ignored Niki, the first ghost of the server before Ghostbur. Why spare a glance at someone transparent? Someone, not all there?)

No one will come for her.

Wilbur cracks his fingers, and Niki winces, for her bones are still on flesh display and slowly repairing. "Well, now that we've played twenty questions let's move on to a new game. You up for some solitaire?"

She rises to her feet and numbly nods. She might as well have something to do to, to try and prevent the inevitable insanity with a card game.

Might as well accept her fate.

Wilbur reaches into his pocket and pulls out the cards. He sits down on the ground. "Sorry," he says. "I'd offer we play on a table but there are no tables in a train station and I doubt your bakery has one either." He hands her half of the deck. "Help me set it up."

But Niki doesn't take them, for she's focused on the word table because -

(There's a table, a weird table, made up of this block she's never seen before. It's sponge-like, with a hole on top decorated by a blueish-green frame, and she's about to ask where they found it when Phil suddenly apologizes for exploding her bakery. At her shocked expression, he explains he'd like to air out all possible tensions before starting their first-ever official Syndicate meeting so that no past grievances keep them from working as an effective team. Techno merely snorts, saying it's not their fault her bakery was on government land, and Phil responds by shooting him a glare fit for his title as Angel of Death. She'd have laughed, she'd have cried because such a look was once how Phil got Wil to eat his vegetables if it weren't for the fact she tells them they have nothing to apologize for. Tells them she left the oven on the day before the attack and by next sunrise, it was already burnt to the ground. Ranboo doesn't blink once from where he sits across from her as she talks. She sees in his eyes that day, how her laughs and her wails blend in with the chaos around her, as if it belongs there, as if she is one with it. And maybe she is, for the fire that consumes her bakery grows and grows and grows but Niki just gets smaller and smaller and smaller as if she has to sacrifice bits of herself to keep the fire going. Perhaps she is, for every monster requires an offering, and her bakery is that. A representative of the old her burning alive to make room for the new, merciless, unhinged her. Good. She looks down at the flint and steel in her hand and in the reflection of the metal she sees a boy with mismatched eyes standing behind her, staring. And then he takes out his book and writes. It feels like Ranboo has placed a noose around her neck. The memory fades and she holds her breath. She waits for him to say something, to call out her lie. This time, Ranboo undoes the knot. He looks away)

Because she needs to tell Ranboo she appreciated his silence that day. Needs to joke about how all this snow reminds her of an ice cream shop and watch Ranboo nervously laugh as she lightheartedly punches him on the shoulder.

Because she needs to know how that story Phil was telling her about his adventures with Techno on another server, something about an Antarctic Empire, ends. Needs to feed the crows with him to make sure he doesn't stare at their wings for too long.

Because she needs to braid Techno's hair one last time while they talk about how pink is clearly the superior hair color. Needs to thank Techno for giving her these becauses, for they wouldn't exist in the first place had he not offered her a place in the Syndicate.

Ironically enough, she always knew she'd die before she could give back all that she owed them. But only because what she owed them was too long a list, too difficult to be expressed in any way that captured what they deserved.

(Somewhere, in a snow biome, there is a family. They're different from each other, too different at times, and yet Ranboo and Techno could wear each other crowns, each fitting perfectly on their heads and no one would know of the switch, except for Phil of course. Right now they're probably looking at their comms around the dinner table, confused by the last message. 'Nihachu fell from a high place.' They aren't worried. Not yet. But in a couple of days, months for her, they'll start to pace. Phil will stand at the edge of the roof, ready to step off, only to remember he doesn't have wings, can't look for her high up in the sky like he used to when she was a kid. Ranboo will force himself through experiments, lose sleep, break himself in, trying to learn how to teleport so as to cover ground faster in the search, to do more than just let his powers go to waste when they could be what brings her home. Techno will grab her rainbow sweater and put it to Steve's snout, but the trail will go cold every time until eventually all of Niki's clothes don't smell like her anymore. They'll do this every day. Nothing will change but their hope, dwindling away each day. So will they just stare at that last message, her unintentional goodbye, looking for some sort of explanation? For some secret message? Some coordinates until they go mad? They won't think she's dead until they've found a body. Won't stop looking, won't leave a corner of the server untouched. Won't stop till they have something to bury)

She can't do that to them.

She slaps the cards out of Wilbur's hands.

"No," she growls, trying to sound tough and less like a kid throwing a tantrum. Perhaps slapping the cards away was not the best start. "I am not going to waste my time playing Solitaire when I could be spending it finding a way back home. And I will if it's the last thing I do."

Wilbur frowns. Niki has the inkling suspicion it has more to do with the cards being all scattered about than from her declaration. "There is no 'last thing I do anymore.' You dying was the last thing you'll ever do. All you have now is this. This is your forever. Our forever."

She turns away from him, just for a second. Away from the sight of his furrowed brows and the crinkles in the space between them where her index finger would go to poke as she teased him. Away from the scrunch of his nose she would joke made him and Techno finally look like twins. Because despite everything, despite all the months that have settled into their bones since the last they saw each other and the wars they've fought on land and in their minds, it's still Wilbur's face. But only in the physical sense. After that, he stops being her Wilbur.

This would be so much easier if his face had physically morphed into a stranger, to prove to her how much he's changed, what he's become over the months, is not all in her head.

Somehow, she finds a way to start.

"You know, not too long ago I'd have stayed with you here. I wouldn't have even put up a fight. I'd have just laid down, closed my eyes, and let the vines on these walls grow over my body until I was just moss. I was… I was so tired, Wilbur. A part of me always will be. I understood. I finally got why you acted the way you did. There was a time I was on half a heart and instead of eating I would - "

Her body begins to shake so hard she almost expects to look down and she cracks in the ground from an incoming earthquake. The only cracks see she's are her own.

She can't say it. Not like that. Not yet.

" - I would respawn to restock the hunger bar," Niki chokes out instead.

(She respawns with dried blood on the back of her head and bones still rattling from the fall. Along her jutting spine, in an almost perfectly straight line that could be confused for an unkempt path lost to weeds and drought, are bruises. She doesn't feel them. All she feels is the urge to do it again)

She blinks and her hand is in her hair, looking for the bump. She pulls her hand away as if it's a hot furnace. "But I can't stay. Things have changed. I've changed. This is not the first time something dark has tried to consume me, but I can't let it win this time. I can't let this place turn me numb and unhinged, or worse, content. Not when I have people to go home to. Not when - "

She looks down at her hand, the one that traced her scalp, and sees it has clenched into a fist.

(At the count of three, Niki throws rock. She groans as she notices all the other hands make paper. Ranboo and Techno exhale as if the losing sentence wasn't shoveling the front lawn, but death. Or worse, going shopping with Phil for a refrigerator to put in the Syndicate meeting room. Ranboo lost that one. Niki points at Techno's hooves and says it's cheating since they can't ever tell which shape he chooses. She demands a rematch with the same tone one uses to declare war. A few minutes later, they're shouting, going over the rules of rock, paper, scissors, and they only stop when Phil comes home and pulls out the dad voice. They begrudgingly agree to do a rematch another time, once they've cooled down. That was yesterday)

She holds her fist close to her heart. The hand was never her rock, it was always three men in a snowy cabin, handing her a mug of hot cocoa. "Not when I have a lawn to shovel."

Silence.

Then, Wilbur sighs. "You know," he says. He places his arms behind him and leans back to get a better look at her. Somehow, even on the ground, he looks to hold all the power. "Years ago your determination would have been a sight for sore eyes, but here's a reality check. I've been here for almost a dozen years. Eleven years of letting the passing train rip right through me in the hopes it would send me to another layer of hell or maybe propel, heck, even drag my body to the next station. But every time I'd wake up back in the train station as if nothing had happened. Like my body breaking under the wheels was nothing."

He is an avalanche, growing and picking up speed with each word, and Niki realizes, too little too late, she's about to be buried alive. She tries to step back, but Wilbur is up quick and approaching. "There is no escape. The limbo is our stage and we have our lines, our cues, but we do not have a curtain call. We just keep going and going, an endless loop. You can't not play your part. It won't let you."

"I have to at least try," she says.

"Why? What's the point? They'll never know you tried."

Her fear turns to disgust. "Is that why you think I'll try? For the sole reason that one day they'll know what I've done for them? That's far from the truth."

(People built statues of Tommy, for all he's done, for all the influence he had on this server. Niki knows they will not give her the same treatment. But that's fine, more than fine. All she needs is a grave in the snow, beside a little cabin)

She didn't want to look at Wilbur's face before, but now, glaring at him straight on, all she sees staring back is Phil.

The day they found out Wilbur didn't inherit Phil's immortality was the day Phil looked like he should, centuries-old instead of thirty-three, the age when angels stop physically aging. Niki will never forget how deep the lines on Phil's face ran. They might as well have been cracks. And maybe it was, for Phil was breaking as he held his dying son - not dying now, but for an immortal, every second a mortal breathes is just inevitable death - in his arms.

But what still haunts Niki the most after all these years are his eyes. They carried the weight of the world in them. She could feel it, even now, pressing down on her shoulders. All the wars, the fall of cities, the birth of them, children with big smiles and even bigger graves.

Niki was not a soldier yet. She was just a nine-year-old girl who wanted to sleep over at her best friend's house.

She threw up in their sink and they mistook it as her reaction to the news. She didn't correct them.

The only reason she slept easy that night was from the knowledge she would never see those eyes on Wilbur's face. And yet, lo and behold, here it is, like a punch to the gut.

Except now, Niki has had time to numb herself to it. It's hard to get surprised by such a dead look when it's on the face of your roommate.

(Phil's screech - no, not a screech, a caw, high pitched and grief-stricken - is like an alarm clock. Except, instead of Niki waking up to the rising sun outside her window, it's to moonlight and blinking stars. This is the fifth time this month she's met Ranboo and Techno outside Phil's cabin, armed to the teeth, ready for war. The door creaks open, loudly, but they don't wince, for they know it won't wake him. Nothing really does when he's in this state, except for one thing. Techno holds him down and it's weird, will always be weird, to see Techno use such force, such retaliation, on Phil of all people, and then Phil nearly throws Techno through the wall with just a brush of his fingers, and she remembers it's necessary. This isn't Phil they're dealing with, it's the Angel of Death. It takes a while until Techno can get all of the Angel's limbs down, but even then they know it won't last long, and that's when Niki throws a slowness potion on him. Ranboo, meanwhile, turns around all the photos of Wilbur in the room, a safe distance away. They told him it's best he handles that since he's built like a stick, putting him anywhere near a powerful avian would be an accident waiting to happen. It definitely has nothing to do with them freezing up whenever they see Wilbur's smiling face, all happy, and so very alive. Phil's movements turn sluggish as the potion kicks in and Niki holds his face, murmurs soft words, and Techno gives his own weird, but comforting, comments. Something about how Phil can't afford to lose sleeping beauty to these night terrors, what with his old age. Niki snorts. Phil's eyes open immediately. Phil sucks in a sharp breath, like he's forgotten how to breathe, his fist clenching and unclenching. The eyes are back. Based on Techno's face Niki knows then she's not the only person that has seen them. They look at each other, nod, and hold him as he cries. They don't need to ask. There's only one person that could cause such a look. They force Ranboo, who is awkwardly standing to the side, to join. Eventually, they break apart, and Techno coughs. He says he hates them for making this all emotional and bans such an awkward event from ever happening again. And yet, when Phil keeps waking up with eyes too dark around the corners, Techno is there. And so is she and Ranboo)

She will not be the reason Phil's eyes age another year.

"It's about Phil, Techno, and Ranboo deserving someone who will never stop trying to find their way back to them," she says, with conviction. "I'm sorry you're too twisted to see not all actions stem from reward or acknowledgment."

She expects a laugh, a glimpse at his forked tongue spewing words so sweet she could use them as sugar in her desserts, only to take a bite and realize it was salt all along. But what she gets is silence. The type of silence before a storm.

"Phil?" Wilbur whispers.

Niki closes her eyes.

She should have never said their names.

She also should have never opened her eyes again, because Wilbur is looking more like Phil each second. Not because of the eyes. No, worse. Because she sees a boy, a boy with his arms spread open wide and flapping about in an attempt at mimicking his father's wings, and they're both running around in circles in the backyard as he tells her how she'll never have to walk anywhere ever again. He'll carry her when she's tired, when she's not tired, whenever she wants wherever she wants. They stop running around in circles flapping their arms when too much time has passed and his wings still haven't grown in, but the acceptance that it never would did.

She blinks and the memory is gone. Slipping through her fingers like sand.

"How is he?" Wilbur says. His voice wavers a bit. He hides it quickly with a cough, but Niki catches it. Niki thought she always would.

(But then a button was pressed and she realized just how untrue that was)

Niki hesitates. She thinks about the night terrors again. She almost mentions them but falters as she remembers Ranboo telling her how it was Phil who gave him a place to stay after L'manburg was blown up for the last time. How as Technoblade hibernates there's a blanket over his shoulders that wasn't there before and a stick missing from the fireplace. How he always places Niki's plate of breakfast down before the others, as if he knows of her first canon death.

He is a kind man, but that is not why he does these things.

"He misses being a father," she settles on.

Wilbur's shoulders slump. Somewhere, in a different life, Niki's hand is there, squeezing comfortingly. "Is he… is he mad at me?"

"No." She answers quickly. "He's just tired, Wilbur. We all are."

Wilbur laughs. It sounds defeated. Mournful. "Understatement of the fucking year."

He slumps against the wall and Niki is sure it's the only thing keeping Wilbur on his feet. His head hits the smooth stone when he suddenly throws his head back and laughs. Niki doesn't know if she winces from the loud crack the impact makes or from the shrill, unhinged laugh.

"I told him to kill me," Wilbur chuckles. His eyes are blinking rapidly. "I told him to fucking kill me."

(The diamond sword has collected dust. Sometimes, everyone jokes, Phil looks like he has to. Playful teasing about how he's a walking antique that should be displayed in a museum. Phil always laughs them off. But it's moments when he stands too still, alone in his thoughts for too long, that Niki wants to put him behind glass with signs that say 'do not touch,' because all it takes is one gust of wind for an artifact to shatter. But that is no way to live and Phil is not so easily breakable. Worn down a bit, rusted from the loss throughout the eons, yes -  who hasn't on this forsaken server? -  but not breakable)

Niki thinks she might throw up. "I know."

Wilbur looks at her. His eyes are red, but there are no tears. "You said you understood me. You get why I had to ask him to do it."

"Wilbur - "

" - And so you also understand why you have to stay here."

"What?"

"We've changed Niki," Wilbur starts. "For the worse. Don't you feel it? How that server has destroyed every cell in our body? A slow painful death eating us from the inside out until we've just withered away into someone new, someone unrecognizable?"

(Niki feels she's in a never-ending house of mirrors. Constantly encircled by reflections that are her and not her staring back, each representing different points in her life. Some are unrecognizable, stretched, or squished beyond identification, like a fuzzy memory of a girl carrying a backpack, skipping down a path she was told by a best friend would lead to a nation with yellow and black walls. Some are too terrifying, demonizing her features, giving her slits for eyes and claws for nails holding flint and steel over TNT. All of them she wants to smash)

Wilbur either ignores the horrified expression on her face or doesn't see it. "We killed our old selves as a sacrifice, an offering, to the monster we saw lurking in the edges of our mind. And once you let the monster in there's no going back. All we know from then on is to destroy, to rip apart all we once held dear with no remorse until there's just ash and dust. We thrive, no, revel in it."

(Nemesis, she names herself. Goddess of divine retribution and revenge. Maybe that's who Niki sacrifices herself to. Why she felt such an attachment to the name. A remorseless Goddess said to have led Narcissus to a pool, knowing full well he'd be too captivated to leave his reflection for food or warmth. He died there. It's no coincidence a few weeks before she lived the story herself, leading Tommy to his death in the form of a hot blast of air at the speed of light and seeing it as justice)

"I'm not having this conversation with you," she says, voice shaking. She whirls around, nearly tripping over her feet, fully willing to ignore him as she looks for an exit.

But his next words make her go still.

"Phil didn't know what I'd become. That's why he had to be the one to do it."

She winces. "Don't."

"He didn't even pull out the sword, his arms were too busy holding me, holding me, as if the shape of me still fit against his chest even though I felt so hollow, so much thinner - "

"Wilbur - "

" - he stroked my hair too. Even though it was dirty and unkempt and a mess like everything else about me and I'm pretty sure his fingers got stuck a few times he just wouldn't stop untangling each knot with such care and precision that I remembered my last thought being - "

"Wilbur - "

" - could he have brushed away all the knots and twists in my soul like this? Cleaned me up on the inside like he's doing on the outside? I thought I went crying, Niki. Maybe I did. I'll never know because all I felt was his tears ricocheting on my face - "  

"Stop - "

" - he tries to wipe them off. He's cursing at himself, apologizing profusely through hiccuping sobs and, and I don't understand why he's so sorry when it feels like, like when he'd lick his fingers and scrub the grimes of our faces after we played outside too long. Do you remember that Niki - "

"I don't wanna - "

" - because I do. We'd screech so loud, saying it was disgusting and unsanitary as we slapped his hand away and ran, but he'd always catch us a second later because of his wings. I don't wanna run away this time. I'm relishing it, craving every stroke because I'm starting to go cold - "

"Please - "

" - and I wish you weren't teleported here. I wish you had died instead - "  

"Wil - "

" - so you would know, so we could relate to what it feels like for the limbo to claim you. To mark you. It's like, it's like being mutilated over and over again. A mallet to your bones, a hole in your brain, everything from your skin to your tendons unraveling before you - "

"Wil listen - "

" - spilling out and about like confetti, and you, you are confetti! You're shredded pieces, everywhere and nowhere all at once, and just as the mangling begins it stops, replaced by the limbo trying to put you, no, force you back together again. It's the same sensation, but in reverse, almost a loop, a tunnel with no light at the end, and all you can do is scream  - "

"WILBUR SHUT UP AND LISTEN TO ME!"

Something shatters

Wilbur falls silent.

Niki looks down. There is a puddle, slowly growing at her feet. She looks to her left. Her hand has punched through the aquarium. Blood trickles down her hand, some get over the glass. She doesn't pull her hand away.

"You never listen," she mumbles, but it seems so loud to her ears. "No one does. No one wants to. I talk and I talk and I talk and yet no response. Not even from the wind. I am a voice box stuck on rewind, repeating myself as life moves on without me."

Niki can hear her voice ring down the bakery, bouncing around with nowhere to settle. Until it does, in Niki's chest, rattling, crackling like a fuse has been lit, and perhaps it has, for her anger feels sizzling. "You used to always say how words were powerful. How they could stop wars, how they could build nations." She lets out a laugh. It burns her throat. "But what would I know?! You and everyone else never gave me a chance to use my voice! Always talking over me whatever chance you could. Even before Pogtopia you walked all over me! Even when I was screaming at top of my lungs you'd - "  

She gasps. The glass presses deeper into her skin as her hand trembles. She does not feel it. "Oh primes, oh primes Wil, didn't you hear my screams? I came here screaming, Wil. I, I do know what it feels like for the void to take you. I still feel it, even now, why, why do I still feel it - "

Wilbur staggers to his feet, so quick he promptly falls. He catches himself halfway on Niki's wrist.

His hand scratches on the glass. He doesn't even flinch. Their blood mixes.

(They are one)

He doesn't even grip too tight, and yet it hurts. Stings. "You do understand," he grins. Wide, too wide for his face, that she almost expects his nose and eyes to sink into his skin to make more room. "You do, you do oh thank primes. I'm not alone in this. I've been alone for so long but now, now you're here and you understand! Oh, Niki, I'm so happy you're here."

"You're… happy, I'm here?" She mutters. "You're happy I'm dead?"

He nods frantically. "It's more than that Niki," he says. "DreamXD, whoever that man is, he's my hero for sending you here."

(Parallels between Wilbur and Dream and her and now Wilbur and Dream and DreamXD no no no she can't be them she can't she can't she won't she won't - )

"You don't mean it," she cries. "You don't mean that Wil. Say you don't mean it."

The grin, somehow, becomes wider. She realizes then his eyes don't have to disappear. They're already gone. Replaced by a black hole, too dark in the corners and its gravitational pull making it hard to look away even though she knows staring at it too long will get her sucked into an endless void.

He leans in close like he's sharing a secret. "I only wish he had sent you here sooner."

(Wilbur's life, Niki is realizing, is like a house of mirrors too. Except Wilbur has smashed every mirror. No, actually, not true. Niki sees, if she squints, that Wilbur has abandoned the sledgehammer and is observing a still intact mirror. He didn't keep the mirror depicting a little boy sitting on the steps of a home, their home, trying to play a song and failing because the guitar is too big for his body, but he refuses to buy a smaller one because "this is my Dad's guitar Niki! So, therefore, it's by default the best guitar in the world". Or the one of a father panting heavily on a couch, cursing his human legs while Niki is doubled over laughing because there is a baby fox is running on all fours around the house at 45 miles per hour who doesn't want to be put to bed. Nor the one of a leader, handing out purpose and meaning in the form of a blue and white uniform with a soft smile. No, it's the one of a man who's just pressed a button. Who long before L'manburg's destruction, always felt like he was breathing in smoke, but now kept warm by the ash and dust of his nation flying up to the red sky, it feels - for the first time in a long time - easier to breathe. Niki can't believe he didn't destroy it. He's… preserving it. Why is he preserving this version of himself of all things?)

foolish girl with dreams for a better nation, better server, better future, too much better somethings, you've ruined reality for no one but yourself. think for once about what is and not what was or could have been. he is different. changed for the worse. he's preserving it because he doesn't care about you. can't you see how happy he is over your death? how there's light in his eyes for the first time over yours being snuffed out? how he shows no sympathy in your entrapment here, forever away from Techno, Phil, and Ranboo because it benefits him. so give in and fight fight fight fight

She sees red.

Her fist collides with Wilbur's nose.

She doesn't even wait to hear the crack before she's already reeling back her arm for the next hit.

This time she aims for the jaw. She feels something split. It could be Wilbur's lip or bone. Maybe her mind. She doesn't know and she doesn't care.

What she does know is how familiar this is, having something break under her knuckles. It's easy, familiar even, throwing punch after punch, like some sort of autopilot response. Perhaps it is, for every punch is instinctive, out of body almost. No longer is there a before in the blows, only an after.

Except, that's not true. Not entirely. Because Niki is realizing why there is no before. Because before each blow there is always a struggle from your opponent. Flailing limbs trying to make contact with something, choked wheezes, an attempt to curl into a ball, and, sometimes, begging.

Wilbur does none of that. He's silent the whole time.

It's almost like he takes it willingly.

clever girl with hands too bruised, too scarred, too violent to ever be held so gently. a finger trained to pull the trigger is not meant to bear a promise ring. who's fault do you think that is? you've held back for so long, don't stop now. so give in and get revenge revenge revenge revenge

A swing at his eye. A swift kick to the ribs. A fistful of his hair so tight she could yank his scalp off if she twisted her wrist just so.

It's all a flurry of movements really, too fast for even her own eyes to catch. Half of the time she's lost on where the hits land, totally dependent on wherever the blood leaks the most and the bruises that weren't there a second ago to tell her. Eventually, the damage starts to blur, too much of his face has swelled up to spot any new marks and too many limbs bend at weird angles to differentiate what is and isn't broken, so she stops trying to guess.

Which is why she doesn't know which strike finally gets Wilbur to fall, all she knows is that he does. He doesn't even sway. One second he's on his feet and the next he's on his back.

It's kinda pathetic really, that this was her general.

For a second he's still, too still, and then he spits out a tooth. He licks his gums with a grimace, looking for the gap before finally speaking.

"I see Technoblade's been training you. Do you feel better now?"

clever girl who's seen her fair share of men with livewire tongues, spitting rogue sparks at your skin in the form of harsh words to quiet you down. do not be silenced once more. you let him speak before and it cost you a nation. this time silence him, and I will secure you a limbo without him. so give in and maim maim maim maim

She screams. She thinks she does. It's hard to tell over the deep reverberated banging of Wilbur's head against the stone floor.

The first slam simply causes blood to trickle down his forehead.

The second one caves in the front of his scalp.

The third one he's unrecognizable.

The fourth one there's nothing left to bash.

She keeps going anyway.

"Shut up," she pants between each crack and occasional splat. "Shut up shut up shut up shut up SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP."

Wilbur tries to say something. All that comes out is a gurgle, wet and sharp and loud. So very loud. And it keeps going, stringing along and along and along longer than the large chunks of skin and brain on the pavement. It shouldn't be possible, his mouth, along with everything else, is practically gone. Nothing but a small pit inside a bigger pit.

Yet it continues, getting increasingly louder in pitch.

And then she gets it.

He's scared.

clever girl of never-ending war zones, jumping from one horror to the next. this is the last one. and I know that's been said before but you can trust me. just end it and you can finally rest. wouldn't that be nice? so give in and kill kill kill kill kill

She smiles. It hurts her face.

She picks his head up from the ground one last time. She's humming, like a lullaby. Maybe it is. She's putting the baby to sleep. She knows he can't die again, but wherever he goes after this, if the limbo keeps its promise, it can't be pretty.

"I said," she laughs. "Shut up."

She brings his head down.

She blinks.

Her empty hand meets black stone slabs.

"Niki?"

She looks up and immediately regrets it. Everything is too bright, scorching, a burning gaze on every inch of her skin, but what really hurts are her eyes. She thinks they're sizzling, like actually sizzling, because her sclera feels as if it's bubbling and her iris is definitely melting into her brain and there are so many spots dancing behind her eyelids.

And then the voice, soft and familiar, speak's again.

"Do you have your stuff?"

It takes a while, and a lot of blinking, but her eyes eventually readjust.

She gasps.

The first thing she processes isn't that George and DreamXD stand just a few feet away or that it was George speaking. No, it was how absurdly colorful, everything was.

Here there was life. Life. It was like she poked her head through a kaleidoscope, what with how the specks of a rainbow illuminated itself in the clear blue water of the fountain and the sight of shimmering white quartz glistening under the sunbeams that poured through the purple-tinted windows. No longer was everything dulled around the corners and drained at the center like anything in her dreadful, cramped space of a bakery she shared with -

Oh primes.

Her bakery.

This isn't her bakery. This is Church Prime.

"She's back," DreamXD exclaims. He turns to George, bouncing on his heels excitedly as if expecting some sort of reward, but George pays him no mind/ He's too busy looking at Niki, or, more so, through her.

"What happened?" He asks.

She opens her mouth, then slams it shut.

She's alive. Dear primes, she's alive and she's back and she should be happy, cheering, jumping up and down to feel the livelihood ache in her bones but…

She looks back down at the floor. The floor should be covered in blood. Wilbur's blood, and his bits of flesh and tissue and muscle and -

Oh primes. What has she done?

Or better yet, what didn't she do?

"George," she whimpers. "I don't know what's going on. I, I don't know what's going on here."

She hopes it was her imagination. It had to have been. Otherwise, she hosted Wilbur's head up by the splits of his hair, pushed down as hard as she could and -

She wouldn't. She couldn't, not anymore at least. She left that side of herself in a gate full of slaughtered chickens as Jack demanded they try and kill Tommy again. That side of her is as dead as those chickens.

Right?

She prays so, for this is a church after all, and that means prayers have to be answered here. They have to come true. They have to.

There's a smile in DreamXD's voice when he speaks again as if he knows how much this torments her. "I sent her to hell and then I brought her back."

No.

She sobs. She looks down at her hands. Their bear and yet they feel so heavy. As if the ghost of Wilbur's blood and gore is still there, a new thick-coated layer of skin.

She tortured him. Broke him brick by brick again and again and again even as he tried to beg. Her best friend, her general, her family, begging at her feet, and she kept going, would have kept going too, with an ear-splitting grin, like it was some sort of game.

And it had felt so good to finally get a checkmate.

Wilbur is not a demon. He's just seen too much in too little time. Too much pressure on too little shoulders. Too tired to be all there. It's not an excuse for all the pain he's caused, far from it, but it shows his actions didn't come from a place of malice, but rather a cry for help. Niki knows this, she gets it, and she'll say it time and time again. But all she could think about at that moment, before the final strike, was how happy Wilbur was about her death. He deserved a piece of her mind, but not like that. Never like that.  

What is wrong with her?

No, no it wasn't her. It was that place, that voice. It was a parasite, burrowing deep within her brain and planting itself in the center, telling her what to do and what to say. Telling her to slaughter left and right. It was so loud, rattling around in her head and echoing like war drums. She couldn't just ignore it, it was too much. So, no, she is free of guilt, free of responsibility, hands all clean.

But she knows that at the end of the day the host still needs to be somewhat conscious for the parasite to thrive.

Oh primes. Is this what Techno deals with every day?

Then, she jumps to her feet.

Techno, Phil, and Ranboo.

It's coming back now, that memory of fury in her eyes, that fire in her voice as she told Wil she had people to go back to. How she was willing to claw her fingers down to bone to make an exit. But that voice, that stupid stupid voice, it told her she could rest, could get revenge, and against her better judgment she listened. It caught her at a moment of weakness, Wilbur's words of memory lane, of Phil, of everything that came before and after his death, she was at a low point. And like a moth to a flame, she was there one moment and gone the next. Back to the old her.

She thought she had left that version of herself behind when she joined the Syndicate. She was so sure she was getting better with Techno, Phil, and Ranboo around.

But all it took was one voice to ruin all her progress. 

Her chest constricts and her head feels heavy. 

She needs to find them. She needs to tell them what she saw. She needs to tell Phil. She needs… she needs…

She just needs them.

"What did you see?" George says, snapping her out of her thoughts.

This time, her mouth has no problem moving. "George," she starts, voice trembling. "I have seen things. I... I... I have seen things. I don't know what's going on here but I don't know if I should - "  

Niki gulps. It's getting so hard to breathe. She should feel thankful that she can breathe in the first place, but every inhale stings as her lungs try to remember to do a motion so foreign to her.

How long has she been down there?

She doesn't want to know.

She just wants to go home.

She walks away, backward, from the two, eyes fixated tightly on them and barely blinking. She remembers the last time she let her guard down around DreamXD. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry George. Good luck with him but I - "

She doesn't finish, because she's already out the door. She wants to run, but she's so sure her lungs would explode at the first push forward of her heel. So she walks.

And walks.

The world walks with her, with each rotation. As if they’re friends taking a stroll. As if it hadn’t cracked open and swallowed her whole, chewed up everything good in her and spat her out when she turned bitter. Returned her back to a world that didn’t change one bit while she was gone, despite her herself changing so much. 

It’s like what happened to her didn’t happen at all. 

And then she realizes a horrible thing. 

Everyone on this server is going to see today as a normal day. 

Is it bad that a part of Niki wishes something like the Green Festival could happen right now, so that they could all feel the monstrosity of today?

She stands still. Stationary, like this Earth wants her to be. She thinks she could do it, stay like this forever. She feels numb enough. 

Somewhere above, a crow caws. 

She burst into tears.

[a-small-batch-of-dragons]

I adore your Merlin work!! Can I submit a prompt? Merlin finds a way to ensure the safety of Camelot without Arthur’s death, and all it requires is the sacrifice of his magic and his immortality. Cue Merlin willing to become a regular human so Arthur can live.

thanks for the prompt, anon! I hope it’s what you wanted, I had fun with it. Read on Ao3

Let Go

Pairings: Merthur

Warnings: none, this is pretty fluffy

Word Count: 3019

Merlin is magic.

Merlin was born with gold running through his veins, the energy of the earth thrumming through his fingers, sparks lingering just beneath his eyes. His mother used to shake her head when little Merlin ran down the paths, flicking up paths of leaves that would follow him gaily until they fluttered back down to the ground. That boy, she would think, destiny has big plans for that boy.

Destiny did.

Merlin teems with magic. It’s everywhere for him. It’s in the way the wind flicks at his hair as he walks outside, ruffling the strands and sending tingles down his spine. It’s in the way the ground thrums with energy as he sets foot in the forest, the earth rushing to and from the life flourishing around him. It’s in the waters of the lake, ebbing and flowing as it gently laps against the shore.

 It’s no surprise, then, that when a shudder runs through the earth, reeking of dark forces, Merlin drops the tray he’s holding to clutch at his chest.

 “Merlin?”

Arthur looks up at him from behind his desk, frowning at Merlin, hunched over the nearest table.

 “What’s up with you?”

 “Nothing,” Merlin grits out, “it’s fine.”

 Arthur raises his eyebrows, looking at the contents of the tray now scattered all over the floor. “Right, that’s why you’re dropping things everywhere.”

“‘M just clumsy.”

 “I know that, Merlin.” Arthur stands. “Which is why I also know this isn’t just you being clumsy.”

 “You don’t know how clumsy I am.” Merlin isn’t even paying attention. He’s rubbing firm circles into his chest, trying to figure out what just happened.

 So much so, in fact, that Arthur has to call his name three times before he realizes he’s standing right next to him.

 “What?”

 Arthur raises his hands. “No need to yell, Merlin, I’m just asking if you want to go see Gaius.”

 Merlin opens his mouth to retort when Arthur’s words sink in properly and yeah, actually, Gaius sounds good. Gaius will know what’s going on.

 “Uh, yeah,” Merlin mumbles, feet already carrying him toward the door, “I, uh, I’m gonna do that.”

 Arthur just watches him go, a bemused smile on his face. Merlin, he decides, is strange, yes, but that doesn’t make this less odd. He glances around, at the food scattered across the floor, and at his desk. Surely this can wait for a moment. There’s something wrong with Merlin.

 He follows Merlin down the stairs, keeping a reasonable distance, not that Merlin’s paying much attention. Honestly, it was a wonder they didn’t get ambushed by bandits more, considering how bad Merlin was at figuring out he was being followed.

 Merlin’s too busy trying to stay upright to realize he’s being followed, thank you very much. He keeps one hand pressed to his chest, trying to dull the phantom ache, as he dodges and swerves around other servants, mumbling apologies when he isn’t fast enough. At last, Gaius’s chambers come into view and he could sob with relief, pushing the door open and all but collapsing into a chair.

 Gaius raises an eyebrow. “Merlin?”

 “Something’s wrong,” Merlin manages through gritted teeth, “something’s wrong, I can feel it, it hurts.”

 Gaius lays a hand on his forehead. “No fever…when was the last time you ate something?”

 “Like…an hour ago, I’m fine,” Merlin protests, swatting Gaius’s hand away, “it’s not me, it’s something else.”

 Gaius raises an eyebrow. “You complained of feeling pangs in your stomach and convinced yourself it was a curse when you hadn’t eaten in a day.”

 Merlin hunches his shoulders sheepishly. “That time I also hadn’t slept so my decision-making skills were not at their best.”

 “Mm. And how did you sleep last night?”

 “Gaius.”

 Something in Merlin’s tone must convey how serious this is for him because Gaius sobers, straightening and waiting for Merlin to swallow the lump in his throat.

 “It hurts,” he says quietly, still rubbing his chest, “it…it feels like someone opened a crack in my chest and they’re…draining me.”

 “Draining you how?”

 “M-my...me, Gaius.” Merlin huddles closer around himself, still pressing his hand to his chest.

 “Take your tunic off.”

 “What?”

 Gaius motions to his chest. “Let me see.”

 Merlin winces but does as he’s told, the cool air raising goosebumps on his pale skin, the ache worsening when he has to move his hand. Gaius leans forward, prodding at his chest with a finger.

 “Well?”

 Looking around, Gaius finds a mirror and holds it up. “Look, Merlin.”

 Merlin looks. His mouth drops open.

 There’s a dark splotch right in the center of his chest, so dark it almost looks wet. Merlin hesitantly touches it, watching his finger in the mirror hover over the spot. He presses. Hard. It sends a jolt of pain through him but it looks like his finger is just…hovering in shadow. It isn’t just dark, it’s without color.

 “…Gaius,” Merlin whispers, “what’s happening to me?”

 “I don’t know Merlin,” comes the equally hoarse whisper, “I don’t know.”

 Well, one thing’s for sure: Gaius isn’t letting Merlin go back to work. Merlin protests, because Arthur needs him, he left things scattered all over the floor, but no, Gaius is insistent, sending him up the stairs to bed without another thought. Merlin obeys, if even so the pain in his chest doesn’t steal his breath on the way back upstairs. Gaius waits until the door to Merlin’s room shuts and the bot slides to walk to the door and open it, revealing a very distressed Arthur.

 “Typically, sire,” Gaius says in a low voice, “I do not allow eavesdroppers when I examine a patient.”

 “What’s wrong with him,” Arthur mumbles, far too worried to be ashamed, “what’s wrong with Merlin?”

 “As I presume you heard, sire, I don’t know.”

 “But what—how—what do we do?”

 Gaius sighs, ushering Arthur inside with the caveat that he keep his voice down. Arthur sits, worrying his hands until Gaius places a book down on the table and starts flipping through it.

 “What’s that?”

 “A book, sire.”

 “But it’s…it’s…” Arthur frowns, tilting his head. It’s the alleged magic book that someone tried to arrest Merlin with. “Is that…”

 Gaius just looks up at him. “Sire, I truly do not mean to insult your intelligence.”

 And just like that, Arthur knows.

 Arthur knows there’s a reason bandits keep conveniently falling unconscious. Arthur knows there’s a reason Merlin always manages to bollox up some big thing, and yet by the time they show up everything’s taken care of. Arthur knows there’s a reason that whenever there’s a whisper of magic in Camelot, Merlin’s not far behind.

 Arthur swallows. “…can you heal him?”

 Gaius rolls his eyes. “How many times do I have to say it, I—“

 “Don’t know what’s wrong with him, I know,” Arthur interrupts, “but let me help.”

 They scour the books. It’s no use. They can’t find any mention of being drained of magic, nor of mysterious colorless blobs that look like living shadows.

 Merlin finds the answer in what might just be the worst way possible.

 “Merlin.”

 “No,” Merlin whines, rolling over and covering his ears with the pillow, “go away.”

 “Merlin.”

 “Shut up.”

 “Merlin.”

 “Fine,” Merlin mumbles, getting out of bed and pulling on his boots, “fine.”

 It doesn’t take long to get to their field. After so many years, Merlin could walk this path in his sleep. And sure enough, as soon as he breaks through the trees into the clearing, there he is.

 “Young warlock,” Kilgharrah rumbles, raising his head, “you are in pain.”

 “Yeah, well, someone did just drag me out of bed,” Merlin grumbles, even as his knees threaten to buckle under him. “Do you know what’s going on with me?”

 “I do.”

 “Why is it,” Merlin sighs, “that whenever you have something to tell me, it’s always cryptic and vague?”

 “I haven’t even told you anything yet.”

 “Blanket statement.”

 The dragon chuckles. “You have grown cynical, young warlock.”

 “Years of being persecuted and saving the world will do that to you.”

 “I regret to inform you,” the dragon rumbles, his massive head leaning down, “that those days may soon be behind you.”

 Merlin squints up at him. “What’re you talking about?”

 “Magic,” Kilgharrah says, “is at a turning point. The earth is weary. Too much magic has been poured into living beings and not enough of it has been returned to the earth.”

 Groaning, Merlin closes his eyes. “Please,” he mumbles, “for once, can you just…speak plainly?”

 “Too many sorcerers have been executed and the remaining ones don’t hold enough magic to keep the entire earth from threatening to break apart.”

 Merlin gapes up at the dragon.

 “You did request I speak plainly.”

 “Okay…okay.” Merlin presses his hands against his throbbing temples. “What?”

 “Magic is…an interesting thing,” the dragon decides on finally, “and it must be handled very, very carefully when it is being transferred.”

 “Transferred, you mean…”

 “When a being of magic dies,” Kilgharrah says, “it is not as simple as the magic finding its way back into the earth. That is why there are so many rituals for the death of a magic-user. A true magic-user, those that are born with the gift.”

 “So…”

 The dragon sighs. “There used to be many. Now there are scarcely a few.”

 Merlin sinks to his knees. This shouldn’t be a shock. He knows this. He knows it. And yet…

 “Quite,” the dragon murmurs as Merlin buries his head in his hands.

 “What can be done,” Merlin manages around the lump in his throat, “to stop it?”

 “Stop what?”

 “The earth breaking apart or whatever it is that you said.”

 Kilgharrah sighs. Why is he the one sighing? Merlin’s the one who’s just been told that his people are so few in number now that the very ground he walks upon is under threat.

 “Magic must be returned to the earth,” Kilgharrah says, “in the quantity that it was given and without strings attached.”

 “Okay, so how do we do that?”

 The dragon gives him a strange look. “A large quantity,” he repeats slowly, “must be returned…with no strings attached.”

 “You just said that.”

 “I am wondering whether or not you will realize what I am saying.”

 “I just said for you to speak plainly.”

 “You must give up your magic,” Kilgharrah says softly, “and forfeit everything that has made you the Greatest Warlock to Walk the Earth.”

 Oh.

 Oh.

 Merlin’s mouth runs dry.

 Merlin is magic.

 It is so much a part of him that Merlin doesn’t know where the magic ends and he begins. Merlin doesn’t know what it would be like without the rush through him or the faint tingle that keeps him company while he sleeps. He doesn’t know what it would be like to have it not be there. He’s had his magic stopped before, blocked, but it was still there. He could feel it, locked away in a corner of his body, utterly useless and beyond his reach but still very much there.

 He has no idea what it would feel like to reach for it and stumble into nothing but an empty void.

 And yet…

 “What happens,” Merlin asks lowly, “when the earth breaks apart?”

 “The earth will try to get back what has been stolen from it,” Kilgharrah rumbles, “it will seek out what little bits of magic remain and reabsorb them, create itself anew, right the wrongs that have been done against it.”

 A chill rushes through Merlin that has nothing to do with the ache in his chest.

 “The world will end.”

 “Not the world,” the dragon corrects softly, “but…yes.”

 There’s no telling how many people would die. There’s no telling what damage that would do. There’s no telling whether there would even be a world after this is over.

 “How do I do it,” Merlin mumbles, his eyes falling closed, “how do I return my magic?”

 “There are places where the barrier between the worlds is thinner,” the dragon says, “here…in these places, at special times, the spell can be cast that would return your magic in its entirety, to the earth.”

 Merlin swallows. “Will it kill me?”

 “No. That is part of the deal. You will live, your magic will not.”

 Merlin sets his jaw, the ache in his chest settling. “When is the next time?”

 “…at the next full moon.”

 “Where?”

 “I believe you know where.”

 “…the lake?”

 The dragon nods sagely. Merlin bows his head.

 “Will I get to see Freya?”

 “That, young warlock, I do not know.”

 Despite everything, a smile touches the corners of Merlin’s mouth. “You might want to start looking for something else to call me.”

 A realization crosses his mind.

 “You must be excited,” he says, “after me…no more Dragonlords.”

 “That is true,” Kilgharrah concedes with a nod of his head, “and yet…out of all the Dragonlords, I fear I will miss you the most.”

 “You could still visit.”

 Kilgharrah huffs a laugh. “I could. Though it was not long ago that you and I were not on such good terms.”

 “Not long ago I thought my magic would be mine forever,” Merlin says. “Things change.”

 “Indeed they do.” Kilgharrah stretches his neck out, looking down at Merlin. The dragon lowers himself to his belly. “And you, young warlock, you have changed greatly.”

 “Mm.”

 “You were so small,” the dragon murmurs, “so wide-eyed when you first came to Camelot. Sometimes I wonder what happened to that very young boy.”

 “Yes,” Merlin murmurs, “I wonder what happened to me.”

 Kilgharrah has the decency to bow his head. Then, in a shocking display of tenderness that startles the both of them, he stretches his massive neck out, rumbling quietly. Merlin, still curled up on the ground, reaches out, arms open.

 The dragon buries his head in Merlin’s lap, pushing his snout gently into his belly, closing his eyes as Merlin rests against his broad face.

 I forgive you, they say to each other, I forgive you.

 The next full moon is in a few weeks. In that time, Merlin thinks.

 He has the spell. He’s told Gaius. Gaius isn’t pleased, but…as Merlin reminds them both, it could be worse. Merlin will survive. It will just be…different.

 Merlin uses those weeks to try and figure out who he is without magic.

 He figures out that he should probably learn how to fight without magic.

 The knights are more than happy to help him, even if Lancelot pulls him into a rough hug when Merlin tells him, even if Leon looks at him and bows, even if Gwaine curses lightly.

 He learns. He learns through bumps and bruises but he learns.

 He figures out that he is absolute rubbish as a physician’s assistant.

 Gaius simply shakes his head and tells him it’s a good thing he’s Arthur’s servant, there’s no way he’d make it as Court Physician after he’s gone. The good news, Gaius tells him, is that not having magic shouldn’t impact his knowledge of magic in the slightest.

 He learns. He learns through trial and error and sleepless nights, trying to learn all that he can while he still can.

 He figures out that really, he’s doing this for Arthur.

 Not that it surprises him much, he hadn’t been lying to Kilgharrah. Arthur is the reason, at least the main reason, he’s like this now. Arthur and the hope that Arthur will create the kingdom meant to last, unite the land of Albion. He’s doing it for the way Arthur stands tall, amidst a council that is still more Uther than Arthur, and refuses to compromise. He’s doing it for the way a knight no longer has to be of noble blood, the way Percival and Lancelot and Elyan are more valued than ever because of their abilities, not their names. He’s doing it for the way he sees the people smile when Arthur walks by, no longer fearful of their king but proud.

 He’s doing it for the way Arthur is strangely softer in the mornings, before he puts on the crown, still dozing in the warm sunlight. He’s doing it for the way Arthur still can’t remember where he’s put his quill, even if he was holding it only a few seconds ago. He’s doing it for the way Arthur smiles at him, alone in his chambers, just at Merlin.

 He’s doing it for the way that Arthur hugs him fiercely in the early morning light, strong enough to take Merlin’s breath away, and says softly that Merlin is enough, he doesn’t want a normal servant, he doesn’t want a knight, he doesn’t want a sorcerer, he just wants Merlin. And all Merlin can do it hold him back.

 He’s doing it for Arthur.

 He casts one last spell as he stands there, at the edge of the lake, in the moonlight. He cups his hands and whispers into them.

 A single blue butterfly flutters away, its wings almost glowing in the pale silvery light.

 Merlin is magic.

 He is gold and he is silver and he is strength and he is tenderness. He is the way the earth curves about itself and the way the sky stretches farther than the eye can see.

 And yet, as Merlin smiles, murmuring the last spell he’ll ever cast and feeling the ache in his chest start to lessen, the magic start to pull away from him, he knows he can be more.

 For the others who were born with magic, he can be more.

 For those that have yet to learn what magic truly is, he can be more.

 For Arthur, he can be more.

 Merlin closes his eyes and lets go.

[xandraspalace]

[1/3] Gira Gira : Colorless Chamber

----- [1/3] Gira Gira : Colorless Chamber || Taka Radjiman [NIJISANJI ID] Royal! AU.

Summary : Empty and lonely, fragile and easily fade away, also painful and full of tragedies. His pair of eyes were filled with emptiness, his lips were pale, and his world was colorless. What kind of life scenario did God write for him 'till it make him suffer so much?

WC : 1.231 words

Warning : Grammar errors, swearing (?), Ikemen Prince references, others.

Disclaimer : Everything written here is FICTITIOUS. This story is written in first-person point of view and the reader is gender-neutral. The personas written here are based on the avatar of the characters as vtubers, not the person behind it. Enjoy. .

A/N : I didn't know it would take almost a week since Pak Taka's Gira Gira cover was released. I'd really wanted to finish this faster, but my assignments are a bit-- ugh! So since I already promised myself in the comment section of the cover, I will place this work here. This is the scenario version of the thread in my twitter account. So please, check it if you like to read it from there. Thank you!

     “WELCOME to Mitaka Palace!” a well-dressed man I assumed an aide greeted me politely. “By the orders of His Majesty the King, you will assist the Crown Prince, His Royal Highness Prince of Mitaka, Taka Radjiman to prepare him before the coronation ceremony.”

     As someone who has long studied ethics, politics, and other important things concerning the royal life, I should be able to go through all of this with ease. I thought I could complete this task before the last petal of the violet rose falls from its stem. Unfortunately, I underestimated this task too much.

     “Your Highness, a tutor we were talking about has arrived.”

     I couldn't hold myself back. I was sure my eyes were fully rounded and my jaw dropped in shock and amazement.

     All white.

     Everything I saw in the Crown Prince's chamber was all clean and pure white. If it weren't for the contrast of a little of black, I might already have considered this place as another universe—or should I say heaven?

     “I’m not a prince to be pitied. I can take a good care of myself without them!”

     Deep and cold. Like being scalded by the melt from icebergs in the open ocean, I gasped when I heard the voice of the Crown Prince who was standing on his balcony.

     I immediately shook my head and bowed in greeting. “I am the child of the Mitaka Royal Preparatory Academy’s Headmaster. It is an honor to be able to assist you in preparing for your coronation.”

     “I’m the one who should feel honored. I am Taka Radjiman, the Crown Prince of Mitaka who will become the King of Mitaka after the last petal of this violet rose falls," he said flatly without turning to me. Beside him, a violet rose protected by a glass stood firmly.

     The Prince of Mitaka, Prince Taka sighed exasperatedly, getting more disinterested in what was about to happen. “Leave us,” he ordered his aide, making the man who had previously escorted me leave the chamber.

     Once again, his cold words snatched all of the words from my throat. Taka turned his head and finally looked at me.

     The first thing my instincts told me was that I had been trapped and fallen into a den of a cruel beast. His deep and ethereal obsidian eyes was able to make me take a step back out of fears. But on the other hand, my heart said that he is the most beautiful beast I have ever met.

     I swallowed my fear and stared at his pretty eyes for a bit longer. “Your Highness, when you introduce yourself to someone, you must look them in the eyes!” I started to act like a tutor he needed and reminded him.

     “Your shoulder,” he pointed.

     “Pardon me?” Confused visible in my eyes.

     “Your shoulders are too stiff. You take this job too seriously,” he continued.

     The noble manners I learned were how I should always stand tall and hold my shoulders back. However, Taka seemed to want me to get rid of that manners. Did he dislike noble manners or something? Does he want me to relax and the other things?

     Despite the noble manners I discussed earlier, I did follow what he said and lowered my shoulders. “Of course I take this job seriously! You will become a King and His Majesty trust me to prepare everything you need to become a good king!” I raised my voice a little.

     "I haven't acknowledged you as my teacher," Taka pressed the word teacher in his sentence. "After all, I've never acknowledged anyone in my life."

     "Ah?"

     What did he just say? Did those words come out of his lips by accident? “W-what do you ever mean, Your Highness?”

     Not intending to hide the grayness of his heart, he walked painfully slow to the white grand piano in the room.

     "Since I was in the Queen’s womb, I was fated to become the next king, They demand perfection from me. But with this perfection, do my people want to be led by a demon like me?” the Crown Prince asked. “I've always wondered, does God write my fate when He was in a bad mood? Why is the scenario of my life full of tragedy and emptiness?”

    His slender fingers pressed several keys carelessly. Just with four keys, I could hear a melody full of pain and sorrow. The prince raised his gaze and looked at me. He smiled faintly, as if to saying you can laugh at me if you desire.

     From his smile and gaze, I could see something else. Empty and lonely, fragile and easily fade away, also painful and full of tragedies, all mixed into a pair of eyes and a smile. He is also a human, just like me.

     Perfection is everything to a future king like Prince Taka. He is willing to do anything to achieve that perfection, including what the demons do. But without him realizing it, he has tarnished himself and people have already said something bad about him, despite his struggles for his people.

     That was the reason why the Eldest Prince of Mitaka never acknowledged anyone. Because he thought that no one in the land he would rule over will acknowledged him back. He was never given a chance to trust anyone. And because of that too, his diamond eyes is filled with emptiness and solitude.

     "I suggest you to just give it up," Taka spoke again, making me have to look up at him.

     “I-I beg your pardon, Your Highness?!” Once again, I was confused.

     "I said what I said. You never know what lies ahead. If you still value your life, you need to give up," he explained. "Before you get tainted by me, young wo/man."

     He spoke of tainting someone's life, as if his pure white chamber was just a shield. The walls did not protect him from the outside world but it protected the outside world from him.

     He intends to become a tyrant who is feared by his people, I guessed under my breath.

     He seemed to notice the silence. “Without your assist, I am ready to become the next king. So, you're just wasting your own time taking this job."

     Hearing that, I made up my mind. I will make him a worthy king! I whispered to myself. People should know that deep down inside his heart, he wanted to be accepted by his own people. He would be a worthy leader—not only for his people, but for himself as well. People would accept him again and he would accept people again—and himself.

     "I have no desire to give up! I would still help you prepare everything you need to become a king! You do not have to accept me, Your Highness. But perhaps, you will often find me hanging around in this palace until you become the next king,” I bowed in curtsy with a confident smile.

     “Tch, what a strange human!” he sneered. "Do whatever you wish! I could not give a damn about what you desire!"

     I smiled, realizing that without him knowing it, he had accepted me.

     He did scare me, but the thought of him being alone for the rest of his life scared me more than anything. Of course, this will be a very, very long job for me. -----[TBC]

Gira Gira : Colorless Chamber A Fiction by Author Xandra August, 2021 (Revised: April, 2023)