#Very desperate and hiding this single timeline from them as best he can

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 79

  When Pariah was awoken from his slumber, he wasn’t exactly expecting it. One was never expecting to awaken when they were supposed to be sealed for eternity after all. He also wasn’t expecting for the reason the sarcophagus was even opened to be a pair of literal infants. A pair of very sick infants.

  One was a newborn ancient for Realms’ sake! Two years dead, if that, and the other- Where was their guardian?! Who had let an obsession get that bad?! How long had he been sealed away that no one had caught an obsession turning toxic and harmful towards a ghostling?! 

  Why was he even sealed inside this area of the zone?! Why had his Keep been moved in the center of one of the zones where ghostlings formed?! He’d never harm a ghostling, but if he’d been any madder (And he knows he had lost it near the end there, that he’d gone too far as he cracked under the weight of the Realms, he’d had an eternity to realize) it would have been a catastrophe! 

  Who has been in charge, the observants!? … What the fuck, that was supposed to be rhetorical! No! They’re good for paperwork but they seem to have failed even at that and- what do you mean they’ve sealed Clockwork away?! 

  The already traumatized Time Primordial who was in this type of area specifically to care for ghostlings, and was now being prevented?! How long has this been going on- No! He’s fixing his realms-damned kingdom before he even thinks about conquering other ones, because who the fuck let it get this bad!

   Pspsps, here little sick ghostlings, he’s trying very hard not to hurt you but you are very tiny and he has been locked away for a long time so please stop squirming…

[apocalypticavolition]

Let's (re)Read The Great Hunt! Chapter 14: Wolfbrother

If Robert Jordan can reuse chapter titles, I can reuse post images even if they make absolutely no sense in this current context! Anyway. Yadda yadda yadda, spoilers for the entirety of the series, blah blah blah, do not continue if you don't want that, something something something, by clicking Keep Reading you agree to agree with everything I say, hmm hmm hmm, all very standard and completely enforceable not that anyone could possibly object to those terms, let's get started!

So since I'm not in the groove, last time I forgot to do the chapter icon. This time I won't do that: the icon is wolf. This is probably not a surprise considering the chapter title. It certainly won't surprise anyone to learn that this is a Perrin chapter about Perrin doing Wolfbrother things. Last chapter involves even less surprises! It had an all-new icon, the Portal Stone. I refuse to believe any of you need me to elaborate on what it stands for or why it was used last time. Thank you!

“Gone?” Ingtar demanded of the air. “And my guards saw nothing. Nothing! They cannot just be gone!”

Rand's channeler madness is infectious, what with Ingtar trying to have a conversation with the sky. Then again, I'd wonder if I was going mad under these conditions myself: three dudes all gone, two of them incredibly conspicuous, horses missing with them, not a single track.

Mat shrugged. “I don’t know. Rand was. . . .” Perrin wanted to throw something at him, hit him, anything to stop him, but Ingtar and Uno were watching.

Perrin doesn't often get to be a bro to Rand (and frankly even fewer chances to be one to Mat), so it's always very sweet to see that he actually is very much best friends with the guy, even if Rand's acting stupid.

“Why would Hurin leave like that, in the middle of the night, without a word? He knows what we’re about. How am I to track this Shadow-spawned filth without him? I would give a thousand gold crowns for a pack of trail hounds. If I did not know better, I would say the Darkfriends managed this so they can slip east or west without me knowing. Peace, I don’t know if I do know better.”

Ingtar is pretty sure he knows the capabilities of the Darkfriends they're chasing since he let them in, but after this it's not unreasonable to doubt. And frankly, with Fain being Fain, he does not know better at all.

Serves me right for what I told Rand. I wish I could run.

Another reason nobody talks to anybody else in this story is that every time they do, everyone takes each other's advice in the worst way possible. Rand has literally run away from the timeline, which is one step less reasonable than trying to launch himself into orbit. I wouldn't talk to him after that either, I'd be worried my suggestion he should eat something be followed up by finding him with half his horse in his stomach and the other half not having had time to die yet.

His thoughts drifted, feeling for what must be out there, what was always out there in country where men were few or far between, feeling for his brothers. He did not like to think of them that way, but they were.

Really another big problem Jordan had in his Perrin plotting is that he stopped forcing the kid to escalate his power use the way that Rand and the Wondergirls had to. Like, this book he willingly talks to the books, next book he'll willingly run through T'A'R, and by the end of book six he's commanding an army of wolves... and then he just stagnates. He does get to run away from being a werewolf for the rest of Jordan's books, so Sanderson has to do an absolute rush job to make Perrin able to play at everyone else's power level.

It was a faint picture of a man dressed in clothes made of hides, with a long knife in his hand, but overlaid on the image, more central, was a shaggy wolf with one tooth longer than the rest, a steel tooth gleaming in the sunlight as the wolf led the pack in a desperate charge through deep snow toward the deer that would mean life instead of slow death by starvation, and the deer thrashing to run in powder to their bellies, and the sun glinting on the white until it hurt the eyes, and the wind howling down the passes, swirling the fine snow like mist, and. . . .

Weirdly, the first time I tried to copy this segment my computer decided that I clearly instead wanted to copy-paste a screengrab of a Discord conversation that hadn't been in the clipboard for some time.

We should not let my computer's clinical insanity distract us from appreciating how awesome Elyas's wolf name is (though "long in the tooth" meaning what it does, it feels a bit inadvertently mean).

It was not the image he had made, a young man with heavy shoulders and shaggy, brown curls, a young man with an axe at his belt, who others thought moved and thought slowly. That man was there, somewhere in the mind picture that came from the wolves, but stronger by far was a massive, wild bull with curved horns of shining metal, running through the night with the speed and exuberance of youth, curly-haired coat gleaming in the moonlight, flinging himself in among Whitecloaks on their horses, with the air crisp and cold and dark, and blood so red on the horns, and. . . . Young Bull.

Perrin's wolf name is better though, which is 50% why he hates it. The other half is the way it immortalizes his trauma, but boo hoo Perrin learn to love killing Whitecloaks now, you'll be better off in two books if you do.

The one time he had gone to the dungeon, with Egwene, the smell of Fain had made his hair stand on end; not even Trollocs smelled so foul. He had wanted to rip through the bars of the cell and tear the man apart, and finding that inside himself had frightened him more than Fain did. To mask Fain’s smell in his own mind, he added the scent of Trollocs before he howled aloud.

It is a damn shame you didn't kill him while you had the chance, Perrin.

Howled aloud. Those poor Borderlanders, horses, and also Mat I guess. They're worried about three dudes disappearing without a trace, some of them are probably convinced channeling was involved, and now one of the foreign hangers-on is howling.

Their fury infected him. His lips peeled back in a snarl, and he took a step, to join them, run with them in the hunt, in the killing. With an effort he broke the contact except for a thin sense that the wolves were there. He could have pointed to them across the intervening distance. He felt cold inside. I’m a man, not a wolf. Light help me, I am a man!

Dude is going crazier than the male channeler in the party is. Kind of a shame he didn't have a real madness arc like Rand's; maybe Jordan kinda planned on it but ditched it for various reasons including redundancy?

“I have heard of things like this,” Ingtar said slowly, after a moment. “Rumors. There was a Warder, a man called Elyas Machera, who some said could talk to wolves. He disappeared years ago.”

That's hella convenient. You'd think they'd try to hush up Machera's disappearance as much as possible. Who told?

A few of them looked skeptical—Masema went so far as to spit—but Uno nodded thoughtfully, and that was enough for most. Mat was the hardest to convince. “A sniffer! You? You’re going to track murderers by smell? Perrin, you are as crazy as Rand. I am the only sane one left from Emond’s Field, with Egwene and Nynaeve trotting off to Tar Valon to become—”

I mean, Masema and Mat aren't technically wrong in that Perrin's feeding everyone some bullshit, but really I would like Mat to look at the man whose side he's sharing and pick literally any other side. Also don't be mean about the gals.

Vultures flapping, their white wings stained red; bloody, featherless heads tearing and gorging. He broke loose before his stomach emptied itself.

I always picture vultures as desert birds thanks to cartoons and stuff but I just looked it up and apparently they like used to be in France and whatnot. Never woulda guessed. Sadly their modern range in the Old World is a little diminished, but I guess they did pretty well for themselves between the nuclear apocalypse and the magical apocalypse. Good for them!

Mat turned his horse eagerly. “Maybe it’s Rand. I knew he wouldn’t run out on me.”

Cauthor shippers resurrected after their brutal demises last chapter. Also it's great that Mat knows that even after their pissy fights with each other they're still friends.

“Moiraine Sedai sent me, Lord Ingtar,” Verin announced with a satisfied smile. “She thought you might need me...”

Well obviously this statement is 100% true and certainly not a bald-faced lie. Even if we wanted to pretend that for some reason Moiraine didn't immediately induct Verin into her inner circle off-screen, Verin has every reason to think that Moiraine sent her. Remember this little bit from Chapter 7?

“Then we must find the dagger, Sister. Agelmar is sending men to hunt those who took the Horn and slew his oathmen, the same who took the dagger. If one is found, the other will be.”

We must find the dagger. By "we", it's obvious Moiraine meant the three women in the room at that moment and not the good guys as a general concept like most people would mean in casual conversation. Further, "must" was definitely being used in the sense of "this is an order that you must obey" and not just "it is imperative that this be done". Literally any other interpretation of this sentence is crazy talk, because Verin is obviously bound by the Three Oaths as a good guy and it's how she interpreted it, and definitely not to further her own ends by twisting someone else's words to the breaking point. Once she saw that neither Moiraine nor Siuan were in any hurry to recover the dagger and the horn, she was morally obligated to do so as the only other party of the "we" Moiraine so obviously meant.

Obviously. She is not suspicious at all, @checkoutmybookshelf.

“The Ogier, Lord Ingtar? And your sniffer went with him? What would those two have in common with . . . ?” Ingtar gaped at her, and she snorted. “Did you think you could keep something like that secret?” She snorted again. “Sniffers. Vanished, you say?”

“A new sniffer, just when you lose your old one. How . . . providential. You found no tracks? No, of course not. You said no trace. Odd. Last night.”

Verin is absolutely the best kind of Aes Sedai just for stuff like this, by the way. "Yes I know all about your dumb secrets and no obviously I'm not going to try and arrest the man, I'm not even going to try to arrest the Dragon Re-- I mean, tell me about Perrin. That's a crazy coincidence, isn't it?" Verin's not allowed to spend too much time onscreen because if she could she'd have had everything solved in three books.

They started off in a jingle of harness and armor, Verin riding close beside Ingtar and questioning him closely, but too low to be overheard. She gave Perrin a look when he tried to maintain his place, and he fell back. “It’s Rand she’s after,” Mat murmured, “not the Horn.”

Seriously, the only mistake she's made so far is letting Mat and Perrin get suspicious of her, but even then she's got them obeying her so she's doing just fine. They're not even the wrong kind of suspicious.

Perrin nodded. Wherever you’ve gotten to, Rand, stay there. It’s safer than here.

"Dramatic irony exploits the device of giving the spectator an item of information that at least one of the characters in the narrative is unaware of (at least consciously), thus placing the spectator a step ahead of at least one of the characters. Connop Thirlwall in his 1833 article On the Irony of Sophocles originally highlighted the role of irony in drama.[25][26] The Oxford English Dictionary defines dramatic irony as:[12]

the incongruity created when the (tragic) significance of a character's speech or actions is revealed to the audience but unknown to the character concerned; the literary device so used, orig. in Greek tragedy."

I left the now-useless footnotes in so it would be very obvious who I was quoting, thus exempting me from having to source them properly. Alas, this has attracted the attention of the University of Chicago Press Enforcement Bureau, so I must bid you all adieu until the heat blows over.

[thewertsearch]

[...] i really hope this present cheers you up! you looked so sad while you were reading my letter.

COME ON!

the fact that you are awake now i think means all my friends are in trouble. you are awake because it is your job to help them. we will both help them!

Jade doesn’t just get visual information from Skaia’s clouds. She doesn’t just see John waking up - she also sees what that means, and understands what he has to do next.  

I think the ‘friends’ she mentions here are the Prospitians from later in the letter. The war didn’t end favorably for them, and most of them are dead. Any survivors could certainly use the help. 

now that you are awake, and apparently at the center of skaia (??? WOW!!!) you should be able to see stuff in the clouds too. maybe you already have!

Jade is just so happy she can be open about this stuff. She was always pretty bad at hiding information, and it was pretty clear that was because she didn’t actually want to.  

Finally, she doesn’t have to hide anything, and can fully share this world with John - a world she can see he’s already embracing! It would have been awesome for her to show him the ropes, if things had worked out that way.  

and sure the present looks like a fun and completely ridiculous thing to get, but it is also really important! you are getting it exactly when you need it most.

The pen-pal’s letter mentioned four weapons, but Jade seems to be talking about a single object here. In other words, we are still on for Bunny Theory. 

i dont see everything john, and i definitely dont know everything thats going to happen. but when i do know something, i always try to do my best to help people in the future! when im supposed to that is. youll get the hang of it.

Skaia's clouds, while a useful tool, are actually extremely restrictive. They show you events in specific future timelines, and for that information to remain true, you need to play along. 

If Jade wants to help someone, but isn’t supposed to, her help would send everyone into an alternate timeline, presumably nullifying all her previous prophecies. She’s walking an extremely thin line - how much help is too much? 

john i am REALLY looking forward to seeing you when you wake up!!!!! 

I can’t really say anything I haven’t already said. Jade is just... so desperately lonely, and she was probably waiting for this moment for a long time. 

It shouldn’t have to be like this, but it is, and the kids just have to roll with the punches. Jade and John can still meet, but this wasn’t the hour. 

its been nice playing with my prospitian friends and all, but also kind of lonely knowing you were in the other tower sleeping and having lousy dreams. :(

Carapcians are very different to humans - and Prospit doesn’t necessarily have access to the Human Etiquette guide. Growing up with only them to talk to must have been a very strange experience for Jade. 

ill make it down to where you are soon! (jeez how did you get down there??? oh well ill find out)

Alright, I’ll say one thing I haven’t already said. 

Fuck Skaia for getting Jade’s hopes up like this. 

i cant wait to fly around the moon with you and show you all my favorite places. itll be so much fun!!!!!!!!! :D <3 jade

It could have been great. 

[madame-mortician]

Evil Dead the Game Deep Dive!

Yeah this game has lore. It’s not as deep as say, Dead by Daylight but it is still interesting nonetheless and would be interesting to see developed further.

I should start by saying that there seems to be three timelines happening which is confusing but I’ll do my best to explain.

Essentially there is the canon timeline, being the films and show, which this game doesn’t take place in, but has many references and call backs to. The second timeline is what I’ll call the Single Player Mission timeline, as it has the stuff happening from the single player missions. Finally is what I’ll call, the Game timeline since it’s literally, the game timeline.

The single player missions are all different events, that play out very similar to things in the main canon. For an example, one mission has David and Mia arrive to the cabin like in the 2013 film, however it is only David and Mia, and David survives the events. An interesting thing about these missions, is they have their own lore that I could talk about. For now I’ll just mention my favourite. In the David and Mia one, David’s goal is to find and kill 4 deadite Ash’s to exorcise Mia. David meets a possessed version of Ash from each film and kills them. Unfortunately there is no explanation for this, and it just kinda happens. Sadly this is true of most single player missions, as all of them are essentially just offline side missions you can do, with a barebones plot to give you some incentive. At first I thought these single player missions were the lore of the main game, but I don’t anymore because of something I’ll explain later.

Now let’s talk about the main game, and its lore. This lore comes with the Knowby Tapes, being literal tapes Raymond Knowby recorded. The first few are simply him explaining that he found and is currently studying the Necronomicon, however the plot becomes more interesting near the end. In the main timeline, Knowby tried to save his possessed wife by luring Tanya to the cabin, and having the deadite enter her instead. In this timeline a similar thing happens, however before trying to transfer the deadite to Tanya, he had a different plan. In the Necronomicon there is a lost page of “The Hero from the Sky” being Ash Williams from when he was in 1300A.D. Knowby knows of this hero, and how he “saved humanity from deadites” and decides only he can help him. In a desperate attempt to save his wife, and himself, he tried to summon Ash Williams only to fail and instead summon Henry the Red. Henry told Knowby that he had met Ash before and that he needed to kill Henrietta. In another attempt, Knowby accidentally summoned Kelly and Pablo, who also told him they knew Ash before they left the cabin with supplies. Right before they left, Pablo told Knowby he should kill Henrietta, but might be able to save her by transferring the deadite to somebody else, this being what caused Knowby to try and use Tanya, although it still failed. Some time later, Knowby had failed to summon Ash and instead went into hiding, leaving the tape and book behind along with his wife. The next week The Evil Dead takes place, with the only difference being that Shelly and Scotty attempt to use the tape recorder to record what just happened, so that whoever finds it knows what occurred. Skipping ahead, Evil Dead 2’s ending takes place however Ash instructs Annie to grab supplies and they both leave together, meaning she survives these events and the finale is completely different. This is what happened on the tapes, but there’s a few gaps to fill in.

Firstly, Knowby just left despite being so adamant in saving his wife. Second, Knowby never sent the people he summoned back, they simply left the cabin with supplies and didn’t return. Henry the Red has no way of going back to 1300A.D. nor can Kelly and Pablo return to 2015, where are they even going? If this is the lore of the game, why is Scotty, Cheryl and Ed still alive as survivors?

Whilst I can’t confirm anything outright, I can certainly make educated guesses on what is going on with the story, especially because of a key detail I left out. In gameplay, Raymond Knowby actually talks to the survivors and is the one instructing them on what to do. It’s safe to assume that the maps in the game aren’t the actual locations, simply because there’s nobody around, there’s magical barriers around the edges and there’s supplies left everywhere specifically for the survivors. My safest bet is that after leaving in the tapes, Knowby felt so guilty for unleashing the evil that he used something from the book to place the deadites into a pocket dimension, taking the appearance of locations where the deadites predominantly were. After accidentally summoning people who were not the Hero from the Sky, but were instead people who knew Ash, or had fought deadites before, Knowby did it again and summoned as many heroes as he could to aid him. It’s assumed he’s dead since it’s his soul speaking to you in game, so it’s possible he killed himself after he left the cabin behind. The reason there are 4 Ash’s is because he tried to summon the Hero from the Sky multiple times, so he ended up taking him from 4 different time periods. It’s likely the people he summoned who ran off, are the same ones he put in his pocket dimension, and likely sent home after defeating the evil. Despite The Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2 basically happening beat for beat, Knowby managed to summon some characters before they died, hence why Cheryl, Scotty and Ed are here.

The single player missions aren’t canon, due to continuity with the only ones that could be canon, being the Army of Darkness ones, that take place in the past.

This is a very brief summary of the lore, and if you have any questions, feel free to ask them, I love talking about this sorta stuff!

[prxenuntius]

aloe, hydrangea, poppy, zinnia !

aloe :   how does your muse handle grief ?

Baji tries his very best to not let himself be consumed by it, but he is not particularly good with handling grief.

He is more of a person that shoves it into the closet, his mind even glossing over the loss until he misses them and is assaulted by "oh... right. I can't see them any more." and drowns in the feeling for a while, usually alone, then repeat cycle. It's one of the reason why his nightmares are so bad (that and the guilt he feels).

hydrangea :   how much does your muse value communication in their relationships with others ?are they prone to being misunderstood ?

He likes being straight forward when he can and likes that people are direct and honest with him, however, he has a tendency of hiding truths, tricking his close ones or putting a mask that is not his real self if he feels that it will somehow protect them (or himself). e.g: The rude, bored attitude he acquires to hide his worry and guilt over Mikey in the first timeline, the Valhalla incident, beating Chifuyu so he didn't join Toman because he was afraid.

poppy :   what comforts your muse ?

Thrill. He will beat the heck out of his feelings until he stops feeling them.

Toman, being with his treasure is everything, sharing with them, thick and thin.

Peyoung Yakisoba. Petting animals. The wind in his hair while driving his bike.

zinnia :   how has the loss of fallen comrades and/or loved ones affected your muse ?has it taught them anything or given them any new perspectives ?

Baji wears every single person he has cared for in his heart, his mind and his actions. He never recovers from those he loses and he doesn't dwell on them but he tries to cover their "spots" in others' lives in a way (taking it upon himself to take care for Mikey in Shin's place, for example, also adopting people left and right despite him saying he wouldn't after Tora ended in juvie.)

However, it is also something that has made him more unhinged over time. He was already "fist first ask later" as a kid but after Shinichiro passed, he started doing reckless shit because he was so desperate to protect others, to never lose an important person again, even if it costed him his life.

[silhouetteofacedar]

Pearl, Ch. 5: Marche Funèbre

Previous Chapter - AO3 - MSR, rated E

It’s just another Tuesday.

Scully’s been telling herself that all morning as a kind of mantra in an attempt to calm her nerves. It’s not working.

It’s just another Tuesday, and she’s getting ready for an unremarkable workday. She showers, blowdries her hair, puts on the little pearl earrings her father gave her when she finished her undergrad.

In another timeline, in the life her parents wanted for her, she would be putting these earrings on beneath a lacy white veil. Her mother and sister would fuss over her dress, adjusting the train and making sure it hung well on her healthy frame, pressing a sprawling bouquet of flowers into her arms.

But that’s not her reality; in this timeline, she’s alone in her bedroom, putting on the creamy beige suit she’s worn to the office several times already. Her mother doesn’t know, and her sister is dead.

She feels oddly like she’s preparing for her own funeral, albeit a little premature. Will my mother have me cremated, or will they bury me in something I never wore? she wonders.

She thinks of Mulder then, a spouse in name only, and her stomach clenches.

Don’t go there, Dana. Tuesday.

She barely eats breakfast; cautiously nibbling at dry toast, wincing as it sticks in her throat. Her appetite has shrunk considerably lately, and her nervousness this morning isn’t helping. She gulps a glass of tepid water, eyeing the clock in the kitchen.

She doesn’t have to be at the office for another hour, but she decides to go in anyway.

She arrives a half hour early and is surprised to see that Mulder is already there. He rarely arrives before her unless he’s preparing a slideshow or simply never went home the night before. She would usually assume he slept in his desk chair, except this morning he’s freshly shaved and wearing a suit that’s still crisp from the cleaners, a blue striped tie neatly fastened at his neck.

As soon as he notices her enter the room, he covers his eyes and spins his chair away from her. “Bad luck to see the bride before the ceremony,” he says, attempting levity. The joke falls flat.

“Good morning to you, too,” Scully replies drily, setting her briefcase on her chair. “You’re early.”

He peeks at her over his shoulder and turns back to face her. “Yeah, I, uh, thought I should get a head start on some paperwork since we’re taking a long lunch today.”

Long lunch. Is that what they call eloping nowadays?

Scully raises a brow. “That’s surprisingly reasonable of you, Mulder; are you feeling okay?”

He huffs a laugh. “I could use some coffee,” he admits. “Didn’t get the best sleep last night.”

A clumsy response flits around in her mouth, about the quality of sleep one should expect from a leather sofa, but she swallows it. Instead she pulls out her day planner, leafing through the pages until she reaches March eighteenth, scanning her notes. “We have a meeting with Skinner at ten,” she reminds him, setting the book down on the desk. “I’ll get us some coffee from upstairs, and then we can dig into that inbox.” She gives him a tight little smile before leaving the office in search of caffeine.

-

Mulder’s had a rough morning.

He woke up just after five and thrashed about on his couch for half an hour before giving up on sleep altogether. He threw on some clothes and went for a nippy predawn run, relishing the lactic acid burn in his sleepy muscles; chasing one ache down with another.

Back at home he showered and scrubbed every inch of his body clean, even though Scully wouldn’t see it. He shaved carefully, slowly tracing his jaw with the razor. He didn’t want a single nick to mar his skin today.

Every thought, every movement, every little choice he made this morning, was for her.

It was almost funny, them both arriving to the office early and desperately pretending everything was normal. He hopes this new fog of awkwardness around them eventually dissipates; the whole point of this arrangement was that, in spite of legal status, their relationship wouldn’t change.

Scully retreats to find them coffee, and Mulder heaves a sigh, slumping over his desk. He’s going to wrinkle his shirt, but what does it matter? As far as anyone else knows, it’s just another Tuesday.

He glances down and sees Scully’s date book open on the desk, filled with notes and appointments in her neat, slanting script. He angles it toward himself and casually scans the day’s page, two appointments catching his eye.

Get married, 1:00

Chemo, 4:00

He grips the edge of the desk, inhaling sharply. That deep, forbidden feeling hits him like a wave of nausea, rolling sickly sweet through his stomach. He wants to throw the book away, hide under his desk, dissolve into panic on the worn gray carpet of their office. She’s breaking her remaining days into neat little pieces, organizing them tightly in the grids of her calendar, squeezing every last drop of time out of them. And giving that time to him.

This is the worst way to want a woman, he decides. Selfishly lapping up every spilled second, thirsting for more than she can give. Probably more than she wants to give.

Scully walks back into the office, two styrofoam cups in hand. Mulder feels a quick burst of shame at having been caught reading her appointment book, as though it was a secret diary and not a simple calendar.

“It’s at one, in case you forgot,” Scully says, passing him a cup. Coffee, black, one sugar like always. She sits in the chair opposite him, hands cradling a cup of what appears to be tea, judging from the little paper tag fluttering from a string hanging out of it. He wonders how the ring in the small box in his pocket would look on her slender hands.

“Mulder,” she prompts, casting her eyes up at him as she blows on the surface of her drink to cool it.

“Sorry, was I staring?” he asks.

“Mm,” she nods, taking a careful sip. “I’m fine, if that’s what-”

“No, no,” he says quickly. “You. Um. You look very nice today, actually. That’s all.”

Her cheeks remain pale. “Oh. Well, thank you,” she says calmly. “You look very nice today too.”

That was the idea, Mulder thinks desperately, painfully. I wore this tie to match your eyes.

The minute hand on the clock lurches silently forward.

[modern-inheritance]

I don’t really know where I’m going with this but do you have any Oromis/Morzan headcanons? Before or during the fall, or Oromis’ feelings towards Morzan afterwards?

I have a few! More than a few apparently, I'm just finishing this up and uh...yeah that got longer than I thought!

I’m going to do my best to leave Glaedr and Morzan’s dragon out of these because while they’re large parts of each other's lives and even maybe personalities considering how deeply bonded Riders and their dragons can be, I want to be sure I’m keeping the characters separate. Kinda like how you shouldn’t constantly group identical twins together as a single entity, ya know?

Alright let's start off with Morzan. Time for some backstory!

Modern Inheritance!Morzan

Morzan was born into a family of low level nobles. By the time Morzan was about six or seven though, the family had fallen out of favor and was struggling to keep up appearances, spending money they didn’t necessarily have on lavish items and acting increasingly narcissistic in a desperate attempt to hold onto the standing and power they once had.

Morzan probably started showing antisocial behavior around this time, mainly impulsive petty theft, inserting himself in dangerous situations, and manipulation through charm with adults and intimidation and violence with other children. Due to his family’s last shreds of political strength and their long time in the area, most of these incidents were swept under the rug or outright ignored by his family. This generally left a very angry, disgusted-with-others, burgeoning narcissistic young Morzan to his own devices.

When Morzan was chosen by his dragon, his parents were quietly glad that he wouldn’t be their responsibility anymore. They didn’t disclose any of his troubling behaviors and Morzan was quick to understand that he would need to tamp the more obvious ones down and manipulate others into hiding his transgressions.

Despite all this, Morzan and his dragon do deeply care for each other. Due to Morzan’s mind linking with the hatchling, there was a sort of evening out of his behaviors as some were ‘shared’ do the hatchling and some of the hatchling’s personality was ‘shared’ with Morzan. This is what helped Morzan fly under the radar for so much longer until his eventual betrayal.

On a lighter note, Morzan shot up like a weed when he hit puberty, once growing nearly five inches (~12.7 cm) over the span of a year. It took a year or so for his muscles to visibly bulk up, so he was this tall gangly teenager for a while. His clothes constantly needed altering.

Initially Morzan doesn’t really know what to think of Oromis and Glaedr. His family was always distracted from giving him the attention and nurturing he needed, and suddenly he has not only this baby dragon who he can share his frustrations and emotions with but also parental figures.

Eventually he warmed up to them, but more in the sense that he became attached to their attention and the praise he got when he did well in magic and other lessons. He didn’t showboat as much, but would push himself to get more compliments, praise and attention from Oromis. Oromis saw this more as Morzan taking his training seriously. There were a few instances of Morzan and his dragon being pointed out as instigators of some scuffles or small acts of possible, unproven acts of sabotage harming or tripping up other Riders-in-training, but these were generally believed to be accidents or bad luck.

Morzan’s bullying and belittling of Brom was the result of Morzan feeling like his unfettered access to Oromis and Glaedr’s attention was being threatened. He knew he couldn’t get away with physically injuring Brom and Saphira I, so his physical actions never really went past ‘accidental’ full force hits in sparring and roughhousing. If Brom got praise or compliments from Oromis, Morzan would seethe quietly, eventually exploding in rage at some later point after it built up. Again, Oromis merely thought this was just adolescent growing pains.

Wooo! That is getting LONG, eh? I’ve got more, but for now I’m going to move on to Oromis and his feelings around Morzan’s betrayal and link you to whatever extra stuff I add later. I’m really unsure about the timeline of when Morzan betrayed the Riders and when it was known that he had, so I’m mostly going to skip that chunk. Let's go!

Modern Inheritance!Oromis

Even without 100% knowing/being sure of Morzan’s betrayal, I think there was a whirlwind of confusion and general chaos when Galbatorix murdered Shurikan’s original Rider. Who was a child. A Rider had murdered a child Rider and while everyone knew Galbatorix was unstable I don’t think anyone would have expected that. Oromis was swept up in all this and didn’t have time to really ask where Morzan was. I mean, Morzan was a grown man at that point and well beyond Oromis’s control.

Morzan’s involvement was probably confirmed without a doubt at the initial attack on Ilirea, and Oromis and Glaedr didn’t have time to process this until after their brief capture.

Oromis felt some really strong guilt. That’s putting it bluntly.  Let’s expand it, shall we?

First off, I think Oromis felt some guilt over not being able to help in the sort of final big battle at Ilirea. He was previously quite powerful since he was on the council that refused Galbatorix a new dragon (that’s a whole other topic to look at later on btw), and despite his age and wisdom I think it’s safe to assume that any sudden event causing massive life changes can be pretty shocking. Oromis felt powerless and after the deaths that occured in Galbatorix’s initial attack with the Forsworn on the Riders, I think he knew that there would be more. And all he and Glaedr could do was hide in Ellesméra and tend to their wounds and new maladies.

As they healed I’m pretty sure Oromis spent a lot of time thinking ‘how could I have stopped this?’ Hindsight is...well, whatever-elves-have/20, and Oromis would have put all the signs together that were telling him that there was something off about Morzan from the start. He probably thought subconsciously that he was fixing Morzan and didn’t want to acknowledge just how dangerous that little 10 year old boy and scrawny hatchling he had met all those years ago had become as he grew. There was also a lot of guilt post-Ilirea’s final fall around not protecting Brom from Morzan enough, and feeling like a lot of Brom’s pain was Oromis’s own fault because of this.

Oh man, Oromis also has heaps of survivors guilt about the Riders that, while he does work through it and focuses on extending his life to train the next Rider, never really fades completely. He understands that he could not fight in his condition, but there’s always the nagging ‘what if’ questions that can rear up unexpectedly.

Once he learns of Murtagh and Thorn and their forced fealty to Galbatorix, I think Oromis’s guilt probably pushed him over to definitely join the fight at Gil’ead. It’s likely that he feels that if he had separated Brom and Morzan, had taken the signs of Morzan’s growing antisocial disorder seriously and gotten him proper help, and hadn’t been so blind during the Golden Age, then in some strange way he may have prevented everything from happening. Morzan wouldn’t have let Galbatorix into Ilirea, Shruikan wouldn’t have been stolen, the Forsworn wouldn’t have been influenced by Galbatorix and Morzan (who used his manipulative charm to sway some), and it all comes to, in the end, Murtagh and Thorn, both relatively innocent in this and dragged in only due to parentage and some situations which they have no control over, would have never been forced through torture and cruelty to join Galbatorix and fight people they once saw as friends and family.

Overall I think Oromis, while having processed/processing and come to terms with the Riders Fall and the hand he inadvertently had in it due to his connection to and, in some ways, his failures surrounding Morzan, he still carries this deep feeling of guilt. He doesn’t let it simply sit there though, as he pushes himself to be able to train the next generation, but it’s always there.

AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH okay that’s what I’ve got for now. Holy shit that’s a lot of bulletpoints, huh? 

I spent some time researching antisocial behavior and Antisocial Personality Disorder, but per usual I want to state that I am by no means an expert, and the behaviors and traits portrayed here are not the only results, symptoms, or scenarios that can occur when someone has antisocial behavior or ASPD. Mental health is a difficult subject to write about, especially when I have no personal or second hand experience with the specifics, and I’m always open to educating myself on these topics. I am doing my best to learn so that I don’t stereotype or offend. If there are comments/concerns/critique please please don’t ever feel bad about messaging me privately, via the comments, via reblog, or through the ask box point out what I got wrong or if you simply want to share your experiences or concerns. 

I’ll probably have more Morzan specific backstory and ideas later on, but for now I need to make some dinner and get to work on the other ask. Cheers!

Thank you again to @siriusly-misunderstood-creatures​ for the ask! I always appreciate asks and comments, they make my brain work!!

[wy-van-sunshine]

wesper fanfic!

Plot: After the “Crooked Kingdom” events, Jesper and Wylan live together at the Van Eck residence. One night Wylan can’t fall asleep and he looks for some company from Jesper. He finds him staring at that small portrait of a red-headed child which Marya Hendriks had drawn during her exile in the care house.

Wylan had some trouble falling asleep in the last few weeks. His life had radically changed: his devious father was to stand trial and he would probably end up to Hellgate; he had somehow gotten involved in a gang of criminals and - in case that wasn’t enough - he had found friendship as well as love among those criminals. He was now an independent boy, ready to replace his father in the city business, possibly to make a better job than him, and his life felt almost... happy?

Wylan didn’t remember many times in which he felt happy, definitely not since the day he was told his mother was dead.

But mostly, now he felt loved. 

Wylan had been in love before - or at least he thought so - but he never felt that same warm feeling come from the person to whom he gave everything he had.

Still, as a simple student afraid of every aspect of life he probably didn’t have that much to share. 

But Jesper knew everything about him. He knew him in a way no one ever did, maybe even better than Wylan himself. He knew about his most hurtful experiences and, even though he often mocked him about his little flaws, Wylan knew he didn’t do it to do him any harm. He would never. 

So, basically, when Wylan thought about his new life he felt as if his universe and timeline had completely changed: he was a whole new boy, but he didn’t mind at all. 

That evening was different, though: he had already had these thoughts while trying to sleep, but he was so tired from the heists he had attempted with the Crows that the need for a good night sleep was stronger than anything else. 

But now two weeks had passed and his mind was thinking at incredible speed, leaving him no space to rest. He lied in his bed for about an hour, then, after stating it was useless, he stood up to reach the living room and spend some time with Jesper. 

Jesper always got in bed later: they shared the room, but Wylan’s need to sleep and the sharpshooter’s relentless energy were not the best thing after the heists, so Jesper had started to leave the redhead some space in order to let him rest - not without mocking him a little about it, obviously:“Go to sleep, sunshine. I have to say, though, I thought I’d fallen for a young boy, not for the oldest man alive!”.

Wylan smiled thinking about how every insult coming from Jesper embarassed him, but at the same time it somehow made him feel special. After all, that was his way to flirt and he knew it.

“Hey, Jes?” he said softly, entering the living room and looking over the sofa on the left. The view warmed his heart: the room was a little dark and the only light, coming from the fire in front of the sofa, played with Jesper’s features in a beautiful way. Every time Wylan fell a little more for him, he couldn’t explain how, but he did.

The sharpshooter lift his head and looked at him, smiling while putting a little paper he held in his hand in the pocket of his shirt. “Already missing this hot piece of Zemeni boy, sunshine?”

Wylan’s cheeks flushed with red - he would probably never get used to Jesper’s candor - and he walked up to the sofa, where he sit next to his boyfriend. 

“I really hate you, you know?” he said staring at the ground, but leaning in on Jesper’s chest, waiting for him to wrap his arm around his shoulders. 

“Evidence shows the opposite, actually” answered the Zemeni with a grin, circling Wylan’s shoulders with his arm. “What is it, anyways? Why aren’t you sleeping?” 

“Am I not allowed to wish for some time with my boyfriend?”

Jesper smiled, his eyes spreading light:“Of course you are, love, don’t even need to ask. When did we estabilish I am your boyfriend, though? I must’ve gotten lost somewhere between our kiss and- ouch!” Jesper couldn’t finish his sentence as Wylan punched him on the thigh, laughing softly with a sound the sharpshooter loved with all his heart. He laughed back and placed a tiny kiss on the redhead’s neck. 

“I suppose my need for sleep is over, now I just lay in bed thinking about everything that’s happened and I can’t help but making my mind wander” said Wylan answering the original question. He turned over to look at Jesper in the eyes, letting a grin shape his lips:”Which means we can go to bed together now”

“Wylan Van Eck, are you saying what I think you’re saying?” asked Jesper with an astonished but amused expression. “Wow, hanging out with us really made you a terrible person”

The redhead burst out laughing, laying his forehead on the sharpshooter’s shoulder, his eyes filled with tears of amusement:”You’re so stupid”

“I am learning from the best, you know”

“Stop it!” 

They both laughed out loud for a while, Wylan’s whole body shaking and Jesper’s arms wrapped around his waist in an attempt to calm him down. Eventually, they both relaxed and silence fell on them, on their hug which neither of them felt like breaking, not just yet. Wylan’s forehead still lay on Jesper’s shoulder: after keeping his eyes closed for a while, enjoying the moment, he opened them and his gaze fell on the little piece of paper laying in the pocket of his boyfriend’s shirt. It was inside and he couldn’t quite see what it was, but he was pretty sure he recognised it and his heart made a huge, joyful leap. 

“What were you doing, anyways?” he asked, pretending like he hadn’t seen anything “I noticed you were looking at some paper... was that something business related?” 

Wylan noticed with silent amusement Jesper’s eyes starting to wander in the room, meeting everything but his gaze:”Erm, yes, yes, business. A merchant wants to buy- no, sell some of his... well, yes, business related stuff. Definitely. I’ll think about it tomorrow, anyways” Jesper cleared his voice, trying not to choke on his own words ”Shall we go to our room now?” 

The redhead smiled, leaning in on the sharpshooter in order to kiss him. Their lips met and Wylan seized the moment of distraction to rapidly take the paper from Jesper’s pocket and jump off the sofa not to get caught. He stared at the little drawing of him as a child, made with love by his very much alive mother Marya: he remembered Jesper had stolen it when they visited her, but he didn’t think he was still keeping it after Genya had used it to restore his aspect. He smiled, looking at Jesper with not even Saints know how much love in his blue eyes. 

Wylan didn’t think he would ever see bold, enterprising, outgoing Jesper blush... and yet there he was, his dark skin slightly changing colour in realisation of what his boyfriend was learning. The redhead said nothing for a while, a huge smile laying on his lips as he stared at the sharpshooter. After some time in which Jesper did nothing but move anxiously with his whole body on the sofa, Wylan finally broke the unbearable silence.

“Jesper Llewellyn Fahey, you are a big softie!”

If possible, Jesper blushed even harder, hiding his face in his hands and cursing the day his father revealed his middle name. Thank you, Da. Not only do I have to deal with this, I also have to hear Llewellyn being called a big softie. Jesper wasn’t enough. He didn’t like the way he was handling the situation: he was desperately looking for some of his sarcasm, but he was not prepared to face his feelings in such a strong way. He felt so stupid.

Suddenly he felt some gentle fingers wrap around his wrists and he lifted his head, meeting the blue oceans resting in Wylan’s eyes. The redhead was smiling, a light he had never seen before shone in his gaze. He was... wait, was he about to cry? 

“Wy?” he asked, not certain about how to behave. What was happeing? If anything, he should be the one crying from shame.

“You really like me that much?” 

Wylan’s question was so simple, so genuine. Jesper couldn’t help but falling a little more for him every time he witnessed how pure he could be. 

“What... of course I like you. A lot, I’d say. How is that something to cry for?”

Jesper put a hand on the redhead’s cheek, brushing away with his thumb a single tear running on it. 

“I have never had someone like you, Jesper. I have really never felt like someone cared for me this much. Not my father, not my friends, not my crushes. And now you’re here and I... I don’t know how I deserved any of this. Are you even real?”

The sharpshooter laughed softly, his shame completely gone, his love for that skinny, clever boy stronger than ever. 

“You’ve earned every single part of this, Wy. You are so amazing and please, every time I tease you punch me, because you deserve eveything, more than me, more than anything this world could ever offer you. Please know how much you’re worth. Please.”

Wylan smiled, sending his tears back, then he sit on Jesper’s lap and he placed both hands around his neck:”I don’t care what I do or do not deserve, all I care about is you. As long as you’re here, it’s okay” 

Jesper kissed him slowly, with kindness, grateful to the Saints, to Djel and to whomever was up there for placing that merchling on his way.

“Back to the original matter” said Wylan after a while “I’m putting up posters in every street of Ketterdam to tell the world what a big softie Jesper the sharpshooter is”

Jesper laughed out loud:”Yeah sure, everyone will believe that. It wouldn’t work out, anyways”

“And why is that?”

“Your mother drew you as a beautiful child and you’re really not that handsome, No one would say that’s you.”

Wylan grinned and punched Jesper twice on his arm.

“Damn! What the hell was that for?”

“You just told me how amazing I am and that I should punch you every time you say the opposite. It’s on you”

“Fair enough”

[ask-iamnotanalicorn]

Previous: The Flim Flam Timeline

The Wasteland Timeline:

This is the story of when Equestria fell.

And this it the story of when Equestria rose again.

The trials began as they always do: with the return of Nightmare Moon. The celestial sisters clashed, and Celestia fell. Heedless of the struggle it would be to keep the Sun set with its alicorn princess banished inside it, Nightmare Moon did just that, determined that her traitorous sister experience Nightmare’s punishment.

Nightmare’s reign of Equestria was strained, but Equestria could have borne it. But within a year, the capital was attacked by the Changelings, desperate to replenish their stores of pony love that had been stymied by the nation’s state of fear and uncertainty. Nightmare Moon was barely managing to repel the threat when the Crystal Empire returned, and King Sombra began to march on her northern borders. With attacks from within and attacks from without, a distrusted leader on the throne, and economic failure rippling across the country as readily as the shifting front lines, the ponies of Equestria were more torn than ever.

So of course that’s when Discord escaped.

The upside of Discord’s release was that it temporarily stopped the fighting. Even King Sombra was smart enough to withdraw in the face of the mad draconequus on a quest of vengeance against all ponies. Queen Chrysalis and Queen Nightmare Moon (who had absconded herself at first sign of Discord’s escape, using every possible trick to keep him from finding her) formed a temporary peace treaty in order to seek a solution - for a world ruled by Discord was useless to all of them. (Granted, the Changelings could withdraw to their protected realm, but Chrysalis had tasted power and wasn’t about to let Discord have it all. She was quite looking forward to stabbing Nightmare Moon in the back afterwards.)

Their solution: a magical contract with the long-imprisoned centaur, Tirek. Tirek was more than happy to oblige. He single-handedly decimated Sombra’s troops, gorging himself on the magic of Crystal Empire and Equestrian ponies alike. It is possible that, if Discord hadn’t come to see what all the fuss was about himself, Tirek would have kept right on gorging to the very limit of the contract that bound him.

When the two titans clashed, the battle that ensued sundered hundreds of miles of landscape. Canterlot bore the greatest brunt; the castle collapsed completely from its cliffside home, the city little more than ruins. Discord’s attacks spread wildly unpredictable waves of chaos magic across much of Equestria. And when at long last Tirek had defeated him and sucked him dry, the lingering effects of that chaos magic stayed rooted in the ground like weeds.

It seemed, for the briefest moment, as if the worst problem was over. But of course, a power-maddened Tirek is a worse threat - because at least Discord doesn’t go out of his way to destroy everything in sight. Drunk on chaos magic, Tirek easily broke the tenuous contract with the queens and set across the landscape, draining ponies by the thousands and carving swaths through the countryside for the sheer wicked joy of destruction. His power was even mighty enough to destroy the changeling hive, overpowering its magical protections.

There was no choice - the two remaining rulers of any species in the land had to either defeat their own creation or face the loss of all they held dear. Nightmare Moon called upon the power of the Moon itself, drawing it nearer to Equestria in a desperate gambit. Tidal waves rocked Equestria’s coastlines, submerging Manehattan and other coastal cities entirely, and the alicorn of the night shone with deadly moonlit radiance as she bombarded Tirek with the full brunt of her power. But even Nightmare Moon at the height of her power was not strong enough to stop Tirek at the height of his, and he struck her down against the surface of the Moon itself. Some of the dislodged chunks rained down on the world, damaging more of not only Equestria, but many other countries on that side of the planet.

Tirek seemed to have won; all he had left to deal with was one small, angry changeling queen. An assured victory, no doubt.

He could not have known how wrong he was. For a changeling might give its magic willingly to a spell like Tirek’s with no ill effects, but an unwilling changeling queen will not be robbed of her power easily. As Tirek’s powers drain magic, so changeling powers drain love - and no one in all the world had such self-love as Tirek. The cycle of Tirek draining her magic and Chrysalis draining his became a self-consuming spell spiral that ultimately imploded upon itself, taking both creatures with it.

The resulting explosion could be heard across the celestial sea. For a few moments, there was something like an artificial sun on the horizon - a sun that had set directly on Equestria.

Then came the silence. After three years of war, devastation, and disasters unlike any the world had ever seen, there was silence.

And as the silence stretched, the survivors stirred.

Earth ponies, pegasi, unicorns, crystal ponies, and zebras; yaks, cows, goats, donkeys, and buffalo; gryphons, dragons, hippogryphs, minotaurs, and changelings: in spite of everything, many had survived. They rose from their hiding places to find an Equestria and Crystal Empire in ruins. No major cities still stood; borders and coastlines were unrecognizable. Large swaths of land once green and lush were barren and blasted, and spots of chaos magic lay in wait for creatures unwise enough to enter them unprotected. The moon hung wrecked in a dark sky, shining in shattered glory down on the devastation that had been the once-rich land of Equestria.

But the great destroyers were gone. None of the titans and tyrants who had brought this destruction down on the country remained. The usual monsters hardly seemed a threat anymore; those who had survived thus far had learned to cope with far worse. They could build new settlements, make new ways of life, come together or fall apart on their own merits.

And the most hopeful sign of all came the next day. The first actual day since Nightmare Moon returned and the Thousand Days of Woe began:

The Sun - weak and red in the dust-filled sky - slowly rose over the horizon.

The Princess of the Sun had not returned yet; perhaps she is still trapped by her sister’s spell. Perhaps another way of escape is being laid. But the light fills the ponies’ hearts with hope.

The Equestria they knew is gone. But the New Equestria has a future.

____

Sunday, Aug.10, 4 A.C.

Dear Journal,

It’s really strange dating things this way; but with everything that’s happened, most folks agree it’ll be easier to date our calendars starting with the fall of Princess Celestia. ‘After Celestia’ sounds so grim, though; kinda hope we change it. Maybe when the Princess returns... we’re praying she does.

Anyway, I still can’t believe we found a whole stock of blank paper in the storerooms! We’re saving most of it for bartering, but Mom thinks it’s smart for one of us to make notes for posterity, so it looks like I get to keep you. I’ll try to be short to save space, but it just feels so good to write again!

The move into the Canterlot ruins ruins is going pretty well. A few other families joined us after our last trip to Apple Fort, and we’ve shored up our defenses in case the air pirates make another flyby. Pop and I negotiated a deal with the Apples - food in exchange for books. A few of the unicorns know replication spells and are using some of the paper to make copies of really important texts so we don’t lose valuable knowledge to an accident. It still blows my mind how much we’ve lost in... was life really normal only a few years ago? It feels like another lifetime that I was in this very city, talking to the Princess, sitting at a normal cafe... eating lunch with Cam and Press...

I don’t want to forget them. Camera Shy and Pressing Matters, my best friends. Maybe they’re still out there somewhere. We run into old friends every now and then - my old traveling salespony gig has come in handy, actually! I’ve found a bunch of people who used to be clients, it really helps with forming trade and peace treaties with other groups. So it could happen. Please, Prince, keep them safe wherever they are.

I’m really blessed, though. I have to remember that. I have Mom and Pop and Black and Per and Chewie - although I’m still not used to Chewie flying and talking now. She’s such a character. Lots of ponies are missing family - so are we, we haven’t been able to find most of the extended family, but Pop got word from Aunt Pitter that she and my cousin Light Drizzle are out west somewhere, and Pitch Apple is down at Apple Fort, thank the King.

And we could be worse! We made friends with a tinkerer named Steam Punk, he made me a new wing that works as good as my old one! (Not a HUGE bar to cross, but it’s still really impressive!) I’m talking him into working with me to start a production house that can make and sell them affordably to other handicapped pegasi. And Mom got her flight back thanks to a gem Black and some other mages crafted. I think she still misses her diving mark, but she’s so brave and optimistic, it really inspires everyone. I wish we could do something for Pop’s horn, but he’s finding other ways to help out. Per is... well, I guess if you’re going to get turned into a pony-dragon, you’d want to be as cheerful about it as Per. Who knows, maybe she’ll still get a cutie mark someday! And Black is fully aware that he looks pretty boss with an eyepatch, the dork. 

There’s rumors that Princess Cadance might be alive and organizing the crystal ponies up North; lots of ponies are heading that way, but I think our group will stay here. There’s a lot of resources in the Canterlot ruins and in the castle, although Black leads the expeditions into the castle because of safety issues. I never knew he was so good at exploration and such; guess there were a few skills he was holding out on us over the years, but turns out he was working for the Princess before! What in Equus, I gave him such an earful for being all secretive about being my bodyguard or whatever. 

I’m running out of page, so I’ll wrap up today. We’re holding a worship service later, Pop and Parson Brown are setting it up. We want to keep focusing on what we have to be thankful for. We are GOING to get through this. The King, the Prince, and the Advocate have not abandoned us, and we have each other. 

~Salespitch

----

Fun Facts About The Wasteland Timeline:

- This was my favorite timeline to draw =D I HAD to get some steampunk stuff in there, although there are definitely Mad Max vibes. The convenient thing about this timeline is that it was a literal blank slate, so I could really get creative with it! I feel like this would make a neat bookmark, what do ya’ll think?

- I tried to reference all the major villains in the picture. Extra shoutout to ReversalMushroom, the patron who sponsored this Alternate Timeline Special, for giving me the ideas for the changeling goo and Tirek’s hoofprints, which were added in during the coloring phase. I think they round it out quite nicely!

- The random bit of Candy Forest over the crevice there is one of the pockets left behind by Discord’s chaos magic going wild. Most ponies avoid it because here’s WEIRD stuff in there, and ponies who go in there usually come out a little weirder themselves. 

- Black lost his eye and half his sunglasses in a fight with some Changelings. He gets on quite well with only one eye, though, and he insists his sunglass-lens eyepatch is going to be the height of eyepatch fashion. (He DOES have a sense of humor in case anyone doubted it. ;) ) Black taught everyone basic survival techniques and does most of the more dangerous tasks.

- Sales lost his wing during Tirek’s rampage; he tried to distract Tirek, but they didn’t have time to make the plan from the Tirek timeline, so he got swatted pretty quickly. On the upside, Tirek lost sight of him and didn’t get his magic. Sales can fly about as well now with his new steampunk wing, which combines technology and magic to mimic low-level pegasus flight (which was where he was at anyway, so he made a great first test subject!) Sales’ main job is  negotiating peaceful trades with other groups.

- Sales Patter (Dad) lost his horn while pushing his wife out of the way of some falling rubble. He insists he was only mediocre at magic anyway, and he doesn’t need a horn to do business! He does miss it, though. He helps their new community with allocating resources.

- Pitch Forward (Mom) lost her magic and cutie mark to Tirek’s onslaught. The gem in her coat simulates flight for her, although not quite at the level she was before. She and Sales joke about how he can almost beat her in a race now. She helps with the kids in their small community and teaches flying techniques to pegasi.

- Pitch Perfect got hit with a random blast of Discord magic that turned her half dragon. It took a little getting used to, but she honestly thinks it is super neat. She’s pretty good at sniffing out gems now, which (when she isn’t eating them) helps with family finances. Her friends Codebreak and Castle Crasher are part of their little community, and the three are constantly getting into trouble (which most everyone silently thinks of as a nice bit of familiarity.)

- Chewie ALSO got Discord’d; she has fairy wings now and she can talk. Chewie still likes Sales the best and hovers around him chattering like Navi half the time. The other half of the time she forgets she has wings and just hops around exploring. At this point she’s become less like a pet and more like another tiny sister, to Per’s delight and everyone else’s raised anxiety levels. She is VERY aware of her surroundings and alerts the group to intruders and strangers. She really misses computer games.

- Princess Celestia will eventually return, although by that time I feel that the various groups gathering together will have formed something like a decent society again. It remains to be seen if they’ll go back to a monarchy, create a government of connected micronations, or turn into something like the United States.

- And yes, Camera Shy, Pressing Matters, and Press’s husband Curler are all alive. They’ll meet up someday!

---

A/N: Thank you all for joining me on this journey through time and space to explore the seven MLP timelines and where Sales & Co might have ended up in them! I hope you enjoyed it; I had a good bit of fun coming up with the different scenarios, it was a great brain exercise. =D Thank you again to all my Patrons, and to ReversalMushroom for sponsoring this particular special! There will be a final post next week of all the pictures together, with links back to their storyline posts.

I also want to thank you for bearing with me as the regular updates continue to be on hiatus. This has been a rough and strange year for all of us, and I hope you all are safe and healthy and know that you are loved. Jesus has really been with me through this year, and even tonight as I write this; there are things I struggle with, but I know that they do not define my value, HE does. =) And I, like Sales, want to count my blessings, the biggest one (aside from my faith in God) being that I have family around me who love me and care for me. I’m very much looking forward to Christmas! =D  

Merry Christmas! May your Christmas and New Year contain joy and peace, and may Christ Jesus rest His hands on you and draw your heart to His. In Jesus’ Name, amen.

~River Babble

[fallenrepublick]

I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry

Okay but what if... What if you dated both brothers back-to-back at around the same time? First Thrass, then Thrawn?

Maybe you were drawn to Thrass initially, and you loved him for his kindness and sincerity, but his duty as a Syndic started causing a rift between you two. The paranoia and manipulation of Chiss politics maybe started mingling with his personal life instead of staying at work, and usually peaceful nights became wrought with anxiety and doubt.

"How can you lie to someone's face like that?" "These people would see Thrawn die, and you're not trying to protect him?" "How do I know you won't turn against me if the Ascendancy decided-"

The arguments only got more intense, and with heavy hearts the two of you agreed to spend some time apart.

And then, you started working closely with Thrawn. Thrawn, who kept nothing a secret and who's transparency and straightforwardness eased your previous anxieties. You fell in love with his mind and mannerisms, and before you knew it the two of you were kissing behind a sculpture in his favorite art gallery.

All this to say, you ended up choosing him. Thrass could only pretend he was fine for so long - you'd been decent enough to tell him directly that you were now dating Thrawn, and yet he couldn't decide if he'd rather you just ghosted him instead. Some would say you moved on a little too fast, but Thrass understood. He knew you intimately after all, and he always regretted not being able to be completely open with you about everything the way his brother could.

However, speaking of things moving too fast...

He would rather have gotten a call about literally anything else that day. He would have more easily accepted news of the Ascendancy going to war, or that he would be losing his position. Even excommunicated from the Mitth entirely. That would have sat better with him than-

"I'm going to be a father." Thrawn explained matter-of-factly in his signature Thrawn fashion, though there was the slightest bit more excitement in his tone than normal.

"That's..." He felt his heart sink to the depths, any hope of possibly ever returning to you tarnished in a single sentence. You'd only been with Thrawn a few months, and already... "Congratulations."

Thrass couldn't fully pay attention after that. He heard the core words like "union" and "family" and "marriage", and something about if he'd be willing to officiate as a representative of the Mitth. He must have absent-mindedly agreed, since that's what he ended up doing.

It took everything in him to pretend. Part of him was happy for you of course, but it still pained him to see you together. He couldn't decide if it pained him even more that he was still so directly involved in your lives, witnessing every milestone you achieved together. It's not like you were never concerned about how he felt either, though, always asking him if he was okay or if he ever wanted to talk. He'd always dismiss any inquiries with a smile and convincingly content demeanor, even sharing a dance with you at the ceremony.

The moment he excused himself from the premises, the tears wouldn't stop. Even now, years later, they'd sometimes sneak up on him from out of nowhere. It was difficult to even identify the triggers anymore. Maybe this time it was due to those intrusive late-night thoughts of what could have been, or worse, what potentially currently was.

He was a good uncle, always making time to watch the kids when it was needed. The oldest one, the one who had been often told "you take from your uncle" and "your uncle looked like you at your age" was particularly fond of him. They would spend time bonding over something or another when the younger one was content to play off on their own. This oldest kid, who was allegedly born two months early, according to the timeline. This kid...

It could very well all be coincidental, but this kid...

Somehow, he didn't think it was a coincidence. You would get sick every now and then around the time you broke it off, before you had ever even gotten close to Thrawn. He wondered if you had ever suspected, if Thrawn had ever suspected. If the two of you had it was never discussed with him, and that was probably for the best.

Because if he offically had a child with you, the regrets and pain and dreams of what could have been would not only haunt him as they already were, but they'd be literally staring him in the face - with those eyes on a face that resembled his own.

He was fine being uncle Thrass.

He was fine not being yours, anymore.

He was fine drowning himself in his work and drinking all those bad thoughts away.

He was fine.

That’s it. I’m revoking your Author Pass. You’re fired.

But goddammit now I’m thinking...

Thrawn’s... not stupid. He knows the math doesn’t add up. He knows the kid was too healthy to be premature. He knows good, fucking well, that no matter what happens, no matter what his brother tells himself, he isn’t going to handle that knowledge as well as he thinks he will. Thrass has a habit of showing up in places he doesn’t need to be, and when it comes down to it, he will be around these children on a frequent, if not constant, basis, just by virtue of being family.

And he’s not possessive. It only makes sense that they would attach themselves to him. After all, he was always the more obviously emotional of the two, being the one that can outwardly express himself in easier ways. Of course the children would respond well to it. But he isn’t blind either, and he can see clearly that the way Thrass interacts with the eldest is simply, undeniably, different. And uncharacteristically, against every way he’s ever reacted to a scenario, he finds that he hates it. He despises every word his brother speaks to the child, so naturally similar to the way they talk, their facial features so glaringly close that even the most distant of passerby could see it.

He holds to that child, almost in desperation, teaching them what he knows, trying and trying again to relate to them in some way, his attempts failing at every turn as the disinterested child looks to the interests they share with the other. The spare. But he doesn’t stop, he tries, tries again, even attempting to endure the things they enjoy instead, tedious and ridiculous as he may have otherwise found them, just for a moment’s taste of a connection. The others relate to him easily, a perfect combination of who you are with who he is, and he wants it with the eldest, no matter what it may cost him. Yet their eyes never stop searching for Thrass, only making Thrawn’s bitterness turn to resentment.

And there does come a time when the brothers are alone together, Thrass sadly organising the shelves in his home while Thrawn sits darkly in thought. And eventually, Thrawn asks,

“How much do you know?”

Thrass stops in his tracks, setting down the books in his hands, failing to hide the guilt displayed on his face. “Know about what?”

Thrawn’s eyes narrow, his lips contorting in a daring grimace. “Don’t insult me.”

How could Thrass deny it? How could he hide what was so clear to see? To continue to claim innocence of it would be to damn himself forever. But he looks away.

“It was before you had anything to do with it.”

“And that changes this?” Thrawn stands, back straightened and arms crossed over his chest as he looms above his brother, who still refused to look him in the eye. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing. You may have come first, but I am their father, no matter how much you seem to conveniently forget so. I have let your proximity pass for this long. But I warn you now, and I will not do so again. Do not test me.”

[wolfcha1k]

"One look and I can't catch my breath Two souls into one flesh When you're not next to me I'm incomplete 'Cause I'm on fire like a thousand suns I couldn't put it out even if I wanted to These flames tonight Look into my eyes and say you want me, too Like I want you"

"All my life I've been looking for a place my parents wanted me to find, and I found it… but now? All I can think about is Eep. My best friend, my first… and only love."

Summary: Guy and Eep reflect on what has happened in the wake of these two crazy moons since their Tomorrow was challenged. There's damage that needs to be fixed and broken hearts to mend. - <3 - I used a ton of references from the movie as well as loosely traced bits, the kiss was referenced from the ending of "A New Age". I wanted to draw a proper cover for my new "chapter" for my "The Sun Was a Wayfarer" series, which is a bunch of one shots/little stand alone stories set in the same timeline despite it kinda skipping around a bunch. This one is "All I Can Think Of" as of now it takes place after "It's Our Nature" and before "A Tomorrow of Our Own", ngl, this chapter was mostly to practice writing kisses, I had some fun actually writing it. Usually I get hella embarrased lol I'm gonna paste the story beneath the picture, hope you like ~

The Sun Was a Wayfarer - Series

<Previous> Its Our Nature <next> A Tomorrow of Our Own

The moment Guy saw a chance to get away from the Pack he took it, quickly grabbing for Eep's hand to pull her down a random direction into the garden. She started in surprise before willingly following him with a trust Guy didn't feel he deserved anymore after last night. Guy didn't stop until he felt they were far enough away that nobody would find them without looking very hard, hidden behind some of the large gourds and corn.

He spun around to face her, letting out a long sigh. Guy just needed a moment to look at her, dark eyes worried and concerned as the adrenaline of what happened just a few hours ago finally seeped out of his body. Guy was covered in bruises and ached all over but it was nothing compared to the pain of when he thought he lost her forever three times in the span of just two terrifying days of his life. Somehow The End of the World felt miniscule in comparison now that Eep was his world.

His Tomorrow.

He rested his shaky hands on her shoulders, relief making him dizzy. Eep supported the sudden slumping of his weight, her green eyes wide with concern. "Guy! What's wrong?"

"Nothing, I'm fine," he said, a tired smile on his face as he looked at her.

She held him up by the arms before lifting him up into hers. Eep sat down on the grass and positioned him on her lap, stroking the fringe of hair away from his face.

She could see the swollen purple bruises on his cheek and the black eye he had, his lower lip looked swollen and puffy. "You had a bad day," she sighed, cuddling him close.

"Yeah," he managed to chuckle, finding some amusement out of her words. "But it's better now that you're here…" He pressed a tired, sloppy kiss to her shoulder and rested his forehead there after. "Empathis on the better."

She just tugged him closer, as if her arms could squeeze the exhaustion and nerves right out of him. "I'm sorry," Eep suddenly said, muffling her face against his cheek. He felt moisture against his skin and the slight tremor in her arms and shoulders. "I'm really sorry."

Her warbled words cut him like a knife and he used his head to nudge her back so he could look at her. He could see the beginnings of tears on her eyelashes, gaze watery as she blinked it away stubbornly. Guy reached his hand to touch her face, feeling her recoil a bit before relaxing into his palm. He wiped his thumb under her eye, catching a tear.

He realized his own eyes felt moist all of a sudden, it'd been an emotionally charged couple of days. "It's okay, Eep. You didn't do anything wrong, I was just so stupid."

She sighed heavily, unwinding an arm from around his body so she could cover his hand with her calloused palm. Eep said nothing for several long moments, just clutched his hand like a life line.

"Eep?"

Eep finally looked at him, tearing her eyes from the random direction she'd sent her sights towards. "Yeah?"

"You're not hurt, are you?" Guy sat up a bit in her lap, cautiously letting his palms trace her broad shoulders, fingers squeezing tentatively to see if she would flinch. He knew she was good at hiding things like injuries, nursing them in private as to avoid upsetting Grug, it'd also extended to him now. She was strong but that didn't mean he wasn't allowed to worry over her.

"No, I don't have a scratch on me," she assured him but Guy didn't stop checking her. Eep let him fuss though, knowing it would make him feel better if he came to the conclusion himself. His touch felt nice though, Eep realizing how starved she was for it since being separated from each other.

He touched her back, her arms, her ribs, anywhere his hands could reach in a modest way, careful in his examination. After running a hand down her leg, his eyes fell to where the prohestic was once on her pinkie toe. "I'm so, so glad you actually don't have a toe there," he sighed, knowing it was one of the most nonsensical, bizarre phrases he'd ever uttered in his seventeen years of life.

"Guess getting bit by that bearyena came in handy for once," Eep quipped, trying to lighten the mood a little.

He also was relieved she hadn't been ripped in half during the struggle, it had to be a miracle of some kind. Guy didn't voice this though, just traced his hands slowly back up her body so he could hold her waist. He missed her so much and he was quick to show her that, words failing him as he gently brushed her lips in a kiss. He let his hands slide up her back to lovingly stroke her shoulders, feeling the muscles ripple under his palms. She shivered and he shook, he pulled her closer as if to warm them both but still the trembling never stopped.

He always did love her shoulders and muscles, the clinical and practical part of him admired the strength and power there, how they could flex and be used to take down beasts twice her size. Then there was the simplicity of just being a man who loved a beautiful woman and it inspired a different kind of appreciation in him.

One that he knew Grug who absolutely skewer him alive for, his heart longing and aching as he hugged Eep. He never knew he could be so needy, it should have been pathetic as a puppy following its master for attention, never satisfied.

They'd shared an intense kiss over the raging flames but it still wasn't enough after the longest dry spell he had ever known since meeting her. After that first kiss in the ocean, he never got enough of her now. He was greedy and never was ashamed of that when it came to loving her.

He only wanted to be with her until there were no more Tomorrows that crossed the sky.

Eep quickly cupped his face in her hands and surged forward against him, her ferocity taking him by surprise. He practically squeaked when he felt the nip of her teeth on his bruised lip but somehow he couldn't care less. Just welcomed it, tilting his head and taking in the taste of her as he brushed her tongue with his. It was like fire and he was more than happy to be burned, letting Eep fly with him like the wild tiger in his stories.

He drew away a moment, just the slightest breath away as he spoke, pressing a few rapid kisses to her lips with each word. "You." Kiss. "Have." Kiss. "No idea." Kiss. Kiss. "How much I missed you," Guy finished in a rush, breathless as he lowered his head to trail a series of kisses down the column of her throat, grazing his teeth lightly on the skin of her collarbone.

There was a hitch in her breath at the affection. "Can't be more than I missed you."

He went to nuzzle her ear, placing a chase kiss on her earlobe. Eep arched into him and he clutched her tight as if she were water slipping through his fingers. "I thought I was going to die seeing you up there," Guy uttered in a strained voice. He could picture it so clearly, seeing her leaping and bounding across skeletal remains hanging precariously from old tendrils of vine. The spiny mandrilla closed on her heels and he could do nothing but watch, screaming her name out in desperation until his throat went raw. "I screwed up and almost didn't get to fix it."

Guy felt Eep nudge his head away from her so they could look at each other properly again. She just traced her thumb over his cheek, tender as she marked one of his hand print shaped bruises. "You saved me," she finally said, leaning forward to steal a kiss, smiling against his lips as they brushed, once, twice and finally a proper one that had Guy's toes curling and his head fuzzy. "I was so happy when I saw you again, Guy."

He'd been more than shocked to have seen Eep and the others arrive, riding Chunky and a pack of wolfspiders. He had practically given his last rights, resolving painfully he would never see her again, never fix what he had done to her. His first and only love, he didn't need to meet any other girls to know what he felt was real and it was more than just a beautiful teenage romance.

"You want to talk about heroics? How many people come swooping in on a tiger and take on a giant monster single handedly," Guy pressed his forehead against hers, awed by her courage and humbled by her love for him. "And here I picked a tree over you."

"It wasn't just a tree," she lightly scolded him much to his surprise. "I get it now."

Guy felt moisture collect on his eyelashes and without another thought, closed the distance between them once more. He let his hands roam, touching every part of her out of fear he would forget how warm and solid her body felt in his arms. It was almost like a dream, eyes shut tightly and listening to the soft little gasps in her breath, the way her chest heaved against his own. He hated needing to breathe when all he wanted was this, reluctantly pulling away as he felt light headed, exhilarated and breathless.

"Never again," he promised her, nuzzling his nose against hers. Eep practically purred at the loving attention, letting her palms rest on his shoulders to gently knead the tension there. He shuddered, forehead pressed into hers, knowing the gesture meant so much more than simple touch to her. "I'd rather chop off both my legs than lose you again. Please never scare me like that, I couldn't bare it."

She kissed his lips, gentle before in all her passionate nature, looped her arms around his neck and kissed him enough that Guy was convinced he'd forget his own name.

But that was okay, because she reminded him, pulling away. "Guy, I love you," she only said, beaming at him.

"Please say it again," he pleaded.

"I love you."

He felt his eyes growing glassy again and Eep kissed a tear away from below his eye, soft and tender. He smiled at her, embracing her tightly once more from his comfortable position in her lap. "I love you more," he murmured, kissing her shoulder.

"I love you more," she protested, lightly shoving him to nibble his ear, feeling his weight push into her.

"No, I said I love you more first."

"And I'm telling you I love you more right back," she purred, lifting her neck to give him better access to her jawline when he started to press an open mouth kiss there.

He felt her pulse rush under his lips like she'd ran a marathon, skin flushed as red as her hair. He couldn't help but kiss her again and again.

"You're so stubborn," he grumbled good naturedly, nuzzling her.

"Takes one to know one, babe." Eep grinned at him, stroking the nape of his neck and fiddling with his top knot.

It was just them now and feeling thrilled that he had her to himself, gently nudged her down, feeling her eyes bore into his. Guy braced his arms above her, not caring his muscles throbbed in protest. He could see the sun as it set shimmering there, burning with more than mere fire.

Her eyes were nearly amber in the low light of the evening, glinting with love. Those same eyes reminded him of the first night they met, curious and glowing as the fire flickered. He touched her face, fingers curling under her chin, taking in her flushed cheeks and kiss swollen lips. It was a good look for her. She was beautiful, and no amount of sleeping suns in the sky would ever compare.

There must have been something in his expression for he saw her tremble and emotion swelled within him as he shut his eyes. He ached in more ways than just the pain from the ordeal with getting pummeled by a bunch of punch monkeys.

No more words were spoken for a long time, whoever reached for whom first he didn't care. All that mattered was now she was in his arms, heart pressed against heart and the gentle whispers of breath against lips. She arched into him and it took all his might to remember how to breathe. She palmed his shoulder suddenly with a growl, pushing him beneath her and he didn't fight her.

No one and no thing would ever separate them again, he thought as he caught her lips once more in a fluid movement.

Grug had panicked when he realized Guy and Eep had disappeared. After today, who could really blame him for it? Everyone was quick to volunteer to find them, Ugga crouching to encourage Sandy to use that skilled sense of smell of hers. The fierce little tot bounded into the fields, disappearing into the tall grass and crops.

"She's got the scent!" Gran exclaimed, hobbling after her youngest granddaughter.

Grug just worried and worried, Ugga absently massaging a kink out of his large neck. "Relax, the farm is safe. I'm sure Eep and Guy are alright, Grug."

"Still," he began with a frown. "I'd feel better knowing that with my own eyes, honey."

They'd followed Sandy through the gardens, the farther they went the more Grug fretted. It felt too long when Sandy finally paused, several large bushes and crops shielding the view. She pawed in the direction of it, turning to giggle and pounce into Ugga's awaiting arms.

"Good girl, Sandy," she praised, pressing her cheek against hers fondly.

Grug lead the way, parting the foliage. Everyone shoved about behind him and attempted to peak around him, making the caveman huff in annoyance.

The family came upon the couple hidden amongst the fields of other worldly produce, cozy together on the grass as they traded needy little kisses. Alternating between whispering, giggling and pressing a small kiss here or there, Guy and Eep were content in their bubble. Guy was curled up as content as a house cat right in her lap, Eep's arms around him in a hug. The sight would have infuriated Grug once upon a time ago but he'd seen a lot in just two days.

Things changed and so did he. His daughter deserved happiness and having seen just how broken Guy had been over her, he knew it wasn't just puppy love.

It was full grown.

"Aw," Dawn gushed as she peeked over Grug's shoulders, standing on her tiptoes. "How cute, are they always like that?"

The typical young boy that he was, Thunk made a face, his travel window lowering. "Bleh," he only said. "Again already?"

Gran snorted and leaned over to Dawn to say inconspicuously, "You have no idea, smart girl."

Belt's only response from around Dawn's torso was to make a swooning gesture, unwinding an arm to drape it over his face. Dawn chuckled when immediately after the sloth was gushing over Sash who'd leaned down to nuzzle noses with Guy's little friend. "I get the picture."

Hope folded her hands to her chest, "I can't believe we tried breaking them up… who does that?"

The words Hope said affected Grug more than he wanted to admit and guilt swelled inside him.

Ugga patted him gently on the shoulder, rousing her mate's quiet contemplation. "Well?" Ugga asked him in that soft voice of hers, gray eyes shifting back towards Guy and Eep.

"Leave them be," Grug told her and the others, shaking his head with a reserved little smile. He felt sad but there was a fatherly resolve in his heart. Eep would always be his little girl but he had to accept she had her own life to live now.

One with many Tomorrows that he knew Guy could give her, there was no doubt the young man was going to give her the world on a silver platter. The thought of her leaving was like a knife in his heart, even Guy would be a tough bone to swallow, after all, Grug had called him son. And as a father, he only wanted what was best for them, even if it meant it wasn't here with him anymore.

Gran stomped her cane on the grass. "Who are you and what have you done with our Lunkhead?"

Grug grunted, "What? I'm not allowed to have a change of heart now?"

Ugga leaned her head against his fondly. "I'm proud of you, big guy."

Grug didn't want to get emotional, feeling the moisture gather in his eyes. Phil threw an arm over his shoulders on the side Ugga didn't occupy.

"Something on your mind, bro?" His eyes were sympathetic.

He sniffled, "Nothing, really." Grug shrugged Phil's arm off and sighed.

"You can tell me," Phil encouraged, lifting a hand in an encouraging manner.

"I don't wanna."

"I'm knocking on the door, big guy. Let me in!" He persisted.

Grug side eyed him, knowing no matter what he said the lanky Betterman was going to get his way. "It's just… gonna be hard to let them go," he said, the words slightly warbled. He was a big scary caveman but he'd always been soft in the heart despite the stoney exterior.

Gran scoffed, the old matriarch beginning to hobble away. "There's our Grug now. The big baby."

Phil patted him on the back, "There, there, it'll be alright. Besides, I have a solution to your little problem."

He looked uncertain as Phil led him away from the serene couple, the rest of the family following behind. "What do you mean 'solution'?"

"Let's just say it's a wedding present for our favorite pair of lovebirds, Gruggers. You can help me get it ready, they'll take one look at it and want to stay forever." Phil then fondly nudged his friend's back. "Just please learn to use doors, Guy won't be happy if you tear a hole in their little love nest. Knocking will save you a lot of grief too."

"Love nest?" Grug echoed and for a moment the protective father that wanted to smother his daughter peeked out.

Before he could regret his decision, it was a joint effort to shove him towards the large tree on the property, hefting a sigh and pouting as Ugga just laughed.

And oblivious to the world around them, Guy and Eep stayed stuck together, joint by the heart.

[iturbide]

Crest Control Edelgard in Heroes

(CheeseAndCake here) You asked for Crest Control Edelgard in Askr, so here she is! My brain does not like being quiet, apparently. I want you to know that this is your responsibility now, Enjoy! (I also have no idea if this will work, so heres to hoping for the best.)  

Note: The things Edelgard says/thinks are things she thinks are true, that doesn’t mean she 100% perfectly understands her past self. 

 ______________________________________________________________

The former Emperor blinked as her surroundings disappeared and reshaped in a flash of light. What was- 

Just a second ago, she was entering Queen Ivanna’s office to deliver news, and now she was standing at an altar, with a hooded figure in front of her, and no idea what was going on. She was still wearing her black dress with pink highlights, with her armour over said dress, hair still done up in a bun, and still holding her dagger, so if this was an ambush, it was poorly planned. She was pretty sure the Texts guarded by the church never mentioned this, and-

“Greetings, hero, welcome to the world of Ask.” The figure began, nodding their hood, “I am Kiran, the summoner who called you forth. This world is under attack, and in desperate need of aid, will you fight with us?”

“I am no hero,” She responded,  knowing that anyone that referred to her as hero must not know about her earlier life, before she fought Those Who Slither, or have a gross misunderstanding of what heroes are, “But if you need my aid, I shall give it. I am Edelgard.” 

That didn’t mean she trusted them, but if they were being honest, she would give her aid.

Kiran nodded, “Very well, welcome to the Order of Heroes. Here, different people are summoned across space and time, so you may run into people you know, or… other versions of yourself.”

 That was… the last thing she needed, but she nodded anyway, and Kiran led her to what would be her chambers. This was a war. She knew war.  

She nearly tried to sit Kiran’s throat when she thought heard a nearby child scream, but after a moment she realised the child- who she could see had green hair and wings now that she was closer- was laughing, as an older woman who looked similar to her smiled in response.

“You recruit children to your order?” She asked. She didn’t how dragon children aged, truely- there weren’t any dragon’s left when she escaped, after what she did- but she knew only children laughed like that. She made a mental note to talk to them later and ask about their beliefs and traditions, since there weren’t any dragons in Ivanna’s army, and it would be important to know.  

Kiran sighed, “I cannot control who I summon, or from what time I do. Sometimes, they are children. I don’t let them fight, but they can stay if they want.” 

She didn’t ask why they would want to stay in a country at war. If she had the opportunity as a child, she would have grabbed it with both hands. 

“When it’s over, will they be sent back to where they were taken from?” If enough time passed…

“Yes, they’re sent back to the same place, without any time passing, but they keep their memories.” Ah, that’s… not the best, for the children in a bad position, but at the very least, no one will panic about her disappearance. 

It was only when she turned a corner and saw a version of herself, not wearing any black, but an Emperor’s red and a horned crown, that she realised how bad this would be. A nightmare. This was a nightmare. But she’s lived longer than most, and she knows how to push down the familiar feeling of dizziness, and focus on following the white cloaked figure up the stairs.

She makes it to the second floor before she empties the contents of her stomach. 

Kiran was yelling something, but she didn’t completely hear it. Something about a bad reaction to seeing counterparts? 

Before she knew it, someone was leaning over her speaking in a deep voice.. It was only after a few breaths that she understood the words, and looked at the face of the person who came to comfort her, “-completely fine that you had a bad reaction, lots of worlds branch off, and- Edelgard?” 

“Dimitri?” For a moment, she wondered if the stress finally broke her before she dismissed it. If it did, Dimitri would look like he did on the Tailtean Plains. He wouldn’t be so calm, wearing royal armour, or missing an eye. 

“Which timeline are you from?” Kiran asked, voice breaking through her thought process and they helped her sit away from her vomit.

 “‘Timeline?’” 

“Ah, right. Each hero comes from their own individual world. In some worlds, different people won the war of Fodlan.” Kiran explained with a shrug, as apparently this was a common occurrence. 

She turned to Dimitri, “I’m assuming that in your world, you won the war?” He nodded, wincing.

“Then I guess congratulations are in order.” Edelgard continued, giving a short bow before a thought struck her. “Tell me, what was the fate of- Professor Byleth in your world?”

“They became Archbishop of the church of Serios.” Dimitri responded, starting to look concerned, but she didn’t care. That Byleth didn’t follow her, and Those Who Slither would have destroyed the church if they had a pawn in such a high position, which meant…

There was a world where Byleth lived their own life. Free.

She pushed aside any bitterness that it wasn’t her world that had that Byleth. She played her own part in what happened, and now all she could do was move forward. 

“Did I join you, or die?” Now Dimitri was openly staring at her, and she quickly schooled her expression into something more neutral. 

Dimitri glanced down, and in that moment, he looked exhausted. “You… died, El.”

She winced at the old name, “Please don’t call me that.” Her death really wasn’t a surprise. She knew how stubborn she was in the past, and how stubborn she can still be.

“I would apologise for all the heartache I put you through,” she began, standing up straight, “but we both know an apology won’t fix anything. I can only try to make it right with my actions.”

“It won’t fix anything,” Dimitri agreed, his single eye almost looking into her soul, “It’s start, though.” 

“…I’m… sorry, for everything.” The words felt like lead in her mouth, but once they’re out, she didn’t feel any lighter.  

“Thank you.” He sounded sincere, and that just make it worse. 

“Don’t thank me. Not for this.” 

————————————

It’s later, when she was directed towards a woman named Kagero after a few questions, that she thought about what she was about to do. 

She knew herself well enough to understand she only had one chance at it, and if she ruins it, would take much more time and effort to reach the same goal.

Her past self did have a very narrow mind view, so presentation would be half the battle. 

She looked at the small drink offered with a bone deep wariness, and asked “Is the drink alcoholic?”

“Yes,” The ninja- who was currently dressed as a maid- nodded as she cleaned one of the glasses, “I can get a different one if you want.”

“No, thank you, I’m going to need this.” She drank the entire thing in a few gulps, willing for the contents of the glass to give her confidence and numb any pain that would come. 

“Don’t let me have any more,” Edelgard said as she passed the glass back to the server. “I’m going to need a clear head for this.”

“Working together with an enemy for your world?” The ninja asked, as if it was something that happened every week.

“Something like that.”

—————————————

“In my world, Those Who Slither won.” That was all she needed to say to quiet her student self enough to listen. Despite all the time that passed, and everything that happened, Edelgard still knew how to stand and speak like a ruler, and she used every lesson she learned into what she had planned to say here.

“They won, because my war created instability instead of destroying it. Afterwards, they took me back to that godforsaken dungeon and continued their experiments. You know, when we were younger, they needed to keep us alive.” She didn’t bother trying to hide her bitter smile, “They didn’t need to keep us alive this time, so they didn’t restrain themselves.”

It wasn’t a kind thing to say, but Edelgard wasn’t kind. Kindness didn’t win battles, but violence didn’t win hearts. 

“Do you know, why, in the end, they failed?” She continued before her student self could interject, ignoring any memories or emotions that surfaced, “Because Dimitri’s cousin and Claude came back to Fodlan- after years of hiding- to help the people. If we killed them that night in the forest, I never would have escaped. I would have died just another nameless experiment.”  

 The ‘like our siblings’ goes unsaid, and Edelgard wondered if her younger self even heard it.

“You still think it’s a fairy-tale where the fight will be the hardest part, but war… War will be the easiest thing you’ll ever do. The most natural thing you’ll ever do. We grew up on the stories of freedom through violence, of Nemesis and Serios. We have enough resources to sit upon a throne without thinking about who died for it. We’ve been exposed to bloodshed since we were a child, so killing will be easy. Being remembered will be easy.” 

Because at the end of the day, that was all her past self was: a child who wanted to be strong and free like Nemesis. The church was the most visible cage, so it was the first one she tried to destroy.

Edelgard looked her past self in the eye, making sure that if nothing, she heard these words. “Building something after you destroy everything will be impossible for you, because you don’t even know what will come after. You haven’t even thought of it.” 

It didn’t take a mind reader to know she’s shaken the girl, but it only took a moment for her past self to deny it.

“You’ve clearly been corrupted by them, if you believe that humanity won’t be able to build themselves up once the church is gone!” Her past self had a fierce look in her eyes, and she knew at this moment the conversation wouldn’t get anywhere.

“Maybe I have,” Edelgard agreed easily, because she never did find out what it was like to have her free will taken from her. Maybe it felt like you were in control, maybe you were aware the entire time, unable to call for help, maybe it felt like you were half asleep.

She hoped that it was the last option, because if it wasn’t she didn’t know what she would do, but she knew better than to hope.

“But I’ll ask you this:” She continued, because her past self might not bother looking for anything that will change her view, but Edelgard knew her past self’s fears and hopes, and she knows just how stubborn she can be. “Do you honestly think that every act in history was created or twisted by dragons? You claim that humanity is strong, but then claim that they have no agency.

“I’m not foolish enough to try and convince you otherwise.” Edelgard turned to leave, “Nothing but your own consequences will do that. I’m just telling you to prepare for the worst.”

She took a few steps down the hallway before stopping. “Of course, if you want to learn how to limit casualties in the upcoming war, come to me. It’s a useful thing to know.”

Because she can’t force anyone to do anything. She doesn’t have the right, but if her past self is curious enough to listen, she will tell the truth, without hesitation.

Fodlan had already paid enough for her ignorance.

 ______________________________________________

I’m not gonna lie I’ve read through this at least three times now in my inbox and I just love all of it???  Holding strong even after seeing another version of herself until she’s safely away and then completely losing it?  Coming face to face with Dimitri, saying she won’t apologize for the heartache she caused because it doesn’t fix anything, but when Dimitri says that it’s a shart she does it (and it doesn’t feel any better but she did it and I’m proud of her)?  Steamrolling her way through the start of her conversation with her younger self because she knows that it’s the only way to get a word in edgewise?  It’s all fantastic and I love it and I want to see more of it

Also I felt compelled to try sketching out a conceptual CC!Edelgard take this as either thanks for sending this or a bribe for more or both your choice

[imagineaworlds]

I Love You (Part Thirty-Four) -- Aaron Hotchner

Written By: @desperately-bisexual

Request: None.

Warnings: Cursing. Death. Mentions of torture. Panic attack-- everything Criminal Minds.

Pairing: Aaron Hotchner x Greenaway!Reader

Word Count: 12919

Timeline: Season 5 Episode 09. A few days after part thirty-three.

Hotch put his hand on my knee to stop me from bouncing it at an annoying and distracting pace. I stopped and tried to relax, even though the rest of my body still felt like a goddamn Mexican Jumping Bean. Every inch of me was shaking as nerves ran through my veins. While bouncing my leg, I had been so lost in thought about what was about to happen that I didn’t even notice that it had upset Hotch. And despite the fact that I felt the urge to start the habit up again once his hand retreated from my thigh, I used every bit of self-restraint I had to refrain from doing so. Hotch was already upset, I didn’t need to add to that. I needed to be there for him, I needed to help him however he needed. He didn’t need me to be annoying or distracting. That was valid. So, I stopped.

The door to our left opened suddenly. Hotch and I both jumped to our feet, his hand finding mine and squeezing so tight I felt my knuckles touching. I winced, but still tried to squeeze back in order to comfort him and tell him: “I’m here. It’s okay. You’re okay. We’re okay.” For the past few days, he needed to hear me say it every chance we could get. “I’m here. It’s okay. You’re okay. We’re okay.” And then he could breathe for a bit until he needed to hear it again. I knew that no matter what, I'd say it as many times as he needed to hear it, no matter how repetitive it got. “I’m here. It’s okay. You’re okay. We’re okay.”

Emily stepped into the hallway, her eyes glued to the floor until she saw our shoes, and she slowly glanced up. Her face was soft and sad, like she had been holding back tears for the past hour that she had been inside that conference room. If Emily looked that bad, if Emily could crack, then I was fucked. Emily was perhaps the strongest out of all of us, even if no one wanted to admit it. She, like Hotch, had been through too much in her life already to break when it came to losing someone or something. But after what I saw, after what we lost, I knew that there was no way the next hour was going to be easy for me. If Emily could crack even the slightest bit, I was going to break into a million different pieces.

Emily held the door open behind her in order to usher me in, but I took a moment to just stay frozen in place while losing all feeling in my hand because of how tight Hotch’s grip was. I felt sick already and I hadn’t even sat down inside yet— hell, I hadn’t even seen the damn room yet. How was I supposed to go in there on my own for an hour when Hotch and I hadn’t been apart for more than two minutes since it happened? How was I supposed to survive the next hour without him there to comfort me and tell me that it was going to be alright. I knew that I was supposed to be the strong one right now. I knew that he needed me to step up and be the brave one because he couldn’t do it for once— and no one blamed him. Not a single person who knew him the way we all did blamed him for what happened or how he reacted. But when was I supposed to finally break? When was it alright for me to fall apart in his arms and have him tell me that it would be alright?

“You should go,” Hotch croaked.

I shook my head. “I can’t move.”

Hotch let go of my hand and I sucked in a breath. Honestly, I would have rathered he continued to break my hand if it meant he just continued to touch me. Not feeling him anymore made me feel like I was drowning in my nerves. In the next instant, though, he turned and put his hands on my shoulders so that I would face him and look at him. I stared into his brown eyes for a minute, finding peace in how they seemed so dark and endless. Even with a black eye, a broken nose, and scratches everywhere, he was still handsome. His eyes, the way they stared right into mine, and his hands, the way they squeezed my shoulders just right, it all brought me back to Earth and grounded me.

“I’ll be right here when you’re done. It’ll be okay.”

My heart ached in my chest. Nothing felt okay. It didn’t feel like it would ever be okay again. But I trusted Hotch, and I knew that I could believe him about this, too. If he thought that things were going to be okay, even when his whole world was falling apart, then there had to be some truth to it. So, I nodded shortly, bowing my head so that I could collect my thoughts and whatever bravery was hiding deep inside of me so that I could make the first step towards the door that Emily was still politely holding open for me.

Hotch leaned in and kissed my forehead gently before releasing me. I made my move towards the door, and Emily tried shooting me a small, reassuring smile. Even though she was trying to help, it somehow only made me feel worse. I was just too worried to appreciate how she was trying to be supportive. She was a good friend, and she had been by my side when it happened, but even her kindness couldn’t distract me from the misery that was waiting behind that door.

When I stepped into the conference room, I saw Strauss sitting at the table, her back towards me. Her head was down as she wrote some notes down in a file she had in front of her. When she heard me coming in, she glanced over her shoulder to take notice that it was me, but she didn’t smile invitingly. She gestured to the seat across from her as she sat forward again. I sucked in a deep, quiet breath as I walked around the table and took the seat that had seemingly been assigned for me.

“Well, this all feels awfully familiar,” she said to herself while adjusting her glasses on her nose. I asked myself how on Earth she could make a joke about the time she wrongfully suspended me when what just happened was absolutely horrendous. “I’ll be recording this interview for the council, if you don’t mind. It was the only way I could convince them to allow me to do this in-house with everyone on your team except for Agent Hotchner.” I shrugged. Strauss took that as a sufficient answer, so she reached out for the tape recorder between us and started it. As she settled in her seat once more, she began the interview with, “Please state your name and rank for the record.”

I shifted around uncomfortably, my sweaty hands fidgeting with the hem of my pencil skirt under the table. “Y/N Greenaway, Special Agent for the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit in Quantico, Virginia.”

How I managed to get through all of that without stuttering or throwing up everywhere,  I wasn’t sure. I just wished that there were a way for Hotch to be there with me. I didn’t want to relive what happened that day, but I especially didn’t want to do it without someone— anyone— by my side. Hell, I would have even taken up the idea of being there with Rossi, if that was what it would take.

“And, how long have you been a member of the BAU?” she inquired.

“Just under two years, ma’am.”

“And you have worked under Agent Hotchner this entire time?”

Well, that was one way to phrase it, Thank you, Chief Strauss. But I shook my head regardless of the pun that was spinning through my mind. “No, ma’am, I currently report to Agent Morgan.”

“Because Agent Hotchner’s ability to lead this unit had been compromised?”

“No, ma’am. Agent Hotchner has always been able to lead our unit, and he’s very good at it. He stepped down from the position temporarily because of the injuries he suffered at the hands of George Foyet a few months ago. He is planning on returning to his position as the unit chief once he’s feeling better.”

Strauss bit the inside of her cheek. That wasn’t the answer she was hoping to hear since she was looking for every reason to finally bury Hotch’s career now, but there was no way in hell that I was going to play her little game. Just like when she tried to get rid of both of us with our original suspensions awhile ago, I wasn’t going to play nice now. Not when Hotch couldn’t afford to lose his job now, too.

“How long have you been involved with Agent Hotchner?”

“What does it matter?”

“Just answer the question, Agent Greenaway.”

My gaze hardened as I stared at her, a challenge that said: “This is stupid.” But she didn’t relent. Her question still stood, and she was waiting for an answer. If I didn’t respond, and the committee heard that I was dodging a question about my relationship with my boss, that would raise more questions than we needed. So, I gave in.

“Just under two years, ma’am. Agent Hotchner and I got involved with one another a month into my promotion into the BAU.”

“So, you were not involved beforehand?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Your promotion into the unit had nothing to do with any kind of favoritism?”

I stared at her blankly. What kind of fucking question was that? No, I didn’t fucking get promoted because Hotch liked me. Yeah, we both secretly admired one another for years, but I didn’t know that until after I joined the BAU. Hotch told me that him and Gideon decided to hire me because of my skills. It had nothing to do with anything personal. For her to insinuate otherwise was distasteful.

I bit my tongue and answered through gritted teeth, “No, ma’am. Like I said, we got involved after my promotion.” I released my tongue. “Pardon me, ma’am, but what does this have to do with what happened?”

“Agent Greenaway, the faster you stick to just answering my questions, the sooner you can go home. The more pushback you give me, the longer this will take. So, just… answer to the best of your ability.”

I bit my tongue again, this time to hold back every curse word imaginable. If I could have, I would have leapt across the table and strangled her then and there. But with a, “Yes, ma’am,” I obeyed reluctantly.

“Good.” She looked back down at her sheet of questions. “How would you describe Agent Hotchner’s behavior in and out of work?”

“With all due respect, ma’am, this isn’t about what happens behind closed doors. This isn’t about what happens after work. This isn’t about mine and Agent Hotchner’s private life. Therefore, I will not be disclosing any information about his behavior outside of work. As for at work, he is very driven— especially since George Foyet first attacked him in our home.”

“How long has Agent Hotchner been investigating George Foyet?”

“To my knowledge, Agent Hotchner was originally introduced to The Reaper case when George Foyet first started killing in the 90’s. Agent Hotchner was promoted to lead profiler for the case, but the trail went cold, and he didn’t revisit the case until George Foyet started killing again about three months ago.” My hands pulled at the bottom of my skirt as I thought about what I was going to say next. Like I said before, I didn’t want to have to relive all of this, but there we were… I had no say in the matter. “We restarted the investigation again after Karl Arnold revealed to us that George Foyet was his secret admirer.”

“Why did you stop the investigation three months ago?”

“Because we had placed George Foyet in custody after finally catching him. By the time we learned of his escape from prison, he was long gone, and we were already home. We had other cases, and there were no new leads. We couldn’t do anything until we heard from him again or decided to kill again. So, when he reached out to us through Arnold, we restarted the investigation.”

Strauss put down her pen, took off her glasses, and looked away from her questions so that she could look me right in the eye. “I’d like to hear your side of the story. What happened that day as you remember it? Keep in mind, everyone is telling us their story, so if you lie in order to protect Agent Hotchner, it could possibly result in your immediate job termination.”

This was the dreaded moment. There were no more questions, unless Strauss needed me to clarify something. All there was left to do was give every single detail, no matter how painful. The worst part about it, though, was that I couldn’t break. No matter how bad it got, I couldn’t let Strauss, of all people, see me crumble. She had been working since we first met towards getting rid of me, and if she thought that I was “too emotionally vulnerable for the position”, she would have me gone in a heartbeat.

I reached forward slightly and grabbed an empty glass and the jug of water beside it. With a shaky hand, I nervously poured myself a full cup. “Aaron and I—” I stopped myself. Just keep it together. Please. Don’t fuck this up so soon. “Agent Hotchner and I had been staying in a safe house because we were afraid that Foyet was stalking us. We didn’t think that it was safe to go home anymore, so we left and didn’t tell anyone where we were going— even the unit had no clue we moved. We still came to work, though, in case Foyet was still watching. We wanted to give the impression that everything was alright while we started looking for him again. On Thursday,” I shivered as I thought about how that day started so innocent but ended with a trip down to Hell. “On Thursday, Agent Jareau came into work to tell us that she realized something about Foyet’s medication. We had been trying to track him through all of the medications he needed to take as a result of stabbing himself back in the 90’s in order to escape police detection. Agent Hotchner had been prescribed all of the same medicines after his stabbing, so we knew what we were supposed to be looking for, the only trouble was, no one seemed to be buying what was needed, which meant that Foyet was a ghost in the wind. Agent Jareau realized that he was taking certain over the counter medications that replicated the effects of what he needed to actually help him. So, we started looking for purchases around the area that matched, and for the medications that he couldn’t replace.”

Hotch and JJ stormed into the boardroom as Morgan, Emily, Reid, and I kept searching through every red flagged receipt in the state. Reid was going faster than the rest of us, of course, but we really didn’t know what we were even looking for. We knew that Foyet needed to bulk up on all of these seemingly random over the counter medications, but so did half of Virginia, apparently. Despite the fact that Hotch, JJ, and Garcia managed to narrow down our search to a list of different pills, it didn’t help that most of them listed were popular brands, like Claritin, Motrin, TUMS, etc. Anyone with a sick kid or grandparent was stocking up on these pills, too. We needed to narrow it down again somehow if we were going to find Foyet soon.

When they came storming in, though, they seemed to have good news. Finally. They had the name of the medications that couldn’t be replicated or substituted. Tapazole, which helped treat hyperthyroidism— a disease which caused extreme weight loss as a leading symptom. It was the only one out of all of Foyet’s medication that he couldn’t get anywhere else. That was how we were going to find him. We narrowed it down further, just like we wanted, but we still needed to get more specific. There were thousands of people in the state of Virginia who took Tapazole, and Foyet was likely using an alias. If we were going to find him fast before he could move on, we needed to fine down our geographic profile.

Foyet was last seen in Fairfax County, where Hotch and I lived. That was the day he stabbed Hotch and drove him to the hospital. The last time we heard from Foyet, however, came down to the letters he sent to Karl Arnold in prison. Each letter was sent from a different city: Westminster and Fredericksburg. So, we had three locations, which meant that we could triangulate, but that meant fuck all when Foyet’s profile stated that he liked to move around a lot when he knew he was being hunted. Even if we could possibly search the epicenter of the three cities, he was probably long gone. We needed something more.

“The center,” Morgan pointed to the map on the wall, “it’s D.C., not Virginia. Why?”

“Because he’s staying close to Hotch,” Emily assumed. “He liked watching Shaunessy deteriorate because of his guilt. Now he wants to see Hotch fall apart without his fam—” Emily stopped herself when she realized what she was saying. She had just been doing her job, profiling the Unsub, looking at the M.O., narrowing down the victimology; but she crossed a line accidentally, and she immediately regretted it. “I’m sorry,” she told Hotch quietly.

He shook his head and shrugged. “I know he’s been watching us. That’s why Y/N and I moved to a safe house and I stepped down as unit chief. I wanted him to think that he was winning.”

Morgan and I glanced at each other. Neither of us knew that. Hotch told me it was for his health and because I was worried sick about him. I didn’t think for a moment that there was a larger game at play. It still didn’t matter, though. Even if Foyet really was still watching us, and Hotch wanted that, he could be long gone already.

“Eureka!” Garcia cheered as she came running in with her computer, just on time. “The goddess and her boy toy do it again!” She set her computer down on the red table and took a seat. “I narrowed the list down to 153 names.”

“That’s still a lot of people,” I said, crossing my arms. I knew that she was doing her best, and she had just broken through a huge wall for us, but we were racing against time now. 153 names was too many. There had to be a way to find Foyet on that list.

“Garcia,” Hotch said, turning to face her, “look to see if he used the name of one of his victims as his alias.”

Garcia typed away at her computer. “Nothing.”

“What about one of the cops who worked at the precinct during his arrest?”

“Nothing.”

“What about an anagram?” Spencer offered, pushing himself to his feet, using his cane to do all the work. He limped his way over to the glass board and started writing out George Foyet’s name. We all watched as he mumbled to himself, underlining certain letters, crossing out others, rearranging a few here and there. “That’s not right,” he groaned as he erased all of his work. He then started over, using The Reaper as his base. “This goes here, that goes there, this crosses out, that goes away—” And then he got it. By some miracle, that brilliant mind of his found it. “Peter Rhea.”

“You, Dr. Reid, deserve more credit,” Garcia complimented as she typed away again. “There’s a Peter Rhea in Arlington.”

We immediately set out to head to Peter Rhea’s apartment. Morgan hurried to his office to call in a SWAT, and the second he was off the phone, our team was racing to get into the cars. Hotch drove me, Morgan, and Emily, while Rossi drove JJ and Spencer in the other car. We sped through the cities with the lights and sirens on until we reached the block over from the apartment. We split up and parked on opposite ends of the road, staying hidden around a corner and under a tree.

Morgan ordered us to stay in the cars while the SWAT team set up a surveillance system to see if Foyet was inside. He wanted to play this safe and smart since he was still getting a lot of heat from Strauss and the Director while being the new unit chief. We couldn’t go storming into some random guy’s apartment without probable cause, we all knew that, but if the call were up to Hotch, we would have already been knocking at the door. Morgan, on the other hand, wanted to wait and see if Foyet would do anything while the SWAT team got in place.

“Is he ready?” Morgan asked into his comm.

The plan was that they were going to send in an agent undercover as a plumber to see if they could get someone to open up the door. If Foyet opened the door, we could go in and continue with making the arrest. If Foyet didn’t open up, the agent was going to use a micro-wire camera to peek under the door to see if there was anything suspicious enough to give us the reasonable cause we were looking for.

I looked out the window to see the agent walking across the street with his toolbox in hand. He walked casually into the building, which was when we lost sight of him. All there was to do now was wait to hear if we could move in or see if he would connect the camera’s live feed to our tablet in the car. So, we watched as he made his way up to the apartment we suspected that Foyet was in. Still, without cause, we had to wait. But we were all getting anxious, understandably.

He first knocked on the door, waiting to see if there was a response. If Foyet opened the door, we were going to make our move. If someone besides Foyet opened the door, we would have to wait to see if there was anything incriminating of if we just got the wrong place. If no one would open up, then we’d have to use the camera. A minute passed. No one answered, even when he tried knocking again, so Morgan gave the go ahead to use the camera.

The camera snuck under the door, and we watched on the tablet in Morgan’s lap. My heart was racing in my chest. My hope was that the son of a bitch was cowering inside, making it easy for us to capture him. This time, we weren’t going to give him a chance to escape. This time, he wasn’t going to hurt Hotch.

“Morgan, look,” I pressed the tip of my index finger against the screen. “There’s unfinished food next to that laptop. The food, the unopened mail, the clean apartment. This has to be his place, and he left in a hurry.”

“He’s not fucking there?” Hotch inquired angrily.

“Move in!” Morgan demanded into his comm. The team jumped out of the cars we arrived in, all of us unholstering our weapons as we closed the doors. The SWAT team was already moving across the street in formation. 

We stormed the building, racing up the staircase together in a single file line since running was faster than waiting for the elevator. When we arrived on Foyet’s floor, Morgan led the way down the hallway, and slowed to a stop in front of the apartment. Morgan kicked the door down before running in first. Emily, Rossi, and Hotch were all right behind him, with me and JJ keeping watch in the hallway. The SWAT team was still clearing the rest of the building, and it would take a while to meet us all the way at the top floor, so we needed to search the place as fast as possible.

Morgan and I moved into the bedroom on the left while the team looked around the main room. There was a half-packed suitcase on the bed, clothes everywhere, and a safe hidden in the open closet with a stash of guns inside. He hadn’t even bothered to lock up the guns when he left, which meant that he knew he wasn’t coming back. Foyet knew we were coming, and he ran. Shit.

I lowered my weapon as I let out an angry sigh. We wasted so much time just sitting in the car. I loved and respected Morgan, and I knew that I trusted him with my life out in the field, but he made the wrong call by telling us to wait in the car. If we had gotten into the place sooner, we would have already seen this and been tracking Foyet to his next location. Now we were too far behind.

“What’s going on out here?” Morgan asked, stepping back into the main room.

The team was huddled around the computer that Foyet left, watching nervously as something beeped on the screen. I followed Morgan and leaned on my tiptoes to see the computer over everyone’s shoulders. Foyet brought what he needed to D.C., and he only took what he needed when he left this apartment in a hurry. Everything else was evidence for us, he knew that. Since he knew we were coming, he had a safety system in place to make sure we wouldn’t get our hands on anything valuable, which included the contents of his laptop. The team looked nervous because whatever was on there, it was being deleted by a program he created.

JJ was already calling Garcia to see if she could stop it and save everything that was already gone. Like the goddess she was, Garcia already hacked into the computer by the time Morgan and I were aware that this was happening. She managed to stop the program that was deleting everything just as I leaned back on my feet and stepped towards Hotch’s side to get a better look at the screen.

Hotch had his hands clasped together in front of him, his fingers picking at his cuticles nervously. He was upset that Foyet wasn’t there, that he had escaped us again, and that we still didn’t have our family back yet. We had hoped that this lead would end with Foyet in handcuffs again, and Hotch would immediately get to call Sam to tell him that Haley and Jack could come home. Both of us had hoped that this lead would have ended with us holding Jack in our arms by diner time, but the world wasn’t kind to us like that. Foyet had escaped us countless times before, and this was just another one of those cases.

“Garcia, wait—” Morgan insisted. I looked back over at the computer to see that Garcia had paused her new program which was retrieving everything Foyet already deleted. She had been running through hundreds of different pictures, just trying to collect them all, but something caught Morgan’s eye. “Hotch, isn’t that—”

Hotch grabbed his phone from his pocket and flipped it open. “Yeah, that’s the U.S. Marshal assigned to my family.”

My heart sank in my chest as Garcia continued running the program. Foyet had hundreds— if not thousands of photos of Sam. This whole time, Hotch and I had been worried that Foyet was following us in the hopes of getting to Haley and Jack, but he was really trying to get to them through Sam, the only one who knew where they were. Sam had probably visited them on multiple occasions to make sure they were doing okay, since that was the unofficial deal he made with Hotch. Every time Sam went to visit them, Foyet was there. He knew where they were. He knew how to get to them— via Sam.

“He’s not picking up,” Hotch informed us before trying Sam’s number again, this time to leave a message. “Sam, it’s Aaron. We found Foyet’s apartment, but he has surveillance of you. He might know where they are. I need you to call me for a meet location, or we’re on our way to you.”

Morgan pulled his phone out, too. “We need another SWAT team at Sam’s place.”

“That’ll take at least thirty minutes,” I said.

“It’s the best chance we got.”

“Aaron!” I called after him while he stormed out of the apartment. I looked to Morgan for his next orders. “We need to go to Sam’s house. Now.”

Morgan nodded, “Go. Reid will stay here with SWAT, the rest of us will catch up.”

I didn’t spend another second in that apartment. In an instant, I was on my toes, chasing after Hotch, jumping down the steps of the apartment building, trying to meet him at the car before he could drive off. As I pushed through the front doors in the lobby, I saw Hotch getting into the driver’s seat of the closest car we brought. Hotch spotted me running across the road as he started up the car. He waited until I was in the car to go, the door barely even closed yet, my seatbelt not on.

Hotch was driving like a mad man. He was taking the turns too fast, he was weaving around cars, he was racing through intersections without looking to see if it was safe. I genuinely feared that we were going to die before we could even get to Sam’s house. What help would we be then? Hotch could afford to at least slow down a bit, right?

I grabbed the handle on the ceiling as we took another sharp turn a little too fast. Hotch tried to regain control of the car as he straightened out the steering wheel before the car would overturn. I sighed with relief quietly when we didn’t die, then kept driving towards Sam’s neighborhood.

When we arrived at Sam’s house, Hotch drove straight up onto the curb and jumped out once the car was in park, but didn’t wait to turn off the car. I followed suit, both of us grabbing our guns as we ran up the sidewalk in the middle of the front yard. My eyes grew wide as I silently took notice of the unlocked front door that was half open. Hotch noticed, too, but nothing needed to be said about it. The plan was to do what we always did. Go in together, clear the house, find Sam. Most importantly, just pray that Sam was okay.

Hotch looked over at me. “You got me?” he whispered.

I nodded.

He faced the door and took in a deep breath before pushing it open and running in. I followed closely. Both of our weapons were raised, our fingers on the triggers. We hurried inside to search the place for any sign of Sam. Hotch checked the left side of the living room, while I went to the right. The backdoor was open, just as the front door had been.

I immediately holstered my weapon as I walked around the couch in the middle of the room to find Sam laying on the floor, bleeding out. I called Hotch’s name and he came rushing over. We both fell to our knees beside him and I started to put pressure on his wounds. Sam had been shot in the chest twice, each leg once, and in the foot a single time. I started by pressing down on his chest, and Hotch helped by holding the thigh wounds.

“Medic!” Hotch yelled to the approaching ambulance outside. “Medic, please!”

Sam groaned and opened his swollen eyes as far as he could. Foyet had beaten up his face and cut off three fingers. “I’m sorry, Hotch…” he croaked before coughing up some blood.

Hotch leaned over him to make sure they could make eye contact. “It’s alright, Sam. It’s alright. You need to tell me if he knows where Jack and Haley are.” He was being so calm. Oddly calm.

“I didn’t… I couldn’t… I’m sorry…”

“Sam, look at me,” Hotch begged. “Does he know where Haley and Jack are? What’s her phone number or address?”

“It won’t matter…”

“What does that mean?” I questioned.

“It won’t matter…” he repeated, his eyes falling shut.

I looked up at Hotch. “It’s the shock.”

I recognized his inability to speak because of how similar it was to how Hotch was after the car bombing in New York. Hotch couldn’t form complete sentences, and he always kept repeating the same thing over and over, even when I would try to ask him questions. Sam was the same way, and I couldn’t blame him. Foyet had really done a number on him. He was bleeding out fast, and I prayed that the medics would arrive soon.

“Sam, please, just tell me if he knows where our family is,” Hotch said, still calm and collected as I had ever seen him.

Sam’s eyes fluttered open for a moment, but fell shut again. He was losing consciousness. There was no way he would be able to tell us anything about where Foyet went or how to find Haley and Jack. Even if he got to the hospital before bleeding out, there was no telling when he would wake up in order to tell us where Haley and Jack were. We needed answers now, but the only person who could give them to us was unable to say anything at all.

A pair of hands grabbed my shoulders. Morgan pulled me onto my feet and out of the way as the EMTs hurried into the house with a medical bag and a stretcher. I pressed the back of my hand to my mouth to cover the worry and shock that was certainly plastered to my face. Morgan noticed my bloody hands, so he grabbed a wipe or handkerchief of some kind from his pocket. He took my hands in his while I still stared down at Sam and the medics doing everything they could to help him. I felt Morgan wipe the blood off my hands, and I could vaguely hear him talking to me, but I didn’t say anything or even more. Sam was our last chance. He was our last link. He knew where they were, and now Foyet knew.

Hotch looked as solid as a rock, not reacting a single bit. He just calmly stood and moved to the side while we all watched the EMTs get to work. They started by covering up the bullet wounds, then rolling him onto a stretcher, and as they wheeled him out, they stuck an IV in his arm. Hotch was right next to the stretcher as they rolled Sam out of the house, onto the sidewalk, and up to the ambulance waiting in the road. Morgan and I were a few steps behind, watching as the EMTs lifted Sam into the back of the vehicle. I noticed that Hotch wasn’t waiting back with us, though. No, he was all the way up there with them—

“Aaron!” I yelled, running towards the ambulance.

He was climbing in with the EMTs and was already working on closing the door when he heard me. He stopped for a fleeting moment. “Stay here! I love you!” Then he closed the door.

The ambulance immediately sped off the second the door was shut. Sirens shook the neighborhood, and the lights nearly blinded me as my eyes fogged over. I felt sick and confused again, just like I had at the hospital in New York. I tried to close my eyes, swallow hard to keep myself from vomiting, and focus on finding Jack alive. Hotch left to talk with Sam in the ambulance. That was a good move. It was the right move. But not knowing what was going on and not being able to do anything made the panic that had been building in my chest since New York come flooding back into my mind, heart, and lungs.

My ears started ringing just as my heart rate sped up and my lungs started to give out. I cursed under my breath as I hid my face in my hands and sat down before I could pass out and likely hit my head on the concrete. I tried to focus on Jack and our favorite dinosaur that was sitting at home, waiting for him to come back and play with it. I tried to not think about the bile rising in my closing throat or the way my whole body was shaking like I was standing in the middle of a world ending type of earthquake.

I gasped for breath and laid on my back, the sun’s light casting through my eyelids. It was so nice and warm out. It didn’t feel like the kind of day that was meant for this. But, then again, when was it ever the right kind of day for something like this?

“Morgan...” I croaked. “Morgan, it’s happening again.”

I could feel him crouching down beside me, putting one hand on my hair and one on my shoulder. As he tried to talk to me, it just sounded like he was screaming at me from underwater. Everything was so muffled, and nothing made sense. The ringing in my ears returned two-fold this time and I winced. Trying to balance everything— my breathing, my heart rate, my ears, my sick stomach, the shaking, the blurry sight, and the racing thoughts— all at once was too overwhelming for me. This didn’t feel like New York. It felt ten times worse than that.

“Call Hotch!” I heard Morgan yell. That was the only clear thing to me. “Call him now!” 

In a few moments following that, I felt a phone press against my ear. “Y/N?” It was Hotch. He was still in the ambulance. “Y/N? Are you there?”

“I’m here…” I whispered, opening my eyes. The feeling of needing to vomit was slowly subsiding. “Has Sam said anything?”

“That doesn’t matter right now. Just talk to me.”

I sucked in a deep breath, held it, and slowly let it out— just like the doctor in New York taught me. Slow and easy breaths. “Did he tell you where to find Jack and Haley?”

“No.” He was holding something back, I could tell.

“Foyet?”

“Took Sam’s phone, called Haley, and impersonated a U.S. Marshal.”

I pushed myself upright and took the phone from Morgan. Deep breath in, hold it, then let it out. The ringing in my ears was gone and I could hear everything around me again. “Did she tell him where they are?”

“No. She’s meeting him somewhere.”

“Do you know where?”

“Y/N, stop it. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I insisted, standing up. Morgan held his arms out like he was ready to catch me at any second. “Tell me everything Sam said. Please.”

Hotch sighed on the other end of the call, likely debating if he should tell me or hold his tongue. Someone must have told him what happened, which was why he wasn’t telling me anything, and he was avoiding talking about Foyet in order to get me talking. I promised him ever since New York that this wouldn’t happen again, and just when it finally does, he was too far away to help me.

“He told her that she was compromised and that we’re dead,” he answered. “He told her to throw away her phone and buy a disposable.”

“That son of a bitch…” I mumbled under my breath.

I gave Morgan a worried look and he called the team over. I took the phone away from my ear and put the call on speaker. My shaking was nearly gone. I felt like a million bucks again. Funny how those things work sometimes, right? Or maybe it was just that I had suppressed it all again and I was another ticking time bomb. Honestly, if that were the case, I was just hoping that I’d wait to blow up again until after we found Jack and Haley safe and alive.

“Foyet posed as a Marshal and called Haley from Sam’s phone,” I caught the team up to speed.

Emily was cocking a brow at me like she didn’t understand how I could go from laying on the sidewalk while hyperventilating to standing upright and talking about the case without any hesitancy. I tried to avoid eye contact with her so as to not be alarmed by her worry for me. 

“He still has the phone,” Hotch continued explaining for me. “He scared Haley into thinking that she’s alone and in danger. She trusts him now because the call came from a number she knew and he gave her the promise of safety. We have to find him.”

JJ pulled out her phone, “Garcia, we need you to locate Sam Kassmeyer’s phone ASAP.” She stayed on the line as Garcia worked. “Fairfax County,” she repeated for us.

“Send the approximate coordinates to my phone,” Hotch demanded before hanging up.

“Wait—” Emily tried to catch him, but he was already gone. “Garcia, is that phone still on?”

JJ, with the phone still pressed to her ear, nodded to Emily.

“It’s a trap,” Emily said.

“Emily, call the U.S. Marshals. See if they can reach Haley,” Morgan ordered as we all headed back to the cars. “It’ll be a tight fit.”

Emily, Rossi, and JJ made it work, though, as the three of them squished hip to hip in the back seat. Emily was already on the phone with the U.S. Marshal Service while JJ was still listening to Garcia as she tried to get more information about Foyer and Hotch. Emily sighed, hanging up the call she was on after having a back to back conversation while Morgan started speeding out of the neighborhood.

“Haley’s gone. They don’t know where she is,” Emily informed us.

“Guys,” JJ said, putting her call with Garcia on speaker. “Hotch is calling Sam’s phone.”

“Foyet has it, though—” I said before realizing what that meant. “Garcia, can you connect us to it?”

“Already done,” Garcia said.

“Agent Hotchner,” Foyet welcomed with a bright voice. “How are you?”

“If you touch them, I swear to—”

“What? Do you want me to be gentle, like I was with you?”

My blood ran cold. Morgan glanced over at me to read my face before turning back to watch the road. Hotch and told me what Foyet did to him, but there were obviously some details he refused to tell me, like how he was tortured. As far as I was aware, Foyet had broken into our house, stabbed Hotch a series of times after they had a fight, and then he dropped Hotch off at the hospital. He didn’t tell me anything about Foyet taking his time to torture him, though, I guessed I should have known that the Reaper wasn’t just going to let Aaron Hotchner get off that easily.

“What took you so long?” Foyet chuckled. “I was beginning to think this piece of shit phone was dead or something.” There was silence on the call for a moment. “Why are you so quiet, Aaron? You usually lash out when you’re frustrated. Remember what happened when I mentioned dear old Y/N that night? You threw a goddamn glass bottle at my head. Where’s the fight, Aaron?”

“I’m not frustrated. You’re just predictable.”

“Is that so?”

“You didn’t know where Haley was, so you tricked her into coming to you. That’s not like you either, George. Where’s the creativity?” He was pushing back against Foyet to prove that he wasn’t going to be rattled.

“You make me sound lazy, Aaron.”

“No. I just know you’re smarter than this. I mean, you did kill your parents when you were nine—”

“—They died in a car crash—”

“—That you caused and couldn’t take credit for. Is that your biggest regret? Hmm? Not being able to brag about your greatest accomplishment?”

“That’s not my greatest accomplishment,” Foyet snickered.

“No? Then what is? Getting away with all of the people you murdered in cold blood?”

“Have you stopped to ask yourself that perhaps my greatest accomplishment has yet to come? In fact, I’m staring at it right now. She’s gorgeous, Aaron. I get why you married her. But I think blonde suited her better than the brunette look. Oh— and here comes the little man! Look at how big he is now! Wow. You know, Aaron, I actually admire one thing about you. Do you care to know what it is?” Hotch didn’t say anything still, so Foyet continued. “Most couples, when they get a divorce and there’s a kid involved, they fight for custody, but not you and Haley. You two managed to work it out in a way that made you both happy. She got him nearly all the time, and you got to see him when you and your whore weren’t away.” He tsked his tongue, “Aw. Look at his little superhero t-shirt. Adorable.”

I wiped the sweat from my forehead and gestured for Morgan to go faster.

“Hey, you know what, that reminds me…” Foyet groaned like he was stretching. “When I called Haley earlier and told her that you and Y/N were dead, she said that Jack wanted me to grab a toy dinosaur from your place— mentioned something about how it’s Jack’s favorite toy and he can’t bear to move away again without it. I hope you don’t mind, but I went by your guys’ place and grabbed it for him.”

A whimper left my throat as I failed to choke back a sob. Our favorite dinosaur… The one Jack gave me before leaving. The one I had been thinking about earlier to help calm me down. Foyet went back to our house just to grab it. It was going to be the last thing Jack would see.

Rossi reached between mine and Morgan’s front seats and grabbed my shoulder to comfort me. I put my hand over his after wiping away a tear from my cheek.

Another phone on Foyet’s end of the call started ringing. “Oh, that’ll be Haley. Hold, please, while I turn you off speaker and answer her call,” Foyet said. We heard the beep of him picking up the other call and putting it on speaker for us to listen. “Mrs. Hotchner, are you safe?”

“Yes. I’m here,” Haley said.

I squeezed Rossi’s hand.

“Good. Just open the gate and I’ll drive in,” Foyet said to her.

“Okay. Thanks.” She hung up the phone as fast as she could.

“Aaron, you still there?” Foyet asked. “Listen, I gotta go. I’ll say goodbye to the little man for ya.”

“You motherfuc—” Hotch began, but the call ended.

“Garcia?” JJ asked into her phone.

“I couldn’t get an address,” she whispered in defeat. “I’m… I’m sorry.”

“Wait…” I said, letting go of Rossi’s hand. “Wait, wait, wait. Garcia, Sam’s phone is government issued, which means that they can falsify the call’s location. Is it possible that he’s not even in the middle of Fairfax?”

“It’s possible, I suppose, but the signal was bouncing from three towers around that county. He could be anywhere inside it or just outside of it.”

Hotch and I lived just outside of Fairfax County. He hadn’t moved out after Haley left him, and we certainly didn’t move when I moved in with him. We wanted Jack to have some normalcy in his life, so staying in his childhood home was the best choice. There was a gate in order to get into the neighborhood. Foyet mentioned that Haley needed to open a gate.

We were speeding down the highway towards the North side of Fairfax County, but Hotch and I lived East of the county, just barely outside of the county line. Hotch was already close by to the house after leaving the hospital, but we were at least fifteen minutes away. We wouldn’t get there in time, but Hotch could.

I scrambled for my phone and dialed Hotch’s number again and he answered. “Hotch, he’s at the house! He told Haley to meet him at our house!”

Foyet had tried to throw us off by mentioning the dinosaur, making us believe that he broke into our house in order to give Jack the toy at a separate location; when, in reality, Jack was already at the house and probably already found the dinosaur sitting prominently on the table by the front door.

“I know, Y/N. I know.”

Morgan made an abrupt U-turn, and we started speeding back towards South-East to meet Hotch at the house.

“Y/N?” he asked quietly on the other end. I hummed a tune that asked: “What?” and he followed with, “I love you.”

“Hotch, why are you—”

“If something happens… I love you.”

“Aaron, stop it,” I begged, shaking my head.

It sounded like he was saying goodbye, and it was scaring me. Why did he think that something was going to happen? Nothing was going to happen. Nothing. He was going to be fine. He was going to get there before Foyet could lay a finger on Haley or Jack. Everything was going to be alright.

“Please say it back. Please.”

“Aaron—”

“Please.”

I took in a deep breath and blinked away the tears that were welling in my eyes. “I love you, Aaron.”

“Guys, Foyet’s calling Hotch again,” Garcia informed us.

“I love you,” we both repeated to each other one last time before he hung up and answered Foyet’s call.

Garcia connected us again so that we could listen.

“Aaron?” Haley asked into their new call. “You’re okay?”

There was a beat of silence.

“I’m fine,” he responded.

“But… He said that…” Haley gasped quietly. “Oh…”

“He can hear us, can’t he?”

“Yes. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”

“Haley, don’t show him any weakness, alright? He feeds off of it.”

“Oh, come on, Aaron,” Foyet groaned out of annoyance. “Chop, chop, tell your wife what this is really all about. Come on. Let’s get this show on the road.”

“Aaron?” Haley questioned, pressing him for answers.

“Don’t listen to him,” Hotch begged, “he’s just trying to scare you.”

“Well, she should be scared, Aaron! She gonna D-I-E because you refused to listen to me!”

I looked at Morgan for any kind of consolation. He looked back at me with pressed in eyebrows and sad eyes. “We’re at least twelve minutes away,” he told me quietly.

“Ignore him, Haley!” Hotch yelled.

“Since he won’t tell you,” Foyet sighed, “I guess I will. All he had to do to save you and your son was stop looking for me.”

Haley sniffled, “Aaron, what is he talking about?”

Hotch was quiet for a long moment.

I wondered what he was going to say. Was he going to tell Haley the truth? That George Foyet had told Hotch that he would stop killing if we just stopped chasing after him— if we just put the case away until he would eventually die, then this whole mess wouldn’t be happening. Foyet proposed the deal that night in the hotel room, and Hotch practically told him to go fuck himself. It made sense why Foyet wasn’t exactly happy, and was thus trying to take it out on our family. The psychology of it made sense, but I just wanted this nightmare to end. We couldn’t go back in time and tell Foyet that we would agree to his terms, and Foyet knew it. He knew that this was Hotch’s fault, and he wanted everyone to know it. He wanted Hotch to know it most of all.

“Tell Jack I need him to work the case,” Hotch cried into the phone.

My face fell into my hands as I couldn’t hold back the tears anymore. Hotch had tried so hard all day to stay strong for himself, for me, for the team, and for Jack and Haley. He hadn’t broken once, even when I was a wreck. But Foyet had Haley and Jack. He had our son and there was nothing we could do. We were all helpless. But there was one thing Hotch could tell Jack to do that could save his life. One simple request that seemed so innocent to Foyet and everyone else— but Jack, Hotch, and I knew the truth. Telling Jack to go work the case was the last thing we could possibly do to save him. If that didn’t work, it was over. Foyet would kill both of them and we would lose.

“Hi, Daddy,” Jack said into the phone.

I let out a sob. Morgan and Rossi both put a comforting hand on me, but it didn’t matter. Nothing was going to help me. Jack sounded so happy, so oblivious to what was going on. And as I hid my face in my hands, I couldn’t help but see images of him lying dead on our carpet. We were going to find him like that… Our baby Jack.

“Hi, buddy,” Hotch sniffled.

“Is Y/N with you?”

“No… They’re coming, though. We’re both trying to get home to you as fast as we can.”

“Is George a bad guy?”

“Yes… Yes, he is, Jack. Listen, buddy, I need you on this case with me. Do you understand? I need you to go work on your superhero homework because Y/N and I need your help with this case. Does that sound good, kiddo?”

“Okay, Daddy.”

“Now give your mom a Superman hug, Jack.”

There was silence on both ends of the call for a minute, then I could hear Haley whispering to Jack that she loved him more than anything in the world and he complained that she was hugging him too tight. She apologized to him through a half sob.

“Why are you sad, mommy?” Jack questioned.

“Oh… I just love you so much,” Haley answered as bravely as she could. “Now go work the case for your dad, alright?” Jack hummed an agreement, then I could hear his little feet running off.

“I’ll be right up, Jackie boy!” Foyet called after him.

“Is he gone?” Hotch asked.

“Yes,” Haley cried.

“You’re so strong, Haley. You’re stronger than I ever was. You’re going to be alright. I’m so close. I promise.”

“Aaron…” she whispered into the phone. I could finally hear up close just how scared she was. Her voice sputtered, she was whimpering quietly, and her breath kept hitching as she tried to not sob.

“I know you didn’t sign on for this. I’m so sorry for everything, Haley. I’m so, so sorry.”

“Aaron,” she repeated like she was trying to tell him something important. He stayed quiet to listen. “Promise me that you’ll tell Jack how we met and how you used to make me laugh… He deserves to know that we were happy at one point. Promise me that. Please…”

“I promise…” he whispered in defeat. “I promise, Haley. I love you. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, Haley… I promise…”

And then there were three gunshots.

I shook and cried, Rossi’s grip tightened around my shoulder, and Morgan picked up my hand to hold it.

Three shots. Three. They rang in my ears. I counted each one. One after the other. One. Two. Three. One. Two. Three. One. Two. Three. My ears were ringing again. I didn’t even realize that the call had ended.

I heard Emily ask how far we were, and Morgan quietly said that we were still ten minutes out, if we were lucky. Ten minutes for Foyet to find Jack. Ten minutes for him to wait for Hotch to get home. Ten minutes for him to kill my family. Ten minutes to take everything from me. Ten minutes. If we were lucky. If. If we were lucky, we’d get there and maybe only Haley and Jack would be dead. Lucky. That was considered lucky. If we weren’t, I’d walk into our home to find all three of them dead and Foyet gone.

There was nothing we could do. Nothing but to wait the ten agonizingly long minutes. Every second felt like an hour. Every breath I needed to take felt impossible to reach, like a thousand pounds were resting on my chest. And yet, the world around us didn’t seem to notice. Cars on the road moved to the side to let us through, but then they continued on behind us. The trees were still, and the birds were flying high in the sky, kids were riding their bikes on the sidewalks, people were waiting for the public transport buses; and not one of them knew what was really going on. No one knew. No one cared. Just ten minutes of me staring out the window, watching all of those people living their normal, happy lives. And I wished that I were in their shoes.

As we pulled into the neighborhood, I sat up straight, wiped my eyes, and adjusted my vest. I let go of Morgan’s hand and shrugged off Rossi’s touch on my shoulder. I pulled out my gun and checked the magazine and the chamber while telling Morgan that I’d lead us inside quietly. No one argued. They just seemed as shell shocked as I should have still been, but I couldn’t afford to let my guard down when my family was in danger in our house.

Hotch’s car was parked on the grass in front of the house like he sped up as close to the door as he could get before jumping out and running in. The front door was wide open, but all of the blinds inside were closed. Someone had set the house up, and that someone was probably Foyet. He was toying with us. He had been planning this for so long while stalking us, and now that the day had finally come, he was probably sitting inside, smiling and waiting.

As the team got out, the EMTs and SWAT team also arrived. Morgan went over to talk with them about the plan for proceeding inside, while the rest of the team had my back going into the house. We quietly ran up the front lawn, and Rossi pushed the front door open carefully to make sure it wouldn’t break or hit the wall. Our favorite dinosaur wasn’t on the front table as I had left it, which meant that Jack had it with him in his spot, or Foyet took it. I didn’t want to assume anything past that while I needed to focus on finding them all alive.

The house was dark with no lights on and the curtains drawn, so we all pulled out our flashlights. I crossed my wrists over each other, one hand holding my gun up, the other pointing my flashlight forward to help me navigate my way around my own home. I gestured to Rossi and JJ to check upstairs while Emily followed me as we proceeded quietly throughout the first floor.

There was nothing in the living room that was out of place. Not a single thing. Even all of Jack’s toys were put away, even though Hotch and I had left them out on purpose to make it feel like he was still around. Someone had cleaned up, maybe it was Foyet, or maybe it was Haley. Either way, the room was still empty, so we moved on.

The door to the kitchen was wide open. Inside, one of the drawers was pulled out all the way. I checked the inside of it and noticed that our spare flashlight was gone. Hotch had come through there, too. I checked the knife rack, taking note that all of the knives were still there. No sign of a struggle in the kitchen. So we moved on again.

We worked our way into the dining room, and that was where we found the first evidence of a struggle. The table was broken like someone had been thrown onto it and it collapsed under their weight. Then just beyond the wreckage of the table, we saw the first trace of blood on the carpet. I pointed at it for Emily, and she nodded to tell me that she saw it, too. The trail led to the stairs, which was where Rossi and JJ were already looking around— and truth be told, since we hadn’t found Haley, Hotch, or Jack downstairs, it meant that they were upstairs, and I didn’t want to be the one to find them. I was fine with waiting downstairs for Rossi or JJ to tell me the bad news.

“Pssst,” Emily drew my attention to the window that was facing the backyard.

There was something going on outside, but we weren’t sure what. It could have just been the neighbors making some noise, or maybe the SWAT team was surrounding the house to make sure Foyet wouldn’t get away. Whatever it was, we needed to know, so I walked over to the window and carefully pulled the drape to the side to take a look. I peeked into the backyard for just a moment before realizing what was going on. Without warning, I dropped the drape and dashed for the backdoor, which was open, too. Emily chased after me, not sure what I saw, but still decided to follow my lead.

I holstered my weapon as I ran out past the patio and onto the grass. “Hotch!” I yelled at him, sliding to my knees. He was straddling Foyet’s torso while continuously beating him. Foyet was unrecognizable behind the blood and bashed in face, yet Hotch kept fucking going. “Aaron, stop!” I grabbed his arm before he could land another punch and pulled him off of Foyet. He sobbed as he fell back into my chest, and I wrapped my arms around him to make sure he wouldn’t try to get back on Foyet to keep going. “Aaron, it’s me! He’s dead! He’s dead! Stop!” He slumped against my body, giving up, and sobbed even harder. “Baby…” I cried. “Where’s Jack?”

He stopped crying at the realization that he hadn’t gone to find Jack yet. He wiggled himself out of my hold and scrambled desperately to his feet, nearly tripping over himself as he did so. I pushed myself off the ground, too, and chased after him into the house. Emily didn’t follow us, though. She stayed on the porch, just staring at Foyet’s body and all the damage Hotch had done. Hotch was capable of so much, but no one ever truly saw the extent of what he could do when he was angry. While it didn’t exactly surprise me how Foyet ended up, I could understand why Emily was so shocked and speechless.

We ran through the dining room, jumped over the pool of blood on the carpet, and hurried up the stairs. I noticed that the corner wall on the staircase had a dent at the bottom, like someone had smashed their head into it during a struggle. There was blood all over the stairs, and the banister, and the walls. So much blood… But we kept running. I used the railing to pull myself up faster, skipping as many steps as I could at a time without accidentally running into Hotch.

When we reached the top of the steps, we turned to the left and ran into the office together. Hotch’s desk was under the window that looked over the driveway on the side of the house, and my desk was on the wall to the left of that. Between our desks was a large wooden chest with a leather padded seat on the top.

Hotch hesitated in front of it, not sure if he wanted to look inside. But I didn’t wait. I had to know. Did Foyet kill my little man? Did he kill the only innocent thing in our lives? Did he win?

I knelt down and slowly opened the lid. A sudden sigh of relief left me before I started to cry again. Jack was laying down in the chest, messing with the power switch of his Spider-Man themed flashlight in one hand, and playing with our favorite dinosaur with the other. As I opened the lid all the way and rested it against the wall, Jack sat up and I immediately hugged him tight. I let out a painful cry as he nuzzled his head against my shoulder and hugged me back with his Superman strength. I lifted him out of the chest and cradled him close.

“I worked the case with you, Dad,” Jack said to Hotch.

Hotch crouched down beside me and pushed back some of Jack’s blonde hair out of his face. “You did a great job, buddy.” Hotch kissed my temple for a long moment.

Jack unwrapped his arms from our hug, and so did I. “Are you okay, Dad?”

Hotch nodded, “I’m okay. I want you to go outside with Ms. Jareau, okay?”

I looked over to the door to see JJ and Rossi standing there. No Haley with them.

One. Two. Three.

The gunshots rang in my ears again as Jack pried himself away from me and ran into JJ’s arms. JJ caught him with a forced smile and immediately carried him downstairs, making sure that he couldn’t look down the hallway to our bedroom. Rossi stayed in the doorway to make sure that we were okay, though.

Hotch fell from his knees onto his hip and leaned into my side as he started sobbing again. I turned and sat with him on the floor so that I could hold him better. He hid his bloody face in my shoulder, screaming into my shirt. My hands went up to the back of his head and held him close. My fingers curled in his hair as I let out another sob with him.

Jack was safe, but at what cost? Haley… One. Two Three. Haley didn’t make it. That was Foyet’s final move, his greatest achievement. He died knowing that he had beat Aaron Hotchner. He died knowing that he took something that meant everything to Hotch. And that was a win for him. He didn’t have to kill Jack, he didn’t have to kill me, and he didn’t even have to kill Hotch. All Foyet needed to do was take out Haley and that was it.

Hotch’s hands curled into fists around the fabric of my sleeves. I knew that he was trying to stop. I knew that he didn’t want to keep crying. He had been brave all day. He had been so strong, despite everything. And now… Now… He just couldn’t hold it in anymore, and I couldn’t blame him. Haley was the first love of his life. They had been together since high school, and she gave him the greatest gift of their lives, which was Jack. They loved each other so much, even after the divorce, and even after meeting me. They had been through hell and back together, and he knew that he had to let her go when she had finally had enough, even though it was the hardest thing for him to have ever done. Hotch never stopped loving her, it just changed after their separation. He lost her and that was the breaking point.

Foyet had killed dozens of people over his lifetime, he had taunted us, he had stabbed Hotch, he had taken the ring that was supposed to be mine, he had stolen our family from us, and he had killed Sam. And yet… none of that broke Hotch until Haley. He could go through all of that without blinking an eye, and then there was Haley.

One. Two. Three.

Hotch leaned back and looked into my eyes. His nose was broken, his forehead, lips, and cheeks were all bleeding, and his tears were still streaming down his face; but he looked right at me and took my face in his bloody hands. “Are you alright?”

I shook my head. “Are you?”

He shook his head and screwed his eyes shut again. “She’s in the bedroom… On the floor… Her eyes are open… And she was staring at me…” I brushed some strands of his dark hair out of his face. “I’ve gotta close her eyes…” He let go of my face and slowly stood up.

“Aaron—” I tried to catch his sleeve before he could leave me, but he kept going.

I took a moment to just watch him through my fogged up eyes from where I was sitting on the floor. He stumbled around, catching himself on the walls, then pushed past Rossi, who was still standing there. As Hotch walked into the hallway, Rossi and I finally made eye contact. He nodded his head to the side, a gesture that I should go with Hotch because he shouldn’t be alone. I slowly stood and started peeling off my vest. Rossi took it from me as I passed him on my way into the hallway.

I felt my knees buckle slightly as I passed Jack’s room and saw Haley’s feet in our bedroom at the end of the hall. I could tell that was lying on the floor, just as Hotch warned me, yet I still wasn’t prepared for it. Only one shoe was still on her feet, the other one neglected on the side. Foyet had… He wasn’t known for messing with the bodies afterwards, but this was different. He wanted this to hurt as badly as it could. He took every precaution to ensure that he would win. Messing with Haley’s body after she was dead… That was just senseless and cruel. It didn’t bring him any direct pleasure. What did it for him was that it would hurt Hotch the most.

As I practically limped up to the bedroom, I saw that Hotch was already on the floor with Morgan, cradling Haley’s dead body in his arms and sobbing into her shoulder. Morgan had a hand on Hotch’s other shoulder to try and comfort him, but it wasn’t doing any good as Hotch continued to cry and cry. I had never seen him like that. I had never seen him so out of control, so broken. I had seen him cry before, of course, but this was different. This was watching his heart break over and over again as he realized that he wasn’t in a nightmare, that this was real life, that he had really lost her, for good this time.

Morgan stood and met me in the doorway, “Y/N—”

He was trying to stop me from going in and seeing more, but I had to know. I had to see. I had to be with him. So I pushed by. Morgan let me pass, but I didn’t make it very far into the room.

One. Two. Three. They rang again as I saw all the blood.

One. Two. Three. I saw the bullet holes in her chest and neck.

One. Two. Three. I saw an engagement ring on her finger.

I turned to Morgan and covered my mouth to stop to myself from throwing up everywhere. He caught me and held me in his arms as I started sobbing again.

Foyet always liked to take something from his victims and put them on the next. It was his signature. When he hurt Morgan, he took his credentials, then left them on Hotch when he was stabbed and taken to the hospital. Hotch told me that Foyet had specifically gone looking for the engagement ring he was planning on giving me, and we all knew that it was going to be placed on his next victim— but I didn’t find any ring on Sam, considering Foyet had cut his fingers off. 

When I saw Haley, though, I suddenly knew why.

She wouldn’t have been wearing an engagement ring— she wouldn’t have even been wearing her old wedding ring. Foyet took the ring from Hotch because he knew he was going to kill Haley. He knew that he wanted this to be his grand finale, and he wanted to make sure it hurt like a bitch. He wanted to prove to Hotch that this was all somehow his own fault. If he didn’t divorce Haley, this wouldn’t have happened. If he didn’t turn down Foyet’s offer, this wouldn’t have happened. If he had been just a few minutes quicker getting to the house, this wouldn’t have happened. Hotch let Haley down and Foyet rubbed it in his face by not only taking Haley away from him, but the joy that came from buying that ring for me and the excitement of getting to propose to me one day with that very ring. Foyet knew that I wouldn’t want that ring anymore. He knew that Hotch wouldn’t want to even tear it off of Haley’s finger. He took Haley away, and he took away something that was important for us moving on.

He won in every way.

One. Two. Three.

Strauss stared at me silently. There were no words. There was nothing she could say to me that would matter, and she knew it. Even if she could give her condolences, I wouldn’t accept them from her. She didn’t care about me, or Hotch, or the team, or even Haley or Jack. Yet she still couldn’t even find the words to conclude our interview. All she could do was silently turn off the tape recorder between us and watch as I left the room.

As I stepped into the hallway, I let out the breath I had been holding in my chest for that entire interview. I put my hands on my knees and tried to focus on the marble floor in order to ground myself. Hotch approached me, his shoes sneaking into my field of view. I stood up straight and sighed.

“I never want to talk about it again. Ever,” I told him.

He nodded understandingly. The door opened again and Strauss told us that she was ready to speak with Hotch before the rest of the committee would show up to make the final decision about whether or not he would get to keep his job at the FBI. Hotch thanked her for letting him know and asked if we could have another moment alone. She smiled lightly and retreated back into the room.

We stared at each other again, just like we had before I went into the conference room to endure that Hell. Understandably, he was the nervous one now. He was probably going through the motions, too. He wanted me to go with him, he wanted me to hold him, he wanted me to be there as a constant reassurance that everything was going to be alright— that I was alright. He wanted to know that, no matter what, I wouldn’t leave him, that he hadn’t failed me, that I was safe and I was his. He lost one love, he couldn't afford to lose me, too.

“I love you,” I told him when we were alone again. “Whatever happens… I love you…”

Hotch cupped my cheek with one of his palms, and I pressed into his touch. “I love you, too.” He kissed my forehead, but when he pulled away, I leaned up to kiss his lips. We pressed into each other’s touch gently. I didn’t want to hurt him, and he didn’t want to hurt me, but we needed to feel the softness of each other’s lips, and we desperately needed the comfort of our kisses. “You’ll stay with Jack?” I nodded and felt tears welling up in my eyes again. “Don’t cry. Please,” he quietly begged.

“I’m trying,” I croaked. “I’m here. It’s okay. You’re okay. We’re okay.” He wiped away the tear on my cheek that managed to escape me. Before it could get worse, I turned away from Hotch’s touch and hid my face from him. “I’ll be with Jack when you’re done.”

Hotch stepped around me before he could break, too. I stood in the hallway as he entered the conference room, leaving me all alone. I let out an audible sob and started crying again. It was hard enough for me to go through that interview without shedding a tear… I couldn’t imagine the struggle Hotch was going to face over the next hour. And he was going to be all alone. All I could do was hear the way he cried that day replaying over and over again in my mind. I had never heard anyone sound that distraught in my life. It was probably even worse than hearing the gunshots. Whenever my ears weren’t ringing with the sound of Foyet’s weapon firing, it was echoing Hotch’s screams, and I could still feel it on my shoulder every time I thought about it.

“Hey, sunshine,” Morgan cooed from behind me, putting a hand on my shoulder.

I sucked in a shaky breath before wiping my eyes and turning around. When I saw him and the rest of the team standing there, Jack in JJ’s arms, I tried to act like I hadn’t just broken down by forcing a smile on my face so that Jack couldn’t worry about me.

“Hey, there, little man,” I said to Jack as JJ handed him over to me. He was getting so darn big; it was hard to hold him when I hardly had enough energy to stand up straight. Jack hid his face in the crook of my neck, just like he had when I pulled him out of the chest in our office. I felt the tears start to pour again, even though I was trying so hard to make it stop. “I love you…” I whispered to him, hardly making it to the end of what I really wanted to say. “I love you so much.”

“I love you, too,” he whispered back, playing with my hair with his fingers as he said it.

I looked over at Emily and saw that she had finally broken. I held out the arm I could afford to let go of Jack with, offering the team the hug I desperately needed. Emily was the one who hugged me and Jack, Morgan hugging me and her, Garcia hugging him and Jack, and so on.

“I love you guys.”

--------

criminal minds family: @peggy1999 @gorgeousdarkangel @alex--awesome--22 @oceaneblu @brithedemonspawn @absolutemarveltrash @bshelley322​ @rousethemouse​

[echo-bleu]

jump and hope it’s not a cliff

Summary: Five times Alec and Magnus come out, and one time they come home.

“I’m gay,” he blurts out.

Some part of him still expects it to be earth-shattering, but it’s not. It’s almost nothing, just a word, a single syllable that falls out of his lips easily. It doesn’t suddenly make everything click into place, or scramble his whole being.

It’s just a fact.

Malec, about coming out and pride and supporting each other.

A/N: This is set in the same universe as map out a world and there are a few callbacks, but this should easily stand on its own. Alec is autistic, and everything else is mostly like canon, except that I stretched out the timeline. Part 1 to 3 are set somewhere during season 2, 4 during season 3 and the last two at some point in the future. The title is a quote from Red, White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston (thank you Cor for the suggestion).

A huge thank you to the amazing @moonlight-breeze-44  who did a great job betaing this and cheering me on, as well as all the wonderful people in the Malec Discord Server for helping me come up with some of these scenes and being super supportive. This fic was truly a work of love and it's very close to my heart, so it's a little daunting to finally post it!

Warnings: part 5 contains a transphobic character who says very transphobic things. You might want to skip that part if it's a sensitive subject. The rest contains mentions of (mostly past) queerphobia and ableism, but it's all fairly light.

Read on AO3.

1.

Alec can’t remember a specific moment when they came out to each other. He remembers Magnus openly flirting with him — right in front of his siblings, too, and Alec is just embarrassed by how utterly clueless he was, though Magnus seems to think it was adorable — and his own clumsy attempts at flirting back, once he got over his confusion. But he doesn’t remember ever saying “I’m gay.”

He’s not sure he’s ever said it out loud, to anyone, like the word is heavy and draining and it’s something best left half-implied, a whisper of a suspicion rather than a hard fact; despite the evidence. Alec is attracted to men — is attracted to Magnus, really, because besides his mistaken infatuation with Jace, he’s never felt that pull for anyone else — but he doesn’t speak of it. Magnus just seemed to know, just like Izzy did, just like Jace did, or maybe he took a leap of faith and he’s really good at appearing more confident than he actually is.

What he does remember is skimming through Magnus’ Clave file, that day before they went to meet him at his club, and the leap his heart made when he read about Magnus’ well known “proclivities” towards lovers of all genders. It was followed by fear and disgust, because of course the Clave would write this down as proof of Magnus’ untrustworthiness and dangerous behavior. Alec was dangerously close to thinking that way, back then, too terrified of people finding out about him to fully question what he’d been taught to believe. He tucked the information into a corner of his mind, and he’d be hard-pressed to tell if it influenced his first impression of Magnus and how.

They’ve been dating for over two months now, and they’ve never spoken about it. They’ve never spoken about Alec’s very public coming out to the Clave beyond agreeing to a date. They’ve discussed past relationships — or lack thereof — and the political issues that come with a Shadowhunter dating a Downworlder, especially as they’re both prominent figures in the city, but they’ve never spoken of themselves or the couple they form in terms of queerness.

And now, staring at the rainbow cover of the new book in Magnus’ hands, Alec wonders why.

He shakes himself out of his thoughts and finishes hanging his jacket on the coat rack as Magnus puts down the book and stands up with a wide smile. They’ve decided on a quiet night in tonight — dinner and a movie — after a week that has been horrendously long for both of them. Unresolved issues are piling up at the Institute, but right now Alec just wants to relax and enjoy his boyfriend.

Boyfriend. He’s still getting used to that. He thought for so long that he could never have any of the things that so many people take for granted, and feeling for someone what he feels for Magnus, having it reciprocated, seemed the most unattainable of them all.

“You seem distracted,” Magnus remarks after a moment of silence in their dinner.

Alec looks up guiltily and stills his fingers, which have been tapping a discreet rhythm on his thigh. “Sorry,” he says, sheepish. “I didn’t mean to zone out.”

“What were you thinking about?”

“You,” Alec admits — it’s not a hardship to admit it at all. He spends most of the time that isn’t directly taken up by Institute business thinking about Magnus, in one form or another. He worries, often, that maybe it’s too much, that Magnus is going to find him too intense, but so far Magnus just preens at the attention.

“I’m flattered,” Magnus quips. “Anything specific?”

Alec’s eyes fall on the rainbow book on the coffee table again, across the room. It’s a book about queer history or something similar, something he hasn’t seen Magnus read about before. It’s flashy and mundane and distracting. There’s a strange tug in Alec’s stomach at just seeing a rainbow here, in Magnus’ living space, a fear that shouldn’t be there anymore.

“I’m gay,” he blurts out.

Some part of him still expects it to be earth-shattering, but it’s not. It’s almost nothing, just a word, a single syllable that falls out of his lips easily. It doesn’t suddenly make everything click into place, or scramble his whole being.

It’s just a fact.

“Okay,” Magnus says slowly, frowning a little like he can tell he’s missing something. “I already knew that, Alexander.”

Alec runs his thumb down the fabric of his jeans and works his jaw. “Yeah,” he says. “I’m not sure I did.”

Magnus frowns further, uncomprehending, then his face lights up. “You’ve never actually said it, have you? If you came out at the wedding—” he waves a hand.

“That wasn’t planned, and my parents aren’t exactly interested in talking about it,” Alec says. “I kinda feel like I used you, actually. We weren’t even dating or anything, and there’s a gap between flirting with me and kissing me in front of the entire Institute.”

Magnus shakes his head. “I was surprised, but I’ve never been shy or particularly closeted, if that’s what you mean. And I was definitely hoping that you’d call off the wedding. It was a hell of a way to come out, though.”

“It sure didn’t help my standing with the Clave,” Alec mutters. “Or my relationship with my parents. But I don’t regret it. I regret not really giving you a choice, though. Even if you’re not in the closet, I know the Institute doesn’t represent something positive for you, and publicly being with a Shadowhunter can’t be good for your reputation.”

“My reputation has been through much worse than this,” Magnus reassures him. “But I appreciate your concern. And I promise you I was a willing participant.”

Alec nods in acceptance and eats a few more bites of his risotto. Like everything Magnus conjures, it’s delicious. They eat in silence for a moment, but Alec feels Magnus’ gaze on him, intense but somehow not heavy.

“I’m bisexual,” Magnus finally says. “I’ve used many labels over the years, some whose meaning is very different now, and often no labels at all, but that’s the one I like best.”

Alec carefully commits the information to memory and looks up to meet his eyes, to show that he’s listening.

“Did you always know?” he asks. “Even when you had no words for it?”

Magnus takes a moment to think about it. “I think so,” he answers. “It was always a part of me, like my magic or my eyes. I didn’t always accept it, but I knew.”

Alec nods, feeling like he can’t relate to that certainty. Clarity isn’t something he’s ever had about himself, about anything. Whether it’s about his sexuality, or his aspirations, or even who he is as a person, it’s always been muddled. The identities his parents and the Clave tried to impose on him, Shadowhunter and Lightwood and soldier, have never felt quite right, like he doesn’t fit into the boxes he desperately tries to hide in, but neither have the labels he’s come across since, not really.

“I’m gay,” he murmurs to himself again. He’s not sure it feels right. Maybe he just needs to get used to it, after years of not daring to apply the word to himself. Maybe it’s really just a word, and its power drained out with the need to hide. Alec shakes his head. It’s better than anything else. It’s enough. It has to be, right?

2.

Magnus claps his hands once, making a bowl of popcorn appear on his knees. “Here,” he says. “The real movie night experience.”

He had been horrified to learn that Alec has never done that before. His siblings have sneaked out to go to the movies with their teenage dates, but Alec was always the good son, and the Institute only has one TV in the break room that is certainly not casually watched by the Head of the Institute, which Alec has functionally been since he was sixteen.

Magnus doesn’t count the few classic movies Alec watched on his own on his laptop in the safety of his room as a real movie night experience. Movie night is, by definition, something you do with others.

He passes the bowl of popcorn to Alec, taking a few pieces with his other hand and popping them into his mouth. They’re sitting side by side on the couch in his living room, rearranged for the occasion. Magnus has pushed aside the two armchairs that usually occupy the other side of the coffee table in favor of a huge wide screen TV, which is currently displaying the opening scene of The Fellowship of the Ring.

“Why does it include popcorn?” Alec frowns, taking a few from the bowl and passing it back. He’s sitting cross-legged on the couch, a fluffy pillow on his lap and his new tangle toy in his hand. He’s very recently started to loosen up around the loft and actually make himself comfortable, rather than constantly staying straight-backed and tense, and Magnus never tires of watching him stim and relax.

Magnus puts his feet up on the coffee table. “It’s tradition, Alexander!”

“Aren’t you way older than the invention of the cinema?”

“Come on, movie night is something you’re supposed to enjoy, not question,” Magnus says. “Shh, I love this bit,” he adds when Gandalf makes his entrance.

Alec huffs and sits back, but there’s a smile on his face, and he’s almost close enough that their thighs touch. Magnus lets him take the first step, knowing that Alec doesn’t always handle touch well, but by the time Frodo sets out of the Shire, Alec has sought out Magnus’ free hand and interlaced it with his own.

He listens amusedly to Magnus commenting on every moment of the movie, marveling at the landscapes and critiquing the largest departures from the books, which Alec hasn’t even read. He doesn’t say anything beyond making some noises at the right places, up until the first sword fights.

“But you can’t hold a sword that way!” he protests. “His posture is all wrong!”

Magnus holds back a laugh. “It’s a movie, darling. Cinematic aestheticism is more important than realism.”

“But this is wrong! How can anyone not see it?”

Magnus keeps it to himself that he definitely didn’t, in spite of his rather extensive training. His martial arts knowledge is very different from Alec’s sword-fighting techniques. “Just relax and let yourself enjoy it,” he says, squeezing Alec’s hand.

By the time they get to the Moria fight, Alec is leaning forward to watch more closely and sputtering. “That’s not how you hold a bow!”

Magnus shrugs. “He looks rather dashing while doing it, so who cares?”

“Who cares? I care! This doesn’t make any sense! Don’t these actors have a modicum of training?”

“I’m sure they do,” Magnus says. Alec’s indignation is rather hilarious, even if it doesn’t let him truly enjoy the movie. His purpose was to show it to Alec, anyway, not to watch it himself. Watching Alec’s reactions is endearing and more fun than the movie itself. “But they’re thinking more about making it look good than realistic. And they’re all really hot doing it, which doesn’t hurt.”

Alec blinks at that and tilts his head. “You think they’re hot?”

Magnus turns his head toward him in surprise. “Don’t you?”

Is Alec jealous? It doesn’t seem to fit with his character, not over such a small thing, but Magnus doesn’t know everything about him yet.

“I don’t know, I guess?” Alec shrugs. “I haven’t really thought about it.”

Magnus opens his mouth and closes it. He pauses the movie, and Alec frowns in surprise. “Alec, do you...who do you think is hot?”

“I, uh,” Alec hesitates. “I don’t know. Why is that important?”

“It’s not, necessarily, but most people don’t say ‘I guess’ when asked if someone is hot or sexy. You can have a type, but—” Magnus gestures in frustration, struggling to explain. “It’s something you see right away.”

Alec stares at him for a moment, lost. “I don’t… I’m not sure I understand. I mean, you’re beautiful. You’re hot, I suppose. Them—” he gestures at the TV. “I don’t know them.”

Magnus carefully doesn’t let the ‘I suppose’ hurt — he knows Alec doesn’t mean it the way it sounds. He smiles at the compliment, instead. “So you need to know someone to appreciate their sexiness?” he asks.

Alec takes a moment to think about it. “You’re the only one I’ve really thought of as sexy,” he says slowly. “And even then...it’s not something I’d think unprompted? It’s just not important to me, I suppose.”

“Alexander, are you asexual?” Magnus asks slowly.

For a moment, Alec looks like a fish out of water. He opens his mouth and closes it several times, searching for his words. He’s twisting his stim toy more and more nervously, so Magnus releases his hand to let him stim freely, putting his own hand on Alec’s thigh instead. Alec flinches away, though, so he lets him go.

“I don’t know,” Alec finally says. “Maybe? What if I am?”

“There’s a bunch of different identities under the asexual umbrella,” Magnus says. “It doesn’t have to be all or nothing.”

Alec freezes for a second, then squeezes his tangle toy hard in his hand. “Is it a problem? If I’m completely asexual?”

“No, of course not,” Magnus says hurriedly. “You’re wonderful the way you are.”

“Then why is it important?”

“For us?” Magnus checks. Alec nods without looking in his direction. “It just means that we need to talk about boundaries a little more than I’m used to. I want to do that with you, anyway, but maybe we should dig deeper than I anticipated.”

Alec nods tightly. “Okay.” He doesn’t sound like he really believes it.

“Alexander, I don’t know what you’ve been told, but it doesn’t make you lesser, or broken, if you don’t feel attraction to people. It’s just different. Some people are straight, some are gay, or bi, or something else. Some are ace.”

“But I’m gay,” Alec says.

It dawns on Magnus then. Of course, in the homophobic environment Alec grew up in, he would have defined a large part of his identity through his gayness, even before he was fully aware of it. Now that he’s come out, there are likely people at the Institute or even the Clave who only think of him as “the gay one”. Or “the gay one who is shagging a Downworlder,” probably, but Magnus doesn’t want to open that particular can of worms tonight.

“It doesn’t make you any less gay,” he says. “You can be asexual and homoromantic. Or gray-asexual or demisexual and still sexually attracted to men.”

“I think I’m attracted to you,” Alec says quietly. “I mean, sexually. I know I want to kiss you and date you, but I think I also want to have sex with you.” He’s red as a brick wall by the end of his sentence, but he bravely plows through, his voice even quieter. “I don’t think I was sexually attracted to Jace.”

Magnus nods as neutrally as he can. “And other people?”

Alec just shakes his head.

“Even romantically?”

He shakes his head again, his cheeks even redder. He’s started stimming again, so fast that his hands are a blur.

Magnus refrains from telling him that he feels giddy about being so special for Alec, because this isn’t something Alec chose. He doesn’t try to touch him, even though he wants to reach out. “So you’ve only been romantically attracted to people you already knew?”

“I don’t know,” Alec shrugs. “I didn’t really know you?”

“When did you start feeling attraction for me?”

Alec bites his lip, thinking. “I liked that you paid attention to me. No one gives me a second look, usually, unless I’m giving out orders. Jace and Izzy are easier to...approach, I guess. But I didn’t feel like...like you said, losing my breath and all that, until later. The day you said that, actually.”

“So you did know me by then,” Magnus says, trying to keep his voice neutral.

“Were you attracted to me from the beginning?” Alec asks hesitantly, like he’s not sure he wants to know the answer.

“Yes,” Magnus admits easily. “But attraction isn’t something you have to act on. I liked what I saw as soon as I laid eyes on you, but then I learned to appreciate you. Your personality, your sense of humor, your loyalty to your siblings. That’s not just attraction. That’s falling in love.”

“And asexuals can do that?”

“Some of them can, some of them can’t. Some want to and some don’t. There’s no one-size-fits-all with this.”

“So what am I?”

Magnus takes a breath, trying to figure out what Alec really needs to hear. Does he need a label? Or just reassurance? He decides to go for the option that feels the least patronizing and tries to answer his actual question. “You can correct me if I’m wrong, but I think that what you’re describing is demisexuality, and maybe also demi-romanticism. It means you need to know someone, to have an emotional connection to them, before you feel attraction. But you could also say that you’re gray-ace and gray-romantic, since you don’t experience attraction often or in the same way as most people, but you do have some attraction.”

Alec nods throughout, his eyes boring a hole into the TV he’s staring at with intense focus. Magnus can even see him mouth some of the words, trying them out. “I think that sounds right,” he says slowly. “I don’t know, I need to think about it more, but it’s a start.”

“You don’t need to settle on a label tonight,” Magnus tells him.

Alec swallows. “No, I know, but...you deserve to know. Even if you’re amazingly tolerant, you deserve to know what you’re getting into.”

Magnus closes his eyes briefly. “No, Alexander,” he says, pained. “Your identities are yours and yours alone, and you don’t need to put words on them for me. I’m not being tolerant; I love you for who you are, and anyone who can’t accept you, all of you, doesn’t deserve the time of the day. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

Alec breathes out through his nose and stills his hands for long enough to look in Magnus’ direction. “Okay,” he murmurs with a tiny smile. He reaches out and takes Magnus’ hand in his. “I love you too.”

3.

“Mister Bane, please refrain from interrupting me in the future.”

Magnus sighs. The meeting has been going on forever, and the President of the Spiral Council, a warlock older than himself but disliked by nearly the entire community, is being downright insulting by refusing to call him by his rightful title of High Warlock. He feels the usual prickle of his skin at the address, at the way she insists on the Mister.

“My apologies,” he relents, all energy to argue drained out of him. He’s been fighting her on this matter — a change in the interrogation protocols for the warlocks captured by Valentine, ultimately a waste of resources — for three hours, and he’s done. He glares at the assembled warlocks around the table, who all agree with him but don’t have the guts to speak up. Why does he always have to do all the work?

He sits through the rest of the meeting without saying a word, resolutely ignoring the constant taunts from the President. She’s not worth his time. Not if no one will back him up.

Magnus is tired and more than a little upset when he makes it back to his loft. Minor inconveniences are piling up to make today one of the worst days of work he’s had in awhile. At least Alec will be here tonight, on his night off from patrol.

Magnus magically summons the few bills that have been left in his mundane mailbox downstairs at the same time as he takes off his jacket and haphazardly throws it on the floor of his bedroom. His heart constricts a little more at the sight of the address, Mister Magnus Bane. He doesn’t want to deal with this today, but he can’t seem to escape it.

He banishes the bills and changes his outfit to a silk robe with a snap of his fingers. There, better. At least now he’s comfortable.

Sighing, he sits down at his makeup console. He looks at himself critically for a moment. He went overboard with the makeup this morning, and the heavy, dark eyeshadow that he thought made him look mysterious now just seems to carve in his eye sockets, and he looks gaunt instead. He makes it disappear, leaving only the light eyeliner lines.

He woke up with a strong need to shave off his goatee, along with most of the hair on his body. He goes through one of these phases every now and then. He would usually do it straight away, but this time, he hesitated. What will Alec think, if he comes over tonight and finds Magnus smooth-skinned, not only his face but also his chest and legs?

Sure, Magnus could technically magic back the hair as soon as Alec gets here, but it doesn’t feel right.

“Everything okay?”

Magnus starts and almost falls off of his chair in surprise. Alec is standing at the door of his bedroom, in his socks. In his distraction, Magnus somehow missed him passing his wards, coming through the front door and removing his shoes.

“Fine,” he says. “Just a frustrating day. But you’re here now.”

Alec smiles. “I am. We can just chill out in bed, if you’re tired.”

“What about dinner?”

“I could do dinner in bed,” Alec shrugs. “I’ve been on my feet all day and most of last night. If I had my way, I wouldn’t move from bed for at least two days.”

“I could arrange that,” Magnus quips. He knows Alec would never go for it — for all that he says that, he’ll still be up at six on the dot tomorrow and unable to go back to bed. So Magnus has to take advantage of him while he’s here.

Snapping his fingers, he conjures a tray filled with Chinese food from a take-out place he knows Alec likes. “Dinner in bed it is,” he says.

“See, that’s why you’re my favorite man,” Alec smiles.

Magnus flinches. An actual, full-body flinch. He tries to cover it up by standing up, but Alec immediately spreads his arms to show his harmlessness, hunching over like he’s trying to make himself shorter. “I said something wrong,” he says.

“No, it’s fine, Alexander,” Magnus waves his hand, annoyed at himself.

“Please, Magnus. I can see it. You don’t have to tell me, but it would be better so I don’t do it again.”

“It’s just…” Magnus trails off, hesitating. He’s been putting off coming out to Alec, and he doesn’t know why. Or rather, he does know, but his fears are barely rational. Alec has taken him in stride so far, barely batting an eye, even at Magnus’ more extravagant habits. He had a truly amazing reaction to seeing Magnus’ warlock mark. So why would this be any different?

No, Alec won’t react badly. But if Magnus comes out now, it will become a thing. They’ll have to talk about it, explain, like every time he tells someone, and it will be weird for days. Magnus is tired. Tired of not being able to be who he is without everyone else forcing him into boxes he doesn’t fit in.

He’s tired and he doesn’t want to explain, but he also wants Alec to know. He wants him to know why words that seem perfectly normal and safe to Alec sometimes feel like a knife to Magnus’ back. He wants to be able to make jokes about his gender and have them understood. He wants to wake up next to Alec and know that his partner knows and respects him for who he is, fully.

He takes a deep breath. “I’m not a man. I’m nonbinary.”

Alec doesn’t move. His eyes widen a little, but he doesn’t turn away from Magnus, keeping his gaze somewhere around Magnus’ mouth as usual. Magnus can almost see the wheels turning in his head as he tries to decide what to answer with.

“Okay,” he says slowly. “I don’t...I think I know what the word means, but I don’t know a lot about it. Do you want to tell me what it means to you or do you want me to research it first?” His gaze trails toward the bookshelf Magnus has put together of books on queer theory.

Magnus gapes, because this is so far from any reaction he expected that it didn’t even come to his mind as an option. “I—” he stammers. “I will tell you, but I’m too tired tonight. And maybe you could...read a couple things first? Would that be okay?”

“That’s why I offered,” Alec says, with a relieved smile.

“You’re amazing, Alexander. You know that?”

Alec grins, with that tiny frown that says he wants to refute it but knows Magnus won’t hear of it if he does. He still can’t take a compliment — he can’t, Magnus has come to learn, think of himself positively without remembering every time he’s been put down and belittled by the people who should have lifted him up. Magnus just pats his shoulder. “How about we go to bed? Tomorrow, we can talk.”

Alec nods, and Magnus realizes that he’s looking forward to it, to telling Alec about himself.

*

When Magnus wakes up the next morning, which is their day off — Magnus has adapted his own schedule to match Alec’s whenever possible — Alec isn’t in bed next to him. Magnus finds him in the main room, sitting crossed-legged in an armchair with his laptop on his lap, a full breakfast ready on the table. He’s obviously been up for a while, if he’s had time to prepare all that on top of his morning run and stretching routine.

“Hey,” he gives Magnus a wide smile.

“Did I oversleep?” Magnus asks. He’s definitely less of an early-riser than Alec, who tends to wake up with the sun whenever he hasn’t been on the night shift, but he’s usually awake by the time Alec comes back from his run.

“There’s no such thing on a day off, but I think you were tired,” Alec answers. “I’ve been up for three hours.”

“Oh my,” Magnus murmurs, checking the time with a wave of his hand. To his relief — and amusement — it’s only eight-thirty, definitely not that late by his standards. “What have you done with all this time?”

“Research,” Alec waves to the books on the coffee table in front of him, which Magnus only now notices. They’re from his LGBT+ book collection, and definitely his top choices for learning about gender identities. “I’m learning a lot.”

“Let me shower and we can talk about it,” Magnus decides, his body tensing with excitement and a touch of apprehension.

“Breakfast is ready when you are,” Alec smiles reassuringly.

He’s just serving coffee when Magnus comes out of the shower. Magnus hasn’t bothered to get dressed or do his makeup yet, avoiding his mirrors — which isn’t the easiest feat in his bathroom, which has no less than two full-length mirrors beside the one above the sink — because he’s not sure what he wants to look like today. His goatee still itches on his chin, but he needs to get a feel for Alec’s reaction before he goes ahead and shaves it.

He forbids himself from pulling at his facial hair and grabs his mug of coffee instead, hissing when it nearly burns his hand. “Hey, you okay?” Alec asks, his voice quiet and concerned.

“I’m fine, Alexander,” Magnus makes himself smile. There’s no reason for this to go badly. Last night, even though Alec didn’t know much, was already affirming and relieving.

The concern is always there, especially given the culture Alec comes from, but Magnus has seen Alec fight hard against his own racism and internalized homophobia, and more recently his internalized ableism — and Alec is someone who doesn’t relent until he makes things right. Especially when he’s the one who made mistakes. It’s going to be okay.

“Tell me what you need,” Alec says, meeting his eyes — something he only does when he wants to show Magnus his support, explicitly and deliberately.

“Ask me?” Magnus tries. He hates feeling this vulnerable. “Ask me whatever questions you have, without beating around the bush.” Don’t make it awkward and painful, please.

“Alright, I can do that,” Alec smiles softly, and Magnus melts a little, like every time Alec looks at him like that. He takes a sip of his coffee. “So, I’ve read that there are a lot of different nonbinary identities. Do you use any of those labels for yourself? If you want to tell me.”

Magnus swallows in gratefulness. “I don’t, not really,” he replies. “Most of those labels are very recent, and they don’t really match with how I’ve learned to think about myself. Even nonbinary doesn’t feel exactly right, even if I fit the definition. But I use it because it’s rare for me to feel part of a community, of a group of people who share that with me.”

Alec nods thoughtfully. “I think I can relate with that,” he says. “The community thing, I mean. I’ve never actually thought about my gender, not beyond where it relates to my sexuality, but I guess not needing to think about it is a good sign that I’m cis.”

“Probably,” Magnus shrugs. “Does it feel strange for you? Realizing that you’re not really dating a man?”

Alec takes the time to think about it, though he never completely looks away. “No,” he says finally. “I won’t lie, maybe a few months ago it would have, because...I fought against my own gayness so much that when I finally accepted it, I needed it to be clear-cut. But I don’t feel like that anymore. If I learned something about identities and labels, it’s that they shouldn’t be boxes where you have to cut off parts of yourself to fit inside. I love you. I’m gay. You’re nonbinary. Those don’t have to be mutually exclusive.”

Magnus needs a few long seconds before he remembers how to breathe. “They don’t,” he murmurs when he can finally speak again. Alec isn’t usually eloquent, but he has a knack for finding exactly the right words sometimes. And surprising Magnus, every day.

“Yesterday, you reacted when I called you a man,” Alec says slowly. “I’m probably going to slip up a few times until I get used to it, but can you tell me how you want me to speak of you? What words I should use?”

“Yesterday I was irritated and dysphoric,” Magnus replies. “It usually isn’t a problem. I don’t love those words and I’d prefer to avoid them when it’s just us, but socially, I’ve been taken for a man for so long… I can’t say it doesn’t bother me, but I’m not sure I can really imagine anything else. Sure, I’ve had fun glamouring myself into something more feminine, or cultivating an androgynous style at different times, but I’m still...I’m more comfortable being seen as a man than as a woman. Warlocks are sometimes seen as sexless by mortals, like Seelies, because our customs are so different, and I’ve always played with those perceptions.”

“Your name is masculine, right?”

Magnus shrugs. “Yes and no. It uses the masculine marker in Latin, but Latin was a language with grammatical gender. There are masculine words referencing females, and the other way around. And it’s a dead language, anyway. It was dead before I was born. I don’t think of my name as masculine.”

“Then, that’s what’s important,” Alec says. “What about pronouns?”

“I’ve used many different pronouns in many different languages,” Magnus answers. “I’ve always been partial to languages with no gendered pronouns like Turkish, but I really don’t care. He/him pronouns don’t make me feel bad, and I’m used to them.”

“There are languages with no gendered pronouns?” Alec asks, fascinated.

“A number of them,” Magnus says. “We really need to travel more. But to go back to your question, maybe in a few years or decades, I’ll be more comfortable with the new gender-neutral pronouns in English like they/them, but it takes me a while to get used to new things. So he/him is fine for now.”

“Okay,” Alec nods. “What about...we’ve been calling each other boyfriends. Would you rather I use something else?”

Magnus laughs, relief finally washing over him. He was tenser than he realized, and it makes him feel like jelly, suddenly. “No, Alexander. Hearing you calling me your boyfriend is far too endearing to change that. Please keep doing it.”

Alec’s face illuminates with a wide smile. “My nonbinary boyfriend,” he says playfully. “I know we’ve only barely scratched the surface, but is there something else I should know right now?”

Magnus runs a few things through his head, deciding to keep them for later — he’s very curious, and not all that apprehensive anymore, of what Alec’s reaction to him in feminine lingerie might be — and strokes his chin. “Oh,” comes the illumination. “I really want to shave my face right now. It’s been too long since I last did that.”

“Okay,” Alec says. “That’s a gender thing?”

“Sometimes facial hair feels dysphoric,” Magnus replies. “Like today. Sometimes I just want to look different.”

“I love both looks,” Alec says. “I love all of your looks. I love how I never know what you’re going to go for in the morning.”

Magnus starts eating his pancakes, but he decides that he doesn’t want to wait. He conjures a hand mirror in front of his plate and runs his glowing hand over his chin carefully, leaving smooth skin behind. Alec smiles at him over his coffee mug and Magnus smiles back, glancing at his now hairless face in the mirror. That feels better. Maybe he’ll go ahead and wax his legs and his chest as well.

4.

“Of all the days to be called out on patrol—”

“I know, I’m sorry,” Alec sighs, trying to appease Magnus’ annoyance by squeezing his hand. It’s Sunday, it’s the middle of the day, he wasn’t expecting a call from the Institute at all. “But the nest is in a busy metro tunnel just below the end of the parade. In a few hours, there’s going to be thousands of people down there, and who knows when the demons might try to attack the trains. And they’re bat demons, so they need my bow.”

The curse—and occasional blessing, if Alec is honest with himself—of being the only archer worth his salt in the New York Institute, is that despite now being the official Head, he’s still needed on the patrol roster. Most Institute Heads retire from the field, the administrative and political work being a full time job, but Alec still goes out with his siblings several times a week, and he usually leads the special teams called to handle demon surges.

Today, he curses that necessity with everything he has. Magnus has been excited about their first Pride together for weeks, and Alec was truly happy to do this with him.

“We were supposed to go to the parade,” Magnus sulks.

“I’m really sorry,” Alec repeats. “Maybe if we handle this fast enough, I can join you part-way through? I’ll do my best.”

Magnus looks at him critically. “No. I’m coming with you.”

“I know the parade is important to you—”

“It’s only important if we go together,” Magnus answers. “If I come with you, it will be faster, and then I can portal us into the procession directly, if there’s still time.”

“Alright,” Alec nods.

The team, larger than usual patrols because of the size of the demon nest, is almost ready when Alec and Magnus make it to the ops center. Alec quickly gets his bow and quiver and straps on his thigh holsters, and moves to signal the go ahead.

“Wait,” Magnus holds him up. “If we’re going to do this, we’ll do it in style.”

Alec frowns as he waves his hand, releasing a cloud of blue magic onto the two of them. Alec looks down at himself, his eyes gliding over his outfit before he clocks the changes. The lapel of his leather jacket now holds two prominent flag pins, a rainbow one and one with the black, gray, white and purple of the asexual flag. He sees matching pins, significantly larger, on Magnus’ vest, with his own flags. It’s the first time, as far as Alec knows, that Magnus has outwardly worn his nonbinary identity in the Institute, and he feels a swell of pride at the shine in Magnus’ eyes.

“Look at your arrows, sir,” Underhill’s voice comes from over his shoulder.

Alec twists his head to see the fletching of his arrows, usually red, is now brightly colored. Each fletch bears the colors of a different pride flag.

“So we can defeat the demons with pride,” Magnus smirks when Alec looks back at him.

“I like it,” Alec smiles. The mass of bright colors hurts his eyes a little, but the gazes of his teammates on them aren’t full of judgment but of amusement, and that’s a victory in its own right. He runs a hand over the little pins on his lapel.

“Um, sir?” Underhill asks, clearing his throat.

“Yes?” Alec turns to him, but he realizes that Underhill is looking at Magnus and not at him.

He gestures at the pins Magnus is wearing, and Alec can feel Magnus brace himself for a comment. “Could I, uh, have one too?”

Magnus blinks. “Of course,” he recovers quickly. “Rainbow flag?”

“Yeah,” Underhill nods.

Magnus snaps his fingers, and a pin as large as his own appears on Underhill’s chest.

“Thank you!”

Alec is certain he can see his subordinate’s eyes shine.

“Anyone else?” Magnus asks, full of mirth. A few people grumble, including Jace, until a young Shadowhunter takes a step forward.

“Can I have a trans pin?” she asks, her voice only wavering a little.

Alec feels a swell of pride. Kara is one of the youngest recruits, a sixteen year old who’s mostly kept to herself since she transferred to the Institute last winter, because he was the only Head willing to accept her chosen name and pronouns. Her face is set in stubborn determination as she fields her teammates' stares and stands in front of Magnus. Magnus beams at her. “Here you go, darling,” he snaps his fingers again. Kara looks down at the shiny pastel colored pin in reverence, and flashes him a smile.

“Are we ready to go?” Alec asks. He doesn’t want to break the moment, but they really need to move.

Magnus takes a step back and throws out a portal in front of them. “Let’s go kill some demons,” he says.

Alec grabs an aromantic-themed arrow from his quiver, smiling internally at the pun, and nocks it onto his bow string before stepping through the portal.

5.

Alec does his best to pay attention to what Jia is telling him, but he’s not having the best time of it. He’s had a full glass of champagne already and it’s getting to his head a little, and the ambient noise isn’t helping his concentration — in fact, it’s loud enough that his head is pounding and he’s losing track of what’s going on.

And then, there’s Magnus. Alec keeps stealing concerned glances at him, standing across the room in conversation with an older Shadowhunter from the Prague Institute. It’s been at least ten minutes, and every time Alec looks, Magnus is wearing a new accessory.

Alec knows why Magnus elected for a plain look today, for their very first reception since they moved to Alicante. He wanted to avoid dragging attention to him, knowing that many people in attendance are doubtful toward the new High Warlock of Alicante. Tonight marks Alec’s official nomination as Inquisitor, and he wanted to spare Alec a scene.

Alec is starting to suspect that a scene may be unavoidable, and if the reason is what he suspects, then he will wholeheartedly defend Magnus. It started with earrings. Magnus went for a simple dark suit with almost no jewelry beside his wedding ring, but he’s now sporting a very shiny pair of diamond earrings. And a necklace. And a butterfly hair clip that probably costs more than a year of Alec’s now sizable salary.

And now, lipstick. Very obvious, bright red lipstick.

“I’m so sorry,” Alec turns back to Jia, “but I believe my husband needs my help.”

Even though she’s now his direct superior, he doesn’t wait to be dismissed and he strides through the room, his height and his new status meaning that everyone gets out of his way. Izzy catches his eyes briefly, and Alec signals at her to stand by.

By the time he’s made it to his husband’s side, Magnus’ hair has turned into a vibrant rendition of the nonbinary flag, and that’s not a good sign. Alec steps into his field of vision before putting a hand on his arm.

“Everything okay?” he asks.

“Peachy,” Magnus says through his teeth. “This gentleman right here was just telling me about a very strange sort of demon that possesses young Nephilim men and makes them pretend to be women in order to assault actual women.”

Alec blinks as he takes that in, as well as the poison in Magnus’ tone. He tightens his grip on Magnus’ arm, feeling the stares on them — Magnus’ new hair color is hard to miss.

“Really?” he asks innocently, tilting his head. “I’ve never heard of those demons. I should read up on them, so I can make sure every Institute is fully ready for an invasion. What did you say their classification was, Mr. Svec?”

The man gapes at him. “They’re...uh...I don’t…”

“That’s what I thought,” Alec says icily. “There’s no such thing. You’re Kara’s father, aren’t you?”

“That monster isn’t my son,” Svec spits out.

“No, you’re right. She’s not. She’s your daughter. And she’s absolutely thriving at the New York Institute, by the way. She’s the best fighter in her class. That’s what happens when people accept you for who you are.” Alec deliberately turns his back to the sputtering man and looks at Magnus. “Honey, it’s getting late, we should probably head home,” he says, purposefully speaking louder than he needs to. Magnus is trembling with rage, fighting to rein himself in. “Let me just tell Jia, okay?” he adds in a murmur, just for Magnus.

Magnus closes his eyes and nods. “Get me away from him,” he says.

Alec gently guides him over to Izzy, who immediately takes Magnus’ hand. “Let’s stay out of the crowd,” she says, nodding at Alec that she’ll take care of him.

Alec finds Jia with Aline by the buffet. “I can’t condone this kind of bigotry coming from the Head of an Institute,” he says through his teeth.

“I don’t think he’ll try that twice around you,” Aline chuckles, nodding toward Svec, who is now glaring at them from across the room, clearly ostracized. “He didn’t make any friends tonight.”

“What happened tonight isn’t enough to remove him, but as Inquisitor, you’ll be able to push for someone else to take his place when his contract is up in six months,” Jia says. “I understand your anger, Alec. But we can’t change people in a day.”

Alec remembers, not for the first time since she offered him the job of Inquisitor, that she’s not just the progressivist Consul that the most conservative Nephilim frown at, or the mother of one of his best friends. She’s also the person who once sentenced Clary to death without a second thought. If he wants change, he’ll have to bring it on himself.

He exchanges a look with Aline, thinking of the folder on his new desk, the proposal they might have a chance at getting through now that he’s the Inquisitor. Jia’s right, it won’t be done in a day. But it will happen. Alec will make it happen.

And if at some point in the meantime, he has the opportunity to get rid of a few bigots like Svec, he won’t turn his nose up at it.

“Magnus and I are going home,” he says. “Thank you for tonight.”

“Congratulations on the promotion again,” Jia nods. “I’ll expect you in my office at eight tomorrow.”

“Good night.” Alec has to unclench his fist to shake Jia’s hand, and he realizes just how angry he is. Aline clasps him on the shoulder with an understanding look.

He finds Magnus and Izzy at the door, ready to go. “Can you portal us home?” he asks Magnus as they step outside.

Magnus wordlessly opens a portal and steps through without checking that Alec is following him, a testimony of how unsettled he still is. Alec takes the time to hug Izzy before he goes through. “You were amazing,” she slips him, kissing him on the cheek.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he answers. “Thanks for your help.”

Alec comes behind Magnus and embraces him as soon as he’s out of the portal. Magnus took them straight to their bedroom, but he hasn’t moved since, standing there trembling in rage — or in something else.

“I love you,” Alec murmurs over and over in his ear. “All of you.”

After a minute, the shaking subsides, and Alec feels his own anger drain with it. It leaves him tired and out of sorts, his head still ringing with the noise of the reception. He loosens his hold on Magnus and takes one hand off of him to pull off his tie.

“I’m sorry,” Magnus murmurs. “I really wanted to avoid making a scene.”

Alec moves to face him. “Don’t ever apologize for something a bigot caused. It wasn’t you.”

“I tried to just ignore him, but—”

“He was awful,” Alec finishes. “I know.”

“I don’t know why I let him get to me so much,” Magnus sighs.

Alec guides them both to sit down on the bed.

“You love Kara,” he says. “He was saying horrible things.”

Magnus shakes his head. “I didn’t even know that was her father.”

Alec shrugs. “We all get triggered sometimes. He just pushed the wrong buttons.”

Magnus curls up and buries his hands in his still colored hair. “I usually have better control than that,” he says.

“I think I know what happened,” Alec sighs. “You were feeling insecure because you toned down your whole identity for me, in a place where you don’t feel safe. You were already on edge, and probably dysphoric, am I wrong?”

“No,” Magnus mutters. “I hate slacks.”

“Magnus, I don’t want you to change yourself for me, ever,” Alec says. He puts a hand on Magnus’ shoulder, to make sure that he’s really listening. Magnus looks up at him. “I don’t want you to make yourself smaller or more acceptable because you think it will be better for me.”

“I just—” Magnus sighs. “It was your day.”

“We’re not, ever, going to be normal. Not for the Downworld, and definitely not for the Clave. And I don’t want us to be, Magnus. I’ve spent enough time trying to make myself fit into a mold that didn’t fit me. I don’t ever want you to tone yourself done for them.”

“Okay,” Magnus murmurs, his voice fragile. Alec feels a strong pulse of anger at Svec course through him again, seeing Magnus so vulnerable. Magnus isn’t supposed to be vulnerable. Not about this.

Or maybe he’s more insecure about it than Alec realized.

Alec holds him for a while in silence, feeling Magnus’ need to recoup. “How did you know I was feeling dysphoric?” Magnus asks suddenly, after a few minutes.

“I’m starting to recognize it,” Alec shrugs. “Also, you might want to look at a mirror.”

Before he can realize it, Magnus is out of his embrace, staring at a hastily conjured hand mirror. “Fuck,” he mutters, showing Alec that his suspicion was right. Magnus didn’t realize the way his magic responded to his discomfort.

“Did I just come out to the entire Council because I was angry?”

“Uh,” Alec hesitates. “I doubt that many of them know what the colors mean. They’ll just put it down as one of your...eccentricities. Izzy might know, though.”

“That’s why she kept saying she loved me,” Magnus breathes out, running a hand through his colorful hair.

“Should I be jealous?” Alec raises an eyebrow.

“I don’t know, Alexander. I’ve been thinking of leaving you for Isabelle’s legendary cooking skills.”

Alec makes a face at him, then he reaches out and touches the tip of Magnus’ artfully styled hair where it’s dyed bright yellow. “I like this look on you,” he says. “I mean, I don’t like that you felt so threatened that your magic reacted this way, but I like to see you proud and loud. You’re beautiful.”

Magnus beams at him and relaxes back against Alec’s chest, holding up the mirror to look at the both of them, Alec straight-backed in his serious black suit and Magnus boneless against him, a flurry of colors. Alec wonders, often — especially on days like today — if they could make a more disparate couple, at least in the eyes of the world.

And yet the ways in which they fit together outweigh their differences, every day.

+1.

“I asked you here because I want to show you something,” Alec says when Magnus walks into his office on a Friday afternoon, holding his phone in his hand and looking confused.

Magnus stills at his seriousness. “Is something wrong?”

“No, not at all. The opposite, actually. But it’s important to me, and I thought you’d want to see it.”

Alec takes a thin blue folder from his desk and hands it over to Magnus, a small smile on his lips. Magnus opens it with a frown.

“What is this?” he asks.

“The ruling from the latest Council meeting,” Alec answers. “It came in just this afternoon.”

“The one they asked you to testify in?”

Alec confirms with a nod. He didn’t tell Magnus exactly why he needed to talk at the Council assembly, but it’s a common enough occurrence that Magnus didn’t think much of it. To Alec, though, it was a moment he’s waited for for a long time.

He watches Magnus skim the first lines of the ruling, his eyebrows shooting up. “Is that what I think it is?” Magnus asks, glancing up at him.

Alec’s fingers find his wedding ring and start spinning it. “Depends what you’re thinking,” he shrugs, trying to look unconcerned. He probably shouldn’t be anxious about Magnus’ reaction, but he is. “It’s the first part of a set of amendments to Clave law that I’ve been pushing for since before I was named Inquisitor. Aline and I presented them to the Council last month, and they’ve just been voted.”

“You and Aline,” Magnus says pensively. “‘Amendments concerning the inclusion of members of the LGBTQUIA+ community,’” he reads out loud. “You did this?”

“Full marriage equality regardless of gender, including for mixed-species couples,” Alec recites. “Automatic acceptance of name and gender change requests if related to transition. Recognition of the existence of genders outside the binary.”

Magnus gasps in surprise. Alec nods to confirm the truth of it. It’s one of the things the Council fought back the most on, and he pushed hard to get it to pass. It goes beyond even mundane progress in every country he’s looked up, but it was too important to let go.

“Anti-discrimination policies,” he continues. “And this one might affect us directly someday: equal rights to adoption and the use of surrogates.”

Magnus’ eyes light up briefly, though he doesn’t immediately comment. Alec wrings his hands and rambles on nervously. “We didn’t manage to get the legalization of polyamorous marriages, but we’ll keep working on it. We’re preparing a second proposal on Downworlder inclusion, but that one will probably make amendments to the Accords necessary, and that will take a lot more time.”

“Alexander,” Magnus says in a low voice. Alec almost keeps going, too nervous to stop, but there’s something almost dangerous in Magnus’ gaze.

“Yes?”

“You did all this?”

“Not on my own,” Alec shakes his head. “Aline wrote up most of the proposal, and we got as many queer Shadowhunters to come testify as possible. There aren’t a lot of trans Nephilim who are out, but it was important, especially since most of the people on the Council have little knowledge of these issues. Aline being Jia’s daughter probably helped a lot, and our wedding made a lot of noise around here.”

“No,” Magnus catches his wrist. “You did all this and you didn’t tell me anything? Not once?”

Alec deflates. “I, uh… I wasn’t sure it would go anywhere at first, and I know Clave politics can be a touchy subject for you. And then when we finally got the hearing, I kind of wanted to keep it a surprise? I didn’t want you to be disappointed if it didn’t work.”

He doesn’t understand Magnus’ reaction, or rather his lack of reaction. He’s been absurdly happy ever since Aline came by his office earlier this afternoon to bring him the ruling, and he thought Magnus would share his mood once he found out. But he seems pensive instead, like this doesn’t interest him all that much.

“What about you, Alexander?” he asks. “What if it hadn’t worked?”

“We would have kept trying,” Alec shrugs. “Like the last four times we submitted the proposal.”

Magnus blinks. “Four times?”

“The first time, it didn’t even make it past Jia’s office. She’s supportive, but it was shortly after she was elected, and she couldn’t afford the waves it would make when there were still so many Circle supporters around.” Alec consciously stops himself from talking and stills his hands, clasping them behind his back. “Magnus—”

“Yes?” Magnus prompts him.

“Are you angry I didn’t tell you?”

Magnus’ eyes widen in surprise. “No, Alexander, of course not. I’m just—overwhelmed, I suppose. I’m sorry I made you think that.”

“Then what is it? I thought you’d like it.”

Magnus looks away, biting his lip. “I do,” he says. “I—what you’ve accomplished is incredible. It’s going to change—everything—for some people, and that’s amazing. And I know that you didn’t do it for me, but—”

“You’ll be able to get the gender mentioned on your Idris ID changed or removed,” Alec finishes for him. “And anything else you want. I did do it for you, Magnus. Not just you, but for you, too.”

“I’m not a Shadowhunter,” Magnus says.

“You live here, now. This will apply to every Downworlder in Idris, too.”

Magnus works his jaw. “I’m having a hard time processing it,” he admits. “It’s been so long that—to be able to have my whole identity recognized, in Idris of all places—it’s almost impossible to believe.”

Alec’s tension relaxes almost on its own. “You can take your time,” he smiles. “It will still be here tomorrow, and the day after. Are you...mad that I didn’t include you in the process?”

“Why didn’t you?” Magnus frowns.

“I figured you had other things on your mind, with all the work you’re doing to get more Downworlders to move here. And it felt like...like something we should achieve on our own, somehow? I don’t know if that makes sense. Aline and I discussed asking you for advice several times, but we felt like it should be our project.”

“It does make sense,” Magnus nods. “This isn’t just about changing the law. You’re trying to change the culture, your culture, and I’ll never be a part of that. I understand.”

“I don’t want you to feel excluded,” Alec says immediately.

“I don’t. I’m amazed at what you’ve achieved. And if the next step is a rewrite of the Accords, then I’ll back you every step of the way, and push for those changes in the Downworld communities too.” He reaches out to stroke Alec’s cheek tenderly. “I love you, Alexander. You still surprise me every day, and I love you so much for it.”

Alec feels his heart speed up at the declaration, a wave of warmth and love coursing through him, reaching for Magnus. He opens his arms, and Magnus comes to nestle his face in Alec’s neck, hugging him tightly. “I love you too,” Alec says. “It would mean everything to me if we can take this next step in tandem. Change the world together.”

Magnus moves to beam up at him. “You’re incredible, Alexander. You know that?”

“You keep telling me,” Alec smiles, leaning in to kiss him.

As they pull apart again, he can’t help admiring the way the light hits Magnus’ face just right, highlighting the golden sparkles in his blue eyeshadow. Magnus has made it a point to wear warlock blue everyday since they moved to Alicante, but today it’s subdued, down to just his makeup and a discreet sapphire bracelet. He tilts his head, and the light makes his eyes glow.

“When you said the amendment about adoption could affect us, did you mean it?” he asks.

Alec bites his lip. “I know we’ve only talked about children in a very abstract way, but—is that something you’d want?” he asks in a smaller voice than he’d like.

“I’ve never truly wanted it before I met you, but yes, I think I would,” Magnus answers, looking a little awestruck by his own realization.

“It’s not something we need to commit to right now,” Alec reassures him. “But now, if we want to, the Clave will fully recognize any child we adopt as ours, and as a legal resident of Idris.”

“All thanks to you,” Magnus murmurs, tears in his eyes. “Yes, Alexander, I want children with you.”

“Then we’ll start thinking about that,” Alec says with a wide smile. “For now, let’s go home and celebrate properly.”

Magnus laughs wetly and twists his hand to make a portal. “After you,” he says.

Alec grabs his hand and pulls them through together.

[leebrontide]

A true, 30 year, tropetastic, queer love story. (Part 1)

Pls open the link if you'd like to read a 30 year, trope-tastic true queer romance featuring pining, instalove, swords, childhood-friends-to-lovers and a happy ending.

We THINK the story begins in 1991. We know it starts at theatre day-camp for kids, a summer when we were both in elementary school.

The earliest memories are vague- I remembered a super cool kid from the older class with dark eyes who I was desperate to eat lunch with every day.

It's taken us years to reconstruct the timeline. We have figured out I did go to her house outside of camp that first year, because I remember her bird that tried to bite me. We can only guess at years based on camp themes.

Because we were little kids. I was 7. So we lost touch.

But here's the thing- we kept going to the same camp. She was always in a class ahead of me, because I'm a year and a half younger.

And every year- apparently without remembering we'd met before? We became summer best friends. Drawn together over and over.

But, being disorganized kids in a world of lesser tech, every year, when camp ended, we lost phone numbers- we lived a good 30 minutes away from each other, so I have to imagine our parent's weren't exactly heartbroken at the loss. It was a lot of driving.

In 4th grade, when I was 9, I made a new best friend, named Meredith. My parents heartily recommended the summer theatre camp to hers, and she was sent with me, the next year.

She, was older than me, so she was in Ty's class. & having excellent taste, also made friends with her.

The three of us played together all summer.

Then came the fall, and the inevitable lost contact. I remember being sad about that much more clearly, that year.

BUT, the big change happened when I was 10.

Again, sent to camp. Again, my friend Meredith was there to.

At lunch, I found them playing together. I went to introduce myself to the obviously cool older girl.

For some reason I tried to shake her hand? Little weirdo.

Ty reacts to me the same way- oh hey! Cool new person! I want to be friends!

Meredith looks at us both like we're out of our minds.

"You know each other. We played all last summer."

And suddenly, the spell of childhood amnesia was broken.

I DID know her. We were FRIENDS.

We HAD BEEN FRIENDS for years.

She LIKED ME.

SHE LIKED ME.

(love with memory disabilities is a trip, folks. And her lil ADHD kid brain was struggling right alongside mine)

We were elated.

But that wasn't the last shock to my little 10 year old heart that 5 week summer camp would bring.

Meredith was, and is, a poet. Somehow she had a habit, at 11 years old, of making up poems about people's eyes.

Weird stuff. I remember a pair of green eyes being compared to a deep sea, were the bones of drunken drowned sailors floated.

Very Anne of Green Gables.

And- I remember this part with perfect clarity. She turned to me and said, do you know who has pretty eyes? Ty.

We were crossing the stage, Ty was carrying a box of props like 15 feet ahead of us.

I said "does she?"

And then, ever the romantic I screamed "HEY TY TURN AROUND I WANNA SEE SOMETHING!"

She did.

And for the first time, I looked into the dark eyes I'd been drawn to for all those years, and saw them anew.

There's a reason cupid's supposed to have arrows.

I swear to you that this is true. It felt like an actual blow to my chest. Like a physical blow.

I was stunned. My little heart was hammering out of control.

I have no idea what I said, or did, or looked like after that.

But I figured out pretty quickly what that was. It was not subtle, even to a prepubescent nearly 6th grader.

But I was a pragmatic little almost-6th-grader.

This was a crush. Middle schoolers have crushes.

And they're supposed to fade over time.

I don't remember if I was worried that my crush was on a girl. I just remember the certainty that this was just a child's crush, and therefor nothing that would last or cause problems.

And when fall came, I lost her number again.

But this time I was devastated.

But, this time a hero saved the day! Meredith, sweet, wonderful, more-organized-than-either-of-us Meredith, still had the number.

And this time, I held on to it.

We became year round besties.

For the first year of adoring her year-round, I didn't worry about my little crush. It'd go away in time.

By 7th grade, it started to be a problem.

We were having sleep overs, and I started to feel guilty about how much I wanted to look at her and cuddle her all the time.

I don't think I told anyone right away. But Meredith was always the smartest of us three.

She's the one who proposed we play "wedding". She presided over the ceremony herself, and her little sister was our wedding photographer.

Oddly, even though I didn't know about this photo till years later, this is a game both of us remember playing.

It meant... something.

Image

I started to feel guilty. We were having sleep overs, talking every day on the phone. I wanted to look at her all the time- I wanted to be with her all the time. I wanted to kiss her, and started to realize she might be bothered by that.

I never wanted to hide anything from her.

So, I confessed my love. I didn't think of this as being especially radical or brave, but in retrospect, I'm impressed by 12 year old Lee's behavior.

She smiled brightly, and said she loved me to!

As her best friend.

I clarified my position.

She repeated that she loved me as her very best friend.

And these feelings were a bit scary and BIG, so that was all good. She still wanted to hang out all the time. Life was good.

By 8th grade, I was starting to worry. The crush hadn't worn off yet. Everyone told me these things wore off.

But I was more in love with her than ever.

And when Meredith moved to Nashville, we got even closer.

We joined the MN sword club. Made new friends. In the way of these things, a whole lot of them turned out to be some evolving variety of queer. Friends started coming out.

I barely needed to, my crush was horrifyingly obvious to all our friends.

Image

I promised you swords. The swords don't feature prominently, but the club was a major connection for us for years, and this detail has always struck me.

I'm not an especially good fencer. Especially then. I was constructed out of raw spaghetti noodles and moved like creaky budget claymation most of the time. I was calculating, but slow.

She was fast, and brash, and more skilled than me. She eventually beat some nationally recognized fencers. We called her "fiery Tybalt" because we're a bunch of big ol nerds who wanted to sound smart. She eventually took her name from that nickname.

Even at only 5ft tall, she should have beaten me handily and reliably. She could hold her own against much better fencers.

But we actually got BANNED from sparring together, because we were so evenly matched we could never get enough points for a win.

My one and only expertise in fencing was knowing her. But she knew me just as well, so there was a stalemate.

Our friends laughed at us.

I confessed my love again in 8th grade.

And 9th.

10th.

11th.

I never wanted to lie to her. It was important to me that she knew what I was thinking and feeling, but it was also important that I not burden her with it.

She always gave me the same answer. She loved me. She loved me SO MUCH.

What a shame she was straight.

Now, readers, let me remind you we're looking at two queer kids in the 90s at this point.

There were pressures at play.

When I was in 11th grade, she left for college. And she was far enough away that long distance calls were expensive. I couldn't call her every day.

What I remember most about senior year was being depressed and lonely.

But also, that after years of my family despairing of my ever learning to type, and eventually getting me the (then very expensive) dragon speech-to-type program so I could type my homework and not fail school- my contact with her was suddenly all in text. AOL messenger.

People have commented at all my workplaces about my typing speed. I type 120 words per minute now.

Specifically because it was the only way to talk to her most days.

I went to college the following year. We both got boyfriends. Both nice boys who liked and admired us.

BOTH broke up with us because we so obviously preferred each other over them. To an embarrassing degree.

The boy I was dating- bless him he only lasted 3 months- specifically told me "if I go out with you any more I'm going to fall in love with you. And you're in love with her."

Slick bastard.

He was right tho.

I couldn't be mad at him.

But this is when I started to really panic.

It'd been 6 years. My first crush was still absolutely roaring. Nobody else came close to tempting me.

And nobody else wanted to, when it became obvious they couldn't compete with her.

And she was still my best friend, so of course I told her. I told her I was miserable, because I was going to be single forever because nobody else would want me, because I was so in love with her.

She felt bad. She loved me so much. So much she'd been dumped to.

Such a shame she was straight.

I wouldn't find out till much later that that conversation had started something on her side, that, for once, she knew to keep from me.

She spent the next 6 months in intense contemplation.

She DID prefer me to all the other boys (and girls) who were chasing her in college.

And there were a lot of them.

She did think I was pretty, and she did love me. And she did want to be with me forever.

She'd been as dedicated to me as I was to her through this whole time. As caring, as invested, as, frankly, obsessed. Everyone could see it.

But she wasn't straight. She was bi.

And ace.

We wouldn't learn that word for many more years. All she knew was that the story of falling in love didn't match the love she was feeling.

But then she realized- she'd never felt the feelings she was "supposed" to feel for her boyfriend, either. She was not more attracted to him than to me. And he was a good looking guy. A catch by most any standard.

And she also hadn't loved him.

But she did love me.

So, my sophomore year of college (her junior year), we were preparing our trip to the Renaissance festival. A bunch of her friends were driving into town for it, and we'd see each other again at last. (we'd been back at school like 2 weeks, so naturally were desperate to meet up)

I am still flabbergasted as the next series of events.

She asked me out. On AOL instant messenger. After over 7 years of my pining, and adoration. After 7 years of choosing the pain of being near her and not being able to kiss her, over the desolation of not having her beside me

She very logically explained her reasoning.

I had a meltdown.

My poor room mate walked into our room to find me crying and throwing things at the computer screen.

I was convinced she was offering to date me because she felt bad for me. Because she loved me and wanted me to stop hurting and feeling alone.

So I turned her down.

That, friends, was HARD. REALLY HARD.

Thankfully, she was having none of it. She insisted it only made sense for us to date. I tried to stay firm. I refused repeatedly, all in that damned AOL messenger.

We reached a compromise- one date, at the Ren Fest, as a test.

And if it failed we'd never speak of it again.

Because the prospect of dating and breaking up was terrifying to us both.

If we were going to be together, we'd be defacto engaged. Neither of us could tolerate breaking up.

The weekend came- my college friends all knew, and accompanied me, made sure I was decked out in the best fair garb we could cobble together.

She drove up with her friends- including the ex- who had no idea what was happening. She had on her finest cape & boots & a swishy dress.

We could not manage to be alone together. Like it was a proper rom-com ridiculousness. All damn day.

But at least we were together.

She came back to my dorm that night, to spend the night, and drive back the next day.

Shout out to my room mate who stayed at her boyfriend's house that night. Love you, Lindsay.

We finally managed to kiss.

She abruptly decided kissing wasn't some weird thing people only pretended to like because it was normal, and was in fact an amazing wonderful thing we should do frequently.

I don't actually remember us deciding that the experiment was successful, and we'd be a romantic couple from then on.

Pretty sure the kissing melted my brain.

It was not like kissing my old boyfriend at all.

She went back to college the next day.

I do remember, that, MORE THAN ONCE, I nervously asked my roomy if this had all really happened. I was truly and genuinely concerned that I'd dreamed or fantasized the whole thing. I'd done both enough times before.

I couldn't just ask outright so I'd say something like. "Hey did anything- important happen yesterday?"

And she'd look at me like I was speaking some alien language, and tell me I was dating Ty now.

I wandered around in a dream-like stupor for a WEEK.

This is a good place to stop for now. More tonight. I need to go snuggle my baby and help my wife with lunch. 💖

Popping in briefly for the next installment.

All our friends knew immediately. Some of them- the newer ones, were confused because they had assumed we were always dating, on account of how blatantly in love we were all the damn time.

We decided tho, to hold off on telling our families. We decided to date a year first, to show that it was serious, and that we meant it.

It was a good year, full of the kind of pining that is regularly rewarded by happy weekends and spring breaks and summers.

The next august, before we went back to school, we each sat down our own parents. Hers were sort of "yeah ok whatever." I was not there for that conversation.

I went to my favorite restaurant with my own parents, and told them I was seeing someone. Dad was enthused. Wanted to meet him.

Well. I said. You have.

Because it's Ty.

[blackypanther9]

Part 59 - Something is wrong...

"We did it...We got the second book, Loki !", you cheered.

Loki smiled in triumph. Then the smile disappeared.

"Where are we ?", he asked in confusion.

You also looked around. Your eyes soon widened.

"Oh no...", you whispered. _________________________________________

WARNING!: Mentions of Blood, Organs, Deaths, Body parts, Abuse + Dark!Cursed!Asgard!!!! You have been warned ! Enjoy.

Loki looked at you.

"What is it ? Where are we ?", he asked you confused.

"We aren't in OUR timeline. Why did it take us here ?", you asked yourself.

"It is YOUR Magic ! I don't know !"

You turned to him and glared at him.

"My Magic isn't under my control ! It is free and not caged like you cage yours ! It brings me to places that are in danger ! Something is wrong here !", you yelled angered at him.

Loki looked at you in shock and worry.

"Then where are we and what is wrong ?", he asked.

"I don't know ! I know the timeline tho. And you won't like it...", you warned him.

"Try me."

"We are in the cursed timeline. The one I told Laufey and you about with Loki and Thor fighting and the spell that went wrong. We are in a cave and we need to get out of here and that FAST."

Loki paled at that. The cursed timeline ?

'Oh shit...', was all Loki thought.

SLAP !

Loki stared at space.

"Loki ! There is no time to have another blackout ! We have to find Cursed - Loki ! Only he can help us. Maybe he has a trick for you too. A clue why we are here. SOMETHING. We aren't here without a reason !"

Loki turned his head to you and stared at you, then touched his slapped cheek.

"Did you just slap me ?", he asked in a daze.

You huffed.

"I did and now follow me. We aren't safe in here and I can't teleport for another few hours. My energy was low already in that cave. It damaged me and my Magic. I need time to regain everything."

"That cave we were in...Did it block most of your Magic ?"

"It did. I ripped the last little pieces from deep inside me and now I almost am dead."

"Why didn't you tell me ?! I could have helped !"

"Your sacrifice of your own blood was already draining you too much. I could have killed you, by using your Magic to aid mine. Blood is very important or else it will not work.", you answered simply.

You held his hand and dragged him behind you, searching for the exit. _________________________________________

You were outside of the cave and ran with Loki behind you, as fast as you two could, straight. Soon you reached a path, drunk with blood and decorated with organs. Loki stared at the path in horror.

"Can we NOT go that path ?", Loki whispered at you in fear.

"We have to. It will bring us to Cursed - Loki and we can plan. Something IS wrong and he probably has the answers."

Loki whimpered at that horror - path, but followed you. Soon you reached the Palace of Asgard. It was terrifying. It was black and every single spark of gold looked like it was washed away.

The closer you both got, the more he saw some damaged walls and blood smeared on them. When he looked up, he wished he didn't.

Why ?

Above him hung body parts, organs and other disgusting things.

You poked his side and he snapped his head at you.

"Look at me and in front of you, never anywhere else. Remember that it is just kind of a bad dream, Loki.", you told him softly.

Loki was beyond spooked. He nodded and tried his best to listen to your advice. Keyword: Tried. Loki failed, too scared that something will jump on him. He felt stalked. Like someone was watching you both. He was beyond scared.

"Dest...Someone is watching. I feel eyes on me...", he whispered shakily.

"Thor probably. We are almost there, Loki. Stay near me."

Loki nodded and took your hand.

You led him into the Palace and Loki looked even more terrified. More blood, more organs, body parts and also corpses. All his people. He was ready to faint any second. You pulled him after you harsher, faster walking too.

"What is it ?", Loki whispered.

"We don't have much time left. The clock will soon chime and then Cursed - Loki will awaken, like the rest. Thor is mostly awake and still asleep. Cursed - Loki can talk into Cursed - Thor's head that he imagined that, if we reach his room now. Before the clock chimes."

"In other words...we have to hurry."

"Exactly."

The two of you speed - walked into a room soon and you slammed the door. You looked at Loki.

"Stay here. I will look for Cursed - Loki.", you told him.

Loki nodded and looked around nervously. You left him and went into the bedroom, looking at the bed. Cursed - Loki was still there and asleep, but he looked really bad.

Loki yelped as the clock chimed darkly.

(Whatever you chose for a sound the last time.)

You went to Cursed - Loki's bedside and knelt down, waiting for him to awaken. You ran your fingers through his blood - crusted hair. Soon he awoke and sat up slowly. He 'looked' around and then at you.

".....Destiny ?", he asked.

You smiled.

"It's been a while, hasn't it ? How are you my friend ?", you asked him.

"It has been a little while, yes. I am well, but....what are you doing here ?", he asked worried.

"Well, I do not know. My Magic brought us here. Something must be wrong here. Otherwise we wouldn't be here."

"We ?"

"Loki and me. We are hunting books down, to safe his and my timeline. Odin...he tempered with us all and will kill us all, if I do not do anything."

Cursed - Loki then stiffened.

"Thor is coming. You need to hide. NOW.", he told you.

You jumped up and ran into the sitting room of Cursed - Loki's. You grabbed Loki's hand and pulled him into the secret, hidden room.

"Be silent. Cursed - Thor is coming. Cursed - Loki warned me. Do not make even one peep.", you warned.

Loki nodded, afraid of talking right now.

You both jumped as the door flew open with great force to Cursed - Loki's chambers.

"LOKI !!! Where is the food !!!", Cursed - Thor's voice yelled loudly.

"Well, Good Morning to you too, Thor. What food ? I didn't see anyone alive entering my chambers.", Cursed - Loki's voice replied.

"I saw !"

"I would have seen that first. Maybe you still dreamed ? You just woke up, Brother. Your unsatisfied hunger is getting to you.", Cursed - Loki suggested.

"I...I guess you are right...But I will keep my eyes on you. If I catch you with anyone living I will beat you up again. Got it ?", Cursed - Thor threatened in a growling voice.

"Yes Thor. I get it.", Cursed - Loki answered bored.

You could hear the eye roll in Cursed - Loki's voice. You smirked at that.

Cursed - Thor huffed and then slammed the door of his chambers. You and Loki heard footsteps. Then the door opened softly and after a few minutes the door closed again. Then the footsteps got distant and after mere 15 minutes they returned.

"You can come out. He is gone. You two are safe.", Cursed - Loki said softly.

You opened the door and Loki followed you out of the room. Soon you were in Cursed - Loki's bedroom and sat all down on his bed. Then Loki looked up and at him. He paled and then fainted.

"Oh dear. Is he dead ?", Cursed - Loki asked worried.

"Nah. He just fainted in shock. He never saw anything like you before."

Cursed - Loki hummed.

"A first time thing, huh ?", he asked.

"Yes. Just for the books."

"What book do you search ?"

"The Magical book of Life."

Cursed - Loki hummed in thoughts and was quiet for some time.

"Never heard of it...", he then answered.

"I thought so. What happened ? Something is wrong and I want to hear, what exactly it could be."

Cursed - Loki 'looked' at you and then sighed.

"Odin...he...he hid the book for so long...Everything is getting even worse."

"Where is the book ? Did you find it ?"

"Yes. And Odin is planning to burn it down in a week. He knows that I try to get my fingers on it and because of his crazed out mind already, he doesn't want me to fix my mistake. Mother...she attacked me yesterday and abused me too."

"Oh god, Loki...."

"I know she didn't mean to, but still it was painful. She lost the rest of her humanity too. I am the only one left and because I still fight and act out of character, they don't accept me and try to make me succumb."

"That is not everything that is wrong, right ?", you pressed.

Cursed - Loki shook his head and sighed again.

"No. I am changing too. I lose myself some times now too. I won't last long anymore. Maybe 2 months and then I am gone. Destiny...I need help. I can't do this alone."

You looked at him with worry until realization dawned on you.

"You called me for help. You are desperate and called me. My Magic then brought me here. That is also why and how we came here."

"Maybe. Sadly I did so without knowing and also in a bad time. You already have a lot of things to do."

You smiled at him a sad smile.

"Loki, I am always busy. Every Dimension, Timeline, Existence and Realm busy me. And I have to keep it all going. Not easy, but I manage. So do not blame yourself for calling for me, because I was busy. I always am. And I love to help. That is the only way to survive for me."

Cursed - Loki smiled also at you then. It was terrible, because of all the torn and burned flesh, decorated with scratches and blood, but you knew that if Cursed - Loki wouldn't look so terrible, it would be a thankful, cute smile.

You smiled back and rubbed his damaged left cheek.

"Do not worry. We will fix this. And my Loki will help us."

"Sounds good to me."

He nuzzled your hand and held it with his right hand, softly to not hurt you with his claws.

"Thank you, Destiny.", he murmured.

You smiled at him.

"Always."

Part 60

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