#a deeply sad broken hollowed out tired man

[alwaysbethewest]

I don’t read a lot fic so I’m simultaneously living in an ignorant lalaland but also wanting more and afraid to venture into wild territory for fear of repeatedly encountering the Joel you mentioned. If even someone like me has noticed it, then it’s truly pervasive. I like to think I do a decent job of separating the character from their dominant trope/au/fanon but it gets hard <insert Oscar Isaac coffee gif>

I'm kind of in the same boat! I'm not reading that much these days (and when my brain is ready to I have a looong to-read list for other characters!) but I like to scroll through the fandom tag and skim the summaries. I'm sure there IS some great, thoughtful, in-character fic out there but I rarely see anything that draws me in. I've actually literally just added a tag filter for his name so I can stop looking in the first place because I find it so dispiriting and confusing 😕

[omg-imagine]

All We Are

Pairing: Johnny Silverhand x female!V

Summary: V is jealous after Johnny’s date with Rogue, which leads to an honest discussion about where they both stand.

Words: 1.7k

Warning: spoilers for Blistering Love side job, a little angst

A/N: Requested by an anon. This may be a bit different than what you were expecting, but I was in the feels™. Hope you still enjoy :)

Also, can we please talk about how adorable he looks in the gif?? 

The long drive back to the apartment was silent; the utter stillness in the car weighs heavily on V’s mind. Hands gripping tight on the steering wheel, she tries to ignore this unsettling ache she has, not allowing even an ounce of thought to pass. Though she chalks it off as a side effect of the pseudoendotrizine, this strange, hollow feeling of hers continues to stir deep inside, burning, burning and burning.

And so, she switches on the radio and focuses ahead on the stretch of road winding down the North Oak hills, the approaching lights of Night City glowing brighter against the inky skies. A fresh breeze flows into the open windows, dulling the tension for a moment.

A moment of tranquility that ends far too soon, yet it was a moment V’s at least grateful to have.

“You’re awfully quiet,” Johnny points out, the gruff baritone of his voice piercing the air. “An enny for your thoughts?”

Kicking his feet up on the dashboard, his aviators glint in the silver moonlight, making him appear impossibly more obnoxious than he usually is. He acts as if he’s not aware of the recent thoughts plaguing V’s head, but perhaps that truly was the case. If it were, then she would be surprised— Johnny often invades her mind, poking and prodding at things he shouldn’t be. For a while, she assumes he knows.

“Just tired,” V replies monotonously. Her answer was far from a lie; she really was tired. Exhausted, even. All she wants is to collapse into bed, pass out, and hope that for a few short hours, she can forget about today, about everything.

“Huh,” he breathes out, and V spares him not a single glance. “Pretty sure somethin’ was up. You’ve been actin’ weird since we left the drive-in.”

A chuckle rumbles through her chest. V still finds it unusual for Johnny to act so… concerned. Almost caring, if she had to be honest. She’s noticed a change in him recently, which became apparent after their conversation in the oil fields. He’s a lot softer now, sometimes sweet, both in his own unique way, of course. As if his rough edges were slightly smoothed out with sandpaper, enough that they no longer cut and make her bleed.

V would often catch him staring when he thinks she’s not looking. She also doesn’t fail to miss the small smile that creeps across his face as she talks. And in those passing seconds that lasts an eternity when the relic malfunctions, Johnny was there to offer her comfort. He’d kneel down to the ground while she coils in agony, whispering promises that this will all be over soon. That one way or another, they would get rid of that goddamn chip slotted in V’s head and ultimately save her life.

Life. Life has a funny way of unraveling itself. Fuck, this all seems like a cruel joke the universe is playing on V. Fate is rarely kind to her, a sad fact she’s accepted over the years. Never would she have imagined that after experiencing the pain of heartbreak and loss, she’d find herself falling for someone at the worst possible time.

And that someone is the imprisoned digital ghost of a rockerboy-turned-terrorist studying her from the passenger seat.

But V’s adamant in denying it. Her life was too fucking complicated for this right now.

“Are you capable of shutting the fuck up for two seconds?” V bitterly snaps, the hands on the wheel clenching stiffly as her jaw. “You got what you wanted tonight. Finally got your dick wet after fifty years, so leave me the hell alone, would’ya?!”

She doesn’t mean to act on her muted anger, but it manages to get the best of her. V knows why, and because of it, she crumbles. She crumbles like the walls she’s built around herself. Like the facade she’s been hiding behind for the past couple of months. Because underneath the dirt and grime, V was just a poor, tragic soul, more worried about losing the man she couldn’t have than her awaiting death.

“Really think that’s what happened?” Johnny asks, pushing his shades up to his head as he shifts to sit up straight in his seat.

V grits her teeth, eyes remaining locked on the road. She had woken up an hour or two after Johnny took over, finding her lips still warm, still swollen. Her hair was tousled, and she had been stripped off of most of her clothes; the scent of Rogue’s perfume lingering on her skin. She didn’t need him to recount; it was all clear to her what had transpired. It was what she agreed on to make him happy, a date with the Afterlife fixer and whatever it could lead up to.

In the end, V regretted it, not because Johnny used her body to sleep with someone. But because even after the rollercoaster ride, the dog tags, the private concerts, and the heart-to-heart they had at his gravesite, she still wasn’t his. He was too hung up over Rogue, and she couldn’t blame him. Having shared a lengthy history, there was no doubt Johnny wouldn’t snatch up the opportunity to win her back.

But then where does that leave V?

“The fuck is wrong, V? Don’t make me figure it out by myself.”

Biting the edge of her lip, she ignores Johnny’s latest question and contemplates swallowing an omega blocker. She doesn’t even care that he’s threatening to search for the truth without her permission. Choosing not to do so, he keeps pressing on regardless, and V was getting pissed off. When he doesn’t stop, she loses her temper and slams on the brakes, the Porsche coming to a screeching halt on a dead street.

Huffing, V pulls over to the side, shutting the car’s engine as Johnny is left bewildered by her actions. Peace and quiet. She yearns for peace and quiet, and the pills would do the trick in an instant. Her hand reaches for the bottle in her jacket pocket, the pounding of her heart echoing in her ears. Popping the cap open, she turns her head to the side, unable to help herself. She sees the tenderness etched in his features, a wordless plea shining in his dark eyes.

“V… Tell me.”

V’s gaze slowly falters, her consciousness at war with itself. The storm of anger in her calms, yet she needs to know what her next move is. She’s always been terrible at this sort of thing, dealing with her feelings and shit. Growing up in the streets of Heywood, she’s learned how to shut people out and keep them out. Biggest rule she had imposed on herself was to never, ever fall for a choom, but this time was different. Despite him being a mere figment of her imagination, she feels safe around Johnny, appreciated and content. The two understand each other on a level nobody else has done. They’ve been through literal hell and would only sink further into it to find a way to survive.

A chrome palm comes to rest on V’s cheek, the sensation oddly warm, oddly familiar. Her attention flickers back to Johnny as he strokes her weary face. His touch was delicate, movements careful and controlled. He treats her as if she were porcelain, afraid that his metal hand would cause her to crack. V exhales deeply, relishing the feeling she’s longed from the moment she had broken that dumb rule of hers.

“Go ahead,” she mumbles, giving Johnny consent for him to read her mind. It only takes a second, maybe even less. V half expects his shit-eating grin to make its appearance. She couldn’t forget how cocky he was, and she thought this would certainly rub his ego.

It never comes. Instead, Johnny’s lips turn up into a genuine smile, one softer than the way his black hair falls to frame his face. V swears she was floating; this doesn’t feel all that real to her. It couldn’t be real. But as the first faint slivers of sunlight appear on the horizon, she starts to believe that she isn’t dreaming nor hallucinating. She was still very much wide awake.

“Didn’t know you were the jealous type,” Johnny quips as he leans closer. “You had no reason to be jealous, princess.”

“Why not?”

“Nothin’ happen between Rogue and me,” he clarifies, his fingers pushing back her locks. “Yeah, we made out a little, but I couldn’t go through with it. Wanna know why?”

V nods.

“’Cause I realized that ship sailed a long time ago. We’re too different people now; she’s got her own life, while I got mine sittin’ right here.”

“Johnny…” she murmurs his name as he brings up his other hand to cradle her face. “I wanted to have what you and Rogue had, minus the shitty things you did. But I could feel how much you loved her, how you basically worshipped the ground she walked on. Then I thought, can’t compete with her. She’s a livin’ legend, a badass. Meanwhile, I could be dead the next minute or two, either by this fuckin’ relic or a bullet.”

“Trust me, V, you wouldn’t want that,” Johnny returns, resting his forehead against hers. How could he feel so real? “What you and I have is special. Ain’t felt this way before, not even with Rogue or Alt. Like I said, you’re the fuckin’ closest to me. These feelings you’re afraid of? Shit, I have them too, and I’m fuckin’ terrified. But knowing that you’re here and we both share them, it makes things a lot less scary.”

“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

Johnny laughs softly. “Gotta spell it out for ya, huh? Well then, here it goes; V, I love you. I don’t throw that word around randomly, but know that it’s what I feel whenever I think of you.”

V doesn’t waste a second longer. Her lips meet his for a kiss that is gentle and bruising, all at once. They hold one another close, their grasps taut so that the other wouldn’t slip away, not wanting to lose what they’ve gained. Time goes by, ticking in the background as they kiss again and again, but to them, it’s slow, nearly everlasting.

And when it was over, when they finally had to part, they were breathless, panting.

“Love you too, Johnny,” she murmurs into his skin, tone dripping with affection as he hums in response.

Night melds into day, and the city comes back to its fullest life. V kisses Johnny a final time before driving back to the place she calls home, even though she’s found her true one in his heart.

—

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[catgirlsareruiningmylife]

[23:08] - baby you’re a haunted house .

Corpse Husband x Reader

TW :: kinda sad and artsy af tho

A/N :: also its like my first corpse fanfic dont talk 2 me...also uneditedand no, i don’t stalk corpse like some of you, so some shit might be inaccurate xd

corpse guides you through the rickety, torn down fence and then the two of you weave through tall grass. your destination sounds mundane, at first; towards the house a few blocks past the pond you used to skip rocks in...

the house- as many of corpse’s ghost stories go- has been rumored to be haunted, by what, no one knows. ghosts this, cryptid that- nothing particularly interested you as much as him, the narrator versus the story. no, nothing would ever take your attention as much as corpse does- he is the apple of your eye, but he’s too dense to realize this. the two of you have been friends long enough for you two to know what makes the other tick forward. his is alcohol, those die-hard fans of his, and his friends...

so you believe.

he takes your hand and they fit perfectly in his. he feels like a puzzle piece becoming whole for the first time since creation... or he thinks he does anyway- because he feels complete with you gripping onto his hand so tightly. it’s obvious with the way you glance around that you are terrified of being found on private property. it’s as though you were not as cool as you once were, knowing perhaps someone may still be inside...

...or something else might be.

if it were not for the cold weather or the broken windows that hadn’t been fixed in god knows how long- he would laugh at you and call you a scaredy cat.

yet, he doesn’t- he finds there is no point in teasing you unless he wants you to laugh- and right now, he wants you to be comfortable more than anything. he loves to tease you but right now, clearly isn’t the time, judging by the way you fidget with your sweater once he lets go of your hand.

“i’m scared and cold, corpse... where are we..?” you question as the masked man pulls you close out of nowhere- his heart thumps wildly in his chest, matching the pace of yours that echoes loudly in your ears. the symphony of hearts aching for one another is so loud and so in tune that it sounds like your own, so you don’t even notice.

meanwhile, corpse hopes you can’t hear his heartbeat with his loose arm around you, attempting to keep you warm. you feel like that house- hollow and empty, but then his fingertips dig through layers of fabric just to keep you warm. that alone makes you feel alive

“i’m okay... don’t make fun of me, but like.. i’ve always been afraid of ghosts.”

that makes him laugh for corpse is neither dead nor alive (at least it feels that way). some days, he truly wonders if he is a ghost, reliving this cursed life until he gets it right.

(your two worries contrast- his a worry of being dead and losing you- yours, the dead being able to come back.)

“don’t worry, i got your back, if any scary monster comes out i’ll throw myself at them first... then you run, okay?” corpse says this with such a seriousness, it’s difficult not to laugh when he does a moment later.

you two enter through the front door, admiring the architecture of years of being a living room and now it looks like the place where the dead rest.

you cannot help but yelp when he steps on glass and it breaks, immediately, your blood turns cold as you grab his jacket sleeve.

“what the hell was that?”

a pause.

“i stepped on some glass, sorry...”

you exhale, relaxing immediately, yet you refuse to let go of him.

“anyways... why did you bring me here?”

another moment of silence- but that moment turns into a few seconds, and soon a minute.

“i... i used to come here a lot as a teen... this house has always been rumored to be haunted- it’s not, by the way- but everyone looked at me weird.”

he smiled a little softly, as if it was something to be fond of, but it just makes you want to pull him into a hug.

“like, you were the first person who didn’t... and this always had a special place in my heart, because i felt like this house once... i was a happy place, but it went wrong...”

you cannot stop holding your breath, listening carefully- this isn’t the first time corpse has opened up to you so deeply before, but it’s rare that it happens. most of the time he downplays his feelings. sometimes you catch him by seeing puffy red eyes, whether it’s from being tired or having just got done crying, it’s... hard for you to read him. and the other for sure way to tell if corpse is sad is by scrolling through his recently played songs.

“and well, then i met you... and you made this broken home look prettier to me.”

this time, you went silent, unsure of what exactly he was trying to say...

“i... i guess i’m trying to say thank you, and i fucking adore you, alright? in fact, if i could, i’d let the whole fucking world know i... that i love you.”

wait...

“what?”

he groans with exasperation, pulling you into a hug.

“i love you, that’s what i meant... that’s what i’ve always been trying to tell you, don’t know why it had to be here, it’s just... special to me, and so are you.”

“corpse-”

“just listen, [name], you don’t gotta say you love me too, because if you don’t love me like that, it’s alright...”

“listen-”

“i mean, yeah, i’ll be a little sad, but i mean. we’ll always be friends, right?”

you shut him up with a kiss and he returns it immediately. in between laughter, the two of you return the kisses, one by one. until you get to the point where corpse is rest assured that you do in fact, love him.

“you’re a lot like this house, corpse... mysterious but lovely.”

now the two of you see this haunted house in a newer, brighter light...

[vercopaanir]

One Day

The Lovely Moons, Chapter 26

Masterlist

Pairing: The Mandalorian x Blind!Reader

Summary: After leaving Nevarro, the covert, and the two additions to your clan behind, the Mandalorian sets out on acquiring the bounty that will free the child from Imperial hands. The coordinates and tracking fob take you to an icy planet, and the bounty proves not to be the most dangerous part of the hunt.

Rating/Warnings: T, brief sexual themes

Words: 5.6k

Notes: Thank you all so much for allowing me space and time during a pretty stressful and emotional period. I really appreciate it. While it’s not over by any means, your continued encouragement and support means the world to me, and I’m so happy to give back to you with this story. I hope it continues to make you happy!

AO3

A leather gloved hand touches the back of your neck, and you flinch so violently that you knock a holopad off the shopkeeper’s counter. Din yanks his hand back as if he’s been burned, growing still at your reaction. Your face crumples when you realize you have once again floated away from the present, tangled in dreams that won’t leave while you wake and grief that won’t be shaken. You apologize profusely to the clearly annoyed vendor, kneeling down to gather the holopad and return it to its place on the counter that boasts the finest leathers and fabrics in the weapons shop. You don’t even remember what drew your interest over in the first place.

“Cyare?”

You turn, feeling forlorn and dejected to face the armored man who holds a securely wrapped infant in one arm, his other hand hanging low near his holstered blaster. You blink up into the dark glass of his visor, a small sigh leaving you. He handled you as if you were made of glass, of porcelain, and you feel like he might be right.

“Would you like to sit while I finish here?” he asks, his voice so soft it’s hardly louder than a rasp.

You nod meekly, taking the baby when he passes the child into your arms, and one hand touches your back to lead you to a small bench in the corner of the store. He hovers while you get comfortable, shifting the child so he is tucked beneath your cloak. Having few clothes to begin with, and fewer still after your favorite dress was torn on Canto Bight, Din had bought you new clothing. A thick, fur lined cloak that is almost too heavy graces your shoulders, but it is so delightfully warm and soft you loathe to take it off even indoors.

He watches you for a moment while you pull the cloak firmer around your shoulders before nodding hesitantly down toward you. He only turns when you try your best to smile, making his way back to finish his bargain for ammunition.

You had left Nevarro two days ago, stealing away in the hours before dawn when the world slept on and time moved like sap down the bumpy bark of a tree. You had been so exhausted, so heavy in your heart that Din had to pry you away from the mumbling, sleeping children when you had whispered your goodbyes. Corde had been excited for your adventure, as she called it, wanting to hear everything upon your return. Venka had hugged you until it nearly grew too much, but that morning, they had been too sleepy to truly be sad, something you were thankful for. Din carried you halfway when your knees buckled from exhaustion, and you had slipped into a tearful rest with the child in his bed.

No amount of sleep helps, though. You know through rationality that leaving Corde and Venka in the care of the covert, under the protection of Paz Vizla is the wisest choice. You could not live if either of them were hurt because of your selfishness, but you did not consider how much you would mourn how silent the ship is now, how lonely it feels, how complex and different your lives became when they clung to your skirts or the Mandalorian’s arms.

You have not left Din’s side, fully aware of how needy you are to follow him around like a lost kitten when he tinkers beneath a panel or goes into the hull to retrieve a tool. He says nothing to deter you, seeming just as listless as you, but you almost wish he would. You think it would be better if he spoke harshly, snapping you back into place like a fractured bone.

The baby seems even worse off. He sits at your feet, his petal shaped ears hanging dolefully as he rolls his durasteel ball against the wall so it will bounce back toward him, a sad and sorry replacement for his playmates. He turns his large, watery eyes up to you, and you scoop him up, not realizing how close to tears you are yourself. The two of you perch on either co-pilot seat at all hours, seeking the closeness your Mandalorian brings even with his back to you, piloting the ship through asteroid belts and over rings of different planets.

The University of Sanbra Guide to Intelligent Life is balanced on your knees, your soft-shoed feet propped up on one of the control panels so the baby can lean back against you more comfortably, and you read aloud to him and Din most hours, filling the ever encroaching silence with your voice until you’re hoarse.

When you’re not in the cockpit, you are in the hull practicing with your staff. You find old, busted holsters that Din doesn’t use and fashion them into a grip that you fit on the middle of the tool, protecting your hands while you grow used to the new reach you have. It takes time getting accustomed to opening and closing the staff, but soon you are flicking your wrist and unsheathing the beskar like a saber, which fills you with an undeniable excitement.

The first night, during dinner, you are tapping the staff against the floor of the hull while you explore the newly cleared out space. It gives you a clearer perspective of how wide the ship is, and Din is eating in the corner, sitting with his legs crossed and watching you. The child is busy reaching up for his plate, which Din must hold up in the air so the baby won’t eat so much he makes himself sick. Again.

“What happened to your first walking stick?” At your pause, you hear him clear his throat behind you. “I heard you say it was taken.”

“Walking aid,” you corrected lightly, tapping your staff’s end along the metal wall. It has a more hollow sound against the ramp, you find, than the reinforced sides of the hull, and you smile to yourself at this discovery. You explore this area, tapping lightly and muttering, “I was clumsy, broke too much with it. The Moff snapped it in half over his knee.”

He says nothing in reply, but later that night you notice, when you are grasping his shoulders desperately, astride him as he holds you so tightly against his chest, muttering Mando’a in your ear, that he has given your staff a place of honor beside his helm. Never far out of reach.

But sleep still does not come easy. It is a battle, fueled only by nightmares of a boot upon your cheek and the child crying. You wake in the night, bullets of sweat slipping past your eyebrows and down your neck, only fairly remorseful to rouse Din by your restlessness. He assures you the child is asleep, curled beneath blankets in his pram, but you don’t deny yourself the haunted memory of having heard him cry. You half expect to find a footprint upon your cheek when you wake again, or a back broken upon a beskar helmet.

Your dreams draw your conscience away from the present too often, enough to concern your lover who already has the world pressing down on his shoulders. You suck in a breath, shifting on the bench in the shop and pressing your cheek to the top of the baby’s head.

The intelligence given to Din when he received the fob for his bounty pinpointed the quarry on an icy, remote planet in the Hoth system. Not only would it take superior tracking skills, but neither you nor the child are prepared for the environment. He elected to stop at a small town on a moon he’d visited previously, not just to overstock his weapons’ locker but to supply you and the child with your new warmer clothing.

The bounties he collected on the Ivalice brothers had made him a wealthy man for a short time, he assured you whenever you hesitate to tell him you like something he might gift you. You are unused to being spoiled, with affection or material goods, but it seems to come more naturally to Din the longer you share his space and time. It is a queer and strange thing, seeing more of his personality when you had once only thought him to be cold and unfeeling, and it leads you to ruminate on this compassionate man beneath the armor you have grown to love handling, affixing to his body each morning and relieving him of it each night.

As you sit in the shop and listen to the vendor haggle prices, you feel the cold creeping through the windows, chilling you until you grow tired again. The child grows lethargic as well, his ears drooping and his eyes weighing heavy as he nuzzles close to your body heat. It occurs to you that perhaps his natural habitat is far removed from the ones you visit, and you wish to know more of his species, of his home. Din had told you that once, he was going to try and find the child’s people back when you were newly boarded to the Razor Crest and still shy around such a fierce warrior as a Mandalorian, but neither of you had spoken of it since.

The idea leaves you so sick, you have to actively push it away.

The thought of being separated from the child brings tears to your eyes, and you are swallowing the cries working their way up your chest when a warm, gloved hand rests on your shoulder.

“What’s wrong? What happened?” Din kneels down quickly in front of you, helmet shining from the light in the shop windows, and you close your eyes against the glare, shaking your head helplessly.

The weak feeling of so many tears leaves you cross with yourself. Surely he feels some semblance of the grief you carry, and it’s not fair for you to languish in it while he’s shouldering through every task and chore to take up this job. You breathe deeply and sniffle, opening your eyes again with more resolve.

“I-I’m being stupid,” you mutter, your thumb tracing a wrinkle on the baby’s head. You wear gloves now too, dove grey and softer than his, another gift that accompanied your cloak. Din’s visor doesn’t stray from you, even when the vendor is shifting to eavesdrop out of your periphery. You clear your throat. “Are you finished?” you ask quietly.

He nods, slow to stand as if he fear you might tip forward. Tugging the cloak around you against the chill, he helps you to your feet and the three of you set out into the town. Misty, cold rain dances in the air above dirty, mud trodden streets, and you blink whenever it crystallizes on your lashes or dusts your cheeks. The baby sneezes when the mist tickles his ears, and when Din laughs at you both, you can’t help the smile it brings.

It is a welcome distraction from your sadness, from your nightmares, and you slip your free arm through his elbow, ignoring the sheathed staff that is affixed to the sash around your waist beneath the cloak. Somehow, even now, he is a surer and steadier anchor than beskar.

The town is built up, wooden and stone structures creating a city more than a town, filled with lumber workers and animal trappers. It has a rustic quality that you did not expect for a bustling enterprise hub, and when a medcenter comes into view, conspicuous by its many windows and telltale red stripe above the threshold, you come to a sudden stop.

“I-I need something,” you say suddenly, blushing high in your cheeks. Din turns to you, curiously tilting his head when you pass the baby into his arms. You shuffle the cloak tighter around you, glancing nervously up at his shadow against the grey, overcast winter sky.

“Alright.” His words hold no small amount of wariness. You purse your lips, understanding he isn’t going to be leaving you for this, and you sigh, gesturing towards the building. He glances between your destination and you, shrugging his pauldrons lightly, and when he speaks again, you think you hear a smile on his face. “...are you still shy?”

The blush unfurls in blatant heat, and you look away. Truthfully, you don’t think you won’t ever not be shy about such things. Dealing with your cycle, both as an indentured servant and slave, was one of the only times you were allowed privacy to yourself. You consider that, while you have shared your heart and mind and body with this man, he has never truly denied you anything. If you truly wish for him to wait outside, he will honor that.

“Do you wish me to change my nature?” you ask, shifting to remove your beskar from beneath the cloak. With a quick flick of the wrist, it stands beside you, allowing you to displace your weight properly and stand a little taller. “I don’t know if I can. I am modest in all ways of life.”

Din chuckles, following you through the sliding metal doors, but his quiet whisper behind your ear nearly has you skidding to a stop. “You are not always so timid with me, Mesh’la .”

When you turn to narrow your pale gaze at him, he is retreating to a corner of the lobby, folding himself in a chair and looking utterly unbothered.

Huffing, you walk up to the counter, speaking with the female alien quietly about needing a new implant. She takes you into an examination room, and you wait patiently for a doctor, unsure now that you are alone. This town is bigger, richer than Quanera, where you had access to a small-town doctor who administered your injection quickly and quietly. There had been no fuss. This time, the doctor who comes in takes your vitals, your blood, and your heart rate climbs as she glances at her holopad with a smile.

“Nervous?” she asks. She is a Twi’lek with deep blue coloring, and you think that her eyes are gold and very kind. “Your pulse is jumping a bit.”

“I’ve only seen a doctor once,” you confess, thinking of your examination upon purchase as a slave. You resist shuddering, curling your hands in your lap. “It’s...it’s been about six months since I received my implant.”

“That is the correct time length,” the doctor agrees, turning to her cabinet and opening the sterilized pouches with pristine gloves. “You’re very responsible to remember.”

The thought of what would happen should you forget makes your blood run cold for a moment. You have not truly thought of your body beyond a vessel, but since Kuiil extracted your chip, you have begun to appreciate things about yourself you had never paid attention to. Making choices like what clothes to cover yourself with (or not), how long or short you could wear your hair-such small things, you think, now make you feel ordinary. It is unfamiliar and altogether pleasant. Being able to go to bed with a man, with anyone of your choosing, had not been a possibility to you before.

Now, imagining having your body overtaken by something like a new life fills you with sickness in the pit of your stomach, feels like being stolen from.

But, at the same time, after the brief moment has passed, you think of being able to lay a hand on your belly and what Din’s blurry visage might look like if you spoke those words to him.

One day , you decide with resolution, rolling up your sleeve and presenting your arm happily to the doctor.

When you exit the examination room, you find the lobby empty. Your heart drops to your stomach, trying desperately to squint and hoping you have missed a shadow or shade that might be the Mandalorian, and you use your staff to tap against the edge of the counter, putting a hand out to steady yourself.

“Excuse me?” you begin to ask the nurse droid, but in that same moment, the Mandalorian strides back inside through the sliding metal doors, calling your name.

Relief washes over you, and you hold your hand out to his glove when he grabs your fingers, a grin on his face beneath the helmet from the sound of his voice. “Come look,” he says breathlessly. You notice the baby is wide awake now, ears perked high from beneath the blanket he is swaddled in, and you allow yourself to be led outside to find something remarkable.

“W-What is it?” you ask when you see that it no longer rains, shying back beneath the building’s covering, but Din gently leads you out into the cold street where other people have stopped to exclaim and point with excitement.

“Snow,” he says, glancing at you as you hold out your hand where wispy flurries begin melting on your covered palm. It’s so light, dancing in the air and never seeming to truly land anywhere. You can’t quite see it, only when it’s low enough or right in front of your face, and you sneeze when a few of the flakes tickle your nose.

The baby suddenly squeals with laughter, reaching his own tiny three fingered hand up to try to catch the delicate, fluffy flakes. You can feel the cold melting on your cheeks, dripping down your neck and beneath your clothes. Din reaches over and uses the back of his fingers to brush it away.

“I’ve never seen snow before,” you say gently, holding out your palm towards the sky. The beskar staff grows colder, begins to frost, and you twist it to fold it inside itself, slipping it back onto the loose sash of your dress. Now you hold both palms out, up to the sky, feeling the small kisses of snow melt through your gloves.

“Where we’re going, you’ll get sick of it,” he chuckles, bouncing the baby on his arm gently.

When you feel the cold on your lips, you dart your tongue out to taste it, gasping with surprise. You must stand there catching flakes in your palms and on your tongue for so long that you are surprised Din doesn’t sigh and shuffle you off. It’s only when you shiver, face damp from the floating ice, that he touches your back and says quietly that he should get you and the child out of the cold.

You take the baby from him when you board the Razor Crest, freeing him to take care of the pre-flight checks, and you giggle and kiss away the melting snow from the child’s cheeks until he snorts and hiccups with laughter. You blot away the rest with the corner of his blue blanket, smiling.

The small kitchenette upstairs isn’t the most modern of installations, but you are able to heat bone broth and bread, feeding the little one in the cockpit while Din pilots quietly. The familiarity of your surroundings sends you back months, thinking of when you were too intimidated to even speak, let alone sit with the armored warrior.

Once the child is fed, you allow him to toddle about in the limited space of the cockpit, standing to stretch and noticing a surprising splash of color near the Mandalorian’s glove. Moving closer, you rest your now bare hand upon the back of his neck, reaching over to touch the blue flowers in the clay cup the child had gifted him so long ago. They had since bloomed and dried into a fragile relic, and Din’s helmet tilts toward you as you caress it.

You wish you could take Corde and Venka to that field of flowers, splattered in violet and periwinkle.

Without speaking, the Mandalorian reaches out and flips a switch, letting go of the controls before gently guiding you by your hips to sit upon his armored cuisse. His glove rests upon the flesh of your waist, curled over the firm beskar staff still hanging there, and you press the warmth of your cheek against his cold crown of his helmet.

“It is okay to be sad,” Din whispers, both of you cognizant of the little child climbing over his boots beneath your feet. “You do not have to keep it inside you, to yourself.”

Tears threaten to well in your eyes, and you swallow them down hard. You have been crying so much, so freely, that it leaves you feeling guilty. His voice carries all the grief you have harbored since leaving the covert-perhaps even more. You rest one arm around the back of his shoulders, your other hand falling over the soft space between his vambrace and pauldron.

“I do not want to burden you even more,” you whisper, your eyes drifting through the blurry streaks of stars as autopilot guides the ship through the frigid depths of space. You can see the coordinates for your destination, though you cannot read them. They are a scarlet smear of digital letters, not unlike blood upon a stone. “It isn’t fair.”

Din is silent, though you have a feeling-one that comes beyond words, a feeling that is only shared between two people who have known each other so irrevocably-that he agrees, that he understands. You rest against him, in his arms, upon his legs, and you feel yourself listing into a dreamless sleep. Fatigue has followed you these short days after departing Nevarro, and traveling into the Hoth sector, where it feels even colder somehow, has left you mellow and slow-moving.

When you wake, you are slumped in the co-pilot’s seat, and you can hear the baby chirping close by. Din is pulling the ship into land, the descent through a bright atmosphere one of the smoothest you think he has ever flown, and you smile as your hands find the soft, heavy fabric of his cloak upon you, even while you still wear your own. As your eyes adjust to the lighting of the cockpit, you find you have to squint from such a brightness you’ve never experienced on board the Crest, the light reflecting off a harsh white view.

“Where are we?” you ask softly, slow to sit up and feeling a slight stiffness in your neck.

Din’s helmet tilts to the side, but he does not turn from the observation deck, flipping several switches to activate the landing gear. The light has not reduced, and it takes you much longer to adjust. You briefly wonder if he has some kind of photo sensor detection in his helmet that neutralizes the reflection. You feel the thrusters turn on, allowing a softer landing than you expect, and as the engines power down, he finally turns his chair smoothly to face you.

The baby coos from his lap, and a laugh bursts from between your lips.

“What is that!”

Din huffs indignantly, laying a palm on top of the baby’s head. It’s covered with a thickly woven wrap to protect his ears, swaddling him like some kind of decadently coated olive. You can’t make out what it’s made of, but the dark material only allows his face to be free. His ears wiggle at your laugh and he blinks his large, innocent eyes, making you grin wider as you stand.

“It’s freezing out there,” Din grumbles, allowing you to lift the child into your arms where he immediately begins to snuggle closer into your warmth. The wrap smells like Din, you think, and you hide a smile as you press a kiss to the baby’s brow. You turn your pale eyes upon the Mandalorian’s shadow before leaning down and kissing the steel above his visor, too.

“You are a sweet-hearted man, Din Djarin,” you murmur, unable to keep the lightness from your voice, your movements. His hand touches your waist tenderly, only falling away when you turn to retrieve his thick cloak from the chair you vacated. “Are we to wait for you to return from bounding and sneaking across the plains?”

He ignores your teasing, standing and receiving the cloak you offer him. You watch as he affixes it over his helmet, tucking it much tighter beneath the beskar than usual. “Yes,” he tilts his helmet towards you, and you sigh a little, wishing you could see his face. Knowing and understanding why you can’t for now. “But not yet. There’s something I want to show you.”

Your curiosity piqued, you follow him swiftly down the ladder, suddenly grateful for the thickly lined dress, woolen leggings, and thick boots he insisted upon. Din lowers the ramp, and you yelp at the sudden frigid blast of dry air that seems to frost everything around you like splintering cobwebs. You grab the baby up, burying him beneath your cloak and glaring at the Mandalorian who laughs at your scowling.

“I told you it was cold.”

Your answering glower does little to snuff out his laughter, and you allow him to tug your gloves back on one at a time, shifting the little child in your arms. It’s only when he steps out onto the ramp that you notice he has armed himself to the teeth, and his rifle is slung across his back. Once, it frightened you, but now it seems just another part of him.

Blinking against the bright light, you pull the hood of your cloak over the crown of your head before taking your staff out, comforted by the quiet clink of the beskar against the ramp as you step outside.

The sun glares down upon a frozen, empty surface, a thickly snowy hill country, and you think the Razor Crest must be the only blot of color on the entire planet. You sniffle against the cold, realizing as you walk down the ramp that the earth is not solid.

Immediately, you sink down nearly to your knees in soft, powdery snow.

“Din!”

His laugh is loud, barking through the vocoder, and you scramble to try and step through it, only succeeding in sinking further into the drift of white crystals that are melting less than before. It coats your boots, your leggings, your dress, and you sputter and spit the fluffy crystals off your faces.

The baby shrieks with happiness.

“Alright,” he laughs, stepping over and helping you out of the drift until you can find a place to stand more solidly. He brushes the snow coating your cloak, and you slap his elbow playfully.

“You could have warned me. That wasn’t funny.”

“You are very pretty when you are angry, though.”

Your cheeks blush hot enough to melt the speckles of snow on your eyelashes, and you duck your head bashfully, gently setting the baby down upon his feet. His tiny boots, sewn from the thick scraps of leather of Din’s worn holsters and lined with wool you’d taken from your own dress’s hem, barely leave footprints as he begins to waddle curiously. His little arms are thrust out on either side to retain his balance, ears wiggling with delight beneath his head wrap as he coos in wonder at the icy landscape around him.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” you finally sniff, hovering carefully behind the child as he makes a slow ramble through the snow, one hand splayed outward just in case he falls as you lean on your staff.

Warm, rough leather hands circle your hips, and you suck in a breath as you’re pulled back against hard beskar, and suddenly you don’t feel the cold at all. The curve of his helmet bumps the back of your head where your hood shields your hair, and you swallow against the sudden rush of heat blooming in your belly.

“I’d give you my rifle for another chance to see you challenge a man with it,” Din whispers, barely audible over the gentle breeze. Your pale eyes keep hold of the tiny ball of wool that is your son, huffing and puffing as he makes a path through the snow ahead of you, but you can’t say your attention is fully dedicated to him anymore, especially when Din’s hands begin to slip beneath your cloak, tracing the curve of your waist. Even through your layers, you can imagine the path his hands make, and you are burning beneath them now.

You turn your face over your shoulder, biting your lip. “I’m still unhappy with you for not telling me about that fight,” you mutter, shuddering when one of his hands cups your breast and squeezes, firm enough to nearly have your knees buckling. “I-I won’t...be distracted.”

His chuckle vibrates through the beskar chest plate against your back, and you have to close your eyes and breathe through the sudden dizziness of feeling him firm against your backside. He rests the lip of his helmet upon your shoulder.

“Yes, ma’am.”

You both stand together, your free arm folded over his as he holds you, watching the baby giggle and flop in the snow. He face plants forward, causing the both of you to burst with laughter, and he seems intent to try to make his imprint on the ground.

Kneeling down, you scoop snow into your gloved hand, squeezing and forming it experimentally. You had never truly considered what snow was like, having hailed from a temperate and balmy climate, but the way the bright sun glimmers, nearly too much, you can see the appeal. Your breath fogs before your face, and you blow rings into the air.

And then, a sudden splatter of snow swamps you from above, and you scream.

Whirling around, you find the Mandalorian holding his middle, shaking with restrained laughter, and you take two quick strides up to him before giving him a firm shove. Surprisingly, he loses his balance and tips over with ease, falling back into the pillow of a snow drift only to laugh harder in the face of your wrath.

“You’re such a bucket-head!” you laugh, picking up your own handful of snow and lobbing it at his helmet. The satisfaction of actually aiming and hitting your mark is stolen when he continues to laugh, a deep, rich, and warm sound, sprawled in the snow and deeply unaffected by your vengeance.

Panting with giggles, the baby waddles at top speed through the icy powder, giving a wiggling hop to pounce upon his father’s chest as if to claim a prize. You plop down on his other side, thumping hard on the chest plate with the mythosaur carved in the top of your staff.

“This is what you wanted to show us, is it?” you challenge, knowing he’s beaming under his visor. He folds his hands under his helmet as if he could simply take a nap, and you grin down at him, shaking your head. The baby moves to sit on his chest, grunting until he squeals in triumph and begins to slap his tiny hands upon the helmet like playing a drum.

“Alright, womp-rat,” Din grunts, lifting the child up high in his arms as he sits up. The baby coos, throwing his hands out as if he could fly through the air, and you giggle when you watch Din sit the little green infant upon his shoulder. He offers you a hand, pulling you to your feet with more delicacy than Paz Vizla, brushing snow off your shoulders. You smile, pushing yourself up to your toes and pressing your warm forehead against his cold one.

Beep-beep, beep-beep, beep-beep-

Din tenses, his hands gripping like iron with a near bruising strength around your wrists suddenly. You blink, foggy and distant in the planes of affection and play, before you realize the soft echoing radar comes from his own person. He has gone completely still before you, the tracking fob giving off a subtle blinking red light at his hip, and as you draw your pale gaze up to him, you realize why.

On the horizon of the otherwise blindingly white landscape, there is a small smear of color in the distance, hardly noticeable at first, a blotting of red like dripped wax on paper, but you see it as it moves. Moving toward you, and Din. And the child.

“Get him inside,” Din snarls, thrusting you and the little one sharply behind him before striding through the snow like a shadow defying the bend of light, shouldering his rifle with the ease of a practiced killer. “And lock yourselves in.”

Your heart is a panicked, fluttery thing, a frightened rabbit in the open sight of prey, and you clutch the baby in your arms, wrapping him firmly against your chest even when he begins to fuss at the jolting movements. You are clumsy, stumbling through the snow and tripping even with your staff, nearly falling several times in your attempt to get back to the ramp of the Razor Crest. It is slick with ice and snow, and you slip on the lip of the threshold, landing painfully on your knees. Fear is clawing up your throat, and you feel tears sting your eyes when the child begins to whimper over your shoulder, reaching out his tiny hands toward his father.

Using the staff to draw yourself up, you slam your gloved hand against the release switch to shut the hull, looking desperately across the tundra for a sign of the man you love, for the prey he hunts, but all you see is white.

-

Mando’a Translations:

Cyare - Beloved

-

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[damnzawa]

Hi! For your AU fest, can I request a afterlife! bakugou x reader x Todoroki, where bakugou used to date the reader but towards the end he kind of mistreated her. Reader dies and Todoroki is some sort of death god/spirit who falls in love with her! Bakugou feels really guilty and fights his way into the underworld for you. Then reader picks one! (up to you haha) sorry this is kinda long! Thank you so much! 😊

FIRST LOVE — T. SHOUTO

Note(s): oh wow,, a new post ?? congratulations me! anyways, i’ve been mia lately due to animal crossing so please pardon my lack of new posts. i’ll try my best to finish all the requests before school starts! enjoy :)

Warning(s): Lil angst i think,, also King Explosion Murder is your ex lol

—

In all the years you lived on Earth, you’ve hardly experienced love. Years and years, you’ve been asking yourself, what was your fault? What was the sin you committed that gave you a bad karma like that?

All those years and not a single drop of love was given to you. Of course you grew used to it, but still, you yearned for it. You craved for it. So much that you were desperate for someone, anyone, to show it to you.

It was that desperation that led you to your ex-husband, Bakugo Katsuki.

He was kind in his own way, fiery, feisty. He did things his way and didn’t let anybody get on his way. Maybe it was his looks or that damn personality of his that made you fall. But nonetheless, falling for Bakugo Katsuki was the biggest mistake of your life.

He was cruel. Menacing. Cold. He wasn’t the man you pictured him to be. What he first showed you was only a facade, a mask to cover what he truly is: a monster.

In all the years you lived on Earth, you’ve never really felt love. Not from your parents, siblings, nor from the husband you cherished with your whole heart. So, it was ironic that when you finally left the face of the Earth that you finally felt it.

You feared death. You dreaded the time when your heart stops beating and you stop breathing. You hated the silence that came afterwards. Everything about death was bad. Until you realized that your death was the beginning of something new. Something beautiful. It wasn’t the end. It was only just a beginning of a new chapter.

The man in front of you was different from Bakugo Katsuki. He wasn’t aggresive nor have anger issues. If anything, he seems like an empty shell. A hollow and broken one at that. But despite that, despite the cold feeling in his heart, he showed you love. He gave you all of his love. Even if it meant none was left for himself.

Todoroki Shouto was the God of Death. Yet despite his title, he wasn’t as menacing as it sounds. In fact, he’s soft. He wasn’t the living demon you expected him to be, he was so much more than that. He was your saviour. And he was also the one who made you experience what love is.

But it made you feel guilty. Was love supposed to make you feel guilty? It was sad. Love was never supposed to be sad. (Or so you think.)

It was sad because the love wasn’t mutual.

“It’s ok, Y/n.” He said in his usual soft voice but the look in his eyes betrayed his voice. He was hurt. Deeply. Of course he was. It was the first time he loved someone and he was rejected. “I’ll wait for you. And when the time comes, I’ll be here for you.”

“Shouto.” You placed a hand on his cheek to which he happily leaned into. “Don’t. Don’t do this to yourself.”

“Do what?”

“Love yourself before you can love someone else, Shouto.” You smiled sadly at him. “And when that time comes, I’ll be happy to accept your affections.” Your hand left his face, making him frown. The warmth it left on his face was slowly disappearing. “Besides, I, myself am not ready yet. You know this Shouto.”

He sighed and nodded. He respected your decision and frankly, you were right. It seemed that you’ll be practicing what you preached too. So, it made him a bit glad.

You and Todoroki stayed friends, even after the rejection. Honestly, you expected him to leave, shut the door on your face, but he didn’t. Instead, he stayed with you, the both of you finally learning to love yourselves first before others. He stayed with you through thick and thin, in sickness and in health. He stayed with you through all the bad and good times, as you did with him, and for the first time in forever, you were finally ready.

You were about to say it. Those words that Todoroki wanted to hear. You opened your mouth to say something when suddenly a commotion was heard in the distance. A very familiar one.

“Let me see her! Fucking damnit! Get out of my way extras!” You felt you heart drop at the voice. It was him. Bakugo Katsuki.

“Y/n. Stay here.” Todoroki instructed you but it was too late. Your feet moved on instinct and started running towards Bakugo. You didn’t know why but hearing him made you want to see him badly, for some reason. You didn’t know why but somehow, you forgot about Todoroki for a second.

Katsuki.

Katsuki.

Katsuki... died?

Arriving at the scene, your breath hitched once your eyes fell on a certain angry blond. It was him, in the flesh. Standing there with that trademark scowl of his.

“Shut up dumbfucks! I don’t fucking care!” You were about to approach him when a hand found it’s way on your shoulder. Glancing back, you saw Todoroki with a worried expression on his face. He wasn’t worried about your well-being though. He was worried you’d leave him for Bakugo.

“Shouto. It’s ok.” You flashed him a smile, as if to reassure him that everything will be fine. “It’ll be done in a jiffy.”

Removing Todoroki’s hand from your shoulder, you approached Bakugo, who instantly calmed down at the sight of you.

“Katsuki.”

“Y/n.” Bakugo teared up and immediately hugged you. “I’ve been searching everywhere for you, you goddamn extra! I even made a deal with some of the fuckers above just to meet you!”

“Katsuki-“

“I know I’ve been fucking cruel to you. I’m not the best at this shitty things. But, come with me, Y/n. We’ll start again. I promise I’ll be better.” Your mouth went agape at the amount of emotions Bakugo Katsuki gave off. Regret. Grief. Sadness. Despair. Love. It shocked you to the core.

“Katsuki.” You called him once you recovered from the shock. “Go home.” This time it was Bakugo’s turn to be shocked.

“What the fuck? What do you mean?”

“Go home, Katsuki. I don’t want to.”

“Why wouldn’t you want to?”

“Katsuki, have you considered my emotions when you planned all of this? Have you thought about what I would feel?” His silence gave you the answer you needed. “See? I’m tired of this, Katsuki. I don’t want this anymore.”

—

Todoroki hasn’t seen you for weeks ever since the Bakugo incident. He was worried about you. Were you ok? Were you eating well? Were you sleeping ok?

Heavens, he just wanted to know you’re ok.

“Shouto.” Your voice snapped him out of his train of thoughts. Todoroki immediately stood up from his throne and engulfed you in a hug. He felt relieved. Glad that you were ok. Glad that you were here. Glad that you didn’t leave him.

“Someone missed me.” You joked, but you both knew it was true. In all honesty, you missed him too. But you needed the time to figure things and your feelings out.

“You suddenly left without a note. Of course I’d miss you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. You needed time.”

“Even so, I worried you.”

“It’s ok.” Todoroki gave you a small smile. “You’re here now, that’s what matters.”

“Hey Shouto. Remember the question you asked me?”

“Hmm? Of course I do. It makes me cringe everytime I think about it.”

—

What happened? What the fuck happened? One second you felt flames engulf your body then the next you were lying on a boat. Boat to where? You didn’t know. But it was giving you the creepy vibes for sure.

Upon further inspection, you spotted a few boats nearby, all headed at the same direction as you. The people in it were just as confused as you were. Where were you exactly? And what happened?

After what seemed like eternity, you finally reached the shore. You reluctantly stepped out of the boat and took a quick look at your surroundings. It was foggy, overall looking like a horror movie. Oh my God, were you gonna die?

“You already did.” A voice interrupted to you. You turned around and saw a dual hair colored boy, infront of you. His answer confused you. You already what?

“You already died.” What? Your face paled at that. Then suddenly, memories of you being trapped in your burning home came flashing back. Oh God. Oh God. You really are dead.

But why aren’t you covered in burns?

“It’s just that.”

“Ok, stop reading my mind.” You glared at the man infront of you. “Who are you anyways?”

“My name is Todoroki Shouto, and I am the God of Death.” If your face went pale earlier, it went pale-r than before. Did you just talk back to the fucking God of Death? Oh shit, oh shit.

“Yes, you did.” You glared at him. “But I don’t mind. Just answer my question.”

“What question?”

“Do you want to be my wife?” You choked at that. What the fuck? Was he for real? You just barely met the guy! You were sure he doesn’t know you too!

“Yes, that’s true.” He replied to your thoughts. “Let’s get to know each other then.”

Was it possible to kill the God of Death?

—

“You were clueless back then.” You giggled. “And honestly, you still are.”

“I’m offended.” Todoroki replied, but the smile on his face grew at your remarks.

“Good. I want you to be.” You joked. “But jokes aside, is that offer still on the table?”

“What?”

“Do you wanna be my husband?” You asked him with a grin on your face.

“Sure, I guess.”

“You guess?!”

Bakugo Katsuki was your past, and now Todoroki Shouto was your present and possibly your future.

[lotornomiko]

The Broken Hearted Comfort One (Not safe for work)

Decided to do some improving on the existing chapters...some tweaking in an attempt to make them flow and read better. I don't believe I ever posted the first versions here either....if I can get the cuts to work, I will be posting them all to my tumblr as I go over them...(Couldn't get the post editor to do a cut for 16 no matter what I tried yesterday...)

Hook Belle coupling, once Upon A Time fanfic...

It begins with a look, just that of two pairs of eyes chancing a meeting from across the bar. Neither one of them means to do it, but it happens all the same. Grieving blue meets a gaze equally full of such similar a sorrow, sparking a reaction in the two.

The woman is the first to look away, to glance down at the mug she's nursing. Hook stares at her a moment longer, then turns away with the startled realization that he KNOWS her. He might not know her name, or where she is from, but he knows where she spends her nights. Or at least part of them, Hook acknowledging that she's always been at the tavern long before he has arrived, and is probably still there long after he leaves. And always, she just sits at the bar, nursing that one drink, with the same despondent look in her eyes.

It's a look he knows well, Hook having seen it gaze back in full in his own mirror’s glass. It's one that has been reflected there since the day that his Milah had died, his love a woman who had been savagely murdered by her own coward of a husband. On that day, with her brutal passing, a part of Hook had died as well, his heart all but torn from his chest the way that Milah's had been.

His sole remaining hand tightens on his own mug, Hook staring off at nothing with those memories sparking vivid in his head. He doesn't realize that his grief shows all the more, or the fact that the woman is looking at him once again. Staring at him with an open mouthed recognition, a kind of sorrow eyed sympathy shown his way. She can't possibly know what he's been through, but she does acknowledge it as a twin to her own grief.

The woman quickly looks away, when she realizes he has noticed. Hook can't help but stare at her, wondering what--WHO had put such a similar look of pain in her eyes. His own sympathetic gaze is cast on her, knowing her for what she is. A woman whose heart has been thoroughly broken, just as Hook's has been.

It didn't matter the circumstances of her situation. He wasn't looking to make a friend. Wasn't looking for anything except a minute or two of relief, the kind of peace drinks alone could not grant him. And yet he kept turning back to her, studying her, noticing things beyond the sad blue of her eyes.

Like her hair, which was a rich chestnut brown color, full of long curls that were draped and gathered over the front of one shoulder. She wore a pretty blue dress, with plenty of white frills and gold lace. She had a shapely figure, and a beyond lovely face. She was beautiful, even in her torment, Hook wondering why anyone would ever want to hurt her and tear the smile off of her face.

But he wasn't going to ask, wasn't going to even think of the potential reasons for her hurt. Because if he did, he'd want to kill someone, want to hunt down the monster who had made this beautiful woman hurt so badly. And that was something he couldn't devote time or energy to, Hook having a mission, a single minded purpose, existing all on the desire to avenge his murdered and broken heart, that of his Milah.

He thinks of her raven black hair then, of ivory pale skin, and those piercing eyes that had seemed to always see past his swagger, to the man Hook was---had once been inside. Milah had always able to make him feel things, exciting and new, revealing unexpected facets of Hook, she still affected him now. But it was all dark in his head now, his eyes a blue dulled with his own monumental pain and sadness.

Coins abruptly clattered on the bar's countertop, Hook leaving his drink unfinished. He wouldn't even look again at the woman in blue, stalking towards a side exit of the tavern. It had started raining outside, a cold spray heavy enough to send the townspeople all fleeing indoors. Hook lingered undecided for one moment more, then stepped out into the rain. Someone follows behind him, and Hook wonders just who can be that foolish. Especially when they then follow him into an alley, Hook turning, grabbing at an arm, then hearing a woman gasp. Hook might have gasped too, staring shocked for one moment, at the woman from the bar. Then reason comes back to him, Hook gripping her arm tighter, forcing a pained sound out of her.

"Why did you follow me?!" He demands, his harsh sounding voice making her flinch for one moment longer, before she gathers up her courage.

"I wanted to ask....wanted to know if it will get better."

He doesn't have to ask her what she means by that, not when they match each other so perfectly in the pain that they feel. Nor can he give her an answer, any hope, Hook just shrugging back.

The woman seems to deflate before him, as though what little hope she had been clinging to, has now extinguished completely. And still she is beautiful, even as the rain soaks her tired form down, and plasters her hair and her clothing against her.

She doesn't seem at all fearful that she is alone in an alley with a stranger. Has she gone stupid from the pain, or does she simply not care what could happen to her? But he well knows the answer already, Hook too having long having abandoned caring if he lived or he died, simply existing instead.

"This is no way to live." Hook mutters out loud, and the woman nods. But what choice do they have, when caught in the grip of their own private heart breaks.

"I just want it to stop." The woman confesses. Is she starting to cry? But with the storm on her cheeks, he can't tell tears from actual rain drops. "I just want the pain to go away, to feel something other than this heart break."

It is then that Hook realizes he is still gripping her arm, and that she's not even attempting to get away. In fact she moves towards him when he pulls, her head tilting back just enough to keep on looking him in the face.

He's not the one she should be looking to for comfort. He can't even fix his own heart, let alone that of any other. Not with the pain still so fresh, so new. With th wound that Milah's death has dealt him, keeping on festering inside him, hollowing out his heart so that he can feel nothing of love and hope and happiness.

The grief that is so relentless inside of him, goes blessedly quiet the instant his mouth covers hers. It's not a true peace that he has attained, the kiss unable to keep his sorrow away for forever. But it will do the job for at least a few minutes, Hook realizing he wants to lose himself in this woman. And from the eager way that she is attempting to kiss him back, he realizes that she feels the same way.

The kiss isn't anything like the ones he had shared with MIlah. This woman is more an inexperienced girl, than that of a practiced seductress. She doesn't at all know what she is doing, but what she lacks in expertise, she makes up for in enthusiasm. Kissing with the same raw need, and desperation that Hook feels, both wanting to know something other than the pain. Hook can only marvel at what a fool the person who had broken her heart must have been, this woman eager for kisses, for just even a little affection. It's downright criminal for one to have ignored her, to have refused lips as sweet as hers. It makes him want to teach her, to show her what it felt like to kiss and be kissed back.

She makes a soft, startled sound, but doesn't outright hesitate when his tongue twines with hers. He makes his own groan of sound, deeply gratified when she laves her tongue back, the woman learning the play of it, and seeming to enjoy it.

Hook enjoys it too, his hand letting go of her arm, to catch instead at her hair. Gripping it and her steady, then losing his own focus when her hands touch on his sides. It's over his coat, and probably means nothing more than an attempt to keep her balance, and yet the mere idea of this woman touching him any where, makes him wild. Completely frenzied, Hook walking her back, to pin her against the alleyway's thick brick wall.

Kissing her harder, then pulling back, his forehead then lightly resting against hers. Water pours off the both of them, the two staring into each other's eyes. Both of them are panting, their heavy breaths echoing oddly amid the rain. Hook stares and sees not just confusion, but a lost, helpless look, the same one that he is surely wearing. They both want peace, they both might want someone to share the pain, but most of all they both want this moment, the woman issuing out a breathy plea.

"Don't stop."

He couldn't, not even if she had begged him to do otherwise. He needed her, needed the comfort she could provide. Hook didn't care that this was insane, that this didn't solve anything, for him or for her. He just wanted, and as a pirate, he was used to taking that which he desired.

It wouldn't be anything like she deserved. He couldn't, wouldn't show her the care a woman such as this needed, couldn't allow himself to make this moment into something more than it was. He was not some hero in a story, and she was not his happily ever after. Hook didn't even believe there was a chance for him, no longer daring to wish for more, to want for anything more than revenge and a quick death after.

This time when he kissed her, it was almost angry but Hook didn't know who that feeling was for. Himself or for her, or for the things that could not be, the future they could not give each other.

His tongue harsh, his lips bruising, Hook kissed her as though he would devour the woman whole. She tried to match his pace, to match the near violent intensity he displayed, mewling sounds escaping out her throat. Her hands clutched at his coat, the woman feeling so small while she trembled against him, but ever so soft and so pliant.

Knowing she had to be freezing from the rain, he STILL sliced through the laces of her dress' corseted back with the hook that had taken the place of his severed hand. The dress didn't immediately fall down to her hips, too rain soaked to do anything but cling to curves he was sure were perfect. Hook nearly groaned with impatience, wanting her bared to the waist, but not wanting to take the time to tug and pull down that skin tight bodice.

It proved more than worth the effort, Hook rewarded with a sight that was glorious. Round, full breasts, with small but rosy looking nipples, the rain water leaving slick trails all along her freezing skin. He hadn't even needed to touch her, the chill making those nipples stand out. Greedy, he tasted one, his open mouth enveloping it fully. The woman seemed to jerk back in surprise, a hitch to her breath a moment before she arched her back and pressed her breast more firmly against his lips. And then she was moaning, Hook's mouth teasing, making the woman shiver and shake against him.

Her hands went to his hair, holding, encouraging him. His hand went under her dress, kneading the inside of her thigh for just a moment. And then he was pressing his knee against her, forcing her legs to part and straddle around him. She mewled, and tugged on his hair, forcing him up from her breasts so that they could share a kiss once more.

Tongues seeming to duel against one another, Hook's hand dropped to the front of his pants, fingers more clumsy than they should ever be. Somehow, without the aid of his hook, he got the leather open, his cock springing free and erect, and touching against her. She shifted to see, and that was when he tore off the voluminous amount of fabric that served as her under garments, Hook hauling the woman onto him.

She cried out, her nails digging into him in retaliation for the hurt he had just done her. There was the pained glimmer of tears in her eyes, the woman looking almost betrayed. Hook wondered if that was the same look she had given the man who had broken her heart, but quickly shrugged free of all thought, not wanting to give in to anything like guilt for having hurt her.

Keeping her pinned against the wall, Hook began to move. Not caring about her, about anything but the moment, and the fact that it was now silent in his head. Revenge, Rumplestiltskin, even Milah was forgotten, Hook completely in the moment, his lean but powerful hips working. Forcing his way into the deepest part of the young woman pinned before him, feeling every inch of her passage work to expand and give way, and still remaining ever so gloriously tight.

He cried out, not recognizing his own voice. Not aware of anything except the all consuming lust that had pitched through him, Hook feeling frenzied and feverish. Needing to come, and not wanting the moment to end, his hips bucking wildly, with little art or expertise, Hook bit down on the crook of the woman's shoulder. She cried out too, but he couldn't make out the words, his tongue laving over the bite mark he had left her. His good hand lay flat against the wall besides her, Hook ruthlessly driving himself into her, relying on the bricks to hold against their combined weight.

Her nails were drawing blood, the woman's breasts bouncing with each thrust of his. He could feel a wetness that didn't have anything to do with the rain or her maiden's blood, the woman's body at last fully accepting him, though its attempt at preparations had been woefully delayed. Hook knew he should have helped her, should have eased her into her first sexual experience better. For that matter he shouldn't have taken her in some side alley, should have given her the bed and comforts a virgin would have required. A dozen more should of came to mind, and were quickly dismissed, Hook knowing it too late to change anything, even the fact that he was about to come, and she was not.

His cock actually jerked inside her, his climax erupting harder than he could ever previously remember. He actually thought he saw stars, so dazed was he by the orgasm, just continuing to standi there while going flaccid inside her. Both of them were breathing heavy, Hook resting his head on her shoulder. And as his breath began to even out, the memories began to come back. First trickling in, then becoming a full out flood, Hook remembering it all, Milah, Rumplestiltskin, the horrific murder of his loved one, the need for revenge. And besides it, was the memory of the woman he had just had sex with, Hook not daring to look at her face, not wanting her betrayed expression to add to his future torments.

Not looking at her, he pulled out, and then set her down none too gently on her feet. He'd go to take a step away from her, and she'd sway, Hook spinning to catch her in his arms. It was an uncharacteristic moment of vulnerability, Hook feeling bad for what he had done, for how he had treated her. He'd feel worse after she recovered, her delicate hand then slapping hard across his face.

"Beast!" The woman proclaimed, hurriedly pulling up her dress a moment before she took shaky flight off into the night. Hook didn't try to stop her, fought even the desire to turn and watch her run away. His cheek belzard with hurt, the woman having struck him hard enough to leave a mark of her own. He deserved worst, his shaking hand touching first his cheek, and then his lips where the taste of her still lingered.

The encounter had been a mistake, he was sure of it. One he wouldn't be repeating. With her, with any woman, Hook deciding this was the last time he'd be unfaithful to Milah's memory. It didn't matter that it seemed an unreasonable promise, Hook hating himself in the moment. Swearing off sex, off drinking, and off beautiful strangers who wore pretty dresses. Especially ones whose eyes were as hurt as his.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To Be Continued.....

8/24/2021 Updated and Tweaked a fair bit to try and make it flow better without outright overhauling and rewriting the entire story from scratch. Will try to tweak the other chapters as well!

Michelle

[skiller0dani]

Hollow Grave | Dean Winchester

M A S T E R L I S T Supernatural Masterlist

smut (v sad though) requests info listened to ‘dumbledore’s farewell’ by nicholas hooper when I wrote this. just btw xx

The sun had set hours ago but the tears were still wet on your cheeks. The aching in your chest hadn’t lessened, you feared it never would. Your fingers curled around the steering wheel of the pickup truck you hot wired in your frantic attempt to leave the Bunker. Your hair was wet from the rain which battered down on the roof of the truck. The strands stuck to your face and neck as you cried, you couldn’t see through the tears or rain but you didn’t care- you needed to go. Dean didn’t- there’s no way he did what he said he did. Panic settles deep into you, if he did it then not only did he lie but he is exactly what you feared he was. A man who sees nothing more than what’s in front of him, that things in this world are as easy as black and white. Wendy is fine- she’s in North Carolina. That’s the last place a postcard was sent from, she’s okay... Dean didn’t. He just didn’t. Tears fly down your cheeks as you speed down the road going much faster than is safe for how heavily it’s raining. 

Dean stood with his back to the door, you and Wendy stood in front of him. “Y/N you need to let me do this.” Dean says, his eyes hard and his jaw clenched as he eyed the two of you. You stood protectively in front of your little sister, a pleading look of pure panic strewn on your face. “She’s not a monster baby please you don’t have to hurt her. She steals blood from the morgues and hospitals.” You try to keep your tone sharp and hands steady but the fear coursing through you overrides anything else. Dean still holds the gun pointed firmly in your direction, but you know he’d never pull the trigger with you standing in the way. “Dean if you hurt her I will never forgive you. She’s all I have left.” You plead, the tears in your eyes threatening to fall. When Dean lowers his gun Wendy makes a beeline for the motel room door, not even throwing a fearful glance in Dean’s direction. 

He didn’t hurt her, but he didn’t promise not to eventually. You feel nearly lightheaded as you frantically drive to the address Dean gave you. He didn’t look up as he did so, a somber expression laid over his face. Not happening. This isn’t happening. You love Dean but how could you ever look at him the same if he hurt her? If he killed Wendy? You don’t want to believe for a second that your faith in Dean was misplaced. You pull into the parking lot, barely making sure the truck was in park before you were throwing open the door and rushing into the forest. You glanced around for the trail start marker before sprinting down it, the rain chilling you to the bone. The water soaks through your clothes but you don’t notice as you keep an eye out for the tree with a yellow scarf tied around the trunk. Dean knows how much Wendy means to you, he knows that if you were to lose her then you would lose yourself. “No,” The word falls past your lips like  a broken promise when you catch sight of the yellow scarf. Your feet move on autopilot as you collapse to your knees at the trees base. You begin to scoop up the ground with your hands, desperately clawing at the dirt as tears blur your eyes once again. 

The Bunker was quiet, save for the steady ticking of the clock in the Library. Dean sat across from you, stubble lining his jaw and a tired haze in his eyes. Your socked feet stretched across the distance under the table to rest on his lap, and you felt his thumb rubbing circles onto your inner calf. He had a book in his hands but you could tell he wasn’t really reading it. “Where did Wendy end up?” His voice was ragged, it matched his appearance. You eyed him suspiciously, but saw no hidden motive in his eyes. “One of the Carolina’s.” You tell him, flipping another page of the book you were pretending to read. Dean turned his attention back to the book in his hands, but the hollow look in his eyes worried you. “Baby, are you okay?” You asked knowing it was more like that he would lie to you. His eyes turn up to meet yours and expression on his face has all the answers you need. “Been worse.” He quirked the corner of his mouth up, but that glimmer in his eyes never sparkled as he smiled at you. 

You’re frantic as you dig away at the ground, the tears in your eyes making it hard for you to see what you’re doing. When your hand hits something you curl your fingers around it before yanking an arm out of the ground. “No, no please-” You gasp as you continue to pull the body out of the sodden Earth. Eventually you get another arm free and soon you’re yanking the body up by the shoulders. A scream erupts from your dry throat as you make eye contact with your little sister, her blue eyes glazed and empty. Dead. “Wendy! God please not Wendy.” Your tears are thick as you sob, clutching her to your chest. Her body is heavy like dead weight in your arms as you cry out. The pain overwhelms you. It consumes you and for a second you’re worried it’s going to swallow you whole. Dean- Dean. You feel anger first, the betrayal making your skin itch. Then the pain comes rolling in waves, each time drowning you more than the last. You gather Wendy in your arms, the pain turning into a boiling rage with each step. You trusted Dean, you love Dean. He killed Wendy. 

As the weeks went on there was no further mention of Wendy from Dean, which you were grateful for. Every once in a while you’d receive a post card from her, a way for her to let you know that she’s okay. “Got another.” Dean said as he tosses the card down onto the table in front of you. His expression was sullen as he knelt to kiss your head. With a firm hold on your chin Dean tilted your head to press a searing kiss to your lips which you responded to with fervor. “Baby?” you questioned when he pulled away, his hand digging into your hair to drag your lips back onto his. Dean reached for you frantically, a desperation twitching underneath his palms as he lifted you around his waist. Your lips met his once again as his hands gripped your hips with a bruising force. You’re not sure where this sudden desperation came from but you know whatever demons he’s battling in his head- he needs you to chase them away. Which you gladly will. Dean’s hand slid up your bare thigh to graze his fingers over the soaked crotch of your sleep shorts. 

There are no words spoken as he presses your back to the wall of the Library hard, his lips are still pressing to yours. You can feel the tension like an aura radiating off his body as his hands fumble to yank his belt loose. There is a quickness to this that makes you feel as though you’re running out of time. “Dean what’s going on?” Your voice is hoarse between the kisses and his hand has slid into your shorts. His eyebrows are pinched together, as though he’s trying to bury a painful memory. “Need you.” His sentence is simple, and while those are words you’ve heard him say before you can’t recall the last time they sounded so empty. It’s like he needs you because he has nothing else, or because he knows something you don’t. You feel like he’s saying goodbye- you want to understand. Dean’s fingers pull your panties aside and you feel the head of his cock nudging into your opening. His face is buried into your neck, breathing in deeply when he pushes all the way in. His cock immediately goes balls deep and you can’t control the strangled moan as it falls past your lips. 

Dean’s lips find yours as he begins to thrust into you, his grip firm but his movements gentle. The way he kisses you, the way he holds you tightly but thrusts sweetly and slowly, it’s as though you can physically feel the breaking of his heart. Dean’s breathing is labored as he slides all the way out and then pushes all the way back in again, each drag of his cock against your walls causing you to flutter around him more. The burn is built slowly, that desperate aching to release growing stronger as Dean’s lips tangle with yours. Your mouth hangs open as he snaps his hips into you slowly but forcefully, and you feel yourself teetering on the edge. “God, fuck-” Your cries are muffled by Dean’s mouth as you cum, your body convulsing as you remain impaled on his cock. He swallows up all your cries and groans with his lips as he stutters slightly before you feel him going soft inside you. When Dean lowers you to the ground again and redoes his belt, you can’t take your eyes off him. He looks hollow inside, distant. “Baby-” You begin but he gives you one of his Dean smiles that makes your heart melt. He’s trying so hard to show you he’s okay but you know better. You know him better and when he sends you a wink and turns out of the room- you’re terrified of the secrets hiding in his head.  

You nearly blast through the door of the Bunker, your dead sister laying in the back of the pick up. The Bunker is dark save for one lamp on in the Library where Dean sits with an open bottle of Tennessee Whiskey. You stumble down the stairs, your clothes and hair soaking wet as you tremble before him. The look of horror on your face and betrayal in your eyes is all the answer Dean needs before he even questioned if you found what you were looking for. You found the truth, but not all of it. Wendy’s necklace is held tight in your closed fist before you slam it against the table in front of Dean. The silence in the air is deafening, and it says much more than words ever could. You’re both aware that any relationship you had is destroyed, and that the love you share is in tattered pieces. “Wendy-” Your throat closes as you close your eyes to push the emotion back down again. Dean’s hand stays curled around the bottle, that familiar haze in his eyes. He’s been waiting for this nuke to go off. “You... you’re dead to me.” The words slip out of your mouth before you can stop them, and you see the shadow of emptiness cross onto his face once again. 

“You’re heartless- soulless. I wish I never met you, I wish I could stop loving you. I never want to see you again.” Each harsh word spills out one after the other. It’s as though a tidal wave of pain and anger has begun to rush in your head and there’s no dam to hold it all back. “You’re a monster Dean, you only care about one thing: the next thing you get to kill. As long as you’re shooting something or cutting something’s head off you’re good. You’re a brainless grunt Dean, there’s nothing more to you. You’re only good at ending lives, and destroying the lives of people who are still living.” The tears are hot as they traverse down your trembling cheeks. Your words seem to bring out no immediate reaction from Dean- no anger, no defensiveness, just nothing. You turn on your heel and make a beeline for yours and Dean’s room, you need to leave. You need to bury Wendy, and then you need to drink yourself into a coma. Cas watches with heavy eyes from the end of the Library, and none other than Dean knew he was standing there. “You need to tell her what happened, what really happened.” Cas said, a look of sorrow crossing onto his own face as he took a seat next to Dean. 

Dean shook his head, taking a long gulp from the bottle. You knew what Dean wanted you to believe because the truth is much worse than that. “Dean- she hates you... and you didn’t even kill Wendy.” Cas is confused, why would Dean let her believe a lie? What could be worse than allowing Y/N to believe that the love of her life killed her sister? Dean swirls the Whiskey in the glass, hearing you tossing things around in the bedroom. Your cries and words of hatred will haunt him forever, but he would rather shield you from the truth and just let you believe a lie. “Who are you protecting?” Cas asked, his eyebrows furrowed and it’s only now that Dean looks over into his eyes. “I’m protecting her.” No further words are spoken as Dean turns back to the bottle, his palm twitching as he reaches out to grasp it again. When you come stumbling from the hallway you’re dragging an assortment of bags up the stairs. Cas can’t let this continue, Dean already shoulders more guilt than he needs to. 

Cas finds you outside, “Y/N there’s something you should know.” He says and you turn, eyes swollen and near dry clothes soaking again in the rain. You watch him expectantly, your thoughts flying and swirling in so many directions. “It might be easier to just show you.” Cas explains before his eyes glow and he reaches up to press two fingers to your temple. Your eyes glow blue as the vision starts nearly a month ago, during that hunt where you and the boys took down a witch in Tallulah, Louisiana. 

Dean listens to the witch as she yells Latin. He’s safely hidden behind a fallen bookshelf, but you’re hit with the spell full blast. “Y/N!” Dean’s voice has panic in it when he watches you fall to your knees. He emerges from his cover when the witch smiles but before a spell can be blasted at him, Sam shoots her with a witch killing bullet. The brothers rush to your side as your eyes flutter open thinking that whatever spell has been broken by the witches death. But this is a spell of the witches own creation, the Hollow Grave spell. It needs to run it’s course before it is broken, but the flame in your eyes left by the spell grows dimmer but still simmers. Dean helped you to your feet before lecturing you about staying behind cover while checking you for injuries. After deeming you unharmed Dean pulls you close to his chest while whispering how he loves you. It was 2 days later when you disappeared. Dean had no idea where you went so he tracked your phone, where you just so happened to be in North Carolina. You didn’t tell Dean or anybody else that you were leaving so as soon as Dean received an exact address he left with Sam. 

After stepping closer to the abandoned house at the end of the road, Sam and Dean were immediately alarmed to find the door ajar. Dean pulled his gun out, senses heightened by the possible danger and panic in his veins. Were you hurt? Sam stood behind Dean, staying close as to not become separated. A shadow is cast across the kitchen floor and a pool of dried and sticky blood pools into the living room. Coming around the corner into the kitchen Dean stops in his tracks when he sees Wendy, slashed and dead on the ground. It was you standing over her, arms and hands covered in blood and your breath was heaving. “Y/N? Baby?” Dean calls out gently, eyeing the knife in your hand and the wooden stake driven through the center of Wendy’s chest. “No loose ends.” Your voice sounds dissociative, almost as though it’s not your voice. When you turned Dean knew by the red glow in your eyes that this was because of whatever that damn witch did to you, and when you collapsed to the ground Dean called Cas. He needed Cas to wipe your memory, you would never forgive yourself if you knew this happened. Dean would rather you believe he killed Wendy. 

When Cas released you it was as though your world came crashing down for a second time that evening. Wendy- Dean- you. You killed Wendy, it wasn’t Dean. It never was Dean. You turned your eyes back to the Bunker, “you’re a monster Dean.” The words haunt you as they come back, and the look that was on Dean’s face haunts you more. Dean, oh that man. That man you love so dearly, the man who has taken the blame for something as catastrophic as this so that you wouldn’t have to face this guilt. Before you can stop your feet you’re rushing inside, finding Dean still drinking in the same place. There are fresh tears on your cheeks as you take heavy footsteps towards him. You push him back in his chair before sliding into his lap, your arms curling around his shoulders and wet face buried in his neck. “I love you,” Those are the only words that make it through the sobs as you clutch tightly to him. Dean’s arms wrap securely around you, hand brushing through your hair as he whispers soft loving words into your ear. “It wasn’t your fault,” “I know you didn’t mean what you said,” “I love you,” Nothing can ease the pain, and the pain grows deeper still when you remember Wendy’s mutilated body in the truck. 

-cavum sepulcrum unum eritis quem tueri desidério-  for you shall hollow the grave of the one you most desire to protect

[goldeneyedgirl]

jalice2020 day five

JaliceWeek2020 Day 5: Angel/Demon

Afterglow

Notes: This is the third version, because I thought the others were going to be ‘too long’ and then this became a behemoth. I’ve lost all sense of whether it’s actually worth posting, but it’s 6,300+ words and a whole day of work that I refuse to waste. These prompts are going up out of order because I feel like being contrary and am totally disorganised. 

And I found the idea of ‘demon’ fascinating because what else would a vampire be but a very specific form of ‘demon’? Plus there were so many (utterly amazing) fics about demon!Alice, I decided to flip the script. 

I am also totally running with the angel thing in a much longer fic, because I had so much world building, so much more history for both Alice and Jasper, and I was sorry that I couldn’t include it. 

There were three things of which she was certain.

The first was that her name was Alice.

The second was that she was born an angel.

And three, she was getting ready to die.

—

He finds her in an alley behind a diner, slumped against the brickwork, struggling to breathe. He sees her, and for a moment he doesn’t realise what he’s seeing - why would he? Who, in living memory, has laid eyes on an angel?

But he remembers the stories, told around a Monterrey bonfire, of the markings, the aura, the divinity of those nearly mythical creatures. Creatures born of hope and love and all those things that he left behind on that last ride. The older ones always had angel stories, of their astounding beauty and immense power; of wings that stretched out eight, ten, twelve feet of pure white energy that could cut through any substance known to creation. Of miracles and healings and forgiveness that filled all the hollow spaces inside. Of blood that can only be offered willingly, or it becomes fantastically and irreversibly poisonous.

He goes to her side, his hunt forgotten. Maybe it is the stories, that childish, lingering hope at the back of his mind that there is absolution for his actions, that he has not fallen so low he cannot rise up again.

Or maybe it is seeing a creature as broken as he feels, and the twist of pity-empathy in his gut won’t let him turn away from her. She is so small, so utterly… forgotten.

She was a great beauty, he can see that underneath her suffering; her skin has a grey cast, and her lips blue, her eyes underscored with dark bruises. She’s so thin, her skin stretched tight. The celestial markings still adorn her tiny arms, from wrist to elbow, a collage of flowers and stars and maps and symbols utterly meaningless to him, but faded like an old bruise.

Something utterly precious, just thrown away.

His red eyes meet hers, and she gasps, tries to make herself smaller. Some half-forgotten lesson tells her that red-eyes, demons, are the lowest evil and she must protect herself. But with what? She has lost her wings, has lost her magic, has lost much of her memory.

She has been discarded, and is worth nothing more than a demon’s gaze, his next meal. It would be better to go quickly than to linger with this heaviness in her bones and lungs and heart and mind. Whatever divinity is left in her blood, perhaps it can gift him with something - she doesn’t even know what a demon would wish for with angel’s blood, truly. But for a quick end, she would offer it willingly.

She gasps again as he lifts her, and cradles her close, his eyes studying her carefully as he settles her in his arms, making sure he causes her no pain, even as fresh bruises bloom on her skin.

“What…?” she croaks, as he sweeps out of the alley, away from his chosen meal, from the buzzing signs of the diner, and into the night.

“Rest, little one,” is all he says, as if he has a plan. “You’re safe.”

Those half-remembered warnings feel paper thin as she is cradled like treasure against his strong body, as he moves confidently through the streets. Even through her threadbare clothing, it is the first time she has been touched since she can remember, and it is… nice. It is nice and it is easy enough to close her eyes and let whatever is to happen next come upon her.

—

His room in the boarding house is small and worn, but fine enough for him to have a minuscule wash room of his own. The angel sleeps deeply, the sleep of the gravely ill, and he tucks her into the untouched bed in the corner, whilst he ventures into the yet unvisited common kitchen to find her food.

The landlady sweeps in, a well-lived woman - who has never trusted the red-eyed man - likes him a little more as she watches him make a right mess of toast and tea, and she quickly assembles a little tray. This isn’t the kind of establishment that cares what he does in the room he pays for, and she doesn’t really consider the possibilities when he asks for an extra towel and pillow.

The angel sleeps through the night and well into the next day, and he can feel the heat coming from her skin. He dribbles cooled tea between her lips, and curses the fact he has no memory of nursing from the army, of his human life. He refuses to request more help from the landlady, and finally he gives up all pretences and manages to gather the girl up and clamber into the narrow, stained little bathtub together, filled with cold water that he hopes will curb the fever.

She dreams of fire licking her limbs and red eyes staring into her soul and her lips are so dry and everything is all jumbled up and then she is staring at the very tall red-eyed monster cradling her in a bathtub full of cold water, and patting her face with a cloth and worry on his face.

Somehow she regains control of her limbs, enough to reach one shaking hand up to his cheek - it seems impossible that the most evil of creatures could be so handsome, could go to so much trouble for her. She wishes she could ask him a million questions, but she is so very tired, and it is easier to settle back against him and sleep as her fever rages.

—

They are together a week before she is lucid enough to ask questions and offer answers, for them to even learn the other’s name.

Alice.

Major Jasper Whitlock, ma’am.

A soldier, a killer, in his human life. That makes her sad for him, that humans choose to set themselves on a path that is paved in death and misery but there is nothing that can be done about that now. And for a soldier turned vampire, with all his terrible deeds indented on every inch of his arms and neck, with luminous red eyes and a hard stare, he is not.. bad.

In fact, he shows her the first kindness she can ever remember.

He brings her food, strange choices at first, but he soon learns - angels like sweet things, fruits and honey and candy; thin soups to build her strength up, well-sugared milky tea to help her sleep. He brings her some clothing - a proper night dress, and a blue day dress that is far too long, but it covers up the bruises on her stocking-less legs. He reads to her, cheap novels that have covers depicting in young ladies and flowers and cannot be vaguely interesting to him.

She knows he slips away to hunt, to drain humans of their life, but she sees the slump in his shoulders, the tired, pained look on his face upon his return and she wonders if those paper-thin lessons were wrong. That demons do have souls, souls that are weighed with every choice, every action, of their cursed existence. After all, a vampire is just a human gone astray, really. And for all of their flaws and follies, ignorance and arrogance, humans are essentially good, kind creatures. There is a reason they are so staunchly guarded by the angels, after all.

What if Major Whitlock is only a demon because the angels failed him?

When she is well enough to stand, to limp slowly around their tiny room, he offers to take her to church, and she wants to giggle, but he looks so serious and so determined to escort her there that she agrees; churches are for humans, and so is the religion found in them. But she thinks she understands - angels and churches and religions have been so tangled up together that it is some kind of logic, to take her there. He even brings her a hat and gloves and new shoes for the excursion, letting her limping stride set the pace, letting her lean on him as her lungs struggle to keep up.

His arm is gentle yet strong around her, and she leans closer to him, breathing in a scent of pine needles and rainwater.

—

The closest church is of moderate size and limited wealth - the parishioners are hardworking people with little money - and the pastor is an elderly man who has overseen the births, marriages, and deaths of those people, all of whom he can name on sight. It is a late night, counselling a young couple, and he ambles around the church, setting it right for the next morning.

He looks up when he hears voices, and sees the silhouette in the doorway - one tall and one small. For a moment, he mistakes them for an adult and child; perhaps siblings? Strangers or newcomers, certainly. They take a place in a back pew, the taller figure helping the smaller into her seat before settling beside her. It is then he approaches, to welcome them and offer them counsel, before he realises what he is seeing.

The red eyes of the male, firmly fixed on the diminutive girl. And he wants to banish the monster, this fiend from the sanctified ground on which they stand, of which he should not be able to enter. But the flickering candles throw light onto the girl, and the sight of her is a reward paid for with decades of his faith. It is a split second, a flicker of light and shadow, and he has Seen her. The ghost of wings that fold around her in filmy light, the slight glow of her skin, the wisp of lost golden markings, such beauty his mortal eyes has never seen. She looks up at her companion with affection in her eyes, and she takes his hand, and the pastor does nothing more than nod and bless them both in passing; whatever has brought the pair into his church is beyond that of mortal comprehension.

They stay a little while before the devil helps the angel stand, and the pastor watches as the girl limps from the church, leaning heavily on her corrupted companion and says a little prayer for them, one to see them both to whatever sanctuary they might be needing. And then he extinguishes the candles.

—

Time meanders on, and Alice grows stronger. Strong enough to walk unaided, though she still takes his arm every time they leave. Strong enough to teach herself to mend their few clothes, to prepare herself food, though he finds her with candy and fruit just as often as something properly nutritious.

Seeing her cheeks round with chocolate, blushing with embarrassment at getting caught, is the first time he’s properly laughed in decades.

She looks so well now, with faint colour in her cheeks; her eyes are a blue he could get lost in, a swirling galaxy of shifting light and colour - they are most inhuman thing about her right now. Her lips have lost the blue cast, are now a rose pink that makes her look very kissable, but thoughts like that are dangerous, and feel heavy in his chest. Her markings look like some kind of bruise-coloured tattoos that are slowly darkening. He hasn’t asked about them, about the meanings behind them, but when he holds her hand, he sometimes finds himself tracing the lines of the flowers, the stars, the symbols - he thinks he has them memorised.

But eventually, it is time to move on. His body count is rising, getting closer to noticeable, and the money is running out - they only have what he takes from his victims, and it has been slim pickings for a few weeks. He hates to have to admit why they have to leave, but she doesn’t flinch, just smiles and requests a bag for her things as if fleeing a city because of too many bloody disappearances is a perfectly normal reason to leave.

So they leave Philadelphia, hand in hand, with no particular destination in mind. And for a long time, that’s how they live - boarding houses in the city, forgotten farm houses in the country, cradled by long grass in forests where the night sky peeks through. Those are the nights she lies pressed up against him, her head pillowed on his shoulder, as she traces constellations with her finger as she relaxes into sleep.

Those are the nights that are imprinted on his brain forever.

—

They find themselves in the back of Vermont in the fall; it’s been a few years since they left Philadelphia, wandering around the country. She looks beautiful to him that day, with a flower crown in her hair - the flowers drooping but not yet wilted - and her very worn out pink dress that is shredded below her knees and a filthy white shawl with more holes than lace. He clasps her hand tight in his as they meander through the forest; she hums a song under her breath, one that is sweet and soothing and intoxicating and he can never remember the tune until she sings it again.

He isn’t paying attention, when they settle on a camp site and she flits off to find something edible - fruits, herbs, flowers; she is surprisingly adaptable. And for all the legends and half-truths, she has no trouble or reluctance eating animal flesh, as long as she cooks it on a fire first, though she always cries when it has to be a rabbit.

They are upon them at once, a coven of five aged vampires, suspicious and on edge as they see his eyes, his scars, his cold glare at the interruption and his own failure to sense them.

At the strange, sickly amber of their eyes.

It’s a tense conversation of his intentions, his purpose on their lands, and his honeyed words are thinly veiled threats. He is grateful that Alice’s sweet scent (roses and linens and melting snow) is easily covered by his own, an illusive little quicksilver protected by her own sacred biology. He has them almost convinced them to, in laymen’s terms, fuck right off and leave him be when Alice returns.

“Jasper?”

The older woman gasps at the sight of her and the entire family go from suspicion to anger and disgust - the shawl slung low around her elbows (covering up her markings, good girl), the girlish, tattered dress, and flowers in her hair. The apples clutched in her pale hand, one with an obvious bite mark. Her blue eyes bright and skin flushed, and decades later he will remind them how damn unobservant they are that they thought she was his victim, lured into seclusion, when two bags sit by the tree, when everything about her was uncanny and inhuman enough to tell them the still-shocking truth. It was fall in the forest, and the flowers in her hair were still fresh, for god’s sake.

But in that moment, she is the innocent, a future meal of a monster, the sacrificial lamb.

“Sweetheart, come away from him,” the woman gestures to her, but Alice is no longer smiling, and if they looked closer, they’d see the storm rising in her eyes (he loves that about her, the way the blue of her eyes darkens and churns when she’s worried or afraid, and lightens and ripples with her joy. He could watch her eyes forever.) She drops the fruit, and moves closer to him, her hands reaching for the sleeve of his coat.

The coven move too fast, and the only reason they aren’t destroyed is because he is too aware of her; she is pushed aside in their efforts to manhandle her away from him, to drag him through to their side of the river. He lets the biggest one push him to his knees, his arms tight and awkward behind his back. There is a growl is rumbling in his chest, and he can smell it - her blood. It’s an odd, distinctive smell that is enough to make him freeze. It’s not a lot, maybe a scrape, but this coven… angel blood is somehow a walking, resistible temptation. They could drain her dry (and die horribly for the effort) but she’ll still be perfectly dead and that cannot be allowed to happen. He begins to struggle, but the big one holds him firm and shit. This is bad.

“Let him up, please.”

He can only move his head enough to see her standing, a small cut on her leg that will be gone in a day or two. She looks … displeased. He’s never seen that look on her face before.

“You’ll be okay now,” the redheaded boy tells her superiorly. “You should find your way back to town.”

“Let him up,” she retorts, just as arrogantly as the boy, as imperious as a queen, and there is a stillness, an edge to everything around them - no birds or breeze; even the running of the river seems rather muted.

“We’ll deal with him,” the big one says confidently, and that is the wrong thing to say.

“Let. Him. Go.”

It happens all at once, an echoing order that is not yelled but thunders in all their ears. They yell and gasp and are tossed away like paper dolls and he finally gets a look at his girl in all her glory.

She’d told him once, off-hand, that she’d never be fully healed again. That she accepted that she was Fallen and Shunned, and what she had managed to recover, she was grateful for.

Not recovered, his ass.

She was great and terrible and the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, her arms thrown wide and the shawl gone, her markings glowing white, her eyes pools of white energy. And behind her, stretching four feet, easily, on either side were her long wings, crackling with pure light. Markings he hadn’t glimpsed before peeked out from the neckline of her dress, and her skin had a faint glow to it, the entire effect as if a star was entrapped inside her body.

It is his captor that bears the brunt of her wrath, gasping in pain as her gaze focuses on him, the rest of the coven disorientated as they pick themselves up.

The last of the group, the blonde woman who might have been mistaken as an angel herself, is at his side immediately, wanting to help but unsure how to as he howls at whatever Alice’s power is doing to him.

“Stop it!” the blonde vampire screams, “STOP IT.”

He manages to get back to her side, wanting to reach out and pull her to him, but he doesn’t know if he can touch her like this.

“Alice?” he says. “We’re okay.”

The energy recedes as quickly as it appeared, leaving her looking cranky but pale as she immediately tucks herself against him as the coven inspect their fallen member.

He is disorientated and startled but unharmed as he reassures the blonde woman, the rest of their gazes falling to the couple over the river. More than a girl in a pink dress and a man in an overcoat.

“I can’t read them anymore, Carlisle,” the redhead murmurs. “His is … too quiet, and hers is in a language that… I think she made up.”

Alice spits a sharp word at the boy, holding him so tight he knows she was - is - afraid.

The leader, this Carlisle, simply stares at them with an indescribable look on his face. Incredulousness and awe and confusion and amusement dance around them, and he shakes his head.

“In all my years, I have never…” he began, wiping his face with his hand, an indisputably human gesture. “I apologise, my family misunderstood.”

Alice grunts and still glares, and if Jasper knows anything, it is that she holds a fantastic grudge against that which wrongs her - the woman who called her a harlot in a town back in Minnesota; the perfectly spoilt fruit tart from a shady baker; the young man who tore her dress in Boston. If those things can keep her gaze dark and sour her mood, he doesn’t fancy being any one of these creatures.

“Carlisle?” the older woman asks curiously, and the big one is back on his feet and seems to be entirely unaffected by whatever Alice had done to him.

“What is she?” he asks with genuine curiosity, his arm around the blonde.

“I believe this young lady might be an angel.”

—

That’s how they meet the Cullens. Carlisle spends three days hovering around them with delighted, boyish excitement until Esme gently redirects his attention and energy. Esme, who is so kind to them both, even with his red eyes and scars (later, she will smile at him and tell him that she knew that no matter where he had come from, no one who treated Alice so gently could be anything other than a true gentleman). Edward is frustrated with them both, and mutters comments under his breath as Alice snipes back in a language no one else understands - which just agitates Edward more. She admits later, when they’re alone, that she hardly remembers learning the language and probably couldn’t hold a conversation in it but does in fact remember most of the good swears and insults, and he laughs loudly at the idea that angels are pure and good and selfless as she taunts the arrogant little vampire.

Rosalie hates them. Hates his red eyes and violence, hates Alice for hurting her mate. Emmett is more curious and entertained than offended, and shrugs off Rosalie’s rage - “Babe, you’d do the same to them for me.” He’s more interested to know if Alice can change the colour of her ‘lights’ at will - like a disco ball - and Alice congratulates him on asking the actual dumbest question in the history of creation and of course that means Alice and Emmett are friends now, even though he described her attack as being ‘boiled from the inside out’.

How does he feel about them? Well, they offer them a nice room with a bed for Alice and little bathroom, and Esme goes to find Alice food - Carlisle sending her with a ream of notes on angels and their preferred diet despite the girl’s insistence anything will do. They are respectful and genuine and he cannot fault their welcome into the house. There are clean clothes and books and amusements and every possible comfort except human blood.

That is a conversation he has alone with Carlisle, whilst Alice joyfully eats her way through a pile of candy roughly the same size as she is. It is a long conversation, a hard one. Of all the guilt and the pain and the regret; of every horror he has never spoken of to Alice, of every fear that lingers in his bones.

And when he finishes, he feels lighter.

Carlisle smiles benevolently, and explains the advantages of abstaining from human blood, of existing only on the blood of animals.

“It does, admittedly, take away some of our strength,” the older man warns but his mouth quirks into a smile. “Not that I think you have to worry about your safety with such a… formidable mate.”

Jasper is quick to correct him, ducking his head so that Carlisle might not see the longing in his eyes. They are not mates or lovers or sweethearts. As much as he admires her, a goddess in his eyes; as much as he restrains himself from noticing the slender curves hidden by her clothing, from letting his gaze linger too long, they are mere companions; the closest of friends but no more than that.

Carlisle chuckles outright at that. “I assume this isn’t your preference?” he says, with a grin that makes him look his age.

He scowls, refusing to take the bait.

“In all my years, I have met many people in many differing kinds of relationships,” Carlisle says, with that knowing look on his face that Jasper decides he hates. “And I can tell you without an ounce of doubt that no angel - or woman - would look at a vampire like that, would defend one so fiercely, without holding him close in her heart. I think, if you were to make a gesture, it would be warmly reciprocated.”

And for a moment, he is full of hope. Hope of a future where he could press a kiss to willing lips, could slide his hand over the curve of a waist. Could trace the markings hidden by her dress with his fingers, his mouth, learn them by heart.

But the truth is, he is a monster. The blood in his eyes, the scars on his skin, the violence in his movement… it is what he is. That he would not sully her with his touch, if she would even accept such a thing. And in truth, he could not bear to be dismissed from her side. He would walk her down the aisle to a worthy man, as long as he could remain in her orbit.

“No,” he shakes his head. "She is… and I am… it would not be fair.” She already Fell once, why drag her further down?

Carlisle studies him carefully, the regret rolling off him in waves. “If you’ll pardon me for prying, how on earth did you end up meeting Alice? I only know of one other who has met an angel; they are illusive creatures.”

Jasper looks up, a quirk of his lips at the memory. “I found her in Philadelphia. She was dying in an alley. I tried to help her.” And the story slowly comes up; the long wait for her fever to break, trying to build up her strength, their brief attendance at church that was more for him than for her; their little pilgrimage around the country. How she loves to watch the stars, to wear flowers in her hair, and sings like the angel she is. How any money they had went to food, and she found sweet irresistible - more than once she went barefoot rather than go without a slice of cake, a bag of strawberries. He ends up smiling by the end of the story, the warmth of the memories surrounding him.

Carlisle looks at him incredulously. “Jasper, you found a dying girl in Philadelphia, and you saved her life,” he says so gently. “You raised an angel from the dead out of pure selflessness and honour. And you sit here and tell me that you are deemed unworthy? I cannot believe it, myself.”

Jasper shakes his head and thinks of all that he has been told, about animal blood, and protecting human life. About all that he has seen and felt with that diminutive girl beside him.

“For her, I have to be better.”

—

They settle into the Cullen family with relative ease - Esme is a doting mother figure to Alice, whose quirks he found so charming are utterly foreign and confusing to the rest of the family. But Esme carries no frustration to find wilted flower crowns discarded through the house; to find Alice has eaten a week’s supply of food in one night; to find an ugly scorch mark on the couch when Edward provoked the girl far enough for her magic to get involved.

Carlisle is still fascinated, but is affectionate to the small girl who has so many questions about everything, everywhere. He cannot answer many of her questions about angels, but he has more than enough stories about his life to entertain her for hours.

Edward and Alice snipe at each other constantly, as she continues to conceal her thoughts, and somehow mute Jasper’s, from his probing. The thing is, they could be good friends if they wanted; he wonders if Alice still holds a grudge from his dismissal of her during that very first meeting. Emmett, however, thinks Alice is a fantastically weird addition to their family even if her powers remain unused. Her intuition is second to none, and she is strong enough to exist safely in the household, but mostly she is unremarkable. He likes ruffling her hair and asking dumb or embarrassing questions (“So when you have sex, Lite-Brite, do you go all glow-y?” he asks one day, just ambling into the room with that question on his brain, and Esme scolds him and he growls, and Alice turns faintly pink and admits she wouldn’t know. Emmett does feel bad when she reveals that, and buys her an enormous bag of fudge that means he’s automatically forgiven.)

Rosalie tolerates them - she likes how annoyed Edward gets with Alice, and that Alice is an eager student in the art of fashion and shopping, and has suitable awe for Rosalie’s beauty and attitude. But she resents Alice’s divinity, that somehow the universe judged this tiny girl to be a precious, sacred creation, and decided that Rosalie herself was worth less than humanity.

They treat him well enough - politely, respectfully, and that’s all he asks. Carlisle offers relatively good counsel on most subjects, but most specifically on hunting animals. It’s the hardest thing he’s ever had to do, and he fails more than he succeeds. He sees frustration in the faces of the Cullens every time he returns with red eyes, but he never sees Alice flinch or fluster. She greets him with that same special smile every time he walks into the room, her sheer presence a balm. And that unconditional affection, that is when the shame feels heaviest on his shoulders.

So he tries again.

And again.

And again.

And it gets easier. Or rather, he gets stronger. The gaps between red eyes get longer, and his eyes lighten slowly from red to orange to amber. But the burn in his throat remains, and he struggles constantly. But he reminds himself, the prize is worth it. She is worth every second of burn, every disgusting animal, every long night resisting the urge to hunt.

She will always be worth it.

—

After Vermont, there is Minnesota, then Montana, then… well, they begin to blend together. All are within abundant hunting grounds, all in beautiful homes, all provide comfort and luxury he could never have imagined providing her. She fits it like a glove; her beautiful clothes, the abundant library, the ease of every day life - it is a palace for a princess and he is so happy that she is happy.

It is the place where Carlisle insists he go to school with the others, tempting him with the possibility of college in the future. She cannot go; they have no ways of concealing the inhumanity of her, and she struggles to contain her powers sometimes, especially when distressed. Even one sad movie an have her shining like a discount glow stick. Carlisle does much research on the subject, to try and help train her, but his research is slow and they still don’t know much. One day, she’ll join them. She’s determined, even when she scorches another dress, another chair, another wall. One day.

She pounces on him every single afternoon, demanding to know about his day, about his classes, about what high school is like. For so long it was just her, then it was them, then it was the family - the idea of classmates and friends and peers is so foreign. He dutiful fills her in, though many of the details she demands are not things he has noted. She always touches him during these conversations, hanging over his shoulder, curled in his lap, tucked at his side.

And even when Rosalie and Edward tell her to stop bothering him, forcing him to relive the tedium, he encourages it. Because as dull as school is, recounting it to her as she clings like a little possum to his back, is his very favourite part of the day.

And somehow, maybe because of that, something changes between them. Their closeness holds something new - potential, maybe. But her eyes seem to really see him when he presses a gentle kiss to her forehead; her cheeks get a little pinker when he compliments a new dress; he finds himself reaching for her less, and finding her already there more often.

They still share a room - he has no need for his own, not with the communal library on the third floor - and he tries his hardest to give her privacy. But he’s caught her changing more than once, seen a glimpse of more markings on her pale-flawless-exquisite spine. He lingers too long in that view, berating himself for his perversion, but he cannot resist. He wonders where else the tattoos lie.

Carlisle looks at him with knowing eyes, and Esme beams every time she sees, or thinks she sees, something. But no, not yet. Not until he’s worthy of every hope, can grant every single one of her wishes and whims. Not until he can court her as she deserves.

It’ll happen, he’s determined. He will make himself worthy, reforge himself in any hell that he can find, if it makes him a better man for her.

Inevitably, he slips again, and they have to move, and he is furious with himself. Every time he thinks he might see the light at the end of the tunnel, he weakens. Two steps forward and one step back.

He spends the night on the couch, watching movies without seeing them, and trying not to notice the warmth of her skin as he endlessly traces the lily-star-celestial map that are her tattoos. She falls asleep against him, a heavenly weight, and he wishes for a lot of things, but mostly for sleep.

—

There were three things of which she was certain.

The first was that her name was Alice Cullen.

The second was that she was a fallen angel, which wasn’t such a bad thing to be.

And the third was that she was completely and irreversibly in love with one Major Jasper Whitlock. And she was tired of waiting.

—

He has taken her into the forest, the spring air crisp, and the plants blooming. She skips beside him, her fingers interlaced with his, and it’s a lovely day - the canopy of the forest concealing the glitter of his skin. It’s one of those lazy, peaceful days that he lives for.

She leaves him sitting by the river, as she gathers wild flowers and leaves, settling beside him as she makes her crown - nimble fingers twisting and weaving. The white and yellow blooms match her new dress. And then she is wrapped around his back, crowning him in leaves and tiny red and white berries.

“My prince,” she whispers in his ear, leaning forward to press a lingering kiss on his cheek. And she pulls away, just enough space for him to turn his head and align their lips and he’s many things, but he’s also a man deeply, deeply in love.

Their first kiss is a slightly awkward angle, but it is… it is his absolution, his greatest hope, his most perfect joy. For her, it is finding home, the last piece of an indecipherable puzzle finding its place, it is entirely new and yet as familiar to her as her own self.

After he pulls away, she twists herself into his lap, her eyes so wide and flickering blue and white, a pink flush to her cheeks. She looks so hopeful and loving that he cannot help but steal another kiss, another jewel to hoard in his dead heart as she sighs happily against him.

But the real world is still outside their private little glade, and finally he pulls away.

“We can’t,” he croaks, her arms wrapped around his neck. “Oh Alice, I can’t.”

“Why not?” her question is so innocent, he wants to wrap her in his arms and keep her here forever, where nothing will ever sully her.

“You’re an angel, darlin’. An honest to goodness angel. You deserve so much better,” he murmurs, half against her lips. “Not me. I’m a goddamned monster.”

Alice sighs again. “Oh Jasper, I wish you could see you as I do,” she says so sweetly. “The person who lifted me out of the trash, the person who healed me, the person who cared for me and protected me and loved me without question or expectation.”

She traces his face, her soft fingers running over his nose and lips and cheeks.

“I’ve waited so long for you to be worthy to yourself,” she continues. “Because you were more than worthy enough for me.”

The next kiss is deeper, passionate and he pulls her flush against him, feeling the buttons on her dress press against his chest, probably cracking them. Another one follows, and then another, until it all blurs together, and he’s slid his hand further up her leg than is truly proper, and her hands are tangled in his hair.

Her smile is the sweetest, a little shy, as she buries her face in his neck - drawing in his scent - and he notices the faint glow around her markings, almost like her powers are blushing.

“I’ve waited for you - for this - for so long,” she whispers to him, the words almost lost in the light breeze.

And he holds her close, holds her tight. “I never meant to keep you waiting.”

She looks him in the eye, gold meeting blue, and her smile is radiant, as beautiful as every story and every myth. “Well, we’ve got all the time in the world.”

And then she leans in for another kiss.

—

There were three things of which Jasper Hale was entirely certain.

One was that he was a vampire in love with an angel.

The second was that his angel loved him back, as completely as he loved her.

And the third was that they had the rest of eternity to be together, whatever the future might bring.

[ianthedisastrous]

In my Father's Eyes

People assumed Edward doesn't recall his father, perhaps thought of him only in the sense of another story. Truly, shouldn't the author who penned that tale be Edward's parent? His creator? The thought had puzzled him, from time to time, but always he returned back to several certainties. 

His father was a fair man, one who listened to the pleas of his people; the sort of king that Edward wished to be, if he were to ever be given the chance. Many boys idolize their fathers as much as they adore their mothers, with childishly blind eyes; but Edward had always known the image his father held in his eyes as true for more than only himself; a man who earned the praise of his kingdom. 

"A good king," his father's voice comes back to him sometimes, with warmth in the memory of being very small and sitting before him with expression filled with wonder at what he might learn, "must be kind."

"As kindness is stronger than any terrible deed, stronger than evil men and frightening beasts; kindness can give hope and that is the most important gift that can ever be given. 

You hold the faith of your kingdom in your hands and you must always take care with it." 

And Edward believed, with a strength of conviction that could not waver, believed every word spoken was the guidance of a wise man. 

His father taught him to wield a sword, another memory upon the pages, a young boy with palms sore from gripping too tightly the hilt of the blade that was both exciting and frightening. A weapon that felt so much more unforgiving than he knew how to carry. 

"Steady your arm higher m'boy, lift your chin, for if you must be the one to bring harm to another you must carry the burden of meeting their eyes, their pain you too must see; this is the weight of the blade you hold. 

This is the responsibility of a just man, if he must spill blood. You must remember them, for they too have fought for their cause."

It was a truth Edward never forgot, a memory that gripped him each time he drew his blade, knowing that it was never to be done in jest. And never once did he walk away in victory without solemn respect given to the loss.

Yet, the lesson that pained him the most, filled him with an indescribable peace, was the hardest to learn.

A brave man stricken with grave wounds and tired, hands grasped weakly around the firm grip of his trembling son, a smile spared for his lovely wife and her soft tears, for the sleeping infant cradled in her arms.

A man Edward thought neither sickness nor time could touch, that no injury might slow; in the end was simply just a man. 

"A good king sees his legacy grow brighter in those he leaves behind when his time is spent. There is no shame in weeping only a short while, do not be afraid of giving your grief a voice; it lives in you the same as every happiness and with just as much to teach you.

But you will be a good king one day, as you are a good man grown from the eager child who once begged for bedtime stories of dragons and knights. 

Love, m'boy, is what makes a man the best he can be; for his family, his kingdom, and himself. You and your sister are my proudest moments, Edward."

The words had never left him, not in the days that followed with eyes wet from the ache of that grief, nor ones beyond it when pain gave way to joy at the recollection of good times and gratitude.

What did it mean then when those memories were penned to the pages of a story? Chapters in a novel that held a past truly real to him? Edward returned to them now and then, fingers swept over the words with an indulgent smile. 

Because it was not only a story, it was his story. 

That is what his father taught him, and what he faced with his head held high; his had a legacy to carry with pride. 

Slightly's life, however, had never been a fairytale. 

Kindness had never been the litany of the world they resided within, but their father had urged them to never lower their eyes in spite of the snarl and snap of the darkness; even fairytales have monsters. And monsters have purpose, if only for how they craft it from their own darkness. They were brilliant, they were strong, they would survive. 

He was proud of his brood. 

"You should never forget where you belong, why you were born with claws rather than lofty ambitions.

I expect you to do great things, things that you must do in places others are afraid to walk."

Perhaps the most loving thing their father had ever uttered was how high those expectations were; he believed in a child many would not have. In those early days the words sounded like a demand ushered unfairly upon the child who had no want of it, but with time the purpose unraveled into truth better understood.

Slightly knew more of being a father than they did of their own; the chores of the Mountain Prince were never finished, they cannot recall ever seeing him at peace. Never remember a moment at rest, no more than a fleeting encounter before the call of the Court drew him away. A shadow of a figure that would with time grow fuzzy at the edges of their memories. 

But what other way was there aside from necessity?

"Is father angry, because of me?" So small, Sorrel was only a child filled with foolish questions, dangerous questions, questions Slightly was old enough to know better than speak out loud and settle doubt in the air around them. Doubt could wound far too deeply. Eyes as blue as still waters begged to know, eyes that did not belong to the Mountains.

"No, he isn't. He's mad at other people for arguing about differences," Slightly had shushed the boy and drew him close with claws laced with Sorrel's own, tiny creature nestled in the spot against their side. Secrets carried a burden one so young did not fully understand. "Because no amount of difference means more to him than you do." 

And it was a truth Slightly saw and knew, each time their father gathered up in his arms the boy who was not his own but he would accept as no less. Each time he stepped between him and some threat, the vicious ferocity the Mountain Fey protected their young with fueling an inhuman anger. 

Their father never spoke it in so many words, but he taught that lesson well; those who are your own simply were, no matter where the world's opinions might fall. 

The crueler lesson came too soon; what loss can do and what sacrifices are worth. 

Day by day Slightly saw their father fade to a terrifying emptiness in his voice, the horrors of giving too much of himself to the pain of having his eldest ripped away from him. 

He gave up, hour by hour, until the light was all gone away into a stillness that lay glassy and hollow in his once fire-bright eyes and Slightly was left choking on the rage of being abandoned. 

How dare he choose to mourn one child so intensely that he left the others behind. To make the decision to fade away rather than fight after all his demands that his children must always do so.

"Keep your eyes open, you must always be ready." 

The words of the one who had not been able to do the same, the one who Slightly trusted and found themselves suffocating in the wake of what they could not understand.  

Slightly locked away the memories; his voice, his lessons, every moment buried deep and soaked with a bitter pain. They had no choice; Sorrel needed to be looked after and mother was taxed with a role meant for two. 

Their father taught a poignant truth with his death; leaving those behind to fend for themselves was the cost of some choices.  

But even so, Slightly could not bear to truly hate him, not when they missed him so very, very much. Children do not simply forget the ones who were their world.

It took long years to find the truth in the pain, to shift through and see that all joy has a shred of sorrow within it, that all love carries a bitter core of fear in the loss; that sometimes a sacrifice is not written so much in blood as it is in a broken heart. 

Slightly learned to grieve from the one they called father, to value those near more than anything that could be won, and most importantly; that sometimes loving someone means you cannot save them from their own demons. That you must accept, and forgive, that they may fail you. 

But shadowy creatures and skies filled with unfamiliar stars never crossed Ian's mind much as a child; he couldn't concern himself with storybook monsters when he knew far too many real ones waited for him in the cold gazes of his classmates. People who didn't understand him, people who were taught to never dare to understand.  

And his mom tried so hard; every day it seemed like she came home just a little more exhausted than the one before. Her soft smile might not have wavered but Ian knew her heart was still just a little too broken to tell her why he was afraid of the world.

She needed him to be brave, but he could only pretend to and hope it was enough. She urged him to speak but he remained as silent as he dared; it was her tired eyes that hurt him at the thought of asking too much of her.   

But his dad always listened. Whenever he needed him, even if he never answered.

As a child, barely tall enough to reach the desk where his mother kept her glossy albums, Ian believed that somehow his late night conversations, hands tightly gripping the only photo he had of the man, did not go unheard. 

"Please come back. Mom is sad all the time and I don't know how to make it better," he would speak in no more than a breath of sound, eyes dropped and half shut to hold back the tears. "I know they're wrong at school. That...that you didn't leave because you wanted to, not because we're...different from everybody else. But if you could just come back? Nobody could say those things anymore."

Some places, his mom explained, people could not come back from, as she kissed his forehead one day. It was a day he could barely recall later his age or the other details, only the words she spoke when he voiced what he had really wanted for his birthday. 

Children so young still believe that magic could do a great deal more than it ever should. 

"He wanted so badly just to meet you," and with the words Ian saw a gravity in her eyes that he never had before, "He loved you boys more than anything in this world, but he just didn't have the chance to stay."

Ian learned that love was powerful, but sometimes it was very unfair, and it was why a person had to be strong for those who needed them the most. The world was scary, it always would be, but people had to try. 

He didn't ask his mom again, he couldn't stand to see that sorrow. 

His dad always was there; never judgemental in that silence. And as a child it had been too easy to overlook that silence could only exist without judgement and find the best in that. It felt safe, so much safer than risking speaking the doubts to anyone else. Silence was patient, and so too then was Ian's dad in his memories of a man who could not be there.

"We have to leave soon,'' quiet moments in his room had long since given way to rooftop vigil under the sprawling skies; maybe somewhere in that expanse of forever his father resided just beyond his reach. "I..I thought I'd be happy to leave this place but I'm just scared. I'm always scared; I wish-" He sighed and drew his knees up with the tired words. "-I wish I were like you, not afraid of anything." 

But Wilden had been afraid; of the sickness that stole his life in small measures, of the world moving on without him, of missing so much of it, and most of all of his boys never knowing who he was. 

Ian had been surprised when he discovered that, as his mom reassured him that it was okay to be afraid sometimes, but just as often she spoke of his bravery in the face of those fears and that it rooted itself down deeply into Ian's mind.

The man he had never had a chance to hear speak taught him that everyone was afraid sometimes, that everyone fights their battles, and the best a person can do is to find a reason to. 

But it wasn't right to let that fear turn a person cruel; time and again he heard of his dad's forgiving nature. And bit by bit Ian learned what parts of himself he wanted to be so much like the man, and what parts he had to let go, for his own sake.

"I don't want to have to be you, dad. I'm sorry." Ian whispered to the darkness as the morning crept so steadily closer; every star in Swynlake glittered in watchful attention to that conversation from the balcony. Twenty years to his life that very day. "I don't know what I want to do from here but you won't be mad if it's not what you expected me to, right?" 

The night could not speak, ghosts belonged in days and years behind him, but it did not mean their presence was any less wanted. Ian could not think in the past tense, not when he still felt there was too much more left to learn. 

He knew what his dad had already taught him, how many times that memory had held vigil to his unsteady words, and he was not nearly done yet. His dad had never been there, not so much the way other people could have claimed, but he had done what any good father strived to; he had listened. 

"I miss you."

[villlainarc]

The Stars Are Fading (So Am I)

Summary: Love like theirs always seems perfect, like it will never stop being perfect. But when a series of piercing remarks shatters everything they’d been, that perfection is suddenly so far out of reach it might as well have been laid out among the fading stars of night.

Pairings: Roceit

Warnings: open ending where things aren’t properly wrapped up (solely because i couldn’t decide whether i wanted them to talk to each other and be happy or freeze up just before they’re about to and be sad), crying, lots of self deprecation, mentions of (regretted) manipulation, an ungodly amount of angst

Word Count: 1263

Taglist (ask to be added!): @max-is-tired @raaindropps @kiribakuandcats @main-chive @emo-disaster @heavenly-roman

Notes: no one say a word about those prompts that i should probably be doing instead and no one even tHINK about the big bang that i haven’t fully outlined okay cool (inspired by the song intoxicated by mika)

ao3

_________________________

Roman had almost been able to have everything he’d ever wanted.

But then, of course, he’d had to go and mess everything up.

Why hadn’t he been able to keep his mouth shut for once in his life, why hadn’t he been able to keep pretending that everything was fine for just a few moments longer? If only he’d been more understanding, less stubborn, better, if only he’d been able to control his anger, to listen, to—

Roman shook his head. There was no use in dwelling on the past, on what he could have—should have—done. It wasn’t as though he would be able to do anything now, anyway. It wasn’t like Deceit—no, Janus, he reminded himself with a pang of regret—would forgive him. He’d hurt them, and he’d done it intentionally. That wasn’t worthy of forgiveness. And now—

His breath hitched.

Now he was left without the one person he’d ever been able to be himself around, the one person who had loved him not despite his multitude of flaws, but with them, the one person who had seen his every failure, his every short-coming, his every impurity—the one person who had taken one look at the mess that he was and loved him just the same.

Without that—without Janus—Roman was so completely alone that it physically ached. He wanted nothing more than to go back in time and take it back, take everything back because he loved Janus, would always love Janus, and goddammit he would do anything in the world to win back their love.

He wanted to apologize, no matter what Janus was going to say. He needed to apologize. Just for himself at the very least, just to lift the overwhelming weight from his chest, just because he missed them. It was selfish, and Roman didn’t want to be selfish anymore, but everything hurt and it kept hurting and Roman couldn’t take it and Janus had been right, he wasn’t the good twin, not really, because how could someone good be this selfish?

And that was just the thing. They couldn’t—and wouldn’t—be.

So it shouldn’t— didn’t matter if Janus refused his apology, if they decided he wasn’t worth forgiving because he wasn’t and they would be right not to forgive him because he wasn’t good, he was evil and—

Roman took a gasping breath, forcing air past the lump in his throat, slowing the rise and fall of his chest. In, then out.

If Janus refused his apology, Roman would survive. Everything would hurt—Merlin’s beard would it hurt—but he would survive.

Roman lifted his face from where it had been buried in his pillow, sucking in another breath of air. He uncurled his body, sat up, wiped away the tears that were pooling in his eyes.

Roman breathed in, then out. In, then out.

He stood up and left his room for the first time in days, bracing himself to apologize to the love of his life—to apologize to the only person he would ever love this deeply.

_________________________

Janus had almost been able to have everything they’d ever wanted.

But then, of course, they’d had to go and mess everything up.

They’d known that comparing Roman to his brother would break him. They’d known that doing so would be crossing the line Roman had stayed firmly on the other side of, the line that divided the forgivable from the unforgivable. Laughing at someone’s name was one thing, but it was another thing entirely to make light of their biggest insecurity, and Janus had—

They took a slow breath. What they’d done wasn’t the sort of thing you could forgive. And though it would break their heart, Janus could accept that Roman would never want anything to do with them ever again. Not after they had twisted everything so he would take their side, not after the empty flattery designed to throw him off balance, not after the way they had manipulated him. Because that’s what they’d been doing, whether they chose to admit it or not.

It didn’t matter that they regretted it now. It didn’t matter that if they could, Janus would take it all back. It didn’t matter that their flattery that had once been hollow now rang with truth, it didn’t matter that they loved him. None of that would ever change what they’d done to Roman, and none of that could possibly make up for it either. And now—

Janus had to shut their eyes to stop the tears from falling.

Now Janus was left without the one person they’d ever felt safe enough with to be themself, the one person who had loved them not despite their multitude of flaws, but with them, the one person who had accepted their every failure, their every short-coming, their every impurity—the one person who had taken one look at the mess that they were and loved them just the same

Without Roman, Janus was alone once more. It had been nice, feeling loved and appreciated and happy, but they should have known that it wouldn’t—that it couldn’t—possibly last. The dull ache of loneliness had settled once more somewhere within their chest, so familiar that they were almost able to convince themself that it was better this way.

Even still, though— Even still, they wanted to apologize. Roman deserved something from them, and an apology was the least Janus could offer. It wouldn’t matter if he forgave them, because really, they’d broken him. Janus had heard the way his voice had given out, the way his face had fallen—and that wasn’t something that deserved to be forgiven.

But Roman deserved that apology, so Janus would give it, no matter the outcome. And maybe it would hurt, but they wouldn’t let on that it did. Janus always had been so good at pretending.

Their mind made up, Janus uncurled themself from their spot in the corner of their room, taking a breath to calm their nerves.

Janus stood up, telling themself they were ready to apologize to the only man they truly trusted—the man they knew would be the only one they’d ever trust this deeply.

Janus stood up, telling themself they were ready to apologize to the love of their life—to apologize to the only person they would ever trust this deeply.

_________________________

Roman stood in front of Janus’s door.

Janus stood behind it.

This will work, they told themselves, squeezing their eyes shut as though that would help their wish come true.

Because that was all it was. A wish.

Neither had any idea if this would work. Neither had any idea if the other still cared, but both took a step closer to the door anyway.

Janus reached for the doorknob.

Roman raised his hand to knock.

Both hands dropped.

Both faces fell.

This will never work, they realized, closing their eyes as though that would stop the tears from falling.

It didn’t.

The words echoed through both of their heads and settled in their hearts. Both believed that this wish of theirs was hopeless, both believed that the other wouldn’t ever forgive them.

But both knew that they had to try.

As one, they raised their hands—Janus’s formed a vice-like grip on the doorknob, Roman’s folded into a fist and rested carefully against the door.

Neither knew what was going to happen, but both knew that they’d loved each other once—that they’d trusted each other once.

They could only hope that would be enough.

_________________________

find other stuff i’ve written in my masterpost

[sapphichollow]

THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY- The Swedes/ Platonic/ Part 8

Darkness swamped the corners of the room, chased away by the soft glow of overhead lamps. Winnie lowered herself onto the floor and undid her laces. She fumbled and slipped her boots off, but she did not speak. They already knew she was home. If their cat like senses weren’t enough, they knew the steady tread of her footsteps by heart.

Before turning into the open living room, Winnie scooped the groceries into her arms and willed a smile to her lips. The Swedes were many things. But they were not stupid. She’d have to really sell it. So a mask painted her face, pinched her cheeks with a smile, filled her with an overexcited bounce- all to make sure they didn’t worry. Or worse, they worried too much. Bad things happened when they worried too much. Who knew what they’d do to Elliott if they found out?

“I’m back,” She called from across the room. 

Axel lifted his head and gave her a curious glance from the stove. He was wearing a floral apron, tied neatly at the waist, a white shirt and a pair of beige boxers. This was not uncommon. She considered it - they considered it- underclothes, and it was just his way of being comfortable. Their work clothes were thick, exhaustingly so, heavy and undesirable. She’d once jokingly tried Axel’s coat on, and she practically swam in the blue material, the sleeves drooping down past her hands.

As she eased past, Otto and Oscar paused at their usual game. A knife sank into Otto’s leg, but he didn’t seem to notice, nor did he care. He just smiled. On any other day, she would have said something. Told them to be careful and wrinkled her nose at the flash of silver. They never listened, of course. They were adults, she was not. Therefore, they could make their own choices, even if it meant seriously injuring themselves. 

What lunatics. She almost smiled.

“You get fish?” Axel asked as she set the groceries down on the counter. Otto wrenched the knife from his leg, handed it to his brother and joined them both at the table.

“Yeah.. ungutted, like usual,” Winnie grinned at him with heavy eye contact. As she delved through the bags with forced vigour, she felt him eying her.  Winnie pulled out a wrapped fish and waved it at him, grinning. But then she stopped. He was staring..

 He knew- of course he did. It was obvious. Was she smiling enough? Did she put up a proper authentic guise of...Winnienesss to fool three intuitive men who had known her over five years? Then, as he appeared to dismiss it, she relaxed a little. Apparently not.

Otto reached into the bags and helped her find places for the food. He took charge of the higher spaces- the nooks and crannies she couldn’t reach, often swiping things from her hands just as she was about to find homes for them. It got a little irritating sometimes. But he meant well, and she was too tired to protest or joke around. So she manned the lower cupboards- though there was little to unpack. The smell of fried fish tainted her nostrils. It was her favourite- but somehow she wasn’t hungry for it.  Perhaps, she thought, glancing down at the cats which lazed about, she would donate her dinner to them. If Axel would let her.. of course.

It was alright. So far, so good. They wouldn’t find out, and she could just ignore Elliot for the time being. No biggie.

However, as Winnie stowed a packet of pasta into the cupboard, Oscar skimmed the top of her hair with his fingers as he passed. She ducked away instinctively- her first mistake. Winnie dropped her gaze at once, anxious to push away the concerned looks she knew to be there.

She opened the freezer, squeaked, and slammed the door shut. One of the cats leapt back in surprise.

“Forgot about the head,” She gasped, reeling back. Her facade slipped away at once, revealing the hollow, fragile look in her eyes, shaken up to the bone. The black and white cat- Marabou- gave her a sour look and sulked off to the sofa, her fluffy tail scrubbed up like wire.

Axel’s head snapped up, suddenly alert. If he had been a cat, she was certain his ears would have pricked up.

“What’s wrong?” He asked immediately. Winnie looked at him, then her gaze ran to the others, who hovered nearby, bleeding out of various wounds across the length of their bodies. Concern dashed across each of their faces, but she dismissed it at once.

“I think I saw some bandages in the cupboard earlier,” She told them, turning back to Axel.” It’s nothing.. I’m going to paint,” She insisted and turned on her heels, snapped her suitcase open and grabbed her paints, dragging her last canvas with it to the dining table.She could feel their gaze boring into the back of her skull. The sound of Swedish muttering hushed in the room. Hoping it would ease her mind a little, she took up her paintbrush.

For a while there was nothing- just the steady sound of the brush stroking against canvas, the bubbling of water as she cleaned her brush and patted it dry. She dotted black across the canvas absentmindedly. Her eyes were cloudy and unfocused. But the feeling inside still remained. At a glare from Axel, Oscar and Otto had dressed and cleaned their wounds carefully, still hovering about nearby.

Every so often, one of the cats- the black one- would butt her leg with its head, mewling to be picked up and held. She would have liked to be picked up and held herself, but she continued painting. Her lips sealed. As she worked, Oscar settled beside her, pulling the mewling cat onto his lap.  But Winnie barely noticed, she was so engrossed in her work that black and grey smears dappled her cheeks, and splattered her fingers, caught under the nails.

It was out of line. The way in which it had panned out. Elliott was her friend- he was desperate. He could have been called crazy. Those were the reasons. The excuses that rose foggily in her mind when she tried to justify his actions. It had deeply unsettled her. It was out of line.

Start of flashback:

“No, you’re outta line,” and the torn pages spiralled to the ground, spread like white feathers at her feet. The girl tried to pick them up, but he stood there waiting. She caught a glimpse of the ink illustration Alice, cradling her pig babe in arms until he kicked the pages away, rough hands capturing her tiny butterfly shoulders. She screamed. But he wouldn’t have it. Nails dug into soft skin. Another scream and he was gone. Poof.

Then, his face warped and changed. His once shiny forehead became that of Elliot’s sallow brow. His eyes were small and weasel-like. Now he bore no resemblance whatsoever to her father. Now he was Elliot and the fingers came back and he squeezed and squeezed.

End of flashback.

As Winnie’s eyes snapped into focus, her hand jerked of its own accord into the jam jar which she kept for water. Murky grey water spilled onto the table, and she sprang back instantly.

“Shit...sorry, sorry,” She blurted out. Salmiak (the black cat) hissed, Winnie backed away from the table, her shoulders flying up to her ears.  Axel was there in an instant, having snatched the towel from its shiny holder. She reached for it, wanting something  else to hold, something to distract herself with. But he shook his head. His gaze shifted to her hands, which trembled. 

“Oh..,” Her mind went numb as Otto took her gently by the shoulders. He gave her a soft nod, with a sad look in his eyes and sat her down on the sofa, giving one of the cats a light shove to get it to shift.  The cat mewled lowly and proceeded to stare balefully out at her.

Shit. Shit. Abort mission. Now she would have to speak to them. Now they wouldn’t leave her until they knew every detail. Everything. It had happened before.... it had happened and they’d broken Raj’s nose, killed Rita that one time, and that along with countless other incidents, gripped her with a choking fear, pressing in on her throat. She couldn’t breathe. She-

The sofa dipped as Otto settled beside her. He shushed her softly, and she realised she was holding one of her paintbrushes, squeezing it into the palm of her hand, whimpering subconsciously. It hurt.. It all hurt. She could see Oscar, crouched down in front of her, his white trousers covered in black cat hair. 

“Vinnie?” Oscar said, worriedly. She looked up, pushing her hair back, soft tears slipping down her cheeks. She looked like a soft, scared animal. Pathetic, she thought and wiped her eyes hastily. 

“No. I’m fine,” She added, snapping a smile to her lips. But it was no use. If she was smiling, it was in that bizarre taut way In which a clown smiles. The shiny greasepaint does nothing to hide the sad creases in the corner of each eye; the dishevelled look of a broken man hiding underneath a painted face, a big red nose and a bow tie.

“You’re not fine,” Otto said suddenly. She looked between them.

“Lilla björnen, “ Oscar licked his lips, his eyebrows furrowed, trying to muster the right words. “You ...tell us anything,’ He managed at last. 

Winnie’s throat ached, and she swallowed thickly. It meant a lot that he was trying so hard. Oscar struggled with his English more than the others. He wouldn’t pick up a book like Otto, nor did he infuse much effort in learning the language at first. When she’d  first met him, he spoke only Swedish. Actions meant more than words.

“Elliott..he-,” she despaired, struggling to form the words. Her fingers gripped the paintbrush tightly, hands like little claws,” I can’t explain it,”

Oscar took the paintbrush from her before she could hurt herself and dropped it onto the oak coffee table. His soft eyes pierced her own, a subtle language. She knew what he was asking. It was obvious.

Show us.

“Okay..,” She swallowed a wave of nausea, lifted her hand and rubbed her fingertips together. 

At once, the home vanished before them, replaced by a mask. A hollow mask. They were in Elliott’s home- she recognised the stacks of paper, the faded photographs and news clippings on the wall, the boxes and the books. Then her memory began to replay itself, a spool of film unravelling and changing. She avoided the their gaze and stood by the wall of photographs. 

 When people tell you to reflect, it’s usually meant in a sense of memory. Take a good, hard look at yourself and your actions. Really reflect on them.  But for Winnie it was literal. She could see herself, just.. standing there. Helpless, scared. She watched as past Elliott gripped her wrist, gripped her wrist and squeezed. Fear sparked in her past self’s eyes. Helpless, scared.  She couldn’t move.  

Winnie wondered what would have happened if she’d refused. Would he have hurt her again? Would he have apologised and let her leave? He was desperate for security- that was all she knew. He didn’t want other people getting involved. At least, that was what she told herself. As she willed her illusions away, Winnie finally looked up at them. 

Something dark thundered across each of their faces. Dark, twisted. It scared her. Elliott’s apartment simply vanished behind them, rolled up like parchment.  They were back home. 

The three of them exchanged a  long hard look. One look was all it took. They had decided. Nevertheless she crept closer to Oscar for a hug. Burying her face into the material of his shirt, she clung to him. It smelt faintly of lavender- probably the soap she’d given him a while ago. His arm looped around her shoulders at once, a warm protective barrier as if he could chase away her fears one by one. She squeezed her eyes shut, still damp and sticky. 

“Is okay,” He murmured,” Safe.” 

He looked up at Otto and Axel, both of which had sprung instantly into action As they bustled about, collecting guns and checking them for ammunition, her stomach curdled inside. Well shit. She had known this would happen. What was she thinking?

 Axel’s lip curled. He frowned and gritted his teeth, surging off in the direction of the coat rack. She knew that look, and wriggled round desperately. She had to give him some kind of sense.

“Axel,” She stuck one arm out and caught the hem of his shirt. Axel turned around, his eyes softening as he looked down at her. “Please don’t hurt him,” She begged, still hugging Oscar tightly.

For a moment, he closed his eyes, and drew breath to speak. She knew he was about to argue. He sighed, “Lilla björnen He hurt you-”

“There’s no mark, just a bruise from earlier. Check if you want,” She interrupted with desperate look.

“No,” Axel shook his head and motioned towards her chest. No, underneath her chest- her heart. ” In here.”

“I know,” She said, ”But it doesn’t warrant a gun in the face,”

“Please,” She tipped her head back, looking up at Oscar who sighed heavily.  His fingers tangled in her hair, stroking it thoughtfully, like the touch of father.. or brother. So natural. So calm. But after a moment he nodded.

“Stand down,” he said to Axel, then erupting into a bubble of Swedish something he often did when he couldn’t think of the English translation. Never the less, she knew that if she had not been hugging him in that instant, his hands would have surely tightened around his gun.

“Fine,”

At once, Winnie’s body went slack. Her shoulders slumped to her sides. But Axel wasn’t finished.

“But,” His gaze held her firmly in place,” If it happens again you will tell us,”

“Thank you,” She cried and pulled free of Oscar. It was all she could do but press herself into Axel’s arms for a hug. She wanted to be held, and though she was too big to be picked up anymore like one of the cats, she wanted the closure. No.  She needed the closure, dammit. 

He held her close, and he was warm and in that instant she felt....safe. A wave of ease washed across her mind, loosening her shoulders. The weight had been spread evenly across the shore. Less of a burden now. She was safe. That was what she knew. She was safe and loved and warm. 

“Is okay,” Axel muttered, sighing against her hair.

And that was that.  

@gorgeourrific-nerd

Done! I’ll probably post another chapter soon. Maybe this evening, maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day. She can cast illusions! This means a multitude of things for her, opens her up to a multitude of vulnerabilities which is just swell for me as a writer. But probably not so swell for her, you know? Anyway, expect plenty of fluff- I have some great scenes all planned out. Then we can develop the story and have her meet some more familiar faces. 

[englass]

Threadbare

Pairing(s): John Seed x F! Reader/Deputy

Warning(s): A little bit of Possessive Behaviour near the end (when isn’t there in my fics haha)

Word Count: 9,101

A/N: Gonna use this opportunity to apologise to @starsandskies @softseeds and @seedlingsinner for not getting back to you on your ‘Last Line Meme’ tags, I’ve been working on this and didn’t want to risk spoiling anymore of it than I have 😅 Apologies again, lovelies! ❤️ Now, I hope you all enjoy this inconsistent mess;  I’m just glad that it’s finally over!

Also, side note: this is the final/original version of ‘A Moment In Time’ that I never thought that I’d finish, so... yeah, I actually finished it; oops? 😅

- - -

The room is quiet, save for the gentle rustle of fabric and your calm breathing, only ever holding when your concentration tightens or a loud sound catches your ear. It’s a risky move you’re making, being here of all places. All it would take is one slip up and any patrolling Peggies would come running. In your current position, rifle resting just out of comfortable reach against a nearby night stand and hand gun securely holstered to your thigh, the potential outcome could be precarious.

Still, such thoughts are far out of mind. If anything, for once, your mind is not plagued by the worries, fears and demands of the people. It is quiet, tranquil, filled with an occupied motion that lulls and eases. It is the most peace you have had since this whole debacle began; and secretly, unknowingly even to yourself, you take your sweet time and milk it for all it’s worth. An unconscious action deeply needed.

Every so often you take stock, pausing to look, only to end up staring at nothing in particular, around the room you hold court in. It’s a surprisingly large room and it is as gorgeous and telling as the man it belongs to: all high-class with expensive taste, yet subtly simple – modest in design and openly exquisite in every minute detail. Almost everything, save for the immaculate wooden furniture and feather-soft carpet, falls within the spectrum of blue. It creates an oceanic space filled with a deep and enriching sense of stillness and liberation, emulating the ebb and rise of a tempered wave.

It’s an absent wonder why sloth is visualised as the coercing colour.

You shift slightly, readjusting your position as you turn back to the article of clothing in your lap, eyes layered with an embedded fatigue not aimed at anything in particular. The glaze is misleading, your movements speaking not of a tired body. Instead, they are easily measured with a humble confidence, working at a steady pace with a precise and focused concentration, all benign.

There is an edge of paranoia, sharp and teetering like the point of a knife. It fuels the anvil-heavy weight on your shoulders, makes it hard to breathe even the shallowest of breaths. Worry gnaws at your edges alongside its cutting twin. ‘What ifs’ are a dangerous line of thought, yet even with an empty mind it turns in the background, twisting and coiling like a viper as worry and paranoia feed and pamper it.

The stress of the situation – the position you’ve been made to hold, a final bastion in a red-dyed field – has left a very real and scarring impression upon you. A bitter taste you can’t wash out.

It’s why you draw out your time with a self-imposed task that could be over within a matter of seconds. You drown yourself in an old action and memory, away from the war you have been made charge of.

It actually makes for quite an interesting scene.

Away from the tragedy of a civil war and the reluctant role you play in it, in the confines of a grand modern home, one would see the image of domesticity. A young woman sat on a satin quilted bed, expression relaxed and eyes tinged with oblivion as they lose themselves in a rhythmic motion, effortlessly mending a piece of male attire with a needle and thread in hand. A simple kit that the young lady wields with a conviction that rivals that of a knight and his sword.

Yes, quite a scene it makes.

Admittedly breaking into the infamous Seed Ranch wasn’t the best place to host such an image, despite how well you fit into the frame (obscenely so), but it wasn’t your idea to come here in the first place. No, the Resistance has a way of... puppeteering you. Not that you would ever openly admit to such a thing.

Thankfully you have it on good authority – ‘it better be on good authority’, you had snarled, before stalking out of the door of the outpost you had been visiting – that the youngest Seed would be away for the day. Overseeing another load of confessions and such, you had no doubt. It would be the perfect opportunity to take the ranch for the Resistance; loot the cave while the dragon is away, so to speak. Perhaps that’s why, along with the decrease in guard numbers, you had somewhat made yourself at home, taking your time to slowly wander the grand ranch and really take it all in; all in its full and undisturbed splendour.

Arguably you could do so once it was under the Resistance’s control, it would be a lot easier and less stressful to do so then, but you are not naive enough to believe that they won’t change anything once it’s theirs. No, it’s better to see it as it’s intended to be, before that travesty occurs.

Yet, despite your initial wanderings into the many, many rooms around the ranch, it was John Seed’s bedroom – of all places – that had caught your eye. It is why you are currently perched contently on the man’s king sized bed as you tend absently to one of his shirts.

It’s truly silly when you think about it, it’s just a shirt after all, but it turns out that sewing your younger sibling’s toys and clothing growing up has ultimately left a very lasting impression upon you. You had found solace in the action growing up and you still felt it now, more so than ever with the violent turn your life has taken, and you wanted nothing more than a brief moment to try and capture that same tranquility once again.

Although, in all honesty, even you know that you’re not potentially endangering yourself like this for a reason so small and seemingly petty.

With your modest sewing kit on the night-table next to you, and the faintest whisper of the birds songs outside, you pause to look over your work. It’s not turned out too bad, it won’t be the worst you’ve ever done, but not the best either. Not that you believe for a second that John would actually appreciate the gesture, no matter how perfect it turned out.

John Seed, though mainly known for his slippery lawyer ways and role within the infamous Eden’s Gate, was a very rich man. His life before Eden’s Gate, before being reunited with his lost siblings, had him as a rather successful property attorney from what you’ve heard, and it’s from that life and accumulated wealth that’s allowed the project to get as large and domineering as it has done.

It’s also allowed him to lavish himself in some of the most luxurious, and most audaciously expensive, brands that you’ve never heard off. Not only was he good looking, tall and slim with a lean frame painted with tattoos and gifted with a pretty face home to a devilish smile, but he dressed impeccably well.

It was near impossible to not initially swoon at such a charming character, but sadly he was a bit of an open book. The exterior may be exquisite, utterly unique and persuasive in how it draws you in, but it’s too easy to read and you find it’s pages to be littered with an underlying venom and rage; a bitterness that may be understandable, but hardly justifiable.

It was actually quite sad when you chose to sit down and actually think about the man and his siblings, to sit down and try to read them as best as you could. Each of them were broken in their own ways, left in disrepair, from the lives they had lived. You had even gone so far as to read Joseph’s physical book, the bible by which Eden’s Gate knelt before, to see if it could tell you more. The question of how they became – how you know them to be – a guiding hand as you flicked through the yellowing pages and over painful words.

Theirs was truly a sad story.

Still, you know it is no excuse for what they have done, or what they continue to do; and yet there is a part of you that, secretly, knows that you do this simple gesture for more of a reason than out of habit or past influence. It’s a simple but nice gesture and, although you don’t feel like it’ll be appreciated, you’re sure it’s something that they – John in-particular and especially so – have never been given before. At least not willingly.

If anything, with how rich John is, you wouldn’t be surprised if he just brought a new shirt from an equally fancy, if not tear-inducingly expensive, brand without even batting an eye. That’s if he didn’t get it custom made. You’re pretty sure your average store doesn’t sell plane printed jackets and Eden’s Gate belt buckles after all.

Even so there’s no need to waste money, even if he can burn it and still be well off, when you can just as easily fix it. Besides, it’s actually a really nice shirt. Even with its predictable colouring.

Despite all the terrible things the man has done, and will no doubt continue to do, you can’t help the small smile that blooms across your lips. The knowledge that the Baptist, the dreaded Reaper, of Eden’s Gate has a favourite colour and is so shameless in embracing it is strangely humanising to you; and also surprisingly sobering.

At a leisurely pace, mind now hollow with an echoing sorrow, you pierce the fabric and loop the needle through the gap between the strand of thread and pull, creating a knot. You do this a second time, creating another knot to make sure it stays, before you reach for the small scissors in the kit beside you, cutting the remaining thread loose.

With a soft touch you run your finger over the fabric, silently marvelling at its heavenly texture as you thoughtfully look over your finished work. The thread you’ve used isn’t as high quality as the shirt itself is made out of, a fact that actually irritates you, but it’s the best that you own and you find yourself sighing in resignation; leaving it be.

Yes, it’ll have to do.

With a lingering gaze you start to slowly turn the shirt back to being inside-in, taking your time to enjoy the quiet that’s fallen over you. It’s only as you go to straighten the shirt, holding it out in front of you and giving it a final, critical look-over, that the silence breaks and you’re startled out of your revere.

Looking toward the bedroom’s door with wide doe-eyes you are shocked to see none other than the Baptist, John Seed, himself standing at the threshold. Eyes equally as wide, but much more bemused than your own, staring at you as you internally curse your luck with a tensing jaw.

He isn’t supposed to be here...

“You know, I must admit, Deputy,” he drawls with an intriguing lilt, ocean eyes dragging over you as he leans his lithe form against the door frame with crossed arms, completely at ease despite the situation, “I never pegged you for a housewife. It makes for quite an... interesting image. Did you also happen to cook me a meal and do the laundry by chance, darling?”

His smile is mocking, sharp and cruelly delighted, and it has you flushing in a mixture of shame and restrained anger. The fact that you’ve been caught in such a position puts a nasty dent in your pride. You know how this looks: the fearsome Deputy, poster child and head of the rising Resistance, sewing; and not just sewing, but sewing the damned enemy’s – a man on your given blacklist – shirt of all things.

It’s a colossal embarrassment.

You’re also aware of what this could do to your reputation if this got out and you don’t need John Seed, the smuggest bastard around, to gloat over that. Nor do you want him making smart quips that you know he’s more than likely going to constantly torment you with now over the radio for everyone else to hear.

Life’s a living hell at the moment as it, and you don’t need something like that being added to the proverbial pile. The humiliation would kill you quicker than a piece of shrapnel from a plane crash.

“Oh shut up,” you snip, “like I’d do you the honour; and if anyone makes for an interesting image around here it’s you, unexpected as you are,” you sass lowly. “Honestly, when are you going to do us all a favour and just fuck off. Maybe you should go and play with that little toy collection of yours like a good little brother instead of harassing all of us, now that would be an interesting image.”

It’s hardly even a half-baked comeback you give him, your bite a mere brush of teeth, yet it’s still enough for his expression to turn into something testing. A tick in his jaw as his icy eyes pierce you like a needle, pinching and uncomfortable; attention grabbing in the worst way possible.

The look is near enough water off a duck’s back. If you’ve come to learn anything from your few, but nonetheless taxing interactions with the man, it's that he won’t take the risk of action unless he’s a hundred percent certain that he has you right where he wants you; where you can’t or won’t fight back.

He wants things, people and confessions alike, handed to him on a gem encrusted platter. Given to him so he can play his twisted little games and break all his new and precious little toys. Always pushing past limits and breaking you down until you can do anything else, but give him exactly what he wants. Spoiled brat.

Perhaps John isn’t as absolved of his sin, carved into his chest like a fatal warning, as he thinks he is.

Closing his eyes John kisses his teeth with a restrained annoyance that is difficult to miss. For all his talk of wrath, and how well you embody it, he puts you to shame in how well it suits him, wearing it like a second skin and parading it like a model wrapped in Prada.

“As much as I’d love to spend my free time doing things that don’t concern you or your petty Resistance, it’s a bit too late for that now, isn’t it dearest,” he hits back with a chilled, but airy quality. “After all, you’ve made yourself quite a fixture in my life as it is, and I don’t believe for a second that you’d actually want out of that.” There’s a hint of something knowing in his words that doesn’t sit right with you. “And in case you haven’t noticed, but this is my home that you’re trespassing in. I’m pretty sure you’re breaking the law actually; you hardly have a warrant after all, Deputy,” he bites, cruel and vile and so self-satisfied.

For a brief moment the twins of worry and paranoia raise their heads with salivating jaws, itching like an infection to tear into you as you suddenly start to fret over John’s motives for this back and forth; along with the simmering anger that lurks beneath the water.

The anticipation of what his next rage fuelled actions could be is rattling. You can’t tell if he’s going to laugh this all off like some sort of bad joke or straight up lunge at you with the likes of a wild animal by the end of this. He can be rather unpredictable, and it’s that unpredictability that makes him so feared throughout the Valley. It’s what makes him so dangerous.

Yet it seems you can do nothing but poke the bear lately, your own frustrations and stresses giving you a false and reckless bravado. Albeit with a soft and unthreatening tone.

“And do I look like I care? We’re at war John, I’m pretty sure anything goes; your methods have already proven that. Now, are there any other normal past-times that you want to mock me for while I’m here, or am I free to go?”

Internally you wince. That came out a lot more defeated than you intended it to be. Still, you hope he at least concedes on this petty back and forth of yours and actually lets you leave–

“I’d hardly call your level of wanton wrath ‘normal’, Deputy. Tell me, what is your total body count at the moment? How many innocent lives have you gorged yourself on in order to fuel that gluttonous soul of yours, until it’s satisfied with the carnage you leave in your wake? Don’t worry though, you’re in safe hands. I’ll be sure to give your soul a good scrubbing once I get you in my chair. Starve it out of you until you bleed across my floor...”

You don’t say anything, merely roll your eyes and gently shake your head at the flip in attitude, continuing to look and touch up the shirt in your tender hold. He’s likely lost in his own warped thoughts if the way he stares through you for moment is any consolation. However, even lost in thought, you’ve found that John is not one to keep quiet for long, and he quickly proves that notion right.

“You know,” he says suddenly, conversationally; tip of his tongue wetting his lips as he looks for all the world like he just discovered the weight of gold, “if you wanted to confess to me you could of just called. Really, you needn’t go through all this trouble just to make my life easier, darling. I could have set up a welcome party and everything for you. Pulled out the red carpet, set it all up and made it all nice and perfect, for you... just for you, Deputy.”

It doesn’t make sense to you how he can warp what strangely sounds like the most sweetest and innocent of words into something so filthy, sinful and ultimately twisted; as if whispered around a forked tongue made of false promises and sugared venom. He’s an expert at his craft, you’d give him that. Sadly though you can’t help but skim over your absent companions playful jabs and blasé observations with a newfound air of caution.

The beast of worry looks at you with a telling, razored grin.

“... Flattered,” you drawl warily.

For such a simple and plain response you don’t feel that his boyish grin – filled with an emotion that is so foreign on the sadistic and calculating man that you feel the lazy shift of fear beside the intent prickle of paranoia and worry; something self satisfying and grateful and speckled with awe – is justified.

Like the flippancy of the wind John’s expression shifts, fluidly, into an emotion akin to a played up indignation. He sharply huffs through his nose.

“You should be. I make so many exceptions for you my dear and you do nothing but repay my kindness with more bloodshed. It’s rather rude of you in fact.”

“To be fair,” you cut in with a tired glower, careful with were you step in this game of twister, “your kindness leaves much to be desired. It’s not like anything I’ve ever seen, so forgive me for misconstruing your intentions.” It’s said with the most blatant sarcasm, dripping thickly like molten tar, and yet John lights up like a town on the eve of Christmas. The remains of his coiled agitation shifting into an unwarranted giddiness.

Good Lord, you’ve not even spent five minutes with this man and already you’ve got a killer headache.

“Oh? Should I learn by your example then, my dear Deputy? From this... quaint little gesture of yours, hmm?” He’s eyes hungrily roam over your lap, no doubt acutely aware of the way your thumb has comfortingly been brushing over the silken fabric of his shirt. “Not to say I don’t appreciate it mind you.”

You can’t stop the roll of your eyes nor  the huff that accompanies it. “Trust me, John, there’s no gesture here.”

He makes a sound in his throat, chimed with a badly contained mirth. Slightly, barely visible from your perch on his bed, he leans forward with something almost predatory in those sea-deep eyes of his. “Then what’s that in your lap?”

You turn to hold his gaze, icy and sharp with a smugness that screams of a known victory. He’s got you there. Your teeth grind into each other as you will for a retort to come to mind, but nothing does. With a heavy exhale through your nose you turn to the ceiling and pray for the strength to survive this ordeal.

Not that you’re completely confident that you will. With a swift flare of frustration one of your hands shoots up, palm facing skyward, in a half-arsed admission. “I don’t know. I don’t know, okay, I was just trying to be nice I guess.”

“Nice? You?” John barks mockingly, “Oh don’t make me laugh, Deputy. You’re a killer; there’s not an ounce of mercy in that tainted soul of yours. After all,” There’s a humourless chuckle, a glint of something vicious in his sea-deep eyes, “what ever happened to serve and protect?”

The look you throw him is completely disbelieving, practically aghast from insult, but there’s also a familiar rage resting within the glaring pools of your eyes that John knows rather well. Truthfully, it’s not something he’s ever seen in you before, more a muted irritation than straight up fury, and it thrills him something fierce to see it threatening to come into full bloom.

Conflict has never been in your veins. You came from a quiet and career driven family, to the point where your parents were hardly ever around. Arguments were rare, and if they did happen they never lasted long. You didn’t have the courage, nor stomach, for such things; and despite how much this County has twisted your placid instincts into something sharper, more aggressive and impatient, some things will just never change.

Lips in a tight line, brow furrowed and eyes ablaze in a dirty glare, you look away from him; down to your lap then across to your resting rifle. He’s not wrong, and ultimately that hurts worse than anything physical that he could very well do to you. The battle of your morals – your conscious – against your duty, against the pedestal that everyone has hoisted you up onto like some sort of savour – another Joseph almost – , is a constant one.

“Then what does that make you?” You ask quietly, something cruel lurking beneath the surface of your own waters. “What makes what you do so good, so much better and different than everyone else? Because you believe your brother, because he believes he talks to God?” There’s a huff of a laugh, a mocking condescension hissing with fangs bared, “don’t make me laugh, Inquisitor.”

John’s away from the door frame before you can even blink, a warning shift that tells you that this is no longer a strained, but casual banter between enemies. There’s a familiar glare in his eyes, dark and treacherous like the deepest waters and daring you to get a little closer, to swim a little deeper; to say another word against his brother.

Despite your writhing worry at the sudden tension in the air, twisting and flailing and coiling, you take a deep breath, let it suffocate you a moment too long, and then let it go. Tracing the lines and scratches on your rifle as your shaking anger lessens into a quiet ache. You’ve never been able to maintain it for long; you’re just glad that it no longer makes you break down crying anymore.

John on the other hand...

“Joseph,” he starts, voice so tight that it trembles, “wants to save people.”

“And you don’t?”

There’s a pause; a subtle shift.

You watch as John’s jaw gets tight, his head tilting the slightest amount to look down his nose at you; arms crossing over his chest in a defensive gesture as he leans back against the door frame again; a faux display of casualness.

It’s all the answer you need.

Slowly you nod your head, an acknowledgment even though you needn’t give one. A murmured ‘right’ scoffed under your breath. In all honesty you didn’t expect him to be so (indirectly) honest with you. In a way you can very much respect that, appreciate it even, but in another it only has the beast of worry grinning hauntingly at you; a new dread crawling up from the deep. It’s twin sewn from paranoia slinking up beside it with an equally telling flash of teeth.

Surely he can’t be doing this just for Joseph, just for the Project; there has to be something more that he’s gaining out of this. There has to be.

“Atonement,” the word is drawn out, a slow and delicate dissection, “is the absolution of sin… without it we are left to fester in the disease of our past transgressions. If we are not absolved of sin then we can never even begin to hope to be allowed entrance into Eden. However,” the baptist gives you a pointed look, head ducked and eyes alight but shaded, a stray strand of hair falling loose, “that decision must be genuine. They must want to atone, otherwise what would be the point?”

There’s a bitten laugh that scraps between his teeth; bared in a feral frustration that speaks of long talks and discussions that lead to nowhere but dead-ended roads. A hand claws through his hair, putting that stray strand back in place as he looks to bite at the inside of his mouth; eyes briefly cast to the side.

The afternoon sun, gradually turning richer as time goes on, catches against the satin blue of his vest, making it shimmer like the clearest of Caribbean seas. With his gaze turned away from you for the moment you can see the way the light glazes them, can see the hellfire for all it’s worth beneath those choppy waters; the rage given a flare of new life with the setting sun as the shadows stretch and consume, turning the once clear and shallow waters of his eyes deep and foreboding.

You think you may actually be starting to see some of the truths that lie within the Book of Joseph.

There’s a hesitant inhale; a steadying breath.

“But, it is the will of The Father to save everyone, regardless of if they are worthy of it or not.”

Looking away from the shirt still in your lap you turn to John, many questions on the brain, but only one that gets voiced.

“So you don’t think I’m worthy?”

John blinks. A moment of consideration before he meets your curious gaze; stars glinting against a multitude of emotions, all buried and unspoken, but telling all the same.

“I don’t think you believe yourself to be worthy.”

The bluntness of his response catches you off guard, eyebrows jumping high in surprise. It’s straight to the point in a way that you never imagined him to be, and you can’t help the interested ‘oh’ that melts on your tongue in response, lilts in newfound curiosity as your head tips to the side ever so slightly. “What makes you say that?”

You half expect a smile and some sort of jab, another dig to attempt to provoke you and prove a point that only he is fighting to prove. Yet, he does nothing of the sort. He’s quiet, simply watching you, and it’s with a strange type of realisation that you realise that, not only is he back to looking relaxed and at ease, but so are you; the tension lost and in its place lies a peculiar air, a feeling of contented melancholy almost; an accepting moment of reprieve within the wheel of fate.

“You’re still here,” he answers simply, an airy awe cushioning his tone, “if you didn’t want to be convinced then you would have left a while ago. You wouldn’t be asking me in the first place.”

There’s a tightening anxiety in your chest, a truth struck too close. Are you really that easy to read? Is your dissatisfaction and growing suspicion of the Resistance –  coupled with your thirst to learn more about the local cult and its founders – really that obvious? You should hope not, such things will get you into trouble if you’re not careful. Satisfaction over discovering such things would certainly not bring you back if that were the case.

“Tell me, Deputy,” there’s a new glint in John’s eye, a new interest piqued, “what is it that you’re looking for exactly? Because whatever it is apparently can’t be found within your little Resistance, otherwise you wouldn’t be entertaining me like you are, nor would you be concerning yourself over such a touching gesture.” Surprisingly there’s a lack of sarcasm to his tone this time around as he loosely gestures toward your lap, where his shirt still lies under your gentle touch.

You suck on your tooth for second, petulantly glancing away with a quick, but weak rebuttal of, “It’s not a gesture.”

A familiar, if not slightly fonder and more teasing, lopsided smile lights up across John’s face. This strange companionship of yours back on steady waters. “If you say so, my dear.”

The warmth of the gradually setting sun is a welcome blanket at your back, the stillness between you both comfortable despite the different lines you draw and stand on in this war. Faintly you can hear the chatter and motions of the guards outside, the rumble of distant engines, but they quickly fade into the background as you genuinely consider John’s words.

Just what are you looking for?

You’re not too sure, and you don’t suppose John would appreciate such a response no matter how honest it may be. Really, if you were to be insanely honest with yourself, you would guess you are looking for a reason to stop; a reason to turn your back on those you are fighting for and not those who you are fighting against.

No matter how many times you humanise the Seeds, excuse their actions on past situations, you can’t justify what they’ve done. You may one day forgive them, when all is said and done and this whole sorry war is nothing more than a story for the grandchildren; but you could never forget the horrors they have put people through, the uncountable and unimaginable things they have done to get to where they are now; to both you and the residents of the County.

Yet, does that justify what the residents of the County have done? Does that excuse the crimes and damages conceived by the Resistance? No, no if things were even a sliver close to normal, if you were actually a proper deputy and not so damn green, then maybe everyone would of been locked behind bars by now; and you would be no exception, right beside them with blood covered hands.

The world has never looked so grey to you as it does now; and that honestly scares you worse than any cult.

“But please,” John continues after a beat, breaking the silence, “indulge me; what is it you’re after, my dear? What is it that you are really searching for?”

Absently your thumb brushes over the fabric in your lap, a heavy hesitancy causing you to take your lip between your teeth, biting at the skin there until the taste of copper hits your tongue. Eyes downcast as you debate with yourself over how honest you can be with John, how raw you’re willing to let yourself became in front of someone like him; as an enemy, as an ex-lawyer and – maybe, just maybe – as a friend.

You look up at him, see the interest and something else that you can’t quite name dancing like fireflies over a lake’s still surface. Watch as he patiently waits for you, for what you think and have to say… It’s a nice change, if not a little strange.

Without a thought you smile at him, a beam too tight that it doesn’t quite reach your eyes, a huffed laugh under your breath. “Nothing much,” you squeak, “although a decent meal would be a start.” The laugh lingers on your breath, eyebrow cocked and lips tilting into lopsided smile; an intended joke.

John looks wholly unimpressed at your bid at humour, his own eyebrow raising casually in a silent question. Surprisingly though he doesn’t say anything in response, doesn’t call you out or outright accuse you of lying, even though you both know that you just did.

Ultimately, it leaves you with a new type of uncertainty, anxiety rising once again as the smile slowly falls from your face. Still, you push past it as best you can, clearing your throat awkwardly as you decide to stand from your seat on the bed, looking and then making your way toward the set of draws on the left where you had found his discarded shirt.

You feel, but still try to ignore John’s eyes on you as you place the shirt back in (what you hope is) its original resting place, neatly folding and fitting it between others not unlike itself. Briefly you brush your fingers over the collar, savouring the uniquely expensive feel of the shirt before closing the open draw. No doubt you’ll never get an opportunity like this again. It’s a little sad in a way.

With a quiet hum you turn – back facing John – toward the bed, and with a casualness as if you own the place you start brushing down and straightening where you’d been perched on the edge of the bed, smoothing out the creases.

Admittedly, with the sudden lack of conversation, John’s silence is really starting to get to you, a familiar edge of paranoia creeping into the forefront of your mind like scavenging rodents. You listen with a keen interest as you finish your work, the rustling of fabric and your own soft breaths the only sounds that really catch your ear.

With your back facing the infamous Baptist you would have thought this would be a great opportunity for him, your more laidback and docile nature on full display for him to take advantage of if he so wished to. It really would be a perfect opportunity.

Yet, as you turn around, once more with a hum at your work, you find that John hasn’t moved from his spot in the doorway. If anything he still looks very much at ease there, completely comfortable and unconcerned as he rests his lean frame against the door, arms and legs casually crossed as he simply watches you with soft eyes; reflective pools that refuse to hide even the tiniest of emotions. Yet, strangely enough, you suddenly feel as if time is impervious to the both of you. As if there is no one else in the world, but you and John.

The sparkling sapphire of his eyes, deep and as unfathomable as the ocean, whisper in dulcet tones the promise of a loving caress within the safe haven of his gaze. An unexpected gentleness in the sorrow of a buried plea, a want for something never owned, but always craved. Such a display of tenderness, from a man that you know to be cruel and volatile at times, is so far removed from the usual turbulent seas in his eyes that it makes you feel breathless.

His face – strong defined jaw, coupled with an immaculately trimmed beard, and skin a naturally tanned hue that looks as smooth as the silk of his shirts – is not masked by barely contained snarls of rage like it often can be, nor the sharp displays of malicious mockery and petulant pleasantries that hiss between his fangs when bared. Instead he bears a freedom and fondness that has your heart racing, a strange vulnerability on his suddenly boyish features; an unfamiliar, yet not unpleasant, warmth stroking over something deep within your chest that you had feared you were starting to lose.

A thought skims across your mind, and is banished just as swiftly as it had appeared; but even so it leaves an impression that you can’t help but entertain. No matter how futile and unachievable it may be; a hopeless romantic forever at heart.

Lost in fanciful scenarios that will never come to be you don’t notice the way that John also takes you in, cataloguing every minuscule detail and committing it to memory with a keenness that rivals the amount of silver on his tongue.

With where you stand, still and serene in the heart of enemy territory, the large window of his bedroom holds proudly behind you. The fading afternoon sun casting a light pastel orange across the earth and room, beaming through the glass and haloing you in a warm and intimate glow, your form mesmerising and ethereal with how at peace you look when held within such a divinely born light.

Your eyes, typically brimming with a wrathful defiance and a gluttonous need for misguided justice, are a demure beacon that glitters like the limitless galaxies within the cosmos. A flare of hope and unconditional love, soft and reassuring, for all of those that catch a glimpse of your guiding starlight. And although he feels unworthy, tainted and irrefutably damaged as he is, John also feels unbelievably blessed to bare witness to such an otherworldly sight; to be gifted with the absolute vision that is you.

And, for a moment that never quite ends, John can’t help but question how you could be hell-incarnate when heaven touches you oh so sweetly.

There are many words John Seed would have used to describe you, none of them necessarily complimentary or flattering, yet in this shared time between the two of you – just the two of you – only one word comes to mind as he unknowingly, longingly gazes at you.

Angelic. Yes, angelic you truly are. Stunningly and perfectly angelic.

John can’t remember the last time he felt this way about anyone, if he has ever felt like this at all even, but suddenly he finds that nothing else matters to him. Not the Project, not his brothers, and not even the work that he should be doing but that he had slipped away early from, because – frankly put – he was tired. He was as fed-up with this war and the responsibilities placed upon him as he suspected his dear Deputy to be. Both falling foul to your shared sin of sloth in regards to the duties you uphold.

Yet, John at least holds direction and dedication to the work divinely placed upon him. Knows what the end game is and strives to achieve it to its fullest potential, but you? You’re wavering; you’re doubting. Straying away from the path you are on, looking into the distance for something else, all the while refusing to even acknowledge the right one. The one alongside him.

You may not say it, nor ever even admit it, but John knows exactly what it is you are looking for. Knows the evidence that you’re desperately trying to compile in order to build a strong case in favour of yourself and the choices that you’ve been making, wanting to justify yourself and the many actions that you’ve made until this point between you both in the name of your feeble Resistance. And John also knows that he and his siblings are partially to blame for that.

If it wasn’t for them, you wouldn’t have to try and stand alone for yourself in your own self made courtroom. Wouldn’t have to stand before your self-conscious as you pleaded your guiltlessness before your own guilt. But, really, that’s why you needed a lawyer; that’s why you needed him. John could help you with that, could show you a better path where you could be free of such shackles. He would stand and defend you where no one else would; he would protect you when no else could.

He just wished that you’d let him. Wished that you would just sign the contract laid out before you so he could aid you, so he could fight for you. Yet, you still refuse to bless him with the payment of his favoured word. You still refuse to acknowledge just how in debt this battle will leave you without his help. It’s a small ask, a tiny payment, for a lifetime of rightful assurance.

Yet, John wonders if maybe it’s not just the courtroom that he wants to defend you in.

In his previous life, before the Project and his reunion with Joseph, John likely wouldn’t have even paid you a second glance. You’re a bit of a Plain Jane, have a very girl-next-door sort of look about you. Yet, in the wake of this interaction, bathed in the golden hue of the setting sun, John can’t think of anyone more beautiful. So human and down to earth; lost and conflicted, yet certain and firm. You really are an oddity, and one that John finds himself genuinely wanting to learn more about.

True, he had always had an interest in you, especially when this war between you first began, but it had always been a professional interest (despite what many thought or claimed). You needed to join the Project, Joseph decreed it so, and although his interest had risen to a slightly more personal level it was still business; without you he wouldn’t be able to reach Eden. His fate was in your hands.

Yet, fate seems to want to play you both into each other’s arms, for if it didn’t then surely this sacred moment between you both wouldn’t be happening. Surely, if this wasn’t meant to happen, John wouldn’t be longing for the love that Joseph promised him – the love that only you could give him – like he suddenly and hopelessly is.

John knows where he stands in this war, it’s a fixed point that he can’t move away from even if he eventually decided that he wanted to, but really his dear Deputy is still undecided. You still have a choice to make in this divine plan; you still have time to choose. And, funnily enough, it looks as if you’ve already started to make that choice. That curiosity of yours, you being in his home – on his bed – looking so domestic, like a wife waiting for her husband… to John this is a sign, a hint, a mere taste of the future that he’s always secretly hoped and longed for. A prophecy in its own right.

Yet, as much as he wants to fight for you, to defend and cherish you, he regrettably knows that the time for such things isn’t quite here yet. It’s close, certainly within his reach, but you need to meet him the rest of the way. You need those final damning pieces of evidence before you’ll come to him. You’ll want every piece of evidence available before you’ll walk your chosen path; and although he shouldn’t interfere, John could very easily acquire such evidence for you. He could very easily make such evidence for you. A little more time, a few strings pulled and a couple of sins stripped, and he could give you everything you need and so, so much more.

The temptations of the promised future are a fruit too sweet not to savour.

Eden’s Baptist watches with a fresh interest as you sigh heavily, chest rising and falling with the action, as you start to walk towards him. John’s chest tightens, flutters under the way your sparkling eyes meet and hold his own, only a hint of uncertainty, a fleeting touch of something questioning – do you feel it too? Do you feel this like he does? – on your face before you look away, glance down like a bashful bride, and come to stand next to him.

He doesn’t move from where he’s been leaning against the door, doesn’t even dare to breathe in case this moment is blown away like ash on the wind. Yet, when nothing happens and all he can focus on is his and your own gentle breathing, he takes a gamble and swallows thickly, slowly turning his head so he can look down at you next to him, naturally pretty despite the odd scratch and speck of dried blood on your well worn clothes.

The tension is palpable between you both, not so tight that’s it choking you, but tight enough that you can certainly feel it; hear it moan like a bow dragging steadily over a cello’s strings. Although, not as ominous as one would first suspect, but more melancholy; a rich sadness. As though despite how much you might want and wish for something, it will never come to pass; a sad inevitability that you can do nothing but walk past, never to stop and consider. Or at least you shouldn’t, for only heartbreak lies down those withered and desolate roads.

Which is why you shouldn’t stop, why you shouldn’t be wanting to reach out with a tender touch, a reassurance to this greedy want of yours for something more out of this moment, for more out of this strange connection and unlikely companionship you have discovered between the two of you. You shouldn’t feel this safe when standing next to the man that wants to starve this Valley into submission. You shouldn’t feel so at ease around a man that derives a sick thrill out of torture and the power it gives him. You shouldn’t feel like you’ve finally found a home when you’re sitting on his bed with his shirt in your arms.

You can’t deny that you’re attracted to him, that there clearly is some sort of unexplainable connection between the both of you, but whatever this connection may be… it can never be explored. It can never happen. You will never side with Eden’s Gate, and even if you decide that you can no longer be with the Resistance, it’ll be for the same reason why you can’t join Joseph’s cult. Ultimately, your decision, whatever it may be, will change nothing. Just like nothing will change John’s decision.

Ruled by the cry of your heart and the attachments it’s quick to make you hesitantly lay your greedy hand upon him, turning slightly as your right hand crosses you in order to gently grip his toned arm; the familiar feel of uniquely expensive silk sliding pleasantly

against your skin.

You feel him tense under your hand, arms tightening from where they are still crossed across his chest, but you don’t blame him. Really you’re not even too sure what it is you’re doing, this will only hurt you more when you walk away from whatever this could’ve been if things were different, but you always have had a bit of a penchant for torturing yourself with things like this.

So no matter how much the ‘what if’s’ will wound you in the future you still immerse yourself in the feel of him, of the way he relaxes as your thumb brushes back and forth in a comforting gesture against his arm, the smell of his cologne naturally intermingling with his natural scent… it’s a bitter torture that already has the tears coming to your eyes, but still you stay a little longer; heart hopefully romantic even though you know better.

This – the two of you – could never work.

“Deputy…”

“You know,” you cut him off, the slightest fracture in your softened tone, “I didn’t mean what I said earlier, about your planes. They’re not toys; they’re really cool actually,” there’s a buried laugh under your breath, a small smile that speaks of a brief reminiscion, “the way you have them all set up, cataloged with their little name plates… it’s really cute. It would be super cool if you had them hanging down from the ceiling though; like, having them act out dog fights and things almost. Can you imagine it?”

You giggle there, head ducking as you get lost in thoughts and bitter imagines – helping to set them up, walking in and seeing them like that, being lifted and twirled under them like stars in the sky – that will never be.

This war has taken everything from you, has made you doubt and lose sight of who you were before. Even your dreams for the future, regardless of who they may be with, have been tarnished by the stains on your hands and the things you have been pushed into doing. How could you ever have a normal life after this? Who would want a life with you after all of this? It all seems so impossible and far too far out of reach for you now.

Although it may be cruel, your wandering thoughts and the reminder they bring is a good grounder, and in turn your smile sours; even as one blooms sweetly across John’s face, a light dusting of pink across his cheeks.

For the better, you don’t see it.

“Anyway, I better go; got a County to save and all that after all. I’ll see you around though, John,” you pause, hesitate, desperately cling to this fleeting moment that’s finally reached its end, “take care of yourself now, sweetheart. Lord knows we need to...”

With nothing else to say, that quiet piece of compassion laid out before him like a final offering, you leave; letting go of his arm with a parting squeeze and a faint caress as you pull away, walk past him and out the door until you’re eventually lost to him yet again. A weary ghost bound to forever wander the lonely battlefield.

John doesn’t follow you, doesn’t even reach out to stop you like a part of him begs him to do, and instead merely turns to watch you leave. Head down and arms wrapped comfortingly around your waist. He really should stop you, force this moment to last for as long as he can get it to, but he doesn’t; and that surprisingly hurts him, letting you go. Yet, the pain it brings only hardens him, makes his thoughts straighten and become resolute in the face of the same realisation that had dawned on him only moments before hand.

And as the sun sets over the horizon, the sky streaked in sunburnt northern lights, colours shifting like water with the flowing of time, John finally moves to sit in the same place you had been on his bed; alone and lost in thought. Reaching out to pick something up off his nightstand as he draws his elbows to rest on his spread knees. His hands cupped against his mouth and securely around your forgotten sewing kit, as he stares blankly at your abandoned rifle.

Another sign in and of itself.

Although you hadn’t been looking at him when you had left John had certainly been watching you. He had seen the way that your eyes had glistened like unsteady waters as the courtroom erupted into a debate that you felt that you couldn’t win; the choice taken from you as your morals and exploited loyalty raged and dictated the sentence you should face.

He knows you felt it, knows that there is something special between the two of you, and that it’s taken this moment between you – this one act of rebellion stemmed from your curiosity – for him to see it; for him to finally grasp the meaning behind his brother’s plea.

You were right when you had questioned him on his lack of care regarding the Atonement; how he doesn’t care to save those that don’t believe, how he doesn’t want to put in the effort for those that will only put it to waste. If their motives are not genuine then the process is entirely pointless. Although, John won’t deny that there is a certain gratification in having such control over someone. Forcing them to say yes, purely for their own survival, is not the intention, but it certainly works all the same. After all, Joseph hasn’t exactly scolded him for his methods; especially if he gets a little therapy and self management out of it.

But what of you? What do you have as an outlet, as a way to cope and make the prize all the more sweeter? Better yet, what is the prize that you’re working towards, because John certainly has his in mind, and it won’t just be the end of a cruel and uncaring society.

You’re a puppet, both in terms of your occupation and the leading role you’re now being made to fill, dancing on fraying strings. Strings that John could fully free you from, help to cut you loose, if only you would just say ‘yes’. He’d be able to properly protect and defend you then, reassure you in your choices and how the things you’ve done were never truly your own; your caring nature merely exploited by those that you were forced to associate with while under the influence of shock. The trauma brought on by that helicopter crash disorientating you and leaving you vulnerable toward their manipulative and pressurising ways.

At least if you were to say ‘yes’, John would be able to safely guard you and your surprisingly tentative character. He would be able to love and cherish you, hold you close like no other, and make it so that you would want for nothing while in his arms. He could actually keep you in his bed, smother you in the pleasure that he would gladly give you as his beloved; chain you there as he ravished you and the softness that you would offer him, that you allowed him a tantalising glimpse of.

If you said ‘yes’, then John would finally be able to secure you and your loose strings, worn and threadbare under the continued pressure of your wailing guilt, to his own tangled ones; knotting them together until they have been sewn into something new, becoming one and the same. And when that finally happens, you will be entwined around a silk too rich and blissful to be so easily frayed.

[skyphile]

prime numbers! ((emberoops))

Does your character have siblings or family members in their age group? Which one are they closest with?

THIS IS SO SAD BUT NO...... he would DIE for a sibling, and his parents dont have siblings either so he doesnt even have cousins,,, he longs for that kind of relationship so much??

he ended up projecting being a big brother to many people over the course of his life instead, and it embarrasses him so much when he notices it happening, it makes him feel so silly

i would say the biggest tugs of that kind of dynamic rn are maybe with colin especially with all the dumb fake animosity, while adrien is almost a legit Parental/mother hen feeling of being protective of him

What is/was your character’s relationship with their mother like?

ive talked about this a bit before, but graham was the product of an arranged marriage. his grandfather made his dad marry a woman from a prestigious family so they could keep their popularity and prestige and important connections themselves, especially as immigrants in a very racist country

his parents ended up caring deeply for one another, but not in a romantic way, and his mother was extremely depressed and anxious throughout her pregnancy, and after graham was born. she was nearly suicidal and grahams grandfather was only making things worse, so it was grahams dad who basically. decided to say fuck it to his father, bring grahams mother somewhere safe, give her all the money and resources and protection she needed to get better and pursue her own life, and he was super attached to baby graham and wanted to raise him all by himself

this early turmoil traumatized graham and when he grew up it was something that made him feel othered in relation to his peers, in addition to his race, his culture, his budding gender identity and sexual & romantic orientations. it made him feel deeply unloveable, broken, and incapable of love himself, it was one of the things that made him grow up very wary of the concept of marriage, and it took a lot of vulnerability, respect and genuine care and hard work between him and his dad to understand that the circumstances of his birth were not his fault, and that this was the best solution for everyone to be able to experience their love for each other the best way possible

graham has met her several times, writes to her regularly, and he treats her like a dear friend rather than a parent. hes happy for her, her art degrees, her girlfriend, and in turn shes expressed a lot of pride and joy in getting to meet this boy she helped bring to the world

What is/was your character’s relationship with their father like?

graham loves his dad to fucking pieces

hes such a humble, emotionally intelligent and caring man, who from early on caught onto all the outdated and damaging aspects of the traditions of his family and fought against it time after time after time

he is completely different from his own father, who had very specific plans for him, and he just foiled them all!

with grahams birth, he did the best he could raising him by himself, thwarting his fathers enduring influence, and making sure this kid had all the tools to be true to himself and follow his heart no matter what. he isnt perfect and of course he made many mistakes, but he is always humble enough to admit when hes wrong, apologize to his child, communicate his feelings and figure out solutions together. graham has always had an amazing role model in him

the circumstances of grahams disappearance and then return after the trials of his own jumanji esque adventure are still difficult for him to understand, but he still believed graham, and he was the biggest force in bringing his son back from his damaging self isolation and motivate him to cook, to live, to carry on

he still remains ever supporting and adoring of his child, adoring of his new child in law, and just an all around amazing dude

On an average day, what can be found in your character’s pockets?

what pockets....

Does your character have recurring themes in their nightmares?

if theyre not horror movie or game induced, then theyre related to his period of isolation, to being trapped in an endlessly dark, silent, quiet cold place

he may see himself as he was when that happened too, close to starvation, hollow and alone

In what situation was your character the most afraid they’ve ever been?

during the time they were in their own jumanji esque adventure, completely by himself, unaided, trapped in some reality away from his own so he could put it together and slowly solve this lock puzzle until he got to come home again

Is your character bothered by the sight of blood? If so, in what way?

hes usually ok with handling himself with crises, even when theres a lot of blood

What was your character’s favorite toy as a child?

bunnies! lots of sweet stuffies, including rabbits, pokemon and marine creatures

his gameboy and his tamagotchi too

What is your character’s biggest relationship flaw? Has this flaw destroyed relationships for them before?

i would say his biiiiiiig repulsion/aversion to dating culture in general? this is related to his family history but is also a big consequence of his aromanticism

he has huge trouble understanding all the rituals of people jumping into commitments and weird expectations and fleeting obsessions when most of the time they dont even have a solid foundation of time, vulnerability and trust to even call themselves a good friendship, especially in people who he sees jump into the same pitfalls over and over?

ultimately he understands that his own circumstances are important differences in how people shape their relationships, but it still makes him extremely secondhand anxious, especially because in his experience as an observer rushed things and pushed expectations make for very volatile and intense disappointments that end up hurting him a lot too, and hes kinda very tired of that

nonetheless, this has made him grow distant of friends in the past, and while he regrets some of it and wishes it was easier to compromise and be more comfortable about it, he also knows that he was right about many situations and ultimately it was a better idea not to get involved and trust his gut

What does your character dislike in other people?

nonsensical violence, general assholery, unwillingness to listen, lack of consideration for others, being treated as someone useful for stuff he knows or tools he has or things he can give and then being discarded, he also feels very peeved when people sexualize him when hes talked about his nudity before and how it relates with growing comfort with his self image

What did your character dream of being or doing as a child? Did that dream come true?

i would say so, yes!! working on video games, pro cuddling and cooking for others are definitely pinnacles of things hes always thought would bring others joy

Describe a scenario in which your character feels most comfortable.

home... close to kes, taking a deep breath in their little home, with their little family, and feeling wholly, intrinsically belonging...

similar locations are for example when his dad throws a party and graham gets to invite all his best friends and everyone just has a lovely time laughing and eating together. game streams are a similar venture too!!

but at the end of the day, coming home, kicking off shoes and clothes, snuggling up to his starlight and their babies? pure bliss

Is your character more concerned with defending their honor, or protecting their status?

i still dont understand what this means,,,,

he does not have honor OR status SOBS

Does your character feel that they deserve to have what they want, whether it be material or abstract, or do they feel they must earn it first?

oh it is a constant cycle of tremendous happiness and having to pinch himself bc hes so scared hes still in the silent cold dark alone... hes always trying to do better to keep earning this. hes a bit better about it now, he understand ppl are here bc they want to, but yknow. brain trauma still does things sometimes.

Has your character ever had a dependent figure who was not related to them?

nope! but his dad moods are soooo big now. he just wants to protect kids and be a good influence...

[pagiecakewritesstuff]

Taking away his pain (Arno Dorian x reader)

Just the basic Elise died and now Arno is very sad stuff, but I had to write my own version of it.

And requests are open, I guess...

MENTIONS OF SUICIDE AND DEPRESSION IN THIS PART.

You looked at the shouting crowd below, and then at him, standing at the edge of Notre Dame's tower without a haycart to cushion his fall. Down everybody noticed him already since he stood there for soo long not being able to decide whether he should take his life or not.

"Arno?" You tried to get his attention gently. The mission wasn't a secret anymore, every eye were on him. You could even catch a glimpse of templars down there. They were more than delighted to witness this event, which made your blood boil.

"Arno, please come here to me. You're going to fall." You pleaded, trying to stop your best friend's suicide attempt.

"Yes, I'm going to fall (y/n)." Answered Arno, his voice was shaky and broken. Really broken, your heart ached for him.

"There is no reason for you to do this."

"I have plenty of reasons." Finally, the man turned to you with glossy eyes. "Elise is dead, I'm not an assassin anymore. I was betrayed by the people close to me. Let the revolution go on without me..."

"No." The thought of losing your best friend frightened you. "I can help you, Arno. I will help you to get through this. I just need you to come here to me, back to safety."

"I'm going to jump." Arno looked at the streets below him, crowded with people.

"You don't have to..."

"But I will!" He shouted sobbing. "You can't help me, you can't take away this pain I feel!"

"But I can show you how to live with it."

"No." Arno stepped forward, you had to act quickly. There was no time to think. Grabbing his robes you pulled him back roughly. But he didn't give up. Arno thrashed around, trying to escape your hold. He was desperate to end his life.

"Calm down okay? Just calm down..." You whispered into his ear, while feeling his body ease, and start to tremble. Arno fell to the ground, bowing his head down, hiding his tears.

"It's alright now, I'm going to get you out of here." You kneeled beside him, embracing his shaking form gently. He buried his face into the crook of your neck. Arno hated being broken before you, and you knew that well. Only in his hardest times, he let you see his real sadness or pain. In this case both. Other than that he was always charming, funny, even a bit flirty sometimes, cracking bad jokes just to annoy the hell out of you when he was bored. But it seemed that the Arno you used to know died with Elise.

"Come!" You stood up, pulling him with you. "A priest is waiting at the door down there to escort us to our carriage." Arno nodded pulling his hood even more over his features, ashamed by his tears.

"Can you climb down?" Showing the small leap between the tower and the door to Arno you looked at him concerned.

"Yes." His voice was blank, empty.

"Just be careful, and don't do..."

"I'm not going to jump (y/n). You made more than sure of that.

"Alright go ahead, I want to see you." Quickly following him you watched his every step, only easing when both of you reached the door, where the priest impatiently waited.

"May I escort you out of the cathedral?" He looked at Arno strangely.

"Oui, merci." The three of you took the steps down, thanking everything to the priest again downstairs. The carriage was near, but you still had to go through the crowd.

"Heads down and try to blend." You ordered Arno. "The carriage is not too far."

Arno would tell you that he doesn't like it when others at his or below his rank give him orders, but he had nothing to say, after all, he wasn't the part of the creed anymore. The male assassin silently obeyed, in the meantime you scanned the crows with the help of your eagle vision, trying to identify templars.

Before Arno decided to jump there was a riot, so quite a few people gathered. Knowing that the council was already displeased enough you got to the carriage very fast.

"To the Café Theatre." You told the driver, giving him some money, that he took with a half-smile. He got waí more than he would've asked for. You took the seat next to Arno who was already sitting inside, waiting for you to pay. The male assassin's eyes were tired and full of thoughts.

"Your next mission is also about me?" He asked with a raspy voice.

"Yes." You admitted. "I clearly told the council that I know you better than any of our brothers, therefore if somebody has to be next to you I'll be it."

"Why do they even care if I kill myself or not?"

The horses came to a halt, stopping the carriage.

"I didn't ask, but I deeply care about you, you have to believe that. Come on."

The Theatre was filled with sweet smells, laughs, and guests. With very loud ones actually, singing revolutionary songs happily.

Arno looked at a kissing couple, longing.

"I shall take you upstairs." Holding his hand you basically dragged him after yourself into his room. "What about you have a bath while I make two cups of warm tea?"

Arno just nodded, lightly touching the letters from Elise, scattered around his table, with his fingertips, like he couldn't decide which one to read or should he even read any of them.

"Can you do the bathing part yourself?" You asked awkwardly.

"Yes (y/n), I'm not yet crippled."

The harsh remark took you aback a bit, he probably just wanted to be alone, a little time by himself might do some good.

"Alright then."Placing your hand on the doorknob you decided to leave the room. "I'll be back with that tea. Please don't do anything that you might regret later."

He didn't answer, just slowly headed to the bathroom, like nothing happened before, but his hollow eyes were out of focus. Looked like he wanted to disappear, far from Paris, far from France.

Realizing that he wouldn't speak to you, with a worried sigh, you left the room. After making the tea you hurried back, feeling a deep sense of fear about what state you'll find him in.

But he was alright, as alright he could be in the moment. Sitting at the edge of his bed he glanced at you, while you placed down two cups at the bedside table.

"You should leave." He stated blankly, eyes fixated on the tea. It took a moment for you to realize what he just said.

"I'm not going to leave you."

"I wasn't asking."

"What you told me is nonsense, I'm not..."

"Just leave already!" Arno shouted, tears brimming his eyes. He was clearly unwell, but what could you do? Nothing. As a highly skilled male assassin, he could throw you out by his two bare hands at any moment.

"If that's what you wish for." Slightly bowing your head you went trough the open door. The council must be impatient by now, you had to report what happened.

After two weeks you got no news from or about Arno. The council didn't know anything either, nor the other assassins. Checking on him would do no harm you decided, as you headed to the Café Theatre. A waitress came to your side at the moment you arrived.

"He is not well. " She whispered glancing around at the guests. "He forbid me to send somebody for you, bud he needs help. We worry about him greatly."

"Why he didn't let you ask for me?"

"He said that he doesn't need anybody's pity. But he can't handle his emotions, so I fear he'll attempt suicide again."

"I see what I can do." Running upstairs you saw that the tiny home was in chaos, broken furniture, torn clothes. Even tiny droplets of blood splattered around the floor.

"Arno?" Your voice was full of fear as you searched for the assassin.

"Leave!" He shouted from the bedroom.

"Look, I came to help, and I know..." That's when you saw him, sitting against the wall, in dirty, bloody clothes, his untied hair around his pale, sad face.  His bloodshot eyes met yours.

"I want you to leave."

Only after the first wave of shock, you could answer.

"Absolutely no way!" Kneeling beside him you discovered cuts all along his arm. Some of them were fresh, some were almost healed, there were deep ones too. "You cut yourself?!"

Arno's only reaction was his pained expression.

"Let me heal you...." You pleaded. "Please..."

He gave you a barely visible nod.

"Can you stand?"

The male assassin didn't know what to say, he might be able to get on his feet but he wasn't sure.

"No."

You hauled him up and helped him sit on his bed then grabbing a seemingly clean cloth you pressed it on his cuts.

"Hold this there tightly, I'll grab some water to clean your wounds." Then as fast as you came you left the room.

Arno was actually relieved that you were with him. These two weeks were hell for him. He wanted to be alone but he also desired the company, somebody to hold him and tell him everything will be alright. Letting you help might make him weak in his own eyes but he couldn't live in this state anymore.

You stepped into the room with a bowl of water and some clean fabric.

"You don't have to do this." He muttered quietly.

"I'm your friend Arno." Watering the cloth you started to clean his cuts. Arno winched slightly, but he could manage his pain. "And because of that, I'll do everything to make you feel better."

"I don't deserve your care (y/n)..."

"Yes, you do."

"The Creed won't take me back anyway."

"I think they'll take you back, you are a valuable assassin, with great talent and experience. You just have to get back on your feet."

He buried his face into his hands trying to hide the fact that he was on the verge of crying.

"I'm a mess (y/n). I don't think I can ever be the same again."

"Youll never be the same." You ran your fingers through his messy hair, undoing the knots in it.

"Elises death will change you forever. But that doesn't mean you can never be happy anymore. Take your time, and the pain will ease."

"I can't do it alone." He leaned on you, burying his head into the crook of your neck. Your smell calmed him, it felt like home, fresh clothes, warm bread, but he could also notice the marks of the revolution, gun powder, medicine, and blood. All so familiar to him, Elise had the same aura, but she was less gentle. She didn't need to be, not with him.

"I'll be by your side."

"You promise?"

"I can even move here. The Café is big enough for us."

"Then stay."

"I will."

Weeks passed with the day being hard at first then slowly easing into peaceful, more happier ones. You saw Arno cry in your embrace, rage with boiling anger or just sit depressed by the window looking out to a Paris without Elise. He slowly started coping with her death, turning back to his duties as an assassin. For you, he seemed happier on the outside, but in the inside fear tortured his soul. He found himself discovering a new kind of love... for you. Elise was his first partner so his feelings for you seemed different. Guilt washed over him every time he looked at you. What would Elise say? He still loved her in a way but he had to let her go. She would want him to be happy. Right? Also, your kind of work made him nervous. You as an assassin could get hurt or die any day in this bloody revolution. Elise didn't get engaged in fights until she became a grandmaster. What if he can't protect you? He would surely end his life.

On the other hand, you started to like Arno not knowing that he felt the same. You gave no signs of your affection, after all, he was grieving. And this made him more insecure, you might reject him, he thought.

After days he grew quite stressed over his feelings. You noticed that.

His cheeks slightly reddened when you said something nice to him, he would fiddle with his fingers while talking to you and he became rather clumsy in your presence making a fool of himself on occasion like he concentrated on something else rather than his actual task. Until you decided you had enough.

One sunny afternoon you sat down by his desk where he worked himself through some letters. Assassin business mostly.

"Arno?"

"Yes (y/n)?" He neatly put away the paper he was reading, looking up to you.

"I'm concerned about your behavior. You acted... odd in these days. Is everything alright?" You asked watching closely his reaction. He instantly blushed like a lovesick schoolboy. Unbeknown to you he was indeed in love.

"I feel perfect if that's what you want to know."

"In this case I'm relieved. You started to get better..."

"There is actually one thing I wanted to talk about with you." He admitted nervously.

"Go on, we can talk about whatever you want." You smiled reassuringly.

"Do you think I can find new love?"

"Yes, that's totally possible."

"What would Elise say?"

Oh, so that was the problem.

"She would be alright with it."

"You sure?"

"Totally."

"Then I think the problem is with me."

"There is nothing wrong with you." You stated, maybe a bit too fast.

"You see there's this (man/woman), (he/she) is very nice but I'm afraid to confess my feelings for (him/her).

"What are you afraid of?"

"Losing (him/her) I guess..." There again he fiddled with his fingers nervously.

"Then you should speak to (him/her). Shoving away your feelings because of this... is not a life."

"You might be true."

"Who is the lucky one anyway?" Glancing at him you resisted to show any emotions. "If I may ask..."

Arno loudly gulped, forgetting to say something even."

"Arno?"

"Well..."

"You don't have to tell."

"(he/she) is sitting in front of me." He blurted out...

It took you a couple of seconds just to realize what he said.

"What?"

"It's you (y/n)."

"Me?"

"Forget it, I was foolish to..." But he couldn't finish as you quickly got up and pressed a light kiss into his mouth. He stared at you dumbfolded before a small smile tugged his lips upwards.

"Je t'aime Arno."

"Je t'aime (y/n)."

[tmandpm]

Four Names She Had, and One She Didn’t

Daughter.

Her eyes darted around the moving scenery as they drove. Her heart was conflicted over the new chapter she was starting. She hated to leave home, but she was ecstatic to see the world beyond the vicarages and churches her childhood had been filled with. She looked to the front of the car where her parents were sitting, holding hands, and she smiled sadly.

She had been her father’s little companion since the day she was born. He had given her the world as she grew. They passed by a pond, and she laughed quietly as she remembered when her father had attempted to take her fishing. She couldn’t have been more than four. He had sat her in his lap, fishing pole between her hands that his were holding, and they had waited and waited and waited. Nothing had bitten, and she was sleepy and moody when an older man had passed by, stopping at the fence to yell that there were no fish in the pond. It was meant for swimming only.

“Tessa, are you okay? You’re very quiet,” her mother said in a soft voice.

“I’m fine. Just thinking.”

Her eyes took in the half smile as the older woman turned back to look at the road. Her mother. Her mummy. She always felt a tug in her chest when she looked at her. She could vividly recall the days they would spend in the back garden playing all sorts of games. Her mother had always been the sort to make the best of the worst situation. It had been her birthday, and they had promised to take her to the park and have a picnic when a storm came from nowhere. She remembered how she had cried until she’d made herself sick when her mother had come in her room quietly and pulled her downstairs. Her eyes had gone wide when she saw the indoor picnic and sheet fort she had made. They’d stayed in that thing all day, playing with dolls and board games and cards. It had broken her heart to see the older woman shrivel into someone she wasn’t...someone who was a ghost of who she had been.

“Love, we’re here,” she could hear her father say as she snapped back to reality.

“I’m glad you two will only be a phone call away.”

“We are too,” her mother whispered as tears filled her eyes.

………………………………………………………..

Sister.

She couldn’t quite believe her ears when Cathy had said it. “I’m...what now?” She asked.

“I told them you were my sister,” she said with a smile as she took in the dumbfounded look on her face. “Face it, Theresa. You practically are.”

She nodded as she sat back on the couch. Sister. She had heard the word countless times, but she had never considered herself close to one. She had been an only child. Her parents had, had her late in life, and any cousins that she had were much older than her. It boggled her mind that Cathy considered her one. Joy and John had taken her in without so much as a second thought, but she never thought Philip’s siblings would.

Philip plopped down beside her on the couch, arm slinging around her shoulder. “You okay?”

“Does David think of me as a sister?” She asked suddenly.

“Yeah. I guess,” he shrugged. “He wanted to poke his eyes out after he walked in on you in the bath. That’s something he’d do with the girls.”

She nodded as she stared in front of her.

“What is it? You’re thinking awfully hard.”

She sighed, leaning into him. “I just never thought I’d have siblings. It’s a bit...I don’t know.”

“Gross? Annoying? Irritating?” He teased.

“Odd. It’s odd to have a family so...big,” she admitted.

Philip smiled, kissing her forehead. “Get used to it. You aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.”

……………………………………………………….

Wife.

The weight was obvious on her hand, specifically her left hand. And to be exact, her ring finger. It had yet to be twenty-four hours, and her whole life had changed. She was married. She didn’t even have the same last name. Her eyes drifted to the man laying beside her. He was on his stomach, eyes closed as he dozed. The sheet was draped across his legs, and the first thing she noticed was how youthful he looked in his sleep. Her hand ran through is unruly curls as she shifted, sighing at the soreness between her legs.

“Morning,” he muttered as he pulled her closer.

“Not quite,” she giggled out.

He smirked, eyes still closed. “It’s after midnight.”

“Damn. You’re right.”

“Look at that. A wife telling her husband he’s right,” he teased, kissing her head. He smiled as she rolled into him more, face buried in his neck.

“I like that name.”

“Wife?” He asked curiously.

“Your wife,” she corrected.

“I like you being my wife too,” he whispered before kissing her neck softly. “I like that I get to kiss you anytime I want.”

She giggled as they snuggled again. She loved the fact they got to do this, share an intimacy they didn’t before. She couldn’t wait to see all the little things she missed. They had put in an offer on a house, and they had a good chance, but she loved having him in her flat...in her personal space for a long period of time. They had decided to put off a honeymoon until after they had a house, saying it was more important to have a home than a week away. Her eyes fluttered closed as his hand traced up her thigh.

He kissed her deeply, rolling her onto her back. “What would you like, wife?” He asked while smiling down at her.

“You. It’s always going to be you.”

……………………………………………………….

Orphan.

She hated it. It was like acid on her tongue every time she said it. She saw the pitying looks everyone gave her. She wasn’t stupid. Her life had been ripped apart. Everything was painted in black and shades of grey. She was tired of the tears and the pain and the hollowness that wouldn’t leave. Her parents were gone, and she had to accept that.

She had thought it was getting better. She had gone back to work, she had taken her life in her hands and forced normality back into it, but she could feel the volcano about to rupture inside. She kept pushing in down until Philip had brought her a cup of tea one night. The sobs had come so easily it was like they had never left.

“Oh, darling,” he whispered as he rubbed her back.

She looked at the cup, heart wrenching. “It’s her tea set.”

He gasped. “I...I didn’t know. It was in the cupboard,” he explained, pain lacing his words.

“Why me? Why did they leave me?”

They were questions that had been swirling around her head since her mother died, and she wanted the answers. She wanted the closure. She craved it.

“They didn’t want to. You were their world, Tessa.” His arms pulled her into his chest as he rocked them back and forth on the couch.

“I’m an orphan,” she said through her tears, voice quivering and cracking. “It’s not fair. He...He was only meant to take her...not both of them.”

“Who, love?”

“God. Did he abandon me too?” She asked.

His eyes went soft as his heart crumbled. “He most certainly did not. I don’t know why He did it, love, but He’s not cruel, and He did not abandon you.”

“I just want them back,” she whispered. “I just want them back.”

……………………………………………………..

Mother.

It was the one that hurt more than the rest because if people called her that it was cruel. They taunted her with it. Political cartoons, critics, even family members that didn’t particularly like her. It was all some sick joke to them. Her and her husband’s infertility had become a punchline, and it broke her heart every time. She knew it hurt Philip just as much as her, if not more than. He had told her that one night after they had gotten tipsy on a bottle of his favorite red and made love. He had whispered into her hair that he wished the public didn’t automatically blame her for it all because he knew she blamed herself enough.

The truth of it was that they didn’t know. She had decided after one too many negative pregnancy tests that they should stop. She didn’t want to know whose fault it was. She didn’t want to know which body was too defective to create a life. It never really stopped though, the ache to grow a child in her belly or to see Philip as a father. It was ever present and ever painful.

The older she got, the more she looked back on her periods with speculation. She began to wonder if the unusually heavy cycles had been miscarriages, and she had been too naive to realize it. She asked herself if the great blood clots that she passed at times were actually the babies she had so wanted. She had only voiced these thoughts once to her doctor, and she had never mentioned it again.

It was a dull ache now. The fact they didn’t have a spare room made up for the grandchildren was a constant reminder. She could see the resigned sadness in Philip’s eyes when he watched her with children, and she knew he could see it in hers when he held a family member’s child. They had each other, but they both knew it wasn’t the same. Love conquered and love healed, but love also brought wants and desires. And sometimes love just wasn’t enough to fix everything no matter how much two people loved each other.

[dicnechambers]

What was done has been done and what was said has been said.

Summary: Set right after I’ll Be Seeing You. The sadness and the regrets are inevitable, but the end is not. 

(Cheers; Sam Malone/Diane Chambers; Rated: T; Hurt/Comfort)

Sam Malone was still staring at the painting in his hand. He was no longer admiring it, rather he was deciphering what it was conveying. He never really grew an appreciation for art, no matter how much Diane tried to instill it in him and how much he really tried for her, but this one was different. It was a portrait of her. Although it was an abstract imagery of her, it reflected her much more than any fine art ever could. Through each brush stroke that made every line and curve and the colors that brought the canvas to life, he saw the sadness and the anguish she kept deep inside her. He saw the torment he stirred inside her heavy heart.

What was he thinking? Telling her to get out? Bidding her goodbye for the rest of his life just like that? He was just so furious at her! He felt betrayed by what she had done, going behind his back and getting her portrait done by that despicable artist he strictly told her not to. He had enough of her telling him what to do and what not to do, as if he was hers to dictate how his life should be lived. She drove him crazy and he was sick of it! He gently laid the painting down on the bar and gripped on the railings and bowed his head down. What was he thinking? She just brought out the worst in him at times! 

He closed his eyes, trying to clear his head from the mess that had just happened. He shook himself up, trying to get rid of all the negative thoughts inside his head and warn off the negativity surrounding him. It didn’t work. The silence around filled him.

He thought about breaking up with Diane, maybe once or twice or a few times, whenever she snapped the wrong wires inside his head. He always thought breaking up with her would be the biggest and deepest sigh of relief he ever had in his life or the fastest and loudest banging of his fists on his chests with joyous cries of liberty. The reality was nothing like that. Instead, it was the most hollow emptiness he ever felt deep inside of him, as if everything he had was taken away from him. 

The silence rung louder and louder with each undying effort to shut his eyes closed. His hands turned white with his grip on the rails growing stronger. His body stiffened. He pursed his lips together and furrowed his brows in deep concentration to warn off the misery that lured inside him. A few moments passed and soon he was shaking as he tried to hold himself together. Eventually, he began to lose his breath and his balance when he gasped for air and almost fell off his stand. He leaned against the bar in defeat and took in breaths of air.

It was in that moment of acceptance that his efforts were vain when he felt it. He felt the depression of the everything that had just happened, and it hit him like a million volts coursing through his body in an instant shock. He had lost his sweetheart, his dream girl, his right one, his love... and he had never felt so overwhelmed over a loss before.

Sam Malone wasn’t old, but he had definitely lived one hell of a life so far. In his life, he reached the highest of highs and fell to the lowest of lows. His life was no stranger to loss. He lost his baseball career and marriage. He almost lost himself to the liquid devil in a bottle. Through all the losses of his life, none of them ever hurt him quite like this one. He had cared about his career and his wife, but not like Diane. No, Diane was different all together. She was the only thing in his life that he had held onto so tightly. His grasp on her never quavered, through the good and bad times. No matter how much she enraged him to insanity, she made him the happiest he ever was in his life. She was the only person who made him try to change for the better, for her and even himself. He has his old habits that are hard to die out, he’ll admit that. His machismo and his womanizing are just some to mention. Regardless, there was no doubt in his mind that he would ever dare cheat on her. He cared for her - quite frankly, he loved her with the best of everything he had and everything he was. He would never hurt her intentionally. It was beneath him.

He let the one thing he had in his life that was most precious to him walk away from him and he had no one to blame but himself. He felt the crippling pain in his chest deeper and deeper and deeper when the realization hit him, and it crushed him beyond repair and he hated it.

He looked around the lonely bar. He didn’t know what to do with the damage he caused. Then, as if it called out to him, he saw it. It twinkled right before his eyes. He grabbed a beer mug from the bar and walked right over to the tap, poured himself a glass and placed it on top of the bar. He watched as the foam rose up to the rim. He looked down at the temptation in front of him. Oh, was he never more tempted to take a sip of amber happiness. He wanted nothing more but to forget. He wanted to forget about what happened, forget about his relationship, forget about her. He didn’t want to feel anything he was feeling at that moment, and that was exactly what he was going to do.

—

Nothing. She felt absolutely nothing. Diane Chambers barely felt the cold Boston breeze as she made her way back home to her building. She didn’t feel how heavy her feet were when she dragged them up the stairs to her apartment. She couldn’t even feel how her eyes were stinging from the tears she held back since she walked up the steps of Cheers.

As soon as she was home, she locked the door behind her, shrugged off her coat and kicked off her heels. Any other day, it would feel like weight being lifted off her shoulders but today it hardly made her burden any different. She leaned against her front door and let out a heavy sigh as closed her eyes. She felt so tired. She was through. She was empty.

Today’s events were the worst events she ever had in her entire life. She walked away from the man she loved so deeply, and he let her. This was it. Throughout their relationship, they’ve had multiple arguments and some of them almost leading up to the end of them until they both come back to their senses and apologize to one another. This time, this was not one of them. There was no turning back now. What was done has been done and what was said has been said. They we’re over. Oh, how she wished they weren’t over.

Diane loved Sam with every ounce of love that oozed out of her. He was a good-looking fellow with a mesmerizing charm. As much as she would never like to admit it, it wasn’t hard to see why all the ladies fell hard for him. Underneath his dim witted masculine jock persona, she saw through him and who he really was. He was a genuinely kind, caring, loyal and considerate man with integrity and a heart. 

Their relationship was far from perfect. They were different people and they wouldn’t see eye to eye often. He had his infuriating moments and they would fight with each other like they were scratching nails up against the walls. In spite of that, she knew how much he deeply cared about her. He did things that proved that time and time again when the universe seemed to be giving them bumps on the road. He read War and Peace for her and he ditched skirt chasing escapades with his friends. She heard his conversation with Norm about finding “the one” (and how Norm pointed out that he found her). He really tried to change his old ways for her, and she knew. In every vicious dispute, she never once doubted how much he meant to her and she knew he did the same.

What hurt the most about all this was that it was Sam who told her to get the hell out. She never would have thought that he would be the one to end their relationship, especially how he did it. It felt he stabbed a knife straight to her heart. That was the worst their relationship ever was, but no matter how bad it got or if it were to ever get worse she didn’t and she never wanted to leave him. She was completely shattered when he still wanted her out even after she gave him the heartbreaking ultimatum she never thought she’d give. Even after she climbed up those stairs, she didn’t want them to end this way. She tried to go back down their, to fight for them and their relationship, but from where she stood in the middle of those steps she saw him walking away from the door and after how he kicked her out she thought it would be useless to even try so she retreated up those steps with a broken heart.

Maybe she should’ve treated him differently. Sam didn’t treat her nicely, but she didn’t treat him fairly too. She shouldn’t have forced him to try to change for her completely. Maybe she shouldn’t have berated him for every little thing he did that she didn’t like. Maybe she shouldn’t have forced him to do things he didn’t want to do either. Maybe she shouldn’t have said that their relationship was pointless and just filled with childish arguments. What they had was so much more than that.

Her thoughts don’t do any help with the immense aching inside her chest and she breaks down in sobs that she’s been trying to hold back as her back slowly slides downwards against the door. She had never felt so broken. The last time she cried this much was when she lost her childhood cat. Elizabeth was part of her life for so long and she loved her so much. The love she had for Sam was completely different, but she never loved anyone the way she loved him. She was never with anyone the way she was with Sam. No one could spark a torch in her when she was furious the way he did. No one had ever gone out of their way for her. No one has ever had a special place in her heart.

After a while that seemed to have lasted forever, she decided to get back on her feet. Her vision was a blur, her nose was runny and her cheeks were wet with the tears that continued to fall. She walked towards her drawers and began to grab some candles.

—

Sam was still standing in front of his beer-filled mug. He had picked it up and tried to raise it to his mouth but he just couldn’t. He tried again and again and again, but the most he’s done is lifting the mug up in the air before he placed it back down on the bar.

All he wanted was a little taste and all his troubles would be over. He wanted it so badly, it was agonizing. He desperately craved for just a tiny bit of his drink. He never thirsted for it the way he did at that moment.

He stared down at the mug head on. He wasn’t going to leave his bar until he had his fill. The darkness that reflected the lateness of the night and surrounded the bar was seeping deep within him. He looked to his side and suddenly the view brings back a memory to him. He stares out for quite sometime before he snaps back to the present and shrugs off the memory. This time he was going to do it and nothing was going to stop him. There was nothing that could stop him.

Once more, he takes the mug in his hands and lifts it up. He moves it closer to his lips and he holds it up there. He brings his lips closer to the mug that it touches the rim. All he has to do is to tilt it enough that the liquid pours right into his mouth. He closes his eyes to savor the moment as he’s about to do it when a voice from his memory comes creeping back into his mind and he pauses.

The memory he has is the last time he wanted a drink so badly. He remembered the way he opened himself a bottle, poured himself a mug full and stood in front of the beer mug so intensely in the dimly lit bar. It was when he lent his lucky bottle cap and he found out that it was lost in the middle of Kansas City. He had a pretty bad streak of bad luck before he found out the faith of his lucky bottle cap and he thought he would be doomed without it. What he remembers most from it wasn’t how low he felt at that point or how high he felt when he once again conquered his enticement towards alcohol. He remembers her, how she tried so frantically to cheer him up and stop him, how she silently stared at him fearing that he would do something terrible to himself that he was going to regret and how relieved she was when he didn’t. The voice that crept up in his head was hers, trying to frantically stop him from doing it.

Her voice only got louder every time he tried to tilt the mug up against his lips. When he hears her voice ringing out of his mind, he slams the mug down on the bar the liquid inside spills out of the glass and remains swish back and forth heavily. With a shake of his head, he throws down the remains of mug down the sink. He releases a deep sigh after he wipes down the bar of the beer that spilled.

He walks over to the side of the bar towards the door, the side where stood at that low moment of his life. He ran his hand across that side of the bar when he felt the carvings against his hand. He looked down at it and read it in his mind. SM + DC. It was engraved at her favorite corner of the bar. It was written on the bar forever. He remembered how he lightly scolded her for doing that, but gosh did he wish he appreciated it more when she first did it. That’s when it hit him.

When he was at that low point in his life, he turned upside down by taking the bottle cap of that last beer bottle he opened and claiming it to be his new one instead of heading back downhill after everything he’s been through to get back on his feet. Now he was at the lowest point his life ever reached. He knew that he had to do something to make it right before he were to back downhill again. No, he was not going to lose his battle this time.

He went inside his office to grab his baseball jacket before he headed out the door. He locked up the bar and headed up over to his red corvette. He began to drive, but he wasn’t heading home quite yet.

—

Diane was sitting on her couch with her legs wrapped around her arms in her candlelit apartment. She was still a mess of free falling tears and occasional sniffles. She lost track of time the moment she curled herself up on that couch. From the outside view of her window, she could see that it was either well late into the night or early dawn. She could care less, for all she knew.

She took a deep breath in as her sad thoughts filled her head once again when she heard a knocking on her door. Who could possible be at her door at this untimely hour? She honestly just wanted to ignore whoever was behind her door, but wasn’t going to be rude even in her state of distress. She got up on her feet, headed towards the door and wiped away her tears on her cheeks with the back of her hands. She unlocked all the locks attached and opened her door wide.

To her surprise, she saw Sam standing outside her door, looking as if he had a pretty long rough night. She looked up at him with a questioning look on her face.

“Sam, what are you doing here?” She asked him as softly and broken as she sounded earlier when she was about to leave Cheers.

He looked down at her and his heart broke harder than it did earlier. Her entire face was red and her cheeks were stained with tears. He hated seeing her cry, and hated it more than he was the reason she was in tears.

“I’m sorry.” He said with his hands hanging open loosely on his sides. “I’m so sorry. Please forgive me.”

They look at each other silently for a moment before Diane steps forward, falling forward to him, grips her long, slender arms around his shoulders and violently sobs against his chest. He instantly catches her in his own arms and pulls her closer to him. She’s thankful for his support on her because her knees were weak and she didn’t know how she could keep on her feet. Her tears soak through his shirt, but it didn’t bother him at all. He ran a hand up and down the small of her back and closed his eyes as he continued to utter his sorry’s against her ear.

Nothing else in the world mattered at that moment. Right now they we’re holding each other close together. That wasn’t it. They weren’t over.

—

It had been a couple of minutes since Sam arrived at her doorstep. They were seated across each other in opposite couches of her living room in silence. Right now, the silence was comforting but eventually one of them had to speak up and talk about what had just happened earlier that day.

Sam cleared up his throat. “I think we should talk about what went down at the bar earlier.”

Diane looked up at him from where she was seated and sighed. “I think we should too.”

He stood up from where he was seated and walked right over to the unoccupied space beside her and took a seat there. He looked at her straight in the eye. “Look, Diane, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for kicking you out of bar like that, and I’m so sorry for ending it the way I did. I was just so mad at the moment I wasn’t really thinking right. I never should’ve let you go and I will never, ever let you go again like that. I’m gonna try to better for you, Diane. I really will. I’ll make everything right again, I promise.”

She shut her eyes closed and took in a deep breath before she began to speak. “What you did to me awhile ago hurt me, Sam. I didn’t know how I was going to recover from this. I was so devastated. It was the worst you ever treated me.” She took in another deep breath before she continued. “However, it made me realize how unfairly I’ve been treating you too. I shouldn’t have tried to change you so much or forced you to do things you didn’t want or belittled you. I love you for who you are, Sam Malone. I’m sorry too.”

The way she looked up at him with her wide blue eyes really got to him. “Thank you, Diane. I’m so sorry for how I’ve been treating you too. I never wanted to hurt you or had any intentions of hurting you and I never will. I know there’s a lot I’ve got to work on about myself, but please believe me when I tell ya I’m trying my damn hardest and I’m really doing the best I can. There is no other woman for me but you, Diane. You really are the woman of my dreams.”

His words made her want to sob all over again. She felt them in her heart and she was simply speechless. “Oh, Sam...” she said as the tears began to spill once again. He grabbed her in an embrace as encircled her arms around his neck and cried on his shoulder. They held each other close together.

When her cries began to die down he looked down at the blonde resting on his shoulders. “So, are we gonna be okay, sweetheart?” He sincerely asked.

She gave him a teary smile. “We’re going to be alright.” She answered him back and he returned her smile with one of his own before he lifts up her legs to rest on his lap. She simply leans into him even more.

They weren’t okay, but they were going to heal together. They were going to make all their wrongs right. They had a lot to work on, but they were going to do it together. They were going to be better for each other. Right now, they simply need each other to assure them of that. They were going to get through this together.

—

Author’s Note: If you follow me on Twitter, then you probably have a pretty good idea how I ended up writing this. I finally watched I’ll Be Seeing You today and it just about crushed me. As soon as I finished watching the episode, the words to this flowed through me and I got on my laptop and typed this the whole day. I’ve never been able to type down a one-shot in one sitting so easily as I did now. I guess you can say that I am that devastated over their break-up. I know they’ll get through this even if they won’t be together for now, but for now I’m just really sad that they had to end this way (now I’m absolutely not excited to see I Do, Adieu and One for the Road). Anyways, I hope you all enjoyed this story! I’ll see if I’ll write more some day again soon.

Disclaimer: I do not own Cheers. It was created by Glen Charles, Les Charles and James Burrows.