#also i have fears about oleg

[larchraven]

elizabeth/nadezdha (the americans) is my meow meow and im having emotions about her at start of last season and i have Fear

[whoredmode]

big info post on the antagonists in the srtt rewrite! similar to the ones i did for the sriv rewrite antagonists. originally i wasn’t gonna make one bc i was like y’all know the antagonists in srtt, but i adjust things in it enough where i’m like. yeah maybe i should make a post for it. some of this stuff is probably already familiar to you if you keep up with my rewrites at all, so apologies in advance for some stuff that you may have heard before

so right after the end of sr2, phillipe loren had offered dex protection from ultor. dex, extremely desperate, accepted the deal even if he wasn’t happy about it. in return for protection, loren wanted information on ultor and the saints. once the plot of srtt starts, dex is still with the syndicate, essentially stuck in a deal he was never gonna be able to repay and get out of. however, loren is killed by oleg within the first act of the story, and so dex assumed he’d be able to leave after that. killbane, however, is not gonna let that happen, so dex is still stuck with them as the story continues. 

so killbane’s whole deal is very similar to what we see in the actual game, but my lore for him for the rewrite is a mix of both implications and stuff that we can learn through things like the radio ads and the game guide—basically things that are unfortunately not shown or done in the actual game. so killbane was a pretty famous wrestler in the states during the 1980s. he was glamorous, he was powerful, and he knew how to put on a show. however, he got addicted to steroids fairly early on in his career, and his temper became more and more of an issue. this all culminated in what is considered one of the most infamous moments in wrestling history where he ended up killing his opponent live on-air. it was ruled an accident, as it genuinely was one, but killbane was disgraced and had to quit  then and there. he left for mexico shortly afterwards to get away from it all, where he ended up getting intrigued by lucha libre. he met angel, and the two quickly became an unstoppable and lovable tag team. about a decade after the match that ended his wrestling career, killbane was back in the states, this time with angel by his side. the two had a good run, becoming more famous than before and loving every minute of it. however, killbane was still abusing steroids this entire time, and as time went on, he grew more erratic and paranoid and violent. fearful that angel was coming for his crown, he challenged him to a match which led to killbane unmasking him and angel leaving the limelight for good. killbane’s career, however, only grew larger. it was around this time when he also really started to seriously get into the drug trade, but i’ll talk more about that in a minute.

onto the dewynter sisters. so kiki and viola are actually ultor-sent assassins/spies. they’d been on a several years-long mission within the syndicate, tasked with rising in the ranks of the syndicate, getting information on their operations, and eventually killing loren. they’ve been on this mission since before dane vogel was ultor CEO (side note: i think kiki and dane knew each other and had a thing going on. just because i’m a kikidane enjoyer). all that said though, once eric gryphon became CEO, he changed their main target to dex. the sisters are extremely good at their work, and everything they do they do together. that said, despite their expertise and passion, they will always put each other first. it’s why when killbane eventually kills kiki, viola abandons her mission and decides to help the saints instead. she lost kiki, so nothing matters to her anymore. 

and finally matt miller. so the deckers were originally a relatively small hacking group he put together back home in england, but their work caught the eye of loren, who eventually contacted him and offered him an important role within the syndicate. the deckers themselves are comparatively small within the syndicate, but their work predominantly deals in cyberspace, so it works out. he doesn’t get out much, nor does he do any big missions with the others, but he’s still eager for their approval, especially killbane’s. killbane has kinda taken him under his wing—unbeknownst to matt, the reason killbane has been so buddy-buddy with him is because he plans on taking the syndicate from loren, long before loren actually died. early on, in a bid for killbane’s approval, matt took out kinzie’s whole investigation. kinzie, while still in the FBI, had been tasked with part in a large investigation into killbane’s drug racket. he’d been smuggling steroids and opioids into steelport, both for his own consumption and also to sell to the huge wrestling community in the area. matt caught wind of this and set up kinzie so she’d lose her job, all so killbane would be proud of him. he was, but this also sparked kinzie and matt’s ongoing feud. matt’s just a kid, so he’s very awkward when dealing with the other members irl, so he tends to just stick by killbane. 

there’s more i could say but i’m cutting myself off because this post is long enough. as always though please feel free to ask me about my rewrites whenever

[survivors-of-barovia]

12 and 14!

Ok, we've been discussing how we're gonna go about answering since there's a whole group of us and decided everyone who's online and willing just goes ahead and answears and we'll mark who said what.

So this is from Nui (Edena):

12. Lady Arisa died twice so far, but got revived both times, so she's still alive and kicking. And among NPCs, we kinda mourn several of our baddies we had to kill ourselves... rip Abbot and Sasha, you had very tragic deaths

14. TOO MANY favourite memories to pick! I loved our Ravenloft heists (aka the Tome of Strahd Heist & the Dragon Skull Heist), especially the first one. So much fun planning and doing it. Among the older ones, the vampire attack on the church: first time our game got REAL dramatic! Oh, and our first fight against Strahd, the one where he got trampled by horses and we had to play tug of war with Lady Arisa's corpse (ouch)

From Madonna from Space (Paelias):

12. For me personally, the saddest deaths were in Krezk. First, we have the Abbot - the group made 100 000 plans to save him, but the dude was too corrupted and too far gone, sadly, so we didn't see any other way. Long live the Abbot! (He was reborn as a celestial baby thanks to some meddling of the Seeker goddess so all is well). I also really mourn the deaths of Anna and Dimitry Krezkov because we intervened too late and they were already killed by an oblex. Especially Dimitry! Edena pressed to attack sooner but we were too hesistant :/  RIP Dimitry. OH also I remember the most memorable death - Oleg, the local herbalist from Krezk, threw a homemade molotov coctail in Rahadin's face and was promptly killed. But what a way to go! 14. SO MANY AWESOME MEMORIES! Honestly, one of my favorite ones was our cozy Christmas where our characters made a festival and invited everyone to pariticipate. It was incredibly heart warming and gave all of us some real Christmas miracle feels ❤️ Also, the fight against the Abbot with three characters attacking him mid flight and a real chance for one of them to fall down brutally... I also really loved our first fight with Strahd and our Yester Hill battle that was a huge success. And there are SO many personal PC moments that are my favorite ones, hah! But those mentioned above are my favorite with the group together ❤️

From Sonntam (Lady Arisa):

14. I really loved our time in Vallaki. It was a really tense experience with a lot of highlights: church massacre, Ireena being kidnapped, Rictavio leaving us behind right before we decided to speak to him frankly, Vincent's brother Izek getting his arm cut off and joining our group... It was a non-stop thrill ride where we seriously feared for our lives and every session was full of tension. Good times!

[mariacallous]

On Aug. 12, Ukrainian forces launched a combined drone and missile attack on the Kerch Strait crossing, in the second major attack in a month on the twin bridges that link the occupied Crimean Peninsula to the Russian mainland.

Russia’s perennially apoplectic Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, responded in her usual manner: “There can be no justification for such barbaric actions and they will not go unanswered,” she said.

However, I fear the Russian Foreign Ministry is in for a shock when it discovers that its furious diplomatic interjections have still not deterred Ukraine from targeting the 19-kilometer bridges—a piece of critical military infrastructure illegally erected following Russia’s invasion and occupation of Crimea in 2014. It is vital that Ukraine’s Western allies support Kyiv’s efforts, which are a key step in the process of liberating Crimea from Russian control.

Ukraine has made it clear that efforts to destroy the bridges will continue. Last month, Kyiv finally claimed responsibility for an explosion, which was carried out by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) using a truck fitted with an explosive device, on Oct. 8 last year. Speaking after the Aug. 12 attack, in one of his regular video updates, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was bullish and referred directly to the “very eloquent smoke on Kerch bridge,” in reference to the smoke screen Russia deployed during the reported drone attack.

Speaking in an interview with Fareed Zakaria at the Aspen Security Forum in July, Zelensky said: “The [Crimean Bridge] is not just a logistical road. This is the road that is used to feed the war with ammunition. … It is militarizing the Crimean Peninsula. For us, this is an enemy facility built outside international law, so understandably, it is an objective.” He added that “any target that is bringing war, not peace, must be neutralized.”

Zelensky is correct that the bridges, both road and rail, are vital to the logistics sustaining Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and are used to facilitate the transfer of huge amounts of material being used on the front lines of occupied southern Ukraine.

When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, it pushed troops into the south of Ukraine from Crimea. The Russian Black Sea Fleet imposes a naval blockade of Ukraine’s southern coast from its base on occupied Sevastopol and routinely launches cruise missiles targeting Ukrainian cities from the Black Sea. The Russian Air Force bombards Ukraine using the Saky air base in occupied Novofedorivka. The rail and road bridges across the Kerch Strait transfer tens of thousands of tons of military equipment into Ukraine to sustain the Russian military occupation of Ukraine’s coastline.

Zelensky is also correct that the international community continues to view Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and subsequent occupation and construction of military infrastructure as a violation of international law, with the EU and United States both condemning the partial opening of the crossing in 2018.

Alarm bells, however, have been ringing in Kyiv following remarks made in Norway by NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg’s chief of staff, Stian Jenssen, who suggested that Ukraine could “give up territory and get NATO membership in return.” The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry shot back immediately, with spokesperson Oleg Nikolenko calling the suggestion “completely unacceptable.”

Amid concerns in some Western capitals about the progress of Ukraine’s 2023 counteroffensive, many of which frustrate Kyiv due to the scale of the daunting battles ahead of its forces, there is a growing sense of unease that diplomatic support for Ukraine’s military objectives may be waning.

The Ukrainian government is very clear that its objectives are unchanged, intending the liberation of all the occupied territories, including the Crimean Peninsula and the parts of Donetsk and Luhansk seized by Russian-backed groups in 2014. The Ukrainian people are similarly resolute, with two-thirds of the population supporting the liberation of all of the currently Russian-occupied territories, including Crimea.

Crimea remains vital strategically, politically, and geographically to both the authorities in Kyiv and the Ukrainian people as a unified polity. Geographically and strategically, the peninsula, or rather, the Kerch Strait itself, provides a natural choke point for naval access to the Sea of Azov, giving whoever controls the crossing considerable control over most of Ukraine’s southern coast. There should be little doubt that, for the foreseeable future, the Ukrainian electorate would not countenance any proposal to relinquish or recognize Russian legitimacy over any part of Ukraine’s sovereign territory.

But most importantly, a Russian-occupied Crimea, which equates to a highly militarized Crimea, remains an existential threat to Ukraine as a state. Crimea has already been used as a staging ground for two invasions of Ukraine’s sovereign territory, and the Russian seizure of Crimea in 2014 must be understood in the context of the wider war, as Crimea was the opening military foothold Moscow needed to invade the south of Ukraine. The Russian military facilities across Crimea have already been used to destroy vast swaths of Ukraine’s infrastructure, particularly along Ukraine’s southern coast, with attacks stretching from Odesa to Mariupol all launched from the peninsula.

Moscow has already put this question beyond all reasonable doubt and, after the Minsky Protocol and Minsk II and countless other violated international treaties and norms, cannot be trusted diplomatically, politically, or militarily by Ukraine to have any postbellum military presence in Crimea.

There is a sense here in Ukraine, however, that the closer to that goal Ukraine gets, the louder some voices pressuring Kyiv against it will get. Arguments made in opposition to Ukraine reconquering the Crimean Peninsula fail to appreciate the reality of that threat and give succor to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s nuclear bluster.

For too long, the debate about Ukraine has been centered in the West on how Putin and Russia would react to losing the territory Moscow illegally annexed in 2014 and not on how a Russian-occupied Crimea functions as a core component of Russia’s attempted military domination of its sovereign democratic neighbor.

Not only will Ukrainian strikes on the Kerch Strait crossing continue, but they are also very likely to intensify in the near future, and if Ukraine’s counteroffensive manages to liberate the majority of its southern coast at any time in the foreseeable future, it is almost certain that Putin’s beloved bridges will end up at the bottom of the ocean before the end of the war.

Ukraine’s allies can make a difference here by finally providing Kyiv with the long-range missile systems it has been asking for. Sending U.S.-made ATACMS and German Taurus cruise missile systems would put much more of Russia’s military infrastructure within Ukrainian missile range and would spell disaster for the Kerch Strait bridges. This increased capability would provide Ukraine the opportunity to finally respond to the routine bombardment Ukrainian cities have suffered since the start of this war due to Russia’s Crimean military facilities.

Moscow remains emboldened diplomatically and militarily around the peninsula because these bases are currently far enough from the front line that they can function with relative impunity.  Ukraine is trying to shift that dynamic already. Increasing Ukraine’s long-range capabilities would swiftly disabuse them of that notion.

But both Moscow’s and Kyiv’s international allies need to understand that even without the bridge, a Russian-occupied Crimea poses a critical threat to Ukraine’s survival, and as far as the Ukrainian government is concerned, the destruction of the Kerch Strait bridges will only serve as a prelude to the eventual campaign for the total liberation of the Crimean Peninsula.

Ukraine may pull this off. It won’t stop trying—and there is no point in diplomats or analysts laboring under the absurd assumption that the Ukrainian position on this can be negotiated away in a future deal.

[lokifromvalhalla]

I miss you (2)

╔═══*.·:·.☽✧    ✦    ✧☾.·:·.*═══╗ Ivar The Boneless x Reader Genre: Comfort / Fluff / Light angst Words: ± 3 000

"Elhaz wasn’t my name, in the first place. It was for me what ‘Boneless’ is for Ivar, a title, one that was given to me by Ivar since, in his words, I’m his protection, the one who makes everything feel sacred, the safety. His safety. Eventually, it was all that really mattered, and turned into what some people call me. Does he remember it?"

Algiz (or Elhaz) – “Al-jiz” – divinity, higher self, the state of listening, protective teaching force, the divine plan, Valkyries, protection, safety, spirituality – “Fear has its place in every heart. Courage is only a response.” (x) (x)

Part 1

╚═══*.·:·.☽✧    ✦    ✧☾.·:·.*═══╝

“Sit still!” I click my tongue, tugging onto Ivar’s strands, which unfortunately only earns me a soft groan from him, his cheek rising with a smirk which I would very much like to slap off his face if I weren’t so busy. The last section of hair by the middle of his head is the last one to be tightly braided, but also the one that takes more time due to how Ivar insists on moving around. Absolutely nothing new. It would have been a surprise if he was able to sit still for that long without starting to fuss around at some point. Yet, he is not the only one who wants this to be over soon; my knee already aches on the place it comes in contact with the bed and the foot I have set on the ground already hurts. “There you go!” I tap his shoulder once having finished the last braid, and move away from my spot behind him, groaning a little at the pain of stretching my leg after so long.

“Thank you.” Ivar sighs, and continues to adjust his braces around his legs. So that’s what he had been doing.

“Let me help.” I crouch down on the ground in front of him, and even if it’s been so long since the last time I did this, my fingers still remember exactly what to do, where each piece goes, and the specific way to tug here and there so Ivar feels little to no pain at all. His eyes follow every little movement of mine, and the trust continues there, shown by the absence of tension whenever I touch him.

Ivar sighs with a nod in a silent thank you once I bring myself up to my feet again, taking his crutch from its place against the wall to hand it to him.

“Having you by my side is very appreciated,” Ivar hums as he nods in approval to the good work in general. Ironic. I comment nothing about it, though, acting as though I never heard his comment in the first place, and only nod when he says we shall head to meet Oleg for the first meal.

Silence hovers between us before we can leave, as if we were supposed to do something, but nothing ever comes. Not an exchanged smile, not a simple touch on the other’s shoulder nor kiss on the cheek.

Despite having talked and at least eased things, this thin wall still stands between us, not just for the apprehension of what Oleg can do if he learns how close we actually are, but due to something else given how it continues there even in our encounters during the middle of the night. It’s not something I can put into words, though bringing myself into touching Ivar like I used to do simply doesn’t work anymore. Of course we mean it whenever declaring we love each other, but sleeping holding on one another close was a single occasion that happened in the burst of feelings.

We decide for a short nod before we’re leaving the room, and only Igor is there to greet us when we walk into the room. He had been slouching until we walked in, sighing in relief once his eyes met us, presumably at noticing none of us are Oleg. I take a seat across from Igor and by Ivar, as usual, but I can’t help but to notice there’s an extra seat today, next to Oleg.

“Good morning!” Oleg walks into the room, arms extended in the air as his lips stretch into a smile, all of which would be warm and welcoming if coming from someone not as arrogant and oscillating as Oleg himself. “It’s great to see everyone is here already! I have something important to tell you! Some days ago, I commented about getting myself another bride! A new reason to live and go on!”

“You didn’t,” I hum, eyeing him up and down. Watching the way his expression falls at the same time his arms fall to his sides shouldn’t be so funny.

“Well, it doesn’t matter.” He twists his mouth, but the displeasure lasts on his face just for a few seconds before he is smiling once again, taking a step to the side. “I would like to introduce you to Katia, my soon to be bride.” His smile stretches into a grin before Katia steps into the room whilst taking the hand that Oleg stretches to her.

All my blood rushes to my feet at the same time, and I wonder if I actually didn’t fall and hit my head somewhere on the way here. It can’t be her, right?

“My dear,” Oleg says, wrapping an arm around her once she is close enough, “these are my nephew Igor, and the Vikings—Ivar The Boneless, and (Y/n) The Elhaz.” He motions to Ivar and I, briefly introducing us, much to Katia’s disinterest—she hums softly with a light nod, only bothering to greet Igor and press a kiss to his head then smile at Ivar and I, soon looking at Oleg until he leads her to the table and she takes a seat beside him, practically lying onto him.

Is Oleg playing games? If so, with me or with Ivar? With both of us?

I only remember to breathe when my lungs are already aching, but it still feels like the air in the room is too thick for me to breathe. Katia looks at me, a small smile tugging on her lips as she tilts her head to the side. Does she know? The servants placing the food on the table puts ground under my feet again, and I adjust my posture, noticing I had been leaning towards her direction. For the gods. A sigh escapes my lips as I turn to the food, helplessly catching Igor’s gaze from across the table.

“Looks like you’ve seen a ghost,” Igor mouths, and I want to laugh, but all I can do is to exhale humorously, nodding lightly.

“You can bet I have,” Ivar mumbles, and I look at him to see his eyes still fixated on the woman across from him. Oh, great. I can already feel a stingy tug in my chest, but everything is going to be fine, right? Of course it is, as long as she’s not Freydis—or better, as long as Ivar knows better this time. I should stop thinking about this if I don’t want a headache.

“Igor.” I smile a little once he looks at me, but I doubt it looks genuine. “I’m going training today. Maybe you would like to watch it this time?”

Igor raises his eyebrows, throwing a glance at Oleg before he nods enthusiastically.

The morning meal can’t end soon enough.

Russian people fight differently. There’s a brutality that the Vikings usually don’t carry, sometimes having me out of breath until putting a proper distance between us to make a decent attack. I wouldn’t say I’m bad at this or weaker than Oleg’s best warriors—as he had introduced them to me—, but not knowing the Rus fighting style plays a big role on the battle, requiring from me a new rhythm and strength to absorb the ruthless impacts that I didn’t need even against the Saxons. Still, I don’t think these warriors would resist that much against the Vikings unless they were in an extreme advantage of numbers, given the current state, and depending on the number of good Viking warriors.

This sparring is certainly the sort of thing that Ubbe or Bjorn would spend hours on until they finally found the right flaw in the Russian seemingly perfect fighting. Imagining the two doing it is easy, taking a step back from their adversary to shoot them a dirty look while actually processing what happened to know what to do next, lunging at the adversary to knock them down for once.

“What are you laughing at?” The soldier asks me, making me aware of the chuckle I let slip my lips at my thoughts.

“Nothing you’d understand!” I grin despite pushing my sword up to hold his attack, stepping away and letting his sword slide against mine until it meets nothing and he’s sent stumbling forward at the loss of support, giving me the perfect opportunity to press the blade to the back of his neck. “For the gods, you got defeated even with me lost in thoughts? What are you going to do when one of the Ragnarssons attack you?” I click my tongue, shaking my head in disapproval, and all that I’m able to catch from his response is a string of curses since I’m too busy grinning and bowing at Igor once he catches my attention with his clapping whilst Oleg stands next to him, leaning forward on the railing with a smile on his face. They are up on the balcony along with a few other people. None of them are Katia nor Ivar. Alright.

“Next one?” Thick steam leaves my lips with each pant of breath as I bring my sword up, pointing it at some of the other warriors that stand around in a wordless challenge. Such a difference. In the beginning, everyone wanted to fight the Viking, to test them, to humiliate them, maybe, but now they even step back under the aim of my sword in a simple provocation.

Training easily becomes my main distraction, hence I don’t need to overthink about a plan to invade my homeland or the way I might be betrayed again while I’m at it, it’s only the weirdly pleasing clash of metal and thuds against the shields that fill my mind. It helps me take out the feelings which I don’t have enough time or patience to sort out, making the rest more bearable.

“Elhaz,” Ivar calls, and I don’t even look up from the fighting soldiers, only humming a little as I adjust my forearms over the railing of the balcony. He groans softly once coming to a stop next to me. This weather must be terrible to him given how sometimes it allows me to feel every single place I’ve ever shattered my bones in, all at once. “Elhaz,” he calls again, a little slower and louder this time; a smile settles on his face once I finally look at him, his shoulders dropping a little, and steam rises from his nose with a sigh as he leans back against the railing, sparing some glances at the warriors.

Elhaz wasn’t my name, in the first place. It was for me what ‘Boneless’ is for Ivar, a title, one that was given to me by Ivar since, in his words, I’m his protection, the one who makes everything feel sacred, the safety. His safety. Eventually, it was all that really mattered, and turned into what some people call me. Does he remember it? For the gods, I should stop being so bitter about everything before I am the one to get tired of myself.

“Ivar?” I raise an eyebrow, sighing as I bring myself up and let my hands replace my forearms.

“Is anything wrong?”

“What do you mean?” I look him up, and glance around, but never spot Oleg nor Katia.

Ivar hums, following my gaze around for a moment. “You’re... You’re here, but you’re not here.” I mouth a quiet oh and nod slowly, returning my attention to the new fighting pair. Ivar takes in a breath to say something, just for it to die in his lips with a shake of his head, replaced by a sigh. “Look, I thought things were going to change after we talked, but...” A frown mixed with a scowl tug at his features. “It’s like you’re doing simple obligations by being by my side! You know how annoying that is! You’re not a slave!”

In times like this I find myself huffing and crossing my arms just like Ubbe, Hvitserk and Bjorn do whenever faced with Ivar’s stubbornness, also questioning why I would sometimes try to explain the reason for Ivar's self-absorption. It honestly makes me want to shake him to see if it knocks some sense into him before I could explain everything while showing him around without guaranteed gentleness. I owe Ubbe, Hvit and Bjorn an apology.

“You don’t...” I press my lips together. “I just can’t, Ivar, not right now.”

Silence comes from Ivar as he observes me for a good moment before his expression falls. “Did Oleg do something to you?” His voice is almost a growl that has me shaking my head at the same time. “You know you can always tell me any—”

“No! I— Don’t seek trouble with him, he did nothing!” I groan, burying my face in my hands. “I just... The gods will let you know at the right time. It’s up to them, and not to me.” The powerlessness that fills me and holds me back invisibly whenever it comes to Katia and Ivar is certainly the gods wanting me to give all of it some time, otherwise what would all of it be about? I would like to let Ivar know about everything right now, but the words are a knot in my throat that I simply can’t undo.

Ivar furrows his eyebrows as his eyes drift down to the ground and his chest shudders with a shaky sigh, and right there is one of his rarest expressions. Knowing he still considers me enough to allow himself to be vulnerable like this around me is good. Not everything is lost. Sometimes I can still look at Ivar and be filled by the same feeling that I had years ago, back when we would sit behind the Great Hall and sometimes talk under the stars, running away from the Hall’s commotion when we grew tired of it. Or when we discussed how Ragnar’s death would be avenged while angrily tossing stones at the sea, near Floki’s place.

Questioning someone is reasonable, questioning the gods is madness. Ivar simply nods and sighs, still seeming like he is going to say something that never comes.

It is during the night of the same day that I sneak into Ivar’s room to massage his legs to relieve him from some of the pain, as requested, but it is also that night that I spot a darker mark upon his chest under the light cast by the candles.

⟐

It doesn’t take long until the thick snow that covers the whole Rus turns into something thinner and the thicker layers of fur can soon be discarded, replaced by simple furs over our shoulders and the occasional cloak, though the clothes continue to be thick. With the spring, however, also comes the actions of Oleg’s plans.

Ivar is responsible for a small group that recognizes Kattegat’s territory whilst I take care of Harald’s, where the Russians slay a small settlement without any pity and leave behind a spear with a cross as a foreshadowing of their oncoming plans. Attacking Harald’s—the king of all Norway’s—immediate territory like this does undeniably give me this chill, a small taste of power that has a grin tugging onto my lips when my eyes lock with a Viking’s right before I’m running to hop into the boat once again so we can take off.

Despite being lonely, in a way, being away from Ivar like this is good; it gives me time and space to think and relax without any prying pair of eyes that tries incessantly to figure out what’s wrong whenever he’s reminded of my existence. Or even Oleg, who certainly already caught on to something, and Katia’s almost permanent smile that reeks of cynicism—if it’s a fantasy of my mind, it remains a mystery.

All of that, and more, probably contribute to the way I don’t have this feeling when I arrive back at Rus; this feeling I had whenever seeing Kattegat in the distance when coming back from a journey, or when I finally stepped back on the docks. There’s no Ubbe, Bjorn or Hvitserk to welcome me back—or even go on adventures with me—anymore, and things with Ivar are still... complicated. It shouldn’t be this way, but the memory of being chased out of Kattegat with my cheek stinging is still an open wound in my mind, or at least a barely healed one, shamefully.

A sigh escapes my lips as I step down from the boat, still feeling as if the ground swirled under my feet, hence my first steps are careful on my way over to the horse one of the servants holds out to me, and I don’t even wait for the rest of the soldiers to start to make my way back to the castle. Some of them do catch up with me, though, coming along with the warriors that escort me in the long journey to the capital.

⟐

The servants are there to get my cloak off my shoulders and take my bag with them to put it away in my bedroom once I walk into the castle, sighing as I look around and soon meet Oleg in his throne room, with Katia lying down by his feet and playing with the fur of their bear carpet.

“(Y/n), it’s great to see you back, and whole.” He smiles, leaning back against his seat.

I bow a little, letting my hand rest on the handle of my sword out of habit. “Thank you, my Prince. It was a successful mission. I hope we can sit down and discuss it further soon, after I take a proper rest.”

Oleg hums, eyes closing briefly with a nod. “Of course. I wouldn’t want my best warrior to exhaust themself uselessly like this. Have a good rest.”

With a final bow, I excuse myself from the room, letting my body go for itself as my mind is too tired by now, striding up the stairs and finally reaching the familiar hall. Soft talk comes from Ivar’s room when I approach it, and the door is somewhat open. So he arrived first than I did? And if Katia is with Oleg, and Igor was at the meal room when I walked past it, who’s it with him?

I can’t help but to glance into the room once walking past it, and... Did I see it right? I take a few steps back, this time stopping to take a proper look.

“Hvitserk?”

[vivien-leigh]

GENE TIERNEY mentions VIVIEN LEIGH to an interviewer inquiring why she decided to write an autobiography.

Though movie memoirs clutter our bookshelves these days, Gene Tierney's self-portrait (Musson) deserves even the jaded fan's attention. Not because she is beautiful, not because she starred in hit pictures, but because of the personal and professional tribulations that virtually destroyed her career and almost her will to live. She survived, and for those who wonder why she vanished from the screen in the late Fifties and early Sixties the answer is here. Self-Portrait is just like that- an open, straightforward account of what it was like to be a Hollywood star when Hollywood was still the dream of everyone all over the world. There are also anecdotes about actors who made passes at her. Her husband was Oleg Cassini, haut couturier, an on-again-off-again romance that lasted a long time. But the two men she was most attracted to were beyond the marriage pale for her. One was John F. ("Jack") Kennedy, whom she seems to have adored, and later Prince Aly Khan, a playboy-potentate. The most important insight the book offers is into the mental breakdowns which overwhelmed Gene. In a deep depression she felt she was being poisoned in restaurants, could not read or learn her lines, feared she was the victim of Communist conspiracies- typical symptoms of paranoia. She was confined to mental institutions in Connecticut and Kansas. Her report on the electric shock treatments she received there make grim reading. Even now, fully healthy, she shudders at the recollection. "The horror of that experience I cannot fully recapture."

[lichdragon-fortissax]

I was so certain of it but I am not anymore. Did Morgott actualy defend Leyendel twice? There is a sword monument that refrences him butchering heroes on second defense, but is there proff of him being at first? Who did Leyendel actualy defend itself from? Godrick and who else? I logicaly assumed Morgott defended both sieges, but really made his name in second. Now I can't find evidence for anything. Or was the first defense one against dragons? I thought that one was long ago as the sword monument that refrences the first defense talks about bloody conspiracy, probably means Mohg and Miquella business, so it had to have been during the shattering. So Leyendel was attacked 3 times total. Man the lore is rich, love it but sometimes it's really keeping its secrets.

Yep, he did defend Leyndell twice! There was Godrick's ancestor, Godefroy the Grafted, and then there was Radahn, who we saw getting his ass kicked by Morgott in the opening cutscene (which, yes Radahn stans, Morgott did best him in battle- Radahn being the mightiest demigod doesn't mean he can't lose every so often, that's what makes one a better fighter). The attack by the ancient dragons likely occurred before the Shattering + Morgott's release, as I believe that Fortissax and Godwyn met on the battlefield and became friends after it resolved. Likewise, the beef with the Ancient Dragons came from the fact that Placidusax was the Elden Lord before Marika + the Greater Will took over, so it would make more sense for that war to be much earlier in the timeline. We can also assume with a great deal of confidence that Radahn's attack was on the capital because Morgott pretty much keeps to himself- he only defends Stormveil because Godrick is a major weak link in the defenses, lmao

As for the sword monument that speaks about a bloody conspiracy, my assumption was that it was referencing the attack by Godwyn's lineage, as they were living in the city when they attempted to usurp Morgott. We also have canon evidance of this with the description for the Ancient Dragon Knight Kristoff's ashes:

Spirit of Kristoff, an honorable knight of Leyndell who was also a devout worshipper of the ancient dragons. His skills strike down foes with thunderbolts, the dragons' weapon of choice. After the First Defense of Leyndell, Kristoff earned the hero's honor of Erdtree Burial for the feat of capturing Godefroy the Grafted.

And that + the fact that the Banished Knight Oleg and the other Banished Knight summon were known to have 'attracted the notice of the grace-given lord' (aka Morgott) and eventually given a hero's grave burial for their loyalty means that Morgott himself was known for picking out particularily skilled warriors among his troops to give Erdtree Burials to, which then means he was already the Lord of Leyndell by the time of the First Defense.

So yes, Morgott defended the city at least two times- from Godefroy's attempt to take the throne, and Radahn's siege on the capital during the Shattering. It would also make sense for his name to become feared and respected in the second siege due to Radahn's influence on it + ability to gather deep respect from those around him, as Radahn and his forces were known specifically as being heroes, and Morgott beating them back from Leyndell's walls would have certainly had his name whispered about by anyone else who was eyeing the capital during the Shattering

[yoonia]

About Time // Part 20

➬ Character | Jungkook x reader / Jimin x reader (feat. BTS)

↳ Type/Genre/words | Angst, Fluff, Alternate Universe (Time Travel!au/Time Leap!au, Soulmate!au), Eventual Smut / 18,5k words

↳ Prompts | “What if you find your soulmate… at the wrong time?” - Lauren Kate, Passion

↳ Summary | Be careful for what you wish for, because you may never know how to deal with them once it comes true. What would you do when your wish for a second chance actually came true? But was it really a fulfilled wish? Too many questions lie when it actually happened. Were they real memories? Or perhaps a part of a past life? Was it only a dream all along? Will everything be different this time?

↳ Ratings | Mature/+18 and up

↳ Warnings | mentions of alcoholism, mentions of cancer, (probably) inaccurate medical and law terms

↳ Author’s Note | This chapter took me forever to finish, but I’m glad that it’s finally out. I want to thank my girls, @randombtsprincessa and @softyoongiionly​ who have been hyping me out and yelling at me each time I came close to giving up and when I stop writing, and as always my second set of eyes, @theodea​. I hope you’ll enjoy this one as we slowly unravel the story between our characters. Please make sure not to miss the second note at the end of the chapter. Thank you!

↳ ⤎ Previous Chapter | Series Index: About Time | Next Chapter ⇢

Song Companion | Shah - Can't Leave You | Oleg Byonic - Wait For You

—First life. St. Vincent’s Hospital, year 2027—

Subtle movements happening around me were the ones that had woken me up.

Whoever it was that had been moving around while I was still asleep, they had tried to do things stealthily, moving about carefully enough not to disturb my sleep.

But when a person had been stuck in one place for so long the way I did, their senses would easily become familiar to their surroundings the same way mine had. I didn’t need much to recognise the sounds that had been constantly happening around me, allowing me to identify the foreign ones when they appeared. I would be able to feel every movement, be it from any unanimated object or simply random movements that took place, and I could sense the changes in the air around me as it happened. So it was easy for me to catch their presence even before I had my eyes opened when they kept on moving, the low thud of their footsteps and the things they were moving around followed each move they made.

And then there were also the scents. It was his cologne that allowed me to recognise him without me seeing him. And it was a good thing too, because it allowed my heartbeat to settle down from its frantic pace and prevent me from waking up in fear, startled to find a random stranger invading my space.

I finally opened my eyes slowly. He was nothing but a blurry blob of a person moving around my room when I looked at him through my bleary eyes. The way he was still pacing back and forth around the bedside drawers told me that he had yet to realise that I was awake. So I continued watching him, blinking my eyes until the sight of him gradually grew clearer and I was finally able to see just what he was doing in my hospital room.

Of course, cleaning up my mess would be the first thing he would do the moment he got here, I wondered with a smile.

This man could never settle with a messy space. He could not even settle in patience without finding something to do, no matter how often he would complain or whine whenever he felt like he had been doing too many things at once.

I barely moved when Yoongi reached out to grab a bouquet of fresh flowers that had been left on top of the small table near the doorway. It looked new, and I had no recollection of seeing it before I fell asleep after my treatment this morning, so it must have arrived just a while ago. I saw Yoongi opening the card that came with it and tutted to himself, muttering low as he shook his head.

The moment I realised what he was saying, I could no longer stay silent. “Bastard? Did the sender really sign the card with that name?”

My voice seemed to startle Yoongi that he nearly jumped. He turned with his hand on his chest, looking almost ghastly grey that quickly faded when he chuckled. “Fucking hell, you scared me,” he said, tossing the flowers away. Though they only landed back not so gracefully on the table instead of into the trashcan placed on the floor right beside it, where he was probably aiming to throw them in before I caught him.

“Sorry,” I said, pushing myself up from the bed the best I could to sit upright while he handed me a glass of water and helped me drink. As I drank, my chest felt hollow. I had been in this place for too long that this simple gesture had become some sort of a routine. And that he had become so familiar with everything that he knew easily just what I needed. It made me feel relieved to have him with me, but I felt the guilt gnawing inside me just the same.

I hated feeling miserable and weak. And I hated it more to see the pitying look he gave me as he read me so easily. “Have you been here long?” I asked him before he ever had a chance to bring it up. Because there was no way he didn't notice it when he had grown used to my moods already. Thankfully, Yoongi had chosen not to say a thing about my condition and only shrugged.

“Not really,” he looked around, rubbing the back of his head as he followed my eyes to see the things he had been tidying up before I woke. “I wasn’t sure if it was alright to wake you up, so I tried to find some things to do while I waited. Sorry if I woke you up.”

I waved him off. “No, you didn’t. It’s just time for me to wake up. It’s almost lunchtime,” I told him, not that I was excited for lunch in any way. Not when I was not completely capable of eating properly. The blisters on my lips and inside my mouth had been increasing rapidly that I couldn’t taste anything without feeling pain. It had been coming and going, sometimes getting better after getting some vitamins or once I began drinking all those herb drinks Kara had been making for me. But whenever they came back, they always left me feeling miserable. And terribly hungry.

And hunger made me feel even more miserable.

If Yoongi had noticed the discomfort look I was making just by thinking about the food, he showed none of it. But he did scrunch his nose and gave a distasteful scoff. “You’re actually excited for the hospital food? Man, you’ve been here for too long.”

I scoffed. “Nope, I’m just excited for their pudding,” I said, without bothering to elaborate the fact that it would probably be the only thing I could manage to eat.

“Damn,” he said, shaking his head almost too dramatically. “I was hoping that I could steal your pudding while you eat.”

I knew that he was only trying to make me feel better, but that was enough to have me laughing. But only for a short while, because any kind of tension happening on my torso gave me pain. As I winced, my eyes fell on the flowers he left behind. It was not hard to recognise them. Jungkook had known me for a long time to remember just what kind of flowers I loved most, and he had gotten me the same kinds ever since we had been together.

Fresh white roses, mixed with a handful of blooming white baby’s breath—just like the ones I had in the flower bouquet that I carried on our wedding day—and with a simple white ribbon wrapped around the footstalks. He had known me well enough to know that I only enjoyed simple things, and it hurt to know that he still remembered everything to the T.

I didn’t really need to ask, but I could not help it. “Those flowers—Jungkook sent them, didn’t he?”

Yoongi clenched his jaw and nodded. “I heard that he’s making amends.”

I rolled my eyes. “No, he just promised to stay around. Be a friend,” I told him, to which he gave me a sceptical look through his eyes. “He wants to be involved but not so much to disturb my life or to get in the way of my recovery process.”

Yoongi started shaking his head. I knew that I didn’t have to explain things on Jungkook’s behalf or to defend him right in front of my friend. But what Yoongi did not know was that Jungkook was not the only one making amends. If he was willing to try and make peace with everything that had been going on, then I should do just the same. It was the only way I could do to let the pain of his betrayal go away and to be able to look at my future without any resentment of the past.

It may have been far too late for me to realise it, and I hated the fact that I needed Jimin there to open my eyes, but the only reason why I have yet to be able to move forward entirely had been due to my anger. Letting my resentment grow freely inside my chest would only blind me from the beautiful things waiting for me in the future.

That is, if there was still any hope for me out there.

“I was almost sure you’re going to forgive that son of a bitch again,” Yoongi finally said with a sigh.

“Oh, I have forgiven him.”

Yoongi sat back with a jolt. “What?”

Chuckling, I waved him off. “No, I meant to say that I have forgiven him, just so we could move on. It has been too exhausting to keep being angry. If he really meant it when he said he wanted us to be friends, that he wanted to support me, then I should stop being so hostile with him. It’s actually pretty relieving to not be angry with him all the time,” I explained, and Yoongi slowly relaxed, while I had to clench my teeth together at the memory of all those passing moments we have had where we were too busy battling each other instead of moving forward. “Not to mention, the last altercation he caused had hurt Jimin. I don’t think I would have any more to give if I’m going to continue fighting him.”

Yoongi sat in his chair with his arms crossed over his chest. Sighing, he nodded his head after a while. “I still regretted not being here at the time to punch his face. Not to defend your boyfriend, but for stressing you out.”

I gave him a wry smile. Our relationship had always been a bit more cordial before this point, when we were just two people running a freelance business together. Back in college, he was nothing more but a stranger since we both ran with different crowds. He was more a part of Jungkook’s circle than he was in mine. But to have him on my side this time around, to have him as a part of my support system both as a friend and a second brother to me was gratifying.

“You haven’t been around much. I was starting to miss you,” I told him, making him chuckle. It was not a lie, I did miss him. His absence had never felt so strong before, but even with the overwhelming change happening in my life lately, I have missed his presence around me.

“And you really want me to believe that you actually have been thinking of me?” he jokingly asked me. “I thought you already have someone to keep you company. And I know that he’s been keeping you busy.” He said this while waggling his eyebrows, and I felt my face flushing with heat. He may not have fully supported my new relationship with Jimin at first, stating that I was risking my heart by being close to someone who was fighting the same battle as I was, but he seemed pretty okay with it now.

“What have you been up to?” I asked him. “Come on, tell me anything. I’m bored, and anxious.” Because the days were moving closer to the day for my surgery, was what I couldn’t tell him. Thinking about it only made me tremble in fear, so I tried to avoid bringing it up unless it was necessary. “Tell me that the world outside still exists.”

He gave a bitter chuckle. “Oh, the world outside still exists, all right,” he said, before he began updating me about everything that had been going on lately. Not everything in the world that I could keep up on my own through the news or the things I saw on the television, however, but the things around us that I had left behind. He updated on things regarding work, since I had left behind a bunch of unfinished projects on his hands when I got sick. I had tried my best to help him while I still could, until I had no more energy and he stopped bringing files on our projects to the hospital so he could stop me from trying to force myself to stay active.

Then he suddenly fell silent, just when I was asking him about what had been going on in his life. He looked a bit embarrassed for a moment, looking everywhere but my eyes until he finally took a deep breath and spoke.

“I’m seeing someone,” Yoongi finally admitted. “It’s new and nothing really serious yet, so Hoseok told me to take my time for myself with—you know.”

“No, I totally understand. I don’t ever want to be in the way for you or Hoseok on whatever is happening with your lives,” I told him, before realising something else. “Did you think I would say something about it? Is that why you never said anything to me at first? You know I wouldn’t, right? You’ve done so much for me. I already told you and my brother that I don’t want to have you both putting lives on hold for me. I know Hoseok is starting to.”

And I meant it. I have noticed it for a while but my brother had never wanted to talk about it. Hoseok was starting to look like he was stepping back from living his life, as he struggled to be there for me the entire time I was battling my illness, all while he was doing all he could to help me get out of my broken marriage completely unscathed.

Yoongi’s smile looked a bit sad when he looked at me. “I know you wouldn’t say anything bad. You’ve always been so great when it comes to dealing with my relationships. I think you’ve handled things better than I had,” he said with a chuckle. “As for Hoseok—He’s trying to make up for lost time. You know, for all those years he had made the mistake of cutting you off.”

Shaking my head, I refused to acknowledge it. “It wasn’t completely his fault,” I said, surprising even myself for knowing how I meant it. Through all those years we have lost contact, I did blame Hoseok for pushing me away and refusing to hear what I had to say. He was the one who had shunned me when I needed him the most, but that anger was gone now. Just like how I had forgiven my ex-husband, just how I had forgiven Kara and my father, and how I was just starting to forgive myself for all the horrible things which had happened between us in the past, I had forgiven my brother.

“Yet he still blames himself,” Yoongi said to me patiently, defending my brother. “He still thinks that he deserves to be punished for his ignorance in the past, for not being there for you until it was too late. He kept telling me how hard it has been for him to forget that fact how he had turned his back on you. That you had trusted him and he had only let you down. I think he instantly regretted it when it happened but he didn’t know just how to reach out to you again.”

“Until he met you.” I gave him a wry smile, while deep inside, I was grateful for the fact that my brother had somehow met Yoongi by chance and reached out to him so he could become the bridge between the two of us. Yoongi had no obligations to do any of that, but he did. And he had made it possible for the two of us to reconcile, even if it had come a bit too late.

An orderly interrupted our talk by entering the room with my lunch. Yoongi stood up to retrieve the tray and took his time to set up my meal for me. After a while, I couldn’t help it, I just had to ask, “Why do you take such good care of me? I mean, I’m happy that you are here and to have you as a friend and a second brother. But you’ve done a lot more. Not just for me, but for Hoseok too.”

Yoongi avoided my eyes when he returned to his seat. “Because I really care about you, ______. And you also did a lot for me when I needed help and people were turning their backs on me,” he finally said. His eyes were dark, and his pain was visible when he looked up at me. “Back then, you knew my secrets and still didn’t run away,” he said, while my memory brought me back to the past, when I had met him again after a quite some time, after he had become distant to most of the people we knew back in college. None of the people around us truly knew then that his friends had left him when things were hard for him, and I had chosen to become his friend at the time because I knew what it was like to lose everyone because of all the choices we made.

“I would never turn my back on you,” I told him, while he only gave me a bitter chuckle.

“Well, most people did. They always said it didn’t matter, but then they couldn’t look at me the same way again.”

I bit my lip when I remembered those days. Those final days before I finally left college, when people were whispering things on campus. Bad rumours had always been easy to travel quickly, especially when it came to a person like Yoongi. “Did people ever find out? I thought nobody ever clarified the rumours that had been going around at campus.”

He scoffed. “No, but it happened around the same time I began cutting back from classes and partying, so I guess people took it as a confirmation to them being true. And I had no point or a reason to deny it. Especially since when the truth finally came out, it didn’t really help much to make a difference in the situation.”

I reached out to him and grabbed his hand. “It doesn’t really matter anymore, does it? It’s in the past and you have grown far from that. And you’ll have my back as long as you have me.”

Chuckling softly, Yoongi gave me a relieved smile as he gripped my hand tighter. “Good. Cause you’ll have mine as long as I can help it.”

My heart felt full and warm with the promise that we shared, but at the same time, I also felt the weight of guilt brewing inside my chest as I said those words to him. I was grateful and glad for our friendship and knowing that we would be there for each other no matter what cause, and I had meant every word I said. But I couldn’t help but wished that I had been able to do the same and keep my promise to someone else.

I still wished that I had been able to do the same to another person who I should have never turned my back on in the past.

—Present life. Year 2018—

Winter break had barely ended when I returned to campus at the beginning of the new year.

The cold breeze still felt so strong even though spring was right in the corner that I had to tighten my coat while I paced down the slippery sidewalk towards the rendezvous spot. Taehyung had to repeatedly look over his shoulder to make sure that I was still following him close behind and that I hadn’t slipped away without him noticing. It was partly my fault that he got worried. Simply because I kept refusing his help each time he tried to hold my hand as we walked down the icy sidewalk on our not so sufficient boots. But I also knew that he could barely hold his own, which had been the reason why I didn’t want to become a burden.

Not when I was supposed to be here to give him the support he needed.

I looked up to notice that we were getting close to the east side plaza, where the largest park in the campus’ vicinity was located and also where people were gathering for the event. Loud voices and excited chatters were heard just when we were coming up around the corner, while Taehyung’s gaze looked both amused and nervous when he looked over to me for the last time.

He waited for me right before we went there. This time, I reached out for his hand and held on tightly. “You okay?”

“Fine, just nerves,” he said, shrugging, acting like it was no big deal. But I knew him, both in this lifetime and in the previous one, enough to know that he was blanketing his emotions and thoughts from me. And yet, I only chose not to push him too much about it and tried to have him think of other things instead.

“Okay, now remind me again why we came all the way here? Classes won’t start until the end of the month,” I asked him, just when a series of laughter was heard from the plaza. “And why the hell did they choose to meet up out here anyway? It’s fucking cold.”

Taehyung chuckled as he watched me wrapped my arms around myself and tugged me to come and walk with him, huddling close to keep our bodies warm. “These people are volunteers who are interested to join the spring project. I heard that they wanted to gather as many volunteers as they could get before everyone gets swamped with classes and assignments,” he began talking as he guided the two of us to join the crowd.

As we came up to the plaza, the place had already been filled with students, all wrapped up in thick winter coats and sweaters, all rubbing their hands together to keep themselves warm. But everyone shared the same wide eyes and bright, excited faces as they waited for the event to start. Everyone was standing together, facing the stage at the center. I kept on watching the people around us as Taehyung led us to the middle ground, all while sharing everything there was to know about the event.

This project was held by the local social acts group formed by students from the Social Studies and Medical Faculty, with some of Taehyung’s seniors whom he had grown close to leading the group. They always held their annual community service to help children or elders in need, and Taehyung had been involved in them a few times through the past year that he had probably grown accustomed to all of this.

Most of the work that he had done had mostly involved children, since that had been his main interest for his studies. But early winter, he had joined the service to provide coals and firewoods for elders and poor families who lived in isolated areas. For the past year, Taehyung had enjoyed doing this service and charity work because it had made him happy, it had given him a purpose and new goals to achieve, while opening a way for his future career.

In a different lifetime, being involved with this cause had only served as a form of escape.

And it was what had brought him far, far away from me until the day the bridge between us finally burned for good. All driven from the hurt that I had caused him.

“What’s the goal for the spring project, then?” I asked him just when he found us an empty spot with the perfect view towards the stage. The cold didn’t feel as harsh now as we stood between these people, but Taehyung still wrapped his arm around my shoulders and held me close to keep me warm.

“That’s what we’re all here for. The group always chooses their project from the ideas that they collect from their members or other volunteers, then chooses a captain to lead according to what kind of social service or charity they are doing. They haven’t decided what they were going to be working on this spring. Looking from all of these people gathering here, I’m guessing it’s going to be a big one. They’ve never had this many people being interested to join.”

“Maybe this is for the project that you wanted to sign up so badly before? The one they said they were going to send volunteers to the southern hemisphere?” I asked him, reminded of his wish to join the volunteer work that may give him a chance to travel to places while continuing his study.

Taehyung shook his head. “I don’t know. It could be. They haven’t really announced anything for that one either.”

I was about to say something, asking him more about this group and the organisation behind its cause, when a few people stepped up to the stage. One of the female leaders took the microphone and began to greet everyone who was present, applauding people who had come even in the cold. But I barely paid any attention to a word she said when I followed Taehyung’s gaze and saw him standing there with the other members of the volunteer group.

“There he is. Namjoon is always there with them. He’s been made captain on the last few projects that we’ve worked on,” he said, sounding almost distractedly as he watched Namjoon conversing with his friends on stage. I had to admit, the man really was attractive. His whole presence oozed confidence and his demeanour showed me that he was a smart man. Smart enough to be extremely persuasive. A dimple showed on his face when he smiled, and his laughter echoed through the stage, almost rivalling the MC’s voice as she continued to speak.

“Has he approached you yet?” I asked.

Taehyung shrugged. “He’s been a bit friendly, but that’s about it.”

“Is that why I’m here? To make sure that you would have someone to remind you to consider things before signing up?” I turn to look at him, waggling my brow to tease him a little.

This time, Taehyung turned to me and snickered. “Well, you know what they said. The only way for someone to avoid getting swayed by a handsome looking guy who happens to be an extremely persuasive man is to have your childhood crush standing right with you.”

“Whatever you say,” I said, chuckling as he tightened his arm around my shoulders and pulled me close. Neither of us said a thing as we listened to the MC spoke, before she finally handed the microphone to Namjoon, who became the one to talk about the project and let the volunteers learn more about the system, the plans, and how to sign up.

We shared nothing more but a bittersweet feeling while we were entranced as we listened to Namjoon speak, holding each other the way we never could in another life we shared.

We didn’t only come here to admire this man or to only see what today was all about, but to simply find answers. To slowly connect the dots and put the puzzle pieces together to fill the blanks, just so we could lay down every part of that other lifetime for us to understand where did everything went wrong.

There had been parts of the past, faces and names of the people that had become a part of my previous life that I could not recall or draw from my jumbled memory so easily. I may have seen or felt their presence in those memories, but some of them had appeared in my dreams merely as blurry shadows, faceless figures, people whose voice only came to me as if they had been submerged underwater.

Kim Namjoon was one of the missing pieces of the puzzle that had caused a rift in my friendship with Taehyung in another lifetime. In my memory, he was nothing but a nameless shadow, one that I feared and hated almost as much as the painful parts I shared with Jungkook from the past life. It took Taehyung finding him to help me remember everything—who he was, what he had done, and everything that happened then—all the broken memories had been unravelled the day Taehyung had first introduced me to this man sometime last semester.

And the reminder of who he was had come in the right time, because he had already become a part of Taehyung’s life through these activities he had been involved in. Because just like how it happened in the past life, Kim Namjoon was the one who had convinced Taehyung to join their movement.

The only difference now was that Taehyung had me by his side. That Taehyung had not been wounded when they first met.

In the past life, Kim Namjoon had come into Taehyung’s life when Taehyung needed someone to look up to, when Taehyung needed a friend and guidance while I kept on pushing him away, leaving him in the blind and completely alone. In that part of our lives, the man had come in at the right time, right when my best friend was completely vulnerable. And he had eased his way in so easily, filling the void in Taehyung’s life, saying all the right words and showing all the right things to have Taehyung follow him wherever he would go. What had started as a good cause to give Taehyung a purpose in life, it had ended leading him to get involved with the bad crowd, to join the bad business that Namjoon was secretly building behind his gentle smile and manipulative ways of making people around him feel special.

Taehyung had loved him with his wounded heart, and he had given the man everything. Only to have Namjoon suck his heart and soul dry, before tossing him away once he was done with him.

And I was not there to catch him when he fell.

“So what do you think? Are you going to join this one?”

The gathering event had ended two hours ago, and now we were heading towards the coffee shop where I had been working part-time for the past few months. Taehyung had insisted to walk me there despite his dorm being located in the opposite direction, saying that he was worried that I would slip if I had gone alone. After all the trouble we had by walking through the icy road and the slippery sidewalks this morning, I had no reason to argue. And I also knew that he only wanted to spend some more time with me before he had to leave for his part-time job, so I just let him be.

Ever since we watched Namjoon’s speech, Taehyung had been left in a daze. He had always reacted this way whenever he saw Namjoon. I was never quite sure whether it was due to my warnings regarding the man or if he had truly developed some sort of a crush or perhaps grown the same hero worship that he had for the man the same way he did in the different lifetime.

“I’m not sure yet,” he finally said. “Even if the cause is going to be just around the city, I don’t think I can make it if they’re starting around the same time my classes are starting over.”

His reasoning had made complete sense. But deep down, I also knew that he was lying. He was conflicted. I could feel it. And he was trying so much to hold back from whatever it was that had been bothering him.

Once Namjoon was done with his speech and the event presentation on stage, he had come down to approach Taehyung while the other students had started lining up to join the cause. He had pulled us both to the side, persuading us personally.

“It wouldn’t be as tiring as the one we did last time. We’re only visiting some of the schools at the neighbouring towns. We’re going to give classes, lend some care for the kids, do some health check-up, while the group from the Engineering Faculty will be there to help with technicalities, like building new facilities or fix old structures that didn’t survive the winter,” Namjoon had told the both of us, pretty much summarising his own presentation on stage to make sure that he would point out all the compelling factors to appeal Taehyung. “You’ve always enjoyed working on any causes that involve children, so I’m sure this would be perfect for you. Not to mention, we’ll be getting extra credits for each movement we make this semester with the faculty supporting us through funds and getting us sponsors.”

I could tell that he was getting through to Taehyung when I saw my best friend watching him with wide eyes. But I had been focusing more on Namjoon, letting my own curiosity and wonder get to me. And for someone who appeared so open, so enticing, and one whose main job was to approach people, Kim Namjoon was hard to read.

My memories of him had been nothing but scraps. It had seemed that in my other life, I had no opportunity to know him in person as he was merely a part of Taehyung’s world once our friendship fell apart and we became worlds apart. This time, I had more opportunities to know this man in person. Still, the only things I had come to know about him had only come from Taehyung.

The only thing I knew about him was that he was a year senior from us, focusing on Medical Studies to become a neurosurgeon. He was a brilliant student, had always come with the highest grade in his year, and he had been active in great causes to help people.

None of that information had ever told us the reason why everything fell apart for Taehyung when they began doing all of their causes together. We only knew that in the past life, Taehyung had gone away with him to a place far away, never to return until everything had been much too late. We just never knew when and how, and I knew that this was the reason why Taehyung had been so afraid to take the risk.

“Remember what you said to me back then, before I met Jimin? Back when I was too scared to even go out and have fun?” I asked him as we continued to walk in silence. The coffee shop had appeared on sight, so I knew that this would be the only chance I could ever be able to say this.

“No, I don’t. What did I say?”

I turned to him. “You told me to be cautious, but not too cautious that I don’t get to live and enjoy the present,” I said. “I know you’re worried about the risk of getting close to him without knowing what exactly happened to you in the past after you got together with him, but I know that you enjoy doing these things. So just go for it. If you do it, I’ll be there to join you so you won’t have to be there alone.”

Taehyung smiled at me as he listened to my promises. I could tell that he was relieved to hear it. “You would?”

“Didn’t I promise that I would never let anything come between us? Not this time,” I told him, reminding him all the promises that I had made back then when we found out that one of the many reasons why our lives had fallen apart was because neither of us was there for the other.

I had made a promise that I would never let that happen again. That I would never let him stray away from my life. No matter what. In a different life, I may have left him to fend for himself. This life had to be different. This time, we had each other.

“Right, okay,” he said, nodding to himself while sighing deeply. The frown that he had carried with him ever since we left the campus’ plaza disappeared when he looked at me. In its place came a smile, and a pair of eyes so bright it made me believe that he would be able to conquer everything if he wanted to.

“Thanks for coming with me this morning,” he said, giving me a side hug as we continued our walk.

“You know I don’t mind it. We haven’t been spending too much time together lately,” I told him as I leaned to him.

For the past few months, both of us had been busy focusing on our own lives. While my relationship with Jimin was blossoming, Taehyung was busy tackling different challenges in his life. We haven’t been spending a lot of time with each other the way we used to aside from the time we spent when we went back to our hometown together during the holidays, yet another reason why I had wanted to do this with him.

Despite our busy lives, things had been completely different still.

At least this time, he was still there, and he had yet to disappear from my life. Even if we couldn’t see each other, all we needed to do was to pick up the phone and we would be there for each other even through the distance.

“We’re still on for tonight, right?” he asked me just as we arrived at the coffee shop.

“Absolutely. Are you picking me up here once my shift ends?”

“Yeah. I might stop by at the library to drop some books, but I’ll come to get you right after,” he said, before giving me a hug as he said goodbye.

“Alright then. See you later.”

I stood in front of the coffee shop for a while longer, watching him walk away until he disappeared right around the corner on his way to the daycare center he had been working at. The coffee shop wasn’t too crowded when I walked in, with the majority of the students had yet to return on campus after the long winter break.

But that soon changed the moment my shift began, right when the rush of the lunch hour started. Students and workers from the nearby offices came in, forming a long line only minutes after I had taken over the cashier. The rush lasted for a little over an hour, much shorter than the regular hustle that would no doubt begin the moment the next term started at the end of the month.

Even if I had been out and active since early morning, I served the patrons with a smile on my face. Before I knew it, the line of customer started to dwindle. By the time I served the last patron, my back was sore and my legs were tight, but something was telling me that I wasn’t supposed to take a break yet. So I stayed behind the counter while my co-worker for the day—the only one there since many of the other staff had yet to return from their holiday—turned to ask if he could take a quick break while there was no customer coming in.

“I’m going to take a quick smoke break, is that okay? We can switch once I’m back,” he said, already in the middle of untying his apron to avoid getting some smoke on it.

“Sure, no problem. I got it handled.”

I turned back to check on my phone once he was gone, taking my time to reply to some messages that I got from Jimin who was asking about my day and my plans for the night. I had just pressed the send button when the bell at the front door chimed behind me, but it took me a few seconds too long to put my phone away before a deep voice called out.

“Excuse me. Can I make an order?”

I turned around to greet the new customer. But the moment I saw him, my body went frozen stiff and my head began to spin.

I had never met this person before. And yet, I remembered him.

Each time I tried to reclaim my memories, there was a void where someone was supposed to be a part of. There was a presence that was constant in almost every part of my painful memories. Yet aside from everyone that I had remembered so far, this person had always been nothing but a shadow, a faceless entity that was there, but never completely solid.

But the moment I saw him standing there, right on the other side of the counter, waiting for me to take his orders, his face brought all the missing pieces together. All the blurry images I had been seeing in my dreams came to me in flashing moments, so quick, so random, but far more clearly than how they all had been. His face filled all of those empty voids. His face, his eyes, his small smile, they replaced the faceless man who had been there by my side through all of the hurt, through all of my journeys.

In those dreams, in those flashing memories that I had been getting, I could never see the face of the man who was holding my hand while I was fighting for my life. And at that moment, as I was looking straight into this customer’s eyes, his face was all I see being there by my side.

He was there.

He was always there.

“Um—hello?”

The man waved his hand right in front of my face with an amused look, snapping me right out of my stupor.

“Oh, uh—yes, hi. Sorry, what can I get you?” I questioned him, unable to hold back the nervous chuckle that came bubbling out. Thankfully, he only smiled.

“I’ll have a cup of espresso and a bagel,” he said, only after taking a moment perusing through the menu placed above the counter.

My fingers were shaking when I was placing his orders into the cashier machine, so I kept my eyes down to make sure I wasn’t making a mistake. “Right. To go?”

He hummed softly and looked around. “Um—no, I think I’ll take them here.”

“Okay,” I said, taking a moment to finish up his orders. “Thank you. You can take a seat or wait on the counter. We’ll call your name once your order is ready.”

“Yeah, okay. My name is—”

“Yoongi,” I blurted out before he could even finish. For some reason, just like how his face filled all the missing puzzle, his name just came into my head as if I had known him my whole life.

When I saw his eyebrows came up to his forehead, I knew then that he was just as surprised as I was. “What? Have we met?”

“Um, well—” I began to stutter while my brain seemed to just stop working indefinitely. So I only said the first thing I could think of as an excuse, “You’re pretty well known. I mean, my friends know you. I just suddenly remember your name.”

Well, at least that was not a complete lie. I was pretty sure that perhaps some of my friends would know him, and I did just remember his name.

He looked at me with a frown, not looking entirely convinced, but he said nothing of it when he handed me his cash to pay for his orders. “Right, well. That’s me. I’m Yoongi.”

“Of course,” I said, avoiding his gaze as I put his money in. “I’ll call you when your coffee is ready.”

His eyes lingered on me for a few seconds, filled with curiosity and probably a bunch of other questions, but he only nodded. “Thanks,” he said to me as he walked to the other side of the counter, leaving me feeling lightheaded.

Everything seemed to be colliding together right at the same time. The final missing pieces of the puzzle were coming to place one at a time. As if the whole universe was trying to shove everything to my face, though I really had no idea just what it was trying to tell me.

—Present life. Hot and Spicy Grill. Year 2018—

As promised, Taehyung had picked me up at work right the moment my shift was up.

There was nothing much to say between us as we drove away in his small city car from the coffee shop, since I was still trying to process the shock of having the unexpected meeting during work earlier while Taehyung seemed like he was having his own turmoil to deal with. He was silent during the drive, looking distracted but thankfully not enough to derail him from driving the car properly. But his silence had made it hard for me to question it when he suddenly started leading the car away from the campus grounds and he kept going further until the car entered the freeway.

It took a few turns before the sight around me changed, the suburbs getting further away behind us, when I finally grew wary and curious that I simply had to speak up. “Are you sure we’re still going to dinner? You’re not planning on kidnapping me, are you?”

Taehyung’s eyes grew wide before he chuckled. “Sorry, it’s a surprise,” he said. “Don’t worry, I won’t go crazy and take you to any place with no civilisation like what Jimin did.”

Smiling, I looked away from him when my face began to flush. I had told him once about the surprise trip that Jimin had taken me to—which I had to spill because I had completely forgotten to call him back that night after we had just parted way minutes before Jimin came to pick me up. I had told him about how Jimin planned out an outdoor picnic with a thousand stars above us and the view of the valley everywhere I looked, though I had to skip telling him about the ‘dessert’ Jimin gave me under the same stars which had sent me flying to heavenly bliss.

Judging from the sly smirk he was making now, I supposed he had made his own guess to what had happened on the date once the food was left forgotten.

As I looked out the window, I finally realised that he was right. He was not taking me towards the same area that Jimin had taken me to. On the outer lane of the freeway, I saw buildings and dense trees instead of hills and valleys. And to my relief, what I was seeing was the kind of trees I would normally see packed up in the city. The lanes were getting more and more packed with cars as we went further, so I wasn’t quite surprised to see him turning to the exit heading downtown.

“Sorry for the long trip,” he said. “I just found out about this place a while ago and wanted to check it out. I figured if I want to take anyone here to try it then it should be you since we haven’t done this for a while.”

“Aww—that’s so nice that you’re thinking of me. You are truly the best friend every girl needs. The man after my own heart. Or, in this case, stomach,” I teased him, earning his laugh.

It didn’t take much longer than fifteen minutes after we were out of the freeway before he pulled into a small spaced parking lot, and my gaze fell on the small restaurant that seemed like it had only opened pretty recently. “Is it a barbecue and grill place? Awesome!”

“Figured you’ll love it,” he said, turning the car engine off. “Let’s go before the place gets packed with the dinner crowd.”

It didn’t take us long to be seated. But Taehyung was right. Not too long after we made our orders, more and more people started coming in and the place was full within minutes.

“I hope this place is good. People keep talking about this place so I bet these people came from everywhere around the city. I don’t even doubt that we would see some familiar faces from campus,” Taehyung told me after taking a quick look around.

“I’m really hungry I can eat anything at this point,” I said, smiling at him. It really didn’t matter where we were or if the trip here had been worth it. It was spending the time with my best friend during all of the things that had been going on in our lives which I had been most excited about.

The tables around us had started grilling and Taehyung seemed giddy in his seat, looking excited as he looked at the meal with a deep longing in his eyes and he licked his lips at the roasted beef cooking beside us. This was something that I had missed, enjoying our time together and to see him loosening up. Each time we were together, I would look at him and wonder how we ever came apart.

How much different was it back then between us compared to us now? Would we still have this if I had never learned all the mistakes we made in the past life?

Taehyung was picking on the welcome snacks when I felt my phone vibrating in my bag. Remembering that I had promised Jimin to text him the moment Taehyung had succeeded in picking me up at work while he couldn’t, I pulled out the phone and smiled when I noticed that he had messaged me first.

From Jimin: Hey, babe. Are you out with Taehyung?

From Jimin: I’m taking a break atm and I thought about you. Hope he didn’t decide to steal you away from me :(

A smile came to my face as I was reading through his messages. I could picture him sitting down in the middle of his dance practice, all sweaty and breathless while he was typing these words. My heart jumped and it made me realise how much I missed him, even if we had only been apart for a day thanks to our schedules.

To Jimin: I’m safe. He’s not kidnapping me or whatever, but you did give him an idea of taking me far away from campus

From Jimin: Sorry, my bad :p

To Jimin: How’s practice?

From Jimin: These guys are relentless. I’ll probably wake up all sore and bruised tomorrow

To Jimin: But you love it

From Jimin: I do :)

To Jimin: What time will you be done?

From Jimin: We’re doing one more round of practice then I’ll be on my way home

Home. The way he had said it made my heart stir. Ever since we became official, Jimin had repeatedly asked me to move in with him. But I have yet to give an answer, thinking that perhaps things had been going on too fast. If there was anything that I learned from putting all the pieces from my other life together was that moving too fast could lead to a disaster.

Would I dare risk it and say yes? I knew that it was something that my previous self—the other ’me’—had wished for. I saw her dreams as some broken fragments of memories in my dreams, had even mistaken them as actual memories until I managed to decipher them as parts of imaginations instead, and many of those images had shown me various types of white picket fence houses. The settings and everything else around them would be a blurry mess and they had kept changing each time they came to me, but there had always been one part of it that had been consistent, an invariable factor from all of these dreams—Jimin.

“Is that Jimin?” Taehyung questioned me the moment he noticed the expressions I was making as I was messaging my boyfriend back, not realising that my mind had started to wander. “Is he still at practice?”

Putting away my phone, I smiled at him. “Yeah. That’s him. He was checking on me. Kinda. I told him that I’d be with you while he’s busy with his dance.”

Taehyung tilted his head. “Doesn’t he bring you to his practices?”

“No,” I said, snickering to myself when I remembered how adamant Jimin had been to stop me when I insisted to come to his practice. “Jimin said it’s better for me to just watch the actual performance. I think he’s still a bit embarrassed to show me all the process behind his work.”

Taehyung chuckled. Shaking his head, he only commented lightly, “He probably didn’t want you distracting him. Or worse, have his friends coming on to you while he’s busy dancing.”

I rolled my eyes at him. Both of us knew that Jimin had a bit of a jealousy streak, but not so much that it made me feel suffocated just to be with him, or to feel like I was constantly walking on eggshells. The only way he had been showing it was to playfully complain or he would sometimes poke fun on me, acting sulky but never too much.

There was only one person in this world who could tick him off the wrong way. And honestly, Jimin was not the only one who was against this same person.

Looking up at Taehyung, I realised that he had never been kind to each time Jungkook’s name was mentioned. Out of everyone in my life, he was the only person who knew why I had to stay away from Jungkook. He was the only one who had heard all the stories, everything that I remembered from the other ’me’ and all that I felt when the memories returned.

Just like how I was the only person who knew what would happen to both of us if we would ever make another mistake.

Taehyung glanced towards the table next to us one last time, growing impatient while he was completely oblivious to where my mind had been wandering to. Watching him like this reminded me of how distracted he had been when he first came to pick me up, suggesting that something must have happened to him between the moment when we parted ways to the time he came by at the coffee shop. I had been waiting for him to talk about it, only to have him constantly acting as if I had yet to notice his odd behaviour.

“So how was your day?” I finally asked him when his gaze turned blank and he was suddenly becoming more interested in the paper napkin which he had placed on his lap. “You haven’t told me much about your work and your trip to the library.”

He shrugged. “It’s fine.”

That got me raising my brows. It was becoming more obvious to me now that he was trying to avoid talking about it. “Really?”

Taehyung looked up to me, pressing his lips before he released a defeated sigh. “I hate you,” he said, catching me off guard before he suddenly chuckled. “I hate that I can never lie to you.”

Smiling to him, I merely shrugged my shoulders the way he often did. “We’ve been friends since forever. If there’s one person in this world who knows you better than yourself, it would be me,” I said teasingly, before I added, “Second to Hoseok. Sometimes I wonder if he’s secretly your brother, not mine.”

Taehyung chuckled at that. There was no lie that he had come to grow close to Hoseok as we grew up together. Our friendship had started from a play date held by our Moms that happened when we were kids, only because our houses were located in the same block and I was the only one in the neighbourhood who was at the same age as he was. Then our friendship grew in elementary school when we promised to have each other’s backs, and we stayed close as we kept on going to the same school, doing the same things together growing up, then he stayed with me when I got sick and while I was recovering in the hospital years ago. But, as a boy, he had looked up to Hoseok as if he was his own older brother, and Hoseok had taken a liking to him especially because he had always wanted a brother.

“True. Though he wouldn’t be subtle if he wants to know stuff about me. He’d probably be snapping at me—Come on! Spill!” Taehyung jokingly imitated Hoseok’s tone of voice, which made me laugh when I saw his face and I could actually imagine my brother’s voice coming out of him.

“Seriously, though. What is it?” I asked again before he ever had a chance to change the topic around and avoid answering your question. “You came to the coffee shop looking like someone had just hurt your dog. And you’ve been pretty quiet when you’re not talking about this place and the food.”

Once again, he pressed his lips together. “Nothing much, really,” he started, though he suddenly grew restless in his seat and he began to look away, finding it hard to look into my eyes. He suddenly seemed nervous, yet I still felt a hint of relief when I didn’t see any guilt in his eyes, it would probably be worse if he was hiding something big from me.

“It’s just—” he said, clearing his throat. “I stumbled upon Namjoon at the library earlier.”

“You did?”

Are you sure that he was not stalking you? —Was what I had originally wanted to say, but I kept them to myself.

Taehyung looked down briefly before facing me again. “Right, so—he kept on asking me to join the cause and the rest of their spring activities cause they needed more people. Then he started asking me about my classes, the professors I’ve gotten this semester, before he suddenly asked if we could grab a coffee sometime.”

I blinked. He had spoken so quickly during the last part of his sentence that I wasn’t sure if I was hearing things right until it finally clicked for me a few milliseconds too long. “He asked you to go out for coffee?” I asked, to which he nodded. “Like—casually? Or—”

“Like—he just literally said, ‘Hey, why don’t we grab some coffee sometime and talk more?’, in a friendly kind of way,” he said, imitating Namjoon’s voice in his own way.

“What did you say to him?”

“Nothing,” he said, shrugging sheepishly. “I was kind of shocked and he only patted me in the back and walked away.”

I blinked again. “Funny how he seems to insist having you around a lot,” I muttered, before looking at him suspiciously. “He even came to you this morning while the gathering was clearing up. And you said he wasn’t interested to make a move on you.”

The waiter came in just then to drop our drinks and Taehyung took his time to take a sip of his cold beer before answering, “I don’t know either. He didn’t seem like he even noticed me that much in the past year.”

“How did you feel about his offer then?”

He raised his brows. “How I felt? Well—I certainly didn’t have all the goosebumps, the fireworks, or my heart beating fast cause I have no jumbled memories mixing in between the good and the bad, so—”

“Hey, watch it—” I warned him while pointing a straw at him. “No, I’m just asking cause it seemed to bother you a little.”

“It’s not. It’s just—” he seemed to contemplate his answers for a moment, like he was trying to find the best way to explain his trail of thoughts even while he was having trouble understanding it himself.

“I guess I was just wondering, why me?” he finally said. “I mean, I kind of understand why he would be approaching me—another ’me’—in the alter life. It must have been compelling to come on to someone who seemed broken and lost and I had probably seen him as my saviour, the light of my life after the darkness, the white knight.”

His overly dramatic expression had you raising your brows. “He’s kind of a heartthrob too.”

“Yeah—” he hummed. “I won’t even deny the fact that he’s attractive. But normal me? This me? I wouldn’t have picked him as the type of guy I’d be dating if I would—” he stopped and started glancing around, as if he was afraid that someone might be listening in. “You know.”

And I did know what he was trying to tell me. For someone who had been open about his sexual preferences, he was still wary about the world around us, not too sure on how they would perceive him.

He leaned back on his seat when he added, “He seems so put together too. But after knowing what would have happened if I had just let things be, I can somehow look past his false act of composure and find him seem a bit unhinged.”

“Seriously?” I questioned him, laughing. “Unhinged? Have you been reading criminal fiction novels in your Psych classes?”

He rolled his eyes. “You know what I mean.”

I laughed at him, but then stopped myself as I watched him closely. While a part of me was relieved that he believed me enough to tread things carefully, I was also feeling the guilt for allowing him to build his own boundaries by giving him all the warnings on what was supposed to be our future. Even though he was giving it the best he could, I still worried that he might not be living his life to the fullest potential just because he was afraid to make any decision that could lead to the end of our friendship.

Taehyung looked at me when I fell silent. “What? Why aren’t you saying anything?”

Sighing, I had no choice but to share my thoughts on this. “Just wondering if I’ve made the right decision on letting you know about your supposed future. What if my memories had been wrong this whole time and it wasn’t Namjoon that I saw? What if he’s just a good guy with his mind on his good cause who happens to have an innocent crush on my best friend?”

Taehyung seemed to ponder on it briefly before shaking his head. “I’ve been talking shit and making long speeches about you risking things by not staying away from this dude who had supposedly ruined your life and your trust to other human beings—”

I rolled my eyes. “His name is Jungkook.”

But he continued on, ignoring me completely. “—so I’ve decided not to risk mine. Second chances, remember?”

His words made me stop. I bit my lip and nodded. “Second chances.”

Taehyung gave me a grim smile when he nodded back, but it also appeared to me that there was a huge weight being pulled away from his shoulders. As if being honest with each other had been freeing for him, something that I was feeling too.

Noticing that our meal order had yet to arrive at our table, Taehyung looked around and pushed himself out of his seat. “The food’s going to be here any minute but I’m going to need the restrooms. I’ll be right back,” he said, before he left his seat to make a quick run to the restrooms at the back.

I watched him leave just in time for my phone to vibrate in my hand. I looked down, opening the messaging app immediately for thinking that Jimin had texted some more before his practice would start again, only to stop when I saw Jungkook’s name flashing on the screen instead.

From Jungkook: Hey, I hope I’m not texting you with your boyfriend around :p

From Jungkook: It’s been a while since I’ve seen you at the pub

From Jungkook: Is everything okay?

Biting my lips, I looked over to where I saw Taehyung had disappeared to and breathed a sigh of relief that the message had come in while he was gone. Taehyung would have only needed to take one look at my face before he would start asking questions, including why I had been texting with Jungkook from time to time.

To Jungkook: everything’s fine

To Jungkook: Been a bit busy, that’s all. How are you?

From Jungkook: doing okay

From Jungkook: I’m finally back on campus and I just got my schedules at the pub. Will be performing on stage next Friday night

From Jungkook: Will you come?

I lowered the phone to my lap, having no idea how to respond. While most of our texts had been about keeping up with each other’s lives, there had been a few times when he would invite me to his show at the pub. I had only come to watch him a couple of times, most of them without even saying hello to him directly and leaving before giving him a chance to sit with me. I knew it was wrong to keep in touch and talk to him like this after what I had promised my best friend before, but it had not been easy for me to ignore him.

And he was not someone who would give up so easily either that ignoring his text messages was never a choice. Not when he would often try to find me or even call me until he could talk to me.

From Jungkook: ________?

Another message came in, letting me know that he was waiting for my response. Biting my lip, I pondered over the options. What was I supposed to say? And would he be happy to hear what my answers if I had refused to come?

And why on earth was I already wondering what clothes to wear for the night at the pub?

To Jungkook: Sorry

To Jungkook: I’ll try to be there. What time?

From Jungkook: the second stage of the night. 8 PM

From Jungkook: I’ll be waiting :)

Reading through his response, my stomach turned and my chest grew tight with guilt. There was no way out of this now. And I really had no idea what I was doing either, knowing that Friday night would be the night I would usually come to stay at Jimin’s place so we could spend the weekend together.

“Fuck,” I cursed at myself, before tossing my phone into my bag to avoid looking through his messages again.

The meal we ordered had just arrived at the table when Taehyung returned, with the waiter apologising to the two of us repeatedly about the long wait, explaining to us overwhelmed they were as the restaurant was a full house for the night. As Taehyung returned to his seat, the waiter walked away from our table, and my eyes were drawn to follow him as he weaved through the floor between the tables to return to the kitchen area.

That was when I saw him. His head bobbing over the other seated guests as he walked across the room until he found the table that seemed to have been reserved for him.

“What?” Taehyung questioned me when he noticed, his voice drawing my attention when I was still looking far away. “What is it?” he asked again when he got no answer, then he began looking around the seating area to find what I was looking at.

“I saw someone. From campus. Though it seems a bit odd that he had come all the way to this place to eat,” I said, disregarding the fact that it had been the same case for us since Taehyung and I had driven far to be there too. “There, he’s on the table at the corner. Wearing a black shirt and a black cap.”

He followed the direction I was subtly pointing to, taking a few seconds before his eyes grew with recognition when he finally found Yoongi at the other side of the restaurant.

“You know him?” he asked, raising his brows at me when he turned to me again. “I thought the only people you know on campus are just me, Jimin, and his cousin.”

“Ha, ha, funny,” I sneered at him while rolling my eyes while he enjoyed having been able to mock me about it. But then my eyes went back to his table, seeing Yoongi with another man who looked like him, but a bit older.

“He came to the coffee shop earlier today on my shift,” I told him, finding him looking at Yoongi again as if he wanted to make sure. “You know who he is?”

He turned back to you with wide eyes. “Min Yoongi? Everyone knows him. He’s pretty popular among the frat boys. He’s always leading his friends on the stuff they always organise in their frat houses, though he hasn’t really been in the scene that much lately.”

“And you have?”

He scoffed at me. “Hey, unlike you, I still have a reputation to uphold,” he teased me, snickering when I gave him a scowl. “My dorm mate gets invited to their parties a lot and I always go with him when I can.”

I looked over to Yoongi again, noticing the broody look that he was wearing even as he was chatting with his companion. His brother, more likely, since they looked pretty similar from this distance. Except that when Yoongi was wearing a dark shirt, his brother was wearing something lighter and a bit too formal for a grill house. “So, why hasn’t he been around?”

“Seems like he’s graduating this year, and rumours said he had already taken a job at his brother’s company so he no longer spends much time on campus unless necessary,” he explained slowly before he began glancing around warily the way he did previously. “But, um—there’s also this rumour going around.”

I snapped my head to look at him. “What kind of rumour?”

Taehyung took another quick glance at Yoongi before leaning closer so he could whisper, “Someone said they caught him kissing a TA. A male TA. It happened at a dorm party.”

My eyes grew instantly wide and I had to lean closer as I whispered angrily, “And people just—what? Stay away from him?”

Taehyung shrugged. “I’m not sure, but it seems like his friends are beginning to dwindle. I don’t think it’s because they’re afraid of the repercussions from sticking around or if it’s because there’s a possibility that he’s queer if the rumours are true, it’s just—” he swallowed hard, looking sympathetic as he glanced one more time towards Yoongi’s table before looking at me again, and I knew that the look he was giving me was there only due to the fact that he had once been in his shoes. “He’s been hiding this for so long, if it’s really true. Maybe they’re just pissed cause he’s been keeping a secret. You know how those frat boys are, they hold secrets like a treasure.”

They sure did.

Because according to one of my strongest memories of all, one of the biggest secrets that had been painful enough for me to remember from my past life was how Jungkook’s friends had also had a hand in hiding his sins from me.

Shaking my head, I chose to look away from Yoongi. “Still seems so stupid to just turn their backs on him like that just because of some rumours,” I wondered out loud, when the bitter truth of how he was left abandoned by the same people who were supposed to support him through it truly sunk in.

“It makes you think. Doesn’t it?” he asked me, though it sounded more like he was wondering out loud just like I was.

“About what?” I asked him.

“How you can’t always depend on others to stay in your life forever,” he said to me with an as-matter-factly tone, though it also sounded bitter, because he had experienced it too. Meeting his eyes, I was suddenly glad that I had been able to show him that he deserved the kind of support he needed too.

As we continued with our dinner, talking about all the silly and mundane things from our daily lives, I couldn’t shake the nagging thought still hanging in the back of my head. Too many coincidences happening on the same day. Right at that moment, just when I recounted that I had met Yoongi coincidentally twice in the same day after not being able to remember him for so long, something in my head clicked.

I just didn’t know what to do about it. And I had no idea how I could make it all possible to even happen.

—First life. St. Vincent’s Hospital, year 2027—

As the final weeks before the surgery slowly started creeping up on me, I was slowly becoming a complete nervous wreck.

The fact that I was having an on and off fever also did not help my case at all. I was feeling like crap, was constantly exhausted, without knowing if the reason I kept on falling asleep was due to the overwhelming dose of painkillers that still remained in my blood or if my body had succumbed to the lingering pain that had only been intensifying, as if the masses in my body knew that they were about to be torn to pieces and they were giving their last fight.

My family, which mainly included Hoseok and Kara with the additional help from Yoongi, had been coming and going to stay with me and nurse me whenever needed. I knew that they were trying to ease my mind by staying positive whenever they were around, lifting my spirit while distracting me with things that they knew would make me happy. They would do everything they could, from bringing me movies, books, sometimes food or snacks that I could take without breaking the doctors’ rules and ones that I could swallow easily, to telling me stories or life updates that would be able to stop me from thinking about all the negative things I was facing.

But as the days were coming closer to the day of the surgery, not a single thing could help ease my mind. It was then when I finally realised that the fear had never truly sunk in, and it was only then that my brain was finally processing the fact that I was about to face a high-risk procedure that—according to some of the things I had been reading while I was preparing for it—also had a high chance of failure. And every illusion that I had let itself grow inside my mind, the false hope and optimism shattered like a glass wall and I was faced with the reality that perhaps all of what I was about to go through would be nothing but a fruitless attempt of getting me out of my bind.

It was even worse because I also knew that the people around me were doing all they could to hide the fact that Jimin had been absent.

The emptiness I felt without him there had seemed like a void, a black hole that was growing larger inside me, as if it would be strong enough to swallow me from within. That was when I realised how much I needed him, and I could never imagine how life would be if I no longer had him by my side.

The last time I came to see him, he had been recovering from a long day of tests and treatments, and I had stayed in his room until he was feeling better, only after I had made sure that he was strong enough to go through the days without constantly being under watch.

Not too long after we parted ways, I was getting prepared for the surgery that I was no longer allowed to leave the room or to roam the hospital as freely as I had before. Though the reason why I had not been able to come and see him was not only due to the restrictions given to me, but also because my body had simply given up. I had no energy, and the pain was getting too unbearable as I was getting less painkillers to allow my body to take in more of my new meds.

The last time I saw him again was when I was under heavy medication. I was having a high fever that day and I heard his voice talking to my brother and the residing nurse to ask about my condition. I felt him holding my hand and kissing my forehead each time I woke up, barely able to speak, but seeing his face through my bleary eyes felt like a breath of fresh air. When I woke up feeling much better later that night, he was no longer there, but his warmth remained.

The only thing that had been making me worried was knowing that there had to be a reason why he had yet to come and visit me ever since. In other—more regular—days, he would appear in my room to each time I was unable to visit. He had also promised to stay by my side through this surgery, and yet, only a couple of days left and there was still no sign of him, letting me wondering if there was something wrong.

“I can check on him if you want,” Yoongi finally offered after noticing how anxious I had been the whole day. He must have caught me glancing towards the door even as we were sitting there, watching the movie playing from his laptop together. Perhaps he knew that my head had never been on the movie, just like it had always been.

I looked at him and sighed. “Could you?” I finally relented and asked him. “I asked Soyeon about him but she didn’t say much except that Jimin is still recovering. We text at night before bed, but he’d never answer when I ask how he’s doing.”

Yoongi simply nodded. “You know, it’d probably be easier if you guys just share a room together, huh?” he wryly said.

“I wish,” I chuckled, rolling my eyes before I realised just how tempting the idea had sounded. “Is something like that even possible though?”

Yoongi shrugged. “I’ve heard of family members or spouses with terminal illnesses being put together in the same room, but I don’t know if it’s possible on your case. I could have Hoseok or Kara to ask around. They’re the ones who are listed as your family.”

Shaking my head, I turned to look at the laptop again. “I don’t even know if Jimin would agree.”

“I’m sure he’s just as devastated as you are that he can’t come to see you.”

“You really think so?” I questioned him, finding him frowning when I looked up. “Thanks for trying to lift up my spirits. I feel like you’re treating me like I’m your teenage younger sister or something.”

Looking at me, Yoongi merely scoffed. “I never had any teenage younger sister to take care of so I wouldn’t know.”

When a visitor finally came by to my room later in the night, it was not Jimin.

Yoongi was putting his coat on to leave for the night after staying with me all day when Jungkook appeared in the doorway. There was another bouquet of white flowers in his hand—the same as the ones he had been sending me every day—and a deep scowl on his face when he exchanged gazes with Yoongi.

Yoongi clenched his jaw, obvious enough to show his dislike at Jungkook’s appearance. He didn’t even bother to greet my ex-husband as he turned to me. “Do you want me to stay a bit longer?”

I looked back and forth between them, only to have Jungkook looked away when I met his eyes, though his gaze softened just a little when he saw how uncomfortable I felt at the tension that was rising from them together. Sighing to myself, I could only choose to diffuse the situation by letting Yoongi go on his way.

“It’s okay. You have that date to go to and it won’t be long before Kara gets here anyway,” I told Yoongi, though it was clear that he didn’t exactly enjoy accepting my choice.

“You sure?” he asked again, to which I only nodded. He came to my bed while shaking his head, but he chose not to say a thing when he kissed my forehead aside from telling me to call him if I needed anything. “Promise me to let me know if anything happens.”

“I promise.”

He gave me a final nod before turning to the doorway, where Jungkook was still standing. Both of them stood facing each other for a few awkward seconds before Jungkook finally stepped aside to allow him to pass without saying a word to each other.

The moment Yoongi left, the air between us rippled into a different kind of tension. When it was only between him and Yoongi, all I could feel was their rage, their hostility against each other. But now, as Jungkook was making his way slowly towards the bed, there was a sense of awkwardness that grew between us.

Only a year ago, he was the only man that I had ever loved. Though our marriage was not perfect, he was still a huge part of me that I called home, no matter how lonely that ‘home’ would feel like at times. Tonight, it felt like he was a stranger. There was still a pull inside my chest that felt so tight I could hardly breathe, but it was not enough to have me opening my arms to welcome him with a warm embrace.

Jungkook looked around the room with a wry smile on his face. “You’ve kept the flowers,” he murmured softly as he saw all the white flowers that still remained, finding each one being kept in different vases in all sizes before looking back at me.

“Kara and my nurse, Soyeon, took care of them. If the boys had been the ones who received them, they’d end up somewhere else,” I told him with a chuckle, choosing not to tell him that there had been some that had only ended being tossed into the trash. Mostly on Yoongi’s doing, because Hoseok had always opted on passing them on to the other female nurses who had slowly grown into becoming his admirers.

Jungkook nodded as he listened, and I noticed that his grip on the bouquet had somehow tightened. “May I?” he asked, pointing at the empty chair next to my bed which Yoongi had been using all day.

“Sure,” I said, as I watched him take his seat.

“Here, these are for you,” he said to me as he handed the small bouquet of white roses to me, forcing me to peel my fingers away from the sheets that I had been clutching tightly ever since the moment he appeared at the door.

“Thank you,” I whispered. My fingers felt cold when I took the flowers from his hands. My skin crawled when our fingers touched. It was an odd feeling, when in the past, each of his gentle touches would be able to send my heart racing and my body would shudder in pleasure. It truly felt like he was no longer a part of me, as if the years we shared together had been a distant memory that was no longer mine.

I instantly pulled my hand away and kept the flowers on my lap. I didn’t miss the way he flinched when I avoided his touch, nor did I miss the look of hurt and disappointment that lingered in his eyes when he saw me clutching the flowers tightly on my lap, as if I was using them as a shield to protect me from him.

“How are you feeling?” he finally asked after a brief moment of silence. He cleared his throat and blushed when he noticed me looking up. “I, uh—I heard the surgery is in a couple of days.”

I nodded. “Two days,” I said, and my heartbeat accelerated almost immediately. He must have noticed it when my skin blanched, when the rush of panic came over me.

“Oh, shit,” he muttered. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s okay,” I quickly told him. “It’s just that it feels surreal, dealing with it. I still haven’t completely wrapped my mind around it. It felt like a long time ago when I agreed to go through with it, so I’ve tried not to think about it too much. But then, suddenly it’s only days apart.”

Jungkook nodded as he tried to understand, and the concerned look on his face remained. “You’ll get through this just fine, I know it.”

I looked up, giving him a small smile. “How can you be so sure?”

Pressing his lips, Jungkook avoided my gaze for a moment. “Because you’re strong,” he finally said to me. “You’re always the stronger one between us. You’ve gotten through everything and still came out of it in one piece, whereas I could only burn things to dust and destroy everything I touched.”

Shaking my head, my words slipped out of me before I could stop them. “Not everything.”

His gaze found me, looking surprised to hear what I said, while I had to look away when once again all of the good memories that we had shared together went through my mind. My fingers clenched tighter around the flowers when I wondered just how everything fell into pieces, though what was left inside me was nothing but a numbing rage, when all the hurt he had given me had seized to give me pain since a long time ago.

Jungkook shifted in his seat, pulling my attention back to him. He was still avoiding my gaze, giving me a chance to finally take him all in. There were a lot of changes going on with him. He had always looked pristine, even when he was hiding his pain inside him. But there were also those moments in time, especially while we were battling for our divorce, when he looked terribly broken. He had stopped taking care of himself, leaving his hair constantly messy and his face looking dark and gloomy. I remembered seeing his eyes red and swollen, with deep, dark bags under them growing darker each time with all the sleepless nights he went through and all the drinking that he had resorted to just to escape from everything.

Now, he had looked much better, making good of his words to take care of himself while I was battling my own illness. His body had grown toned and broader, a sign that he had reserved back to working out and eating healthy again. His eyes were much brighter than how I had seen him last, as he had promised me time and time again that he would stop drinking so he could always be in his clear mind while he was supporting me. And then I caught the sight of his hair, looking thicker and longer as he styled them to the back of his head.

“You look good,” I said, making him look at me again. “Healthier. And you’ve kept your hair longer.”

He smiled and ran his fingers through his hair. “Not on purpose,” he admitted with a shrug. “I used to have my wife reminding me to go to the barbershop. Sometimes she would do it herself, have me sit down in the kitchen as she would cut my hair for me. Now, I can’t even decide what style of hair to choose for myself because I’d never know what would look good for me.”

I looked down just as my eyes started burning. There was nothing I could do to stop the tears from building up, threatening to flow like a river.

“Sorry, fuck—” I heard Jungkook’s voice cursing at himself before he leaned forward, catching my wrist and holding it gently in his hold. His thumb began rubbing gently on my skin and the dam of tears just broke apart. “I really need to learn how to shut up, but I just cannot help myself.”

I laughed nervously, though they came out with a round of sobbing when I continued crying. It took a moment before I calmed down. As much as I hated to admit it, the way he was softly holding my hand truly helped put myself together.

“I do miss you. That’s not a lie,” he whispered softly, meeting my eyes when I looked up. He reached out with his free hand, brushing my tears away. “You might not see it, but it feels so empty without you. I tried. I promise you, I have tried. Not to move on by seeing anyone else, because other women always remind me of you, but I try to live my life the best I could, to take care of myself the way you would do it for me, but nothing could fill up the empty space you left behind.”

Shaking my head, I tried to pull away from him. “Jungkook—”

His grip tightened, and he refused to let me go. “No, I’m not doing this to beg you to come back. I swear. I just want to tell you how I feel before I’d explode.”

Drawing a shaky breath, I tried my best to calm my heartbeat before I looked at him again. “Can we talk about something else, please?”

Jungkook looked at me for a moment longer then nodded his head. “Sure,” he said, before he proceeded in telling me things about what he had been doing lately. He made me laugh when he talked about meeting up with his friends, reuniting with his mates from college and spending the whole night playing pool.

“No, I didn’t drink,” he said to me when I asked him about it. “Been sober for almost six months now. There’s no way I can break that promise to you now,” he added, making me smile wider with relief brewing in my chest. “Eunwoo got a bit crazy though. Seconds after he agreed to join me on the next AA meeting, he ordered a full bottle of a 12 years-old Macallan and finished almost three-quarters of it on his own.”

“And the only thing you drank was Coke?”

Nodding his head, he smiled proudly. “Yes, Ma’am. I was on my best behaviour the whole night,” he said, and I felt instantly proud of him. The feeling was bittersweet, however, because I couldn’t stop wondering what our lives would have been like if he had as much control back then when we were together.

“I’m glad,” was all that I could say to him. “I’m happy to know that you’re living a better life.”

Pressing his lips together, he reached out to grab my hand. “And you are going to be there to continue watching me as I make better changes in my life, so you can witness me as I grow to be the man that you can feel proud of,” he said to me, and another set of tears escaped from me. Tightening his hold on my hand, he reached out to my chin and turned my face so I could look at him.

“Listen to me. You’re going to get through this, be stronger and healthier. I know you would. I know it’s scary, but I’m here. As much as I want to beg for you to come back to me, the only thing I need for you is to fight a good fight. We’ll get through this, and we will both have a much better life. We’ll watch each other as we both move on and find our happiness, to make the most of the rest of our lives, whether we’re doing it together or apart. Okay?”

At this point, I was a sobbing mess. The fear was still clawing from within. But his words gave me a new strength that I never knew I could still feel. It probably wouldn’t be enough to make sure that I could make it through, but it was enough to help me look at what was beyond me with a different kind of light.

As I looked into his eyes, I found a new kind of calmness that I had thought I had lost. What I saw in his eyes then would never be the same as what I had seen from him in the past, when he was the reason for me to carry on. But for now, this was more than enough. Taking one last deep, shaky breath, I looked straight into his eyes and nodded. I knew it was wrong to take comfort from the same man that had caused me a lot of pain, the same man that had also caused all the darkest times of my life.

But I knew that he was right and I needed to engulf myself in the comfort of his warmth just as long as I could find strength in them. No matter how scary it would be, I knew that I had to fight it. I needed to. And I had to survive through this no matter what.

“Okay.”

Jimin finally came to see me on the last day I had before the surgery.

It only took waking up to his smile to feel like I was coming alive again, even though I had to take a moment to make sure that I was not dreaming, that he was actually there.

I looked over his shoulder, noticing that the sky outside the window was still dark. the sun had barely come up, which meant that he came in way before the first round of nurses started. On the couch across the room, I saw Kara still deep in her sleep. She had come around the time Jungkook was ready to leave last night, and she had stayed all night to keep me company.

Out of everyone, Kara had been the one who would stay with me overnight. She has admitted once that she was worried that I would feel lonely should I ever wake up in the middle of the night without anyone by my side.

Another reason for her to stay was because of the memory we shared about my Mom. At one of the conversations that we have had where we talked about my mother, I had told her about the late-night phone calls that my Mom made while she was ill. Her eyes instantly lost their light, knowing that one of the many reasons why my mother had been left in the hospital all by herself during those times were because of her. Because my father had chosen to spend the night with his mistress instead of staying by my mother’s side.

“I would remember her whenever I think about you sleeping alone at night in this lousy hospital, afraid and lonely,” she said once after she had asked for a cot and an extra blanket for her to sleep in. “I won’t be able to sleep well at night when it happens. Take it as my redemption. I can’t change the past, but I sure as hell won’t let the same thing happen to you.”

Gentle kisses along my knuckles brought me back to the man sitting next to my bed. Jimin smiled at me when I looked at him. He had my hand in his grip, his lips pressing on my skin as he trailed soft kisses that sent delicate shivers through my body. His touches were enough to warm me up against the cold air conditioner blasting in the room.

“Morning, beautiful,” he whispered, making sure to keep it down so he wouldn’t wake Kara.

“Morning,” I answered him, still completely in a daze as I took in the sight of him. “You’re really here.”

His gaze softened as he gave me a wry smile. “I’m sorry that it took me so long to come and see you again,” he said, and only then did I realise that his voice was hoarse and weak, hidden in his whispers.

And then it took him pulling away for me to notice everything that I had missed—the wheelchair he was sitting on, the thinning hair under his beanie hat, the bags under his red-rimmed eyes, the sunken cheeks, the blisters on his lips—and my heart dropped.

“Jimin—” I choked, to which he quickly pressed a finger on my lips to stop me from talking.

“Sshh—I know, I look like hell,” he said, chuckling softly. Though the sound immediately turned into a set of coughs until he managed to take a deep breath and hold it in. “And I’ve been through hell.”

My eyes burned with tears, but I did all I could to stop them from falling. Yet I couldn’t stop myself from questioning him, “Why didn’t you say anything? Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t anyone—”

“Because I didn’t want you to worry about me when you already have so much to worry about on yourself,” he said to me with a sad smile. “I asked the nurses to not tell you anything. I couldn’t leave my room and let you see me when I was at my worse. You need to focus on yourself, on what’s happening tomorrow. I should be the last thing in your mind to worry about.”

Shaking my head, I leaned towards him and let him took my hand in his once again. “It’s not fair.”

He smiled at me and said, “It’s only fair. I shouldn’t be in the way of your recovery.”

“You never were. I need you, and I want to be there to support you too.”

“I know. That’s why I’m here now. I’ve done all I could to get strong enough to be here today so I could see you,” he said, pulling my hand in his so he could place my palm on his cheek, giving me a chance to feel him. “You know that I will always be here to support you.”

“Always? Promise?” He only answered me with a nod of his head, but it was enough for now. “Can you stay here with me?”

Jimin glanced over his shoulder and tipped his head. “Will your guardian let me?”

I looked over to Kara’s sleeping form and smiled. “She has to.”

And indeed she did. Kara knew how much I had missed Jimin and how his presence helped make a lot of changes that she even let Jimin use the cot that she had neglected the night before so he could rest once in a while. Even the nurses had come to let Jimin take his medicines without him returning to his room.

“Told you that things would be easier if we had just been placed in the same room,” Jimin joked at Soyeon when she came into the room while shaking her head at him. His comment surprised me as I had never thought he would even consider it.

“You asked them for a room transfer?”

Jimin shrugged with a sheepish smile. “Hey, I tried. I’ve thought about it ever since you got sick from your trips down the halls at night to see me.”

I looked at him, not believing what I just heard. Never once in my mind I had considered it possible for us to share a room that I had pushed away every hope of making it happen. I was completely speechless that all I could do was hold his hand. It was Soyeon who spoke next, breaking the moment we were sharing.

“If you want, I can submit another request once you’ve gone through the surgery,” she said, while Jimin and I exchanged looks.

“Can you do that?”

Soyeon glanced at Kara who was now giving her a hopeful look and smiled. “I can ask your doctor to have permission for transfer,” she answered me with a wink.

“If Doctor Kim agrees, then it’ll leave only one last hurdle that might get in the way,” Jimin said, breaking whatever spell we were in before either one of us even had a chance to celebrate the possible good news.

“What is it?”

Jimin gave me a sad smile and said, “Your ex-husband.”

It was finally the day of the surgery.

Everyone had been here with me since this morning, waiting in the room with me. While my anxiety had peaked through the roof the day before, I was surprisingly calm ever since I had woken up this morning. Meanwhile, everyone else seemed to be on the edge since the moment I woke up and it even got worse when the nurse came in just one hour before I was supposed to be taken to the operating room, handing me the last medicine for the day.

The frown on Hoseok’s face kept on slipping out no matter how hard he tried to hide it behind his smile. Even the years that had passed during the period of time when we fell apart couldn’t change the fact that I knew my brother. That I would be able to catch on to his emotions so easily despite his efforts of hiding them from me.

He was not the only one who was restless, as Yoongi kept fidgeting in his seat. He had been silent all day, tension continued to roll out of his shoulders as he sat with Hoseok across the room.

As I was forbidden to consume any food or water, Kara found nothing to do to distract herself and she had opted to stay by my side. I had to respect her for trying her best to stay calm, though the moment she held my hand and she started praying for the two of us, it almost felt like I was the one calming her down until her fingers stopped shaking.

“It’ll be okay,” I finally said to her when she gave me yet another forced smile the moment our eyes met. But everyone in the room knew that I was speaking for all of us, especially myself, when I added, “Everything’s going to be fine.”

Jimin came to my room just when it was almost time for me to go. He came in on his wheelchair, with Nurse Soyeon pushing him into the room. Everyone instantly stepped aside to give us space, allowing Jimin to settle down next to the bed, where he took my hand to hold and he could lean in just close enough to give me a kiss.

“I’ll be here until the moment they come to pick you up,” he whispered to me between his gentle kisses, then gave me another promise before he pulled away, “And I’ll be here when you wake up.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

After that moment, time seemed to stand still. Neither of my family dared to speak, afraid that any word they said would burst any bubble that we found ourselves in, to allow the reality to sink in and take over the serene feeling we were having. But they kept hovering around me, making sure that I was calm and ready, though I felt more numb than I was probably supposed to.

It wasn’t until the moment when Soyeon returned with another nurse from our floor, pushing a gurney into the room with the help of an orderly, when the silent tension in the room broke apart.

“It’s time,” Soyeon said to me with a calm voice that did nothing to stop my heartbeat from pacing rapidly in my chest. Jimin must have sensed the change in my mood, because he immediately pulled me to him and held me tight, whispering sweet words to calm me down.

“It’s okay, baby. Take a deep breath. Close your eyes and focus on me,” he kept telling me, making sure that I followed his words until I was breathing calmly again.

“Okay, I’m ready,” I nodded at Soyeon after giving Jimin one last kiss and sending one last smile to my family.

As everyone stepped back and I was carefully transferred from the bed to the gurney, the numbness returned to me and I let myself to be engulfed in it. Even the pain that came piercing through my spine during the transfer couldn’t snap me out of it. The sense of calm felt even stronger as Jimin grabbed my hand and gave me one last squeeze only moments before the orderly began pushing me out of the room.

“I’ll come with you,” I heard Hoseok said, as if watching me leave the room had snapped him out of his trance and he quickly rushed to walk alongside the gurney as we left our family behind. The last thing I saw when I took one last glance was Yoongi placing his arm around Kara’s shoulders as she cried soundlessly, and Jimin smiling at me as he placed his palm over Kara’s hand that was resting on his shoulder.

The trip from my room towards the operating section on our floor felt like an eternity. I barely paid attention to our surroundings as we made a few turns down the hallways, focusing more on my breathing pattern as I kept myself calm, until I suddenly saw him standing not too far from the doorways leading to the operating area.

“Jungkook,” I called out to him as the gurney slowed down to a stop right where he was waiting for me. He nodded briefly at Hoseok before he turned to me, giving me a warm smile despite the way his eyes were watching me closely as if he was afraid I would disappear.

“You came,” I said, and he nodded.

“I decided I’d wait for you out here so you could have a moment with your family,” he told me, and my eyes moved to his hands, where I found yet another bouquet of white flowers, and his smile widened as he followed my gaze.

“These flowers will be waiting for you in your room to greet you once you return,” Jungkook said, before he leaned down, pressing his lips on my forehead as he whispered. “You’re going to be alright.”

His eyes were glassy with tears when he straightened up, but he forced himself to smile as he brushed gently at my cheek for one last time before he stepped back, allowing the gurney to pass. I kept my eyes on him until I could no longer see him, and Hoseok pulled my attention right before he had to let me go.

“We’ll be waiting for you out here,” he said to me while squeezing my shoulder gently. I could tell that he was trying his best not to cry in front of me, so I put on my brave face and smiled.

“Make sure to buy me some of my favourite ice creams when I come back, will you?”

He nodded and chuckled softly. “I’ll fill up the fridge with them for you.”

“Ready?”

The nurse that was going to assist the surgeons was the one I was not familiar with, but she was friendly and nice that I stayed calm despite the complicated preparations that would have scared me away. I already felt slightly intimidated just minutes ago, when I was pushed into this room with only strangers standing around me. But the thought of my family who would be waiting right outside those doors, and knowing that Dr. Kim would also be here to assist the procedure, all had done more than calm my nerves that all I had to do was wait until this moment would come.

“I’m going to put this mask on you. Just breathe in normally, and you will feel sleepy in no time. Just don’t panic, and focus on counting down or just think of good things, okay?”

“Okay,” I told her, nodding my head before I let her put the breathing mask on my face.

She gave me a smile that was hidden under her mask as I settled back down on the bed, while she carried on with the preparations, helping the surgeons and welcoming Dr. Kim as he came into my line of sight.

His voice was calm, but I barely paid attention to any word he said to me as he introduced the other doctors that had come in with him. I only responded with a nod to each time he spoke, until he instructed me to continue breathing as the only thing they needed to do was to wait until the anaesthetic drugs they had given me would take effect.

Everything around me seemed to move in slow motion afterwards. It felt as if I had left my body and I was watching things unfolding from the outside looking in. I followed the nurse’s instruction as I began breathing normally, taking deep breaths while counting down slowly, until I started to feel heavy with sleep. It didn’t take long until I finally gave in as there was never a fight in me to stop me from getting under, and I felt myself drifting away merely seconds after.

That was when everything happened.

They had all said that when you went under, your whole senses would not be able to tell you about anything happening around you, leaving you completely oblivious to what they were doing to your body.

That was not what seemed to be happening to me.

My senses were completely numb, but I was still there. I was still present. My body was no longer moving, but I was terribly aware. A thick blanket of darkness folded around me, cloaking me from the world that still existed around me. I had lost the ability to feel a thing. There was no pain, not a hint of the slightest of touches they made on me, but I knew they were all there.

My mind registered their presence in the form of shadows. Looming, hovering, moving around me while I was rooted as their center. I could feel their movements even through the fog of darkness, but I could feel none of their touch. I heard nothing but a steady hum, drowning me deeper into the darkness, though some of the voices I heard made it seem more like I was drowning underwater.

And then it happened, and suddenly, I could hear it all almost too clearly.

It started with a steady beep, before it began to rise, sounding louder by the second, and then it went faster. The humming sound around me began to rise as well, growing steadily intense. They sounded almost similar to voices of people shouting, only that everything was muffled, like everything was happening under the current of water. The beeping noise grew louder, breaking through the fog, and then louder, turning into an alarming sound as the shouting continued.

An odd feeling of chill washed over me.

And then everything went still.

Author’s note:

I’m sorry this took a long time, and I know that you must be hating me for that ending lol

Don’t worry, every single question you may have at the moment will be answered soon. We’re so close to the final chapters and I am terribly nervous about it, not going to lie. But, before we can finally get there, we’ll be having an extra chapter coming in the way.

Yes, your requests have been answered. We’ll be getting into Taehyung’s side of the story on the next chapter before we can find more answers to what had happened to all of them in the past.

Stay tuned for the next update. Thank you for all of your support!

—  © 2021 Yoonia, all rights reserved. reposting/modifying of any kind is not allowed. translations are not allowed.

[blanska]

Did Sergey lie to Lera?

SPOILERS for the Plague Doctor comics up until issue #8

Disclaimer: I read most of the comics with the help of Google Translate, so it is highly likely that I don’t have the fully picture. I wrote this after reading #8 of the Plague Doctor.

In Plague Doctor #8 Sergey tells Lera in the car that the Bird has been destoryed, erased.

When I read that, I put down my phone and started pacing in my room, because this statement comepletely contradicted my interpretation of the story so far. It contradicted what I have seen.

My opinion: I think it wouldn’t be a great story if they truly killed off the bird forever. But here’s the thing. This is my taste in stories, which has no bearing on what happens in the comics. So instead, let’s talk about what my more objective side saw.

The Knife Scene

The most convincing part for me that the Bird is right there in the comics is the scene when Oleg takes out the knife. Next we see a close-up of Sergey’s eyes and the knife reflected in them. Immediately I thought of the Bird. The way this is presented makes this moment seem very important and ominous. The knife falls to the ground, and in the next moment Sergey pushes the blade to Lera’s side. He says, “Dead. Always watch your back.”

What makes this even more convincing and important is Oleg’s reaction. All of a sudden he acts almost like a prison guard, puts Sergey in his place, “Close the knife and hand it over to me. And step back!” I find it hard to interpret this in any other way than Oleg talking to the sociopath who just crossed a line. Sergey hands over the knife with a frown. Immediately after this things go back to normal.

If the Bird has been dead for years, why do we get this scene? Why would they show us specifically this scene in this way?

Two different people behind the wheel

In every scene when Sergey is present, for like 90% of the scene I saw one of two personalities. The one who seems to be less active (or just not as eccentric as the other one) I saw perhaps in #1 at the cafe, possibly in #2 when he gives Lera and Oleg their first job (he is dressed in white), in #3 when Lera tries on the suit, in #6 after the casino when he’s been up all night and they meet at the apartment and in #8 in the car with Lera.

Let’s call him “Sublte Sergey” bc I no better ideas.

The way he’s sitting, standing, the way he’s holding himself is different from the other personality. He doesn’t take up too much space, but he also doesn’t seem to lack confidence.

The way he phrases things is more matter of fact and he doesn’t talk down to others all the time.

Doesn’t joke about murdering the person he’s talking to and doesn’t do other things that seem very sociopathic.

The other personality is way more obvious. I saw him in #2 when they first gather in the apartment, then later during the first training session. In #3 during training when he attacks Lera and starts coplaining that Oleg didn’t do a good enough job. In #4 when they meet in the apartment before the casino. And the thing is, he acts just like during the Game when the Bird was in control and the other personality was essentially held hostage.

Let’s call him “Entitled Sergey” (bc I don’t wanna call him Bird for the sake of the discussion).

The way he’s holding himself. He looks like he’s always on a stage, he takes up a lot of space, he seems overly confident.

He frequently phrases things in a very condescending way, he seems to think he’s the smartest person in the room and he’s always surrounded by idiots. He very often complains about what the others are doing.

He jokes about hurting or murdering Lera on two occasions, he’s the one who picks up the knife, possibly the one who wants to suggest ideas that Oleg immediately shuts down (perhaps bc it would cross a certain line).

If the Bird is truly dead, then who am I seeing here? Why would there be a personality that acts just like the Bird during the Game? Did the Bird play the role of this personality back then? Is this the person who might know himself to be The Sergey and is that why the Bird would have played this role? If yes, who the hell is Subtle Sergey?

The Second One

In the car Sergey talks about the “second” personality, because idk he forgot to count himself, but sure let’s call him the Second One. “He doesn’t remember anything, shakes with horror, cannot fight.” It seems like this is the person who almost crashed the car twice driving to Lera’s home. The person who’s influence is slowly fading away during the conversation in the car. Nice to finally meet you, buddy.

I do not think that the Second One equals Subtle Sergey. Because as the scene goes on he starts to sound more and more like Subtle Sergey and not like Entitled Sergey. He says he is afraid of the Second One. The Second One wouldn’t say this, at least I do not think he would phrase it in this way. So these seem to be three distinct personalities.

Who is We?

In the car when Sergey is ranting about his, well.. their internal struggles, at some point he starts a sentence with “we” then pauses and corrects himself to “I”. I really like this, because of course he would say “we” occasionally as he seems to be co-conscious and living together with at least one other personality nowadays. At first I thought he corrected himself to try make his sentences more consistent and easier to understand, since most people refer to themselves as “I”.

But after it occured to me that he might have lied about the Bird being dead I thought pehaps that was not the case. He is talking about the Second One, “If I lose self control.” and then “The epitome of his greatest fear is absolute helplessness!“ He talks about the Second One in the third person and he clearly doesn’t want this person to be in control right now. 

Immediately after this as he starts to explain what happened with the Bird during the game, he says “We...” then corrects himself to “I've never made excuses with an evil alter ego.” What if when he said “we” he was thinking “the Bird and I”? But since he later claims that the Bird is gone, he corrects himself.

Sure, he could have done this for many other reasons, such as realizing that the other part(s) of the “we” have made those excuses before. But it still makes me wonder if he indeed lied.

So what if he did lie?

If he did lie, then I think Subtle Sergey and the Bird has been living and working together on this project and we’ve seen a lot of both of them. There were some moments of instantaneous switches just like back in the Game, but now the Bird is not trying to take over, he’s on board with the plans. He’s part of a system, even.

Especially with the intense reaction of the Second One, stepping to the foreground and having panic attacks, being unsure of himself, I can see why they would claim that the Bird is dead. Even if they’re not that unsure of themselves, it makes sense to say that. Because the Bird did all those horrible things when he was fully in control and running amok. Now they’re doing things differently. Saying “oh yes, he’s right here, but I promise he’s not gonne empty a round of bullets into you like the last time” isn’t very reassuring or believable. I would definitely consider lying in this situation.

What if he didn’t lie?

Then we have the Subtle and the Entitled Sergey, one of whom seems to behave like the Bird during the Game. Which is weird writing. It’s confusing. In the Plague Doctor, we don’t get to see what is going on inside Sergey’s mind. We don’t see alters talking to each other, or be represented by different character designs. We can only guess. And putting an alter in the story who acts like the Bird, without an explanation or anything to make clear that this is not the Bird, is extremely confusing to me.

If he didn’t lie, I have no idea why we had the Knife scene. What was the point? During the Game there was a Sergey trying to resist and fight the Bird unsuccessfully. I associate this sociopathic side of him with the Bird.

If the Bird is truly gone, then a part of Sergey has been thrown out the window. They didn’t get the chance to learn to live together, to get better, to figure out their life. It is not a good lesson. You don’t ignore or kill parts of you, especially the parts of you that make it incredibly hard to live your life and thrive. You deal with it. You come up with solutions to make it work for you or at least make it stop being an obstacle. If Sergey gets to be the Anti-hero and gets to live a better life, a healthier life, it shouldn’t be because we threw out the part of him who was causing trouble.

So I hope he lied. I desperately hope that he lied. But please, Bubble at least let us find out what the truth is in the end! I am getting tired of guessing who this person is in the scene with Oleg and Lera :D Whatever the case is, I am intrigued, I want to know more, I want to know what is really going on. And as of now I am absolutely confused.

[euphoniouspandemonium]

7 and 19 :-)

Thank you!! Answering for Cotton Mendings cause I'm mildly obsessed.

7. You’ve published or shared your WIP and it develops rabid fandom. What’s the fandom known for?

... hating me for murdering Salvatore but also arguing over Salvatore's morality (half the fandom would say he absolutely sucked and that maybe I'm condoning murder and the other half would be sobbing, going "noooooooooo he was babyyy" and then exactly two (2) people would be like "look, I know he murdered his brother and framed someone who didn't really deserve to be framed and then broke Virginia and Oscar's hearts but. Lay thine eyes upon the field in which I grow my fucks and you shall see that it is barren❤️"). Oh, and of course... *shudders in fear* dare I say it...... the ship wars, Oleg. The ship wars.

19. You attend a convention and see someone cosplaying one of your OCs! How are they dressed?

Hmm, I feel like people would enjoy Virginia cosplays, which means you have given me an excuse to talk about my gal's fashion taste 😌

Anyways, Virginia likes light peachy and sage green tones when it comes to clothing, so I feel like anything inspired by any of these would work marvelously for a cosplay! Granted, the first fashion plate is from 1918 and the second two are from the late 1920s, say 1928-ish? But yeah with some adjustments they could look more early 1920s.

And as for hair I think a "girlish bob" would do wonders <3

And of course. I almost forgot. A FLOWER CROWN THEY HAVE TO BE WEARING A FLOWER CROWN as an homage to That One Scene <3

[kyluxtrashpit]

Hi, I'm wondering if you'd mind briefly telling what's happened in plague doctor from issue 8 onwards? I have no access to the comics nor can I read Russian but I'm obsessed 😭

Hello! And sure, I absolutely can give you some brief summary! I feel you though, I've been translating the issues myself out of desperation skdsldlss. They're just SO GOOD!

Okay I'm gonna assume you've read to the end of volume 7 and just go from there, and I'll put it all behind a cut for those who don't want spoilers (also this is long cause I'm rambly RIP lmao)

Okay so we leave off 7 with Oleg captured and Sergey finding out. In 8 Sergey essentially has a near mental breakdown, asks if he's still alive, and then is instructed to go to a certain address - alone, no PD suit (cause they still think it's him in the suit). Sergey agrees. He picks up Lera, has her drive because he's so nervous he almost crashed the car twice and got it scraped up, and then he basically infodumps the whole Rag/Bird situation at her. He confirms Bird is gone but that Rag is still there, and it's Rag he fears - he hates being helpless

He drops Lera off in the suit early so she can find a good place to hide and Sergey goes in alone. His only weapons are a powerbank and Oleg's wolf necklace, both of which Vad lets him keep. Altan pulls out a sword to cut Sergey's head off without a word but Sergey pleads for him to at least explain how he figured out Sergey was still alive. Apparently Altan has connections to Holt Manufacturing and thus heard about someone getting a PD suit - who else could it be? Altan raises the sword again but, before he can do any damage, Lera interferes, dropping a hanging platform as a distraction. She strikes at Altan, but it's revealed he's also wearing a combat suit from Holt

Then we go right to 9 where it's mostly fighting. Sergey takes out a few guys before Oleg appears out of the dust clouds, commenting that he wont survive a 6th bullet and telling Sergey not to miss "this time" as he holds the handcuffs above his head. Sergey shoots the chain and they stand back to back. Vad, meanwhile, is not participating in the fight, just sits on a fold-out stool and keeps score basically lmao (I'm not kidding)

Meanwhile, Lera and Altan fight, Lera taking one of his swords, and Altan lectures her about serving someone else's agenda, how she's not the moral one here for following Sergey, stuff like that. Lera basically says she knows Sergey sucks but Altan isn't better here, so she's going to stop him. There's a glorious montage of Sergey just going ham with a knife and we also learn that Oleg's wolf pendant came from his father. Anyway, Sergey and Oleg succeed and take out all the mercenaries but Vad is gone. Oleg is tired and hurt. Cut back to Lera: she disarms Altan and puts the sword to Altan's neck. He comments that she's not kilingl him and she says he needs to go to jail, but he basically scoffs and says he'll be out in a day, he's rich and powerful like Sergey, death is the only option. But before that can go anywhere, Vad appears from behind Lera and throws her off the platform, hitting the stairs a few floors below hard. Vad carries Altan off, Sergey helps Oleg to the car, and then goes back for Lera, who's unconscious and bleeding from her nose

Now we get to volume 10, where we have 3 stories. Sergey's and Oleg's revolve around them talking about their emotions and relationship (no, I'm not exaggerating lmao). We also find out Lera had to go to the hospital and is resting at home now, but more on her later. Sergey cleans Oleg's wounds and redoes his bandages. Oleg confesses he was angry with Sergey about not listening to him, and that Sergey can't decide if Oleg is his 'friend, partner, or subordinate'. Yes, PARTNER. Anyway, they resolve that spat, and talk about the 5 bullets too, and Oleg says that out of all he's done, that's the thing Sergey had the least responsibility in and thus he shouldn't feel guilty. Sergey goes to get more supplies and dinner and thinks to himself that Oleg is wrong, Sergey lost control so it is his fault, and he still loves to kill people. He worries about keeping control of that else it'll destroy their relationship.

At the restaurant, he runs into Vad, but both of them are unarmed, so they just talk. Vad doesn't take Altan seriously as a boss it seems, and Sergey asks why Vad didn't participate. Vad just says he was curious to see how it'd go. Sergey notes Altan could've died but Vad just says he didn't. They part with Vad warning Sergey about that Altan isn't the scariest thing in the city and that Sergey has now attracted the attention of far worse people. Sergey scoffs, ignoring the warning

Then Altan's story opens with his father being assassinated by a mysterious order that is present in Igor Grom, followed by a flashback to Altan first arriving in St Petersburg to enact his plans. The rest is about him in Hong Kong, angry, training with Vad. Yuma, his sister, calls him in to talk. Yuma runs the whole gang and she is absolutely not impressed with how Altan fumbled the Plague Doctor situation. She says that a man who hates his enemy can't think straight. Altan protests, says he never wanted this life, wasn't trained from birth to take over the clan like she was. But he'll get Sergey next time, he swears. She threatens him, points a knife at him, and says that if he can't, she will deal with it, the way she usually does

The last is Lera's where she has a nightmare about a horrible bird creature using her as a puppet and a monstrous Altan killing her family and then her. She wakes up to her worried mother. We see that Lera's ribs were broken and she is just COVERED in bruises. Her family is worried, but Lera insists she fell from an icy railroad crossing. None of them believe her. Kirill asks if Sergey is her boyfriend and is beating her but she scoffs and dismisses that and explains how exhausted she is and how she doesn't have the energy to keep arguing about this. Meanwhile, her mother meets with some friends (also characters from Igor Grom) and confesses her worries. They say they have police connections who can help - the connection turns out to be Dima. He talks to Lera but she sticks with her story, though she does ask if anything really does happen, can she call him, and he says yes and gives her his card. He goes back to her family and tells them to trust her, she'll tell the truth in time. There's another nightmare and this time Lera frees herself. She vows that she doesn't want to be Sergey's puppet anymore. She's the Plague Doctor now and he'll have to admit it

There's then a final scene of someone buying a lot of meat at a corner store and beating the shit out of some assholes there. Like as in with supernatural strength. It's revealed at the end this person is Chrysalis, another Igor Grom character, who is a serious threat. Vad's words about a more serious threat are written again

OKAY and 11 lmao. 11 is a crossover with Major Igor Grom. We get a flashback of Rubenstein talking about how special and weird Sergey is, and how he must treat this entirely new form of mental illness that is Bird. Of course, we know he loses Sergey when he escapes, so he talks about his next 3 patients (Poet, Chrysalis, and the third I can't remember the name of - these are also Igor Grom characters). They had potential but they don't have what he's looking for and they're uncontrollable, killing patients, so he has to "hide them somewhere no one will find them". He also talks about Igor and how he's promising but resisting treatment. Rubenstein is insistent on finding a cure, no matter the cost

Next scene is Sergey having a nightmare about Igor and a mirror, and then we get into some new characters, some cultists taking about a "cleansing" they need to do. We're next introduced to Max and Banu, police officers who've been looking into the Dagbaev case, and they're looking for clues on the 15 bodies serovolk left at the warehouse. It's all very odd for the Dagbaevs to leave bodies behind. Charon, the medical examiner, is also introduced. Max is the prosecuter's son and so he gets the baby treatment by being partnered with Banu, as she's a lot older and more cautious. Max is sick of it, wants to do more exciting things, like the famous Igor does. But, due to the higher ups wanting it to happen, Banu, despite her protests to them, informs Max they've been given the Plague Doctor case and he's thrilled

They investigate for a bit and ultimately decide to call Igor for info. Igor reluctantly agrees to chat. His analysis is that the person on the roof wasn't Sergey and that Igor would've known if it was, but that this whole scheme could either be him or a very convincing copycat - it's his style. Igor confesses that it worries him that this could be Sergey and Igor says he never wants to see him again. He doesn't want to lose anyone else he cares about. He hopes Sergey agrees. Banu and Max leave him alone after that, not involving him in the investigation

Then we get to see Sergey! He's at a museum, looking at a famous Botticelli piece and enjoying it greatly. There's a flashback to him and Oleg talking. Oleg is in bed, still healing, and tells Sergey can't you wait, you need to be careful. Sergey says he just won't be able to wait and he'll be careful, it's a museum, it'll be fine. Oleg reluctantly agrees so Sergey tells him he'll be back by 8 to help change his bandages. Back at the museum, Sergey is approached by a stranger who starts talking about all the people in the museum. Sergey is annoyed, tells him repeatedly to go away. Then some people with guns come in and the stranger explains that they are cultists, who believe everyone there is lost and needs to be "saved" (by being killed) and that the art is a symbol of paganism, which is corrupting them. The stranger is then revealed to be Poet, saying 'so, should we talk now, Sergey?'. Which means he knows who Sergey is

And that's the end! I tried to include the important details but this still only a summary lmao. I highly recommend finding a way to read them when you have the chance, they're SO good omg

[whoredmode]

What is Dex's relationship like with Kiki, Viola, and Oleg? And what is Oleg's relationship like with the DeWynter twins?

Does Kiki still die in your rewrite? If she does, how does her death affect Dex? How did Loren's death impact Dex?

Does Matt Miller still join the Saints in your rewrite?

ooh fun questions. always happy to answer rewrite stuff

to preface i’ll link a longer post i did explaining the syndicate side of things in the rewrite; some of this is answered in that but i’m happy to talk about it again. also putting a readmore bc this got a bit longer than i thought haha

so kiki and viola had been undercover, rising in the ranks of the syndicate long before dex ever joined ultor. they’re mercenaries hired by ultor to get information on the syndicate and eventually kill loren; i’d say they started their mission around 2005-2006, eventually becoming loren’s right hands around 2009-ish. though dex was made head of security probably around 2008-09, he wasn’t made aware of these sorts of more shadowy, espionage-based missions as his work primarily dealt with stilwater and the surrounding areas (nor do i think dex was that interested (at the time) in ultor’s more international dealings since i hc he was made head of security unwillingly). that isn’t to say he wasn’t aware of who loren was, he just didn’t know that kiki and viola were undercover spies being paid by ultor.

so when dex flees ultor and seeks loren’s protection in late 2011, he just assumed the twins were always part of the syndicate. not to say he isn’t suspicious of them—bc he’s suspicious of everyone at that point—but as far as he knows they’re not going to hurt him. but as we know, their objective changes once eric gryphon, acting as the new CEO and as someone who knew kiki and viola back then due to his work in weapons manufacturing, orders them to kill dex and loren. anyway all that to say, dex’s relationship with the twins is very much just. strictly professional. he’s not looking to get to know them, and to them he’s just another target.

oleg’s an interesting one. lemme link my posts on rewrite oleg (if you’re interested) bc i’ve made his story different than what’s in the game—he’s an assassin from an old crime family that’s been held prisoner and tortured by loren for years. i hc the dynamic between oleg and loren to be a very longstanding one—very personal and filled with extreme mutual hatred. i don’t think loren would ever allow dex to be aware of oleg. he wants to eliminate the possibility of dex even thinking about oleg. i’m sure oleg becomes aware of dex, just through hearing through the walls and whatnot. oleg’s relationship with the twins is similarly bitter, mainly because they likely took part in the torture. perhaps even as an initiation of sorts to become loren’s second-in-commands. after oleg and viola both join the saints they just kinda avoid each other; i think their relationship in the saints plays similarly to how it does in-game. they’re distrustful of each other.

loren’s death didn’t really have much of a personal effect on dex initially, because he just assumed that meant he was finally free of their arrangement and he could leave steelport. now that he knows the saints are there, he wants to leave to avoid seeing them since he believes anteros is gonna kill him. however, killbane won’t let him leave. that whole scene of killbane taking control of the syndicate plays like it does in-game: dex says he’s leaving, as do the twins, but killbane grabs kiki and snaps her neck, warning dex that he’s next if he doesn’t stay right there. killbane only has one dex. kiki’s death scares dex more than anything; he feels bad for viola, but it mostly just gives him a deeper sense of dread. he fears that he’s going to be stuck here forever. however with dex still being stuck in the syndicate, when viola leaves for the saints, she uses dex as a bargaining chip. she can give them all the information she has if they help her kill killbane. without her sister, she has nothing left to truly work for, so she abandons their mission of killing dex.

matt miller does NOT join the saints. he’s way too scared of them. they spare him after johnny beats him within an inch of his life because he also has useful intel, but johnny also shoots him in the foot and they allow him to hide in the penthouse for a few days to heal a bit and give them everything he knows before they send him back to england. he does return in the sriv rewrite, working/studying under asha. asha is leading part of a joint investigation on the philosotology cult and their illegal dealings (Z is originally from the UK so that’s why this concerns them at all), and the saints end up crashing an operation. this is how they cross paths again. asha tells matt not to work with them, but anteros puts a gun to his head later and oops now they’re involved in this too.

[the-girl-in-the-box]

Not Today XXXII

A/N: It's wedding time, folks! Which, of course, means new drama, and toward the end here, new trauma. Why do I do this to these characters? Because the plot demands it, I'm afraid. But hey, hopefully it makes for good reading. So, with that said, I hope you enjoy! Skål!

Summary: When Ivar takes the throne of Kattegat, Lagertha flees to Wessex along with Björn, Ubbe, Torvi, and the Bishop Heahmund. There, they seek the aid of King Alfred. This aid comes in the form of his sister, Aethelind, who agrees to travel to Kattegat and try to reason Ivar, who she spent some time with during their youth, when her grandfather King Ecbert hosted Ragnar Lothbrok in their castle. Now, she is the only hope for Lagertha and her supporters to retake Kattegat from Ivar the Boneless.

Masterlist

--

The palace was buzzing with activity as the wedding of Prince Oleg and Princess Katia drew ever nearer, and Asta found herself glad that the Prince and Princess were both kept rather distracted and busy with the arrangements for the occasion. This meant that she and Ivar had almost entirely unrestricted time to theirselves, and also an abundance of free time with Igor. It was easy enough now to get time with him, so they could grow closer and closer to the boy, until they’d grown so close to him, that he almost felt like…

Well, Asta had grown to think of him like a son. Their son, truly, though she’d never referred to him as such with Ivar. It wasn’t that she couldn’t see such a bond forming between the two, it was more that she knew that could force a discussion between them about what exactly they were, what they meant to each other. They didn’t realize they were very much on the same page, the care for each other being quite strong in them both, that it was even the same kind of care. Of course, they both remembered the kiss they’d shared in Novgorod- or, the kisses, really- but they hadn’t kissed again since, for fear the other hadn’t really meant it.

But the wedding was coming, and on the day of, both Asta and Ivar seemed to have the startling revelation that they’d be expected to attend, as the guests of Prince Oleg. As his honored guests, what with almost the whole of Rus believing she was Ivar’s Queen. This had sent them both into a frenzy of getting ready as quickly as they could, even down to braiding each other’s hair so that they didn’t waste time on fumbling with each braid themselves.

Ivar found himself stunned into silence at the sight of Asta in such formal apparel as they were expected to wear for the wedding. He’d not seen her dressed like a Princess since before the Siege of Kattegat. Since then, she’d put her everything into being a Shieldmaiden, and appearing as such, so it was a shock to him to see her dressed this way, now. But, there was a difference now.

Now, she wore a dress more like those the women of Kattegat had worn- the Queens of Kattegat had worn. Her hair was done in many braids, giving her a look which still very much called back to a Shieldmaiden, and her eyes were lined black, only adding to the look. Truthfully, she looked exactly like he knew a Shieldmaiden Queen would look, sitting in the Great Hall to hold court. This brought about Ivar’s second startling revelation of the day.

He gave a small hum, which brought Asta’s attention to him with raised brows, expectant. She even prompted him with the question of, “Yes?” which she spoke with quite the same tone as if she were asking if she could help him. This only caused Ivar to chuckle softly.

“I was only thinking how you would look sitting on the throne of Kattegat,” he confessed, and her eyes widened a bit.

“The throne?” she questioned. “I’d have to be Queen to sit there, wouldn’t I?”

“Mm, you would,” he confirmed, nodding slowly. “But I think you would make an excellent Queen. Don’t you?”

Asta chuckled softly, shaking her head a bit and leaning against the wall. “If you think a Saxon woman would make an excellent Viking Queen, then perhaps,” she said. Her answer had been far less committal than he’d have liked, but he didn’t figure he could do very much about that. Not without pushing a bit for a more exact answer, of course, which he was not at all above doing.

“I would think so,” he said. “You are not just any Saxon woman, though, are you?” She gave him a pointed, yet amused look. “You were born to be Princess of Wessex. A role you have… given up, yes, but one you were still prepared for most of your life. You would have been taught the sorts of things which make a successful Queen, wouldn’t you?”

With a deep breath, she did nod. “I would have been, yes,” she conceded. “But you are the son of Ragnar Lothbrok. You’re the heir to his throne, not me. If we return to Kattegat, triumphant, then you will be King, and I would be your Prophet again.”

“Maybe so,” he said, “but either way, I would like to have a Queen, and you are the most fit I can think of.”

Asta chuckled softly. “That would require I be your wife, you realize?” she pointed out, and the way he smirked made her cheeks flush pink. She blinked a few times. Oh. Well, then that was his whole point, wasn’t it? He was telling her a very specific intention he had when they eventually returned to Kattegat, and the thought made her blush.

He wanted to marry her there.

That, or they were preparing to attend a wedding, and he was messing with her. Messing with her, or… trying to see how she felt on the idea? The lack of certainty as to his meaning by presenting this idea to her made her shift a bit in place, and eventually just answer, “We can’t be late. Oleg will serve our heads at the feast after,” before ducking out the door.

She could hear him laughing to himself at her response, and her cheeks burned a little hotter in her embarrassment. Probably, it was only the impending wedding putting thoughts in his head of what he might like when all of this was done. Maybe it was true, he wanted to marry again, and she was the only woman he felt close enough to that he felt comfortable considering it with her. But surely that would change, if they only met some Viking woman who was better suited for him to be Queen in Kattegat.

What Asta didn’t realize, was that Ivar didn’t think there was a woman better suited to the position, to the throne, than she was. She knew and loved the people there, had been close to the Queen who had served during her time there, and now was close to him. Not only that, but she could fight better than any shieldmaiden he had met on the battlefield, and had been trained in the art of ruling a Kingdom before she left Wessex. Add her loyalty to him, and the connection he was fairly certain they shared? No, he couldn’t think of a better woman to be his Queen than Asta the Prophet.

They ended up walking to the wedding together, of course, but neither of them could quite find it in themselves to speak. It was incredibly clear how strange this would feel, to watch a woman who so closely resembled Freydis to them, marry a man who wasn’t Ivar- and a man neither of them trusted so far as they could throw him, at that. No, it wasn’t a pleasant day at all.

But still, they were escorted to a place of honor when they arrived, close enough they would be able to see the wedding take place with no difficulty, and they shared an uncomfortable glance as the wedding got underway. It was torture to them both.

Nothing felt any better as they watched the rings be placed on Katia’s and Oleg’s fingers, as their hands were bound together by a pure white cloth, and as crowns were placed on both their heads. Each of them holding a candle in their free hands, they began to follow the priests around the altar in a circle, and as they came around, both Prince and Princess looked to those they believed to be rightful King and Queen, though Oleg looked away before Katia did. Asta wrapped her arm around Ivar’s, hoping to bring him some slight comfort as he watched the woman who looked so much like his late wife, who he still couldn’t be sure wasn’t her, marry another man.

After all, how much would Asta’s own heart ache if she had to watch Ivar do the same?

They ended up being brought to feast privately with the newly wedded couple once the wedding was over, and as they sat, Ivar decided to speak up, to make sure he and his wife were in a good place with them both still, as strange as things had seemed during the ceremony.

“May we be the first to congratulate the bride and the groom on this momentous day?” he said, and lifted his drink in a toast. “Skål.”

Asta, Oleg, and Katia all returned the toast, taking a sip of their drinks in turn, though Oleg spoke up to say, “And may Odin, Frey, and Freyja also bless our marriage.”

“Yes,” Katia agreed. “To Odin, the Allfather. And to Frey, and Freyja.”

Oleg dismissed the servants who were waiting on the group, and they all bowed, before slipping quietly from the room. Asta watched them go, always perceptive to everything happening in the room. The poisoning of Prince Askold had warned her to be ever on guard with Oleg.

“To Odin,” he toasted, once the servants had all gone. “And the gods. Skål.” Asta wasn’t sure why he seemed to be toasting what he just had, but she figured the difference must lie in a toast to the gods, as opposed to a toast in hopes that their marriage would be blessed by the gods. Still, it made very little sense to her, in all honesty. “Katia told me that she reminds you two of someone,” Oleg began, as Ivar and Asta set their cups down. They each lifted a brow, and then looked between themselves in slight concern. Though, it should be noted only they could read that expression, from so long of being in such close quarters. Neither of them could be a closed book to the other, not anymore.

They also glanced to Katia herself, before Ivar finally nodded, and confirmed, “Yes. My first wife.” They had to be careful when Freydis came up, not to accidentally give away that Asta was not his wife now.

“You had a child with your wife, no?” Oleg questioned then. Ivar shifted uncomfortably, and Asta’s eyes narrowed. She knew she needed more tolerance for Oleg and his games, but she found her patience with him often running quite thin.

Well, not when he played his games with her. She could tolerate someone messing with her. But when she cared for someone, she couldn’t bring herself to tolerate someone messing with them. And this conversation turning to Baldur, Ivar’s lost son… She was already gearing up to argue Oleg down from this topic if she must.

Ivar remained silent for quite a long while, thinking something over for a good bit of time. Asta, having not been involved in quite a few of Oleg’s conversations with her ‘husband’, wasn’t shocked to hear him ask about this. But Ivar was, and so when he spoke, it was to ask, “How did you know that?”

“I know a great many things about you…” Oleg replied vaguely. Asta’s guard went further up. “Ivar the Boneless.” He paused a moment, before asking, “Am I not a Prophet?”

“I have my doubts,” Asta answered honestly, and all eyes turned to her in complete shock. “Unless the gods reveal all things differently to each of those they choose to speak to, it appears you simply have excellent information, information I know you have ways of finding out besides hearing it from the gods.”

She referred to what he’d said about Princess Anna, how he’d known she would be marrying Prince Dir before they’d even been wed, and Oleg’s eyes narrowed as he realized this.

“You are questioning if I speak the truth when I say I am a Prophet, then?” he asked, tilting his head just slightly. It was meant to be a threat, but Ivar watched with curiosity- and truthfully, a touch of pride- as Asta didn’t back down, and only narrowed her own eyes. She was retaliating, beat for beat.

“I am,” she confessed. “All information I have ever been given by the gods has been far less… precise than this, as I know it was for the Seer in Kattegat, while he still lived. So unless they speak to you more directly, in less of a riddle than anything they have spoken to us, I would doubt your information truly does come from them. Not in the way you claim it does, anyhow.”

“You should be careful in your accusations, Queen Asta,” Oleg said, his voice low and threatening. “Questioning me is questioning what the gods have shown me, and who knows what the gods may show me about you?”

Ivar watched incredulously as she leaned forward, her arms crossed on the table now to hold herself up, and her lips stretched into an easy, almost dangerous smirk. “And who knows what they will continue to show me about you?” she replied.

It was brilliant, and Ivar almost grinned with pride. Oleg sat back, and the battle of wills was won by the woman he was convinced now was sent to him to be his Queen. Who else could have worded that so brilliantly as to make it seem her questioning came because the gods had revealed something already, not because of what she didn’t believe they had? Sometimes, he truly wondered if she were not aided by the silvertongued trickster himself. Then again, if Asta didn’t believe in Loki, he couldn’t be sure if he would help her or not. Maybe Loki was helping him, then, through Asta? He couldn’t say, though her mastery of words made him wonder.

The air in the room had become tense and uncomfortable, even if it was slightly diffused by the end of the contest, and Katia gave a strained smile, before standing and approaching her new husband. “Do you mind if I take off this dress?” she asked him. “It’s too hot in here.”

“Of course, my darling,” he replied, and the perfect revenge on Asta came to him. “I’m sure our friends won’t mind.”

“They can help,” Katia said, and turned to walk to their end of the table. Asta stood and stepped forward, as if to help. Ivar looked very much like a startled deer. Because she’d stepped up, Katia asked, “Can you… undo it, Asta?”

Ivar was clearly miserable as Asta nodded, and set to work undoing the back of Katia’s dress, pulling it down off her shoulders once it was done. But it wasn’t what Asta was doing that made him uncomfortable, no. It was the look on Oleg’s face as she did so. In fact, Ivar found himself standing as Katia thanked Asta, smiling at her and letting her hair fall around her shoulders once she took the comb out from it.

“We should go,” Ivar said to Asta, putting a hand on her shoulder to draw her attention to him. His eyes- readable still only to her- were silently begging her not to make a fuss, and to just agree with him. “My legs are…” He cracked an embarrassed smile, tilting his head side to side as if to say they weren’t feeling well.

“Aching?” she supplied, and nodded. “Of course, my love.” She lifted her hand to cup his cheek affectionately, then turned to Katia and Oleg, who seemed surprised at this.

“Oh, but you have to stay,” Oleg countered. “It would be good for you.”

“No,” Asta protested. “We really must be getting him to bed. He stood for quite some time at the ceremony earlier, he needs to rest his legs, now.”

Katia sighed, as if disappointed, and pressed a kiss to Asta’s cheek, then her other cheek. The Shieldmaiden knew that was a common form of greeting, in some places, and so didn’t question it, but did return the gesture. “We are happy to have had your company for the time we’ve had it, then,” she said graciously. “And we hope to have it again soon.”

“Of course, Princess,” Asta replied, and smiled to her, before simply nodding to Oleg, and taking Ivar’s arm so they could go.

Oleg glared at her retreating form, the moment she’d turned her back to him.

The rest of the day passed without very much of note, as Asta really had taken Ivar back to their chambers and convinced him to go to bed. He’d been frustrated, but as his legs had actually been aching, he’d finally conceded and laid down- especially once he realized she intended to lay down with him, curled into his side as always.

Their conversation turned naturally to the meal they’d shared with Oleg and Katia, and he commended her for the way she handled Oleg. It was another point to her being an excellent Queen one day, he’d said, and she’d simply given him a light smack on the chest before telling him to go on to sleep. Amused, he’d laid back and promised to do as she wished, even calling her ‘Your Majesty’, which had earned him a roll of her eyes.

But she was amused as well, he could tell, and so he’d fallen asleep with a smirk on his face, and the woman he intended to make his Queen in his arms. And, for most of the night, they slept in peace.

That peace ended in the early hours of the morning, when Asta sat up gasping for breath, her eyes filled with unshed tears as she panted, her chest heaving as if she had great difficulty breathing, and Ivar quickly sat up with her, his arm wrapping around her shoulders immediately.

“My love, what is it?” he asked her, a near panic laced in his voice which she might reflect on later, as well as the way he had addressed her. But for the time being, she felt as though she were choking on grief, on pain and on a devastation she seemed to feel calling out from the earth. It was all she could do to choke out her response.

“Lagertha.”

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[pomegranates-and-blood]

Maybe Death Gives Up On Us

My Masterlist

Maybe We Meet Again (prequel to this)

Pairing: Ivar/Reader

Summary: The second and final part of the sequel of In Another Life, set in a Modern!AU.

Word Count: 3.7k

Warnings:  Mentions of death, descriptions of violence and death, major character death (past), angst (a lot of it), nothing else I can think of.

A/N: So, this is it. Idk how I feel about this tbh, but I hope you’ll like it. Thank you! Love you!!

Taglist: @youbloodymadgenius​ @xbellaxcarolinax​ @1950schick​  @heavenly1927​ @ietss​  

You haven’t seen him in two weeks. After silently dropping him off at his -yours? Is it still?- apartment, you managed to distract yourself working on the information the stone ship, and the identity of the shieldmaiden that lay buried at the center of it, provided for your university, for your investigation.

But each night, when you close your eyes and you still see the wide and scared eyes of the man you love looking back at you in a mix of disbelief and grief, centuries dawn on you, memories choke you, and you are forced to face the realization Ivar, the quick-witted and endearing, guarded and loving, man you’ve known and loved for almost a year was the same one you saw in your nightmares, his knife in your heart, his teary eyes on yours, his lips whispering promises of love.

And so you go to him. For your sake, but, you dare think, also for his.

When he opens the door, you are stunned into silence. Gods, the eyes are still the same, and for so long you hoped that familiarity to be a trick of Fate, and not…not the reality that his eyes were in fact those of the man in your -her?-memories.

“Why are you here?” Ivar asks, and it strikes you how much like the man in your memories he looks.

He always did, but now…now you see the cruelty, the vitriol, the resentment. They were always there, the anger and the explosiveness are still the same but…but there’s an unhinged side to it all, and it reminds you so much of…of those last days.

You close your eyes tight for a moment, clearing your throat and stepping into the apartment.

“I…wanted to see how…how you’re faring.”

“I’m losing my fucking mind, Princess,” Ivar confesses, and where you think he meant for there to be bite and anger and resentment, all you find is desperation and fear and pain. He shrugs, and his eyes cannot meet yours, “Or I’ve lost it already, I don’t know.”

“You’re not going to lose your mind, Ivar.” You point out, letting out a sigh.

“I think I did, you know,” He confesses, hesitantly, a little lost. He shakes his head, running a hand over loose hair -hair that for some reason you expected to see in braids you once knew by heart-, “After I killed Oleg. I think…I ran out of people to blame and I-…”

You interrupt him, even though a part of you clings to his words, clings to the confession like who holds their hand over a burning flame, begging to feel pain if only to make sense of the world.

“Not you. It wasn’t you.”

“Why do I remember it then, hm?” Ivar presses, anger back in his tone, “Why do I remember…remember when I almost drowned on the way to Wessex, when we took Mercia and the Isles and you promised to marry me? Why do I remember when I-…?”

His voice wavers and dies, and Ivar grits his teeth, averting his eyes from yours. It does nothing to hide the agony in his gaze, the tears in his eyes.

You try finding the calm, the certainty, that you’ve held on to ever since you found yourself remembering.

“It is not unheard of, that some people may-…”

“Are you going to start talking about reincarnation, Princess?” He chuckles, but it is watery and broken.

“All I’m saying is that there is proof that cycles repeat. The Ancient Greeks spoke of some souls that given the choice to remain in the Elysian fields, their…Valhalla,” Ivar’s eyes turn to you with sharp focus, and you know he remembers the countless conversations where she wondered on what Valhalla truly meant. Still, you continue, “or return to the living, they chose to return, to live again.”

“That’s why you-…” He takes a deep breath, before he tries finding his voice again. You’ve never seen Ivar so…fragile, with the stance of a man that’s tethered by a thin string onto the safe side of a cliff. He swallows, and meets your eyes again, “That’s why you found me? To prove reincarnation is a thing?”

You shake your head before he is even done asking the question. Because still, past everything, you cannot fathom seeing the fragility in his eyes, the fear that it was a lie.

“I didn’t know you were-…I didn’t know you also remembered.”

“But you took me to y-your grave, to that ship. A stone ship, because you died too far from the sea, from o-our seas,” He shakes his head, as if trying to fight back against the memories that flood his mind, that come pouring out of his lips. “Why did you take me there? Did you hope I would remember? Remember what I did, what it cost me?”

“No, I-…”

He gestures with his arm, interrupting you. His voice raises, his temper does as well, the fury and desperation shining clearly in his pale eyes.

“Why, then!? To torment me, for…for what I did?” He huffs a breath, running his hand through his hair, “You did that plenty, you didn’t have to find me I don’t know how many centuries later to torture me for it, Princess.”

You close your eyes tight, and your hands curl into fists, anything to keep you in one piece, anything to keep you from breaking apart at the seams.

“Stop calling me that. You remember, which means you know what it means.”

“Why do you call me that?”

“‘Princess’?”

You nod, “My father is an Earl, Ivar. You are the Prince.”

“Mhm,” He concedes, and in someone that didn’t know him like you do the way he focuses on spinning the round-handled knife in his finger would be nothing but a nonchalant gesture. But you know better, and so you stay silent. Ivar clears his throat, before he offers, “I could make you a Princess, one day. I-If you wanted.”

Your heart lurches in your chest, and the start of a wide and stupid smile spreads on your lips. Leave it to him to bring up the possibility of one day marrying you like this.

Your hands find the sides of his face, and you bring your forehead to rest against his before you whisper, as softly as you can,

“I have no interest in being a Princess, Ivar,” Before his thoughts can get ahead of him, before he can build a wall so high not a thousand years of war would make a dent on them, you press your lips against his for a moment, before whispering, “But I’d love to be your wife.”

“Do you remember all of it?” Ivar asks, and you frown.

“Why do you ask?”

“Would you have done it?” He asks, and you both pretend to ignore how his voice wavers, “If I hadn’t stopped you, would you have joined Björn against me?”

You know what the real questions are: Was the murder in vain? Was the promise of betrayal nothing but a ruse? Did she die for nothing? Did he have other choice?

You cannot give him the answer, if only because it would mean accepting that he is…him, and that you are…her. And you cannot accept that.

That certainty that it is only memories what returns is what has kept you sane for these past weeks.

“She wasn’t-…”

“Not ‘she’,” He corrects, leaning closer. His eyes burn as they meet your own, “You.”

You still shake your head, pretending to be resolute, “It is not proven that anything other than memories rema-…”

“Why do you insist on denying who you are!?”

Rough fingers trace up and down your spine, and you nestle closer to the warmth, content and sated.

“I always wonder…” Ivar starts, and you hum to signal you are listening, “Why it is you are always so calm, so…courteous with everyone else. But you are always so easy to grow angry with me.”

“You have a talent for getting under my skin,” You confess, pressing a kiss over a new mark that starts showing on his neck, a small little proof that he is yours. After a breath, your lips curve into a mischievous smile, and you drag your teeth over that same, now sensitive, spot. “And I don’t hear you complaining, my love.”

And you realize with gut-wrenching clarity that never changed. Each time his voice raises so does yours, each time his temper flares so does yours to meet it.

And so you raise your chin and square your shoulders, never missing the weight of a shield at your back as you do now.

You take a breath shaky breath before you reply, voice raised and eyes shining with more than fury, “Because if I’m her, that means you are h-him!”

There’s tears making their way down your cheeks, there’s a tremble in your hands you cannot control, there’s a brittleness to all that makes you you, but there’s steel in your spine, there’s ice in your veins, there’s an anger that has lasted centuries singing in your blood.

And so you approach him with certain strides, furious eyes set on his and breaking your own heart with the familiarity of the situation.

The memories make your head feel less clouded, less cluttered, but they make your heart feel like it will break in two inside your chest.

The distrusting edge in his eyes, the cruel twist of his mouth, the cold tone of his voice.

The loud fights where he almost dared you to admit loving him was a lie, wild eyes and demanding voice. The quiet nights where you heard the pleas that you were truly his to keep pressed against your skin in between reverent kisses.

“Means you refused to believe I loved you for years on end!”

Your fist clashes against his chest, but Ivar doesn’t react. It feels like talking to a marble statue, to a distant figure of a past not your own, to a monster you read about in books and saw in your dreams.

The smile as he approached Kattegat’s throne after so long, the way he let go of your hand when it came to view.

The silent demand you make a choice: your people, or him. The refusal to acknowledge it was a choice at all after you decided to stay by his side.

“Means you chose a fucking throne over me!”

Even if your words end in a sob, you still hold on to anger, to grief, to the always bleeding, always stinging wound of betrayal.

Pleas not to bring the Rus army to Scandinavia falling on deaf ears, promises that the Rus is only the means to an end, arrogance coating his words as he vows he can control Oleg.

“Means you trusted that Rus bastard more than your own wife!”

Your fist tightens even more, and your head bows for a moment, before you lift your gaze to find his again. To make your fury and your pain meet his regret and his mistakes.

Your head hurting from so many hours crying in silence, holding onto anger and grief and ruin. Your steps those of a woman sentenced for death when you grab your sword and go meet him, meet your Fate.

“Means I…I…I loved you, and you broke my heart!”

And your hand lets go of the tension, just as your body does, and you stand with your back curved under the pain of centuries. And now your open palm rests against his chest, right over his heart.

The heart you once thought you owned. The heart that was more than once, in more than one lifetime, your most precious possession.

There’s tears in his eyes, there’s a sob making its way past parted lips that try to whisper your name.

But there’s certainty in the sharp movement of the knife, there’s finality in the blade that pierces your heart.

“…It means you killed me, Ivar.”

And the last of your strength, of your anger, of your grief, leave you. It doesn’t feel like defeat, though, it doesn’t feel like being crushed under the weight of Fate.

It feels freeing, like relief after trying to stand under a heavy weight for such a long time. Longer than you remember, probably.

Still, maybe because you were never strong enough to hold on to these memories, to this other life; or maybe because that is what strength is when you taste your own blood in your lips, when you know what it is like to have your heart stopped by the one that owns it; you break.

And your hand on his chest is the one thing keeping you upright, before his free hand settles on your back. Where you would have expected the uncertain hold of trying to soothe you, you find Ivar grips you as tightly as he can, holding you towards him with a mix of gentleness and desperation that speaks of pain and regret and love.

You don’t know how long you cry, and scream, and beg to know why. You don’t know how long he holds you, you don’t know how long you hold him.  

He doesn’t say he is sorry, he doesn’t ask for forgiveness. You only hear him say your name, and three words you can still feel reverberating in your chest.

Says both of those things so many times your name doesn’t sound yours anymore, even though it is, it always has been. Says both of those things for so long his voice breaks and yet with each ‘I love you’ he presses against your skin you hear it louder and louder.

You don’t know when he gently pushed you to sit on the bed, but you did, and you have the strange feeling of being an intruder to the room you and he shared before…before he knew who he was, who you were; before you knew who he was.

A whisper of your name, and you lift your gaze from the comforter you were numbly tracing with shaking fingers.

His eyes are red, and you know yours are too. His breath is shaky, and you know yours is too.

“I am…angry,” You confess, absently tracing his cheek with the back of your fingers, “At you and…and at Fate. A-Aren’t you?”

“Fate brought you back to me,” He whispers, hand trapping yours and pressing a kiss to your wrist, right over your pulse, “I found you again, after all I did, after…what I did to you. I can’t think of this as anything other than…”

“A blessing?” You interrupt, a smirk pulling at your lips, “Awfully Christian of you, Ivar.”

Your tease, weak and burdened by the past as it is, manages to make a smile pull at his lips, to make life return to his eyes, to make hi huff a breath than in another life could have been a chuckle.

You smile too, because you cannot help it. Still, you move back, away from where he sits on the bed, and curl over yourself, your back to the headboard and eyes glued to the digital picture frame that loops over and over pictures of you and Ivar.

His voice startles you from comfortable numbness, “How do you…live with it?”

You frown, “Why would I have the answer?”

He shrugs, “You’ve known for months.”

You can’t keep the bite from your tone when you point out, “I didn’t kill you.”

“You did.” He sentences, voice hoarse and avoiding your gaze. You close your eyes, taking a deep breath, trying to find a center, find clarity, find anything past resentment and pain and anger.

Instead of acknowledging his words, you offer, “The theory is that we all return, but…only a few have memories of those times. I talk to some people that…that have remembered too.”

“Does it help?”

“Haven’t met anyone that was stabbed in the heart by the man they loved, so…no, they don’t help much.”

“Anyone that stabbed the woman they loved in the heart?”

“Surprisingly enough, yes,” You sigh, before swallowing past a dry throat. Even if your voice wavers, you confess, “His eyes are familiar.”

“You are a very fortunate man to have her, I hope you know that.” The Rus whispers, dark eyes leaving your husband’s to travel to you. He offers a smile, a smile that speaks of sadness and envy and pain, a smile that for once seems honest.

Ivar keeps calculating eyes on the raven-haired man, and lifts your joined hands to his lips, pressing a deliberate kiss on the inside of our wrist, right over your pulse. Were this any other situation, and it would make a rush of heat travel through you, but now you only watch frozen in your spot as the Viking smiles.

“I know.”

“But you’d do the same thing I did, wouldn’t you? If you found your sweet wife had betrayed you.”

Ivar’s answer is immediate, and the fire in his eyes speaks of anger even if his voice is certain, “She would never.”

Oleg’s eyes narrow, and the smile he offers is once again shallow, once again a lie, once again poison, “I thought so too. Now my heart is broken, and she is in a crypt.”

“My mother…” Ivar starts, a broken sort of wonder shining through his words, “Her eyes are familiar.”

The part of you that even after death refused to stop loving him smiles, and grows warm at the knowledge he now recognizes her.

“Frighteningly so.” You concede with a nod.

“Do you think…do you think she knows? That she remembers?”

“She was once one to see beyond what the rest of us can. I think…I think she still is.”

Ivar sighs, “Gods…”

“It…time makes it make more sense, trust me.” You offer, somewhat sheepishly. What can you say to someone that has just remembered a whole life before this one?

Ivar lays down on the bed, hands at his sides and gaze on the ceiling. You remain sitting, your legs folded before you, your arms holding them close to you, as if to keep you safe, together.

After a while, he breaks the silence, “We were happy, weren’t we? Before?”

You don’t ask which before he means, because the answer remains the same. Before, when he was just the son of some lost legend and you were the unruly daughter of an earl, you loved him and he loved you and you were happy.

Before, when he was leader of the greatest of armies and you were a shieldmaiden known across the land, you loved him and he loved you and you were happy.

Before, even with the weight of defeat on your shoulder and the poisonous snake of dark eyes and darker heart at your backs, you loved him and he loved you and you were happy.

And because Fate granted you another chance, or maybe because the Gods are cruel, you had a before after all those ones. Before, when he was just the man you met in a coffeeshop and you were just a student trying to unveil one of the greatest tragedies -or greatest love stories, depending on who you asked-, you loved him and he loved you and you were happy.

And so the answer is a breath on your lips, light and easy and true, “Yes.”

Problem is, you don’t know what you are supposed to do now. How you are supposed to live with all those befores, with all those afters. With all these memories, memories that make you hate him, and love him, and miss him.

A part of you wishes you would have never known of the past, that you would have never recognized him, or his eyes. But you know even in death you’d know him, you know even in another life you’d miss him.

And so you lay down on the bed next to him, and sigh.

“I never thought you’d…I didn’t take you there on purpose.”

Ivar’s smile is bitter, “Because you hoped it wasn’t me.”

“Need I remind you why, my love?” You point out without missing a beat, too late realizing that is not an endearment you usually use. No…that’s hers. Yours, from…before.

“I haven’t heard you call me that in a long time,” He chuckles. A few beats of silence, and Ivar takes a deep breath, “I’ve missed you. I-I know y-…”

“I understand,” You interrupt him, and in a moment of weakness you reach for his hand. He doesn’t hesitate to return the hold, tight and hinting at desperation. Your eyes fall closed, and you can be somewhere else, in another time, in another life, “I’ve missed you too.”

Ivar takes a breath, and lifts your hand to his lips, pressing a -reverent, familiar- kiss over your fingers, “We can do this, Princess. We can…be happy. We got another chance, I…I don’t want to lose you again.”

“You won’t,” You promise, and it comes easy to you. Many times you promised him the same, and each and every time you meant it with all that you are. “I…I love you, Ivar.”

“In the last life and this one?”

You accept his words with closed eyes and a huff of weak laughter, but the promise is still true, “And all the ones after.”

He lifts himself up on one arm, leaning over you. He is so close to you that you can feel his warmth, familiar and enthralling and his, and your heart beats so quickly in your chest you are certain he can feel it.

It feels long-overdue, it feels like nostalgia and familiarity and a past you loved; when you lean up and kiss him. But it also feels like new, it feels like hope and thrill and a future you want to discover.

It is Ivar who breaks the kiss first, yet it is him that comes back and presses his lips to yours again, stealing your breath and your heart and your sanity.

When he pulls back again and his eyes meet yours, you notice they are the same and yet so different. Yet the feeling in your chest, the smile that curves at your lips, the love you see shining in his eyes, they are all the same.

“You and me, Princess, in this life and the next,” He smiles, “We will make death give up on us.”

____

So, that is it for this story! I would love to know what you think of this, of the ending, of everything really. Hope you enjoyed!!

As always, thank you so much for reading, and I hope you have a great day/night! Love ya!

[ghxst-queen]

What is Dead May Never Die

Freydis’s heart was pounding as she sat with that letter, reading it again and again and again, This... this confession, she’d sworn to herself never to make, and she had to make it. Ever since Ivar had left Kiev, it had been eating her up, gutting her, to have this secret still buried deep inside her chest. He had changed, there in Kiev, changed enough that as he’d been walking away, she’d suddenly felt the urge to tell him. But that quiet voice in her head had yelled Stop! Don’t you remember what he did to you in Kattegat? Don’t you remember the way you fled, thanking the gods that his attempt on your life had not been successful? You can’t tell him the truth now. He’ll do it again.

Her fear had kept her mouth shut, and in the end, she’d watched him go, knowing the truth that she hid from him, knowing that, this time, she truly carried their child, knowing that... that so much had changed from when they had last been in Kattegat. And he was going home, to their home, and she would remain in Kiev, have this child there, and watch over Igor. Someone had to, and she figured she may as well. It wasn’t public knowledge that she carried the child of Ivar the Boneless, and as she began to grow, she knew people would expect that this would be the child of Prince Oleg, who she truly despised now. He had saved her once, and then thrown her to the wolves, so far as she had been concerned, by dropping her right back in with Ivar. It made her glad to know he had died a childless man, and that it was his enemy whose child she carried. 

But ultimately, she thought it good that she had been thrown in with Ivar the way she was, both of them ultimately working with Dir to save Igor. It was said that ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’, and that had ended up being true. There’d been their affair, of course, which she considered to be far more than just a friendly sort of thing- and judging from his confession to her, when they successfully overthrew Oleg, he had considered the same- but she doubted it would have come about at all if they’d not both been working for Dir. Not unless Oleg had had suspicions, and sent her to him to find out. But that was all in the past now, as was Kattegat. This letter she held in her hands, however, was not. She swallowed hard as she read over it once more.

Dearest Ivar,

I sincerely hope this letter has found you safely arrived in Kattegat, and happily settled in there. Kiev has been quieter since you and Hvitserk left, and I would be remiss in not confessing that I miss the noise. Igor studies for much of the day, and Dir is busy undoing much of what Oleg had done. Overall, I find my presence here is less and less needed, except that I am still keeping a careful eye on Igor.

Your child is also doing well, I am told, and the healers here seemed very pleased the last time they checked my health. I am still thankful for your forgiveness, that you did not hold it against me I could not come with you to Kattegat, even though I carried your child. But, I am afraid that is not all I should have asked your forgiveness for.

I kept another secret from you, from the time we met in Kiev until the day you left to return to Kattegat, and even until the moment I finally decided to write this letter, and tell you the truth of it. Or, at least, all that I can without fear of what happens if this letter is intercepted before it arrives with you. Though I find it difficult to find the words to make this confession, now that I am trying to make it. Perhaps I should simply put the words on the page, and forget the presentation? I think that is what you would do, and so I think that is the easiest way to do it myself, if not the easiest way for you to receive this news.

Ivar, you were right about me from the beginning, who I was, and how we had known each other before. You claimed we had a connection, and I claimed to not understand that connection, but I did. I understood every moment how we had known each other before, what things had gone right for us, what things had gone wrong, and how things were left between us. It was that final piece of knowledge that kept me from revealing who I was to you for so long. In truth, I feared that you may wish to ‘finish it’, for lack of better words- make a second attempt, and ensure that you did not fail again. Truly, that was all which kept me from stopping you before you left Kiev, and telling you then. Perhaps I should have. Perhaps you deserved to hear the truth from my mouth, and not my hand, but what is done is done, and this will have to do.

I hope you will not hate me for this. I know, once, you told your men that hatred could never take the place of love. But we both know that is not true, don’t we? So maybe it is too much for me to ask, that you will not hate me for this. In that case, I think I would not be wrong to ask that you do not return to Kiev with the intent of ending my life now, as you could not before. I hope you recognise the trust I am placing in you to make this confession, and... if there is anything you wish to know, then I hope you will somehow allow me to explain, whether it is by returning to Kiev with that purpose in mind, allowing me to return to Kattegat in the same way, or responding to this letter with your questions. Though- I will warn my answers will have to be vague, as I do not trust this letter could not be read before it reaches you.

You were right. I am her, and I hope I have not disappointed you now that you realise it.

Yours,

Freydis

It had taken a lot for her to send that letter, and once the gates of Kiev had closed behind the messenger, she knew there was no turning back. Nor, really, was there any point to waiting. She had no confirmation that Ivar would even respond to her letter, much less do anything else. But the letter was sent, and so all she could do now was continue to prepare for the baby, and if not wait, then hope- hope and pray for the best, whatever that would be. And that would have to be enough, until something changed, if it ever did.

@justoneneck

[ivarswickedqueen]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY LIS

My dear friend @lisinfleur​​ celebrates her birthday today and here is my little gift for this amazing friend of mine ♥  I love you and I am happy and honored that I can call you my friend, babe ♥ 

Paring: Amma x Hvitserk Word account: 3285 Warning: none, oh there are spoilers for 6B, so if you didn’t watch it don’t read it ;) 

Amma was sharpening her sword and her arrowheads and she was afraid to go to sleep, because tomorrow there will be a huge battle between her people and Rus army led by Oleg the Prophet. She has never seen this man, but she heard enough stories about him to fear the day when he could possibly walk into the Kattegat as its new ruler. She also heard that prince Hvitserk Ragnarsson is marching with the Rus army alongside his younger brother Ivar and she didn’t know, what to think about it. The last time she saw Hvitserk was when his own brother Björn wanted to burn him alive because he killed his mother - the most famous shield-maiden in the world - Lagertha. But his other brother Ubbe saved him on Björn’s command and Björn casted him out of Kattegat for good, shouting these horrible words to his face: “I saved you. And do you want to know why I saved you? Because I know you were happy to die. But I don't want you to be happy. No. I don't want you to enter Odin's Hall. I want you to suffer a living death, expelled from Kattegat and the haunts of men, destined to die in a ditch in some forest somewhere, utterly forgotten, wretched, insignificant, unmemorable! Like a flea on a sheep's back. Take him away! He won't survive the winter.” That day Amma couldn’t help herself and she felt so sorry for him. She spent so many days with the young prince. She watched him, when he was sleeping, shivering and murmuring nonsense words under his nose, trembling because he was an addict. He was obviously addicted to mushrooms and his brothers didn’t care enough to help him through the rough times. She knew why he started escaping his problems in the alternate realities created by the mushrooms in his system. His brother Ivar treated him like a dog and mocked him in front of everyone for a very long time, making him feel like a shit even though Hvitserk jumped ship for him and abandoned his beloved brother Ubbe. And when he found someone who finally made him happy, a beautiful girl named Thora, Ivar burned her and her whole family alive. And it was second of Hvitserk lovers who found death in his younger brother’s arms. The slave girl Margrethe was murdered by Ivar’s men even though he never admitted that publicly. Hvitserk suffered so much and he had nobody to care about him so he became this pitiful wreck of human being. She was trying to help him. She tried her best to keep him home, away from the drug dealers. She tried to make him eat properly and drink less ale, but he was stubborn and she had her own duties so she couldn’t be there for him all day. She felt so sad when she found him high as a kite every evening when she came back to the great hall, he was calling Thora’s name, saying the words full of love to someone who was long gone. He saw her everywhere, her burnt body telling him to kill Ivar, to avenge her, but he couldn't do anything, he was scared of Ivar, he was losing his mind and he saw him everywhere. Every shadow in his mind was Ivar, ever strange sound from outside was Ivar, slowly crawling to him, intending to finish him. He was slowly losing his mind and there was nothing she could do to help him.

But the real hell broke loose when he killed Lagertha. She couldn’t help him anymore. She was crying her eyes out when they took him away, tied him up to the stake and lit the fire under him.

But she quickly wiped out her eyes, when he was saved and casted out of the town. She quickly ran to her cabin, she took some food into a bag and few warm furs and clean male clothes that belonged to her brother, she also took one of her old swords and she quickly and quietly run to the woods. She knew that she will find Hvitserk there somewhere. He had nowhere else to run.

She found him after few minutes, trembling under a big tree. She gave him the dry clothes; she wrapped him into the warm furs and lit a fire. She cuddled closer to him, trying to warm him up because he was still trembling. She spent the night in his arms, feeling him hugging her tightly like if his life depended on it. Next morning she gave him the bag with food into one hand and the sword into another and with heavy heart she sent him on his way. She wanted to go with him, but she knew that her brothers would start looking for her soon and she didn’t want to cause him more troubles. And he didn’t show any interest for her to go with him. He seemed like he didn’t care what is going to happen to him. She watched him until he disappeared behind the horizon, thinking that it’s the last time when she saw his face.

And now he is back, leading the Rus army towards Kattegat. He obviously survived the cold winter and met Ivar in the woods. She was more than surprised when she heard that he is with Ivar again. She clearly remembered his terrified face when someone only mentioned Ivar’s name in front of him. Something obviously changed. She was wondering why he came back and for a very brief moment she let herself believe that he came back for her, but it was nonsense. He probably already forgot her face… He came back because he wanted revenge, he wanted to show Björn and Ubbe, that he was still worth something. That he is not some pathetic excuse for a human being. Amma finally put her sword down and changed her clothes and went to bed, trying to get some sleep before the big fight. She wasn’t very successful because she couldn’t fall asleep until four in the morning, Hvitserk’s face kept popping in front of her eyes, making her feel excited and frustrated, because she shouldn’t feel something like this for an enemy.

In the middle of the battle

Amma felt like if this battle took forever. It seemed to her like if it was days ago since Björn rode into the battle on his horse, mortally injured, leading his people into the battle for the last time. It felt like years ago, when her eyes found Hvitserk standing next to Oleg and Ivar. He looked so much better than the last time she saw him. He gained some weight, his hair were clean and braided again, he was sitting astride on his horse, looking majestic, looking around him with clear, intelligent and sober eyes. She could see that his eyes were green again, the blood stains were gone and so were his inner demons. His lips were no longer quivering. He looked again like a mighty warrior and she stopped worrying about him being easily striked down by the defending soldiers. She stopped worrying about him hours ago and right now she started worrying about herself. She was trained shield-maiden, but her arms were becoming weaker and weaker with every hit from their enemies. She let out a frustrated scream and stabbed her sword through the heart of the nearest fighter. But seconds later another two started banging their swords on her shield and she felt that her arms will give up on her soon if she won’t retreat. But she wasn’t a coward, she would stand her ground and fight until her last breath.  She fell on her knees and the bangs falling on her shield became louder and harder. She felt that her shield started slipping out of her hand and she had no control over it anymore. She closed her eyes and prepared herself for the final blow, but it never came. She heard someone shouted above her, and when she opened her eyes again, she saw Hvitserk standing above her, yelling commands and pushing those two soldiers away from her kneeling form.

“Can you stand up?” he asked her and she nodded shakily. Hvitserk’s strong arm pulled her up, but her trembling legs failed her and if he didn’t catch her, she would fall down on the ground again. “I will take care of you this time, sweet Amma,” he said softly and carefully took her away from the battle field in his strong arms, into one of the healing tents. He gently put her down on the bed and shouted at the healers to take care of her. He stepped aside and let the healers do their work, his eyes never leaving her small body. “You can go Prince Hvitserk, we will take care of her,” one of the healers assured him, but he didn’t move. He wanted to personally make sure, that she is OK. It seemed like he didn’t even care what is going on outside the tent. Amma lost her conscience couple times and then she fell asleep. When she woke up she was alone. Or at least she thought that she is alone until she heard angry voices yelling outside the tent. “Where the hell have you been?” Ivar yelled at someone and she shivered. “I just needed to make sure that she is OK, Ivar!” Hvitserk answered, his voice also full of anger. “Who is she? Who are you hiding inside that tent?” Ivar asked again and tried to step inside the tent but Hvitserk stopped him. “Don’t you dare to go inside, don’t you dare to go anywhere near her!” he shouted, obviously trying to stop his brother to go anywhere near Amma. “Listen to me Ivar, I care about this girl, she is the reason why I am still alive. She helped me to survive my darkest days and without her I would never be able to make it to the woods where you found me. I owe her my life! So listen to me very carefully little brother! If anything wrong going to happen to her by your hand , I will hunt you down and blood eagle you on the nearest tree, letting you there as a feast for the crows, do you understand me!!!” he growled the last words. She couldn’t hear Ivar’s answer, but it seemed like he simply nodded, surprised by his brother's sudden burst of protective words. Amma didn’t have time to think about everything she just overheard, because Hvitserk stepped inside the tent and rushed to her, when he noticed that she is awake. “How do you feel Amma?” he asked her, obviously worried if she is OK. “Tired, but happy that I didn’t enter Valhalla today,” she said with light smile and couldn’t take her eyes from his face. She only knew the addicted version of him, and his sober face was much more beautiful and lovable. “Why are you staring at me?” he laughed and gently tucked a strand of her brown hair behind her ear. “You are so handsome, when you are sober,” she blurted and quickly covered her mouth with her injured hand, wincing in pain. “I am so sorry, prince Hvitserk,” she mumbled but he took her hand gently into his and smiled at her bitterly. “My dear Amma, you have every right to tell me the truth into my eyes. You saw me at my lowest point and you didn’t abandon me in those terrible dark times. You were the only light and warmth that kept me alive those days. But I wasn’t aware of it back then. I pushed you away, I yelled at you, I called you names, I refused your help and continued my road to my own destruction. But when Björn kicked me out of Kattegat and when the drugs got out of my system, I started seeing things clearly. I remembered everything. I remembered your encouraging words, telling me, that I can get through the darkness surrounding me, your sweet voice telling me that you believe in me, that you believe I can become the man who I used to be. It was you who made sure that I ate a warm meal every day, it was you, who helped me to lie down on bed and take off my clothes and shoes when I was too drunk to do it on my own. It was you, who was holding me when the nightmares and hallucinations surrounded me in the middle of the night or day. And most importantly, it was you who gave me warms clothes, food and weapon when my own family abandoned me and let me die in the woods. I will never forget that, my sweet, little, caring Amma. I was thinking about you a lot when I was in Kyiv. I was wondering what you were doing. I was worried If Björn hadn’t found out that you helped me and punished you for it. I was wondering if you are still single or if you found a fine man and gave him your heart,” he finally looked at her after his long speech, his eyes full of tears, guilt and love. He left her speechless, but she couldn’t say a word even if she could because he quickly continued. “Amma, I know that I wasn’t very kind to you. You witnessed the worst in me and you stayed by my side the whole time. I would love to show you my better side. I would like to show you the real Hvitserk, son of the great Ragnar Lothbrok. I would love to give you all my love and respect. I would love to cherish you, protect you and take care of you until my last breath. If you let me, my little sweet, courageous shield-maiden,” he smiled nervously and looked at her with so much hope in his beautiful green eyes that all she could do was nod her head and smile kindly at him. She was overwhelmed by his unexpected confession and by her own feelings, because she realized, that she was in love with him for a very long time and that she could be never happy without him. Hvitserk’s face lit with the brightest smile she has ever seen on it and gently kissed her forehead.  

Oleg the Prophet lost the battle and they had to retreat back to Kyiv and Amma didn’t have to think twice about it and left with them, never leaving Hvitserk’s side. She helped Ivar, Katia and Hvitserk to get Igor out of Kyiv and then she came back to Kattegat with the brothers. She didn’t expect warm welcome, especially when she heard that Gunnhild died. And she was right, people were hostile to her, because they saw her as a traitor. She wasn’t son of Ragnar so people of Kattegat did not forgive her so easily. So when Hvitserk told her that he would like to go with Ivar and Harald to go raiding in Anglia and to defeat young king Alfred, she didn’t hesitate and left Kattegat with both brothers. She was excited about the new adventure and about the new lands, but nothing went as they planned. Alfred won the battle and Ivar was stabbed to death and Hvitserk was seriously injured. They were both standing above Ivar’s grave, Amma was silent and let Hvitserk “speak” with his little brother for the last time.

“You don't know this, but you saved my life so many times. And one day, when we meet again, I can thank you. After all, one way or the other, none of us really lived a simple or ordinary life. And who wants to live an ordinary life? So enjoy Valhalla, brother, while it still exists. We can all see the sky darkening. We can all see the Twilight of the Gods. And I trust to be with you in that great defeat. So, hail and farewell, my brother. I wish I had something important to leave on your grave, but I sold my arm-ring to the drug dealer,” Hvitserk ended his speech sadly and Amma quickly started rummaging in her bag. She quietly walked to Hvitserk and put her small hand on his strong shoulder. He looked at her sadly and she took his hand and put something shining into it. “What is that?” he asked and looked at her in disbelieve. “It’s your arm-ring, my love. I bought it back from the drug dealer. One night I noticed that you no are longer wearing it and I asked you about it. You told me, that you sold it and I went back there and bought it back from that dirty scumbag. I thought that you would like it back one day,” she said softly and gave him a small sad smile.  Hvitserk gaped at her, lost for words, feeling another wave of strong love for this little woman. He kissed her hand lovingly, unable to say anything, overwhelmed by his love for her and great sadness of losing his beloved brother.

1 year later

Hvitserk was coming back from one of the successful raids in East Anglia. After Ivar’s funeral he and Amma managed to escape from Alfred and they found safe haven in small kingdom whose king was Ragnar’s old ally and he welcomed his son with open arms. Hvitserk never wanted to be king and rule over lands or to be the most famous Viking who ever lived like Ivar. He wanted to find new lands like Björn when he was younger, but it didn’t interest him anymore. He didn’t want to be a farmer and settler like Ubbe. He wanted a simple Viking life. He wanted to raid, enjoy the rush of a battle, defeat his enemies, gain new lands for his king and after the successful raid go back to his home and find a loving woman inside, waiting for his arrival. He opened the wooden door of his house and smiled happily when Amma jump on her feet, rushing to him as fast as the huge belly allowed her to. “Hello, my love. How was the raid?” she asked him after she welcomed him with a long tender kiss. “Successful, the slaves will bring my share tomorrow. But tell me, how is my little boy doing?” he asked lovingly and gently stroked her belly. “He was a good little boy, but he is like his father, always hungry. I ate almost everything I found here,” she pouted and Hvitserk chuckled happily. “Ok, give me few minutes and I will get you more food from the market,” he winked at her, ready to rush out and buy some food and quickly return back home to her. “No need to rush, my love. Me and little Ivar will wait for you here,” she said softly and he looked at her surprised. “You want to name him Ivar?” he asked her with trembling voice, clearly moved by her suggestion. “If you agree, it would be an honor for our son to be named after his fearless, strong, intelligent uncle, who meant so much for his father,” she said and Hvitserk quickly walked to her and kissed her lovingly, caressing her cheeks with his thumbs. “I love you so much Amma,” he confessed. “I love you too, my sweet Hvitserk,” she smiled happily and her stomach made a loud noise. “Alright, alright, I am going for the food, don’t worry son,” Hvitserk chuckled and left the cabin, happier than any of his family members were in long decades.