harley-bell

[casliveblog]

Custom Toonami Block Week 147

Spy X Family: So they really try to sell that this episode is going to be about Yor murdering someone but you can basically call it from minute one that this is about her learning to cook since the cuts on her fingers are way too small to be from murder work and her murder work never seemed to affect her mood before. They do end up spicing it u a bit by tying it into the end of the Dog Arc where Yor thinks her cooking is the reason why Loid was gone all day and they hook it into her bitchy coworker being the one to teach her so those are some nice touches, even if I feel like since we’ve seen Loid and Anya at work for a lot of these episodes some more time with Yor’s assassin work would actually do us some good but I guess we’re trying to avoid a seinen tone here. They even throw Yuri in there which seems like a bad idea given her coworkers are some of the people that can verify that she only just got married and Yuri’s still under the impression that she got married a year ago, but luckily it never comes up. Camilla’s dynamic with her husband here during the lesson is really cute and through the power of flashbacks and motherly love they do manage to get Yor to make one dish that’s not entirely poisonous and she starts thinking about the whole ‘this family is about more than what I entered it for’ thing that happens at the end of every story arc. Also there’s a minor B-plot about Scruffyhead liking a girl and Loid helping him practice asking her out and he gets shot down anyway, it’s brief and funny so it doesn’t overstay its welcome but if I learned anything from Inuyasha filler you can really get a lot of comedy mileage out of weird romantic rehearsals and they kinda yadda yadda over Loid dressing in drag to pretend to be asked out by his best friend which could’ve been pretty funny. But they have a nice scene drinking together after where Loid’s all ‘relationships aren’t for people in our business’ like an informant’s gonna have the exact same life or death stakes as a spy and like the series isn’t going to end with the Forgers staying together anyway.

Inuyasha: It’s the second part of the Kikyo special and this part of the timeline has always been a little confusing since they kinda retcon some of it partway into the series and it’s intentionally jumbled up even then, so here’s really the only place we get to see it all laid out chronologically and it’s kind of a patchwork of filler and clip show which makes it really kind of obvious when they switch back and forth because they didn’t re-animate any existing scenes. It is kinda fun how they kinda stitch together that Inuyasha and Kikyo basically had their own series before this where they were traveling around slaying demons like he and Kagome end up doing. But yeah Inuyasha and Kikyo continue their romantic fling and the whole Naraku thing happens and I am kinda glad they remembered not to show him with Kagewaki’s face because he didn’t take on that appearance until Sango’s arc (though he apparently keeps it from then on no matter how many times he’s reincarnated and usually his head’s the only thing to never be destroyed so maybe Narkau’s just weird and vain and REALLY likes Kagewaki’s face who knows). After Naraku sends some mook demons after the jewel Kikyo recognizes her romance is causing her to lose focus and holy power because she’s only spending 23 hours a day praying and training and hanging out with Inuyasha for that extra hour I guess. When she’s distracted by this and Inuyasha’s picking up for her slack Kaede gets her eye injury because if you ever have a character with an eyepatch go through a flashback without the eyepatch you’re about to see how they got that eyepatch, ask MGS3. But yeah Kikyo and Inuyasha agree to use the jewel to turn Inuyasha into a human which Kikyo believes will be an unselfish wish that will cause the jewel to disappear.

Now I’m about to go on a tangent here but I don’t think this would’ve worked, I think the jewel could turn Inuyasha human and it wouldn’t like turn black or anything but it wouldn’t disappear because it still involves Inuyasha and Kikyo wanting that romance and rejecting the idea that Inuyasha can still find happiness as what he is, a core theme of the sacred jewel as a plot device is that people end up obtaining what’s most important to them through their own efforts as opposed to the external macguffin they were searching for: Inuyasha becomes a strong half demon with a solid support network, Sesshomaru creates a sword stronger than the Tessaiga, even Naraku manages to become a full demon and makes the jewel redundant, which is why asking anything of the jewel inherently has a small layer of selfishness and hypocrisy built into it and at the end of the series the ONLY correct wish was the one Kagome made, for the jewel itself to disappear and stop teasing people with easy answers for their goals.

Anyway, tangent aside we get into the betrayal plot where Naraku disguises himself as Inuyasha and Kikyo and tells the other to fuck off (also he destroys Izayoi’s rouge which makes Yashahime kinda impossible but idk maybe they scooped it back up and reforged the shell idk). And he FUCKING PUTS THE JEWEL BACK WHERE IT WAS, like early series Naraku really is just giving out jewel shards left and right to let people fill it with malice and here he has the whole thing in his hands and gives it back so it can absorb Inuyasha’s hatred but like just hold onto it dude you’ll save yourself fifty years of headaches and you can find other couples to break up, bet Naraku’s regretting this move in the present story like not to mention by the end of the series the only shard he’s missing is one he gave away to just to fuck with Sango for a couple weeks but like idk why he didn’t just take it off Kikyo’s body like by the time Inuyasha’s sealed and Kikyo’s dead there’s no one that can stop him from just swooping in and taking it before Kikyo’s cremated with it but maybe her sacrifice made a barrier around herself and purified the jewel one more time so he couldn’t take it back but it’s never explained. Anyway we cut to the modern day and deliberately cut around Kagome’s father for the scene of her being born because Kagome’s family life is kind of a nightmare, his grandpa and mom don’t even have NAMES (then again we never see Kikyo’s parents either despite her being a teenager at the time and being around recently enough for Kaede to be like ten or whatever, guess they died doing feudal era stuff a few years before she met Inuyasha), anyway yeah this special is fun for trying to tie together a lot of the flashback stuff that doesn’t otherwise make sense but there are some holes it creates too so I’ve always approached this one as a ‘if it makes something make more sense run with it but don’t treat it as hard canon if it contradicts something that comes up’ as a kid and that’s still basically where I stand on it now.

Yu Yu Hakusho: It’s time for the wrap-up episode for the Chapter Black arc because yeah there was a lot of things we had to push pause on while the plot was go go go. Yusuke and co. come out of the cave and Keiko adorably instantly recognizes demon Yusuke when Botan gets confused, the Spirit World SCP is still all ‘yo Koenma you fucked up’ and Yusuke tells them to fuck off, Koenma is kind of half in trouble still for everything that happened but he doesn’t come home by the end of the episode so that’s a bit of a plot thread. We also get cute little ‘where are they now’ vignettes for each of Sensui’s minions. Sniper and Doctor have a little chat (Sniper’s not dead btw idk he got better) and talk about how the rage and immediacy of being in an echo chamber re-feeding them the literal worst of humanity kind of had them under a spell where they were still in control of their actions but influenced beyond a reasonable level too and how that’s passed and it feels weird and empty. Doctor pulls a Yoshikage Kira and gets a new face and founds the Ronald Mcdonald house or something, Sniper meets a psychic girl that forces empathy onto him and he becomes a Batman-like vigilante, Gamemaster and Seaman go back to school and have a better time of it with better studies or socialization now that they’re trying to see the good in people, Itsuki and Sensui’s corpse/soul I guess float forever in Itsuki’s Prismo pocket dimension, guess that’s fine and Gourmet’s… still dead, fuck that guy I guess. It’d be REALLY funny if they got through all these sickeningly sweet ‘It gets better’ montages for all the other guys and we just hard cut to Gourmet’s corpse rotting on Elder Toguro’s body while the guy’s still shouting about killing Kurama forever, like they just did not want to revisit that horror show. The three living normal dude psychics agree to not use their powers anymore so they don’t get targeted by demons (wonder how that’ll work out for Sniper and Doctor who are making a living off using the powers) and Yusuke’s going through the ‘how do I go back to high school after the PTSD of blowing demon heads off’ for like the fourth time this time with the added baggage of actually BEING a demon and not knowing what he’s capable of. So yeah, next time we’re in the final arc, this’ll be interesting, I know this arc isn’t the longest, this is like doing the Hunter Election arc right after the Chimera Ant arc but it’s weird to think about that we’re pretty close to done with one of the longest series on the block.

Jujutsu Kaisen: Yuji and Todo briefly step in on the intro for this episode were Todo gives Yuji the Avatar State lesson where ‘the divisions inside us our only there because our mind makes them’ so he can basically summon his energy to a part of body instead of channeling it through his body if I’m understanding it right which is a pretty cool zen lesson to just go for right away. Anyway the meat of the episode is Nobara and Panda confronting Kiki’s Delivery Service girl before Panda gets sniped by Mechamaru and we get a good old fashioned Chunin Exams style ‘do the backstories while they fight’ structure. Mechamaru was born with glass bones and paper skin and every night he lies awake until his heart attacks put him to sleep but it lets him remote control a robot from miles away so uhh… win-win I guess? Like they say his body’s just outside the arena but they cut to his bunker and it looks EXACTLY like the one they also cut do in Kyoto from the Juju Stroll, maybe Juju Stroll’s not the best way to try and decipher this but I was working with the idea that he made a pocket dimension inside the robot where his bathtub tv is but maybe they really did relocate him and put him in exactly the same room or maybe his glass bone paper skin disease lets him just do shit from across the country since I’m used to thinking of things in US terms of geography as opposed to Japanese terms which is relatively smaller. Also turns out Panda’s actually a chimera made of three types of animals and he’s basically like one of those stuffed animal things except he’s made of a living Panda corpse except he was also ‘born’ so idk how exactly that works but point being he’s three animal souls in one Pandaish body with emotions and shit because of Kung Fu Panda power of love shenanigans so he’s a Panda, a Gorilla, and some third thing they’re probably saving for a cool reveal later. But yeah Gorilla!Panda fucks Mechamaru up and they bond about being the weird-looking people of their group and it’s pretty cool, good job, can’t wait for more of this arc.

Zom 100: Now that Akira has his new lease on life, the practical ramifications of the zombie apocalypse come more into focus as he starts to run out of food or more accurately, beer, and interrupts his neighbors’ scene from the Walking Dead to ask if they need anything while he’s at the store which is pretty fucking funny. Once there we get the REAL manic pixie dream girl of the show after the last episode had our fakeout and sports bra girl saves Akira’s ass before telling him she doesn’t want anything to do with someone who can’t assess risk and ditching him. Akira thinks about this and steals a motorcycle for some sick zombie action before finding out his quirky interaction with his neighbors is cut short because they’re fucking dead now, deciding that risk is worth it because he almost died without living at all so he’s willing to stake his life on doing the things that will make him happy and he fills out the first thirty three things in the Zom 100 notebook. Meanwhile we cut to sports bra girl’s perspective and replay the same day again which is a really interesting choice, we see she’s a telecommuter (doesn’t say what she does but I like to think she works in stocks as a risk analyst because it fits the theme) and is currently trying to analyze every possible aspect of the apocalypse to maximize her chances of staying alive, the classic Wall-E “I don’t want to survive, I want to live” dichotomy and we see the convenience store encounter from her perspective and what to Akira looked like a manic pixie dream girl encounter was actually her barely listening to him and predicting zombie movements before genuinely putting herself in danger on a whim to save him. I’ll admit I was a little apprehensive because basically all anime has to have waifus now to sell shit but treating her entrance from a different perspective like this is a neat way to show how what looks like a harem anime trope is actually a subtle start to her character arc which is neat. She makes it back to her house and thinks about how happy Akira looked being reckless and going for what made him happy and regrets not doing the same and picking up non-essentials on her own. The show’s going to have to do some tricky balancing about how someone so carefree is going to actually be able to survive but I think that dichotomy’s off to a good start here, though on a side note I have no idea how the power’s still on or how long that’ll last but it kinda bugs me, sports bra girl grabbed some batteries and power gas but there is a LOT of electricity happening for people that should be more worried about supplies.  

Ranking of Kings: So this episode has A LOT of flashbacks, first when Desha talks about Miranjo Bojji remembers that she’s the one that killed his mother and he practically literally almost drowned in her blood before Miranjo was betrayed by the archers she hired and shot down as well and that causes him to freak out a bit but he’s able to pull himself together enough for Desha to tell him that they want to take Gigan back since he’s, you know, a criminal and all, that’s kind of the mission objective. But Gnasty Gnorc here was made a life debt friendship thing with Bojji so he steps up to protect him and Desha sees him deflect his spell and was like ‘wait a minute what the fuck I just saw you like two weeks ago when did you learn to CUT LIGHTNING!?’ and we get the flashback that Desha recruited Gigan to fight his dad but in the fight they kinda had to torture babies and commit genocide against the whole race of Gnasty Gnorcs and Gigan was not happy about that and killed some of Desha’s dudes so they put him in jail for that. There’s also a neat scene of Desha, Despa and Ouken talking about their means and Desha says he didn’t want to do it but the mercs he hired are cruel assholes and he needs to keep them placated, Despa doesn’t want anything to do with it and Ouken doesn’t like it either but he revolves to become strong enough to not need such cruel tactics in the future and that Gigan will be among his royal guards. So Desha absolves Gigan of his crimes and takes him back to the Underworld as a member of the royal guard. It’s funny because apparently Desha and Despa have a magical brother walkie talkie system and Desha’s just like ‘yo bro how much did you teach this Bojji the Rock kid huh?’ and Despa’s just like ‘Oh fuck bro, don’t fight him, he’ll absolutely wreck you, also you had no chance of beating Bosse, just try and let Bojji fight him and we can kill Miranjo while they’re hashing out the family shit’ and it’s really kinda funny because we haven’t seen Bojji get serious in a fight yet but everyone’s absolutely certain he’s like a tactical nuke now and I wanna see it. But yeah Sword Guy and Kirito apologize to Bojji about the whole trying to kill him thing but he still has PTSD so he has to run off, though Kage’s able to calm him down while they head back to the surface. Meanwhile Ouken’s waking back up over by Despa because we know he’s gonna have to fight Bojji at some point.

Vinland Saga: So yeah, Canute’s not taking Ragnar’s death well and Asekladd’s and Bjorn talk about and bottom line, Askeladd will either let this be a learning experience for Canute to make him a badass or if he breaks they’ll abandon him and lose nothing from the process. Meanwhile the men are torturing an English Captian for info and Akseladd breaks out the Sonozaki family finger torture techniques and schools him on how big assholes the English are and how the Danish are basically just fighting fire with fire at this point since the English also stole England from the Celts. Meanwhile the interrogation is pretty short because their answer comes to them when Thorkell is revealed to be hot on their trail so they have to get moving again. They root out some deserters and Askeladd says if they wanna join Thorkell they can stay but Thorkell just murders them all anyway because you can’t trust a deserter. Meanwhile while crossing a bridge Asekladd orders it torn down to slow Thorkell but Thorkell’s also like right there and one of the brothers from the Those Two Guys squad is like ‘man fuck Askeladd let’s kidnap the prince and bring him to Thorkell’ and we already saw how well that would go (which is funny because until the deserters told him, Thorkell didn’t even know Askeladds NAME, he doesn’t give a shit about Askeladd he just wants Thorfinn and Canute) but yeah that whole deal comes to a head as a good amount of the troops surround Canute’s sled and threaten to turn on Askeladd.

[blackestnight]

for the record, my new years eve was lovely, my sister and i spent it running a murder mystery dinner (that we had also written), wherein we played charon and thanatos (respectively) who were guiding a bunch of poisoning victims to the afterlife, except none of the victims/guests knew they were dead until they got there, so we had to guide them on one last journey to solve their own murders

they did solve the mystery and everyone seemed to have a great time, so i count the evening as a smashing success regardless, but some particular highlights included:

the inital reveal that they were all dead; generally murder mysteries like these only have one victim, who “dies” partway through the evening, and the other players need to use clues from both before and after the murder to solve the whodunit. in our case the clues came in the form of memories the players “recalled” from their last dinner as the evening went on. somehow, despite “charon” and i being dressed like we’d crawled out of a spirit halloween dumpster and greeting everyone at the door with “keep your wailing and lamentations to a minimum,” no one put together who we were supposed to be until i said, “you do all realize you’re dead, yes?” and let me tell you, hearing a room of 18 people yell “WHAT” in perfect unison was extremely tasty.

how willing the guests were to just roll with the concept—i didn’t get to hear most of the conversations with “charon” since we were split up for most of the evening, but several guests had in-character questions for “thanatos” such as “how do you know we’re dead?” (”i reaped your soul. it’s my job.”) and “what do you usually eat in the underworld?” (me, straight faced, shoveling lasagne in my mouth: “i don’t.”) i also enjoyed the one person who expressed concern over eating the “recreated” last dinner, considering they’d been poisoned, to which i replied that they couldn’t get any more dead.

the sheer number of accusations that went flying immediately after the guests were told they’d been poisoned. considering they’d only been talking to each other in-character for ten minutes at that point, and that they only had their basic introductory character bios (no first-round clues), there were some pretty sound arguments for who was most likely responsible. not that any of them were right, but still.

a lot of the characters were work-obsessed—most of the suspects were on the list because of potential threats to their jobs from the other guests—and their players leaned into it. it was so fucking funny. there was a couple whose characters ran a perfume shop, and they spent a solid ten minutes at dinner laying out their plans for a new line of scents inspired by the underworld for when they came back to life, as they obviously would (they kept saying, while looking at me, the person who had reminded them repeatedly that death was very much a one-way trip). another character, who was a software systems developer/genius inventor, was plotting out setting up an e-mail system for hades.

we played a gambling mini-game partway through the night where the guests could win chocolate obols to spend on more clues; fittingly, if unfortunately, my table did alright at winning their gold, but the table playing against “charon” had the shittiest luck with their dice and ended with basically nothing. we wound up doing a pity second round because it was going to be so much harder to solve without at least a couple of the bonus clues, which went much better, but the whole thing solidified charon’s character as a stingy motherfucker.

[tyforthevnm]

Interview With Gerard Way & Ray Toro Taken From Black Velvet 41 - Aug 2004

Interview With Gerard Way & Ray Toro Taken From Black Velvet 41 - Aug 2004

NB. Matt Pelissier is no longer in the band.

By Laura Fitzgerald

Link to interview: x

MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE are the rock 'n' roll embodiment of Jekyll and Hyde. Onstage, cursing and howling, spitting and snarling, an enthralling yet seemingly unhinged band plough through their finest material, the slow but steady alcohol intake of the previous few hours having taken glorious effect. Chaotic, furious and playing as if their lives depended on it, it is hard to believe that just a few hours earlier Black Velvet was sat with these same individuals in an upstairs dressing room discussing cartoons and English cuisine. For despite their boisterous onstage antics, My Chemical Romance are some of the most grounded, polite and genuine people you will ever come across.

Off the back of the success of 'I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love' My Chemical Romance (Gerard Way - vocals, Ray Toro - guitar, Mikey Way - bass, Frank Iero - guitar and Matt Pelissier - drums) rushed into the studio in between tours to complete work on their second full length offering 'Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge'. "It's definitely a lot of growth for the band, rapidly from the first record," Gerard explains. "It's definitely a transitional record. You can hear a lot of the stuff we did well on the first record, that's all brought onto the second record but we explore a lot of different song types, structures, it's actually more structured for sure. The songs are all collectively a lot shorter."

Many bands profess to either being a 'studio' or a 'touring' band, enduring one because of the enjoyment the other brings. Unusually, My Chemical Romance claim to have no preference. "I think we're split pretty much. We like making records; we already want to make a new one. But at the same time, after three months in LA recording, the first night of our first tour we were like "fuck man this is what we live for". At the same time when you're on tour for a year and a half you're like, "I wanna make a fucking record".

The band is also unable to write on the road. "We like to write together in Jersey at our little shitbox practice space, that's where we write everything. We like to have stuff ready, sitting around in a studio, wasting thousands of dollars, going "ah I got a riff". That's a waste of time to us."

In fact, work on the album got so pressured that Gerard disappeared for a few days during the recording process, prompting a post on the band's official website declaring the front man 'Missing in Action', much to the concern of their loyal fan base. He explains, "It was more irresponsibility than MIA. I had forgotten my phone charger, I had a credit card on me, a notebook and some art supplies. I realised I had to finish two songs lyrically and do the artwork, so I found a hotel, charged a room and stayed there for a couple of days. But it got out of hand and it was really irresponsible of me. It was a little bit drink-fuelled, not majorly. It was more like I gotta get all this shit done and I'm gonna stay up constantly to do it and not use the phone or tell anybody where I was."

In the early stages of writing, the new album was rumoured to be a concept album about a guy that comes back from the dead to wreak revenge on those that had wronged him during his life. It turns out that although things did not pan out exactly as planned, fans hoping for a revenge-fuelled zombie killing spree will not be disappointed. "It is and it isn't a concept record. The coolest thing that happened on this record is the fact that we went into it as a concept record and then partway through making it you kinda get lost in the story, in your own life and stuff like that. And you can't help but write about your own life. There's a lot of stuff that happened in the band that I wanted to relate through lyrics about what happened in our first year and a half that I really just said 'fuck it' to the concept.

"So it's like this cool concept where you get lost in it then you gotta figure out what's part of the concept. 'Cause I'd say at least half of the record follows the concept, even the songs that have nothing to do with the concept too. You can't really plan things when you make a record 'cause if you do that then you get stuck. Oh you gotta use this song because it tells the story as opposed to oh you gotta use this song because it's a great song."

It seems that lately concept albums have been making somewhat of a surprising comeback. Coheed And Cambria are partway through a Star Wars-like trilogy of albums detailing the untimely end of a pair of characters confusingly called Coheed And Cambria, The Mars Volta's critic pleasing debut 'Deloused In The Comatorium' is a tale of a friend's coma after a failed suicide attempt and The Street's 'A Grand Don't Come For Free' is a moving account of, erm, losing a thousand pounds. My Chemical Romance believe this lyrical revival is a change for the better. "I think they're just bored of the same old shit and people are coming up with very creative science fiction horror movie type things and they wanna tell those stories through music, and I think that's really really awesome. I think people are kinda moving away from singing about relationships between men and women and moving onto more fictional things. And I think that's really cool because you can relate fiction sometimes better than reality."

With songtitles like 'Vampires Can Never Hurt You', some would argue that Gerard's lyrics are pure fiction. However, the frontman reveals that it is a conscious decision by the band to mask the true meaning of the songs behind horror movie imagery rather than the lyrics being completely straightforward (albeit supernatural metaphor-less.) Although the paranormal associations make for some extremely cool merchandise, the new album is a step away from all things Halloween themed. "The second record has a lot less of the supernatural element aside from the fact that it's a concept record about a guy that comes back from the dead. Obviously that's supernatural. We've kinda moved away from the vampire thing."

In case you are wondering, yes, the band are massive horror movie fans. The quintet saw Dawn Of The Dead together in Los Angeles whilst recording, the movie getting a big thumbs up from the band, unlike over the top blockbuster Van Helsing, Frank describing as "awful".

Another of the band's passions is cartoons, an obsession of Gerard's in particular. Before the group took off, the singer was working for a company making a series called 'Sheep In The Big City', as well as developing a show of his own called 'The Breakfast Monkey.' Intrigued, Black Velvet asked the obviously multi skilled front man to explain more. "It was a failed idea, it never got sold but it got close. It was about a monkey. He doesn't really look like a monkey though so it's kinda weird. He looks more like a cross between a monkey and the Pillsbury Dough Boy, and he has breakfast magic powers which are unexplainable. He hangs out with a Spanish wrestler and a kid who is really sugar damaged and has ADD and he rides his bike in all the pictures."

Recommending 'Aquatine Hunger Force', ("It's incredible. Makes no fucking sense, it's awesome") and 'Adult Swim' as cartoons for us Brits to look out for in the future, My Chemical Romance feel that television in the UK is a bit of a let down. As is the food. "I did have a nice pizza today, I will say that," announces Ray, before adding "at a pub, but I might have had four beers anyway by that point." The culture shock topic is one the assembled give careful consideration to. The measures used to pour spirits are a particular pet peeve of Gerard's. Unbelievably such devices are non existent in America, "the bartender just puts as much as he wants in there. Sometimes you get a bartender that will put almost all vodka in your drink," he explains. "In the States, if you get a vodka cranberry it's almost clear, just a little bit of pink in it. In the UK there is just a smidgen of vodka in it, so yeah that was kind of a culture shock for me personally."

Before the topic is well and truly exhausted, Ray remarks "the toilet bowls flush differently" and "all the toilet paper is really rough." My Chemical Romance have toured with a bizarre variety of bands, from hardcore to emo and everything in between, their dream being to open for Iron Maiden one day. Whilst not as high profile as a support slot with Bruce Dickinson and co, the band did play this year's Concert For Compassion in Los Angeles. They explain to Black Velvet how they got involved, "I think that happened pretty quickly. John Reese, who manages The Used and Story Of The Year, has been a big supporter of the band for a long time and they were like "you wanna play this thing? It's gonna be cool and you're already gonna be out here." We said absolutely 'cause it's a good cause. So we did that and it was fun." A show to raise awareness of animal cruelty and to stop animal testing at Huntington Life Science's lab, many of the bands on the bill were extremely passionate and vocal supporters of animal rights, actively involved in work with charities like PETA. My Chemical Romance, however, do not fall into that category, and whilst you are unlikely to find the band protesting outside your local KFC, it would be equally as unjust to suggest that the band does not care. "We don't really have any kind of political stance or anything, but we support good causes. If it's a cause like that then we'll absolutely support it. We haven't really got into that aspect of things as a band" Gerard clarifies.

None of the band are vegetarian, "I wear a leather jacket" the singer states. "I didn't wear my leather jacket that day obviously, but I wear one every show so it's kind of interesting they even asked us to play. PETA contacted us once and I was like "dude what are you doing? I'm wearing a leather jacket!" I mean I didn't kill it, I just saw it in a second hand store, it's a cool jacket."

Despite claiming not to get into "that" aspect of things as a band, the one cause the band readily lends their support to is suicide prevention. When asked if they feel it is important to communicate such a positive message, Gerard answers "absolutely. Especially when you get up there and you and your band are so violent and abrasive and drunk sometimes onstage. It's very important to at the same time give a positive message. And even if we weren't that way live, I think it's kind of your duty as an artist that young people listen to and look up to or whatever they do, to lead people in the right direction, as opposed to just an extremely nihilistic attitude where you just say "fuck everything, it's all pointless, we should just die". There has been a lot of art like that made. There's nothing wrong with being crazy and cursing your head off and being nuts on stage but at least have something important to say." Wise words indeed. Nu metal is then mentioned, where a generation of frustrated teens were encouraged to respond to life's problems by sticking their middle fingers in the air. "Exactly," Gerard proceeds. "I think an example of that is Limp Bizkit. They have a song where it's just like "break stuff". It's ridiculous. They played Woodstock and incited riots and people got raped. Is that leading anybody to anything good? I don't think so."

And there you have it. Jekyll and Hyde undoubtedly. My Chemical Romance not only want to send you home from their shows with temporary tinnitus and clothes drenched in other people's sweat (the tell tale signs of a good gig); they want to lead you in the right direction. They rock, but they care.

Visit www.mychemicalromance.com for more info.

[demonbanisher]

I feel like I’m always writing these at the weirdest times of the day but ANYWAYS more of the Unexpected AU (is that what we’re calling this? The Addie AU? Idk, anyone got name ideas?) - also note to self to make a master list to save tagging everything in each post, so keep an eye out for that. Today’s @wolfstarmicrofic (please don’t hate me for tagging you everyday) prompt was pliant.

I’m so tired. I hope I did this idea justice and sorry for any typos.

Fevers and Feelings

Remus felt like him and Sirius were finally starting to hit their stride as parents. Did they know what the hell they were doing? Absolutely not. But at least they didn’t know what the hell they were doing together. Tracking milestones and feeding times and sleep schedules, late night diaper runs and grocery lists that were more reminders that they needed to eat too and naps, lots of naps. 

And then Addie got sick. It was hard seeing her so helpless and upset. She was crying constantly and Sirius just wished there was someway he could explain it to her that she could understand. Someway he could reassure her it would be okay. Neither of them every thought that they’d have to accio boogers out of someone’s nose, but here they were doing so constantly since Addie couldn’t do it herself yet. It was a lot of running around on little sleep and food doing whatever they could to keep her comfortable. Lots of sitting on the floor of a steamy bathroom hoping it would help clear her lungs a bit.

It was partway through the second night when her fever spiked and Remus decided they should take her to the hospital just to be sure. They bounced back and forth about whether to go to the Muggle one or St. Mungo’s and eventually decided a magical one might be for the best this time. 

“How are we doing today folks?” The healer asked as she slipped into the room.

“Little one has a bit of a fever. Runny nose and out of sorts the last two days. Thought we should bring her in just in case,” Remus told her. Sirius was too busy watching Addie intently, his leg bouncing up and down nervously. 

“Good call dad. We want to keep a close eye on fevers when they’re this young.” The healer ran a couple of diagnostic spells over Addie, lights and swirling of different colours popping up in response each time. “Well, the fever is slight so I think we’re just looking at a common cold here. Let me just grab a drop of something to help bring her temperature down but she should be right as rain in a day or two.”

“Thank you doctor,” Remus said.

“Of course. Bring her back if her symptoms get worse but I’m sure she’ll be alright.”

Once they got back home, Remus got Addie settled in her crib, Sirius following behind him all the while. Remus didn’t know why but he wasn’t worried. Maybe it was some sort of parental instinct, although he was pretty sure the only parental instinct he had was to worry, or maybe it was just that after everything he’d been through with Fenrir, he knew how resilient children could be. He knew that Addie had it in her to get through this. 

Remus reset the monitor spell and then began to head back to their room, pausing when he realized Sirius wasn’t following him. “Coming love?”

He cast one last look back at Addie and nodded, trailing after him. 

A few hours later, Remus rolled over in his sleep only to find cool sheets. He blinked awake, his eyes immediately going to the monitor spell which was still glowing green. He cast a glance towards their bathroom but there was no light coming from there either. 

He rubbed his eyes and headed down the hall towards Addie’s room. He pushed the door open to find Sirius sitting on the floor, one hand curled around the bar of the crib as he watched her carefully. Remus made his way over to him.

“What are you doing love?” Remus asked.

“Just making sure she’s okay.”

Remus knew his husband well enough to know he probably came back here the second Remus was asleep. “We can’t take care of her if we don’t get some sleep too.”

Sirius stayed silent. His eyes focused on Addie’s slight twitching in her sleep and the boogers on her face. 

“Come on,” Remus said, standing up and leaning over the bars. “We still have the extra crib in our room.”

Sirius reached for his hand. “You’ll wake her. She needs her sleep.”

“So do you love,” Remus said and lifted her up gently. She stirred for a moment before settling into his arms. Remus made his way back into their room and grabbed his wand to clean up Addie’s face and move the crib right next to Sirius’s side of the bed before slowly lowering her inside.

Sirius lay down, curled up on his side with his eyes staring intently through the bars. Remus lay down behind him and wrapped his body around him.

“Is she gonna be okay?” Sirius whispered. 

“Yes, she is.”

“But we had to go to the hospital,” Sirius said and Remus squeezed him a little tighter then, finally getting a full picture of what was going on in Sirius’s mind. “I don’t like it when I can’t help you two.”

“You are helping us. You’re doing everything you can by being right here. And by taking care of yourself too.” 

Most of the time Sirius was solid like stone, but when he was vulnerable he became pliant. Loose and mouldable and it was up to Remus to pick up every piece and shape them into I love you and You’re doing amazing and It’s okay to rest now, knowing that there were times in Sirius’s past where he’d shown his softness and had it beaten into an ugly thing into You’re a failure and How could you do this to the family? and You’ll never belong here.

Remus leaned down and pressed a kiss to Sirius’s neck. “You take such good care of us. My perfect, perfect husband.”

“I just don’t want anything bad to happen to her.”

Remus didn’t want that either but he also knew that they couldn’t protect her from the world forever. He knew that she’d experience grief and heartache and anger. That one day she’s fall out of a tree or off a bike or broomstick and break a bone. That someone she thought cared for her would say something mean and she’d wonder for a second if it was true. He knew they couldn’t keep her safe from everything but he also knew she’d have four steady hands ready to pick her up anytime she fell. Always waiting with a hug or a warm cup of tea or unholy amounts of chocolate. 

“One day,” Remus said, “Addie’s going to have a bad day and she’s going to come home and you’re going to get to tell her everything you never got to hear growing up. And then when you’re not looking, I’m gonna tell her about the first night she got sick and how her Papa sat on the floor by her crib all night just to make sure that she was going to be okay. Bad things might happen, but she’ll know every fever will break and she’ll know we’ll be there for her until then, whatever it takes.”

Sirius shook a bit then and Remus just held him through everything that he needed to feel and right when he was dozing off he heard him whisper, “I’m never going to fall out of love with you, Addie.”

He mumbled back, “Me neither. To both of you,” and they both drifted off to sleep. 

[milf-harrington]

zukka + travel!au + enemies to lovers + “shut up for a second, will you?”

grumpy historian zuko and grouchy artist sokka my beloveds

i hope you like it <3

--

“Oh you are fucking kidding me.”

Zuko’s head snapped up, his eye widening in disbelief before narrowing in annoyance and then rolling in boredom. “Amaruq.”

“Hinata.” Sokka grouched, ignoring the brief flutter of relief in his chest at seeing that familiar scowl.

“I thought I got rid of you in Greece.” Zuko complained boredly, going back to typing on his laptop. Because of course he happened to be in the same random cafe in Rome that Sokka had stumbled upon on his walk.

“I thought I lost you in Greece.” Sokka snapped back, begrudgingly dropping into the open seat across from him.

As much as they didn’t like each other, they’d agreed around the third time they’d run into each other to stick together if it happened again (and it did happen again), both favouring familiar company over a petty feud.

Besides, it wasn’t Sokka’s fault Zuko had a stick up his ass.

Zuko would argue that Sokka was the one with a stick in places it shouldn’t be.

“So, what are you doing here?” Sokka eventually asked, sometime after he’d gotten a coffee, unable to sit in silence for too long before he started getting antsy. Zuko, annoyingly, had gotten used to it, but he still sighed to keep up appearances.

“I wanted to go see the Laurentian Library.” He answered shortly, and Sokka wanted to laugh because of course.

Zuko looked up from his laptop and his expression blanked. “You’re kidding.”

“Guess we’re going together.”

-

The thing about Sokka and Zuko is that there was a reason they kept ending up in the same cities. Sokka was a huge art nerd, and had saved up for practically his whole teenage life to be able to travel around the world. Zuko, similarly, was a huge fan of history and was doing the same thing, except he’d used his inheritance.

Their feud had started in Japan, where they’d argued for long enough about the original date of a piece of art that they’d been kicked out of Tokyo National Museum.

Neither of them had gotten an actual answer, which just kind of added salt to the wound.

Then they’d run into each other again in the Netherlands, and then again in Spain where they’d finally admitted that as much as the other guy sucked, at least they actually knew each other so they may as well stick together.

Something had changed in Greece though, when they’d visited the temples together and talked about more than the history and the art and had actually learned about each other.

And then Zuko had said something totally incorrect about a statue of Athena and Sokka had haughtily corrected him, which lead to a Tokyo National Museum-esque argument where Zuko had declared that Sokka was an uncultured idiot and Sokka had asked how his mouth tasted after spewing all that bullshit.

It had taken an alarming amount of self restraint for Zuko to hold back his response of “Why don’t you kiss me and find out?”

A day later, Sokka hadn't quite been able to figure out why he'd gotten onto his plane feeling like he'd left something behind.

-

They met up at the Laurentian Library the next day, and partway through Zuko's excited speech about the historical context of the building, Sokka had sighed fondly and blurted "I think I'm in love with you."

After a second of shocked silence, Sokka quickly attempted to bury his confession with everything he knew about Michelangelo, hoping they'd get close enough to a group of people that Zuko wouldn't be able to confront him.

Not that that had really stopped them in the past.

Before he could get very far, a hand wrapped around his arm, pulling him to a stop before turning him around. Zuko had a soft look of wonder on his face as he cupped Sokka's cheek. "Just- shut up for a second will you?" He chided gently, before tilting Sokka's chin up slightly with his knuckle and pressing their lips together.

[arcadia-city-stories-if]

Oh, alternatively, how would the ROs react if MC purposefully sent them a nude photo? Maybe while they were busy or in public and couldn't immediately retaliate as a way to tease them? 😈

I'm answering this one instead of the other ask of yours, because the other one was like 5 questions and that's how I end up writing an essay lol.

We're going for the relationship stage in this one!

Murphy -

Mid-conversation, he only glances briefly at the phone screen as it buzzes in his hand with an unread message. When he sees MCs name his brows knit together, vaguely concerned about what it could be about.

He nods in bland agreement at a comment made my the man opposite him, before sliding his thumb across the phone to unlock it, only to be greeted by a photo.

Murphy's knuckles turn white as he death grips his phone, the muscle in his jaw jumping as he clenches his mouth closed, genuinely blindsided by the image staring back at him.

"Agent?"

He startles, instinctively locking his phone as his attention jumps back to the man in front of him. "Yes?" His voice is harsher than he'd intended and he takes a second to level himself when the man flinches in reponse. Returning to the conversation at hand, he slides the phone back into his pocket. I'll deal with that later.

Shae -

Nearly drops their phone in shock, cringing as the offending item clatters awkwardly onto their desk, drawing unwanted attention from the agents currently standing to attention opposite them partway through giving their mission report.

Shae laughs nervously, flustered as they flip the phone face down onto the desk. "Apologies." Their voice comes out more strained than they'd anticipated and they take a moment to clear their throat before trying again. "You were saying?"

Callie -

Lights up upon seeing a message from MC, immediately losing all interest in the conversation she was in the middle of as she hits 'open'.

Her mouth falls open at the sight of the photo, quickly morphing into a grin as she mutters a distracted "Gotta go." and heads straight for the exit, ignoring any and all attempts to stop her. Phone in hand, her reply is already sent. "Where are you?"

Toni -

Raises their eyebrows in surprise as the image fills their screen. Well, this is new. "Sorry, just one second?" They smile placatingly at the person opposite them as they turn away, as if to make a phone call. Instead they lift their phone, winking into the camera as they tilt it towards themself, typing out a quick message to send along with it.

'Don't move. I'll be home now.'

They grin as they slide the phone back into their pocket. Clearing their throat, they settle into a more neutral expression before returning to their previous company, ready to make their excuses and get the hell out of there.

Claude/Claudia -

"Leave."

One word is all it takes for the room to clear of staff as they stare down at the image on their phone. They tap one finger distractedly against the casing, a sharp canine dragging across their lower lip as they think.

They step towards their office door, ready to tell their assistant to clear the rest of their schedule for today, as they bring the phone to their ear, wasting no time as MC accepts the call.

"I want you here. Come."

[gb-patch]

Ask Answers (March 3rd, 2021)

Here’s our latest batch of anon ask answers! Thanks for waiting for them.

Will there be a 'Our Life' game for each season? Please say we're getting a winter one! 

As of right now we’re only planning on making two, summer and fall. They take quite a while to finish and we’re not sure where we’ll be when the second OL is truly wrapped up. But it’s not impossible we can do a third. Though, four Our Life games is probably not super likely, honestly, aha. Maybe the third game, if we make one, could be switch between winter and spring or something.

What engine/engines do you use to make your games? 

We use Renpy for all our projects!

For version 1.2 of OL, did you make any changes to the DLC? If so, could you post a changelog detailing what exactly (or at least a general overview)? If it's not too much trouble, could you also elaborate on the bugs/errors you fixed in the base game? 

There aren’t really any changes to the DLCs, except for the voiced name DLC getting an expansion. We fixed very few small typos and added a couple extra lines. Unfortunately, we don’t have a list of exactly what all the little fixes were.

I've been playing OL and I love the characters! As soon as Baxter showed up, I knew I wanted to learn more about him! Would you consider adding him as a prospective LI in the future? 

Yep, Baxter (and Derek) will be getting his own romance story as an optional DLC late in 2021! Glad you like him.

Hellooo! First off I'm a huge fan of the game and can't stop playing it. However, I was wondering about how much domestic life with Cove we'll get to see in step 4. Meaning the time before the wedding and the time after. In my game Cove and I talked about having children and I was hoping that would be an option in step 4. Either way, I cannot wait for the release and I send my best to everyone working on the production :) thanks! 

I’m sorry, there’s no children or scenes after the two are married. There’s sort of endless possibilities for what that future could be like, so we unfortunately can’t depict it. You only get scenes before they’re married and, if you get the wedding DLC, you can see the day they get married. It ends there, though. But thank you for the well-wishes!

Hello! I was just wondering, so step 4 is going to be similiar to the prologue/epilogue scenes of the game. Is the Wedding DLC going to be one long scene too or will that have moments? (I love the game by the way, its ruined all other visual novels for me in the most wonderful way <3 ) 

Yeah, Step 4 and the wedding DLC will be like the prologues/summer ended parts of the game. There won’t be separate Moments you can play in any order. I’m really happy you like the game so much!

You said that the OL MC's birthday can't be in summer, but what if you headcanoned it to be? 

You can headcanon it as being in summer! There just aren’t birthday events in the game even if you do know your MC was born in summer. We had to leave those out, since some people might not want their MC to be born in summer and then they’d miss out on extra birthday scenes because of it. It wouldn’t have been fair.

Hello!😺 I absolutely love your game!😻 I can't wait for DLS with Derek and Baxter. And I wonder if Baxter could have seen Cove and MC at the party during their first failed dance? Or is Baxter only paying attention to who he's dancing with, or is he not dancing with anyone at the soiree at all then? 

Baxter isn’t really paying attention to the couples on the floor. He’s just cruising the outskirts for someone available to dance with him. So he doesn’t get any memories of the MC or Cove at that party if the two just dance with each other. It’s great to hear you like the game!

time-wise/step-wise when does the nsfw dlc take place? 

It’s not super strict in terms of an exact of weeks/months, but generally it’s sometime not long after the end of Step 3.

Heya! I'm currently obsessed with Our Life (I played through the entire game on Valentine's Day, hahaha– ha... hah), and I have one silly question: if I start playing Step 3 with the less... "romantically inclined" interest levels (Fond & Disinterest), is there still a chance of getting a romantic ending with Cove? Can Cove and the MC realize "they're the one for me" in just one summer? Or... are confessions off the table completely unless at least at Crush level? Thank you in advance! 

So happy you’re having fun with it! In OL1 deciding that Cove is your friend means he’s truly only a friend. You can’t decide you have a crush partway through. But we are considering doing things differently in future games.

hey i have some questions about our life

a) is there a way to be friends with that mean bowlcut kid or is he always... like tha

b. what is coves ethnicity?

A. He is always like that, haha. At least as a kid, he does grow up to be different~

B. Cove’s mom Kyra is white, but Cliff’s race doesn’t come up and players are able to headcanon it. So Cove is half white and half whatever you prefer Cliff to be. 

how do you get to the two mc cut-in scenes from the new update?

&

Hiii! I'm doing another playthrough (it's only like my 100th time playing through the entire game) after the 1.2 update, and I was wondering how to get the new art? I also really love all the new stuff, thank you for working so hard and creating such a wonderful game :)

You can check our our CG guide on Steam for that! Thank you for the kind words.

Sorry to bother you, but I have a question about the Patreon moment. Will there be initiative settings there too? And if there aren't, will the MC lead the whole thing or will Cove lead at certain points too? Thank you~ 

There will still be flexibly in what you’re comfortable with and whether you want Cove to automatically do things or for choices to always be involved :]. And you don’t need to apologize!

Hello!! I wanted to ask a couple of questions about Our Life:

1. Will we able to buy all the DLC via Steam or will there be some of them only available in Patreon? Just to know if I should create a Patreon user XD

2. Will Our Life: Now and Forever be about the current MC, Cove and the other characters or will it be a game with a New MC, new romantic options and new characters?

1. There will be a Patreon-only NSFW bonus Moment. But all the normal planned DLCs will release on Steam.

2. Our Life: Now & Forever is about new characters- new MC, new family, new LI, etc.

just some small bug I noticed: even if you didn't ask Cove to dance, if he asks you at the Soiree in Step 2 later and you say yes to dancing, the MC acts like they got to dance with Cove again even if it was the first time. 

Thank you for the report on that! We thought it was fixed, but I guess it didn’t work.

I was messing around with the new update and I noticed that all the hands in the firefly CGs have the same skin tone regardless of what you put in, (with the exception of the really dark skin color) is this a glitch or something? 

The skin tones aren’t the same. It’s just because they’re out at night with only fireflies for light that it makes each image look dark and therefore similar. But if you line them up together it’s clear how there are changes in every option.

How long did it take to plan out and write the story for OL? Not including the programming, art stuff, or the DLC chapters, I mean just planning and writing the base game story alone. The base game story seems hefty as is, and then on top of that there's the changes to scenes depending on MC's and Cove's personalities and relationship, I'm curious how long that took 

It took basically the full development time, aha. I’m someone who doesn’t fully outline a project before start and instead continues to come up with stuff as a project progresses. There were new parts to the story being created right up to near the launch. So, starting in 2016 or so to later 2020, with some breaks/hold-ups throughout that time.

Hello! I'm really, really enjoying Our Life: Beginning and Always, it was the kind of sweet, wholesome content I needed during these past months. I had a quick question, will you be making any female characters for the MC to romance? In this game or any others like it? I'm a lesbian and I'd love to have a female love interest with such well written romance as yours! Thank you so much. 

Thank you for the nice comment! Our Life: Beginnings & Always won’t have a female LI since we didn’t want to treat other gender options as second fiddle to the male lead. But we have just started full production on Our Life: Now & Forever, which will have a starring female LI! There’s a silhouette glimpse of her Step 1 self here~

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

Thanks everyone for sending the questions :D

FAQ   If you prefer to just see the main posts without all the asks/reblogs, feel free to follow our side account instead: GB Patch Updates Bl

[margridarnauds]

I think a lot about what it means to be a Celticist, what it takes, how I ended up in this area, what led me here, what my relationship is with it. Most of the time, terrified of accidentally leading someone into being in over their head, I emphasize the hard work, and it’s true --  the field is notoriously strenuous. 

But there are times, just times, especially when I see people’s ideas of what it’s like, usually filled with misty forests and insufferably easy translating work, when I want to talk about the emotion behind it, the love. As terrifying as it is, as raw as it is, because it’s so much easier to talk difficulties. You’re not putting as much out on the line, it’s more detached, more clinical. Talking about the love is inherently personal, it’s inherently terrifying and vulnerable, especially when you’re in such a position that people have, in the past, voiced a belief that you have no business studying it in the first place. It isn’t what people who are invested in notions of dark academia or overly aestheticized visions of the Celtic peoples think, it isn’t particularly mystical or effortless. 

It’s almost the opposite, really. 

It’s when I was working at home over the summer, my head bent over my notebook, my brow knit, working through some Old Irish paradigms, and one of my cats would paw at my pen, and I would think of the poem Pangur Bán, about the monk and his cat and, for a moment, I wasn’t sitting in a disheveled desk, littered with books and bits of paper, lit with a cheap lamp that made my face look absolutely ghoulish in morning Zoom calls, I was a medieval monk, carrying out my studies in the dead of night, a small candle burning at my side, my trusted cat beside me, as we worked to turn darkness to light. 

It’s when I’m working on some line or the other from the Mabinogi and, for one moment, one magical, golden moment, I figure out how all the verbs and nouns and adverbs and particles fit together perfectly, and, in that moment, the text sings, and I can step back and appreciate how good the writing is, the fine use of Middle Welsh, the attention to pacing, the delicate characterization, all the better part of a thousand years later. 

It’s looking at a manuscript and seeing all the little ways that a scribe’s hand could differ, all the little things that make them unique, at the little notes in the margins, in the way that the symbols can change. (And sometimes, being furious at a scribe with a particularly bad hand or bad vellum to work with, when you have to cut off a transcription partway through.) It’s wondering whether, when they were writing this down, they knew it would reach quite so far into the future, by people with such different lives from them in so many ways. 

It’s walking by a river or lake or bit of rock and thinking of the Dindshenchas, of how the Irish heroes carved their identities into the landscape and thinking about how, no matter where you go, people have looked at the same rivers and lakes and woods for thousands of years, and I’ll wonder what people saw a thousand years ago.

It’s when I delve into the historical side, looking deeper into the people who are otherwise just names in the annals, all these people with names like “the short”, “the fair”, “the dark one”, and realizing that each one of them had lives and loved ones, all these lives spread out across the years, just names to us now. 

It’s reading bardic poetry, listening to all these great poets from close to a thousand years ago -- Their loves, their heartbreaks, their fears, about one princess’ love for her favorite lapdog and another’s love for her pet goose, and feeling this connection to people who are long since gone.

It’s finishing a paper on some character or person and being overwhelmed because, after hours and days and weeks and months and, God help you, sometimes years, it’s done. And you feel, if not totally happy with it, because there are always going to be little things, that you did them some amount of justice, after all these years, and for a second, they’re there with you, whether they were chieftains or slaves, whether they even ever existed in any tangible way. 

It’s being able, if you’re very lucky, to visit some spot or another associated with a character that you’ve done research on, and being overwhelmed because it doesn’t really matter if they never existed, what matters is that you have something of them that’s solid. 

It’s sometimes looking at when a text references some work that’s been lost and feeling this overwhelming sense of loss and fury, not just for the stories or the books, but for everything. All the lives lost to the greed and cruelty of colonialism. All the things we can’t know because they were destroyed. All the things we can’t get back. And then it’s going right back into it because there’s nothing else to do but to fight like Hell for everything that’s been preserved. 

It’s looking at the historical scholars who did everything they could to preserve these things, often at great cost, and just wanting to reach out and tell them that it was all for something. That we’re carrying on what they started, and that we know what they did, that we’re grateful.

It’s being worried each time some new ordinance passes against a Celtic language, every time another comes within a knife’s edge of extinction, every time someone writes a thinkpiece about their lack of relevancy, every time Celtic Studies programs are cut, and wondering whether we’ll ever see a day when everything we’ve done, all of us, all of it, is for nothing. And it’s wanting to reach out and SHOW THEM, take them by the hand, let them read the literature, let them understand the greatness that these languages produced. (As an American Celticist, it’s wanting to SCREAM “If I can love this, why can’t you?”) And it’s knowing that it wouldn’t matter to anyone whose mind is already closed to anything outside their own experience, especially as I think back to everyone who told me I was wasting my time doing this work, that I should go somewhere important, someplace useful.

It’s feeling an immense debt to it all, because it did give me a life, it’s saved my life multiple times at this point, while knowing that there’s an awesome responsibility to make sure that it’s all passed on, that it can keep living, the modern and the medieval alike. 

It isn’t easy. It isn’t effortless. And, frankly, most of the time, it isn’t particularly #aesthetic or romantic. But it’s worthy.

[neonthewrite]

Washed Up Winchesters 4

The mission goes on! Jacob is just happy to be included.

Cowritten with @nightmares06, the writer behind the @brothersapart multiverse!

( 1 ) ( 2 ) ( 3 ) -4- ( 5 ) ( 6 ) ( 7 ) ( 8 )

Story Tag

Read Time ~10 minutes

~~~~~

Jacob had spent much of his time walking the fields outside the city since finding the sodden pair. The livestock minded him less and less anymore, and keeping an eye on the herds gave him something to do. The moment Chase and Minnie had dragged the poor guys into the house to get them wrapped up and dry before they caught hypothermia, there was nothing more he could do to help.

When Minnie brought him news of their waking up, he was relieved. He'd thought he might be called back and tasked with carrying them to a hospital or something.

Now, after hearing Minnie's annoyed news that one of them ran off, he wondered if Chase had taken a chance to explain things. Probably not.

He heard Chase's argument by the tree out front. He didn't see the other guy, hiding as he was near the trunk, not until he'd moved closer.

Then, of course, he recognized a gun for what it was. Tiny, perhaps, but it would be just as deadly to the miniature people he'd been surrounded by since he washed up on Lilliput's shore.

"Hey!" he blurted, twitching forward. One hand braced on the ground to avoid falling over, and the other swept down towards Chase. Huge fingers curled around the small Lilliputian, forming a wall between the tiny pair. Chase was safe, barricaded in a small alcove created by Jacob's hand.

Only a short distance from Chase, Dean jerked backwards to avoid the incoming hand. It was not reassuring to have it sweep close to him, and his mind interpreted it as coming right at him.

Before he realized that Jacob was just barricading Chase off, a person that Dean had no intention of being hostile towards, his finger twitched, and he fired his gun.

All it did was sputter, and only then did Dean remember that he, and everything he owned, had been recently dunked in the ocean, rendering the gun totally useless.

In the pause that followed, Jacob stared at Dean with a shocked look. He’d been fully prepared to take a tiny bullet from that gun, and didn’t know how to proceed once that plan failed. He opened his mouth to say something, and then closed it again.

Chase, however, was neither silent nor still for long. He shoved against Jacob’s hand with all the strength he had, and though Jacob wasn’t affected by it, he hesitantly uncoiled his hand partway for Chase to stumble out again. “Dude, seriously? You were gonna shoot him?!”

"I thought he was gonna grab me!" Dean shot back defensively at Chase, fussing with the gun only to find the insides were still flooded. Useless. "And now we don't even have any silver bullets to stop the skinwalkers, since Sam's gear is in the exact same shape!"

Jacob drew his hand back slowly, very aware of the distrustful glances he was getting. As he did, Chase shook his head and sighed. "Guess you'll just have to let us help ya, then," the small Lilliputian announced. "And no more attacking Jacob."

"I don't really blame ya," Jacob muttered. Even crouched down and trying not to loom over the pair, he eclipsed the house behind him. "I promise not to grab, if that helps…"

Dean sent Jacob an annoyed glare as he put his gun back together, resolving to give it a full cleaning the moment they were free. The gun deserved better after the amount of times he’d used it, occasionally saving their lives or the lives of victims.

“Better not,” he griped, remembering how strange it had felt to wake up in giant hands after being tossed overboard. “The last thing I need is the newest giant getting in the way while we work…”

“Actually,” a voice interrupted Dean’s grumblings. “We’re going to need Jacob’s help for this.”

Sam came striding up, Minnie not far behind him. She had to move fast to keep up with Sam’s longer paces, and as they hurried over to join the others, Jacob’s hand twitched slightly, startled by their sudden appearance. He scanned the small crowd of four while Sam went on. “If we want to have a chance at getting to the docks on time, we’re going to need someone with longer legs.”

Dean bristled at the idea. “Help?! From them? They’re just a bunch of kids!”

“And we’re just some hunters that got tossed overboard, remember?” Sam reminded Dean sharply. “Without Jacob, you’d be stuck at the bottom of the ocean, finding out if mermaids exist or not.”

Dean just stubbornly crossed his arms. “Our disguises and paperwork were perfect,” he insisted.

“I was thinking about that, too,” Sam admitted. “It could just be that they… sniffed us out. If there were only skinwalkers on the ship, it didn’t matter how good your paperwork was.” Turning to Jacob, he tilted his head back to meet him in the eyes. “So? Are you in? We need to find out what they want before anyone else gets hurt.”

Jacob’s eyebrows drifted up and he glanced over the others in the group. He had no idea what they might be talking about. The first thing he heard after coming back to the house was an exasperated Minnie explaining that Dean (and, to even more of her annoyance, Chase) took off. Despite being able to outpace everyone in Lilliput without question, he could barely keep up with them sometimes.

He had to hope they’d explain things eventually.

“I mean, yeah,” he answered after his confused pause. He shifted slightly where he knelt, feeling awkward out there on the front lawn. “But I can’t walk through the whole shipyard or anything, there’s some spots I’m not allowed to be.”

“That’s fine,” Sam assured him. “If you can get us there fast, we can take care of the rest.” Turning towards Chase and Minnie, he held out his hands placatingly. “Look, I know it’s a lot to take in, but out there,” Sam waved distantly towards the horizon, “there are monsters.”

“We don’t have time for the whole spiel,” Dean interrupted. “But they’re as happy to kill you as look at you.”

“Me and my brother fight them,” Sam took over, trying not to let Dean’s gruff nature ruin what little camaraderie they had with the Lilliputians. “They’re not like your friend Jacob, or any other giant from the ocean, they’re far more dangerous because they can blend right in with you or me.”

Chase and Minnie exchanged a glance. His was amazed and confused, while hers was exasperated. Ever since Chase brought a giant home, it seemed like weird happenings followed. This was crazy. They couldn't outright deny the idea of monsters, not with a giant looming over the whole group, but the temptation was there.

"You mean, like, not just in Blefuscu?" Minnie finally said, cautious and reluctant to accept it.

Chase was practically enthusiastic about the news. "If there's monsters out there, why would they stick to just Blefuscu? Apparently they just hop on boats to get back and forth!"

Jacob frowned faintly. "And they toss people off boats," he murmured indignantly. It stuck with him that he'd nearly been too late to help Sam and Dean. "You think they're already ... infiltrated, or whatever?"

“We won’t know until we catch up to them,” Sam cautioned before Dean could jump in with his assumptions. “With their ship disembarking so fast, we only had a short time to infiltrate, and we got tossed off before we overheard any of their plans.”

“Anyway,” Dean said testily, “we need to get moving. Time’s wasting!”

Chase grinned. Minnie rolled her eyes at him. “You’re having too much fun with this, there’s actual monsters.” She crossed her arms as if it might deter her brother’s buoyant mood.

It didn’t. Chase tilted his head back and shielded his eyes from the sun. “You heard him, Jake! We gotta get going!”

Jacob wanted to agree with Minnie. If there were actual monsters out there, it seemed like they should be taking things more seriously. From the way Sam and Dean put it, people could already be hurt. Judging by how quick Dean was to pull weapons on him, these things could jump out at anyone at any time.

Still, he smiled faintly and scoffed. “I might just leave you guys waiting here,” he teased, even as he shifted one of his hands and moved it towards the small group, already turning it palm-up before it got to them.

Dean hesitated when the hand was there, larger than life and twice as strong. “I don’t know about this--”

Sam roughly shoved Dean’s shoulder, making him stumble onto Jacob’s hand before he could bring up even more protests. “Yeah, well this is what we’re doing,” he sassed his older brother. “Unless you suddenly have a better idea for how we’re going to catch up to the skinwalkers, just stay put and quit complaining.”

Chase and Minnie were next, though they gave Sam and Dean a few extra seconds to situate themselves. Even with twice the normal amount of people hitching a ride on his palm, Jacob still had plenty of room for them all. He held steady as Chase and Minnie stepped up, noting that they felt even lighter than usual compared to the newcomers.

“Alright, guys, no roughhousing,” Jacob instructed with a hopeful smile. “Won’t be long before we’re at the harbor.”

With the warning out of the way, the surface beneath the four tiny pairs of shoes tensed. Jacob’s fingers curled slightly, an extra precaution, as his hand rose into the air as steadily as he could. Luckily, he’d had some practice. Lifting the miniature crowd towards his chest was a smooth motion followed by his other hand appearing like a guard rail.

And then he stood, sending them all but soaring into the air as the air brushed past.

It was all of about five seconds of Jacob standing at his full height before Dean ended up clinging to Sam.

"Dude, really?" Sam griped, trying to peel the iron grip his older brother had on his arm. "What's the problem now?"

"Problem?" Dean asked, his voice a higher pitch from normal. "There's no problem. We're just a hundred feet in the air, that's all!"

"You fight monsters, Dean, and a little height is what gets you?"

Dean sent a glare at Sam, but it was half-hearted, the heights beyond the edge of Jacob's hand distracting him enough to keep him from sassing back. "Just... don't like heights..." Dean muttered. "It wasn't a problem before!"

“Minnie’s not a fan, either,” Chase chimed in, earning a dark glare from his sister. “But don’t you worry. Jake here has practice!”

Indeed, Minnie stood close to him with her arms crossed and her shoulders tense, and avoided looking at the edge of the giant hand. “He’s … pretty careful,” she muttered. Admitting it was tough, but for the sake of helping their erstwhile guests feel safer, she would avoid arguing with Chase. At least on some things.

“Talking about me?” Rumbled not only overhead, but nearby in Jacob’s chest. He tilted his head down to check on his many passengers. He’d never seen his hand look crowded. “Gonna be alright? The only other secure way I have is my pocket.”

Dean's reply was somewhat along the lines of a strangled grunt, and Sam shook his head, amused.

"This is fine," Sam told them. "No... pockets. I doubt that would do much to help."

Dean nodded faintly in agreement, and gave them a weak thumbs up. He sank down, ending up sitting on Jacob's palm, trying his best not to think about where they were, and that he was sitting on a giant's hand. All of that while said giant took them to their destination.

The other hunters back home would never believe this one, as if they needed more reason to call the Winchesters crazy.

Jacob nodded once, and his sympathetic gaze lingered on Dean’s shaky hunch. It wasn’t the first time one of the little folk had been nervous on his hand, and probably wasn’t the last. Even Chase had been concerned at first, as much as he tried to act like it was the most natural thing in the world.

Once assured everyone was as settled as they could be, though, Jacob turned his attention on the ground far below instead. He didn’t want to dote so much attention on his passengers that he forgot to keep an eye on anyone wandering down there.

As he stepped off the front path of the Lisong’s home, he regretted leaving a very noticeable giant boot print behind. Someone would likely scold him for it later.

[jincherie]

TEASER: sunshine riptide

genre: hybrid au, ot7, fluff, animal crossing insp wc: 2.6k

“So in exchange for three months paid stay on the island while you get back on your feet, you will work part-time at the Rabbits Den three days a week, and man the desk in the Resident Services Building on Sundays. Is that okay to you?”

You nod eagerly, the ordeal seeming too good to be true and something you’re afraid will be retracted if you don’t act with haste. Mr Bang returns your motion with a little less fervour, the same kind look never leaving his face.

“Perfect, it’s settled then! We’re glad to have you with us, y/n.”

Something lifts from your chest in that moment, as though you’d been walking beneath the cover of a lead blanket and it has finally slipped from your shoulders. You feel a little breathless, and you know the grin that slips onto your face is stupidly wide. Embarrassingly, you feel salty pricks at the corner of your eyes.

“Thank you so much,” you say, and you mean it. It hadn’t exactly been a well thought out plan, moving here with nothing to your name but your most basic possessions, but you’d just needed to escape and start anew and this… this had been the first opportunity you’d seen. The best opportunity you’d seen. “Really, thank you.”

“You’re more than welcome, young lady.” Mr Bang’s expression grows even softer, if possible. “This is a place people come to find refuge, and happiness. You’re welcome here.”

You clear your throat, turning your head to the side and pretending that you need to cough so he doesn’t see the tear that slips out. You have a feeling he knows, though, as you turn back and find him smiling at you, floppy rabbit ears framing his round face. He reaches out, patting you on the shoulder.

“Now, lets find you a room for the night. I’ll send word to the house I have in mind and make sure they have it nice and tidy before your arrival tomorrow. Sound good?”

It hits you only now how tired you are, more emotionally exhausted than anything, and nod while allowing him to lead you down the hall. That does sound good, actually. That sounds amazing.

O – O – O

You’d arrived on this island in the early hours of the morning yesterday, the late-night ferry the only one that runs to this island on the outskirts of the archipelago. It’s likely due to the fact that the captain is a nocturnal hybrid, and hence prefers to run his business under the cover of night. You hadn’t been able to sleep on the trip over, so when Mr Bang had shown you to the room he was happy to lend you for the night, despite it being barely ten o’clock in the morning you’d passed out the second your head hit the pillow. It was more of a nap than anything, but you suspect that the events of the past few months all caught up to you at once because you woke only for dinner and then fell asleep once more. Mr Bang offered no judgement, and simply left a note instructing you where the bathroom is and where you could find towels so that you could freshen up once you awoke. He also left you a coffee bun in a container, since you’d missed the afternoon tea he held the day before.

You hadn’t even been on this island a day and already the kindness of one of the residents was almost bringing you to tears.

Due to the fact that you’d slept far too early, you end up waking up at an ungodly hour the next day, the day you are meant to be moving in to the sharehouse that Mr Bang told you about. Laying in the bed, nestled in the warmth of the covers and watching as the suns rays slowly begin to stain the ceiling and the curtains in rich marigold, you do your best to get yourself together. You can breathe easy now, any anxiety you’d felt previous now nothing more than an echo in your chest. You feel refreshed, and not just from the ridiculous amount of sleep you’ve had in the past twenty-four hours. There are of course some nerves pertaining to meeting your new housemates, but it’s manageable. You have faith that everything will turn out well. It’s a good feeling.

Mr Bang is kind enough to offer you breakfast, and likely would have pushed you to stay for lunch had you not shown up down the stairs with your baggage already in tow. So begrudgingly, he allows you to head on your way, informing you that your new housemates knew of your arrival and had endeavoured to tidy up as much as possible. You thought it was a little funny he was telling you that—just how messy is the house usually?—but he simply shook his head with a smile that told you the answer would come soon enough.

The island isn’t big, but it most definitely isn’t small. The sun is warm and the air cool with a tinge of salt and sea trailing along the breeze, and the path you walk along that skirts the beach is peppered with sand and the odd shell. It makes you happier than anticipated, because just being out here makes you feel so free. Mr Bang told you that the house where you will be staying is on the other side of the island, past the little cluster of shops and small businesses and perched at the edge of the sand, backing onto a river that flows into the ocean and skirted on one side by a small cliff.

“It’s their own little alcove,” Mr Bang had snorted, a mixture of fondness and amusement evident on his features. “They get up to more trouble than I can keep track of over there, but they’re good boys.”

Ah, that’s right. You’d almost forgotten; your new housemates are a bunch of boys. You hope that Mr Bang is right about their character and you won’t be living in discomfort for the next three months.

The path wound and curved a bit, following the edge of the island, and before long you were walking through a section of light forestry. You suspected the house would be on the other side, and were in the midst of thinking just what it would look like when a small squeak! catches your attention and you halt, almost dropping your bag.

It’s silent, save for the way the breeze caresses the leaves around you. You peer around, eyes unable to spot anything in the foliage. Did you imagine it? It’s a little early in your stay to be going crazy. Hesitantly, you adjust your grip on your bag and resume your trek.

Squeak! S-squeeeak!

No, you definitely heard that. You freeze, having gotten a better sense of where the sound is coming from now and turning towards a large tree smothered in vines of varying thickness and clinginess. For a moment, you don’t see anything, eyes squinting hard—it’s like one of those I spy books you used to rave about as a kid— and just when you think you might be looking in the wrong place, you catch movement.

There, in a cluster of the vines dangling from one of the tree’s thicker limbs, is a tiny creature, all tangled up and squeaking in distress.

“Oh my goodness,” you drop your bag, immediately moving closer.  “Poor thing—hold on just a second, bub. I’ll get you out. Promise not to bite me?”

The creature offers a squeak and logically you know it isn’t answering your request, but you pretend it is anyway. Carefully stepping over plants and twigs, thanking past you for wearing more practical boots, you reach where the creature is stuck, dangling just below eye level.

The vines it has managed to get all tangled up in aren’t particularly thick, but there are a lot of them, and it has managed to get a few of its limbs stuck in place. Carefully, you snap a few of the more central ones and ease the tiny thing out, getting a better view of it the more you pull from its body. It’s squeaking all the while, though with much less distress and more of an energy that simply feels chatty. It makes you smile.

“There you go,” you murmur, cradling the tiny baby in your palms and cooing, trying to calm the heartbeat and hurried breaths you can feel racing against your skin. You stroke along its back as lightly as you can manage. “Oh, you’re a little sugar glider! You’re so pretty, such a cutie. Look at your markings, wow… so pretty.”

Almost as though it can understand your praise and is basking in it, it flicks its bushy tail and rolls in your palm, like a cat rubbing against something with its cheek except this little glider is doing it with its whole body. It’s awfully friendly, you note. Perhaps much of the wildlife here is more peacefully accustomed to human and hybrid activity.

“Okay, you’re free now. I’ll stop ogling at you and let you go,” you say, holding your hands up to a part of the tree that isn’t covered in vines lest there be a repeat of the earlier situation. The sugar glider merely blinks, eyes still on you, and doesn’t move. Brows drawn in confusion, you move your hands closer to the tree, “Well, aren’t you going to—oh!”

Faster than you can react, the little thing darts from your hands, leaping to your bicep and scurrying up with tiny claws in your shirt to your shoulder. Once at its apparent destination, it rushes to the crook of your neck and makes itself at home, nestling against you and securing itself with its tail partway around the back of your neck and its little paws clutching your shirt edge. You giggle, still in shock and trying not to jostle it off as you fight the ticklish sensation.

“Okay. I guess you can come with me. I’m not sure if you can stay the whole while, but I’m sure it will be okay while I walk.”

So off you go, bending and retrieving your bag carefully so you don’t dislodge your tiny new companion. You’ve seen a bit of sugar gliders, but the way this one is acting is quite peculiar. If it sticks around until you arrive at the house, you’d love to snap a quick picture because it really is so pretty, so cute.

The trip is faster than anticipated, now there is something else to occupy your thoughts. Before you know it you’re out of the forestry and approaching a large, modern three storey building that is probably just a few yards short of a mansion, nestled between the ocean, the river, and a short cliff-face just barely higher than the roof. This is the place for sure.

The little glider seems to perk up, the closer you get, something that surprises you since it was so quiet you thought it was asleep. With a soft noise, it grabs onto your hair with tiny paws and scurries to the top of your head, likely making a mess of it in the process but it’s so cute you can’t bring yourself to mind. At least it will be an interesting first impression.

As you approach the front door, you think you see movement in one of the windows on the ground floor. You almost dismiss it as you reach the eve, until you catch the hurried patter of feet against hardwood from beyond the door.

You barely manage to blink before the door is flying open, a man with raven curls and two fluffy russet ears peeking between the locks presenting you with the biggest grin you have ever seen on anyone’s face. It’s boyish and cute, a direct contrast to the mature, sculpted features of his face.

“Hello!” he says, and you catch sight of a long, fluffy russet tail whipping behind him and betraying his excitement—not that he was doing much to hide it. “You must be the new roomie! It’s nice to meet you! We’ve been waiting all morning, and one of us actually went to pick you up but… I’m not sure where he is.”

You’re a little overwhelmed but easily recover when he simply keeps looking at you so happily, returning the man’s bright smile. There’s rustling in your hair at the back of your head but you ignore it, adjusting your grasp on your bag. “Ah, thank you. I’m y/n, it’s nice to meet you…?”

The man pulls back, a sheepish look on his face that accompanies a light flush in his cheeks. “Oh, right. I’m Taehyung. Sorry. My hyungs tell me I tend to get a bit ahead of myself sometimes.”

You keep the smile on your face. “That’s okay, we got there in the end. It’s nice to meet you, Taehyung.”

Taehyung brightens, tail curling happily behind him. He opens his mouth to say something, but is interrupted from a voice to the side.

“Are you going to make our poor new housemate wait outside all day, Tae?”

The light blush colouring Taehyung’s cheeks deepens, a sheepish laugh escaping. “No. I was just about to invite her in!”

He steps back and reveals the person behind him who had spoken, a tall man with dimples and silvery hair that did little to conceal the large, rounded grey ears atop his head. He seems a little awkward in his stance, like he has more body than he knows what to do with, but still extends an arm in greeting with a kind smile. “y/n, is it? Welcome, please come in. I hope you’ll enjoy your stay here with us, however brief. We’re happy to have you.”

Don’t cry, don’t cry! If you cry now you can never show your face here again. You clear your throat, returning his smile as you step inside and out of the sun, the difference in temperature against your skin immediate. “Thank you, I really appreciate your generosity in letting me stay here.”

“Nonsense,” Taehyung snorts, “Namjoon-hyung has been saying for months we should find someone to fill the spare room, and now you show up on our doorstep! It’s perfect.”

The taller, who Taehyung had referenced as Namjoon, seems a little bashful, his cheeks heating. Does everyone in this house blush so easily? You hope it’s not contagious.

There is movement in your hair again, the glider apparently needing to breathe, and you have your mouth open ready to explain when Namjoon beats you to it.

“Oh, I see you’ve met Jimin already!”

What?

The glider leaps from your head and onto Taehyung’s outstretched arm, climbing to his head before leaping from that too and gliding through the air, all the way around the corner. There is a small clutter, the sound of a light swearword entering the air, and then the ever-familiar patter of feet against hardwood. Another boy rounds the corner, ashy-blond hair tousled and parted by two small grey ears, bushy tail curling behind him.

He skids to a stop in front of you, dipping in a brief bow before rising and shooting you a bright smile. “Hello! Thank you for helping me! I’m Jimin, welcome home!”

It takes all of your willpower to keep the happy tears at bay as you tilt your head back and laugh, already feeling lighter than you ever remember feeling before.

[poptod]

The Breeding Kings, pt. 17

Description:

Notes: WC: 6.3k

+

"What are you doing here?" Came a low voice, speaking in a foreign language.

Both of you whipped around, wide eyes meeting the stern gaze of a muscular man. His bare waist was toned and dark, covered partially by a long, curly beard of black hair that came down in a straight cylinder from his chin. He crossed his arms.

"We... clean," you tried slowly, glancing to Ahk for any help or assurance. Ahk, unfortunately, had none to offer.

"Your supplies are over there," he said gruffly in Akkadian. Neither of you understood that sentence, but the man pointed back to where you'd came from, and you both silently agreed it'd be best to just go wherever he told you to.

The man, who you now noticed had a sword on his hip, followed you to the back of the temple.

"Do you know when you said you do.. keep me safe, in my travel," you whispered in Egyptian.

"I remember, yes," he muttered, glancing back at the guard.

"Well???"

"... are you saying you want me to stab this man?"

"In safe place," you whispered with a nod.

Ahkmen sucked in a breath, his hand tightening over the dagger's hilt sheathed beneath his longer robes. He had never directly killed anyone––perhaps by careless decisions and ignorance, yes, but never with a knife in his hand.

"I thought we agreed we're just coming to see what it is then leaving," he whispered, leaning down to you partway.

"We see it, now we go! We will get food and leave this city," you hissed.

Before you knew it, rags and sweeping brooms were set out in front of you, and you found yourself returning to what you did best, according to the Egyptian priests––cleaning.

The guard only left you alone when you were both on your knees, cleaning the feet of a statue you were not allowed to look at. You kept your head down, breathing roughly as you dusted and polished the stone, sparing glances only to Ahk. As expected, he wasn't quite as thorough as you were and required a couple whispered instructions.

Speaking Egyptian was not the best idea, but speaking in a language those around you understood would've been more detrimental. So it was only in whispered breaths that you spoke. Behind you, the old man continued to speak in a half-dead voice, reciting indecipherable scripture. Every now and then he'd turn the page––the first time he did it, you were at the knees of the statue, polishing the smooth stone, and the second time the page turned, you were washing the statue's hips and skirt.

Once you finished, you both darted away, grabbing the rags and water as the old man approached. He'd moved from his spot for the first time, appearing from behind a curved wall of stone and wood that he preached in front of. The two of you still managed to peek out from behind the arches, overshadowed beneath evening light still flowing dimly in.

Citizens eventually made their way out of the temple, leaving the old man alone with a couple guards––one of which was the one who originally caught you––before the soldiers relented to the coming night.

The harder you squinted, the more you could see, and Ahkmen managed to catch the old man's mouth still moving in unspoken murmurs. He then knelt upon a cushion sat in front of the statue, his hands clasped together. You watched in silence for a moment more, until the old man slowly turned to face you, an empty, kind smile in his expression.

"Come here, children," he rasped out, beckoning you forward with bony fingers.

You glanced to Ahk, subconsciously pressing yourself tighter to him. He swallowed his fears best he could, took your hand, and stepped quietly forward.

"Are you thirsty?" He asked, but in Akkadian, and you couldn't understand him.

"I... what?" You said ever so hesitantly.

"Mm..," the preacher glanced between you, "what language do you speak?"

Egyptians weren't all that well liked in this region. The Sumerian language, though, might fare better.

"I speak Sumerian," he said in his chosen language, keeping his voice nonetheless quiet.

"Harappan," you added for yourself.

"I am Namluh," the man said with as much of a bow as his frail, aching body could do. He stood and turned to Ahk, speaking in Sumerian, "come drink the Holy water."

Namluh, now that you were close to him, was only a little bit taller than you, and shorter than Ahk, though he wasn't aided by the kinked hump on his back. In short, almost shaky steps he led you to where he'd been preaching. Now, a well stood before you, whose bottom dug so deep into the earth you couldn't see the water that would usually reflect even dim light. You tried to peer down further, but Ahk pulled you back before you could.

Using a rope, Namluh lowered a water-tight reed basket into the stone well. It took nearly a whole minute till you heard the splashing of water, and another couple minutes while Namluh carefully pulled the basket back to the surface. Ahkmen was tempted to help, but far too scared of the man to say anything out of line, and instead watched with his hand encircling yours.

At last the rope rose to its end, bringing with it a basket of crystal clear water sloshing in its' unsteady borders. Namluh took up two flasks from the chest behind him, dipping them into the water, and handing them to you when they no longer bubbled beneath the water's surface.

"Drink, children," he said with a slow nod.

Your hand tightened around his fingers, pressing your racing heartbeat against his. He glanced to you with a knotted brow, and realized something faster than he could truly think––and he was sipping from the flask, swallowing a gulp of freezing cold water.

Ahkmen could hear your breath catch in his throat. He rubbed the bank of your hand softly, allowing you a small comfort before you, too, drank the groundwater. It appeared, after a moment, to be nothing more than water, unlaced and clean.

"You are new here," Namluh said when you both began to shuffle awkwardly.

"Yes," Ahkmen admitted softly.

"Where do you come from?"

"Jericho."

The preacher paused, looking them up and down before he asked, "have you drunk the water of the Euphrates?"

You and Ahk shared a confused look.

"Well, yes," he answered with a slow nod.

"I see... come with me," Namluh rasped, turning and walking towards the main entrance to the temple.

Although uncertain, you followed him, squeezing one another's hands whenever your heartbeat picked up.

Cool, gentle winds blew about the city, tossing Ahk's mangled hair about his dusty face. A refresh of petrichor hit both of you, a stark difference from the incense that poisoned the air of the temple. Houses that were previously abandoned were now filled with sparse lights, the families inside usually very large, numbering around 6 to 10 on average, and all looking starving.

You nudged Ahk with your elbow.

"Ask him, what it is with the water," you whispered in Egyptian. He nodded.

"Uh, Namluh –" Ahk tapped the man's shoulder, startling him. Ahk quickly apologized. "What is wrong with the water?"

"In the winter, disease breeds off the malnourished masses," he said, a form of speaking that reminded Ahkmen heavily of the way his teacher spoke. "In this last year, the disease arrived by the water, and our city has suffered greatly."

Ahkmen whispered slow, clunky translations into your ear, arising an expression of confused alarm.

"That must answer a question I'm sure you have," Namluh said with a dry chuckle. "I have saved this city through the water I pull from the ground."

"Wait – wait. We did drink from the river. What does that mean for us?" Ahk asked, a growing panic rising in his chest.

"I do not know, truthfully," he said as he stopped in front of a building, turning to face you. "No one has drunk from the river for a long time now. Until then you must be watched."

"Watched?"

Namluh knocked on the door and near instantaneously soldiers, though not as tall or muscled as the ones in the temple, appeared through the tall doorway. Both of you froze up, making their job easy––they dragged you into the tall, mud building, shoving you inside and closing the door behind you before you could even think to protest. A large, metal clanging could be heard as they locked you inside.

Your mouth fell open from what Ahk could only presume to be shock.

"What has happened?" You asked in a loud, flat voice.

"I think... we're being quarantined," he said, his wide eyes staring blankly forward.

"What in time?"

"Quarantined," he repeated as he looked to you. "They've locked us up so that illness can't spread to anyone else."

"But we do not... we are not sick," you said.

"They think the river's what's making them sick, and I told him that we drank from it, so..."

"... fucked," you finished for him.

He snorted.

"Yeah, I guess so."

The room, while unlit, could be seen through the couple windows that allowed moonlight in. As scarce as it was, you could still see till the end of a hall lined with beds, some empty, and some occupied. You sucked in a sharp breath at the realization you were not alone, stepping so your side was pressed to Ahk.

Victims.

Or, the already dead. Most of the beds didn't move––not even to breathe, the leaf-thin sheets covered in the dust left by incense burned hours ago. Sitting at the wall opposite the door was another altar not unlike the one you found in the temple. There was no well of water, but there was a plate piled with ash from incense in front of a small statue, seemingly another god that neither of you recognized. Your footsteps that echoed in the tall ceiling eventually earned you a harsh 'shh!' from one of the beds, and while you couldn't tell who had shut you up you dutifully stayed silent.

Ahkmen tried to say something to you, but he was speaking too quietly. Since if he spoke louder he would be heard by others, he leaned in, his lips brushing your ear as they moved.

"Should we sleep?"

"It is night," you said, almost reluctant to agree.

The beds had no frame, but they did have a good amount of cushioning that Ahk enjoyed immensely after sleeping on the ground for weeks on end. He wandered a little while before he found the largest, most comfortable bed, and jogged back over to you on the other side of the room.

"I found the best one," he said, grabbing your wrist.

"Good for you," you said as you continued to scan the beds in front of you.

"No," he tugged on you, causing you to face him, "come join me."

Your mouth opened into an 'oh' shape despite not making any sound, and followed after him.

To the right of the bed was the entrance of the hall, as well as a few more empty beds, and to the left was a bed with a suspiciously unmoving body within the sheets. You both tried to ignore that, sidling into the bed beside one another. It was a little small for two people, but you were equally small, and Ahk could easily pull you against him so your back was pressed tight to his chest. The sheet was tossed aside, useless with your combined heat warming each other.

His breath tickled the top of your head, and though the eerie silence still surrounded you in pitch black night, you giggled and scratched at your hair. He chuckled, his hold on you tightening ever so slightly.

"Go to sleep, Yogasundari," he murmured, his words partially blurred  with his lips on your head.

"You go sleep, malam," you retorted as you shifted your body.

Your bags were still in the strange temple. Ahkmen nearly forgot where you were, along the route of the river, and along the traipse of your trek to Harappa. He thought a moment, his eyes staring at the lump in the bed next to you.

Rapiqum. Rapiqum was apparently home to some cult-like figures, and not the kind that Ahk generally enjoyed or knew. Disease and the struggle for water; the same battles fought since the beginning of time almost 5,000 years ago. Ahk held you tighter yet, hoping––or praying––you would never struggle for such things again. There was a certain doubt that preyed on the edge of his mind, whispering that the symptoms would've started a while ago, especially after continuous days of drinking from the Euphrates.

Piye would know, a sudden thought that brought a pang of guilt through his chest like a lightning bolt. He could see them again, he reasoned––he could return to Egypt after you no longer needed him, or Piye could alternatively visit him. They didn't like travelling all that much, but enjoyed learning about other people just as he did.

He would see them again.

A dry, empty feeling trickled down his throat.

He had to see them again.

He gripped you tighter, curling himself around your sleeping body as he closed his eyes at last.

Ahkmen awoke to empty arms and a sense of morning chill creeping in from the high-up vents in the ceiling. He opened his dry, red eyes, finding the bed next to him empty as well. That woke him up a little better, and he blearily made his way to his feet, blinking at the haze-filled room thick with the scent of kyphi incense. He could only tell as he'd encountered it quite a lot––it was a favorite of Egyptians, and most common there. This was clearly not Egypt, and he soon recalled he was in Mesopotamia with quite a lot of distaste for himself.

A short line of children anywhere from the ages of 6 to 20 stood down the middle of the hallway, leading up to the altar from which the incense burned. The priest who had locked you and him inside was at the head of the room, passing out something he once again couldn't see, hidden behind the tallest boys' head.

You were standing near the end of the line. Once he caught sight of you, he jogged over.

"What's going on?" He asked in a hushed voice.

"He is giving bread," you murmured. "Beer. No water."

"Okay.. just to make sure, the plan is still to get out of here, right?"

"Yes," you said, the corners of your lips quirking up. "Food is good, we need to eat."

"I suppose so," he said quietly.

Ahk's gaze shifted from you to Namluh, who stood at a table handing out bits of bread and small cups of beer. The two of you were the oldest of all the kids staying in the hall, which meant that as Ahkmen approached the table, he was quick to notice the portion sizes were smaller than the palm of his hand. He frowned, but took what he was given anyway.

You found a seat back on the makeshift bed you'd slept on, crossing your legs and eating in silence. On your last couple bites you offered Ahk the rest of your bread.

"No, don't do that," he said, pushing your hand away. "Eat it. You need it just as much as I do."

"A fly does not eat what a bird does," you said, and offered the food again.

He sighed as he took it. You grinned, but a quiet fluster overcame you when he split it in half, and handed one of the halves to you.

Mother of Gods, he thought as he watched you eat. I'm whipped.

Throughout the day, there were no other visitors except the priest who checked in sparsely. The chaos Ahkmen had been expecting never came, and instead he spent the day watching sick children sit around, picking at the dusty floors, too tired to move. A handful were in a genuinely sick position––clutching their heads or stomachs, features twisted with pain and nausea.

His sandal scraped against the floor as he drew his knee closer to his chest, eyeing the tired children warily. As pathetic as they were, Ahkmen didn't want to take chances, even with a disease he didn't trust the origins of. You, on the other hand, tried a couple times to go speak to a few of the kids, but were stopped by Ahk tugging you back down.

"We should try and stay away from the sickness," he said, watching you slowly move back to your knees. "Or whatever this is."

"Fine," you said with a huff, crossing your arms as you sat down next to him.

Ahkmen fiddled with his hands as he thought about your bags, locked into the temple in a dark corner. All of your potions, your weapons, and his belongings were now missing, but what he found he missed the most was carving into that shitty block of wood he found in the middle of the desert. It kept his hands busy,and creating something tangible––rather than ordering the work of servants and builders––satisfied him, a feeling that only grew when he fantasized giving you a wonderful thing.

He closed his eyes, his head thunking on the wall when he leant back. What had he gifted you throughout your friendship?

Was it even a friendship anymore?

It felt like more than that. Or less than that, but either way it felt strange to call you his friend.

Other half, he thought. That didn't sound right either.

Companion?.. no.

Your bodyguard. Your protector.

Your secret admirer.

His cheeks lit up a bright red at even the thought of that, and he pulled his legs to his chest, hiding his face in crossed arms that leant on his knees. A hand on his shoulder brought him quickly away from that.

"You are okay?" You asked.

"Yes, sorry," he said with a heavy sigh. "I just want to get our belongings back."

"We will do that this night," you assured him.

"Right... we should probably think about how we're going to do that," he said, glancing to you till your gaze brought that blush back to him and he had to turn away.

"It can not open," you said as you pointed to the door. "That is Namluh's home."

Over the top of your head, Ahk could spy another, much smaller door on the opposite side of the room, near the altar.

"I hate doors," Ahkmen said, frowning.

"Why??" You chuckled.

"Can't see past them," he said.

"You are funny, Aganu."

He frowned again. That usually meant you thought he was 'kind of' stupid.

In the eveningtime, Namluh returned with bread and beer, the common staple of––Ahk assumed––the whole world. He stood at the altar in view of the whole room, his hunched back leaning over the table, upon which the small rations of food were spread out. Children and teenagers soon lined up, their shoulders sagging and eyes darkened with restless sleep.

Ahk watched on with a brow he wasn't aware was furrowed. You eventually stood as well, and Ahk followed dutifully, without thought, to join you in the line.

Namluh muttered prayers and blessings as he handed out the food, the proportions equal to or smaller than what you'd gotten in the morning. Neither of you fully understood what the priest was saying in his Akkadian language, but neither of you cared much earlier, returning to your seats to discuss your escape plan in subdued, hushed voices.

One major problem you had to contend with was the presence of the sick children. At first you wanted to bring them along, or at least the ones who were unjustly locked in the hospital, but Ahk reminded you that all the children lived in Rapiqum. You couldn't take a horde of children all the way down to Babylon and leave them there to suffer the strains of poverty, homelessness, and prejudice.

In that case, staying quiet was a necessity. That ruled out much of the brute-force method Ahkmen suggested, and instead you wondered if, by stacking everything you could find, you could reach the vents built into the roof to allow fresh air in. You were certainly small enough to fit, but Ahk was doubtful that he could.

"How would we get out if I can't fit, though?" He asked, leaning in. "If it doesn't work, then we have a massive pile of things that we need to put back, that could take a while."

You thought for a moment, your brow furrowed as you played with the skin of your chin.

"I have a think," you said slowly, "but we will be very fast to have this done right."

"Well we still have to get our bags. Can we do that in time?"

"... get rope and yes, we can do," you said with a growing, mischievous grin.

"Rope..." his eyes raced around the chamber, searching for anything resembling a long rope.

The door to Namluh's home––or at least his bedroom––swung open as the priest finished with the food and revelations, and fell shut behind his slow steps. It gave Ahkmen ample time to note the decorations in the priest's room, including a beautiful chart of pulleys, the system Rapiqum was now using to hydrate its' citizens. The essential tool. Examples of the system were displayed hanging around Namluh's room, as well, meaning that long, thick, and sturdy rope was much closer than either of you thought.

"No problem," he said, his eyes never leaving the swinging door as he tapped for your attention.

You peered over his tall shoulder, sounding a quiet 'oh,' as you caught sight of it, as well.

Light was already dim in the ceiling vents, as the sun set nearly all the way down over the mountains and plains. Neither of you could see the single, blazing piece of sun remaining, nor the orange and purple dusk that it soon left behind. Now only the incense at the altar burned, glowing like burning embers whose smoke still filled the room, settling low near the floor.

You and Ahk were still awake and obviously so, sat up against the wall with your sides pressed together. The other children slowly made their ways back to their beds, but many stayed awake unwillingly, wracked with coughs and ragged breaths. Conversation between you died off as you both became more preoccupied with scanning the beds, attempting to gauge who was asleep and who wasn't. But your hand creeped down between you, a touch that nearly had Ahk jumping, before his smallest finger linked with yours.

Soon, even the tolls of bells from outside were silenced, and all that existed was the hazy, black room, whose loneliness was broken only by coughs and sniffs. The hall wasn't that big, Ahk reasoned––the ceiling was technically less than twice his height, though only a little––but the overwhelming darkness hiding even his hands from view left him alone. A consciousness suddenly disconnected from its' body, and from reality.

You shifted closer to him and he immediately returned to kiss the top of your head.

"Soon," he murmured.

It must've taken hours for everyone to fall into their uneasy dreams, at which point you were both growing quite tired yourselves. But there was something important to be done, and despite your needs, sleep would be no friend of yours throughout the entirety of the coming night.

Ahkmen slipped his leather and reed sandals off, and the two of you finally stood, him barefoot and you with soft, fabric shoes. You padded down the middle of the room in silence, your slow steps allowing you to look at every child you passed. In the heat of dreams, some had tossed their blankets aside, and others were shivering. You almost paused with your breath caught in your throat, but Ahkmen was quick to pull you along.

The wooden door was rather short, now that you both stood in front of it. It was also locked, but that was only the third thing you noticed, the former being the first, and the second being it had a strange looking handle. Neither of you had ever seen one before.

"What..." you tried to say before Ahk's hand whipped up to your mouth.

He held his finger in front of his lips and you nodded.

While you tried to figure out how the lock and handle worked, Ahk stood guard near the altar, watching to make sure no one would wake up. Metal still rattled against itself no matter how careful you were, and every time it did both of you seized up.

A small click signalled the releasing lock, and Ahk hurried over to your side as you slowly opened the swinging door. It creaked for a half-second, stifling your breath till it opened the rest of the way silently, revealing the inside of Namluh's still-lit room.

Long, black shadows descended across the floor from a rushlight burning at Namluh's beside, where a small counter supported both the light and a wax statue wrapped in linen. His bed was little more than a wooden frame and a neck holder to keep his head up. Across the room from Namluh were bookcases, most of which were filled to the brim with scraps of incomprehensible papyrus and clay. Some shelves contained artifacts of worship and ingredients Ahkmen assumed to be for potions.

Rustling of sheets in the hospital sent you both jumping into the room, shutting the door as delicately and as quickly as you possibly could. Your backs pressed against it, heavy breaths filling your chests as you scanned the room, from the desk, to the bed, and the displays.

On the wall directly to the left of the door, buckets and one long, sturdy rope hung along the frame of an innovative concept. None of the notes and scribbles were written in any language either of you knew, but the illustrations sufficed in their explanations. Still, as nicely set up as the decorations were, your needs were more important, and the two of you picked the rope off the nails and into your eager hands.

You looked up with a wide grin, nearing a laugh you knew you couldn't lease. He chuckled silently as well, and with that you left, opening and closing the door with just as much care as ever.

"Now what?" He whispered beneath his breath, standing at the altar beside you with the heavy rope's weight shared between you.

"I must be on your shoulders," you whispered, looking up at him while he short-circuited.

"What?" He said after a moment of silence.

"I am on your shoulders!" You hissed in a whisper.

"Okay, okay," he said quickly, kneeling down.

You climbed up over the bend of his back, settling your thighs on his shoulders. He screwed up his face into a frown to avoid blushing or stuttering too profusely.

With the rope in hand, you set to figuring out the true distance between yourself and the air vents. You squinted, throwing up one flayed end of the rope that circled around the thick wall separating the different, horizontal vents from each other. When it caught, you pumped your fist with a massive grin before tapping for Ahkmen to let you down.

He knelt again and you climbed off. While you brushed your clothes of wrinkles, Ahkmen reached up on his tip toes, just barely grasping the other end of the rope to pull it down and equalize the sides. There was a special knot he was taught in the house of life––it made a loop that could be secured at the top of the rope by pulling on the other side, meaning you could easily climb the rope. That was what he assumed you wanted, at least––he'd feel rather silly if it wasn't.

Consequently, you began your first attempt of climbing the rope, restrained grunts of effort still sounding behind lips shut tight. He tried to help you up a little further, but he couldn't get you high enough to grasp the vents, so you couldn't make it. As you tried to reach forward, your grip on the rope slipped, and you fell with a muted gasp, landing with a fwhoosh in Ahkmen's open arms.

The two of you stared wide-eyed at each other as you waited for someone to stir, for someone to notice, but no one did. You both sighed in relief, returning to scaling the rope.

This time you kept your grip much tighter, your knuckles paling with the force of it, while your uncut nails dug into your palm. You ignored the feeling to the best of your ability and, using your knees and Ahk's help till you finally grasped the vent wall. Your other hand whipped up to stabilize yourself. The strain of lifting yourself up burned your tired muscles, but you managed it nonetheless and scrambled onto the roof of the hospital.

It took several minutes before Ahkmen followed after you, his head popping out of the vent but not much else.

"Told you it wouldn't fit," he muttered, feeling slightly safer to speak at a more comprehensible volume.

"Do not be a child, Ahkmen," you said with a quiet giggle. "That is my work."

"Yes, you're adorable, I get it," he grumbled as you scooted closer, digging into your pockets. "Are you going to help me or not?"

"No, I will leave you here, for all time," you said, banging a hammer against the dried mud building that began to shatter like shale.

The sound immediately echoed in the mostly vacant hospital, sending numbing shivers all throughout his kicking legs, attempting to find some sort of surface to push him through the vent.

"Yogi I swear to God –"

"Which God?" You said, grunting as you once more slammed down the hammer, breaking the vent further yet.

The missing stone allowed a much bigger entrance, through which Ahk pushed himself desperately through as the sound of footsteps sounded from far below the roof. You grabbed his arms, pulling as hard as you could till he popped out and you both tumbled down the slanted roof, the rough rock burning your cheek when you skidded against it. Even now neither of you dared to make a sound, and you drew blood trying to keep your mouth shut with your teeth.

When you didn't collide with the far off ground, you opened your eyes that had been screwed shut, only to find yourself dangling by a single hand. Your gaze darted up to see Ahk grasping your wrist tighter than a snake's coil, his teeth gritted and eyes burning as they watched you. A darkness overtook his iris––one that didn't fit the usual grey color.

You wound your fingers around his arm, and with that he pulled you up, aided by your kicking feet.

"Get the rope," you said, panting from the exertion. He nodded and rushed over, zipping up the long rope, the end of it disappearing into your grasp the moment the doors splintered open and guards burst through.

Ahkmen peered over the edge, revealing just his eyes that scanned the room below. There were only three men who'd come to check on the noise, and with the rope gone, there was little hint to what had happened. All of the children were in their beds, most of them passed out entirely. Ahk grinned as he slinked away from the vent.

"Smart little thing, aren't you?" He said, sitting down beside you and pinching your cheek. You pushed him away, giggling.

"You say it like I do not know."

Shouts from below signified the arrival of Namluh, who awoke from the clutter only when guards came to shake him from his bed. You both jumped to your feet, but you were quicker to cast the rope down to the earth, as the other end of it was still tethered to the vents and, with that resistance, could hold your weight as you climbed carefully down.

Ahk followed your example as soon as he could, landing both of you with a low puff of dirt around your feet.

You started off in a sprint up the city paths leading towards the temple. Much of your invisibility could be credited to the nighttime, as well as the shadows casted by city homes, making you no more than silhouettes to any passerbys. Still, you both attempted to muffle your heavy pants from running.

Once you made it through the wall borders and into the complex, you found that the front entrance to the temple was blocked off by a large, metal gate, the ends of which were made into pikes that pierced the earth below. There was obviously no fitting either of you through that, so you ran round to the other side to where you'd first entered the temple. The back door, never guarded or closed––mostly because it didn't have a door––had three steps that Ahkmen skipped over entirely. You scaled them with quick feet.

"Alright, where did we put the bags?" Ahkmen asked, his chest still keeping a heavy up and down as he looked around the room.

"I think.. when we had the cleans, we had them off," you said slowly, frowning as you tried to concentrate.

"Right," he said, chewing his lip before he set off again, you trailing behind as you entered the next room.

Somehow, it had gotten even harder to see; the weak light of stars and the moon partially illuminated the entrance room, but was, beyond that, useless. It took a minute or so, but eventually he could see the vague outlines of objects, including a closet that had the designs of Hathor on the edges.

"I can't believe those bastards got a hold of something from Egypt," he tsked, stopping to appreciate the handiwork.

"Shut up, Aganu," you said, and pulled him along.

Someone took your bags away from where you dropped them, making it several grueling, anxiety-filled minutes until you found them stacked in the corner, some of their flaps open and loose. You let out a gasp, falling to your knees as you set to finding your stock of potions. Ahk knelt down beside you.

"Everything there?" He asked, going over his own bags as well as looking over your shoulder.

"I think..," you mumbled as you dug into your belongings. "Sephys!"

"What?"

Ahk, who had only looked away momentarily, was abruptly returned to your shoulder to find Sephys still curled up and sleeping in one of your pack's pockets.

"Holy shit," Ahk said with wide eyes. "She was in there the whole time?"

"What, you want me asking her? I do not know, we must go now," you said, pulling the flap back over Sephys and hauling the bag onto your back. Ahkmen nearly laughed, but was pulled to his feet by his shirt before he could.

The straps weighed down on your shoulders once more, the bruising weight more of a comfort than it had ever been before. Tools and bits of metal, glass, and stone clanked against each other in your packs, making your steps much smaller and more calculated.

From the small hill upon which the temple had been built, and the descending sides that housed the rest of the city, you and Ahkmen could see to the edge of the city––which had really become more of a town in the past century––and the winding, tangled streets that led to the end of the buildings. One particular road led from round back of the temple complex out into the south, opposite from the city's main entrance sitting on the northwestern edge.

Ahk tapped your shoulder, silently directing your attention to the path. You nodded, and the two of you set out, ever remaining in the shadows.

Halfway to the end Sephys popped out from your bag. You nearly let out a call for her name, but Sephys appeared to follow your path anyway. Ahk shrugged and the three of you continued.

It appeared after a while that most everyone was busy searching the hospital or temple for what had made the noise. That was the conclusion Ahk decided to draw; whether or not it was right didn't matter. All that mattered was that the townspeople and the priest were preoccupied, and it was mere minutes until you'd be gone from the city. Surely they wouldn't chase after you. Actually, they might be happy to have you gone, since you were 'infected' in Rapiqum's eyes.

A bloom of warmth that the sun couldn't bring spread throughout his chest as the last of the homes disappeared, making way for an open desert and the river that flowed on the mud-soaked shores of the Euphrates. Reeds grew taller than even him, spreading out from the water to every crevice it could survive in.

The day had yet to come, but the two of you were up on the high of the chase, and thus greatly energized for the long walk you now resumed after the short intermission. You grinned when you met his eye by chance.

"No problem, yes?" You said with a quiet giggle.

"Say that once we get to Babylon," he said, turning from you to the path ahead. "Then we won't have any problems at all."

"Really?"

"I hope so," he said with a nod.

"We can stay, for a long time," you suggested.

"What do you mean by that?"

"We can... you can take your bath, I can see the city, you know. Stay for.. many days. Not for all time, but a good time," you said, glancing between the ground and him.

"... that'd be nice," he said, matching your smile.

[tsuki-chibi]

Marichat May Day 2: Ghibli AU

This story is a sequel to my Marinette March and Adrinette April stories; I highly recommend reading those first.

You can also read this story on AO3: Cloudburst

---

When looking for a particular universe to jump to, Kaalki had again told them that it was all about intent. So before Marinette used her attack, she closed her eyes and thought particularly hard about the sort of universe that they needed to go.

For Adrien, a universe where there was a Ladybug but no Chat Noir.

For Marinette, a universe where there was a Chat Noir but no Ladybug.

Everything inside of her cried out strongly against such worlds – she believed with all of her heart that Ladybug and Chat Noir belonged together – but Marinette did what she could to push those feelings down as she spoke the words that might just change their lives forever.

“It worked,” Adrien said in her ear, and Marinette opened her eyes.

Two portals were floating in front of them. Contrary to Bunnix’s portals, which were usually white, these portals were more of a bluey-green color. It reminded Marinette of pools of sea water, except she couldn’t see through the bottom. She couldn’t see anything. The portals were just endless depths of color, and that left her feeling anxious.

What if they didn’t go anywhere?

What if she had done it wrong?

Tikki had told her how dangerous this was…

Adrien must have noticed her apprehension because he smiled at her. “Think there’s a chance one of these will drop me into a Ghibli AU?”

“A… what?” Marinette said, blinking.

“You’ve never seen a Ghibli film?” Adrien said, looking a bit horrified. “That’s it. When we come back, we’re having a movie marathon night.”

“Uh… sure,” Marinette said, shrugging. The brief back-and-forth had helped to ease her nerves a bit, though she was still cautious as she stepped closer to one of the portals.

It moved away from her.

Adrien looked at Marinette.

She looked back at him blankly.

“Was that supposed to happen?” Adrien asked after a pause.

“I have no idea.” Marinette tried to approach the portal again, but it determinedly moved away from her.

“Maybe…” Adrien walked right up to the portal. It stayed where it was supposed to be, even allowing Adrien to reach out a gloved hand to not-quite-touch.

But when Adrien tried to walk over to the other portal, that portal then moved away. Adrien nodded.

“Yeah, this one must be mine and that’s yours,” he said, gesturing to the portal that wouldn’t allow him to get close. “I guess that’s good. Means that we won’t end up going to the wrong place.”

Marinette hadn’t even thought about that being a possibility, and she gulped. It would’ve been a mistake that they could have fixed, though it would’ve required her feeding Fluff and Kaalki to do so. As it was… she checked her miraculous, realizing that she had missed the first warning beep. They had less than four minutes to get through the portals.

She didn’t even want to think about what might happen if the timer ran out and she detransformed while they were still in the portals.

Maybe they’d be lost forever…

“We need to go,” she blurted out. “I don’t know how long it takes to go through, and I have less than four minutes – no, make that less than three minutes before I detransform.” She amended her sentence partway through when both miraculous beeped again.

“Right.” Adrien put on a brave smile. His orange, white-tipped fox ears bobbed as he walked over to her and took both of his hands into hers.

They looked at each other for a long moment.

Though Marinette knew they had both done dangerous things before in the line of duty, somehow this felt different. Ladybug and Chat Noir were an unstoppable team… when they were together. Normally even if they had to separate during an akuma attack, it was always short.

A few days really wasn’t that long, but right then it felt like forever.

“It will be okay,” Marinette said finally, forcing herself to smile too.

“Yeah,” Adrien said softly. He looked like he wanted to say something else.

Marinette wished he would.

There were so many feelings bubbling up inside of her that she just didn’t know how to express.

But maybe Adrien was having the same problem because he let go of her hands without saying anything.

Then he did something that surprised her.

He held his fist up.

Marinette could have cried as she formed a fist and bumped her knuckles against his.

“Bonne chance, My Lady,” Adrien said somberly, with none of his usual joy. Then he turned on his heel and ran towards his portal.

“Good luck, Chaton,” Marinette whispered right before he went inside.

Her heart felt impossibly heavy as she watched the portal swallow him up. He was out of sight within seconds, gone into the sea of blue green. The portal faded away seconds later. Marinette took a couple of deep breaths, trying not to freak out too badly.

He had the charm bracelet, she reminded herself.

She would find him again.

They would be together again.

Holding that thought in her head, and in her heart, she turned and walked through her own portal.

[hypnoticwinter]

Down the Rabbit Hole part 35

Just looking at Makado makes me realize how incredibly tired I am. “Makado,” I say, trying to put a little bit of that weariness into my voice, “please, I just want to get Elena out of here.”

“I don’t give a fuck,” Makado tells me. “Take your helmet off.”

“Makado,” I start, but she raises the gun and coaxes a threatening-sounding click out of it.

“Jesus Christ,” I mutter, and reach up and pop the helmet open. 

“Now take it off slowly and drop it.”

The helmet thuds to the floor with a dull clunk. I keep my hands open, bent at the elbows, roughly shoulder-height. I guess it’s a testament to how often this has happened to me lately that I’m not particularly panicked or flustered, even though she has a gun on me. I look into her eyes; they’re about as kind as a brick wall, a far cry from the Makado I knew - well, that I thought I knew. I don’t think she’ll shoot me but I don’t want to push her. 

“Makado,” I try again, speaking softly, “I know that you’re upset, but -“

“Upset?” she laughs. “That is a big understatement, Roan.”

“As if you have any right to be upset at me,” I snort. Makado’s eyes flash but I press onwards anyway. “You’re the one who was trying to literally fucking frame me for all the illegal shit you were doing -“

“You got Peter killed,” she says. My mind goes blank for a moment before I nearly laugh. I choke it back down; if I started laughing, either out of terror or nerves or just pure exasperation, I know I’d never stop, and I know Makado would probably shoot me.

“Makado,” I say, stammering a little bit, “I didn’t - there was nothing I could have -“

“Then how come you lived and he died, huh?” she says. I think I hear a crack in her icy demeanor and I look at her - really look at her. She glances away after a moment or two, and when her gaze swings back and hits mine whatever I thought I might have seen, whatever small vulnerability, has already faded away. “How come you lived?” she asks. 

The barrel of the gun trembles gently.

“Mak,” I start. I want terribly to be angry at her but something about the way she’s acting is just making me sad instead.

“Don’t call me that!” she yells. She slips her finger inside the gun’s trigger guard and I feel my breath catch. Maybe she really will shoot me; if she’s mad enough, if she thinks that somehow I caused Pete to get…to get leeched, or whatever the hell…

“Peter was the only one who ever called me that,” she murmurs. I know I’ve called her ‘Mak’ before and she never made a fuss about it but I guess this is special circumstances.

“Pete is - was - a fully trained ranger with dozens of expeditions under his belt, he might have - “ Makado licks her lips and tries again - “he might have gone a little downhill after 2007 but he was still sharp. He would have gotten out of there no problem. But he dies and you live?”

“Was that the plan?” I ask. If I can keep her talking maybe I’ll be able to pull something, but deep down I doubt it. “You send me down there hoping I’d die in an accident or something?”

“Of course not,” she says. “But if I had to choose between you and Peter…”

“That’s cold,” I tell her. She starts to say something, but I continue before she can. “But I get it. You loved him, huh?”

“Of course I loved him,” she says, sounding mildly scandalized. “You wouldn’t understand, I’m sure.”

“Why, because I - ? Oh, whatever,” I grunt. “Whatever, Makado. Just shoot me and get it over with.”

“I don’t want to shoot you.”

“Right, of course,” I snarl, putting as much venom into my words as I can. “You want to hand me over to the feds so I can suffer for your sins, right? That’s the endgame here, right?”

She has the good graces to flinch, at least. “I don’t -“ she starts, but I shake my head.

“Whatever,” I tell her. “What happened to Elena?”

Makado looks round, her eyes resting briefly on the wreckage of the autodoctor unit. “I don’t know,” she says. “When I got down here it was like this, and Elena was gone. I was going to -“

“Kidnap her so you’d have some leverage?”

“Bitch, will you stop fucking assuming the goddam worst of me? I was planning on tracking her down and getting her out of here.”

“I don’t believe you,” I tell her, my voice flat. “How did you even know she was here?”

“Because I heard the two of you sopping all over each other on the radio,” she tells me, her voice hard-edged with disdain. “Soon as I heard she was here in DUSA, I split off from my team and rushed up here. Guess I was too late.”

“Goddam it,” I mutter. My cheeks are burning a little from the knowledge that we’d been overhead; I guess I could have assumed, but it still had felt like it had been something private, something special we had shared. Maybe I wouldn’t have broken down quite so hard if I’d known Makado had been listening in. “It must have been the Leechman,” I mutter, glaring at the gaping hunk of metal torn away from DUSA’s hull. My eyes are stinging and I wipe them hurriedly, not thinking, and when I take my hands down Makado is glaring at me very seriously over the sights of the pistol, and I realize that the quick motion nearly made her shoot me. My stomach does a backflip and I stammer out the beginning of an apology before she mutters a curse and takes a length of rope from her suit pocket.

“Hands together,” she orders me, and with a sigh I slap my wrists together and hold them out to her. She comes to me with the rope and hesitates for a moment; I know it’s because she’s only just realizing that she will have to put the gun away to tie me up. 

“I’ll hold that for you,” I offer, and in spite of herself she laughs.

“Turn around,” she says. “Hands behind your back.”

My heart is thumping heavily in my chest as I do. I am trying very hard not to imagine the Leechman bursting into here like a demon straight out of a horror movie and swallowing Elena up into its swollen leechy body. I can feel my hands trembling as Makado takes my wrists and lashes them tightly together. The rough synthetic fiber cuts into my wrists and I grunt. Makado steps away from me and I flex my hands experimentally but it’s no use, she’s tied me tightly enough that I’d never be able to free myself unless I had a knife. She’s already taken mine from the sheath on my belt and tossed it casually to the dusty, oily floor.

Elena’s dead. I can’t stop the thought from echoing around my skull, increasing in severity with each impact. She’s dead, she’s gone, I was too late. If I had just been a little quicker, if I hadn’t stopped to sleep, if I hadn’t…

“Hey, what are you - oh, Jesus Christ,” Makado grumbles. I sniff and look away from her. I try to keep it down but a quiet sob bubbles out of my throat.

“Goddam it,” I mumble. I can’t even wipe my eyes. My shoulders are shaking with the weight of it, with the weight of knowing that -

Makado sighs behind me. “You didn’t kill her,” she says. “If she’s even dead. We don’t know.”

I let out a terribly mirthless laugh. “You didn’t kill him,” Makado continues, begrudgingly. “I know you didn’t, it’s not like you put a gun to his head and shot him. I just…”

“Don’t want him to be gone,” I suggest, and out of the corner of my eye, through a veil of tears, I can see her nod.

I feel as though I might rip in two the next time someone touches me, but in spite of everything I do want to reach out and touch her, brush my thumb along the knobby edge of her wrist, feel her warmth near to me. Maybe it’s pathetic and stupid, maybe I should be spitting and cursing and swearing revenge but I can’t bring myself to. I want to just curl into a little ball and cry. 

Makado is rustling around behind me, and then I hear the click and crackle of a radio. “Peterson, Rodriguez,” she says, enunciating clearly. “Status check, over.”

A moment passes and then the response comes burbling up through the airwaves. “Peterson, checking in. I’ve got Rodriguez here with me but he’s carrying the crystal so he couldn’t call himself. Everything’s good down here. ETA 20 minutes to DUSA. Over.”

“Thanks. You were able to disable the specimen? Over.”

“Hard to say. It backed off but Emmanuel is hurt pretty bad. One of those leeches, it got into her suit and chewed the hell out of her leg. We’ve got her on a stretcher and we’re bringing her back but I don’t know if she’ll make it. Is the autodoc functional? Over.”

“Negative,” Makado says. Her voice is tight and fraying. “Negative, it’s smashed. It looks like the Leechman got here before we did. Over.”

“Shit. Well, Emmanuel is fucked, then. Do we have support from topside? Over.”

I hear Makado mutter a quiet curse below her breath. “Give me a second,” she says. “Out.”

I sniff hard and duck my head down into my shoulder, try and wipe my eyes against the rubber of the ranger suit. Makado is tapping at the pad in the arm of her ranger suit; she’s put the gun away at this point, tucking it into her holster at her hip. I could make a run for it, I reflect. Instead I fold my legs beneath me and sink into a huddle on the floor a little like a gazelle bedding down for the night. Makado glances over at me and then back at her screen. “Who’s Emmanuel?” I ask. My voice creaks partway through it, and when I clear my throat it comes back thick and congested.

“None of your business,” she tells me, a little absently. “You’d better stop crying,” she adds. 

“Fuck you,” I tell her, but I can’t put much heart into it. “Fuck you for trying to walk all over everything and try to do it your way. You walked all over me, you walked all over the team, you walked all over Peter -“

Makado looms over me, ruddy bolts of fury sparkling behind her eyes. “You have no idea, you have no idea -“ she starts, but I roll my eyes at her.

“Do you have any idea how many people are dead because of you?”

That catches her, and I get a vicious little thrill out of seeing how it impacts, how she absorbs it, how her eyes grow even wearier. She starts to say something but I start listing off names.

“The Sergeant. Peter. Slate. Erica and Marcus. Klaus. Crookshank. Euler. Ellis. Emmanuel, whoever that is. And El - Elena,” I say. I have to swallow hard to get that last name out but I manage it. “They’re all your fault, Makado. If you hadn’t gone off the deep end because of this stupid fucking crystal none of this would ever have happened. Does it really matter? Does it really matter this much? Is it worth it? Tell me. Please. Do you even know?”

“They knew the risks,” Makado tries to say, but she isn’t meeting my gaze. “You wouldn’t understand,” she says, a little bit of strength returning to her voice. “You don’t know what it’s like to -“

“To have an obsession take over your life?” I finish, and she blows a breath out.

“I’m the only one trying!” she yells. “I’m the only one fucking trying to stop all of this! That crystal is the only thing that we have that we know can shut down the Pit if it wakes up again. Getting it back should be our top priority -“

“And the last time one of those crystals was used,” I point out, “it infected - I’m sorry, how many people? - with a fucking personality-destroying disease that spreads when you feel emotions and forces you to crawl into the Pit to die.”

“We know better now,” she says, hands on her hips. “We know what we did wrong. If we don’t shatter the crystals -“

“How do you even know? Aren’t you just guessing?”

“You have no right to tell me how to do my job,” she tells me. I can see her knuckles whiten with rage. “I’m doing what needs to be done. If the Pit woke up and became fully ambulatory, it’d be the end of the world as we know it. If you think that isn’t something worth stopping by any means necessary, then you’re either stupid or insane. Maybe both. If I -“

“Okay, Makado. Whatever,” I tell her. I feel as though if I shut my eyes I’d be able to fall asleep in about a minute. My heart hurts. 

Makado glares at me and for a moment, just a moment, I think she might be about to draw her leg back and slam the hard edge of her boot into my gut, but instead she spins on her heel and walks away, fishing the radio out of its holster on her belt and talking quietly into it.

I think for a while about struggling to my feet and just walking out. I don’t think Makado would shoot me, I really don’t. I think she wouldn’t have the heart for it. Maybe she’d just let me go.

Elena’s dead. You haven’t seen the body, a little voice whispers in the back of my mind, but I don’t need to see the body. If the Leechman got her, I’m not sure I want to see the body. I would want my memory of her to remain clean. I want to remember her in the tent smiling down at me, I want to remember her hands on my body, the way her lips felt when she kissed me, the way my heart felt when she kissed me. 

I spend the next twenty minutes or so agonizing myself before the clunk and hiss of heavy machinery, burbles glutinously up from outside the rent in DUSA’s hull. With a little difficulty I manage to sit up and look outwards, and I see three orange figures in ranger suits marching up out of one of the vents leading to this organelle. Two of them are carrying a fourth on a stretcher, and the third…

My mouth drops open. The third is incredibly bulky, far more so than a normal person in a suit, and as they come closer and step into range of DUSA’s flickering floodlights, I realize that they are wearing something like a white enameled arthropod over their arms and legs, a squat mechanical spider perched on their back like a backpack. Its limbs extend along the ranger’s arms and fill out into armored gauntlets encompassing their hands.

And in their hands, hefted with an assurance and strength borne, I imagine, solely from their armor’s assistance, is the crystal, green and spiky and menacing, with an ugly luminosity flaring somewhere deep inside of it. I think again that I can see something moving within its murky depths.

Makado rushes out to meet them, leaving me forgotten, and again I consider getting up and just walking away. I think I’ve missed my chance, though; if it was just Makado, she might let me go. With everyone else here, all of these other rangers, there’s no way I’d be able to get away with it. And who knows if she’d have any compunctions about letting someone else shoot me.

Makado, to her credit, only paused briefly to tell the ranger with the crystal where to set it down before rushing to the ranger on the stretcher. Even from a distance I can tell that she’s hurt badly; her orange suit is splattered with blood and there is an enormous hole in her side. I think I can see teeth marks. One of the rangers shows something to Makado; it looks a little like a very thick, dark length of rope, and I realize with a horrible twist in my gut that it’s a dead leech. It looks to be about three or four feet long; it’s head has been torn off and it trails a thick, foul-smelling ichor behind it in a long oozing trail. 

The huddled conversation over the wounded ranger continues a while longer before the group breaks apart. The ranger with the exoskeleton carries the crystal into DUSA, moving with almost exaggerated care through the hole in the wall. He looks down at me as he passes, craning his neck around the crystal to make sure he isn’t going to bump into me. “You alright?” he asks. He has a thick Texan accent that makes me smile in spite of myself.

“Yeah,” I tell him. “Do you think you could untie me?”

He pauses. “You’re tied up?” 

“Yes,” I say, rolling halfway over and waggling my fingers at him. “See?”

“Why are you tied up?”

“It’s a long story.”

“You’re Dzilenski, aren’t you?”

“I, uh. No.”

“No? What’s your name, then? I haven’t seen you around before.”

The weight of the crystal doesn’t seem to be troubling him at all. He cocks his head at me.

“Merriweather,” I tell him. “I’m new.”

He waggles a finger at me; the servos of the exoskeleton make little whining noises as he does. “Nice try,” he tells me, but I can tell from the shape of his voice that he’s grinning. I shake my head a little and give him a halfhearted smile.

“Can’t blame a girl for trying,” I suggest, and he laughs as he stomps off towards the stairwell, the crystal glowing malevolently in his arms. 

A few moments later someone is taking me roughly beneath my armpits and hauling me to my feet. I stagger a little but keep my balance. I look over and see Makado glaring at me from a few inches away, but it seems as though her temper has died a little; there isn’t quite as much venom in her gaze as before. Without uttering a word to me she marches me out of DUSA and towards one of the rangers, standing on a small, bulgy lump of flesh with their hands on their hips. I feel a spike of fear in my stomach. “What are you going to do with me?” I ask her.

I can see Makado’s lip curl out of the corner of my eye. “I’m not going to kill you,” she tells me. “Peterson there is just going to take you up to the surface and give you back to the feds, that’s all. Then this whole stupid thing can be over and done with.”

“So that’s it, huh?” I ask, breaking out of her grasp and turning to face her. “You’re just going to throw me to the wolves? You really think that you can get away with this?”

“Roan,” she groans. “Do you think I want to fuck you over? Do you think I want to do this?”

“Well, from the way you’re acting -“

“This thing is bigger than you or me,” she says. “And I’m - I’m sorry,” she tells me. To my immense surprise I actually believe her. “I’m sorry, and I don’t want to ruin your life like I know I’m going to, but I - I have to do this. I’m sorry.”

Before I can say anything Peterson takes me firmly by the arm. Makado swallows hard and nods to him. “Take her up. There should be a contingent of FBI agents somewhere up there, I know it’s a mess but they should still be hanging around, probably yelling at Admin. Let them know she’s Roan Dzilenski, they’ll take it from there.”

“Right,” he says. “Come on, then.”

I stare back at Makado all the way over to the vent leading up to the passage out of here; she refuses to meet my gaze.

“I’m sorry about all this,” Peterson mentions, adjusting his grip on me to push a hanging fold of flesh out of the way.

“If you’re so sorry, let me go,” I tell him. He has a quiet, apologetic tone.

“I’m not that sorry,” he explains, and I can’t help but roll my eyes. “Look on the bright side,” he suggests. “You’ll be out of here soon. I’m sure that will be a relief.”

“Yeah,” I snap, “I’m sure that -“

Something falls onto my shoulder and I let out a shriek. It rolls off and slaps onto the ground with a wet, meaty thump and slithers away.

“Are you okay?” Peterson is asking. “What was that?”

I look up, knowing what I’ll see, but the Leechman actually comes at us from the side, the leeches boiling out of the fleshy wall with a noise like a million hungry mouths gnashing and chewing and slurping simultaneously, leaving the wall pockmarked and collapsing. Peterson blurts out a surprised curse and lets me go, his hands darting to his holster, but the Leechman is faster. It reaches out with a massive, dripping, writhing paw and fixes it around his head, lifting him bodily off the ground. Rodriguez screams and I hear commotion from behind, in the main organ housing DUSA, but his screams quickly become muffled and gurgly and thick. His hands and legs are shuddering and jolting like he were being electrocuted, and then my stupid, shell-shocked nerves finally, finally kick into motion and I stagger backwards. My foot catches on something and I fall; the ground comes slamming upwards to meet me and the breath whooshes out of my lungs just as the Leechman drops Peterson. The helmet of his suit is bent and crushed and although he lands on his feet, his body sways gently back and forth like a wind were catching it. The Leechman stomps past me and I cringe away from it, but it ignores me entirely. Its footsteps resound through the meaty floor and rattle my teeth in my jaws.

I am so scared I think I might throw up. Every fiber in my body is screaming at me to get up and run away, but I can’t force myself to move. “Hey,” I whisper, as the Leechman ducks its broad, wormy head and pushes into the organ. “Hey, uh, Peterson, are you okay?”

Rodriguez turns and looks at me and I scream. His face has been eaten away to nothing and his jaw is hanging from a few stringy tendons on the left-hand side of his skull. He shambles towards me and I scream again, and I hear my screams echoed from back behind me in DUSA’s chamber. It’s only a few moments later that the gunfire begins.

I kick my feet and try and push myself away from Rodriguez’s corpse. As I watch a leech crawls out of his mouth and plunges its snub-nosed head into the wreckage of his eye. The body lurches closer to me and into the light and I get a better look at him; my stomach nearly turns. I scream again and try to kick at him but he just catches my leg and drags me closer. The bone of his skull and the scraps of meat and flesh on his face are stained a dark, inky black with a dripping, noxious ichor. Without any preamble the body straddles me and shoves its fingers into my mouth. I choke and cough and try to kick and bite but it’s simply too strong. My eyes are filling with tears but I can still see the body’s cavernous mouth yawning and yawning and the body of an enormous leech slowly struggling up Rodriguez’s pitted, masticated throat. Though it has no eyes or face I imagine it leering at me, and though I redouble my efforts to get away, my throat convulsing in anticipatory terror, I can do absolutely nothing to stop what is about to happen to me. At the very last my courage fails me and I just squeeze my eyes shut and wait for the leech to barrel down my throat, wait with an anticipatory cringe to feel its needle-sharp teeth dig into my insides.

Instead I feel more than hear a horrific, bone-shuddering crunch from just ahead of me, and when I snap my eyes open it takes me a moment to comprehend what I’m seeing. Jutting from Rodriguez’s chest amid a thorny cluster of broken ribs is a bulky mechanical hand absolutely slick with gore and ichor. With a harsh mechanical whine it makes a fist and withdraws from the grapefruit-sized hole it made in Rodriguez’s chest and then seizes the body and flings it off of me. The body lands against the side wall of the vent with a wet crunch and then flops to the floor and lays still. 

“Joker,” I breathe. The robot’s blocky, flat-panelled head is staring down at me with what I imagine to be a rather odd expression. It’s pitted and stained and rusted and every couple of seconds sparks burst from its torn left arm socket. Its armored torso is battered and dented and it moves with difficulty, but it still leans down over me and with incredible gentleness tucks its blood-drenched hand beneath me and brings me lightly to my feet. A moment later it has untied my hands and I can feel the blood rushing back into them with a clustering ache of pins and needles.

I can scarcely breathe I am so relieved but I still manage to reach up and put my hand on the machine’s metallic chest. “Jesus Christ,” I tell it. “I am so fucking happy to see you.”

But before I get any more out, a tall, blonde-haired blur slams into me and wraps me up in long, strong arms and lifts me off of my feet and nuzzles her face against mine. “Oh god,” Elena says, and before she can say any more my greedy, bruised lips find hers and for a moment, just a moment, amid the gunfire and the screams, I feel completely okay.

* * *

When we finally break apart and Elena sets me down on my wobbly, weak-kneed legs, I reach up and take her face in my hands. I still can’t quite believe that she’s here, that she’s alive, that she’s okay. My heart is beating so quickly that I almost feel nauseous and I don’t trust myself to speak. Elena’s eyes are wide and slatey; they flicker over me, dancing like roulette balls, just as she runs her hands over my arms, my legs, my sides and back. “Are you okay?” she asks. Her voice is shaky. I try to speak a few times but I can’t get any words out so instead I just nod. Elena leans in and kisses me again, briefly this time, and then, with her lips brushing my ear she murmurs, “I was so scared, Roan, I was so scared that I had lost you, I thought -“

“It’s okay,” I tell her. There’s another scream from DUSA and we both jump. I grab onto her desperately as she starts to pull away. “Listen, are you alright? The gunshot -“

“I’m okay,” she tells me. “I promise I’m okay. Jesus Christ I thought I lost you. Let’s get out of here.”

Next to her, Joker shifts on his damaged heels and creaks forward further down the vent, towards DUSA. Elena curses. “Hey, wait. Stop. We have to go.”

Joker ignores her. “Elena,” I ask, “what the hell happened? Why is Joker -“

“Whatever the Leechman did to him down in the barrows jarred something loose or damaged him somehow, he’s operating completely autonomously.”

I stare at Elena. “You’re not controlling him?”

“No,” she says. “He - I think he heard our conversation on the radio, that’s how he knew to come to DUSA to get me. It’s a good thing he did or Makado would have gotten me. He burst right in through the wall, it was fucking terrifying.”

“Joker did that? I thought it was the Leechman, I thought you were dead -“

“No, no, it was Joker! Oh, god, baby you must have been so scared -“

“I’m just glad you’re okay. Where did he take you?”

Joker looks back at us, then returns his gaze to the scene inside the organ ahead. The screams have largely died down now, but I can hear Makado shouting something, and a high-pitched electric whine that sets my teeth on edge.

Elena shakes her head. “He must have been monitoring Makado’s transmissions, I think he has to have a radio receiver in there somewhere. He grabbed me and brought me down to a little organelle maybe a mile away and we just sort of hunkered down there for a while.”

“Did he hurt you? If he -“

“No, no, he didn’t, it’s okay, I’m okay. Joker!” she yells. “We have to go!”

Joker ignores her. There is a curious sense of animation about its pose and its motions, quick and precise and birdlike. As I watch, its fingers flex tightly enough to dig deeply into the fleshy wall it rests against. Again its head swivels and glances back at us and I think I can feel its nonexistent gaze resting on me. “Elena, if you’re not controlling it, then who is?”

“I don’t know,” she says, glancing over at me. “I think nobody.”

“But how could it -“

“Roan, listen, forget about that for a moment.” Her lips are tugging upwards in an irrepressible smile and I can’t help but mirror her. I want to hold her and kiss her and - “there was something I needed to tell you, something I needed to tell you face to face,” she says. My stomach swoops upwards in a surge of delight and I reach out, take her hand in mine. 

“Yes?” I ask, trying to sound innocent and oblivious.

“Roan, I -“ she starts, but before she can get more than a few words out, there is a whipcrack of thunder in DUSA’s chamber, and Joker bolts forward like a sprinter off the starting line, and we both scramble into action and chase after him.

DUSA’s wet, fleshy cavern is in utter disarray. Dead leeches are littered everywhere and there are massive stains of ichor and blood splattered all across the cavern, as though someone upended buckets of paint and flung them. A crushed, distended corpse in a black-stained suit has been driven so deeply into the flesh of the floor that it has nearly been snapped in two. Of the Leechman there is no sign, but as we watch, Makado and three other rangers come storming out of the other vent and take up defensive positions around it, hunkering down and training their weapons on DUSA’s hull. Makado is carrying a long grey brick of a rifle, bulky and supremely un-ergodynamic, with what looks like a lens in place of a barrel. I wonder about it for a moment before a sickly green glow floats into view and the Leechman emerges from DUSA, ducking its titanic head, with the crystal beneath one of its arms, held as casually as one might carry a basketball. It pauses there for a moment, peering out at the four small figures opposing it. 

Makado looks scared; her face has paled to a sickly white and I can see the rifle shuddering in her trembling hands.

I can’t see where Joker’s gone; I catch Elena’s eye and frown, but she nods upwards a little, and I see the robot just above us, clinging to the ceiling like a monkey. It seems content to wait for someone to make the first move.

Behind the Leechman an orange-suited figure takes a juddering, unsteady step into the light, and I can see the limp exoskeleton clinging to its limbs like a length of sodden rope. Another figure follows, and then another, and even in the dim half-light, lit by strobes and flashlights and headlamps, I can see their bodies bulging and throbbing with the gallons and gallons of leeches seething beneath their skin.

My stomach betrays me and I bend double and vomit, trying furiously to wipe the image from my mind, but I can still see the man’s distended belly glistening beneath the orange ranger suit, pregnant with its load of parasitic cargo, and the thought sends a wave of furious revulsion scurrying up my limbs, coaxing rank, cold sweat out of my pores.

The Leechman takes a deliberate step forward and Makado pulls the trigger on her rifle. A  coruscating lance of blinding white light jolts from the barrel with the same deafening whip-crack we’d heard before and spears the Leechman through the core of its body, blowing a meter-wide hole open clean through it and filling the air with the smell of burning leeches. The Leechman staggers back a step or two and reaches out to steady itself, dropping the crystal; it clunks to the floor with a strangely musical tinkle and I can see a few of the spikes shatter and fall to pieces.

Makado rises to her feet, a little color returning to her cheeks, and fires again. This bolt catches the Leechman through the head and forces it down to its knees. It puts one massive hand forward to catch itself and Makado burns it off. She advances on the Leechman, firing again and again until the thing is just a pile of writhing, dying leeches, slowly burrowing into the ground and the walls and the ceiling, trying to escape. The bodies of the parasitized rangers shudder and twitch but they hesitate, standing still as though bereft of any governing intelligence.

Finally Makado pulls the trigger and the gun hisses a loud, screeching complaint and vents an enormous gasp of steam from recessed ports in its side; through them I can see the gun’s innards glowing white-hot, and Makado tosses it aside after glaring down at it in disgust. She draws her pistol from her holster and trains it one-handed on one of the rangers, squeezing one eye shut and glaring down the sights.

I open my mouth to suggest to Elena that it might be time to leave, but before I can get a word out the Leechman charges past us, out of the mouth of our vent, forcing a shriek from my mouth, and bowls into Makado headlong, sending her flying. She slams into the wall on the far side of the organ so hard that I can see a Mak-shaped bruise forming in the Pit’s flesh when she flops to the floor, limp and helpless, either stunned or unconscious or dead. 

The rangers open up on the Leechman but if the laser wasn’t enough to kill it, bullets clearly aren’t going to be enough either. The three parasitized rangers surge forwards as well, wading into the fray, but the Leechman is doing the heavy lifting. I cringe back against Elena as I watch it pick up a hapless, screaming ranger and pull him in half, a spray of gore and guts flooding from the man’s cleft torso and legs. I clutch at Elena, trying desperately to get my legs beneath me, and she pulls me up and steadies me.

“We have to go,” she says. I can hear a note of hysteria in her voice. I take a shaky step backwards into the vent and feel a leech writhe and squirm beneath my cleats. Another one leaps at me and thuds into my back. I can feel its jaws working to pierce the thick latex of the ranger suit, and I hop frantically, trying to reach backwards and dislodge it. Elena brushes it off of me and crushes it beneath her boot just as the Leechman vomits a tidal wave of blunt, wriggling bodies into the pried-open chest of another ranger, struggling weakly in the creature’s squirming grip.

More leeches patter against us, driving us unwillingly out of the vent as we crawl and duck and dodge, trying to avoid them. A nerveless, exoskeletoned paw swipes at me clumsily and I scream and throw myself out of the way. From my vantage point on the ground I see Elena shove the infested ranger back and unload the entire magazine of her pistol into his gut, but the body staggers towards us still. I can see Elena’s teeth bared, a mad glint in her eyes, and I know that she is about to charge the thing and I know that it will kill her, but I haven’t enough breath to tell her not to.

Deeper in the chamber, the Leechman plucks the head off of a ranger’s pinioned, struggling body as easily as separating an apple from a tree and fling the chunk away like a bloody comet. It slaps wetly to the ground only a few feet away from me and I roll back from it, nearly mad with terror. I can see the Leechman slowly turning towards us and I am so afraid I think I might die just from fear alone.

“El - El - El - “ I try, again and again, but I can’t breathe, I can’t speak, I can’t think -

Joker drops from the ceiling directly onto the parasitized ranger, landing with a sickening crunch and a whine of servos. Its head snaps upwards and regards the Leechman with a calculating stare, and the Leechman, impossibly, stops. It seems to cock its head at Joker, and then it takes a step forward, heavy and inevitable and menacing, but before it can go any further Joker launches itself at it with a scream of straining metal and whining pistons. I struggle to my knees and brush the leeches off of Elena, checking her suit for holes or punctures.

Joker is losing. The Leechman has torn its other arm off and tossed it aside, and now it’s yanking at Joker’s leg. Joker is lurching spasmodically back and forth, trying to get free, but the Leechman has too strong a grip on it. The leeches are flowing over the robot’s metal form and in a few more moments it looks as though it’ll be enveloped entirely. I can see Joker’s head turn with what seems like a titanic effort and peer back at us, and then it disappears beneath the surface of the Leechman.

I tug Elena to her feet and take a few faltering steps back towards the vent before there is a colossal wave of sound and light and heat from behind that bowls me over and knocks me face-down in the sopping, bloodstained flesh. Elena falls over me with a scream and for a while all we can do is cling to each other and pray that whatever the hell happened is over quickly.

A moment passes, then another. I roll over and, with more than a little trepidation, sit up. 

It looks as though a bomb has gone off. There is a bloody, charred crater in the floor, and all that remains of Joker are a few metal fragments, embedded like shrapnel in the floor and walls and ceiling. The parasitized rangers have all been cut down, most of them separated into small pieces of flesh, both leech, and human, smeared across DUSA and the organelle like daubs of lumpy paint.

Of the Leechman there is no sign, and when I glance over at it, I realize that the crystal is gone as well.

After another few minutes of utter stillness, Elena and I look at each other. “Are you okay?” she asks, and I glance down at myself.

“Somehow,” I say, “I think I am. Are you?”

She pats at herself cautiously, peers down at her legs, wiggles her foot. “I think so. Did Joker - ?”

I point to the crater. “He must have exploded. Either there was some kind of self-destruct or whatever engine or motor it used was damaged, or…”

“Jesus,” Elena breathes, getting shakily to her feet. She offers me a hand and helps me up and for a little while all we can do is survey the carnage. I feel as though I want to cry and laugh and throw up all at the same time. 

I squeeze Elena’s hand. “What were you going to tell me?” I ask.

“Is now really the time?” she smiles, and I bite my lip to keep myself from grinning back at her.

“At this rate, if you don’t say it now you’re never going to.”

“Roan,” she says, putting a hand on my cheek, “I -“

There is a groan from across the cavern and we both snap around. Over there, on the far side of the wall, Makado is starting to sit up. She looks shaky and shell-shocked and terrified. She sees us and tries to get to her feet, but her leg buckles beneath her and she falls back to the ground. Elena’s eyes narrow and she lets me go, starting towards Makado, her hands curling into fists. I have a knot in my stomach.

“Elena, wait,” I call after her. She spins and stares at me and then shakes her head.

“Don’t look,” she tells me, and for a moment, just a moment, I think of going after her and stopping her from - from doing whatever she’s about to do.

But instead the coward in me wins out and I avert my gaze, squeezing my eyes shut, my insides tensing in anticipation of a gunshot. I hear Makado cry out weakly, and I shudder.

There is a loud, satisfying smack, as of fist on jaw, and then a flopping sound. I look up and see Elena wringing her hand, cursing beneath her breath, before she flips an insensate Makado onto her stomach and, folding the woman’s hands behind her, begins to lash her wrists together with a length of paracord. She looks up and sees me staring, registers the expression on my face and gives me a laugh.

“You thought I was going to kill her?” she asks, and I blow a breath out and try to calm myself before I answer.

“I didn’t know what you were going to do,” I say, truthfully.

“I’m not a killer,” Elena tells me, hefting Makado’s slim frame onto her shoulders in a fireman’s carry. “Jesus Christ,” she adds, adjusting her load a little. “This little shit is heavy.”

I kick at a piece of wreckage, a folded metal panel, bent from the force of the blast, and then reach down and with difficulty pull Joker’s battered torso out of the crater. Elena sets Makado down none too gently and comes over and squats beside me.

There’s something that looks a little like a car battery, jammed into a slot in the torso. I tug at it, using my foot to hold the hunk of metal steady, and it breaks free with a hiss like a seal being broken. “What is that?” Elena asks. I shake my head.

“BCPU - Property of Anodyne Berlin,” I read. “Mind Impulse Unit - B. Walken.”

“Walken?” Elena asks, incredulous. 

“No,” I say, “this can’t - no, that’s ridiculous.”

“What is?”

“Burt Walken was Erica’s husband,” I tell her. “B. Walken, Burt Walken. She told me he died from the psychic illness from 2007, that Anodyne had never returned his body.”

The top of the box is translucent plastic, but it’s too dark to see inside. Elena reaches down and grabs her flashlight and shines it onto the box, and we both squint at it. When I comprehend what I’m seeing I nearly drop it - for there inside the box, soaking in a briny, gelatinous fluid, festooned with wires and covered in metal electrodes and circuits, are the ridges and folds of a clearly human brain.

* * *

“What were you going to tell me?” I ask Elena again once she gets off the radio. She’s spent the last fifteen minutes begging and cajoling and cursing someone on the surface to try and get them to send someone down to get us and finally, finally gotten a begrudging affirmative. I can slowly feel my spirits rising, and Elena even gives me a secret little smile as she comes to sit next to me, sinking down against the wall of the vent with a groan of relief. I lean my head on her shoulder and she kisses me gently on the forehead. A wash of warmth floods down my arms and legs and I have to restrain myself from seizing her and clutching her to me.

“You sure I shouldn’t just leave it a mystery at this point?” she asks, and I elbow her lightly in the ribs.

“Tell me,” I insist.

Elena leans back and takes my chin gently in her hand, inclining my face upwards to her. I can see her studying me, see her pupils dilate as they flick from my eyes to my cheeks to my nose to my lips. “I love you,” she says, and my heart jumps in my chest as though struck by lightning. I can feel myself grinning madly, and then our lips brush and then fit together as though they were made to do so.

And then, when our breath has finally grown short enough to force us to break apart, we slowly rise, Elena’s hand in mine, scarcely daring to tear our eyes from each other, and begin to gather our things for the long journey up.

Continue with the Epilogue

Back to Table of Contents

[coldflasher]

Title: don’t threaten me with a good time Chapters: 1/1 Length: 7.7k Fandom: The Flash (TV 2014) Rating: Gen Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Minor/Background Relationships: Cisco Ramon/Kamilla Hwang, Barry Allen/Iris West Characters: Barry Allen, Cisco Ramon, Kamilla Hwang, Caitlin Snow, Killer Frost, Iris West, Leonard Snart, Original Male Characters Additional Tags: Alcohol, Drunken Shenanigans, Bisexual Barry Allen, The Flash 7x12 Good-bye Vibrations.

Kamilla leaned forwards to read the front page. “The Barry Allen Drunkenness Scale.” Bemused, she looked up. “What’s this? “This,” said Cisco, “is the result of a great deal of research and a number of hard-earned lessons.” He pulled up a chair and sat beside her, pulling the folder towards them. “There are eight stages of Drunk Barry, each one with a varying level of severity. It begins with stage one.”

Inspired by the Santiago Drunkenness Scale from Brooklyn-99. Team Flash are throwing a party to celebrate Kamilla and Cisco’s departure from Central City, and Kamilla wants to make sure they go out with a bang. But with great power comes great responsibility, and sometimes responsibility means making sure your friend doesn’t break the sound barrier by doing the worm at Mach 2.

Read on AO3

@dctvgen​ (i hope this is okay!! didn’t really use any prompts but i had this one saved up and seemed like a good time to post it, lmk it’s not suitable!!)

Life came at you fast. After seven years being besties with a speedster, working to save the world, Cisco knew that to be true in more ways than one. But apparently despite everything he’d seen, it still had the capacity to surprise on him.

One minute the thought of leaving Central City had been a vague, abstract thought – a ‘what-if’ or a ‘maybe’ he dwelled upon whenever yet another crisis announced itself with a shower of broken glass raining into his Vibeuccino, or when he’d compared the news in Central City, which was all doom and gloom and murderous metas, to somewhere nice and peaceful like Keystone, where the biggest news story of the day was some kid winning the national Spelling Bee Championship. Then the job offer came in, and Kamilla had tested the waters with wanting to leave – and now their stuff was all packed and in boxes, he had a start date at ARGUS, and what had been a daydream was now a very clear reality. He’d hung up the gloves, said a final goodbye to Vibe.

It was the other goodbyes that were going to be the hard part.

“It just feels weird, you know?” he said, pausing in the middle of hanging bunting from the corner of the cortex. “We’re saying goodbye to everyone we know. This has been my life for almost eight years now. Team Flash are my family. It feels weird to celebrate leaving all that behind.”

“Don’t think of it as a celebration of what we’re leaving behind,” said Kamilla, who was sat at the desk, partway through ordering pizza. “Think of it as a celebration of everything we’ve accomplished. Making friends and building inventions and saving the world! I know it’s difficult and change can be scary, but it doesn’t have to be. We’ve done amazing things, and I think it’s important to honour that.”

Cisco sighed as he successfully stuck the flags to the wall. He climbed down from the table he was stood on and joined her at the desk in his usual chair, pushing himself back and forth with his foot. “You’re right,” he said. “You’re always right. I’m not getting cold feet, I promise. I’m excited. We’re going to make this work. We’ve done amazing things, and we’re going to do even more. Together.”

Kamilla beamed. “That’s the spirit.” She held out her hand for a fist-bump.

Grinning, Cisco returned it. “You’re such a dork.”

“Which is exactly why you love me,” Kamilla countered, with a few final clicks and a flourish as she placed the pizza order. She consulted the list on her phone. “Okay, so we’ve got the cake, the decorations, the drinks, and the pizza is in transit. There’s just one more thing we need.”

She slid past him and made her way towards the small metallic fridge tucked away in the corner. Kamilla typed in the passcode 05-20-80 – the release date of The Empire Strikes Back – and the fridge unlocked with a clunk, revealing two test tube holders – one containing a single emergency vial of Velocity IX, and another that held eight tubes of liquid a few shades lighter than blood.

Cisco glanced over, bemused. “Babe, did you stash your Kraft beers in my security fridge? Because that seems a little excessive.”

Kamilla eased the second rack of tubes off the shelf like a tray of freshly baked cookies out of the oven. “No, I’m just getting a couple of vials of 500 proof for Barry. I didn’t want him to feel left out of the festivities.”

Cisco had met a lot of speedsters in his time, but in that moment he was pretty sure he moved faster than any of them as he sprinted across the room to intercept. Startled, Kamilla jerked back and the test tubes clinked together like champagne glasses mid-toast.

“Sorry, can we just back up a little bit – you’re what now?” said Cisco.

“I’m grabbing some drinks for Barry,” Kamilla repeated slowly. “This is his special speedster booze, right?”

“Uh, yeah,” Cisco said nervously. “It is, but…”

“But…?” Kamilla prompted.

“Listen,” he said, hands up in a pacifying gesture. “It’s not that I don’t trust you, but that is a highly controlled substance and it’s really in everyone’s best interests if you put it back.”

Kamilla grew wide-eyed. “Why? Is it dangerous?”

“I mean, if any normal person drank it, it’d pretty much liquidize their insides, but that’s not the problem.”

As he spoke, Cisco headed over to the shelf on the wall, ran his fingers along the various binders tucked onto the shelf, and pulled one off. Cisco carried it over to the table, pushed aside the keyboard and laid the folder flat in front of her.

“The problem,” he said, flipping it open, “is this.”

Kamilla leaned forwards to read the front page. “The Barry Allen Drunkenness Scale.” Bemused, she looked up. “What’s this?”

“This,” said Cisco, “is the result of a great deal of research and a number of hard-earned lessons.” He picked up the metal test tube rack and returned it to the fridge, his fingers flying across the buttons to input the code before he slid the vials back into place. “It’s also the reason why this stuff doesn’t leave the lab except in dire emergencies, including but not limited to break-ups, deaths and severe metahuman disasters.” Decisively, he closed the fridge and it locked again with a clunk and a beep.

“I don’t understand.”

“That’s because you are fortunate enough to have never before encountered an inebriated Barry Allen,” said Cisco. “Let me walk you through it.” He pulled up a chair and sat beside her, pulling the folder towards them. “There are nine stages of Drunk Barry, each one with a varying level of severity. It starts with stage one.”

 1 DRINK BARRY: A LITTLE CLINGY

One of Barry’s many wonderful qualities is his propensity for affection. Unimpeded by the bounds of modern-day toxic masculinity, 1 Drink Barry generously bestows physical affection on everyone he encounters. To put it plainly: he’s a hugger.

Standing outside Barry and Iris’ front door, Cisco checked his watch.

Usually at this time of night, he’d be hanging out in the cortex watching the red dot darting around on the monitor as Barry did a lap of the city, or in his lab tinkering with some new invention. Tonight, though, was different. They’d all agreed work was off-limits – time to take a hard-earned break. Cisco had been looking forward to it all week, but he guessed the rest of Team Flash didn’t share his enthusiasm, because they were late. That wasn’t like Caitlin at all. Shrugging, he lifted his hand to knock.

The click of heels made him turn just in time to see Caitlin bouncing up the stairs in her heels. “Hi, I’m here! Sorry I’m late; Frost and I couldn’t agree on an outfit.” She leaned in. “Did you bring the, uh…”

Cisco slid a silver flask out of his pocket slightly. “Sure did.”

“Then I guess we’re ready to go!”

“Damn right. …Ladies first?”

Caitlin knocked. They waited, listening to the rattle of six locks being unfastened one at a time, until the door opened to reveal Iris standing on the threshold wearing a tight red dress and a leather jacket.

Cisco whistled. “Damn. You look good.”

“You’re not so bad yourself,” said Iris as she stepped back from the door to allow them entry. “Barry will be down in a second, he got held up at work, so he’s a little behind –”

There was a whoosh and a crackle of lightning, and Barry skidded to a stop beside her with windswept hair and a grin. “Here! Hey, guys.”

“Oh. Famous last words.” Iris reached for her purse and swung it onto her shoulder. “Well I’m also running late, so I’d better get going. You guys have fun! And try to stay out of trouble, okay?”

“I’m afraid we can’t make any promises, cos everybody knows there ain’t no party like a Team Flash party!” said Cisco. “You sure you don’t wanna come with us? It’s gonna be one hell of a night.”

“Thank you, but I’m going out with a couple of the girls from CCPN tonight, so… rain check?”

“I’ll hold you to it,” Cisco warned.

“You’d better.” She rested her hand on Barry’s arm. “I’ll see you later, okay? I love you.”

“I love you too,” said Barry, and he leaned in for a kiss.

“Boo! Get a room!” Cisco hollered.

Iris rolled her eyes fondly. “Goodbye, Cisco,” she said, and headed out.

Cisco sighed. “And then there were three.” He looked from Barry to Caitlin and back again, stretching out on the sofa. “Okay, drinks!” He headed into the kitchen and returned with a bottle of wine in one hand and three glasses in the other.

“Uh, isn’t the drinking supposed to start after you leave the house?” asked Caitlin.

“Only if you’re an amateur! You always have a drink or two before going out on the town. It’s financially savvy.”

“Thanks, but I’ll pass,” said Barry when Cisco offered him a glass. “No use wasting perfectly good alcohol when it doesn’t even touch the sides.”

“That,” said Cisco, “is why you’ll be drinking this.” He pulled out a silver flask from inside the breast pocket of his blazer. “I call it 500 Proof 2,” he said, and held it dramatically aloft like Frodo holding the one ring.

Caitlin wrinkled her nose. “Really?” she said.

“The name’s a work in progress,” he admitted. “But the drink itself…” He kissed the flask. “She’s ready to go.”

Barry eyed the flask warily. “I don’t know…”

“Oh, come on, you’ve earned it. The city can manage without the Flash for one night. Go on, live a little.” When Barry continued to look skeptical, Cisco started to chant. “Barry, Barry, Barry–”

Grinning, Caitlin joined in. Barry endured it for all of thirty seconds before he rolled his eyes and snatched the flask. Caitlin and Cisco both cheered.

“That’s what I’m talking about!” said Cisco.

He splashed wine into his and Caitlin’s glasses, and passed one to her. She took it with a twinkle in her eye.

“All right, Team Flash!” Cisco whooped, and they clinked their glasses against Barry’s flask before they all drank.

Barry pulled a face. “Jesus! That’s – that’s potent.” He coughed, eyes watering.

“You’re welcome,” said Cisco. “We made a couple of tweaks to the formula. It should stay in your system longer instead of just burning off in thirty seconds flat like the first batch.”

“It tastes like rocket fuel!”

“Don’t worry about it. It’ll put some hairs on your chest,” Cisco said dismissively.

“You can say that again,” muttered Barry, massaging his chest.

“Speaking of hairs on your chest,” said Caitlin, curling up comfortably in her seat. “Did they grow back yet?”

“Not entirely,” admitted Barry. “It’s sort of a peach fuzz.”

“That’ll teach you not to get so close to my experiments,” said Cisco.

“Maybe it’ll teach you to label them better,” said Caitlin.

“Really? Don’t do me like that!”

“Sorry, it’s true.”

This triggered a bout of good-natured bickering as they debated the results of some of Cisco’s more disastrous experiments. Before long they were all laughing, loosened up by the drinks. Barry, who was perched on the arm of Caitlin’s chair, leaned against her.

“I love you guys, you know that?”

“We love you too, Barr – ooof! Oh. Okay,” said Caitlin, bewildered. Barry had slid off the arm of the chair and squeezed up next to her, taking up half the chair like a Great Dane still trying to sit in its owner’s lap.

“Look at him, he’s getting tipsy already,” Cisco teased.

“Shhh.” Barry rested his head contentedly on Caitlin’s shoulder. Amused, she patted his knee.

Cisco downed the rest of his drink. “All right, let’s get this show on the road.”

He offered Caitlin his hand – only to have Barry grab it instead. Then he grabbed Caitlin’s hand too.

“Oh, we’re holding hands?” said Cisco. “Is that a thing we do now?”

“It is when we’re running,” Barry said, grinning.

Caitlin’s eyes widened. “Oh. No, no, no runni–”

The rest of her sentence was lost to the wind.

 2 DRINK BARRY: KINDA CLUMSY

When Barry became a speedster, he gained a massive boost in motor functions, including enhanced reflexes that have massively improved his coordination. Prior to this transformation, his ability to walk unhindered across a flat surface was roughly equal to that of Bella Swan from Twilight. Two-Drink Barry is harmless, but he must be kept at a safe distance from breakable objects.

 Okay, so travelling at super speed sucked – Cisco would stick to breaches from now on, than you very much – but he had to admit it had its advantages. They’d beaten the evening rush by minutes and found themselves a table, where they had been comfortably situated for the past half hour. Since then the bar had filled rapidly, and now they were surrounded by people. Glasses clinked, bodies gyrated. All around them was laughter and the throb of music; he could feel the buzz of the bass against his elbows where they rested on the table.

“This is nice, isn’t it?” asked Caitlin. “No monsters, no metahumans… just the three of us having a few quiet drinks.”

“Don’t jinx it,” Cisco said darkly. “Also, I don’t know that the ‘drinks’ part is entirely accurate. The fastest man alive is about to lose his title. Where the hell is he?” Barry had offered to get the next round, but that was ten minutes ago and they hadn’t seen him since. Frowning, Cisco and scanned the room.

Just as he had started to get concerned, the crowd parted and Barry appeared with three glasses in his hands.

“It’s about time! What took you?”

“I’m so sorry,” said Barry. “I got held up at the bar, there was a huge li–”

Whatever he’d been about to say next was cut off as he abruptly tripped over his own feet.

All three drinks spilled everywhere. Lightning flickered as he lurched forwards to try and intercept, and he managed to right the glasses, but not before the majority of their contents had ended up all over the table.

Cisco’s plastic cup floated across the tabletop in a puddle of dismally fizzing coke, which dripped steadily into his lap. Caitlin looked down at her soaked sweater, hands held up in shock. Her eyes flared white.

“This,” snarled Frost, “is a cashmere sweater.”

Barry’s eyes were wide. “Oh my God, guys, I am so sorry.”

With a jerk of her head, Caitlin regained control. “It’s fine,” she said, then winced, presumably in response to whatever Frost snarled in the back of her head. “Really. It happens to the best of us.” She pulled the sopping wet fabric away from her with a grimace. “Um… does anyone have a tissue?”

“Let me get some paper towels!” said Barry.

Cisco reached out to stop him. “Actually, Barr, maybe you should –”

But it was too late: Barry had already turned around and crashed into a guy going in the opposite direction, who slopped beer all over himself. Cisco winced sympathetically.

“I’m sorry!” Barry said, while the guy glared and shook his wet hands.

“Maybe you should take a seat,” said Cisco.

Still apologising profusely, Barry sank onto his stool and shrank in on himself, nursing what was left of his drink while Caitlin went to get something to clear up the mess.

“So I guess those adjustments we made to the 500 proof are working, huh?” Cisco said with a smirk.

“Oh, they’re working,” said Barry. “Speaking of which, can I get a top-up?”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Caitlin asked, returning with a wad of paper towels. She started to mop up the table.

“What? Oh, yeah, I’m fine. I’m not even buzzed, seriously. Tipsy at best. Come on, hit me.” He waved at his drink.

Cisco and Caitlin exchanged looks. There was a slight flush to Barry’s cheeks, and his eyes were a little brighter than usual, but other than that he seemed stable.

“I have wanted to study how the speedforce interacts with alcohol,” Caitlin admitted. “Metabolic processes aside, I am interested to measure the effects.”

“What the hell,” Cisco said. He unscrewed the cap of the flask and tipped it in to Barry’s glass, pouring a generous measure. “Knock yourself out.”

Barry beamed and picked up his drink. “Cheers,” he said, and they all clinked their half empty glasses.

 Three Drink Barry: Barry Dance-Pants

This Barry is able to flawlessly replicate the choreography for every single Britney Spears music video unprompted. So far we have been unable to determine where he acquired this information.

They all agreed that it was best if Cisco got the next round. He didn’t retrieve the next lot of drinks any faster than Barry had – if anything, he was slower; people kept shoving in front of him every time he got close to the bar – but at least the glasses stayed upright this time. When he returned to the table, though, Caitlin was alone.

“Where’d Barry go?”

Caitlin frowned. “I thought he was with you.”

“Nope.” He passed her drink over to her.

Caitlin worried at her lower lip.

“Hey, don’t stress,” said Cisco. “Barry’s a big boy, he can take care of himself.”

“I don’t know. He’s been gone a while, and he wasn’t exactly steady on his feet. He might hurt himself.”

“Good thing we have a doctor on call,” said Cisco, sipping his drink.

“That’s not funny. Seriously, I’m worried about him. I’m not sure he should be left unsupervised.”

She had a point. Speed and immense clumsiness wasn’t a great combination – they’d learned that the hard way. Cisco downed the rest of his drink with a grimace. “All right, let’s go look for him.”

They got up and headed out onto the dancefloor. The music was so loud that the entire room vibrated, Britney Spears’ Womanizer throbbing through the room. Caitlin pulled back and made a face as she almost inhaled a mouthful of some stranger’s coarse blonde hair. She batted it away like cobwebs.

“Ugh. Remind me why we decided to come out on the busiest night of the week?”

“Seemed like a good idea at the time,” muttered Cisco, craning his neck. “Man, I can’t see him anywhere. It’s like playing Where’s Wally? Hey – hey, excuse me! Can I just squeeze – guys?” He attempted to slide past a knot of people, only to give up with a frustrated sigh. “Jesus, it’s like talking to a brick wall. What the hell are they looking at?”

Caitlin stood on her toes. “It looks like...” She stopped. “Oh, no.”

“What?”

She grabbed his arm and steered him through the crowd, using him as a battering ram to force her way through. Eventually, breathless and sweaty, they made it to the outskirts of the dancefloor, where Cisco finally got a good look at exactly what had captivated everyone’s attention.  

Barry was in the middle of the dancefloor, tearing it up. He strutted up and down, squatted and slut-dropped before he arched his back and pumped his hips forward in several lewd thrusts. The crowd cheered.

“Oh my God,” said Caitlin.

“He is killing it!” Cisco cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, “Yes, Barry!”

Barry winked and blew a kiss, rolling over to air-hump the ground with an alarming level of enthusiasm.

“Should we maybe go over there?” asked Caitlin.

“In a second,” said Cisco. He held his phone up, pressed record and zoomed in on Barry’s gyrating body, careful to keep his face in shot. “I wanna get this for posterity’s sake.”

“Cisco!” Caitlin scolded, and reached out to cover the camera.

Cisco jerked the phone out of reach. “You are aware that his ringtone for you is still thirty seconds of you butchering Summer Lovin’?”

Caitlin pursed her lips. “On second thoughts,” she said. “I hope you’re getting this in HD.”

Cisco grinned and went back to recording.

*

“Okay, that’s a little embarrassing,” Kamilla conceded.

“That? That was iconic,” corrected Cisco. “The man has moves. I swear he was a professional dancer in another life. I still have that video; I’ll show you later if you ask me nicely…”

“I’ll hold you to it. But none of this explains why this stuff has to be so rigorously controlled. I mean, being clumsy, affectionate, kinda sloppy, tearing it up on the dancefloor… that sounds like pretty standard drunk behaviour.”

“The first three drinks aren’t the problem,” Cisco said darkly. “It’s what comes after that you have to worry about. See, drunk Barry is insatiable. One drink is never enough. Once he’s had a taste of that sweet, sweet 500 proof concentrated speedster juice, he won’t rest until he’s had more. And while he may be an icon, three-drink Barry soon gives way to…”

 FOUR-DRINK BARRY: LOUD BARRY.

Barry Allen is a hero in every sense of the word. Time and time again he has sacrificed everything for the noble goal of making the world a better place. Barry doesn't save lives for the glory or the recognition; he does it because it's the right thing to do. But four-drink Barry… he thinks a little recognition might be nice.

 The final chords of Womanizer faded out into a sea of applause. Beaming from ear to ear, Barry took a series of bows, flapping his hand as if to say, ‘oh, stop it!’ After a few more moments of thoroughly enjoying the spotlight, he disengaged from his loving admirers and headed back towards Cisco and Caitlin and slid breathlessly back into the booth. His sweaty hair stuck to his forehead.

“Where did that come from?” Cisco asked, impressed.

Barry shrugged. “I’m full of surprises.”

“Clearly. I think you just earned yourself another drink!”

Cisco handed him the flask, and Barry clinked it cheerfully against Cisco’s beer bottle before he tipped it back and swallowed with a grimace. His eyes watered.

“Damn. That never goes down any easier.”

“Well it is just concentrated alcohol,” Caitlin reminded him. “Speaking of which…” She pulled her testing kit out of her purse. “Four drinks should be more than enough to start showing some side-effects. Let me take a quick blood sample.” Before Barry could object, she stabbed a lancet into his finger.

“Ow!” Barry put his finger in his mouth and sucked on it.

“Everything okay there?”

They all turned. A blond man in a grey t-shirt stood a short distance away, looking at them in concern.

“What? Oh, yeah, I’m good. Just hurt my finger.” He held it up ruefully.

Blondie moved closer. “Well it’s your lucky night: I’m a nurse. Why don’t you let me take a look?”

Cisco plastered on a smile. “That’s real nice of you, but our friend here is actually a doctor, so –”

Barry held out his hand, overriding Cisco’s objections. Blondie took it and examined it, tracing his palm with the tip of his finger. Cisco rolled his eyes hard and took another swallow of his drink.

“I was just watching you out on the dancefloor,” Blondie said. “Those were some impressive moves.”

“Oh, it was nothing,” Barry said modestly.

“No, it was definitely something. If I busted out a routine like that I’d be laid up for a week. What’s your secret?”

“Funny you should say that, cos…” Barry leaned in and said impishly, “I’m actually the Flash.”

Cisco choked on his drink. It went straight up his nose; his sinuses were on fire. He coughed hard, eyes watering.

“Are you okay, man?” the stranger asked concernedly.

“Great,” Cisco managed.

Satisfied, Blondie’s attention returned to Barry. “Well, I think your finger’s okay.” His thumb pressed against the inside of Barry’s wrist and his forehead creased slightly. “Your pulse is pretty fast, though.”

“Is it?” Barry said, resting his chin on his hand. “I hadn’t noticed.”

Caitlin rolled her eyes.

Blondie released him, but he showed no signs of leaving. He looked Barry appraisingly up and down. “So you’re the Flash, huh?”

“Yep,” Barry said. His eyes twinkled. “Fastest man alive.”

“Mm. Maybe we’ll have to test that.”

At this point, Cisco decided, enough was enough. He slapped Barry on the back hard enough to make him stagger and complain, “Ow!”

“Ha!” he said. “This guy. He’s a kidder, right? A real riot. Hey, uh, Barry, can I talk to you for a second?”

Before Barry could object, Cisco had grabbed him by the back of the shirt and pulled him out of the main bar area into the corridor, where there was a line of people waiting for the bathroom. Out here it was cooler and while he could still feel the throb of the music through the sticky soles of his sneakers, at least he could hear himself think.

“Dude,” he said. “Seriously? What the hell?”

“Oh, come on. It’s just a little harmless flirting. Iris and I, we have an agreement–”

“I’m not talking about the flirting! You can’t just –” Cisco stopped and made himself take a very deep breath before he lowered his voice. “You can’t just tell people you’re the freaking Flash!”

Barry gave a slow, confused blink. “But I am the Flash.”

He didn’t say it quietly. Several heads turned their way.

Cisco gave an uncomfortable laugh and rolled his eyes, before darting them at Barry like, ‘this guy, am I right?’ After a moment, the bystanders lost interest and went back to their conversation, and Cisco lowered his voice. “I know that, Barry, but it’s a secret, remember?”

“A secret?” Barry’s eyes widened and he clapped his hands over his mouth. “Oh! Right, I forgot. I’m sorry.”

“You know what? It’s all good. Just a little misunderstanding. But uh, let’s keep that one under wraps from now on, okay? Lips…” He mimed zipping up his mouth.

Barry nodded dutifully. “Got it.”

“Okay.” Cisco exhaled heavily. Jesus. Babysitting a drunken speedster was hard work.

Barry patted him on the shoulder. “M’gonna go to the bathroom. I’ll be back in…” He held up two fingers. “Two seconds.”

“You’d better be. And remember –” He made the zipping motion again.

Barry imitated it, pretending to lock his mouth up and tossed away the imaginary key. Then he went to join the queue.

Feeling like he’d just aged a decade, Cisco made his way back to their booth. Mercifully, Blondie had gone to chat up some twink at the bar. Cisco sank back onto his stool and buried his head in his hands.

Caitlin, who was squeezing a few droplets of Barry’s blood onto a testing strip, made a sympathetic sound. “Not having a good time, huh?”

“I’d be having a great time if Black Canary over there could quit singing about his secret identity for five freaking minutes.” Cisco snatched the silver flask off the table and screwed the cap back on with a sharp twist. “We’re cutting him off right now, before we get into any more trouble.”

“Oh, come on, cut him a little slack. He doesn’t exactly get to let loose very often.”

“There’s letting loose and then there’s whatever the hell this is.” Cisco shook his head. “It’s like –”

A high-pitched shriek cut him off, and Cisco grimaced as it rang throughout the room. Everyone turned to the source of the commotion – and Cisco’s heart sank. Barry stood on the stage, fumbling with the microphone stand.

“Is this thing on?”

“Oh God,” said Caitlin.

Cisco launched himself at the stage, fighting through the crowd. As he did, Barry continued to ramble into the mic.

“Hi. My name’s Barry, Barry Allen, and I just wanted to say something real quick. Because I love this city. It’s like… my favourite city. And I love all of you. Especially you.” He pointed unsteadily at someone in the crowd and gave a clumsy wink. “Anyway, I’m gonna tell you a secret while I’m here. You guys can keep a secret, right? Shhh!” He put his fingers on his lips. “See, I’m not supposed to tell you this, but…” He leaned in so close that his lips brushed against the mic. “I’m the Fla –”

Just in time, Cisco jerked the mic away from him. “Flaaa–ha! Okay, that’s quite enough of that. I think my buddy here needs some air.  Come on, Barry, let’s go.”

Luckily, Barry didn’t resist. He whooshed cheerfully as Cisco shunted him back to their booth and into his seat, then lolled sideways against Caitlin, who – with reflexes well-honed from constantly grabbing flying paperwork – managed to save her testing kit from being swept off the table.

Barry giggled. “I’m fast,” he said.

“Okay,” Cisco said resignedly. He turned to Caitlin. “Got any better ideas?”

She shrugged. “Pray that six-drink Barry is a little more tight-lipped?”

It sounded like a terrible idea. But when had that ever stopped them? With a shake of his head, Cisco withdrew the flask from his pocket.

“Hold on.” Caitlin’s voice had dropped an octave, and silver began to creep down from the roots of her hair. “I wanna see this,” said Frost. “It’s gonna be a total shitshow.”

Unfortunately, Cisco suspected she was right. He splashed more alcohol into Barry’s glass. “Here you go, big guy. Drink up.”

Barry looked down at his drink and frowned. “Can I get ice in this?”

Frost passed her hand over the glass and a chunk of ice dropped to the bottom with a clink.

“Awesome,” Barry said, and downed it.

“Oh God,” said Cisco. “We are so gonna regret this.”

 *

“Okay,” said Kamilla, looking up from the binder. “I think I’m kinda starting to see the problem. But we won’t have that issue tonight. Everyone at this party knows Barry’s the Flash.”

“Listen,” said Cisco. “Four-drink Flash is a cake-walk. The worst is yet to come.” He flipped the page. “Let me introduce you to five-drink Flash.”

*

 5 DRINK BARRY: THERAPIST BARRY

Five-drink Barry got a little too invested in Iris’ Intro to Psychology textbook in college. He’s all heart, zero clinical training.

Leonard Snart lay back on his bunk in Iron Heights, one leg resting lazily over the other, flipping through a nudie magazine. At least, that was how it appeared from outside the cell. Tucked between the pages was a blueprint of the prison, which his sister had smuggled in during her last visit. The bed creaked as he shifted his weight.

One of the guards struck the bars with his baton. Len glanced up.

“Snart. Get your ass out here. We’ve got a phone call for you.”

“Who from?” Lisa didn’t usually call so soon after a visit, and Mick never called at all; the signal on the Waverider was terrible.

“What do you think I am, your PA? Just get your ass out here.”

Interest well and truly piqued, Len tossed his magazine aside, careful to make sure the blueprint stayed safely tucked between his pages as he crossed the cell and waited for the door to be unlocked. Given his status as a high security prisoner, the guard cuffed him before leading him to the payphone booth in the reception area, the walls marked with grease stains and graffiti. With some difficulty, Len picked up the phone.

“Hello, this is Leonard Snart speaking. How may I be of service?”

The quality of the call wasn’t great. He could hear the throb of music, people talking and shrieking and laughing in the background.

Then a familiar voice said, “Snart? Is that you?”

Len’s forehead creased. “Barry?”

“Shmart. Snart.” Barry cleared his throat. “Hi. Are you okay?”

“…Peachy.” Len flicked a glance over his shoulder. The two prison guards stood watching him with folded arms and distinctly unimpressed expressions. “Can I ask if this is a business or a personal call? Because this isn’t exactly a secure line.”

“I just –” A loud, deep burp echoed down the line. “Wanted to check in n’ make sure you’re doin’ okay.”

“What?”

“Because I wanted you to know,” Barry said, his voice thick and indistinct, “that it’s okay not to be okay, you know? You shouldn’t bottle up your emotions. You gotta let ‘em out, you know? After everything you’ve been through with Lewis, I just wanted you to know that if you ever needed to talk…” He choked up, before recovering. “I’ll be here.”

“Barry, are you drunk?” Len said incredulously.

“See, there you go again, changing the subject. Have you ever noticed that you often use de… def… deflection as a way to avoid talking about difficult subjects?”

“I’m hanging up now,” said Len.

“No, no, no, no, wait! Wait!” Barry said urgently. “You need to talk about what bothers you. Don’t just bottle it up. Your emotions are a beautiful thing. Emotions are what make us–”

“Barry?” came another muffled voice on the other end of the line. “Who are you talking to?”

“No one,” Barry said immediately.

“Barry, give me the phone.”

“No.”

“Just give me the god damn –”

The sound of static and scuffles crackled down the line, and Len grimaced, lifting his head as far away from the speaker as he could to keep from being deafened. Over the commotion and the continued music blasting in the background, he could hear Barry shouting.

“You can be anything you want to be! Your past does not define you!”

“Okay,” said Len, and went to put the phone down.

“Wait!” said Barry. “Before you go, do you have a number for King Shark? Because I wanted to check in and make sure he’s doing okay. I know he looks scary, but underneath that slimy exterior he has the heart of a –”

Len rolled his eyes and hung up.

*

Sober Barry was a seasoned fighter, with speed, agility and hard-won experience on his side. Fortunately for Cisco, however, Drunk Barry’s combat skills comprised of slapping and some half-hearted attempts to bite, which meant that he was able to wrestle the phone away from him fairly easily. As he hung up, he glanced at the caller ID and blanched.

“Seriously? You’re making phone calls to Iron Heights? Are you gonna tell all the bad guys your secret identity too?” He held Barry’s phone up. “You know what? I’m keeping this; you clearly can’t be trusted.”

“My phone!” Barry said, and made a pathetic grab for it.

“Nope. Not happening, pal.” Cisco tucked it into his back pocket.

Barry pouted.

“Hey, don’t give me that look. I’m going to give it back later, I promise. I just need you to sober up first.”

“Okay,” Barry said sorrowfully. His bottom lip started to tremble.

“Oh, no,” Cisco said. “Not the lip – oh God, Barr, you’re breaking my heart here.”

“What’s happening?” asked Frost, returning to the table with two more beers, frost creeping down the side of the bottles. She gave a disinterested look at Barry, who was staring at the table with tears brimming in his eyes. He sniffed hard.

“Uh-oh,” said Cisco. “Six-drink Barry must be…”

 SIX-DRINK BARRY: SAD BARRY

Shortly after his fifth drink, Barry loses his well-honed ability to repress and crumbles under the weight of well over a decade of trauma. In times of crisis, he can be medicated with chicken wings or, in a pinch, large servings of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream.

 Cisco turned to Frost for help, but she inched away, rapidly shaking her head. Great, thought Cisco. Super helpful. He rubbed Barry’s back tentatively.

“Hey, Barry. You doing okay there, bud?”

Barry looked up. “I just got off the phone with Snart. He’s having a really hard time, you know? I mean, some people just can’t catch a break. He had a crappy abusive drunk for a father; he practically raised his sister. In and out of juvie, never graduated high school – and in spite of all of that, he comes up with these brilliant heists – like seriously impressive – and then the Flash comes in and totally ruins every single one of them. I mean, come on. The guy’s gotta make a living somehow, am I right?”

“Uh,” said Cisco.

“I always said to him, you can do better.” He poked Cisco clumsily in the chest to emphasize each word. “You have what it takes to be a hero. So the guy joins the Legends, becomes a hero, and then he freaking dies in an explosion. Kaboom! And then he comes back, returns to Central City to start over, robs one lousy bank and gets thrown straight back in prison. How is that fair?”

“Jail time seems like a fairly reasonable consequence for grand larceny,” said Frost.

“It’s just a bad habit,” Barry said forlornly. “He deserves help and compassion, not a prison cell. Do you know what it’s like in Iron Heights? The food is terrible. My Dad spend a decade in there and he always said…”

He trailed off. For a moment Cisco thought he’d gone into a trance, as he stared down at the table, forehead slightly creased. Then he saw the haunted look in Barry’s eyes. The face of a man who had seen terrible things.

They needed a distraction. Luckily, Cisco had just the thing. “You know what?” he said. “Maybe the food in prison isn’t great, but you know what’s awesome? The food you can get delivered right here. Nice, starchy, alcohol-absorbing food. Let’s look at a take-out menu and see what we’ve got.” He pulled up JustEat on his phone. “We could get you a pizza… maybe some fries… a couple of burgers; that sounds–”

“Chicken wings,” Barry said distantly.

They both turned to look at him.

“Chicken wings?” said Frost sceptically.

“Chicken wings,” Barry insisted.

“Okay!” said Cisco. “We’ll get chicken wings.” He added one portion to the basket. Then took another look at Barry’s face and hit the plus button several times. “Lots… and lots… of chicken wings.” He locked the phone. “Okay, food should be with us in a couple of minutes. So what now?”

“More drinks!” Barry said.

“No! No more –”

It was too late; there was a crackle of lightning and then the flask slammed back down onto the tabletop.

Cisco closed his eyes in defeat.

 8 Drink Barry is a Michelin-star chef

Sober Barry’s cooking is average at best, but 8 drink Barry reveals a deep inner passion for the culinary arts.

It was a little past two am when a breach opened at the top of the stairwell, pulsing and flickering with pale blue light. Frost and Cisco staggered out of it, each holding one of Barry’s arms to keep him from escaping.

“Okay, almost there,” said Cisco. “You’re doing a great job. Can you let us in?”

Barry patted himself clumsily down until he found his keys and tried to open the first lock. He kept missing the keyhole. After his third attempt, Barry sighed and collapsed forwards, head resting against the wood panelling. Then he started vibrating.

Cisco suddenly realised what he was trying to do. “No, no wait, don’t–”

There was a buzzing sensation, a sickening lurch, and then all three of them fell straight through the front door.

Frost gave a full-body shudder and released her hold on Barry’s shirt to rub her arms.

“Never do that again! It makes my skin crawl.”

“I feel like we should have a rule about phasing under the influence,” Cisco muttered.

Together, they managed to get Barry onto the couch, where he lay blinking up at them, floppy as a rag doll, barbecue sauce smeared down his chin. More of the wings had ended up on his face than in his mouth, but Cisco hoped the restorative properties would kick in soon.

“Hey, Sad Flash. How’re you holding up?”

“I’m hungry,” Barry said. He clawed his way to a standing position. “Gonna make food.” Yellow light blazed as he sprinted into the kitchen.

Frost turned to Cisco. “He’s still hungry? He had like, eight servings of chicken wings!”

“Just go with it,” Cisco muttered, and then the alarming sounds of crashes and bangs came from the kitchen. “Barry? Do you need some help in there?”

Lightning crackled erratically as Barry sped around the room. Within seconds, every available surface was strewn with culinary equipment: a chopping board; a stained knife; various ingredients. A knife flashed as he rapidly diced an onion and swept it into the pan too fast for the eye to follow, and then the burner came on with a click and a whoosh. Oil sizzled as Barry dropped a steak into the pan. He grabbed a wine bottle off the side, yanked the cork out with his teeth and spat it across the room; it missed Frost by inches, and she recoiled in disgust. Barry sniffed the wine, and after a moment of consideration, he sloshed a generous amount into the pan. Flames leapt skyward, and Barry expertly tamped them down.

“Uh… what are you doing?” said Cisco.

Barry flipped the steak with a flick of his wrist. “Cooking.”

“Yeah, I can see that, but I thought you were going to make pasta, or fries, you know – normal drunk people food, not –” Cisco inhaled. “What even is that?”

“Braised steak in a red wine sauce, with asparagus on the side,” Barry said.

“…Right,” said Cisco. “Sorry I asked.”

*

“That doesn’t sound so bad,” said Kamilla.

“It isn’t,” said Cisco. “It’s goddamn awesome. The problem with 8-Drink Barry is that hot on his heels is –”

*

9 DRINK BARRY – SLEEPY BARRY.

On the night the particle accelerator exploded, Barry went into a coma and remained unconscious for nine months. During that time, his score on the Glasgow Coma Scale was a 5. Rumour has it that nine-drink Barry scored even lower than that.

 “This is the worst night out I’ve ever been on in my life, and I share a body with Caitlin. Her idea of fun is wearing hideous pyjamas and watching documentaries on Hulu,” Frost hissed.

They stood on the doorstep laden with plastic bags while Cisco searched through the assortment of keys Barry had given him, trying to find the one for the first lock. “Look,” he said, inserting one into the lock with a crunch, “I know it hasn’t exactly been smooth sailing, but hopefully he’ll have got the rest of it out of his system while we were out breaching to every grocery store in the city.”

“Right, because Gordon Ramsay in there had to have…” Frost slid the bottle of wine out of the grocery bag. “Whatever the hell this is. Chateau Belair Mona–whatever. As if a hundred-and-fifty-dollar bottle is going to taste any different than the fifteen-dollar fifty bottle from the liquor store.” She rolled her eyes. “What the hell is he even going to do with it?”

“To be honest, as long as he doesn’t drink it I could care less what he does with it. Just keep him distracted for long enough to get some more food inside of him and make sure any breakable objects are out of reach before he gets down to the two-drink level.” He shook the keys in frustration. “Jesus, how many keys do they have?”

“I still don’t see why we had to–” Frost paused and narrowed her eyes. She sniffed sharply. “Is something burning?”

They looked down. Thick grey smoke billowed out from underneath the kitchen door.

Seconds later, the door burst off its hinges in a cloud of icy fog.

Inside the loft was total chaos. Barry slumped at the kitchen table, dead to the world, his hand still loosely clasped around the flask of speedster booze. A small puddle of drool on the table shone in the firelight. Behind him, his frying pan lay abandoned on the range, smoking violently while flames leapt towards the ceiling.

The piercing shriek of the smoke alarm tore through the room. Frost blasted the frying pan with a thick stream of ice and cold energy crackled from her palms, barely making a difference in the temperature of the room. Cisco grabbed a damp tea towel off the side and beat at the flames, trying frantically to extinguish the blaze. Behind them, Barry didn’t so much as twitch, his snores drowned out by the alarm.

*

“Okay, I think I get the gist,” said Kamilla, looking up from the folder. “No-booze Barry is the way to go.” She hesitated. “But just out of morbid curiosity, what about nine-drink Barry?”

“Unchartered territory,” Cisco said darkly. “We figured eight drinks was enough.”  He closed the folder conclusively. “So yeah, it sucks that Barry can’t drink with us, but with great power comes great responsibility. And sometimes responsibility means making sure your friend doesn’t accidentally break the sound barrier by doing the worm at Mach 2.”

Cisco went to slide the folder back onto the shelf. As he did so, his gaze caught a framed photo on the countertop. He paused and picked it up, smiling sadly. It was a picture of himself, Caitlin, Barry and Thawne – or Wells, as they’d believed back then – from the early days. They all looked so young, grinning at the camera, hair tousled where Barry had sped out from behind the phone before the shutter clicked. His chest ached.

Kamilla put a hand on his arm. “You’re going to miss them, aren’t you?”

“Always.” He put the photo down. “But we gotta keep moving forward. Speaking of which, it is beyond uncool to be late to your own party, so we’d better get shaking.” He held out his arm. “Ready?”

“You go,” said Kamilla. “I just have a few last-minute things to take care of. I’ll catch up.”

“Okay.” Cisco kissed her on the cheek and slipped out of the room.

Kamilla glanced over her shoulder, bit her lower lip. Then her gaze slid over to the fridge.

Tiptoeing across the room, she approached the container and input the code again. Her hair tossed as she glanced over her shoulder to make sure that no one was watching. Then she slid out a single blood red vial and tucked it into her purse.

Just in case.

[mc-lukanette]

Grade for Each Other (Part 9)

[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5] [Part 6] [Part 7] [Part 8]

Luka stirred to the sound of idle conversation and the smell of breakfast being cooked. He rolled onto his side, enjoying the comfort of the couch-turned-bed, but still let out a groan at his own grogginess.

The idle conversation ceased at the simple noise.

"A-ah—!" Marinette's voice rang out, only for her to clam up a moment later.

He opened his eyes, turning his head towards her as he sat up.

She buried her face into her hands and whined. "I really did wake you! I'm sorry, Luka!" She paused, then peeked out from between her fingers, greeting him awkwardly, "Um... good morning, by the way."

"Good morning, and don't worry. Even if you did wake me up," he began, knowing that he couldn't be sure if he'd woken up normally or not, "this was the best thing that I could've woken up to."

He enjoyed the way her face heated up at the comment. Maybe it was the fact that he'd just gotten up, but he supposed it was more bold than his usual.

Sabine, who Luka only just now noticed was there, greeted him as well. "Good morning. Marinette and I were just talking about you and how she wanted your breakfast to be perfect for you."

"I-I didn't say that!" Marinette argued. "...Even if it's true!"

She turned away from Sabine's amused expression and glanced at him, embarrassed. He simply smiled at her, reassuring her without words that everything was fine. She smiled sheepishly back at him.

Then, his eyes wandered downwards, and he realized that she hadn't changed into her normal clothes. She was still in her pajamas.

Marinette's eyes drifted on him as well, probably noting the lack of his hoodie+jacket combo. Her eyebrows rose, at which point she looked down at herself and noticed what he already had.

Her head jerked up. "I-I'm going to change!" she shouted, dashing away for the stairs while hugging herself as some form of cover.

Luka muffled his chuckle with a hand - hopefully it hid his blush too - then slipped his blanket off and got up from the couch. He approached Sabine, now able to see what sort of breakfast she was preparing, and it was close enough to pick up the separate scent of a completely different breakfast. Glancing towards the second aroma, he noted what he presumed to be his and Marinette's breakfast, though it was impossible to tell what it was due to how heavily wrapped up they were. He guessed it was to help keep in the heat.

"She never wakes up this early, you know," Sabine commented.

Luka made eye contact with her, having almost missed what she'd told him due to being distracted by what Marinette had prepared.

"She doesn't usually have a boy over, much less one that she's so comfortable around," she continued. "So, thank you. You're good for her."

He's good for her.

Luka knew (or at least figured) that it didn't mean what he hoped it did, but it nonetheless made him happy to hear that Sabine could tell that he had an effect on her. He'd always seemed to exude an aura of calm that made it easier for people to relax around him, but he was always surprised when it extended to someone as excitable as Marinette.

Last night was still fresh in his memory. He could spin it however he wanted and think that she didn't realize it in the moment, but Marinette had definitely been flirting with him; the wink had made it obvious if nothing else. She had also almost definitely been checking out his usually-covered arms just a minute ago before she'd dashed into her room, which stroked his ego far more than normal since her first crush had been an actual model, made to look good at all times.

He couldn't deny that they were close. He couldn't deny that her parents seemed to like him. He couldn't deny that his desire to be with her romantically was starting to drown out his attempt to convince himself that Marinette didn't feel for him in the way he dreamed of but never hoped for.

Claudine's voice did an encore in his head. "A good song will never come together if you don’t try."

Luka stared ahead at nothing, deep in thought. "...Mrs. Cheng—"

"You have our permission to date our daughter."

He was so tired that he needed a moment to replay the last few seconds in his head and realize that he hadn't finished what he’d been going to say. Given that, he could only glance at her, letting out a very coherent and well thought out, "I do?"

Sabine was looking back down at her pan like she hadn't just granted him access to Marinette's lips. "We see perfectly well how you feel about Marinette, and Tom would not stop talking about you when we went off to our room last night. We were worried about Marinette adjusting from being away from—" She stopped short of saying 'her friends' and opted for, "—everyone in her old class, but she's been doing much better than we thought. We... haven't always given her the credit she deserves, and while a lot of it was just her, she made it very clear that you've helped. We don't have any reason not to trust you with her."

Luka was positive his face must've looked absolutely stupid, being some sort of mix between confused and pleasantly surprised. He was also more awake than any amount of caffeine would've made him.

Sabine, still not looking at him, let out a small giggle. Completely changing the subject before he could reply, she asked, "Do you have a backpack or anything you need to get from your home before you head to school, or are you planning on getting it on the way?"

He blinked, finally closing his mouth as he processed that. Moving for once in the past minute or so, he took a step back and gave her an acknowledging look. "Ah—thank you."

He supposed he could've been thanking her for any number of things, but didn't have the brainpower to clarify on what it was. He turned quickly, but forced himself not to speed-walk to the door despite a desperate need to get his mind working again.

While passing the stairs, he added, "I'll head to my house and get my backpack while Marinette is getting—"

Marinette's voice suddenly rang out from her room, "W-wait! Wait, I'll come too!"

He looked up, Marinette opening the trapdoor with her jacket only half on and her backpack's top strap in her hand. She scrambled to slip her arm through the remaining sleeve and put on the backpack itself as she rushed down the stairs to stand next to him.

"You don't have t—"

"—I know!" she cut him off, apparently expecting his reassurances now. "But... it's okay, right? I can?"

He nodded, giving her a warm smile. "Of course."

She beamed at him, then gasped, turning and rushing for the counter. "Oh! Let me get our breakfast first!"

She picked up the two wrapped breakfasts, observing the wrapping with a critical look to ensure it was right. He smiled, admiring her energy, then turned away and headed straight for the door. He opened it quietly so as to not disturb her concentration, standing off to the side and simply waiting for her.

She returned to him happily, a grateful look on her face as she led the way downstairs. He pretended not to see Sabine's knowing look before he closed the door behind him.

"I never thought I'd be glad to not have my school right next door," Marinette admitted on her way down the steps, one arm carefully hugging the wrapped breakfasts to her chest like they were something precious. "We get to go on a nice walk and have breakfast together!"

Her behavior wasn't making Sabine's comments seem any less valid. He wanted to think on his walk to his house and clearly that wasn't something that was going to happen.

Marinette reached the bottom of the stairs first due to the excited skip in her step. She looked back at him with a smile, blindly reaching for the door and opening it, then waited for him like he had for her.

Her not looking the other way meant that he saw what - or who - was on the other side of the door before she did. "...Jule?"

Marinette's expression became confused. She glanced to the side, then jumped at the sight of Juleka standing there stiffly and looking down at the sidewalk.

Luka picked up his pace to get to them. He had no idea how long she'd been standing there, but he was sure that she'd never knocked; not because he knew he would've heard it, but because her expression told him that she hadn't had the confidence.

Even once he stood in front of her, Juleka was as still as a statue. It's why Marinette was all the more jumpy when Juleka's arm suddenly thrust outward, Luka's backpack in hand.

Ah. So that was her excuse for showing up.

Eager to break the silence, he took it with a grateful, "Thanks."

"Mm," she let out.

It wasn't a word, but he hadn't expected one.

Juleka's eyes flickered to Marinette, who was still standing confused by the door. Juleka simply turned away, taking two steps before stopping. She didn't glance back at them, but her head was partway to doing so, making her current expression a mystery to Marinette's eyes.

"...Sorry," she finally murmured, not waiting for a reply as she continued walking.

Marinette tilted her head, then glanced at Luka. He put his backpack on and met her gaze with his own, though didn't say anything because he could see the metaphorical gears turning in her head.

A thoughtful expression replaced her confused one as they walked outside together.

——————

"You'd still be okay doing work for Kitty Section?" Luka asked, surprised that she'd actually brought it up without him having to ask.

Staring up at the sky, Marinette replied, "Yeah," then repeated with more confidence, "Yeah, definitely. I didn't want to cut everyone off, and even though I was hurt, I'm willing to be friends with at least the rest of Kitty Section again, as long as they're okay talking about it. Besides..." She looked down at the breakfasts still held against her chest, then grabbed the larger one and held it out to him with a fond smile. "I really hated the idea that your sister wouldn't want to get along with me when we're so close. I know she's not like that, but still."

Normally, he would've immediately banished any implications he could've taken from her saying something like that, but this time, he let the notes settle on the song sheet with all the others. He took his breakfast from her hand, giving his second, "Thank you," that day that could've been taken in any number of ways.

Marinette fiddled with the wrapping on her own breakfast, Luka watching to know the best way to unwrap the top but looking away before she'd done it fully. It felt like he'd be spoiling himself on what his own breakfast would look like otherwise.

He copied what he'd seen, undoing the top of the wrapping as the scent of baked goodness hit his nose. At first glance, it seemed like a crispy ellipsoid-shaped bread that was large but small enough to hold properly with one hand. It was clearly seasoned, perhaps lightly buttered, and the feel of it made it obvious that it was filled.

He took a bite before he could start embarrassingly salivating in front of Marinette; however, it proved to be a poor decision, as it was so delicious that he let out a noise even more embarrassing than that. Marinette must've heard of too from the muffled squeak he'd heard afterwards.

He straightened, blushing but nonetheless savoring the bite in his mouth. There was no way he was going to swallow like he was trying to get it over with, even if Marinette knew that wasn't the case. He dared a glance at her, seeing her curious gaze.

After the bite went down his throat, he groaned. "Sorry. It's... really good."

"O-oh, no, I-I'm glad!" she assured. "I ran the recipe by my mom and dad a bunch of times and made sure all the flavors lined up, and that it was still healthy enough and I made a smaller third one just to taste and make sure it worked!"

"It shows." He took another bite, managing to suppress any noises this time. The now-visible inside of his breakfast was a myriad of colors that looked as good as it tasted.

How much work had she gone through in one morning to make everything as perfect as she could?

Once he swallowed, something occurred to him and he looked at her with concern. "Were you up that early to do all of that for me? Of course I'd love to do this with you more, but wouldn't you have to get up that early every day for us to do this?"

"No!" she insisted, seeming horrified that she'd worried him at all. "I mean—yes to the first question, sort of, technically I was doing it for us—but no on that second one! I can make things in advance and freeze them if I have to! I won't lose sleep or anything, I wouldn't want to do anything to worry you, Luka!"

He felt relieved, but gently pointed out, "I want you to sleep well because you care about your health, Marinette, not because you think it'll worry me."

She blushed, her pout telling him that she knew he was right. Still, only a moment passed before she grinned teasingly and asked, "So you wouldn't worry about me?"

He snorted, grinning in return. "I'd worry a lot. I wouldn't be able to hit a single note on my guitar."

She beamed, her walk getting an extra bounce from his words. He was tempted to keep teasing her - to tell her that she looked really happy to hear about him not being able to play his guitar properly - but he quite liked the sound of her bouncy footsteps.

Thus, they walked in silence for a while. Luka considered it to be for the best; if they kept teasing each other, they'd never finish their breakfast that Marinette had so painstakingly made.

He somehow managed to eat the rest of his food without making any more noises that would’ve made it seem like he'd been eating terrible food all his life. He ate decently, really, but Marinette's food was just that good in comparison and he couldn't believe she wanted to go out of her way to do this for him every day they went to school together.

Just as he was looking around for a garbage can to discard his wrapper, the wrapper itself was snatched out of his hand. He glanced over at Marinette, seeing that she had the top strap of her backpack in her mouth. With both wrappers in one hand, she went to open the front pocket with the other.

Luka drew closer to her, brows furrowed. "You don't have to keep them in your backpack, Marinette," he told her. The wrappers were definitely not clean, as he could see crumbs and the darkened areas of the wrapper where hints of the butter had rubbed off.

Marinette ignored him. He first thought that it was just due to her mouth being occupied, but then she triumphantly retrieved a ziplock bag from the pocket and Luka's mind clicked with an acknowledging oh.

She slipped the wrappers inside, then stored the bag inside the pocket and zipped the pocket back up. Returning the backpack to her back, she gave him a beaming smile. "Thanks."

He blinked. Placing a dramatic hand to his chest, he asked playfully, "You're thanking me, Marinette? I haven't done anything but eat your amazing food."

She gently poked his arm, then returned the backpack to her back. "You know what I mean. It's nice not walking alone, and you didn't even complain last night when my parents were—" She made a vague gesture between the two of them. "—you know."

He chuckled, waving dismissively at her. "I don't mind your parents. They were really nice," he assured.

"I know, but—" She pouted adorably. "—I still wanted to be the one to ask you to stay for dinner!"

It amused him that she had remained upset about that. "I stayed anyway at least, right?"

Sighing, she threw her hands up. "I guess! It's just..." She paused, arms dropping back down.

He felt her hand come in contact with his own, looking down to see the backs of her fingers touching his. He looked back up to see that she was eyeing his face, as if checking for something. Whatever it was, she apparently found it, her fingers moving to slide properly to the other side of his hand so she could clutch it.

"I got tired of other people forcing me and trying to work things out to make sure it was how they wanted." Smiling warmly, she added, "If I get to spend time with you, I don't want it to be because of someone else. I want it to be our choice."

He couldn't form a response, though she apparently didn't expect one with the way she looked away from him and focused on where they were walking. He glanced at their hands again, Marinette's grip gentle but with no intent on letting go.

He couldn't help reflecting. Every amount of romance knowledge he'd ever received (courtesy of Rose's excited ramblings) told him that the circumstances were more than appropriate for things to advance, and if he turned off the part of him that kept insisting that Marinette's actions could be interpreted in any way, it really did seem like she was dropping every hint possible that this was so much more than friendship. He'd have to be incredibly dense to suggest otherwise.

Suddenly, he felt bad, realizing how much had happened without his involvement. He took time to watch over and comfort her, certainly, but she was on another level.

She'd been the one to suggest the "study date date." She'd be the one to give him a gift. She'd been the one to suggest walking to school and eating together.

And now, she was the one who initiated them holding hands.

Even outside of her, his friends had been the ones to prepare accordingly and give them alone time, while Tom and Sabine practically treated them like they were already dating. Luka had always been of the belief that Marinette should set the pace of their relationship, but where was the line between letting her comfortably make choices, and making her work for it despite him doing nothing outside of reciprocating her gestures?

She deserved better than having to do all the work. It'd never been fair to her to have to make all of the decisions, and she'd been doing all the work seemingly her entire life.

He knew - better than everyone else - exactly how much she'd been working, for both herself and the rest of Paris.

"Luka?"

He was jerked out of his train of thought by Marinette's voice. She had slowed their walk and was looking at him worriedly, her frown lopsided in thought.

"Is everything okay? You look like you're thinking too hard." Though her brows were still furrowed, she smiled and tried to joke, "That's my job."

His expression softened, mostly out of its natural reaction to her. "It's alright," he assured.

Making a decision for himself, he stopped in his tracks, still holding onto Marinette's hand. She stopped as well, looking at their hands and then to him.

"Luka—" she began, but cut herself short. Whatever emotions he was showing must've given something away, as her mouth remained slightly open in curiosity, her eyes never leaving his.

"Marinette." He took a breath. "...Do you want to go on a date with me?"

Her mouth opened wider, a small noise coming out but forming no words.

"A real date," he clarified. He then continued, almost hastily, "There's no pressure, and it can be wherever and whenever you want. I just want to date you, as long as you want that too."

She was still, but he was more than willing to wait for her response. They'd already left early thanks to Juleka, so they had plenty of time.

Not that he would've minded being late if it was for Marinette's sake anyway.

Finally, Marinette blinked, then blinked again, this time rapidly. Her posture relaxed and she started breathing again. "...Yes."

His heart skipped a beat. She stepped closer to him, letting go of his hand so she could put both hands firmly on his shoulders and repeat seriously, "Yes." Growing excited, she leaped forward and squealed, throwing her arms around him in a tight but comfortable hug. "Oh my gosh, yes!"

He didn't stagger at her weight being thrown at him, but he might as well have. He felt like he'd been knocked over, all his breath leaving his lungs.

He loved it.

He returned the hug with just as much enthusiasm, giving her a loving squeeze. She let out a happy noise, nuzzling into him and making him realize how warm she was. He knew immediately that he wouldn't have to explain to his friends what had happened since the last time they saw him.

"...Oh!" Marinette gasped, pulling away from him. "Wait! I don't even know where we could go! I'd have to think—and plan—and figure out what the best time would be—"

He cut her off with a laugh. "I can wait. You can text me whenever you figure it out."

"I will!" she said resolutely. She then turned and placed one hand on the lower half of her face, looking deep in thought as she blindly reached back for his hand. He let her take it, fully willing to be dragged to school with her if she so desired.

He was so lost in the sound of his own heart pounding in his ears that he almost missed her whispering to herself.

"And I'll be there." There was a shake to it, but the resolve was apparent in her voice.

"I... I'll definitely be there."

[Part 10]

[flyinghome-againstthewind]

the best by far is you: chapter 13

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Previous Chapter

For all the things my hands have held, the best by far is you -  Cecilia and the satellite

————

Summary: An exploration of Claire & Jamie’s story if their firstborn had lived and they had the chance to be parents together of wee Faith Fraser before the Battle of Culloden.

Chapter 13

April 16, 1746

Jamie watched, disbelieving, as Faith tumbled seemingly from mid-air and landed at the foot of the stone, unleashing a scream at the top of her lungs as though she’d been hurt. 

His body reacted before his mind could catch up, gathering Faith into his arms at once to try and calm her. His heart beat erratically in his chest. Even as he held her, he didn’t want to believe it to be true.

It hadn’t worked. Faith couldn’t travel through the stones.

Cumberland’s troops would ravage the Highlands as Claire had said, flocking out from the very battlefield Jamie had stupidly brought his child to. Oh god, his child… with her bright burn of red hair that matched his own. He was a dead man... and she was indisputably his own if they were found together. 

He let out an unearthly howl at the stone, clutching Faith tightly to him. She should be two hundred years away from him now, in the safety of Claire’s embrace. “Ye were supposed to take her!” He screamed, his eyes boring into the rock. Why hadn’t it worked? 

Faith shrieked at the top of her lungs, a painful pitch that rattled Jamie’s brain in his skull. She kicked her legs frantically against him and pushed on his chest to try and get away, which only made his grip on her tighten. 

“I’m sorry. Oh God. Mo chridhe, I’m sorry. Tha thu sàbhailte,” Jamie murmured.  

And then he heard it.

The scuffle of soldiers nearby and British voices approaching them.  

“Faith,” he whispered sharply, feeling as though his heart was going to jump right out of his chest. “Shhhh, mo chridhe, please.” His hand slipped over Faith’s wee mouth, careful not to block her nose, while he strode to the other side of the stones, away from the direction he and Claire had come from. 

They would’ve seen his horse, undoubtedly. 

Faith’s screams dropped to a pitiful whimper against his hand and when he glanced down, he saw her eyes were wide with fear. “Christ, I’m sorry, lass.”

“--heard a child, sounded like from up there.” 

There wasn’t time to think, only to act. 

He slipped around the farthest stone to stand just outside the stone circle and crouched down to set Faith there in the grass. “Mo chridhe, ye canna leave this spot and ye canna make a sound. Not until I fetch ye. D’ye understand? Stay put and stay quiet.”  

  Wide, unblinking eyes stared up at him. Faith was silent, but like the calm before a storm, like she could break out in screams again at any moment.

There wasn’t time for anything else, though. He could hear the men approaching and he had to leave Faith there in the hope that she would listen. Jamie crossed to the stone directly opposite where he’d hid Faith and pressed his back against it, facing the center. He drew his sword slowly, being careful to contain the sound. From what he could tell, there weren’t many men approaching ‒ two, maybe three soldiers by the sound of it ‒ but whether they were patrolling or deserting, they weren’t likely to show mercy to him either way. Especially if they recognized him.

He was poised and ready, keeping his breathing steady even while his heartbeat thrummed in his ears. One was close, approaching from the other side of the stone he stood against.

Movement ahead of him caught his eye and he stood transfixed as Faith braced her palms on the grass just beyond the edge of the stone and leaned her head around to look back at him.    

No. 

Panic flooded his veins. She met his gaze and he shook his head abruptly in warning. Her eyes flickered over somewhere beyond him and his blood ran cold. 

“Christ, there is a baby up here.” 

A voice, just a few steps behind him. Faith retreated back behind the stone with a small cry, but it was too late. 

She was spotted. And they were out of time. 

The first man to walk past the stone hadn’t even seen him coming. Jamie struck the side of his head hard and fast with the butt of his sword and watched the man drop like a stone. One man down. 

He turned and advanced on the other soldier, who had in his haste not bothered with his musket and instead drew his sword.  

“What the devil are you playing at?” The man spat, and Jamie considered for a moment what a strange thing this was to happen upon, a Highlander warrior and a small child on a desolate hill. “Wait, you’re‒” 

The moment turned into a clash of steel, no longer having the luxury of considering anything other than that he had been recognized and he was the only thing standing between this enemy and his child. 

The struggle to overpower the other was brief, fueled by the protective fury of a parent whose child was in danger. Jamie came away from the fight alive ‒ victorious ‒ because he had to be. There was no alternative for him. 

The second soldier lay sprawled in the grass, partway down the hill, his eyes open but unfocused.

Jamie wiped the blood from his sword before sheathing it. When he looked towards the stone where Faith hid, there was no sign of her watching, no sound from her anymore. He swallowed roughly and moved on suddenly shaky legs towards where he’d left her. “It’s me, mo chridhe,” he called out softly just before he reached the stone. 

She was sitting up against the stone and flinched when he came into sight.

He dropped slowly to one knee before her and fought the overwhelming urge to grab her and run. “Ye did good, lass,” he murmured. “I ken you’re scared but we’re safe.” For now, he thought. “And I will keep you safe. But we have to go.”

He held his hands open to the small child. “C’mon. We have to get away from here.” 

The sounds from a not-so-distant battlefield still thundered in the air and it felt like an eternity that Jamie waited until Faith raised her arms up toward him, giving him permission. He picked her up and stood, holding her tight for one moment with the back of her head cupped in his hand. The panic that had risen from their encounter with the British soldiers finally began to dissipate as he felt her little arms twine around his neck. God… they were alright.

“We have to go,” he repeated, and turned to press a kiss to the side of Faith’s head. 

But go where? 

He’d had days to fine tune the plan that had been brewing in his mind over the course of this war. A final failsafe if they couldn’t avoid Culloden. And everything went according to plan except for Faith, unraveling the final part completely. 

He turned and began to walk back toward his horse, keeping Faith carefully shielded from seeing the bodies of the two men, when he noticed his plaid there in the grass near the center stone. 

Claire. 

It was his plaid, but more often than not, it had been wrapped around her shoulders for added warmth. It must’ve fallen at some point during their goodbye. 

He crouched down and grabbed it, holding it tight to his chest with his free arm. Faith’s head lifted off his shoulder and looked at him curiously. He realized then that he had been inhaling the scent of it, the faint lingering smell of Claire still on it. 

“Here,” he said gently, tucking part of it under her arm. “It’s soft and it’ll keep you warm.” 

For the first time since he’d seen Faith again, the tension between her eyebrows relaxed and her fingers began to play with the fabric of his plaid. “There ye go.” 

He made his way down the hill toward Donas, eyes scanning for any other signs of movement. But besides their chance encounter with those soldiers, they were entirely alone. 

Once at the foot of the hill, he wrapped his plaid around his chest, leaving room for Faith to sit comfortably in the cocoon it made for her. With her secured, he swung up carefully onto Donas and glanced down to check that Faith was alright. Her head was pillowed against his chest, and she stared out at their surroundings. Though he was sure she was still terrified from the recent events up on that hill, she’d fallen silent once more. 

He checked again that the plaid was holding her securely so that his hands were free to hold the reigns. Then he kicked his heels into the horse’s sides and urged him forward at a brisk pace, a direction already in mind. The Highlands would be no place for the child of Red Jamie, that he knew. He’d considered turning towards Lallybroch, towards where his men were surely marching, but only for a brief moment. Nae, he’d ruled out anywhere that was familiar to him for the sake of his child’s safety. The Highlands would be crawling with British soldiers ‒ and for years to come, if Claire was correct. 

There was an eerie calmness around them as he rode away from Craigh na Dun and away from Culloden. Taking that in, Jamie felt assured in his belief that the Lallybroch Frasers would be able to slip away undetected and head home. For the moment, the epicenter of conflict was Culloden Moor and he was keenly aware of his own brief window of time to move about undetected. 

He would head for Inverness first and gather supplies. Plot his next course. Move south from there.

A thought came to mind then of a potential ally residing in town. He turned the thought over in his mind as they rode. Yes… that could be beneficial.  

As they approached the town of Inverness, he slowed the horse’s pace, keeping an eye out for Redcoats or any other apparent threat. But while the chaos of war was raging not far from this place, the remaining inhabitants of Inverness were only those uninvolved in the fighting. 

He dismounted and tied Donas to a post before unbundling Faith and shifting her weight to the crook of his arm. 

Despite how sparsely populated the town seemed to be, Jamie still hurried inside with Faith, wanting to limit their exposure. They slipped through the quiet hall and up the stairs, pausing in front of a door. 

He pounded on the door and waited, hearing the sure sounds of someone stirring on the other side. The door swung open and he met the gaze of one wide-eyed Mary Hawkins Randall. 

“Please let us in. I need yer help.” 

“I don’t understand. Where’s Claire?” Mary interrupted his poor attempt at filling her in on the situation with the one question that landed like a punch in the gut. Mary looked puzzled and too distracted by the fact that if he was here with his child, his wife should be here with them. 

He inhaled sharply, his mind grappling for the words. He hadn’t said it out loud yet, hadn’t allowed himself to dwell on it when Faith’s life was in danger. “She’s… she’s gone.” 

“Gone?” Mary’s voice rose to a high-pitched whisper. Her hand covered her mouth as his meaning took root. She shook her head at him, tears glistening in her eyes. 

Aye, for those Claire left behind, she was lost to them forever. 

Faced with Mary’s display of shocked grief, he felt suddenly that the air in the room was too stifling, that the room was too small somehow. He rose from his chair, needing to move ‒ as if that might keep the grief from touching him as it did Mary. 

“I‒ I can’t believe it. Sh‒she‒she can’t be gone,” Mary sputtered before dropping her head into her hands and crying softly. 

He turned and watched her before his gaze swung curiously over to Faith where she had sequestered herself with Mary’s hairbrush and comb and was busy playing with her own hair. Faith paused at the sound and looked towards Mary, her eyes round with concern. Brows furrowed together again.    

Moved by the need to set Faith’s young mind at ease, he went for a glass and poured a bit of wine for Mary. She looked up when he approached and accepted it gratefully, and he took a deep breath before he dove into the reason he was here. 

“Ye must’ve seen the broadsheets by now. Ye ken I’m wanted by the British crown for treason. So I canna turn back home. I intend to flee, but the less my face is seen around here, the better. I ken people here are no’ too loyal to the British crown, but times are hard and that reward money is verra tempting. Now I’ll need some supplies before Faith and I can leave, but it would help us greatly if you could gather those for us.” 

He waited, but Mary’s gaze stared through the floor, her expression pinched with emotion, and didn’t immediately respond. 

“Could ye help us, Mary?” he asked gently. 

 She nodded, looking away as she wiped at a tear that spilled quietly down her cheek. “Yes, I‒” He noticed that her hands were clasped so tightly around the glass of wine that her knuckles were bone white. “I can help.”

With Mary running out for him to gather a few items, he found parchment and a quill and quickly began to write a letter for home. They would think he had died, if Murtagh shared his plan with them, which Jamie was quite sure he would. And they would think Claire and Faith were both gone, even if they didn’t know the details. But if the British realized he wasn’t numbered among the casualties of Culloden, then they would go stirring up trouble at Lallybroch and Jamie wanted the chance to set the record straight. 

At least… as best he could, with what he could share. 

He also couldn’t count it outside the realm of possibility that the letter might be intercepted before it reached its destination, and so he sat quietly for a while, puzzling out his message. 

At length, he began to write, his words scratched onto the parchment in a mix of French and Gaelic as he tried to assure his family that he was alive through coded phrases.

Tha mo sorcha air falbhm, he wrote. And then stilled in his progress. Read the words back over and inhaled sharply as the finality of his words hit him. 

My light is gone.

He could at that moment hear something clatter to the floor as Faith unabashedly explored Mary’s rented room. A timely reminder that he wasn’t alone, that there was one very important reason for why he wasn’t bleeding out on a battlefield right about now.   

Mais j'ai toujours la foi, he added. But I still have faith.

Jamie finished the letter, including his recommendation at the end that Jenny should burn the letter after it was read. He folded up and sealed the letter and then rose from the small desk to find Faith had managed to unlatch Mary’s trunk. She held it open above her head with one hand while the other dug through Mary’s dresses. 

“A leannan, leave Mary’s things alone,” he chided gently.  

“No.” 

His brows shot to his hairline, but Faith didn’t even check to see how her refusal was accepted. She grunted suddenly, but he realized it was not in response to him, but due to her struggle to keep the trunk open while only having one hand to explore the treasures within.  

“I can see that lid is heavy, lass. Ye’ll hurt yerself if ye’re no’ careful.”

“I careful.” Her words also came out in a grunt.  

Jamie sighed, reminded once more exactly whose child she was.    

He crossed quickly to where she stood and grabbed hold of the lid. “Faith,” he called to her softly, waiting until her eyes met his. “Would ye like to come wi’ me…” he flashed the letter with its bright red wax seal, “and help me deliver this?” 

Faith stepped forward, hands outstretched for the letter, and Jamie grinned triumphantly. 

When Mary returned, Jamie had already arranged a room for him and Faith for the night and left the letter with the proprietor of the boarding house ‒ the man had already seen him and Faith upon entering the building so it hadn’t seemed an added risk to take. 

Jamie helped Mary with the bundles and listened as she summarized what she’d been able to obtain from his list. Most importantly had been a change of clothes for him that wasn’t his Fraser kilt and plaid. Mary had been able to find enough ready made that looked as though it would fit well enough, and a few items for Faith as well. Since it wasn’t much altogether for both him and Faith, Mary had purchased some fabric, too. 

Jamie smiled tightly at this, wondering if she understood that it would be just him and Faith on the run and there wouldn’t be much time for making clothing. Well, it had been a nice thought on Mary’s part. 

“And I found this…” Mary unraveled a small, hooded cloak and held it out to Jamie. “Looked to be about Faith’s size.” 

He took the garment from her, rubbing over the soft fabric with his thumbs. It was a soft brown color and the cloth was heavy and warm. The hood, he noted, could help obscure her red hair. “Faith, come see what Mistress Mary bought ye.” 

Curious, Faith wandered over and her eyes lit up when she saw the cloak. Jamie fastened it around her shoulders when she drew near and lifted the hood up over her wee head. She peered up at him from under the hood, bright blue eyes dancing with joy. She looked remarkably like Claire when she was happy ‒ and that thought came to Jamie with a bittersweet sting. 

Faith’s hands came up to touch the top of the hood and she smiled. “Mine!” She crowed suddenly and raced away to the other side of the room. 

Jamie huffed in surprise, his eyebrows raised. He looked sideways at Mary and offered reluctantly, “She, uh, she has two wee cousins near her age ‒ both lassies. She’s used to anything and everything being fair game among them, I suppose.”   

“It’s alright.”

Mary handed over the last parcel, smaller than the others. 

“Ye were able to find everything?” 

“Yes, it’s all there.” She stared at him dubiously for a moment. “And you’re sure it’ll work?” 

“Weel, I’ve never tried it, but I did listen to my wife when she described the wonders of certain plants to naturally dye yer hair.” He looked to Faith where she was twirling in her cape, making the edges flair out. “And the best chance we have is to make Red Jamie not so recognizable, aye? So it’s worth trying.”  

“And what about Faith? Will you‒”

“No,” Jamie said quickly, his gaze still glued to his child. “No, we have bonnets she can wear now, but I canna…” He wasn’t sure he could put it into words, the wrongness that he felt at the thought of dyeing Faith’s hair. She was… she was something that came from him and Claire, perfect in that combination that made her uniquely Faith and also completely theirs. Made from their flesh and bone. And Claire had loved her red hair… he couldn’t stomach the thought of trying to alter Faith in that way. 

They worked quickly to prepare the dye and then Mary helped him apply it to his hair. 

“How long does it last?” She asked as she worked. 

“Dinna ken. I’ll bring what’s left with us and will likely have to restock as we go.” 

He looked over to see Faith watching them curiously as he transformed his hair from red to black. He smiled at her, but she only cocked her head to the side in response.  

The time spent here while Mary had run out for them had been much needed. It allowed Jamie to think ahead, plan their next steps, and anticipate the risks. And in that time, an idea had taken shape. “Mary,” he began, unable to see her where she stood behind him. “How long do ye intend to stay here?” 

“Oh,” she said softly, like she hadn’t really considered the question before he asked it. Perhaps she hadn’t. Her beloved had died only a few days ago, he reminded himself. “Well, I‒ I suppose that depends on… John.” There was an odd waver to her voice when she said his name, and he wondered if there had been any further interaction between the two after poor Mary had been tied to him in marriage, only to watch the man turn around and beat her dead lover. 

Jamie took a deep breath. He felt an odd sense of duty towards Mary. Though Murtagh laid vengeance at her feet for what happened in Paris, it seemed as though the poor girl had endured more pain and bad luck than was owed to one so young ‒ and many of those challenges could be tied back to the time they were all in Paris. “I dinna ken how to tell ye this, Mary, but I didna want ye to have to wait on this news.” 

He felt her hands still over his hair. “What are you talking about? What news?”

“About yer husband.” He twisted in his chair to look back at her. Claire had told him over and over of Randall’s death at Culloden. If they truly couldn’t change the outcome of the war, it stood to reason that by now, Randall was already dead. But he couldn’t exactly explain how he knew that to Mary. “He rejoined his regiment after Alex’s death, aye?” Mary nodded. “There was an accident this morning. A musket that was fired unintendedly within the camp. Randall was struck… he didna survive. The army will likely attribute his death to the battle to cover the accident.” 

Mary was white as a ghost, dumbfounded and silent. 

“Do ye understand, Mary? He’s gone.” 

He canna hurt ye now. 

Her brows furrowed together and she sucked in a deep breath. “H-h-he’s gone,” she repeated.  

Jamie thought he saw a flicker of relief on her face before she turned her gaze curiously back to him. 

“How do you know this?” 

“Word spreads quickly in a war,” he said evenly. “Especially when a captain is struck down by one of his own. It might be some time before the army informs kin of their losses though, so I thought ye deserved to know, seeing how this changes things for ye.”

“Changes things?” 

“As Randall’s widow, ye are entitled to some things ‒ his officer’s pension for one ‒ so ye’re not without a means to get by. But ye also have no cause to stay in Inverness, away from everyone ye know.” 

“I… I could go home.” 

“Aye, ye could.” He watched her closely as the news settled in. She seemed to warm to the idea of going home ‒ or perhaps simply leaving this place. “I have a proposition for ye, though. Faith and I will be traveling south to Edinburgh.” 

“B-but Edinburgh is‒” 

“Aye. The British overtook it months ago. No doubt they still have troops there to hold it. But if I recall, ye have some family there, do ye no’?” 

“Yes. An aunt. But‒”

“Travel with us to Edinburgh. I will escort ye there safely and deliver ye to yer aunt. In return, yer presence with us makes us less conspicuous. No one will bat an eye at a young couple wi’ a child.” 

Mary breathed in slowly, seeming to consider this. “It still seems an awful risk to you.”

“Anywhere I go from here is a risk.” 

“You won’t stay in Edinburgh, surely?” 

“No. But it’s a large city and much easier to hide in a well-populated place like that. We’ll lay low, wait for the ports to open back up.” Jamie smiled ruefully. “And then at first chance… I’m getting my daughter out of Scotland.”  

“Where will you go?”

“Doesna really matter to me where we end up. I only want Faith to be able to grow up without threat to her safety just because she’s mine. And… and without her mother to care for her, I’ll be damned if she loses her father, too.”       

Mary glanced over to where Faith sat quietly playing, still wearing her cloak. “I’ll go with you to Edinburgh,” she said at last. Her gaze swung back to Jamie and she smiled sadly as she added, “For Claire.”  

With his distinct red hair successfully colored black and arrangements made for Mary to join them in the morning for their departure, Jamie and Faith gathered their things from Mary’s room and retreated to their own. 

He watched Faith’s sluggish steps beside him and determined that the first thing he would do tonight was get wee Faith ready for bed.  

Though she had seemed to take much of the day in stride since arriving at the boarding house, her eyes grew wide when Jamie mentioned sleep. 

“Auntie Jenny?” Faith asked him, her voice rising to a pitch that told him tears would soon follow. 

He stood there mutely, not wanting to answer her. What could he say to make her understand? They were far from home and couldn’t go back.  

“She’s no’ here, a leannan. Tis only me.” 

“My Maggie?” She pleaded hopefully. 

Regret sliced through him, swift and painful. He hadn’t meant to cause her harm like this. “No, lass. I’m sorry.” 

Like a burst in a dam, Faith’s screams were sudden and forceful. She backed herself against the side of the bed, away from Jamie.     

He took a few steps toward her, intent on trying to soothe her the way he always had when she was a bairn, but Faith’s cries rose in pitch and volume when he moved closer. He froze, watching helplessly as tears poured down his daughter’s flushed face.

“No!” She screamed at him, bracing herself against the side of the bed. Her next words came out in a rush, blending with her loud cry, but he didn’t need to understand her to know that she wanted her Auntie Jenny, wanted to be at home. He kept the distance between them, but squatted down to her level. 

“Faith…” 

The word had barely left his mouth when Faith quickly scaled the bed and launched herself face down into the bedding. Her cries were muffled into the blankets as she stayed there, stretched out in a prone position in the center of the bed, but she continued to wail and scream to the point that Jamie was scared to go near her, lest he upset her further. 

So instead, he retreated to a chair and sat with his elbows resting on his knees, his fingers interlaced together and bracing against his chin, and listened as Faith’s muffled sobs continued to fill the room.

He wanted nothing more than to go to her, but he’d resigned himself to the fact that he was a stranger to her, responsible for her being plucked from her home and the loved ones that she knew. 

His hands scrubbed over his face before he leaned back in his chair, his gaze resting on Faith. They were safe at the moment. He’d managed to get her away from Culloden unscathed and keep his promise of safety. 

But he had no earthly idea how to help her now. 

He felt as unsure of himself as he had when he came back from the Bastille and found out his child had survived and lived three months without him. He’d felt like an intruder on her life then, already so bonded with Claire… 

Oh God… Claire.

She would’ve known exactly how to reach Faith. Was it only that morning when he’d watched the two of them together? Had seen how even with the months apart from her, caring for Faith seemed as natural to Claire as breathing?

 It had taken every ounce of strength to push thoughts of Claire out of his head today, to not dwell on the implications of what happened at the stones. There were a few times it had struck him that she was truly gone, but each time, he pushed it down. Because there was Faith to focus on and to protect, and their future to plan for. 

But now… seeing his wee child in agony, he could hardly bear the weight of it all. Faith should be two hundred years away from this time, in the comfort of her mother’s embrace, in a place where she would be safe. He recalled how she had looked earlier, her wee face peering out at him from the other side of the stone this morning, and dropped his face into his hands. 

She could’ve been killed…

Lord, it was all wrong. A cold, dank feeling settled around his heart at the thought of what this meant for Claire. He hadn’t allowed himself to imagine what she must be feeling, arriving back in her time without their girl. 

A sob tore from his throat, and he gasped painfully for his next breath. How many times in the last several months had he held his wife in a poor attempt to soothe her empty arms? And now he’d sent her away from Faith forever. Though it hadn’t been his intention, he couldn’t think of a single other act of cruelty towards Claire that would measure up to the magnitude of what he’d done. 

“Oh God, I’m sorry,” he cried out, feeling a wrenching pain in his chest. “I’m so sorry, Claire!”    

He must’ve been louder than he thought because he drew Faith’s attention. She turned her head to the side, still sobbing, and her gaze sought him out. He locked eyes with her and felt something tumble in his chest. Faith looked distraught and confused, and the urge to hold her came back with riotous force. 

And he thought of how ashamed Claire might be if she knew he was sitting with his guilt instead of holding their child, squandering the time with Faith that Claire didn’t have. 

His next breath was shaky. He wiped at his face as he rose to his feet and approached the bed. Faith didn’t move or react this time and he slid his hands under her shoulders to lift her off the bed. Her crying didn’t cease in the transfer, but she did curl in at his neck in a way that made him think she wasn’t so sorry to be stuck with him after all. 

“There, m'annsachd. Shhhh…” 

Her cries became more rhythmic, interrupted like clockwork by hiccuping gasps to force herself to breath in. She was winding down, at least. He spoke gently over her in Gaelic, knowing it was what she would’ve heard at home with Jenny and Ian. Something familiar and comforting, he hoped. 

He wasn’t sure how long he paced the short confines of their room with her. She had grown considerably since the last time he’d done this, but there was something inexplicably comforting for him when he felt her fingers curl around his shirt collar and hold on, the same thing she used to do as a wee babe. “I do love ye, Faith.” He rested his cheek against the top of her head. “So much… it feels like my heart could burst open from it.” 

Faith’s cries had waned to half-hearted whimpers that only surged in volume when he shifted her weight to his other arm. She doesna want me to put her down, he realized. 

“Dinna fash, a leannan,” he crooned. “I’m here. I’ve got ye.” 

He felt her heave a sigh against his neck and it triggered his own, releasing some of the night’s tension from his body. “I’m so sorry, lass. God, am I ever sorry…” The words slipped out on the heels of his sigh, so quick he barely registered that he’d spoken them aloud to her. But once formed, the words opened up the cavernous well of apology and regret inside him, and he had the sudden need to unburden himself. Even if she didn’t understand the weight of what had happened, the extent of the loss he’d caused her. 

“I- I broke my promise to ye. And that is unforgivable. I swore that I would see yer mam safely returned to ye and instead I’ve… I’ve split ye apart. Christ. A leannan, she loves ye so much ‒ more than her own life ‒ and ye have no idea. I’ve deprived ye of that. I canna begin to say how sorry I am. How ashamed I am.” Tears were spilling quickly down his face, but he managed to go on speaking, his voice husky with emotion. “I dinna think I can live wi’out her. She… she was my heart.” His hand moved in slow circles along Faith’s back and realized suddenly that she’d fallen quiet ‒ not asleep, but no longer crying or whimpering. 

“But I will live every day keeping you safe from harm and… and reminding ye that ye had the most wonderful mother. That is my new promise to you. That is what I owe to Claire. I will tell ye everything about her, so ye can know her in some small way. ” He turned and pressed a kiss to her temple and then felt the gentle pat of her hand on his cheek in response. He exhaled a smile. “Still such a sweet wee thing. I ken ye’re scared and lost and I dinna blame ye a bit. But we’ll be alright. Dinna fash yerself, a leannan. Lay yer head and rest. I’ll guard ye while ye dream.” 

Lord, that I might be enough… and oh Lord, that they would be safe, Claire and the child…