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istumpysk · 2 years

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Operation Stumpy Re-Read

ASOS: Samwell III (Chapter 46)

Night was coming on, and it would be good to sleep beneath a roof for once. He was so tired. It seemed as though he had been walking half his life. His boots were falling to pieces, and all the blisters on his feet had burst and turned to callus, but now he had new blisters under the callus, and his toes were getting frostbitten.

But it was either walk or die, Sam knew. Gilly was still weak from childbirth and carrying the babe besides; she needed the horse more than he did.

Aw.

+.+.+

Sam heard a rustling of rats from a dark corner, but otherwise there was nothing in any of them but old straw, old smells, and some ashes beneath the smoke hole.

I'm now programmed to include every mention of rats.

+.+.+

"Old gods, hear my prayer. The Seven were my father's gods but I said my words to you when I joined the Watch. Help us now. I fear we might be lost. We're hungry too, and so cold. I don't know what gods I believe in now, but . . . please, if you're there, help us. Gilly has a little son." That was all that he could think to say. The dusk was deepening, the leaves of the weirwood rustling softly, waving like a thousand blood-red hands. Whether Jon's gods had heard him or not he could not say.

Samwell prays three times in this chapter.

Gods don't hear prayers in this story, but someone else might.

+.+.+

Sam blushed. "I . . . I know some songs. When I was little I liked to sing. I danced too, but my lord father never liked me to. He said if I wanted to prance around I should do it in the yard with a sword in my hand."

"Could you sing some southron song? For the babe?"

"If you like." Sam thought for a moment. "There's a song our septon used to sing to me and my sisters, when we were little and it was time for us to go to sleep. 'The Song of the Seven,' it's called." He cleared his throat and softly sang:

[...]

The Seven Gods who made us all,

are listening if we should call.

So close your eyes, you shall not fall,

they see you, little children,

Just close your eyes, you shall not fall,

they see you, little children.

I'm not going to include the entire song, because tumblr is still broken. The Maiden part is cute.

Samwell's now singing a hymn about a different set of gods. Gods don't hear hymns in this story, but I can't help but notice little children are listening.

+.+.+

Gilly gave him a puzzled look. "Did you only sing of six gods? Craster always told us you southrons had seven."

"Seven," he agreed, "but no one sings of the Stranger." The Stranger's face was the face of death. Even talking of him made Sam uncomfortable.

I bet she does.

Arya IX ->

Stranger, the Hound called him. Arya had tried to steal him once, when Clegane was taking a piss against a tree, thinking she could ride off before he could catch her. Stranger had almost bitten her face off.

+.+.+

After they had finished, Sam begged her pardon and went out to relieve himself and look after the horse. A biting wind was blowing from the north, and the leaves in the trees rattled at him as he passed.

Can't a man get a little privacy?

+.+.+

She kept saying how she'd be his wife if he wanted, but black brothers didn't keep wives; besides, he was a Tarly of Horn Hill, he could never wed a wildling.

[...]

His cloak was big enough to cover all three of them and keep in the warmth of their bodies.

Sam covers Gilly in his cloak almost immediately after thinking he can't wed her.

+.+.+

He liked sleeping next to her. It made him remember times long past, when he had shared a huge bed at Horn Hill with two of his sisters.

While cuddled next to Gilly, under his cloak, Sam thinks of his sisters.

If that doesn't make you laugh, nothing will.

+.+.+

His dreams were strange that night. He was back at Horn Hill, at the castle, but his father was not there. It was Sam's castle now. Jon Snow was with him. Lord Mormont too, the Old Bear, and Grenn and Dolorous Edd and Pyp and Toad and all his other brothers from the Watch, but they wore bright colors instead of black. Sam sat at the high table and feasted them all, cutting thick slices off a roast with his father's greatsword Heartsbane. There were sweet cakes to eat and honeyed wine to drink, there was singing and dancing, and everyone was warm. When the feast was done he went up to sleep; not to the lord's bedchamber where his mother and father lived but to the room he had once shared with his sisters. Only instead of his sisters it was Gilly waiting in the huge soft bed, wearing nothing but a big shaggy fur, milk leaking from her breasts.

I know Heartsbane has to be important in the future, I just don't know how yet. The show bungled it.

More laughs: Sam finds Gilly in a state of undress, in the bedchamber he shares with his sisters.

+.+.+

Then, by the door, one of the shadows moved. A big one.

This is still a dream, Sam prayed. Oh, make it that I'm still asleep, make it a nightmare. He's dead, he's dead, I saw him die. "He's come for the babe," Gilly wept. "He smells him. A babe fresh-born stinks o' life. He's come for the life."

The huge dark shape stooped under the lintel, into the hall, and shambled toward them. In the dim light of the fire, the shadow became Small Paul.

"Go away," Sam croaked. "We don't want you here." Paul's hands were coal, his face was milk, his eyes shone a bitter blue. Hoarfrost whitened his beard, and on one shoulder hunched a raven, pecking at his cheek, eating the dead white flesh.

My first reaction was that I was happy to see Small Paul finally get a raven.

Is that Mormont's raven? That seems impossible. I'll go with no.

+.+.+

"Small Paul. Do you know me? I'm Sam, fat Sam, Sam the Scared, you saved me in the woods. You carried me when I couldn't walk another step. No one else could have done that, but you did." Sam backed away, knife in hand, sniveling. I am such a coward. "Don't hurt us, Paul. Please. Why would you want to hurt us?"

It's kind of sweet his first instinct is to reason with it. Hey, you never know, it could work in the future.

+.+.+

Across the longhall, Gilly reached the garron. Gods give me courage, Sam prayed. For once, give me a little courage. Just long enough for her to get away.

There's Sam praying to the gods one final time. Gods don't give you courage Sam, you have that all on your own.

+.+.+

He clutched the dagger with both hands to hold it steady. The wight did not seem to fear the dragonglass. Perhaps he did not know what it was.

Yeah, I bet that's it.

+.+.+

There was no time to think or pray or be afraid. Samwell Tarly threw himself forward and plunged the dagger down into Small Paul's back. Half-turned, the wight never saw him coming. The raven gave a shriek and took to the air. "You're dead!" Sam screamed as he stabbed. "You're dead, you're dead." He stabbed and screamed, again and again, tearing huge rents in Paul's heavy black cloak. Shards of dragonglass flew everywhere as the blade shattered on the iron mail beneath the wool.

Sam's wail made a white mist in the black air. He dropped the useless hilt and took a hasty step backwards as Small Paul twisted around.

Oops, there's that dragonglass being completely useless against wights. A fact that's well established in these books.

Stupid.

The children of the forest used to give the Night's Watch 100 obsidian weapons a year. One hundred. For the White Walkers, not wights.

Now suddenly the show needs you to believe the largest army ever needs to be equipped with these useless fucking weapons to battle a wight army.

Stupid.

+.+.+

Sam wrenched himself sideways, pulling Paul with him . . . his arms flailed against the dirt floor, groping, reaching, scattering the ashes, until at last they found something hot . . . a chunk of charred wood, smouldering red and orange within the black . . . his fingers closed around it, and he smashed it into Paul's mouth, so hard he felt teeth shatter.

[...]

The wight was burning, hoarfrost dripping from his beard as the flesh beneath blackened. Sam heard the raven shriek, but Paul himself made no sound. When his mouth opened, only flames came out.

Wights/White Walkers keep getting the dragon treatment in Samwell's chapters, and it's not subtle.

+.+.+

He ducked from the long hall. "Gilly?" he called. "Gilly, I killed it. Gil—"

She stood with her back against the weirwood, the boy in her arms. The wights were all around her.

[...]

Sam made a whimpery sound. "It's not fair . . ."

"Fair." The raven landed on his shoulder. "Fair, far, fear."

Fair, far, fear? Help?

+.+.+

It flapped its wings, and screamed along with Gilly. The wights were almost on her. He heard the dark red leaves of the weirwood rustling, whispering to one another in a tongue he did not know. The starlight itself seemed to stir, and all around them the trees groaned and creaked.

SAVE THEM BRAN.

Tongue he did not know? True Tongue? Wait, is it the children of the forest?

+.+.+

Sam Tarly turned the color of curdled milk, and his eyes went wide as plates. Ravens! They were in the weirwood, hundreds of them, thousands, perched on the bone-white branches, peering between the leaves. He saw their beaks open as they screamed, saw them spread their black wings. Shrieking, flapping, they descended on the wights in angry clouds. They swarmed round Chett's face and pecked at his blue eyes, they covered the Sisterman like flies, they plucked gobbets from inside Hake's shattered head. There were so many that when Sam looked up, he could not see the moon.

The gods may not answer prayers, but Bran sure does!

Or the children? Or Bloodraven?

Oh no, I'm second guessing myself.

+.+.+

"Go," said the bird on his shoulder. "Go, go, go."

There's a theory that every talking raven in the story is Bloodraven, but isn't it well established the children of the forest use ravens to communicate?

+.+.+

"But where?" Gilly hurried after him, holding her baby. "They killed our horse, how will we . . ."

"Brother!" The shout cut through the night, through the shrieks of a thousand ravens. Beneath the trees, a man muffled head to heels in mottled blacks and greys sat astride an elk. "Here," the rider called. A hood shadowed his face.

He's wearing blacks. Sam urged Gilly toward him. The elk was huge, a great elk, ten feet tall at the shoulder, with a rack of antlers near as wide. The creature sank to his knees to let them mount. "Here," the rider said, reaching down with a gloved hand to pull Gilly up behind him. Then it was Sam's turn. "My thanks," he puffed. Only when he grasped the offered hand did he realize that the rider wore no glove. His hand was black and cold, with fingers hard as stone.

Coldhands aka Not Benjen Stark, welcome to the story.

This is what's throwing me off. Coldhands will guide Bran to Bloodraven, giving me the impression he's assisting Bloodraven. So maybe Bloodraven sent Coldhands to save Samwell?

I know, I know, why would Bloodraven care about saving Samwell? Well, Coldhands instructs Samwell to bring Bran to the Black Gate, so there's that to consider.

So is it Bloodraven? Or is Coldhands helping the children? Maybe he's helping the children. The chapter seems to be pointing to the children.

Or is it Bran? Bran's been interfering for three books now.

Ughhh, my brain. Help. It's getting harder.

Final thoughts:

Many people pointed it out last Samwell chapter, but it's such a fantastic point, it's worth repeating:

If Samwell is to write A Song of Ice and Fire, all of these clashes with wights and White Walkers will have to mirrored with dragons.

Samwell's lost a lot of brothers to the White Walkers.

-> return to menu <-

#operation stumpy re-read #asos #samwell iii

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fivekrystalpetals · 1 year

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Not having your live reading of Pandora Hearts will be sad ! I loved seing your analysis, I'm happy you enjoyed it :3

Awwww thank you so much ❤!! yes it’s gonna be so sad for me too to not have my weekly live screaming sessions,, nooo this masterpiece of a story got over ;_; as they say, every good thing has to come to an end (nooooo~) so we gotta enjoy it till it lasts ;_; [I want to reread it again, but not anytime now... I need time to recover, sadly it seems I am getting increasingly upset and frustrated seeing A Certain Someone’s logic and arguments so I need some time to get over it and read again with a clearer mind; lol I generally don't get this upset over a fictional character but this guy’s character resonate a lot with someone ik ig that’s why I associate one with the other in my mind idk]

Break continues to be my favorite character which is honestly a surprise bc I tend to change my favorite midway through the series (I am not faithful shhh); Lottie and Lacie come a close second (well-written female characters tho they had not enough screen time (at least not for me, I wanted to see more of them!), they have lots of gaps and flaws I can develop on in my mind and in my fics if I ever post anything)

The two Alices, Oz and Gil: they are my babies now I adopted them, already signed adoption papers and all 💪 (once again, a surprise bc I hardly ever care about the main characters but these four are just... made-to-be-loved how dare anyone hurt them?!?!? *looking at a Certain Someone 🔪🔪* I just wish we saw more of Alyss and her thoughts, likes, dislikes etc. before the end. Since Cheshire loved her but was dead scared of our Alice, Alyss must have craved for meat less lol)

Fun fact: my favorite arc in Pandora Hearts still remains *drumroll* Headhunter Arc my beloved <3

not only was it mochijun’s super self-indulgent glamorous-makeover-for-all-my-characters arc but also has some of the best cliffhangers, plot twists and lore—humpty-dumpty (this chain damn!), Fianna’s house and their eerie ritual of making contractors out of little homeless kids, the doings of Isla Yura, his cult of Jack worshippers and the Nightrays (except Elliot ofc) all gave me chills and thrills, kept me to the edge of the seat,, say, if you see, I have less live drafts for that arc, it’s because... I was so invested in the story I couldn't even bother to pause and log on to tumblr; I just had to get to the end. It was like a standalone, little whodunit+thriller story arc with Eliot as the detective/protagonist set out to investigate his family’s curse ;_; and then the final reveal of the actual criminal (Retrace 61) 😭 (something I had guessed at in the beginning from Lottie’s words but the rat is just that good at distracting us from the truth =_=)

The rest of the story is, well, do I need to explain aghfhshfg why is this story so compact and coherent and filled with so much foreshadowing right from the first panel of the Retrace 1 that it still gives me goosebumps (I was actually talking about Retrace 76/77 with my friend (no, not specifying names or giving out spoilers, she hasn’t read PH yet and I am slowly luring her in with a carrot into this rabbit hole)—kinda like: See? I think I have uncovered a huge conspiracy theory— you know the suspected immortals in our world? I think they never die but go full Benjamin Button mode back and forth! She is super interested to know more and I am waiting to cast The Question: *conspiratorial tone* Do you wanna read something with a plot like that?)

ahhhh lol I was rambling but thank you so much for sticking around with me til the end, reading my analysis and posts (most of them were my incoherent screams fgsghghsj) and for this ask! It was so sweet of you <3 <3 And although I ran out of my live drafts, I do plan on writing a lot on the other characters too (in fact, I have three posts—character analysis of sorts—about Oswald, Gil, Vince and the Baskervilles in general—in my drafts and then, a few others in plans.) I will also be screaming (and probs writing fics bc what else to do when a ship takes its roots inside your head) about my favorite ship ahem ahem, which no one but me likes 😭😭, so that too.

So no worries, PH brainrot is going strong! my reactions on tumblr is actually minimal,, only about 10% of how much of a nuisance I was with people here irl at Certain Points in the story lmaohgjsgj

#pandora hearts #asks #anon #may-answers #thank you for this ask!#glad you enjoyed reading my posts ❤#sorry i am answering this a little late but i was rather sick over the week #and only now am i opening desktop tumblr #also i cut down many of my posts and deleted some of my rants and character critical posts #after that one post i wrote about reim and people started vagueing about me in main tags *shrugs*#(btw i haven't changed my mind about that lol i still hold him responsible for cough cough someone-important's death cough cough)#so what i really posted is a lot of percent less than what i started out to write gjshjgkskl

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tehuti88-art · 4 months

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12/22/23: r/SketchDaily theme, "Tree Week: Free Draw Finale." (I did regular Free Draw Friday.)

This week's character from my anthro WWII storyline is Sergeant Major Champere. He's the leader of the French resistance forces. He's a good guy but has rather an attitude problem and can be difficult to deal with. There'll be more about him later in my art Tumblr and Toyhou.se.

Regarding his design, he went through the wringer in the Great War, so his ears are nicked and torn and he has a burn scar over his eye; his vision was impaired but not blinded. He wears an old kepi (yes, I finally learned the name of the hat Louis Dobermann wears).

TUMBLR EDIT: Champere dates to before the circa-2000 reboot, I believe, yet his character has never been significantly developed. All I really knew was I'm not quite sure of his rank--major or sergeant major?--or if he was even truly in the military, and that he's a jerk. Although he receives advance warning of the planned German attack on Trench Rat Headquarters, he refuses to get involved or warn them--he even orders Papillon to say nothing--until after the fact. It's Didrika's partisan forces who arrive first to help the beleaguered Rats, despite the Rats being on closer terms with the French partisans. And you can bet that Didrika gives Champere the tongue-lashing to end all tongue-lashings for it. And likely tosses a few curses and evil eyes at him while she's at it. (Even Boris, who can't stand the Trench Rats, considers it a dirty move.) AND although he belatedly sends his men to offer after-the-fact aid, he never apologizes or explains himself, so for quite a while, Trench Rat/French relations are severely strained; Papillon, deeply humiliated (as well as hurt--Drake Rat, with whom he's quite close, is captured in the attack), is left to try to patch things up between the two groups. Champere mellows out a bit as the series goes on, but never quite warms to the Americans.

I always just assumed Champere--that's likely not even his real name--was a snobby a-hole. His character has never been dropped from the story, though I've never paid much attention to him either, not being interested. As I chose him from my to-do drawing list and started brainstorming his appearance--he was going to have a mustache, but how do you do that and whiskers?--he finally, grudgingly opened up to me a tiny bit. But just a tiny bit. Many details, including his life history and his reason for distrusting the Trench Rats so much, are still unknown. I imagine they'll start emerging sometime soon, now that he's made it clear he's not just a boring snob.

I've long suspected shadiness on Champere's part. Sergeant Major or Major? He's named the first on the character list, but I swear someplace he was referred to as Major. Was he ever even really in the military? Because he's not leading a military unit now--yet still goes by a military rank. Is he some kind of fraud? Is it a Red Badge Of Courage situation and he just assumed command after mistakenly being perceived as a war hero? Is he crazy? From what little I know so far, it's all kind of complicated.

You notice I mentioned the Great War. Champere is indeed originally a military man. He has the wounds to prove it. He also has the bottomless hatred of Germans. I'm toying with him having encountered Captain Himmel, who also fought in the Great War--while underage--though it's unlikely as Himmel ran into Sergeant Camo Rat back then, and it just seems like too many coincidences, but who knows. He obviously had a rough time of it however, given his scars, so I imagine some of the hatred comes from that. He probably saw a lot of his fellows die miserable deaths in the trenches and it's left him not just bitter but nationalistic. Thus, he dislikes Americans as well, even though they're allied.

I suspect as well that Champere is a little...not all there. I think maybe a lot of his paranoid, erratic behavior can be chalked up to mental imbalance. He was likely a sergeant major in the Great War...now that he finds himself with a partisan unit behind enemy lines (HOW a group of "French partisans" came to be in Germany is never explained, same as all these groups of Allies fighting on German soil--this was based on my childhood misunderstandings of WWII and I haven't retconned any explanation for it yet), he's assumed the title of "Major" although everyone knows he's not one; they humor him, because even though he obviously has some screws loose, he's still a charismatic, intelligent, effective leader. His irrational distrust of others can be a liability sometimes--as it is with the attack on the Trench Rats--yet this incident is more of an exception than the rule, and his men decide it's worth the risk.

That being said, Champere avoids fighting except when absolutely necessary, and then when a victory is almost ensured. His group seems more invested in gathering intel and doing heavy work that doesn't involve direct combat. One major incident I know of where his men aid the Trench Rats is when they find an abandoned camp in the woods and need to handle the bodies; Didrika's guys for once aren't so helpful due to superstition, so Champere sends some of his guys to carry away the dead instead. (See Reseda's entry.) They also frequently trade with the Rats and Didrika's partisans. Again, I'm not sure why any of this is, why these guys are in Germany if it's not primarily to fight...

...

...Hm.

Uh. Anyway. That particular detail needs to percolate, and indeed, you just saw my brain hiccup with a tiny bit of an idea. It only JUST peeped into my head, and may be forgotten tomorrow...but as I said...percolation. Is that a word? Well, it is now.

I'm picking this up again after sleeping and WELP, indeed, more of Champere's story is coming out. Normally I'd start gushing it out here, but it's still heavily under development, is really weird and convoluted, either needs research or for me to make it up whole cloth (considering how much of it seems based on a mix of semi-religious psychotic delusion and actual supernatural experience), and to share it while it's so nascent would be a mistake. As a teaser, some of the stuff that's begun to emerge (which is all subject to change) is: A WWI battlefront vision, Turquoise and Nixie, the earliest days of Projekt Weltuntergang, the Thule Society, a secret pledge and a mission (maybe finally explaining why/how these French guys end up in Germany?), and Holy Roman Emperor Otto the Great. So...yeah. It's looking a tad bit wild at the moment.

Anyway. I mentioned that Champere does mellow out somewhat as the storyline goes on, though never completely. Despite his inaction re: the attack on Headquarters, the situation does wear on him; after an obviously aggrieved Papillon fills him in on the outcome, he doesn't bother to turn around and look him in the eye, and reiterates his decision, but then quietly adds, "I'm sorry for your loss," indicating that he knows about Papillon's and Drake's discreet relationship. He's fully committed to not intervening for whatever reason, he believes in all his heart that he's doing the necessary thing, yet he does feel guilt over the outcome. He's driven by impulses he can't explain yet believes he must follow for the greater good...a sign common to both mental illness and religion, which look like they're gearing up to be big themes in Champere's story. When Drake is finally liberated and Camo returns, Champere acts out of character in personally letting them know he's grateful that they're back. Drake is simply too worn out by his experience to harbor any anger; that's Camo's reaction. He feels intense spite over Champere's refusal to warn them, and doesn't accept his comments graciously. There's some difficulty convincing Camo to work with him to get everything wrapped up.

I'm not entirely sure what happens to Champere toward the end; given the turn the plot is taking, I assume he survives the war, and almost certainly plays a previously undisclosed role in Ultima Thule. If he's indeed still alive and it's not just a matter of him leaving info behind, then this means a likely collision with/culmination of events that were set in motion way back on the Western Front of WWI. Champere isn't COMPLETELY crazy. He just has a strange way of viewing and interpreting the things he's experiencing.

And that's where I guess I have to leave things for now; no point hashing it out yet when it's still so embryonic and highly subject to change. I'm not even sure if Champere survives the storyline or not, though he almost certainly plays a role in the outcome (i. e., the fall of Jäger's proposed Fourth Reich and the destruction of the Alpine Fortress). It's a conclusion that encompasses two wars and almost thirty years, so I imagine it'll need quite a bit of ironing out to see the light of day.

[Champere 2023 [‎Friday, ‎December ‎22, ‎2023, ‏‎3:00:23 AM]]

#artists on tumblr #ibisPaint x #SketchDaily #original characters

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chrissylives929 · 1 year

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Uhh howdy I’ve never used Tumblr before but I’m giving it a shot- as my first post, I give you my first ever attempt at writing a story… Critiques are appreciated

“Crimson”

“It happened on a Monday night,” he said, “I was only home for maybe an hour, it was a long day, a lot of exams, I was so ready for this year to end. Didn’t realize how easy we had it…”

“It was almost midnight when I heard my sister scream, she was so easily startled,” he laughed. “There was one time the dog jumped on her bed in the middle of the night, I swear, she probably woke up the whole neighborhood, good times.” His voice grew weaker. “I miss her.” He said, tears growing in his eyes.

“I grabbed my little slingshot, expecting some rat or spider was what scared her, the house wasn’t the cleanest, always had a pest problem. Anyway, I quietly strode over to her room, making sure not to scare whatever came out back to its den. I got to the room and saw some kind of red liquid staining the carpet under the door, thought it was Kool-Aid… thought she had the last packet and wasn’t going to share. Assumed she dropped it when she got scared.”

“The door slowly opened, and out stepped Cait. Her white pajamas were slightly torn and heavily stained. I could see her neck was kind of crooked, as if her spine was trying to escape through the side. I yelled at her for potentially waking up our mom, who had gotten home just before I did. All I got in response was silence. She just looked at me. And that’s when I noticed her eyes were gone, in their place was just a dark, blood-like crimson ball, slowly rippling. I stepped back in horror, looking at her once again from afar. I saw now that her shirt wasn’t simply torn, there was a softball sized hole in her chest.”

“Once I realized what had happened, it was too late. What looked like a tentacle shot out of her chest in my direction. I jumped out of the way, only to tumble down the stairs. I didn’t hit anything important, thankfully, i got up, ran to the pantry to grab a bag and some supplies. I knew I wouldn’t be able to come back here, at least, not for a while, so I grabbed everything I could carry and left. When I got outside I saw a red blob slowly rolling up the side of my house towards my mom’s room… I wish I could've saved her.”

He cuts his story short at the sound of rustling in the bushes. The young man jumps over the campfire and runs behind me. I stand in front of and plant myself to the ground, ready to protect him as if he were my own child, even though I’ve only known him for a couple days. I stand at the ready with my machete in one hand, and a smoldering stick in the other. I wonder to myself what kind of horror I’m about to see, and to be honest, I wasn’t disappointed. The head was a deer’s with antlers made of severed human arms, each twitching in their own sporadic pattern. The head was halfway rotten, but the hands have no sign of decay, almost like some disgusting, flesh trophy. My eyes gaze down, beholding the rest of this godforsaken creature. The body is made up of a human torso linked to the withers of a stallion, both with holes where the hearts used to be, and the hindquarters of a goat with the tail chopped off. A mismatch of moose, bear, and horse legs hold up the revolting thing in front of us. Taking what little time I have before it attacks, I can guess it’s been searching for a new husk for a while. Damn. Just my luck. These… things, invade whatever living thing is around and take what they need as a vessel. Judging by what the kid said about his sister, I’m willing to bet “Cait’s” head is somewhere on a Hog’s body or something. Not that it would change much, the boy was relentless on those descriptions.

The monster stares down at us, huffs, and lets out a shriek that, as far as I know, doesn’t naturally come from deer. How do i even describe this? It doesn’t even make any sense. The scratch was like every donor cried at once, hoping for the salvation of death. Two spear-like tentacles shoot out each of the eye sockets of the buck, coming straight at me. I throw the kid out of the way, step back, and strike the bloody blurs with my burnt branch, causing them to shatter like glass. The beast screams out in pain, and rather than using another tendril to strike, it jumps towards us. I kick it in the “chest” and it fell into the fire, sadly it grabbed my shirt with its antlers and ripped part of it off. That was my favorite shirt. Come to think of it, that was my only shirt.

“I’m gonna kill this goddamn thing, don’t you dare stop me, kid,” I snap at him.

“Yes sir.” He sheepishly responds.

Just as I turn around, another red spear rushes towards me. I jump back just in the nick of time as it lodges itself into the ground, only inches in front of me. In a state of what I can only describe of blind rage, stupidity, and vengeance for my shirt, I throw my machete into the fire, leaving it to cook, and start a full-on assault against this ugly beast. It had already gotten back up and started to burn, letting out another terrifying screech. I’m pretty sure its goal is to make me deaf, ‘cause all I hear is ringing, but I’m a man on a mission, and a little tinnitus ain’t gonna stop me. The beast lunges towards me. I step back and grab my machete from the fire, which, in hindsight, it probably wasn’t necessary for me to shove it in there like that, y’know, because hot metal + skin = big ouchie, at least I got a cool scar now… still… yeowch.

As the monster comes towards me for another strike, I slice the human torso in half, causing the upper part to tumble down and hit the dirt. The moment it hit the ground, the arms, deer head, and torso started to solidify into rock. That half of the monster is dead, even down to the original form, horse half’s still up and at it though.

Good news, it’s blinded since I removed the head. Bad news, it’s in a blind rage kicking around… blindly. I grabbed another smoldering stick, which, in my professional opinion, hurt like shit, and looked for an opening. Once I saw it, I leapt onto the back of the horse, honestly I’m surprised the rotting corpse didn’t crumble under my weight. I clamped my legs around it’s body, I took the stick and shoved it into the open hole, burning the parasite inside. I got off it as quickly as I had gotten on, tumbling as I hit the ground.

#writing #horror #short story #first post #not a boomer just an out of touch gen z

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figgy-bug · 2 years

Text

It’s late, I’m sad, you’re on tumblr.

Let’s have some wholesome and comfy Bruno x Reader, shall we?

Should I leave you be?

•:•.•:•.•:•:•:•:•:•:•:•☾☼☽•:•.•:•.•:•:•:•:•:•:•:•

Characters: G/N reader and Bruno Madrigal

A/N: this was written on a whim at 1am bc I had a random drop in my mood, so if this is super sappy, no it isn’t. If there are 90,000 typos? No there ain’t. <3

Warnings: mentions of being overwhelmed, anxiety(?), a twinge of crying. That’s about it!

•:•.•:•.•:•:•:•:•:•:•:•☾☼☽•:•.•:•.•:•:•:•:•:•:•:•

It wasn’t uncommon for you to have off days- in fact, they occur quite often. You were pretty good at masking your apathy, sadness, or emotionlessness on any normal occasion, but tonight was different.

You had spent the whole day putzing around the Casita, talking to whoever happened to walk by, helping out when you could, and immersing yourself in the energy, yet you couldn’t find any of your own.

Shortly after dinner that night, you decided it was time to retire from socializing and hide for a while and let yourself try and process whatever was clouding your mind.

When the conversations at the table seemed to reach a peak, and you saw an out, you quietly pushed your chair back, stood, and scurried away without anyone noticing.

Except for Bruno.

~~~

Once supper was finished and he was finished bringing the dishes to Julieta in the kitchen, Bruno politely excused himself and began wandering Casita, looking for you.

You and Bruno had a lot in common- neither of you were fans of huge social gatherings, admittedly, you were both very awkward, and most of all, you both hid away whenever a situation got too overwhelming, or you needed a break.

And he knew just where you’d be.

Bruno rounded the corner of the second story floor, approaching a painting, which hung askew on the wall.

“I knew it”

He smiled softly to himself, and moved the painting aside.

He hopped through the hole in the wall and effortlessly made his way over holes in the floor, around planks of wood jutting from the wall beams, and ducking below fallen staircases, making his way to his old room in the walls.

Soon enough he reached a wicker door, and knocked softly

“Y/N? Are you in there?” He asked

There was a sniffle from inside the room. Bruno’s face shifted into a look of concern, hearing that you were most likely crying.

“May I come in? Y-you can say no!” Bruno cracked the door slightly

“Y-yeah… you can come in…” a shaky voice replied.

With the affirmation, Bruno slowly pushed the door open, searching the room, as his eyes landed on your figure, curled up in his throne-like red chair, he made his way over to you, pulling his ruana off and offering it to you.

“How are you feelin’ Y/N? I noticed you left dinner a little early so I figured I’d find you here-“ he knelt down beside you as you wrapped the green ruana around yourself, offering a huff of a giggle as a rat popped its head out of the hood.

“I- yeah, I’m ok… I’ve just been feeling sort of- off-? I don’t quite know how to describe it.” Your eyes welled with tears as you tried to explain yourself to Bruno.

He began to panic, seeing you struggle to word your emotions to him. “Hey, hey! You don’t have to explain anything to me! Trust me, I-I get it… do you want me to stay with you? Or do you want to be by yourself for a while?” Bruno asked quietly, almost afraid of pressuring you with a question

You offered no response.

Bruno nodded to himself. “Alright, well I’ll give you some space, and if you’d like me to come back, I’ll be-“ as he began to stand up he felt a tug on his sleeve.

He swiveled his head back to look at you, as you had grabbed hold of Bruno’s arm, silently telling him to stay with you.

Bruno smiled and ruffled your hair with his free hand.

“Alright, I’ll stay. Scooch over-“ he said, waving his had, signaling you to make some room.

You did, you curled up in the other direction, leaving enough space for Bruno to join you. As he sat down beside you, you readjusted yourself to lean against Bruno’s shoulder. He tensed, not really expecting contact like that, but softened as he saw how comfortable you looked.

“I feel… numb.”

“What-?”

“Not in this moment- sorry- just in general.”

“Oh- is that why you came back here?”

“Yeah- I couldn’t take any more noise- it’s like the feeling when your arm is numb but it still hurts when you hit it on something-“

“Whahat??”

“That analogy made a lot more sense in my head…”

“Noho I get it, I get it! Like,, you feel numb but still… overwhelmed, right?”

“… Yeah- exactly that-“

“I know that feeling- it’s pretty debilitating- but it’s good to have places to go when you feel like that.”

“Like here.”

“ … You really feel safer in my wall house?”

“I do.”

“… I’m glad it can provide some peace for the both of us then.”

“Me too.”

Bruno smiled, wrapped his arm over your shoulder and gave you a squeeze, and you leaned further into him, hiding your face in his shirt.

“You make me feel safe.”

#encanto #encanto fic #bruno madrigal #bruno x reader #fanfic #fluff #encanto fluff #hurt/comfort #encanto fanfic #sadge #having a rough night #pls enjoy

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hawksugarbaby · 3 years

Text

Deku x reader- don't forget

Smut + Fluff. Porn with plot

This is part of the Deku’s birthday collab by @rat-zuki I'm Very excited to post my first tumblr exclusive chapter! Happy birthday to our not so sweet sinnamon roll!

Chapter includes: begging, slight daddy, praise, orgasm denial, fingering, a lil mirror shit, swearing, unprotected sex.

You slammed the door of the house and kicked your shoe’s off, shoving them to the side of the coat rack with your foot while you shucked off your jacket and threw it over the rack, not even bothering to hang it on a hook. The living room was a mess, magazines and paper strewn over the coffee table and chewed pencils were stuck in the crevices of the couch. The landline was stretched from the wall to the arm of the couch and tangled in its own cord, somehow a pair of tights (you’d intended to put on) had weaved itself into the knot and the sight just made you angrier.

As quickly as you’d moved away from the door it swung open again and your freckled boyfriend walked in hurriedly taking his shoes off and blabbering while he attempted to fix your coat.

“Bakugo is going to keep him tonight and drop him off in the morning. If you forget to pick my son up from school again and there will be consequences” your words are firm and send the message across instantly.

“Okay honey.” he muttered into your neck, making you shiver but you were so angry it didn’t feel right to give him any reaction. He was the one who made you angry in the first place. “Well if bakugo has the little one tonight…” he trailed off and let you fill in the blanks yourself.

You scoffed and slapped his hand off of you pulling out of his embrace and turned to stare him dead in the eye. You open your mouth to yell again but your lips are swiftly caught between his and his large hands slide up the back of your neck tangling in your hair and his other arm wraps around your hips pulling you forward forcing you to be chest to chest with barely enough room to breathe. He pulls his lips off of you and you gulp struggling to find the resolve you had mere minutes ago but the blinding anger was still apparent in the front of your mind.

You push him back and head for the door only to be grabbed by the wrist and pulled back towards him, turning toward him while you move leaving minimal space between you. His smile has faded. “Don’t push me” he warns and you tut shoving him away again but his feet are roots in the ground and he comes back to the center like a punching bag. He hoisted you up over his shoulder and dropped you on the bed facing the polished mirror and climbed up behind you sitting you in his lap.

“Please apologise honey” he hummed into your neck, his thick calloused fingers drumming on your collarbone, thumb gracing your neck and you swallowed thickly making the digit bob on your throat. You purse your lips and narrow your eyes at his staring reflection waiting for an answer he wasn’t going to get so easily and he sighed disappointedly. “Do I need to fuck one out of you princess” he asked nibbling on your earlobe and you roll your neck to the side letting your eye’s flutter closed for a second.

“Fuck off I’m not apologising for anything” you grumble with a waver that didn’t go unnoticed by either of you and you curse yourself for letting it slip out. You squirm in his lap feeling his cock harden behind you. The thin fabric between your legs was growing dark with your own slick and your core throbbed with each of deku’s hot breaths fanning your cheek as his fingers inched closer to your neck.

“Don’t talk to me like that” he huffed and his thick fingers curled around your neck and you choked on a gasp as they squeezed ever so slightly on the sides of your neck. His other hand trailed up the inside of your thigh and ruffled with the end of your skirt teasing you as his knuckle’s grazed your pussy and you whined in the back of your throat leaning back into him and shifting in his lap. “You're being such a good girl, you could have all you want if you just said sorry” he mumbled and you really did consider it for a minute. Your cherry face challenges you in the mirror, daring you not to.

“No.”

He rolls his eyes and slips up your skirt the pads of his fingers rubbing on the damp spot on your underwear drawing a hum from your chest and you close your eyes swimming in the ocean of sensations bubbling in your veins and a plea climbs up your throat only for the green haired male to laugh and retract his fingers.

Your eye’s snap back open and you glare at your boyfriend looming over you and lifting you off of his lap. “No please Zuku I need it” you whimper and watch his relaxed figure in the mirror laughing away to himself. You knew what he wanted but you were too stubborn to give him his satisfaction, it was a family trait it appeared as your brother was just as arrogant and stubborn.

“Then you have to apologize,” he smiled innocently like his cock wasn’t strained against the fabric of his jeans and like you weren’t sitting like a pretty whore begging him to rearrange your organs. Kneeling with your back turned to him and your knee’s spread apart slightly, hands resting in the space between your legs and your puppy eye’s and glistening bottom lip jut out to beg like a hungry dog.

He couldn’t see you himself but he could see it all in the mirror in front of you mounted on the wall and he bit his lip. He didn’t manage to notice your hands slip under your skirt behind you and slide your underwear off of you, landing in a small pile on the floor. You flip up your skirt and present your bare cunt glistening with your slick urging a soft groan from his throat. Your fingers travel up your thigh dipping between your folds and your thumb flicking over the sensitive button making you hum in blissful pleasure. Your small fingers pumped in and out of your pussy, digits gleaming with juices.

You pulled them out and sucked on your wet fingers, tasting yourself while watching your boyfriend out of your peripherals, hand down his jeans and trying to discreetly pump his huge cock without you noticing. You chuckle and swirl your tongue around the fingers deciding your next plan of action.

You pulled your shirt off and unhooked your bra, the skirt being the only piece of clothing left and you leaned forward putting yourself on your hands and knees. “Come on. Don’t you want this... Daddy.” a growl comes from behind you and you’re pulled back so that you’re stretched, arms out in front of you and back arched up so that your cunt is directly in front of deku’s face. You wiggled your hips with a giggle when a sharp strike landed on your ass and you yelped, followed by a soft moan.

He gripped your hips with one hand denting the flesh around his finger tips while his other stroked along your folds gently dipping his fingers in and out every time you made a noise just to pull back out and leave you unsatisfied. You wriggled trying to get out of his grasp and just pleasure yourself if that’s what it took but his hand was as tight as a vice and you worried that becoming an escape artist wouldn’t be worth the pain you’d end up in either from tumbling off the bed or his determination to keep a hold of you.

Deku swiftly moved his thumb over your clit, circling the button slowly while stuffing 2 fingers in your hole, curling them quickly in a ‘come hither’ motion. The pads of his fingers grazed the spongy spot inside of you making you jolt with every curl and whine needily into the mattress as your stomach pooled with heat. “Gonna cum on my fingers baby?” his thumb sped up and you gasped, whipping your head up. Your chest began to heave and you nodded, biting on your lip hard enough to draw blood.

your stomach tightened and your walls began to flutter around deku’s fingers signaling your oncoming release. He slowed his thumb and pulled his digits out of you leaning next to your ear and whispering, “tough shit.”

Your eyes snapped open and you looked around wildly as if searching for your missing orgasm. “W-what”?” Your denied release fizzled away in your stomach and you pulled your knees under you so you were kneeling and shuffle around to face him. “Baby please make me cum I need it!” you whimpered, leaning your head against his hard chest, your own fingers beginning to doddle beneath your skirt.

Your teasing was enough to encourage him again and he pushed you down gently, laying you on your back and spreading your legs, gripping the meat of your thigh as his lips caught yours in an intense kiss and you hurriedly pulled down his trousers and boxers in tow.

His thick cock sprung out of his boxers standing to attention. Your small hand wrapped around the shaft and moved up and down slowly, your thumb swiped over the slit leaking pre-cum and he grunted bucking his hips in your hand. You come away from his length and draw your hand over his toned stomach tracing each muscle with a long fingernail that tickled.

“Patience daddy” a small giggle escapes your lips and you're pinned to the bed quickly, both wrists clasped together in one of Izuku’s dry, calloused hands and held above your head while Izuku rubs the head of his cock over your folds.

“You want it?” he asks inserting the tip and pulling out again drawing a moan out with it and jerk your hips up toward him. “Use your words honey I can’t give it to you if I don’t hear a yes” he hums next to your ear.

Your wrists writhe in his hand and you nod “Yes! Please baby please I want you to fill me with your cum” the words echo off the wall and go straight to his cock, jumping in his hand. He pushed in quickly and you both moaned in unison, your head falling back into the pillow and deku buried his head in the crook of your neck kissing along your shoulders and up your jaw as his hips pummeled into you at inhumane speed. “Ah~ fuck deku your gonna rip me apart” your words are broken up by tumultuous moans that couldn’t be held back no matter how hard you bit your tongue.

The burn of Deku's thick cock stretching you out again was blissful and the artful kisses he left behind were euphoric, seeping into your skin and lighting your veins on fire with pleasure filling them with napalm. “You feel so good honey. So warm and soft I could stay here all day. Cock buried in your perfect little pussy it’s like you were made to be my little sleeve” his words came out in a growl and you felt your stomach flip and tighten. His relentless thrusting left you hot like your fever pitch had turned into a real fever and you could feel your wrists redden and bruise as he grabbed them tighter with his oncoming release.

“My hands deku” you chuckled and he let out a small gasp of panic letting go and used his hands to hold himself up, the right hand cupping your face and stroking your cheek like you were the most precious thing in the world to him despite his length ruthlessly tearing into you.

“Sorry honey”

You shook your head afraid that if you spoke all that would come out would be high pitched squeals and broken moans getting caught in your throat. “Deku ‘m gonna cum fuck ahh.” you rocked your hips against his but he slowed his thrusting and you whimpered gazing at him with glassy eyes.

“You can’t cum until you’ve apologised” he stated flicking your clit with his unoccupied hand and you squeaked pushing away from him with your feet.

“Apologise? Apologise for what!” you shout hitting his hard chest with an exhausted slap and his eyelids dropped to adorn a primal gaze watching you like pray.

“Pushing me. And hitting me just now.” you crossed your arms and turned away making it clear you werent apologising. “Fine I guess i’ll just finish myself then” he pulled his cock out with a sigh leaving you feeling empty and you grabbed his large bicep staring at him desperately.

“Fine! I’m sorry I'm sorry just please baby I need to cum so bad” you beg with misty eyes and he thrusts back in sharply eliciting a loud moan and a groan from his chest. “Fuck yes!” he thrusts into you forcefully the tip kissing your cervix and with every pull out he grazes the sweet spot inside your walls. His thumb circled your clit and he could feel your walls clamp around him making it slightly harder to move.

“What a good girl. Gonna cum for me?” he praises and you nod with a whine and your hands dig into his back as your stomach tightened.

And tightened

Until it snapped and you wailed into the air. Your back arched and head dropped into the pillow, your dark orbs rolled back into your head and deku could see the sweat collect on your brow as your vision clouded with white and your body went red hot.

He kissed your forehead and kept thrusting into your exhaustion riddled body. “Well done honey” he smiled and thrusted a few more times before he quickly came painting your walls white and filling your womb with his thick hot cum. He must have been pent up as he kept cumming as he pulled out, his seed dripping out of your whole, sliding down your ass cheeks and the rest was spent on your stomach.

“You did so well” he hummed quickly standing to grab a warm cloth from the master bathroom and wipe you down but the sight of his cum dripping out of you was almost enough to get him going again. He picked you up and laid you on the chaise beside the window while he fixed the bedsheets and duvet. Re-fluffing the pillows and propping them up the way you liked them.

You whined and stretched out for him making grabby hands at him “come cuddle me” you whisper and he smiles, nodding while he put you back on the bed under the warm blankets and climbed in beside you pulling your lassulus body into his and turning off the lamp.

“I love you.” he mumbled into the top of your head and you smirked lightly.

“I love you too”

#the deku agenda escapes no one collab #bnha #my hero academia #mha fanfiction #bnha fanfiction #boku no hero academia #mha #boku no hero fanfic #deku x reader #izuku x reader #midoriya x reader #midoriya izuku #izuku midoriya x reader #dekus birthday #fanfiction

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tilltheendwilliwrite · 3 years

Text

Star-Crossed: Bound by Blood

Chapter One

Master List

Pairing: Mando/Din Djarin x OFC Baast’Mal

Warnings: I'm making this up as a go, Canon divergent from the series during chapter 13, mild violence

A/N: I make this stuff up as I go along, if I screw something Star Wars-y up, apologies in advance, I didn't do it on purpose, but I'm new to this Fandom. I will be cross posting this story between AO3 and Tumblr except the smutty bits. Those chapters will only be available to registered users on AO3. (I'm trying something new for people who want to read here on Tumblr, but to also avoid the smut for minors controversy. We'll see how it goes.)

*I do not have a tag list* Please follow the story on AO3 if you want email updates, or follow @tilltheendwilliwrite-library where I post the new/latest chapters of all my stories.

***

In the sweltering heat of the jungle, Din Djarin crouched to better scan for tracks in the rotting foliage at the base of the tall trees. Pools of light made it difficult to adjust correctly for the shadowy depths; add in the thermal activity of the plants and animals in this stinking sewer of a planet, and he was having a hard time tracking his quarry.

When he'd accepted the puck, he hadn't known what he was getting into as her chain code was surprisingly sparse. The only additional information he had was her name - Taa Marel - her last known location and face.

And what a face. Even on a holo, she was stunning, not that the Mandalorian would let that sway him one way or the other.

He'd tracked the stolen ship from Bogano, where she'd initially been hiding out to this skug hole of a world that was made to torment men in beskar, causing them to swelter in their helmet.

The kid, however, loved the place.

Constantly cooing, riding in his pouch, he touched everything he could get his chubby green fingers on. Leaves, flowers, bugs; those, of course, went straight in his mouth. By this point, Mando accepted the womp rat could and would eat just about anything.

Upon arrival, they'd found the ship nose down, destroyed, and abandoned, but the crash landing had created just enough space for Mando to set the Razor Crest down. Then the hunt began.

After three hours of slogging through the heat, he was ready to kill her. After four, he decided death was too good for someone who made him sweat this hard. After five, he was determined to make her suffer. But they were closing in. He could feel it like an ache in his bones.

Tracks led forward, but something didn't sit right with that. They were too obvious. After hours of following such a well-covered trail, this was an insult to his skills. Footprints led straight down a game trail like a beacon meant to lure him astray.

It wasn't right, too easy by far, and the skin on his nape crawled.

He looked up, straight into the eyes of the woman he was hunting. Even through the distorted colour of heat vision, he could see they were a vibrant green.

He moved on instinct, whipcord shooting out, wrapping around her shoulders, and dragging her out of the tree.

She screamed the battle cry of a hunting cat, an inhuman sound before she twisted mid-air and landed lightly, crouched but on her feet.

"Taa Marel, I can bring you in warm, or I can bring you in cold," he warned her, hand hovering over his blaster.

"That is not my name. And I choose option three."

Her voice kicked him in the groin and made his dick twitch. Stunned, he could only watch as her hands came up and nails like talons shredded his whipcord.

Someone had left a few things out of her chain code.

"Put the child down."

Mando blinked. "Why would I do that?"

What did she want with his foundling? Had she heard about him? Would she attempt to take him?

"I intend to kick your ass, Mandalorian, but I do not hurt children. Put him down."

Surprised, Mando reached for the strap across his chest instead of his blaster. "You're not going to run?"

She lifted a proud chin. "You will continue to hunt me. I would rather die than return to that hell hole, but I will not go easy. I will fight."

She was beginning to impress him with more than just her face.

Din lifted the strap over his head, his eyes fixed on the target, studying her outside of the holo he'd memorized.

She stood with her chin raised, body slightly turned in a stance that bespoke proper training. If one could call it that, her green tunic had no sleeves, crossed over her breasts, tied just beneath them, and ended a few inches thereafter, baring the wealth of sun-darkened skin over tightly packed muscles. Pants hugged slim hips, billowed at her thighs, and tied tight to her calves thanks to the soft, short boots that went to her knee.

Sweat gave her a sheen that made her glow, her vibrant eyes shadowed behind thick, long lashes. Her face was a treasure trove of sculpted brows, sharp nose, and high cheekbones over lips that looked like ripe fruit, begging for teeth.

A mass of hair, the colour of sand, fell in heavy waves to her hips. It began to darken toward the tips until it was as black as the deepest corner of space.

As he moved the kid, she untied a thin cord from her wrist and slowly began to bind her hair in a low tail.

He'd never met a woman like her, a bounty like her, ever. This one - fugitive or not - had honour in her.

The kid cooed and waved. Her lips twitched into a smile as she winked and waved back.

"Fear not, Mandalorian. Should I kill you today, I will raise your foundling as my own."

Din's blood ran cold. "You won't get the chance."

He hung the child's satchel on a low tree knot and drew the beskar spear from his back in the same motion. Though he'd won the spear from magistrate Morgan Elsbeth on Corvus and helped the Jedi Ahsoka Tano defeat her forces, the Jedi held no answers when it came to the kid. Though, Din wondered if that had more to do with him than the little green monster. She'd told him to seek another Jedi, someone with more training than she, but had given him no direction in which to search.

"He is rather cute," she smirked. "But his kind age so slowly. You will be long dead before he is grown."

Mando paused. "You know of his kind?"

She arched a brow. "You do not?"

He lowered the spear and held up his off-hand. "I am tasked with returning him to his people."

Her posture never changed, but her eyes filled with sorrow. "He has no more people. The last of his kind, or what was thought to be the last, died some years ago. Master Yoda was his name."

"I'm to help him find the Jedi," Mando murmured.

Her eyes lost their sadness. "I cannot help you."

"Will not."

"They are one and the same," she whispered.

Lightning fast, she rushed him. Mando barely blocked the first swipe of her claws before the second clanged off his pauldron. He used the spear's shaft to knock her back, even as she kicked him in the ribs, bypassing the beskar.

"Do you know the life you condemn me to, Mandalorian, if you return me to that horrible place?" she asked, crouched once again, a few feet away.

"You're a bounty. I don't make deals," he stated, watching his quarry while keeping his body between her and the kid. His ribs smarted, but he'd had worse.

"No. You just work for the people who Purged your planet!" she spat, leaping and clawing.

She was fast, damn fast. Barely able to keep up, it was all Mando could do not to lose ground until he saw an opening and swept the butt of the spear at her leg.

She jumped back, breath coming hard.

"I didn't ask who the bounty was for." Greef Karga offered him the chance for a big payday, and right now, they could use it.

"You work for the Empire," she sneered. "Returning me to torture and experimentation. Do you think I was always like this!?" She stood and held out her arms, flexing fingers tipped in dark claws. She bared her teeth, revealing wicked-looking canines, then lifted a portion of hair to reveal a sharply pointed ear.

Again he paused, a thing unheard of, to ask, "What are you?" Her chain code said human, but she was certainly not that.

Her proud chin lifted in defiance. "Do you know what a Zentari is, Mandalorian?"

Din inhaled sharply. "That's not possible. They were wiped out."

"All but one. I am Baast'mal, last of the Zentari. The Empire took me as a child and used my gift to ruin me. They bound my blood to the Corellian Sand Panther and Manka Cat. They have so thoroughly defiled my biorhythms that if the constellations were kind enough to cross my path with that of my mate, I do not know if I could bond with him." Pain flickered across her features. "I am sullied, broken. I am a monster," she whispered before shaking herself free of the melancholia and raising that proud chin once more. "So kill me if you can, Mandalorian, for I will not go willingly."

The beskar spear fell from his fingers as Din dropped to a knee and bowed his head. "I am a Child of the Watch. I must offer aid, Zentari. This is the Way."

"The Way?" She took a step back. "The Mandalorians no longer follow the Old Ways. They no longer conceal their face from all but their riduur and ad. The creed is long dead."

He shook his head. "My Tribe is one of zealots. We hold to the old ways of Mandalore. I only recently learned of this as I was raised with them in hiding. The Purge took much, but the ways of the Zentari are remembered in the covert."

She hesitated, eyes wary. "I have faced Mandalorians before. They knew not the Way."

Din stripped his gloves from his hands and held them out, palms up as if catching water. He raised them above his head and brought them down over his helmet, appearing to another as if he washed with air. "Zentari of the Bright Star, may the constellations bless this warrior with a treasure greater than beskar that they would be mine. Cyar'ika. Ka'rta. Riduur."

She inhaled sharply. He watched her fight tears, lip trembling before she closed the distance between them and knelt. She dipped her fingers into his cupped palms as if they held water, brought them to her brow and stroked them down over her eyes and out along her cheeks.

Her hands shook as she lifted them toward his helmet and laid her palms lightly on the sides of the beskar.

His hands gently grasped her wrists, her skin warm and soft beneath his fingers. She wouldn't remove it, that he was sure of, but it was an instinct he couldn't deny when someone touched his helmet.

Her voice was whisper soft when she spoke. "Mandalorian, Holder of the Creed, blessed of the constellations. May you raise warriors strong in the Way and find your riduur. Your cyar'ika. Your ka'rta."

"This is the Way," he murmured, shaken by the encounter.

"This is the Way," she agreed as she drew him forward until his helmet lightly kissed her brow.

The shudder that raced through her raced through him with equal intensity. The Zentari race was a myth, a legend, a beautiful dream. They were so lost to time Din felt like his heart would burst with joy.

"Have you ever removed your helmet, Mando?" she asked softly.

The shortened form of address made his heart skip. "Not before any living thing." The Droid on Nevarro didn't count, and no matter what Bo'Katan said, the creed was his way. He would never show his face to any besides his wife or children.

Let Koska scoff as she liked at his traditions. She had not found a Zentari. She likely wouldn't know what to do with the Zentari if she did.

Din rocked back on his toes and pushed to his feet, surprised when she followed him with equal grace. "Zentari, we should return to my ship. The Alor will want to meet you. The covert will rejoice."

"Baast."

He froze as her hands landed lightly on his beskar covered chest. "What?"

"To you, I am Baast." She stared into his visor as if able to see his eyes.

"Baast," he murmured, wishing he could speak her name without the modulator.

"Yes, Din Djarin," she smiled.

He still held her wrists, and his hands became her shackles. "How do you know that name?" he demanded.

Long lashes swept her cheeks, a coy smile curling her lips. "Grogu told me."

His grip tightened more. "Who is Grogu?"

She tilted her head to look past him at the kid cooing at them. "He is Grogu."

"You can understand him?" Din asked, his shock registering even through the modulator.

"Not in words, but he speaks to those who can listen. Images. Impressions. The Force is strong in him," she smiled at Grogu. "He loves you."

"He's okay." Mando was grateful for the helmet that hid his foolish grin.

"You fool no one," Baast chuckled. She gently twisted her wrists, reminding him of her bondage.

He let her go and stepped back to pick up the spear.

"You are a man blessed of beskar," she murmured. "You must be a great hunter."

"Something like that," he murmured. It still shamed him how he'd acquired his armour, but if he hadn't turned in the kid - Grogu - he wouldn't have been as well-equipped to get him back and keep him safe as they ran from the Empire.

Baast headed for Grogu, her smile growing as she lifted down his carrier and situated the baby against her chest. Grogu giggled and babbled something Mando didn't understand.

"Oh, I see," Baast chuckled, casting a side-eye his direction.

"What?" Mando muttered.

"Clan of the Mudhorn. A clan of two." She flicked her claws over his sigil. "I wondered. Grogu explained."

Mando glared at the kid- Grogu. "Don't tell her all my secrets."

Grogu cooed. Baast cuddled him and smiled slyly. By that look, he was pretty sure it was too late for his secrets.

He turned to go, heading back the way he'd come. It would take hours to return to the Razor Crest, and it was already getting dark.

***

They didn't make it back to the ship before nightfall, but he found a hollow tree in which to spend the dark hours. Creeper vines had choked the life out of the behemoth, leaving them in a cage of vines and dry, dead bark with a wealth of firewood to choose from.

The fire burned brightly, drafting well, casting shadows across Baast's face and keeping the larger predators at bay. She slept curled around Grogu, lips gently parted. The air had finally cooled at sundown, but now he could see the shivers and goosebumps developing on her flesh.

Slowly, he leaned forward to remove the cape from his back. Then, just as quietly, he rose, rounded the fire, and draped it over her and Grogu. She stirred but didn't wake, and Din returned to his watch on the far side of the fire.

A Zentari. He could scarce believe it.

She was a myth made flesh—a beautiful dream. Once, when Mandalore still followed the old ways, Zentarus was where many warriors sought their mates, their most cherished riduur.

A Zentari was always fast and strong and incredibly rare. They grew quickly but aged slowly, their years stretching out into eternity, some said. Fine in face and form, when they met their match, they bonded, taking on traits of the other and giving a few as well.

A Mandalorian could live a very long time with a Zentari mate.

But most Mandalorians came home empty-handed as a bond with a Zentari could not be forced, but those who the stars smiled upon, those most blessed with a cherished mate, bonded in ways that grew legends. It was said their children were the most incredible of warriors.

Baast'mal was everything he imagined when told stories of Zentari as a child new to the Tribe. It didn't hurt that she was the most mesh'la female he'd ever seen. Fast. Strong. Deadly. He wondered at what the Empire had done to her, how they could force the blood bonds on Sand Panthers and Manka cats, and just what other mutations they'd caused.

He also wondered at her Force sensitivity. What she felt or even what she could do had not been discussed, but Mando knew there was more to her than he had yet discovered.

But it was the ache in him, the growing need to once again touch her skin that concerned him.

It was primal. Feral. It clawed at him. It had him itching to be closer - much closer - to her. He wanted to show her his face and hope she found him as pleasing as he did her.

Din had nothing to go by in comparison. He'd seen his reflection before, of course, but he had no way of knowing if a woman would think him handsome. He'd had encounters before, ones in which everyone walked away satisfied, some paid for, others freely offered, but the helmet and the beskar never came off.

With her, he wanted to be bare, stripped off all trappings. Din wanted to feel his naked skin against hers. He wanted to taste it.

"You are a very loud thinker," she mumbled, bright eyes glowing softly beyond the fire.

Mortification filled him. "I'm sorry, I-"

"I do not know your thoughts, Mando," she clarified, "just feel a gentle buzzing from the beskar. It restricts what I pick up from you."

Relief almost had him sagging. Baast closed her eyes, but he was loath to let the conversation end.

"How old are you?" She looked young, maybe twenty-five.

Her brow twitched, amusement in her smile. "It is rude to ask."

"I wondered how long the Empire had you," he explained.

Shadows darkened her eyes. "Forty years."

"But they've only been around for thirty," he frowned.

She gave a hollow laugh and sat up. "They have been around much, much longer. I remember the day they came for us. They slaughtered all who fought, men and women. Every child they could catch was rounded up and taken away." She looked away, down at dark claws. "I was the only Zentari to survive the experiments."

"I'm sorry." He was. "I know what it's like to lose everything."

She tilted her head. "You were a foundling."

It wasn't a question, and Din didn't answer her.

"They began experimenting with my blood almost immediately. I was ten when they bound traits of the Manka to me. I was fifteen when they brought in the Panther."

"How? Why?"

Her eyes burned into his. "Because they could." She flexed her fingers. "Because they are depraved. Because they are monsters, who turn others into abominations."

"You're not."

She looked at him in surprise.

Din shifted until he stood and made his way around to her side, where he offered his hand. Baast took it and joined him in the shadows as he led her a few steps away from Grogu. He stripped his gloves from his hands, the need to touch her no longer under his control.

Slowly, he reached up to caress her cheek. He pushed her hair back, revealing the pointed tip of her ear. Her eyes gleamed from behind heavy lids when he stroked his fingers down her tricep and finally cupped her elbow.

He closed his opposite hand around her nape; his thumb pressed to her spiking pulse. "You are no monster."

"My blood is sullied."

"Perhaps. But you remain unbroken," he murmured. "You lived. You escaped. Mesh'la, you are a beacon of shining hope to my Tribe. If there is one Zentari, perhaps there are others."

She closed her eyes. "There is not."

"How do you know?"

A tear trickled down her cheek. "I felt the last die three years ago. It was what gave me the strength to escape."

"Mishuk gotal'u meshuroke, pako kyore," he murmured, rubbing his thumb on her pulse.

"Pressure makes gems; ease makes decay?" A small smile twitched her lips. "Am I a gem, Mando?"

"No."

She arched an amused brow.

"You are something more precious than any gem," he murmured.

Colour dusted her cheeks. "A Mandalorian who has a way with words? I truly have seen it all," she teased.

He sighed and made sure it echoed through the modulator. "Get some rest." He attempted to move away, but she grabbed him by the belt.

"Stay."

"Baast?"

"Stay." She took his hand, led him closer to Grogu, encouraged him to sit against a fallen chunk of tree, and then curled up beside him, tucking herself under his arm.

"The beskar is too hard," he worried.

"No harder than a prison cell, and you are much warmer. I have not known the comfort of another since I was seven," she admitted.

He sighed again but gave in, curling his arm around her.

"Thank you for your cape."

"Hm."

Her chuckle was more of a low purr. When it rippled through him, Din swore he felt something inside him purr back.

Next Chapter

#Star-Crossed #mandalorian #Mandalorian fanfiction

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figonas · 3 years

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Twilight Re-watch Notes Pt. 1 - A Contest for the Worst Movie Quote in History

I'd like to think I'm funny so please enjoy my scene-by-scene notes from a recent Twilight Saga re-watch.

Hey Catherine Hardwicke, opening with the death of an animal was probably not the best choice but go off I guess??

There is a lot of general Bella awkwardness that I'm skipping over here but the scene in gym class is so horrifically, painfully uncomfortable that I almost passed out from the second-hand embarrassment.

Jessica trying her best to be fake nice to the human embodiment of a crumpled soda can: "Aren't people from Arizona like....really tan"

Bella with all the cadence of a child who just found out Santa isn't real: "yeah..I guess that's why they kicked me out"

Mike clearly just trying to get his dick wet: "HAHAH you are funny"

no mike she is not.

I'm not gonna go into the biology class scene because god knows tumblr has beaten that particular horse to death. BUT the scene in the administration office immediately after that is a TRIP. Edward has one of his most dramatic lines here when they won't let him switch classes: “I’ll just have to endure it” ?!?!?!?!?!?! This is INSANITY, he sounds like he's going to burst into tears like Edward please chill you aren't even being a little subtle.

I will never get over Bella trying to put Ketchup on her burger and then just???? giving up???? when it doesn't come out after she limply shakes it approximately once.

“HOW YOU LIKIN DA RAIN GIRL” Is our first contender for the worst and most unnatural line in movie history, and trust me there are plenty more.

Bella accusatorily saying “you were gone” to Edward as if this dude who she met for approximately 30 minutes 2 weeks ago owes her even a PALTRTY SCRAP of an explanation about anything???????

Actually, this whole scene is a horrific nightmare of awkward intrusive conversation:

“You’re asking me about the weather” HOE WHAT ELSE ARE YOU GONNA TALK ABOUT YOU DON’T KNOW EACH OTHER

“hey did you get contacts” WHO JUST ASKS THAT?!?

and of course; “it’s the fluorescents” [RUNS AWAY]

Charlie and Bella have the only organic-sounding dialogue in the entire movie. Any awkwardness they have is BELIEVABLE father-daughter awkwardness and not like "I'm being forced to film this against my will" awkwardness like every other exchange in this film series.

Bella asks Edward ALL OF ONCE about him saving her from the truck and Edward gets so haughty and smug thinking that Bella won't figure it out

“you’re not gonna let this go are you?” “no” “then I hope you enjoy disappointment” [storms off] MY DUDE LITERALLY 2 SCENES LATER SHE FIGURES IT OUT IN 3 GOOGLE CLICKS

“I had an adrenaline rush, it’s very common you can google it” contender number two for the terrible dialogue award.

Edward saying “if you were smart you would stay away from me” AFTER HE APPROACHED HER LIKE FUCK OFF [skeleton throwing its own skull gif]

Kstew got a lot of flack for her performance in this movie but when she has a good partner to exchange lines with she SHINES. The scene with Angela and her at the beach where she tells her to ask Eric to prom is GOOD. EVERY scene with Charlie in THIS ENTIRE FRANCHISE is GOOD. It is nothing but pure misogyny that Rpatz didn’t catch any flack for his truly, horrifically awkward performance

I cannot believe Stephanie thought it would be a good idea to have Edward save Bella from potentially getting gang r*ped like I get it girl is about the drama but still this is just a TOOOUCH too far

“your hand is so cold,” WHO SAYS THIS TO SOMEONE THEY BARELY KNOW COMPLETELY UNPROMPTED???

SHE TRIES TO REFUSE CARRYING BEAR MACE WHEN SHE WAS ALMOST R*PED NOT 4 HOURS PREVIOUSLY LIKE SIS CARRY A KNIFE?!?!?!?!?

The “you’re impossibly fast & strong” monologue is so bad I want to barf

“I’ve killed people before” “doesn’t matter” BITCH YES IT DOES WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU

“MY OWN PERSONAL BRAND OF HEROIN” IS SO BAD. Like we all recognize how bad this is right? Especially when one considered the target demographic for these films, i.e. teenage girls, have NO FUCKING FRAME OF REFERENCE FOR THIS WHAT.SO.EVER.

“And so the lion fell in love with the lamb” YOU’VE KNOWN EACH OTHER FOR ALL OF 3 SECONDS I CAN’T WITH Y'ALL. AT LEAST THE BOOK HAD SOME BUILD-UP JESUS GEEZUS

Who thought this meadow scene was a good idea, they need to be sent straight to hell. WHY ARE THEY LAYING DOWN LIKE, SIT MAYBE?????? IT’S SO WEIRD AND UNNATURAL THEY LOOK LIKE DOLLS I HATE IT

The scene where they get out of the car and Edward puts his arm around Bella while Spotlight by Mutemath plays in the background is TOP TIER teen drama bs and I love it. Far and away the best shot in the movie apart from The Baseball Scene(TM).

I will never get over the fact that Edward's bitch ass rats Bella out for already eating when she comes over to meet his family. BE FUCKING COOL EDWARD FOR ONCE IN YOUR LIFE, GOD!!!

Esme is too pure for this world I can’t deal with her, & Emmet waving the knife is my favorite thing in all 5 of these movies

Why tf are Alice and Jasper fucking off doing god knows what in a tree and not helping with dinner like everyone else? Y'all ain't special even Rosalie is helping

Esme talking to Rosalie “Clean this up..now” I LOVE YOU BE MY MOM

Earlier they talk about the fact that vampires don’t sleep BUT the first thing Bella says when she walks into Edward's room is “no bed” girl we know what you after you ain't slick.....

WHAT IS THIS DANCING SCENE IN HIS BEDROOM IT’S HORRIBLE TO WATCH and I want to find whoever thought “well I could always make you” was a good line for Edward to say and slap them directly in the mouth.

“hold on tight spider monkey” excuse me while I VOMIT

Mike offering his opinion on Bella dating Edward HOWEVER justified is automatically invalidated by A. his own romantic interest in Bella and B. the fact that he has also know Bella for all of 10 minutes & has no bearing on her personal life whatsoever

THE PAST COUPLE OF MONTHS THIS MAN HAS BEEN COMING INTO HER ROOM AND WATCHING HER SLEEP THIS IS RED FLAG CITY LIKE BELLA WATCH A TRUE CRIME DOCUMENTARY OR READ THE NEWS FOR FUCKS SAKE

THIS FRANCHISE HAS THE MOST HORRIBLE KISSING SCENES IN MOVIE HISTORY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YOU CAN HEAR LITERALLY EVERY BREATH, EVERY AWKWARD PRESS OF LIPS. You're telling me THIS was the best take of this???? CAN YOU IMAGINE HOW AWKWARD THIS WAS TO FILM

The whole scene when Bella is telling her dad about her date with Edward is absolutely god tier. Charlie snapping the barrel of the shotgun closed, him motioning that he has a halo on, asking her if she still has her pepper spray. BILLY BURKE LIFTED THIS MOVIE UP AND TRIED SO HARD TO CARRY IT ON HIS BROAD, MUSTACHIOED DAD SHOULDERS, WE STAN

WHERE TO START WITH THE BASEBALL SCENE:

Supermassive Black Hole in the background, Alice going AWF with her pitching, Rosalie getting all pissed when Bella says she's out and Emmett yells "c'mon babe it's just a game" like the puppy dog of a person (vampire?) he is, CARLISLE WEARING A SCARF WHILE PLAYING BASEBALL, I WILL NEVER EMOTIONALLY RECOVER FROM JASPERS BAT TRICKS, EMMET AND EDWARDS LAUGH AFTER CRASHING INTO ONE ANOTHER.

A TRULY IMMACULATE MOVIE SCENE. This scene isn’t long enough

“My monkey man” might be the worst line in this movie, I’m so torn between which one is the worst. Also, I'm just now realizing that this is the second time someone has compared a loved one to some type of monkey and I really don't like it.

Bella's defeated “I can’t hurt him” breaks my heart every time. AND FUCKING BILLY BURKE pulling out his acting chops with Charlie’s poor little broken sounding “I know I’m not that much fun to be around we can do more stuff together” & “I just gotcha back” LIKE LITERALLY EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS SCENE HURTS ME ON A PHYSICAL LEVEL AND I AM ENTITLED TO FINANCIAL COMPENSATION

I know I've skipped over a lot but it's just a lot of like star wipe level montage of nonsense, so we are mOVING ON to what is possibly the biggest plot hole I've never recognized before now: How in the hell was James planning on luring Bella out if he didn’t find that videotape of Bella's mom looking for her????? Or was he just going to bust up in the holiday inn, metaphorical guns blazing & toss Bella out a window???

This fight scene between James & Edward is VERY poorly choreographed and you can practically see the stunt wires pulling on their clothes but no one is surprised..this is Twilight after all.

Who the fuck starts the fire in the ballet studio if Carlisle & Edward are with Bella, Jasper and Emmet are holding James's arms and Alice is ripping his head off???? Esme and Rosalie aren't there so the only explanation is that Emmett's power Stephanie never told us about is his ability to start small, controlled, indoor bonfires with his mind.

If Bella was losing blood from her femoral artery it is HIGHLY UNLIKELY that she would have been cognizant enough to tell them her hand was burning + THERE’S A BIG ASS BITE HOW DID THEY MISS IT???

Let Me Sign is such a good fucking song. Actually, while we're on music every song on every Twilight Saga soundtrack SLAPS. At least 1 department at Summit Entertainment was staffed with competent people. (side note, why the fuck do I know the studio by name that made this movie. I need to go lie down)

Bella acting a damn fool in the hospital bed like clingy much

CHARLIE IS SUCH A GOOD DAD FUCK!

The Edward/Jacob beef is so dramatic at prom can you both chill for 5 minutes we haven't even gotten to y'alls bullshit yet that's not until New Moon.

Bella really thought this mfer was gonna turn her at prom in the middle of the dancefloor??????????

Flightless Bird American Mouth. That's it, that's the bullet point

Victoria coming to prom, like we stan a dramatic bitch.

I will almost CERTAINLY post my New Moon (Extended Edition) notes in a few days. & yes I do have notes on the entire franchise.

#I had a lot more but I cut it down #a lot of my extra stuff was just talking about RPatz slipping inexplicably into a Spanish accent from time to time #no one seems to notice #but I fucking do #I hear the way he says 'so you're worried' and want to caCKLE OUT LOUD #I'm not nearly as funny as I think I am but ask me if I give a fuck #baby I will subject you to my poor humor #Twilight #Twilight Saga

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3pirouette · 3 years

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Fic: Roughing It

Title: Roughing It By: TriplePirouette/3Pirouette Disclaimer: They're not mine. Word Count: 1601 Distribution: AO3 Anyone else please ask first :)

Story Summary: This was no place for the love of his life.

Satisfies the “moonlight” square on my Steggy Bingo, also for a tumblr prompt “I wish you would write a fic where Peggy and Steve are both Cap in modern times (or 40s)” Set Post Civil War

A/N: Totally 100% inspired by Outlander quote from season 1

~*~ Inspired by the following Outlander quote:

Murtagh: I’ll saddle the horses; you take hold of Claire. We’ll be away from here this very night. Jamie: And how would we live? Horrocks was my best chance, now I may be an outlaw for good. Murtagh: We’ll live off the land. Or has castle life made ye soft? Jamie: Would ye have me sleeping under a tree, come winter, with my wife?

~*~

This was no place for the love of his life.

It was dirty, and rat infested, but they were down to their last few dollars and until they managed to figure out how, exactly they were going to make money and stay off the US radar, it was all they had.

That, and each other.

He watched her from the flimsy folding chair across the room, eyes glued tight to how she carefully brushed out her hair, how she rolled and set it with strips of fabric from a face cloth she’d cut up. The artist in him wished he had a book to sketch in or a phone to take a picture. The moonlight flooded around her, bathing her in a silver glow as her fingers separated out the long, wet strands of hair and deftly rolled them up and tied them tight.

He could draw her for hours the way the moonlight settled on her, making her look like a goddess made of platinum, strong and soft, beautiful and tender… It was a familiar look, but he never tired of it. Even in just his oversized shirt, she was beautiful to look at.

They kept the lights off in the small studio apartment as soon as the sun went down, and it reminded him more than he wanted to say of those days back in London when they’d hear the sirens and turn off all the lights and just wait for the moment something exploded around them.

He felt like he was always waiting for the other shoe to drop, for something to explode figuratively or literally, and it kept his heart pounding in his chest.

They had a little, thanks to T’Challa and Shuri and a quick, undetectable wire. Peggy had been squirreling away money in a little hidden account she called her ‘rainy day fund’ and had always just smiled and winked and said “Once a spy, always a spy,” when he asked why she’d been putting the money away.

Steve was thankful for those few thousands they were able to get and split up between the group of them. It wasn’t like they’d actually thought about anything besides doing the right thing in the heat of it. They certainly hadn’t thought about bringing silly things with them like ID and bank cards or thought about how to survive while on the run. It was enough to get started, and enough to get by- especially if they were careful.

They’d split the money and gone their separate ways, planning to meet up in a few months. He’d been nervous, separating, but knew that out of all of them, he and Peggy would be the easiest to spot and the hardest to hide. They were giving Sam, Natasha, and Wanda a shot at relative anonymity. He and Peggy would get by… they always had.

He hadn’t minded sleeping rough during the war, but this wasn’t exactly the same. On the run, hiding in abandoned buildings and sneaking into empty hotel rooms was necessary but harsh. Holding her close at night while her teeth chattered made him want to scream. But she always smiled up at him in the morning, ready for wherever the day might take them.

The little apartment they’d finally landed in wasn’t much, barely more than enough room for the old mattress on its rusted springs and a half kitchenette with a stove that didn’t always work and a sink in the bathroom that dripped endlessly. It might have been less than ideal, but the landlord took cash and didn’t ask any questions.

“I can feel you watching me,” she murmured, rolling up her last curl and tying the ends of the piece of rag tightly. She smiled up at him. “You’re thinking so hard you’re going to give me a headache.”

He gave her a half smile and shifted back in his chair, not at all embarrassed that he’d been caught.

Peggy stood, moving in and out of the shafts of moonlight like a mythical creature until she straddled him, sitting back on his knees. Steve settled his hands at her hips, fingering the threadbare cotton of the undershirt, thinking that she looked like a dangerous Medusa with the rags in her hair to set her curls. He looked her over, his fingers moving with his gaze, thinking of the softness under them, thinking of the power under them, and how he’d been lucky enough to see both.

Peggy tired of the toying after a minute and took both his hands in hers, sighing. “You’re swimming in the melancholy again, my darling.” She kissed his knuckles and held his hands tight. She waited a breath as he looked at her, but finally could take the quiet no more. “Talk to me, Steve.”

He almost laughed at her earnestness. He shook his hand and wrapped his arms around her, wanting to fold into her as he held on tight, wanting to fall within her and forget all of this was happening. He buried his face in her neck, breathing the scent of her sun kissed skin in as she wrapped her arms around him, fingers running through his hair and massaging his scalp.

Her nails weren’t red anymore. They couldn’t afford the time, money, or the visibility, to go looking for something as frivolous as nail polish.

At least, that’s what she told him when he mentioned it one night.

He owed her something, at least, if he couldn’t give her cozy beds and proper curlers and bright nail polish. Words. He held her tighter for a moment before lifting his head. “This isn’t what I wanted.”

His words were soft and gentle, but the meaning was sharp and harsh. He knew neither of them had wanted this, had wanted any of it from the moments when he held her close, tucked under his shield tight as the Valkyrie dove from the sky, splashing down in the cold water beneath them.

She waited, face open and unjudging, for him to continue.

He shook his head and kissed her forehead, still trying to turn the jumble of feelings into sentences. “You deserve—”

Peggy pressed her finger to his lips, stilling them. “Now don’t you go on with all of that ‘what if’ and ‘should be’ nonsense again.” She shifted, taking his face in her hands and forcing his eyes to hers. “Neither of us could have imagined that this is where we’d end up. But we’ve both always stood up for what we’ve believed in, no matter how difficult, and that has brought us here.” Peggy leaned forward, kissing his forehead gently.

Steve closed his eyes, relishing the feel of her lips on his head, before taking her hands in his, lifting them from his cheeks, and kissing each in turn. “This place, Peg…”

She smiled softly. “Would it have been all that different after the war? A little apartment in Brooklyn on a soldier’s pay while we try to decide what’s next? Pipes that rattle and rickety furniture and you and me against the world?” She kissed his lips this time, soft and sure.

“A house,” he whispered as he chased her lips for another kiss. “With a yard and a porch and a—”

Peggy kissed him quiet before leaning back, serious. “We’ll never know.” She shook her head and ran her fingers through the scruff on his cheeks that was slowly turning into a full beard. “We will never know what might have been. But what I do know…” Tears gathered in her eyes as she looked at him, pushing his growing hair from his forehead. “What I do know is that I’d rather be anywhere, anywhere, with you and a clear conscience, than in some warm fuzzy bed and having sold my soul for something I don’t believe in.”

He squeezed her hands tight, looking away for a moment before finding her eyes again. “And if we never get out of this little shit hole?”

She chuckled at him. “Then it will be our little shit hole.” She stood, pulling him up with her and tugging him towards the bed, pushing him down on it before crawling in next to him. “I don’t know what will happen tomorrow,” Peggy whispered, sliding up against him as he arranged the rough blanket over them. “And I know that that eats at you.”

Steve tugged her tight against him, the moonlight falling on her skin again, making her look like a beauty out of a silent movie. “It would be nice to plan, just for once.”

Peggy settled against his chest, kissing the bare flesh there. “I plan on being with you,” Peggy breathed softly, “today, tomorrow, and however long the two of us have left in this world.” She hummed melodiously, eyes fluttering shut. “Dripping bathroom faucet and all.”

Steve shifted one of her knotted curls over from where it was digging into his shoulder as she relaxed into sleep. He watched her breathing slow, her lips part as she fell deeper away from consciousness, and felt a warmth rise up in him at the thought of holding her, just like this, for the rest of his days.

Tomorrow he’d try to fix that faucet. Then maybe he’d head down to the docks, see if there were any jobs that would trade a day’s wages for a little muscle and heavy lifting. Maybe, if they were going to be here a while, he’d try to make their little shit hole a little less shitty.

For now, Peggy and the moonlight would have to be enough.

#Steggy Bingo Bash #Steggy Fic #3P's Fic

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katahnisharma · 5 years

Text

old married couple | p.p.

Summary: Dating Peter means you’re basically dating all the Avengers too. And they don’t hesitate to point out when you both start turning into “that” couple.

Warnings: pure fluff, i just needed the therapy man

A/N: An anon requested this last week, so I hope you see this and like it! By the way, my requests are open so if there’s anything you want me to write just shoot me an ask and I’ll get to work on it. Also Tumblr apparently won’t let me link things so if you’re looking for my masterlist, playlist, taglist, or writing challenge it’s in my bio ♡

It had been exactly two years since you joined the Avengers as the resident kid genius. Tony had picked you from Midtown along with Peter for his internship, and he quickly found that you were an even better hacker and programmer than he was. Pretty soon he had you working alongside him, helping him make prototypes and suits.

That’s when you first met Peter Parker.

You were with Tony after school one day, tinkering with E.D.I.T.H’s programming, when Tony introduced his other intern. You knew Tony had another intern, but you’d never met them before. They always came in at a different time, though you knew it was a boy from your school.

You had no idea it was Peter Parker.

“H-hi, Y/N!” Peter stuttered, blushing when you nearly dropped your screwdriver. You smiled shyly, gripping the table as Tony started to tell Peter something about thermodynamics. You tried to keep working, but you just couldn’t focus. Peter kept looking back at you when he thought you weren’t looking, trying not to make eye contact with you.

He was so distracting, and it didn’t help that you’d had a crush on him since fourth grade.

The first time Peter asked you on a date, you were wearing your “ugly pretty clothes” and binge watching Gilmore Girls. Your parents were gone for the weekend, so the house was quiet on your own. But you were in no state to see your mail man, let alone the cute boy interning with you when he knocked on your door.

“Peter?” You asked, opening the door to a very nervous Peter. He was holding something behind his back, and when you tried to look he moved back. You were well aware that he was wearing nice, clean clothes while you looked like a rat’s nest, but there was nothing to do about it now.

“Hey, uh, you home alone?” He asked, realizing most of the house was dark. You nodded, blushing when you realized you were wearing a tank top. Peter noticed and decided to try very hard not to look at your body and focus on your face.

“Yeah, my parents are gone for the weekend. Wanna come in?” You asked, and Peter took your invitation. When he got inside, he shakily handed you a bunch of flowers and asked you if you wanted to go with him to stargaze on Friday.

“I mean, you don’t have to. This is weird, I’m sorry, I should go.” Peter rambled, after you stood silent for a moment. You were so shocked you just stared at the flowers in your hands, peonies which were your favorite. Then you remembered Peter Parker had just asked you a question and you snapped back to life.

“Oh my god, I’m sorry. I was just caught off guard, I wasn’t expecting this at all. I mean, I’ve liked you for who knows how long and you’re so cute and smart and I’m such a nerd so I never thought you’d…...what I meant to say was yes absolutely. I’d love to.” You finished, biting your lip nervously. What if he didn’t mean it, or he decided he didn’t want to go with you anymore? Peter turned back around and grinned.

“You mean it? Really?” He asked, trying not to smile like an idiot. Peter had fallen for you months ago, but he only really screwed up the courage to ask you out after his talk with Tony. Tony had told him that he was pretty sure you liked him back, and even told him what your favorite flowers were. And here you were, looking like a goddess and telling him that you thought he was cute and had liked him for a while now.

Why hadn’t he done this sooner?

“Yeah, I mean it. Like, I really like you.” You said, your face going red. You weren’t one to be so open about your feelings, but Peter thought it was adorable how your cheeks tinted when you talked to him. He felt the same way about you, his stomach had butterflies in it if you even looked at him.

“So, can I pick you up at 7?”

“Yeah, I’ll be waiting.”

Fast forward two years and you and Peter were Stark Tower’s reigning stupidly cute couple. You and Peter were basically attached at the hip, working together, eating together, cuddling together. Tony once caught the two of you having a food fight in the kitchen and had to ban whipped cream from the premises. Secretly, he was happy his two interns were so perfect for each other.

But none of the Avengers could remember when the two of you became such an old married couple.

“Peter! Come on, we’re going to the dentist!” You called, waiting downstairs for your boyfriend to appear. You’d made the appointment months ago, even though Peter hated the dentist, and promised to go with him. May was at work, and she was so grateful she’d made you cookies as a thank you (which Peter may or may not have eaten the day before).

“Noooo!!! I’m not going, I hate the dentist. That fluoride stuff is disgusting!” He yelled, holed up in his room. You sighed, noticing Natasha trying not to laugh as you threw a pillow at her. Peter groaned, trudging down the stairs and shooting death glares at you. He was wearing a very oversized sweatshirt and flannel pants, so he’d basically just gotten out of bed.

“You’re such a baby, let’s go.” You giggled, kissing Peter’s cheek as you held his hand. Peter grumbled, but a little smile formed on his lips. He loved when you kissed him, and he’d suffer through the dentist if it meant you gave him kisses afterward.

“Fine, but I want kisses when I’m done.” Peter whispered, and you finally agreed to it just to get him out the door. Natasha stood in the kitchen, shaking her head at the two of you. She wrote it off as just a cute thing long time couples do. Sure, maybe it was weird but she wasn’t going to judge.

But that wasn’t the last time it came up.

“Hey do you want-?”

“Cookies? Yeah, I’ll buy some. What else do we need?” You finished, writing things down on the grocery list. Steve and Bruce were watching from across the room, rolling their eyes. Recently, the two of you kept finishing each other’s sentences and it was getting annoying.

“Probably popcorn, we ate all of it. Oh and-”

“Lemonade.”

“Yeah, I was just about to say that. Also, can you please-?”

“Swing by the dry cleaners and pick up your suit? On it.” You stuffed the notepad in your bag and waved to a stunned Steve and Bruce. Peter looked up from his seat on the couch, smiling at you lovingly.

“Wow, look at us finishing each other’s sentences. I love you, be safe.” Peter said, throwing you your jacket. It was raining outside, and he didn’t like seeing you get wet or cold. You blushed, noticing Steve and Bruce exchanging glances.

“Love you too, I’ll be back in a bit.”

The next time it was Wanda’s turn to notice it.

She was sitting on the sofa with Thor, watching reruns of Friends when you bounded through the door in a huff. Peter followed behind, holding a laundry basket full of clothes. You slumped into the armchair next to Wanda, refusing to look at Peter.

“Baby, I’m sorry!” Peter whined, trying to kiss you. But you turned your face away, rolling your eyes when Peter threw a sock in your face.

“I told you, I fold the laundry because you can’t do it right! What sort of heathen folds shirts in half?!” You snapped, throwing the sock back at him. Peter frowned as you got up and walked past him to the kitchen. Wanda and Thor watched as Peter ran after you, not sure if they should intervene or not.

“Well, you can’t load the dishwasher right!” Peter countered, making you storm past him.

“No, YOU can’t load it right! Nobody puts plates on the top rack!” You yelled, picking up the laundry basket and giving Wanda an annoyed look. She gave you an apologetic smile, and Thor tried not to laugh when Peter tried snatching the basket back.

“Peter, I swear to God I’m going to kill you!” You hissed, and Peter ran for his life with you chasing him with the iron.

One day after work, Pepper swung by the Tower to pick up some mail for Clint. She let herself in, thinking no one was at home since it was deadly silent. Pepper almost had a heart attack when she realized halfway across the room sat you and Peter, completely silent.

You were reading, the only sound coming from you was the turn of a page. Your legs were draped over Peter, who had fallen asleep hours ago. His head was on your shoulder, little snores escaping his mouth as he slept. You had a hand in his hair, running your fingers through his curls. It was so domestic, anyone else would have thought you’d been married for years.

Pepper could hardly get out of the Tower fast enough.

At this point, all of the Avengers had seen you and Peter act like an old married couple together. It was just an unspoken thing between them, that you two were just sickening together. Nobody was going to say anything about it, who wanted to have that conversation? And as long as you both were happy, Tony didn’t want the topic broached.

Until Carol accidentally mentioned it during dinner.

“Hey Pete, can you pass me the water please?” she asked, gesturing to the jug next to Peter. Peter nodded, but at the same time you went to pass it to her too. Your hands met, and Peter chuckled as you blushed from the contact. All the Avengers looked at each other, everyone thinking the same thing.

“Gosh, you two. Just like an old married couple.” Carol laughed, taking the water from Peter. For a moment, everyone was so silent you could hear a pin drop. Peter turned bright red and you buried your face in your hands. Carol groaned, realizing the cat was out of the bag.

“Carol! We weren’t going to say anything!” Bucky whispered, watching as Tony tried to keep eating. Peter was holding your hand under the table, and you were so embarrassed. How long had they been talking about this?

“Sorry, it just came out.” She whispered back, avoiding Wanda who was biting her lip trying not to laugh. Suddenly, Thor burst out laughing at the end of the table, hitting it with his fist. He very nearly fell out of his chair, clutching his stomach. That was all it took, the rest fell like dominoes. Pretty soon Bucky, Wanda, Steve, Sam, Clint, Nat, Bruce, and Pepper were laughing so hard they were crying. Tony managed to keep it together, but he was on the verge of breaking too.

“Oh, come on! All of you?” Peter moaned, wanting to disappear into thin air. Sure, he knew you two were super domestic and cute, but the whole “old married couple” thing seemed a bit much. You couldn’t stop blushing, hoping that they weren’t going to make this into a big deal.

“It’s just you and Y/N are so comfortable around each other, you act like an old married couple.” Tony said, patting Peter’s back. “It’s not a bad thing, it’s just different. You’re old souls, that’s all.”

“Please, can we never mention this again?” You squeaked, frowning when Wanda made a heart with her hands. Sam followed suit, until the entire table was doing it. “Stop, this is so embarrassing!”

“Personally, I think it’s adorable. It’s like a little snapshot of what you and Peter will look like in fifty years.” Pepper said, kissing Tony’s cheek. You sighed, realizing that this was not going to be forgotten anytime soon. The rest of the table nodded, giving you both knowing smiles.

“Yeah, when the little Parkers show up it’ll be just like this.” Steve said, passing Clint the salt. You went so red, you thought you were turning into a tomato. Peter coughed violently, nearly choking on his food until you rubbed his back.

“Alright, that’s enough. We’re done talking about this.” He said, shooting everyone death glares. That shut them up, and pretty soon everyone was back to normal. Wanda was arguing with Sam over sports, and Steve was giving Nat dating advice. Once the attention was off the two of you, Peter leaned over and pressed a kiss to your forehead.

“You know, I like being an old married couple. It makes me excited for the real thing.” He whispered, and you couldn’t help but smile at his words. Peter was definitely the one you wanted to spend the rest of your life with, he was your soulmate. And no matter what, you wanted to grow old together

Even if he couldn’t load a dishwasher right.

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lady-of-the-lotus · 3 years

Text

Xue Yang whisks a solipsistic Lan Xichen off on a murder roadtrip to raise Xiao Xingchen and Meng Yao from the grave. Because that will solve all of their problems, right? AU where Wei Wuxian never came to Yi City and Xue Yang is still running around post-canon disguised as Xiao Xingchen.

Lan Xichen can’t remember most of the day, spent pacing the Chang manor in a state of increasing desperation.

A-Yao had been back.

A-Yao had been in his arms.

A-Yao had been warm. Alive.

Whole.

And now, A-Yao is gone.

XueXiao & XiYao - Rated M - Read on AO3! Tumblr: Ch. 1 Ch. 2 Ch. 3 Ch. 4 Ch. 5 Ch. 6

a bit of blood here but the violence itself isn’t incredibly graphic...I mean, it’s still rated M!

Chapter 7: bigger than my bones

A-Yao sits up.

“A-Yao!” Lan Xichen falls to his knees beside him, staining his robes with blood from the array. “A-Yao!”

A-Yao stares up at him, dazed. He looks as if he’d just been struck over the head after having been abruptly woken from a drugged sleep.

“Er…Er-ge?” His voice is thick. “Lan Xichen?”

Lan Xichen grips his bare white shoulders. They’re warm. Solid. Real. Two arms— two. Both warm.

Solid.

Real.

A-Yao swallows hard. He’s shaking all over. “Er-ge?”

Lan Xichen whips off his outer robe and drapes it around A-Yao. “It’s me, it’s me, I’ve brought you back, I’ve brought you back—”

Xue Yang clears his throat. “Actually, you just stood there and goggled at me and passed out.”

Lan Xichen ignores him. All he can hear is A-Yao’s breathing, all he can see is A-Yao’s face. “You’re back, you’re back—”

A-Yao slumps forward, pitching against Lan Xichen’s chest. His face is warm against Lan Xichen’s throat, body completely limp against his own.

Lan Xichen turns to Xue Yang in panic. “What happened?! What happened?!”

“How should I know? The last time I did this I killed the man as soon as I confirmed I could do it. Was just trying to see if I was doing something wrong and that’s why it wasn’t working on Xiao Xingchen.”

Lan Xichen feels A-Yao’s throat. There’s a steady pulse, and the skin is warm. “Perhaps he's simply exhausted. It must take a lot out of one, being dead—”

Xue Yang laughs. It’s not a particularly nice sound. "I don't think anyone else has ever spoken those words."

Gently, Lan Xichen scoops A-Yao up into his arms and carries him to the first bedchamber he can find, laying A-Yao under the covers as if putting a newborn to sleep for the first time. He seats himself at the bedside, eyes fixed on A-Yao’s face.

“How many days will it take for those servants you let escape to reach Cloud Recesses?”

Lan Xichen barely hears Xue Yang, too intently focused on A-Yao. He’s too overwhelmed to know how to feel. Elated? Worried? Overjoyed? Terrified?

Xue Yang snaps his fingers in his ear. “Are you in there? How long do we have until those servants tell the Lan where we are?”

Lan Xichen looks up. “With no detours, on foot, two weeks.”

“Then we have that long until anyone comes after us on their swords. Unless they meet Lan cultivators on the road—”

“I told them not to speak to anyone.”

“As if they’d follow your orders if it were convenient not to?”

“I’m the clan leader.”

“Not of their clan.” Xue Yang loses interest. “Doesn’t matter. We need to get moving anyway. As soon as your dimpled little friend is on his feet, we’re out of here.” He stretches, yawning, and gives Lan Xichen a look he can't decipher. “Wake me if anything important happens.”

Lan Xichen sits at A-Yao’s bedside all night, longing to reach under the covers for his hand, hold it, feel its reassuring warmth and weight in his, but he’s too afraid that if he moves, if he touches A-Yao, A-Yao will dissipate in the moonlight pouring in through the open window.

Shortly before daybreak A-Yao stirs.

“Er-ge?”

A-Yao! Lan Xichen wants to say, but his mouth is suddenly too dry.

A-Yao sits up. “Where am I?”

“Chang Manor. Yueyang.” Lan Xichen runs his bone-dry tongue over his equally dry lips. It’s like rubbing sandpaper with sandpaper. “Xue Yang helped bring you back.”

A-Yao looks alarmed. “Xue Yang is here?”

“He helped get you back.”

“Have I any clothes?”

Lan Xichen points to Chang Ping’s clothes and goes to wait outside. His heart is beating fast again, a sick feeling in his stomach.

A-Yao doesn’t want to be back.

Or rather, if he does, he doesn’t care that Lan Xichen was the one to bring him back.

Or else—or else how could he speak so—so mundanely —

A-Yao steps out of the room. His hair is in a simple half-knot, and he’s wearing Chang Ping’s simple, if well-made, clothes and shoes. They’re too large on him, and he looks even smaller than he had when naked, almost frail.

Nothing like Jin Guangyao. Nothing like the man in Guanyin Temple. Hatless, unassuming, with no poisonous red dot between his eyes. Younger, too, as if the years of crushing responsibility, paranoia, and dread have been erased.

He looks , Lan Xichen thinks despite how illogical he knows it is, like Meng Yao.

A-Yao heads straight for the main hall, as if he remembers the manor’s layout from his one visit over fifteen years ago. He stops short when he sees Chang Ping’s body hanging from the hall's rafters, a sticky brown mass of dried blood with dozens of bloated flies feasting on its flesh. There’s far less of that flesh than Lan Xichen remembers, the body whittled down to a mere floppy, fat-coated skeleton, as if most of his flesh and bone and muscle had gone into remaking A-Yao’s fragile new body.

A-Yao looks down at the array on the floor, at the bucket, at the blood still staining Lan Xichen’s knees.

“Oh, Er-ge ,” he says.

Lan Xichen peers at him anxiously. “What is it? What happened?”

There’s sorrow in A-Yao’s large black eyes. “Did you help him do this?”

Blood pumps through Lan Xichen’s head with such force he’s afraid he might pass out again. “I—I—”

“Oh, Er-ge ,” says A-Yao again, and, his beautiful face twisted in agony, he begins to fade, rapidly growing fainter as the first touches of pink sunlight creep in through the front door.

“A-Yao!” Lan Xichen leaps forward, snatching at him, but it’s too late.

A-Yao is gone.

“Well, that didn’t go as planned.” Xue Yang stands leaning against the doorpost. He’s in his green inner robe, collar wet, as if he missed his face when splashing it with water. His glossy black hair is in a messy bun at the nape of his neck, feet bare, dark circles under his eyes. Maskless. He yawns, stretching like a sleepy cat. “He say anything interesting?”

Lan Xichen flies across the room and grabs him by the throat. “You little rat, what did you do, you promised me A-Yao back—”

Face turning purple, Xue Yang desperately tries to pry Lan Xichen’s fingers from his throat, but Lan Xichen is too strong.

“U—gh—uhg—”

Lan Xichen flings him out the door so hard he bounces twice and rolls down the discussion hall steps.

Xue Yang stands slowly, coughing raggedly. He’s a resilient little cockroach, Lan Xichen will give him that.

Lan Xichen flies down beside him. “What did you do, you repugnant little liar—”

Jiangzai appears in Xue Yang’s hand. “I brought him back!” he chokes through bared teeth. He’s bleeding from his tongue, face red with white splotches. “I swear!”

“You bastard, you lied to me—”

“I told you, I’ve never done this before! I swear I did my best! Do you think I wanted this? I need that dimpled little madman too!”

Lan Xichen hits him so hard that the delinquent cultivator is knocked flat on his back, Jiangzai falling with clang. He draws Shuoyue, but Xue Yang has Jiangzai back up, a new light in his eyes.

“Lay one more finger on me,” Xue Yang says, his voice a chilling rasp, “and it will be the last thing you ever do.”

“As if I care—”

Xue Yang spits blood. “I’m the only one who can get him back, and you know it!"

Lan Xichen freezes, then slowly sheaths his sword. “You have until tonight,” he says.

Rubbing at his bruised throat, Xue Yang grins. It’s a grin full of teeth. “Anything for you, my friend.”

* * * *

Lan Xichen can’t remember most of the day, spent pacing the manor in a state of increasing desperation.

A-Yao had been back.

A-Yao had been in his arms.

A-Yao had been warm. Alive. Whole.

And now, A-Yao is gone.

He avoids the main hall, where Xue Yang is holed up with Chang Ping's body. The ground is mere air beneath his feet, the walls and grass and trees and ceilings misty nothings. He tries to meditate but can’t. Can’t eat, can’t drink, can’t rest, can’t think of anything but A-Yao.

The way A-Yao had looked at him.

“Did you help him do this?”

And—

“Er-ge.”

That soft, sorrowful, disappointed, “Er-ge.”

Without giving Lan Xichen time to explain, without letting him explain how Chang Ping had deserved it, and how even had he not deserved it, nothing truly mattered, nothing mattered except getting A-Yao back. A-Yao, the only real thing in a world held together by spider-silk and starlight—

The moon is high in the sky when Xue Yang flings open the doors to the main hall. The day had been unseasonably warm, and a blast of rotting meat and stale blood comes gusting out around him.

“Your little friend is back,” he says shortly. “I’ll be packing. We need to leave this place.” He turns and strides off without so much as a smart remark.

A-Yao steps out of the hall, takes a few steps, and collapses heavily on the steps.

Lan Xichen opens his mouth to speak, then closes it and sits beside him.

“What did he do?” he finally asks.

A-Yao’s head jerks up as if startled. “Nothing, as far as I could make out,” he says, and his voice is the same old voice Lan Xichen remembers, the same…not casual, A-Yao was never casual, not even with him, but what passed as casual for him, the voice he had used while they lived together after he fled the Cloud Recesses. “I…I believe I will disappear every morning, to reappear at night.” He glances down at his hands. They’re lying like baby birds in his lap, shaking despite the night’s unseasonable warmth. Lan Xichen wants to reach out, cover them with both of his, but he’s too afraid to move, to do anything that might result in A-Yao drawing away with a hiss of disgust. “It...it hurts.”

Lan Xichen is crushed by a sudden wave of guilt. “My fault,” he says. “I never should have brought you back…”

“No, no, Er-ge, I—I thank you.” A-Yao darts a nervous glance around at the utter stillness of the courtyard, as if afraid his words might manifest a demon out of thin air to drag him back to his coffin with Nie Mingjue. He takes a deep breath, shudderingly, as if it’s difficult for him to fill his lungs.

On a sudden impulse Lan Xichen reaches out to brush his shoulder with the back of his hand, make sure A-Yao is in fact there, that he’s not a figment of his imagination, and A-Yao flinches at his touch, face blanching.

So Lan Xichen was right. A-Yao does not want to be here. At least not be here with—with him.

He forces himself to speak, say something, anything. To sound friendly, light, casual.

“What’s the last thing you remember?” he asks A-Yao.

A-Yao closes his eyes and tilts his head back as if to catch the moonlight, painfully, eerily beautiful in its otherworldly silver rays. “I remember everything,” he says quietly. “I wish I didn’t, but I do. But I—I feel—I feel different. Feel like…”

“You look like Meng Yao,” Lan Xichen blurts, then blushes.

A-Yao opens his eyes. “You’ve changed too, Er-ge.”

“Lan Huan,” Lan Xichen hears himself saying. He needs to hear it from A-Yao’s lips just once, just once in case he loses him again, just one time he can look back on and remember. “Lan Huan.”

“Lan Huan,” says A-Yao, and Lan Xichen wants to reach out again, grab his hand, press it to his cheek, feel his warmth as he speaks his birth name, but is too afraid that A-Yao will pull away again. “A-Huan.”

Lan Xichen clasps his hands together in his lap so that A-Yao won’t see how badly they’re trembling. Perhaps if he thinks Lan Xichen is his old calm self then he won’t realize how different Lan Xichen has become, won’t think he’s changed any more than he already knows he has, won’t be disgusted.

Won’t leave him again.

“I am sorry, A-Yao,” he hears himself saying. It sounds woefully inadequate. “I’ve spent the past year trying to…” He trails off. Trying to forget? Trying to bring him back? Moving on? Mourning?

A-Yao doesn’t seem to hear the first half. “A year?” He looks almost anxious. “Is Jin Ling well? Koi Tower is a pit of vipers… Are the Jin prospering?”

“They’re doing well.”

“He must hate me.”

“I’m sure he doesn’t hate you.”

“I would, if I were him.”

“Jin Ling is fine.” Lan Xichen doesn’t know how true that is, but lying is nothing compared to the things he’s done. “Jiang Cheng supports him. He’s doing fine…”

A-Yao stares fixedly at the ground. He really does look younger. Almost most fragile, in a way that he never fully had in the past. “And you?”

“I’ve been…fine.” He hates the sound of that word. Fine.

A-Yao bites his lip. His voice is very low, almost inaudible. “I spoke to Xue Yang.”

Lan Xichen doesn’t ask him what exactly Xue Yang told him. Better not to know. Suddenly he’s having trouble breathing, anyway, and isn’t sure he can speak at all. He feels himself drifting, and he reaches down and squeezes the stone of the steps, but it’s soft and formless beneath his palms—

“Hey. Lovebirds.” Someone nudges him from behind. Xue Yang, prodding him with Jiangzai’s scabbard. Shuanghua and its scabbard have been safely tucked away in his qiankun sleeve since he used the blade to carve up Chang Ping. He’s wearing dark blue robes he must have found in the manor. “Time to hit the road.”

“A-Yao is in no shape to travel.”

“Then maybe next time don’t let witnesses escape. I’ll bet you even gave them money. You self-righteous naive types are all alike.” With a curl of his lip, Xue Yang heads off.

A-Yao follows him with his eyes. “Perhaps you haven’t changed so much after all, Er-ge— A-Huan.”

Lan Xichen feels a surge of warmth. “Let me help you up—”

“I’m fine,” says A-Yao, struggling to his feet on his own.

The warmth fades.

Lan Xichen changes into simple rust-colored robes found in one of the manor’s rooms before following the strangely silent Xue Yang up the road to Yueyang. It’s the obvious place for anyone to look for them, but it’s the largest city for miles around and the best place to get lost in.

A-Yao stumbles once, and Lan Xichen reaches out to steady him, briefly gripping his arm before A-Yao pulls away.

He feels better after that. He hadn't been mistaken before. A-Yao is real. Is here.

But for the most part, A-Yao makes it all the way there under his own power, somehow. As resilient, in his own way, as Xue Yang.

He’s had to be.

Lan Xichen remembers A-Yao telling him about how his father had kicked him down the stairs on his fourteenth birthday, how his mother’s client had kicked him down the stairs as a child before flinging his half-naked mother out into the street, how he’d lain in bed for weeks with a concussion that almost killed him. How the client had eventually returned, had pointedly ignored his mother and started patronizing another prostitute. “Why pay for something the whole town’s already seen?” he’d laughed—

It was Meng Yao who had told him that, he remembers. Jin Guangyao had rarely spoken of his past, as if afraid speaking the words aloud, even when cloistered alone with Lan Xichen in the innermost room of his chambers, would remind the entire Koi Tower of his past, would make him less worthy of his position, would form a black stain on his forehead for all to see.

Yueyang isn’t far, but the going is slow. They reach the city at dawn.

A-Yao fades as soon as the sky begins to turn orange and pink, his face a mask of pain.

“It hurts him,” Lan Xichen says, turning to Xue Yang.

Xue Yang tosses a candied peanut in the air, catching it in his mouth. “So? What do you want me to do about it?”

Lan Xichen presses his lips into a thin line. “Anchor him here. Do something !”

“You’re the scholar. You’re the expert on ghosts.”

“On getting rid of them! You’re the one who knows how to—to work your wicked tricks—”

“Ah, the second they’re no longer working in your favor, they’re suddenly ‘wicked tricks.’ ” Xue Yang points to a dodgy-looking tavern on the street corner. “Shall we stop there for the day, rest up, and decide where to go from here? I don’t know about you, but I could use a drink.” Whistling, he strolls off towards the tavern, where he orders four bottles of wine up to their room.

“I thought you don’t drink much,” says Lan Xichen. Aside from that one time outside of Qinghe, he’s yet to see Xue Yang drink more than a cup of wine with dinner.

“Everyone has to start sometime. Besides, if you think I can put up with you and that dimpled weasel making eyes at each while sober, you are gravely mistaken.” He takes a deep drink from the wine jar. “Just go and ask the little freak straight out.”

A-Yao is clearly not “making eyes at him” in any possible way—he won’t even let him brush his arm!—but Lan Xichen doesn’t dare follow up on this. “I beg your pardon,” he says instead. “Ask him what?”

“ ‘I beg your pardon’?” Xue Yang mimics. “Just ask the dimpled little freak what he needs done.”

“Needs done?”

“Are all of you Lans this dense? This is demonic cultivation. Everything is the opposite of what you know. The thing that would normally set his spirit at rest will instead bind him to this world. No more disappearing and reappearing.”

“No more pain?”

“I can’t answer that. But I’d guess not.” Xue Yang has already finished one jar of wine. He doesn’t seem to be enjoying it—it smells like dry wine from where Lan Xichen is sitting—but he unstops the second jar and takes a sip, which goes down the wrong pipe. “Not that we can fix what’s wrong with him up here,” he adds once he’s finished coughing, tapping his head. A splatter of blood comes out with the clear white wine, as if the bite on his tongue has reopened. He looks at the blood on the floor, then gives a little laugh. “Guess being locked up for a year with an angry ghost who hates your insides isn’t a lot of fun.”

“What do you mean?”

Xue Yang doesn’t answer, just heaves a long-suffering sigh, rolls his eyes, finishes the jar of wine, and passes out—pretends to pass out?—on his bed.

Lan Xichen would have liked to spend the day pacing, but he’s too tired to do more than nap on the other bed, which is larger than usual for these kinds of inns. His nap is more of a doze than anything else, but he feels stronger when he wakes that night.

A-Yao is kneeling beside his cot.

“Er-ge?” A-Yao whispers. His face is glowing white in the starlight coming in through the window. “Oh, you’re just asleep.” His shoulders relax. “I…” He swallows and looks over his shoulder. Xue Yang is lying sprawled in an uncomfortable-looking position, four empty jars of wine on the floor beside his cot. “You weren’t waiting for me.”

A wave of crushing guilt. Lan Xichen reaches out for A-Yao’s hand, manages to brush it, be reassured of his warmth, of his reality, before A-Yao jerks away.

He continues lying there, A-Yao kneeling beside the low cot with his one arm lightly resting beside Lan Xichen. Close enough to touch him, if he wanted.

Which he clearly doesn’t.

“A-Yao,” Lan Xichen says finally, “what is the one thing tying you to this world?”

A-Yao looks slightly startled, like a baby deer asked who it thought the next Chief Cultivator should be. “I—I don’t know.”

Not me. Of course not.

“I mean, if you were a ghost, and there was one thing you needed done to set you at peace, what would that one thing be?”

A-Yao’s eyes are wide. Lan Xichen has only seen that expression once before—in Nightless City, when he hid behind him from Nie Mingjue, and he feels a sudden twinge of uncertainty.

Not that he has any reason to doubt A-Yao, he reminds himself. This is just his paranoia speaking. A-Yao has made no promises to him. A-Yao is not trying to get out of anything or manipulate him into doing anything. He had been the one to ask A-Yao what it was A-Yao wanted.

Besides, that had not been manipulation back at Nightless City, he reminds himself, no matter what Nie Mingjue had claimed. A-Yao had been ready and willing to die for the terrible things he’d been forced to do to maintain his cover…

“You want to get rid of me?” A-Yao asks. He leans forward slightly, so close Lan Xichen imagines he can feel his breath on his skin.

“Xue Yang says that it would bind you to this world.”

A-Yao glances over at Xue Yang again. “He might be right.”

“You think so?”

“I think it’s worth a try.” He rests his cheek on the rough blanket, closing his eyes. “It’s worth a try…”

Lan Xichen inches over to the other edge of the bed, glancing over at A-Yao across what feels like a vast expanse of mattress. “Are you tired, A-Yao?”

A-Yao opens his eyes at the sound of his name. “In a strange kind of way.”

Lan Xichen takes the one pillow and lays it beside him as a kind of invitation. He doesn’t say anything. They’d shared a bed many times before while hopping from one run-down inn to the other after the destruction of the Cloud Recesses, always with a pillow between them. Does A-Yao remember? Or will he think Lan Xichen is being presumptuous—

A-Yao lies down beside him.

He lies on his back, rigid, like a corpse laid out in a coffin, straight and stiff and still until he finally relaxes into something almost human. Lan Xichen thinks he can feel his body heat, feel it radiating into him, warming him, making the dark shapes of the room come into sharper focus, the cool night air almost alive in his lungs.

“If I had to choose one thing,” A-Yao finally murmurs, in a voice very unlike his usual clear, almost over-enunciated tones, “it would be to kill him.”

Suddenly Lan Xichen knows that his having remembered A-Yao’s story the night before was no coincidence. He knows exactly whom A-Yao is talking about.

“I should have done it myself long ago,” continues A-Yao in that same low, uncharacteristically natural-sounding voice, “but his death would have raised too many questions back then, and after that I had too many things keeping me busy…I owe her this much. I should have long ago…”

“What’s his name?”

“Wu Shen. He’s a merchant in Yunping City.”

“Not…” Not Nie Huaisang?

A-Yao shakes his head. “I have been unfilial.”

“Then I’ll…I’ll go to Yunping.”

He hears A-Yao swallowing hard. Something brushes his hand, very briefly, and then A-Yao pulls away as if he can’t bear to touch the man who rammed a foot of ice-cold steel through his chest.

Lan Xichen doesn’t close his eyes the rest of the night. He lies very still, watching A-Yao sleep, memorizing every flutter of eyelash, every murmur, every twitch. A-Yao seems to be plagued by nightmares, but Lan Xichen doesn’t dare wake him.

“If I had to choose one thing, it would be to kill him.”

Lan Xichen thinks back to those idle days in the Cloud Recesses all those years ago. Lan Qiren’s interminable lectures, Wei Wuxian’s question about pacifying restless spirits: “But what if the wish was to kill many people in revenge?”

Deserving of death, is Wu Shen. As much as Chang Ping had been. And if Lan Xichen were to refuse now, then Chang Ping’s extrajudicial death, his torment, would have all been for nothing. Real or not, his pain had existed in some form.

Lan Xichen raises the hand A-Yao touched, stares at it in the moonlight, presses the spot A-Yao had brushed to this cheek. He has to do this. Prove he’ll do anything to bring A-Yao back fully.

Maybe then A-Yao would forgive Lan Xichen for killing him.

* * * *

The trip to Yunping City takes a week. Fourteen times Lan Xichen is forced to watch A-Yao suffer, fourteen times he’s forced to endure Xue Yang’s intense stare as it happens.

The sun is setting when they arrive in Yunping, bloody red streaks across a sky hung with thick gray clouds. A light early-season snow is beginning to fall as they check in at a reputable inn and hurry up to their room.

“Dinner first, I think,” says Xue Yang after A-Yao has appeared. “Can’t practice demonic cultivation on an empty stomach, now, can we?”

A-Yao gives his head a little shake. He hasn’t eaten anything since he’d been brought back.

“Zewu-jun? No? Suit yourself. Meet back here in an hour, and we’ll head out.” Humming, Xue Yang disappears down the stairs.

Without a word A-Yao follows him. Lan Xichen hurries after them. With every passing night A-Yao has become more and more detached from this world, not uttering a single sound on some nights. Lan Xichen sometimes thinks A-Yao’s skin has grown translucent, at least from certain angles, as if he has begun to fade as his connection to this world weakens.

Tonight will change that.

Lan Xichen wishes Xue Yang hadn’t insisted on eating. Every second, every minute is precious—

But he silently walks beside A-Yao, following him out of the inn all the way to Guanyin Temple. It’s no longer a temple, just a pile of rubble belonging to Jin Ling as A-Yao’s next of kin. He flies A-Yao over the wall into the courtyard, waits outside the temple as A-Yao disappears into the darkness.

Lan Xichen paces the courtyard as he waits. The last time he was here—

The last time he was here —

Don’t think about that. It doesn’t matter, not anymore—

The snow is falling faster now, thick eddies of white whirling around the courtyard, wet powder melting on his hair and robes, but he barely feels the cold.

Tonight—tonight—

There’s a smear of red on A-Yao’s face when he eventually emerges, as if a tear of blood had been clumsily wiped off. A-Yao notices him looking at, reaches up, scrubs the last of the blood from his face.

“I interred her,” Lan Xichen says, very quietly, “near the Cloud Recesses. With honor.”

A-Yao gives a brief nod. No need to tell him of the concessions he’d had to make to Nie Huaisang in order to get him to release A-Yao’s mother’s body.

There would be plenty of time after tonight.

They’re about to leave the temple courtyard when Xue Yang flies over the courtyard walls and lands in front of them, grinning.

“Figured you’d be here,” he says, dumping a man on the thin layer of snow blanketing the ground. A bound, mustached man with a face that it was a crime for him to inflict on the local populace without a license. Xue Yang has placed a Lan silencing spell on him, and the man’s face is bright red with anger as he struggles to tear his lips open.

Lan Xichen darts a glance at A-Yao. A-Yao’s eyes are wide, the rest of his face frozen.

Wu Shen.

“Let’s go inside,” Xue Yang suggests, shaking the snow from his skirts and hair. “Too many eyes out here.”

Lan Xichen glances around at the walls surrounding the courtyard.

Xue Yang sighs. “There are Lan cultivators flying around the area. I saw them on my way over. Besides, it's cold and wet."

They hurry inside the temple. The ceiling is half cratered, the entire place turned upside-down, but the damage isn’t as extensive as it could have been. Humming, Xue Yang moves around the temple, lighting the surviving candles with his Wen talismans.

There, right here, that was where Lan Xichen had stabbed A-Yao—his blood remains on the stone floor; shielded from rain and snow by fallen beams—

A-Yao’s breathing is shallow. Desperate for a distraction, Lan Xichen removes the silencing spell on Wu Shen.

“—sue you all! Unhand me at once! What is the meani—”

Lan Xichen replaces the silencing spell.

“ ‘Unhand me at once’?” Xue Yang snickers. “If you don’t kill him, I will.”

Lan Xichen glances back down at Wu Shen, who’s rolling quietly towards the front door.

Xue Yang places a foot on his shoulder and shoves him down to the floor. Jiangzai is out, slung casually across his shoulders.

“He’s all yours,” he says. He sighs at the look on Lan Xichen’s face. “Our dimpled friend can’t do it, or it would just create more resentful energy,” he explains, answering a question Lan Xichen didn’t realize he had. “You know about these things from your studies, don’t you, Lianfang-zun? Tell the man.”

A-Yao ducks his head in agreement, eyes still fixed on Wu Shen.

Xue Yang prods Wu Shen’s belly with the tip of his sword. Wu Shen gives a silent eep of indignation. Strangely, he seems more angry than scared. “Better hurry, Zewu-jun, before I give it a shot myself and nab all the credit. ‘Unhand me at once’—”

A-Yao looks up for the first time. “Er-ge?”

Shuoyue is quivering in Lan Xichen’s hand. He shoud let Xue Yang do it, he knows he should, but A-Yao had asked him, asked Lan Xichen—this is his one chance to prove himself to A-Yao, be the instrument of his salvation just as he had been the instrument of his destruction—

“Take my advice,” says Xue Yang, leaning on one of the surviving columns, “and get it over with quick. Don’t try to have fun with it this time. I mean, I did my first time, but—”

Lan Xichen plunges Shuoyue through Wu Shen’s heart.

A-Yao watches impassively, then spits on the man’s corpse, a vulgar gesture Lan Xichen would never have expected from him.

Lan Xichen releases Shuoyue’s hilt, leaving the sword stuck deep in Wu Shen’s chest. His hands are shaking, and he can’t take his eyes off the corpse.

He just murdered a man in cold blood, in almost the exact spot he had murdered A-Yao—

Two wrongs to make a right. A-Yao would be back now. A-Yao would have a second chance. Wipe away what had happened here a year ago—

A-Yao turns to Lan Xichen.

“I didn’t think you would actually do it,” he says, very softly. “Xichen, I…” He grips Lan Xichen’s sword hand. “Goodbye, Xichen,” he says. Lan Xichen feels a stinging spark where A-Yao is gripping his wrist. “Find m—”

He’s gone before he can finish, diffused light flowing outward to join the flickering candlelight, a thousand sparks of gold fading for the last time.

Gone. Gone, just like that.

For good this time.

Lan Xichen stares at the spot A-Yao had been standing, at the bleeding corpse at his feet, and drags his eyes up to look at Xue Yang.

Xue Yang glances up from where he’s using Wu Shen’s blood to draw an array on the floor.

He’s grinning.

“That went well,” he says.

“Did you know?” Lan Xichen grabs Xue Yang by the throat. “Did you know he’d disappear? You told me it was different for demonic cultivation; you told me it would bind him here—”

“Better question to ask is if he knew,” Xue Yang chokes out.

“If—if—”

Xue Yang pries Lan Xichen’s nerveless fingers from his throat. “It was a test. You failed it. Gave in right away, as I understand.”

“I—”

Xue Yang is laughing as he rubs the bruises forming on his throat. Lan Xichen has torn his Xiao Xingchen mask, but Xue Yang doesn’t seem to care. He peels it off and drops it to the floor, his disarmingly boyish face mottled with pink and white. “You were the better part of him,” he sneers. “Supposed to be the better part of him. Moonlight in the darkness and all that nonsense.”

“You—you lied to me!”

“I suppose all the beads were put in the looks bucket when you were made,” Xue Yang grins, “without a lot left over for brains.” He clicks his tongue. "What else did you expect from someone as repugnant as me?"

Lan Xichen falls to his knees, palms pressed to the spot A-Yao had been standing as if he can still feel his heat on the stone tiles. The room has faded, and the old weight is crushing his limbs again, keeping him pinned to the ground, barely able to breathe. Squeezing his lungs, threatening to crack his skull, a thousand times worse than it had ever been in the Cloud Recesses. There’s a dark red spot on his hand where A-Yao had been touching him—

“Aw, how nice,” Xue Yang clucks. “He marked you as his own. Can’t decide if it’s like a dog pissing on a tree or—no, I think I’ll go with ‘dog’ on this one.”

Lan Xichen stares at the red spot. Something is pricking at his half-melted brain—something familiar—but his blood is pumping too hard to think. He’s hot, so hot —

“To help find him in the afterlife,” explains Xue Yang. He bites his lip, hesitating, then shrugs. “Better not blow it again the next time, my friend.”

Lan Xichen is on his feet, swaying slightly. “Why did you do this?”

“About time you asked.” Xue Yang removes a folded sheet of paper from his qiankun sleeve. “You really should have asked more questions, my friend.”

The missing page from the book, the one that had supposedly been destroyed in a fire.

Lan Xichen grabs it.

“The ritual calls for the corruption of a soul of equal so-called purity in order to create a proper vessel for me to call the soul into before putting it back in his body,” Xue Yang explains as Lan Xichen stares at the paper, as if knowing Lan Xichen’s thoughts are too hot and flurried to be able to read, his vision blurred. “Not exactly easy to find a person like that in this fucked-up world. Not to mention access to the Lan library and Inquiry.” He shrugs. “You were the very obvious choice. Too bad you didn’t intentionally kill those Lan cultivators when we left the Cloud Recesses or those Nie guards, or I could have saved a lot of time.”

“Are you going to kill me?” Lan Xichen can barely hear his own voice over the blood roaring in his ears.

Twice. He’s killed A-Yao here, in this same temple, twice.

And A-Yao—

He has to find him. Has to explain. Has to be explained to. About why A-Yao would prefer death over life with him—

“Kill Zewu-jun?” Xue Yang twirls a strand of hair around his finger, eyes wide and innocent. He takes the pages back. “I can’t take you down on my own. But I figure they can, which is why I invited them. Right on time, too—”

With a squelching sound Lan Xichen draws Shuoyue from Wu Shen’s corpse and flies at Xue Yang. Laughing, the hooligan easily springs out the way, and Lan Xichen is about to pull out Liebing when he hears a familiar voice from behind him.

“Clan Leader!”

He whirls around. Six high-ranking Lan cultivators have dropped through the ceiling, swords in hand, snow gusting down around them. One has his guqin out and has begun to play the Song of Clarity—

Shuoyue arcs through the air, slicing the guqin in half.

And the cultivator.

Lan Xichen hadn’t meant to kill him but he, Lan Xichen, the top-ranked cultivator of his generation, is suddenly unable to govern his own spiritual energy.

But—

Is it really such a bad thing?

They’re trying to stop him from joining A-Yao. Stop him from killing the man responsible or A-Yao’s death. They're trying to bring him back to the Cloud Recesses—

Something echoes through the blood pounding in his ears.

“Too bad you didn’t intentionally kill those Lan cultivators when we left the Cloud Recesses—”

How many other Lan cultivators has he killed?

No. He couldn’t have killed them—

But he remembers the sound of the cultivator’s bones cracking against the stone as he fled the Cloud Recesses, and something bursts inside him.

A fistful of blood spatters out past his teeth, hot on his chin, speckling the floor with red.

A dozen more Lan cultivators have appeared, flickering around him, laughing, grinning, sneering. Despising him, ridiculing him for his desperation, his weakness, for his having fallen for Xue Yang's lies not once but twice—

Coming to take him home. Coming to lock him up again—

Something inside him snaps.

Blood burns his eyes, his vision half-obscured, but he hacks and slashes at the phantasms around him. There’s not a hint of his old elegance as he spins and whirls and lunges. He’s seized by Nie-like berserker rage as he rips them apart with Shuoyue—(they’re not real, anyway)—he knows they aren’t real—they’re just specters sent to haunt him, to taunt him, inventions of his overheated brain—

(Not that it matters, now. Nothing is real, nothing matters.)

The cultivators' bodies disappear. A dozen more men and women have appeared to take their places—

A face.

Wangji? No. Wangji couldn’t be here—nobody is here—

Sorrow on Wangji’s face— not Wangji’s face—not the real Wangji, anyway; if Wangji were truly here Lan Xichen wouldn’t stand a chance, not in his current condition—

A tear slips down Wangji’s face.

A hand on his shoulder, the first solid thing he’s felt other than Shuoyue’s hilt in—in how long—?

Where is he—

The temple. Still in the temple.

He scrubs the blood from his eyes, looks down. His blue robes are soaked with blood. Fresh blood dribbles from his eyes, his mouth, from the thousand ruptures in his flesh. Blood coats the snowy floor, taints the air, blossoms beautifully on the while robes of the six Lan corpses surrounding him.

Xue Yang looks down at him, watching him bleed out. Xiao Xingchen’s spirit-trapping pouch is in one hand, the Stygian Tiger Seal shard in the other.

For once there is no smile on Xue Yang’s face. “Shall I do it, my friend? The ritual will heal any damage to your body so that he will be whole when he returns—”

Lan Xichen stabs upward with Shuoyue.

Cursing, Xue Yang falls to his knees before the kneeling clan leader, blood spraying out past his teeth, eyes wide with shock. Lan Xichen must have struck an artery, because there’s a rapidly spreading pool of red around him, the hot crimson liquid surrounding the two of them.

Instead of using his spiritual energy to heal, Xue Yang instead begins to laugh, a laugh tinged with more than a touch of hysteria.

His knife is out.

Lan Xichen stares down at the mark A-Yao branded into his wrist, barely visible through the blood.

He looks up at Xue Yang again.

Waits.

“You’re welcome,” says Xue Yang, blood spurting over his chin, and he plunges his knife deep into Lan Xichen’s breast.

Lan Xichen hears a cry from the doorway, a familiar voice.

Or maybe he just imagines it.

The metal blade is cold as it pierces his skin, enters his muscle, scrapes bone. As cold as the mountain stream outside his mother’s house—

Lan Xichen wonders if the crane is still there.

He can almost see it now. Fluffing its wet feathers in greeting as Lan Xichen glides low over the Cloud Recesses—

The faint red light of an activated array comes from far away. Dimly-glowing symbols spin around him, as if someone is pouring the last of their life essence into the array as a soft new presence envelopes Lan Xichen—

The red light fades as he circles the mountain, flies higher into the crystal-clear sky. Frigid air is all around him, caressing his bare arms and legs, but he’s wrapped in warmth, in starlight.

A growing, glowing feeling, as if he’s bigger than himself, as if he’s become something more.

Something new.

He soars higher.

The Cloud Recesses looks so small from up here. So insignificant.

Like everything else.

He’s out among the stars now. Glowing, expanding, leaving a trail of green and purple stardust behind him.

Cosmic light envelopes him.

He melts into it.

* * * *

Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed. AO3

#The final chapter: Things come to a head #Or: The night sky sure is pretty and stars are cool #Fractured Ice #Lan Xichen #mdzsnet #Xue Yang #the untamed #mdzs #cql #check out Ao3 for the warnings

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