#and ive already lost the thread of thought too but i was thinking about how the translators work earlier as well

[clockwayswrites]

Like Betta Fish Do Part 20

Chapter 15 when on Ao3, Masterpost WC: 3354 CW: Canon Typical Violence, Blood, Injury, arguing

There was so much blood already. Danny peeled off Jason’s— Red Hood’s— jacket looking for the wound.

If he had been quicker—

No, he couldn’t think that way.

He found the stab wound under Jason’s left arm, shoved right in a point where the armor was less reinforced. Danny pressed the palm of his hand tight to it and took a shuddering breath.

The pull had been so quiet. It had taken a moment to notice what had woken him from sleep and then another to realize what it was— that it was Jason’s core flickering to life and calling out. Not calling out, screaming.

Danny had transformed as he lept out of bed. Before he flew off, the case of ectoshot was hastily grabbed from the back corner of his closet. But Jason hadn’t been at his place. Danny had been forced to fly through the streets and alleyways to find him.

He hadn’t know what to expect as he stepped through the wall of the apartment.

His boyfriend bleeding out on the floor, dressed as Red Hood, wasn’t it.

Danny curled forward, resting his forehead against Jason’s. He was just so glad he got the ectoshot in him— that Nightwing, that Dick who was Nightwing, wasn’t able to stop him.

Even if Dick hated him now.

His fingers still twitched with the feeling of electricity running through him from the blow.

“Do you know how to do stitches?” Dick snapped as he came back with an armful of supplies.

“Yes.” On himself. He didn’t think Dick would want to hear that though (or anything Danny had to say).

Dick tossed the suture kit at Danny and got to work setting up an IV in Jason’s other arm. Silently, Danny cut away enough of Jason’s shirt to start cleaning the wound, keeping pressure on the spot itself as he first cleaned the area around.

“…how bad?” Dick asked, glancing over once he got something hooked up to the IV. Danny thought it might be saline, but he wasn’t sure. They never had that sort of stuff for him.

“It’s… deep, but the bleeding slowed with the pressure,” Danny said, mostly keeping his head down. It was different stitching someone else up. (How did Jazz do this? He owed her such a gift basket.)

Dick nodded and hooked Jason up to some sort of machine.

Danny focused on making all of his stitches neat. He didn’t want Jason to scar too badly. Fuck, he was stitching up his boyfriend. He hoped that Dick would let him stay until Jason woke up at least.

His hand shook. He had to take a moment to breathe to get them steady again.

He had almost lost Jason. Would he have even known? What cover story would Dick had given him, if he even thought to reach out? His boyfriend had been out there, fighting crime, with a developing core and had almost died for it. And this time there would have been no Clockwork to turn back time and let Danny save them. Not unless losing Jason was enough to—

No, nope, not thinking about Dan.

Danny was going to keep that dark spot inside him locked tight away.

It was all fine. Jason was alive. His fledgling core buzzed just on the edges of Danny’s senses. It hadn’t been snuffed out.

Danny tied off the stitches neatly and cut the thread.

-

Dick tucked Jason’s arm onto the couch as he settled him, careful not to jar the IV or the blood pressure monitor. Jason’s numbers were good. Jason’s numbers were better than they should be. That was… Dick was going to be grateful about that.

“Danny,” the other said suddenly.

“What? No, it’s—”

“No, my name, it’s Danny,” the Guy— Fish— Danny rasped from where he was slumped back against the wall. The guy, Danny, looked wrecked. There was a fevered panic to his eyes that Dick was sure he matched. A smear of blood was bright on his tanned cheek and his clothing (were those… pajamas?) were stained with it. “I figure… I figure you should get to know that, considering…”

“I guess… good to officially meet you or something. I’d shake your hand, but,” Dick looked down at his hands covered in his brother’s blood— just like Danny’s were.

“He’ll be alright.”

“You can’t know that,” Dick snapped. Things could always take a turn.

“I can. It’s why I needed to get him to drink that stuff.”

Anger flared in Dick’s gut at the reminder of Danny forcing Lazarus water down Jason’s throat. “Right. About that—”

“You can still punch me if you want to, I said you could,” Danny interrupted. “Just… not with the sticks again, please? I’ve— me and electricity have a bad history.”

He died.

Electrocution.

His heart stopped.

Dick felt sick. If— if Danny wasn’t a LOA plant, if he had told Jason the truth about his past, then Danny had been killed by electricity as a teen.

And Dick had hit him with his escrima while it was electrified.

Dick watched Danny’s fingers on his left arm twitch.

Forget him punching Danny, Jason was going to punch him.

“…go clean up first. You’re staying here? I mean, so you have extra clothing?” he asked, looking at the apparent pajamas (boxers and an old t-shirt) again.

“What?” Danny’s brows furrowed. “No?”

Okay then, another point to blind panic. “You… ran here in your boxers?”

“I, no? It’s… kinda? I didn’t run, but…” Danny trailed off.

Nothing was making sense.

One thing at a time.

“Go shower. There’s a draw labeled RR, the clothes in there should fit.”

With the wobble Danny gave as he stood, Dick was a little worried about him staying on his feet. Shock might be an issue. Dick should think about making tea.

Danny was watching him warily. “You’ll… you’ll let me stay then? At least until he wakes up?”

Dick got that sick feeling again.

“Yep. But go clean.”

Dick could take care of some of the blood on the floor while Danny did that. At least get it where they wouldn’t slip in it. He kept an ear on the sounds of the shower. It was seeming like Danny really cared about Jason, that the adoration he had seen in Danny’s eyes the other day wasn’t a lie, but the guy still had Lazarus water.

He couldn’t trust him completely.

The floors were clean enough by the time that Danny padded out of the bedroom in Tim’s sweats and a hoodie that that could only be Jason’s. He was completely drowning in it. Danny noticed Dick staring and picked nervously at the oversized piece.

“I just…”

“No. I get it. I’ll prob do the same,” Dick admitted, softly. “Can you put water on for tea?”

Danny nodded and padded around him with a wide berth. Dick’s stomach roiled again as he moved to the bedroom. Almost all the blood came off with his uniform, so he just quickly changed, washed his face (no point in the domino at this point) and hurried back out.

Danny was still in the tiny kitchen.

Dick took the time to strip Jason of the rest of his clothing but boxers. He had just covered him with a blanket when the kettle whistled. It must have startled Danny because there was a banging and then cursing.

The cursing had kept up as quite muttering that trailed off into a loud sigh just before Danny came out with two mugs of tea.

Dick took his gratefully and tucked himself onto the edge of the couch by Jason’s propped up feet. Danny settled for the armchair. Dick pushed his teabag around with the spoon, grounding himself in the warm metal handle. He wouldn’t drink it— it could be poisoned— but the warmth helped.

“I want answers.”

“I figured.” Danny was cradling his own mug, face twisted in a little frown. “There’s a lot I won’t give you until Jason is awake to agree. They’re his secrets too.”

“If he agrees?”

Danny rubbed at the back of his neck. “Then I’ll tell. I mean, you’re Nightwing and apparently I’m dating Red Hood. I figure you can keep secrets if you need to.”

Oh. “You didn’t know before tonight.”

“Nope. And what a way to find out,” Danny said with a hysterical sounding laugh that he clamped down fast with a hand over his mouth. Dick could see him take a few purposeful breaths through his nose. “Sorry.”

Dick gave a helpless little shrug. What did someone say to any of this? “It’s a lot. I get it.”

“Not really.” Danny gave him a mirthless smile back when Dick shot him an incredulous look. “I thought I would be done with the whole hero bullshit when I moved to Gotham.”

Oh.

“Retired small town hero at your service. I guess hero was dubious title depending on who you asked. Even in the end some of them preferred menace. I wasn’t… expecting to get caught back up in any of it. That wasn’t the plan.”

Dick glanced from Danny, who was practically hunched around himself now (and looking so tiny in Jason’s hoodie), and over to Jason.

“He knows,” Danny confirmed. “Not any details, just the basics, but he knows. And I… I didn’t know. Not about any of this.”

Fucking hell Jason… “He wouldn’t have told you because of us. Learn about one of us…”

“…and it gets to be pretty clear who everyone is?” Danny said with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Who would have thought, Bruce Wayne is Batman, not his sugar daddy.”

Despite the tense air, Dick couldn’t help the snort of laughter. “That’s always one of our favorite ones. I guess this is you saying you’re not with the League of Assassins then?”

“The who?”

“The ones who have the Lazarus water.”

“Fuck no, can you imagine me as an assassin? Like, ignoring the whole killing part, I am… not subtle enough.” Danny finally took a drink of his tea. “And it’s not Lazarus water. They’re connected maybe, I think, but not the same thing at all. The Lazarus water is why my stuff can help Jason though. Which that is some of what I’m only explaining once Jason is awake.”

“Why do you have it?”

Danny shrugged, the movement too stiff to be carefree as Danny might be hoping. The question clearly bothered him. “Because it helps me too. Because I died too. Because I was revived too. Mine just happened pretty instantaneously. I haven’t… pried into the details, but I get the feeling Jason’s wasn’t.”

A shuddering breath ran through Dick and he tamped it down quickly, clearing his throat. “No. No it wasn’t. But same goes for me here, that’s not my story to tell for Jason.”

Danny gave an understanding little nod.

-

Jason’s everything hurt. Fuck why did his everything hurt?

“Hey, don’t try to move.”

“Dickie?” Jason rasped.

Right. Burning sensation, stabbed, called Dick.

“Yep, I’m here Jaybird. I got here in time. And… and so did Danny.”

“What?” Jason jolted up and then immediately regretted it as pain flared through his side.

Danny really was there, sitting in the ratty armchair, legs pulled up this chest, arms wrapped around them, and mug in hand. He looked so small— small and miserable.

“He was here to pour Lazarus water down your throat.”

Jason groaned and let his head fall back against the couch. “It’s not Lazarus water.”

“How do you know that?” Dick snapped.

Damn, Dick was upset. He was hard to deal with when he was upset. Dick was a real act first, smile after sorta guy.

“Because I’ve drank it before and it doesn’t rile up the Pits, Dickie. Does the opposite.”

“…what do you mean?”

“Means it calls them down. Not… it’s not a cure or anything, we don’t know if they’ll go away completely, but they’re less with the ectoshots.”

“And you know that for sure? You’ve done tests? Rounded up a bunch of Pit mad mice and ran tests?”

Jason only didn’t roll his eyes because of how badly his head hurt. “Yeah, sure, that’s exact what I did. What the fuck Dickie, no, I didn’t—”

“So you just took this shit on his,” Dick spit the work venomously, gesturing at Danny; Danny who flinched back, “word on this?”

“Back off, Dick, you don’t get it!”

“No, you don’t get it! You took this ectoshot without running any tests! Jason—”

“Yes, I did!” Jason shouted over Dick’s lecture. “I was tired, Dick. I was tired of being angry. I was tired of being scared of being angry— of what I would do! I was tired of hurting the people I love! I was tired… I was tired of you all flinching away from me when I spoke too loud or moved too quick.”

Jason slumped back down onto the couch, rubbing wearily at his face with his good arm. “I was tired. And you know if I had taken it to Bruce he would’ve wanted to run tests and trials and I wouldn’t have gotten to use it for months or even years and I didn’t— I don’t know if I had years, Dick, not with what’s left of my sanity intact. Not with… not with my family intact.”

“Jay—”

“And it would have made Danny have to expose himself to the Bats. That wasn’t fair, Dick. I couldn’t—”

Dick just sunk down next to the couch and wrapped his brother up in a hug. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t fair of me. I was just scared too. I can’t lose you again. And never, never did I not touch you because I was afraid. I held back because I didn’t know if the touch was welcome. I didn’t want to hurt you and… and in doing that I hurt you.”

Jason dug his fingers into the hoodie Dick was wearing. His hoodie. “You’re a fucking clothing thief.”

“Danny started it,” Dick mumbled into Jason’s shoulder.

“Yeah, well, I think I deserve some comfort. I barged into my boyfriend bleeding out on the floor because, oh, he’s Red Hood,” Danny drawled. “And yeah, we’re talking about that later and how stupid of you it was to go out and fight crime while taking the shots!”

Jason winced. “I’m s—”

“No,” Danny said, cutting him off. “Not now. We are talking about it later. Right now I am pissed off and I hurt—”

“What? Why are you hurt?”

“That’s…” Danny started before he cut himself off with a frown and looked away.

Dick stiffened in Jason’s arms.

That wasn’t a good sign. “Dick… what did you do?”

“I came in and he was trying to poor Lazarus water down your throat!”

“It’s not Lazarus water.” Jason and Danny coursed at the same time.

“But I thought it was! And that he was trying to hurt you!”

“What did you do?” Jason growled, pushing Dick back enough to see his brother’s face.

Dick wouldn’t meet his eyes. “…I hit him with my escrima.”

“Your— were they electrified?”

“Yes.”

“You— And— After I told you that Danny had died from being electrocuted to death?!”

“Wait—” Danny cut in. Why did Danny sound upset— why had he gone ashen? “You told him I died— how I died?”

“I— yes?” Jason wanted to defend himself and he didn’t even know why. “That you were electrocuted in a lab accident and your heart stopped for a bit.”

Danny buried his face in his knees.

“Danny— I…” Jason was missing something. Something like… “Cultural differences?”

“Yeah.” Danny sounded slightly strangled. “Let’s go with that.”

“I thought he was trying to hurt you! I’m sorry!”

“He was just trying to protect his brother, Jason, I get that,” Danny said. He tilted his head up to rest it on his cheek on his knees. “I would kill for my sisters.”

Jason huffed, “I’m still—”

“You’re allowed to be,” Danny said.

“You can hit me if you want,” Dick offered.

“How about…,” Jason trailed off, utterly exhausted again. “How about you just get me some tea?”

“Herbal,” Dick said, standing, “Your blood vessels have been through enough without caffeine.”

Jason waited till his brother was in the kitchen to ask, quietly, “Are you really alright? If you’re not comfortable around Dick...”

“No. I mean, yes, I’ll be fine, just a little… twitchy. And no don’t ask Dick to— we’ll be fine. He had a reason. And I… um… he might be afraid of me too. I may have sunk him into the floor for it.”

“I— okay,” Jason said, having to take a moment with that. “Guess we’re explaining that.”

“Your lead.”

“Fish,” Jason almost pleaded. “You can’t want that. Not when I didn’t tell you—”

“I said later.”

Jason just nodded.

“You both can obviously keep secrets. I’ve… given things away, putting him in the floor. I told him I died and came back too- just not… how.”

“I’m sorry about telling him that— I didn’t think about it. It would have just been like saying I knew someone who drowned and had CRP.”

Danny sighed, just looking so tired. “If I asked you to tell me how you died?”

Jason recoiled at the thought.

“Exactly.” Danny’s smile was sad. “It’s okay. Thank you for saying sorry.”

Not knowing what else to do, but knowing what he needed, Jason held out his good arm, careful of the IV line. Danny uncurled, setting his mug aside, and took the offer. Jason felt something in him settle at having Danny tucked against him.

“What does it feel like?” Danny asked softly.

“Hum?”

Gently, Danny pressed his hand to Jason’s chest. “Your core.”

“Is that—? Burning. It feels like burning. I… that’s not right, exactly. It feels like molten heat.”

Danny hummed and learned over to press a kiss to that spot on Jason’s chest before resettling.

Dick— timing as impeccable as always— came out when Danny was breathing easily again. He handed over the tea in a to-go mug so Jason didn’t have to lean up much to sip at it and settled in the vacated armchair.

“So…,” Jason started eventually. He rubbed his hand up and down Danny’s back. “Like I said and maybe shouldn’t have, Danny died, briefly, in his parents lab. Electrocuted by one of their machines. He came back different because of that machine.”

Dick was quiet for a moment before asking, “Meta?”

“Close enough,” Jason said. “A lot of it the ecto— something his parents were studying as… paranormal scientists.”

“…okay.”

Danny laughed (the sound a little hysterical). “Right? Dead juice does a lot for you if you’ve died.”

“And it must have done a lot for me,” Jason said, before they could get much more into Danny’s situation. “Something in that graveyard brought me back before the Al Ghuls. Whatever the Lazarus water is— and it might be some of the same stuff to start— it’s gone wrong. The ecto Danny’s parents, and now Danny, extracts is pure. It’s basically like a transfusion for me.”

“Okay, right, sure, healthy dead juice,” Dick said, running a hand through his hair. “Are you going to… will you get powers too?”

“Maybe,” Jason said, trying to sound casual. “Or maybe I’m too fucked up from the Pits. But it’s helping Dick, it really is.”

“I do have research on this. I didn’t just give Jason something I knew nothing about,” Danny said. “And I drink it myself if I’m hurt or ill.”

“Like when you were a hero?” Dick asked, following it up with a full body sigh as he just sunk into the armchair.

“You told him?” Jason was surprised.

Danny shrugged in Jason’s arms. “It seemed the only way to explain why I reacted the way I did to the thing we’re not talking about yet.”

“Yeah, okay,” Jason said, kissing the top of Danny’s head. He wouldn’t press tonight. He was in no state for it anyways.

He just hoped that conversation would go well.

He just hoped he wouldn’t lose Danny.

-----

AN: So no one is really happy in this part- but at least they're talking? And they'll have to talk more too. There's also a lot of trying (and failing) not to panic by all the boys. But hopefully this settled a lot for you all!

Sorry if there's more mistakes than normal (don't need them pointed out, they'll be caught in the rewrite and beta) but my hands and my brain have both been really rebelling against me. Proverbial fingers crossed for the new meds I started today to do some good!

(It might be a few weeks before the next part, btw, looking at my progress.)

Due to the new post editor and having been shadow banned, I'm no longer tagging people! You can subscribe here to be notified instead like you would with a tag!

[lovinggreeniehours]

🎫 here's a gush pass ^^ feel free to gush about whichever f/o you want, however much you want, then send this ask to 3 other self shippers! (@comfortingstars)

this isn't really a gush but i wanted an excuse to ramble without getting embarrassed hfshjhddj i might not be very coherent, and all of this is just me talking to myself (about arifive) so i can organize my thoughts

okay firstly, i am rewatching season 3. it is such a giant shitshow. honestly. hfshjfdhhdh now the thing is, the plot threads are so tightly knit together (same can be said for the whole show, really) that ive always found it difficult to self insert into it. which is why ari doesn't play too much of a role besides being five's self-appointed meatshield lol

i am rolling with it and making it related to his character arc throughout the story, but i also thought, what if i scrap him altogether? 🤔 what if he was still in the first apocalypse? we do see in the s4 trailer that we might get to see it again through the time-traveling subway(?) so the idea of arifive reunion there sounds. hmmmmmm. but then again that would present a lot of issues like awkward age gap that just. doesn't feel like their style i guess

that idea, i realize, is also just going to be scrapped right away though. five would never leave him there to begin with. that's the entire basis of their relationship 😭

however that does leave ari as a hanging thread with nowhere to go again. ive tried my best not to speculate too hard so i can roll with the flow as s4 comes out (in less than a week :DD) but i really do wonder. in any case ari's presence there, i feel like, would already create colossal differences to the canon events simply because he's there? 😭 five might not behave the same way because of that and now i have to rewrite the entire series. which is such a pain. honestly

like a lot of problems would be solved so fast if ari was there 😒 not to toot my own horn or anything hfshjfsfhj but i do mean it. like the many times five gets hurt and shot at would be solved very quickly, since ari would be affected by neither of that. that is a major problem on this show in general i think. it relies too much on the inconvenience of it all. they keep all their main characters busy and distracted so they're never on the same page, and therfore they all deal with shit by themselves for 10 episodes when they could've solved the problem in 1 by just talking to each other for more than 3 minutes,,,

this show is so so annoying actually how am i supposed to walk around saying "i like this show" when that is sooo not true i am the umbrella academy's number 1 hater at this point 💀 but also i have extensive knowledge of the characters, lore, and plot that is basically burned into my skull. yes i hate this show i swear

one way i had wanted to give ari his own plot (his main theme is of him growing into his own person after his childhood was cut short, after all) was his doppelganger, morgan, in the sparrow academy but im so lost on whether or not she's dead at the end of the season,,,💀 like sure TWO sparrows survived to the finale. out of SEVEN. and then one of them lived until the end (but he's ben so we're unsure about why he's here), but the other one????? no one knows where the hell she went???????? and the season 4 promo doesn't mention her at all 😭 😭 😭 😭 im so confused okay

one thing i definitely had wanted to touch on when i flesh out ari's arc is his powers. they are so complex and personally one of my favorite concepts ever. the power itself is actually rather simple in concept, just hard to explain

but assuming that there are multiple timelines and dimensions in the universe, ari's powers make it so that he is spiritually connected to all his other selves. at least, more so than the average person would be. this is why he doesn't die! if everyone else's souls are split into all their different variants', ari's variants have one soul connected together like a giant web. even if you cut one string, you still have the web, and it can still be rebuilt. therefore, he can never really be processed as dead (unless he cuts the string himself, but he doesn't know that)

that has always been so interesting to think about for me, and how that impacts his character, because then even his power is a direct parallel to five's. five is the traveler of time and space, meaning he can go anywhere he wishes. ari, meanwhile, is already there. always has been, always is, always will be

i was going to build up on that in season 3 and 4, since morgan is one of his variants but. 💀 um. she might have been wiped from existence altogether so i don't really know if that counts as killing her

tldr this show is stupid. it's so stupid it makes its characters stupid by proxy. if i put myself, a non-stupid person, there, there would be no more plot :( i am sad. but i will carry on with my watching because i need to see my husband very badly

[ahalliance]

I want to know about c(l)ock duo for the WIP ask game :D

Hihi azham :D

Okay my c(l)ockduo wip is a bdubs and impulse double life fic ive had in my backpocket for . So many months now LOL since July I think . i have this third life series that explores the post-game trauma of the hermit players (that I . Also haven’t updated since July my bad lmao) and I started writing this particular wip as a continuation of that from an impulse pov bc impulse and bdubs life series brainrot <3 always been absolutely fascinated by them and I wanted to touch on their double life dynamic bc holy shit . You forcibly soul bonded two people who have this Giant Elephant in the room together (bdubs’ permakill on impy back on third life) that one is still feeling fucked up over (impy) and the other is trying to ignore and move on from (bdubs) . how do they confront that . How do they NOT confront that . The potential is CRAZY . Also the wip is called c(l)ockduo because the fact that clock is one letter off from cock is humorous to me . also they were self-admittedly (gay) married that season . Don’t come for me

EXTRACT !!

“They plant flowers in the soil beds outside their home. 

The house, Midcentury-modern, as Bdubs insists on categorising it, is practically finished; at least its exterior is. Impulse can’t quite face going inside yet, can't bear to pass through elegant doors to see nothing but emptiness. The same emptiness he feels rising within him whenever he’s left alone to his thoughts for too long; whenever he catches Bdubs’ frowning visage out of the corner of his eye, and feels the yawning gap that still lingers between them. 

It isn’t all vacant, he knows. A thread of longing still beats, alive, to some invisible rhythm he cannot place. It sits there next to his heart, next to the soulmate bond imposed upon them.

There is still love, like invisible ink, revealed through blood and sweat; there is love like a tender wound, both a curse and boon against his fragile body. Impulse can feel it all thrumming there, in his chest, a faint double heartbeat that reminds him that not all is quite lost yet. That emptiness does not define them; that emptiness can be dusted out like sheets, if only they’d address it. 

But for now, they plant flowers instead.”

this is nearer to the beginning of the fic where theyre already paired and have started construction on their house and impulse is trying to figure out how to Talk to bdubs past empty platitudes . and he’s finding it hard and confusing !! they’re both struggling with it a lot in their own ways . but the way the fic goes they Do end up talking about stuff in some capacity and it’s at least mildly healing for them (more than they talked in canon at least . but hey you write the things u wanna see LOL)

hope my ramblings were comprehensible hehe

WIP Game

[alcinadimitrescuwu]

This Woman's Work Part IX (Alcina x Female Reader Fanfic)

Part I Part II Part III Part IV Part V Part VI Part VII Part VIII

“You’re almost there, Maman. You’re doing great. Just a couple more steps.”

You take a deep breath in through your nose and blow it out through your mouth and push forward at your daughter’s coaxing, your arms gripping the railing that had been set up in your bedroom. The wound in your side is in agony but you take another step, biting the inside of your cheek hard to keep from crying out in pain.

It has been three weeks since that horrible night. You had already lost a lot of blood by the time Karl and Alcina arrived at Donna’s place. In an incredible stroke of luck, Donna had surgical thread in her sewing kit and at Salvatore’s instructions (he was having one of his good days) sewed up the place where Alcina’s claws had torn through. You were in and out of consciousness, but every time you opened your eyes Alcina was there by your side holding your hand.

Alcina is sitting nearby in her chair now, gently burping Ecaterina after her feeding. She looks up at you and you see concern in her golden eyes and another emotion that has been a mainstay for the past couple weeks: guilt.

Things had been...awkward between the two of you since that night. No matter how many times you assured her that all was well and you had forgiven her, she refused to forgive herself. You had only been intimate one time since that night and it ended quickly after Alcina had forgotten about the wound in your side as she cupped your hip and you couldn’t hold back the scream of pain that came out of your mouth. Alcina had immediately gotten out of the bed and as far away from you as she could, as if afraid touching you would cause any more damage.

She had sunk into the chair and began sobbing brokenly. You had wished to go to her, but your Bath chair was already on the other side of the room. You braced yourself against one of the bedposts as you said gently, “Darling, it was an accident. The pain’s already subsiding. Please come back to bed.”

Alcina covered her face with her hands, but you could see the tears rolling down her cheeks. “I can’t even make love to my wife without causing her pain. What kind of wife does that make me?” The raw self-hatred in her voice broke your heart.

From that point on whenever you had settled down for the night, Alcina kissed your forehead and turned out the light and that was the end of it. She kept to her own side of the bed and you greatly missed the feeling of her muscular arms about you with your shoulder tucked under her chin, her curls kissing your cheekbones.You had the sense that if you tried to move closer she would move away so you didn’t even try.

You try to take another step and suddenly the room spins around you and you fall forward. Daniela, however, quickly grabs your arm and puts her arm around your shoulder before you hit the ground.

“I think that should be enough for today, Maman,” Bela says soothingly.

You set your jaw. You only have three more steps to go before you clear the railing. “No, girls, I can keep going.” But your ragged breathing and forehead shining with sweat give you away. You push your tongue to the inside of your cheek and taste coppery blood from where you had bitten into it.

Cassandra rolls your Bath chair over to you. “Maman, you don’t need to push yourself so hard. You’re not gonna be of any use to Ecaterina if you run yourself ragged.”

You smile at Cassandra’s brutal honesty as she helps you into your Bath chair. “You’re right, dearest.”

Alcina stands up, having finished burping Ecaterina. She looks affectionately over at her daughters taking care of you and you see one of the first genuine smiles from her that you’ve seen in weeks. “You’ve been so good to Maman these past few weeks, dears. She and I really appreciate all the help you’ve given to us and Ecaterina.” She rests the hand not holding Ecaterina on the back of your chair and you take her hand in yours, kissing her knuckles. Surprisingly, she doesn’t pull away this time. “It’s time for us to put Ecaterina down for her nap and for me to change Maman’s bandages. If you’ll excuse us, loves.”

The girls nod in agreement and vanish into their bug shrouds. Alcina turns around and settles Ecaterina into her cradle. Ecaterina gurgles, her eyes mirroring the gold in Alcina’s. Alcina gives her a tender kiss on the forehead before turning to you. She motions for you to stand up and you obey as she kneels down to your level and helps you take off your day dress. Standing there in your slip with her hands on you reminds you of how long it has been since you have last felt her touch.

Alcina lifts up your slip ever so lightly and peels off the gauze bandage wrapped around your waist. Alcina sets her jaw as she uncovers the gashes she herself had inflicted on you. She takes off her gloves, dips the pad of her thumb in a jar of salve and applies it to your wounds. There is an unreadable expression on her face.

You try to give her an encouraging smile. “I talked to Sal the other day,” you posit. “He says that even though the wound is deep,if I don’t expose it to too much sunlight it won’t leave a scar!”

“Not a physical one at least,” Alcina mutters.

Ok. You’ve had enough. You turn her head to face you. “Darling, we’ve been over this,” you say, rubbing her cheekbone with the pad of your thumb. “Are you going to keep punishing yourself forever?”

Almost despite herself, Alcina leans into your touch and interlaces her large fingers with yours. “I can’t imagine how much physical pain you must be in, my love,” Alcina whispers. “And all by my hand.” Tears begin forming in Alcina’s aureate eyes. “I nearly killed you.”

“You didn’t though, Alcina!” You move over to her lap and she gently almost tentatively wraps her arms around you and holds you close. You lean your head against her chest and resist the urge to sigh. It’s been so long since you’ve been held by your wife. “I know you were under Miranda’s control but something held you back from killing me outright. I know it.”

“You don’t know what it’s like being under someone else’s control.” You can almost feel Alcina’s body shudder as she recalls that night. “It was like I was outside my body watching myself. I was screaming at myself to stop when I kissed that woman.” The memory of your wife kissing Mother Miranda so passionately pops into your mind briefly but you shut it out as she goes on. “And when I stabbed you, I-” Her voice cracks. “I was practically begging myself to stop but my body just moved on its own.”

“Don’t you see, then, darling?” you ask. “You weren’t yourself when you were under Mother Miranda’s control. The person that kissed Mother Miranda, the person that stabbed me, that wasn’t you, so please.” You cradle Alcina’s face in your hands and stare into those beautiful discs of gold. “Please stop blaming yourself for this. Mother Miranda is dead. I’m alive. Our daughter is safe and healthy. That’s what matters now.”

Alcina kisses your forehead lovingly. “When did you get so wise?” she asks, tucking a stray curl behind your ear. You can see that you’ve finally gotten through to her. Her body posture is more relaxed, her jaw is loose, and her shoulders aren’t so tight. She carefully places the new bandage over your wound and you feel a pleasant tingle as you feel her bare fingers brush briefly over your tender skin.

She moves to pull your slip over your new bandage but you take her wrist before she can withdraw it. You hold her gaze as you take the strap of your slip off your shoulder and your slip coils in a pool of silk around your ankles. She takes you in her arms and brushes her lips against yours briefly. When she pulls aways, you see the same desire in her eyes. “Are you quite sure, ingeras?” Alcina asks, brushing the back of her knuckles against your cheekbones.

“Yes” you rasp. “Take me to the bed.”

Alcina picks you up as you wrap your legs around her waist, taking care not to touch your sensitive wound and carries you over to the bed. She gently, almost reverently lays you down on the bed. She lowers herself down to kiss you again and you bury your fingers in her curls. Alcina deepens the kiss, her tongue coaxing your mouth open as you unfasten the pearl buttons on the back of her dress. “I’ll go slow for you, draga,” Alcina murmurs against your lips.

“Alright, let’s see how our little patient is doing today- JESUS CHRIST! What the FUCK?”

It seems like Heisenberg has decided to check up on you today.

With a frustrated growl Alcina moves quickly in front of you while holding her own dress up. “Yes, Heisenberg, that is in fact what we were setting out to do before you arrived.” Alcina shakes her head at him derisively. “You seem to have impeccably bad timing, as always.”

Heisenberg’s face is beet red again, you note with amusement. “Well, excuse me for trying to check in on my sister-in-law and my goddaughter! Speaking of which, really Alcina? Getting down and dirty with the kid in the room?”

Alcina’s cheeks are also sporting a lovely red color. “Ecaterina was asleep.” Amidst all the commotion, Ecaterina has already woken up and is crying. “Well, she was until you came in.”

The girls suddenly materialize into the room. “Mother!” Cassandra chirps. “I thought I heard Uncle Karl in here and- JESUS CHRIST! What the FUCK!”

Alcina covers her face with her hands. Bela takes the book that Daniela is holding and holds it so it’s covering the image of you and your wife on the bed. “Really Mother,” Bela tuts to herself.

Daniela doesn’t seem to mind. She turns to the two of you, unperturbed by the state of your undress and asks, “Can Uncle Karl stay for dinner, Mother, Maman? Please? It’s been so long since we’ve all had dinner together!”

You smile indulgently at her over Alcina’s shoulder. “Of course he can, darling,” you say.

“Fine,” Alcina mutters. "Now if you please, will all of you kindly get out of our room?”

The daughters vanish into the bug shrouds, chattering excitedly about what Cook is making for dinner. Heisenberg leaves too, chuckling softly to himself.

You turn to your blushing bride and give her a chaste kiss on the lips before you both get dressed and join your daughters for dinner.

Together. As a family.

[wavesmp3]

[ksw] clouds

sunwoo x reader

wc. 5k warnings: medical inaccuracies, death, illness, hospitals, overall just a pretty heavy piece genre can only be described as an absolute mess inspired mainly by san junipero but also slightly by charlie kaufman and wong kar wai

a/n: this is supposed to be told nonlinearly but like the creation of it was very messy so i have no clue if it actually worked, so good luck trying to make this piece make sense of this :) 

act iii. scene iii.

Sunwoo sits and watches the sun shift from pink and blue to an impossible shade of green. And it’s then he knows that without a doubt Clara has ruined the color green for him. Because instead of marveling at the color of the sky, Sunwoo is reminded of the doors in her apartment building.

“Thought I might find you here.” The voice of a stranger who Sunwoo loved once upon a time says behind him. He tries like hell not to turn around. Not to lean back towards the voice and wait for your hand on his shoulder or your shin knocking familiarly against his back. He focuses on the waves crashing below instead. The roar of the water beneath him is deafening, but only if you let it be. He does, and he almost forgets that you’re behind him.

“Where’d you go?” You ask, now sitting next to him, tugging at the long grass. 

“I’m right here.”

“And what about in there?” You bring a finger up and poke at the side of his forehead. 

He turns to you, facing you in full. He takes in your features like it’s the first time all over again. And, oh, he wishes he knew before how many firsts you already had together. This is just another. This is just the first time he’s seen you in the past six months and remembered the thousands of times he’s seen your face before. 

He studied your cheeks. The one he now recalls running the back of his palm over after you left for the Cloud. 

He memorizes, for the millionth time, your eyes. He used to swear they were darker than they are, but then he saw them in the sun. He was dying back then; then he saw your eyes and you saved him. Just like that. 

Mr. Choi was right of course. As he always must be. You and him are like an old married couple. Not like. You are. Almost were. 

“I had lunch with Mr. Choi today.” He tells you. 

You squint at him. “I know. It’s Thursday.” You pull out a piece of the grass. “What’d he make?”

“Ramen.”

“Was it good?”

“It was okay.”

“Too spicy?”

Suwnoo answers with a sigh, looking away from you and back towards the water. The deafening waves crash against the cliffside. “I know you looked at your file.” He finally says. You stop pulling at the grass. You still. “Mr. Choi told me.”

After he says it, there’s a silence that isn’t actually silent at all. The waves rage below his feet. The seagulls are there too, beneath, above, somewhere, everywhere. And then, of course, there’s you and Sunwoo, trying to be silent over the static in your heads and the machines you’re hooked up to in a universe far far away. 

“Did he tell you about my file?”

He looks at you again. “No.”

“Oh.” You look away, brows furrowed, lick your lips, and then turn back to him. “So why are you upset?”

“After he told me, I went and I…”

“You didn’t.”

“I looked at mine.”

There’s another silence, except that this time it really is quiet. Sunwoo read once whilst in a rabbit hole of medical research that true silence only happens in a vacuum, where there is no medium for sound waves to travel through. This must be that. This place, the files, Mr. Choi and Mr. Chan, Clara and her apartment building full of green doors--it’s a vacuum. And they stick people in it then call it the Cloud. They call it extra time. But it isn’t. It’s nothing and he’s stuck in the middle of it. So Sunwo stares at you, straight through the vacuum of time and space you’re both lost in, waits for you to say something, and then waits for himself to hear it. 

“You looked?” You finally say, voice folding in on itself. 

“Yes.” Sunwoo’s own voice is barely there. You must be reading his lips which you’ve always been good at anyways. 

“So you know now?” 

“I always knew, and now, I remember.”

act i. scene iv.

There’s been an accident. 

That’s what they say when the sun falls out of the sky and the world starts spinning in the wrong direction. It’s how they show up at Sunwoo’s door painted in shades of blue and red, with authority in their arms and hands on their hips. How they prepare him for the looming moment where they rip past his skin, blood, bone to shoot a gun straight at his heart. I’m so sorry for your loss, they say leaving him with a bullet lodged somewhere between his left and right atrium. 

And those are the four words that play over and over and over in Sunwoo’s head as he gets to the hospital. Those are the words that crawl inside his open chest and turn him blue and black with infection. There’s been an accident, he remembers, staring at the extraordinary measures taken to keep your heart beating and lungs beating. This is it. Except that the accident isn’t that you’re dying, but that you’re dying. It’s always supposed to have been him. He’s supposed to be the one stuffed with tubes and hooked up to monitors, the one whose life is hanging on by a thread, and you’re supposed to be the one that saves him. It all feels like a play that’s gone horribly wrong because everyone switched parts after intermission without telling him. At what point did you steal the role of dying protagonist from him? 

We did everything we could, a stranger in a white coat says. Except that it’s not some stranger, it’s your colleague and co-worker because this is the hospital you work at and the hospital Sunwoo met you in. There was too much damage to the brain, they explain as the image of their tear-stricken face goes from your friend during intern year to the doctor who operated on you as your brain went dead. 

“We have two options, right?” Sunwoo is far too familiar with surgery and all this. He knows from his hospital days what’s supposed to happen next. But apparently, things have changed since then. 

“Actually, there’s a third option.”

Sunwoo doesn’t waste a second. He jumps out of the chair stained red from his bleeding heart and asks: “What is it?”

“We can upload them.”

act iii. scene ii.

In fifty days of living in the cloud, Sunwoo has learned all about the people that he shares a building with. There’s Mr. Chan who lives behind a vomit green on the same floor as him and who hasn’t left his room since last January. There’s also Mr. Choi, who lives behind the emerald door and invites Suwoo over for lunch every Thursday. Clara lives upstairs, where the walls are painted in various shades of green--olive, seaweed, moss, hunter, shamrock, sage, and others that Sunwoo tries not to think too deeply about. He’s only met Clara once in the past fifty days and has no particular wish to see her again. He hadn’t expected her to be a kid. Cancer, you told him after their introduction in the lobby, poor girl was only seven. As said before, Sunwoo tries not to think about it. 

And then of course there’s you behind the forest green door who has been slowly showing him all the good places. There’s the beach where you spent the day making seashell necklaces. The  cafe which serves its tea too sweet for him, but sweet enough to be considered your favorite. Sunwoo just gets the chocolate bread. You took him downtown. To a club. The tallest building. And to midtown where the amusement park is. 

But his favorite place you’ve taken him so far is the cliffside above the beach, where the waves crash against the rocks in a way that can only be described as violent. That day you and him laid in the grass and stared at the clouds with your heads dangling just over the edge and water spraying the backs of your necks. That day you turned to him and told him you’re sorry. For what, he asked. I’m so sorry you’re sick, you said, but it’s nice to have you around here. I think in a sense, we’ve both been waiting for this. Then, you smiled and stole all of the blood from his body. So yeah, that day, that place--it’s his favorite. 

Today, you take him on a hike up a mountain. 

“Do you believe in an afterlife?” You ask him after having spent thirty minutes silently staring at the view from the best peak. 

“One after this?”

“Yeah. I guess. Although, I’m not so convinced this counts.”

“I don’t know.” Sunwoo shrugs. “Maybe.”

“Do you think we’d be able to be with our loved ones in it?”

His chest lurches. “If there is one, yes.”

“Do you think it’ll be different than this?”

Sunwoo turns to you finally. “Why are you asking about this?”

You shake your head. “Nevermind. It’s a stupid question.”

He turns back towards the view. From here, he can make out Clara’s building. He thinks about her, about Mr. Choi and Mr. Chan, who he recently found out were once married but who haven’t spoken since Mr. Chan read his file in January, and he thinks about you and about him. 

“I think,” Sunwoo says, loud enough so that you can hear after wandering a little bit away from him, “that whatever the afterlife is, if it does exist, it’ll be worth it.”

You turn to him, but don’t make any move to come near him again. “And if it doesn’t exist?”

“Then life will have been worth it.”

The corner of your lip lifts. “I like that.”

Sunwoo only nods at the sentiment, and after a long while, he builds enough courage to ask, “you’ve been here a really long time, haven’t you?”

“Time doesn't work as linearly in the cloud as it does in the real world. Sometimes it feels like I got here and then you arrived the very next day.” You turn back towards the view and exhale heavily. 

“But yes. I’ve been here for an eternity.”

act ii. scene i.

Before he actually sees you, Sunwoo feels you. Not you, in particular, but something in the distance, a presence in the corner of the room and a pair of eyes watching him from somewhere far away. 

The scariest part is how much the feeling doesn’t actually scare him. 

--

Two days after that, he starts to see you in the flesh. He tells himself that his mind is playing tricks on him, that the person he saw in the produce aisle wasn’t actually you at all and was just a stranger with the same hair. 

He doesn’t go straight home from the store that day. Instead, he stops by the hospital and checks in on you, but even that doesn’t do anything about the fact that he sees a shadow of you behind the bed.

--

The day after that, you speak to him. Standing in the middle of his kitchen in broad daylight, you speak, you say hello, and the first thing Sunwoo thinks is that he’s dead. 

You aren’t, you reply. You’re a zombie, he reasons, here for my brain. I’m not. A ghost. No. Are you, here Sunwoo falters, fear flooding out of his body to make room for the briefest blotch of hope that’s crushed almost immediately by you saying: I’m not alive, Sunwoo. You saw me in the hospital yesterday. 

“So then,” he swallows, “what are you?”

I’m here. You look at him, stare at his face and without a sliver of doubt say, I’m here for you. 

Sunwoo knows it’s impossible. You can’t be here. You can’t. And yet, you are. 

Three years ago Sunwoo was told he had three months left to live, and he still remembers how impossibly you saved him from the brink of death. He remembers how impossible things happen all the time, and how impossibly possible it is that this is one of them. He steps towards you, touches your face, and feels the real, impossible thing against his hand. 

“You’re here.”

--

On the fifth day of your haunting, Sunwoo finally has the sense to ask why. 

Why what?

“Why are you here?”

I’m here for you.

“Stop saying that.”

But I am, you tell him. You asked, and that’s the answer. I’m a doctor, Sunwoo. I’m here for you. 

Then, finally, he hears what you’ve been saying for the past five days. You’re here for him. 

And the thing about doctors is that they’re there for you when you need them. 

“I’m sick.” 

Yes, you answer quietly, although it wasn’t a question. 

“Again.” 

I’m so sorry. 

“You’re a hallucination, aren’t you?” Sunwoo’s shocked by how sad that makes him, how disappointing it is. “I’ve been hallucinating.”

Find me in the Cloud, Sunwoo. There’s something I want to say. 

You’re gone by the time he gets to the hospital. 

act iii. scene i.

Sunwoo stares at the hall of green doors, eyes darting from door to door in an attempt to stare down the shades until they confess which one of them is tea green.

“Clara, the landlord, likes colors.” A voice says from behind him. “Every couple of months she repaints all of the doors in different shades of the same one. Before the green, it was yellow.” 

Sunwoo turns around to face you. When your eyes find him, they go blank for the smallest of moments. You give him a look that goes right through him, turning him inside out like you’ve seen the underside of his skin. It irks him. 

“I’m Sunwoo. I’m new.”

You gulp. “You’re here.” He doesn’t know what to make of the statement. Do all people in the cloud act like this? “Why?”

Sunwoo nods, maybe you’re not so weird as much as you just have a weird way of posing questions. “I was told I’m sick.”

“I’m sorry.” You say, frowning like you actually might feel back for him. 

“Have you been here a while then?” You nod. “Can I ask how long?” You shake your head. Sunwoo doesn’t think too much about it. Instead, he returns your earlier question “Why are you here?”

“Brain dead.”

“I’m sorry.”

You ignore it and point to a door down the hall. “I’m forest green. You?”

“Tea green. But I can’t find-” 

You tap the door in front of him. “This one, genius.”

“Oh.” He laughs awkwardly. “Thanks.”

Your mouth parts as if to say something, and your face goes blank again. He feels his skin turning itself inside out because of it. “Have you read your file yet?”

He shakes his head. “I just got here.”

You inhale, softening, and mutter an ‘okay’. You continue down the hall towards your door. Sunwoo is stuck in place. “I can show you around here, if you like. Take you to all the cool places.”

Sunwoo takes you up on it.

A forest green door slams shut down the hallway. 

act i. scene ii.

“Thank you for taking me out of the hospital.” Sunwoo says, exhaling. “I can’t remember the last time I’ve been to a park like this.” 

And it’s true, he really can’t. He’s been sick for so long now, and has been through a multitude of treatment plans and too many surgeries. When you’re sick and have 9 surgeons turn you down after asking them to save your life, you forget the joy of being outside and feeling the sun on your skin. You were the first doctor to agree to the surgery. You’re the only doctor to have ever treated Sunwoo like he wasn’t dying, like he was actually going to live.

“You don’t have to thank me. This is good for me too.” You say, head resting against the park bench and eyes closed. 

Sunwoo inhales, taking in the park with all his senses. A visceral sort of thing you learn to do as often as possible when you’ve been as close to death as frequently as he has. He feels the wood beneath his body and the grass beneath his feet. He feels the light on his skin and the wind pushing against his arms and nose. He listens to the kids screaming at the playground at the bottom of the hill and to the dogs barking within the dog park beside it. He takes all this in, relishes in it for the last time as a dying person. 

You sigh. “One more surgery.” 

“And then I’ll be done with this sickness.” 

You smile. He pretends not to see. “And then you’ll be done.” 

“Thank you for saving my life.”

“Don’t do that.”

“No. Seriously.” 

You smile again, this time at him. Sunwoo doesn’t have to pretend not to see. “I haven’t finished saving it yet.”

He leans back against the bench and closes his eyes. “But you will.” 

You tap on your coffee cup. “Honestly though, you did more work than me.” Sunwoo frowns while you take a sip. “The other nine doctors you called are good doctors, and they made the same judgement call I would have made for any other patient. No sane doctor would have agreed to treat you. But you were the reason I said yes. You had such faith that you were going to live and so much faith that I could do it that I believed you. I might be the one doing the technical saving, but you, Sunwoo, you’re the one who convinced me to do it. You saved yourself.”

He stares at you. The light hits your eyes like it’s finding a way to break through them. In truth, before Sunwoo got sick, he didn’t think he was scared of death, but he is. He’s terrified of it. Sunwoo realized it two weeks after his diagnosis and the day after he was wrongly told he only had three more months left to live. But now, for the first time since he was diagnosed, he doesn't feel so afraid of it. Despite how far he’s come and how close he is to beating this fucking illness, while staring at the light woven through your eyes, Sunwoo thinks he could live with himself if he dropped dead tonight. 

That thought alone, is almost as terrifying as death used to be. 

act iii. scene v.

“I saw your ghost, you know.” It’s the first thing Sunwoo has said to you in over two weeks. “It wasn’t actually you though, was it?” You don’t even bother looking up from your cup of tea. Through the silence, Sunwoo orders a coffee. 

“I didn’t know that.” The coffee turns lukewarm. “It wasn’t me.” You push an uneaten half of chocolate bread towards him. “It’s in your brain this time. Symptoms can include hallucinations.”

“Think you can still save me?” You can’t. If you know that much, you know he’s out of medical miracles, and that this time, he really won’t survive it. But it’s a joke. And you laugh at it.

“Definitely not. I never really liked neurosurgery.”

And all at once, he’s painfully aware of your friend somewhere in the real world that does like it but watched anyways as your brain died before her, split wide open. 

“Anyways, how do you know all of this?” But what Sunwoo really wants to say is brains are killer. Literally. Figuratively. 

“I’ve known since we...“ you hesitate, mouth stuck halfway through a word he can’t place. “After last time, I read your chart and looked at your scans.” Sunwoo nods. He expected as much. He doesn’t ask how you got them. “I’m sorry you're sick again.” You say to him quietly. “I’m sorry you’re dying.”

“I’m sorry you’re dead.” As soon as the words have left his mouth, he regrets them. Because you aren’t. And he knows you too well to think you’d look past the technicality. 

You scoff, shake your head slightly, and with a spiteful smile say, “Can I say it?”

Sunwoo only sighs. “Let’s start over instead.” 

You nod. He pushes the chocolate bread back. 

act iii. scene iv.

Mr. Choi was the one to recommend that Sunwoo give you and himself space. It’s been a month since you and him last spoke, since that moment hovering above the waves after he read his file and after he found out you read yours. He misses you, and has been for so long now. Mr. Choi was wrong. Sunwoo’s standing outside your forest green door to prove it. 

You open the door before he can knock. There’s no shock in your voice when you say his name, like you’ve been waiting for this day, expecting it. 

He looks behind you, at your apartment in Clara’s building that looks just like your apartment in the real world. The same one he cleaned out after you died, still filled with things he gave to your family or donated or took back to his place. He wants to crumble just looking at it again. “Can I come in?”

“It’s only been a month.”

And he knows what you mean by it. Three months is the recommended time off after reading one’s file. To reacclimate, they say, to process. But the insinuation that Sunwoo was supposed to go three months without seeing you makes him feel sick. The insinuation that after a year of being without you in the real world he was supposed to be without you here too, enrages him. Then he remembers how long you’ve been here, and how long you’ve been doing this and feels slightly murderous.

All he says is: “It’s been a lot longer than that for you.”

Your lip twitches. You lock and unlock the open forest green door five times before saying, “Are you sure?”

He nods. You let him in. 

Sunwoo used to imagine what it would be like to meet you again in the Cloud one day. He imagined tears and hugs and kisses. He imagined i love you’s and i hate you’s and i miss you. He imagined the scenario more times than can possibly be considered healthy. But he imagined something. He was waiting for the day. Waiting for this day. But this moment, sitting at your round wood table while you boil water for tea, is nothing like the million different ways he imagined seeing you again. 

And as you set down two mismatched mugs and take the seat across from him, he doesn’t even try to create one of them. “How long has it been since you read your file?”

You watch the steam rise from your tea for a long moment, then stand, grab the sugar and pour a spoonful of it into your tea. You take another spoonful and look at him expectantly. “Want some?” He nods, and you pour the sugar into his. You stir the tea then taste, then cringe, then add more sugar and then ask if he wants it. He refuses. You stir again. Sunwoo watches the whirlpool and waits the eternity it takes you to say: “I read it on my first day.”  

You put the sugar away, satisfied with the tea’s sweetness while Sunwoo marvels at how long you’ve known and how silently you’ve been carrying the knowledge of you and him since he came. And that knowledge is what makes him finally remember one of the reasons he came. “Is there something you want to tell me?” You look up at him when he asks it, exhaling like you’ve been wanting to bring it up for so long now, which Sunwoo guesses isn’t as much of a simile as he thinks it is. 

“Yes, actually. I…” you hesitate, flicking the mug as if the right words will come hopping out of the tea. Sunwoo watches for it. “I’ve just been here for a long time now, Sunwoo.”

“Two years isn’t that long.”

“Time doesn’t work the same here as it does down there.” You tell him tiredly. “It’s been decades.”

He doesn’t say anything.

“In the beginning, I didn’t mind the waiting. I knew you were on your way, but I just,” you hesitate, “I didn’t think it’d take so long for you to come back to me.” 

Sunwoo covers your hand with his. “I’m sorry.” You twist your palm into it, squeeze, then pull your hand away. Sunwoo swallows. “I came as fast as I could.”

“I know. I waited.”

“Do you regret it?” Sunwoo’s terrified of what the answer might be.

You don’t give it. “That’s not what I meant.” 

“Then?”

“I’ve been here for so long, and,” your head drops, voice breaking under the weight it carries, “it’s been so lonely.”

“But I’m here now.” Sunwoo says, leaning forward against the table. “You aren’t alone anymore.”

“I know you’re here. I know, and I thought that would fix it, but it didn’t. Seeing you in the hall that day was so bittersweet, because you were here but that also meant you were somewhere else dying. Because you were here and I still felt lonely.” You stop, chugg the remaining bits of your tea, and then wipe your cheeks. “Do you get what I’m saying?”

“No.” But it’s a lie. He does get it. He knows all about loneliness and the way it creeps inside, so slyly. The way it starts small and then grows, feeding on negligence, until it's too big for your body. He knows how it sits inside you, for all its enormity, and spills into everything. He knows how it lingers. How it has nothing to do with people or lack of them and everything to do with grief. Sunwoo knows all about loneliness. The day he read his file he felt a dam of it burst open within him. 

“I’m saying that in the real world I saved you, and now it’s your turn to save me.” You gulp. “I’m saying that I want you to unplug me.”

It takes a moment for Sunwoo to even register what you’ve said, but when he does remember the life support that’s keeping your body alive somewhere in a universe far away, he doesn’t say anything. He just stands and walks out of your apartment. 

act i. scene iii.

“Doctor, please present.” The attending announces, stepping into Sunwoo’s room for rounds. 

“Mr. Kim,” a resident starts, flipping open his chart, “was diagnosed 14 months ago and has gone through several different treatment plans. When he came to us, the illness had spread and was deemed inoperable and untreatable by several other physicians. Our treatment plan was aggressive and grueling but ultimately, effective. Sunwoo is 20 days post op from his third and final surgery. The surgery went extremely well with no complications and his vitals were excellent. He has been a model patient all throughout recovery, and according to our latest scans, he is also now illness free…”

Sunwoo doesn’t even bother listening to the rest. 

--

“So, now that I’m no longer a patient, if I ask you out on a date, will you actually say yes?” 

“Well,” you say, signing his discharge papers, “only one way to know.”

“What is it?”

You look up at him, smiling. “Ask me again.”

He does. 

You say yes. 

act iii. scene v. take ii. 

“I saw your ghost.” The first thing Sunwoo says after the last failed attempt.

You look up from your tea. “It wasn’t me.” 

“I know.” Sunwoo orders another coffee. “But the hallucination was how I knew I was sick again. It made me feel like you were trying to warn me, like you were up here somewhere caring from a distance. Right after I pieced it all together you told me to find you here and that there was something you wanted to say.” The coffee turns lukewarm again. Sunwoo can’t bring himself to say it. You sigh and push the same piece of chocolate bread back towards him. This time, he takes a bite from it. And with a mouthful of chocolate bread, he cries, “I just got you back, and now you want to leave all over again.”

You frown. “I didn’t want to leave the first time, and it’s different now.”

“How?”

“I want to go. Isn’t that worth something?”

“And what about what I want?”

“Oh, Sunwoo,” you say, “I’m sorry you’re sick. The hallucination was you and your head, but for what it’s worth, I have been up here caring from a distance. I still…” you don’t need to say the words. He knows. He never had to doubt it. “I never stopped.”

“I’ve been thinking about what you asked of me.” Sunwoo tells you. He made the decision last week but today, right now, with your confession still falling through the air, is the first time he’s had the stomach to swallow it. “And I’ll do it. I will. I just need some time. You’ve had so long and in comparison I’ve had nothing.”

“Okay.” You say simply.

“How long can you give me?”

You smile. “You know I’d give you an eternity if you asked for it.”

“I’m scared.” Sunwoo confesses then. “I know it’s what you want, but selfishly, I don’t want to let you again. I don’t know if I’m a big enough person to do it.”

“I do.” You say to him, leaning forward against the table and looking straight through him. “I know because I was your doctor. I have cut inside your body, seen all your organs, and during surgery two, I held your heart in my hands. I felt it beating. So I know exactly how big it is, and I know it’s big enough for this”

Sunwoo feels the heart you worked so hard to repair bursting inside of him. 

“God. Why’d you have to read your file so soon?”

You laugh. “I missed you. I couldn’t help it.”

And just like that, you’ve stolen the entire concept of fear from him. 

“I’m ready.”

“What?”

He looks at you and feels the loneliness slither away.

“Ask me again.”

[nevertheless-moving]

Suicidal Misunderstanding Part VI - Star Wars Time Travel AU

Part I - - - - -  Part II - - - - - Part III - - - - - Part IV - - - - - Part V 

Anakin watched Obi-Wan through the stalks for several minutes. He could see him kneeling at the base of the waterfall, occasionally glancing around, as if searching for someone. Just when he was about to break and interrupt him, Obi-Wan stood and walked over. They sat together on the low bench, surrounded by the carefully cultivated colored fungi. 

“Obi-Wan...maybe we should talk about what’s going on with you. Whatever it is, I’m here for you.” Anakin offered hesitantly.

Obi-Wan tensed, hands clenching in his lap. 

“No.” 

“Master Windu and Bant both seemed to think this isn’t a drug thing. Please, let-”

“That wasn’t what I was saying no to.” 

Obi-Wan stood and began threading a path through the mushrooms, careful not to step on any of the smaller ones. Anakin was forced to follow directly in his footsteps, not wanting to risk damaging something Obi-Wan clearly seemed to care about, but wishing he could look at his Master’s face.

“Did I ever tell you about Bruck Chun?” Obi-Wan asked.

“No. Who’s Bruck?” Anakin responded with deliberate patience.

“He was an old crechemate of mine, quite gifted, though he had a temper. There have been times you remind me of him. We were rivals.” They were approaching the end of the alcove, a large stone overhang throwing them in to shadow.

“Were?”

“He died. When we were twelve.”

When they reached the rock face, Obi-Wan started climbing straight up. Anakin followed. Several clicks above the floor, Obi-Wan squeezed his way into a narrow crack, invisible from the floor below. Anakin followed. They awkwardly shuffled along the passage until Obi-Wan suddenly dropped out of sight. Anakin followed.

They landed in a hidden alcove. It was half lit by sunlight filtering in from cracks above, and half lit by the glow of mushrooms and crystals tenaciously embedded in the rock face around.

“Oh.” Anakin said softly. “Is this where you go when you visit the fountains to meditate?”

“No, I hadn’t been here in years.” Obi-Wan answered wistfully. “I started getting too big, didn’t want to damage the passageway too much. I figured some other younglings would stumble upon it someday like I did. I’m sorry. I avoided this room for the first year or two of your padawanship. By the time I even thought to share it, you had already grown so big...”

He sat down, legs stretched out in front. Anakin sat next to him, mirroring his position.

“I’m glad you’re sharing it with me now.” Anakin smiled reassuringly, but Obi-Wan was staring ahead blankly.  

The young knight swallowed nervously. “Did you...come here with Bruck?”

Obi-Wan let out a snort. “Gods, no! I hid here from him. Before we were rivals, he bullied me relentlessly.”

“And...this is the guy you said I remind you of?” Was he being insulted?

“At times. Math lessons, saber practice, none of that ever came easy to me. But you and him...you never even needed to study. And you do have a vicious streak, Anakin.”

Rather than try to argue in vain against the slight hurt, Anakin just asked, “How did he die?”

Obi-Wan closed his eyes. “He fell.” 

Anakin jerked in surprise, “Wait, you mean-”

“We were fighting at the top of the waterfall- it- he had nearly killed Bant. He was angry that we both had been chosen by Masters, and Xanatos used that to manipulate him into helping with an attack on the temple. Bruck was lashing out. He was a better swordsmen, but his anger made him unbalanced. I knocked him back. And he fell. I’ve forgotten a lot of details about him as a person, but I still remember his body at the bottom of the falls.”

"That’s...awful. I’m sorry.” Anakin said helplessly. He had known the bare basics of Xanatos’s fall, but clearly not the full story.

Obi-Wan sighed, leaning slightly to press their shoulders together. Anakin scootched over to try and provide a little extra silent comfort.

“I thought I had learned to live with my guilt over my part in what happened to him, but I suppose recent events have torn open old scars, so to speak.”

Anakin held his breath, Obi-Wan didn’t add anything else. 

“Obi-Wan” he tried to nudge gently. 

“Hmm?”

Anakin lost his patience, jumping up. “Master, please!” He half yelled, looming over his Master. A flash of fear crossed Obi-Wan’s expression as he looked up, which immediately halted the fit of rage. 

He knelt down penitently, “I’m sorry, Obi-Wan, I shouldn’t have yelled, but please, let me help. I won’t get mad like that again, I swear. Whatever you need, I’m here for you.”

“You’re not.” Obi-Wan whispered, expression blank. He shuddered all over, fists clenching tightly.

“You’re NOT here for me!” Obi-Wan shouted, suddenly offended. “How can you POSSIBLY claim to be there for anyone after what you-” Obi-Wan seemed to choke on the words. He let out a strangled cry and pulled his knees up to his chest. Tears welled, but he didn’t seem to notice.

Anakin stared wide-eyed, cold all over. “This...this is about something I did. I don’t understand. You... told me a few hours that I’m dear to you, what...what could I have done since then to make you...I don’t understand.”

“You know what you did.” Obi-Wan let out. “And the fact that learning about it didn’t stop me from caring about you doesn’t help, it just makes the heartbreak a thousand times more painful.”

Anakin racked his brain wildly. This couldn’t be about his marriage with Padme, right? He told him this morning that he didn’t mind the sneaking off. There was only one screw-up big enough that could possibly warrant this severe a reaction, and only two people alive knew about that, both sworn to secrecy.

“The younglings,” Obi-Wan whispered. “You - you didn’t even spare the younglings.” Obi-wan looked gutted, terrified. 

Anakin felt like he had been dropped in ice water. This was- this was his worst fear- that Obi-Wan would learn about his darkest failing as a Jedi and be ashamed of him, angry at him, would abandon him. He had already made his judgement. How could he have even learned about about the Tuskens?

“Padme-” he breathed out. “Padme told-”

“No!” Obi-Wan denied desperately, lurching forward. “Padme would never betray you! I would never betray you! We both love you, Anakin. Please, some part of you must know that! You must!”

His master seemed frantic, fingernails digging painfully into Anakin’s arm.

“You love me?” Anakin asked brokenly, heart cracked open.

Obi-Wan let go of Anakin to curl in on himself again. He seemed very small. It hurt to look at.

“I think its safe to say at this point that there’s nothing you could, no betrayal or atrocity you could commit that would make me stop loving you. Despite what you’ve done, you’re my brother, my son- of course I love you. The fact that I led you to doubt my love for you might be my greatest failing, though there are so many its hard to really say.” Obi-Wan sounded utterly defeated.

Anakin’s heart was pounding. This was a nightmare and a childhood dream. Obi-Wan loved him unconditionally, but he knew about his slaughter of the Tusken's and was ashamed. This couldn’t be real. He can’t know.

“Palpatine-” Anakin tried to ask.

Obi-Wan growled. “I do not need to talk about how that power-hungry liar systematically worked to tear us apart. I want to know why you would-” he cut himself off again.

Palpatine told Obi-Wan- that was more than he could even begin to process.

"I’m sorry, Master. I’m so sorry for failing you.” The words came desperately tumbling out, “I was just- I was so angry about my mom’s death and-”

“Your mother’s death? You killed innocent children for the sake of your Mother?! I don’t- how could anyone possibly rationalize-” Obi-Wan hissed out, truly angry for the first time that day. He took a deep breath and pulled himself upright.

“Your mother’s death was a terrible tragedy and I will forever regret my role in it. I should have tried harder to free her, for her own sake. I was so afraid that if I pushed for permission with the council they would think I was failing you, and they would take you from me. I made- so many decisions out of attachment, out of fear of losing you, and in the end I hurt you so badly you couldn’t trust me. You didn’t trust me with the truth of your visions, so I gave you bad advice born of misunderstanding, and your mother died horribly. I- I can see how you would blame the Jedi for that, even if its not rational. I certainly understand why you would blame me for that, why you would hate me because of her death.”

Obi-Wan scrubbed at his face mercilessly, practically tearing skin in his haste to wipe away snot and tears.

“But why, if you were getting revenge, would you kill the children and not me?” “Why couldn’t you just kill me and be satisfied?” He finally looked straight at Anakin, asking like it was a real question.

Anakin was horrified. After a few false starts he finally choked out, “Master, I love you. I told you, you’re the closest thing I have to a father. You’re the last person I could ever kill.”

“The last person you could ever kill,” Obi-Wan echoed back, looking pained.

“Please, Master, tell me how to fix this. I want to make things right. How can I fix things?” Anakin begged.

“That’s not a fair question. You can’t unmurder people. You can’t put them back together like a- an engine or a droid- ”

“There has to be something I can do to make you forgive me!” Anakin said desperately. “You can’t just tell me you love me and then say I’m an irredeemable monster!”

“Well that’s an entirely different matter, though no less cruel to think about.”

He leaned into Anakin’s side once more, the press providing a hint of warmth even in the unshakable cold. “Anakin, it isn’t very rational or fair of me, but it wouldn’t really take that much to get me to forgive you. Kriff, if you just acted sorry for what you had done.” Obi-Wan sighed.

“If you told me that you regretted the lives you took and swore you were going to stop murdering, force help me, I’d probably take you back in an instant. All I ever wanted was to help you be the best version of yourself.”

“I’m sorry.” Anakin said immediately. “I’m so, so sorry for what I did. I lost control of myself because I was scared, and angry, and suffering and, and then I was so scared that you would hate me that I pretended it was ok, and I told myself that they deserved to die, but how could children ever deserve to die and please Master I’ll throw away my lightsaber just please, please don’t leave me, I need you, please-” and the rest of the words dissolved into large, ugly sobs.

Obi-Wan keened and pulled Anakin into his lap like he was a child again. Anakin scrabbled at his cloak, desperately trying to hold on. The terrible chill that had been haunting him slowly started to fade away as he was rocked back and forth. 

After a minute, Anakin got enough of a hold on himself to consider trying to stop blubbering like a crecheling on his Master’s robes. But he quickly realized that Obi-Wan was also crying, so instead threw his arms around the older man and let himself go.

An uncertain amount of time passed before they both slowed from heaving sobs, to dry hiccups, to quiet whimpers. Eventually they ended up laying in a heap, boneless but for their hold on each other. And finally, the cavern was more or less silent.

Anakin felt physically lighter, mind clear like he had just completed an extremely successful meditation session.

Without a word, they slowly shifted so they were leaning on the wall instead of sprawled on the ground. Obi-Wan pulled his robe off, first using it to wipe his face, then tenderly cleaning his Padwan’s. 

Anakin just chuckled. 

Obi-Wan threw the robe so it covered the two of them, which was a little gross, but that only made Anakin snort giddily. 

They sat there peacefully for sometime. The shadows from above started shifting, and Obi-Wan sighed, “I really should go eat something.”

Anakin sighed back at him in agreement. They both stretched in the small space, joints popping.

“Do you need to walk through the rest of the gardens first?” Anakin asked.

“No,” Obi-Wan replied, tenderly fussing with his kid’s hair and robes so they looked presentable. “This was...more than I could have hoped for.”

Anakin beamed, giving Obi-Wan one last quick hug before gesturing upwards. “Time to get back to the real world?” he joked with a hint of regret.

“Time to get back to the real world.” Obi-Wan repeated heavily.

Part VII

[faerynova]

First Line Tag Game

tagged by @the-finch-address​

Rules: List the first lines of your last 20 stories (if you have less than 20, just list them all). See if there are any patterns. Choose your favourite opening line, then tag some of your favourite authors!

ive done this once already but ive got a lot more bullshit to put on the table so heres everything that has an actual opening line (because a lot of my wips dont yet)

1.) Pressure [Disabled Disasters in Love]

As soon as Sam hears the thunder-- loud and startling enough that he slams his wrench down far too hard and, ah, he’s probably stripped the screw-- he’s worried. He doesn’t have any particular reason to worry, it’s not like it hasn’t rained before. But he doesn’t think it’s actually stormed like this since he and Ponk have started... trying to make things better. He doesn’t know how well she deals with storms nowadays.

2.) Braids Undone [Threads of History]

Philza grabs his braids with a tight, shaking fist. With the other hand, he brings a knife to the nape of his neck. In a swift motion that’s harder than he thought would be, he chops off his hair.

the rest (all dcmk and dsmp wips) are under the cut because its long!

3.) Red Lung [Disabled Disasters in Love]

Sam can’t believe he let Bad and Antfrost pull the rug out from under him like this. Literally. Falling fifty-some blocks into a mess of obsidian and thick red vines... he isn’t sure if his pride or his body hurts more right now. Feather falling on netherite does wonders though, so it’s probably his pride.

4.) instinct and discipline [Wheel of Fortune]

It starts with a fight.

Heiji wants to strangle Hakuba, like, every time he speaks. He’s had more than a few thoughts about pushing the holier-than-thou bastard right down the stairs. Punch his smug face square in the nose.

He doesn’t expect Hakuba to throw the first punch.

5.) Philza Minecraft and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Hardcore World [Threads of History]

Philza Minecraft is seventeen years old when he dies.

Sort of.

It’s complicated.

6.) A Study in Family and Humanity [Threads of History]

Piglins don’t have names. Not really, not the way overworlders do. Some have titles, but titles are earned. An identifier like that means you’re important enough to be known by people you have never and will never meet. But ᛏᛖᚾᛟᛞᛖᚾ isn’t a name or a title so much as it is something that grows on him like fungus, creeping in through his skin and sprouting in his veins and choking him from the inside out until there’s nowhere he can go without hearing the word.

Techno is born insignificant. He doesn’t stay insignificant for long.

7.) some of us will die lonely, and others in grace and warmth [Wheel of Fortune]

SAGURU IS FOURTEEN, and he sees a small murder of crows gathered on the sidewalk. He approaches slowly as to not startle any of them, but they aren’t paying him any mind. A few give him cursory glances before looking back at the source of their gathering: a dead crow, lying halfway between the hot sidewalk and overgrown grass.

8.) now i start to dream [Wheel of Fortune]

“Hello there!” The voice is gentle, but not quiet. “Can you hear me?”

9.) a diamond at my fingertips [Wheel of Fortune]

“Aah, it’s cold,” Kaito whines. “I should’ve doubled up on socks. I bet my feet are about to freeze off.”

10.) Michael is Missing

Techno isn’t built for the snow. He’d never even known that this kind of cold could exist until he left the Nether, and even then it was ages before he encountered ice and snow and this fascinating thing called frostbite that he’s suffered from more times than he would like. The arctic is good for hiding, but he’ll never admit to anyone other than Philza how irritable and uncomfortable the cold makes him. He just wants to sleep most of the time.

11.) Amputation [Disabled Disasters in Love]

Ponk is not ashamed to admit he cried when he lost his legs. He openly sobbed, grief and fear nearly destroying him in those first days after the festival. Looking back, it’s a reasonable response. He’s seen plenty of patients and their families react far worse than he did after a tragedy. He doesn’t look down on their reactions, and he refuses to feel bad about how he reacted either.

12.) hide. [run&hide]

Hakuba says nothing during his trial.

Absolutely nothing.

He doesn’t defend himself.

He doesn’t give Kaito away.

He’s charged guilty of murder and has a guaranteed fifteen years in prison without parole.

Kaito feels sick.

patterns. uh. man i REALLY like abrupt starts. probably cause its what most grabs my attention when im looking for new things to read.

favorite opening chunk is definitely “a study in family and humanity” (tentative title). i did a GOOD fucking job with that paragraph. very proud of it.

idk who to tag. everyone take this as an invitation to do this for yourself.

[spencers-renaissance]

Honeysuckle

Summary: The BAU decide to head out for a picnic one summer afternoon, but they’re soon rudely interrupted by a bee sting and anaphylactic shock. Seeing Spencer carted off in an ambulance is not exactly how they expected the day to go.

Tags: whump, angst, fluff, hurt/comfort, hurt spencer, friendship, medical conditions, severe allergic reactions

Pairing: Derek Morgan x Spencer Reid 

Word Count: 2.3k

Masterlist // Read on AO3 // Bad Things Happen Bingo

Spencer had initially been wary of Penelope’s invitation to picnic in Meridian Hill Park one beautiful summer afternoon — he burned way too easily and didn’t like exposing himself to insects more than absolutely necessary — but as soon as she’d mentioned Derek was going, he’d given in. He wasn’t about to turn down an afternoon spent in the sun with his best friends and boyfriend. It was a rare day off for the team: one not even spent hanging by their phone expecting to be called in any minute, so they were all insistent on making the most of it. 

He’s the last one to arrive, spotting the others sat in the shade of an oak tree, already laughing as they get stuck into their first drinks of the afternoon. Despite his initial hesitations, as soon as he feels the sun on his face and sees his friends he’s immediately glad he turned up and he hurries over to join the rest of the team, his own contributions to the picnic in hand. 

“Pretty boy!” Derek shouts, grinning widely as he jumps up from his lazy position on the blanket to wrap Spencer in a hug, before pulling back slightly to kiss him. He can already tell he’s a little tipsy, and although Spencer doesn’t drink he has nothing against everyone else letting their hair down and having fun; God knows they deserve it. 

His relationship with Derek is only a few months old, and he still relishes every moment he gets to spend wrapped up in his arms.

“Hey guys.” His words are muffled slightly by Derek’s shoulder as his boyfriend is reluctant to let him go, but as soon as he’s released, he turns to match everyone’s wide grins. 

“Did you bring the strawberries?” Emily asks, levelling him with a faux-stern look that she can’t maintain for long, melting back into her relaxed smile soon enough.

“Of course.” He takes a seat on the picnic blanket only to be immediately wrapped into a side hug by Penelope. He hugs back before beginning to unpack his bag.

“What about the icing sugar?” she asks, and her stern glare isn’t fake at all: Spencer knows how seriously Penelope takes a) organisation, and b) sweet treats.

“Who do you take me for?” he laughs, retrieving the fruit and sugar from his bag and taking a swig of the cool lemonade he’d packed in his thermos. 

Sometimes he wishes he could go back in time and show lonely, teenage Spencer pictures of days like these. One day, he’ll be twenty six, working at his dream job, and spending his days off in the warmth of the East Coast sun one Sunday afternoon surrounded by his best friends, kissed by his boyfriend at every opportunity. They’ve never asked him to be anything other than exactly who he is, inviting them into their group and doting on him relentlessly, loving him just as much as he loves them. 

It’s a luxury you only appreciate when you’ve known the loneliness of summer: when the hum of the AC is the only sound in your stuffy, humid dorm room, and you’re researching the effects of methane on winter weather patterns as you long for cold weather again, because then at least then you don’t have to listen to the excited shouts of friends outside anymore, then it’s acceptable to isolate yourself inside with only yourself and books for company.

He shakes himself out of his miserable recollections and reminds himself to be in the present. Emily has her head in Penelope’s lap as they discuss which incarnation of Doctor Who is the best while JJ and Derek discuss the new jogging park opening up across the border in Virginia. He knows which conversation is more suited to his interests and immediately goes up to bat for the Seventh Doctor, which manages to engage him in a spirited debate with both women. 

Soon, though, they find themselves all discussing their workplace embarrassments and recalling the funniest moments from over the last few years, and Spencer loses himself in the heat of the afternoon and the warmth of his friendships. He’s gorged himself on all the strawberries and sandwiches he could stomach, and as the afternoon stretches longer and evening approaches he lies down on the blanket and rests his head in Derek’s lap, mirroring Penelope and Emily. His eyes flutter closed as his full belly and heat of the sun tire him out, and Derek’s fingers thread themselves through Spencer’s long hair, a light and welcome touch. 

The haze of his friends still chatting around him as he dozes comfortably is interrupted, however, when he feels a sharp pinch on his wrist and seconds later, he’s fighting for breath. He launches upright, wheezing as he claws at his chest, trying desperately to fill his lungs with enough air. 

“Spencer? Oh my God, Spencer, what’s wrong?” Penelope cries, immediately by his side as she looks him over frantically, not knowing what’s happening. 

“Derek, call an ambulance,” JJ directs, taking charge as she rushes to Spencer’s side as well. “He’s in anaphylactic shock. Spencer, listen to me, do you have your epi-pen with you?”

Her words manage to get through the panicked haze and light-headedness as he can’t get enough oxygen. He can feel his face swelling and his heart racing, but he’s still coherent enough to point to his bag. 

“He didn’t eat anything, though,” Emily says, panicked and confused as she watches her friend have a medical crisis while she’s powerless to help. 

“He’s allergic to bees,” JJ says, keeping calm as she prepares the epi-pen and administers it to Spencer’s thigh. “One must have stung him for some reason.”

“There!” Penelope points to the bee sting on Spencer’s wrist and JJ lunges for her bag, rummaging until she finds her credit card which she uses to carefully slide under the stinger and remove it, preventing any more venom from flowing into Spencer’s system.

It’s clear after a few minutes that the epi-pen hasn’t worked: Spencer still feels like he can’t catch his breath and the world is fading slowly as his heart beats out of control and his organs can’t get enough oxygen. 

He feels himself be moved gently by various hands as JJ directs the others until he’s leaning up as comfortably as possible against Derek’s chest as Penelope elevates his legs to keep blood flowing to his vital organs. 

“It’s okay, Spencer,” JJ says loudly, right in front of his face. It’s blurry and out of focus and he can feel himself losing consciousness fast. “The ambulance is on its way.” 

It’s the last thing he hears before he collapses completely as he passes out. 

⭐️

It’s dark outside when Spencer finally wakes up. His bed is warm and comfortable and he lets himself listen to the somewhat comfortable steady beeps of the heart monitor and movement of staff and patients around the ward before finally opening his eyes to scan his room. 

Derek’s sitting in an uncomfortable hospital chair right next to his bed, sketching what Spencer can only guess are plans for the property he’s just taken on, an empty jello cup balancing on the armrest of his chair. 

“Sandwiches and strawberries not fill you up?” he asks, voice croaky as he cracks an eye open. He can’t help but smile, too. He has the best boyfriend and the best friends anyone could ever hope for.

Derek’s head snaps up as he hears Spencer’s voice, setting his notebook and jello aside to grab for Spencer’s hand. “You are something else,” he chuckles. “Your first thought when coming round from a medical disaster is an observation of my eating patterns.” He shakes his head fondly. “ But you know I can’t pass up a tub of jello.”

“That’s true. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen you say no when it’s offered.”

“You’re one to talk, pretty boy.” 

They lapse into short silence, accompanied only by the quiet beeps of the machines. “Sorry I scared you,” he whispers eventually, feeling guilt wrap itself around his stomach. 

“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s not your fault.” Derek looks sincere as he holds Spencer’s hand tighter, careful of the IV in his wrist. “The doctors… they said it was a severe attack, which is probably why the first epi-pen didn’t work. They’re monitoring you overnight to make sure there was no damage to your kidneys, I think. I’ll go find a doctor to tell them you’re awake.”

He moves to get out of his seat, but Spencer pulls him back down, as well as he can when he’s still feeling weak. “No, just… don’t leave,” he asks, his voice coming out a little too pleading for his liking. “Stay.”

The idea of being alone right now twists his stomach; the idea of being without Derek so desperately scary. 

“Okay, okay, baby,” Derek relents, sitting back down and running a soothing hand through his tangled hair, Spencer’s eyes fluttering closed at the contact. “I won’t go anywhere if you don’t want me to.” Instead, he presses the button for the nurse. 

“Where are the others?” Spencer dares to ask after a few seconds of quiet. 

“The nurses weren’t too happy with four people in here,” Derek chuckles. “I’ve been updating them by text; I’ll tell them you’re awake in a minute. JJ saved your life, you know. None of us had any clue what was happening but she was the only one who kept calm and the only one who got us through those awful minutes waiting for the ambulance to show up.”

“I know,” he whispers. “I told her I was allergic to bee stings years ago. It was just an off-hand comment, it never feels like that big a deal… this is only the third time this has ever happened. I guess I don’t feel the need to bring it up.”

“Well that off-hand comment saved your life, pretty boy.” Derek squeezes his eyes closed for a second, and when he opens them the emotion written on his face is heart-wrenching. “God, I can’t believe I could’ve lost you. There were a good few minutes there when I didn’t think you were gonna make it and after… Tobias… I was just so scared.”

Spencer’s stomach clenches at that, imagining the roles reversed is terrifying just as a hypothetical. He can’t even begin to imagine how Derek felt. He reaches a hand out to touch Derek’s face gently, squeezing his hand with the other. “But you didn’t lose me,” he murmurs. “I’m here, I’m  okay.” 

“Yeah.” His voice is barely a whisper as his eyes close again. “Is it bad that I kind of want bees to go extinct now?” he asks with a wet chuckle a few moments later.

“Derek!” Spencer laughs weakly, acting scandalised. “Bees are fundamental to the global ecosystem. Civilisation would effectively collapse if bees went extinct, it’s definitely not worth eradicating bees for the sake of me avoiding the rarity of anaphylactic shock, not according to the laws of proportionality. It’s actually frightening how fast the bee population is depleting though… did you know that there are only about 2.5 million honey-producing hives left in the US? That’s down from 4.5 million in 1980 and the loss has largely been attributed to colony collapse disorder—”

“Ah, Doctor Reid, you’re awake.” A smiling nurse bustles through the door and comes to check his vitals, fiddling with one of his IVs before taking a step back. “How’s your breathing? Is the nasal cannula okay or would you prefer a full mask?”

“The cannula’s good,” he says, smiling politely. Really, he just wants to get back to telling Derek all the bee facts he can recall. He has some really good ones itching to be let out. “I’m breathing fine, just feel a little weak still.”

“Good. Your vitals all look stable, so a doctor will be round in the morning to talk you through your treatment and medication. Is that okay?” 

“That’s fine, thank you,” Spencer nods, and she gives them one last smile before leaving the room and sliding the door shut quietly behind her.

“I should bring her back in,” Derek chuckles as the nurse leaves the room. “She missed out on your bee lecture. Fascinating stuff.”

“Shut up,” Spencer huffs, sinking back against the pillows. “You don’t deserve to hear my bee facts.”

“No,” Derek protests, grinning widely. “I’m joking, baby, carry on. You were telling me about colony collapse disorder.”

Spencer knows that, of course — he does have an eidetic memory after all — but it makes him smile that Derek remembers exactly where he was in his spiel. Maybe Penelope’s onto something when she says that Derek is “whipped” for him. (It had taken at least fifteen minutes for Spencer to fully understand what she meant by that, mostly because he kept asking about the etymology, history, and statistical usage of the word and she kept rolling her eyes, which he would then insist was not an answer.)

“Colony collapse disorder is depressing,” Spencer sighs, feeling quite tired all of a sudden. “I don’t feel like explaining it.”

“It doesn’t sound great.” Derek goes back to threading his fingers through Spencer’s hair. “Why don’t you tell me your favourite three bee facts, and then you can go back to sleep”

Spencer hums, giving it a bit of thought before replying. “Scientists trained bees to score goals in bee soccer in return for a sugary treat, which is especially interesting because they have brains the size of a poppy seed. They communicate with one another by wiggling their butts. It’s like their own language, they tell their nestmates where to go to get the best food. Bees also live in loads of different places, not just in the countryside. My favourite place they live is in marshes and wetlands, because I love insects that live in watery areas.”

“I’d pay to watch bees play soccer,” Derek laughs quietly. “You’re so smart, baby, I’m so proud of you.”

Spencer sighs happily. “Love you,” he murmurs, eyes closing against the exhaustion. 

“I love you more.”

Spencer isn’t awake long enough to argue with him.

taglist: @criminalmindsvibez @strippersenseii @hotchgans @suburban--gothic @takeyourleap-of-faith 

[ad1thi]

2020 fic recs!! [Part 2]

part 2 of my 2020 fic recs!! as before, ive limited this to five fics per month; and fics are ordered by the month they were published. This spans fandoms and ships, and hopefully you find something you like!! credit for the idea goes to @iam93percentstardust

***

July

this is the start: @capnwinghead

Clark and Bruce continue raising the Wayne children and encounter a number of challenges along the way.

great minds (love alike): @starklysteve

Steve’s eyes flicks down to Tony’s knees on the floor.

“Are you – are you proposing to me with my ring for you?” Steve asks incredulously, eyes wide and confused.

---

Or, Steve finds Tony’s ring for him, Tony finds Steve’s ring for him. Panic happens.

Marvels Unsolved: @iam93percentstardust

Marvels Unsolved was never supposed to be this popular. It started off as a novelty web-series about Tony trying to convince Bucky about the existence of the supernatural—he firmly believed that if science could turn Uncle Steve from an actual shrimp to the god of muscles, then magic had to be out there—and then they’d started talking about an unsolved crime from the early 20th century after filming an episode one day, forgetting that the camera was still rolling, and had ended up with enough footage to make a second episode about real crimes. They had stayed pretty unknown throughout that first season but then true crime podcasts had exploded in popularity and Unsolved along with them.

it’s a small world after all: @maguna-stxrk

“Great speech.”

Smiling at the compliment, Tony turns around. “Thank y—”

And nearly drops his champagne flute.

His world comes to a stop.

They had only spent a night together, but Tony would recognize those baby blues anywhere.

It’s Steve.

Steve from Tony’s London business trip. Or, as Rhodey has become accustomed to calling him—The Soulmate That Got Away.

you’re in my blood, you’re in my veins: @nethandrake

Tony always figured that if they ever were to break up, it would be like a blaze. Scorching and hot and all-too blinding. Intense like the two of them have always been.

Instead, they break up on a Tuesday, with the rain pelting the windowpane and the midnight silence stifling.

August

Five Times Danny said he’d marry Steve (plus one): @five-wow

Danny humphs. “Look, all I’m saying is, I think I’d probably have married you by now.”

“I’d marry you, too,” Steve says.

Or: An experiment in how many times you can say something before you have to put your money where your mouth is.

Family (You’ve Always Had It): @/SunnyQueen

A black Camaro and a scowling blond was not what Junior had been expecting.

“Hi, sir. You didn’t have to pick me up.”

The blond looked up from the screen on his phone and groaned, completely ignoring Junior's statement. “You are right, I didn't have to."

Ode To Yoga Pants: @riotfalling

OR the continued terrible mating dance of Bucky and Tony, AKA when betting on your friends stops being fun

Through The Years: @hawkbucks

Tony brings home Natasha one day, proclaiming her to be his new sister.

Natasha takes this all in stride.

The broken road that led me home to you: @just-fandomthings

A documented list of conversations between Steve and Danny via text and phone call following the events of 10x22 "Aloha." (Where, even thousands of miles apart, Steve and Danny can't go without talking to each other.)

September

someday, we’ll pass it on to you: @starklysteve

Steve smiles.

Reaching up, he flattens his hand against his son’s far smaller one, curling gently around it. “You wanna be like him?”

“Da!” Peter agrees again.

One year old, and you already know who’s the best of us, Steve pauses to reflect, all his fears chased away by a fierce pride. “Your Dad’s coming home real soon,” he promises, “you should tell him that.”

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

Or, five times Peter did the repulsor pose as a toddler

+ one time he used the repulsors as an adult

Classic Sci Fi: @notdoingsohot

Bucky wakes up to Steve telling him he's lost his memory, but not to panic, it'll only last a few days. Easier said than done when the last thing Bucky remembers is fighting Hydra with the Howlies in WWII.

He tries to make the most of it however, and there's this guy... Tony Stark. It's pretty clear the guy hates Bucky's guts, which is unfortunate because god damn is he a sight.

He tries to figure out what he did to wrong Stark, but everyone just tells him he doesn't want to know.

They were right.

Blooms in Frost: @/Diomedes

Tony coughs up his first petal on the sixth of July. He has been married to the love of his life for two years.

Bury a Hanahaki corpse in earth and it will beget the most beautiful garden. All that love, it is said, must go somewhere.

Hanahaki AU: Established relationship

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

A Single Thread of Gold: @lovelyirony

Rhodey doesn't believe in love at first sight or any of that cheesy shit. He just wants someone who is nice, dependable, and safe.

Tony Stark is Housing Service's little problem for the school year, and now he's stuck in Rhodey's room because he's exploded the last two dorm rooms he's been in and won't live off-campus.

high roller, place your bet: @machi-kun

“Would you kiss Stark for a hundred bucks?”

“I would pay a hundred bucks to kiss him.”

October

press my luck: @omg-just-peachy

But... Steve is almost ten years his junior, and he could be with just about anyone, looking and acting like he does. And then there’s the not so small fact of Tony’s name and net worth and the fact that, okay, Tony had paid for Steve’s grad school tuition, and now he’s worried Steve feels obligated to stay. Or something.

Or, Tony is a billionaire, Steve is a grad student, and they learn to let themselves be taken care of.

see it with the lights out: @starklysteve

Tony goes on a business trip, and he does not - not at all - get jealous of Dodger hogging his husband's chest, a territory otherwise known as Tony's pillow.

(or, Steve goes on an Instagram spree and Tony misses home)

adulthood is looking both ways before you cross the street and getting hit by an airplane: @starkslovemail

It was a perfect plan, if Peter did say so himself.

The Buy In: @dracusfyre

For the ImagineTonyandBucky prompt: Mafia AU with Tony as the Boss (except he's a really good one, making the streets safe, keeping drugs away from kids etc) and Bucky as the detective sent to go undercover to catch him out but ends up realizing he's actually doing more good than harm and they end up falling in love

trinkets of your affection: @starklysteve

Kissed him once for every year I loved him, Steve had written.

By that count, Steve owes him five more kisses now.

Tony traces the words, hands trembling, and tips back a shot of Howard's ancient whiskey. None of it burns anymore.

One day, he'll have lived more days without Steve than there are words in the diary.

For the first time since he'd woken with shrapnel in his chest, Tony fears the future.

----------

Or, five things Tony keeps to remember Steve by, and one thing Steve gives him to remember.

November

“Hey Tony”: @riotfalling

Steve points out that Bucky never calls Tony by his actual name. Bucky doesn’t believe him, until he does.

Remembering You is Hard to Do: @lovelyirony

“The future’s crazy, honey-bear.”

Jim looks up.

“Why do you call me that?”

“Call you what?”

“Honey-bear. It’s weird.”

“Inside joke we have,” Tony says, chest tightening. “We thought those couples that have the lovey-dovey nicknames were ridiculous.”

overheard your heartbeat (calling me yours): @starklysteve

"Tony - "

"I wish I could promise to come home this time," he feels the armor crawl back down his arm, continuing unnoticed over Steve's red gloves, then up the blue uniform as Tony fights to keep Steve's gaze firmly fixed on him.

The last eyes Tony might get to see, and he wants to be lost in them.

In the end, his entire life boils down a few simple things: "JARVIS, take care of him for me."

----------

Or, Tony overhears a phonecall where Steve proposes, a battle happens, and a paper ring settles some misunderstandings.

i (really, really, really, really, really, really) like you.: @nethandrake

For as long as Steve can remember, he's been crushing on Tony Stark. The thing is, he's pretty sure Tony doesn't know Steve exists. And how could he? Steve's scrawny and little. He's a nobody compared to Tony who's Mr Popular and the son of a billionaire.

Or at least he thought so until Tony swings by the bakery Steve's mother happens to own to enlist Steve's help in finding the perfect Valentine's Day card.

The perfect Valentine's Day card for someone who isn't Steve.

One Song (My Heart Keeps Singing): @iam93percentstardust

When Thor is old enough to understand what a Heartsong is, he goes to his mother to ask her why he can’t understand the language his is in. He listens as she tells him about the first soulmates who couldn't understand their Heartsong until the day they meet, excited by the thought of a grand adventure, one that will take him across the cosmos in search of his One.

He’ll search all the Nine Realms if he has to.

December

Swiping Right: @s-horne

“Ouch. Definitely a hard pass for that one?”

Steve startled at the sudden comment from the row of chairs behind him and turned around. He’d been passing the time in the airport lounge by swiping through Tinder and had gotten lost in his own world. It was almost jarring to be pulled away from the screen of hot men and back into reality where the PA was screeching and there was noise everywhere.

Adjusting to the difference, Steve frowned. Wait, he knew that face. Oh, shit… he knew that face.

“No, no, it’s fine,” the man said before Steve could get out anything other than an embarrassed sort of yelp. Waving his hand through the air, the stranger smiled ruefully. “I get it. It’s the beard, isn’t it? True be told, it was a weird winter choice that year and I knew it would come back to hurt me.”

Steve didn’t know what to say. He knew it must have shown on his face and could feel himself flushing, panicked and embarrassed all at once. What were the odds of swiping left on someone literally sat behind him?

set your flight path home (to me): @starklysteve 

Tony puts down his welding torch. “I’m building you a plane.”

Stepping carefully over the gears and tools scattered about, Rhodey slowly makes his way to him.

“And when did you become an expert on how to build a plane?”

“Last night,” Tony grins.

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

Tony builds a plane, and Rhodey teaches Tony how to fly it. Or he would be teaching Tony, if Tony didn't distract him so much.

I Want A Man With A Slow Hand: @thefourofswords

“Can I ask you a question?” he asked on their way to a crime scene, because no time like the present, and Danny believed in ripping off band-aids.

“Why not?” Steve replied, eyes on the road. “You’re gonna even if I say no.”

“What do you like in bed?”

*

Danny undertakes a very important mission to get Steve laid. For his health. Ahem.

same time next year: @omg-just-peachy

“I forgot to ask. When’s your flight home?” Steve asks, draping his arm over Tony’s shoulder and settling in against him.

Tony ignores the knot that forms in his chest at the idea of it, leaving Steve again for his own impersonal apartment, his piles of books and projects and the nights without sleep.

“Day after tomorrow.”

Steve huffs a little sigh, then brings his lips to Tony’s neck. “Well, we’ll have to make the most of it, won’t we?”

Or, four (4) Christmases with two (2) idiots who can't admit they're in love.

rearrange my heart (to fit your smile): @starklysteve

"You dare," Howard's chair makes an ugly noise as it scrapes against the stone floors, the chatter of the room shifting into hushed whispers and stolen glances. "I am your father and your King!"

"My King is my husband," Tony tips his chin up, defiant. "And I refuse to hear you suggest that my husband has been anything other than good to me."

Next to him, he feels Steve's shoulders stiffen in surprise.

Howard's fist slams loud on the table. "Your husband does not even love you!"

Tony jerks back, burned. He knows that. Knows that Steve did not marry him for love – does not need any reminder of the cold truth, of what he desperately yearns for and can't even hope to have – but the harshness of Howard's words was scalding, and Tony can't afford for this to go any further.

----------

Or, King Steven marries Prince Tony, Tony is pretty sure he shouldn't panic when he falls in love with his own husband, and Steve tries his very best not to cause diplomatic crises.

Keyword: try

[noona96n]

okay so relating to how u answered ur last ask.. i’ve noticed that sam and yu.... especially sam seems to have really embodied shi de. like, he’s really digested shi de as a character and it shows whenever he answers questions on lives. he refers to himself as shi de at some points (so does yu but i’ve noticed it more from sam) which is interesting because it could be the first time i’ve seen it to this extent. gotta give props to sam’s method acting (at least it seems to be the approach he takes what with really committing to being drunk and all) because its really not easy to immerse yourself so fully into a character. kind of unrelated but if you want to see a darker take on method acting i recommend watching the korean movie Method. also unrelated but something i think about a lot bc this is really cute.... in some live sam and yu were doing sam was talking about how lucky he was to have this support and opportunity and have all these nice people working with him and he was deadass getting misty eyed and emotional it was kinda adorable meanwhile yu looked so endeared. honestly what a mood. 😂 he’s very adorable and at first i was just really surprised at how completely different to shi de he was (duh its acting but still sam is like a big dog who doesn’t know he’s not a puppy anymore lmao)

i assume it’s this ask?

SAM

Sam referring to himself as Gao Shi De isn't surprising tbh... ive seen a couple of actors do that but Sam made it his personal mission to make sure that we, the audience, can truly understand what it's like to be in an unrequited love for 10+ yrs (he said this in a couple of interviews, i can't find the links, sorry). he put a LOT of thoughts into his character... if u watch their hotpot IG live, there's a portion where he explained Gao Shi De's mindset in depth.

en fait, SamYu's valentine's day IG live was what REALLY spurred me on to write my SamYu fic... (i mean Yu kneeling on a pillow by Sam's feet put naughty thoughts in my head but i didn't really wanna write anything until Sam randomly said 'I love you' to Yu, UNPROMPTED)

as u've said, Sam is extremely invested in Gao Shi De. this is literally the first time he's this invested in a character (at least the first time i see him this invested)... and, like, Sam has always been a bit of a quiet person most of the time (esp when he’s in a ‘crowd’ he’s usually only a crackhead around ppl he’s ‘close with’) but, before S2EP2 aired, i got the sense that he was very withdrawn... as if he was worried about the reception of S2EP2 (my man lost 10kg out of stress okay asfghjkldi) i'd be worried too... it's such a controversial scène but it's also pivotal to his character & speak of who Gao Shi De is. and i gotta say... that scene would be the scene of Sam’s career. Yu’s career too... like, wow,,, wtf, why did they have to go so hard???

that IG live literally had me asking 'where does Sam end and Shi De begin?' and it's a concept i toy around in my fic.

i think, Sam’s immersion in his role as Gao Shi De is due to pressure & encouragement from the director... like, director Ray Jiang put quite a lot of pressure on Sam when it came to portraying Gao Shi De & even expect him to take the lead amongst the younger actors as he’s the most experience from the lot... but i believe that it’s that kind of environment that provided Sam with the ‘right’ mindset & encouragement to play Gao Shi De so well.

Sam's passion for Gao Shi De is énorme... unimaginable. and, in WBL's first clubhouse broadcast, when asked if he's out of character yet, Sam instead replied that 'Gao Shi De's character is life changing and he will always remember this character'.  (fun fact: Luo Luo said he's not out of character yet while Chihtian said it’s hard to answer) (twt translation thread) (random observation but i feel like Ray Chang’s literally the only person in the entire cast who’s already gotten out of his character lol )

(also another fun fact, if i remember correctly, Sam has aspiration to become a director... but, like, don’t quote me on that, idk if that’s correct asfghjkldi)

YU

as for Yu, this is his first drama and he's the fckn lead... the role was basically 'written' for him... like, in an IG live/FB live, the executive producer, Qiao-jie, said that they discovered Yu's song 'aqua blue lover' as they were writing the swimming pool scene and thought that it fit with the series. they immediately wanted him to audition... the team only heard his song saw saw pictures from his album jacket... not even his MV! they haven't even seen his acting and didn't even know if he spoke Chinese!! and bcs of Yu, Shu Yi became half-japanese! 

he felt a lot of pressure to play Shu Yi well and even cried at their wrap-up party (Ray & Chihtian said this during first IG live) 

can u imagine what kind of pressure Yu has to carry??? bcs i sure fckn can’t

fun fact... 'aqua blue lover' was written with 'call me by ur name' movie in mind! (source: Yu's manager IG or result entertainment IG, i don't remember which) (also, random info but Yu's manager is called Kitty)

(translation of the filming of the drunk scene)  (a bit of bg info on Yu’s life)  (SamYu timeline here)  

twt thread of WBL eng sub  (1)   (2)   (3)    i went on twt once and fckn bookmark every wbl stuff i can find haha

follow fujosu  &   koilicous  for translated wbl stuff + follow  soku_hitsuki  for god’s tier SamYu / Shu Yi/Shi De fanarts

also, i just wanna say that i love Lin Zihong so, so much; my whole heart aches for him, that is all

i've seen method lol but still... thks for the rec! i’ll rec back some BLs (since u seem like the type to enjoy more than just boys kissing & falling in love) His 2019 (prequel) + His 2020 , restart wa tadaima no ato de

this become so random somehow, im so sorry T-T

[slutsofren]

Danger Days Chapter 7: I Never Told You What I Do For A Living

summary:  Joel isn't looking good after the recent run-in at the university. Ellie and you have to do everything you can to stop the bleeding and save his sorry ass.

word count: 2,648

content warnings: gore, hurt/comfort, cursing, unconscious Joel, general canon-typical violence, you know the drill.

note: this was so exhausting to write lol

read on ao3 here / masterlist

“I think we're safe.”

You look over your shoulder, back to the stone walls that lined the university. The three of you narrowly escaping it and you wanted to scream, yell, throw a fucking tantrum at the situation but you held it in. “For now,” you replied spitefully. “C’mon, kiddo, we should put more distance between us and them.”

“How is he holding up,” Ellie asks you tensely,

“If I’m being honest, I won’t know until we find somewhere safe.”

“You gotta tell me what to do,” she was beginning to sound more and more scared as your back got coated with Joel’s blood. What little patching up you did on Joel wasn't holding up, and wouldn't for much longer.

“Keep an eye out for where we can hold down for a couple nights. I gotta watch Texas here and make sure he doesn't fucking die on me.” Literally.

Ellie looks over at Joel, “Let's go.”

The two of you took off, Whiskey sensing your agitation and being the gentle beast he is, didn't jolt around too much. Speeding as best you could've in the situation you were tied down in, you suggested to Ellie that it would be nice to find somewhere rather far away from the university, far from trouble. She agreed, not wanting to run into whatever group that was again.

After a couple miles, safety seemed within grasp.

“Look, over there,” Ellie points off to the distance. You can see it, just barely. A shopping mall.

Like everything else in the area, it looks abandoned. Even by infected standards. It’s quiet and private, therefore it’s perfect.

Upon further gazing at the storefront, you recognize the banner. “Is that Swirls? The yogurt place?”

It takes you a bit off guard, recognizing something familiar from the time before, but for some reason it brings you a tiny bit of hope. Maybe.

“It says ‘Colorado Mountain Plaza’ over there,” Ellie points out.

“Looks safe enough.”

“Thank fuck.”

“Language.”

“Sorry,” she apologizes. Then sarcastically adds on, “Mom.”

You snort at her, shaking your head. Although she teased, you’ve come to enjoy the way she called you mom, but those were thoughts for another day.

Approaching the yogurt bar, Ellie jumps off Callus and reaches for the garage type door and lifts it. It creaks loudly which puts the two of you on edge but no signs of infected ring out. Joel does grumble a bit over your shoulder, likely at the sound of metal grinding on metal.

“Careful, Ellie.”

She waves you off then ducks beneath the door, disappearing from your sight. You hear a muffled ‘it’s clear’ from the other side as she lifts it up again to its full height. She leads Callus in by his bit and you follow with Whiskey. 

“I’m gonna need your help, El.”

You try not to jostle around too much as Ellie comes close to your side, “What do you want me to do?”

After taking a couple moments explaining how to safely pull him down, you adjust yourself on Whiskey. Side-saddling him, you put your arms around Joel, “He is not gonna like this one bit.”

“Damn straight he’s not,” Ellie mumbles.

“On three.”

Sliding down Whiskey, you pulled Joel with you and with her help, the two of you managed to get him down with potentially only minor bruising. Laying Joel on the ground as gently as possible, he groaned harshly at the adjustment. “I know, cowboy, I know,” you said to him softly.

Checking over him one last time, Ellie looks up at you. “Now what?”

“Now,” you sighed. “We try to stave off an infection. The bar itself wasn't clean by any means. And you see this,” you pointed to where the puncture wound was. “This is where his large intestine is.”

“Okay,” she shrugs. “What does that mean?”

You hesitate for a moment, mouth agape. “It's where food gets absorbed and gets-,” you trail off.

Ellie looks at you for you to continue.

You sigh, “The biggest problem is his poop okay? Basically if the bacteria from his intestines, specifically his colon leaks out into his body then we're going to have much bigger problems than the wound itself.”

“Gross.”

Chuckling, “Yeah. Imagine how he's gonna feel if his own shit kills him.”

Ellie lightens up just a little at your off-colored joke. “He would be really pissed.”

“I'd argue maybe even a tiny bit of embarrassment.”

The two of you lightly laugh, both just as drained as the other. “How do you know all this stuff anyways?”

“I was a field medic with FEDRA, remember? Didn't last long there, after I lost my finger but I picked up a thing or two from the other nurses.” You shrug, you never found out much about the soldiers you aided, if they survived or not but maybe that wasn’t the best thing to tell her right now. 

You point towards the metal garage door, “Go lock that up for me will ya?”

She gets up and does it, using a padlock to secure it shut. “Think there's anything out in the mall?”

“Possibly,” you groan as you get up off the ground. “I'll have a look around.”

“No, you stay with him, I can go,” Ellie offers. For a moment you want to argue with her, you know what you're looking for, but you see it in her eyes. Just a hint. A hint of uncertainty and fear. “You know how to keep him alive.”

It takes you a second but it clicks, Ellie doesn't want to see Joel like this. “Okay,” you relent. “I saw a map on the way in, I think there's a pharmacy on the second floor.”

“What do you need,�� she asks, shifting on her feet.

You rapidly tell her everything within reason - needles, thread, alcohol, gloves, anything and everything that could possibly help the situation within reason to help the fucking dying man laying in front of you. “I'd be grateful if you found a saline bag or a IV or, fuck, even a staple gun but that’s bein’ too damn hopeful. Whatever you find, just bring it back alive. Take your bow.”

She nods as she picks it up along with her backpack and you give her a tight hug. “There and back, Ellie.”

“There and back, promise,” she says, her words slightly muffled by the embrace.

She backs away and opens her mouth to say something but decides against it. Instead mumbling a couple words of encouragement to herself as she leaves. Turning on her heels and lifting the gate separating the shop from the mall with little to no hesitation, Ellie is gone before you know it.

As the metal slams behind her you sigh, listening to the sounds of her locking the gate behind her. Faintly hear her talking to herself. You chew on your bottom lip, thinking of what to do next.

Well, for starters, it would be awfully nice if the man of the hour didn't fucking bleed to death before Ellie comes back, you thought.

Taking off to your left, you scoured behind the bar looking for something, anything, that would help. The shop itself looks picked over so whatever is here isn’t going to be much. Finding nothing but nearly empty drawers until you find a roll of duct tape. Nice.

You walked back to Joel and dropped to your knees, taking off your backpack. Lifting his shirt up to see the poorly done bandages you had applied earlier were thoroughly soaked in sickly copper tinged blood. “Shit,” you whispered.

“Okay, Texas, this shit is gonna hurt like a bitch but you're just gonna have to suck it up and deal with it.”

You took a moment listening to Joel’s uneven breathing, the moans of pain. Hoping to hear some kind of response from him but received nothing from the man. Nodding to yourself, you went to work. “Okay, I can do this,” you mumble to yourself. “Nothin’ you haven’t done before.”

Reaching into your backpack you pulled out some fresh gauze, water, and the bottle of alcohol you were genuinely hoping to drink one day but it is what it is. Next, you grabbed the duct tape and pulled off some strips and lined them up, making a square patch. 

Lifting his shirt, you removed the front bandage from his stomach. A slight gag came up from the smell but you suppressed it, allowing yourself to dissociate from the situation and work mindlessly. Grabbing the water bottle, you rinsed your hands then his stomach, repeating the same motion with alcohol, and used one of the extra shirts you had in your backpack to dry him off. Blood still seeped from the wound but you used the gauze to seal the puncture then covering it with the duct tape square.

One side down, now the other.

“Hold tight,” you told him as you pushed him onto his side. His back looked just as bad as his front but you grabbed another spare shirt and shoved it under his head, adjusting him to make him lay on his stomach in an indirect way to put some pressure on the front.

Joel groaned in pain at the movement, you tried to be gentle but he was not being a rather good patient. “I know, I know, I'm sorry,” you whispered.

You got to working on his wound, doing the same as what you did on his stomach. Rinse, disinfect, gauze, patch. Once the duct tape square went on, you sighed heavily looking down at yourself.

Truly a sight of horror. Your hands and clothes were soaked in Joel's blood. Blinking once, then twice, turning your hands over, seeing the glistening and the flakes peeling off from long since dried blood, you rose and reached for more clothes to change into. 

Discarding the stained ones save for your coat. It was going to get colder, winter was soon. Shit, winter was already fucking here, you recalled the first hints of it when snow started falling earlier. It would be best to not throw away the only thing that would give you warmth in the coming days.

After you changed, you thought you should also change Joel. His dirtied clothes would only worsen his situation if any germs or bacteria got into his injury. You approached Callus and got Joel's pack, scouring around until you found a suitable shirt, flannel, and coat for him.

“This is going to embarrass me more than you,” you told the unconscious Joel.

If you were being honest with yourself, this was not the way you wanted to undress him but those were thoughts for another day. One where he survives this whole fuckin’ ordeal.

You got to work on him, doing everything humanly possible to be careful. Once the bloodied clothes were off and fresh new ones were on, you were going to take one hell of a break.

Adjusting the coat back onto his body, you laid him down gently as before, resting his head on a makeshift pillow. Now the only thing you could do is wait for Ellie.

She’d been gone for an hour tops, nothing to worry about just yet. Maybe the pharmacy was a bust and she’s looking around for first aid kits, you think. It wouldn’t do you any good to worry just yet.

The two horses start chittering behind you. “Looks like we got a couple of chatty birds over here,” you raise a brow at them.

Callus neighs a bit loudly at you and before you say anything you hear a very loud voice. “Hey! I hear the fuckin’ horse behind here! Help me get this open,” then the locked gate started rattling. Those fucking people must have followed you all through the fucking snow.

“Oh, shit,” you curse and immediately start rummaging through your things to reload your empty guns. Your hands were shaking, making the reloading just that much more difficult. You looked up once you heard another voice.

“Yeah, yeah, we’ll get the door. You guys keep searchin’, I don’t wanna get ambushed.”

No shit, I don’t either, you think.

You try to make haste and get your shit together. After you top off with whatever remaining bullets you have available, you corral the horses against the wall and drag Joel behind the bar to shield him from any debris or accidental fire.

Just as you finish you hear a loud bang, someone kicking the door in frustration. “Fuckin’ door!”

You couldn’t help but smile. Good door.

“Get the kid, take the woman, and find the old man. I’ll go for the door,” the same voice shouts.

Then another voice further away, “Shit! There’s someone out here.”

Ellie.

“Wait, shit, I think it’s starting to give,” the first one shouts as the metal door begins to creak and whine.

You decide to do something incredibly stupid but before you could talk yourself out of it, you dive and lay down next to the door. It begins to lift and you hear how the men start to cheer. Just as it gets high enough you take aim and shoot at them, unloading a healthy mix of lead, anger, and frustration into them.

Just as the door slams back down with a loud clang, you hear two soft thuds as their bodies drop.

“Oh fuck this, I’m comin’ Ellie,” you say as you get up and begin lifting the metal door. Just as it slides high enough for you to get under, you slam it shut behind you as you run forward and take cover behind some metal crates that were conveniently positioned just outside the yogurt place. As you do, you see a flash of pink and white to your left as Ellie comes running next to you.

“It’s the same guys from the university,” she says breathlessly. Her freckled face is etched with frustration, matching yours. It’s like none of you could catch a break, catch a breath.

You put a hand on hers, “We got this, sweetheart.”

Her hand squeezes yours and the two of you start fighting back. Fighting for survival, each other, for Joel, fighting for the sake of seeing another sunrise together.

A bullet whizzes overhead and hits the wall, “We got them pinned down over there! Finish them!”

You smile at the men’s clear underestimation of the two of you. Chuckling, “You go left, I’ll go right. Meet here in say ten with dinner?”

“Sounds good to me,” she bumps her fist with yours. With a nod, she’s off. You, the same.

Trying to take it easy, you found yourself trying to be stealthy by using the hunting knife Gustavo had gifted you months ago. It was hard between the harsh winter wind and lowering visibility with the ongoing snowstorm outside that was leaking through the broken roof of the mall. It possibly hurt more than helped.

Two gunshots rang out on the opposite side of the mall than a shout, “Shit! Infected!”

“I’ll take that as a no for dinner,” you mumble to yourself.

You pick up a couple bottles and throw them at the men who were hunting you, screams and clicks followed the noise until you heard more gunshots until silence. Figuring it would save you on ammunition if they just fought and killed each other. You followed this same sequence until there was complete silence, only for it to be broken by Ellie.

“That’s it! If anyone is alive don’t even think about surprising me! You’ll end up like your friends. You hear me? Yeah? Yeah.”

You laugh a little loudly, tears welling up. Just for a moment you let yourself reel in the moment that the two of you fucked up those people on your own. “C’mon kid, let’s save that old bastard of ours,” you shout at her.

[silvermoonflowers]

Moonflower Act V

Priestess!Reader x Demon!Bucky

Summary: A morning conversation stirs up doubt.

Warnings: Angst

Act IV

James continued to visit you. But that was only if your family was not at home. And that wasn’t so easy considering there would be at least one member of your family who would stay home with you. Those days when you couldn’t see James, you would sit glumly in your room, staring out the window, wondering if he was alright. 

“James,” You said on one sunny afternoon. You and James were in the parlor, sitting on an armrest together. Much to your embarrassment, James was once again wearing tight dark clothing, but this time without his torso exposed. Since you were sitting so close to him, you would occasionally feel his muscles brush against you. As if to rile you even further, whenever that happened, James would purposely give you a teasing smirk. You tried to ignore his constant teasing by looking at the sparkling moonflower ring instead. “What is the name of the inn that you reside at?”

“Fontaine Inn. Such a nice place.”

You perked up immediately. Fontaine Inn? That was the most famous inn in all of Larissa and like James had said, was quite close to the residence. A bubble of excitement began to rise within you.

“Well then, how about I visit you over there instead? I think it’s better that way since I’m not sure when my family would stay or go out.” But your excitement faded away when James quickly shook his head.

“I appreciate that Priestess, but it’s better not to get anyone’s attention over there. There has been more demonic activity recently and I don't want you to get in harm’s way or raise suspicion from humans,” He said.

You frowned. “Okay...how about we meet at a secret place instead -  “

Before you could finish, James held up a hand. “That wouldn’t work either. For we all know, that secret place that you want to go to could be occupied by demons. And if people saw you frequently at that place, they would see it as a suspicious act even though you are the Priestess. I know you’re already stressed out with your duties, so I don’t want to put you in that situation.”

Well, James did have a point. However you weren’t done arguing yet.

“But I can wear a cloak to hide my identity as the Priestess! I don’t think anybody would care if I go out like that.”

A cold finger was gently pressed to your lips. “No. It’s better this way. Please?”

As he withdrew his hand from your lips, you stared at him. He gave you a small sheepish grin, but you didn’t return it. You didn’t know why, but something in the back of your mind was telling you that there was more than what James had told you. But you weren’t sure. And you weren’t ready to confront him about it...yet.

With a huff, you reluctantly nodded and instead laid your head on his shoulder. James, in turn, wrapped his arm around you and kissed your cheek. One of his hands began to gently thread through your hair. You couldn’t help but give out a little moan at the sensation.

“My sweet Priestess,” He whispered as you closed your eyes in relaxation.

                                                                       ~*~*~

The scent of freshly baked bread woke you up. You winced when you tried to move around. Last evening was just extremely tiring for you and your family. It was supposed to be a pleasant walk. But then so many demons suddenly appeared and tried to ambush you. The ones who were much bigger than the average demon gave you a much harder time to defeat. They were able to withstand so many hits from you and your family that you nearly had to retreat. In the end however, with a combination of yours and Nicole’s spiritual power and the help of a certain demon (who was hiding in the darkness), you and your family were able to wipe them all out. 

But because you and Nicole used up so much spiritual power, the two of you were very exhausted. Nicole had passed out in Steve’s arms while you leaned onto Sam.

“Let’s go home,” Steve said quietly as he brushed a strand of hair out of Nicole’s face before gently lifting her up.

“Yeah, let’s,” Sam said in agreement as you quietly thanked him before gathering your strength again. “Hopefully there’ll be no more demons tonight.”

While your family walked on ahead, you stayed behind for a bit. When your family was a foot away, you looked back. Standing in between two trees was a familiar tall shadow with blue eyes staring at you kindly.

“Thank you,” you whispered.

You could’ve sworn you heard him say “Your welcome” as you walked away.

Oh James…

The blankets were thrown back as you finally got up, though your limbs were screaming from the effort. Perhaps some ointment and stretching will ease the pain. Last night’s fight also made you hungry, evidenced when your tummy grumbled as you inhaled the wonderful bread scent. It seems like Wanda made her delicious bread again.

You ran a hand through your hair as you stepped into the corridor. Voices could be heard from downstairs, presumably in the kitchen, but you were too tired to hear what your family was talking about. All you wanted was some bread and maybe some spread to go along with it...

“Is it me or is the Priestess being distant to us recently?” Pietro had asked. 

You froze.

“Well, it could be because of her stressful duties,” Clint said as he took a bite of bread. “Dealing with so many monstrous demons can do that to you, you know.”

Biting your lip, you stayed hidden in the darkness of the corridor and tuned into the conversation.

“Maybe, maybe not,” Wanda added. “Nicole, has your sister told you anything as of lately?”

“Not really,” Nicole replied. “She just checks up on me occasionally. I assume it’s because of her duties and Mother trying to set her and I up in arranged marriages.”

There were collective groans and you had to stifle a giggle. “Oh man, your Mother is still onto that?” Sam shook his head in disbelief while Nicole sighed.

“Yeah, I know. I don’t like it, at all. But it’s tradition, of course. I’m thinking of speaking to Mother about it though.”

“...That could be it. However I think there is more to that.” Your eyes widened. That was Steve. “Do you guys remember that night when a demon somehow infiltrated our residence?”

Oh Steve. His big brother instincts really were so irritating at times.

“Yeah, I do,” Clint replied. “...Come to think of it, the Priestess never told us what happened on that night. Where did she even get the moonflower?”

“That’s what I keep asking her,” Steve said, his voice taking on a serious tone. “But every time I ask her, she either hesitates or tries to change the subject. Which makes me think the moonflower came from that demon after all. I just hope that that demon didn’t do anything to her.”

“Oh...this isn’t good. He could’ve tainted that flower with demonic energy,” Natasha muttered. “Nicole, are you okay? You don’t feel different do you?”

“I feel fine, Natasha,” Nicole said. “I also feel like my spiritual power was rejuvenated.”

You could hear the relief in Steve’s voice as he responded, “Oh thank goodness you’re alright, Nicole.”

“But still...for all we know that demon probably did it just so he can get close to the Priestess before he kills her. Wanda, do you think you can set up a strong barrier around the residence for tonight?”

“Of course,” Wanda replied. “Anything to protect our family and if that demon tries to come in, I’ll kill him.”

Your heart sank. 

“It’s settled then.”

“Wait, there’s something else that I need to tell you guys,” Natasha said, her voice becoming serious just as Steve’s. “I also discovered something.”

There was silence before Steve spoke up, “Go ahead?”

“I saw the Priestess in the parlor one time. I tried to ask her if she wanted some tea. But it didn’t seem like she heard me. I assumed there was something on her mind. But when I came closer to her, I saw that she was holding a ring...”

Aughhhh Natasha?! Really??!!

You wanted to disappear into the darkness of your room and never come out. You had tried your best to hide the ring from your family, and yet in the end, it was discovered. Were you really so lost in your thoughts about James that Natasha just happened to see you with the ring on that day?

“Well, she could’ve just bought the ring,” Pietro had said. “After all we do go to those markets often - “

“No,” Natasha interrupted. “From what I could see, that ring is really expensive. There’s no way she could afford that. I want to believe that it came from someone within the royal family or someone from a noble family…and yet my instincts tell me that it came from the demon...”

More silence.

“I...I, oh gosh…” You had never heard Steve sound that nervous before. Even when facing the scariest of demons, he managed to stay calm. “First the moonflower, then the ring? You don’t think that demon bargained with her, do you???”

“Guys, guys,” Sam said hurriedly. “Why don’t we go outside, maybe talk a little walk so we can cool off? We’re all stressed out from last night and this certainly is a lot to take in. For now, it doesn’t seem like the Priestess is in any danger. But we’ll find out the truth later, okay?”

“Good idea. Some fresh air would be nice.” You pressed yourself further in the darkness as everyone got up and gathered at the front door.

“Nicole, wait, please.”

“Hmm, yes, Steve?”

Hoping that no one notices you, you peeked out from behind the corner. Nicole and Steve were  the only ones at the entrance now. Steve’s cheeks seemed to glow as he looked at Nicole with fondness. 

“Are you sure you’re okay, Nicole?” Steve said softly as he gently laid his hand on her shoulder. “I just want to make sure…”

Nicole smiled up at him as she took his hand into her own. “Of course, I’m fine, Steve. My sister definitely wouldn’t give me something that is dangerous. Please don’t doubt her. And even if she did have a secret, maybe she did it to protect us. Sometimes there are things that we aren’t ready to tell. But I will talk to her after our walk.”

“I know...I’m just worried about you and her since we live in a dangerous time...but I’m so glad that you’re alright.”

Steve ruffled Nicole’s wavy hair and she let out a laugh. Your heart swelled at the touching moment between them.  “Hey, don’t mess up my hair! Now I have to mess up yours!”

“Not if you catch me first ~ !” Steve stuck out his tongue teasingly at her before racing outside. The door closed as Nicole quickly followed suit. You stared out at that same spot for a few more minutes before letting out a frustrated sigh. Then you put your hands over your face. 

All of a sudden, you weren’t hungry anymore. The soreness in your limbs had seemingly faded away. Even the cute scene that you had witnessed just a few minutes wasn’t enough to erase the troubled thoughts building up inside of your mind.

You knew that someday your family was going to discover your secret. Trying to keep it to yourself wasn’t so easy with your duties and all. And all that delaying wasn’t going to last forever either. But how were they going to react when you tell them the truth? Whatever the outcome was, you knew it wouldn’t turn out so well.

“Priestess, are you alright?”

Oh no.

“J-James…” Your hands slid down your face in horror. “W-why are you...?”

He was dressed handsomely again. However, his long dark hair was rather wild, as if he forgot to comb it. If it weren’t for the situation you were in, you would’ve laughed at how silly James looked with all that messy hair. 

“I’ve...felt your distress from Fontaine Inn. I couldn’t help it. I just wanted to see if you’re alright…” There was a sympathetic expression on his face as he approached you. 

Pushing aside all doubts, you let out a sob and threw yourself into James’ arms. Tears stained James’ shirt, but it didn’t bother him as he whispered comforting words to you. One of his hands began stroking your hair while the other hand wrapped your waist. You didn’t care that his hands were cold, because these were the same hands that soothed you when times seem tough. 

“Oh James...I think my family is finally finding out what’s going on between us…what do we do?”

James didn’t respond at first. In fact, his hand had stopped moving after you said all that. All you could hear was the sound of his heartbeat. When you looked up, you saw that James’ expression was a mixture of worry and terror. 

“Oh my dear Priestess,” James murmured after a while. He leaned forward and kissed your tears away. Oh, his lips felt so nice. “I’m so sorry for letting this happen. I only wanted to help. I would never do anything harm to you and your family. However...I think the only way to fix this is to...perhaps run away with me?”

“What!”

You couldn’t believe what he had just said. Run away? To where? And in a world filled with demons and vengeful spirits that would never stop haunting their targets? You tried to see if James was joking in his mischievous way, but he was looking at you very seriously.

“James...you can’t be real! That means I have to abandon my family, my kingdom, and my duties! I can’t do that! That wouldn’t be…!”

“Fair.” James’ blue eyes softened. He gently pushed your head to his chest. “I know. I’m sorry. I’m just being selfish. I really like you, you know?”

Fair. Now that you thought about it, you realized that what you had said to James in return wouldn’t be fair to him either. You didn’t want to leave everyone and your duties behind, but you didn’t want James to be gone from your life either. Just why was life so complicated?!

You sniffled. “I know. I like you just as much. You’ve done so much for my family and I. You should come here and live with us. You’ve done so much for us. It’s the least I can do...”

“I would love to live with you and your family.” James led you to the parlor and set you down on an armrest. He grabbed a blanket and wrapped it around you. You muttered a “Thank you” to him as he sat beside you and laid his head on your shoulder.

“I actually feel like I’m the selfish one,” You said as you brushed James’ long locks. But you said it in such a hushed voice that you presumed James didn’t hear you. However, he looked at you and his widened eyes told you otherwise.

“Why do you say that, my dear?”

“Because I’ve been keeping quiet about the moonflower and about you as I know they’re going to get upset with me!” You were this close to pulling your hair out.

“I don’t think you’re being selfish.” As if he knew what you were going to do, James slid his hand over to yours. His cool thumb rubbed circles over your soft skin, which sent tingles down your spine. “Things are already tough for you. I...made it even worse for you…I apologize.”

“Oh James, don’t say that. It’s not your fault!”

“It is…” James murmured. “But if you do not want to run away with me, then the only other option...is to tell them the truth.”

You lowered your head in defeat. Right. That was the only other option and one you had been avoiding so much. 

“Do not worry, my dear.” James soothed you as he pressed a kiss to your cheek. “I am right here with you. I will even give them my explanation. It’ll be alright.”

Will it???

You have learned in the past that things never turned out to be alright in the end. Life was wonderful and yet at the same time, it was painful. It seemed like an endless cycle. You would’ve preferred where life didn’t have so much suffering, where everything could be so easy. Would a wish like that be granted?

“Priestess! Get away from him!”

Your blood ran cold while James flinched. Your family was back already?! How did you not even notice?! 

But...this was it. The inevitable had come. Yet, you couldn’t face them first. But slowly, oh so slowly, you looked up. Your family was standing at the entrance of the parlor. Their weapons were drawn while they all fiercely glared at James. Before you or James could protect protest, Wanda stepped forward, her hands clenched and her eyes starting to glow red. “No need to hide your presence from me, demon.”

[poptod]

Pull the Stars Out of the Sky (And Gift Them to Me), pt. 10, (Ahkmenrah x Reader)

Description: Relief.

Notes: now ive said this before, but i need to say it again and add on to it. This chapter will NOT make much sense if you do not read Mahjur's story, None Like You. The experience of reading this chapter will also be enhanced if you read Piye's story, Miscreation, but it's not as necessary as Mahjur's story. theyre also long as fuck so heres the important stuff: Piye was born blind and went on a mission when they were about 14 in which they grew their dark skin, massive height, and white hair, and gained some of the sight they'd lost. Mahjur gave up everything to be with Ahk. in the end, Ma'at (Goddess of Truth and Order) forced them apart in the name of the 'holy law'. Ma'at did this because mahjur, as a god, was not supposed to be interfering with the lives of people.

WC: 6.4k

+

Throughout the entirety of your two-day journey, you never left the canoe, leaving your muscles cramped, and strained, and restless. Still, you supposed you were in a better state than Piye, who had yet to sleep or rest from their rowing. On the other hand, Ahk was fine. At one point you asked him if he was worried about the coming events, but he told you that he wouldn't stress until it happened, and continued to swim beside the canoe without a care.

How you wished to have his capability to simply not think about things.

As you passed by Thebes in broad daylight, you looked far across the river from the western bank, searching for the falcon soldiers. Like Aswan, most of what you saw looked vacant or abandoned. Despite that you continued to stare, watching civilization pass by slowly, till city walls faded away to the flush green of the Nile.

"When will we get there?" Ahk moaned, his neck on the edge of the canoe, allowing him to dip his head upside-down, the crown of his hair soaking in water.

"Shut up," Piye said. The Pharaoh obeyed, although begrudgingly.

Night came and went in the blink of a sleep-heavy eye, passing into the dark early morning. Birds had yet to stir, leaving you in the eerie silence––the quiet before the battle. The only to feel such stress appeared to be you and Piye. Ahk slept on as usual, and the rest of the world remained ignorant to your journey.

"How did you meet Ahk?" You asked, desperate for someone elses' voice rather than the one in your head.

"My father was employed by his father, the Pharaoh of the time. I was... nine, maybe?" They said, taking a moment to remember. "Why do you ask?"

"You seem very close."

"I suppose we are." They paused. "He was a great comfort to me when my father died. And other... such things."

"He seems to have a habit of winning people over," you noted quietly.

"Yes, well... he has a certain charm."

As the sun's light began to crest the horizon, Memphis appeared in the distance, and Piye pulled the canoe to a stop on the western shore. Ahead of you lay the city you had so eagerly fled, the silent white walls foreboding in the worst of ways. You were certain the city would be flooded with falcon soldiers, as well as people who had heard of Ahk's treason, and who had decided Gyasi would be a better ruler. There would be few friends in those walls. Those of standing who had openly expressed their support of the Pharaoh Ahkmenrah had been banished.

Once the boat hit the riverbanks, Piye jumped out of it and pulled it the rest of the way onto solid ground. From there they donned a head covering, and shook the water out of their sandals, before helping you out as well onto dry land. No words were exchanged as you fully dressed yourself as well, sheathing knives you had been toying with.

You stepped to the side, tapping Ahk's head and laughing when it lolled to the side. It took a few more pokes before he truly stirred, moaning about a poor night's sleep, before he noticed you above him.

"When are we gonna be there?"

"We're here," Piye said flatly.

"We are?!" Ahk jumped to his feet, nearly falling over in the canoe. "How's the city look? Is it burned?"

"Look for yourself," you said, manually moving his chin to face the city behind him.

"Beautiful as the day I left," he said, seemingly satisfied. "So what are we doing?"

"Following a Goddesses' orders," Piye said as they finished pinning their head covering.

Ahk haphazardly dressed himself, but refused to wear a head covering. Piye explained thoroughly how screwed the three of you would be if Ahk was instantly recognized, and though the Pharaoh argued back for a little while, he was eventually won over. With that decided, the three of you abandoned the canoe and made way for Memphis.

The flush bushes and trees lining the river soon disappeared into empty sand, the land having been cleared for the construction of the great city. From where you now stood you could see guards inside the entrance of the massive walls. Your heart thrummed in your chest, crashing against its' own strings, sending your thoughts into a flurry. Disappearing was your act––returning was not. Facing the consequences of your actions was something you rarely did, since you weren't locked down anywhere, and didn't require anything from anyone but yourself. Now, you had a self-appointed duty––keep your friends safe. After the many years of your travels, you finally had something to lose.

And the thought of that terrified you.

"We aren't using the front entrance, are we?" You murmured, mostly to Piye.

"Of course not. Have you ever scaled a wall?"

"Well... once when I was trying to escape Ahk," you said reluctantly.

"Oh, I remember that," Ahk said with recognition in his eyes. "Then I tied you to the bed."

"Yeah, and then I cried."

"You two are.. I don't even know. You're insane," Piye said. "Now stop being insane and help me here."

You had yet to reach the walls of Memphis, so Piye stopping halfway there confused you for a moment.

"What are we doing?"

"I can't throw a grappling hook straight up that far," Piye said, kneeling and digging into their bag, "so we have to set up here."

Before they could find the hook amongst the mass of other tools set carelessly in their bag, they stopped suddenly, raising their head and looking off to the city. It didn't catch your eye at first, but when they didn't move for a good minute, you noticed, as did Ahk.

"Piye?"

They stood suddenly, the tools in their lap clattering to the ground. Long threads of white hair began to rise, floating mid-air as though Piye stood underwater, or stood suspended in nothing.

Your attention alarmingly caught, you circled round them, finding their eyes white and glowing on a face of night-black skin.

"Piye, this is not a good time to have a revelation!" Ahk chided, reaching for their wrist. Before he could do so, Piye flicked his hand away, making him recoil with a pained gasp.

"There is..." their voice spoke in double, in triplicate, echoing in your skull like the resonance of a gong, "... much to do."

You and Ahk looked to each other, both searching for answers that neither of you had. Piye continued their path forward, leaving you and their belongings behind, as they headed in broad daylight towards the city's gates. Without ever having to reach up, their head scarves and chest coverings fell away till all that remained was their skirt.

What the fuck do we do now, came through your head, but you had little time to voice your question before Ahk ran to Piye. You followed, mimicking his actions when he tried to stop Piye or direct them the other way.

"You're going to get us killed!" Ahk scream-whispered, all too aware of the soldiers surrounding the city's entrance. He leant the entirety of his weight on Piye, attempting to pull them back, but they showed no sign of strain.

"It is meant to be," they said in a hush. "It is meant to be."

Their mouth closed but the words remained, whispered over and over again in your ears. Your own breathing had already hastened, fingers tense with your own terror, worsening as you met the eye of one of the guards.

"Ahk, they're looking at us!" You hissed behind Piye's back, still grasping helplessly at Piye's hands to attempt at pulling them back.

Panic stewed in your heart and leaked into your head, leaving you in a daze of confusion, unsure what to do to protect yourself and your friends. The soldiers were now focusing their attention on you, and Piye's eyes were still glowing.

It was then, within full view of the falcon soldiers and about ten feet from the city itself, that the magi released themself of your terrified grips, rising into the morning air. They opened their mouth and out came a voice that did not belong to them, lodged in their throat as they screamed over the rustling of guards and soldiers readying themselves for battle. Bells began to chime in the city, alerting officials and citizens to the threat now floating above the white walls of Memphis.

"If ye are in Heaven or on Earth, I am the Only One in your bodies," Piye spoke, loud enough to be heard throughout the city.

The sheer volume and the vibrations within the earth that followed had you crouching down, and covering your ears with your hands, a position Ahk soon adopted as well. You watched from the corner of your eye as the soldiers fell victim to that same, screeching pain digging into either side of their heads. Swarms of people began to leave the city through the back entrance, trampling over each other like fleeing rats.

"I am the Pure one – I shall not die a second time. I am He Who is Not Known."

Ahk's eyes darted upwards, recognition flooding him.

"They're calling in Amun," he murmured, just loud enough to hear between the pauses of Piye's words.

"Already?!"

"I don't think they can control it," Ahk said, but as Piye continued, he was forced to cover his ears once more, wincing away.

"Your forms, indeed all forms, are my habitation. My moment is within your bodies. I am The Unveiled," Piye said, and suddenly the aura around them stilled, fixed on a glow brighter than the sun.

For a moment all was silent. Then their mouth opened, gaped and unhinged from the skull as they looked to the sky. An ear-splitting note came from them, running through the earth and sky, even through the water that now bubbled on the shore as though heated by fire. Horror filled your chest, spreading quick through your veins till your body trembled and shook.

Light flooded out of their mouth, a great beam of sun cast into the dark morning sky. Their still-glowing eyes now gave their skull a hollowed look, filled with nothing but light, pouring out with the overflow. Such multitudes could not be contained to a mortal body.

"We need to get the hell out of here!" Ahk yelled over the horrifying screeching, attempting to cover his ears best he could while still reaching for you.

Hopeless, you reached out as well, finding his hand in the space between you and grasping it as though he were a ship in a storm. He pulled you along, stumbling on his feet just as you did. The deep hum running through the earth and water had already worsened, till the ground began to crack, the water of the Nile turning into steam at an alarming rate.

You said nothing to each other, but he led you into the city and you followed without question. Every two seconds you cast looks behind your shoulder, watching events carelessly unfold, and stumbling over yourself whenever Ahk increased his speed. Together, you barrelled down the straight pathway to your destination––the gleaming palace.

"Ahk, what are we going to do?" You asked in a shaky voice, burdened by stumbling feet and a racing heart.

"I don't know," he admitted in his own fear-laced tone. "We need to hide you."

"We can't hide forever!" You wrenched yourself out of his grasp, pulling the both of you into a side alley hidden from Piye's––or Amun's––eyes. "That Goddess wants us here for a reason. We have to face him eventually."

"What if they were just dreaming?" He grasped both your upper arms, looking into you with wide, terrified eyes. "What if that Goddess doesn't come? I. Cannot. Lose you."

"It's our only hope. Don't you believe in your own Gods?"

"Not since Amun tried to steal you from me," he said, still searching your face for something he clearly couldn't find.

"That's your fucking friend up there!" You said, pointing behind you to Piye, who was now floating above the city walls, their hair suspended as they continued to bellow with that horrible ringing sound. "I know for a fact Piye would give their life for you and you should do the same."

"I know, I know," he hissed. "But I won't risk you. I have to hide you –"

He reached for you again, but you swatted his hands away.

"I will not be hidden!"

"No, no, no, no, no," he began to murmur, his gaze flickering between you and Piye, far behind you. "No, you must stay away. Far away."

"Ahk, I'm n––"

He tore his sleeve, a habit he had apparently used enough to become good at, and promptly tied it around your mouth. You protested greatly, pushing and shoving and kicking him away. In the end it was that same struggle you never won––your hands were tied behind your back, quite literally, and your legs followed. Even as you writhed and yelled, you could note the tears streaking down his face.

"Don't you do this!" You said through the gag, your words muffled as he threw you over his shoulder.

"I must keep you safe. I cannot fulfill my role if I am worrying about you," he explained in a weak voice.

With that, he hid you away in an underground cellar, locking the door as he left. Try as you might––and you did try, from yelling to thrashing to crying––you couldn't move from your spot, tied to one of the pillars holding up the dirt ceiling.

As much as he promised not to hurt you or bind you in any way, he sure had done it a lot. Tears began to burn your own eyes, and soon they were falling, soaked up by the gag wrapped around your head.

Piye's unholy screeching had yet to stop, even within the earth. The vibrations you'd felt so fiercely were dulled with distance, a fact you were very relieved about, as any risk of cave-in would've held you mortified. It was a small comfort compared to the severity of your situation, but you tried to revel in it nonetheless.

Every now and then you'd thrash in your bonds again, hoping your continuous struggle had done you some sort of good. Each time you were proven wrong, and still you rubbed your ropes against the splintered wood that kept you there, praying the bonds would break.

A soft hum reverberated in the room, and for a moment you were terrified Amun (in Piye's body, of course,) was knocking at the door. But a popping sound marked the end of the tune, making way for a person to appear, their form tall and still nothing more than a white silhouette.

How many god-damned magic people am I going to meet in Egypt? you thought tiredly. Piye was already enough for you, but the bushy, almost circular hair of this person had you convinced it was someone else.

Eyes pulled themselves open. The only trait on the glowing, ethereal form, and you recognized them. The heat on your skin. The crawling unease trickling down your spine. You recalled a night's sleep spent in a restless haze, and it clicked––it had watched you. This had watched you, now reaching forward as though to touch you. Instinctively you flinched away, but you couldn't go anywhere, not bound to the pillar. You tried your best to cringe and strain away. It still touched you, first by its' fingertips, and the burning heat reached down from your forehead down into your sternum.

"Stop!" You cried when the entirety of its' hand spread over your forehead, sending searing pain through your nerves like electricity. With your shout it withdrew, seemingly surprised by your reaction.

"Whhhat iss your naammmee?" It asked in many voices that spoke one after another, stretching the words.

"... Amoke," you said quietly, still pushing yourself against the pillar, but thankful it was no longer hurting you.

Slowly, starting at their crown and spreading down to their feet, their image appeared through the light. Who stood before you was not someone you recognized, but there was something unearthly about them––as their mouth opened, you found long rows of sharp teeth, all ordered as if it were normal to have that many teeth. But they towered above your shrunken form, fiery gold eyes staring down.

"You are... a friend of Ahkmen's?" They breathed out.

"Y - you mean Ahkmenrah?"

"Yes," they said with a relieved sigh, a smile stretching too-wide across their face. You curled further into yourself at the sight of their sharp teeth. "How is he?"

"Fighting Amun, I think," you said, hoping it would help them along.

"Oh, right," they said, jumping back into action.

Circling you, they bent to untie your ropes, grabbing your hand and wrenching open the lock on the door. Without pause they bounded up the steps with you in tow, leading you out of the alley and back onto the main street. By now the sun had risen, now shining bright with its' familiar warmth, circled by a sky of blue.

"Come, we must –"

"Wait, for one second," you said, pulling on your hand to release their hold, but you couldn't shake them off. "Who are you?"

"... my name is Mahjur," they said in a quiet voice. "I don't know if you know of me."

"I've... heard some things," you said vaguely.

"Shall we go now?"

You nodded, and the two of you were off. The main street still led straight from the gates to the palace, Gyasi to your right and Piye to your left. You had no way of knowing which way Ahk had decided to go, but Mahjur seemed to have some idea, as they set off straight away for Piye.

When you reached the city gates, you found the ground ripped into pieces, lightning-like strikes running through the earth. You stumbled over them and jumped, reaching the riverside where Amun had unleashed a special hell of holy wrath. The Nile was still boiling, and the height of the water had gone down drastically already, matched by the haze of fog and steam now hiding Amun, and Piye, from view. Spilt blood soaked your sandals, reaching up to the soles of your feet in a sticky liqueur. Sickness suddenly overtook you, nearly vomitting from the sensation even despite your previous run-ins with blood-soaked limbs, memories of dry blood tainting your tongue.

"Who has brought me to this form?" He asked from Piye's mouth, too deep for them, too roaring and ear-piercing.

"I am," said a woman, and your attention zipped to a figure standing atop the city gates, looking up at Amun. "I came to a magi in a dream and asked them to summon you."

The Goddess.

"Who is that?" You asked Mahjur quietly.

"Ma'at," they answered. "Goddess of order. I asked her to help. Knew she wouldn't stand by if she knew a God was breaking the natural order."

"Can we help her?"

"Yeah. Just need to wait for Ahkmen to get back from the palace," they said, looking back over their shoulder towards the shining palace in the distance. "He's fetching his royals and their soldiers under the guise of protecting the city. Once they're here, we can take down Amun, and Ahkmen can deliver a final blow. That'll reinstate him as Pharaoh."

"You've thought this through."

"Of course I have. I actually plan ahead, unlike Ahk."

"You can say that again," you mumbled beneath your breath.

Mahjur didn't respond, but took your hand again, pulling you out past the giant walls. The cracks in the ground were large enough that, at times, you needed to jump over the crevices, dodging the crumbling earth leading into a bottom you couldn't see. Before you could ask what to do, Mahjur began to search through the stalls still put together after Amun's rampage.

Caught up in whatever Mahjur was searching for, you remained unaware of Amun's argument with Ma'at, one that had digressed into nothing more than angry yelling. His eyes inevitably fell to you, and the glow within them tripled.

"Amoke," he said in a whisper that still echoed like drums.

You whirled around with eyes big as the moon. He, Piye and Amun, looked upon you with a smile that crawled across the darkened skin, illuminated by both the glow in his eyes and the rising daylight. Petrified into place, you could do nothing but watch as he lowered himself to your level. In Piye's body, Amun still towered over you, just as he had inhabiting his golden statue.

"Don't you look away from me, Amun!" Ma'at yelled from the top of the wall.

Even as the Goddess yelled, he did not tear his gaze from you. You began to back up, looking behind you to try and find Mahjur, but they were as scared stiff as you were. They would not help you, and Ma'at was too far away.

He snatched you in his arms, grinning as though he'd won some sort of prize. In Piye's face, glowing with Amun's power, you found something familiar––hunger. Ahk's hunger, of cannibals, of the rich. Your hands shook, followed by your heart thundering in your chest till you were sure your veins would explode. His smile was too wide, like Mahjur's, but empty and near expressionless.

"Pretty little thing," he said softly, scanning your face.

Wings of green and gold spread out above Amun's head, catching your eye as he attempted to lean in closer to you. Your eyes further widened when they began to descend, growing larger till the ground shook with the landing of heavy feet, marking Ma'at's footprints in the earth that burnt at the touch of her skin.

"How dare you look away from me," she said in a voice that trembled with her fury, barely contained in her mortal form.

A large hand came over Amun's head, wrenching on his––or rather Piye's––long, silver hair. Under Ma'at's control, he turned to face her with ire in his gritted teeth.

The Goddess, who had at first seemed rather small and delicate, had grown to twice the size of even Piye, meaning she seemed much like a statue to you and Mahjur. Her wings that came from nowhere now flared out, appearing to crown her head that she held high. Her eyes did not glow, but her anger reverberated in the air, thrumming in your bones.

"You claim to be a lord of all creation," she said through a fixed jaw, forcing Amun back and kneeing him in the face, hard enough to hear an audible crack that you winced away from. "And then you kill your children, betray the one who saved your armies, attempt to steal from the one who gave you back your power. You were not born yesterday, Amun."

When Ahk left you tied up in a cellar, the tears that lined his face grew cold in the wind of his running footsteps. His pace was slowed by the uphill slant, but he pushed himself as far as he dare, and made it to the bottom of the palace entrance in a short amount of time.

He noted throughout his run an astonishing absence of people. No people in their homes, no markets setting up, no guards at the palace door. As he made his way up the stairs, the reason for it became clear––the sound of many footsteps all trampling over each other came from within the pristine white walls of his home, coupled with fretting voices talking muted behind the walls. He cracked open the door to the inner chambers, and found his hypothesis to be correct.

The whole of the city––or those who had decided not to flee––were hidden within the palace. At the other side of the room sat the raised floor of the throne, and upon it sat Gyasi, flanked by the lesser advisors of Ahk's father. He kept a perfectly still expression, but Ahk knew better––Gyasi panicked under stress but seeked action in times of peace.

Keeping his head low, Ahk crept through the crowd, a hand on the wall to ensure he wouldn't lose himself. A few of the people he passed had hanging swords attached to their hips, and so he stole two just in case, hoping he wouldn't have to use either. Through the mutterings he heard, there were a good deal of complaints about Gyasi––a fact he definitely liked, though his delight was shortlived, as he soon heard a fair amount of criticisms on himself as well.

Murmurings and voices grew louder, more concerned as Amun's voice pierced the thick walls, sparking panic among the crowd. People began to move, bumping against each other and pushing one another aside. Ahk was inevitably hurt as well, thrown against the wall and landing on the floor.

It came to such a height that Gyasi stood, yelling a call to attention above the crowd, who stilled on command.

"Amun will not kill his devotees," he ensured, the skin of his neck dangling as he shouted. "He is searching for the False King and his whore."

Ahk could physically feel his irises shrink as he singled down on Gyasi, hatred boiling in his head.

"He is seeking a citizen," Ahk said, projecting his voice to speak over the old man stealing his throne.

Gasps came from those around him, the crowd suddenly parting completely, leaving him centered out from the bustling heads. Gyasi narrowed his eyes as he saw him.

"A citizen named Amoke. They are my friend, so I must protect them, but I will not abandon my people, leave them helpless in the hands of an artifact," Ahk continued as he stepped forward, making his way to the throne, where Gyasi began to back away. "Do you really think keeping everyone here is going to work?"

"We are dealing with your mess! It is undignified to insult someone cleaning up after you," Gyasi said with furrowed brows, a grimace and a sneer forming simultaneously on his crooked lips.

"I think it's alright if they're doing a godawful job at it," Ahk said flatly. "You need to get the citizens out of here, hide them in the brush of the Nile. If Amun breaches the city walls, this is the first place he will look, and he will demolish every living thing he sees. He is aiming to kill my friend, Amoke, and he does not care if others die in the process."

His words were doing little to quell the audience's worries, but that was his aim, as detrimental as it might be to the health of his citizens.

"You think you know better than I? I have been protecting the people of this city longer than you've been alive."

"You are a remnant of my father's rule. A relic from a time of barbaric violence and meaningless bloodshed. Now get the people to the nearest outcrop of the Nile. You and I have a God to face, if you're truly ready to protect Kemet," Ahk said, offering forward one of his swords.

"... very well," Gyasi said slowly, grasping the sword and drawing it to hilt on his hip. More murmurings came from the crowd that watched the argument. "Pikta, divide the populace and take them in groups. Divide soldiers evenly as you can."

"Yes, sir," said a soldier, who bowed and ran to the front of the room to obey.

"Is Amun outside?" Gyasi asked as he made his way to the entrance of the palace, Ahk at his side.

"He's at the city gates in Piye's body," Ahk said, and as the two of them breached the threshold, he found he could still see Piye's flying body in the distance.

"That beast?" He said with raised brows. "We have quite the battle ahead."

"Hopefully, we won't have to use these swords. We should have the help of a Goddess," Ahk said. "She came to Piye in a dream a little while ago and instructed us on the beginnings of a plan. It is our duty to help her."

"How do you know it isn't a trick?"

"We don't."

The two men began to run down the pathway, both sets of eyes trained on the distant crumbling walls of the city, allowing them to see a tall woman holding a man by his neck against the reflected sun on the Nile. As Ahk noticed two much smaller onlookers, his pace doubled in speed till he bounded down the street. He reached the end much sooner than Gyasi, but it didn't take long till both of them stood shocked, watching Ma'at raise Piye––Amun––into the sky on long, emerald and gold wings.

"I am the Lord of this world," Amun growled, a statement that sent him crashing towards the earth, Ma'at's muscled arm pounding him down.

She stalked over to him, footsteps drumming against the ground till she knelt at his side, grabbing his hair and pulling his face out of the mud.

"I want you to say that to Ptah," she said, before letting his head fall back down. "Mahjur."

Ahk's heart froze at the name. You watched it happen, how his body seized, eyes darting to the God beside you. He lost feeling in all his limbs as Mahjur stepped forward, glancing at Ahk before quickly looking away and joining Ma'at's side.

The two Gods––Ma'at and Mahjur––spoke to each other quietly, and most everyone present listened in with shocked expressions. What you didn't notice, caught up in Ahk's reaction to his old friend, was Amun sinking into the earth. You only realized this as you, too, began to lower into the earth. Beneath you, hands had grasped your ankles and pulled you down.

"Um, Ahk...!" You said in hyperventilated gasps, helpless on how to save yourself.

You no longer had control of your legs, unable to pull them upwards, and there was nowhere your arms could hold onto. Ahk looked to you, shouting when he caught the tail-end of you disappearing wholly into the ground. He ran to where you stood, but it was too late, and Amun was raising himself into the sky with you bound to him.

"Amoke!" Ahk cried.

“They do not belong to you,” Amun said with a smile, unsheathing a knife and baring it to those watching him in an act of vanity. “It’s mine.”

From above, those gathered at the city gates seemed small––even Ma'at, who was twice your height. You watched, unable to breathe through your bindings, as an object materialized in Ma'at's hand and was handed to Ahk with words you couldn't hear. The point of it directed to you, and in an instant you recognized it.

A hornbow.

The tip of the arrow pointed straight to you, and you writhed, desperately trying to escape Amun's grasp and worm out of the way. But he held you fast, and through his speech you couldn't hear over the thundering of your flowing blood, he laughed and held you tighter yet.

Twang.

The drawstring shot back into place, sending the arrow zipping through the sky, and straight into Piye's chest. Amun's arms and magical bindings faded away, and you fell through the open air. Ahk ran to catch you, careening straight into the still-steamy river with open arms. His efforts were not for nothing, as he caught you, using the water to ease your descent as well.

"They asked me to do it," Ahk said through tears pouring out of his eyes, falling as a rainstorm does, as waterfalls do, as blood does from the tip of a sword. "They asked me to shoot them. I didn't think. I saw you, and – and – I didn't –"

"It's going to be alright," you whispered in a shaky voice, comforting best you could even with your trembling hands. His shoulders wracked with heavy sobs as he hid his face in the crook of your neck, wide, haunted eyes cast over your back.

You looked upwards, watching what Ahk could not bear to see. Piye, and Amun, were suspended in open space, the end of a glittering arrow buried in their chest. As the body began to rise higher, your gaze fell to Ma'at and Mahjur still on the shore. They were chanting, both of them––something you couldn't hear, but their eyes began to glow, the veins in their body shining through their skin. You tapped Ahk's shoulders, asking him in a murmur to look. He reluctantly turned to watch.

The heavenly glow emanating from Piye's bones and eyes began to separate from the physical body, peeling away from itself till all that remained of it was a golden shell, shimmering and translucent. Your mouth fell open, watching the two forms pull away from each other.

Once Piye was fully separated from what you guessed was Amun, they fell down into the river, where Ahk also stumbled weakly to catch them. They did not wake, but the slow up and down of their chest marked that they were still breathing despite the arrow piercing them.

You turned back to the power of Amun, transforming from Piye's body to the symbol of the sun. The spells falling from Mahjur and Ma'at grew slowly louder, lifting Amun's essence through the sky, till it dissipated, and fell into the sun.

Silence.

The hum of magic, of broiling Gods and Goddesses came to a halt, and time stood still. It felt as though the world around you had been imbued with enchantments, marinated in it, and then separated entirely, cut off from the feeling of holiness. Your chest had caved in, leaving you near unable to breathe.

No wind. No movement in the water.

Someone was sobbing––you turned to search for the source, and found Ahk knelt in the water with Piye in his arms. His face was buried in his vizier's neck, quiet apologies coming from his trembling lips, matched by fevered hands.

"Bring them here, Ahkmenrah," Ma'at said softly, beckoning the Pharaoh.

He turned to face her, slowly breathed away the tears still building in his eyes, and carried Piye to shore best he could. When he reached Ma'at's feet, he set his friend down to life flat on the earth.

"Oh you young men," Ma'at murmured as she knelt, a hand poised over Piye and the arrow. "Shu of the morning... who have power over those who flash among the sun-folk, whose arms move about and whose heads sway to and fro... may they move about every day."

Piye's eyes fluttered slowly open, a soft groan escaping them as they blinked. The arrow lodged in their chest dissipated to no more than ash. Ahk gasped, a wide grin spreading across his features as he once more knelt to his knees, helping Piye to sit up.

"Are you alright, my friend?" He asked hurriedly, scanning over the healing injury.

"I... I can't see," Piye murmured in a breath, still swaying from the weakness of their muscles. They fell against Ahk. "I can't see anymore."

"What? How –"

"Oh Gods," Piye said, their breathing quickening. "It's as if I am a child again."

"Amun claimed your magic," Ma'at said softly. She hadn't ever looked you in the eye, but she met the magi's, a kinder look on her than ever before. "To save you and your.. friends, I locked Amun into the sun, with help from Mahjur."

Mahjur gingerly stepped up behind Ma'at, looking to you, then Piye, and to the ground below Ahk.

"I am afraid your magic intwined with Amun’s, and I had to lock it into the sky as well, to rid of him," she finished. “Your magic is what gave you eyesight to begin with, if you remember those years.”

"I... do I look.. the same?" They asked in a shaky voice.

"Taller than anything," Ahk said instantly. "Dark skin. White hair. You look the same."

"But with no... magic," they murmured.

"You may still have remnants. Most people do have a base magic. You might be able to do small spells," Mahjur said. You watched Ahk bite into his cheek and look down.

Piye cried––you expected little else, and you waited patiently as they came to process everything that had just happened. When they requested a rundown of the events (as apparently their memory was not fantastic), Ahk happily explained what had come to pass, with his usual dramatic debonair. Ma'at stayed and chuckled at certain points, but stood when Ahk finished.

Movement caught the corner of your eye, and your gaze darted upwards, ready for any return of danger. But what you found instead were people––lots of people, coming from several different directions and circling you, Ahk, the two Gods, Piye, and Gyasi. They were muttering amongst themselves, and from what you heard they appeared to be discussing the validity of Ahk's story.

"I must return to the Duat before anything else decides to unhinge itself from the natural order," Ma'at said at the end of Ahk's retelling. Mahjur, who had taken a seat beside the Goddess, stood as well.

"Wait, Ma'at," Ahk said, standing with a hand out, hoping to halt her. She turned expectantly. "Can I... Mahjur..."

She glanced between the two, who even now were too nervous to look at each other. You watched on though, watched how timid and shaky they both grew, itching terribly to acknowledge one another.

"... very well," Ma'at sighed. "I'll give you a moment."

Ahk didn't even leave time to thank Ma'at for the allowance. He went straight to his friend, colliding with them and wrapping his arms so tight round them you could swear it'd kill a regular human. Mahjur had much of the same attitude, tears and laughter coming simultaneously from them.

"I will be waiting for you," they said with the biggest grin, parting for a very short moment to stroke the side of his face. "I wait for you in the field of reeds."

"I await my death, then," Ahk laughed giddily, followed by his friend bursting into giggles as well. You couldn't help but grin, but you hid it behind your hand.

"Come now, Mahjur," Ma'at commanded, and the two friends reluctantly parted, allowing Mahjur to rejoin Ma'at.

They stood shoulder to shoulder, though Ma'at was still a great deal taller than everyone present, and in a flash they were gone. Murmurings in the crowd grew in volume, people drawing closer as they realized their Pharaoh had never lied.

They had truly seen Ma’at, the Goddess of peace.

Relief––that was the only way to explain it. Pure, unaltered relief, flooding your veins, flooding your thoughts. Tremors in your hand that you didn't even notice were there disappeared, the knot in your brow fading with it. Air felt like it had been made anew, refreshed after a hundred years of a solitary cave, and you could smile. No more Gods.

Finally.

[justletmeplayminecraft]

I love reading all your stories and always find myself coming back to them. I think my favs are prob the ones from the Space Outlaw AU, especially the Ex & Zed one, it always makes me smile. That kinda brings me to this request; I'd love to see a followup to that story where Zed is reunited with Tango & Impulse on the ship and what happens a bit afterwards. ^_^

aaa my gosh, thank you so much. it means a lot to hear that and honestly i wouldn't have had the courage to do it without @martuzzio creating this amazing au & encouraging me !!

as for the request, it's actually a scene ive avoided writing in the past, because everyone kinda has their own idea of how it goes? so i wanna say, just because i've written it, it doesn't mean other people can't write it their way!! even i have other ideas of how it could go!! additionally, if you want more of zit's early days after reuniting, it's a side focus in this fic! i realised it was missing from my masterpost so thought i'd mention it gjgfs

alright, on with the fic:

"And this is one of our secondary testing labs," Xisuma introduces, holding his hand out as they step inside. Seeing the current occupant, he turns that hand into a wave. "Afternoon, Impulse." Zedaph perks up at the name, bright eyes focused on the goggled man in front of him.

"Hey, X." Impulse doesn't look up from his current project, carefully soldering two pieces of wire together. "We got our new recruit?" Zedaph's jaw is falling open as Impulse speaks. Any further and it might unhinge.

"We have!" X glances at Zedaph, his smile becoming a soft look of concern. "This is Zedaph, he may not be joining us permanently but-" Impulse looked up the second Xisuma said 'Zedaph'.

"Zed?" Impulse breathes the name like it's sacred, with the same reverence of a god's. Zedaph stares at him with wide eyes, a noise escaping before he can attempt a word. He raises his hands, tears gathering.

"Impulse?" Zed's gasp is wet, grabbing the strap of his bag. "Is that- Am I dreaming? I must be- I-" Impulse barely remembers to turn off his solderer before he's running forward.

The two meet in the middle. Impulse grabs Zed's face, rubbing his fingers over his cheeks. All Zed can do is reach up and hold Impulse's hands tight. They're rough and dirty and Impulse's face is dirty and he's wearing goggles but that's Impulse. That's Impulse, who's wiping away the tears rolling down Zedaph's face.

"Hold on, hold on- Let me-" Impulse pulls away to snap his goggles onto his forehead. "It's you- I can't- It's really you." Zedaph sobs softly, falling forward and pressing the sides of their faces together. He reaches for Impulse's hair, burying his fingers into the strands. Together, they sway in place, legs shaking so much it's hard to stay up. "I don't- Zed-"

Zedaph laughs, high-pitched and hysterical, "I must be dreaming, I must be." Impulse joins his laughter, grip on Zedaph tightening enough to leave white marks on his skin. There's barely an inch of space left between them.

"If you're dreaming then so am I." Impulse sounds breathless. Zedaph squeezes him, tears dampening both of their cheeks.

"I don't want it to end," he whispers, a hint of fear in his voice at the thought. If he could, he'd cling to this moment forever. His heart singing in his chest, Impulse's solid weight in his hands. Neither of them want to wake up.

"You're not dreaming," Xisuma says. They jump apart as they remember he's there. Zedaph wipes the tears from his cheeks. His other hand stays in Impulse's. Their knuckles are pale in each other's grip. "I can finish this tour later, give you some time together." Zedaph feels like he should protest Xisuma's kindness, but the only sound he could make would be broken noise. Impulse continues looking at him like he's the most precious of gems, or a project he's spent months on and finally finished.

"I'll let you know when we're finished with him," Impulse replies. Zedaph stares at him, taking in how he's aged. They've lost so much time. "Do you mind if it's in a month or so? Maybe a year?" Xisuma chuckles, smiling fondly.

"As much time as you need." He tells them, with a polite nod. Impulse just manages to nod back before Xisuma leaves the pair in the empty lab. They stare at each other, barely breathing. Zedaph traces one of the wrinkles that he swears weren't there before. Laugh lines. Worry lines.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm an old man." Zedaph laughs, pulling Impulse's goggles off so he can press their foreheads together. The bright lights of the lab catch their eyes, leaving them sparkling with tears. They fall into a comfortable silence. Together, in their own world - blind to the bright lights and deaf to the quiet hum of electricity. Focused on the other alone. Zedaph finally pulls away when he processes an earlier sentence, face scrunched in confusion.

"We're finished with him?" He questions. There's a swell of hope in his chest that he doesn't want to believe. He wants to cling to it, doesn't want it to be crushed. Impulse nods, ever so slightly.

"Tango. He's here too. He's- Zed, he missed you so much." The swell spills over. Impulse clutches him tight as Zed sobs, entire body shaking with the force. He falls into Impulse's chest, firm hands keeping him upright. Eventually, the sobs quiet into shaking breaths and Impulse moves his hands to cup Zedaph's cheeks, looking into blue eyes. "Zed would- do you want to see him?" Zedaph nods, nails digging into the strap of his rucksack.

"Does- Would he want to see me?" Impulse smiles, nodding in return. He swipes his thumbs across Zed's cheeks, disrupting the tear tracks left there.

"Zed, he'd want nothing more. Both of us have wanted nothing more than to see you since- since-" Zedaph cries again at the thought. It's been so, so long.

"Yeah-" He agrees, "Yeah, me too."

It takes them several minutes until they can separate enough to walk. Impulse leads the way through the ship. Their pace is close to running, Impulse navigating the way to the lower decks on pure instinct. Between them, their hands stay clasped together, never loosening. Zedaph's other hand rests on his bag strap. The Hermits they pass don't interrupt. A few watch with knowing smiles.

"Tango!" Impulse calls as they grow closer to the engine bays. Zedaph's pace slows and Impulse smiles in encouragement, nudging their shoulders together. He tries to smile back, air caught in his throat, tears ready to spill again. His emotions are haywire: anxiety, excitement, fear, elation. He's feeling so much.

"Impulse!" Tango's voice echoes from deeper into the bays. Impulse leads Zed in, watching his wide eyes focus at the voice. Zedaph feels like his body is giving out beneath him. He's going to shake apart. "What brings you here?"

"I'm- Not here for me, actually." Tango pulls himself out from under one of the cables. He stretches, eyes closed and a wrench in his hand. He's wearing a simple dress, the heat in the bays comfortable enough for him without his suit. Then he opens his eyes and freezes with his arms still above his head. Zedaph steps a little further behind Impulse, both of his hands tensing. Impulse squeezes back.

"Impulse?" Tango asks, looking between them both. His red eyes are wide, arms lowering awkwardly. "Is that- Are you?" Impulse nods, turning to Zed.

"Yeah, yeah, it really is." Impulse squeezes Zedaph's hand again, gently encouraging him forward. Zedaph's already crying. He seems to be doing a lot of that.

"Tango," he whispers. Tango can't hold back any longer, running forward so he can hold Zedaph's face in his hands. The wrench clatters to the floor as Tango wipes across Zedaph's cheeks. He looks into those blue eyes and knows his are just as teary. Zedaph allows Impulse to take the rucksack from his back, lower it to the floor.

"Zed." Tango rubs along Zedaph's hairline. The way he leans into the touch is so familiar Tango can only cry. "Nether, it's- I can't believe-" Zed nods, holding him desperately.

"I can't either," he agrees with a wobbling voice. Impulse wraps his arms around Zedaph's chest, resting his head on Zed's warm shoulder. They all cling to each other with no intention of letting go.

"Did you know?" Tango asks, looking between Impulse and Zed. And he can look between them. They're both here, in front of him. All three of them in one place, safe and- He used to dream about this, he never thought it could be a reality.

"No," Impulse tells him, "I had no idea. None at all."

"I didn't-" Zed agrees, "I- I really didn't- I never even guessed." He reaches back for Impulse's hand, legs finally giving up. He makes a soft noise as he drops, the two quick to support him and lower them to the ground. The trio continue hugging each other on the hot floor of the bay. There's no way of telling where each of them start and end, limbs tangled into a pile.

Impulse buries his face against Zedaph's back, Tango weeping openly. The sound of their cries echo in the bay. None of them care. Why think about the world around them when they can focus on each other? How they feel in each other's arms, the heat of Tango's hair, Zedaph's fingers twitching in Impulse's hand and Tango's dress. Convincing themselves they're not dreaming. This is real.

"Wait, wait, wait-" Zed leans back from them both, reaching for his bag. He digs around his shawl until he pulls out a small band of twisted woollen threads, thinned and snapped. "I- I kept it. It's broken but I kept it-" Tango draws Zed back into their hold with a hand on his cheek. His other hand wipes away tears.

"Oh, Zed." Tango's voice is so soft. "You- How do you never fail to surprise us?" Impulse laughs, settling his chin on Zedaph's shoulder. Their heads automatically lean towards each other.

"I'm so glad you do," Impulse says, squeezing Zed's hand. "This is the best surprise I could ever ask for." Zedaph breathes out, words completely lost to him.

"Hey," Tango smiles at them, bottomless love in his eyes. "You can make us new ones now." Zedaph gasps through tears, nodding eagerly.

"Yeah," he agrees, rubbing his eyes on Tango's hand, "I can."

-

They end up in one of the sleeping dens. Zedaph is curled between them, feeling more relaxed than he has in years. Tango is in front of him, an arm around him whilst Impulse's hand rubs his cheek. Zed nudges comfortably into their holds, enjoying the longed for contact with his herd. Tango's hair is secured in a fireproof wrap. Zedaph knows from experience that it's hot but he has the urge to poke it anyway. For old times sake. Thankfully, Impulse notices, grabbing Zedaph's hand and pulling it down. Zed twists to see him, smiling cheekily as Impulse shakes his head.

"What are you two doing?" Tango questions, peering at them with gentle eyes. Impulse turns to Zedaph again, both of them breaking into smiles. Zed brings a hand up to stifle his giggles.

"He was going to touch your wrap," Impulse answers. Zedaph's laughter grows in volume as he curls into Tango, hiding his face.

"Zed!" Tango cries, "I know it's been awhile, man, but-"

"You shut your mouth!" Zed's voice is muffled, cheeks red and sore from smiling. Tango digs his fingers into Zedaph's woollen curls, laughing as a few fall loose. Oh, how he's missed that texture. Impulse sighs, pulling Zed closer to his chest unconsciously. Tango moves with him.

"It's been way too long," Impulse says, voice quiet as he speaks. "Gods, Zed, we just- we just didn't know. We thought you were-" Tango hums, cutting off Impulse's sentence. But Zedaph only nods, face poking up again. His head rolls to the side, expression turning sad, even if it's briefly.

"I- I thought so too. I-" He freezes. On unsteady hands, he tries to push himself up. "Skizz." The word is urgent in his mouth. "Is he okay? Was he safe?" Impulse lowers him back onto Tango by brushing his fingers across Zed's hairline.

"He's fine," he tells him. "We talk often, he's been doing great for himself. Oh, he's- he's going to be so happy we've found you. None of us could, we looked so hard." Zedaph nudges until he's comfortable again, letting the words sink in. Skizz is safe. They're all safe. It's a dream come true.

"I searched too," he says, "I really did." Tango rubs his fingers across Zed's cheek. His skin is warm against Zed's. It always is.

"We know," Tango replies. Impulse hums, nodding against his head. They're not going to talk about Tango and Impulse. Zed- He doesn't need to know the arguments between them. How Tango gave up on this moment. It's not something he needs to worry about. Right now, they're together. They're holding Zedaph in their arms and it doesn't even feel real.

"I don't want to lose you guys again." Zedaph's voice breaks, lost hands clutching at them. "I feel like I'm going to wake up and-"

"You're not," Impulse promises. "We're going to be right here."

"You're not getting rid of us." Tango wipes away the dampness on Zed's eyelashes before it can spill over once more. "Like, you're going to wish you could get rid of us kinda 'not getting rid of us'." That gets Zed to laugh again and they both smile at the sound. Zed closes his eyes with a gentle sigh.

"I'm so lucky," he decides. "I can't believe it."

"So are we!" Tango exclaims. "I mean- Look at you! Cuddled up between us!"

"Mm, lucky to have me." Zed finishes the sentence with a yawn. Impulse scratches along his hairline again with soft, tired eyes.

"Yeah, we are," he murmurs, sinking down into the cuddle. "Get some sleep, yeah?" Zed hums. He's out like a light. Tango watches him, taking in every change on Zedaph's face. The length of his hair, small scars on his skin. But, much to their delight, he still makes those quiet noises in his sleep. His fingers still twitch. He still seeks out their warmth.

It's only once Tango's certain Zed's sleeping that he looks up, finding Impulse's gaze. Impulse sleepily tilts his head in question. Tango has to think before he speaks, tracing circles into Zed's arm.

"I'm- I'm really sorry, Impulse." Impulse's face opens up in shock.

"Hey, no," he quickly rebuts. "You have nothing to apologise for, Tango." He falls silent for a few seconds and Tango can see him searching for words. He waits for Impulse to speak again. "You did what you had to do to move on. I get it. As much as I wanted to believe, I- I never really expected this day to come, either."

"I guess we were both fools." Impulse laughs, so quiet in their little den.

"Well-" He smiles, the expression natural to them both, "-Nothing's changed then, has it?"

"I guess not." Tango rubs Zedaph's cheek once more, finally able to relax into the hold. There will be time in the future.

They've got so much more time than they thought they did.

[icedcappujaeno]

kingdom come | prologue

Jaehyun remembers you, and he hopes that you remember him as well.

genre: mafia!au | fluff | angst | smut

pair: Jaehyun & reader

warnings: language, sexual content, drugs, blood and violence, guns

↤ previous | series masterlist | next ↦

( a/n: voila. let me know your thoughts. feedback would be greatly appreciated. cross posted on ao3. will update there regularly, updates here will be feedback based. c: )

Jaehyun remembers the day when you first met.

“I think the children like you,” you said, a delightful grin gracing her painted lips. “I’ve never seen them this enthusiastic.”

He could only smile in return, allowing the deep indents of his cheeks to appear. He feels his ears warming, painting it a pinkish hue as he continued to unbox the goods they brought in for the orphanage. “Thank you.”

“I’m guessing you’re a man of few words.”

Your giggles were soft; soothing - like how the bell chimes every time he steps in the doorstep of his home in Busan. How he wishes to come back, yet hearing the soft chortles of yours already brings him back.

The smile on his lips stretched wider, crescent eyes falling upon yours and flawless cheeks turning a pinkish shade as his ears. Jaehyun remembers the same feeling as he was in sixth grade, it has been a while since he looks at another person with such admiration. His heart beating faster than normal, hands sweaty in every contact with yours. 

Crush. The tiniest form of a one-sided intimacy. Jaehyun was pretty sure it was all a short time feeling - he’ll probably only meet you this once and never again.

━ ┉ ━

“Thank you for the donations again. The children learned to bake and they’re  pretty much  invested, thanks to you.”

Jaehyun finds himself back in the orphanage, a box full of goods on his arms as you lead the way to the storage. Since that day he always finds his thoughts back to you - your smile, your laughs, even your embarrassing facade. His co-workers would tease him during work as he keeps spacing out, of course, his replies would be mutters of denial. 

Johnny sees it though, that’s why they are back at the very orphanage the company helped months ago.

“Thanks to the  company ,” he corrected, placing the box over the table. He could feel your excitement and he chuckles, stepping a little aside with a nod towards the box. “I think I’ll let you do the honors of opening this.”

“You’re part of them, so,” you trail off, failing to hide your excitement and stepping your way to where Jaehyun stood. You peel off the tape from the box and open to see more baking supplies inside. 

You can’t contain the happiness and it was evident in your facade.

Jaehyun thinks it was more than a crush.

“I think you’re more excited than the kids,” he chuckles.

“Am I?” You returned the gesture back. “I just thought that with these, I could spend more time with the children.”

“You love them so much, huh?” Jaehyun babbles, but you take no offense from the statement. 

“I just love children,” you reply, the childish grin still on your lips as you took almost everything out of the box. “A mixer?!”

Jaehyun nonchalantly shrugs but overwhelmed with pride as the mixer was from his own pocket, not from the company. He would not admit it though. Though he would admit one thing.

“I love children as well.”

He blurts the second time, and like how you reacted earlier, grin still on your lips, you reply. 

“Great!”

A pause and Jaehyun’s eyes fixate on your warming face. He figures the statement was incomplete, so he waits for another.

“We’re compatible, then.”

You hope it was soft enough for him to not hear, but as he was focused on you, he never missed it. His lips turned into a wide grin. Jaehyun leans his bottom on the tabletop, trying to sound composed and poised as he asks:

“Really? Then, let’s test it out on a date.”

━ ┉ ━

Jaehyun remembers the time you said you didn’t want a ring when someone asks for your hand in marriage.

You were lying with him on your couch, watching some boring documentary when you suddenly babbled. The statement was confusing, so he asks you why while he plays with your hand.

“I don’t think it’s really necessary. You know, all those extravagant preparations, dragging your friends—I don’t know. I just think it’s all for show.”

You cuddle to him closer, the slow beating of his heart lulling you to sleep as you sleep on top of his clothed chest.

Jaehyun takes note of it mentally and places a chaste kiss on your forehead.

━ ┉ ━

Jaehyun remembers how he almost thought he’d lose you.

“You’re going to be assigned to Los Angeles with Johnny and Haechan. Apparently, our  client  ran away from  home , I need you guys to fetch him in case he gets lost,” Taeyong says. He slides a blue folder on the tabletop while Jaehyun stands there, clearly baffled with the designation of his next assignment.

“Excuse me?”

Taeyong looks visibly surprised. Jaehyun was never one to have orders repeated as he gets them clearly in one saying. With a lone brow raised and his hands curled together as his chin rested on it, he repeats. 

“You’re going to be assigned to LA with Johnny and Haechan.”

“L-A.”

“Yes.”

“Los Angeles, California.”

“That’s what LA stands for. Jaehyun -”

“In America.”

Unbelievable. Taeyong isn’t comprehending that Jaehyun’s actually answering him this way. It wasn’t in his character - and as amusing as it sounds, Taeyong isn’t having any of it today.

“Sorry, Taeyong. I have to decline -”

“Jaehyun.”

“I really can’t. I have some important matters to attend to -”

“If it’s about your girlfriend, you should drop it off,” Taeyong finally snaps. He stands from his seat with his eyes full of frustration - one of his top agents declining one of the biggest missions they had in years. “You know the field of your work. Do you really expect to live a life of happy endings -”

“Fine!”

Jaehyun snaps back, heart heavy at the guilt Taeyong imposes. There was no lie in it though. His job endangers not only his life but the people around him as well, that’s why from the start they were asked to forbid emotions to bloom, but alas, love just strikes hard.

“When do we leave?” 

“Well, since Haechan is still training and we’re still gathering enough data...you’ll leave in three weeks.”

Begrudgingly, Jaehyun grabs the folder on Taeyong’s table and leaves his office in angry strides.

━ ┉ ━

“It’s okay. It’s for work I understand.”

You say to him as he curls up within your spoon. His hair feels smooth against your fingers. He acts like a child when he feels like it, especially when there is a favor to ask, but this time, his permission felt a little different than the others.

But who are you to dictate him to stop?

He looks up to you, your chin earning soft pecks from his dry lips.

“You aren’t…”

You wait for him to finish, but he just curls up more to your smaller frame. You adjust to make him comfortable, enveloping his head to your arms and burying it to your chest.

“I’m not mad. It’s not like you won’t come back.”

But Jaehyun is.

What if something went wrong? What if there was a miscalculation? What if he comes back home inside a wooden box?

“You’re thinking too loudly, baby,” you shush, continuing to thread your fingers through his thick tresses. “I’m sure you’ll come back to me.”

Jaehyun hopes as well.

━ ┉ ━

He feels the sting, but he’s not even backing up a step.

He feels the blood drip down his nose, but he keeps his stance.

A left jab from his opponent, but he dodged, moving downward to avoid his fist. He countered with an uppercut and seeing his opponent stunned from the attack, Jaehyun took the opportunity to grab the knife strapped on his thigh. With quick movements, he slid down and stabbed the guy with more force than intended.

When he doesn’t feel like he’s moving anymore, Jaehyun grabs his knife back, standing up to return the blade back to its previous pocket, but a sudden bang from behind jolts him forward.

A bullet on his rib.

Blood was continuing to flow.

And it was from him.

“Jaehyun!”

He hears Johnny scream, but he’s already tumbling forward, vision darkening to a pitch black.

━ ┉ ━

It is painful when he wakes up.

The ceiling is white, and when he looks down, the same hue paints the walls, his bed, his clothes. The only vibrant color on his vision is blue, the color that paints the curtains of the windows on one side.

“Hey,” he hears Johnny say, but he doesn’t respond. “I know you’re awake. Your fingers twitched. Haechan is already calling the nurse.”

“Are we still in LA?”

“Yep,” Johnny replies with an emphasis on the ‘p’.

“How long have I’ve been here?” 

“A week.”

No.

Jaehyun tries to stand, but Johnny stops him from doing so. With his state, he knows it’s useless to fight against the gentle giant, but he has you waiting for him back home.

“We already contacted her,” Johnny says, but he still feels restless. 

The door opens and Haechan, along with his attending physician and a nurse greets him. They were smiling, an act of reassurance, but Jaehyun isn’t having any. He stares at them, void of any emotion.

Johnny takes this as a cue and leaves, dragging Haechan along.

He undergoes examination as facilitated by the doctor. It was a while until he was cleared. When the tests are done, the nurse summons Johnny and Haechan back to the room.

“He’s good to go,” the doctor says, filling up the clearance form. He passes it to the nurse who hurriedly steps outside to work on his clearance and dues.

Before leaving, the doctor prescribed him mefenamic pills to ease any pain. Johnny and Haechan bid them thank you and goodbye as the physician closes the door.

“What’s the earliest flight we could book back to Seoul?” Jaehyun asks in a hurry.

“We already have tickets for tomorrow morning. Taeyong booked it—“

“What time is it anyway?”

Haechan looks at his watch. “It’s one in the afternoon, LA time, hyung.”

Jaehyun pulls the IV out of his dorsal,  almost , as Johnny’s reflexes work better that it halts the action. “Whoa, easy there, tiger. Let the nurses do their job.”

“Can we go to a jewelry shop after this?”

━ ┉ ━

“You know,” you quip as you sit beside him while scooping a spoonful of yogurt from the cup. Jaehyun hums, but there is confusion on his face while he waits for your reply. 

“You’ve been acting weird since you came back from LA.”

“Am I?” He asks without even tearing away his glued vision on the television screen. He is watching a documentary, and you’re sure that it isn’t as interesting as the usual dramas that he watches. You know he’s not interested in your question, but you pursue anyway.

“Yeah,” you say, trying to take interest in whatever he’s watching. You take a spoonful of the frozen yogurt and wince from the cold as it stays in your mouth. 

“You’re an idiot,” to which Jaehyun finally looks at your direction, but of course, with a flick on your forehead. 

“Look who’s talking,” you murmur, sliding down the couch to get more comfortable. He snatches the second spoon you’ve already scooped and he, too, winced from the sudden coldness. “See?”

When he gulps down, he looks at you intently, and you notice how his eyes glistened and softened as it looks at yours. His lips pressed in a thin line, making the indents of his cheeks appear, a trait you always loved of many. 

“What?”

“How many people have you already listed on our wedding guest list?”

“Huh?”

You bit your lip. You’re pretty sure that you’re the only one who knows about how you list your future plans: wedding included. It’s stored in your laptop, folders after folders, and you’re wondering how Jaehyun knew of such self hidden secret.

To which he seems to catch upon. A toothy grin stretches on his lips. “Gotcha.”

“How did you know?”

“Baby, you can’t answer a question with another.”

The show long has forgotten, you quizzically look at his smug demeanor before placing your near-empty cup of yogurt on the nightstand beside the couch. Lying is useless as you were already caught, and since you had been dreaming that Jaehyun would be the one to fill out the blank on the column GROOM , you figure that it’s better to say the truth. Nothing wrong with it anyway.

It’s just a guest list.

“I’m not sure. It’s on my laptop if you want actual numbers.”

He presses closer, nose almost touching yours. “Who is invited?”

“Well,” you quip, trying to focus on remembering your list rather than the feel of his hot breath against yours. “My family, of course. And my close friends. Around twenty...I’m not really sure.”

Jaehyun hums. You don’t exactly know where this conversation is going, so you pull your head slightly away from his. “What is this, Jeong Jaehyun? What are you plotting?”

His toothy grin breaks into an ever wide smile that shows the crescents of his eyes, the whiskers that form on his nose, and the deep dimples that you always find adoring. He lets you go, bouncing as he rests his arm over the edge and lets his head rests on his palms. “Go get your laptop baby.”

“Jeong Jaehyun.”

“Just get it.”

Although you want to resist, your feet already turn to the direction of your bedroom, all the while, Jaehyun fishes a tiny, red velvet box from the pockets of his sweater. He peeks, making sure that the jewelry is there. Suddenly, the room feels hot with him.

You come back with the laptop in hand. Jaehyun tells you to open the guest list file you’ve been long hiding and you do so. You slump down beside him, the file big on your laptop screen. 

“Add Johnny and the rest to the list.”

You look at him incredulously. You hear him say it, but you’re not sure - did he really told you to add his friends on the list? Why?

“What is this, Jeong Jaehyu-”

“Then maybe you can add my grandparents. I’m sure they’ll come.”

“Jaehyun.”

“Have you thought of the theme? The color scheme?”

“Jeong Jaehyun.”

“What?”

You want to cry. You really want to. The tears are already forming on the corners of your eyes. 

“Oh, shit, baby, why are you crying?” He panics. You had your fair share of arguments in the past and he’s yet seen you cry because of him. The plan was naturally smooth in his mind. Go home as if nothing happened. Casually bring up the guest list he saw you making a few days before he left. Propose to you in a very casual way - crying was not in the schedule.

“You’re an idiot,” you say between hiccups. The tears fall from your eyes like there’s no tomorrow, and your nose is getting stuffed with snot as you try to stop crying.

“Don’t say something that will make me hope,” you say.

Jaehyun’s eyes visibly widen. He never thought that you’d think he’s only fooling. Suddenly, his arms stretch out to yours, inviting you over for an embrace, but since you decline, he pulls you towards him - laying your head on his clothed chest. He smells like his favorite perfume, a scent you already resembled home. You feel his chest vibrate as he let out a low chuckle.

“I’m serious,” he coos, threading your hair through his long, ragged fingers. You did not reply, rather shift comfortably in his embrace. There was no exact reason why you said those words, but Jaehyun’s tone as he says he’s serious comforts you.

"I thought you said you don't want a grand, exaggerated proposal, so I..."

You see his other hand opens a red velvet box.

A diamond ring nestled within the comforts of the foam inside the box.

“Marry me.”

He commands, and for the second time tonight, your wails echoed through your apartment in joy.

━ ┉ ━

“You’re getting married?”

Taeyong sounds excruciating. Jaehyun sees the seriousness in his facade and tone. He has his hands overlap one another in front, casually feeling the metal ring against his ring finger. 

“I am.”

“Then what?”

Jaehyun raises a single brow. “Then what?”

“Endanger your fiancee’s life?” Taeyong asks. The older leans on the rest of his swivel chair but the ferocious look on his eyes never left Jaehyun’s. “Isn’t an easy commitment by being a boyfriend enough?”

“She’s not in danger-”

“Maybe she is,” Taeyong then pulls a folder from his desk drawer and puts on the tabletop gently. Jaehyun takes this as a cue and grabs the folder from the table, eyes widening from the picture clipped on the folder. 

It was your picture coming out from a grocery. Jaehyun remembers the chore from a few days ago.

“You know what you oathed for, Jaehyun,” Taeyong says, and surprisingly enough, in his tone was empathy. “The higher-ups don’t exactly want distractions within their agents’ personal life.”

“I’m also human, Taeyong hyung. Give me a break.”

“I would, but I can’t,” Taeyong sighs. “You’re an adult. You know what to do.”

He drops the folder back to the table and places his hands on his sides, curling into a fist. He chooses to remain silent.

━ ┉ ━

Winter came to the country’s capital.

You said that ordering pizza was fine, but he was thinking otherwise. Jaehyun took you to a fancy restaurant for dinner, saying that he just got paid and since it was only two weeks before your wedding, he took it as an opportunity to let you de-stress.

You appreciate the sweet gesture.

And now you’re going back to the comforts of your home. Snow started to fell as you billing out of the restaurants, and the floor was blanketed in glass ice in only a few minutes.

He was seated on the driver’s seat, one hand manning the wheel while the other intertwined with yours. You tell him to focus on the road and let your hand go, but his grip only tightens and brings it to his lips when it came to a red light. 

With the seconds ticking red, he looks at you, a toothy grin etched on his lips which caused the deep indents of his cheeks to come out. He looks at you admiringly, taking in your angelic features even though only illuminated by the dim lights brought about by the vehicles and street lights. 

“I love you,” he says, and no it has been thousands and millions of times you’ve heard those words - but it never fails to make you flush beet red and heart beat faster than normal.

“It’s a green,” you huff, eyes focusing back on the road. Jaehyun laughs and lets his hand back on the wheel. 

You didn’t know the dangers that lie ahead.

Jaehyun swore to protect you. Everything that he needs to keep, he successfully kept it from you. 

The true nature of his job. The true nature of his company.

The true nature of Jeong Jaehyun.

Winter came to Seoul too soon.

As for Jeong Jaehyun as well.

He hears you say “I love you” which caused him to glance at you for a brief moment, but his peripheral saw white-

A blinding white light.

He hears you scream. 

And then there was ringing. His vision was pitch black as his eyes were closed, yet his reflex in before was to hold you. 

He did. He grasps your hand, and your touch was the last sensation he felt as he started to succumb into a deep slumber.

━ ┉ ━

“Bye Teacher [Y/N]! I’ll see you tomorrow!”

“Bye, little one! See you tomorrow!”

Jaehyun sees you wave at the children as they go out of pre-school in a cold afternoon. The surroundings were covered in gold as the sun starts to set and children are scurrying to get home, some along with their parents.

He sees you smile towards them, a smile he had always admired and cherished. You never notice his figure in the background as you were busy with your goodbyes, but he notices your exhaustion by the weary look on your face. You go back inside the premises, hands stuck inside your apron to keep you from the cold.

He only wishes one thing now.

Jaehyun remembers you, and he hopes that you remember him as well.

[sepublic]

Starkiller Base was unnecessary

           Re-watching The Force Awakens, and… It’s occurred to me that, even more than I initially thought, Starkiller Base is a genuinely useless, pointless part of the plot that’s just shoehorned in for the sake of arbitrarily raising the stakes, in a blind attempt to redo the Original Trilogy while one-upping it at the same time; Taking pot shots at the original Death Star’s ‘absurdity’ to try to make Starkiller Base’s destruction feel more ‘involved’ and ‘sensible’ with having an inside job to sabotage and blow up key components, yadda-yadda; Almost feels like the writers are punching down at the Original Trilogy in a vain attempt to look more clever and ‘self-aware’, without considering how reckless power-scaling doesn’t work (Which we see once more and somehow even worse in The Rise of Skywalker).

           The thing about why the Death Star works is like… It’s relevant. It has build-up. We’re introduced to it from the start, the entire story revolves around destroying it; R2-D2 is important because he has plans to the Death Star, Vader is seen chasing Leia because she had those plans. It all comes around to and circles back to the Death Star, we have a sense of what it is from the start, there’s build-up. You NEED the planet-killing machine for the climax of A New Hope, because the only reason to go there is because, surprise- The Death Star IS there, it just arrived right besides Yavin IV!

           But Starkiller Base… When you watch the movie, it just pops in out of nowhere, amidst the pre-established plot threads. Without any prior context or build-up, we’re just suddenly treated to a shot of this huge, mechanized planet, and then Hux almost casually drops that the ‘superweapon’ is ready, and then suddenly it’s firing and blows up the Hosnian System. The Death Star is justifiable because it’s the first of its kind, Starkiller Base is the third. In canon and Legends, there’s a lot of side-material going into the sheer enormity and horror of the Death Star, the amount of manpower it takes to construct such a thing, its formation is treated with gravitas; And yet something WAY bigger and more advanced comes out of nowhere, from a group even less powerful than the Empire?!

           Again, you need the Death Star, it’s why the rebels are being chased, it’s why Leia was captured, it’s why R2-D2 meets Luke and then Obi-Wan, bringing up the Rebel journey; It’s why Luke’s aunt and uncle die, it’s why there’s no Alderaan and instead the Death Star itself to capture the protagonists when they arrive there. But Starkiller Base is pointless- The plot is about BB-8 because he has the map to Luke Skywalker, it’s about finding Luke through BB-8. Starkiller Base is just so casually dropped for something that should be so much bigger than the Death Star in the narrative… And likewise, we don’t need it for anything.

           Is it to prove to Finn that the First Order is dangerous, that he can’t just ignore its destruction? The thing is, he already has Rey’s capture to motivate his participation. Starkiller Base could not fire, but Finn would still help the Resistance infiltrate, because Rey would still be captured. It’s not needed for Poe and the Resistance to arrive on Takodana, because they came for BB-8 after getting that message, the Hosnian Cataclysm totally unrelated. You could argue it gives the Resistance an excuse to fight back against the First Order in the film’s climax… But that does not justify creating another superweapon, much less one as implausible and redundant as Starkiller Base.

           Like, maybe the writers wanted to REALLY return to the status quo, so having the New Republic be devastated was a requirement… But was it really? Just have the New Republic continue to be ineffectual, it’s even a plot-point in side material that its military is embarrassingly small; So just say the Resistance IS the full extent of that military! You still get an underdog situation. And again, if you really want to forcibly cut off any support for the Resistance… You don’t need a giant superweapon to one-up the Death Star. Just have the First Order demonstrate its traditional military power, by having a fleet invade the New Republic’s capital, unexpected, able to waltz in because everyone is so incompetently lax about these rising fascists; And with recent real-life events, it only makes more disturbing sense.

          Instead of getting a pointless superweapon, have a bunch of Star Destroyers attack Hosnian Prime and take it over, show a montage of destruction and civilian death, etc. This still establishes the danger of the First Order and how it’s quickly decapitated the New Republic and left it in shambles, setting the stage for the underdog conflict; But you don’t have to rely on something as absurdly over-the-top as Starkiller Base, which has no build-up to its unprecedented firepower besides “Oh yeah this exists” and then watching it fire and finding out firsthand.

          The death of trillions with the Hosnian System is senseless violence both in-universe and from a narrative, writing perspective… And again, this arguably establishes the First Order as a threat better, because they don’t need to rely on a superweapon; And even after The Force Awakens ends, the audience still knows that they have access to an entire fleet… Whereas with Starkiller Base, that threat is lost by the end of the film and thus made redundant. The scene could become even more disturbing if we straight-up see some civilians on Hosnian Prime welcome the First Order, adding additional world building that helps explain why the First Order was able to develop, how it got support- And again, being topical to what happens today. It connects with canon lore about the First Order’s supporters in other worlds (such as Coruscant), and could even be a callback to liberty dying with thunderous applause in Revenge of the Sith! We could still have the people on Takodana react in horror, through the Holonet’s broadcasting of the coup.

           Of course, this is Star Wars- And what’s more iconic than thrilling space battles and trench runs? Sometimes you want sci-fi fun and stuff for the sake of it, nothing wrong with that, that’s always important too… But again, you don’t need a giant super-laser to have that. Just make up something else; Like Starkiller Base is the planet that the First Order has taken over. Perhaps they intend to launch a bunch of new Star Destroyers, or are about to finish production of a whole new batch, which would make things even worse. Instead of destroying a superweapon, you could have the Resistance crippling the factories that finish these Star Destroyers- There’s your trench run! Have them blow up a power plant that’s running the factories, instead of a thermal oscillator. There’s still a victory at the end, and while the threat is far from over, time has been bought- And it makes the First Order’s immediate retaliation in the next film more sensible, adds to the idea that every second, every bit of progress helps, you gotta take what you need… Even an extra day to prepare and evacuate is a miracle that furthers the underdog motif.

           Plus, with a batch of Star Destroyers that need to be stopped- There’s still the need to rescue Rey. The Resistance still needs to cause damage at the First Order’s base, and Finn is still needed to infiltrate and lower the shields, while taking advantage of this operation for himself and Rey. Most importantly, you don’t get a contrived superweapon that only adds to the bland, carbon-copy standard of the Sequel Trilogy; And perhaps best of all, we don’t have to see Ilum retroactively bastardized and destroyed, with Starkiller Base’s identity revealed AFTER we see it get blown up… The legacy of the Jedi and its history is not further destroyed with the loss of this sacred planet of kyber crystals.

          And that’s better, because this trilogy about passing the torch, seems as insistent as Kyle Ron, the villain, on interpreting this theme as utterly wiping out all traces of the past, and leaving nothing for the next generation to work with. Which, I’m not surprised at a corporation thoughtlessly razing and salting the earth in selfish disregard for those who will need and use it afterwards, but still. And while a star that burns brighter than most thanks to its heart of Kyber IS a neat concept that could be worked with, especially with what Chirrut Imwe says, in addition to the motifs of flames of rebirth and the Phoenix… It’s not something that justifies the further eradication of Jedi history and effort on a level that even the Empire didn’t go, just to arbitrarily raise stakes with yet another uninspired superweapon.

           Like, the Duel of the Fates script and its concept of a device that blocks off all inter-galactic communication is MUCH more interesting, clever, and innovative than the Death Star Lite, and it hits closer to home in this age of internet and mass communication; In contrast to the Death Star, which fit more in its time as a criticism of the stockpiling and development of nukes, and how that tapped into the public’s fear at the time of nuclear Armageddon. And a device blocking off intergalactic communication provides good reason for why the Resistance doesn’t have the full might of the New Republic behind them, because they can’t even communicate to collaborate, and it adds to that idea of people made to feel ‘alone’ or whatever and thus isolated, so they can’t band together and rise up. That adds to Rey feeling alone, and makes Poe and Zorii’s discussion at the end of the trilogy that much more meaningful… Not that the Sequel Trilogy was planned to consider the latter, of course.

           (Actually, I wonder if it’s possible to cut Starkiller Base’s superweapon scenes from the film. Like a cut where any references to its superweapon, and the scene where it fires, is cut out; I think the film might still work that way.)