#and march upon the rubble <3

[balladofthewhitehorse]

10 for the dialogue ask, for engport if you're so willing ❤️

Of course! More than willing <3 I love those two so so much.

Bricks and mortar tumbled from upon high, the very earth splitting wide-open beneath his feet. Portugal grunted as he stumbled and tripped, palms grazing on unforgiving stone. Skin ripped at the seams as dust filled in the air, Portugal biting back a cry (bones breaking and mending, a thousand splinters falling apart and then coming back together again as he lay pinned beneath stone, dying over and over). An eternity stretched between each creak and groan of earth and flesh, Portugal trembling as he kicked out like a dying beetle. ‘’Help-...’’ He was pinned down under a crumbling wall, cheek pressed to the dusty earth as blood pooled around his head (a sanguine halo, hair sticking to his forehead - sticky and gross). 

With a pained whimper, he twisted beneath the rubble - spine contorting in a most dreadful way, a burning ache lancing up the length of his back as he did so. ‘’Help-!’’ Portugal could scarcely breathe, and he wasn’t even sure if he was shouting anymore - rubble filling his mouth, stones pouring into his throat and into his lungs, until Portugal was clawing at the dark. Thrashing and twisting, Portugal hardly noticed a hand reaching out towards him, suffocating under the weight of the rubble. Light broke through the gaps in stone, but Portugal knew with a chilling sense of dread, that it was not sunlight that reached towards him. He was going to die here. A hand grasped his shoulder suddenly, Portugal kicking out instinctively with a yelp. His foot landed somewhere soft, a faint ‘Oof- you bugger.’ against his ear as he jolted awake at last; The duvet had become contorted, wrapped around his waist and legs, a trap of Portugal’s own making as he sat up slowly. Trembling, Portugal stared owlishly at England. ‘’S-sorry.’’ He swallowed thickly, heart hammering in his chest as he leaned back against the pillows. ‘’Didn’t mean to wake you up, dear.’’ Rubble echoed in his ears, clattering distantly as he pressed the base of his palms to his eyes (the walls of the room seemed to sway). ‘’Just-...’’ ‘’I know.’’ England whispered softly, his voice low as he wrapped an arm around Portugal’s chest and pulled him closer, resting Portugal’s head against his chest. ‘’I’m right here.’’ There was a faint whisper of the duvet covers being pulled over Portugal, over England’s belly as he cradled Portugal close. ‘’You’re okay.’’ He whispered into his dark hair, the moon cutting a silver slant across his bright eyes - a faint twinkle, a promise that had been repeated for centuries. ‘’I would never let anything happen to you-’’ England growled softly, kissing Portugal’s cheek (and yet, things happened - history in its timeless march, but England would try to stop the moon and stars from changing with his bare hands if he could). ‘’-I promise.’’ 

Portugal smiled faintly, cheek pressed against England’s pec - his hairy chest tickling his cheek as he pressed close to his husband’s love handles. ‘’T-thank you.’’ He wasn’t sure if he would be able to sleep tonight, not while his mind still raced - conjuring images of cracks in the ceiling and the very foundations tearing at the seams, but his heart was no-longer racing. As he stared up at England, hand rubbing a slow - almost meditative - circle on England’s belly, Portugal sighed ‘’...It still haunts me, sometimes.’’ It was a whispered confessional, and his husband did not need to reply - simply nodding faintly as he stroked Portugal’s hair. ‘’Things haunt me too.’’ England whispered. ‘’It’ll be okay. I’m right here.’’ 

Portugal snorted softly, smiling warmly as he snuggled close to England. ‘’Thank you, dear.’’ He sighed, feeling himself drifting off (as though pulled from the rubble at last).

[marlonbrandto]

THE MAYNOS GAMBIT | 2

The remains of the department of records hold little of value. Aun’Shar begins to search the rubble in hopes the key may still be buried within. Pebbles nearby begin to vibrate, floating off the ground as static electricity crackles in the air. Suddenly six pillars of light beam down from the clouds, then quickly dissipate to reveal smoking armored figures standing where there once was nothing. The Imperium of Mankind has made planetfall.

1. The Terminators need no time to shake off the Teleportarium sickness, upon seeing the Tau, the heavily armored unit moves uncharacteristically fast, rushing Kas’Mis ghostkeel. Aun’Shar finds a brass cog in the rubble, seemingly innocuous except for a serial number carved into the face, it’s the key! He takes it and orders a retreat, but it’s already too late, the Terminators have crippled the ghostkeel and turn towards the shouting Ethereal.

2. D’tano orders a firing line be made to cover the Ethereals retreat. Though the hail of pulse fire manages to pierce the armor of a few Terminators, three of them seem unfazed as they plunge into the torrent.

3. The Terminators approach whats left of the defensive line, each fire warrior prepares to give all they have for the greater good.

4. As the Terminator captain shreds through the armor and flesh of a fire warrior with his chainsword, the Sha’sui of the strike team gets a transmission on his helmet comms, the ethereal and retinue has safely gotten away. He relaxes, turns towards his remaining soldier and nods. Drawing his ritual blade, he rushes the captain, dodging a slash as the revving chainsword roars over him. He thrusts the sword with all his might, hoping to find purchase between two joins of the Captain’s armor. Blood drips down the hilt of the blade, “it bleeds!” Thinks the Shas’ui as a shadow of a hand glides over him. Suddenly his vision goes black as a power fist grips his head, compacting his helmet with a *crack* as his skull shatters, letting his body limply crumple to the ground. The final soldier had charged behind his Shas’ui but now found himself lifted a foot off the ground as the Terminator captain grips his neck. Gurgling under the pressure, he fumbles at his belt, finding a smooth round disc. Pressing the button at the center of the disc, he holds it out in front of the Terminators’ expressionless helmet, gasping for a breath that can’t reach further than the fingers at his throat.

—————————————————————————

The Terminator captain throws his helmet into the rubble, blinking furiously as his vision slowly returns to him. The fire warriors’ photon grenade was an insult to the glorious slaughter he and his brothers had preformed. Brother Jeremiah lays his power fist on his captains shoulder, shards of metal mixed with blood and brain still drip off of his fingers as he shakes the captain to attention.

“Lord Balthasar, the Xenos leader left no trail, and there is not a living breath among the rabble that remains”

The features of Jeremiah’s helmet begin to form in Balthasars vision. His prey has escaped, he frowns.

“Those xenos insult us with dishonor, we will continue with our purge of the city, soon all on this planet will be brought to heel. For the emperor.”

“For the emperor!” Jeremiah replies, and the company of three march towards the next building uncaring of the corpses they desecrate underfoot.

[asgh-youtube]

8,372.

8,372, and you have a genocide. 1.2 million displaced, tens of thousands expelled, and then you have a genocide.

This was, of course, decided as such 10 years after the fact. If we are talking during the war, it took 3 years for them to decide enough was enough.

Thus, the Bosnian genocide.

11,078.

Inaccurate as of now. 11,078 isn't even the updated number, and yet this isn't any genocide. 1.5 million displaced — 75% of the population — for those who aren't aware.

That is just the land of "terrorists," of course. Everyone within must be harboring arms or using human shields or plotting those totally-going-to-happen terrorist attacks. 2 million terrorists. The IOF is as justified here as the British Army were back during the troubles, of course! Good old war hero David Cleary killing all those terrorists, just like his buds down in Israel wiping a people off the map.

But it is not contained just to this "land of terrorists," you pieces of shit. It extends to the West Bank — 190 murdered, homes razed and taken, a brand new Nakba for the ages — and through to the 93 killed Lebanese "terrorists" — including 29,000 displaced people, and the family of that war mongering journalist. Not just to there, either. Over to Syria, with 19 dead, and down to Egypt, with 6 wounded.

But this is no genocide, right? Forcing millions into more and more cramped spaces, 4 hours of explusion labeled as "peace," bombing thousands with that which will never stop burning, taking down the internet and killing any journalist who could relay any of this to the outside world.

400+ families, bloodlines, erased in a month. Thousands upon thousands of children, if the innocent adults weren't enough to tear your heart to shreds. People with dreams of being doctors, architects, scholars, and even youtubers, the singular thought to bring joy and help to those who surround them. The cold shreds of their hearts are trapped under the rubble of their destroyed homes, trapped alongside their pets, loved ones, childhood paintings, and every memory imaginable.

But that isn't a genocide.

People take the to the streets each day, staging bigger and bigger demonstrations. Brave souls shutting down their work to stop the unstopping march of death. The people trapped within yell at you to realize that HUMANS ARE FUCKING HUMANS.

You pretend as if you do not hear. That you do not fear. The beating heart of humanity stands outside your door, waiting for you to finally recognize it. You can't kill forever. You cannot support this hell forever. Even if you relish in this hell, you know that that beating heart will break down your door, and the losses will finally be too great, and you will relinquish defeat.

Maybe you'll label it a genocide. Get one of your cronies up on the podium accepting that award of bravery for finally speaking out on such a monstrous series of events. But by then it'll be done.

Or maybe, just maybe, that hope won't be for naught, and your death regime shall fall. The banners of destruction and destitution shall burn, and you will finally realize that hope is undying.

And then, Palestine shall be free. You cannot kill hope, and thus, you cannot kill Palestine.

Free, Free Palestine.

[khfankeri]

Excerpt from Chapter 9 of A Bond Greater Than Family (A Plague Tale)

Credit to @pinkprincess717-blog1 for the pic! <3

From Chapter 9 - Short Interlude

They lay there for several minutes as Amicia started breathing normally again. She looked at Lucas who held her, and it hit her then that she had never asked Lucas about his dream in the nebula. She had been too caught up in her own grief to even think about it.

"Lucas... what happened while you were in the nebula cloud?"

He stopped stroking her back and looked away. Oh, so it was bad... but she felt she had to press. She had to know. "Please tell me."

Turning back to her, she couldn't read his eyes. "Are you sure you want to hear it?"

She gulped and nodded.

He sighed. "Very well."

***************************

Lucas woke up in the the dense cloud of the nebula aching all over. "That was quite a fall..."

He looked around. "Amicia?"

She was nowhere near him in the rubble of a destroyed city. "Okay, just breathe. Remember all natural laws end here. Just keep moving forward. We have to try and save Hugo." If they could at least...

He kept moving and eventually came upon a destroyed farm. It was his old master Laurentius' farm! What was it doing here?? The farm was ablaze and he could hear screaming. He stopped his ears up, reliving the moment he had seen his master die.

"Let go of the past, Lucas. It's not needed here."

"Hugo?? Is that you??" Lucas asked looking wildly around him. No one was there though.

"Yes, it's me. Come on, you have to keep moving."

Lucas fought the gigantic urge to run into the burning building. He had to keep going. He pushed himself past the burning house towards the field they had ran through to escape the rats, walking haltingly to the windmill at the other end of the farm. It was set ablaze as it had been before.

He stopped when he saw Beatrice de Rune tied to the windmill. The Count's wife, Emilie, was holding a knife up to her neck. No he had to stop her!!

"Let go, Lucas. You have to keep going."

"But... she's my teacher..."

He watched as the count's wife slit her throat again. This was too much. It was too painful. He felt the tears threatening again. He had managed to hide them from Amicia earlier, but he couldn't do it now. Losing another teacher was too much. Keep walking. Keep going.

He pushed past with tears starting to come down his eyes. Wiping them stubbornly away, he kept going. Let go of the past. Keep marching forward.

He wasn't prepared for what happened next though.

Lucas was back in the towns and villages he and Amicia had traveled through over the last year. So many rats and guards. Amicia was calling to him from one of the gates. He had found her thank the Lord!

"Amicia!"

But he stopped. It wasn't her. Or, at least it wasn't the current Amicia. She looked like how she looked when they first met. Not as experienced and  much more scared. Younger. More innocent. He knew this was a dream, but she looked so real. Still so beautiful.

She went ahead into the gate and he tried to scream and tell her to stop, there were too many rats! "No, Amicia!! Stop!!"

She cried out in agony as she was eaten alive. His heart dropped.

Suddenly she was back at the gate beckoning for him to follow. There were some ingredients nearby. Perhaps he could save her?? He ran towards her, but Hugo appeared, grabbing his hand holding him back surprising Lucas. "Hugo?"

Hugo shook his head. "Let her go. You can't do anything. You have to keep moving forward. What was done in the past can no longer be done here."

"But she's dying! I can't... I can't lose her too... it's more than I can bare."

Lucas wanted to stop up his ears as he heard Amicia cry out yet again.

Hugo shook his head.

"Please, Hugo. I can't stand here and do nothing. It hurts..." he slumped down onto his knees, holding onto Hugo's hand as Amicia screamed out again.

Hugo hugged him then, causing everything around them to disappear. Amicia's screams disappearing with it. Lucas breathed a sigh of relief.

"You really love her don't you?"

He looked up at Hugo then, tears threatening to come down his face yet again. "More than you know."

Hugo smiled then looking much older and wiser than his five years. "Good. I need you to take care of her. I've... I've asked her to do something really terrible... and she can't do it alone."

A terrible feeling hit the pit of his stomach. "You've asked her to kill you haven't you?"

Hugo nodded. "Although, I think you knew deep down that was the only option left. Amicia... is still accepting it. And I'm not sure if she can. She may need... help."

Lucas gritted his teeth. "What... can I do?"

"Be with her. And if she can't do it..." Hugo pulled out a crossbow holding it out to him. "I need you to do it for her."

Lucas took the crossbow, hands shaking. "But... she'd never forgive me..."

Hugo looked at him with understanding in his eyes. "Yes, I'm sorry. But it's the only other option I have. I can't... I can't let innocent people die anymore."

Lucas gulped as he looked at the little boy who just wanted to live happily with his sister and family. "I understand, Hugo. I'm sorry I couldn't save you..."

Hugo hugged him again taking Lucas off guard. "You did all you could. You and Amicia are my family, and I need you to keep living. Can you do it?"

Lucas nodded against the young boy's shoulder, unable to speak.

"Good. Now go save my sister. I'm counting on you."

Lucas was suddenly out in an open area still holding the crossbow. He looked down at it and quickly put it on his back. No time to think, he had to find Amicia. There was a tree ahead of him. Oh, it was Hugo... He looked like he was in pain even from many yards away. He gritted his teeth. "I'll keep my promise, Hugo."

He stumbled around for a moment getting his bearings. Then he saw her. Gently, he called out to her as she gazed off into the distance as if she was still dreaming.

He bent down in front of her. Taking her in his arms, he held her tightly.

Her eyes started to clear. "Lucas?" Her voice broke.

Fighting tears, he held her close. "I'm here. I'm here."

*****************************

Amicia didn't have to hear the rest. She hugged him tightly crying freely. Feeling wet tears on her shirt, she knew he was crying quietly too. "My brave alchemist. Thank you. I truly couldn't have done it without you. I love you."

They stayed like that for several more minutes. Finally pulling apart, Amicia stroked back his hair memorizing every little feature to his face. For Lucas to cry meant a lot. He was the most stable person she had ever met. She kissed him and pulled him in once again, Amicia holding his head in her arms. It was her turn to comfort.

Eventually they both fell asleep too exhausted to even say another word.

Read more here! :)

[whatdoesshedotothem]

Thursday 10 March 1836

8 ½

11 20

no kiss fine but dull morning F38° at 9 ½ and breakfast in an hour - out at 10 ½ having been ¾ hour looking over Journal - with Mark Hepworth with carts and men + 2 fillers (Robert Mann’s men) as yesterday - then with Robert Mann + 4 at the hollow till Mr. Freeman came to me bringing his nephew from Kent with him - came to look at the new road as I had told him at the rent day I should like him to see the road and give me his advice - took him along the road to the Lodge - he was against lagging and advised cutting up the thorns and branches and laying them (on new cart stuff) as a foundation for the rubble - mentioned the Landymere stone - thought perhaps it was fast in water - the stone of Mrs. Lancashire and Brooke sold - did not know at what price - but some stone near sold at 3/6 per yard - wages and rents must alter or stone could not be sold at the present prices - the best customers in the country - In London the stone most sold at any price - for it cannot lie in the vessels and some are obliged to pay 6d. per ton per day for ground for the stone to lie upon and stone has been hawked about in carts in London streets and in the country 10 miles from London - took Mr. F- to the rock-work - explained - he said it would be rather inconvenient to let me have men and tackling, but he would do it for me - I said then I was equally obliged as if he let me have the men, but that I could manage another way on this he said oh! no! he could manage for me - and it was agreed (he said he would do it for me as cheap as anyone) that he should come next Monday week he finding men and tackling for getting and loadening the stone at the quarry and Nelson to let me have Hinton and men to manage at the rock-man - Mr. F- to speak to and arrange with N- told F- I had had an application for the stone in Joseph Hall’s land, and asked him (F-) to value it for me - had F- and his nephew in the north parlour till near 2 - before going away F- said he had a favour to beg of me to change the stone-road in yew trees wood or have more time - to get the stone the stone in - in fact, this was the real reason of his coming however little he might think I should find this out - said I had often congratulated myself on having Mr. F- to deal with instead of anybody else - that I grieved over the spoiling of the wood and would rather change the road than give more time but that I would do the best I could but could never give more time -A - had Parkinson in the hall - brought him into the North parlour - he wished to have a new public house built in the tan-house garden - 4 rooms on a floor - 5 yards x 5 yards and 1ft. and the back rooms would do 5 yards x 4 yards with 4 good chambers and brewhouse and stable - less would not do - could not afford to pay more than £30 per annum pays £20 a year at present - the building he has would make 5 cottages - thought a new Inn would be built for £300 then when I said no! said well for £400 but could not pay than £30 per annum - A- to consider of it, and give him an answer in a few days - he said he should not stay where he was - then A- had luncheon downstairs - sat with her there and then upstairs till she went to Cliff hill and I to the workmen (Robert + 4, and Frank and my own cart) plant at the meer-head - keep Wood and Samuel Booth planting till 6 when rain came on and from 4 to then sent Robert + 2 to the stubbing at the hollow open drain - came in at 6 ¼ - wrote about a French or German lady’s maid ‘speaking English not essentially necessary’ and sent my letter this evening to ‘Madame Lecomte 11 Bryanston street Portland Square London post paid’ - dinner at 6 ¾ - coffee - A-‘s French as usual - we dined on Pork - too rich for us - it disagreed with both of us so bilious we could not see a letter of A-‘s French book - A- 10 minutes and A- ½ hour with my aunt poorly tonight - came upstairs at 8 55 - tea - rather better for it - but very bilious - wrote all the above of today till 10 10 at which hour F40° fine day but dull till rain at 6 and afterwards for some time - Mr. F- told me the union cross would be sold on young Mr. Thompson’s (of chapel of Briers) coming of age in a year from this time - Messrs. Rainer and Beaumont, brother-in-law to Mr. Jonathan Akroyd, bidding against one another for it - they had already got it up beyond Mr. Mitchell’s valuation - asked F- to get to know for me what it was valued at - F- said the buildings were very bad repair - all the roof would want taking off and the timbers renewing - I said all that would not be done for nothing - F- said it was an excellent situation of which I agreed but made no further remark thinking to myself I see whence the opposition to Northgate will come - F- had said Carr was the fittest man for it - I merely said I thought he had neither capital nor character but, in fact, he had never named Northgate to me - But thought I, I must mind what I am about there will be opposition anyway with Carr or without him  - I had best have a man who would be more difficult to oppose than Carr - A- would not take luncheon till I got her persuaded at last told me she had been unhappy the last two or three weeks had not pleasure in anything never felt as if doing right would not take wine was getting too fond of it afraid she should drink was getting as she was before afraid people would find it out and began to look disconsolate oh oh thought I I see how it is cheered her up said we would get off in May would go to Paris first this made me stay with her so inconveniently long  on leaving her thanked god as I walked along for all blessings to myself and fervently begged his help and felt comforted and my spirits good and my head clear

[prju77]

The Walls are Coming Down!- Your Lion Bite Word For Today!

I am increasing my favour upon the faithfulness of my people.

There are those of you that have been faithfully marching around the same walls for years. You have seen cracks appear, and at times have felt disheartened that these cracks have not widened.

I have heard your prayers, your groans of intercession. I have seen your faithfulness and the times that you have persevered through tears, fatigue, and injury. Even when it felt almost hopeless, you have been steadfast in holding on.

Dear ones, now is the time. The walls are coming down.

With great shouts of worship and praise, I will bring breakthrough. A new sound that willreverberate in the spiritual atmosphere and release waves of freedom that the old walls cannot withstand.

So come forth my faithful prayer warriors and intercessors – release the sound of triumph and victory that I will breathe into your lungs by my Spirit. Just as Jericho was liberated, so I will release a new liberation upon the earth.

Activation: Declare aloud, “Lord, release in me a new sound that is pleasing to you, a sound that will tear down walls and bring breakthrough and freedom.”

Start to pray or sing in tongues – notice the new sound that God is releasing from within you into the spiritual atmosphere. Use that sound to raise a shout against those situations in which you have been praying for breakthrough.

Joshua 6:20 (AMP)"So the people shouted [the battle cry], and the priests blew the trumpets. When the people heard the sound of the trumpet, they raised a great shout and the wall [of Jericho] fell down, so that the sons of Israel went up into the city, every man straight ahead [climbing over the rubble], and they overthrew the city!"

Habakkuk 3:18-19 (AMP)"Yet I will [choose to] rejoice in the Lord; I will [choose to] shout in exultation in the [victorious] God of my Salvation! The Lord God is my strength [my source of courage, my invincible army]; He has made my feet [steady and sure] like hind’s feet and makes me walk [forward with spiritual confidence] in my high places [of challenge and responsibility]!"

[sparrowmoth]

🍎+ 🎩 ?

Thank you, @quimpossible! ♥️

🍎 Snow White: If you could ask any character for a five minute interview, who would it be and why?

If I thought I could expose him for the worm he is, I’d say King Beast. I’d have to be careful though because I wouldn’t put it past him to spin it in his favour. Probably would be way more effective to interview someone like Uma, who’s got natural confidence and charisma, plus I’d trust her to give honest and well thought out answers that would leave anyone who read/watched the interview with a lot to think about.

🎩 Dr. Facilier: Let’s pretend there’s college on the Isle. Which ghastly field would you be majoring in?

Wrathful Writing 101 with a specialization in Deconstructing Monarchies through Injurious English 😇

Disney Descendants Asks

[nycorix]

I made this ghost/22 playlist on a whim after reading Archivist Wasp/Latchkey for the first time, and I haven’t been able to stop making playlists for this fandom since 😂 

I like to curate my playlists into stories/character deep dives, so all of them are ordered and I have specific thoughts about each song! I’ve posted some of my playlists on Twitter already, but this feels like a good place to put those specific thoughts lmao so here goes Title: Carrion Boy Description: A ghost/22 playlist that’s got songs for both his timelines, all mixed up and shaken together just like him oops

1. Roll Call [the neighbourhood] 22's whole existence while living 2. Falling Off [the people's thieves] The ghost's whole existence since dying 3. I'm So Sorry [nico collins] 22 @ The Director/Latchkey 4. Bullet [riot child] 06/22's uhhh unique relationship with both each other and their circumstances 5. Say You Believe [midnight divide] 22's (platonic!!!!) strong feelings for Kit 6. 1x1 [bring me the horizon, nova twin] The ghost's misery strong platonic feelings regarding Foster's memory loss 7. Blue (Da Ba Dee) [jonathan young, toxic eternity, travis carte] This song is as chaotic as he feels to me, flawless external calm and grace but always internally screaming 8. No Mercy [zayde wølf] …….22. It's just 22/ghost's fighting style (especially when fighting 06 lmao) 9. Solo [prismo] 22 honestly thinks he's so hardcore (he's not wrong but also. Drama king much) 10. Where The Lonely Ones Roam [digital daggers] Kit @ 22, Ghost @ Foster. This one gives me chills ngl 11. When Dragons Cry [bo johnson] 22&06's requiem for the latchkey ghosts 12. Stampede [alexander jean, lindsey stirling] For this one I'm literally just picturing 06/22 wasting a bunch of mechs/ghosts/whatever, specifically That One Scene in Firebreak/AW flashback where they destroy the mechs and look appallingly cool doing it 13. City of the Dead [eurielle] The ghost in the ghost-place 14. Kill the Lights [the birthday massacre] He has such intense self-hatred/repression/bitterness and this song represents All That 15. In the End [linkin park] This is literally what happened to 06 and his feelings about it

16. Hurts Like Hell [fleurie, tommee profitt] This song perfectly captures his grief and his way of dealing (lol) with it 17. Neon Ocean [new dialogue] ...his grief/PTSD, continued 18. Sometimes [nick lutsko] 22 and 06 in Latchkey once they're the last ones left 19. Darkside [sam tinnesz] The ghost considering his life/death/etc. 20. Now That We’re Alone [the people’s thieves] 22/the ghost’s mental landscape (y i k e s) 21. Pompeii [bastille] "Oh, where do we begin? The rubble or our sins" i meAN 22. March [jesse abbey] The whole supersoldier thing doesn't really leave you in death, turns out 23. Wolves [selena gomez, marshmello] the ghost's tragic journey to find Foster 24. Man or a Monster [sam tinnesz, zayde wølf] 22′s not great at self-concept and It Shows 25. Centuries [fall out boy] 22's opinions on Latchkey and the director's ghost 26. Stronger [the score] 22 in life at all times/the ghost, upon realizing he's a ghost lmao 27. Be Free [the tech thieves] 22 and 06's yearning for freedom while in Latchkey 28. Echoes [fenris] Everything he was and everything he is, blending together 29. UNHOLY [the faceplants] 22/ghost's bittersweet manifesto lol. I strongly picture this playing over the scene where he snaps at the end of Firebreak and [redacted] everybody on sublevel A 30. Wrecked [imagine dragons] This is the ghost without Foster. 31. Forget [marina] His relationship with memory is Complicated 32. Monster in the Closet [subcon] ….22/ghost's bittersweet manifesto pt. 2. This is like a giant ‘fuck you’ @ the Director/Stellaxis/etc. 

[andrearla14]

[SPOILER ALERT] ACOSF Theory: Nesta as High Queen

On of the most recurring conversation in "A Court of Silver Flames" is that of the High King. They reference the possibility of Rhyssand and Feyre one day ruling over Phrynthia as High King and High Queen. It makes sense, Rhyssand is the most powerful out of all the High Lords, and Feyre has a bit of power from all the courts. Together, along with Nesta's made trove, and the Dread Trove, they could be unstoppable and the perfect candidates for High King and Queen.

But, here me out, what about Nesta?

Here is why I think she could be High Queen at the end of the series, with Cassian at her side.

1. Nesta's mother always refered to her as Queen. "My Nesta. Elain shall wed for love and beauty, but you, my cunning little queen … You shall wed for conquest." Repeated again: "My Nesta, her mother had always called her, even on her deathbed, so wasted and pale from typhus. My little queen." It's very curious that this is mentioned in the same book that goes on and on about High King's.

2. Her mother isn't the only one to call her Queen though. When she visits the Prison, Lanthys says: "Come with me, Queen of Queens, and we shall return what was once lost.". He shows her a vision of her as Queen: "Nesta could see the portrait Lanthys wove into the air around them. She saw herself on a black throne, a matching crown in her unbound hair. Enormous onyx beasts—scaled, like those she’d seen on the Hewn City’s pillars—lay at the foot of the dais. Ataraxia leaned against her throne...". The whole conversation was to goad her onto his side, to show her what she was powerful enough to become, what they could be together with the Dread Trove. But it was interesting that he called her Queen of Queens.

3. She knows how to play the political game. She's cunning, ruthless. She seduced a Duke at 14, and later on in the book she seduced Eris enough that he asked for her hand after their dance. Even Rhyssand was smart enough to use her for his goals: ""Because you savor playing the game,” Rhys said. He’d undoubtedly noticed how smoothly she dealt with Helion’s attempts to flirt earlier. Rhys knew how to wield a tool at his disposal." . We see her time and time again put Tamlin, Eris and such in their place, befitting of a person that could one day rule over them. Plus, she's learning about warfare. Starting with the book The Dance of Battle that Cassian lent her ( "It was astonishing how much of the art of warfare was like the social manipulation her mother had insisted she learn: picking battlegrounds, finding allies amongst the enemies of one’s enemies … Some of it was wholly new, of course, and such a precise way of thinking that she knew she’d have to read the manuscript many times to fully grasp its lessons") and following with other similar books (" Cassian asked Nesta, “What are you reading today?” “A Brief History of the Great Sieges by Osian.” He almost stumbled a step. “Not a romance?” “I realized after you left me The Dance of Battle that there’s a great deal left for me to learn. Last night I asked the House to give me something you might read.” “Why?” Nesta tucked the book under an arm. “What’s the point in learning fighting techniques if I don’t know their true purpose and uses? You’d train me into a weapon, and I’d be just that: someone else’s weapon."). The most likely outcome of the latter is her becoming General of the Valkyries, but Kings and Queens should be knowledgeable in the art of war. A war that might be coming at the end of the series. Which leads us to the next point, why is a High King or Queen important now?

4. Why do we need a High King or Queen? Well, as Amren pointed out when discussing it with Rhyssand, Cassian and Azriel: "We are weakened—all seven courts. Even more at odds with each other and with the rest of the world since the war. If Montesere and Vallahan march on us, if Rask joins with them, we will not withstand it." . She also says: "But a land united under one king and queen, armed with such power and objects … Our enemies would hesitate.", "All seven courts united under one ruler would give us far better odds of survival in any upcoming conflict.". The reason this conversation even started was because of Nesta herself, what she created, her very own trove. ""Nesta forged a new Trove,” Cassian said, reining in his rage at the truth of Azriel’s words. “She could create anything."". Which led to Amren saying: "With these three blades, you could make yourself High King.". "You have three magic blades before you, each a kingmaker in its own right". Amren also makes the point that everything is fated, that everything is happening for a reason, :"Then explain to me why, after thousands of years, objects that once crowned and aided the old Fae have returned. The last time a High King ruled Prythian, it was with a magic sword in his hand", "Nothing is a fluke. The Cauldron’s power flows through Nesta, and could use her as a puppet without her knowledge. It wanted those weapons Made, and thus they were Made".

5. Nesta can control the Dread Trove. They answer to her, come to her. It's because she's made from the cauldron like Elain and the Queen. In theory, they should work for Elain as well which might be interesting to see in future books. But for this theory we will focus on Nesta's importance with the Dread Trove. Nesta found all the objects of the Dread Trove. First the mask: "he didn’t veer away as it shot toward her outstretched hand. It was not her power that shone ahead. The golden disk connected with her fingers, and Nesta knew what it was as she gripped it tight. Like called to like. Power to power." Then the harp, which comes to her in a vision: "There, in the center of the chamber, sat a small, golden harp. Cold leached through Nesta, clarifying her thoughts enough to realize where she stood. That the music of the priestesses had lulled her into a trance, that her own bones and the stone of the mountain surrounding her had been her scrying tools, and she had drifted to this place …", and lastly the crown which she retrieves after killing the Queen. At the end it is mentioned that:" "I got a crown of my own, don’t worry,” Nesta said, even as she knew Mor was now winnowing all three objects of the Trove back to the place Nesta had taken them from. She’d summoned them, working around Helion’s spells. No spell could ever keep them from her—Briallyn had spoken true about that." Even after the cauldron took back most of its powers, Nesta can still control the trove.

6. Nesta's Power. Nesta never learns how to control her power. And at least to me, her power still remains a big mystery. During ACOWAR she does learn from Amren a bit about how to control it, but their lessons seemed to be related to what was needed of her at the moment. Then she fought with Amren when the latter suggested she continue learning. Even through we see small bursts of her power here and there, she doesn't actively learn to use it, or the full extent of what it can do. Can it just make things, infuse them with her magic for whatever purpose she needs? Is there more than that? When she has her nightmare this is what they say about her powers:

"“Was that …” Azriel glanced to the bed and the unconscious female atop it. “That was Nesta’s true power? That silver fire?” “Only the surface of it,” Rhys whispered, hands still shaking as he ran them down his face. “Fuck.”"

"“What is her power?” Azriel asked. “Death,” Rhys whispered, hands trembling again as he got to his feet and aimed toward the window, which was now repairing itself shard by shard, as if a careful, patient hand worked upon it. He gazed at the female sleeping in the bed, and fear clouded the face of the High Lord of the Night Court. “Pure death.”"

It makes me wonder if before her bargain with the cauldron, if she was more powerful than even Rhyssand.

Later on, when she unleashes the full extent of her power: "The baying of her magic was a beast with no name. Avalanches cascaded down the cliffs in seas of glittering white. Trees bent and ruptured in the wake of the power that shattered from her. Distant seas drew back from their shores, then raced in waves toward them again. Glasses shook and shattered in Velaris, books tumbled off the shelves in Helion’s thousand libraries, and the remnants of a run-down cottage in the human lands crumbled into a pile of rubble." Like her power reached all across Prythian to her old village, to the cottage she used to live in. If you don't remember the extent of the distance between the Illyrian mountain and the mortal lands, I suggest you look it up. Later, when the cauldron takes back her power, it is mentioned multiple times that it didn't take all her power:

"Yet Cassian could have sworn a luminescent, gentle hand prevented the light from leaving her body altogether"

"So Cassian asked, “Is your magic … The power’s really gone?” The brisk spring wind whipped her golden-brown hair across her face. “I gave it back to the Cauldron in exchange for the knowledge of how to save them.” She swallowed. “But a little remains. I think something else—someone else—stopped the Cauldron from taking all of it""

"The Mother. The only being who would see the sacrifice Nesta had made and give a little back."

If her power was so great then, and The Mother didn't let the cauldron take away all her power...what was left? Could it be at the same level or still greater than Rhyssand's powers? Or considerably less, at the level of any other high fae?

7. The Mother.

The Mother, also known as the goddess figure of the books, helped Nests save her sister, deemed her important enough to speak to her, to help her keep some of her powers. The book even mentions a special connection: "He’d think of that another day. Along with the fact that she’d stopped Time with the Harp. And that she seemed to have some sort of connection—or understanding—with the Mother. The Mother.". Like why mention it if it wasn't going to be important later on, right?

It would be really cool that if we do see a High King and Queen it will be Nesta and Cassian instead of Rhyssand and Feyre. I think it would play interesting with the power dynamics and create conflict. Also, with the first and only High King they mention how he was betrayed by his Queen and General. Maybe history will repeat itself. Maybe Feyre will be put in a position where she has to choose between Nesta and Rhyssand and for a moment ends up taking Nesta and Cassian's side. Maybe Rhyssand tries turning Nesta into a weapon he can wield because he's scared of what could happen to his son and mate.

But Nesta herself denies ever wanting to rule the world at the end of the book.

Again, this is all just a theory I had. It might not come true. But I do hope that the next books still continue with her POV as well as newer POVs. I also hope we get to see more of her power, learn more about it.

Maybe this theory is tremendously long and nobody bothers to read it, but if you have, what do you think?

[badgersprite]

Fic: Desiderata (8/?)

Chapter Title: Reunion

Fandom: Mass Effect

Characters: Miranda, Samara, Oriana, Jacob, Jack

Pairing: Miranda/Samara very slow burn, friends to lovers

Story Rating: R

Warnings: This chapter confirms (and otherwise strongly suspects) some squadmate character deaths. This chapter also makes references to Miranda’s abusive childhood so as per usual that could potentially be triggering to some people.

Chapter Summary: In 2186, Miranda withdraws into herself after confirming what she already feared - that several of her former companions did not survive the battle for Earth. Just as it seems she’s at her lowest point, someone unexpected shows up at her door. In 2185, the Normandy continues its adventures after defeating the Collectors.

Author’s Note: I initially started writing this story right after Mass Effect 3 came out. Originally, it was sort of a channel for my anger towards the ending, although the story has since evolved beyond that into something constructive, positive and healing. But, as was suggested in the warning I put on the very first chapter, yes, this means that some characters did indeed die in the final battle of ME3, and you’re going to get confirmation of that in this chapter, as well as unconfirmed beliefs about the majority of other characters, and Miranda trying to cope with that. So, be warned. This chapter is probably the darkest one.

* * *

“Shepard?”

Miranda was running. Searching for her. Looking for her.

Had to reach her. Had to get to her. Had to find her before it was too late.

Couldn’t see. Could hardly move. The air was thick with clouds of black smoke, burning her lungs.

She was racing, yet moving so slowly. Every step seemed to take ten times longer than it should. Like wading through tar.

“Shepard! Where are you?”

Her own voice echoed in her ears, feet catching on the rubble and debris that littered the streets of London. Entire buildings had been reduced to cinders that still smouldered beneath her.

A hail of gunfire rained down around her from all angles. Body after body fell and faded to dust in every direction. But, somehow, even though it felt like the whole universe was stuck in slow-motion, Miranda kept running forward, persevering through all the death and destruction, even as blood began to pool at her feet.

The shadow of a mass relay loomed overhead, taking up the entire sky, blocking out the Sun. But that wasn’t what she was focused on.

She could see it ahead of her. The Conduit. That crater right beneath the Citadel.

Marauders marched right past her, as if they couldn’t even see her, firing indiscriminately into the crowds of soldiers Miranda left in her wake. A senseless massacre. A slaughter.

All species fought together. All creeds died together. Names Miranda would never even know.

A bellowing voice resonated in the emptiness. “I am krogan! Nothing can hurt me!”

In the black mist, she saw Grunt’s silhouette single-handedly fighting off what had to be a dozen husks with nothing but the strength of his fists. But every time he knocked one back, two more took its place. He fought valiantly, standing atop a pile of no fewer than a hundred enemy corpses, but with no ammunition left, he was quickly overwhelmed. He joined the growing army of shadows following in Miranda’s tracks.

The tide of blood rose to her ankles.

“Had to be me,” Mordin’s disembodied voice echoed in her ear as his ghost turned to ash in the peripheries of her vision, and scattered in the wind. “Someone else would have gotten it wrong.”

There was nothing Miranda could do. Couldn’t stop to save anyone. Couldn’t slow down. The crimson tide was rising, reaching her knees. Every movement became harder. Slower. Fighting the current. With every step she took, the Conduit seemed to be getting further away.

Had to get there.

Had to reach Shepard.

“Is that all you’ve got?” Zaeed emerged from the shadows, firing at the oncoming horde as his position was swiftly surrounded. He pulled the pin on a grenade. “Open wide, you ugly son of a bitch,” he said, charging at the nearest abomination, shoving the grenade in its face. The blast shattered the walls of the building Zaeed had been hiding in. It crumbled on top of him, and buried his enemies with him.

The blood was up to her waist. Miranda could no longer run. Each step she took was heavier than the last, physically dragging her feet through mud and blood. Ghostly fingers nipped at her heels beneath the surface, gradually getting closer, but not quite able to grab hold of her. She was just barely ahead.

“Do we deserve death?” A vision of Legion flashed before her eyes, vanishing into nothing as quickly as it had appeared. “Does this unit have a soul?”

As the thick blood came up to her chest, she had to swim, else risk succumbing to the shadows that threatened to swallow her. She dove forward into the sanguine sea, kicking her feet and powering through with her arms as hard and as fast as she could. But she was moving so slowly. At a glacial pace.

The harder she battled, the less ground she gained.

The shrieks of banshees pierced her ears as they waded past her, like she didn’t even exist.

A voice came over her comms. “What’s happening?” Miranda heard Kasumi say in her earpiece. “There’s something wrong with the mass relays. They’re--”

Her words were rendered silent when the mass relay exploded with devastating force in a blinding flash of light that ignited the atmosphere in a ring of fire. Miranda stopped long enough to shield her eyes.

When the bright light subsided, she glanced up just in time to see a field of debris spreading out from the epicentre, a blackness so thick that every patch of sky was covered in the wreckage.

Within seconds, the whole world was submerged in darkness.

Miranda shook herself from her daze. No. She couldn’t stop. She had to keep going. Had to reach Shepard. She kept swimming, drawn like a moth to that sole source of light that pierced the endless night.

Finally, at long last, the Conduit seemed to be getting closer. Two faint forms stood their ground against the piercing bright white, protecting the path.

“Go, Shepard!” Ashley Williams called out to her Commander, firing back at the army of the dead, whose fingers began to claw and grasp at Miranda’s body as she fought with all her might to elude their clutches. “We’ll cover you!”

Infrasound shook the ground beneath them. Darkness turned to crimson.

“Look out!” Javik tried to push Ashley out of the way, but it was too late.

The cruel eye of the Destroyer guarding the Conduit had seen them. Blinding red surrounded them both. And then they were gone. Vaporised in a flash.

Miranda didn’t stop. Couldn’t stop.

Nearly there.

She kicked harder, doing all she could to outpace the ghastly skeletal hands that threatened to drown her in their sacrifice.

She got closer.

She could see solid ground again.

As she neared her destination at long last, two figures came into view, battling in the black cloud before her, atop a small island in the red sea. Somehow, their actions were not slowed by the mist, but fast and graceful. A violent ballet. 

Kai Leng, and Thane.

Even though Thane was already dying, he was able to get the best of Kai Leng for a time, even throwing him off-balance with his biotics, but it wasn’t enough. Kai Leng cut him down, the blade in his hand slicing through Thane like butter.

Kai Leng turned to face Miranda. And, unlike all the others she’d passed to get here, his eyes locked directly with hers. He didn’t look through her. He saw her.

Before she could even react, those eyes were mere inches from her face. Her breath hitched as pain seared through her abdomen. She looked down, and saw that blade penetrating her stomach, her own blood now melding with the lake of ichor and viscera that surrounded her.

She gritted her teeth and raised her head once more. His cold face stared back, unmoving.

Miranda’s rage boiled over. With both hands, she reached out. Her thumbs covered his cybernetic eyes. And they sank in.

She pushed deeper and deeper. And as she slowly cracked his mask and crushed her fingers into his skull, the skin around her hands began to wither and burn, like her very anger was incinerating Kai Leng beneath her touch.

She squeezed her fists shut, and he evaporated into the aether beneath her.

Miranda clutched at her wounds and battled forward, scarcely able to keep her head above the rising tide.

Miranda didn’t know how she’d made it, but she was so close. There was just one figure left ahead of her. One shadow in the light. Staring into the Conduit.

“Shepard!” she called out again, resisting the whispers of the dead as they grew ever nearer.

The familiar figure raised her head.

“Don’t go in there!” Miranda warned her, a sense of overwhelming dread encompassing every fibre of her being. She knew what would happen. Had to stop it. “You can’t.”

As Miranda reached out, her wounds overcame her. The sanguine sea suddenly vanished without a trace, and she dropped like a stone, no longer suspended. She fell to the ground in pain, her fingers digging into the dirt.

Miranda hesitated as the army of shadows at her heels infringed on her vision, casting an impenetrable darkness upon her. She didn’t dare turn and look behind her. She knew what was there. Couldn’t face it. Couldn’t face them.

“Shepard!” she called again, begging to be heard in the deafening silence.

Shepard slowly turned. Miranda froze in terror as she was met with red eyes.

That wasn’t Shepard. Not anymore.

She heard the sound. That same, bone-rattling sound she had heard in that shuttle. Saw that same red flash as the Reaper’s gaze fixed upon her.

Only, this time, Miranda screamed as the beams incinerated her.

Miranda jolted upright, throwing her sheets off herself in panic, stopping only once she realised that there were no flames to put out. That she wasn’t back in that shuttle again.

Her heavy breathing slowly subsided. It was dark. Her head was throbbing.

She sighed and leaned forward, rubbing her palm against her forehead. Drops of sweat left strands of hair clinging to her scalp. Her sheets were soaked.

‘Just a dream’, right? That was what people would say, if she ever told anyone.

Unfortunately, like with all Miranda’s nightmares since the war ended, she couldn’t say that about them. Couldn’t brush them off as ‘just dreams’. Because they weren’t lies made up by her mind. She wished that they were, but they were the furthest thing from it.

If they weren’t so cuttingly true, they wouldn’t have haunted her so.

Groggily, she checked her clock. 3am. Roughly twelve hours since…

By sheer reflex, Miranda leaned over in time to grab the wastebin near her bed, just before she threw up. Nothing but liquid spilled out. Nothing but claret red.

The contents of her stomach were no mystery. The only reason Miranda had been able to fall asleep that night was because she’d downed an entire bottle of wine to get the images out of her mind. The thoughts. The knowledge. The stark fucking reality of her friends’ last moments. Hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it. Hadn’t been able to eat after...

Miranda gagged as she put the bin down, wiping her mouth. Obviously, it hadn’t helped her forget. What could?

God, her head hurt so fucking much. It felt like death itself had left its mark on her when it visited her in the night.

She didn’t even remember getting up and walking to the bathroom, only realising where she was when she flicked on the light, and saw herself in the mirror. The next thing she knew, the tap was on, and she was rinsing out her mouth, splashing some cool water on her face, to grant some relief from the heat in her cheeks.

She braced herself against the sink, and looked up. She’d almost stopped noticing the scarring on her own face by that point. Burn treatment and synthetic skin grafts had come a hell of a long way, even within the last fifty years. But, that said, Miranda’s treatment had been a wartime one. Not one designed for aesthetics. One applied by necessity, as a matter of urgency, after days without care.

But, in that moment, her visible scars didn’t make her think about herself. They made her think of someone else she knew, who had suffered a similar injury long before she met him. One whose facial scars had healed a lot better than Miranda’s ever would.

Zaeed.

Fuck, Zaeed.

And then the thoughts she’d been avoiding came flooding back. She was there in that room again. And he was lying there motionless in a plastic bag on a table.

She nearly retched again, saved only by the fact she had nothing left to throw up.

Dr. Michel had not understated her call. There were bodies. And pictures. Pictures from when they were found.

Both Grunt and Zaeed, Miranda had identified by sight. She would never repeat to anyone how they looked when she saw them. Couldn’t say it. Wasn’t for anyone else to know. Wasn’t fair that anyone should remember them like that.

At least they left enough behind to bury. None of the others were so lucky.

Well, it was possible Javik had. Miranda never saw Javik personally. Dr. Michel confirmed that he had been identified by a genetic sample. There was only one possible match for Prothean DNA. No visual ID necessary.

Ashley could only be identified by her dog tags. They hadn’t found anything else. Not yet, anyway. That close to the Conduit, chances were they never would.

Miranda had taken those tags with her, sealed in airtight plastic. Given her position, it was her responsibility to deliver them to her family. To be the bearer of the worst news they would ever hear.

Right now, the tags were sitting in a drawer in her desk. Miranda didn’t know how long it would be before she could bring herself to look at them again. To confront the thought of Ashley’s final moments. She knew she would have to. Very soon, much as she dreaded having to write that letter to her family.

The Williams family had already lost people to this war, hadn’t they? And now this.

As for Kasumi, that information had come from Bailey, by way of The Alliance. It turned out that The Alliance had known, or strongly suspected, her fate for a long time. But they had only just broken their silence, over two months later. Bailey had told her and Jacob the news as soon as he found out.

Some of the ships that worked on the Crucible had remained in close proximity to the mass relay, right up until the time it exploded. None of those ships were in one piece anymore. That included the ship Kasumi had been working on.

As far as anyone knew, she was still on that ship when it was lost. While they had spent some time accounting for people who had alighted onto different vessels in the intervening period between completing the Crucible and the destruction of the mass relays, there was no record of her leaving, and certainly no one had made contact with her since. Now that more than two months had passed, her status had officially been moved from MIA to KIA.

Even though Miranda hadn’t been confronted with physical evidence of Kasumi’s death the way she had for all the others, in a way, her fate might have been the worst to discover. Of all the people they hadn’t found, she was the one person that both she and Jacob had been confident would be fine, because she was nowhere near Earth. Nowhere near the Reapers. Literal lightyears away from any of the fighting. And yet…

Yeah. And fucking yet.

The tap kept running while Miranda stared hollowly ahead. Eventually, the noise spurred her from her trance, and she turned it off.

At what point was the grief supposed to set in, she wondered as she gazed blankly at her own reflection. Should she have been more upset than she was? She hadn’t cried for any of her fallen friends. Tears didn’t come naturally to Miranda. Not unless her sister was involved.

One thing that hadn’t left her mind was how...selfish some of her thoughts had been when she learned their fates. When Bailey had told her about Kasumi, Miranda had thought that the day had been bad enough before that, but to add that too, it was like the universe was actively conspiring to make this the worst day of her life.

Hers. The worst day of her life. The one who was alive. As if her friends hadn’t experienced far worse in their last moments than being fucking inconvenienced.

This wasn’t the normal way to react, was it? Wasn’t right. Why couldn’t Miranda just...mourn like other people did. It wasn’t like she didn’t care. She did care. Didn’t she? She would have been lying if she said she felt nothing - no impact whatsoever. If that were the case, those inescapable thoughts and images wouldn’t be permanently seared into her like open, festering wounds.

From the moment she’d seen the first body on that table, and recognised it as Zaeed, it was like the last light of hope inside her - a flame she hadn’t even known she had been holding onto - had been swiftly snuffed out.

Losing Shepard had been one thing, but now? They might as well give up any prospect that anyone actively serving aboard the SR-3 had survived the war.

Not only did they have confirmation that Ashley and Javik were gone, but they also had definitive proof that any ships that were anywhere near a mass relay when the Crucible fired had been obliterated in the subsequent blast, even in other systems far away.

The last time the Normandy had been picked up on any sensors was...approaching the Charon relay.

So, that was it.

They didn’t know that was what happened. But they knew, didn’t they? They had always known. They had just refused to believe it. They had hoped.

But hope was a frail thing, and reality didn’t suffer hope to live long.

The thing was, Miranda hadn’t experienced much that could be considered loss in her life. A person needed to get close to other people in order to lose them. And, until about a year ago, she’d never done that. Until The Normandy. But then she had. And, now, of all the people who had ever served on The Normandy, only five had survived. Miranda. Jacob. Jack. Samara. Wrex.

There was nobody else left to find. They were gone. They were dead.

And, this time, nobody would be coming back.

All told, it was the first time Miranda had been confronted with death in anything more than a purely detached or clinical way. Certainly the first time on this scale. She hadn’t known how she would feel about it - finding out that so many of her friends hadn’t made it. But she would have expected it to be different than this.

It wasn’t that it wasn’t affecting her. It clearly was. But...she didn’t feel hurt. She didn’t feel pain. She didn’t feel upset. She didn’t feel angry. She didn’t really feel anything in particular.

Mostly, she just felt...less. Like everything had been diminished somehow. Like all noise sounded a little quieter. Like all colours had dimmed a few shades duller. Like every sensation had been numbed. Like the tips of her fingers were further away from her body, and like nothing she reached out to grasp could ever really touch her. Like if someone pricked her skin right now, she wasn’t entirely sure she would even bleed.

It was almost like she was nothing more than a machine, and every person she cared about was a little switch inside her. In discovering their fates, Miranda didn’t grieve or mourn or wallow in sorrow. But rather it was like someone had simply gone inside that part of her brain and flipped all those switches from ‘alive’ to ‘dead’, and parts of her had just...powered down as a result.

What did it say about her that this was as strongly as she could feel about them at this moment?

Maybe she really was just as cold and borderline sociopathic as ever.

Maybe friendship hadn’t changed her at all from the person she was a year ago.

With those thoughts swirling through her mind, Miranda didn’t even notice the bathroom door had opened behind her until she heard a voice.

“Hey, Miss. Are you okay in here?” Jason asked. It took Miranda a few seconds to process his sounds as words, and his words as an actual question. “I saw the light on and heard the tap running for a whi--”

“I’m fine,” Miranda answered starkly, albeit on a delay.

“Are you sure?” asked Jason. He knew what had she had gone through earlier. Not in precise details, no. But all the kids knew.

In all honesty, the thing that had prompted Miranda to go out and drink hadn’t been the deaths themselves, nor the sight of Zaeed and Grunt. Not initially. The thing that had driven her over that edge had been after she and Jacob, in loose terms, explained to the kids what had happened. That Jacob, Jack and Miranda had found out that several people close to them had died in the war.

They were shocked and saddened to hear it. They expressed their sympathies. A few of them, in fact every single one of the girls, wept when they found out.

It was at that moment that a sudden realisation had struck her. Jack’s students had been more upset when they heard the news that people Miranda knew had died - people they had never even met themselves - than Miranda had been to see them dead in front of her.

She hadn’t been able to be near them and their tears when that sank in. Couldn’t stand holding that mirror up to herself and confronting her reflection. Seeing how a normal human person should react when something like this happened to people they cared about, and comparing that to the blank void where her own emotional response should have been, but wasn’t.

“Miss?”

“I’m fine,” Miranda repeated herself.

She was always fine. Even when she wasn’t. That was the problem.

“I’m sorry to worry you.” Miranda straightened up (as best she could) and turned back to face him, her hand still on the sink. “None of you should be losing any sleep wondering if I’m okay. That’s not your responsibility. Nor should it be.”

He seemed confused by her response. “But I--”

“Don’t take that as a criticism. I know you mean well. And I appreciate that you care. That’s not me being sarcastic, I actually do. More than I let on. But you never need to waste any time worrying if I’m alright. I always am. And I’m always going to be,” Miranda said quietly.

Jason looked at her for a good, long moment. “...Miss, I’m not stupid. I know how much you drank tonight. I can see, and hear, how drunk you still are. And I know you probably woke up vomiting, and that’s why you’re here right now. And, from the short time I’ve known you, you don’t strike me as someone who makes a habit of this. So, respectfully, I don’t think you’re as ‘okay’ with everything as you seem to think you are,” he pointed out.

Miranda held his gaze for a moment. “...Go to sleep, Jason,” she told him.

“Sure. You probably won’t even remember this conversation in the morning,” Jason remarked, evidencing that he may have had a little too much experience dealing with drunk adults for a man so young.

“I remember most conversations,” Miranda muttered under her breath, looking at her reflection one final time, turning off the light as she left.

* * *

Miranda groaned heavily, the pulsing music of Afterlife doing her head in. The air stank of sex and sweat, like everyone in the club had gone three days without showering.

“I thought shore leave was supposed to be relaxing,” she muttered unhappily, leaning back against the bar.

“Would you prefer to go back to the ship?” Samara asked, needing to project her usually soft voice to be heard above the music.

“Yes!” Miranda answered bluntly, feeling utterly miserable in this place. “But, alas, that choice has been taken out of my hands.”

“It would appear so,” Samara commiserated. While she seemed to have a greater tolerance for the venue than Miranda, the expression on Samara’s face betrayed the fact that Afterlife was not exactly to her taste either. Or at least, it hadn’t been for several centuries.

After defeating the Collectors, the Normandy had limped back to Omega station held together with the engineering equivalent of double-sided tape and popsicle sticks and somehow hadn’t fallen apart in the FTL jump. They had no choice but to dock at Omega for urgent repairs. Since they couldn’t exactly fix the ship with everyone on board getting in the way, and given what they had all just survived, Shepard had seen fit to grant shore leave to anyone who wasn’t currently actively preventing the Normandy from collapsing in on itself.

Miranda had volunteered to stay back on the ship to help out, but Shepard had overruled her, ordering her to “please, for once in your life, take a fucking break”, in those exact words. She was officially banned from re-entering the ship until the repairs were complete. In fact, the only person who had been allowed to stay back on the ship despite a clear absence of engineering and technical skills was Kelly Chambers, for reasons Miranda neither fully grasped nor honestly cared to know.

Unfortunately, there was nowhere on Omega that was to Miranda’s liking. Afterlife was the least awful place by process of elimination given that, if nothing else, anybody who caused problems here would quickly find out what D.F.W.A. stood for, and why it was the one and only rule on Omega that anyone lived by.

Notwithstanding the above, Miranda had still known damn well that she wouldn’t enjoy her forced time off in this place. Accordingly, she had all but begged Samara to come and keep her sane in her misery, and she obliged. So far, even Samara had done little to improve Miranda’s state of mind, though. 

The Normandy crew were already getting too relaxed for Miranda’s liking, and this was evidence of it. Surely Shepard should have realised that, even if Miranda wasn’t holding a soldering iron, there were still a million other things she could have been doing that would have been a productive use of her time. For one thing, she could have been preparing for what to do if Cerberus came knocking, or comparing notes on the organisation with EDI...

“Well, in any event, I appreciate you keeping me company,” Miranda elected to break the silence, preferring not to think about Cerberus in a moment where she was powerless to do anything about them and whatever they had in store for her if and when they caught up to her. “I can't imagine it's easy for you to be here, after...” Miranda trailed off, wondering if perhaps she was erring by bringing Morinth up so directly.

“It is quite alright,” Samara assured her, appreciating her concern. “In truth, it has given me an opportunity to contemplate my own future, and where I am needed. I had not thought of it before, but I would consider returning to this place when Shepard no longer requires my service.”

“Not anytime soon, I hope. You can’t leave me with these people,” Miranda remarked in jest, earning a small smile. “Is there any particular reason why?” she inquired, curious.

“A simple one; I can think of few other places in the galaxy that could benefit more from the presence of a Justicar,” Samara pointed out.

“That's very noble of you,” Miranda commented, though she was sceptical as to the wisdom of that virtuous path. “But don't forget how that turned out for Garrus. Omega's gangs aren't going to let you waltz in and disrupt the way of things. And that includes our friend up there,” she said, nodding her head up towards Aria’s makeshift throne room on the upper floor. Being an asari, Aria wouldn’t be ignorant to precisely how zealous and unyielding Justicars were when it came to the enforcement of their Code.

“I do not fear death,” Samara contentedly replied, undeterred by the prospect of failing in her quest. Miranda frowned, but voiced no further objection.

“Alright, that's it. One of you had better order a drink. You've been standing there long enough,” the turian bartender gruffly grumbled, looking at them both over the bar while polishing a glass. “Since the old lady over here doesn’t strike me as a drinker, I'm guessing it's gotta be you, human.”

“I'd rather not,” Miranda declined.

“It wasn't a request,” said the bartender.

Miranda glanced at Samara and saw a small smirk creeping onto her lips. Miranda sighed, reluctantly conceding. “...Fine,” she acquiesced. “Just one.”

“Coming right up,” said the bartender, pouring her a fresh glass.

At that moment, another song came on. This one was particularly loud and intrusive. The pulsing bass shook the glasses other patrons had on the counter. Several of the other club goers nearby began dragging each out onto the floor to dance. Miranda did not share the sentiment, or the enthusiasm.

“Why does all club music sound exactly the bloody same?” Miranda complained, finding the repetitive droning rhythms and predictable chord progressions beyond irritating by that point. “These people wouldn’t know an interesting interval or a complex time signature if it slapped them in the face.”

“Perhaps we should endeavour to find somewhere more...quiet,” Samara suggested, pointing up towards the speaker that was right above them.

“Quiet? Here?” Miranda remarked, with a sceptical glance at their surroundings. Afterlife was hardly subdued. That being said, though, she would have been lying if she said she didn’t see the appeal of finding a more secluded corner of the nightclub. She sighed as she took her drink. “If we can find a free booth that doesn't have a stripper dancing on the table, that would be a start.”

That was easier said than done.

“I am certain that, if we ask for privacy, we will be granted it. Come, this way.” Despite her doubts, Miranda followed Samara’s lead, trailing her through the club, in search of somewhere to sit.

As they were walking, Miranda recognised a few familiar faces from The Normandy. Garrus, Thane and Zaeed had commandeered a booth, and Thane appeared to be the only one of them who wasn’t already three drinks in. She didn't particularly feel like joining them, though. Everyone else who wasn’t currently working on the ship must have been on a different floor of the club, or somewhere outside.

Much as Miranda had predicted, the only empty table they managed to find had a dancer on it, no doubt hoping to attract customers.

“I beg your pardon,” said Samara, approaching the young asari. “Would it trouble you if my friend and I had this table to ourselves?”

“Get lost, grandma!” the dancer rudely shot back, turning her head to see who had spoken to her. Instantly, she froze in fear, and turned about three shades paler. “Y-Y...J-Justicar...?” she stammered, recognising her armour immediately. “I...I am so sorry. Of course you can...Please. Please forgive me,” she implored her as she hastily climbed down to the floor, bowing her head in respectful deference before running off to get as far away from Samara as possible.

Samara sat down without an issue, gesturing for Miranda to do the same. Miranda arched an eyebrow, impressed. “She thought you were going to kill her.”

“From what I have gathered about Omega, it is not unlikely that she has done something that would warrant my intervention pursuant to The Code. If I confirmed this and took such action, and she did not voluntarily surrender herself to my custody, then yes, my presence here would result in her death,” Samara acknowledged, serene as always. “Fortunately for her, my oath to Commander Shepard compels me to refrain from acting as I normally would.”

“Where does The Code draw the line on what kinds of people it considers criminals?” Miranda asked, sliding into her seat across from Samara. “Drug users? Sex workers?”

Samara shook her head. “The Code does not criminalise addiction – although this does not mean addicts cannot be held accountable for crimes they commit in support of their addiction. As for 'sex workers' as you referred to them, asari cultures are not human cultures. Consorts hold a high status in our society, and it is normal for many if not most young asari to do as these women are doing in their maiden stage,” she reminded her, gesturing broadly at the asari dancers working throughout the club. “Many among my kind still find it perplexing that such things have ever been considered shameful by other species.”

“Do you share those views?” Miranda inquired. Her question earned a slightly confused look from Samara. “I don't mean to sound presumptuous but my own cultural biases mean that, when I think of ancient religious orders, I tend to associate such things with conservatism and chastity. I guess I kind of assumed you might not look too fondly on young asari wasting their youth dancing in bars.”

“Only in the sense that age has granted me the wisdom to look back on my younger years and consider what I could have done differently, and how much more I could have accomplished if my priorities were not so self-centred,” Samara answered sagely. “Were I asked for my advice, I would counsel them from the benefit of my experience to focus on what they find truly fulfilling in their lives. However, this is not a moral judgement, nor do I object to their choice to dance or take lovers freely. To do so would be very hypocritical of me. And it would be folly of me to assume that this is not their calling. If this is their path to inner fulfilment, then I would never seek to turn them from that.”

Miranda's lips quirked against the rim of her glass. “Are you saying this was you once? Giving people lap dances in bars?”

“No. I preferred adventure and violence,” said Samara, being frank about her past indiscretions. “Any time I spent in places such as this, or in the company of women like this, was merely as a customer. But I was not so radically different from those who work here now. My maiden stage was spent such that I cannot righteously criticise how another asari spends hers. The only reason I did not follow this path, aside from the fact that I am not a particularly gifted dancer, is that becoming a mercenary offered far more excitement and more opportunities to travel far and wide. I also found myself...drawn to certain types of people at that age. The same sort of people I found myself fighting beside.”

“Yeah, you mentioned that once before,” Miranda recalled, though it was no less incongruous to picture it now. It was pretty crazy to think that the types of people Samara used to sleep with as a young woman were now the very same people she hunted down without mercy as a matriarch. That raised a thought, and Miranda was never one to not speak her mind, even where it might have been advisable not to. “Don't answer this question if you don't want to, but did you take many lovers when you were younger?”

“That would depend upon what you define as 'many',” Samara replied.

“By your definition?” Miranda asked.

“Yes,” Samara answered plainly. “Have you?”

“Yes,” Miranda responded in kind. Though whether they had the same definition of ‘many’ was anybody’s guess. Probably not, given that Samara’s maiden stage alone could have lasted close to ten times as long as Miranda had been alive. “But I don't think I enjoyed mine as much as you enjoyed yours. Most of them were nothing to write home about. I don't even remember their names, nor do I care to.”

Samara tilted her head thoughtfully. “I remember some vividly, though not all. And of those I have fond memories of, I have not thought of most in a very long time.”

“Do you ever miss it?” Miranda wondered aloud, curious whether Samara would ever even consider one day laying down her armour and living as...well, anything other than a Justicar.

“I miss my innocence,” Samara confessed. “I miss how it felt to live free from any cares or concerns. I miss being able to dance with strangers, never knowing how it felt to bear the burden of responsibility. But if you are asking me if I would choose to walk that path again, the answer is no. I cannot. And I would not.”

“You can still dance with strangers if you want to, though,” Miranda wryly encouraged, taking a sip of her drink. “And, no, I don’t mean that euphemistically. Just dancing. Surely that’s not forbidden by The Code. Is it?”

“No, it is not. But those days are behind me, as are so many others, and I am content with that,” Samara smiled, a mysterious, ethereal smile. “Do you dance?”

“No.”

“Never?” Samara queried, her eyes sparkling under the lights.

“I may have tried it once or twice.” Miranda shifted in her seat, averting her gaze. “...After I ran away from my father, I got a taste of freedom for the first time. So I did things he had never allowed me to do. Or tried to. Admittedly, I wasn’t very successful at it, and any desire to experiment and rebel was quickly outweighed by how much I like being in control of my faculties and how much I didn’t enjoy places like this, but...well, it was a phase nonetheless, I suppose.”

“You were with Cerberus at the time, were you not?” Samara asked, clarifying the time period.

“Yes but, as you may have noticed, they don't particularly care what you do in your personal life, as long as it doesn't interfere with your work,” Miranda explained. Cerberus had never imposed those kinds of rules upon her. They respected her and treated her like an adult. It was why it had been so hard for her to believe the worst about them, and sever her loyalties. “I was sixteen years old, with only a vague, malformed idea of what the world was like, what other girls my age were supposed to be like, and the experiences I was supposed to have had, together with a staunch determination to make up for lost time. And you should know when I set my mind to something, I don’t do it by halves.”

“And yet, in that time, you never danced with strangers?” said Samara.

“Mostly only in the euphemistic way,” Miranda replied. That was one thing that had never really changed, so much as she was simply more experienced, and had gotten more efficient about getting that itch scratched whenever she felt the need. “Let's just say I made some poor decisions in a short space of time, and it's not an aspect of my life I'm particularly proud of.”

“Many years have passed since then. You are older and wiser, but you are still young – too young to deprive yourself of such things. Perhaps this is not the place for you, but I know you enjoy music. You have told me as much. Surely there would be a place where even you would feel comfortable letting go and dancing freely. To do so would not mean you are repeating your past mistakes,” Samara advised.

“I know it wouldn’t,” Miranda acknowledged. She still didn't feel like it though. Plus, the concept of ‘letting go’ was about as antithetical to her entire existence as any concept could possibly be. “Tell you what, I'll dance when you dance. That's a promise.”

“Your promise sounds a great deal like an excuse,” Samara quipped.

Miranda smirked. “Nothing gets past you.”

* * *

Bailey had been surprised when Miranda showed up to work on Monday, less than a day after confirming the deaths of so many of her former comrades.

Before he had even opened his mouth to speak, Miranda had cut him off. “Whatever you’re going to say, don’t. Please, just...I need to be here. Please just let me work right now.”

To his credit, he had honoured her wishes, and that had been the end of any discussion about it.

Focusing on something else, anything else, had always been Miranda’s best and only coping mechanism. Her unyielding need to be productive, and to feel like she was in control of at least one aspect of her life even if everything else was falling apart around her, was a lifelong companion that never failed her.

There was no shortage of work to keep her busy. Some of the Alliance ships that had made the jump only a few lightyears away before the relays exploded had finally made their way back into the Sol system to study the wreckage of the Charon relay, and to begin working on reassembling and repairing it. They were in communication with other teams of varying sizes all over the galaxy.

The dextro races still stranded in the Sol system were starting to reach the point where food was becoming a concern. Several turians and quarians had already gone into cryostasis, and the number joining them was increasing day by day.

Of the levo races, more and more were settling into Earth in the expectation that their stay would be a long one. Many asari and salarians had joined with humans in moving out of cities into smaller towns and villages, working to restore infrastructure and agriculture, getting sorely needed supply lines up and running.

But London remained in tatters, still rebuilding. When any hospital had a shortage of beds or medicine or staff, Miranda knew about it. If there was a building that was possibly safe enough to move people into, Miranda knew about it. If a block didn’t have power or water, Miranda knew about it. If the black market jacked up the prices too much on luxury items, Miranda knew about it.

Bailey may have been the face of the operation, but she was his eyes and ears (well, technically only one of each), and she was the puppet master pulling the strings, making sure all resources and personnel were allocated precisely where they were needed. And if they didn’t have enough of either, she found them.

For as good of a distraction as all that work was, at the end of the day, she still needed to go home. And she still needed to deal with this.

She’d approached Wrex directly on Monday afternoon. They were in the same city, after all. There would have been no way to avoid speaking to him about it that wouldn’t have meant admitting to herself that she was deliberately putting it off. So she didn’t.

Miranda delivered the news to him personally, about everyone who had passed. As the leader of Grunt’s clan, he was the closest thing Grunt had to next of kin. It only seemed appropriate that Clan Urdnot should hear it from her first, and be given the right to decide how to honour their dead.

Miranda didn’t know Wrex well enough to be able to gauge his feelings on Grunt’s passing, or anyone else’s. And, whatever they were, Wrex certainly didn’t know Miranda well enough to show them around her. But he had expressed his brief thanks to her for informing him, respecting that she had taken her duties seriously and had the courtesy of bringing this to him face-to-face.

It was true that, as the highest ranking member of the Normandy left alive, she had big shoes to fill. And her job was far from done.

Unfortunately, Kasumi, Zaeed and Javik didn’t have any next-of-kin to inform. Not that Miranda had been able to track down, anyway.

Javik’s isolation went without saying. He was the sole survivor of a fifty thousand year old genocide. He was the one person who was never exaggerating when he said he was truly alone in the universe. Even if he had survived the war, who knew if Javik ever really intended to go on living? But, then, Miranda knew too little about him to speculate.

Kasumi, for as socially aware as she had been of everyone else aboard the Normandy, was a chronic self-isolator. She never truly got close to anybody, save for the love of her life who lived on only in the form of an implant inside her head. Miranda personally hadn’t even realised just how much of a distance she kept everybody else on the SR-2 at right up until that day when she’d looked around and suddenly realised that they were one head short because Kasumi had disappeared without a trace at the last place they docked.

If Zaeed had any friends or family who were still alive, he certainly hadn’t volunteered that information to anyone else aboard the Normandy. There were probably no shortage of people who he had met over his years, but, similarly to Kasumi, from all appearances it sounded like Zaeed would move on the moment it felt like he might be getting too attached. The terrible things he had seen wouldn’t allow him to settle down and live a normal life. He had probably always known deep down that he would die fighting in a war.

However, there was one among the confirmed dead who definitely did have a family. A family Miranda had already written to once before, to let them know she was searching. A family who it was now her responsibility to ensure those dog tags made it back home to.

Every single day, Miranda had sat down at her laptop with the intention of writing the letter nobody ever wanted to have to write. But the words just wouldn’t come. It was the one task that Miranda simply couldn’t seem to bring herself to start, let alone finish. And the screen would just stay blank until she inevitably convinced herself that tomorrow would be the day.

During the week, Miranda told herself it wasn’t her fault she wasn’t getting it done. She was busy with work. Clearly she wasn’t making progress because she didn’t have enough time to concentrate on doing this properly.

On Saturday, her reason for not getting it done was because she had helped Jack leave the field hospital and move in with Jacob in his apartment. Jack’s students had thrown an impromptu lunch to celebrate their teacher getting out of hospital, and as a courtesy Miranda had stayed for the whole thing.

Perhaps it should have said something about the state they were both in after learning what had become of so many mutual friends, and the extent to which Jack actually felt sorry for Miranda to have to be the one to identify what bodies there were, that, in those entire few hours they spent in each other’s proximity on that day, Jack didn’t insult Miranda even once.

Then Sunday came, a whole week since Ashley’s fate had been discovered, and Miranda didn’t have any excuses to put it off any longer.

Today had to be the day. There was no alternative.

And yet, despite not leaving her room even once that day, despite forcing herself to sit there until she finished this, she still hadn’t typed a single word.

Miranda had done a lot of things in her life that other people would probably class as difficult. Living with an abusive tyrant of a father. Pulling off countless life-threatening missions for Cerberus. Being captured and tortured by batarian slavers. Raising the fucking dead.

All of those things had been a cakewalk compared to writing to Ashley’s sisters.

She’d lost count of how long she’d been staring at that blank screen, or those dog tags, in the hopes that the words would just...come to her if she focused long enough. So far, it hadn’t worked. Any time Miranda thought of something to say, it just felt...wrong. Inadequate. Even if she couldn’t explain why.

At first, she didn’t know why she was finding this so bloody hard. After all, Miranda didn’t know Ashley particularly well. She’d only met her a handful of times, if that. She had no right to pretend otherwise.

But, then, it clicked.

In a way, the fact that she didn’t know Ashley at all was precisely what was making this so much worse. For one thing, if she had known her on a personal level, then no doubt she would have had no shortage of things she could say about her that would resonate with her family, to express understanding and sympathy for their loss. For another, and more significantly, because Miranda knew so little about Ashley, it meant that the only thing that she could focus on when thinking about her was the one thing she did know - that Ashley was a sister to three other sisters. And that they all loved each other dearly.

If there was one actual, honest to god human feeling Miranda knew all too well, it was the love she felt for her own sister. So, suffice it to say, she could relate.

And, although she’d never even seen a picture of Ashley’s sisters, every time the mere thought of them crossed her mind, all she pictured was Oriana.

This was one circumstance where Miranda didn’t have to fake empathy. For this, she had it in spades. It would have been easier to do this if she didn’t.

She knew what it would mean for them all to receive this letter. Because she understood better than anyone exactly how much it would have absolutely fucking destroyed her if she got the same letter. And it felt horribly, gut-wrenchingly cruel to be the one to write that letter, in full awareness of what it would do to those three sisters to receive it.

If that was what it was like for normal people to lose someone, then in a way Miranda felt lucky to be so numb to her own feelings compared to others. Maybe Kelly Chambers had been right when she speculated that becoming emotionally closed-off was as much a form of protection Miranda had developed to survive as it was something imposed upon her by her father whether she wanted it or not. It was certainly easier, and safer, to be cold on the inside, than to expose herself to a pain like Ashley’s sisters would feel when they learned the news.

Miranda wasn’t sure she would even have the emotional capacity to process losing Oriana, if the worst ever came to pass. It either would have broken her completely and caused her to jump off this mortal coil after her, or she would have withdrawn so much further into herself that she ceased to be recognisable as human. Maybe all of the above at once.

But Miranda wasn’t in that position. It seemed so strange to think about it. So many people had lost so much to this war. But not Miranda.

She was perhaps one of the people who least deserved to live, given her past allegiances to Cerberus, and given that she had never at any stage aspired or claimed to be, quote unquote, a ‘good person’. And yet, she was still there. Mostly in one piece. With three out of the grand total of five people she had ever truly cared about confirmed alive.

If anything, the fact that she had survived and others hadn’t was proof that the universe was not a fair place. There was no justice. No balance.

She knew it didn’t make any sense, and that it was impossible to trade her life for someone else’s, but she couldn’t help but think how much collectively happier more people would have been if Miranda had died and Ashley had lived. Or Shepard. Or most other members of the Normandy, really.

Oriana would have been the only person truly hurt by it, but even then she had lived nineteen years of her life perfectly fine, not even knowing Miranda existed. She’d only known about her for a year. She would have recovered eventually.

Speak of the devil, it was at that moment that a message popped up on Miranda’s screen. A message from Oriana.

“Hey, sis. What’s up? We haven’t talked in a few days. This a good time?”

It was true. This wasn’t the first text she had received from Oriana over the last few days, but Miranda hadn’t responded to any since she found out what happened to her comrades. Couldn’t bring herself to. Couldn’t bring herself to think about...precisely the sort of things she was thinking about right now.

It wasn’t that she couldn’t tell Oriana what had happened. What she was feeling. Of course she could have. She could have gone to Oriana about absolutely anything. On some level, that was all Miranda wanted to do. To talk to her. To feel a little less alone in that moment.

The problem was that Oriana would have listened to it all in a heartbeat. Every word. Without judgement. Without hesitation.

That wasn’t fair on her, and it wasn’t what Miranda wanted their relationship to be.

Oriana may have been the most well-adjusted person she knew, but she was still barely more than a kid. Only twenty years old. Still figuring things out. How was it fair for Miranda to burden her with all her problems, as if she could possibly know the answers, or the right things to say?

It was supposed to be the other way around. Miranda was supposed to be Oriana’s shoulder to cry on. Her protector. Her guide. Her big sister. Even if she wasn’t cut out to be any of those things. And she had foisted enough of her problems on Oriana already.

So she texted back.

With that, Miranda closed the messenger window, and switched back to the blank document. She’d been staring at it for so long without typing so much as a single word that she hadn’t even noticed the battery had almost drained down to zero. She reached down and plugged in the charger.

Just as she did that, another alert popped up on her screen. Message from Oriana.

“What do you get when a journalist cooks without reading a recipe?” Oriana asked. “Unconfirmed sauces.”

A small smile tugged at Miranda’s lips. Even if she was pushing Oriana away right now, it was comforting to know that Oriana would never take anything personally, and that she would be there waiting for her when she was ready to talk again.

With one last look at Ashley’s dog tags, Miranda began to type.

* * *

After finishing repairs to the Normandy, Commander Shepard seemed to have taken Miranda’s suggestion to heart. Or perhaps it was what she had always intended to do. They still had numerous leads on file that they never had the opportunity to investigate before the Collectors took them by surprise and attacked the crew. Why leave any of those assignments incomplete?

Miranda kept enough of an eye on things to know that, despite what had happened, The Illusive Man was still sending messages to Shepard (to which Shepard never responded) in an effort to cast himself in a good light. Evidently, Andrea was important enough to his plans that he considered it worth his while to continue trying to persuade her that they were on the same side. And maybe it was true that they were, at least where the Reapers were concerned.

By contrast, he had said nothing to Miranda whatsoever.

She knew what that meant.

Even if she came crawling back to Cerberus with a grovelling apology, which was never going to happen, she wouldn’t have been welcomed back anyway.

Despite now acting on their own, in a lot of ways, it was almost as if nothing had changed after defeating the Collectors. They knew the Reapers were out there, and the mutual intention of all concerned appeared to be that the best thing to do was carry on as usual in the hopes of finding out more about the impending threat, and hopefully to stop it from ever coming to fruition.

In fact, the only person who it seemed wasn’t exactly the same as before the Collector Base was Kelly Chambers. She had stopped making individual appointments with members of the crew (which Miranda knew from no longer getting any reports from her) and had been cut back to only light duties by Shepard. The last time Miranda had seen her, Kelly had jumped at the sound of the elevator doors opening behind her. Maybe that had something to do with it.

In any event, Miranda had concerned herself more with uncovering as much as she could about Cerberus’s true motives. Since Cerberus hadn’t made any effort to stop them from investigating any old leads so far, this certainly seemed like her best opportunity to take advantage of a position of relative safety and protection to arm herself with knowledge.

“Shepard, do you have a moment?” Miranda had begun, approaching Andrea after a meeting in the Briefing Room. Andrea had turned to face her, signalling for her to speak. “Do you remember that message you got from The Illusive Man last week, about the Overlord cell going off the grid without explanation on Aite?”

Shepard had sighed and rubbed her forehead. “You’re just not even hiding the fact that you read my emails anymore, are you?”

“No,” Miranda answered bluntly, but that wasn’t important right now. “I think we should investigate. The Illusive Man mentioned experimenting with highly volatile technology. It must be operationally sensitive, if he wouldn’t tell you anything more than that. Whatever the purpose of Project Overlord is, this is likely our only opportunity to learn about it. Cerberus will clean this up themselves if we don’t, and by then there’ll be nothing left.”

“You don’t think we could be walking into a trap?” Shepard asked.

“Possible, but unlikely. The Illusive Man asked for our assistance on this before we found the Reaper IFF device. Setting a trap for us before we had the intention or the ability to assault the Collector Base would take a level of prescience that nobody is capable of,” Miranda said confidently, folding her arms across her chest. “He’s many things, Shepard, but even he can’t see the future.”

“Fair enough. You’ve convinced me,” Shepard replied. “I’ll bring Tali with us. She’ll make sense of any tech we come across, no matter how ‘experimental’ it is.”

Miranda nodded her head. That was a sound choice.

What they actually found at the heart of Atlas Station, Miranda could not possibly have predicted.

Please make it stop.

Miranda hadn’t even been able to speak when she saw him there. David Archer. A completely innocent, vulnerable man hooked up to machines by his own brother as part of some sick experiment to see if his gifted mind could, what? Control geth? That was the reasoning that justified that level of cruelty and abuse?

This was it, wasn’t it? The true face of Cerberus. What they did to people. So many had said that this was the reality, and yet Miranda hadn’t listened before.

Reading between the lines, there was no doubt The Illusive Man knew exactly what was being done on Aite. While he made sure to say he didn’t condone Dr. Archer’s actions, he seemed to know perfectly well that David’s “unique talents” had “provided a breakthrough”, and he made sure to mention that Shepard’s actions had set back their understanding of the geth several years.

The only good thing that had come out of this was knowing that David Archer would be well looked after at Grissom Academy. Well, that and it was reassuring to know that, whatever Cerberus might have planned to do with an army of geth under their control, those ideas would never come to fruition now.

Evidently, Shepard really had done the right thing by not sending Legion to be studied by Cerberus, if it would have helped them. In retrospect, Miranda had never been more relieved that someone hadn’t listened to her advice.

It just made her wonder what else she didn’t know.

The door to Miranda’s quarters slid open, and she glanced up. “Forgive my intrusion. Am I interrupting anything?” Samara asked, always a sound question to open with when it came to Miranda, especially when she was in her office.

“No,” Miranda answered honestly. Not a damn thing.

Samara was too tactful to say it, but of course she knew that the number of people Miranda reported to had decreased drastically in recent days, and her requirements to Shepard had already been discharged several hours ago.

Since Miranda hadn’t objected to her presence, Samara took that as a cue to step inside. “I have not seen you since you returned from Aite. Is all well?”

Miranda sighed, interlacing her fingers in front of her. “I honestly don’t know.”

The truth was, ever since she’d seen David Archer in that state, there had been this lingering sense of unease that Miranda hadn’t been able to shake. She had never been an expert at being able to put labels to her feelings. But if she had to choose a word to describe this one, it would be ‘unsettled’.

It wasn’t a pleasant feeling at all. It was as if her own skin was no longer sitting properly on her body. Like there was an inherent...discomfort, that was impossible to rectify. Like these unwelcome sensations and thoughts wouldn’t stop wriggling around beneath the surface, disturbing whatever they touched.

Had this been any regular day, Miranda would have just worked and avoided thinking about it until it went away. But that option wasn’t available to her anymore. Besides, something told her this malaise wouldn’t vanish so easily.

Then again, if there was anybody who she felt safe sharing her thoughts with, and who could help her make sense of them, it was the woman in front of her.

Not about to just leave her standing there by the door, Miranda got up from her desk and gestured for Samara to follow her further inside her quarters. “Sorry there’s not a lot of room, here,” Miranda remarked.

“It is quite alright,” Samara assured her.

“By all means, make yourself at home,” Miranda invited her, electing to sit cross-legged near the head of her bed, tacitly giving Samara permission to join her.

Samara followed her lead, perching on the far end of her bed, as if to signal that she was in no hurry to be anywhere else.

“Do you know what happened down there?” Miranda began.

“Yes.” Samara nodded her head. Even though Miranda rarely if ever observed her speaking to anyone else, word always somehow seemed to reach her about what transpired on any mission she wasn’t a part of.

It certainly made things easier not to have to explain it.

Maybe that was why Samara had come here in the first place.

“...I don’t think a single person I’ve met would ever accuse me of being in any way compassionate. Not even you, and you give me the benefit of the doubt far more than anyone else. But…” Miranda trailed off as she reflected on the days’ events, her voice steady despite the grisly subject matter. “Even in the name of science, how could anyone do that to their own brother?”

David Archer had been begging his brother to make it stop. Begging him. And all Gavin cared about was continuing the experiment.

Why? What was the fucking point of taking it that far?

“I do not know,” Samara answered honestly. “I cannot fathom it either.”

“I suppose that’s the thing. I can fathom it,” Miranda pointed out. She knew all too well that people like that did exist.

She’d been raised by one.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” Miranda shook her head, unable to even find the language to describe the uncomfortable twisting in her chest that came from thinking about David Archer, picturing him in that core with all those tubes sticking out of him. “Nothing normally ever...gets to me. Even things that probably should. I’ve always been like that. My whole life,

“Did you know, I don’t even remember crying as a child? At all?” Miranda asked. “Any time I ever came close to shedding a tear, my father made sure to ‘give me something to really cry about’. So perhaps I did do it more than I can recall, and I simply blocked those memories out. But I don’t think that’s the answer. I’ve always assumed that the reason I never cried was because I must have been...so isolated and neglected as a baby that one day I just stopped making any noise, because even then I must have known there was simply no point to it,

“So, if you ever pictured me being an emotional child, that’s not true. I’ve never known myself to be any different than the way I am now,” Miranda somewhat shamefully admitted. She’d never had the chance to be another way, from the moment she was brought into this world. “The one exception, the one thing that I can’t seem to stop from hitting me in whatever small, emotional part of me survived my childhood, is Oriana. Or anything that reminds me of her.”

“I see.” Samara needed no further explanation. Miranda may not have fully understood it herself, but to Samara, it made perfect sense. Why wouldn’t what Miranda saw down there on Aite remind her of her father, and make her think of her sister? “...May I ask, have you seen something like David Archer before?”

“Close enough,” Miranda said, the truth of those words leaving a bitter taste on her tongue. “Do you know, I’ve never told anyone about how I escaped from my father? I suppose you could’ve guessed. I’ve never had anyone to tell.”

Samara shifted, matching Miranda’s cross-legged position as she turned to face her, sitting opposite her. She didn’t even need to say anything. Her body language alone said that she was receptive to whatever Miranda felt comfortable sharing.

Miranda never allowed herself to look weak in front of anyone. To show vulnerability. Whenever she came close, she would brush it off with a deadpan quip or dry understatement, demonstrating that she was in total control.

Samara was the one exception to that. The one person she’d met who she trusted enough to reveal that flawed, softer side of herself around, and who had never judged her even slightly for her imperfections. Why Samara tolerated her at her worst, Miranda still didn’t know. But she always had, from day one.

Plus, Miranda knew better than anyone the grief Samara had somehow survived and how she had come to terms with the most intense sorrow imaginable. It was no wonder she was so understanding, given what she’d endured in her past.

So, for the first time in her life, Miranda began to tell her story.

“I always knew that I was an experiment, but I never really knew what that meant,” Miranda elected to start at the beginning. “My father said things, sure, but if you imagine anybody ever sat me down and explained to me my purpose, or the purpose of anything they put me through, then you’re sorely mistaken.”

“What were you told?” Samara prompted.

“The part about being genetically perfect. That I wasn’t the first he’d made, only the first he’d kept. And that my father wanted to create a dynasty - a great legacy that would ensure his name lived forever,” Miranda explained. “I always assumed that my father saw me as his heir. That he wanted me to be the perfect daughter. Someone he could trust to carry on his work long after he passed. It wasn’t until Niket put the thought in my head that I began to consider that I might be wrong - that maybe my father’s experiment wouldn’t end with me. If he ever did make another daughter, then I didn’t know what that meant for me, except that I knew it wouldn’t be good, and I may not be safe,

“So Niket and I began working on an escape plan. It took us the better part of two years to prepare. We had to get every detail exactly right, and we thought about every possible contingency. Niket already knew my father’s security systems intimately, so we knew what the weaknesses were there. Before he left, Niket gave me software I could use to hack into the camera system and make the monitors replay the feed from twenty-four hours ago. It would look like I was asleep in my bed, and any rooms I was actually in would look empty,

“We knew that most possible routes I could use to escape were patrolled by security at all hours. We actually had to scour the plans for the whole compound to find any potential ways out. The only option that presented any possibility was...well, perhaps I should go back a few steps.”

Not used to speaking this much without interruption, Miranda stopped briefly to make sure Samara wasn’t overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information being dumped on her all at once. But Samara’s position hadn’t changed at all. Her blue eyes had never left Miranda’s face, listening intently to her every word.

Miranda took that as implicit support to keep going.

“My father had a large research facility underground, beneath the estate, but I never saw most of it. Even when I started working in the lab, I was only ever allowed to enter certain rooms, and only under supervision. I assisted on some of my father’s research into gene editing, which is where most of the family money comes from. I was aware that there were some restricted projects that required special lab clearance, but that was the extent of my knowledge,

“Niket and I discovered from reviewing the plans that there were more levels to the lab than I would have expected. And, when you’re that far underground and working with potentially toxic chemicals, you need a very good ventilation system. We could see on the blueprints that there were air ducts that connected to the surface, which I could most likely fit through. Both ends of the air duct wouldn’t be patrolled by security, since they were only watched by cameras, which we already had a means to deal with. It seemed like my best option,

“Once everything was in motion, all I needed to do was steal an ID card from one of my father’s senior lab technicians, and memorise what passcode was used to enter the restricted part of the lab on the day I chose to escape. I don’t think I’m surprising you by saying that neither of those two things were a challenge for me. I even stole a gun to defend myself, just in case,

“It was exactly thirteen minutes past two in the morning when I got up and left my room. I knew that was the perfect time to leave, because there were the fewest people around, and I’d noticed that security tended to get tired and bored around that time and would start slacking off at their posts. I’d seen them sitting back in their chairs with their feet up watching TV to amuse themselves,

“Everything went precisely as I had planned it. I walked right across the entire house without anybody noticing I was there - which, however big you imagine the house I grew up in was, triple it and you’ll be closer. I got to the lab without incident, swiped the stolen card, entered the code for that day, and headed down to the restricted level where my designated escape point was.”

Miranda paused then. It was the first time she’d really, consciously thought about that day in a long time. And, certainly, it was the first time she’d ever spoken about it, beyond referencing it with flippant passing comments.

In the peripheries of her vision, she saw Samara shift closer. “May I?” 

Miranda glanced up at Samara’s voice, and found her making a subtle motion towards Miranda’s left hand, where it rested in her lap. Miranda hadn’t even really been conscious of it until that moment, but in hindsight she had been gesturing more with her right while she spoke.

Admittedly, Miranda was far from fluent when it came to reading unspoken body language. Even though she didn’t fully grasp what Samara meant, she trusted her enough to follow along with whatever she intended. Accordingly, Miranda turned her left hand over, such that her palm faced upwards.

Interpreting that as tacit consent, Samara reached across the small gap between them and clasped Miranda’s hand between both of her own. For as strong as their friendship had become, neither of them were exactly the touchy-feely type. Quite the opposite. So, to feel Samara gently holding her hand with such kindness, well...Miranda imagined this must have been how it felt for other people who weren’t generally so averse to physical contact to be hugged.

“You do not have to give voice to any of the thoughts on your mind if you do not wish to,” Samara reminded her, one of her thumbs softly tracing circles at the centre of Miranda’s palm. “But I am here to listen if you do.”

“I know you are. Thank you,” Miranda said sincerely.

With that, she continued, difficult as it was to revisit this part of her memory.

“I remember the doors to that level sliding open and...I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. This wasn’t just a lab. It was a cloning facility. My cloning facility. The place where I had come from. And I just...froze,

“I completely forgot why I was even there. All I saw were...tanks with embryos in various stages of development. Photographs of dissected failures detailing the mutations and cancerous growths caused by element zero exposure. Pages of speculation as to the errors in their altered genetic sequences which made them...unviable. And then there were images of me. Reports on my behaviour. My progress. With a list of ‘imperfections’ that needed improvement in further cycles.”

Samara was nothing if not masterful at maintaining a neutral expression, but even she could not hide the visibly pained look that crossed her face when she heard that. Words could not describe how much that moment must have not only hurt Miranda, but shattered her entire perception of reality.

“All that time, I truly thought the project had ended with me. But it hadn’t. My whole life, I had been living in that house, while beneath my very feet my father was actively working to ‘improve’ upon my genetic code for god knows how many years. And the only reason he hadn’t replaced me sooner was, ironically, because any time he had a viable embryo, his insistence on exposing them to element zero to replicate my biotic abilities resulted in death and deformity.”

Even though she was silent, hanging on Miranda’s every word, it was evident that Samara was shocked by what she was hearing. Stunned. She’d always believed Miranda when she said her father was a monster, but she’d obviously never suspected it went to this extent. That it was this systematic. This calculated. This callous. What sane person would even comprehend a mind capable of something like this, let alone be complicit in it?

“I don’t know when exactly my father started perceiving me as a failure. In retrospect, I’ve learned things that make me suspect it was probably day one. But that was the first inkling I ever had that I was only ever intended to be a prototype, and nothing more. A test. A proof of concept. A first fucking draft.”

Samara squeezed Miranda’s hand a little tighter, as if to express her sympathy, and her apologies, both for the fact that Miranda had ever had to go through something like this, and that Samara hadn’t understood her history sooner.

Miranda’s eyes drifted out of focus, before she even knew they had. She wasn’t in her quarters anymore. She was there. She was sixteen. She was in that lab. Standing in that door. Discovering the truth. She saw it so clearly, down to even the smallest detail. She could hear the hum of the refrigerator, and the whirring of the fan. She could even smell the exact cleaning agent the staff had used earlier that day to sterilise their hands before they entered the room.

“When that realisation hit me, I just...I just saw red. I thought fuck him. Fuck him. That everything he had put me through, everything I had done for him to meet his arbitrary and changeable standards of perfection, it had all been for nothing. Nothing I ever did could be good enough. He never cared. There was nothing I could possibly have done to live up to the unreachable bar he set for me, because he never truly intended for me to be ‘the one’ no matter how well I did. I had been set up to fail my whole life. And this was the proof. So I paid him back,

“I destroyed it,” Miranda said with cold fury, a mere fraction of the rage she had felt nearly twenty years ago. “Everything he had worked so hard on, everything that mattered to him more than me, I destroyed it. I overloaded every computer. I threw every freezer to the ground. I shot out every one of those tubes. I broke the sprinkler system, grabbed every flammable substance I could find, poured them all over everything, and ejected my thermal clip,

“The alarms went off when the fire started. I didn’t regret anything that I had done, but I had been so angry that I had completely blown any chance I had of a quiet escape. I knew I had to move quickly. So I headed for my exit. But, then, just as I reached the air vent, I heard this sound. And I stopped.”

Miranda swallowed. Perfect memory was a curse as much as a blessing. She hadn’t relived this exact moment in years, yet she could still vividly remember every single detail as clearly as if this had happened ten minutes ago.

“I looked over and I saw this...incubator. I had thought it was empty, but...no. There was a child inside it. A seemingly newborn baby. Left alone in the dark, in this cold, sterile lab. Screaming and crying for attention that would never come.”

Miranda felt a sting in her eyes as she replayed those images in her mind.

“The first thing I felt was betrayal. This was my replacement. They hadn’t been able to improve upon my DNA yet, despite their best efforts, so they just made another one. And this was her. A genetic identical. A ‘do-over’. Well, actually, they made several. Like me, Ori was just the only one lucky enough to survive the element zero exposure - although, unlike me, she didn’t get biotics out of it,

“What did it say about my father that this was how I found her? She and I, we were the culmination of his life’s work. We should have been his most prized possessions. But then look at how he treated me my whole life. And he was already doing the same to her. The only reason she wasn’t dead was because there were machines there to perform the absolute bare minimum functions to keep her alive, so that she could be the next phase of the experiment,

“Neither of us had ever been, or would ever be daughters to him. My father wasn’t, and still isn’t capable of that. There is not a single shred of anything resembling love or kindness in Henry Lawson’s heart. He is devoid of anything right, or good, or redeeming--”

Miranda had to stop herself then, pulling both her hands away to wipe beneath her eyes. This was more raw than she had ever been with another person.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Please do not apologise,” Samara implored her, beyond moved by everything she had heard so far. She reached out, but stopped just short of touching Miranda’s cheek, as if uncertain whether she would want her to.

“I feel so stupid,” Miranda cursed herself. It didn’t happen very often, but she hated the way it felt when her eyes burned with tears. It was a horrible fucking feeling. An alien sensation. Like she was stricken with some disease. Or like something inside her was broken. How the fuck did anyone find this cathartic?

“You are not,” Samara assured her, holding Miranda’s gaze, letting both hands fall atop her knees, compelling Miranda to look at her, and be with her in that moment. “Need I remind you, I came to you. I have chosen to be here.”

“Why?” Miranda asked, still not understanding why Samara of all people deigned to put up with her when she was at her most useless and pathetic.

At that question, Samara’s stoic expression faltered. “...Do you have to ask this of me? Do you not know?” she said quietly, her voice barely louder than a whisper. It was almost as if it hurt her to think that, after all this time, Miranda still didn’t honestly believe deep down in her heart that Samara cared about her.

Upon hearing that in her voice, Miranda knew that question had been unfair. Samara deserved better than that. And, after all, didn’t Miranda already know the answer to that question? Samara was here for Miranda when she needed her for the exact same reason Miranda had been there for Samara in the past. 

Because she wanted to be.

Miranda took a moment, her thumb and forefinger running across her eyelids, and meeting at the bridge of her nose. “This is hard for me to talk about,” she confessed, her voice breaking, knowing she hadn’t even reached the most difficult part. She didn’t know if she would even be able to get through this.

“I understand,” said Samara, giving her as much time and space as she needed.

Miranda drew a deep breath, and willed herself to keep going, keeping her eyes closed beneath her fingers, unable to even look at Samara as she went on.

“So, as I was standing there, hearing glass explode around me in the flames, having only just discovered this baby even existed...I knew I didn’t have long, but I had to spare her from whatever came next. If I left her, she would die in the fire, or she would be deemed a ‘failure’ and be killed, or she would go through exactly the same thing that I had gone through with my father. None of those outcomes were acceptable. But I hadn’t planned for her. I couldn’t take her with me.”

Miranda hesitated, a single tear escaping and falling down her cheek.

“For a split-second, I thought...well, I have this thing in my hand, and the most merciful thing I could do for her is…quickly and painlessly…” Miranda couldn’t even say the words, “...And I really did think about it. I was going to...”

The fact that it had even crossed her mind, however briefly, was the one thing in Miranda’s life that she had never truly been able to forgive herself for, no matter how many years passed. It made her feel sick to her stomach.

Oriana didn’t even know. But Miranda would never be able to make that up to her.

Never.

“But I couldn’t.” Miranda shook her head, her breaths coming shallower. “I just couldn’t. Something inside of me just...physically wouldn’t let me. And I felt...I felt something I’d never felt before. A compulsion so powerful I’ve never felt it since. It was like my heart exploded in my chest. And I didn’t even have control over myself. The next thing I knew, I just put the gun away. And I took her,

“All I could think was, if I could just get her out of there, then she would have a chance at everything I never had. And the moment I had that thought, it was as if I didn’t have a choice. I had to do everything in my power to make that happen. It became the only thing that mattered to me, even more than my own life,

“So I opened the incubator, and wrapped her in my jacket. And the second I touched her, she just...looked at me, and she stopped crying.”

Miranda went silent for several, long seconds, fixed on the memory of the first time she’d seen her sister’s face. The first moment she felt that connection between them. A moment that changed her forever.

She exhaled, willing her voice to stop shaking. 

“I didn’t read anything into it. I assumed the reason she stopped was because she’d never felt a human touch before, and was just surprised, but...I said to her, ‘I’m going to get you out of here. You’ll be safe with me. I promise,’

“Just as soon as I took her, I heard voices behind me. I didn’t look back. I bashed open the grate and got inside the vent as quick as I could. None of my father’s men could follow me through a space that small. I don’t know how long I was in there. But it felt like an eternity. I don’t know how I didn’t fall,

“When I got to the surface, I remember seeing searchlights in the dark. Either they hadn’t figured out where I was, or they just hadn’t made it out of the lab in time to beat me there. I had a whole route memorised in my brain. You can’t even comprehend how big my father’s compound was. The gardens had an actual, literal maze as one of the features. I tried to hide from them in there,

“Amid all the people searching for me, I carelessly wandered into a trip beam for the outdoor alarm system at one point. Spotlights fixed on me immediately. That’s when I heard my father over the loudspeaker ordering his men to shoot me. And they were live rounds. I could tell. But, if nothing else, all that training made me a lot faster and more agile than any of his men. I shot a few rounds blindly behind me to force them to take cover. That must have worked. And I lost them again,

“The only way I could get outside the walls was through a drain. Believe me, a lot of water went into those gardens. I jumped into the drainage ditch, and the water went up to about here.” Miranda put one hand at the point where her hip became indistinguishable from her abdomen. “Niket had already loosened the grate for me ahead of time. All I had to do was move it. And...I was out,

“I have never in my life run as fast as I ran then. I knew they wouldn’t be far behind me. I could hear them. Including my father. Niket had left a skycar for me in a hidden location nearby, where nobody would ever find it by accident. I got in, and I put my sister down beside me, and I said to her, ‘If we get shot down, I just want you to know, I don’t regret trying to save you. These last few minutes have been more freedom than I’ve ever known in my whole life’,

“I can still hear the bullets bouncing off the hull as we flew away. But that was it. That was my last memory of home, and the last time I saw my father.”

Samara visibly held back her own emotions as Miranda recounted the most pivotal day of her life. Miranda had long intellectually understood that feeling what others felt was something that came naturally to empathetic people, and Samara (as composed as she was) was definitely that. If anything, that response meant more from her precisely because she was usually so stoic.

It seemed clear that her restraint, in this case, was not born out of any desire to hide what she was feeling, or any shame at being seen in such a state, but rather came purely because Miranda was her priority in that moment, and she did not wish to detract, however unintentionally, from her and her feelings.

“I know it cannot have been long before you were separated from your sister,” said Samara, her voice calm, level and soothing. Her unwavering demeanour was oddly comforting. “I am sorry. That must have been very difficult for you.”

“It was,” Miranda confirmed. “She had never been part of the plan. I didn’t even know she existed until I found her. I was supposed to be off world with my fake ID immediately. But, with her, I couldn’t do that. I had a little money, but not much, and everything can be traced with enough effort so I was scared to use what I had. Once that money ran out, I had no plan for how to feed her, or clothe her, or care for her. And I was afraid that asking for help would attract attention.”

For a short while, though, she had really tried. They may have been genetically twins, but Miranda was old enough to be her mother. Teen mothers may have been a rarity in the twenty-second century, but they were certainly not unheard of.

The only problem with that idea was that Miranda barely knew how to take care of herself in light of how she had been raised, let alone a baby.

She shivered as she thought on those days. “I remember, this one night, I had bought us a room in a hotel with these...ludicrous purple walls. We never stayed in the same place twice, but this room, I remember. Because, for whatever reason, that night she just...would not stop crying. And not just crying, she was bloody screaming her head off. And I didn’t know why. I didn’t know what I was doing wrong. Whatever I tried to calm her down...nothing worked. I didn’t know if she was sick and going to die, and I was terrified that people would come and take her away from me if they heard her screaming like that. And I just...for the first time I can remember, I broke down and bawled my fucking eyes out until the sun rose. Because that was the point where I realised I couldn’t do this,

“I knew that, even if I managed to get her off-world with me, my father wouldn’t stop looking for us on Earth. He would follow us. We would always be in danger. And I had no means to care for her. Even if I did, how could I work? Who would I leave her with? I didn’t know anyone I could trust,

“...Until I remembered this man my father had spoken to two years earlier, who was an affiliate of Cerberus. English expat named Alan. He had said The Illusive Man was looking for ‘exceptional individuals’ like me. They knew who I was, and what I was. And, even though my father donated to Cerberus, I knew they had never returned the favour - they never funded his cloning research, probably because he was always so cagey about sharing any data with them,

“I knew it was a risk, but I didn’t have anyone else to turn to. I remembered enough about Alan to know his name and what company he ran. And, because he remembered me too, I was able to get in contact with him. I told him that I wanted to offer my services to Cerberus, in exchange for them helping me get my sister off world. I said I wanted them to make her disappear, and put her safely into the hands of a normal, loving family. So long as they kept their end of that bargain, they would have my undivided loyalty. And that was all it took.”

And that promise was kept, along with everything Cerberus promised. Oriana grew up with some fine, spacer parents, who were coincidentally of Australian origin themselves. Miranda watched over her, and her brilliantly, boringly normal life, seeing her grow from a happy child into a smart, popular teenager, and a well-adjusted adult. It was why Miranda trusted Cerberus so much.

“The woman who took her from me was very nice about it. In truth, other than Niket, she was the first person I ever met who had been kind to me. But that...that was the first time in my life that I remember crying. Really crying. The day that it hit me that I wasn’t fit to take care of her, when I knew that I had to give her up.”

And, nineteen years later, Miranda had tears in her eyes when she finally met her sister again, speaking to her for the first time at Shepard’s urging on Illium. She wasn’t kidding when she said Oriana was the only thing that ever brought that out of her. Such raw, intense emotion. Such...humanity.

Miranda had gone to Oriana that day to let her know she was loved, and she had done exactly that, but she had received something so much greater in return.

For nineteen years, Miranda had known what it meant to love someone. But it wasn't until then, at the age of thirty-five, that she finally knew what it felt like to have someone out there in the galaxy who truly and unconditionally loved her back.

Holding Oriana as a child had given Miranda purpose. But holding her again all those years later as an adult had given Miranda something far greater.

Family.

“You may not have been ready to take care of a child then,” Samara began. “But you were certainly an excellent sister to her, as you have been ever since.”

Miranda’s lips couldn’t find the strength to quirk, not even into the faintest shadow of a smile. “Thank you,” she said. If doing right by Oriana was the one thing that she ever managed to do with her life, then it justified her entire existence.

Giving Oriana up was, unequivocally, the hardest thing Miranda had ever done, before or since. Experiencing unconditional love for the first time, only to be forced by circumstance to give it up a few short days later. And yet, at the same time, it had been the only thing she could do. Because the real, selfless love she felt for Oriana didn’t allow Miranda to do the selfish thing. Not when it came to her.

She sighed and rubbed one eye with the corresponding palm. “Ah, god, how long have I been rambling at you about this?”

“As long as you needed to,” Samara answered with unfeigned warmth and compassion. “I cannot stress how much I appreciate you speaking of this to me. I know it was not easy for you, and that you do not share your burdens with others lightly. Everything you have told me, I treat with the greatest respect.”

“I know you do,” said Miranda. Even on the pane of death, Samara would never divulge anything told to her in confidence. Nobody ever needed to doubt that.

“Do you feel better for having spoken of it?” Samara asked.

Miranda stopped for a moment. “...Strangely, yes,” she acknowledged.

In retrospect, it now made sense why the incident with the Archer brothers had been so...for lack of a better word, ‘triggering’ for those past traumatic events. And, for as much of an emotional rollercoaster as it had been to relive the most mentally scarring day of her life, at least she had gotten to the point in her story where she and Oriana got their happy ending, reunited at long last.

“Then I am glad,” said Samara. That was all she wanted to achieve by coming here as she had, if it had been at all possible to do so.

“You’re not going now, are you?” Miranda asked, audibly disappointed. After all, when Miranda entered a conversation with a specific purpose in mind, she would generally leave immediately after accomplishing that goal.

“No.” Samara shook her head, hoping she had not unintentionally conveyed that impression. “I will stay for as long as you would like me here.”

“Would you stay forever?” Miranda wearily remarked. Samara hesitated, as if caught off guard by that. “I’m joking,” Miranda told her, assuaging Samara’s fears that she had to answer that question seriously.

Samara uttered something that sounded faintly like a chuckle. “My offer remains,” she replied. It was funny how something as simple as that kind twinkle in Samara’s eye was enough to make Miranda feel so much less vulnerable, despite the fact that this was the most she’d ever let her guard down. Ever.

Miranda exhaled heavily, running both hands through her hair as she leaned back, her head hitting the pillow behind her. She had no idea that the simple act of talking could be so exhausting. But, then again, it did feel like she’d just run an obstacle course through every single emotion she’d ever felt in her entire life, so maybe that explained it. No wonder she needed a moment to recover.

She heard movement, and felt Samara shift off of the bed, moving to stand by the window, almost like she was keeping a vigil at her side.

“Miranda?” Samara broke the silence after a minute or two. Miranda moved one hand just enough to allow an eye to open. “I am proud of you.”

Miranda arched an eyebrow in questioning.

“Of the decisions you made then. Of the woman you are now. And that you were courageous enough to be so open with me,” Samara elaborated.

“...You know, I think that’s the first time anyone has ever said that to me,” Miranda commented. And, if anyone else had, then it hit differently coming from someone, firstly, whose opinion she held in such high esteem and, secondly, who she knew wouldn’t have said that unless she damn well meant it.

“Then those people were unworthy of you,” Samara responded with stark honesty, and a terseness to her tone that Miranda had never heard before.

With her half-open eye, Miranda silently studied Samara’s expression. It took a few seconds for her to recognise that unyielding flame she bore. Now that Miranda had finished speaking, Samara no longer simply felt sorry for what she had gone through. No. She was angry about it - angry that people had treated Miranda that way, livid that they had made her even for a second feel as though she were worthless, and furious that they had seen so little value in her that they were prepared to dispose of her like she wasn’t even a living being.

That, she could evidently not abide.

Had she not known the reason for it and so agreed with the sentiment, it would have been a little intimidating to see Samara so righteously pissed off, even if the average person might have only perceived her as her usual, guarded self. 

“That I ever dared compare you to the people in your father’s employ...” Samara trailed off, staring out into the void, her body tense. She hadn’t known Miranda’s full story at the time, but now that she did, she looked like she wanted to tear herself apart for letting those words leave her lips. “I apologise unreservedly.”

“You weren’t wrong, though,” Miranda acknowledged. When it came to Cerberus, she had been on the same path. She could have easily been complicit in the same, if not worse atrocities than were done to her as a child.

“No.” Samara turned to face her, stalwart conviction shining in her eyes. “I have never been more wrong. You are nothing like them. You are so far above them, and they are so far beneath you...the people who hurt you do not even deserve to breathe the same air as you,” Samara stated firmly, staring Miranda dead in her eyes, as if daring her to find a single shred of falsity or exaggeration in her gaze, because she knew that Miranda would find none. “I hope you know that.”

Miranda blinked, taken aback by the severity and seriousness of her response. Not having the strength to fight Samara on the validity of her past criticisms, which Miranda still thought were fair, all she said was, “Apology accepted.”

Satisfied with that answer, Samara folded her arms, and faced the void.

Miranda wouldn’t say it out loud, but it was weirdly kind of validating to see someone else react that way to her story. Whether it was intentional or not, it was almost like a reassuring acknowledgement in the back of her mind, saying, ‘See? You aren’t crazy, and you aren’t overreacting by not being able to let go of what your father did to you so many years ago. You actually are justified.’

Plus, on an entirely selfish level, part of her definitely enjoyed knowing that, in the very unlikely event Samara and Henry Lawson ever happened to cross paths after this day, Samara wouldn’t hesitate to fucking kill him.

* * *

It had been two weeks and a day since she identified the bodies. Writing to Ashley’s family and sending them the dog tags hadn’t been easy, but she’d done it. She’d personally given the letter to some contacts Jacob had within the Alliance from his days as a Corsair, so she knew it would get there.

She didn’t know when a response would come, but she wasn’t looking forward to it when it did.

Monday to Friday had been spent working, as usual. If nothing else, it was a reassuring constant.

Saturday, she had paid a visit to Jack. “What are we, fuckin’ wacky sitcom neighbours now?” Jack had complained when she showed up, signalling that things were back to whatever this new normal was between them.

Despite her initial reaction, Jack hadn’t otherwise objected to her presence. She actually felt up to going outside that day, to the extent that she was able to, so Miranda had walked with her and given her the lay of the land, including where her own apartment was. “If you ever want to stop by while I’m at work, feel free. I know your students usually visit you during that time, anyway, but--”

“Yeah. I get it. Thanks,” Jack brusquely cut her off. Even though they were so far sticking to their word to try and turn over a new leaf with each other, evidently she could still only take so much of Miranda being genuine towards her before it weirded her out.

Miranda didn’t feel the need to point it out but, for her own part, she had yet to be anything other than civil with Jack. It had not been fully reciprocated yet, but that was not unexpected.

Jack’s medical condition was an unusual one. Mainly because no human had ever suffered from it before. They actually had to go to the asari for aid to get insight on similar situations. Apparently it had been recorded within their species before that massive exertions of phenomenal biotic power in life-or-death situations could cause physical damage similar to what Jack had suffered, and it had been noted that such events could also cause a temporary ‘burnout’ of biotic abilities. Certainly, at the moment, Jack couldn’t so much as move a glass with her mind, nor was she to try to as the effort would only lead to migraine.

It was hard to put a timeline on it, but she was expected to be back to normal within a few months. Until then, she would have to take her headaches and fatigue day by day. Some days, she would barely have the strength to walk from one side of the apartment to the other. Other days, she would feel mostly fine.

On Sunday, Miranda had gone off to spend some time on her own. It turned out that her quiet spots where she hid at night when the tinnitus was too much to bear were just as isolated in the day as well. She tried to clear her mind, and not think about anything for a while, with limited success.

On Monday, it was back to work.

Oriana kept sending bad jokes as she thought of them over the course of the week. The latest one was, “How many colony developers does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Three. One to hold a committee meeting to decide whether screwing in a lightbulb is an efficient allocation of resources, one to raise rates on the colonists to fund the lightbulb replacement, and one to hire a private contractor to finally screw in the lightbulb five years after you needed it.” 

Obviously things were going well at her job.

Miranda appreciated every message she got from her, but she still hadn’t had the heart to respond. Not just yet. Oriana would be able to tell something was wrong if she talked to her in her current state, even via text. She would just know. She would sense it, no matter how many lightyears away she was. And it was better not to talk to her than risk burdening her with her current troubles.

Throughout it all, it wasn’t lost on Miranda that the students were, suffice it to say, aware that Miranda hadn’t been acting the same these past two weeks. She couldn’t really tell the difference from her own perspective. She always buried herself in work. And she was always always rather detached, serious and quiet. But, for whatever reason, the students somehow just seemed to know that dark cloud was there, hanging over her head.

Maybe she was acting just different enough that they could tell. Or maybe it was the fact that the deaths of her friends hadn’t changed her behaviour at all that caused them to be concerned about her.

They didn’t openly express any worry. But they weren’t treating her as they normally did. Weren’t teasing her, or prodding at her, or trying to get a rise out of her. They were being...polite and respectful.

Miranda would never have predicted it, nor would she admit it, but she had actually started to miss the former. Just a little bit.

It was pretty late by the time Miranda got home from work that day. It was now November, so it was getting dark early, and it was colder than Miranda preferred. She took off her scarf and put her keys down when she came inside.

“Pardon me, Miss?” Prangley began.

“Yes, Jason?” Miranda inquired, too preoccupied to notice the somewhat awkward manner in which Jack’s students were gathered together in the living area. Why was it so cold in there?

“We're, uh...we're not entirely sure,” he admitted with a shrug, glancing over his shoulder towards the balcony outside. “She wouldn't tell us anything. Just that she wanted to see you. I get the feeling we couldn't have kept her out if we tried.”

At that, Miranda blinked and glanced up, suddenly paying more attention. “She?” Miranda echoed. “Who are you talking about?”

Miranda didn’t know it, but to the kids, that reaction was the first glimpse of the Miranda they knew they'd been able to get out of her in two weeks.

“I don’t know, but it’s not often an asari matriarch drops in unannounced,” Reiley remarked, scratching the side of his head. Miranda’s heart stopped. She couldn’t believe her ears. It couldn’t be. “I hope this isn’t some kind of mix up. It’ll be pretty embarrassing if she's got the wrong address.”

Miranda didn’t even hear the rest of his comment, much less respond to it. She didn’t say so much as another word to her wards, taking hold of her cane and marching straight towards the balcony, needing to see if it was her.

As soon as she got close enough to see outside, there was no mistaking it. Samara stood there beyond the open doorway, hands clasped behind her back, her posture upright and rigid, staring out over the ruined city that lay before her.

The second she saw her, Miranda halted in her tracks, unable to take another step. It was as if time stood still. And yet her pulse was pounding so fast.

Sensing that she was being watched, Samara turned to look over her shoulder.

Their eyes met.

Miranda wasn’t sure whose breath caught first, hers or Samara’s. For a long moment, they both just stared, Miranda frozen by the doorway, Samara motionless on the balcony, both of them scarcely able to believe that this was no illusion.

Micro expressions flitted across pale blue features. The night concealed much, but Miranda could have sworn she saw Samara’s eyes glisten with unshed tears. 

“The last time I saw you...” Samara glanced down, unable to finish the thought. But, before long, a small smile unfolded across her lips. Miranda was there. Her fears had not come to pass. “...Truly, you never cease to amaze me.”

A faint laugh of astonishment and disbelief escaped Miranda as she stepped out onto the balcony, sliding the door shut behind her. “You don't call, you don't write,” she remarked, mostly in jest, moving to stand beside her in the cold night air, resting her arm on the railing. Honestly, Samara had been absent so long that Miranda had begun to suspect she would never return. “I suppose I did get your message, but you could at least have sent flowers.”

“My apologies,” said Samara, politely tilting her head in acknowledgement that the manner of her parting had been...less than ideal. “From what I have gathered, by the time you regained consciousness, I was already far from here. I could not linger when suffering was so widespread. The Code demanded that I go where I could assist. But I would not blame you if you do not forgive me for leaving,” she answered. She never made excuses, but those were her reasons.

“In light of the fact you saved my life, I think we can call it even,” Miranda commented, though her expression soon faltered, her features becoming a little more sombre and sincere. It had hurt for Samara to vanish as suddenly as she had, but it seemed so stupid to say that now that she was finally here.

She’d wanted this so badly for so long. It had almost driven her crazy at times, fixating on Samara’s absence as much as she had. And, now that she was here, she found it impossible to be angry with her, even if she ought to have been.

She was here. She was finally here. Not just in London, but here. With her. Where she should have been. And, even though there was about three feet of space between them, she was close enough that Miranda could have sworn she felt the warmth of Samara’s presence even through her jacket.

“You look well,” said Samara, genuinely glad to see the extent of her progress. Were it anyone other than Miranda she was speaking to, the rate at which she'd bounced back would have been astonishing, if not outright impossible.

Miranda snorted. “I look like I was nearly killed in a shuttle explosion. But I don't mind the scars, or the arm. Could have been a lot worse.” Miranda hesitated then, her fingers tensing around her cane as her tone turned serious. “I know I stopped breathing three times after you rescued me. If you hadn't...” She trailed off, not sure she wanted to reflect on just how close she'd come to death. There had been too much of that lately.

“Yes. I know. Far too well.” Miranda briefly glanced at her, and saw Samara staring ahead into the night, scant city lights reflecting against unfocused eyes. She seemed...preoccupied. Troubled, even. “The first time the medics told me you were not breathing was right as they took you out of my arms after I carried you to them. They revived you in the transport on the way to the hospital.”

“Mmm. Jacob told me about that after I woke up,” Miranda uttered in response. 

Come to think of it, until just now, it had never really occurred to her how Samara must have felt in that moment. For a while, at least, Samara might well have believed she had felt the last of Miranda’s life force slip away in her hands.

A secondary thought tiptoed into Miranda’s mind. Something else Jacob had told her in the same conversation that had never sat right with her.

“Did you really threaten doctors that you would consider it attempted murder if they took me off life support?” Miranda asked, audibly sceptical. She’d long since assumed it must have been some sort of misunderstanding or exaggeration on Jacob’s part. It didn’t strike her as something Samara would do.

Samara didn’t answer, nor did her expression change.

Miranda interpreted her silence. “You know what? Forget I asked,” she said, regretting even bringing it up. Of course Samara wouldn’t threaten doctors. The entire purpose of The Code was to protect innocent people, not harm them.

“They did discuss it with Jacob and myself. Your condition had barely changed for several days. And you were very ill. They had lost faith that there was any prospect that you...” Samara couldn’t seem to bring herself to say it. “It was after that conversation that I...recorded that message you saw. When I left, I did not think...I was not certain you would recover,” Samara confessed, with a heavy heart. There was no mistaking how much that dark thought must have plagued her in the intervening weeks. “Every day I spent elsewhere, I thought...”

“Thought what?” Miranda prompted when Samara trailed off.

Samara blinked out of her daze and shook her head, quickly banishing whatever imaginings had distracted her. “That is not important now. What matters is that you are alright. You survived where most would have perished, and for that I truly cannot express how thankful I am. Though it saddens me to learn the same cannot be said of some of our former comrades.”

“Mmm.” Miranda's gaze dropped to the ground, swallowing as she leaned on the bannister. “I can't say I didn't expect it. Surviving with all of us intact was never going to be an option. I'm not a believer in miracles, by any means, but we're lucky that even the four of us made it,” Miranda explained, sounding more like she was trying to convince herself than anything, unable to help but feel a pang in her chest at the knowledge that she wouldn't even get to bury most of them. They were all just...particles, somewhere in space. “I assume you know about Jack.”

“Jacob told me where I can find her. I intend to visit her later,” Samara confirmed. Miranda secretly hoped Samara didn't know everything - that she'd very nearly gotten Jack killed by not trusting her own judgement. She could never have forgiven herself if she had left her behind, trapped beneath that building. Especially knowing they would never find anyone else. “There are no others?”

“There's Wrex from the original Normandy. He made it out in one piece. You probably already knew that. But from our lot? No. Just you, Jacob, Jack and I,” Miranda answered, silently counting the missing among the fallen. “I, um...I found Zaeed and Grunt. Javik and Ashley Williams from the SR-3 as well,” she broke the news, unable to raise her head, their fates an uncomfortable burden to bear. “...I can take you to where they're buried, if you would like to pay your respects.”

Samara's face fell. It wasn't clear whether that was because she didn't know before Miranda told her, or because she felt a sense of shame and regret for leaving Miranda to shoulder that alone. “I will do that before I go.”

Miranda swallowed, brushing a stray lock of hair out of her eye. “One more thing. The ship where Kasumi was stationed to work on the Crucible...it didn't make it. It was too close to a relay, and...” She didn't finish that sentence, letting the implication speak for itself.

“...I am sorry to hear that,” Samara said honestly. Another life, another friend, confirmed lost. She paused, and glanced back at Miranda. “Are you alright?” 

“Yeah, I'm fine,” Miranda assured her, straightening up a little more.

Samara just stared at her, with silent compassion and understanding. Miranda didn't have to say anything. And Samara would never press her on it, respecting her space, but...she knew damn well that Miranda wasn't coping with this as well as she wanted everyone to think. Or even as well as she had no doubt tried to convince herself she was.

At that unspoken realisation, Miranda slumped forwards and uttered a humourless laugh, barely louder than a whisper, leaning more of her weight against the railing. “What can I say? Everyone's gone, Samara,” Miranda admitted, finally acknowledging it out loud. As much as she wanted to pretend the Normandy SR-3 was still out there somewhere, they would have heard from them by now if it was. Besides, finding Javik and Ashley had all but sealed it. She wasn't an idiot. She couldn't deny it forever. “Everyone's gone.”

“Not everyone,” Samara quietly replied, holding her gaze. “Not you.”

“I came pretty close,” Miranda murmured. The fact that she had lived where others died had been circling through her mind a lot lately, whether she wanted it to or not. Her survival in the war had come down to mere millimetres. If the bullet that hit her in the eye penetrated just a little deeper. If the red glare of the Reaper had moved just one degree counter-clockwise. If she’d landed on her neck when the shuttle crashed. If the infection had spread just a little further. If Samara had found her just a little later.

The truth was, Miranda hadn’t earned the right to be there in that moment anymore than the people who had perished. She didn’t deserve to live anymore than those who died. It had all come down to chance. Well, chance and genetic engineering, neither of which were her own doing. It was hard to feel like anything other than a thief, in a way - like, by avoiding what should have been certain death, she’d stolen time from others that didn’t truly belong to her.

“I keep thinking…” Miranda began, almost unconsciously seeking to give voice to thoughts she had never spoken aloud. She caught herself, hesitating, wondering whether it was too much to worry Samara with her morbid musings.

But, then, this was Samara. The one person she’d always been able to talk to honestly about anything. The person she’d opened up to about things she’d never told anyone else. The person who knew sides of her that nobody else knew, and probably never would. Not even Oriana.

She swallowed, and decided to continue.

“I keep thinking that I should be able to take the way I feel about losing everyone and channel it into...I don’t know, something fucking productive,” Miranda said, audibly frustrated with herself. “But there’s just...nothing. Nothing good is coming from this. There’s nothing I can do. And I can’t even see what it was all for. Did any of their deaths really matter? Did any of them truly die in a way that was ‘worth it’? Or is that just a comforting lie we tell ourselves?”

Samara considered her words for a long moment before breaking the silence.

“May I be honest with you?” Samara asked.

“Have you ever not been?” Miranda remarked in response. Samara didn’t reply to that. Assuming she was still waiting for her permission, Miranda eventually signalled for her to go ahead. After a few more seconds, Samara began to speak.

“In my own experience, the notion that grief can be transformed into something else - something that motivates you and drives you...that is a flagrant lie. It never happens,” Samara stated starkly. “Anger at losing someone, perhaps. A sense of injustice. Your love for that person. Even regret. But not grief. Even if channelled through some outlet, grief is never transformed into anything else. It remains as it is. An emptiness. A heavy hollowness. A missing piece that can never be replaced. A hole that never goes away, and never fully heals,” Samara spoke solemnly, her words carrying the weight of a long and painful life.

When Miranda looked at her then, she lost any semblance of the words she intended to say. In that achingly raw, real and honest moment, it was as if she was seeing Samara for the very first time. The warmth she felt from Samara’s proximity grew so hot that it began to burn. Everywhere that heat touched set Miranda's nerves on fire. Suddenly, it took great effort even to breathe.

Standing there in Samara's striking aura, it was as if that numbing sensation Miranda had carried with her recently - that diminishment - was not only stripped away, but flipped to its inverse. It was as if the world around her had never been so intensely tangible and corporeal as it was in that instant. Like she had never seen the colours and textures around her in such vivid detail. Like she was hearing sound at frequencies beyond the audible human range. Like she could feel the contours of every single atom and molecule beneath her fingertips.

And all because, for seemingly no reason at all, she had looked at Samara in a whole new light. Let her eye fall upon her in a way it had never gazed upon her before. And, now that she had, she was totally and utterly mesmerised by her.

“Forgive me,” Samara broke the silence.

Miranda shook her head, rattled by her thoughts and...whatever the hell it was about Samara in that moment that had left her temporarily spellbound. “What?”

“I know my words were not comforting,” Samara admitted. “For that, I apologise.”

“Oh.” A small smile crossed Miranda’s lips as she tried to hastily forget what had just happened and jump back onto the original train of the conversation, ignoring the flush of heat coursing through her veins. “No, actually. I’m glad you said it,” she quietly confessed. “In a weird way, it’s the first thing anybody’s said that’s made what I’ve been going through lately seem...normal.”

“It is. Whatever you are feeling, it is. There is no correct way to grieve,” Samara assured her. And she would know. “It may be futile to ask this of you, but please be gentler to yourself. Knowing you as I do, I have no doubt that you are doing the best you can given the circumstances. That is all anyone can ask of you.”

“Thank you,” said Miranda, not sure why she felt so on edge all of a sudden. She was never nervous around Samara. Or around anyone, for that matter. “Sorry for rambling at you about this. Ugh. I’m thirty-six years old and I sound like a child experiencing loss for the first time.”

“I did not lose anyone I truly cared about until I was over four hundred years old. When my mother died. So you are far ahead of me, if that is the measure,” Samara responded, putting matters into perspective. “Would that you were not. Inevitable though it may be, I would not wish loss upon anyone.”

Miranda swallowed heavily, keeping her gaze fixed on her fingers for a moment. She wasn’t sure how to respond to that. For a moment, she wasn’t sure if she remembered how to speak like a normal human person at all. What the hell was wrong with her all of a sudden? Why was she acting like this?

This was Samara. Samara. The one person she felt truly comfortable around, even at her very worst. So why did it feel like her skin could just jump clean off her body at any moment? Why did she already feel so naked and exposed?

“Jacob must have pointed you in my direction. He isn't joining us?” asked Miranda, electing to move to a lighter topic of conversation. Whatever was going on, she could at least have the decency to not let it affect her, or how she acted.

“I extended the offer, but he declined. He said he wished to respect our space and give us some time to speak privately, but I believe he finds the prospect of the two of us in each other's company rather disconcerting,” Samara answered. Her expression was always calm, collected and difficult to read, but Miranda interpreted that look as vague amusement.

“Sounds like him,” Miranda replied. Jacob may have been about the closest thing she’d ever had to a conventional best friend, but they were very different people. It made them a good team, but they also frustrated each other to no end at times.

“Whatever his reasons may have been, I am grateful for it,” Samara admitted, a fondness in her tone. So was Miranda. It gave them the chance to be alone, like they used to be. She'd missed that. Evidently, she wasn't the only one. “He also informed me that you contacted Falere on my behalf,” Samara continued, catching Miranda's eye. “I thank you.”

“I wouldn't have had to if you had just contacted her yourself,” Miranda pointed out. Sure, Samara had her Code to explain her actions, but in all seriousness at times it seemed more like a convenient justification for Samara's evasiveness than the definitive cause of it. Unless the Code had some rules against calls, texts and emails that Miranda didn’t know about.

Come to think of it, Samara’s disappearing act reminded Miranda of herself when she'd been on the run from Cerberus more than anything else.

“She’s probably still waiting to hear from you,” said Miranda, quietly searching for cues in Samara's unyielding exterior that would signal her intentions. “If you wanted to write to her, or even call her, I could easily arrange it,” she pointed out, subtly urging her to follow her heart and make contact with Falere, much as Shepard had done for Miranda when she'd rescued Oriana on Illium.

Samara bowed her head slightly, a momentary flash of sorrow creeping into her expression. “In time,” was all she said.

Miranda understood that sentiment. Or at least she thought she did. Their circumstances weren't entirely dissimilar. Both of them had only just reclaimed those relationships once thought lost forever; a chance at a new start with the one person they loved most. And self-deceit was the only thing keeping it from sinking in that it was entirely plausible that they might never be reunited. In spite of everything they'd fought for, in spite of outlasting all the odds, in spite of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat and saving the galaxy from annihilation, the one thing that they had nearly given their lives to protect might still be denied to them.

Their family.

If it weren't for the fact that Miranda refused to accept that possibility, it would have broken her heart. Never holding Oriana again. Never having that life together she'd worked so hard to make possible. Losing her would have drained her of everything she lived for.

So, yes, unless she was missing some important piece of the puzzle, Miranda knew all too well what Samara was feeling, and why talking to Falere was touching on too many raw, tumultuous emotions at that moment in time.

“Oh. I almost forgot,” Samara rather abruptly broke the silence, calling Miranda out of her thoughts. Samara extended her hand, holding out a small keychain shaped like Blasto the Hanar Spectre. “I promised to return this to you when next we met.”

Recognising it, Miranda couldn’t help but laugh. She’d completely forgotten about that before now. It was a cheap trinket she’d won at the arcade the last time she and Samara were on the Citadel together, when Shepard threw that party. That felt like a lifetime ago, even though it had only been three months.

���You do know that was a gift, right?” Miranda said through a chuckle.

Samara blinked, hesitant. “Justicars--”

“Eschew personal possessions. I know,” Miranda finished before Samara could. It was exactly what she’d told Miranda when she had first offered it to her. She thought they had resolved this dilemma the first time they had this conversation. “If your tenets require me to say that it’s still technically mine, then fine. It’s mine. But I insist that you hang onto it for me indefinitely. Does that work?”

“It…” Samara paused, evidently more than a little torn on the matter. Miranda would never understand how something so insignificant could be a breach of her Code. But, on the other hand, Miranda couldn’t fault Samara’s tireless dedication to her discipline. She didn’t cut corners. She didn’t cheat. She was who she was - what she had sworn to be. And that was nothing if not deeply admirable. “...I suppose that would be acceptable,” Samara eventually answered, with some slight hesitation, running her thumb over the keychain.

“I mean, unless you hate carrying that stupid thing around,” Miranda added offhandedly. She hadn’t considered that possibility.

“No,” Samara hastily assured her, not wishing to create that impression. “Of course I do not.”

Miranda couldn’t help but muster a smile at that response. Honestly, it was kind of incredible how a woman who was nearly a thousand years old, and who had experienced so much, could still have the capacity to demonstrate such pure, unfeigned innocence and earnestness. It wasn’t often that it showed, but Miranda had always liked that about Samara whenever it did.

“Then, please, keep it. Do this, in memory of when I still had both halves of my face,” Miranda remarked, mock-crossing herself, as if giving Samara her blessing. Samara stared at her blankly, caught in momentary shock. Miranda didn’t take long to realise why. “...Sorry. I forget you’re not used to seeing me like this. It’s fine. I’m in the ‘joking about it’ stage. Have been for a while, actually. You don’t need to…feel awkward about it.”

“No!” Samara interjected again, a little more urgently than the last time, loath to think that she had inadvertently hurt Miranda’s feelings, or made her self-conscious about her injuries. “That is not what…” Samara trailed off, pressing her hand to her forehead in annoyance at herself. “Forgive me. It appears that in this moment I can neither speak nor stay silent without making a fool of myself.”

“You could never appear foolish to me, Samara,” Miranda reassured her, speaking from the heart, so there could be no doubt she meant it.

Samara softened at that, glancing down at the trinket in her palm once more. “...I should not say it, but...in truth, this came to mean a great deal to me,” Samara quietly admitted, earning a raised eyebrow from Miranda. “Because you gave it to me,” Samara explained at her inquiring look. Miranda felt her pulse quicken at those words, the heat suddenly rushing to her cheeks. “It was all I had to remind me of you, when I did not know whether or not you would…”

Miranda couldn’t speak. Her mouth had gone dry. And her throat felt so tight all of a sudden. She had to turn away and cough to clear it.

Fortunately, Samara spoke again before she had to. “You are right. I will keep it. Even if it belongs to you, there is no reason I cannot carry this, if you wish it,” said Samara, mustering a smile as she closed her fingers around the keychain.

“Great. It’ll be our secret,” Miranda replied in a concerted effort to act normal despite feeling anything but, holding a finger to her lips.

Wait a second. Did her voice have a tremor in it, all of a sudden? God, she hoped not. What if Samara heard that? What on Earth was this? Was she sick or something and didn’t know it? Was that why she felt so off-kilter?

“Before either of us get carried away, I must let you know that my stay here will be short,” Samara rather sombrely confessed, aware it was not something Miranda would want to hear. “I do not wish to mislead you into believing otherwise.”

“You didn't; I suspected as much,” said Miranda. She would have been lying if she said it wasn’t disappointing. But at least she’d gotten to talk to her this time before Samara set off again, resuming her ceaseless quest to bring justice to the galaxy. That brought some amount of closure, if nothing else. “Where will you go? Come to think of it, where have you been?”

“Many places. Forgive me, I am not familiar with Earth's regions,” said Samara, powering up the omni-tool on her hand. “I have, however, found it helpful over my years to maintain a record of all my travels. You may be surprised how often it is necessary to know these things, and how easily one forgets,” she remarked with a small quirk of her lips that almost resembled a smirk, activating a holographic map that documented her travels.

“You're kidding.” Miranda stumbled backwards when the incalculably dense web of destinations formed over the hologram of Earth in front of her, her bad leg nearly giving out under her weight before she remembered to grab the railing to keep herself steady. “I'll be damned. You really did get the grand tour,” she commented, genuinely awed by how she'd managed to go literally all the way around the world in under three months. “How did you get to Dunedin?”

“On a ship, from the North Island of New Zealand,” Samara answered, her literalism containing no traces of irony. Miranda suspected Samara knew what she had meant, but was using that sneaky deadpan delivery of hers to play coy. 

“Keep saving those frequent flier miles and you could get back to Thessia at this rate,” Miranda offhandedly remarked. Samara gave her a slightly odd look.

If the Earth could have opened up and swallowed Miranda whole in that moment, she would have let it.

Miranda shook her head in embarrassment, regretting that stupid comment as soon as she had said it. Why did she try to be funny when she wasn’t? “Please remind me never to attempt to make jokes again. That was horrendous.” 

“It is quite alright,” Samara assured her, appreciating the intention, if nothing else. “It is good that you have maintained a sense of humour in these troubled times.”

“I...don't have one. Never have, never will,” Miranda awkwardly replied, letting go of her cane long enough to rub her neck. “But thank you for your tolerance.”

She couldn’t isolate what it was that was making her so anxious around Samara. This was the exact opposite of what it was ordinarily like - usually it put her so at ease just to be in her vicinity. Now, the mere act of existing in Samara’s proximity made her feel like she was tapdancing on hot coals, and they weren’t even standing that close. Inexplicable waves of heightened energy surged through her nervous system every time it felt like Samara shifted a little nearer. It made her heart race just to hear her voice, and to let each word she spoke wash over her.

Why was she feeling this way? What was she feeling?

Why hadn’t it gone away yet?

“For the most part, I have not found it difficult to acquire travel,” Samara explained. “I have found most people quite accommodating in light of these dark and troubled times. They do say adversity breeds camaraderie. And it would seem that quality is uniquely commonplace among your kind,” she said plainly, having developed a great affinity for the human species as a whole.

“Would it dim your view of humanity if I pointed out the locations where I think the Reapers' invasion actually caused several billion credits of improvement?” Miranda asked, hopeful that her dark quip would land that time. Perhaps she was imagining things, but she was pretty sure Samara cracked a smile at her dry remark, recognising the gallows' humour for what it was. Most of Samara’s facial expressions were extremely subtle at the best of times, though.

“The work you have done here is good,” Samara told her, looking out over the slowly recovering city once more. “Your ability and intellect have always been remarkable. Now that you have applied them to a more worthy cause than Cerberus, what you have accomplished is truly admirable,” she said, approving of Miranda's new direction in life. It pleased her to see she had found a path that seemed unlikely to ever put her in conflict with the Code.

“Yes. That's all true,” Miranda matter-of-factly replied, resting her hand on her cane once again. What could she say? Feigned humility had never suited her. “But I could always use help,” she said sincerely. “I could also use a friend. Are you sure I can't persuade you to stick around longer?”

They both knew the answer to that question already. But every part of Miranda really wanted to deny it.

“You cannot, though it is not for anything you lack. Quite the opposite,” Samara replied, earning a wrinkled brow. “Other cities on Earth do not have the benefit of your leadership and oversight. Any contributions I can provide will be limited here. My Code compels me to look for where aid is most needed.”

“...I see,” said Miranda. That explanation was fair enough, she supposed. So why did the thought of Samara's absence leave her feeling so hollow? Why did the thought of Samara going away again make her heart feel like it was contorting into a knot inside her chest? Why did it hurt so badly?

“We will have many chances to speak again before I depart. That would...” Samara paused, internally dismissing whatever she had been about to say. “For now, I fear I have lingered too long unannounced, and taken enough of your time. I can see you are responsible for many others. I would not keep you from it.”

For a split second, something surged inside Miranda – an intense emotional need she couldn't describe. But that ache in her heart couldn't go unspoken. She reached out to touch Samara's hand, covering it where it rested on the balcony, letting her cane fall from her grasp and clatter to the floor at her feet.

“Stay?” The word was softly spoken, a question that carried with it uncharacteristic vulnerability. “Please?” Miranda implored her.

“For how long?” Samara sought clarification, evidently unsure how to decipher Miranda's odd request. “Are you certain I would not be imposing?”

Miranda uttered something that amounted to a short, heavy-hearted laugh. “You know what I mean,” she said. She wasn’t talking about today. She wasn't asking for a few more hours, or even a few more days.

She didn’t want an end date at all.

Samara gazed at her for a long moment, her reserved expression as always difficult to decipher. Whatever her thoughts were, her features did not readily betray them. Miranda didn't know whether she gave the matter any consideration, or if her answer was already as clear as every rational part of her assumed it was. However, maybe it was just an illusion or a trick of the mind but...for a split-second, Miranda was sure that Samara looked conflicted. Even torn.

Samara withdrew her hand. With scarcely more than a thought, she drew Miranda's cane towards herself using her biotics, and extended it to Miranda.

“We each have a role to play in the aftermath of this war. These duties cannot be forsaken,” Samara spoke calmly, placing the walking stick in Miranda's grasp once more, and enclosing her palm around it. With her other hand, she reached out to cup Miranda's cheek, fingers softly brushing the scarred skin beneath her eye-patch. Miranda's breath caught at the contact. It was all she could do not to tremble beneath her touch as a tingling sensation flooded from Samara’s fingertips out to seemingly every single cell inside her body. “It grieves me that our paths do not align. Perhaps that will change in time.”

“...It's okay.” Miranda averted her gaze, willing her voice not to shake under Samara's gentle caress, unable to meet her stare, scarcely able to breathe. She knew little of what Samara's Code entailed, but still she regretted asking her to do something that would require deviating from it. That had been unworthy of her. Even if the non-Justicar part of Samara may have wanted to stay, what place of it was Miranda’s to put her in that difficult position? To ask her to turn away from her vows? “You don't need to explain. I understand responsibility better than most. However, I would like it if I saw you again sooner this time. Or if we stayed in touch while you were away,” she admitted, allowing herself that much.

Samara let her touch linger, grazing Miranda's damaged skin with such gentleness, never once breaking eye contact with her, even if it wasn’t returned. “As would I.”

Much as Miranda might have wanted to, she didn’t dare lift her head. Wasn’t sure she could handle it if she did. It felt like her entire being was disassembling under Samara’s fingertips. And, if Samara couldn’t feel her quivering, then it was a fucking miracle. Her heart was pounding like a drum, and her palm began to perspire against her cane, where it was covered beneath Samara’s left hand.

It wasn’t lost on Miranda that neither of them were the type of people who were entirely comfortable or natural around others. Even small gestures of physical affection were largely alien. They had never so much as hugged each other. A touch of hands here or there was the most they had ever...but that didn’t explain it either. Miranda hadn’t felt anything close to this the last time Samara gently clasped her hand. She’d never reacted this way around her before, or anyone.

Miranda had never felt anything remotely like this before. Ever.

What did it mean?

Miranda had to recoil from her touch just so she could breathe again. Samara didn't resist, nor seem offended, letting her hand fall from Miranda's cheek. “You take care of yourself out there, okay?” said Miranda, keeping her eye fixed anywhere but Samara, because she knew damn well by that point that she wouldn’t be able to control whatever it elicited in her to look at her in that moment. “And don't leave without saying goodbye this time.”

“I will try, on both accounts,” Samara replied, promising that much. “Farewell, Miranda.” Miranda didn't try to stop her, though she wasn't oblivious to the tension in her body as Samara passed her. The air had never felt so dense.

Miranda could feel from the sudden chill that filled the atmosphere in her absence that Samara had left, and only then did she dare to confirm it with a glance upwards, her gaze met by empty space where once she had stood.

Alone, Miranda finally released a deep exhale, that bizarre energy that had built up inside her at long last finding the space to wane, and subside, and work its way out of her, at least in part. She didn’t know how long she would need to linger out there to compose herself, but she felt no urge to hurry inside, despite the autumn air feeling bitterly cold having lost Samara’s warmth.

She didn’t even know where to start to untangle that messy jumble of unlabelled sensations and ambiguous emotions whose echoes still lingered inside her chest. She held her hand up to eye level and, sure enough, it was shaking. She clenched her fingers into a fist, which made that stop, at least.

She leaned against the railing and let her head fall into her hand. Miranda may have been comparatively unskilled when it came to deciphering even her own emotions, but she also wasn’t completely dimwitted, nor was she naïve. And the longer she stood out there, the more one possible answer for these nameless feelings began to emerge from recesses of her mind as the most obvious fit.

The thing was, she didn’t want that to be the answer. She wasn’t sure it made sense, or if it was even possible for her. And, if it was, then she had even bigger problems than she could have imagined. Because it could ruin everything.

Miranda’s hearing wasn’t quite good enough since the shuttle crash to notice the door sliding open behind her.

“So, Miss,” Seanne was the first of the students to ask, peering around the door to the balcony at the subtle urging of her brother. “Who was that?”

“A friend,” Miranda replied, staring out at the city, unmoving.

“A girlfriend?” Rodriguez said with a smirk.

“A friend,” Miranda repeated without inflection, as if reminding herself to remember that. Convincing herself not to dare begin to think otherwise.

“It's alright if she’s more than that,” Reiley teased. “Or if you've got a thing with Mr. Taylor. You can tell us, you know,” he prompted, grinning.

Miranda turned and arched her brow at them. “Have you got nothing better to do than gossip about my personal life?” she wondered aloud, beginning to understand the meaning of the old adage 'idle hands do the devil's work'.

“No. We really don't, no,” the group cheekily replied, happily falling back into the habit of having fun at the expense of their guardian now that it (hopefully) seemed like things were improving for her. With that, they closed the door and went back to report on her response to the others.

Miranda didn’t join them. Jack’s students were right, in a way, if they thought they’d perceived a sudden change in her mental state. For the first time in two weeks, Miranda wasn't being haunted by the dark spectre of death.

The problem was that now the only thing she could think about was Samara. And, the more she tried to reason herself into denying it, the louder that one increasingly isolated answer grew as it kept circling in her mind.

Somehow, someway, somewhere between all that time they’d spent together on the Normandy, and seeing Samara standing on that balcony again, and she didn’t know exactly when, where, why, or how it could possibly be true, but...

She’d fallen for Samara, hadn’t she?

She’d fallen for a woman she knew damn well could never love her back.

*    *    *

[antibronybenswolo]

Who has two thumbs, is starting to go insane, and might have just made the craziest villain concept ever? This guy right here.

So, if anyone is wondering what the heck this is supposed to be, then I prompt you to picture this: Episode 3. Anakin Skywalker watches upward as Obi-Wan takes the High Ground. However, Anakin leaps over his master and strikes him down, leaving his body by the side of the lava.

A victorious Anakin Skywalker meets up with Emperor Palpatine, who gifts him a new red lightsaber. Skywalker, however, strikes Palpatine down directly after being gifted the lightsaber, claiming the Galaxy to be his. And thus, Emperor Vader is born.

Despite his best efforts, Emperor Vader could not save Padme from death as he had promised, for her heart was too broken by Anakin's betrayal to be preserved. Vader, however, did take it upon himself to train baby Luke and Leia the ways of the Dark Side, as he had felt the Jedi were too dogmatic for them.

Many years would pass, as Emperor Vader would build his Empire much differently than Palpatine would have. Vader would put his complete faith in the Senate to help him make smart decisions in running the Empire, as he had very little political experience compared to his late wife and master. Luke and Leia would grow up to become the Galaxy's enforcers who report only to their Emperor and Father.

However, Rebellion would rise up in both the civilian populace and the Imperial Senate, as it usually does. But it doesn't escalate to civil war yet. Not until a group of freedom fighters end up executing Luke and Leia, devastating Vader. Overrun by guilt and rage, Vader assembles all his forces and unleashes the fire of a thousand stars on the rebels who killed his only children.

The Empire's might pounds through the rebel scum as Vader grieves the loss of his children, pleading to Padme for forgiveness for not saving them. Vader then thinks back to what Palpatine said about Plaguise's power. Not only could the Dark Side save the ones he loved from dying, but also create life itself.

Realizing this, Emperor Vader turned to Darth Plaguise's old teachings and attempted to create life as Plaguise had done to create Anakin in the first place. But, as the Force had done before, it rebelled against him, instead spawning another convergence. And Vader would not rest until he found where his creation was.

Emperor Vader would then turn to the old ruins of an ancient Sith Lord named Darth Edris, who had mastered interdimensional travel, and Vader would study Edris' notes on Multiverse theory. After building a strong enough portal to carry an army, Vader marched his forces through a portal to another world, a bright and colorful realm full of bright shining faces on bright colorful ponies. But something was...different. And Vader sensed it. This realm harbored Jedi.

Emperor Vader would raid the realm down to rubble until he found what he was looking for. At first, he thought he sought out the Jedi of this realm, a pegasus with a buttercream-colored coat and a rose-colored mane, wielding a lightsaber with a magenta blade. But, after dueling the Jedi for some time, he found something extraordinary.

He found a rather young-looking colt with a light blue coat, a messy black mane, and big cyan eyes that matched the mare Vader was fighting. And most importantly, he was dangerously strong in the Force. Emperor Vader had found his long-lost creation.

Striking the Pony Jedi down and leaving the pony realm to crumble into dust, Emperor Vader took the small child in, raising him as his own son, naming him "Lightning Bug" and taught him the ways of the Dark Side as his new Sith Apprentice.

...

Whooo, what a rush!

[notyetneedcoffee]

Soul Seer, Pt. 9

Pairing: Loki x Reader

Warnings: Only loads of angst

Author’s Note: Takes place right after Avengers 1, with time travel elements and hints of Infinity Wars. Does NOT follow cannon after Avengers.

The constant rumble of heavy machinery and the army of workers on the streets never stopped. The organized chaos of the recovery churned on around you as you walked between two of Fury’s men, a few government officials, and Steve Rogers. The destruction from the street, even after several days of clean up, looked nearly insurmountable.  

As the group passed pile of rubble, bulldozed against what was once a Post Office, the dark brownish-red smear across a chunk of concrete captured your eye. You’d seen dried blood, lots of it. Your dad and uncles hunted every season. But that wasn’t the dried blood of an elk. Someone died against that broken piece of building. You knew because it was far more than anyone could lose and live.  

“Y/N,” Steve’s hand rested against your back, his voice low. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” You nodded, a bit numbly. “I’m fine.”

He knew it was a lie, but allowed it rest. Instead, Steve just stood a little closer and kept talking. The group discussed the recovery of alien technology, inspected the work being done. Fury insisted you attend, arguing you were the most reliable and direct link for Loki to the outside world. Now you understood.  

Fury meant for you to feel the damage and destruction the people of the city felt at the hands of the invading army.  

I worked. You felt ill. Being up in the Tower, above the wreckage, isolated from the damage, it’d been easier to focus on the power behind the attack. It’d been easier to focus on Loki as a victim of the Mind Stone and not see the death caused by his attack.  

Your group passed a chain link fence blocking off the damaged side of the street from the safe side. Hundreds of photos were attached to it, people still missing or dead. Some people laid flowers. Others strung up balloons. People stared, eyes full of exhaustion and pain.  

Their minds battered against you like a storm. Dark sorrow crashed over you like unsettled seas, while flares of anger and fury crashed like lightening. Confusion and worry blew you about. You fought to raise mental walls, but it was all too much. Tears burned your eyes.

Stepping even closer to Steve, your hand slipped into the crook of his arm. He looked down, concerned. “You okay?”

“No.” You whispered, turning closer to him. “Too much. There’s too many, it’s too strong, to shut out.”

His arm came around your shoulder, pulling you close to him. Steve announced with absolute authority, “We’re done. Time to head back. Right now.”

“But,” one of the men began to argue, but fell silent at Cap’s scowl.  

“Now.” He turned and led you back to the SUV.  

Steve kept you close all the way back to the tower, protecting you from the questions of the others. His calm, sure, presence allowed you to breathe. Still, the sights and the mental impression looped in your mind. You remained so distracted, you didn’t even register where you were until the elevator doors opened and Loki stood before you.  

Loki frowned, looking from your tear streaked face to the Captain, who’s arm still held you protectively. He growled low. “What is the meaning of this?”  

You looked at him, raw and hurt. For the first time since meeting him, you didn’t want to cling to him to feel better. Some part of you needed to hold on to the pain, needed to keep that tie to the people outside. Slipping out of Steve’s protective arm, you escaped past Loki and disappeared into your suite.  

A few minutes later Loki silently entered the room. You had not heard, or felt, the two men fight. It was something. You remained curled on the sofa, feet tucked beneath you, and stared out the window. Loki stepped close, changed his mind and sat at the far end of the sofa.  

“The Captain said you were overcome on your outing.” He began softly. “He assured me you did not suffer any mistreatment.”

You didn’t answer.  

“He said you became overwhelmed by the,” Loki swallowed, “by the emotions of the victims.”  

You chewed your lip, feeling tears slip down your cheek. “You know they don’t even have a death toll yet. They’re still looking for people in the rubble. All of those people have people who loved them, people who are hurting because they are gone. There is so much pain. And I’ve been up here, away from it all.”

Loki stood, marching to the window, his back held stiff as stared out the window. An ugly viciousness slid into his voice. “So, you now come to the realization of what a monster I really am.”

Your head snapped up, irritation flaring. “Not everything is about you.” You stood up and strode over to him, poking a finger in his chest. “I was overcome by other people’s pain. I was shocked by the level of destruction. I am feeling guilty because in the midst of all of it, I’ve been happier than I’ve ever been. So, it’s not about you, Loki. You don’t get to pull that self-loathing bullshit right now.” You were crying full out, shouting at him. “I can’t deal with it and everything else right now! I can’t!”

The utter confusion on his face would have been comical in any other situation. “You don’t hate me?”

“Of course not,” You threw your hands up. “I hate the situation, and right now I feel like shit!”

“My pet,” Loki’s voice softened. He slid his fingers down your arms. You shook him off, stepping away. His hands grabbed, not allowing you to get away, and pulled you to him. Pushing against him, your anger flared and more tears fell.

“Let me go!”

Loki just pulled you tight against his chest. When his lips ghosted over your hair, making soft shushing sounds, all fight left. You wept hard, holding on to him. Loki’s mind brushed against yours, light and comforting. Still, it was enough for him to see the hundreds of photos, the faces, the dried blood.  

As your own raging emotions receded to dull ache, deep regret settled over you like a heavy blanket. Loki’s regret was something you did not expect. His arms now held you tight, one hand cradling the back of your head. His face pressed into your hair, his breathing deep.

“I’m sorry for pushing you away.” You murmured into his chest.

“Do not think on it, little one.” Loki’s voice was deep, thick. “I wish I could spare you such sorrow. I would take away all the pain if you’d let me, but I know you would not wish to be numbed of the reality.” He pulled back enough to look in to your eyes, holding your face with reverence. “But as much as I would willing do whatever I could to spare you, I cannot regret finding you. You, my lovely soul seer, set me free.”

You clutched his shirt, face turned up. “You’re right. I will not hide from it. What happened to you was horrid. What you brought down upon the city was horrid. The resulting pain is immense. Still, I will weather it all, because now you are mine.”

Something akin to a whine escaped Loki’s throat as his mouth descended upon yours. His lips soft, as he kissed you with tenderness. Warmth spread through your body and washed over your mind. Bitter sweet and full of tenderness, this was a side of Loki you’d never experienced. Tears slipped from your eyes again, though not from pain.  

Loki’s eye shone bright as his lips captured your tears. “Yes, my pet.” he sighed. “And because you are mine, I will do all that I can alleviate the pain so it will burden you no more.”

TAGS

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[fatehbaz]

Disappearing island: The effect of Hurricane Walaka (October 2018) on French Frigate Shoals (Northwestern Hawaiian Islands) and disappearance of an island, an important landmark for endangered Hawaiian monk seals and one of the rare areas in the archipelago that provides refuge for seal pups.

“Monk seal pup -- possibly twins -- nursing from mother, GV18″:

“A Hawaiian monk seal and sea turtle at French Frigate Shoals”:

Before and after satellite images show the extent of the impacts upon East Island from Hurricane Walaka in French Frigate Shoals. The first photo was taken in May 2018 and the second photo is from October 2018. [See map animation above.] French Frigate Shoals is home to abundant wildlife and one of the most significant coral reef systems in the monument. In October 2018, Hurricane Walaka passed through the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands at French Frigate Shoals as a Category 3 hurricane. The hurricane caused major damage to the islands of this atoll. During this research expedition, the first to assess coral reef impacts since Hurricane Walaka last year, divers observed devastating damage to coral reef sites at French Frigate Shoals. Before and after photos show rubble not recognizable as the former coral reef. Highly diverse fish communities associated with the reef are also gone. [Photo animation, text: NOAA National Marine Sanctuaries blog. “Researchers observe coral reef damage and invasive alga in Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument.” August 2019.]

The size of the monk seal population [entire global population of endangered Hawaiian monk seal] in 2019 was about the same as in 2018, with slightly more than 1,400 seals. Most of the population (about 1,100 seals) reside in the remote Northwestern Hawaiian Islands [which includes so-called “French Frigate Shoals.”] Just about 300 seals call the main Hawaiian Islands home In recent years, fewer juveniles have survived at several of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands sites than in past years. [...] One Northwestern Hawaiian Islands site, French Frigate Shoals, exemplifies the ups and downs in monk seal conservation. This site has seen major changes with the loss of two important seal pupping islets. One was inundated and the other washed away by Hurricane Walaka in 2018. In 2019, these islets reappeared as tiny sandbars, but still provided limited area for seal pupping. Loss of safe pupping habitat makes young pups vulnerable to shark predation and drowning in high tide or surf conditions. [Text excerpt: NOAA Fisheries News. “Hawaiian Monk Seal Population Saw Signs of Recovery in 2019.” 18 March 2020.]

“Fish school at Rapture Reef in French Frigate Shoals ... prior to Hurricane Walaka”:

From NASA Earth Observatory:

It’s not often that an island disappears off the map, but that’s just what happened in October 2018. A remote but ecologically important island was lost to the sea in the wake of one of the most intense hurricanes on record for the North Pacific. Around October 3, Hurricane Walaka passed the Hawaiian Islands, including an archipelago about 900 kilometers (550 miles) northwest of Honolulu known as the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument. Strong surges from Walaka inundated the shallow islets, one of which has been almost completely reclaimed by the ocean. While East Island was uninhabited by people, it provided nesting grounds for the threatened Hawaiian green sea turtles and pupping grounds for endangered monk seals, of which there are only 1,400 in the world. [Satellite photos, text excerpt: Kasha Patel. “An Island Disappears.” NASA Earth Observatory. December 2018.]

“Monk seals resting on one of the few haul out areas at Mokumanamana in 2019″:

[burts-baked-bees]

{If The World Was Ending          You’d Come Over Right? }

Author: ohhey-mishamigosx

Relationship: Cas x Reader

Warning : Violence, swearing, ANGST, idk what else, its for big kids. 

Word Count :  4404

A/N: I’ve been meaning to post more stories on here cuz AO3 is trash. This song gives me major SPN vibes so I made this. Its divided into 3 parts. The male sung verse/chorus is Cas’ POV, the female sung is Y/n’s POV, the part sang together will be both of them!  This took me a while to write and I’m so happy with how it came out! So enjoy! 

Summary: (A story written to the song lyrics of “If The World Was Ending”by JP Saxe &  Julia Michaels) Castiel and Y/n have had a complicated relationship since day one, but now Chuck is wiping out the world they know, and Y/n is nowhere to be found. 

                                                                         - PART ONE - CASTIEL’S POV - 

( Bold is Song Lyrics ) 

( Italics is Flash Back )

I Was Distracted, and In Traffic 

    The room was impossibly silent as a lone figure stood in a dark and dismal room, their head tilted to the heavens. Flashes of red were seen in the night sky, clouds outlined by the blood soaked light sending eerie shadows on the world below. The harsh flashes outlined the fabric of a worn trench coat and even older suit, the vessel wearing them was no stranger to the feeling of fear that filled his bones as the impending doom danced across the skies. He had been present for many of the earth's cleanings; from the Great Flood to some of his father’s more recent attempts at wiping the slate clean. But, in all those mass killings, those end of days times, he had never felt nearly as much dread as he felt in these very moments. 

I Didn’t Feel it, When The Earthquake Happened

As his blue eyes followed the red lighting across the ever expanding skies, he found himself thinking back to one singular person. 

   One small human of the billions on this planet had captured his mind and held it in bittersweet captivity. He just knew she was somewhere halfway across the country he was in, her eyes also fixated on the skies. And he, an angelic host of the Lord, prayed that she too was thinking of him, but he knew that to be far from the truth. He would know, he remarked, if she was sending out her thoughts to his almost graceless form. 

   The earth shook. 

   Castiel felt the very ground beneath his feet cry out in pain as a rumble filled his ears. He grabbed ahold of the wall next to him and dug his fingers into the plaster. He watched as dirt erupted from new forming holes and cracks in the surface of this once calm planet. He knew it was drawing to a close. He knew his father had had enough of the foolery of his creation, and now he was striking back. The end was near. 

   And he was alone. 

But It Really Got Me Thinking

“Well, look who’s back.” Her voice was soft, but bitter and it sent a shiver to the angels' very core. He turned his head from Elieen and met her gaze. The ghost of a smile was seen on his cracked lips as he took a step to face her fully. 

  “Hello Y/n.” He rasped, his blue eyes twinkling. Her expression didn’t change in the least bit as Sam came to rest behind her. He pursed his lips into a flat line and raised his brow at Castiel, making his confusion with her temperament known as well. Eileen signed something to Y/n and she responded quickly, too fast for Sam to see and unknown to Castiel. She stepped away from Sam and past Cas to lean her weight against the map table. 

  “What brought you back? Thought you and Dean were mad at each other again.” 

Sam looked to Castiel confused as the seraphim looked to his feet, then back at the woman across from him. 

   “I was told that Sam needed help with his….. Unusual wound ...” The words left his mouth like a plea for any form of relaxed conversation, but it met Y/n’s ears like a deflection of what she truly wanted him to say. She narrowed her eyes at him and smiled dryly while nodding. 

  “Yeah…” She pushed her weight off the table and brought her body impossibly close to his. Castiel felt his grace flare for a moment, the proximity of Y/n to him was affecting him in more ways than one. Her e/c eyes were fixated on his blue ones as he felt her body heat enter his own personal space. His Adam's apple bobbed as he tried his best to keep his eyes on her’s and not her weather beaten lips.  

      “That’s exactly what I thought you’d say…” Castiel felt like a spike of ice had entered his vessel. Her words cut him deeply as she made her way around him and out of the room. Sam, Eileen, and Cas watched as the hunter left the room with her arms crossed. The way she carried her obvious sour emotions resembling that of Dean, and giving Castiel yet another taste of the discomfort of being in the presence of this family. 

Were You Out Drinking?

Were You In The Living Room Chilling

Watching Television?

    The sky was growing darker and brighter all at once as the lone fallen angel made his way through the musty afterglow of the earthquake. His mind drifted to thoughts of Sam and Dean, and what they must be doing now. They always seemed to be at the center of earth shattering events, and this time must not be an exception. He imagined them throwing caution to the wind and pulling out all the stops in order to bring his father’s plans to its knees once again, like a never ending story book that had no definitive plot. He wondered however, as he looked to the rubble around him, if this time God had truly given up. If this was to be the ending to the creation he had hid from for so long. 

   “I’ve never seen this planet so calm.” His voice drifted over the restless land and floated into the air with no real destination. He wondered how Heaven and Hell would react to the coming end, and to add the Empty to the mix was a frightening thought. He had gone face to face with that entity before, and hated every minute of it. That disgusting abyss had taken more than one friend from him; from brothers and sisters, to the only soul that had ever come close to calling a son. He recalled the way Jack used to interact with Y/n. How he looked to her for comfort and compassion when the Winchesters lacked the knowledge of how to tap into those emotions. She was so kind to the young boy. She treated him like family, and Castiel couldn’t help but see him and her as the parents that Jack deserved. 

      There she was again.

    The world was crumbling around him and all he could bring to his mind was a girl that had rejected him long ago. She was all he could think of. Her world was coming to a close and he feared she may be alone in this chaos. He feared most of all that he hadn’t crossed her mind once. 

It’s Been A Year Now

  “You don’t get it Cas! After all this fucking time you still don’t get it!” Her voice was rough and raw as she screamed at the angel across from her. He stood rigid and tall, his suit jacket and trench coat were placed on the edge of her bed, his frame looking impossibly naked with his white sleeves rolled and tie loose. He clenched his jaw as the words left her mouth and he looked to the door before looking back to her; blue eyes ablaze. 

   “I am not some ignorant child Y/n. I may not be human, but I assure you I have a firm grasp on the nonsensical emotions you all seem to share!” His hand was raised and pointed at the door as if referencing the Winchesters just a step outside. She laughed dryly and with venom in her lips, she marched at him and got right in his face as he straightened up and met her gaze with a passion. 

  “You’re not a child Castiel, that much is true, but you’d be a fucking liar to say you weren’t ignorant.” She spat the last few words, and Cas felt each one strike him like a knife to the chest. She went to walk past him and out the door but she was stopped by his hand grabbing hers. She went to pull away when her eyes found his face. His blue eyes were fogged with tears and his brows were knitted together in what could only be pain. Her entire mood changed at the drop of a hat as she took in the look on his face. His messy hair was falling in his face from the heated fight just a few moments ago, and his chest was shaking from ragged breaths. 

   “Please…” He choked as Y/n stopped moving, “I Can’t do this….. Not with you…” His once strong and dominant voice was nothing more than a whisper now as a lone tear made its way down his cheek. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. The angelic beast once proud of his inability to feel, was forced into experiencing the most human of emotions. 

Fear.

Y/n let her guard down and let a sob slip past her lips. Castiel looked up at her with a look of confusion, but relief all the same. She gave a hard tug on his arm and brought his body crashing into hers. Castiel deflated and let her hold him. He felt himself give into her completely as they fell to the floor in a mix of limbs and tears. 

I Think I Figured Out How 

How To Let You Go And Let Communication Die Out

“It’s a shame. Of all the ways for our father to dismantle this planet, he chooses earthquakes and fire from the heavens.” Castiel spun around, his shoes sending a groan through the gravel he was standing in, his angel blade dropping from his sleeve like an extension of his arm. “Well, nice to see you haven't changed brother.” The words left the girls mouth as Castiel sighed and lowered his weapon. 

  “Iaoth.” He breathed, “You caught me off guard.” The seraphim stiffened up upon seeing his sibling.

  “I’m surprised to see you alone.” She remarked as she brushed a bit of soot off her shoulder, “I’ve been told you’re very fond of humans. Seeing that you threw away heaven and all of us for them.” Her mouth was smiling but her eyes shot daggers, Castiel glared at his sister with a deep anger. Her emerald eyes darted around the torn and beaten landscape, “So after all this time, we finally get to see our mighty fathers breaking point…” Her hand reached to a decaying flower sprouting from the ground. Castiel watched her intently, his grip on the silver angel blade never wavering. She picked the rotting plant from the ground and crushed it in her hand. “His breaking point was his biggest mistake.” 

 “Why are you here Iaoth?” Castiel spat, his jaw clenched and eyes ablaze. She laughed at his demeanor and wiped her hands on her suit jacket. 

  “I could ask you the same thing ‘Oh Fallen One’.” She turned from his gaze to look upon the fire filled skies. “Heaven, as you know, is very much in shambles. You and I are some of the only ones left alive. Naomi is having a party up there with what's left.”  She looked to Castiel, her teeth barred in a sinister smile. Cas took a step to his left, circling her as she moved the opposite direction. “It’s so sad to see you like this brother.” Castiel could hear her wings ruffling, as if she was preparing to take flight; or fight. “I can almost smell her human vile on you.” Her wings extended to their full length, the lights from the sky illuminating the silken feathers. Cas felt a primal fear alight in his gut, this wasn’t the first sibling of his to try and kill him since this all began. So many seemed to blame him for the way things were coming to an end. His vessels hands were drenched in the blood of his fallen brothers and sisters, and his angelic form was scarred from the ending of his own kind. Iaoth’s words stuck Castiel to his very core as he allowed the human Iaoth spoke of to take shape in his mind; a misty form reaching out to him in the midst of chaos. 

 I Know, You Know, We Know        

        “The whole of the heavens is ending, your celestial home, where you were created and raised, and yet your mind is lingering on the vile mistake that is human kind?!” Iaoth’s words were strong and soaked in rage as she squared up the much smaller Castiel before her. 

  “Iaoth. I don’t want to fight you.” Castiel spoke, his deep voice unwavering. The woman's laughter flooded the air like a bolt of lightning, 

  “You really think you have a choice?!” She spat. “Look at you! A broken and grace stripped seraphim! You don’t stand a chance against me or my TRUE brethren.” Her wings were now fully visible. All six of the deep grey spans filled the air like dark clouds, and Castiel let his heart drop as he considered the condition his own wings were in. Iaoth laughed again as Cas allowed his own wings to spread out, the once proud black feathers holding more gaps than anything else, and scarred flesh beneath them. “All that…” Iaoth spat, “For humans. You must be so proud…” Her words dripped with sarcasm as she lunged at the fallen angel before her. 

You Weren't Down For Forever And It’s Fine 

The motel room was dusty and old, large pieces of dust hanging in the air were seen best around the yellow lamp light, setting a almost frozen in time feel about the place. Castiel looked ahead of him through drooping lashes as the frame at the foot of the bed unbuttoned the last of the flannel shirt that hid her form. The yellow light illuminated every inch of skin as she made her way up from the foot of the bed to mere inches from the angel's face. He could feel her breath fan over his face as she moved his hands to rest on her hips. He exhaled shakily as he closed his eyes, his fingers digging into the flesh of her hips. His own name filled his ears like a breathy sigh as he shot his blue eyes open to meet her e/c ones. 

  “Do you want to do this?” She asked, her voice barely above a whisper. He could see in her eyes that she was genuinely asking him, out of fear of frightening him away. He gave a smile and brought his face closer to hers, his lips ghosting over hers. She held back a low moan as he rested his forehead against hers, their noses brushing. 

  “More than anything.”  In an instant their lips crashed together, moans and staggered breaths filling the air of the motel room. Y/n straddled Castiel’s lap atop the bed and worked his white dress shirt off his torso. Cas brought his hands to her hips and brought her roughly down against his heating core. She let out a gasp and broke the kiss. With a smirk she reached for the bedside lamp and wrapped her fingers around the switch. Castiel grabbed her wrist and held her back from snuffing the light. She looked to him with confused eyes, only to be met by rough lips against her own. The stubble around his own face dragged down her neck as she let her hand drop from the light. 

  “Want to see you…” He growled as he pressed more kisses to her neck. With a smile she brought his eyes back to meet her own. 

  “Then let's get started.” 

I Know, You Know, We Know 

We Weren't Meant For Each Other And It’s Fine 

Iaoth spit a mouthful of blood to the cracked and dry earth as Castiel stood above her, his hand wrapped firmly in her hair bringing her gaze to his own blood splattered form. She laughed through red stained teeth and took a shallow breath, 

  “You pack quite the punch little brother.” Castiel brought the butt end of his angle blade down on her swollen face a few more times, the sick crack of bone filling the hot air. 

  “I’m not going to sit here, Iaoth, and watch you die but you should know that it’s out of pity,” He brought his face closer to hers in order to whisper the final statement, “And not because I consider you anything close to family.”  He released her hair from his fist and let her fall to the ground. His hands were red with the paint of war as he wiped them clean on his coat and began staggering away. Iaoth was on the ground on her back, sputtering blood as she cackled at seemingly nothing. Cas ignored the sound and kept walking, finished with the mere thought of her. 

   “She’s-- She’s going to die alone. On this forsaken slab of creation. Thinking of why you didn’t save her…” 

Castiel froze. His eyes were wide as he turned his head to the side, taking in the sickly form of his dying sister. “That human girl you bonded with like an animal,” Her words were choked, “The word back home is that Naomi is offering safe passage to a parallel world to the one who brings him her filthy head.” 

 “SHUT UP!” Castiel boomed, bringing his boot in contact with Iaoth’s jaw and sending her reeling to the ground. More broken laughter left the dying angels mouth as Castiel breathed heavy, his shoulders rising and falling in a dramatic manner. He stood over her, his eyes ablaze by her words,

   “That hunter whore is going to die drowning in her own blood and her filthy body is going to burn with the rest of this world.” That was the straw that broke the camel's back, with a deep guttural scream Castiel drove the shimmering blade in his hand through Iaoth’s chest. Her own scream ripped through the skies as her eyes and mouth broke forth with a bright glow, a small reminder of the grace that once filled her. 

  Once the screams died down, the dark haired angel stood from the lifeless body beneath him. He looked to the burned imprint of her wings upon the ground and wiped a spot of blood from his own face. His mind was reeling, wondering if what Iaoth said had been true. If there really was a price on Y/n’s head, as some sort of sick joke by Naomi’s hands, he had to find a way to get to her. 

    To warn her. 

   He wasn’t even sure if she’d want his help at all…

But If The World Was Ending You’d Come Over Right? 

Dean placed a hand on Y/n’s back as he helped her stumble to the car. His eyes were laced with concern as Sam opened the back door for her, worry upon his features as well. 

  “Guys, I’m really fine.” She slurred, her head spinning from blood loss. “You don’t  need to panic…” Her knees gave out as Sam jumped forward and helped Dean catch her. She chuckled a bit at her own expense and allowed the boy’s to help her into the back seat. Sam looked to Dean and they both decoded that he would ride in the back with her. 

  “Hey Y/n. Keep those eyes open.” Sam cooed as he brushed the side of her face. She smiled at him and scrunched her nose. 

  “Trust me Sammy, I’m not dying in the back of this car. That’s nor nearly exciting enough for me.” Sam laughed at her blind optimism and met Dean's eyes in the rear view mirror. 

   “You die in the back of my car, and I’ll kill you.”Dean joked, taking a glance behind him at her ever shrinking form. Sam felt her squeeze his hand and looked to her now closing eyes. 

  “Hey!” He shouted, “No, no,no,no, don’t go to sleep Y/n.” He shifted so his hands were holding her face. “Goddammit don’t go to sleep.” 

 Dean began to panic in the driver's seat as the sounds of Sam’s protests filled his ears. 

  “Dammit Sammy, don't let her sleep!”

  “I’m trying!” Was the angry response. Y/n shifted in Sam’s grasp as she forced out a few more words. 

  “You guys are such idiots…” Her eyes drifted closed. 

You’d Come Over And You’d Stay The Night?

Castiel practically flew down the stairs as the Winchesters came into view. His eyes were wild as he searched the room for any sign of loss or pain. Sam smiled at him and took a step forward. 

 “Hey, easy buddy.” He placed his hands on Cas’ shoulder and held him steady. Cas looked to Dean who pursed his lips, cocked his brow, and gestured to the chair Sam’s body was blocked from his view. Cas moved from Sam’s hold and froze upon meeting the gaze of Y/n, wrapped in one of Dean’s hoodies, and face littered with stitches and bandages; but still smiling. 

  “I lived bitch.” She spoke in a horse voice. Dean laughed out loud at her statement and sat down beside her, nursing a half empty beer.  Sam sighed and ran a hand through his hair,

 “Wow that was so sensitive, considering he thought you were actually dead.” Y/n shrugged and felt tears brim her eyes as Cas raced to her. He pulled the chair around and knelt down at her feet, taking her hands in his. 

  “I - I really thought I lost you.” He looked up at her with big blue eyes, also brimming with tears. Dean shifted away just slightly, a look of fake disgust on his face from the romantic display. “If you ever do anything like that ever again-” 

 “Oh, I guarantee you I will.” Y/n cut him off, “But we’ll be a bit more careful next time.”   

Would You Love Me For The Hell Of It? 

All Our Fears Would Be Irrelevant. 

“I don’t think I’ve ever felt this way about anyone before.” The words sailed off with the breeze as Y/n scratched an itch on her face. She glanced to the angle beside her, his body leaning against the tan car behind him. His trench coat was wrapped around Y/n’s shoulders, and she noted how utter naked he looked without it. “Sorry if that's too forward.”

  Castiel looked out at the sunset and sighed, his eyes soon traveled to the human beside him, wrapped in his essence. “Y/n…” He began. She looked to him with hopeful eyes. 

  “In all my eons of existence, watching civilizations rise and fall, watching your kind like a child watches a bee in the garden…” He looked to her, “I’ve never seen a more perfect example of the wonders my father is capable of making…” His hand wove together with her’s. 

                                                        “... Then you…” 

            If The World Was Ending You’d Come Over Right?

   The sky let forth a loud cry as the earth beneath Castiel's feet shook. He looked skyward and took witness as large chunks of flaming stone began falling from the heavens. He watched in the distance as the stone crashed to the ground and set a sick crack through the air. He watched as the sky began falling to the ground, and he was helpless to stop it. He swallowed hard as the soft sound of ringing filled his ears, and he reached for the almost forgotten phone in his inner pocket. 

  “Dean?” His voice bellowed over the sound of earth breaking all around him. 

    “Hey Cas! You seeing this?! Where the hell are you two man?! Me and Sam are dying over here!”  

Castiel furrowed his brow and shielded his eyes as dirt few up all around him. 

 “Dean? I’m in Montana! Are you two still at the bunker?” His voice met Dean’s ears like a long lost prayer and the hunter sighed. 

  “Yeah! How is Y/n?” Cas froze, his face scrunched up in confusion. 

   “What do you mean? I thought she was with you?!” 

  “Why the hell would she be with us?! Isn’t she your soulmate or whatever?” 

 Castiel felt his heart drop. 

The Sky'd Be Falling And I'd Hold You Tight 

And There Wouldn't Be A Reason Why 

“I wasn’t supposed to tell you…” Jack mumbled from his seat at the dinner table. Y/n felt a lump grow in her throat as she forced back tears. 

  “Don’t worry Jack, sweetheart…” She looked to the ceiling as she viciously fought her tears.

 “Castiel, he didn’t want to. But it was the only way. It seems selfish, but it’s not. He saved so many. I really wasn’t supposed to tell anyone. He made me promise…��� Jack let his head fall to the table, his mind not at unease. 

 “I would have found out sooner or later.”  

  We Would Even Have To Say Goodbye

  “You are the biggest idiot I’ve ever met.” Y/n spat as she slammed the car door, the force shaking the whole vehicle. Castiel didn’t even flinch as he watched her walk from the parked car to the small lakefront just beyond the car. He felt his heart ache as she sat on a small bench and placed her head in her hands. 

  “I know…” He whispered to the empty car. 

If The World Was Ending You’d Come Over Right? 

“The Empty will take you.” She sobbed as she looked to the water in front of her. Castiel stood behind her, his own eyes filling with tears. “Take you the next time you feel joy.” She laughed, a last stitch effort to mask her pain. “How- How the fuck am I supposed to live with that?” She spun around to look at him, and he saw first hand just how much pain he had caused her. 

Right?

“But that was months ago Castiel.”  He tried to take a step towards her but she stood. 

“Months ago! And you're still here!”  She let a few sobs rack her chest as she looked down, tears falling like rain. 

   “Y/n…” 

 “So…  Since that day when you sold yourself over. Everything we’ve done. All the moments we had, that filled me with an immeasurable amount of love and joy… You’re still here. So...” She looked at him, her pain turning to hurt, turning to anger. 

 “You're not happy?” 

If The World Was Ending You’d Come Over Right?

Castiel held the phone to his ear, his mind blank. 

“Cas?!” Dean shouted on the other line, “Cas?!” 

Right?  

[fanfictrashdump]

Queening a Pawn, 19

If you're new: this is my procrastination fic. It is what I drabble around with when I'm being my worst self, and ignoring all my other WIPs and responsibilities! Enjoy!

X

Summary: During the Time Heist, Loki stole the Tesseract and escaped. He did not expect, however, to be pulled through a Time Loop that delivered him to a Midgard more than a decade older, wiser, and bitterer. Having just lived through his unsuccessful attack in New York, Loki must learn to live in Midgard after the defeat of Thanos (post-Endgame). The question is, who is Loki without a quest for a throne or total domination?

Pairings: Loki x OC

=

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Delilah inhaled deeply, stirring suddenly out of slumber. Her eyes barely opened and focused on a shadow in front of her before the scream ripped out of her throat. Loki sat up beside her, daggers brandished and in search of blood, eyes wild and unfocused.

"For fuck's sake, Bucky! What the hell!?" Delilah shrieked, throwing pillows at the shadowed figure. For what it was worth, he looked apologetic for having nearly given her a heart attack. She did not, however, appreciate the fact that the only thing between Bucky and her naked form was 800 threads of black Egyptian cotton she was holding up with her left hand. Or the fact that he had found them asleep in Loki's quarters. Or that he found them naked in Loki's quarters. They had made it a point to be careful, and yet here they were.

"Sorry, Li. You didn't answer your phone."

"What's up?" She asked, once her heartbeat had gone back down. Loki groaned, falling back onto the pillows to slumber.

"There's a situation, we're going off on a mission. We were hoping we could borrow him," he replied, jutting his jaw out at Loki, who turned his eyes to stare curiously at the Winter Soldier. "It's that group Dwyer was part of–"

"And you want to take Loki? On a mission?" Delilah glanced to her right, cutting across the calculating green gaze piercing the dark. "He's clear for it on my end, but you might want to, you know, ask him."

"You in? Two days, tops. We're just raiding a warehouse." Bucky stared expectantly. "Strange could use some magic back-up."

Loki narrowed his eyes at Bucky before he sat back up, turning his gaze at Delilah. A hand rested on her bare back, sending a shiver down her spine. "I don't want to leave you alone."

"I have Einherjar and this," she replied, tugging at the silver chain around her neck. "And about a million different daggers. It would only be two days." She shrugged, rubbing the sleep away from her eyes with the heel of her right hand. "Do you want to go?"

"I'd like to assist, yes."

"Good. Wheels up in one hour." He left before the other two could respond.

Loki took care dressing. It had been a while since he had pulled on any clothes that weren't Midgardian in fashion or design. Even for training, he had gone for Earthly training garb, weighing himself down with discs to mimic his armor. He had not felt the need to parade around in his royal dress, and at current moment he debated whether he wanted to break the streak.

The simpler battle leathers hung in his wardrobe fit comfortably. There were no flashy embellishments or trinkets–just leather and magic in black and green, layered and spelled to keep the better part of injuries at bay. Delilah had insisted on helping, despite the fact he could spell his armor on faster than he could explain how each piece fit. Still, there was something soothing about her, still naked from the night before, lacing up his vambraces after a little direction. They had ended up having to refasten his cuisse after a lone brush of her fingers down his chest had caused him to all but rip his trousers off and sink into her warmth.

"Are you nervous?" She asked, sitting cross-legged in bed after summoning the energy to dress. The jeans and T-shirt she wore were no less appealing than her bare skin, so he tore his eyes away before another re-doing of his armor was needed.

"Only about leaving you unattended. Norns know what could happen when I'm gone." The notch that formed between his brows confirmed his concern, but Delilah was quick to brush it aside. Not to mention, she could feel his anxiety as easily as her own.

"I'll be fine. Just hurry up back to me, OK?" Loki nodded, dropping to his knees before her and making a point of kissing her so thoroughly he could sculpt her lips from memory. "Let's go. It's almost time."

"I love you," he said, knowing it would be impossible to say once they got to the helipad.

"I love you, too."

Sam let out a cross between a groan and a yell when they arrived at the helipad ten minutes later. "Frickin' finally! How long did it take you to tear this fool away from a damn book?" Both Loki and Delilah were confused but tried not to show it in their expressions. "Also, why are you in the library at 3 am? Do you have nothing better to do?"

Loki rolled his eyes, looking nonplussed. "Some of us knowhow to read, Falcon," he sassed before cutting his eyes at Delilah. Delilah, however, was mouthing a quiet thank you to Bucky, who shrugged.

Stephen poked his head out of the Quinjet, watching Loki cast one last longing stare at Delilah before marching past him onto the ship. Strange rolled his eyes, frowning at the woman. "Oh, come on! I thought you were better than that!"

"Lower your expectations, Strange. We're all trash," she joked, rolling her eyes just as petulantly. "I want you all back in one piece, OK? Be safe!" She watched Sam, Strange, and Bucky pack into the jet. Loki lingered by the doors as they closed and offered a half-wave that she returned before they had slipped through a portal Strange had evidently created.

--

"Delilah." There was no answer as Pepper waved a hand in front of the other woman's face. "Lilah. Lilah! Lilah! LILAH!"

Seemingly snapping out of it, Delilah turned her eyes at the redhead with a frown. "Did you say something, Pep?"

"Like twenty minutes worth of something, yeah," she joked, closing the files on Delilah's desk with a sigh and pushing them aside. "How long has it been, then?"

"What do you mean?"

"I know that face. I invented that face." Pepper leaned forward, propping her elbows on the desk. "How long since he left on mission, Li?"

Color rushed to her cheeks, and she slumped in her chair despite the desire to deny the accusation. It was no use. She was distracted and jumpy ever since the mission had gone on radio silence. Ever since she felt Loki's last emotion tugging at her through space. "It'll be twenty-nine hours… now," Delilah replied, glancing at the minute hand of the clock on the opposite wall.

"I would say that the waiting is the worst part, but… that's not true," Pepper admitted, eyes softening.

Delilah sighed, not knowing whether to feel better or worse. She had never considered the possibility of anything going wrong. It sounded ridiculous. "I'm not worried. Quick warehouse raid. Two days."

"Oh, you sweet innocent child." Lilah shuddered at the implication behind her expression. "Always add two days to whatever estimate they give you. Always expect them to come home with significantly fewer limbs. Don't watch the news."

Delilah had heeded Pepper's warning. For the most part. She had added extra time to their time away since the team had not shown any signs of returning after 48 hrs. Missing limbs weren't really a concern to Loki, who somehow cheated death an extraordinary number of times. After nine days of no information, however, she had succumbed to the temptation to turn on the news.

"We're coming to you now, live, from the scene of the battle. Early yesterday afternoon the underground movement known as PURITY took arms against the superhero group formerly known as the Avengers. Local infrastructure has been severely damaged and the city evacuated, though local authorities have no estimate for when the area would be safe to return."

Delilah stared the screen, teetering on the edge of her seat as she watched mortar and brick explode in dusty clouds.

"Local witnesses report the sighting of one Loki of Asgard working alongside the superheroes. Loki is better known as the figure responsible for the 2012 attacks in Germany and New York City that ended in the invasion of the Chitauri aliens."

Out of the corner of the screen she could see a pair of golden horns stretching towards the sky in a gentle swoop. He was running, pumping his arms before throwing a dagger in his right hand, dispensing with a group of attackers in a single shot. The image shook and Loki whirled around on a dime. A building in the background was trembling on itself and out the bare front threshold, Sam ran out with a bundle in his arms, one metal wing bent and smoking. Loki glanced up, momentarily frozen, before he made off like a shot. With a twist of his hands Sam flew off to the side, leaving Loki with his arms up, trying to manipulate the building to keep it standing.

Bucky and Strange came out a few moments later, their arms equally laden with bundles that Delilah realized were children. She gasped, a hand covering her mouth–if to keep herself from screaming or crying, she didn't know. On the video, Loki's teeth were grit in effort and concentration, and as time trickled past, his whole body trembled, all in the name of allowing Sam another run inside.

Another building imploded nearby just as Sam skirted by. There was a shouted exchange that Delilah could not read as the air thickened with dust and destruction. She didn't notice that she had kneeled in front of the television set, mere inches away from the picture. With bated breath she watched him slowly turn, trying to get distance between himself and the collapsing structure. Out of the far left corner a group of attackers was closing in. They opened fire upon the god. He threw his mouth open in a roar and in a flash of lights, there was nothing left but rubble.

"Loki!" Delilah squeaked, tears running down her face. As the haze cleared, she could make out Bucky sorting through the stones while Sam and Strange tried to pull him away. Another group was closing in and they had to move. The signal flickered before it went dark.

Lilah wasn't sure how long she had stared at the blank screen for. "FRIDAY, where's the Quinjet?" She demanded as she pleaded for the transmission to restart.

The AI prickled overhead. "The Quinjet is in stealth mode and cannot be tracked."

"Don't give me that shit, FRIDAY. I know Tony patched that bug!"

"I don't have any information, Del. I'm sorry."

She growled, getting to her feet and pacing around the room. Her hands itched to toss things around, a reaction that was very much atypical for her, but there was a desperation in her soul that she could not logically explain away. Sure, Loki had survived far worse, but at what point did the lottery stop pulling up his lucky numbers.

The predatory stalking persisted into the early hours of the morning. She had not stopped to eat or drink, only to bark annoyedly at FRIDAY who continually told her that she had no information. The news channels had lost their feed. She was in the dark both metaphorically and literally. Her pacing had outgrown the expanse of both hers and Loki's apartments, and so she had taken to the hallways. Her stomping footsteps made it abundantly clear that she was not in the mood to talk to anyone. Even Tony's hologram promptly backed away when he naively asked what the matter was.

Around twenty minutes past four in the morning, on the eleventh day, Delilah happened to be walking past the cargo bays on her usual circuit. The complex doors opening caught her attention from several hallways away and she wasted no time in running towards the disturbance.

"You could be bleeding internally, you idiot! Go see Banner!" Delilah could make out Sam's voice yelling over the strained sound of a scuffle.

"Listen here, you pathetic worm. She thinks me dead–"

"And you will be if you don't get checked out!" Sam interrupted. As Delilah turned the corner, she could see Sam holding Loki in a chokehold, and doing his best to hold his own and try to wrestle the Asgardian onto the floor.

"Loki." The name dropped from her lips in a whisper before she had even noticed it. It had been exceedingly quiet, but she felt like, at that moment, he could have heard it across the Nine without issue. A wave of relief washed over her like a riptide that left her momentarily dizzy. They needed to work on controlling emotions through this connection, but that was a topic for another day.

The Asgardian sunk to the floor without any more hesitation and Sam panted. "Will you just tell her you're in love with her so I don't have to deal with your erratic ass every time we go on mission? I can't have you going from chill to feral at the drop of a hat!"

"Dude." It was Bucky who spoke, leaning against the jet doors with his arms crossed and a smirk on his face. He wiggled the fingers on his left hand and Sam focused on the silver band glinting in the nightlights.

The Falcon turned to Loki with a scowl. "Then, what the hell was that all about?"

"She thought me dead," he repeated, much gentler this time, having eyes only for Delilah. Leaving Sam to mutter angrily under his breath about having to deal with him being crazy for days while turning to unpack the Quinjet with Bucky.

Loki hissed, struggling to get his feet under him. Delilah found she had suddenly frozen to her spot, unsure as to whether or not this was real or if she had become so desperate to see her lover again that she had hallucinated. His right eye was swollen shut and his nose was most likely broken. Though his armor covered most injuries, he was holding his left arm at an odd angle and limping on the same side. Every time he stepped, he left behind a trail of blood droplets from an unknown source.

He still made it to her, close enough for her to close her fists around the loose leather chest piece to keep him from collapsing. Their lips connected in a short but intense kiss that tasted bitter and metallic to her tongue. When she focused, she noticed his mouth was full of blood and she hoped to any deity that would listen that it was his own.

"I need a medic quite urgently."

"FRIDAY, get Bruce to the Medbay."

"On it, boss!"

When Loki came to several hours later, the sun was streaming through the windows of the hospital and threatening to trigger a headache. Beside his cot, Delilah sat, slumped in her chair, asleep, looking about as tired as he felt. They really needed to control their shared emotions. A world away, he had felt the utter terror of when that damn building fell, pinning him down in the process. He felt the despair of thinking him dead, and he was sure she felt his desperate attempts to get back and prove that rumor incorrect. It wouldn't do for them to always have to deal with that. Still, he felt like he had earned the right to her feelings and didn't want to deprive himself of them, ever.

"Hey, you're awake!" Bruce exclaimed, and Loki drew a finger to his lips, gesturing towards Delilah. "Sorry," he continued, much quieter. "You're lucky you're not human or else you'd be pretty much a goner. You maxed out your nanobots treatment in an hour. You'll be out of commission for a while." He tapped at his tablet to page through his medical chart. "Barnes said you saved an orphanage."

"Yes, we did."

"No. He said you saved an orphanage," he corrected, glancing over his glasses.

Loki eased himself up with a hiss. "Yes, well. I am not overly fond of watching children die in a war they didn't ask for." He reached over for Delilah, brushing a curl out of her face with a smile. "Is she going to be alright?"

"She'll be fine. You're the one bleeding internally."

"I'm made of steel. She's cotton wool. I'm a lot more worried about her."

Bruce grinned knowingly. "A little sleep deprivation. She'll be good in a few hours." He replaced the tablet in the slot at the end of the bed. "Should I expect an invitation in the mail or…?"

Loki chuckled. "I'm more likely to shout it off the rooftops now that people know, if I'm honest." He shrugged, exerting as much seidr as he had left to float Delilah into his cot beside him. "I didn't think everyone would be this interested."

"We've learned to appreciate the little things." The giant man shrugged, smiling affectionately at how Loki tucked the girl into his side and wrapped her tight in blankets. "Get some sleep and recover so she can do the same." Loki nodded, snuggling down into the medical bed with a groan. "You did good, Loki."

"Thank you, Banner." Loki frowned at how heartfelt the sentiment became. He felt like, at some level, he was erasing some of the errors of his other self.

[pianosoy43]

Expense Of A Loft Conversion In 2021.

Builders Vendors Journal.

Content

Loft Conversions With One Decade Guarantee.

Study Time.

Building Cartels.

An extra is a quantity you pay in the direction of any kind of insurance claim you make on your insurance policy. For example, if your extra is ₤ 250 as well as you make a claim worth ₤ 1000, your payout will be a maximum of ₤ 750. Just how we exercise instance quotes These examples are genuine quotes from our online system. They're based on a variety of elements, like employees and area. Your very own quote will be based upon what you tell us concerning your service. Prices may go up or down from everyday, so the costs you're quoted might vary to the ones you see below. Just how we exercise example costs We take the highest possible price from the bottom 10 per cent of all our consumers paying in month-to-month instalments (based on data from 1 October March 2020).

Throughout lots of groups we have tools as well as materials ranging from items ideal for landscaping as well as gardening tasks to interior decoration, joinery, washrooms, kitchens therefore far more.

Take a look with the groups or use the search function over to rapidly uncover all the tools and also materials you require.

Dublin, Ireland that can deal with the full range of works, either by themselves or via sub-contracting.

Whether you're seeking tools or wood for a one-off work, or a multitude of structure materials for a big task, you'll locate every little thing you need all in one place, below online.

Ask for references as well as stories regarding exactly how the building contractor has met different challenges along the way.

The betting addict would certainly overcharge clients, demand large amounts in advance as down payments and on a regular basis stop working to complete job. Mark Jenkins, 51, from Caerphilly, defrauded greater than ₤ 1m from customers in Cardiff, Merthyr Tydfil as well as locations of Bristol and north Somerset over a 2 year period. He charged one household virtually ₤ 17,000 for refurbishment deal with their house - yet as a matter of fact only performed a percentage of demolition and also excavating job worth simply a number of hundred extra pounds. Damon Owens, 35, from Crosskeys, Caerphilly, operated under a selection of names as well as uploaded fake testimonials of his services online.

Loft Conversions With Ten Years Service Warranty.

I actually can not reveal how reliable, polite, mindful the group at midland are, the website was cleaned down at the end of every change, giving way for a flying start each and every early morning. If you utilize individuals, you're needed by legislation to have companies' responsibility insurance policy. It's an excellent concept to begin with an analysis of the dangers your organization could possibly encounter. reportedly used was servicing a loft conversion for a consumer when his ladder fell onto someone else's car. Consider the optimum possible loss your organization could face in the event of an insurance claim, and make sure you take lawful charges and also problems right into factor to consider. You can select from three levels of insurance coverage-- ₤ 1 million, ₤ 2 million, or as much as ₤ 5 million.

This includes blogs and also e-newsletters from the plant and equipment sector. Builders' Seminar members are encouraged to join up to this source of details to keep them abreast of all things in the heavy plant market. We collaborate with this organisation on a regular basis, sharing present sector trends and also knowledge and passing on news and also best method to our members. Today we are the UK Building Market's premier information service provider.

Research Time.

When we have your needs, we will take photos and also in-depth measurements of the relevant locations in your home. Whether that is to book your onsite survey, obtain your task underway or to obtain more information about the means we work in basic or your existing task in particular. There will certainly be no need to frequently juggle huge lists of professionals with every one of their various routines. We handle every element of the monitoring of your restoration or repair project so you do not have to. The term "going the extra mile" is usually over used, nonetheless, I can honestly say this is exactly what each as well as everybody among the Midland Builders team do, Day in, day out.

We satisfaction ourselves on supplying top quality craftsmanship at a very practical cost. Amazing solution - the staff painted my flat to a really high requirement and also left no detail unblemished. I would most definitely recommend Right Build - thanks a lot Duncan. We supply our quotes in composing within 3-5 working days, with a clear break down of the prices in labour as well as materials. Your quote will be a set price as well as it will consist of in-depth summaries as well as details pertaining to which facets of the service we would be in charge of along with for any kind of aspects we would not be. Throughout the appointment, our property surveyor will review the specifics of your repair task in detail to totally understand what you would like to attain.

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The damages triggered by Rate consisted of placing concrete as well as rubble into a manhole in the basement which ended up being the sewer system. Referred to as having a "outright disregard for safety", Cottle cost sufferers hundreds of pounds to remedy shoddy job executed by his company ACE Plastering and Building Services Ltd . Ian Cottle, 55, from Barry, made virtually ₤ 30,000 from consumers he entrusted cement-stained home windows, peeling off paint and also falling down wall surfaces. He made persistent check outs to an elderly widow's home with the purpose of persuading her the entire rood of her building would require replacing. He additionally overcharged his customers and also in one situation kept enhancing the rate of the task till it got to ₤ 27,000. The offender cold-called his victims at their residences in Bridgend as well as convinced them work required to be done when it wasn't necessary.

Kinzie Builders completes Elm Street Place rental townhomes in Deerfield - REjournals.com

Kinzie Builders completes Elm Street Place rental townhomes in Deerfield.

Posted: Fri, 15 Jan 2021 17:49:13 GMT [source]

Whether you want to cover yourself for crashes on site, legal disputes with clients or the devices you need to run your business, you pick what enters into your plan. Innovative construction remedies, customized for the unique island setting, are an additional speciality. We likewise use an extensive range of home windows, doors as well as sunrooms with our Network VEKA Subscription. Our 2020 programme of special content, occasions, exclusive information, study and also service understanding. Yet he never ever paid back the cash leaving families out of pocket-- and with homes which required extensive restoration. Lee Slocombe, 37, from Pontypridd, defrauded his sufferers out of ₤ 43,000 after requesting for more money to finish his jobs. He left customers half-finished remodellings, frequently securing financings to full job, as well as suffering enhanced stress along with health issue.

Will Residents Get A Price Cut On Their Rent While The Building Is Taking Place To Make Up For The Noise, Dust And Disturbance?

In situation you're confronted with legal costs from running your organization. You recognize your company best-- that's why we put you in control.

Hayel, of from Marguerites Method, St Fagans, confessed 2 matters of participating in a fraudulent service and also was sentenced to two years and three months jail time this year. Among his sufferers was a doctor that feared her residence would certainly fall down when splits appeared in the wall surfaces and also an expecting lady's residence who had her central heating boiler ripped out by the accused yet he never returned. Privacy Noticeexplains much more about exactly how we use your data, as well as your civil liberties.

If you have individuals helping you, including bona fide subcontractors, labour-only subcontractors, part-timers, or permanent staff, companies' liability insurance is required by law. Make certain you cover the complete expense of changing all your devices or you'll only get a proportion of your case paid if something takes place to them. In some scenarios you may need greater than public responsibility to cover certain sort of building damages.