#and yes shes a self proclaimed empath | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ddarker-dreams · 4 years

Text

Deal With The Devil. Yan Hades Giorno x Reader

Warnings: Isolation, implied kidnapping, forced marriage, brief non explicit sexual themes, and mentions of death. Word count: 3.2k.

Time alone is better than time spent in the company of someone you despise.

Skillful fingers run over the wilted stems of your carnations, a frown on your face at the current lifeless appearance. Dull shades of grey slowly turn to a vivacious green where your fingers pass over. Next are the petals, which are all but gone, a far cry from the flora’s typical beauty. At your delicate touch, it’s as if the hands of time are set in reverse. Soft fibers tickle your bare your skin, petals flourishing anew, now with a rosy glow. Standing from your bed, you return the revitalized carnations to their previous position on the windowsill.

The bright, pastel colors are in stark contrast to the obsidian colored walls that trap you. Darkness, like an everlasting night, cannot be cast aside by your pretty decorations. No matter how hard you try to do just that. The lone sources of illumination in the underworld, torches or lanterns, have also earned your scorn. How you had taken the sun for granted, the natural warmth it provided ethereal in comparison to this manufactured light. Sighing, you push the negative thoughts away, aware they do nothing for you. Wallowing in your grief harms the precious flowers you create.

The onyx marble flooring beneath your bare feet is cold and unnatural. Closing your eyes for but a moment, you remember how blades of grass used to feel in the summer and spring. Those blissful days traversing fields without a care in the world feel like centuries ago. You’ve tried to recreate grass as it is on the surface, but with mixed results, and now stick with forming flowers instead.

You take a mental inventory of the surrounding flora to check for problems. These creations of yours are a reliable pastime and bittersweet memory. No matter the life you instill into the delicate blooms, in the underworld, they wither away at an accelerated pace. Your days are spent reviving them or creating new bouquets to decorate this dreadful bedchamber. What else is there to do?

Nothing, you answer the question yourself, scowling. As if on cue, your poppies wilt at the sharp turn in mood, petals falling onto the ground and crumbling to dust. So the cycle continues. Understanding the passage of time when there is no sun is difficult, but if you were to guess, those poppies were just a few hours old. While you consider what to replace them with, a pair of eyes watch from nearby.

“In my brief time down here, this would be my first time seeing such beautiful flowers.” A feminine voice praises. Your eyes widen, head whipping around to find the source of the words. In front of your canopy bed stands a wispy figure. It takes the faint form of a human being, though lacking color and partially transparent.

It takes a second of tentative thought for you to realize what this apparition is. A soul. Not just any soul, a soul of a mortal, you presume. You haven’t spoken to a mortal in some time now. How did a soul manage to find its way to you, hidden away in the depths of the underworld’s palace? As if sensing your bewilderment, the soul speaks up.

“Is it true that I am speaking to the daughter of Demeter?” The soul questions. You nod, pushing down the agony of hearing your dearest mother’s name. “Then it seems I have hope after all.”

Silence settles in after the soul’s relieved statement. You take the time to contemplate the possible meaning of this soul’s words, reaching no conclusions. “How is it that you’re here?”

“... You will not call on his guards?”

Biting your bottom lip, you swallow down the bile that threatens to rise in your throat at the passing mention of him. “I will do no such thing.”

“Then lend me your ear for but a moment,” the soul’s voice is tinged with melancholy. “I am dead now, yes, but I was once alive. At that time I was Sotiria. I mothered three children, each splendid in their way, the lights of my life... I do not say this for complaining’s sake but to offer perspective. I never was given a decent lot in life, the child of a sickly widow whose face I can no longer remember.

Poverty was all I knew until I drew my final breath. I took work equally as it came, whether it was working the fields or being a companion to men at night. Anything for the sake of feeding three hungry mouths. But it was never enough. My youngest, Cyril, fell ill. To keep him alive I had to be by side at all hours. And so it goes… at my wit’s end from starvation, I had no choice, you must understand.”

Sortiria’s voice grows weaker, barely reaching your ears as she finishes her sentence. “I coveted, and I stole. Nothing more than I would need to keep my children alive for another day. When they caught me, well,” she motions to her phantom-like form with a pained smile. “I was killed.”

Your heart aches at her plight. “How terrible...”

“Yes, I’d agree so,” she doesn’t linger on the topic, eager to move to her final point. “But it need not end this way.”

“There is a reason I stand in your presence now. I heard rumors, waiting among the listless souls for Charon to ferry us to judgment. Rumors that gave me hope where I had none. That the god of the underworld had taken a wife, a wife who boasts a compassionate heart. You, [First].”

The pieces she’s presented you with fall into place. Your lips part, the world around you spinning, as Sotiria presents a final plea. “Please, go to him and ask that I may return to my body. That I may return to my children. Us humans have taken to praying to you for mercy when knocking on death’s door. I implore you, hear my prayer now.”

“I will not speak to him, no, I refuse to speak to him. Even if I did as you asked, who is to say he will listen to me? My cries for freedom have been denied, how would this be any different? I hear your prayers but have no power to answer them. My matrimony did not make me the goddess of the dead.”

Neither of you dares to mention Giorno by name, remaining cautious of what could happen, as he’s made aware every time his name is spoken. Even the mortals fear him, you think. And for good reason. You wonder if that’s how this was presented to the humans. A requited romance between the daughter of Demeter and Giorno, a union that gives hope to those dying. None of them know the truth, that you’re forced to remain here, tucked away from the wistful life you once had. That his self proclaimed adoration is nothing but suffocating and self-serving.

“You and you alone are the apple of his eye,” Sotiria insists with utmost urgency. “He will heed your words more than anyone else’s.”

“He has refused me everything of value that I have begged for.” The words are spat out with venom. You fail to notice that with your growing temper, the flowers you tended to prior shrivel up at unprecedented speed, a reflection of your distraught emotional state. Your chest heaves with each strained breath, fists clenching by your side until your nails pierce your skin. Does Sotiria not understand? How could anyone empathize with how the sorrow you feel? You stand in this saturnine chamber that remains your prison, Giorno the steadfast ward.

“I can not speak on what I don’t know,” she lowers her head. “But I do know this. You have his favor. You are his wife -- whether it was by your design or not -- and he holds affection for you in his heart. Go, speak to him, I beg of you. If not for my sake, then for my children.”

“But--”

“I can’t spend any more time here,” Sortiria looks around, her already faint form disappearing. “Please.”

Then she is gone.

You stare, eyes wide as a doe, at the spot Sortiria once occupied in your dim room. Nothing of her remains but the convicting call for action. Her words ring like funeral tolls in your mind, unrelenting, and weighing down on you. There’s no denying the effect her request has on you. Sortiria’s dedication to her children reminds you of your mother, who has tried everything to get you back. An ache in your chest pushes you forward, your legs moving subconsciously to the door.

She risked eternal damnation to speak with you. Leaving your room that never remains locked, you’re met with a similar color palette of midnight black and crimson red bricks. Hell flame is blinding at first, but when your eyes adjust, you catch the demonic guards stationed at your door looking in surprise. Giorno has granted you the freedom to traverse his palace as you please, but you rarely take him up on the offer, preferring to spite him by remaining in your room. When he searches for your company he knows where to find you. Loneliness haunts Giorno Giovanna like a plague, never warded off successfully until he acquired you.

No one dares question your intentions, averting their gaze to avoid eye contact as you travel down twisting halls. Your heart pounds against your ribcage through the journey, not knowing how Giorno will react to your uninvited appearance. This would be the first time you’ve sought him out of your violation. While wandering his palace, you can’t help but notice the difference in decorum compared to your room. He had tried to make adjustments to your personal space so that it would reflect a different aesthetic than the underground, fully aware of your displeasure with the gloomy architecture.

Not that it matters, you think. Nothing could make up for what Giorno’s taken from you aside from permanently returning to the surface. Rounding a sharp turn, you hold your breath at the sight. Cerberus towers in this grand hall and immediately picks up on your presence. The daunting creature lowers itself to the ground, three pairs of eyes piercing through you. A tense moment later, it seems content to let you pass, recognizing your position as Giorno’s beloved.

Behind Cerebrus is where your true challenge lies. Two monumentally sized doors that lead to Giorno’s throne room stand in your way. Taking a deep breath, you close your eyes, Sortiria’s words reverberating in your mind. Perhaps you are soft on the mortals, as your mother once warned you, but she was guilty of the same. Should you be successful, and Sortiria lives to tell the tale, you wonder if your mother will visit her and ask after you.

The doors open when you take a step forward. This palace is an extension of Giorno, you’ve come to realize, bending to your whims to please you. While lacking the necessary preparation to make a sound argument, you have an idea of what may convince Giorno to do as you bid. Any confidence you may have had from knowing you have his favor melts like ice in the spring when his eyes land on you. These eyes, that belong to one of the universe’s most powerful gods, feel heavy and cumbersome. Giorno nods his head in acknowledgment, a good sign. You wish you could hear his thoughts. His sculpted face is impossible to read as ever, in comparison, you feel like an open book.

You manage to force out a cordial greeting despite your petrified state. “I was hoping to have an audience if you’re not otherwise occupied.”

Giorno sits on his sizeable throne, presence imposing yet regal. In contrast to his spun gold hair, the throne is dark as twilight, embedded with rubies and numerous precious gems. He isn’t just the god of the dead, you remind yourself, but also the god of wealth. That’s all Giorno has ever felt like to you, some distant figure. Nothing more, not now or ever. His attempts to kindle an intimate relationship with you have been discarded like weeds. Now in his physical presence, reverence takes place of the disgust you normally feel towards him.

“If it pleases you.” Giorno’s voice is undeniably soothing, every syllable ringing clear as a bell. At his confirmation, you tread forward, over an expansive vermillion carpet. The walk feels like an eternal punishment. He takes the time to scrutinize your body language. You didn’t expect anything different, fully aware that he’d be taken aback by this bold arrival. Doubts in your head cry louder as you lessen the distance. That after all this time, he might see fit to punish you for this final act of entering his throne room without an invitation. Interfering with Giorno’s work might be the final insult he tolerates. You are his wife, but what respite has that granted you before?

You bow your head down as a show of respect. “I apologize for arriving unannounced.”

“Your presence is a welcome one,” Giorno seamlessly dismisses your concern. “Though, I might add, unexpected.”

Despite your best efforts, your posture goes rigid, likely playing into what Giorno designed. Your husband is as pleasant as he is efficient in his conversations, you’ve learned. It’d be a fool’s wish to think otherwise. Sortiria’s words, though you wish they didn’t, held truth. All have come to know Giorno’s affection for you through his special treatment. It’s a blessing and a curse.

“I would’ve come sooner, but I feared you were busy.”

Giorno gazes up at your through golden eyelashes, voice lowering as he speaks from the heart. “I will always make time for you.”

Is it wise to start with your true request? The clock’s ticking and you need to decide without further delay. Anxiety and regret battle for dominance in your mind, but you keep it at bay, recalling the true priority. A mother’s tender love for her offspring. There’s nothing more important to you than doing right by this tormented soul. Sortiria’s words resurface, “Us humans have taken to praying to you for mercy when knocking on death’s door”, she had told you. You were but a minor goddess until this point, and content as you were with that, there was nothing of astonishing value for you to offer the world. Creating and maintaining gardens was all you could do. Now, you have a real chance to do good, to reunite a family. The prayers offered up to you until give strength.

“Would you please stand?” You ask with a sheepish smile. It’s a simple request to test the waters and also a way to feel less intimidated. Giorno blinks but voices no complaints. From his throne, he stands, still towering over you but feeling less intimidating. You step forward, raising your hand and placing it to his cheek. His skin is cold and smooth to the touch. It reminds you of the flower petals you adore so much. There’s no denying Giorno’s beauty, you must confess, it’s almost like his face is perfectly sculpted art. You can tell he doesn’t know what to do with himself.

“Truth be told, there’s something that troubles me deeply,” you confess, to which he frowns. “That’s what I wanted to speak about.”

Giorno prompts you to continue. “And that is?”

The worst he can do to me is say no, you tell yourself. He’s had no difficulty doing that in the past when you’ve begged for freedom. No harm would come to you -- any spite Giorno might feel would be directed elsewhere -- but that doesn’t bring comfort. Sortiria would be punished if Giorno believed she was taking advantage of you. Sentenced to eternity in Tartarus.

“A single request. I wish to reunite a soul with her body, so that she may continue her life that was cut short,” you rub your thumb over his cheek. “Please do me this one good.”

“Sortiria, was it?” Giorno takes your stunned silence as confirmation, not that he needed any. The two of you were careful not to mention him by name. So he knew all along? It shouldn’t come as a surprise, but you still feel disheartened, blood draining from your face.

“It’s a rare occurrence that I permit a soul to leave the underworld,” he explains what you already know in a calm tone. “[First], you know I hate to deny you anything, but--”

“I wasn’t done.” You interrupt without thinking, overwhelmed by enough emotion to drown out logic. Giorno’s mannerisms and subtleties can be picked up on after all this time you’ve spent with him, and you know he was going to politely reject your request. Neither of you utters a word. It’s a split-second decision, but you set your qualms aside, considering the greater implications.

“Giorno,” you call him by his name for the first time, his eyes widening at the slight nuance. “If… if you do this for me, I… I will allow you to finally consummate our marriage.”

Your face feels like it’s on fire from the lascivious suggestion. There’s nothing else you can offer Giorno that’s valuable enough to convince him. Nothing other than yourself that is -- which you’ve vehemently refused him up until now -- swearing you’d sooner cast yourself into Phlegethon than let him lay with you. You hear your heart pounding in your ears as you await his final response. Giorno’s eyelids flutter shut, eyebrows scrunching together.

“This means that much to you?” He asks, not entirely convinced himself. This fiery passion you’re portraying is new. Days of passively tending to your flowers gave him a different impression of you. Now, faced with a cause you truly believe in, you’re willing to do anything.

“It does,” you confirm without further hesitation. “Please give me this single happiness.”

You don’t dare breathe until Giorno speaks again. He reopens his eyes and appears deep in thought. Dread clouds your mind, dominating any thoughts that might bring you comfort. You’ve done the best you could.

“Very well.” Giorno bends to your whims after a long moment’s deliberation. Joy blossoms in your chest, a genuine smile gracing your features. He places his hand over yours, shivers running down your spine from the cool sensation. The negotiations are far from over, as Giorno returns his attention to your prior claim. He wants to test your conviction and see if you’ll give him a piece of what he’s ached for.

He squeezes your hand gently, voice so quiet that only you could hear it. “Is what you said true?”

It’s the only viable option, is how you reaffirm yourself. A degrading option, you recognize, but no one aside from the two of you would ever know. It’s been a long and good fight that you’ve put up. Denying a god his desires is not an easy task by any stretch of the imagination. Goosebumps dot your skin, reality feeling so far away, as you seal your fate.

“You have my word.”

Giorno smiles -- in a way you’ve never seen before -- an unidentifiable gleam in his omnipotent eyes.

“Then I will see it done.”

667 notes · View notes

buckysdior · 3 years

Text

(not so) hot girl semester || a college!bucky au [1/?]

chapter summary: reader meets bucky at a college party that they abandon for a night through lower manhattan

wordcount: 873

warnings: mentions of alcohol, implied smut, reader makes impulsive decisions

sidnote: ahhh okay, this sets up a mini-series i have decided to embark on. also this is my first fic, please b gentle with me

Relationships were not a foreign concept to you. In fact, you’ve spent more of your college career cuffed than not. A busty Russian Studies major from Barnard, a nerdy Mech-E major from Queens, partners that came and went for justified reasons. (She was moving to Russia to teach, He could never seem to sort out his priorities.) The revolving door of relationships in your life was so time consuming it was surprising you could make time for it on top of school and non-academic obligations.

But after a wasted few months on a self-proclaimed empath from Brooklyn, you decided it was time to throw in the towel. Conveniently, your circle of friends happened to exit any relationships that stood around the same time. This led to the group of you drunkenly declaring a hot girl semester—no partners for the semester, only self-development and achieving academic goals. This wasn’t to say hook-ups were off the table, but mutually all of you were not seeking any more monogamous relationships. A few weeks following this your friends from a CUNY promised you a rager at a place called ‘Chinatown Basement’. They recounted wild stories from the countless times they’ve attended parties there, referring to it as Chinatown Basement so much that you thought that was the name of the venue.

Turns out it was just a literal basement in Chinatown, the landlord renting it out to college students to throw parties. So there you stood in this basement, body to body, thinking of good excuses to leave only an hour in when in swooped him. Tall, buff, and under the dark of the party you could just barely spot his manbun and the gentle blue eyes that met yours. Your friends did say hook-ups were still on the table. He made small talk with you about how there wasn’t enough alcohol and too many bodies and how both of you got dragged along as semi-unwilling participants. You introduce yourself and he goes, “James Buchanan Barnes, but my friends call me Bucky.”

“So should I call you James or Bucky?”

“You can call me whatever you want, sweetheart,” he replies with a wink.

You laugh and invite him outside for air and a joint. The contrast of the February cold and the sticky heat of the building unit left you shivering more than usual in your weather-inappropriate outfit. Bucky drapes his jacket on you as you pass the joint back and forth and you suddenly blurt, “Do you wanna go on a walk?”

Down the streets of Chinatown you two went, even after the joint comes to finish. He tells you he’s an English major at NYU and he’s originally from Brooklyn. You tell him you go to school uptown, it’s a college so small the only reason he knows it is because it sits right next to a CUNY. Both of you had intentions on returning to the party and your respective friends, you swear you did, but as the two of you made your way down the bright streets of the neighborhood the appeal of late night dim sum crawled into your mind. And as if Bucky could hear your thoughts he offers, “Wanna’ go inside?”

Two hours over cheap dumplings conversation, you barely noticed all that time fly by. Both of you captivated with the other, feeling like the only people that mattered. This led you two back on the street where you began to wander again, making your way uptown.

You find out his dorm sits in the Village while you have your own place all the way in Upper Manhattan. It’s 3am and as things close and the subway slows, he offers you to come over. You know it could be a bad idea and your best friend’s warnings about stranger danger and true crime paranoia crawl to the front of your brain, but you throw caution to the wind and say yes.

Landing in his single, the two of you are sitting so close on his bed that your knees touch. Your night has been four hours of talking, laughing, flirting, and reassuring your friends via-text that you’re okay. You’ve had a track record of jumping in too fast, but it’s been four hours and he hasn’t made an actual move on you—you’re unsure what his intentions are but you’re also really into him. The words “Can I kiss you?” Escape your lips as he’s mid-story about him and his best friend, Steve, who you two abandoned at the party. He looks surprised and your face heats up, “Sorry I—I was interested, I swear. I just...I’m kind of into you and I wasn’t sure where you were on that and I’m trying to not jump into anything but I’d really like to kiss you.”

He laughs a little and smiles, "Yes, you can kiss me." It’s soft and gentle before you feel him smirk against your lips and pull back, “And for the record, I’m kind of into you, too." You smile and kiss him deeper this time, knowing your feelings are returned. So your night bleeds into day with the ending of kissing and talking and inevitably lying together in a mess of sheets as the sun comes up.

#bucky x reader #bucky barnes x reader #college!bucky x reader #bucky barnes imagine #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky barnes fic #bucky barnes x you #bucky barnes fluff #i know he has short hair in the gif bare w me i have reason #*sn #flash gif tw #duchess writes

139 notes · View notes

imperiuswrecked · 3 years

Note

Pietro + Luna interactions 🥰

(Full fic below the cut)

One Summer Day

Pietro had just gotten off a rather nasty mission, he was covered in ichor and the smell was horrendous. Stopping an evil former god from returning to the mortal plane wasn’t the most fun thing in the world but it could have been worse. He contemplates cleaning his suit, however there was no saving it from the mess of god’s blood so he sighed as he tossed it out. In the shower he slows down and takes his time, letting the hot water cleanse him. His phone signals that he got an emergency text and he grumbles under his breath.

“I swear to god if Clint needs a ride I will take him to Savage Land and leave him there.”

It dings again, and he curses as he sticks his head out of the shower and snatches up his phone to speed text a barrage of insults to Clint, but when he sees who sent the messages his heart drops. The first message simply said; S.O.S. and the second was a set of coordinates. Both messages were from Luna. Pietro jumps out of the shower and in less than 3 seconds he is fully dressed and running out of the door to his small New York apartment to save his daughter.

When he arrived at the place Luna had sent he thought that he would be running into a trap, or a battle, or some plot by a villain who had kidnapped his daughter. That happened a lot back when Luna was younger, after Pietro had gotten her a cell phone, they had come up with the “come get me” message. No matter when Luna sent it, Pietro would race to her location to help. He screeches to a halt and is surprised to find himself in a rather nice place. It was the entrance to a kids summer camp in the northern part of California. The sign proclaimed the name and the grounds were lovely. There was a lake not to far off and the cabins stood in neat rows, beyond the smaller cabins stood a larger one which was probably the meeting hall for the whole camp. Voices sounded all around as girls walked to and from cabins, or the main hall, some were racing down towards the lake, their towels banners behind them as they yelled with laughter. Unless this was some elaborate design nothing here seemed out of the ordinary. He was the one out of place here in his shimmery light blue suit with a lightening blot that crossed him from shoulder to hip and pale white hair.

He pulls out his phone to be sure he had the right directions, but an instant later he sees pale blonde hair and young teen running towards him while carrying a large overstuffed backpack in one hand and her phone in the other, “Dad!”

“Luna?” He was confused, she seemed to be in good health, and not in danger. Still he opened his arms when she ran into them and pulled her into a tight hug, she was taller now, her hair tickled his chin. It was a shocking thought that someday she would be taller than he was, she seemed to have inherited his frame even as a child she was always more like him than her mother.

“Is everything alright? Are you hurt? In danger?” He asked quickly, barely slowing down enough for her to understand, as he pulled out of the hug to hold her at am arms length and check her over for any wounds.

“I’m fine dad, I’m fine! But we need to-”

There was a raised shout and a flurry of movements as counselors began to appear in the distance, a few were checking cabins and others moving towards the main entryway to the camp, following the asphalt road that lead straight towards them.

“Run!” She yells.

He doesn’t even hesitate, in the blink of an eye it was as if they were never there.

Racing with Luna in his arms brings back memories of her younger self’s delighted shrieking, faster papa faster! It rings in his mind as his feet beat against the road. He takes them away from there and to the seaside before he stops. She hops out of his arms and and the backpack she had been clutching is tossed onto the sand.

He crosses his arms and waits for an explanation, she beams up sunnily at him, “Luna?”

She doesn’t lose her smile as she replies, “Yes, Father?”

“What happened to dad?”

“Depends on how upset you’ll be with me.”

“Any reason I should be upset with you using our emergency code when there wasn’t an emergency?” Not that it would have matter, he would have come for every false alarm, but he didn’t want her to think it was alright to do so. She could have just called him for a pick up.

“It was an emergency... sort of.”

Her smile slips, a somber look which makes no one doubt that she is her father’s daughter comes over her face, “Mom sent me to that camp, I was supposed to be there for the summer while everyone was moving Attilan again, and she has a new boyfriend, well old new, it’s Black Knight.”

He winces. It was an old hurt, that Crystal could flint from man to man, and something he had to deal with without making his daughter feel caught in the middle of their ex-marital issues.

One of the girls there found out about my powers and well... they were really nice at first, but then when I wouldn’t use my powers to help them they told the counselors and said I was a dangerous mutant. They locked me up in my cabin but they didn’t know I had my phone on me because it was all supposed to be turned in at the start of the camp and I had given them the communicator mom got me.”

“They locked you up?!” Pietro was already turning on his heel to race back and bash some heads in, but her hand on his arm stops him.

“No, dad, please... they are just scared. I could have made them not scared you know, but I didn’t want to...” she pulls her hand back and crosses her arms, blue eyes that were his mirror turn away and look at the waves.

“You didn’t want to use your powers to make them feel something they didn’t have control over.” He finishes.

“Yeah... its hard sometimes you know? Knowing that I have the power to do this, it’s so frustrating to see people struggling with their emotions and know that I can solve things faster, but it’s not right.” She looks back, her face is a awash with guilt which makes him think about those long ago days when she couldn’t control her powers fully. She’s come a long way since then. He sighs and runs a hand through his hair before smiling at her.

“Well, I guess since summer camp wasn’t working out we can spend the summer together... what do you say?”

She brightens, it didn’t take an empath to know she was excited to see her father for a longer period than her mother usually allowed.

“Can I bury you in the sand?”

“Fine.”

“You have to promise to not move a single muscle!”

“I promise but only if you call your mother and let her know to get a refund from that place,” He counters as he flops onto his back and prepares himself to stay very still, “after that you have to tell me how you broke out of the cabin.”

“Uncle Max taught me how to pick locks!”

“Of course he did.”

The rest of the afternoon is filled with laughter and stories as they catch up on what they have missed since last they saw each other. After Pietro was covered to his neck with sand, Luna snaps a picture of her father and sends it to her mother to let her know all was well.

#welcome-to-latveria #imp writes a thing #thanks for asking!#imp answers

18 notes · View notes

precuredaily · 4 years

Text

Precure Day 198

Episode: Yes! Precure 5 49 - “The Dreams and Hopes of Precure 5!” Date watched: 17 June 2020 Original air date: 27 January 2008 Screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/qlReFMY Transformation Gallery: https://imgur.com/a/6k6SzS0 Project info and master list of posts: http://tinyurl.com/PCDabout

the end is nigh

It’s been an adventure these last few episodes! The team found the 45th Pinky and filled the Dream Collet, defeated Bloody, and then had the Collet stolen from them. They went to Nightmare’s dimension and fought Kawarino, where he tossed them around and Despariah used the Collet to restore her youth. Then, despite all odds, they found hope where there was none and pulled themselves out of despair, managing to defeat Kawarino and rescue the lost citizens of the Palmier Kingdom! Then and only then did Despariah finally stand up and begin her own attack on the girls. They’ve overcome every obstacle placed in front of them up to now, but how will they fare against the literal incarnation of despair?

The Plot

The cold opening is a quick recap of the previous episode and the final scene, with Despariah finally making her stand. After the opening theme, the girls proceed to take on Despariah’s kowainas, and the action cuts quickly from girl to girl as they kick, punch, and chop their way through the ranks. Lemonade remembers that they were able to defeat them previously by separating them from the ground, but when Aqua knocks them off their feet, they land right back on the ground no worse for the wear. Despariah taunts them, but Dream insists they’ll pull through, and they proceed to kick more ass. They do dispel some of the monsters, but just as quickly as they do, more pop up. Nonetheless, Despariah grows concerned, and she confronts Dream to personally push her into despair. She restrains Dream while a group of Kowaina attack the citizens of Palmier, but Mint blocks them, so she sets the squad on the other four cures, throwing them in the air. She hypnotizes Dream as she taunts that their power came from the now-useless Dream Collet, and Dream falls into a dream.

She awakens in Coco’s arms as he tells her to give up, as he doesn’t want to see her get hurt anymore, and reaches for the Pinky Catch. The real Coco, Nuts, and Milk watch from afar but Coco isn’t worried about Dream at all, he’s sure she’ll overcome this. Sure enough, inside the illusion, Dream recognizes Coco as a fake because he would never tell her to quit. Her Pinky Catch glows with the light of hope and several Kowaina in her immediate vicinity are destroyed. Coco proclaims that Dream is always optimistic and striving for a better future. She turns to him and says that his kindness to everyone is what gives her the strength to keep going, and that’s why she loves him. Then she faces Despariah herself and declares that she will make Coco’s dream come true, no matter what, and the other girls line up with her.

Now here’s where it starts to get juicy. Despariah starts to crack under the pressure. Rather than being intimidating, she sounds afraid. She asks the girls why they aren’t afraid of aging or their power waning, and she begins to admit that her new eternal youth hasn’t helped her the way she thought it would. Cure Dream, seeing her opponent breaking down with anxiety, does what she does best: she empathizes. She bravely steps forward and cancels her transformation, facing Despariah not as Cure Dream, but as Nozomi. Nozomi kindly and gently tells Despariah she just wants to talk, because she can tell the villainess is scared, which means she has a heart. Nozomi’s sheer kindness causes the kowaina to begin to disperse as she repels even Despariah’s despair, and the other cures decide to follow her lead and detransform. Thus they stand in front of their archenemy, vulnerable and powerless but happy.

The girls reaffirm their willingness to go along with Nozomi’s reckless abandon and Despariah realizes that their friendship is what keeps them from being afraid. Nozomi invites Despariah to really talk things out, but suddenly Kawarino reappears, alive but on his last legs. He insists that Despariah doesn’t need them, and begins to attack Nozomi, but Despariah blasts him away. She confesses that her newfound immortality has still not brought her peace and she wants to hear what the girls have to say. Kawarino can’t handle this, and begins to despair at the idea that everything he’s done for her was pointless. The Darkness of Despair opens beneath his feet and suddenly a giant hand grabs him. He recognizes the deformed figure beneath the black surface as Bloody and he gets slowly dragged down into the abyss, begging Despariah for help, but all she can do is watch in fear.

Seeing what became of her subordinates shatters Despariah’s already fragile mental state, and the entire Nightmare world begins to crumble as she loses control of her power. She orders Nozomi and co to seal away the Nightmare world with their powers, trapping her in it forever, because if they don’t then her unchecked power of destruction will tear their world apart, too. Despariah and Nozomi share sad looks with each other as they both understand what must be done, and the girls transform again, using the Symphony Set to seal away the Nightmare world. Despariah approaches Coco, Nuts, and the citizens of Palmier, returning the exhausted Dream Collet and apologizing for her actions before she turns away and walks back into Nightmare HQ. Despariah genuinely smiles and thanks the girls as the building is encased in butterfly wings and implodes.

When the light fades, the girls are back in the plaza in their world, at twilight, silent and sad. Dream in particular can’t even look at the others for a while and we don’t see her face, an indirect way of showing how upset she is by the events that have just taken place. No words are exchanged in this beautiful, tragic scene.

The scene fades to night at Karen’s mansion. An idle comment about Jiiya’s absence explains why they’re free to let all the Palmier citizens wander around the facility. Everyone is trying to unwind and catch up and make plans for rebuilding the Palmier Kingdom. Papaya, Coco and Nuts’s teacher, finally asks which of them will become king, and they’re visibly uncomfortable, but Milk explains how they’ve worked so hard together to survive in this world and get to this point, they should become kings together. Everyone agrees and the two princes seem happy.

Later in the evening as festivities have wound down, Komachi and Nuts are talking. She thanks him for pushing her further with her writing and supporting her, and he thanks her for her kindness and perseverance and saving him from his own self-loathing. Both of them have inspired the other to go farther and achieve the previously unthinkable. Nuts even gives Komachi his key to the kingdom for her to remember him by.

Meanwhile, Nozomi and Coco are having a much-needed heart to heart. Nozomi says she thinks him and Nuts as dual kings is a good deal, because they can compensate for each other’s weaknesses, and then the conversation shifts to the promise he made to show Nozomi the Palmier Kingdom. He reaffirms that vow, as she says that she looks forward to seeing the restored kingdom and he wants to build a kingdom worth showing to her.

In both of these cases, the words of love go unspoken, but not unheard.

As dawn breaks, the girls and all the fairies gather on the lawn to say their final goodbyes. Karen and Milk wish each other good luck in the future, rounding off our shipping pairs, and then all the girls begin to cry. However, Nozomi reminds them all that it’s not farewell, and as long as their hearts stay connected, they’ll surely meet again.

Then Nozomi reveals to Coco that she’s finally found her dream: she wants to be a teacher like he was. He inspired her by telling her she was full of potential (a callback to episode 11) and gave her a lot of knowledge, drive, and motivation, and she wants to inspire the next generation in the same way. He responds in kind by saying he wants himself and Nuts to instill hope in his citizens the same way Nozomi instilled hope in him. With that, the girls relinquish their Pinky Catches, which turn back into the butterflies that are the Five Lights of the Palmier Kingdom. They form a ring, which absorbs all the fairies into it before transforming into a giant rainbow butterfly and flying away into the sunrise.

fly away now, fly away now, fly awaaaaaay

To wrap the episode up, we fast forward an indeterminate amount of time to check in on the girls post-Precure. In voiceover, they each express their difficulties in achieving their dreams: Nozomi still struggles academically, Urara still fails auditions sometimes, Komachi gets writer’s block, Rin has trouble coming up with designs, and Karen has doubts about working in medicine. Nonetheless, they all find comfort in turning to each other for help, and their friendship runs deeper than any obstacles. The final scene is the five of them posing together in a still frame.

The Analysis

At this point, Precure final episodes have established a pattern. The first half resolves the battle with the villain, while the second half wraps up any other loose ends in their civilian lives. Such is the case here, but it plays a bit differently from the finales of the Futari wa era. The peril never quite reaches the same depths of intensity, largely due to the immutable optimism of Nozomi and the team and Despariah’s growing uncertainty with her own cause. Comparatively, a longer time seems to be spent tying up loose ends, which I suppose, as with many elements of this series that seem more drawn out, is tied into there being five main characters instead of two. This is NOT a criticism, by any means. I think the story beats covered by the conclusion are appropriate and well-paced and properly wrap up everyone’s story arcs without rushing or overstaying the welcome. Accordingly, I’m going to subdivide this review into two halves, one for the conclusion to both the battle with Despariah and Nightmare, and the other for the girls’ duties to the Palmier Kingdom and the epilogue.

In this case, the fight with Despariah feels especially bittersweet, because for the very first time in a Precure series, the final boss was actually won over by the girls’ ideals instead of just outright blown to bits, but it was too late for her to redeem herself as her power was out of control. Compared to the Star Twinkle finale from early this year (at the time of this writing), which I found rather underwhelming with regard to Ophiuchus just walking away after enslaving half the galaxy, this episode properly redeems its villain without absolving her of the weight and consequence of her actions. Did she deserve her fate? That’s hard to say, it would be interesting to see her use her newfound immortality to walk the Earth, trying to find hope and peace and pay for her sins. On the other hand, it’s a beautiful tragedy for her to gain immortality and eternal youth only to immediately shut herself away forever because her own power has grown out of control and threatens the world she wants to be a part of. It’s similar in concept to the death of Dark Dream in the movie, although that one was much more of a gut punch than this for a few reasons. The redemption deaths are similar, however, in the catalyst for their transformations: Nozomi, the eternal optimist. She has set the bar for team leaders that will be hard to surpass (although I have a few other favorites). She constantly strives to better herself, refuses to bow to negative pressure, and has pulled herself and her friends out of the pits of despair. She turns enemies into friends with the strength of her hope and dreams, but her greatest power is her ability to know when to stop the fight and sympathize with someone in pain. She saw Despariah was losing her grip and instead of seizing an easy victory, she detransformed and approached her as a person. I can’t begin to describe how powerful of a gesture this is, but it’s the absolute best thing Nozomi could do and it perfectly embodies her best qualities.

Regardless of her poor wish, though, it was a good narrative choice to have her steal the wish, whatever she chose to do with it. Since the series was all about hope and despair, throwing all the characters into very despairing situations and then still having them defeat their demons with hope is extraordinary and perfectly encapsulates the message of the show. Coco and Nuts lose their wish and can’t use magic to rebuild the Palmier Kingdom? Fine, they’ll do it by hand! The lost citizens of Palmier Kingdom are actually Nightmare’s members? Thank goodness, they’re still alive and well after all! The Precures are all being forced into despair? But wait, we haven’t even realized our dreams yet, let’s talk about them! At every turn, the series and the climax in particular has been about hope overcoming despair, so subjecting the protagonists to the ultimate despair lets their hopes shine brighter than ever, really driving the message home, and that wouldn’t have been possible if Coco and Nuts had used the wish a little sooner.

While it’s not a particularly deep message, Despariah’s realization that eternal youth has not made her happy is still very important. Who among us hasn’t wished for some grand change in our lives? Now would that change actually make you happier, in the long run? I’m not suggesting there’s nothing you could have or do that would improve your demeanor, but it’s easy to see why Despariah wished for the wrong thing. She misattributed the cause of her depression, rather than trying to make the most of her life, and consequently she damned herself to an even worse fate. She could have wished for help, for companionship, or for the capacity to better understand people. Instead she wished for eternal youth and power, and then learned too late that this wasn’t what she needed.

The only thing that didn’t really work for me was Kawarino coming back, as that didn’t make sense. It was a catalyst to really throw Despariah into despair again after she was starting to make some headway with the girls, and cause her to lose control of her power. If they had at least hinted in the previous episode that he had an ace up his sleeve and wasn’t completely gone, it would have been more acceptable to me. However, it was good to see him react to Despariah embracing the message of hope, and see her assert herself over him. It was also very satisfying, though also horrifying, to see him get dragged down into the pits of despair by Bloody. Seeing how frightful Nightmare is from the outside was important to her development, but it also showed she was beyond salvation and it made her choice to self-isolate for eternity more tragic.

I like the symbolism behind her returning the Collet to Coco and Nuts, though. She knows it’s a hollow gesture and it doesn’t begin to make up for what she’s done, but it is about the only thing she really can do to show her remorse. You can also see that the citizens of Palmier aren’t exactly ready to forgive her for imprisoning them, but they appreciate the gesture. The whole farewell is full of bittersweetness like this.

I gotta hand it to the writers for this, making her repent but still be condemned to eternal solitude by her own hand instantly makes this finale twice as emotional as it would be if she just got beaten normally, and it’s more meaningful, speaking to the complexities of the good vs evil fight and of course the season writ large.

Now, for the cleanup. The second half of the episode is all tying up loose ends and putting the final notes on the subplots. How do they settle the issue of who gets to be king? Make both Coco and Nuts the co-kings! It’s honestly the only way they could do it, since they compensate so well for each other’s shortcomings. It’s a conflict that’s been present throughout the show, but never really dwelled upon until more recent episodes, notably 45. Coco is better with people, but Nuts is more studious and knowledgeable. Both of them bring important leadership qualities to the table. Honestly I always had Coco as the better ruler, with Nuts as his advisor, but making them equals really speaks to the theme of the franchise, that everyone brings different skills that complement each other, and it��s a callback to the first three seasons with the two-person teams.

The thanks and farewells between Komachi and Nuts, Nozomi and Coco, and Karen and Milk are all very moving. They demonstrate the growth they’ve all achieved since the start of the show. Nuts pushed Komachi to be a better writer, Coco inspired Nozomi to be a better learner, and Milk allowed Karen to be a better protector. Capping off their growth throughout the season with these heart-to-heart conversations really resonates and serves as a nice bow on top of their arcs. And as I said earlier, although they don’t say “I love you” out loud, you can tell they mean it. Some may criticize me for including Milk and Karen on that list, because their relationship isn’t as romantic as the other two, being more or a platonic friendship, but nonetheless there’s a deep compassion between them and as I’ve pointed out, they have a close bond that Milk doesn’t share with any of the others. Karen taught her to step back and smell the roses, Karen nursed her when she was sick, Karen has been instrumental in Milk adjusting to life in the human world and Milk helped Karen find her life’s passion. I’ve written a lot about NozoCoco and KomaNuts before, but Karen and Milk have a distinct closeness as well, and their farewell is important too. In fact I wish they’d gotten a true closing scene like the other couples got, but I can understand why they didn’t. They had a lot to cram into this episode. And let’s briefly recount all the other important friendships that were seen throughout the show. Urara and Komachi deepened their friendship over their mutual interest in art and storytelling. Rin and Karen bonded over their shared lack of ambition, and then found goals to strive towards. I really love that even within the circle of friends, they each found specific partnerships and reasons to bond with certain others.

So let’s talk about Nozomi. When the show started, she was presented as a bit of an airhead. She was more than happy to cheer on her friend Rin but she was introduced in the classic “late for school” sequence and we were told she didn’t have much in the way of dreams or a capacity for learning. Boy was she optimistic though.

After meeting Coco and making his wish to revive Palmier Kingdom into her dream, she really changed. Obviously her earnest perusal of that objective is what drew the other girls to her, but helping Coco allowed Coco to help her, and he gave her a genuine passion for learning. He helped her challenge her learning difficulties, and at the end of the series she has internalized that by making it her dream to pass on his teachings as a teacher herself.

This is the perfect capstone to her growth and development throughout the show. I keep coming back to her line from the movie:

“I’m better than I was yesterday! I’m better than I was an hour ago, a minute or even a second ago!” Well she sure improved, and now she’s found something she can pour herself into that will help her keep improving. From the girl with no dream to the girl whose dream is to help everyone reach their potential, surrounded by supportive friends. I just love to see it.

Finally, I really, really love the epilogue. It is perfectly staged and framed and composed. Each girl briefly talking about her struggles as she works towards her dream, the small everyday hardships they face is a reminder that they’re not perfect. They’re ordinary girls just trying to make their way in life. Their greatest strength, whether as Precure or as students, is their friendship and encouragement for each other. The way they each sit down at the table one by one, silently reaching out to their support network, is so encouraging. And the final sequence has a couple of callbacks to earlier in the show, like Urara’s unusual food choices and both Rin and Karen bringing their preferred juice (orange and grape.) It’s a small reminder of where they started to show how much they’ve changed.

vimeo

Now they could end their development here, and I’d be happy, but fortunately we get an entire season that shows where they all go after this that I get to dive into after this, the last such time we’ll have that opportunity in Precure. So look forward to that!

Also, I want to note that the art for the final still frames is gorgeous.

I wish I could say that about the whole episode but unfortunately Kawano Hiroyuki is the key animator and animation director for the finale, and his weaknesses are on full display: flat faces with wide eyes and strangely drawn noses, minimal shading, oddly placed heads, and sometimes weird body proportions as well. When he’s good, he’s good, but when he’s bad, it’s visible. I wish the finale could have had some higher quality artwork but I guess the budget was stretched a bit thin by this point, or they were focusing all their attention on the next series. I don’t have a lot of insight into how this process works behind the scenes. Here’s a few examples of the art that I found a bit lacking.

On the other hand, there are some gorgeous visuals here as well, don’t let me make it sound like it’s all bad either. There’s a few symbolic shots I really like, such as the mirroring of the girls’ feet in and out of transformation, as they face Despariah first as enemies, then as friends.

There’s also the reflection of Despariah in Dream’s eyes that gets an A+ from me for shot composition.

As well as the Kowaina mask superimposed over the fake Coco in Nozomi’s illusion.

And of course, all the fairies of the Pamier Kingdom returning home in a giant butterfly, to cap off our symbolism.

Rewatching Yes! Precure 5 has been a wonderful journey. It’s a great ride from start to finish and an all new direction for the Pretty Cure franchise. It was filled with great characters to follow and I was extremely invested in seeing them grow and develop. This finale truly stands out in the franchise for its discussion of depression and immortality, dreams and hopes, and what’s important in life. It was the perfect conclusion to a fantastic series and I couldn’t ask for a better ending. However, our journey isn’t quite over! The adventures of Nozomi, Rin, Urara, Komachi, Karen, Coco, Nuts, and Milk will continue in Yes! Precure 5 GoGo!

Next time, on Precure Daily, we catch up with everyone after a few months when Nozomi receives a mysterious message, and they get caught up in another battle for the fate of the world. Look forward to it!

Pink Precure Catchphrase Count: 1 kettei! (in the preview)

#Precure #Pretty Cure #Yes! Precure 5 #YPC549 #PCD198

24 notes · View notes

autisticcassandracain · 3 years

Text

Now that I've finished volume 1 & 2 of The New Teen Titans I feel like giving my official ranking of the Teen Titans based on how much I personally like them:

Koriand'r: Love of my life. She's the reason I read this comic I love her so MUCH. I'd literally be here all day if I went in depth on why I love her. Spectacular showstopping amazing 10/10.

Joey: Listen! He's just a lad! Just a nice little lad! I knew practically nothing about him going in but I love him now. He's just a genuinely kind and compassionate person, his power is cool as hell, and I'm actually pleasantly surprised by how well his disability was handled.

Donna: Her arc about creating an aura of perfection around her and being scared to watch it crumble is really good, her leadership arc was likewise great, the issue where she found her family was fantastic, the Amazons as a concept are super interesting to me, and I really love her relationship with Kori and Dick! She's a little bland but that's ok I still love her.

Raven: She doesn't grab me as much as I feel she should for some reason? But she's still a good character. I like the idea of an empath being wildly incompetent with her own emotions, I have to respect and admire her selflessness, and her powers are cool as hell.

Kole: Yes I know she was only in like 5 to 10 issues and existed to be killed off in Infinite Crisis but have you considered: I love her.

Dick: When he's not being a jackass he's really nice! He weirdly feels a lot more... idk, human? In the ntt than I've usually seen him in batfam comics. I especially like how much this era leans into his detective skills. Unfortunately he's also quite frequently a jackass and it makes me want to strangle him.

Vic: His combination of brains and brawn feels very unique, I love how they don't downplay his intellect, and his relationship with the school for disabled kids and his grandparents is adorable! That said there's only so much self pity and 'I look like a monster' monologues I can take before I start to roll my eyes at it.

Tara: Yes we're counting her. Her character was abysmally written, her backstory makes no sense, her flat evil personality is infinitely less interesting than a more nuanced alternative, and of course there was the whole victim-blaming Mess with Slade, but also I thought she was funny. She's a bitch and it's entertaining.

Garfield: As a self-proclaimed chauvinist and the designated group sexual harasser I'm legally required to dislike him. I'd probably like him a little better if he didn't also wallow in self pity constantly but here we are. Yeah your whole family is dead and I guess that sucks but in the immortal words of Donna Troy, that's not exactly unique in this group. Go cry about it in your McMansion. Occasionally has some good moments and his friendship with Vic is cute tho.

Danny Chase: I feel embarrassed having to put him on this list bc I've literally never heard anyone or anything mention him so I'm pretty sure he's getting written out in 2.5 issues flat but. Still a Titan. His entire personality is 'loud-mouth 14-year-old ex-spy' so he's mostly just boring and kind of annoying. Feels like he's only there to get more kids to read comics and I'd bet real money that's the actual reason he exists. And on top of that his powers are boring.

Wally West: This is an NTT Wally West hate blog. I hate this guy so much. He's a conservative in the 80's and as if that wasn't bad enough all he does is feel sorry for himself, complain, and lash out at others. Every time he opens his mouth my brain goes 'That's what I thought you'd say you stupid fucking Republican!' I'm not even going to try to be objective here. If I could push him off a roof I would. Fuck NTT Wally West.

#my posts #infodumping #also disclaimer on the praise for the handling of joey's disability: it's still the 80's obviously it's not perfect #there's still ableist language and some ableist concepts being used #but also i've seen similar disabilities be handled WAY worse in modern media so I wanted to give credit where credit is due #like the fact that they actually just made him speak ASL and have a realistic text-to-speech device for when he needs to make phonecalls!!!!#that's realistic!!!! there was effort put into this!!!#im just so glad they didn't give him some sci-fi or magic work around that basically negates his disability #(like magical accessibility workarounds aren't inherently bad don't get me wrong but they're wildly overused imo)#(and they usually feel less like an attempt at actually figuring out how magic/sci-fi tech could be used to enhance accessibility)#(and more like a lazy excuse for the writers to never address the disability unless it's convenient for them)#and also I'm so glad they didn't pretend that the only way for him to communicate would be to play charades or something #like so many stories just go 'oh no this character can't verbally communicate :('#'guess there's no possible way to know what they're saying. we have never heard of sign language or PECS or text-to-speech devices'#'writing??? what's that????'#it's so fucking obnoxious oh my GOD #so yeah the fact that they actually just. acknowledged non-verbal methods of communication already exist is already pretty great #it's a low fucking bar and yet somehow a crazy amount of media manages to limbo under it #long post

6 notes · View notes

owlsbride · 4 years

Photo

Blinding Lights.

Chapter II

She No Longer Heard the Music.

Is it cruel or kind Not to speak my mind And to lie to you Rather than hurt you Well, I'll confess all of my sins After several large gins But still I'll hide from you Hide what's inside from you I no longer hear the music

Sakura glanced at the clock hanging on the white wall of her office at Konoha hospital and discovered with feigned amazement that she had been working there since 11 pm from the day before. At which point 20 and a half hours had passed, no one could tell, much less her. She remembered that the day before around 8 o'clock she had stopped by the office of the new Hokage to leave him the reports of the previous shift, and after a small talk, she had quickly retired to the hospital to fulfil with excellence one of the last orders that Tsunade had imposed before resigning her position: Co running Konoha Central Hospital together with Shizune. And speaking of Shizune, where could she be now? Sakura looked at the clock again and sighed. Surely her Senpai would already be at home resting. She would have retired hours ago after warning her leaving for the day, asking the young nin doctor if she needed anything and recommending that she should rest too. Sakura already knew the routine by heart: she would simply dismiss any question from Shizune by waving her hand in denial, or she would have pretended not to listen to her Senpai and continued working, as usual, that inhuman amount of overtime. Shizune would have just sighed and after one last tired look, would leave the medical facilities until the next day, leaving Sakura to her own. Sakura felt comfortable in her hospital, she knew it like the back of her hand and every corner, no matter which one, it was like being in her own home. Not that she didn't have a home for her own, well, yes, yes she had, and a very comfortable one by the way, but she felt a lot better when working either in the ICU, the rooms, the laboratory or her office. She did not hate her own house, but she preferred to arrive there once she had finished all her duties. Exhaustion taking over her body and mind so that she could simply enter her comfortable apartment to take a shower and fall on her bed and finally sleep as deep as possible in the most dreamless dream, so she wouldn't wake up in the middle of the night or the day depending on the worked shift. Sakura shook her head coming back to reality once more reading the records of the day, those that she would have to leave to the Lord Sixth at some point in the afternoon which means today she would be forced to leave the hospital shortly. It was 8 pm, if her math didn't fail her if she finished her work around 9, she could find Kakashi on his way to his own home, and at that moment she would deliver the papers. The oral report should be left for tomorrow and knowing her former sensei as she did, that would not be a problem. Kakashi had proven to be a better Hokage than anyone would have ever thought; still, old habits die hard: working more than necessary in bureaucratic matters was not in his nature, less now in these times of peace, so different from those that they had faced so many years ago. So many years ago. Had there really been so many? Yes, they had been, but they had passed quickly. In the blink of an eye, Sakura had gone from being a wayward 13-year-old girl starting her shinobi path to becoming a 25-year-old woman. A direct disciple of Tsunade, a Nin doctor, a great Kunoichi and a promise for Konoha medicine. Her professional life was settled for at least the next 15 years, and she was delighted with it. Even more now that the wars fought in the past had given way to brighter times for the new generations that slowly began to repopulate the village. There were already more births that were attended in the hospital than the fatal cases produced on the battlefields. Of course, people kept dying, that was inevitable, but it was one thing to lose shinobis and villagers due to natural causes and quite another to do it due to the horrors of war. Even so, Sakura, daughter of fire, anger, and convulsed times never let her guard down and was always attentive to a new outbreak of violence. Maybe it was a way of staying attached to a past that made her feel much more supported and contained, but prevention was never too much. The sun could shine brightly now, but no one would never know when a storm could come to sweep away everything built since then. Sakura was satisfied. Satisfied. No, not happy. Satisfied. She knew she was settling for little, but that's how the last few years had been. It's been said that in life one can't have everything and that's why it is better to settle for what at least in some way can go well, so that's exactly what she did. Sakura always considered herself as a woman with will and power, but on more than one time, the lack of self-confidence had led her down dark paths that she didn't even want to think about. However, it was not only her who thought so. She had heard the rumours about her. Since she was a girl, Sakura felt that she didn't fit in. She had grown up in a typical and wealthy home. Unlike the team 7 she had had the possibility of growing up surrounded by the love of her mother and father, she had not suffered the losses that Naruto, Kakashi or Sasuke suffered which at times she almost romanticized. She knew that as an only daughter, she had been the object of her parents' devotion and focus of all their attention, which turned her into a spoiled child. It is true that she was weaker than the others and that she also cried often, but it was also true, and no one could deny that when the time came, the change she had made to become stronger had been radical. She would never be left behind again, and yet the gossip continued. She had even heard them come out of her best friend Ino's mouth. What could Sakura know about the life of a Kunoichi when it was the closest to perfection. Ino had lost her father in the fourth war just like Hinata and Tenten lost Neji. Shikamaru had lost his father. Temari had grown up without the love of her parents like Naruto and Sasuke. Sakura was far from being able to empathize with his two teachers, how she could understand Kakashi's feelings or Tsunade's resilience when losing not only her brother but also her lover and later Jiraiya. For Ino, the most significant loss Sakura had ever suffered was her long pink hair that time as a child. What Ino didn't know is that each of those losses that didn't belong directly to Sakura, they did indirectly. Sakura loved each of her friends intensely and from the depths of her being. Each tear, each pain of any of them was her own in her skin blood and bones. She suffered with them and for them in silence, and that silence hurt more than anything. That is why she had decided to be a doctor, so as not to see anyone else ache again, and if somebody had to do it, after all, better to be her, because deep down she was strong, and she would be even more for others. Silence. That silence was slowly killing her. She was slowly sinking into loneliness and apathy. Ino would always be her best friend no matter what the blonde could say about her with a few too many drinks or for the simple fact of wanting to stand out as she had always been. The rest of the boys would be her family forever, and she would accompany them in every important step they took in this new adult life they faced. They all grew so much, they were even starting their own families. Even Naruto had overcome his unconditional love towards her, and now Hinata was the light in his eyes. Maybe Sakura should have paid more attention to him when she was a child, perhaps if she had tried to fall in love with the self-proclaimed future Hokage, today she would be happy. What Naruto wouldn't have done for her? However, she had always been in love with Sasuke. From the first day she had seen him in the academy, from the first second, and for a moment she thought they could have their happy ending, after the fourth war, revenge, repentance and tears, peace appeared. Sakura believed then that love was enough for everything and she had tried. Sakura and Sasuke finally began their love story. Sakura was ecstatic, and at first, she thought she had everything she had ever proposed. She would form a family with the last of the Uchiha and reestablish the clan, they would have many children who would exalt the surname once more. Children who grew up strong like Sasuke and sweet and determined like Sakura. However, the happiness that Sakura thought she had were nothing more than projections of her wishes. Sasuke was rarely in the village, and when he did, the distance between them was enormous even though neither of them said so. A devious routine that hurt more than any kunai. At night Sasuke and Sakura could love each other intensely for a couple of hours, even talk to each other about their days or their wishes. Sasuke would sleep wrapped in nightmares and night fears while Sakura would watch over those dreams trying to provide comfort to her lover, caressing his forehead, whispering comforting words in his sleeping ears, Sakura would spend hours without sleeping, and when the morning arrived, after having breakfast together they would go their own way without much to say to each other. And so over the years, Sakura realized that she no longer heard the music. All those melodies of love, dreams of illusion vanished, and she quickly began to feel nothing for Sasuke. They had nothing in common, and the truth struck her like a thunderbolt: they were together out of habit, fear and anxiety. She had to finish everything as soon as possible to stop the spiral of wounds that a relationship like this left, however, her heart and nobility played a trick on her. Sakura felt that she could not abandon Sasuke, that he could not suffer another loss and despite losing her own happiness, she had to sacrifice herself to achieve the mental and emotional well-being of her loved one. That's what she was for, that's what a woman was for. she wouldn't be as cruel as the world was when Sasuke was little. She could save him even if no one saved her. And so, without much and without anyone noticing, Sakura became a ghost, the shadow of herself. More and more silence, more and more loneliness and more fake smiles. She was lost again as she was when she was a child. And one day Sakura's world stopped. She should have seen the signs. That night Sasuke and Sakura had sex, the most intense and intimate sex they had ever have. Long hours of love and pleasure till they both fall asleep. In the morning Sakura looked for Sasuke by her side, but he was gone. On the bedside table was a letter that was written in the neater handwriting she had ever seen, and she didn't need to open it. Sasuke had left and would not return. Sakura was relieved and scared of her own feelings, but it was better this way. Both would go their own way and would have to discover who they really were for the first time. Sakura had a new chance. And with this new chance in hands, she devoted her life to the hospital and to others. Yes. She was satisfied. Sakura began to gather her things and put together the folder that would present to her Hokage in just a few moments. She smiled to herself at the thought of him: his languid figure with his false hunched posture, the smile behind the mask, maybe the white robe slung over one shoulder in case he had felt too lazy to take it off and leave it in the office and his hands in his pockets. Kakashi was a mystery; however, those little glimpses of his gestures Sakura knew them perfectly. She had known Kakashi since she was 13 years old and since then he had perhaps been the only person who had stayed closest to her in all this time. Ever since her sensei had assured her and her teammates that he would protect them with his life on their first mission against Zabuza, even if it was a clone talking, even if it was a strategy, she knew then that he was serious. She also knew back then that she was at his feet. She was a child then, she was impressed with Kakashi, even hating sometimes his antics. She wasn't in love with her sensei, she didn't have a crush on him; then, it was just pure admiration and respect. She used to felt secure around him, and so she did through all these years: during missions, in the war and now that he was in charge of all the people of Konoha. Kakashi loved Konoha as much as she did, and that made her respect him even more. He had never turned his back on his people, despite everything he had ever had to go through, he always remained true to his principles and had never become a monster to fear. So far away was Kakashi from Sasuke in the end, those who might once have looked alike, today proved to be totally different. Sakura could trust in Kakashi. No matter how many vague answers he gave to her tireless questions, how many evasions he invented so as not to talk about himself, or how many times she wondered if there was ever a genuine smile underneath that mask, in the end, Kakashi was always loyal, faithful and honest. Sakura admired his joviality. The man remained the same as when she had met him, he seemed not to have aged a year, while she had aged all together. How many years separate them? Thirteen, maybe fourteen, and yet at times, she seemed even older than him. She had to ask him the secret of youth. Saying that Kakashi was attractive was a no-brainer. Everyone knew it, she knew it, even without seeing his face. She knew or thought she knew that under the mask was one of the most beautiful faces of Konoha, however, perhaps because of the secrets it hid, Sakura felt that her Hokage looked even more attractive like that. It was not necessary to speak of his body. Kakashi was an elite shinobi, his body had been shaped for that so he could be a killing machine, however, he also may look like a rag doll sometimes. Sakura knew a large part of his thanks to the number of times she had healed his wounds as a doctor, and she had seen many other men as well, but the former Copy Ninja had a different complexion from the others. While most of the shinobis looked either too thin or too formed, Kakashi was the balance between the two. Long legs, narrow waist, a flat abdomen, broad shoulders. Yes, Hatake Kakashi was the closest thing to perfection Sakura knew that any woman who could have him for herself would be lucky in more ways than one and she was jealous just imagining it. Sakura blushed from just analyzing her thoughts since when had she started observing her sensei like this? She almost chastity herself and force her mind to change the course of her thoughts. Not everything was beauty and light in the Hokage, and that Sakura could see it too. Behind all that carefree facade, the tired looks and mischievous smiles, she also saw loneliness. Whole hours spent in an office to which he had no attachments and a home to return to where he could only find his dogs if they were invoked. She wondered what was going through Kakashi's mind. Was he still missing Rin? Would he have overcome Obito's loss, this time for good and the Sharingan as well? Kakashi was a man of action, Sakura felt that even in times of peace, he would miss the din of missions, a battle, the fire and the anxiety of not knowing what would happen next. Sakura sighed. In the end, Kakashi was more like her than she could have ever imagined. They both clung to a dark past, a present that offered only apathetic calm and a future full of promises of lonely stability. Sakura felt her heartache for both of them, but even more for Kakashi. Once again, her mind and soul were trying to heal somebody else before herself, but she couldn't help it. Thinking of Kakashi filled Sakura with a warmth in her body that she hadn't felt in a long time. It wasn't just physical attraction. It wasn't about wanting to spend a night with Konoha's most coveted ninja. No. Sakura wanted to share her sorrows along with his. She wanted to touch his hand and reassure them both that everything would be fine. She craved to talk to him for hours, contemplate the stars with him, gaze at his profile, laugh at his silly jokes, and get mad at his ridiculous excuses. Suddenly Sakura wanted everything from Kakashi, she desired to know him as he really was. She wanted to remove him from the pedestal she had once put him on and make him human, re-meeting him as what they were now: two adults. Sakura took her things and went out determined to meet the Hokage. She would give him the reports and see what happened next. She would invite him to dinner just for the sake of being courteous and talking to him. Just to know what his answer would be. Even if it were a no, which she supposed would happen, she would begin her attempts to get closer to him and know if he wanted to get closer to her. She didn't care what kind of relationship they could strike up. She wasn't expecting anything, just hearing his voice, even his rejection. Maybe that's how Sakura could felt something again, even if it was just pain.

If you want to read the first part you can ask for the link to AO3, or scroll down to find it here. Third part on it’s way. Hope you all like it. The song belongs to The Libertines: Music When the Lights Go Out, and Naruto, doesn’t belong to me, obviously.

#fanfiction #fanfic #fandom #kakashi fanfiction #kakashi hokage #Kakashi #kakasaku #haruno sakura #sakura #naruto verse #naruto #AO3 fanfic #read on ao3 #kakashi hatake #read #review #follow 👑 Share ❤️ Enjoy 🍑#share #coment

9 notes · View notes

clansayeed · 4 years

Text

Bound by Destiny II, part 1 ― Chapter 12: The Return

PAIRING: Kamilah Sayeed x MC (Nadya Al Jamil) RATING: Mature

⥼ MASTERLIST ⥽

⥼ Bound by Destiny II, part 1 ⥽

While struggling with nightmares of lives she’s never lived, a shadow from the past looming over her city, and the proposed idea that her life may just be a little bit too weird to handle alone, Nadya makes sure to tell herself that everything is perfect just the way it is. If only. When the self-proclaimed King of Vampires (and Maker of her sometimes-girlfriend and always-boss, can’t forget that little tidbit) Gaius Augustine returns intent on claiming Manhattan as the throne that was promised, she and her friends find themselves forced into the task of saving the world. But with millennia-old vampires and an Order of hunters on their heels as well as allies hiding catastrophic secrets at their backs… it won’t be an easy task. Too bad destiny didn’t exactly ask for her input.

Bound by Destiny II and the rest of the Oblivion Bound series is an ongoing dramatic retelling project of the Bloodbound series and spin-off, Nightbound. Find out more [HERE].

*Let me know if you would like to be added to the Destiny II tag list!

⥼ Chapter Summary ⥽

The gang returns to New York with a well-earned victory under their belts. But that means Nadya has to face Kamilah, and she isn't quite sure she knows how to feel just yet.

[READ IT ON AO3]

Nadya leans on the rail with a wistful sigh. Takes a moment and just… lets herself enjoy the peace of being at peace. No memories haunting her behind her eyelids, no immediate danger… at least none she can see right in front of her.

No, the only thing in front of her is New Orleans. The French Quarter spread out for blocks around her in vibrant colors going pale against the purpling sky. It’ll be dawn soon.

Did she sigh already? Well… no harm in another one.

Taylor’s learned his lesson in sneaking up on her. Why else would he knock on the door leading up to the roof instead of taking advantage of one final attempt to startle her silly?

He clicks his tongue with a wry look. “Careful now, that sigh right there, that’s trouble. Means you’re falling in love with this place and you won’t ever wanna leave.”

Nadya can’t help it that she laughs.

“Are you trying to sound like Garrus?” It sounds like something the fae would say, actually.

“No, and frankly you don’t want to hear my Garrus impersonation,” he hesitates; waits for Nadya’s little go-ahead of a nod before joining her overlooking the city as it begins to put itself to sleep, “it’s not very good. My Ivy on the other hand…”

Their laughter is soft and polite. They wouldn’t dare jostle the world below.

“I mean, when I went off to college I had dreams of road trips on spring break, summers spent with one program or another. New Orleans was always on my list.”

“And did she live up to the hype?”

Now how exactly is Nadya supposed to answer that honestly? “Well college-aged me probably wouldn’t have been hanging around the Graveyard Shift, that’s all I’ll say.”

“Nadya, babe, you have got to stop being a hard mood,” Taylor places a hand to his chest, “my little empath heart just can’t take much more of it.”

She shoves him (gently) and their laugh is a little less awkward the second time around. Probably because he is, indeed, an empath. And he gets exactly what she’s feeling right now.

Longing — exhaustion — trepidation — to name a few.

He nudges her shoulder with his own. “You’ll have to come back when everything’s fixed on your end; see the city for real, you know? Not just all the bad things.”

Not like she goes searching for the bad things, thanks. They just kind of… happen dangerously close in her proximity. “I’d like that. Lil’ too, for sure.”

“Oh, for sure. Though I have a feeling her and Ivy together might be a bit more trouble than Nik’ll want to deal with.”

And on that Nadya can most certainly agree. Not that she does so with words. Strangely she doesn’t feel much like talking right now. Not-so-strangely, Taylor doesn’t either. So they lean in mutual silence and watch the streets below. People going through the motions; living their lives.

Lives far less strange than theirs.

The blue of the dawn is just starting to bleed orange when he finally speaks again.

“You’re not used to winning the day, are you?” She isn’t surprised in the least to look and see that strange iridescence back in his irises.

“I don’t have enough coffee in me to answer a question like that,” which — that’s her answer; but Taylor definitely isn’t taking it, “I mean… back when all this stuff started; we won then, I think. Adrian was exonerated and Jax joined the Council and Vega wasn’t trying to kill me anymore —”

Taylor holds up a finger. “Wait — like the missing Senator, that Vega?”

“You knew him?”

“Uh, Vee and our friend Kristin lived up there together. Wait a second—he was a vam— no… that’s not the point. Sorry, please continue.”

God, is that how I look to other people, Nadya wonders; but it’s humbling to see somehow.

“Anyway… I thought everything turned out for the better, and for a while it was better. But now that I think about it…” Gaius, Jameson, the Trinity; all of them lurking just on the other side of the two-way glass. Waiting for the time to strike and take her happiness away; to pluck memories from her she never asked for all in pursuit of some epic fantasy-level world conquering.

If the fight wasn’t over, did that still count as a victory?

“And you’re left wondering if this is the same deal. If you’ve really won, or if there’s more stuff—worse stuff—just out of sight.” Taylor finishes for her. Still a little weird and possibly more akin to mind-reading than the half-fae originally led her to believe, but for the moment she’s glad to not have to say it.

“Yeah, exactly.”

His hand comes to rest over Nadya’s on the railing. He’s warmer than he should be and the sun’s got nothing to do with it. Likely his weirdness is helped by touch, too. Which Taylor all but confirms aloud when a sudden but not unwelcome ease relaxes the tension she didn’t know she’d gathered in her shoulders.

“I can’t offer any answers, and I don’t think I’d want to. With my luck I’d be wrong and you’d hate me forever.” He’s joking but Nadya still rolls her eyes and shakes her head for it.

“But I can say that no matter what happens? You’ll always have friends here to call up if needed.”

What is she supposed to say to something so sincere? “Same to you, Taylor, same to you.”

A sleek black car with tinted windows pulls around the corner and onto their lonely street to park right in front of the bar.

Looks like their ride is here.

Kamilah isn’t waiting for them when the plane pulls into the nice and shady hangar. Nadya tells herself she isn’t surprised by this… but she’s trying not to tell herself mostly-truths lately either. Luckily she’s still too exhausted (and she’s pretty sure she only got about half an hour’s nap in the entire time they were in New Orleans) to make much of a fuss about it.

In fact, Nadya barely remembers sending a text off before she and Lily both are being ushered into the back seat of one of Adrian’s company cars.

[TEXT]: back in NY and miss you like crazy. can we plz talk?? [TEXT]: its nadia

And its the most dreamless, dead-to-the-world-est sleep she knew she needed but didn’t know how to get. Staying awake for near-days and going through every emotion under the sun and also dealing with a high-stakes pursuit weren’t exactly on her list of viable solutions to her sleeping troubles.

Ergo the point of all this — no one is allowed to think her anything less than totally justified when Nadya wakes up in her own bed, in her own bedroom, sometime well after sunset and thinks for even the smallest second that everything was just a dream. She knows logically that it wasn’t… but still.

Totally justified.

When her eyes adjust to the lack of light Nadya realizes she’s not alone. There’s a figure sitting on the edge of her bed nearest the window, away from the door. Giving her the chance to escape if she needs it; making sure she doesn’t feel trapped.

Only one person would do that.

She fumbles for her glasses on the nightstand but leaves her bedside lamp untouched. Can’t shake the feeling like if she does turn the lights on then Kamilah will vanish. This is better for them both.

“Hi.”

Something moves near her head; Nadya leans back to see the woman pulling her fingertips away from where they had been combing through her hair gently. She wants it back so much she aches from the loss of them.

“Hello,” replies Kamilah; sounding awfully breathless for a woman who doesn’t need to breathe, “did you rest well? You… seemed to need it.”

Probably not what she meant to ask judging by the way the neon signs from across the street illuminate her in postmodern beauty. It’s okay though — Nadya isn’t sure she has the courage yet to say what really needs saying.

“When did you get here…?”

“Shortly after your return. Oh, Lily wished for you to know she’s left for the evening. She didn’t leave a message as to why.”

So it’s just been Nadya and Kamilah in the apartment for at least the daylight hours. Alone; together. And not talking about their problems.

When Nadya sits up (in part to look at Kamilah better, in part to make sure she doesn’t fall back asleep on accident) the bed dips as Kamilah shifts back; makes to stand and leave her with all this twin-sized budget bed kit to herself. And because she can’t stand a thought so terrible Nadya reaches out and stops her with a hand on her arm.

“Kamilah.”

A long pause — then; “Yes, Nadya?”

“Why are you here?”

“You messaged me,” so Nadya of course fumbles for her phone and finds it charging under her pillow, “though I suppose I should have realized you were exhausted beyond recognition.”

“Why’s that?”

“You spelled your own name wrong.”

Upon further inspection yes, yes she did. “Glad you weren’t expecting some other disaster you’re dating also named Nadia…” That she chooses not to dwell on the fact that she may have very well used that word for the first time in the middle of their first fight is actually self-care.

Or — she doesn’t until Kamilah’s been quiet for an awfully long time.

“Uhm — I take that back, actually — what I meant was…”

“I won’t disagree.”

Only Kamilah Sayeed could look so perfect framed in the flickering lights of a discount electronics shop.

“But you’re my disaster.”

Nadya kisses her because every other time it’s been Kamilah who takes the lead, takes charge, takes her. This isn’t some attempt to switch that dynamic either (in fact Nadya’s very happy with it just the way it is) but what else is she supposed to do seeing all these vulnerable parts of such an invulnerable woman one right after the other?

But — no, she can’t fall into this. Fall into her. Not without talking. But holy mother of crap she doesn’t wanna do anything but moan at the lips soft on her cheeks, her chin, her throat…

“Kamilah.”

Nadya only has to say her name once. They both know how this works. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t feel the hesitance; the resistance before they part and she all but forces them to meet eye-to-eye. Nor does it mean that she doesn’t take just the tiniest bit of happiness from it.

When Nadya starts pulling away Kamilah holds on just a little bit tighter. Only for a moment; then its gone.

“We can’t not —” — talk about this.

“I know; I agree.”

And she’s got a whole speech planned out in bullet points; not even fully seated and she’s already buzzing to jump right into it. Until—

“I was uncertain and without control. I fell back on old habits to bring my life to a heel — but those were the wrong choices to make. They nearly cost me… something very important.”

Kamilah’s hand falls open on top of the bedspread and Nadya takes it for the offering it is. Their fingers slot together familiar and like nothing’s changed but this is different. This is talking about it; this is… this is Kamilah apologizing. “They nearly cost me you, Nadya.”

Now is not the time to go all red in the face and flustered. Nadya’s willpower is astounding frankly. “There was never a second where I doubted that you cared. Not about what I was going through, or what it was doing to… to everything in my life. But I think there was a part of me that didn’t want to tell you because I didn’t want to believe that you and… and the you I saw were —” — were the same person.

Kamilah’s thumb strokes along her knuckles slow and rhythmic. “My thoughts are the same. I am not fragments of a woman; a queen, different than a soldier, different than a killer, different than who I am today. I am all of those things and more. And perhaps still there are parts of myself I have not yet come to know.”

Nadya chances a look up while she listens, but it’s the words Kamilah doesn’t say that catch her by surprise. The ones about who that person she doesn’t know could be. And—god she hopes she’s not reading too much into this—who she could be that person with.

“I think I get it now.”

“And what would that be?”

She squeezes their hands until it hurts because she knows it’s probably the weight of a feather to someone like Kamilah.

“We were scared of the same thing and for the same reasons; you… and your past. But I wanted to know more. I—I wanted to talk about it, without thinking of how hard bringing up all of those bad memories might be for you.”

Kamilah purses her lips and offers a slow nod. “Insightful; and perhaps I was so insistent on trying to keep that knowledge from you that I did not stop to consider what… I was saying in withholding it.”

Now the question is… where do they go from here?

“So we work on that — we try and… understand what the other is doing when she…”

“Makes a mistake she instantly regrets?”

Nadya smiles, but it’s strained. “That’s half of the things I do anyway though.”

“You know my meaning in the context of this, Nadya.”

“Yeah, but that’s not my only problem.” Which isn’t the best word she could use but at the moment she’s not focusing so much on word choice as actual feelings. And Nadya… feels a problem. There’s a breath of a second where it feels like Kamilah might start to pull away, but it passes.

She thinks better of it. She tries to understand.

“You are amazing, Kamilah. You are this… super gorgeous, super smart, super old—in a good way I swear—and super experienced vampire. But it’s not a smart thing for us to—to ignore that.”

“I wasn’t under the impression we had been.”

This is more painful to admit than Nadya thought it was gonna be. There’s no turning back now though; no ‘Restart from Checkpoint’ or save to load.

And this is so so important. Nadya wants to follow through, and not just for the sake of them. She deserves it for herself. “Maybe you haven’t — but I have. I thought that was the only way we were gonna make this work. Only, if I ignore that then I’m ignoring the fact that you are always going to have a power over me. A physical one. You lashed out and…”

“And I could have hurt you.” That Kamilah’s hand tightens with hers is the literal definition of ironic but she knows it comes from a good place; the same place all that honesty was walled up inside now pouring out.

“Nadya, please tell me you know I would never have hurt you. I don’t think I could.”

“That’s not the point. The point is you were angry, and your first reaction was to try and scare me into running away.”

See, this is Nadya’s problem. There’s a reason her life is so organized — without all her colored pens and sticky notes and multiple tabs that always end up in the strangest places, she’s a literal human mess. Prone to rambling and impulsive actions that aren’t always good for her health; physical and emotional both.

She didn’t organize this part of her talk with Kamilah. She didn’t even know this part existed. And now it’s out there in the world without a label tacked on and… and…

“And I don’t think that’s something I’m quite… over, yet.”

Nadya trusts Kamilah still; she doesn’t flinch away when the woman’s free hand comes up to her cheek — thumbs away a tear she didn’t know was falling. She can separate the then from the now.

But at the end of the day her trust and the way she had felt betrayed that night… they weren’t mutually exclusive.

She turns her face into the lingering palm. When she exhales her breath rattles in her lungs.

“I miss you.”

Kamilah’s hand betrays her composed silence; the barest tremor. “I’m here, Nadya.”

Nadya who doesn’t want to pull back, never wanted to pull back… but what is she saying to herself if she doesn’t?

“I miss you,” she repeats, “and I still care about you — I don’t really see that changing any time soon. And I’ll forgive you, really—I will. I just need some time.”

I know there are no promises you’ll be there when I’m ready, or if you won’t have moved on, or if you can’t forgive me for not forgiving you, or for not understanding you, or for making you feel this way. But I feel this way too.

And in all the things she wants to say but doesn’t, Nadya’s left still and heartbroken. Completely by her own design.

The bed dips and Nadya lets her eyes flutter closed as Kamilah’s lips press to her forehead. Not so much a kiss as a touch; something sincere and solid and so so sad.

Kamilah commits the warmth and life of her to memory. Nadya dares to hope that some day they’ll have all of this again.

She has to. If anything deserves hope right now it’s them.

Finally — too soon, too damned soon — a whisper tickles at her hairline.

“I’ll be here.”

When she opens her eyes Nadya is alone.

Jax has a really good point; if the heat from Adrian’s industrial-grade blowtorch hadn’t been enough to melt the gold, then they probably didn’t need to worry about his sword scratching the stupid thing up in any way that didn’t lend to opening it.

Everyone still backs up a few paces for good measure. They’ve all seen him in action — and the man needs a wide berth.

Nadya closes her eyes and braces herself but she still isn’t prepared for the hollow screeching clang every time the sharpened steel collides with the surface of the Amulet. One—two—three.

He stops after three. Judging by the enraged determination in his eye though he’d keep going given the opportunity.

Lily throws her hands up before crossing out ‘ASSAULT BY KATANA’ on the transparent eraser board. “I’m calling it. This thing is a horcrux.”

“A what?” asks Adrian, but Nadya just gives him the now familiar “I’ll explain it later” wave-off. Because unless pop culture references were the secret puzzle to opening the Amulet of Nero they weren’t that important in the moment.

She pushes her glasses up and unsuccessfully stifles a yawn with the back of her hand. Brings her focus back to their list of attempts to crack open (literally) the case… all of which have failed miserably.

‘METALWORKING HAMMER’ ‘REGULAR HAMMER’ ‘BLOWTORCH’ ‘ASKING IT NICELY’ (Nadya’s idea) ‘OPEN SESAME’ (Maricruz’s idea) ‘ASSAULT BY KATANA’

Off to the left Lily’s circled ‘MISSING KEY??’ over and over in the corner and while they had all agreed to try and hold out on just not having found the right amount of physical force they might as well face it.

They’re running out of options.

Adrian clears his throat and stares hard enough at Nadya that the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. “Ahem, Nadya, could you…?”

“Oh — yes — sorry guys, my bad.”

When she pulls the cover back over the Amulet the difference is immediate. The tension leaves her friends’ shoulders; they sit a little less restless and their eyes are a little less bordering-vampish.

Nadya wasn’t the only one who had been content to write off the strange aura that had come over the vampires in Isadora de la Rosa’s booth as nothing more than trepidation for the inevitable. Now, however, they have to face the facts.

There’s something in the Amulet that draws vampires to it. Cadence had said so himself — when he talked about generations of vampire influence. It’s not enough to incite a war (about which Nadya was admittedly worried, and with good reason given their track record) but covering it was a noticeable benefit to rational thinking.

They only have one thing going for them right now; if they can’t open it then no one else can, either. Hopefully that includes the Trinity. Maybe it even includes Gaius. Who knows? They certainly don’t.

There are too many unknowns — and they’re starting to take a toll on everyone in one form or another.

Adrian begins to gather up the dozens of data graphs spread out in front of him. “With that, I think we’ve come to a natural stopping point for the evening.” And nobody disagrees.

While Nadya carefully wraps the Amulet back up to return it to the R&D vault, Lily leans on her elbows and watches.

“I take it we still haven’t heard from Cadence? What about calling up Izzy?”

If only she had good news to give. “Nope; and I already did. She definitely remembers feeling that weird magnetism to it before it was repossessed by Persephone but nothing beyond that that she knew of. Actually,” she throws a look over to Adrian, “she suggested one thing; witch-fire? Something like that.”

He seems hesitant to mull the idea over. But they were desperate enough to let Jax hit it repeatedly, so…

“I’ll look into a few contacts. That kind of magic should only be used sparingly and in dire cases.”

“Would this count?”

A beat. “Probably. We would have to run it by the Council, though.” Which kind of nulls even the idea. Since everyone had agreed not to tell the rest of the Council yet. Not only because of the Amulet’s potential.

Lester, Priya, the Baron — Nadya likes to try and see the best in people as much as possible but they don’t make it easy on her. None of them are certain who would, if it came down to it, side against Gaius for a second time.

Nothing is unlikely anymore.

Wow, their shortest-lived idea yet.

Nadya nods towards the vault for Lily to follow. “As for the other thing — Kathy’s starting to get worried. I guess he left town a day after we did.” Which the Nighthunter had admitted wasn’t off-brand for Cadence. But the museum had let slip (which Nadya knows means ‘been bullied into admitting’) that he had been granted a leave of absence; very off-brand.

“The one thing he’s always had is that damn museum. No identity, no Izzy, and we both know I’m a recent development. He was a manic mess the first time that kind of dissociation happened.” The Nighthunter had kept her cool better than Nadya would have in her situation. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t worried ill.

“What if it’s worse this time,” even through the phone she couldn’t hide her concern; her fear, “what if he hurts himself? What if he hurts someone else?”

Hopefully they find him soon. But she’s met that strange group of people; the regulars at the Graveyard Shift. If anyone has the ability (and sheer force of stubborn will, to be honest) to find Cadence it’s them.

“I mean, if I went Jekyll and Hyde around a chick as crazy as that Trinity woman, I’d probably want to get away for my own health too.”

Lily’s comment doesn’t sit well with her; luckily at her admonishing look she at least looks apologetic. “You know what I mean.”

“I also know a little bit of what he’s going through.”

There’s an “ahem” behind them as Nadya spins the wheel on the vault. Adrian definitely has the look of someone who knows he shouldn’t have been eavesdropping but was anyway.

“Speaking of.”

Only… she’d rather not speak of it until it becomes a problem. “It’s fine,” she replies, and waves it off. That was what they’d agreed on for the time being, right? And there haven’t been any problems.

Turns out feeling the weight of relationship-burdened depression the moment you walk through your front door lends to a pretty heavy sleeping pattern. Like Nadya’s body doesn’t want her to do anything but try to get through the next day, and the next, and maybe… just maybe the one after that.

Adrian doesn’t seem immediately convinced. “Promise?”

“Pinky promise.” Which — he still doesn’t really get the concept but the verbal agreement is enough.

Once the lab is fully shut down they manage to pile together into the elevator. Jax thumbs at his phone, blows the hair out of his eyes just a little too close to Nadya’s ear for her liking. She swats him away because personal bubble.

“What’s the matter?”

“Eh, Espinoza wants —” But he catches himself with a look in Lily’s direction. “— something. She wants something. And I gotta… go get it.”

Nadya and Adrian just shake their heads and laugh at him while Lily pretends with absolutely no tact whatsoever not to know what he’s talking about. She even sticks her fingers in her ears like that’ll somehow stop her super vampire hearing.

Jax, somehow with even less tact, like negative tact, takes it as permission to lean and murmur on Nadya’s free side. “Apparently Lula got into the cake. So…”

“Weren’t there three?” Adrian hisses, surprised.

“You’ll get it when you meet her.”

Nadya reaches around and pats Jax’s chest awkwardly. “Good luck with that. Maybe try putting them in the passenger seat this time.”

“Shut up.”

“Just saying… third time’s the charm you know.”

When she gives Lily a nod in ‘all clear’ everyone knows she heard everything. But she’s just excited to know Maricruz is going as all-out as she possibly can, so who would be so heartless as to spoil the whole thing by just admitting the obvious?

Adrian lets them all off on the ground level and offers Nadya one last chance to go home early. “What do you pay her for if you keep giving her chances to not work?” And Jax raises a good point — too good of a point. She maybe shoves him in front of her with all her might, and he maybe stumbles. The world may never know. “Just saying — let me know next time there’s an opening.”

“I’ll be up in a sec. I just have to stake him first.”

She and Lily wave until the doors close. Yes, they live together and see each other every day. Yes, they recently defied death in New Orleans together. But its rare now that Nadya and Lily get a chance to unwind like they used to. So whenever it comes along they’re both there to indulge greedy and giggling.

“Mari’s really going all out with this party, huh?”

It’s a valiant effort but Lily doesn’t look so much humbly embarrassed as expectantly excited. “I think I’m in love, Nadi’,” she jumps the next few steps like hopscotch, “she was fully ready to get a bouncy castle.”

“How are they going to fit a bouncy castle in the Shadow Den?”

“Oh I didn’t say I let her. But she was planning on it, and isn’t that what true love is all about?”

Nadya tries not to falter. Key word being tries. And around anyone else she might do everything in her power not to draw attention to it but this is Lily. Who found her huddled up in bed hours after Kamilah’s farewell and called to cancel her own date to stay with her; to be there for her and give her all the hugs she desperately needed but didn’t know how to ask for.

She doesn’t need to pretend around that kind of love and friendship.

But before Nadya can apologize Lily starts up an air drum solo in front of her while they walk. “And winner for Most Insensitive Best Friend Ever is — drum roll…”

“You’re fine, Lil’.”

“I’m gushing about my life while you’re… not so hot.”

Nope, Nadya won’t have it. “You’re gonna gush because you have every right to gush, okay? You’ve been a vampire for a whole year. That’s super important. You survived Turning, became the digital fanged crusader, and it’s ten times more cool because you did it all without a brand. Jax and Adrian can’t say that. Heck… even Kamilah can’t.

“So if you want a Turning party, you’re gonna get a Turning party. I’m not the only one who thinks you’re worth celebrating.” They lace their fingers and Nadya squeezes. “Plus if Jax shows up with the third set of cakes to a canceled party I think he might flip his lid.”

Lily gives a dramatic little sniffle — pretends to wipe a nonexistent tear from her eye. “Please tell me you just memorized all that.”

“Why?”

“Because it’ll be the speech to end all speeches.”

Together they play-shove all the way through the Raines Building atrium. Right before the revolving door Lily spins her around, takes both of their hands together and swings them gently.

“Do you want me to uninvite her? She probably doesn’t even care.”

“No — and even if we broke up, like, badly I wouldn’t want that. I’m just not that kind of person.”

“True, you’d probably invite them to Christmas dinner or something.”

She rolls her eyes at that and ignores it for her own sanity. “And for the record — as someone with experience in decoding Kamilah-isms, I think you surprised her. She admires strength, and Lily… you’re the strongest person I know.”

When they hug, like always, their glasses get jostled in the middle and the following laughter lightens both of their hearts. Lily makes her promise to add that last line to her speech (which inadvertently is a promise to write a speech, she’s guessing) and only when she’s out the doors and around the corner of the block does Nadya head back up to the office.

Adrian is leaning in his open doorway when she exits the elevator — Nadya slows her steps for a hesitant second before coming to realize he’s just having another one of his pensive moods. He’s been having them a lot lately. More and more since they returned from New Orleans.

This one looks different though. He’s not staring into space — he’s staring at her.

“What?” She finally yields, glancing at her boss over her shoulder while the computer boots up slow as a snail. “What’s that face for?”

Nadya nearly convinces herself he isn’t going to answer.

“It’s good to see you smiling, that’s all.” He leans out and squeezes her shoulder; something soft and friendly and so sweet her teeth ache from it. Before Adrian can pull away Nadya makes sure to return the gesture.

“It’s good to smile,” which is far more bleak than she would like, “you know something?”

Adrian pauses mid-step. “Hm?”

“It’s even better to mean it.”

#bloodbound #playchoices fanfiction #choices bb #kamilah x mc #kamilah sayeed #bloodbound mc #mc: nadya al jamil #nightbound mc #mc: taylor hunter #adrian raines #jax matsuo #lily spencer #fic: oblivion bound #oblv: bound by destiny ii #oblv: new chapter #; my fics

17 notes · View notes

amimons · 5 years

Text

Sooo I got some asks about Marinette and Adrien’s zodiac signs and their compatibility. Considering I also run an astrology blog (that's not so active anymore) I figured why not.

I will give Marinette and Adrien a sun, moon, venus, mars, mercury, and rising placement based on my own interpretations from what I know them to be.

A quick overview of what the placements mean

Sun sign: Overall ego/core personality Moon Sign: Your inner self/emotional being, how you internalize things and process things Mercury Sign: How you communicate Venus: Love, beauty, relationships, what attracts a person to someone/something Mars: How you manifest your energy, your ambitions, reactions Rising/Ascendant: Your first impression to others, how you act you, strangers or acquaintance

When it comes to Compatibility it's very easy to remember what sign is compatible with which based on the sign’s elements. You could go further and look into the modalities making it go pass the elements but I’m going to keep this surface level for everyone’s sake.

Fire signs: Aries, Leo, Sagittarius Earth signs: Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn Air signs: Gemini, Libra, Sagittarius Water signs: Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces

So yes I ended up making the two compatible by matching their placements with the elemental signs they are compatible that also works for their personalities.

Marinette

Sun: Leo (natural leader, confidence, dramatic, generous)

Moon: Aries (natural leader, brave, passionate, impulsive)

Mercury: Virgo (analytical, reliable, self-critical/worrier)

Venus: Libra (romantic, indecisive, calculating)

Mars: Virgo (analytical, hardworking)

Rising: Pisces (daydreamer, artistic, selfless)

This is how Marinette’s placements reflect her personality

Marinette is a natural leader, creative, and compassionate. She can be dramatic at times, get lost in her head, and take on many tasks sometimes against her better judgment. She can come off as meek but those who know her best know she radiates confidence. However, she has a problem with self-doubt and can be her biggest critic. She has a bit of a temper but is quick to cool down once she processes the actual severity of the situation. She is prone to get lost in daydreams and overworking herself to make others happy. She cares so deeply for the people in her life and will put their well being over hers. She has an analytical approach when trapped in a situation and she is able to organize a plan no matter how convoluted, making her pretty adaptive.

Adrien

Sun: Libra (charming, diplomatic, cooperative, self-pitying)

Moon: Sagittarius (honest, values education, social, adventurous)

Mercury: Libra (flirty, fair, social)

Venus: Leo (generous, affectionate, dramatic, caring)

Mars: Pisces (weak-willed, empathic, hopeless romantic)

Rising: Taurus (Stubborn, dependable, careful)

This is how Adrien’s placements reflect his personality

Adrien is an optimistic, romantic and passionate. He is an understanding person waiting until he knows all sides of a story before passing off a judgment or making a decision. However, because of this, he may put too much trust in someone’s word making him a bit gullible. He is hesitant when it comes to confrontation but will speak up and stand up for the truth once he feels so strongly about it. He longs freedom and can be negatively affected when he feels trapped. He often conforms to the control of others putting aside his own desires to appease them. Luckily being Chat Noir offers him a life without structure which he thrives off of. He has a witty sense of humor and loves to crack jokes. Sometimes he comes off as too goofy and not taking very seriously, especially with a flirtatious personality.

---

Adrien and Marinette share a lot in common but are also each other opposites, filling in the holes they need to be more well rounded. They both are very generous to their love interests and a huge heart. Where Ladybug/Marinette needs reassurance, Chat Noir/Adrien is there to provide it. Where Chat Noir/Adrien is having trouble seeking out solutions Ladybug/Marinette is there to offer one.

In terms of romance; Adrien loves to give and receive affection and praise. He isn’t afraid to boast about his love for the world because his love is his world. They are both hopeless romantics but Adrien is more forward with it. Marinette instead is creative about it. When she isn’t fantasying about her life with Adrien she makes gifts and letters for Adrien. She feels more comfortable using her words to tell her feelings than presenting them. Marinette has trouble enacting gut instincts because she can over internalize things. Adrien can effortlessly proclaim any feelings because flirting to him is fun banter. He doesn’t struggle with acting out his feelings but on the negative side, he gets too blinded by love. It impairs his judgment because he gets so caught up in the idea of a romanticizes idea that he has trouble focusing his energy away from it. Marinette could learn from Adrien to just go for it and not overthink things while Adrien can learn from Marinette to not jump the gun and think things through.

I think I’m going to stop my interpretation here for now but feel free to discuss!

#i needed to stop myself #miraculous ladybug #adrienette #ladynoir #adrien agreste #marinette dupain cheng #mine

116 notes · View notes

thelastpilot · 5 years

Text

The Monster in the Room- Chapter 13

Okay holy crud, I capped it at just below 16k. I was GOING to do everything all at once but decided against it, so believe it or not this is actually cut in half. I hope its okay, I had to do a lot of work shopping but hopefully it hits the right notes. Let me know what you think!

Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9 , Chapter 10, Chapter 11, Chapter 12

“Okay, everything seems to be in order then. Please remember what I’ve asked, you and your friends are welcome to the campus but please don’t go causing any trouble. Remember that this is still a school, alright?”

Ms. Bustier folded her arms in an attempt to be serious but she couldn’t help the smile on her face, her tone far from scathing. She just couldn’t manage it as she looked down on her newest and most in-need student, practically glowing with relief to see him standing readily out in the open with his tail thumping steadily on the tile. Even as she spoke he scrabbled a little in place impatiently, something almost like a wolfish smile on his face as she looked over the last of what she had brought him.

A positively derelict television was left in the corner on an equally as dated cart that still moved easily enough. She was mostly unfamiliar with human technology but had used and experimented with some of their simpler contraptions out of curiosity before. She had a great long-standing appreciation for the complexity of human story-telling and their recorded programs were among her favorites, even if she always did struggle to get them working. She was hoping Marinette would be able to live up to her promise to oversee all the more intricate needs of their proposed ‘movie night’, trusting her to see to it that it all went smoothly.

She was glad the empathic witch was not there in a moment to detect the slight worry that rattled through her, knowing that the children would be alone for the night.

Really there was no threat… the moon was ages away and the children were all capable of critical thinking and self-defense, not that any of them would need it of course but…

She shook her head a little, attempting to rid herself of her anxieties and just be happy for them all that they were boldly making progress in the earnest, open way that children do. If any of the other teachers found out that she had allowed this… she wasn’t sure what would happen. She had refused to admit to the children at the time that no one else would have ever let this happen, siteing a thousand ways it could go poorly and how the school would be held liable for anything that took place.

In truth… Ms. Bustier had broken perhaps a dozen very serious regulations in the way that she cared for Nino. If her superiors discovered even a single thread of what she had waved or overlooked then she wasn’t sure Mr. Damocles could or would protect her in the slightest. Perhaps he’d sympathize with her decisions, surely no one would morally disagree, but that didn’t mean that it was sanctioned or supported. If her peers were simply turning a blind eye then she was grateful, but she had urged the students not to advertise their intentions regardless.

She would take all responsibility, in the event of an incident.

The cervitaur took a deep breath as she quickly overlooked the extra mats and blankets taken from the abandoned nurses office on site. They were far from perfect, but hopefully no one would mind too much.

When she was satisfied she looked back to Nino to see him nod, standing and crossing over to her to nudge her foreleg gently in a gesture she was sure meant ‘thank you’. She leaned down to press the weight of her hand on the space between his ears as an approximation of the gesture in return, glad to see his eyes close in contentment instead of seeming uncomfortable with it like he might have been a week ago. He really was coming so far… and her decision to allow the sleepover in hopes that it would help him seemed suddenly all the stronger.

She knew she was doing the right thing here.

“If that’s everything you need from me I should probably be leaving then, don’t want to ‘cramp your style’ or anything like that,” she giggled a little at herself, laughing again as Carter reappeared from his scouting mission out in the hallway and demanded her affection before she left. The wolf rolled his eyes, but whether it was at what she had said or Carter’s eager dance on his hind legs she wasn’t sure. “Remember,” she reiterated, “don’t leave campus, don’t make a mess, and don’t be too loud. You’re all pretty far from the other live-in students but if you all decide to wander around then I don’t want a noise complaint, it would leave me with a lot of explaining to do. Oh and if there’s an emergency-,”

Despite the wolf’s uncharacteristic good mood Nino finally groaned, sighing as audibly as possible and interrupting her.

“Okay okay fine I get it, I’ll leave you to it, but please remember to reach out to me if you need me. I taught you how remember? The others can do it for you too.”

Nino groaned again, nodding moodily… but he didn’t fool her. Despite his increasing range of comfort with his new form he still hadn’t gotten the hang of controlling when his tail was wagging, always managing to give himself away.

Madame Bustier took a moment, and smiled. She nodded once and said, “Alright then, I hope you have fun Nino I really do. I know it will be great, I hope to hear all about it on Monday so please enjoy your weekend, alright?”

He barked at that and jumped forward, nudging Carter out of the way and sending him skittering backwards a little so he could lean his full weight into her legs. His weight and strength forced her to shift her footing but she knew to interpret this as both a friendly gesture and as a goodbye, until next time. She returned it as best as she could and said her final goodbye, holding her hope in her heart as she went.

Nino watched Ms. B as she left, relishing in the surge of gratefulness he always felt in her presence and prayed that he had been able to communicate how much he appreciated her while also having a little bit of a back and forth. He still hadn’t gotten to a place where he could communicate in this form the way Alya did, but regardless he was still leagues better at expressing himself then he had been a week ago. The animalistic body language and motions were still stiff and awkward but… it was coming more naturally to him by this point. It wasn’t so repulsive to indulge at least, and it made him more easily understood.

Friday had come again and it found Nino in a much better place then the last one had. He wasn’t… perfect. He honestly wouldn’t even go so far as to say good but… it was Friday. The only real major change his mood had undergone was the fact that he was looking forward to something, which was a new development in his numb, ambling routine. Poor Carter was going mad from sheer boredom and lack of exercise, but as always he was faultlessly patient. Well mostly faultless, he did complain a little but it wasn’t something he blamed Nino for, he genuinely considered the circumstances and Nino’s condition to be completely unrelated things.

But Nino was going to make it up to him, tonight. He had made up his mind as soon as his friends had started to make plans, Adrien having been eager to run back to him after school on Wednesday to tell him that their ideas had been approved. Nino knew that they probably wouldn’t mind playing with Carter if he asked them too, and that maybe this sleepover could be something for Carter to look forward to as well, not that the Shepherd needed any prompting. Even after Ms. B had left Carter was energetically pacing the room, zipping back and forth to sniff all the new cushions.

‘Gross!’ he proclaimed, sneezing at one of the bigger ones but sounding pretty happy about it for whatever reason, just glad for some new stimuli maybe. Nino felt a wave of guilt at that, but shook it off, trotting over himself to investigate a little.

‘Yikes, these do smell really bad… I hope they won’t be able to tell. Is there anything we can do to make it better you think?’

‘We can do this,’ Carter stated, climbing onto it and getting nice and settled before leaning down to start rubbing his face all over it.

He was already on his back rolling around on the sterile, chemical smelling cushion before Nino could say anything, the wolf barking out a laugh as he charged forward to push Carter off of it.

‘Dog smell is not a better smell!’ he growled playfully, laughing again as Carter wiggled out from underneath him to finish what he started. Nino shoved him off at least twice more before giving up, shaking his head as Carter got good and committed to rubbing dog hair over literally everything. ‘Ah yes… thank you Carter.’

‘I’m here to help.’

‘Thanks buddy.’

‘Is the cat coming? Where will he sit?’

Nino paused, looking down his muzzle to glare slightly at the mischievous looking dog, perched readily above the largest of the cushions.

‘…I don’t know what you’re gonna do with that information, so I’m not going to give it to you.’

‘I’ll wait then.’

Nino gave him a solid warning glare but his dog seemed unperturbed, tail wagging happily as he jumped from spot to spot trying to pick his favorite. After a moment Nino huffed, sitting in place and hoping that Adrien would have a good sense of humor about whatever antics Carter might indulge in over the course of the night.

School had ended about three hours ago, the massive crowd of weird and wicked leaving to wherever it is they all went when the bell dismissed them. Nino had gotten used to passing the time by sticking his head out in the gap in the door, listening to the school as it swelled and bowed and quieted, until he was seemingly alone again with his dog. This time however he was listening for something slightly different, hoping to pick out the footsteps of his friends before too much more time passed away.

Adrien was the only one who had stopped by briefly before running home, checking in to let him know that everyone would be back in a few hours after they picked up some things. They couldn’t bring all their stuff to school without people asking a lot of questions, so for his sake they decided to be subtle about the whole thing. Still though he had hoped that Marinette might arrive first, since she apparently lived very nearby. He wasn’t sure what they would do on their own but… he would try and encourage her to talk so he could listen, as was usually his method when Adrien came by himself. For the thousandth time since Wednesday it occurred to him again that he really wasn’t sure how this was going to go, knowing he was going to be slightly on the outside just because he couldn’t speak as easily as they could. Still though… if they had fun and he was allowed to sit and listen then that would be nice too.

He sank into himself a little as he continued to reflect, and he settled down to wait. He had been fending off his nerves all day and was genuinely really trying to just be excited and not worry about anything at all. What was the worst that would happen? He had spent enough time in this form to know that he wasn’t going to lash out at anyone and hurt them, not unless something entirely new overcame him. And if that were to happen, what could he possibly do regardless? No… it was comforting to him that the idea seemed paranoid, even considering the circumstance. No, it was much more likely that a dark mood would overtake him rather than anything else, and his friends had taken great pains to assure him that if that were to happen that he had every permission in the world to excuse himself. No one was expecting miracles or leaps and bounds. No one was trying to fix something that couldn’t be fixed. They just wanted to spend time getting to know him as best as they could… and he wanted to give them something to know. Something other than this…

Something to know him by. That was all.

He sighed deeply, pushing out the huge huff of air and using it as a physical que to get over himself. He promised he wasn’t going to ruin it, so he needed to keep it together.

He jumped a little when Carter unexpectedly slumped down next to him, the Shepard rolling into his side and sighing a little as well if only because it seemed like the thing they were doing right now. Carter rolled his eyes up to look at him to check that yes indeed this is what we’re doing right now, just to make sure, and the action made Nino chuckle a little despite his swelling of nerves.

‘How are we doing?’ Carter asked him gently, rolling his head a little to make eye contact a bit easier and looking pretty adorable in the process.

‘I’m a bit nervous for my new friends to come over,’ Nino admitted after a while, deciding to be honest. ‘I’m not sure how it’s going to go…’

‘It’s okay! I’m here. And the fox and the girl and the cat will be here soon. Does that make you nervous?’

Nino considered the question, not sure how to phrase it in a way that Carter would understand and still trying to keep an ear out for their approach. It wouldn’t be too long now.

‘I just…,’ Nino laid his head down on the ground. ‘I want them to like me. I want them to know me a little better and I don’t know how to do that.’

‘I can help! I know a lot of things about you, the things that matter. I can tell them, if you want. But I think they already know.’

Nino paused, rolling his own head to the side to look at Carter after a moment. He felt that familiar fondness for his dog creeping up on him again and he couldn’t help it as his tail wagged just a little.

‘Oh yeah? What kinds of things.’

‘The important things. You like the rain and staying up late, and food that makes me sneeze. You don’t like it when I get your bed wet but you never get too mad even if you pretend to be. You’re good and kind and lonely, and you let me help even if I don’t know how. You try really hard. And you’re very brave.’

Carter’s own tail was thumping as he looked at his boy, muzzle parted in a happy grin while relaying his list. He had many more things he could think of, but he was trying to think of the most important ones that his new friends might need to know if they didn’t already.

The wolf was staring at him in shock, something undeniably soft present in his eyes.

‘You laugh a lot! And you’re laughing more, again. You take care of me even when you don’t feel well and you try and make other people happy even when you’re not very happy-,’

‘Carter…’

‘You share your food and keep me safe, you like cats which is fine. You like me more, which is good-‘

‘Carter, stop. I can’t handle it when you do this.’

The dog made to speak again but Nino elected instead to roll on top of him, squishing him down in a desperate attempt to get him to stop. Carter yipped in surprised and started trying to wiggle his way out but Nino effortlessly prevented it, looking down at him and quickly stooping his head to nudge him gently. He took the time to say what he should always say more.

‘I love you. You know that right?’

Carter paused instantly in his struggle, seeming to consider the question for a moment from his position at the bottom of the dog pile.

‘… of course I know that!’ The Shepherd barked and leapt back into his struggle with earnest, seemingly outraged at the suggestion that he didn’t and Nino pretended to be thrown by it, when in reality the canine didn’t stand a chance against him. Nino allowed himself to be pinned instead by an indignant Carter, who stood over him to say. ‘I love you! You know that right?’

‘Of course I know buddy. I know.’

‘I love you!’ he reiterated, just to be sure. ‘So don’t be nervous, alright? I know you and I love you. And they’ll know you and they’ll love you too. And maybe you’ll get to know them too. Or maybe not. It’s just one night, they’ll come back for lunch and you can try then too.’

Nino let out a breath he had been holding, focusing on what his dog was saying and letting it fill him with warmth, nodding his head awkwardly after a moment in an attempt to curb his unease. Carter was right, he was usually at least sort of right… it was just one night. He couldn’t put the weight of the world on one night in, he had more time… so long as they kept coming by and he kept up the strength to go and meet them.

That was something that kept popping up, something in his darkest moments he had distantly been resigned to never feeling again.

Just a vague kind of assurance that there was some sort of future out there. Something even small to look forward to. Like lunch or friends, or school. It was okay to feel scared and hopeless now… maybe it would be better soon.

He just had to keep moving forward to find out.

Carter looked like he was going to keep on with his list of important things given the opportunity when he abruptly became aware of Nino’s distraction, the wolf angling towards the door and growing still in a way that Carter knew to copy as soon as he saw it.

Sure enough, his boy had heard something he hadn’t right away.

‘I think that’s them, off boy!’ Nino said in a hurry, shooing Carter off of him and scrambling to his feet. Nino gave himself a quick and nervous shake, trying to dislodge some of the dust from his fur. He fussed for a second, trying to sort out how many of them there were and focusing on the sound.

It was easiest to sort out their voices, still indistinct and far away but they all had different tones. Adrien was the easiest to separate quickly, and Marinette’s high bouncing words second. Alya didn’t seem to be speaking much in that exact second, but the moment she spoke up at all her more alto oriented range was clear to him, directly in the middle.

He couldn’t help that his tail was wagging, his anxious discomfort surprisingly not enough to quell his eagerness, in the moment. His room was unpleasant and the cushions were… kind of a mess and sure it was about as dusty and crappy as always in here but… his tail slowed, just a little, embarrassment taking its place in his mind. As they got closer the feeling grew, and he hung his head a little as he absorbed his poor attempt at having tried to be ready for them. But after a moment he shook his head again, letting the shake spread through his whole body once more and stood firmly on his paws, forcing himself to hold his head high.

He was going to have a sleepover. He was going to watch a movie with his friends and he was going to have fun doing it, and nobody not even himself was going to ruin it. He let his natural born stubbornness burn in his chest and stood with as much power as he could muster, facing the door and prepared for it. And although Carter would never say it to him for fear that it might upset him somehow, in that moment Nino looked very much like a wolf.

And his dog was very proud of the boy he knew was inside.

Nino and Carter waited together in the middle of the room as their friends finally arrived, the trio still chatting amongst themselves as Adrien knocked on the door politely, calling out ahead.

“Nino! It’s us, we’re gonna come in okay?”

Adrien waited a beat for a deep bark to answer, and when it did he stepped inside with the biggest smile he could offer, barely managing to hold on to all the stuff he had in his arms.

Nino perked up in instant curiosity, looking away for a moment as Alya came in second bearing a box full of something (food, he imagined, based on the smell) and Marinette came in third, seemingly holding nothing.

Marinette actually had less on her than she normally would have, her bag she used for school presumably left at home and only a very small clutch bag hanging on her side. Despite its miniscule size however, she seemed to be struggling with it, flashing Nino a somewhat strained yet warm smile as she hefted it onto one of their dragged out desks they often sat in. The thunk it made on the desktop seemed ridiculously out of place, and it took Adrien running up to him to finally distract him from the oddity.

“Hey man! Sorry we took so long, I was the one who was taking forever and then Marinette and Alya were waiting for me cause I said I’d be right there and- uh, sorry,” Adrien cut off his rambling awkwardly, rubbing at the back of his neck sheepishly as if he really had something to apologize for. Adrien knelt down next to him to be more on his level, laying a hand on Nino’s back as he said it and starting in surprise when the massive animal leaned into him, abruptly turning the motion into a hug of sorts. Adrien was shocked by the sudden affection, but rushed to reciprocate as quickly as he could, a laugh slipping out as he wrapped his arms around the creature and ruffled the fur slightly, reassured by the wolf’s wagging tail.

Adrien figured he could safely take that as an apology accepted, and he was beaming when he stood up again.

“I brought a bunch of blankets from home and some stuff for myself, and also a few other things I thought you might think are cool!” he continued brightly, gesturing to the big ball of stuff he had dropped unceremoniously off to the side, too eager to greet his friend to find a proper place for it just yet. Nino started to head over towards it to investigate, but suddenly remembered his manners and turned back to face his other friends.

Alya was standing near her preferred lunch desk with her box of assorted things left discarded on its tabletop, the kitsune too distracted by Carter’s energetic greeting to unpack it. The Shepherd was bouncing around Marinette’s legs, woofing at her happily as she stooped down to return his enthusiasm. Even as she did though she looked over Carter’s shoulder and made eye contact with Nino, laughing as she battled the dog just to say “Hello Nino! Sorry we’re- oh Carter PLEASE- sorry we’re a little behind! It took me forever to pack up everything I wanted to bring.”

“Girl seriously you’ve practically got a whole building in there,” Alya spoke up. “I TOLD you you didn’t need all that! You could literally just go home for anything you forgot anyways!”

“I had a lot I wanted to bring!” Marinette defended herself, about to say something more before Carter knocked her off balance, sending her sprawling on her back in a fit of giggles.

Alya burst into laughter at that but tried to smother her budding laughter, chuckling as she turned at gave Nino a friendly wave. “Hey Nino, I was on time, for the record, I was just trying to get this menagerie moving.”

In one motion she put her hands on the desk in front of her and seemed to sort of leap, forcing herself up and shifting forms as she did it. Her hands shifted instantly into paws and she was suddenly a fox vaulting clear over the box and the desk and landing agilely in front of him, her two tails swishing out behind her and swaying in greeting.

He reacted this this naturally and lowered his head to her level, tail wagging happily as she sauntered up to him, unafraid of their difference in size. She prodded him once with her angled snout and headbutted his chin and he reciprocated as best as he could without squishing her, the actions making him happy in that weird, unfamiliar way that some things did.

He first felt it when Ms. B had found him in the alleyway, the teacher able to use her body language to get something across to him that he might not have understood normally. And he felt it again, much more potently in Mr. Damocles’ office when he mimicked Nino’s instinctual bow of respect. Every once in a while, there was just a movement or a gesture that appealed directly to this other part of him and though at first it brought him a lot of discomfort Alya had been carefully working with him throughout the week to not mind those things so much. She triggered those odd animalistic responses all the time from him, and he was slowly starting to get used to it.

‘Hi Alya,’ he said finally, though it wasn’t needed. ‘Thanks for coming, sorry the rooms sort of-,’

‘Your rooms fine,’ Alya quickly interrupted him, opening her muzzle in that big foxy grin. ‘It’s gonna be something else by the time Marinette’s through with it, seriously you’ve got no idea how much stuff she’s got in her bag.’

Nino paused, titling his head before looking up at the clutch that had confused him before. ‘Does she have a different bag? Or just that one? Cause uh, that one’s tiny. And heavy I guess.’

He looked down when the fox visibly brightened, the creature running off towards Marinette and laughing out loud. Before Nino could ask Marinette was suddenly struggling to her feet, passing Carter off to the kitsune that came to say hi.

She ran her hands over her dress in an attempt to straighten it out a little as she laughed, putting a hand out towards Nino who gladly came towards her. When he did she placed her hand flat on his head and looked him in the eye, patting her bag with her free hand as she smiled.

“Okay! We’re all here finally so first things first! This is gonna take the most work so I wanted to start right away, if that’s okay with you Nino.” She beamed at him sweetly and he swore you could just feel the kindness that radiated off of her sometimes. She only looked away to open her bag, reaching into it as she continued to talk and ignoring the fact that Nino was openly gaping at her as she did.

Marinette was still leaning into it as she talked excitedly about her ideas, her entire arm lost inside this completely tiny completely ordinary looking bag, and Nino was suddenly reminded that oh yeah. This girl was a witch. He only just remembered.

“So! I know how much you hate your room and how it’s not the most accommodating place ever. It’s fine really, but it can be better and much more comfortable I bet! So I asked my mom about it and she was saying that the first thing to do was to get to cleaning it and then start working with the space! Soooo- oh where is it- ah yes!”

She seemed to struggle with something for a second before getting a grip on whatever it was inside, holding the brim of the bag with one hand as she pulled out the very beginnings of what looked like a long wooden stick.

Nino scrambled backwards and watched in awe (very aware of the fact that Alya was openly laughing at him) as Marinette pulled out an entire broom from her clutch bag, leaning it against the seat and immediately reaching back in for something else, producing what looked like a purple velvet bag and then finally a little duster, attached with its own little purple velvet bag.

Aside from the glamours he had seen and the enchantments around the school, this was the first example of actual magic he had seen up close. Like not the spooky supernatural kind with monsters and beasts, just the sort of…

Mary Poppin’s kind.

Marinette held up her items triumphantly, grinning at him and acknowledging full well that she was showing him something he’d never seen before. She was just hoping she was erring on the side of ‘cool’ as opposed to ‘scary’. So far the wolf’s shocked expression seemed to be favoring the former.

She held the broom out to him so he could see it, letting him investigate it thoroughly and giggling a little when he sneezed. Sometimes enchantments could do that to people, the misplaced static is exuded sometimes tickling the nose. Or maybe it was the fact that it probably had a lot of dust on it, that too.

“This is my moms!” Marinette explained, clipping her bag shut with one hand until she would need it again. “The cleaning stuff that is, the bag is actually mine. I made it myself and then wove in all the enchantments over the summer, it’s one of the most useful kind of bags a witch can have. It’s called a ‘Bottomless Bag’. I’m sure you can guess what it does,” she giggled, enjoying Nino’s slow rise in interest and excitement and the radiating humor and energy that was present all throughout the room. She could sense Nino’s slight caution too however and thought it would be best to explain.

“You see, my family lives in a bakery and it can get really messy all the time in there, flour settles on everything like you wouldn’t believe, especially if you’re as big handed about it as my father is. And my mom’s workshop can get really out of sorts too. The bakery part of our house is just actually a bakery if you can believe it, I mean my mom puts a little enchantment on the bread sometimes just to be nice but… don’t tell anyone though, that’s actually against the rules, even if it’s usually just good luck charms and other nice things.” She paused for a second, her face screwing up as she attempted to regain her train of thought. “Oh! But my mom has a workshop too where she makes charms and magic objects and repairs stuff for other people, and that gets so torn up when she’s really busy. So, ages ago my mom made this broom to clean around the house for us and she’s letting me borrow it for now so long as I bring it back. And she lent me the duster too for the little spots, I charged them both before I came.”

“That’s great Marinette!” Adrien exclaimed, crossing over to the desk to examine them curiously. He turned the duster over in his hands before seeming to realize something, putting it down quickly and backing away. “Oops, uh I’ll let you do that one.” And Marinette giggled a little.

Nino was sitting now, looking between the two in confusion when Alya leapt to his side (followed by a panting Carter), helpfully explained ‘Adrien’s got a feather allergy. Combine that with dust and he’d probably be miserable before too long.’

‘Wait so, are they seriously just going to clean the room themselves? Like, the objects? They just magically move around and clean it all up?’

“Yeah you got it,” Alya answered out loud now, attempting to keep everyone involved. “Witches can enchant all kinds of things, this is just one of those household spells that magic users have to make their lives easier. Some assembly required, but no labor needed. Pretty handy.”

‘That’s so cool!’ Nino barked, bouncing up on his paws to stand against the desk, sniffing at her bag curiously. ‘Tell her I think that’s really cool. What else does she have in here?’

“Nino says that that’s awesome,” Alya relayed, smiling at his eagerness and glad to see that he was in a good mood so far. “He also wants to know what else is in the bag.”

“Oh gosh everything,” Marinette said, sounding a little exasperated with herself, which made everyone laugh. “I was trying to think about stuff that you might need so I’ve got a whole bunch of stuff my mom gave me, stuff to help clean the room and decorate it a little, stuff for Carter, a DVD player, like 40 DVDs.”

The wolf grew still for a second, his large ears swiveling up at her voice and were eventually followed by his eyes, looking at her as if he hadn’t quite heard her right. Then after a moment, his ears swiveled back on his head and she could feel an abrupt flood of emotion. Guilt, gratitude, shock, embarrassment. Something warm and hard to name, something cold and hard to beat.

A whine slipped out as he looked between her and the bag, and Marinette didn’t wait for Alya to translate, already shaking her head.

“Nino I want to give you these things. They’re old and my family doesn’t need them anymore, my mother set all these things aside so we could give them to you, they want to help. I told them how barren your room was and it was everything I could do to keep my parents from charging over here themselves. Trust me it’s nothing grand really but, I hope they’ll be useful to you.”

“I brought you some things too! I’m not sure that you’ll like them or need them for anything but I wanted to share some of what I had.” Adrien walked back towards his things and pulled out a large woven bag that was of a style that Nino couldn’t say he had ever seen before. From it though he pulled out a handful of normal looking clothes for Nino to see, smiling at him softly. He packed them away and also patted the side of the bag, taping something solid and metal sounding. “I also have some uh, Never Never things, if you’d like to see them at some point. I think you’ll like them but I’d understand if you didn’t.”

“I didn’t have much to bring I’m sorry,” Alya said genuinely, gesturing with her head at the food she brought. “Kitsunes don’t really own a lot of physical things, so I brought some food.”

‘No one had to bring anything!’ Nino interjected, Carter tense and on alert now at the sound of Nino’s distress. But… it wasn’t quite angry. No, there was still something stunned about it that told Carter that perhaps this wasn’t a bad thing. ‘I- I appreciate it so much but please, I have no way to pay any of you back. I’ve got nothing to give I just-,’

“It’s not a loan that needs repaying Nino,” Alya answered immediately, her voice soft but gaze unyielding in that intense way of hers. “There is nothing to pay back. You don’t pay people back for gifts.”

Adrien nodded quickly in agreement, seeming very firm on this but still smiling gently. “You don’t owe us anything Nino I promise, we just want to help.”

There was a sudden and great silence that fell over them then. Adrien and Marinette looked nervously to Alya but she had nothing to translate, the fox waiting in as much suspense as anyone else as the wolf fell silent.

Nino fell back onto all fours and took an uncertain step backwards towards his bed… and everyone waited. Waited to see if he would retreat, or argue, or anything at all. Marinette reached out into the web of emotions that colored her life and tried to make sense of what she saw there, and it was so confusing.

The boy was overwhelmed, emoting through the body of a wolf whose head hung low not in anger but in deep thought. He shifted on uncertain paws and inside himself he was grappling with a concept that confused him. How kindness for the sake of kindness could have any place here. In this borrowed, mismatched room.

Eventually, the animal seemed the sway, a deep sound getting lost in its chest as it cast about for a moment as if it were lost. Marinette looked at Alya in the corner of her eye, hoping for something to go off of but the foxes head was tilted, struggling herself to grasp what he must be saying.

Nino looked a little helplessly between Alya and Marinette, a whine escaping him again as Alya fretted a little in place.

“I- just slow down a little that didn’t… I don’t quite understand.” Alya suddenly sounded in the silence, apologetic as she tried to focus.

Abruptly though Nino huffed in frustration, casting around a little bit more for help before dropping to all fours. Marinette gasped when he pushed his weight gently against her, bumping her legs with his head and whining again. It prompted her to quickly stoop down and hold him almost sheerly out of instinct, the creature pushing against her in a desperate bid to communicate.

“It’s okay,” Marinette suddenly assured him, her heart aching with sympathy as she boldly wrapped her arms into the thick fur around his neck. It was so warm and dense, Nino pushing his head into the space of her neck to be as close to her as he could manage. “I think I understand… It’s okay.”

“I- um, Marinette,” Alya interjected, padding quietly alongside and firmly fixed on reading whatever Nino must be saying. “He wants you to try and feel what he’s feeling. He knows you can do that, he just, wants you to focus on it. He doesn’t know how to say it.”

Marinette stiffened a little at that, mentally preparing herself for it. After a moment she nodded into his fur, growing still as she allowed herself to fall into that web that no one else could see.

It was nearly physical, condensed into the space the animal occupied and having a kind of color to it when she closed her eyes. It was green and dark, inky blue, pearls of moonlight white trapped beneath dark spreading fingers. She found the things that she had seen before, that something cold and hard to beat… and something warm that had no name.

It was the color of gold.

Nino could feel it as Marinette leaned into him, doing as he asked as he did everything he could to pour what he was feeling into his mind. He didn’t know how to say it, or if there were even words for it. And he knew too that this must be so overwhelming for her, but that’s how it was for him. He thought about the forest and finding Carter. He thought about the alleyway and that day at lunch, where a monster flinched and he lost his grip. He knew that maybe it was too much, but he needed to show her that so he could show her this.

So he could show her how much better she was making it, how much better they were all making this.

He held on to that warm, impossibly grateful feeling and let it overstep any shame or weakness. He just leaned into her… and did what he could to say thank you.

When he pulled away Marinette had a hand to her mouth, and she nodded once. He felt guilty that she looked like she was going to cry, but when she dropped her hand she was smiling.

Nino was partially worried that he had shared too much… but sometimes it felt like there were only extremes these days. Maybe that’s why he had been so excited about a normal movie night, but here he was making everything heavy again…

He just wanted to be understood.

Marinette seemed to get that, on some level at least. She looked around a little embarrassed, trying to collect herself but still absently holding onto him with one hand.

“Oh, Nino…” she finally spoke, laughing a bit though it sounded breathless. She smiled, her entire expression soft. “You’re welcome.”

His tail wagged even if his ears drooped, looking a little exhausted by the effort. For a time it seemed like no one knew what to do, the emotional moment slipping slowly into awkwardness, before abruptly and a little bit clumsily Marinette stood up, laughing weirdly and fumbling for her broom.

“Well, I um, I didn’t bring these gifts for nothing! It’s probably going to take them awhile to do their job so I should probably set them going. There’s a lot of dust to, uh… dust!”

“Yeah, for sure!” Adrien chimed in for the first time in seemingly ages, smiling in a picture-perfect way in an attempt to deflect the weirdness in the room. “Uh, I bet you’ve never seen anything like this before Nino, it’s really cool!”

The wolf was still a little wilted in on himself, his tail thumping slowly but lacking energy. Marinette and Adrien traded a quick glance, coming towards each other in mutual understanding. Despite her best efforts to do so in the past, Marinette could not completely disregard the fact that her and Adrien did tend to make a good team, when it counted. They weren’t as flawless as he claimed and there was a lot that got in the way but… that was a story for another time.

In this moment though, they didn’t need to say it to know that they needed to work together. For Nino’s sake.

Nino was somewhat jarringly thrown into an in-depth magic lesson, a combination of equal parts awkwardness and good intentions leading to a slightly ungraceful effort to change the subject. It was weird, and sudden, and clumsy… but it was earnest.

Marinette was still a little thrown off from the encounter so Adrien took over at first, explaining briefly how magic things like brooms got made. He appeared to be pretty knowledgeable on the subject, but Nino was not retaining much of anything, and that didn’t seem to be the point of it. He gratefully took the cover it offered him, using the lecture as an opportunity to get his act together.

He hadn’t meant to make everything so serious. He just got so frustrated. It was horrible, not being able to say what he was thinking, not like he was ever particularly good at that even when he could talk. Still though, he didn’t even have the chance to get it wrong, and it had gotten the best of him.

At the thought he briefly glanced behind him, looking for Alya who was laying on the ground a short distance away with Carter. The two of them were waiting, Alya allowing the conversation to move on without her and Carter nervously keeping an eye on his boy, a little lost but trying not to intrude.

Nino waited to try and catch Alya’s eyes, but she didn’t look at him in time and Nino was forced to turn back around in order to be polite, Adrien still explaining something. He didn’t want too much time to pass before he had the chance to apologize for getting frustrated with her, it hadn’t been her fault that he couldn’t get it out. She was doing something great for him, it wasn’t fair to only use her as a vehicle to talk to the others.

“-it might be easier just to show you!” Marinette said pointedly all of a sudden, Nino snapping to attention with a little anxiety, afraid he had been asked a question when he hadn’t been listening. Luckily though that didn’t seem to be it, Marinette taking her broom and holding it out in front of her.

“So this here,” Marinette lectured smartly, tapping a nearly invisible band of marks set into the wood around the middle of the handle, “is the enchantment line Adrien mentioned! And it holds all the power needed to make it work. So now, with all the enchantments set and prepared for all I have to do is activate it!”

“Which,” Adrien chimed in, “can be customized by the witch or wizard who enchanted it the first time!”

Nino nodded, totally confused but pretending like he hadn’t been absorbed in his own thoughts. Blah blah Mary Poppins, Fantasia, Harry Potter. Yup yeah totally got it. Please don’t quiz me.

“In the case of these ones, my mom always sets similar items to activate with the same signal, so that all the cleaning stuff cleans and all the baking stuff bakes. For these two guys, it’s the same activation. A snap!”

To prove her point Marinette cheerily raised her hand, looking at Nino excitedly as she did exactly that, and snapped her fingers.

Instantly the broom quaked in place, shaking only briefly before sitting up from its position in Marinette’s hand with an air of duty and intention about it. Carter was on his feet immediately as the broom ghosted across the floor, too busy with itself to notice that it was being fervently tailed by a very unhappy canine.

‘Don’t like that!’ he barked very pointedly, ‘No no no, I don’t like that!’

Carter inserted himself into the situation all at once after a long period of sitting patiently on the outside, letting the others do as they liked but he had to put a paw down on whatever it was exactly that was happening right now. He was content to sit out and let Nino have his time but somebody had to see to this situation, and it only occurred to him that perhaps he shouldn’t when he felt the full weight of Nino holding him down.

‘Stop! No don’t touch it it’s okay, I know it’s weird dude but it’s fine!’

Carter twisted underneath the hold somewhat indignantly, once again frustrated that he and Nino didn’t ever seem to be on the same page about what was and wasn’t a priority. ‘That is not something I like, I don’t like it.’ Carter looked away to see the culprit moving about the place busily, starting to kick up an awful lot of dust that got quickly sorted away into another thing that Carter didn’t like, a limp sack of cloth that gathered whatever the broom thought fit. Something else moved over head and a bundle of feathers started getting awfully busy with itself doing nearly the same thing and he was not having that at all, aware of the fact that the others were laughing but deciding that he was the only reasonable one.

‘Carter please! I said no! This is not something we bark at, Marinette brought them it’s okay! It’s actually kind of cool!’

‘It is not!’

Nino was at a slight loss for what to do, looking up at the things Marinette had thought to bring and feeling something weirdly giddy in his chest, somehow distracted enough from his funk to laugh a little. It- they really just snapped to! He had watched her do it! Just like that she snapped her fingers and they sat up and got to business! Even right that second the broom and duster were lazily whizzing about, not even particularly rushed as they got about doing their jobs and drifting purposefully though the air like they floated on strings he couldn’t see or touch. They both had that weird static about them that magic seemed to have, only just barely perceptible and making that giddiness he felt swell.

But here he had Carter, who had always to this point managed to follow Nino’s orders no matter how much he disagreed with him. It seemed though that this was some kind of line that he was very firm on.

Nino tried not to laugh at his loyal canine friend as he continued to postulate about why this time he was definitely right, knowing that this almost definitely had everything to do with Carter’s dislike of brooms in general. And mops, he’d had a very firm stance on the issue since he was a puppy so Nino was made abruptly aware of the fact that he might not actually win this argument.

Alya was giving a play by play of the situation as Nino argued with his dog, the trio laughing into their hands and trying not to draw attention to themselves as Nino attempted diplomacy. But seeing as he couldn’t give a very convincing reason as to why the broom was moving, he seemed to be getting nowhere fast.

‘Okay Carter listen! I’ll make you a deal okay, I will let you watch the broom and the duster. You’re in charge of them okay, how about that? If you really think they’re a big deal then you can be on guard duty and make sure they don’t come after anybody. Yeah, that’s your job, okay?’ Nino looked his dog in the eye, the German Shepherd struggling less as he came to the conclusion that Nino might be taking him seriously. And, despite how funny it was, Nino was actually trying to take him seriously.

After everything that this wonderful dog had put up with to this point the least Nino could do was validate his concerns.

‘Okay bud, you keep an eye on these guys. If they smack somebody or leave the room you let me know and we’ll take ‘em down, but until they do that then please leave them alone and let them do what they’re doing okay? We got a deal?’

Nino waited until Carter was completely still, the dog still locked on target but at least hearing him out. After awhile Carter finally said, ‘Okay. I will watch them.’

The wolf sighed audibly, signaling to everyone that some peace had been brokered as he finally let Carter out from underneath him. The dog gave himself a pointed shake but wasted no time getting into position, looking to all the world like a police dog ready to go should anyone make an unexpected move.

“Oh man,” Alya snickered, the fox sitting up high on a desk now with a paw to her muzzle and mirth in her eyes. “That was so funny.”

“I guess I should have checked in with Carter before I did that huh?” Marinette tried to sympathize but giggled a little anyways. “I shouldn’t forget that he’s here that’s not fair to him.”

“Oh dogs are like that, you probably couldn’t have convinced him to like it even if you tried,” Adrien shrugged, surprised when Nino came up next to him but looking away at Alya and failing to notice that Nino was shaking his head

‘Don’t tease him please,’ Nino came to Carter’s defense, even if it was pretty funny. ‘How is he, supposed to know? He’s never seen it.’

He waited for a beat before looking at Alya, who was laughing still and had once again missed what he said. He felt a spark of irritation at that as everyone continued to giggle… but on second thought he smothered the feeling, reminding himself of his earlier sentiment. It wasn’t her job to be official translator, it was up to him to try and make himself clear. So after a second he just let it slide, giving everyone the same grace they always gave him and let it go with a sigh.

Nino had watched the magical items work for a while, doing his best to let them distract him from more complicated thoughts and just trying to enjoy himself. After only a handful of moments though there was just too much dust in the air for him to handle, soon enough all the critters in the room were sneezing.

“Okay guys maybe let’s step out for a sec and let the broom do it’s thing?” Alya suggested before long, already edging towards the door with her snout all wrinkled in distaste.

“That might be a good idea,” Marinette agreed, Adrien already out the door and letting out a mighty sneeze that echoed down the hallway, rousing a giggle from the girls. Nino hesitated a little, looking over his shoulder at Carter.

‘Carter, we’re going to be leaving the room cause it’s too dusty in here. I think it’s really okay if you just leave them to it, doesn’t it bother your nose? Come out with us.’

‘No, I don’t want them wandering off,’ Carter announced simply, his guarded position a lot closer to the door then before for the sake of some sort of clean air, but the dog not looking keen on leaving.

‘I don’t really want to leave you here by yourself, what if we walk around? I don’t know if they’ll need to go to the restroom or something. Do you promise you’re okay with it if I leave for a second?’

Carter didn’t answer right away, looking back over his shoulder at his boy and then farther back still at the fox who stood waiting in the doorway, considering the question.

After a moment he looked back to Nino, tail thumping a handful of times. ‘I trust them with you. I’ll watch our stuff, and howl if I need you.’

‘Promise you’re good?’

‘Promise.’

Nino decided that this final sentiment was good enough, trusting the school enough by this point to be comfortable leaving him on his own. Plus, Carter had wandered off on a few scouting missions of his own since their arrival, so it wasn’t unreasonable to separate for a while.

The wolf turned and headed for the wide-open door, the two-tailed fox agilely turning as well and padding out into the hallway with him. Nino was distracted briefly by her presence next to him, looking down at her and feeling that slight pang of guilt. Before he could stop himself he nudged her slightly, ducking his face to manage it and prodding her shoulder with his snout. She turned and looked up at him as soon as he did, but found no reason in his expression or words offered. It was just a touch, and after a moment she returned it, having to pop up on her back paws to do it and making him laugh.

‘You good?’ she asked subtly, only to him as they joined their friends and made a circle, the others talking amongst themselves already and gesturing to the hallway.

‘Yeah I’m good. Thanks for translating, I just wanted to let you know that I appreciate it… I shouldn’t have snapped at you back there. I’m sorry.’

Unsurprisingly she rolled her eyes, and he at least had the good humor to be pleased that he had seen that coming. ‘Oh please, that was nothing. I’m the middle child of three other siblings, that was not what snapping at someone is.’ She snickered, ‘You’re good Wolfie.’

‘Wolfie?’ he scoffed instantly, the fox making a high pitched and very odd chittering sound that mixed perfectly with his mental imagining of her laughter, the two completing each other somehow in his head. ‘You can’t be serious.’ He put as much disbelief into it as he could, huffing even. ‘That’s rich coming from you Tails.’

‘Oooh,’ she cooed, swishing her two tails at him and chuckling again, ‘Very creative.’

He scoffed again but laughed too, allowing a chuckle at it and shaking his head. Whatever, he supposed, he was surprised he had made it this far without a nickname anyways. And it was a relief to know that she wasn’t angry with him.

Their little moment ended when Adrien suddenly referred to the entire group, leaning against the hallway wall with his arms crossed and gesturing down one way with his head. “Interested in looking around at all Nino? I don’t know how much you’ve gone and seen, would give us something to do until we can get back to setting up your room. Marinette says it should only take like twenty minutes, but we can just wait here if you’re more comfortable with that.”

The group waited on his response, and it didn’t take Nino very long to decide. Sure he hesitated but… the sun was nearly set and he had his friends with him, it was a little different then looking around with Carter would have been. Neither of them knew what was what when it was the two of them, at least with this group he had a little more information. It didn’t make him entirely comfortable but… he was trying to branch out a little today.

After a moment’s consideration Nino nodded, and was happy to receive Adrien’s encouraging smile. “Cool! I’ve never been here after dark before, and the only non-used classroom I’ve ever seen is yours. Do you think we could get into any of the other human ones?”

“Adrien!” Marinette wasted no time in scolding him, the Cat Sidhe already pushing off from his lounging position and starting down the hall further into the wing. “We said look around not break in.”

“What are we breaking? I just want to look! They’re all unused, aren’t they? Maybe we could find some cool human stuff!” Adrien looked over his shoulder to grin at her, beckoning her to follow as Nino and Alya had already started to. She opened and closed her mouth once as if to protest, but he could see her curiosity starting to take over slightly.

“Well… I mean if they’re open they’re open I guess.”

“That’s the spirit! Come on let’s go look.”

With Adrien’s exuberant cheer the troop started off down the hall, thankfully going further into unused territory rather than closer to the active center. As far as Nino was capable of sensing there was nobody in this wing but him, and while he had looked down the hall at the line of doors and gone off to find a bathroom in the past he hadn’t looked much further than that. If they were all truly human classrooms before getting taken over by the other realms then he had a somewhat reasonable expectation of what they would see anyways, but if it was interesting to them then he’d tag along.

They trotted off down the hall, Nino unable to keep himself from always keeping an ear out but trying to stay engaged in Adrien’s commentary as well. Being out in the open put him on edge… but he was giving it his best effort.

They all came to a stop in front of a rather large classroom, Adrien peeking around through the windows that looked inside like a fishbowl and announcing what he could see, Marinette curiously joining him. But for the animals low to the ground who didn’t feel like expending the energy to try and look, it was a little less interesting.

‘Um, so uh,’ Nino spoke after a while, keeping an ear in Adrien’s direction for keywords that might mean he needed to listen but facing towards Alya. ‘You’ve got sisters?’

‘Mhm,’ Alya answered, somehow still looking entertained at his poor attempt at small talk despite the fact that surely no fox could be that expressive. ‘Three of them, one older and two younger. The younger ones are twins.’

‘Oh cool! That’s cool. Um, what are their names?’

‘Nora is my older sister, and then my twin sisters are called Etta and Ella. My mom’s name is Marlena, she is a very, very strong Kitsune, everybody respects her. My father’s name is Otis,’ she suddenly parted her muzzle in a foxy smile. ‘He’s human.’

‘H- wait what?!’ Nino barked in shock, Adrien about jumping out of his skin in surprise and clinging to the wall.

“Nino come on, warn a guy!” Adrien whined crossly, but it took one look down to realize that Nino wasn’t listening, gaping openly at a snickering fox.

‘How can your father be human!? Are you serious?’

‘It’s true! He’s as human as they come, only one in the family, obviously.’

‘Wait so you’re… part… human?’

‘Well, no.’ The fox paused, leaning down to scratch at her ear in sudden thought. ‘I guess you wouldn’t know but, Kitsunes marry human men all the time. Well not all the time, but it does happen. My mom is pretty old and has been knocking around the human world for a really long time, but one day she found a human man and fell completely in love with him. Any children born from a kitsune are a kitsune, so me and all my sisters are like my mother. My dad is still just a regular human, but he loves my mother very much. It doesn’t matter to him that they aren’t the same.’

She watched his face carefully, still finding it funny but understanding that it was probably a big deal to him.

‘I- so, your father is just a totally normal human, how did he meet a kitsune? Does he know? Like, he must know right?’

‘Of course he knows! My family is honest, no matter what anyone says,’ Alya huffed, her tone suddenly a little sharper. ‘Maybe some kitsunes don’t tell their husbands the truth but not my mother. She pretended to be human for a little while when they were dating but that’s not the same and she didn’t like doing it she just wanted to get to know him better. When she decided she was in love with him she told him the truth.’

‘… how did he take it?’

Alya didn’t respond right away, looking off down the hall and aware of the fact that Marinette and Adrien were watching them closely, obviously interested but not wanting to interrupt. Eventually, as they started moving on to look at other rooms she said, ‘Not well, at first. My mom said he panicked and ran away and it broke her heart. She knew that could happen, but she didn’t think it would. When she tells the story she says that she wandered the human world lost and heartbroken. She lost her ability to shapeshift too, she was so distraught. She was locked in her fox form for a year.’

The wolf blanched at that, and Alya suddenly regretted saying it. ‘An entire year?!’ Nino barked, and Marinette recoiled at the sudden fear she felt in the air though she couldn’t hear what was being said. ‘A whole year? Are you serious, really an entire year?’

‘She wasn’t trying to get better! She wasn’t trying to move forward or pull it together, she was devastated. She didn’t want to find herself again, and you have to understand how short a year is to her Nino. My moms over a hundred and twenty years old, I know that seems extreme to you, but to her it was probably like nursing a breakup for a few months.’

Nino paused in his fretting, distracted slightly by the whole 120 years thing so Alya leapt on the opportunity, trying to cover up her faux pas. ‘The way she tells it she says that she was so bitter about human men that a year later she found herself being tracked by a foolish human hunter who didn’t realize what he was really following. She outran him effortlessly for ages, but he never gave up and never stopped tracking her, so finally one day she said she just turned around and headed straight for him, wanting to terrify him and drive him away for good. But you know who she found when she got there?’

The fox paused, tilting her head and waiting. She gestured with her paw impatiently, twirling it in that kind of gesture that urged Nino to participate.

‘Was it, your father?’

‘Yup!’ Alya yipped, grinning again. ‘Can you believe it? A year later he left home and dedicated himself to tracking her down. He had spent that entire time trying to learn about the things that are secret from most humans, and by the end of it decided that he wanted to find her. He hunted everywhere for her, and stayed on her trail no matter what, and when she finally ran at him to confront him he told her he was in love with her and that he wanted to know her, the real her. That it didn’t matter to him that she wasn’t human, that he didn’t believe the lies he had uncovered about Kitsunes when he investigated. He knew my mother was an honest soul and asked her if she would let a human love her.’ Alya narrowed her eyes happily, her tails swaying behind her. ‘And they’ve been together ever since. Pretty amazing right?’

‘I can’t believe it… he just, loved her so much that he gave up his normal life and married her?’

‘Well he didn’t really give up anything, he might live in the Farlands now but he still goes home for the holidays and keeps up with his family. My mom goes too sometimes but no one knows about us, their children. They decided a long time ago that they didn’t want us to have to pretend, so I’ve never met any of my human family. Maybe one day when I can pretend convincingly enough that I’m human, but for now I’d give myself away I think.’

‘Well whats so bad about them knowing? Like, your dads human and he knows, maybe they’d understand.’

‘Or maybe they wouldn’t. My mom told my dad the truth because she loved him and trusts him, but my cousins? My aunts? It would be a big decision to tell them anything, and probably against the law. There are a lot of rules about exposing humans to the other realms, but it’s honestly a little hard to discipline anyone for. My mom gets away with it because she married the guy, and that places HIM under a lot of laws too. It’s a little taboo maybe, but Kitsunes are kind of taboo anyways.’ She shrugged, stopping as Adrien found a new room to investigate.

Nino lapsed into silence at that, the creature abruptly in very deep thought. Alya padded alongside him and couldn’t help but feel a little uncomfortable, worried now that her attempts to relate to him had just gone south. He was so quiet and serious sometimes that it was hard to tell, but he didn’t keep her waiting for too long. Eventually he turned to look at her again.

‘That’s a cool story. I didn’t know that humans could… get involved in anything. I just- I thought that… humans being near things that aren’t human like, wouldn’t that put them in danger? I’m not trying to be offensive I’m sorry, I’m just trying to understand.’

‘You’re fine, and that’s what my mom is for, obviously.’ Alya snickered, talking through a light argument that had broken out between Marinette and Adrien off to the side. ‘Trust me, you’ve never seen a Century Kitsune, that’s what my mom is, and what I’ll be one day when I’m old enough. Nobody messes with a Century Kitsune, nobody ever. He’s her mate so he’s safe just by association, plus with my mom’s illusions and how well protected our territory is, nothing bad would ever happen to him. He can walk around the Farlands no problem. People notice that he’s married and they just leave him be, because if a human is happily married to something that holds territory in the area then odds are they don’t want to risk making anyone angry.’

‘She sounds kind of scary.’

‘Oh yeah! The scariest, and the best. I love my mom; you’d probably really like her. I bet she’d like you too.’

‘Yeah, for sure…’

Nino fell quiet again, looking off towards where Marinette and Adrien where bantering about something but not really paying attention.

After a while Alya sat next to him and poked him lightly in the side.

‘You okay?’

‘Yeah,’ he answered, surprisingly. Smiling wolfishly even, but his tone seemed… sad. ‘Just thinking about something, is all.’

Alya was on the verge of deciding whether or not it was just best to let that go, when a very audible click hit her ears. Her and Nino both looked up at the source, Marinette doing a deliberately poor job of keeping Adrien from opening the door he had found.

“Adrien I’m not sure we should go in here,” Marinette warned halfheartedly, clearly looking over his shoulder anyways into the windowless room. “We could get in trouble…”

“Come on Mari I know you want to look, and you said!” Adrien argued, opening the door all the way now. “You said if it was open it’s open, you said that. And it’s unlocked so it’s clearly not off limits. It doesn’t count as breaking and entering if all you’re doing is entering.”

Adrien looked around the group for support, Alya and Nino seemingly done with whatever they had been talking about and looking into the room curiously. Adrien tried not to notice that Nino seemed to have lost energy again, lost in thought but temporarily distracted by the unlocked room.

That was all the justification Adrien needed to do something arguably mischievous, stepping inside without any more deliberation. Marinette gave another hollow complaint but followed right after him so he knew it was all for show, the witch immediately looking for a light switch so they could start looking around, and he rolled his eyes.

‘Uh oh, Adrien found an unlocked one,’ Nino muttered to Alya, changing the subject in a way that brooked no argument, so even if it made her huff a bit she allowed it. It was his business, she supposed.

‘Mhm. Ms. B said we could walk around didn’t she? And it’s not like anyone even uses these rooms.’ Alya was going to enter but Nino walked in first, forcing her to move along behind him. He looked around once inside but didn’t seem terribly interested in it. She on the other hand was a little more intrigued.

Nino knew without having to look too hard that this was clearly some kind of side conference room meant for faculty, probably even used as a break room for teachers who didn’t want to walk clear across campus to eat their lunch. It was stale and dusty and boring like his room was, the tile and wall paneling pretty much identical but there were a whole lot of cabinets that he didn’t have, implying that this space was probably also used as storage.

There was a low counter along one side that Adrien was investigating while the girls headed towards the cabinets, and Adrien was pleased to see that Nino electing to join him instead of the others. He had been right in the middle of investigating a very weird smelling spot on the counter, the whole thing coated in an old bitter smell, when Marinette suddenly gasped.

“Oooh guys! There’s stuff in here!”

Adrien immediately whipped around at the mention of random human objects, leaving Nino to sniff at the counter alone as he charged off to take a look.

“Nino come on! Look at this stuff, maybe you know what it is.”

The wolf didn’t come right away, letting everyone bicker between themselves and drag out a few of the more interesting looking boxes. He only left when he concluded that this must have been where a coffee maker used to be, all the useful utensils having been cleared out a long time ago which was a shame. It might have been nice to find a microwave he could come use.

By the time he finally sauntered over Marinette was elbow deep in a massive nest of wires and bulbs, giggling excitedly to herself as she struggled to explain.

“Oh my gosh this is perfect! It’s exactly what Nino needs, its perfect for you! You know what these are right?” She suddenly addressed him, pulling up a large handful of what he easily recognized to be string lights. It was the white and yellow kinds that buildings usually used to decorate for dances or office parties, and by the look of the massive tangle she was holding it was quite a few of them.

Nino nodded in confirmation, sniffing at them curiously when she held them down for him.

“Wouldn’t this be great for your room? I mean I know these are in the school but, I mean they were left here after the school was abandoned so… people don’t need them. We shouldn’t take things but, I mean think about it! You said the overhead lights in your room bug you because of the noise they make right? So you always keep your room dark, but maybe if you wanted to have some lights on anyways that these might not be so noisy! And on top of that they look super cute!”

“Oh, so they’re lights?” Adrien asked, pinching one of the plastic bulbs gently in his fingers. “That’s so cool! I’ve never seen little lights like this, how do they work?”

“You just plug them in! They have to be powered but human buildings have these little spots where you can connect stuff like this to give them energy. Then when they’re activated they have the power needed to give off light. It’s sort of like a luminous charm actually, just with electricity instead of magic.”

Adrien glanced down at Nino for some indication that she was right, not because he particularly doubted her but more so because he wanted to keep him involved. Nino nodded briskly in confirmation again, his tail starting to wag as he looked at the odd bundle of wires Marinette was holding.

“We should take them!” Alya asserted out loud, jumping up onto the table they rested on and tapping the cardboard with her paw. “No one would even notice but we can just tell Ms. B about it on Monday. If she says no we can put them back but I bet you anything she’ll say it’s okay. It’s not stealing if you tell somebody.”

‘Well usually you ask ahead of time,’ Nino said in response, mostly to himself since Alya was busy again and missed it. ‘I don’t know guys, I don’t want you to get in trouble, Alya tell them I don’t want them to get in trouble.’

The fox didn’t hear him, busy discussing why it was fine to do it when she felt something poking her leg, looking down into Nino’s eyes.

‘Alya.’

‘Oh, sorry I’m sorry. What?’

He bit back a sigh and repeated himself, the others already picking the box up with all it’s contents before Alya managed to get it across. By then they had all pretty firmly convinced themselves it was okay, Adrien addressing him directly.

“We won’t get in trouble! Like Alya said we can just bring them back if Ms. B says we can’t use them and I’m almost positive she won’t care. I want to see how they work they sound pretty.”

Nino for the most part was also almost positive that no one would care one way or the other, since the human part of the school was essentially superfluous anyways but still. He couldn’t help but feel like he would have made a more convincing argument himself if he could just…

He sat out as everyone loosely looked through the rest of the cabinets, finding nothing else nearly as interesting and deciding to head back anyways. As they finally left Nino trailed behind, just a little, Alya jumping into conversation with Marinette.

This was almost perfect. He was having a lot of highs and lows as he had expected, but he was for the most part keeping his head up. Okay well maybe he wasn’t, but had he been left to his own devices it would be way worse. He was having fun, he was, and he didn’t actually care about taking the lights, in fact he thought once again that it was very sweet of Marinette to think of how it might help him.

He just felt like he was always a little bit on the outside. Not that they weren’t trying really hard, he knew they were. It’s just that there was only so much to be done. He wanted to jump in and tell Adrien how the lights worked, maybe amaze him a bit with other seemingly mundane human knowledge. If he thought string lights were cool maybe he could tell him about video games or something else but, to do so through Alya would take so much time.

He was stewing in his frustration by the time they arrived back at his room, sure that Marinette was starting to pick up on it from the way that she kept looking over her shoulder at him. Whenever they made eye contact though he would open his muzzle and smile, trying to assure her he was fine. Thankfully she didn’t call it out, but she seemed relieved to have a new angle for distraction.

“Oh great! It looks like they’re done, oooh this looks so much better!”

Marinette darted inside, dashing over to where her cleaning utensils now sat dormant. She was patting them nicely and thanking them for their hard work as everyone else came inside as well, Adrien stowing the lights off to the side and looking around with his hands on his hips.

“Alright this looks great! It’s sparkling clean now, this is so much better. Right Nino?”

Nino barked once, looking around at everything as Carter came trotting up to him smugly with a report.

‘Nothing bad! They kept on moving stuff around and getting under everything but I kept an eye on them and they never made for the door. It went on for awhile but then they just stopped all of a sudden. I kept watching them anyways just to be sure, but I think they’re done now.’

‘Great job buddy, thanks for holding down the fort. This is nicer right? No more dust!”’

Sure enough Nino figured he would be hard pressed to find even a single speck of anything out of place right now. All the cushions he had scattered around were stacked neatly in a pile (carefully cleaned of all dog hair it seemed) and even his bed was made. The desks were organized like tetris pieces and looking a lot more stable and even their used approximated counter space had been pushed smartly off to the side and left together with their contents. The scraps of clothes he had left behind and pushed into a corner had been gathered up and disposed of and every trace of food trash, dust, lint or loose fur was completely gone from every single nook and cranny. The cold tile no longer felt grainy underneath his thick paw pads, and as he moved further into the room the air was finally clear. The dim failing light from the windows with no dust motes to illuminate, just weak beams of uninterrupted light as the outside world descended into twilight.

It was a huge improvement, the room as a whole still deeply clinical but at least it was clean. In the time he’d been living there he had really made a mess of the place, so this was a nice change.

Nino made a show of darting up to Marinette to gently headbutt her legs as a thank you, the witch patting him once on a head and giving him a friendly wink. “Oh we’re not done yet! It’s gonna be even better! If it’s okay with you can we start putting some other things around? Then once that’s all finished we can set up the movie!”

“And eat!” Alya added, shooting a hopeful glance at her unused box of food.

“Yes, and eat! This is gonna be so fun Nino, we’ll show you everything we have and you can pick where to put it all! Sound good?”

Marinette waited until Nino barked again, the wolf running towards her bag expectantly with his claws clicking on the tile. He looked back at her with a goofy smile, and she was deeply relieved to feel the wave of his emotions start to shift in their momentum. That frustration was still there, but now running side by side with gratefulness and anticipation.

The following series of events was a great old mix of things. It was partly ridiculous, just the never ending depths of Marinette’s tiny clutch bag looking increasingly bizarre and hilarious like a clown car gag that just didn’t stop. He was legitimately frightened that Marinette was going to fall straight into it, Adrien having to help once or twice for a longer reach to grab whatever it was and Alya cheerfully offering to just dive inside to see if she could find it.

He felt so guilty, but also just so… warm. Marinette dragged her bag into the center of the room and started to fumble for books, blankets, pillows, towels, sheets, and rugs. She had so many rugs, some of them so large and colorful that he couldn’t even IMAGINE where she’d gotten it from. They were a ruffled on the edges and weirdly burned in some places but the pattern was stunning, woven so complexly that he really didn’t feel like the burns were enough justification to get rid of them. They were thick and far more inviting then the tile, Alya shifting back into her human form for awhile to give Adrien a hand laying them down. By the time Marinette stopped pulling them out the only space without one was the underneath of his bed and the cluster of desk in the back. She had explained as she pulled them out like handkerchiefs that her family had a billion of these things, given to them as payment by a regular fae customer who never seemed to have money but was always weaving beautiful things.

They really didn’t match each other but he loved them, already grateful for their much more comfortable padding. The mismatched explosion of color continued as Marinette stretched out the bed set she had brought, a size too big for his mattress but he kept pointing at his bed insistently until she understood that he still wanted them anyways. He gladly sank his teeth into the crappy, grating awful nurses office sheets he currently had and ripped them off himself, feeling silly but allowing himself to feel giddy again, dragging them out into the hallway so he didn’t even have to look at them as Adrien hopped to putting on the new ones. It was a loose fit and bound to fall off but whatever, probably infinitely better still.

The comforter came from Adrien, surprisingly, the boy darting over to his (now neatly folded) pile of stuff. It was arguably the thickest and softest looking blanket Nino had ever seen in his life, and weirdly made. It didn’t look like any kind of cloth or material Nino had ever seen, one side something almost like fleece but much, much finer and not nearly as hot. The other side was a deep, dark green and looked woven together, but even through the spaces he could not see the bright white almost-fleece on the other side. Adrien confirmed as he settled it on top that it had been made in the NeverNever, so Nino just assumed that the materials probably weren’t available on earth.

Carter leapt up onto his bed once it was all set up, making everyone laugh as he got good and cozy, loudly announced to his boy how everything smelled. Carter’s smell commentary was nearly constant, vacillating between ‘Nice’ and ‘soft’ and ‘weird’ and ‘cat!’

He wasn’t wrong, some things smelt like a- well, like a bakery, and some other things smelled wild as heck and he had no name for it.

Marinette and Alya tag teamed folding and putting away all the linens, Adrien taking the opportunity to go through all the clothes he had brought for Nino for when he changed back. There wasn’t too many, but it certainly bolstered his meager collection and added more variety. A lot of it looked like regular cotton but some of it was a bit old looking, like something a nomad might wear.

Adrien sheepishly apologized for the wear and tear, saying that they were all his personal hand-me-downs. He promised him though that they had always been a bit baggy on him so it was his hope that they would all at least loosely fit him. Regardless of how often Nino would ever use them, it was a very kind gesture.

After that they went through the books and supplies Marinette had thought to bring, some of it reassuringly human and some of it very not human at all.

His very favorite thing of all was the best possible gift he could have ever been given. Everything was kind, everything was great, from the rugs and the towels to Carter’s brand-new dog bed and the huge array of treats. Every gesture, and action and kindness was so much more than he ever could have asked for… but it was the music player that did it.

“It’s really old,” Marinette immediately defended it, the small black box with speakers and a cd slot making a slight clatter as she set it on the ground for him to see. “It’s one of the very first human devices I ever bought and a favorite of mine. Don’t worry though! I’ve got a new one my dad bought me so you can have this one. I only have a few CDs but, maybe if you could tell us what you like we can find some more for you. It’s hard to find discs now but that means they are always really cheap! I’ve tried to figure out how to get music online but… computers don’t like me.”

Nino just stared, his tail starting to thump slowly against the rug covered floor. It thumped, and thumped, and picked up its pace, getting faster and faster until his whole body was moving with it. He on his feet suddenly, and the wave of emotion that hit her made Marinette just start laughing, the feeling so warm she couldn’t contain it.

He couldn’t help it. He felt like such a dog but it seemed like the final straw, like he just couldn’t handle that huge nameless feeling that dominated his chest. It got so big that his body couldn’t contain it all, having to move to get some of it out.

He had been excited as they decorated, explaining everything that had been given to him for Carter just to tell somebody since no one could hear him at the time. He had felt warm, and grateful, and guilty and relieved, all wrapped up together with no where to go, no outlet. He kept saying to Carter how grateful he was but it wasn’t right, he couldn’t say it. Once again it was just too big, he never stood a chance at making it clear.

The rugs, the blankets, the clothes, the help. The conversations, just… the company, the effort, the attempt to bridge that gap he couldn’t stand.

The good nature of the boy in the lunchroom. The show of faith from a fox in a borrowed space… And the generosity of a witch and her family, who gave all that they could.

The exuberance he felt was quickly punctuated by something else, his relief and gratitude growing heavy and huge. It had been building up for so long now… and he kept thanking them but no one could hear. Maybe there weren’t names to the emotions, which is why he could find none. It was something sad… but something warm. Something grateful, and something just too huge.

It was hopeful when so much hadn’t been.

“Nino, Nino it’s okay, I understand. It’s okay,” Marinette was suddenly speaking, and she wrapped his arms around him quickly, no doubt drowning in it with him as the others hovered helplessly, Alya quickly shifting forms hoping to help. The witch sounded startled, like she was trying not to cry…

Ah.

He had spiraled so fast, getting lost in it, making it hard again. No matter how happy he was there was still that risk, that pit fall. He hadn’t thought he was losing it but… he realized too late that he was shaking, Carter suddenly pressing his face into his back. Nino looked around over Marinette’s shoulder, wanting to tell them everything was okay, to apologize. But everywhere he looked his eyes landed on another of their gifts, on their faces laced with empathy. Too kind, every one of them. And he couldn’t say anything. Again.

A whine wracked through him as he leaned into Marinette, the sound weird and strained. He made another odd, misplaced sound and Adrien found himself looking to Alya, trying to find anything. But once again she had nothing to say, not understanding.

“I think he- maybe this is too much,” Adrien was suddenly saying, getting nervous as he looked around. He looked clear over Nino, trying to come up with some kind of game plan. “Maybe we should step outside or, or give him some space?”

‘Nino talk to me’ Alya urged him with a yip, reaching out to him another way as Marinette and Adrien started to quickly talk above them. ‘Are you okay? We can-,’

No. They didn’t understand, he couldn’t explain.

It happened then, quite suddenly, quite literally out of nowhere, all at once as some things do.

Nino said,

“Thank you.”

He forced it out and felt it leave him, like a sound that hung above everything else. The words shook and were barely there, as if they were said on the very last dredge of air in someone’s lungs.

The wolf inhaled sharply, shaking still as he felt everyone around him gasp, except for perhaps Carter who never noticed such things. Marinette drew back instantly, looking him in the eyes with a look of complete shock.

“Did you just-,” she gasped.

“He DID!” Adrien suddenly cheered, laughing in disbelief and drawing back himself, looking him over before laughing again, the sound of it triumphant

“You- Nino!” Alya cheered, mimicking the same tone he had finally just managed, those disembodied words that hung around them and allowed her to be heard, no matter what her form. “You did it!! You spoke out loud! You did it!!”

“… did I?”

“YES!” everyone cheered, so loud that it hurt his ears and stunned him a little. They all watched as the wolf looked around a little bit blearily, like he was pulling himself out of a well of thoughts and a little disassociated from the climb. Marinette released him so he could back away a little, getting a little distance as he tried to access what was going on.

He was so deep in his own head that he had just said it, rambling the sentiment as he must have done a thousand times by now. His frustration at not being understood had reached a breaking point, where even he couldn’t make sense of anything he said. Just a little on the outside from the incredible people who reached so far. He just-

… he just wanted to be heard, to have some hope of being known.

“Can I- can you still?” Nino looked between them urgently, shifting in place. “You can hear me?”

“Yes! It’s just like you’re talking out loud, I can hear it clear as day!” Adrien assured him, still giggling in giddy relief. “Oh my gosh, this is so great! This is really, really good Nino!”

“But… why?” Nino asked slowly, too nervous to be hopeful but his ears swiveled at the sound, trying to decide whether or not it had really come from him. “Why now? What happened?”

“I have no idea! I wasn’t even sure werewolves could project out loud,” Marinette said after a moment, laughing through her words like she was glad that she was wrong. “My dad said you should have been able to right away, when you couldn’t I just assumed something was wrong.”

“I said he could!” Alya yipped pointedly. “All shifters can do it, but you just- your transformation was really bad. You lost your grip on everything, you couldn’t even talk.” The fox tilted her head curiously, but she was clearly excited too. “If you can suddenly do it now then, it must be a good sign! You’re getting your grip back.”

Nino hesitated, feeling slightly frantic and afraid every time he said something, like it was going to fade and he’d be right back where he started. He didn’t think he could stand it if it did, he couldn’t just go back to square one.

… but he wasn’t. He realized.

At square one.

His friends were gathered in front of him with eager expressions shared between them, relief so real in that moment that he might as well have returned from sea. And maybe he had, in a way, or perhaps he was just a bobbing head found treading water above a sinking ship.

The ship sank steadily down into darkness and had taken him with it, for a time. And though he might still be drowning… he was treading water, and others were coming to help.

He could almost sense the gaping darkness underneath his bed watching him, looking for a monster to hide inside it. But it found none here, not right now. Not when friends were here and things were better.

Nino’s tail began to wag again, a shaky laugh slipping out as he took a deep breath,

And spoke.

“I guess it’s progress, huh?”

#miraculous ladybug #nino lahiffe #adrien agreste #alya cesaire #marinette dupain cheng #spooky ml au #the monster in the room #tmitr #tmitr fic #the monster in the room fic #thelastpilot writes #tlp writes #chapter 13 #tmitr chapter 13 #werewolf!nino #fic is at 86.5 k now

96 notes · View notes

seriefic · 5 years

Text

3000 Dreams (Chapter 4)

Sumary: Is the return of the past good or bad?

Warnings: Angst, Death, Blood, Mentions of religion.

A/N: English isn´t my first language. This story are scenes that have been appearing in my mind, chapters are going to be LONG. There are mentions of Islam since the main character is going to be a muslim (i´m muslim myself, not really practicing but everything is written with respect) and the story does not follow the timeline of the series. I hope you like it.

Tags: @supernaturalvikingwhore @lol-haha-joke @naaladareia

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3

Ivar laughed, he laughed as if seeing his brothers with shattered faces was fun, the funniest thing he had witnessed in years and laughed because he had shown everybody that he was right, he had reaffirmed his power, so in front of the whole world he humiliated his brothers, to show that they should follow him if they wanted to emerge victorious from that situation.

-Now are you going to learn to listen to me?

-Ivar, I continue ..- Ubbe was going to answer him, you knew that with an answer that would not please the younger so you stepped on him to make him shut up and he did so, Hvisterk remained silent, with his head bowed and fists clenched in rage.

When the self-proclaimed king of York decided that the humiliation was enough, you all left the room, you entered the room following Ubbe and the first thing he did was throw one of the jugs with water against the wall, you sat on the bed watching as he moved from side to side and threw some things around the room

-You should take a bath -You said calmly approaching him and untying one of the knots that tightened his gray shirt

-Why are you so calm? what Ivar is doing will lead us to disaster.

- I am not calm, I am enduring the desire to shout at you for having returned with a shattered face after I told you not to do it, so now pay attention to me, stop breaking things and take a bath- Your hands on his cheeks, making sure he looked directly at you and listened to your words well.

-Well-he threw aside his clothes and went to where you had already prepared a bathtub with hot water for when he arrived. You knew that his return from the failed negotiation attempt would mark a before and after in the dynamics of power between the brothers, but you decided not to comment anything, you didn´t want to add more problems and stress to his head, you really wished that his greatest concern was if the land was fertile or not and you could live together and calmly.

You hadn´t said anything to him but you really wanted that adventure to end and to be able to live peacefully in a cabin or wherever the Vikings lived when they were engaged in agriculture.

-Are you going to tell me what you want to tell me? -Asked the man tilting his head backwards, at the edge of the bathtub to look at you, you took advantage of his posture to kiss him on the forehead and slipped your hands towards his chest, introducing them into the water, hugging him.

-I just want you to be safe and if that means that at the moment you obey Ivar with your eyes closed, do it.

You watched the battle from one of the towers, Ivar was next to you, observing everything satisfied by how well the plan worked.

- Are you going down? - You asked to seeing he was going to the stairs of the tower leaning on his crutches.

-I want to fight too.

-Okay, be careful

-I don't need to be careful- Before you would have enjoyed Ivar's company, you liked how he talked and how direct he was, but now you could only describe the interactions between you as uncomfortable and cold, even when you made an effort to be kind and try to empathize with his ideas, everything It felt strange.

You looked back at the small window from which you watched the battle, you tried to be calm but the reality was quite the opposite, your heart was almost out of control and you needed to control your breathing to keep calm, you could only hear the noises, see some banners and see some groups that moved together, but you didn't really see anything, you weren't able to distinguish those who were fighting at the time, the darkness and the rain made the vision and battle much more violent and impossible and you just expected it to end quickly.

After a few hours the sounds of the battle perished and from your position you could see some vikings walking calmly, dragging some bodies, you assumed that it was over but when you were going away to leave you saw something that caught your attention and froze the blood of your veins.

Running down the stairs to the street and through the mud that mixed with the blood you ran to where you thought it was what had caught your attention.

- (YN)? What are you doing out here? -Hvisterk grabbed your arm to stop you, making you stumble and almost lose your balance

-I .......- You were going to answer but one of the bodies that were lying face down moved and grabbed the prince's leg, receiving a kick from him, the dying body of the man was sideways and immediately you recognized the clothes he was wearing.

-No-you yelled at Hvisterk when he was going to nail his sword to finish killing him but he was faster than your voice.

-What? -He looked at you as if he had not just killed a man and you crouched down next to the body, trying to analyze if what you saw was true.

-What are you doing? -Said Ubbe approaching you, with his ax still in his hands

-Ask her-

-Were there more people dressed like that?"-You asked and Ubbe nodded, you got up suddenly,

-Are there still some alive?

-Yes, we have captured some, they are in the square, why?

-They are part of the emirate´s army, they are the African troops, my father's troops.

-Oh shit, do you think your father is here? -You went away, trying to contain the desire to throw up that had suddenly invaded you and Ubbe guided you to the square, you prayed mentally for your father to be among the survivors, you saw many men but none known, all were sitting in a row and tied to each other and the last in line tied to a pole.

You watched all the men, one by one and your father was not among them, but you stopped at one who kept his eyes lost on the ground, his head in another world and his face covered in mud and dried blood, but still with All the dirt, you recognized it.

-Nabil-you whispered and that whisper seemed to bring him back to reality, to York, to be chained with the soldiers who had survived in front of the watchful eyes of the Vikings.

- (YN) -your name came out of his mouth almost inaudible, he looked at you as if he couldn't believe his eyes

-Ivar -You called the man who watched everything from the height- Can you free him? -You asked pointing to Nabil

-Whyi would do that?

-Please, just him.

Ivar looked at you and leaning on his crutches, even with his face bathed in blood he approached you and Nabil and then his brother who looked behind you watching the scene, with his jaw clenched and his fists clenched around his ax.

-Okay, you can keep it, RELEASE HIM- He shouted and two men approached to fulfill his orders, when he was released he fell forward and you quickly ducked into the mud to hold him.

-Help me to lift him - you asked Ubbe, who stood still a few seconds before approaching you resigned and helping you lift the man.

You cleaned his face carefully, with the help of Helga you had taken care of his wounds and Nabil already looked like a completely new man, your whole body was shaking, you didn’t know what to do or say in front of him..

-Aren’t you going to get in trouble for helping me?- He asked sitting on the edge of the bed next to you.

-No, don’t worry- your words came out shy, as if you didn´r really wanto to talk about it and that was the truth, how would you explain to him your actual situation?-Why are our troops here?-you asked changing the subject.

-The Emir made a deal with the Vatican, they would calm the Christian revolts in our territories if our army helped England and France to protect themselves from Viking invasions.

-Why isn´t my father with you?

- (YN) -Nabil took your hand and looked at you in silence for a few seconds -Your father died a few months after you were kidnapped, his heart couldn´t stand it.

-No-you said in complete state of disbelief with a lump in your throat and tears starting to fall down your cheeks- no

-I’m sorry -he said hugging you to try to comfort you, but it was impossible to find comfort at that moment, your heart had just broken, you heard how the door opened and you didn’t need to turn to know what Ubbe was, you separated from Nabil and dried your tears.

-I’ll be right back- you said and walked to Nabil who was leaning by the door watching you, you left the room and Ubbe followed you out.

-How is he going?

-He´s okay, they weren’t major injuries.

-Why are they here? Fighting with the Christians?-”He asked without looking at you, looking at the door behind which your friend was.

-The emir made a deal with the Vatican, they are here in exchange for the Vatican calming the revolts of Christians in the emirate.

-I will inform Ivar.

-Ubbe, can I ask you a favor?

The Viking pursed his lips and took a deep breath before nodding because he knew what you were going to ask him - Can we let him go?

-That’s not my decision (YN). Do you know that the only reason Ivar lets you take care of him is because he wants you to get information right?

-Please try it.

-Do you still love him?

-Ubbe …- his name came out as a complaint-I love him as a friend and a brother, he has been by my side for most of my life, so if I can free him, I will.

-We named her after you and she´s an exact copy of Hurrem, it seems that she is her father and mother -he said explaining how his daughter was.

- she has red hair too?

-Of course and the green eyes and her bad character- You laughed at the mention of your friend’s bad character but he started coughing and quickly got up and went to one of the water jugs in the room that Nabil shared with other wounded.

You were concentrated changing the glasses when you felt some hands around you, caressing your belly and a chin resting on your shoulder, you leaned on the body that hugged you from behind while you finished serving the water, when you finished you separated from Ubbe and turned to look at him.

-What? - You said seeing his expression, which could go through that of a naughty child.

-Nothing-his smirk told you the opposite but you passed by him and offered the water to Nabil, when you returned to sit where you had been at his side and the gaze of your friend passed by you to settle in Ubbe, you noticed why the prince had smiled like that.

-What happened to you? Did they make you a slave? -he asked doubtfully, although because of the way he looked at you, he already knew the answer.

-No, I’m a free woman

-Free in everything? Even to allow that man to touch you.

You left the plate in your hands to the side and looked at him, swallowing saliva to try to find the words -Many things have happened and there are things in my life that have changed, I am in love with Ubbe and for the moment I want to stay with him -you paused a little and your gaze settled on Ubbe, on the other side of the room, with a glass in his hand and his eyes lost on the wall - I don’t think I’ll be back soon.

- What about Hurrem and me?

-I love you Nabil but it´s the same love i feel for Hurrem and now I'm living, when I was at home you know how I felt, here I don't have to worry about being judged for any mistake, they don't care.

Nabil nodded slowly listening to you, I knew that I did not agree with your decision and although you had not explained everything in detail, he had understood the limits that you had already broken with your relationship with Ubbe, Nabil was a man of God, he was pious and devout and he also saw you that way, so you could see perfectly how his face was reflecting disappointment at the new discovery about your life.

-At least you pray?

-Of course, my faith is still intact, simply because of the circumstances I don't comply with all the rules

-I hope God forgives you, I will pray for it

-I hope so too

It was late when you left that room, Ubbe was gone before you. Tired, you dragged your feet down the hall, feeling heavy and apathetic, the conversation with Nabil had left you feeling uncomfortable, you knew your relationship with Ubbe was wrong, forbidden but I was hearing it from someone's mouth, even if it wasn't directly was different.

You had not rested anything in the last days, every time you closed your eyes to sleep you woke up crying or needing to vomit, but That was not the worst, the worst was that Ubbe was never by your side when that happened. Ivar had managed to keep him busy even at night and you wanted to have him by your side, to calm your discomfort and because you were aware of his jealousy because of Nabil.

That time you were lucky, Ubbe was in the room and that was enough for you, you lay next to him and curled up in his chest, the man opened his eyes to feel the contact and wrapped his arms around you, you just wanted to sleep peacefully for one night

You woke up because someone threw you out of bed, the surprise and the hard blow against the ground left you stunned, the next thing you felt was how someone dragged you along the floor to the door while you shouted and revolted trying to let go and know what was happening, you were sure that your screams could be heard all over the hall and you expected Ubbe to appear at any moment but it wasn´t like that, the person who was dragging you and the one you had not yet seen the face put you standing at the end of the hall and several torches lit up in front of you, letting you see familiar faces, Ivar, Hvitserk, Harald and Ubbe were there.

You tried to move forward but the man who had dragged you there held you by the two arms and at the least movement you made pulled you violently to keep you still.

-What is happening?- You asked scared and confused, waiting for some explanation from the familiar faces in front of you.

- (YN) You are detained for treason

-WHAT?

-You have let all the prisoners of the African army escape and they have stolen one of our boats- Ivar was the only one who spoke and didn´t sound surprised at all, spoke as if he were only saying "Good morning" with a big smile on his lips.

-I haven’t done anything, I’ve been sleeping all this time-You paused realizing that Ubbe was in front of you- In fact...i was sleeping with you, SAY SOMETHING- you yelled at him losing your temper and patience.

-Some men will inspect your room, if we find the keys from the chains and the cell there, it will be shown that you are guilty (YN) -Hvitserk spoke, looking at you with grief, you looked at Ubbe who did not look at you and called him but he didn´t raise his head.

You were locked in one of the cells where you cried alone for the rest of the night, until you heard the door open, you didn’t turn around, you didn’t want to see who it was, so you remained leaning against the wall looking at the small window through which you could see that it had already dawned.

- (YN) - You heard Helga’s voice - I brought you water and some food, how are you?

You turned to look at her and she crouched down to hug you, you hugged her as if she were your salvation -Helga, I swear to God that I have done nothing.

-I know, I know, I believe you but the situation is difficult, I come to warn you that they have found the keys in your room.

-That’s impossible.

-Floki and Hvitserk don´t believe that you have anything to do with the escape, we will find who it has been.

-And Ubbe?-sweetheart ...- She started talking, stroking your hair -he ... i think ....- her words were cut, unable to form a sentence because I didn't know what to tell you.

-Helga, I think no one has given you permission to go down here -Ubbe´s voice startled you both and Helga gave you one last hug and got upand went past Ubbe hitting him with her shoulder before leaving.

Ubbe entered the cell and sat in front of you, leaning against the opposite wall - The keys were in your room.

-Do you really think I would betray you?

-I don’t know, maybe you wanted to go back to Nabil but it went wrong and they left you here.

His words sounded bitter and poisonous and it hurt, it was incredible how your chest could sink deeper and deeper with each event, every time you thought you couldn’t feel worse, one more piece was broken.

You got up and Ubbe did the same, you stayed in front of him -Ubbe you don´t remember? I told you to promise to take me back home when I asked for it and you accepted, WHY WOULD I WANT TO ESCAPE FROM A PLACE IN WHICH I AM NOT OBLIGATED TO BE?

.-You may have released them because they are your people, it would be normal that after seeing Nabil you would like to return.

-Why would I want to go back to a place where I have nothing? My father is dead and my only friends have a family to look after, my place is here.

Ubbe seemed to realize what you had said and his attitude changed - your father?

-He died a few months after I left

-Why didn’t you say anything?

-Because my head was full of things, these last weeks have been horrible but ....i need to know one thing. Why when they came for me you weren't in the room? why you were already with Ivar?

-Because he called a meeting to talk about security reinforcement, I should be the one who is questioning you - he recriminated you and walking towards the door.

-Ubbe, time is up- warned a guard from the door.

You walked away from him and looked back at the wall where you had been resting- What have I done to you to treat me like this? I have given you everything, even my integrity- The last thing came out of your mouth in a lower tone, you didn’t expect an answer and you didn’t get it either, Ubbe had left leaving you alone again.

A gloomy atmosphere surrounded the great hall in which the brothers, Harald, Floki, Helga and Vilde were gathered, Ubbe listened to the conversation in silence, drinking from his glass without being thirsty.

-What will we do with (YN)? - Harald asked leaning back in his seat.

-Kill her- Ivar answered simply, earning the murmurs of everyone at the table, from everyone but Ubbe who didn't answer, didn't move, nothing indicated that what he was hearing would affect him.

-We can't do that-Helga protested-She hasn't done it, I don't think it was her, it's also a disproportionate punishment, she hasn't killed anyone.

-Exactly, besides, those soldiers are not a threat, they didn't even want to be here in the first place- Hvisterk supported Helga's argument.

Floki leaned on the table to look more closely at Ivar, he had practically raised that boy, he was almost his son - why do you want to kill her? I thought you liked her.

-I don't like non-Vikings, you should know Floki, and my decision is to execute her.

-Ubbe, do you agree?- Vilde asked, touching his leg, which brought Ubbe's mind back to the table, Ubbe was aware of Vilde's fleeting glances on him, how she blinked when he spoke to her, how her voice sounded sweeter around him and how she licked her lips when he spoke to her, Ubbe had noticed it long ago and the cold woman's hand resting on hir leg was the final confirmation he expected. -Yes, I agree.

Even Harald was speechless, not expecting that response from Ubbe, Vilde tightened her grip on the prince's leg and he placed his hand on the woman's, who hid a satisfied smile at the man's reaction.

When the meeting was over, everyone dispersed in heavy silence, York had always been a dark city, from the first day they arrived but it had never felt as heavy as that day.

Vilde followed Ubbe down the hall to the room, she sat on the bed as if it belonged to her, leaning on her hands while stroking the fabrics that covered the bed

-Get comfortable- Ubbe invited as he took off his own shoes

.-I have to say that you surprised me, for a moment I thought you were really in love with that ... I don't even know what to call her.

He poured a glass of wine while staring at the woman who was sitting in front of him, he approached her walking slowly and when he arrived in front of her body, with one hand, he undid the bow of the dress that kept her chest covered -i must admit sex was good

Vilde laughed at his comment -I doubt that it can be compared to what is going to happen tonight- she said while still looking at him and leaving the entire upper part of her body exposed.

Ubbe approached her and kissed her, pushing Vilde to lie on the bed, while kissing her, with one hand he held her by the neck, leaving her in the perfect position so she couldn't move -Of course it won't compare to tonight.

Vilde was late in realizing what was happening, after those words, the next thing she knew was that Ubbe was on top of her, with a wide smile and a dagger had been stuck in her stomach.

-What ... what does this mean?- she asked, panicking, trying to get Ubbe away from her.

-Do you think I'm stupid?- Ubbe asked, sinking more the kinfe into her belly, causing her to scream in pain. The prince didn´t let her move,he was holding her so tight that his fingers dug into her skin leaving red grooves - Do you think I don't see what you do since day one?

Of course he got no response from Vilde's dying body, Ubbe took the knife from her stomach and wiped the curled edge on the woman's dress, watched her for a few seconds, as her body remained almost immobile, except for some spasms, while she was bleeding to death.

With his hands still covered in warm blood and his stained clothes, he left the room and called one of the men waiting in the hallway.

-Take the body and burry it.

-How much do you think it would take Ivar to discover that his witch is dead? - Hvitserk asked handing his brother some keys

-I guess we'll find out when he finds out, we must hurry.

#3000 Dreams #Ubbe #Vikings #ubbe x reader #Ubbe Lothbrok #ubbe ragnarson #Hvitserk #Ivar #helga #floki #fanfic #scenario

16 notes · View notes