#at least last time it was carpet and the most I had was scrapped. this time I got straight knee to ground

[goldshykitsune]

Hit my knee hard real hard. Making unable to get up by myself. However I luckily I remembered there is booping on Tumblr today and my dog attacked with loves.

[theunfairfolk]

Scurry

There is a thing inside my walls.

I can hear it.

They assure me, over and over again, this endless stream of strangers in uniform, that there is nothing in my house but me. Each more incessant than the last, carrying clipboards and cages, poking and peering and ultimately shaking their heads. 

But I can hear it.

Always the same spot, behind the blank expanse of plaster in the hall. A scuffling, scrapping, skittering noise.

It gets louder at night.

It keeps me awake, just outside my bedroom door, fogging my mind and cursing me to days of bleary pessimism. It will not let me rest. I get up to bang against the spot, silencing it for a fashion, as I imagine it cowers in brief but satisfying fear. But it will start again soon after, too short a reprieve for sleep to take me.

I set out traps when it first began. None were touched. No food showed sign of gnawing, no droppings left behind, no smell rose from the floorboards. Just that damn skittering. Scratching. Scurrying.

I admit, at times it felt like I was going mad. No one warns you how far your mind can bend out of shape, too slow to notice. A constant drag backwards into the recesses of instinct as your higher faculties leave you. I felt like a beast. As if the scraping scurrying thing was burrowing into me, driving out reason and sense.

It was some time past midnight, what day I can’t remember, when it all became too much. The fireplace poker made the first hole. And the second. At some point I switched to my hands, tearing at the drywall with frantic abandon. The skittering stopped as soon as my rampage began, but I continued to pry at the wall, desperate to see the damn thing, or at least find its nest.

There was nothing there. Just pipes and studs and wires that I’d thankfully missed in my madcap destruction. I knelt there in the rubble and carpet and slowed my breathing, straining my ears, even as a triumphant part of me crowed that I’d scared it off for good. No noises came. I waited a good half hour, staying as still and silent as I could. Nothing.

I stood, brushing debris from myself as I surveyed my damaged wall. I blearily decided that the mess could wait til morning, and collapsed into bed.

My peace lasted an hour at most.

The next time I heard the noise- and it was the noise, the same damn noise, unmistakable to my ears at this point- it was in a different spot. Closer to my bedroom, more distinct to my ears, just outside of my door, in the corner of the hallway. It woke me from my brief rest, and I tasted acid in my throat.

This time, I used the marble rolling pin my grandmother had left to me. It worked much better than the poker, tearing through the wall like it was almost nothing. There was no reprieve this time, no silence to lure me into false hope. Just a quick shift of the scratching to another section of wall before it too was bludgeoned open and exposed. Then another. Then again. I swear I could almost catch flashes of it as plaster cracked and tore, but I was always a breath too slow.

By now, there was no thought in my mind of merely scaring it off. I wanted it dead.

A pause in the noise... could I have succeeded? My house was nearly decimated, leaving no place left for the thing to hide. I listened hard, slowing my jagged breath and straining my ears... nothing. Surely then, my last blow had done it. I squinted through the dust, prodding at the rubble, trying to sift out the form of what tormented me.

Then I heard it.

I’ve switched the rolling pin out for the sharpest knife in the kitchen. I’m not sure what kind it is, but it’ll have to do.

I’m writing this in case I fail. So whoever finds me can finish the job.

You see, there is a thing inside my chest.

I can hear it.

[pbandjesse]

I cannot believe Camp is over. It both was the longest summer ever and the shortest. I am driving home now and it's 7:00. I've spent the last couple hours cleaning and organizing and finishing up all the little things I couldn't do because I still had to have my building as a functional space. But while this week had many annoying parts at least today ended in a really sweet way. And I feel really happy and content inside.

After I do my post last night I stayed up way too late. I couldn't get comfortable. I have this problem in my hammock sometimes when I'm trying to position the blanket underneath me where I end up crooked like on the edge of the hammock and then I'm uncomfortable and then finding a way to make the sand hit me in the right way is the whole thing. But once I fell asleep I actually slept really well.

I woke up at like 7:30 and laid in bed until 8:15. I felt weird. But fine. I would get up eventually and washed myself up and tried to shake off my sleepiness. I really liked my outfit today and I felt very cute. But I knew that today was going to have a lot of moving parts. There were a lot of things to do.

this morning I would have a yogurt for breakfast and some of my old pizza from yesterday. And I would take a little walk and then I would go and start putting things away that I could. Most of my stuff I had dealt with last week but there was some stuff I could still deal with. Ty brought some things up throughout the day. And I was able to pack those down into the cabinet. And he also wanted to paint a bow and a spear that he made. I am still a little frustrated that he never came last night or said anything so really kind of hurt my feelings but it's fine. It's his loss if he didn't do the project. And I hope he would value the projects that he did complete.

I did get a little frustrated today because I just felt like I never had moments alone. Someone was always in the building talking to me. And then Louisa was there and she's great and I love her but she just talks talks talks. And Even when I'm trying to talk to my group sometimes she still is talking and she tells me that oh she's just talking to herself. But it's very distracting for me and then it makes the other kids think they can talk over me and then it just sets a bad precedent. I really like that she likes to hang out with me but I also felt very overstimulated having no moments where someone wasn't speaking to me and I couldn't just sit still and do the things that I needed to do.

But to her credit she was incredibly helpful at times. Annabelle had let me take the box of scrap leather that she didn't think was usable and we dumped it on the ground and spent like a half an hour sorting through it to find anything we thought could be cut down into squares to be usable. And while most of the box was too small and is going to be scrapped trash. We got like a good containers worth of material. And it was fun just working on that.

My groups are a little silly today. Like it just felt like everyone was too tired to do anything. Some people made stuff but today no one was really into the project and if they just want to sit there that's them I don't care. I also didn't want to do anything. So most people just hung out and that was fine with me. I enjoyed other people's company and tried to just be chill.

I did not get as much knitting done today as I was hoping. But I'll have tomorrow at the market so I'm not that worried. I worked on putting things away that I still had out and I kind of figured out a plan for my recycling and a lot of my materials and then I came up with a plan for putting away my tables and chairs. Eventually I would also take all the carpets up from under my hammock and fold those up to put in my storage chest. Louisa kept saying that it was getting emptier and emptier in there and she wasn't wrong.

Louisa Kendall lunch with me which at that point I was very burnt out and just wanted to stare at my phone. But my phone was having a lot of services today and was having trouble loading anything. I was excited about lunch though because we had vegetarian hot dogs. And they weren't good ones but I was still excited to eat a hot dog. I love hot dogs. And I sat with Celia and Annabelle and Annabelle did not get her full specialty groups picture but we did take a little shot together and I thought it was really cute. It also was a live photo so we got it as a little video.

And after I finished eating Celia went inside to get her and Annabelle another hot dog and brought my plate to put away for me but then she broke the plate back out by accident and we all had a very silly laugh. And then Annabelle shared some digestive cookies that she brought. I think it's funny that I'm calling them digestive cookies but I I know what I mean. And that's all that matters. And they were fine. A little boring. She described them like a graham cracker and I would agree with that. Like a really light and boring graham cracker.

After that I told him I needed to go and lay in the dark for a little while. And Louisa would come back up and I told her like we said please I need to be alone and she said okay I will be back in 1/2 hour. And I was like okay fine. And I sat in my hammock and read my book and I did not finish it but that is okay. I did enjoy reading and I felt a lot better after taking my alone time rest.

My afternoon groups were fine. I had the little kids. Day Camp one. Kenny's in that group. And he had a little tantrum when I wouldn't let him make a third sculpture. It's not because I didn't want him to make a third sculpture it was because I'd stab myself twice and we were cleaning up. But he's through himself on the ground. And like I get it. I would also be upset but Kenny use your words. Don't throw yourself with the floor. And then I got him a bag and put all the materials in so we can make it later and it was fine. He was over it. But it still made me sad to see him sad. That group actually did make some good stuff but again we ran into the problem with the scissors being terrible. At least their counselors helped. I did not have all helpful counselors today. I had some help from counselors but it is definitely a mixed bag.

I had my little half hour break and during that time I did some organizing and put some more stuff away. I decided that today I was also going to go through my Native American field trip stuff. And so I wanted to make lists of what will be in each kit so that it's in like an easier grab than what I've been doing before. They were boxed already but it was a lot of extra stuff that made the boxes very heavy and I want everything to be much more streamlined. So I made those lists and while I was sitting there a CIT and Louisa came down to ask for help but I was not the best person to be helpful so we found Nick and it was fine. And then Louise and me finished her embroidered pillow. I sewed it on the sewing machine and then she stuffed it and I would do a ladder stitch to hide the seam. And it looked great. I should have grabbed a picture of it because she did such a good job. And the tipis  was there.

They were so excited when they found out that I saved metal for them. I haven't let anyone cast anything in like 2 weeks because I wanted the last group to get to do metal casting. And that was such a good call on my part and we had like exactly enough metal to get them all one or two pieces. And they made some really fun things. A fish and then arrow and someone even tried to recreate a nail. It didn't work 100% of the time but we all got to experiment with stuff and it was really fun. And we used almost all of the last ever metal. Couple of them even made rings which are very difficult to do. And Louisa even made one which was really cute. And it was a lot of fun. We talked about metal casting and how that works and what can work and what doesn't and there was experimentation and interesting shapes. And I just had some nice conversations with the kids. And I always really enjoy that. They're a good group.

My last group of the day came 10 minutes early and I was like you have to take them somewhere else in the counselor It doesn't speak a lot and was not super receptive to that. And I was just like I don't know what to tell you my other group is here. I have cleaning up the metal and a couple of their metal pieces were still too hot for them to take. And so I put the memory refrigerator to try the cool them down and it worked a little but it wasn't ideal. So I gave the one that was still too hot to PJ so that he could hold on to it until it cools down. I hope they came out okay. I hate not being able to see them to make sure that they got something cool. Especially because the one girl's piece broke and half the first time for some reason. I think there was still too much dirt in the metal. I'm usually pretty good about cleaning it before I pour it but sometimes mistakes happen.

And then my last group was there for real that time. And they did fine. They didn't make much but the ones that did did a good job. They help me clean up in the counselor while he was not super talkative he did help me bring in every single chair so I didn't have to do it and that was very kind of him. And while they were working I put all of the materials away that I could. And I started clearing off my table that I use for project display and then putting away some of the examples that people made that just came out really good and I was just really happy with how everything was coming together. Ty had brought me more stuff to put away. Including food which I was like you cannot store food in here. And so he said he would take that to the office and I would start putting that stuff in boxes that would fit in the cabinet. And then it was just waiting for the kids to be done. And once they were they helped me bring all the materials in. The girls did so good. The boys did not and I made the pig cardboard up off the floor because they were just kind of slowly putting their shoes on after the hammock and by the time they did the girls had gotten all the supplies inside and they were like oh we don't have to do anything and I said no you're going to pick up cardboard scraps. And then they were mad at me but I don't care because they need to clean up. It's one of those things that drives me insane like when kids say that they have to go to the bathroom right now as soon as we start cleaning. No you'll go one more done cleaning.

But then we were done. My last group of the summer. And I was alone. I would spend the next hour cleaning went away. And then I finally got into my organization of my Native American field trip stuff.

I took a walk down to the office and teased to CJ about how I texted her and she never texted me back but it turns out it was my phone. Because there's something wrong with it today and I'm not getting all the text messages. And I'm sad about it. I want to know what she said to me. But it was good to see her. I know she was super busy today and then I went back up and continued working. Celia texted me and asked if I was up there and she met me on my way back up from the office. And she would hang out with me organization she worked on her computer on her lesson planning and her animal care sheets. American field trip stuff and picking up things that I'm going to use and putting the things that I'm not going to use inboxes with lids so they can go to the Yukon basement. Because I'm sure it'll get used to or something in the future but it's just not something that I need. And I want to try to eliminate as much confusion as possible by having less materials in these boxes.

And I was having a great time doing it. And a couple people even came up to have me sign their T-shirts which I thought was so cute. It was almost all boys but it was very sweet and I always signed with a little teddy bear next to my name. 

When one of The stockade counselors came up to have me sign their T-shirt I was like oh can you ask Jorge to come up and give me a hug because I'm going to be leaving tonight. And he said oh okay So he went and got Jorge. And Jorge was like you're leaving tonight?! And I was like yes I know you're flying out on Monday and I wanted to say thank you for how nice you were to me all summer and he was like thank you so much for the sticker and all the stuff that you did and fixing my stuffed animal and he was just so sweet. We got a big hug and then him and the boys were sitting outside because they were hoping my hammocks were there but they were not. And so instead I was like hey I really want the cubby that's down at the lodge. I was told that someone would bring it to me at the summer but it never happened would you guys be able to get it. And Jorge and the boys went and got it from me and I know it was heavy cuz it's solid wood but they brought it all the way up to me and I am just so thrilled. It was such a kind gesture and it really made me feel like people were showing up to for me.. because honestly today I did not feel that way all the time. Especially when I moved all the tables inside the building by myself. I did turn them over like rolling on their side so it wasn't super heavy but I did have to do it by myself and that made me sad.

But then having Celia there she help me carry some boxes down that I absolutely should not have been carrying by myself. She watch me almost fall off a chair and was like nope I'm going to be helping you now. And it was really nice. And she had to leave eventually because she had to work on stuff in the nature lodge but I kept working and around 6:40 I was finishing up as a couple CITs came in to have me sign their shirts and asked about what I was doing and I told him about the name American field trip and they were so excited for me which made me feel really excited. And then I got to meet Antonio's mom and I didn't realize Antonio was only 18 so that was neat. And I got to tell her all about my organization and she seemed really excited about it. I love when people are excited about things I'm excited about.

And I finally got to sign off on Antonio's art project because he worked so hard on his charcoal drawing. And then I went down to say goodbye to the people in the office.

I called them just as they were about to cross the field and it was perfect timing. I gave Heather, Alexi, and Chris hugs and told them how one side of the outside of the art building is stuff for storage and how one side is trash. And how so happy that I'm going to be coming back in two weeks I hope that the ceremony tonight goes wonderful.

But I am going home. I am so tired and so dirty. I cannot wait to take a real shower and wash my hair. I definitely think I have outgrown staying at camp. I think 2 years was enough. But you know it's okay. I love being at camp at the drive isn't bad. I just wish gas was cheaper. I hope that get all of the stuff that I have in the car in the house quickly. It was definitely a struggle to get all of my stuff in here especially the hammock stand. But it's all in here and it needs to be washed desperately. But that's for another day.

I'm almost home now and tomorrow I have the market. And CJ's going to be there so I'm excited about that. And I'm just looking forward to having a couple weeks where I don't have to do anything. So I'm going back to camp on the 5th but for the next two weeks I'm just going to chill. I'm hoping that I can go and see my parents and hoping that I can do some organizing and getting rid of at the apartment and maybe I'll go to the dragon bow festival that I'm looking at the sign for on the highway. But I just hope that it isn't good and restful time.

I hope that you guys all have a safe evening. be careful out there because people are driving like crazy people. Good night my friends.

[thelavenderwitchhh]

Another chapter because for the first time in years the Fandom RISES

enjoy~

Chapter 3

The cold darkness felt like a two-ton weight on my chest. It held me down, wrapping its cold arms around me as its clammy hand clutching my throat. It wasn't long before it pulled me up, and I felt myself being dragged through the thick, murky waters. Breath was finally forced into my lungs, a blinding light burning into my eyes. 

"Mama...?" I murmured; my voice heavy with exhaustion. I felt something moist and cold on my forehead as my eyes squinted open.

"Ah, you're awake. I was wondering if you ever would as this point." Said a voice next to me. I turned and looked to my left, Sebastian sitting in a chair beside me as he patted a cool washcloth on my forehead. I sat up quickly, seeing I was in an unfamiliar place. It was a beautiful, but small bedroom. Gorgeous blue wallpaper that costed more than my townhouse, decorated with gold framed pictures. The bed I was in was huge, at least compared to any bed I had ever been in before. The late morning sun was shining through the velvet curtains, small rays of light pouring onto the carpet.

"Where am I?-" I was cut off with the throbbing of my head, my hand clutching my forehead as I tried to keep my vision still. 

"You're at my masters villa, please lay back down." Sebastian informed me calmly, his gloved hand gently pushing me back down on the bed "Don't make too many sudden movements, I've only just gotten your fever down." 

"I'm so sorry you had to see that." I said, embarrassed by his hospitality. His tailcoat rested on the back of his chair; his sleeves rolled up to his elbows. It was clear he had been by my side for some time now. 

"It was rather dramatic, wasn't it?" A smirk tugged the corners of his lips "Fever, sweating, coughing up blood...yet you do not seem to be phased by this. This is not the first time it has happened, has it?"

"I'm afraid you are right." I sighed.

"What is it?"

"The doctor said its tuberculosis." I mumbled; my gaze fixated on the patterns of the quilt on top of me. Silence filled the room, Sebastians eyes wide for a split second before his facial expression returned back to its cool and calm demeanor. 

"That's rather serious, Miss. DeRose." He began in a flat tone "You really should not be on your own with your condition."

"It hasn't flared up in a while." I sheepishly shrugged. "It's not like I can go to a doctor continuously, we can't afford for me to get any more treatments. The most we could scrap up was enough for medication to help bring the fever down."

Sebastian seemed suddenly lost in thought, raising a knuckle to his lips as he pondered my words. His eyes hung to his left for a moment or two before looking back at me. 

"Adele," he started, taking in a sharp breath. Him calling me by my first name so seriously made my attention snap to him, tilting my head to the side.

"Yes?"

"You're...those letters-"

He was then cut off by a rapping at the door, Ciel stepping into the small guest room. "How is she?" he asked, his voice flat and rather bored. When his eye met mine, he crossed his arms and leaned against the door frame. 

"Well, guess you're feeling better then." The smallest of smirks drew over his lips. "You gave us quite a fright." 

"I am so sorry," I bowed my head, trying to respond to him in the best English I could since he spoke in his native tongue to me just now. He waved a hand at me, dismissing my apology. 

"No need to be sorry. You looked like death when Sebastian brought you here. Resting until your fever went away was the rest I could do." He explained; however I was only able to catch a few words. I turned to Sebastian for translation.

"My Master says it is no trouble that you stayed to rest. In fact, he does not think you should go back. It is worrisome to have a young girl in your condition to be on her own." He translated for me with a smile. Ciel's eyes darkened as he looked at his butler. 

"Wait, I didn't say that last part!" Ciel barked "I said she could say the one night and then go back home when she was better!" 

"Oh, don't be so cruel, young Master." Sebastian's smile brightened, but it seemed to only irk the little Lord more. "She's just a helpless child, really."

"Child?" I snapped, able to at least understand that part "I will have you know I am a capable and...Indepartment...no, indeported..." I began to fumble with my words, trying to find the right word I was looking for.

"Independent, you mean." Sebastian corrected me.

"Yes! Independent!" I nodded firmly.

"You know, I'd be happy to teach you English if you'd like." he happily offered. 

"Um, excuse me? We are in the middle of an investigation! You don't exactly have time to tutor some girl!" Ciel said bitterly, his annoyance growing by the second. 

"He really is an ill-tempered boy, isn't he?" I whispered to Sebastian in French, leaning closer to him. Sebastian tried his best to hold back a smirk at my words, his gloved hand covering his mouth. 

"We don't have time for this." Ciel snapped, stepping closer to me "I am sorry about what is going on in your current situation, but we're dealing with serious matters here!" 

"I don't know what he is saying, but I'm really not trying to make a fuss here." I said to Sebastian "I don't mind going back home. You're welcome to take the letter's my mother wrote if it helps at all." 

"Sebastian, a word." Ciel ordered darkly. Sebastian nodded, standing up. The two Englishmen walked out of the room, closing the door behind them. I sat in the bed, holding my knees up to my chest as I listened to the muffled murmurs outside my door. 

"What the devil has gotten into you, Sebastian?!" Ciel roared from behind the door, making me jump a bit at his sudden shout. A few moments later, the door opened back up. Sebastian looked at me with that bright, yet devilish grin while Ciel stood there with a cold scowl.

"Why don't you get dressed and come with us, Miss. DeRose?" Sebastian said, his voice filled with cheer and a hint of mischief. "We think you may be useful after all."

[startoayoungcult]

scrapped [excerpt] : moon sua hyeju vampire/werewolf roommate au

started working on this a few months back with the intention of fleshing out a universe of billlie as vampires and loona as their werewolf rivals. realistically i don't think i'll ever write it, so i at least wanted to write down the key scene. 560 words.

cw // some gore

all that sua had wanted was a quiet little apartment she could afford in a city without any supernaturals.  preferably no roommate, and certainly no roommate like this.

she and hyeju had found themselves living together when sua had found an ad for a two bedroom duplex on craigslist.  there had been no mention of sharing the lease, so she jumped at the chance to have a place to stay with a spare room to store her prized runes and weapons.

hyeju had been rather cold and astoundingly mum considering the two lived together.  hell, the most words that came out of her was when sua had opened the door for the first time, boxes in hand, to find hyeju reclined on a sofa in her pajamas.  most of those words had been obscenities.

sua accepted the peace and quiet since, especially as someone who was still struggling to adjust to the human routine of sleeping through the night.  her biggest threat to tranquility had been the landlady’s cat, who would—on most nights—escape its owner’s home and cry in the window of the upstairs hallway outside sua and hyeju's unit.  but that wasn’t going to be a problem anymore.

sua had awoken that night at the scent of freshly shed blood.  vampire instinct got the better of her as she got out of bed, following the source as if it was alluringly calling her name.  she told herself that as long as she was living around humans that she wouldn’t even tempt herself to drink blood from the source, but she rationalized her curiosity as something for the safety of others—just checking if anyone was seriously hurt.

sua opened the front door out to the hallway to see a scene of red illuminated in the light of the full moon, and her cold blood felt frozen.  the landlady’s cat—barely recognizable—had its pelt ripped at the stomach, blood seeping into the worn carpet.

sua was no stranger to bloodshed—a vampire has to eat one way or another.  but she’d never seen anything like this outside of her nightmares.

a yellow-eyed beast glaring at her, crouched over the carcass.  blood covered her mouth and her hands—or, claws rather?  the creature’s body—despite being half-covered in sparse dark fur—was unmistakably human.  yet her posture, impossibly canine.  and, made evident by the black pajama set, undeniably hyeju.

sua had taken a couple of werewolf self-defense classes when she was younger and training with other vampires.  but nothing could’ve prepared for the real thing, eyes narrowed, one blink away from pouncing at her, fangs bared.  they taught sua where to sink her own fangs with the best chance to kill a werewolf, though right now she knew none of that training mattered with an animal like this.  one thing she did know to be true was that werewolves could smell out vampires even better than they could smell fear.

adrenaline told sua to start counting down the last seconds of her life, but her roommate’s behavior told her otherwise.

hyeju rose to her feet, eyes still glowing transformation-gold.  she wiped her mouth with the back of her paw.  she turned around, taking a step towards the window at the end of the corridor.  hyeju gave sua a glance over her shoulder, flicking her gaze between her roommate and the bloody corpse before she slipped out the window.

[neopronouns-in-action]

Neopronouns in Action #020: The Voyage to Arcturus part 1

Neopronouns: ni/nir/niys/nirself, which follow the same rules as he/him/his/himself

Replace he with ni

Replace him with nir

Replace his with niys

Replace himself with nirself

EX:

"He is going to adopt a new puppy soon, as soon as he gets a fence set up around his yard so the puppy can go outside without him having to walk it. His uncle is going to help set up the fence, since he has a set of power tools he’s letting him use, since he lost his.”

Becomes:

"Ni is going to adopt a new puppy soon, as soon as ni gets a fence set up around niys yard so the puppy can go outside without nir having to walk it. Niys uncle is going to help set up the fence, since he has a set of power tools he’s letting nir use, since ni lost niys.”

This is also a free writing prompt. Based on...what I thought A Voyage to Arcturus was going to be like. I was very wrong. I'm very disappointed.

= = =

Ni leaned back gratefully on the cushioned bench, glad to have a chance to get off niys feet. The line to board had only lasted thirty-eight or so kasus (around fifteen minutes), but ni'd had to walk all the way to the spaceport from the hotel before that, which had taken almost an hour. And, of course, half the day (on this planet, a day was almost seventy-five roluls [twenty-nine hours] long) before had been spent walking to the hotel, starting from the village where ni'd been staying with a friend of a friend, and ending only on the third floor of the hotel, when ni'd finally been able to collapse onto the bed and go to sleep.

Niys feet were killing nir, and ni once again (and not for the last time) cursed the fact that Torvolyn's so-called “public transportation” cost money every time you wanted to use it, and you needed to have a city-official ID card to even board.

This whole trip would have been less of an ordeal if ni'd been able to pilot a shuttle nirself, or if ni at least had a hoverbike, but piloting a shuttle was far too much stress, and hoverbikes were expensive. So were hoverchairs, and though ni could have theoretically spent every last scrap of niys currently buying a cheap, used wheelchair, the road leading from the village to the city was not paved, and most of the pedestrian areas of the city itself weren't wheelchair accessible, either.

But at least now ni was finally on board The Suhilar, guaranteed to reach the Branchspell-Alppain system within at most eighty-two Zarozezian days (around thirty-three Terran days).

They would then have to wait another twenty days (eight Terran days) to dock with the central station for disembarking, so that meant ni had almost a hundred days (around forty Terran days) to do nothing but relax and sit down and not do any strenuous physical activities like stand in line for thirty-eight kasus (around 15 minutes) on a concrete floor with nowhere to sit, waiting to board the ship.

If there was anything aboard the ship that required waiting in line that didn't offer seating while you waited, ni would just sit on the floor. Ni'd already paid for niys ticket, they couldn't throw nir out into space once they started moving. (and you didn't get thrown off of spaceships for sitting on the floor, anyways, even if you were a stowaway.)

Ni didn't need to do anything but relax, and so far, it seemed like that would be an easy task to accomplish. The bench was softly cushioned, and seemed to include the ability to recline, though ni didn't feel like testing that at the moment. The floor, ni had noticed with appreciation when ni first entered, was thickly carpeted in periwinkle blue, and soft to walk on, a welcome difference to the hard concrete of the space station where ni'd boarded. The low ceiling was likewise carpeted in the same periwinkle blue, to accommodate the species who climbed rather than walked. As ni watched, a member of a species ni'd never seen before entered the lounge, clinging to the ceiling by the tips of the claws on their bone-and-skin wings.

Ni stretched niys legs out beneath the table, and leaned back experimentally on the bench. Just as ni'd suspected, the back began to recline, and an extra cushion rose up from the floor for niys legs and feet. Ni closed niys eye, and set niys prosthetic to sleep mode. It would be a little while longer until they actually left orbit, maybe ni would be able to get in a quick nap before then. Along with niys aching feet, niys brain was still in an unpleasant fog from the various vaccines ni'd had to register getting in order to make the voyage to the Branchspell-Alppain system. There were several diseases that were transmissible from Zarozezia to Arcturus (and vice versa), not to mention all the illnesses that could be transmitted from species to species alone, or even just the usual diseases different, long-separated groups of the same species could transmit to one another.

Star-flower-fever had already killed ten people so far this Arcturian year, brought over by some rich antivaxxer expletive who'd bribed their doctor to spoof their vaccination records. Needless to say, that doctor had lost their medical license, and was being sued by too many entities for nir to keep up with. The antivaxxer had been killed for their crimes once the Arcturians had caught up with them. Supposedly, they'd tried to bribe the angry mob for safe passage, and the leader of the group had pretended to accept the deal...

...Then promptly killed them anyways, once the several billion points of interplanetary currently were transferred to their account. Then they'd used the money to pay for the funerary expenses and medical care for all the other victims of the star-flower-fever outbreak, and to make sure more vaccines against it could be manufactured and dispensed at all spaceports leading to Arcturus.

Ni had just gotten the latest version of the vaccine a few days ago, and was still feeling the ill effects, now mainly in the form of a heavy-head and physical tiredness (besides the tiredness that came from spending half a day walking without time to properly rest, then having to wake up early to walk again, then having to stand in line waiting with nowhere to sit).

The lounge was filling up with people, but their voices were a low, pleasant hum that easily faded into the background, and ni felt nirself slowly being lulled by the sound into a gentle sleep.

[perianfrost]

Join the Chorus 23/25

The real Christmas miracle is that I made it three weeks before missing a day!

December 23

“I just don’t understand how something like this happens!” Boots howled. “Weren’t we watching? What about the Squad? How’d this happen?”

Bruno was laughing too hard to reply.

Boots’s side of the room was completely encased in snow, floor to ceiling. It spilled from the cracked window, piled on the floor, big wet footprints on any scrap of untouched carpet. Tufts of brown fur littered the windowsill, Bruno’s bed, stuck out of the snow. Boots reached out and plucked strands from the snowbank where his bed used to be. It was soft. “Bruno, get a hammer and some nails. I’m gonna nail that window shut.”

Wheezing, Bruno waved his hands. “Okay, okay, yeah. Yeah, you bet. But let’s get the guys first. We gotta get it all out first, and Elmer will want to look at the uh, the evidence.”

~*~

“The foot prints are definitely the same,” Elmer announced later. Wilbur and Pete were busy shoveling buckets of snow out the window. “And the clawmarks I could see before it all started to melt matched the ones outside.”

Boots grabbed Elmer’s thin shoulders. “Elmer, why is it all up in my stuff? Why does it keep coming back here? How do we get it to stop?”

Undaunted, Elmer pushed his glasses up his nose. “When wild animals imprint on certain places, it’s often because something was once there that attracted them. For instance, some bears become unwilling to leave campgrounds or residences because there’s a source of food there.”

“Then it should be in Wilbur’s room!”

Wilbur chucked another bucket of snow out the window. They were almost done, now, and the other guys had gone for extra towels to sop up all the leftover puddles. “True.”

“How do we get it to stop?”

“Well… usually what has to happen in the case of bears or other predators–”

“--predators?--”

“--the animal must be tranquilized and transported elsewhere.”

Boots threw up his hands. “Great! Just what I asked my parents for for Christmas! A tranq gun!”

Bruno picked up another sodden fur tuft. “Elmer… did you ever get results back about what kind of animal this was?”

“No. Results have been delayed due to the holiday season. There’s a chance I may get a response tomorrow.”

“Keep me updated.”

~*~

“You really think this was Sasquatch?” Boots asked much later. The rest of the guys had decamped for their own dorms, leaving Boots to throw soggy clothes into the tub to deal with later, and Bruno to jam terrycloth into every corner he could.

“Well, what else?”

“Why us? Why is it always us?”

Yawning, Bruno crawled into bed. “At least we get all the fun stuff. Imagine if this happened to the guys in Dorm 1! They couldn’t handle it.”

Boots huffed a laugh despite himself. “Yeah, yeah. How long do you think the carpet’s gonna take to dry? Larry brought extra cushions, but I think it’ll just soak right through.”

There was silence from Bruno’s side of the room. Then, casual, “Guess we could share for the night.”

Boots fumbled his sweatshirt, basically the only thing he had at the moment that was dry. “Oh. Yeah, uh, I guess we could. You wouldn’t mind?”

Bruno shrugged. He didn’t look up, but his hand slapped the mattress next to him. On autopilot, Boots sat. “Guess we could go ask the guys if we could stay there instead. Most of their roommates are gone.”

Boots shrugged right back. He was pretty sure that Bruno could hear his heart racing. But this… Maybe just once. Just once, and then when Bruno kicked him or snored in his ear or stole the blankets–maybe that would fix everything. They could go back to how they used to be.

He was smart enough to not believe that. And dumb enough that he forced a smile and said, “Remember what happened last time we had other roommates?”

“Ants,” Bruno moaned immediately. 

“The Lysol,” Boots said right back. “I’d rather face Sasquatch dead on than do that again. Better not risk it.”

Bruno grinned at him. 

Just like that, Boots grinned back.

[corpsebasil]

Easily Replaced | part 3

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 4

Kaz Rietveld didn't need a reason.

You knew this, of course, as you always had, but it was most clear the day you, Jordie, and Kaz stepped foot into Ketterdam. The two brothers were, as long as you’d known them, ambitious. Ketterdam would fuel that ambition.

"For you, Sankta." Jordie Rietveld laughed, and covered your eyes with his hands.

He was thirteen—much too old for you, as you were only eight, and though you were teased back in southern Kerch for hanging around with him so much Jordie was something like a brother to you. Your own parents were gone—your mother a woman who died too young and your father a mystery.

"I thought you were getting me food." Kaz scoffed, plucking the wrapped omelette out of your hands before you even had a moment to see it.

"Kaz!" You shrieked as you tore out of Jordie's grasp, lunging for the food, but Kaz simply laughed in return, looping his arm around your shoulders and tugging you along, sharing the omelette between them.

The omelette stands in Ketterdam were Kaz and your favorites.

"(Y/N), wait." Jordie called and you paused, turning to glance over at him. His expression was wide and happy—the happiest he'd been in a long time, since he and Kaz's father had died. "Welcome home." He said, and you smiled.

"WAIT!" You yelped, lurching into sitting position so fast your head spun.

He was there, you thought, still blinking away the image of Jordie from behind your eyes.

Your heart raced and your eyes stung as you stood, scanning the streets several stories below you. You’d fallen asleep on the window pane after sneaking into your room at the Slat—if Kaz wanted you gone that night, you’d be gone by morning just to spite him. If only so you had more time to snoop around.

You weren’t expecting the dreams again.

You wiped your hands over your face and sighed, blinking away the remnants of sleep and forcing Jordie to the back of your mind. Jordie Rietveld would always stay in the very back of your mind, in the dregs; you’d think about him only during your last breath, and wouldn't let yourself do it one moment before then.

You crept out of your room and glanced around its interior once more, hefting your satchel over your shoulder. You’d miss this place—you’d miss Ketterdam, but if leaving helped keep certain memories at bay and kept a certain someone from bashing your head in it was worth the risk.

Your feet were silent when you finally dropped to the streets outside and ran, taking back-ally's and fire-escapes and rooftops as you traveled across Ketterdam on a route few knew. Your mask was pulled up and your hood rippled behind you, your shape merely a black speck against the moonless sky.

When you reached the Crow Club you ducked the guards and snuck through a window at the top. If there was anything to be known about the heist for one million kruge the Dregs had been murmuring about, Kaz would know about it. And if you were anything you were vengeful, and you’d get that prize to earn your freedom or you’d die trying.

"The Orchid isn't Dime Lions turf." Kaz's rock salt voice reached you and you paused, one foot sinking into the plush carpet of your old friend's office.

"Well, it's a new acquisition." Another voice purred, and your blood ran cold.

You knew that voice.

That voice had haunted you for years.

"You heard it here first." The voice continued, and you dropped into a crouch, tugging your hood over your head as you crept towards the office.

Your heart dropped into your stomach.

Kaz was being held on his knees by a nondescript man with a sneer on his face while Pekka, Pekka Rollins, clutched Kaz's cane like he owned it. Your stomach rolled as you took in Pekka's face and you barely stopped yourself from gagging.

It was him.

It was the man who killed Jordie.

"Now, I know you saw Dreesen," Pekka continued, oblivious to the assassin hardly ten feet away who was contemplating his inevitable death. "You got the jump on whatever job he has. I don't know the details...obviously, just that you have a little travel hazard ahead of you. So. Here's the deal: you can do nothing—walk away from it. I'll tell Dreesen I'm taking over for you." He paused, a cruel smile on his face. "Then we're even."

"Not even close—" Kaz began, and you tensed. You knew the man holding him, touching him, was causing him agony.

You had to stop it. You had decided long ago that Pekka Rollins' death would be slow. You could make it last for hours—could make blades sing until he was nothing left but a scrap on a table, but something fast might have to do.

"The other option is..." Pekka began, leaning forward to press the beak of Kaz's cane against his jugular, and you lunged. "I'll cave your head in with your own—"

"Let go of him." You snarled and, quick as an asp, had one of your many blades nestled dangerously against Pekka's throat.

Kaz let out a sharp breath and tensed as the man holding him pulled out a gun, pressing it to his temple to balance the odds.

"Sankta Riipka," Pekka mused, seemingly unaffected by the knife against his neck. "it's nice to finally make your aqu—"

"Shut up, pig." You spat and dug the blade in deeper, your eyes snapping up to the man next to Kaz. You felt steel against your head and froze—

—you’d forgotten about the other member of Pekka's trio.

"By the time you kill me," Pekka began, oozing calm that made to your blood boil, "my friend here will shoot your friend. And then you." He made to twist in his chair and you tightened your grip, stilling him. You knew you were drawing blood. "You ought to make the wise decision here, Riipka."

"Let him go." You repeated, heart pounding violently, refusing to look at Kaz even as you felt the gun against the back of your head push harder. "Let him go or I swear on all Saints I'll slit your throat right here."

The room was quiet for several beats before the man holding Kaz shoved him, knocking your friend—was he your friend?—to the floor. You made no move to remove the knife—your chest was tight and your breathing uneven. Jordie's face was flashing behind your eyes and this moment, this moment, killing Pekka, was what you had been waiting for.

You could do it.

Why couldn't you do it?

You could—

"Stop." Kaz breathed and you froze, meeting his stare. His face was serious but his eyes—they were filled with pain. "Just stop."

"You should listen to Mr. Brekker." Pekka crooned and your gritted your teeth, biting back a snarl as you removed the knife and swung, knocking the gun out of the man behind you’s hands.

     He threw his arms up and froze but Pekka simply laughed, eyeing you like you were a monkey at a circus. You felt small and, for the first time in a long time, like you were eight years old again, sweating with a burning illness and being sheltered by a widow who had no kids of her own.

     You felt like you were eight years old, managing to survive the plague and stumbling down to the docks, half-drunk with a barely broken fever and finding Kaz laying drenched in sea-water on a dock, screaming at you in agony.

It was Pekka's fault.

It was all his—

"No one has to die today, Riipka," Pekka smirked at whatever he saw in your eyes and brushed past, chuckling to his accomplices as they left the office and slammed the door behind them.

The room was silent for several moments before you turned, watching Kaz as he stared at the floor, making no move to stand.

"Let me help you—" you began, reaching out to offer a gloved hand but he jolted, deer-in-headlight-eyes flashing to yours.

"Don't touch me." He snapped, face flushing, and the knot in your throat threatened to burst.

     He pushed himself awkwardly to his feet and scrambled for his cane, one hand absently on his leg as he winced. It was terrible to watch—he was strong all the time, and so serious but this...

...this was him broken. And you weren’t sure if you could handle seeing it.

"I should've killed him," you started over, hands trembling as you resisted the urge to reach out to him. You didn't know if you wanted to help or if you just wanted, needed, his touch. "I should've—"

"You should've been gone by now." He swallowed roughly as his cane hit the floor with a thud, eyes snapping back to yours. "I had it handled. We all could've died tonight because of—"

"Don't you dare blame me for—"

"Well if you had just left when I asked—"

"I'm not leaving you!" You shrieked, yanking off your mask and hood so that you could breathe better. "You can boss me around and yell at me and treat me like Jordie was my fault all you want but—"

"I don't think that," he interrupted, his face stricken as he stared at you. "Saints, (Y/N)." You were silent for a moment, both breathing heavily, before he shook his head and turned away. "If you're not going to leave me alone, at least leave the Club. I can't—" he paused, sighing exasperatedly. "I can't deal with this tonight."

     Without waiting for a reply he strode out the door and shut it, locking it behind him so you’d have to leave out the window. You waited for several moments until you were sure he was gone, strode over to the spare couch around the corner and screamed into the pillow until your throat hurt.

@iamnoobmaster69 @emil7y @balmasedas @euphoniumpets @subjecta13-thefangirl @itisroe @thefandomplace @ambrosia-v-black @i-padfoot-things @kaitlyn2907

hiii sorry I know this one was kinda angsty but it’s gonna spice up soon HA

[be-a-snake-stab-your-brother]

Re: the Hawkeye trailer and the Steve Rogers musical...

I'm just imagining our favorite 100-something year old crumudgeon ex-assassin getting stuck in Midtown for some reason. Maybe he's on a Wilson family outing in New York. The boys want to see Times Square, but Sam has to head uptown for a press conference at the Apollo and Sarah's across the river catching up with friends in Jersey.

Ugh. Jersey.

And so Bucky's stuck on babysitting duty, stuck in the horror that is 21st century Times Square, a place he would never go of his own volition. Behave, Sam had told him before heading uptown. Grab a picture with Elmo, he had smiled, clapping Bucky hard on the shoulder before disappearing into Times Square Station.

Damnit.

Bucky supposed it could be worse. He could have had to go to Jersey.

And he's behaving. Really. The Winter Soldier would already have punched out at least two Elmos and knived a suspiciously aggressive Big Bird. Okay, so maybe he elbowed the yellow monstrosity with his vibranium arm when the bird-man (why was his life full of people overly-obsessed with birds?) tried to corner Bucky and the boys into taking a photo. And maybe AJ and Cass had asked, Uncle Bucky, what's wrong with Big Bird, as the gargantuan lout doubled over, trailing greasy feathers into an overcrowded Starbucks.

That guy? Bucky had pasted on his most charming smile, dropping his consonants in a pale imitation of a long-forgotten accent. Probably ate something from one of those sketchy hot dog carts, he pointed across the street. (Bucky would have doubled over, too. Six bucks for a Nathan's, un-frickin-believable. Hydra should have subjected him to that to begin with and saved them all the time and trouble.)

He steers the kids up 7th avenue, past a throng of humanity crowded around a pan flute ensemble battling with some break-dancers, hanging a left onto 44th, doing everything in his power to traingulate a wide course around the Applebee's that so proudly announced itself on 42nd Street.

Applebee's, he scoffs. Christ. These tourists come all the way to New York to eat at freaking Applebee's.

And that's when he sees it looming on the horizon. The bright, bumblebee banner accompanied by a tinny rendition of some third-rate Sousa march, the whole thing engulfed by a small army of tourists taking selfies as if their lives depend on it.

Rogers: The Musical! The facade proclaims in impossibly patriotic lettering.

"What the fresh hell is this?" Bucky mumbles, eyes rolling so hard he thinks they might come out the back of his head. (Not possible, an unhelpful voice reminds him. Hydra tried that. Multiple times.)

"Woah, Uncle Bucky!" AJ exclaims, tugging at Bucky's sleeve, pulling him towards the florescent, gaping maw. "I thought Steve Rogers was on the moon?"

I wish I was on the moon, Bucky grits internally as AJ and Cass whip out their phones almost as fast as the Winter Soldier could pull a knife, snapping photos of the cast, of characters that look suspiciously like Sam and Rhodey and that bastard Stark, rest his soul and all the rest of them. He does a quick once-over of the mural. No sign of a metal arm and the only person with long, dark hair seems to be wearing some freaky set of golden horns.

Bucky counts it as a win.

He stares at the eyesore of an advertisement as the boys continue to take videos and photos and livestream superhero poses and whatever else kids their age do on the internet. (He still isn't entirely sure what the hell a TikTok is and doesn't want to know). Bucky situates himself behind a seven-foot high replica of the damned shield that's been erected in front of the theater. It's enough cover to not be caught on camera, but good enough vantage to keep an eye on AJ and Cass.

He needs a plan. And not a Star-Spangled one.

On one hand, (Heh...hand. You're becoming a regular comedian in your old age, Barnes.) burning down the theater is probably on the exhaustive list of actions that would get his pardon immediately revoked. But that's only if he was caught. Which he wouldn't be. He was better than that, he was the damned Winter Soldier, after all.

Bucky rubs at his forehead, cursing under his breath in Russian. No, scrap that. Arson was never his preferred method and he doesn't want to put a whole bunch of underpaid, overworked actors out of a job. He's an (ex)criminal and an (ex)terrorist but he's not an absolute asshole.

So. Nothing illegal (it's not illegal of you don't get caught) and no one can get hurt (but everyone's gonna get hurt watching this thing. Me in particular).

"Uncle Bucky!" Cass calls. "Want to take a selfie?"

He'd rather buy one of those six-dollar hot dogs and swap tongues with Elmo. "That's okay, kid. Knock yourselves out." The last thing Bucky needs is his ugly mug in front of Steve's shitty musical blasted across the internet.

God damnit, Stevie.

A quick search on his phone provides some measure of relief. Rogers: The Musical isn't set to open for another few months and tickets are already sold out for the next year. Bucky's certain Sam could get them in (hell, Sam will probably get a gold-plated invitation to opening night), but it allows Bucky time to make a plan, maybe even arrange a convenient disappearance into the wilderness for a while. He can say he's getting back to nature as part of his recovery. Or something like that. The Alaskan tundra can be very nice in winter, he supposes.

Several months later, Captain America - aka Sam Wilson - attends opening night of Rogers: The Musical with his family in tow. Sarah is resplendent in a long, shimmering violet dress, smile wide, eyes twinkling as she talks to reporters about her nonprofit ventures in Louisiana. AJ and Cass, all dolled up in their miniature tuxedos, can't stop tugging on each other's sleeves as they walk down the red carpet to the flashes of paparazzi, striking Captain America poses to the delight of the gathered crowd.

And if Bucky is somewhere up in a forgotten projection booth, having easily evaded multiple layers of federal and private security, tapping his foot along with "Star-Spangled Man with a Plan?"

No one would ever have to know.

[george-mackay-macfine]

Let's play a game

A/N - Who remembers the snippet I posted ages ago with the bad boy / good girl. Well, I finally did something with it.

Please enjoy, Chapter one.

The warmth of the sun was the first thing I felt when I woke up, coating me in a blanket of warmth. It was too much warmth, and I was rapidly becoming uncomfortably hot. The second was the throbbing in my head, undoubtedly brought on by all the alcohol I had consumed the night before. And the third was the heavyweight of an arm across my torso. Who did the arm belong to? Well, to be honest, I wasn’t quite sure.

“Shit,” I whispered, cautiously turning on the plush bed, careful to not startle the owner of the arm that lay all too casually around my waist. “Shit, shit.” I moved the arm carefully off my waist, putting it beside its owner.

The owner of the arm was none other than Jude Hastings, the boy I’d known since I was eight, and the boy who’d mercilessly teased me throughout school and somewhat into our adult lives.

People, primarily our parents, often called it teasing— a bit of harmless flirting between an adolescent boy and a dorky adolescent girl, so they said. I, on the other hand, referred to it as warfare.

Which would lead to a lifelong war between Jude Hastings and me.

“Fuck,” I stood from the bed and looked down at what was covering my body… It wasn’t much. All I had on was what I’m assuming was Hastings’ button-down shirt, and that was it. No bra, no pants… And I had no clue where my underwear had gotten to. “Pull yourself together, Darcy,” I whispered to myself. “Just find your shit and get out.” I pinched the bridge of my nose, taking five deep breaths. My mother always told me it was a way to destress, but guess what, mom, I am still stressed. “Okay. Pull it together.” I had seven things I had to find in this apartment, and hopefully, it was all contained to this one room. Anything I couldn’t uncover would just have to be left as a sacrifice to the apartment demon.

My pants and top were the easiest to find, laying at the end of the bed a dead giveaway of where Hastings and I had ended our night standing, or at least standing for the most part. I vaguely recall him pulling me off the bed just to bend me over the desk he had pushed against the wall… I guess that counts as sort of standing.

“Jacket…” I crept around the room, trying to find where my favourite corduroy jacket had landed in the thralls of passion I had shared with the still sleeping demon. “Gotcha,” I pulled on the sleeve bringing it out from behind the chair that sat pushed into the corner. Another memory of Hastings and I making out on the very chair flashed through my mind bringing a blush hot enough to make the top of my ears burn. “Shoes, bra and underwear,” I sat on the floor, pulling my jacket over my arms looking around for a sign of any of the missing clothing. I quickly spotted my bra hanging over the bedpost at the top end of the bed. “Ahha.” I pushed up from the floor and padded across the carpet, keeping a keen eye on Hastings to make sure he didn’t suddenly wake up and catch me in the shameful morning after clothes collection. If I was lucky, I’d leave with all my belongings and whatever scraps of dignity I had left. “Four down, three left.” I scooped the bra off the bedpost and shoved it in my pocket. Watching Hastings, I dropped to my knees and looked underneath the bed in hopes of finding at least one of the remaining items, if not all of them. “Shoes.” I gripped the heel on one of my boots and pulled it towards me, half an item down… The second boot was more brutal to get to. I had to crawl at least halfway under the bed to reach it, somehow it had landed so far underneath the bed last night, but at least now I had shoes to wear for my solemn journey home.

Was underwear really that necessary for a journey home? Could I just leave without them? And my purse, I mean, I’m sure any decent human being with any dignity would give it back to someone who’d left it at their house. Still, then again, this was Jude Alexander Hastings we were talking about. He wasn’t known to me for being a decent human being. Besides, cancelling all my credit cards and getting a new I.D sounded a lot more appealing than risking Hastings waking up with me still inside his apartment with minimal clothing.

“Fuck it.” I army crawled backwards out from under the bed, careful not to get any carpet burns on any delicate parts. Trust me, one time of having sex on some carpet, and you know the pain well enough to not do it again. Once I emerged from the pits of the bed, I took a final look around, trying to find the elusive underwear or purse. “Note to self, cancel the credit card.” I stood up and walked to the pile of items I’d begun to form at the end of the bed: pants, top, bra, shoes and jacket. Five out of seven ain’t bad in the grand scheme of things. I mean, was it my favourite purse? Yes, and were they my favourite pair of lucky underwear? Yes. Could I buy more to avoid any further interactions with Jude Hastings? Fuck yes.

“Missing something?” The husky voice that haunted my alcohol-soaked brain startled me into dropping my pants to the floor. I spun on the ball of my feet and looked at him, lazily lying in his bed. The sheet hanging from his waist was the demon man himself. Since when did he have abs? - No, not the point, Darcy.

“Two things actually,” I felt the rush of heat blossoming on my cheeks as I finally allowed myself to look over his bare chest.

“Would these be one of them?” His hand rose, hooked around his pointer finger was my black lace thong, the one I’d been crawling around this whole fucking room looking for. Bastard. “They sure look like yours.” He held the up higher, squinting with one eye.

“If they’re not mine, perhaps they’re yours,” I smirked in self-satisfaction as the smirk on his face faltered. One Edwards.

“Well, if you’re sure they’re not yours.” He bunched them up, leaning over to his bedside table. “I think I’ll keep them then.”

“Wait.” I yelped, springing onto the bed. “Give them to me,” I reached for them. Holding my hand out, waiting for the lace scrap to be returned to me. “I need them to get home.”

“No, I don’t think so.” He dropped them into his bedside table. “You said they were mine.” One Hastings.

“God, I hate you,” My eyes turned to slits as the smirk came back to his face more prominent than the one I’d managed to make him lose moments ago. He shut the drawer and returned to his previous position, his whisky coloured eyes running over my form.

“Not what you were saying last night.”

“Was that before the double shots of tequila? Or was it before the fishbowl margarita?” I moved back, standing at the end of the bed, pulling my pants up over my hips. Usually, I’d feel self-conscious dressing and undressing in front of someone I’d just had sex with. Still, by this point in our lives, Hastings had already made numerous comments about how ‘plump’ I was, as he liked to call it. I didn’t have time to dwell on the idea that I gave him a front-row pass to see how correct his childish name-calling was. “Or maybe it was before the game of beer pong?”

“Yeah,” He dropped his head and laughed. “It started about there.”

“Hastings, you know as well as I do that I don’t remember a thing about last night, right?”

“Would you like me to give you a play-by-play?” I unbuttoned his shirt with nimble fingers. For once, my skill of unbuttoning button-downs came in use.

“No, thanks. I think I can surmise what’s happened from the lack of underwear.” And the memories of him pushing me up against his front door helped with the overall picture.

“It was your idea,” I stole a look at the bedside table where the same old alarm clock I was sure he’d had since middle school sat. Nine-thirty. Shit. Fuck. Shit.

“Was it now?” I didn’t really have time to hear how this interaction was my fault, but I was curious. Even if I was supposed to be meeting my parents for brunch in half an hour, and by the looks of it, I was going to have to suffer through without underwear.

“Oh yeah.” He fell back onto the bed. “The boys and I were at the bar, and you came up to me… You know I was expecting to have another verbal sparring match with you, one I’d ultimately win.”

“Doubtful,”

“When you began to flirt with me.” I could hear the smirk in his voice even with my back facing him.

“Is that so.” I sat on the edge of the bed and picked up one of my boots, unzipping the side.

“Oh yeah,” I heard the shuffle of sheets on the bed behind me and then felt the warmth of his chest pressing onto my covered back, heat radiating from where his skin touched me. “Never expected this from you, Edwards.” He moved my hair to the side, his fingers leaving goosebumps on my neck as he trailed a fingertip along the skin. “Really, I never did.” His lips touched the skin now, ghosting the same pattern his fingertips had traced.

“Alright,” I stood up, balancing on one foot as I tried to shove my foot into the boot. “I don’t know what this.” I wiggled a finger between our bodies. “Is, but last night was all there was. There will be no encore, M’kay.” I knelt down, zipping up the boot before shoving my foot into the second.

“If you’re sure you can live without one.” He moved back to the top of the bed, leaning back on one arm, watching me scamper to make myself presentable. “You know you’re still wearing my shirt.”

“Thank you, Captain obvious.”

“I’d like it back. It’s one of my favourites.”

“And those.” I jutted a finger at the bedside table where my underwear remained captive. “Were my favourite pair of underwear.” I smiled sweetly at him. “So we’ll call it even,” I brushed my hair with my fingers, trying to make some sort of progress with it so it didn’t look like I’d just been to pound town… which apparently from the ache in my legs I had been.

“You know that’s not helping,”

“What isn’t.”

“Trying to make yourself look like you haven’t just had one of the best nights of your life.”

“Bold of you to assume that,”

“Not an assumption. You told me so much yourself last night.”

Fucking Hastings. That’s it, fuck it. I was getting my underwear back. Even if it meant a small game of seduction.

“Look, Jude.” I let my voice drop into a whisper as I walked towards where he lay comfortably. I flung my legs over his body, straddling his waist. I couldn’t help but internally melt when his hands clinging to my waist, pressing me down onto him. I’m human. What can I say? The thin sheet gave everything away, and I had to admit, Hastings was packing more than I thought. Self-satisfaction flowed through me as I saw his eyes widen slightly, his pupils dilating as his fingers moving in circles on my waist. “I want you to know something about last night.” His eyes locked with mine as my right hand held onto his chin, keeping our eyes locked, my left going to the bedside table quietly pulling it open.

“Yeah?” His Adam’s apple bopped as he swallowed.

“Last night was,” I moved his head, so he was looking away from the drawer as my hand began to search for the fabric. “Was something that I…” My fingertips grazed the lace. BINGO! “I’m going to pretend doesn’t exist.”

“Oh really?” His hand quickly left my hip and grabbed around my waist. “Because I’m going to remember every little detail.” The lace slipped from between my fingertips as he flipped us. “Especially every time I open this draw.” I heard the draw slam shut and all hopes I had of leaving with my underwear gone.

“Get off me.” His right hand pulled my leg up and wrapped it around his waist. Oh god… he was good.

“Oh no, you started this.” He laughed, his chest pressing into mine with each exhaled laugh. “I’m just finishing it.”

“I need you to get off me so I can leave Hastings.”

“I dunno, I’m quite comfortable.” His hand pushed the fabric of his shirt up, revealing a tiny slither of my skin. “I like how you look in my bed, a forbidden fruit who doesn’t belong.” I let out a snort. If this was his attempt at flirting, he had a lot of work to do. “But here you are,”

“You are right. I certainly don’t look like the type of girl you’d waste your time on, so how about you let me up, and we pretend this didn’t happen.”

“No, I don’t think I like that idea,” His voice came out in a soft whisper.

“Why?”

“I was always told girls like you,” I felt a rush of enjoyment as his eyes ran over my body, a rush I didn’t want to feel. “The good girls who their parents think their perfect when really they’re the worst of the worst are the best,” It was beginning to be a struggle to concentrate as his fingertips brushed the hair away from my forehead. “And from what I’ve been told, you’re the best of them… So I want to find out myself.”

“Oh really?”

“Really. Why did you come up to me last night?” Why did I go up to him last night because I was lonely? Because I was sick of April talking about her fiancé? Because as much as I don’t want to admit it, verbally sparring with Hastings was a highlight.

“I heard that the reformed bad boys are the best,” His finger dragged along my jawline. “And I heard you’re one of the best.” I countered with a smirk.

“Oh really?” He mimicked.

“You tell me,” His fingertip tapped against my lips. Impulsively I nipped on the tip.

“Let’s play a game.”

“I’m listening.”

“The game to end all of our little games for good… No more practice jokes, no more telling my parents I got some random girl pregnant.” He chuckled.

“Then you can’t egg my car anymore or let down my tyres.”

“Fine.” He conceded. “Then let’s sweet talk,” His lips went to my neck, placing sweet kisses along the skin. “Let’s play fight, talk twenty-four-seven,”

“I’m no good at sweet-talking, and I don’t think I could stand talking to your for so long.” My voice came out breathy as my senses zero’d in on the feeling of his lips.

“Let’s wish each other good morning, and good night every day… We’ll take walks together.”

“I’d prefer a ride on your motorbike.” He let out a chuckle, the skin under his lips practically vibrating from the motion.

“I’ll give you a nickname,” His lips were on my jaw now, my hands we on his back, nails digging into the skin, I’m sure leaving moon-shaped indents. “Let’s hang out with each other’s friends.”

“Your friends are dicks.” His lips dropped close to mine, a chaste kiss being left on the right side.

“We’ll go on dates, talk all night on the phone… I’ll hold you, kiss you.” His lips moved to the other side. “We’ll make love, bang, fuck whatever you want to call it.”

“I’m waiting for the game part, Hastings. Right now, it sounds like you just want me to be your girlfriend. I mean, I know last night was good, but really this good?”

“The game is, Whoever falls in love first, loses.” He finally pulled away, his right hand still rubbing circles on my hip bone.

“Doesn’t seem like much of a game.”

“Then why do you seem so scared?”

Was this asshole serious? I was never scared, especially not when it came to challenging him, beating him.

“I’m not.”

“Then what do you say?”

“So you want to pretend we’re a thing to all of our friends, all of our family, just to make one of us fall in love with the other first for what? Bragging rights and heartbreak?”

“Tell me something.” His lips hovered inches from mine. I could feel the warmth of his breath, and how the hell did he not have morning breath? “How good would it feel to know you conned me into loving you, then breaking my heart,”

He had a point. After all the years of heartache and teasing he’d caused me, it would be fun to break his heart into a million tiny shattered pieces.

“What would we tell everyone?” His body moved against mine as he shrugged.

“That we’ve reconnected or connected whatever you want to say.”

“You really want to do this?” My brow raised in suspicion.

“Make you fall in love with me.” I nodded my head. “Oh hell yeah,”

“Fine.” I smirked. “Let’s play a game.”

[sup-hoes-its-me]

Golden II (Kakashi x Reader)

A/N: hello. This is the second part of the Kakashi amnesia fic. I was so conflicted on what to do in this one and admittedly, I am not satisfied with this. Not completely. I really struggle writing the second part of a trio, and it's evident here.

Part three is up!

Word count: 4200

_______

Kakashi struggled to maintain his normal persona after Y/N got into the incident. He just couldn’t shake off that desperate need to be around her. At this point, it was just instinctual to look for her in the crowds, and expect to see her waiting for him each time he got home from a mission. He missed her laugh and her smile, and the people in the village did not help.

His only solace was on missions where he could forget about it all. It was an impossible struggle, especially when everyone and their mother was consoling him every time he stepped outside to do literally anything. He didn’t want people in his business, especially something so sensitive. 

The mornings were now cold and depressing. Each time he rolled over in an attempt to throw his arm around his girlfriend, he was only met with the hollow space where she used to be. He would bury his face in his pillows and shut his eyes, just trying to drown out her voice from his mind. But her scent still lingered on his linens and buried deep into the pillows. 

He imagined her groggy eyes opening just a peek to see if he was awake before her, and he usually was. She would smile and scoot close to his body, curling up and hugging him around the waist, her head resting against his chest. He missed wrapping her up in a cuddly hug, peppering the top of her head with kisses. 

He missed going to get breakfast with her, and her ranting to him about this new novel the store had in shipment, comparing the plot to that of other books she had read and gushing over the character development or the vocabulary or a plot twist she'd never seen. She was always such a nerd, it was adorable.

And he missed meeting up with her each night as she closed the store, her hugging him so tight he could feel her heart beating against his. She'd attack his face with kisses and giggles, pulling down his mask in between the bookshelves where no one could see and gracing his lips with a kiss, or a dozen, depending on the day. 

He just missed her. But he knew it was for the best-not knowing her anymore, not getting attached all over again, or letting her get close to him again. He thought of her amnesia as a fresh start, a way to break up with her without crushing her emotionally. She would never know what she was missing.

He would be the only one suffering, and that was better to him than the other way around.

For Kakashi, it was always hard to imagine he would get to a place in life where he felt comfortable enough with someone to maintain such a relationship. He didn’t think he would grow to have these moments with someone he loved. He worked through so many walls he had built up over the years, fought against all his paranoia and superstitions, and for what? To feel his heart break?

He felt betrayed, by whom, he had no idea. He just felt like the stars had aligned perfectly in favor of screwing him over the moment he was comfortable, the moment someone was able to squeeze into his heart and share their love. It would take time to get over his feelings for her, he knew that. The memories would always linger, but they wouldn’t cut through him like they did now.

For now, the only thing he could do was lie in his bed until his next mission the following day. Without her, he didn’t see any reason to get out of bed anyway.

______

Y/N returned to her apartment after being discharged from the hospital, and did as she was instructed to do. Each day she would look through her belongings, pictures, trinkets, anything that had emotional value, hoping it would bring out some of her old memories. Nothing really changed. Sometimes she could see flashes of people in her head that lived in the village. Kakashi, that guy in the green suit, Yamato, the sweet girl that took care of her all her days in the hospital. All of them appeared in her mind at one point or another,  but nothing strong enough to give her any knowledge.

Tsunade told her to just keep trying and hopefully, something would fix itself. It seemed like a shot in the dark, but anything was worth a try.

It wasn’t until a few hours into the cleaning process, scrapping blood and ink out of carpets and stocking her shelves of the store, that she found something of real importance. Deep in the back of her front counter, hidden in a drawer, sat a small shoebox, filled with stacks of papers.

At first, she assumed they were probably just old receipts, but that was not the case.

Inside she found many things. Photos, notes, letters, and little trinkets all stacked carefully in the box like her previous self took extra special care of them. For this reason, she took the box to the table to sit down and go through everything one by one. Anything was worth a try, and maybe this would propel her recovery in motion..

First she examined the letters. They were very short, but full of information about her past self, and she found herself more intrigued and surprised with every word. Each one was from Kakashi, she noted that immediately. Out of all people, she could not imagine that man sitting and writing out anything nice or thoughtful to her. 

But she was wrong.

They stated things about how he was on missions and wouldn't be back for a month or so at a time. He often stated how badly he wished to come back home and visit her bookstore again. How he was sorry for being gone so long that he couldn’t help around the store. 

 The first few, dated as far back as 7 years, were very friendly, nothing out of the ordinary for a correspondence between friends. It still seemed sketchy to her that Kakashi took time out of his day to send her letters, but not unbelievable.  It wasn’t until they progressed right in front of her eyes that she was taking in every word with awe.

They detailed how much he missed seeing her face, which he often described as beautiful and precious. She was his motivator that kept him going each morning and through the long nights, he said. The man proclaimed his love over and over in the letters starting four years ago until the very last which was from a few months ago. He was never very descriptive or detailed, but he got across what needed to be said and what was on his mind very effectively.

She had no idea Kakashi felt that way about her. He really didn't act like they had any relationship at all. He actually spent most days avoiding her at all costs. Of course, she would see him walking down the street, and wave through the glass panels of her bookstore, not that he ever cared. He would usually take one look over at her, and then walk faster in the opposite direction. 

To say her first impression of him was a bit off putting was an understatement. Where other people like Yamato treated her with kindness and humility, he seemed to think he was too good to try and reconnect. Although, he was certainly a handsome man and very courageous. She could vaguely see why her old self was at least physically attracted to him. Even if he wasn’t acting the nicest now, the letters led her to believe he was possibly a hopeless romantic.

She scanned through the other things in the box. The photos were ones of her with all her friends, but the majority were just Kakashi. The first few photos, the oldest, with the most damage around the frayed edges, were of them when they were much younger. He didn't have on the jounin vest he wore, and she had such a baby face to match a toothy grin. Maybe they were teenagers, 20 somethings? She couldn’t tell for sure.  

The photos were just of them together. Sitting by certain sights or buildings, hugging, eating, on every kind of date you could imagine. It looked like she documented each one. Time stamps on the backs in whatever pen color she had at the time, scribbled details here and there.

It made sense now, why she had a pile of disposable cameras in her room. Dozens of photos of Kakashi, decades of memories all piled up in this box between the pair. It felt surreal, seeing herself in places she couldn’t recognize, in the arms of a man she barely knew.

She must have really loved him before. Their relationship was one of quite a few years from the looks of the things in this box, and obviously she cherished even the little moments. She felt guilt pang in her chest, and her stomach to turn over painfully. How he must have felt when she told him she didn't remember him. How it must feel walking past her in the street and knowing what they had was gone. She couldn't imagine the pain he had to be going through.

And he said that the entire thing was his fault. That day he walked into her hospital room, he apologized for what he did to her, saying that his family was the cause for this, and that he should have come to the store earlier to make sure something like that never happened. He wasn’t a superhero, despite what everyone thought of him. He was merely a man, a shinobi with a love for porn novels and dogs and one girl he desperately wanted to protect. Now that was gone.

Needless to say, she felt awful. It wasn’t her fault for not remembering him, but it sure felt that way.

She set everything back into the box and put it in its place under the counter before flipping the open sign to closed and heading out into the street. She knew where he lived, only because of the return addresses on the envelopes of the letters. She was still quite familiar with Konoha and it's workings, some of the street names hazy but there. She was now determined to make it to his apartment, even if she had to ask everyone in town to help navigate.

If he was on a mission, so be it, but if he was home, she wanted to see the man. 

Thankfully, she realized that he lived only a few streets away from her when a street vendor pointed her in the right direction, but damn,  he lived on the fourth floor and she inwardly cursed him. Her legs were still a bit shaky from the incident, and she hadn't healed completely. Stairs were a pain for her. This entire man seemed like a real pain, honestly.

She finally made it to the fourth floor after hobbling up like an old man, and knocked on the second door. She was going to have a conversation with this man, the same man who was keeping their history a secret this entire time without trying to make a connection again.

No one in this town wanted to explain anything to her. Yamato was nice but he always beat around the bush and left when things started getting informative. Sakura just fawned over her broken limbs and injuries. And the man in the green jumpsuit was too loud, she usually had to kick him out once she felt a headache coming on. Other than that, she didn’t have many friends. They’d told her her family died in a “jinchuriki” attack, whatever that meant, so she didn’t have any family to ask either.

As she waited at the door, she felt her stomach churn. Part of her was genuinely curious how her younger self fell for him and what they were like together. Like, what was the appeal? He seemed kinda strange and distant, and she couldn’t help but want cuddles and love constantly. It seemed like an odd match, and Y/N couldn’t help but question it. 

Opposites attract, I guess.

After a couple seconds, the door opened a crack, and a half dressed man answered the door. She found her face heating up a bit. He wasn’t even exposed in any way, he just wasn’t wearing his headband, nor did he have his jacket on, revealing toned arms and fluffy, messy hair that she had to admit was pretty adorable. Okay, so she could definitely see herself falling for someone so handsome, but regardless, she was on a mission.

He looked startled to see her standing there in all her glory, out of breath and bent over like she’d run the whole way here. She held onto the doorway to balance herself. Perhaps she was just a tiny little bit out of breath from climbing the stairs still. Y/N apologized quickly, “Sorry, give me a second. Going up the stairs is really hard to do and you live on the fourth floor so, yeah.” 

“Who told you where I live?” He questioned, scanning the walkway to make sure no one else was around to be listening. 

“You did, actually,” she answered after taking a deep breath. “I found an old box of letters from you, and I just went to the return address.”

The letters. How could he forget about them? He had tried to rid her place of all signs of him, taking out pictures of the two of them together save for a few with other people included. He took out every single belonging he had. The only thing he missed was the letters, ones he didn’t even know Y/N had kept in the first place. He cursed himself. 

Her reading the letters made him feel violated. Even if the letters were for her, it felt like a stranger had just read some of his deepest and most pathetic thoughts, the ones of love and adoration and depression all piled up in a few letters addressed to a Y/N he used to know.  He felt sick thinking about what this woman now knew. 

“Okay. Well, listen, you really shouldn’t just come to my apartment like this. I’m not fond of drop in visits.”

“I don’t care. I’ll do whatever I want, Kakashi Hatake, or should I say, my lover,” she laughed, resting one of her hands on her hip proudly. He felt himself wince at the sound of those words coming from her lips, seeing her childish grin. It reminded him too much of before, how they used to be, and he couldn’t handle that. Suddenly, he felt that familiar sickness rolling in his stomach. “How come you never said anything about it?”

“Because, I didn’t think you needed to know.”

“Why? Obviously you were a very big part of my life and I, yours,” she asked.

He sighed and leant on the doorframe, his eyes never leaving the village over her shoulder, anything other than meeting her eyes. He really did not want to have this conversation with her. He would have talked her ear off about a month before when she actually had her memories and knew who she was, but today, with the way she was, he might as well be speaking to a stranger. 

“Do you want me to be honest?”

“Of course.”

“It’s because I was going to leave you after the accident either way” he confessed, and she could only nod. It wasn’t like she was gonna get offended by his words, she didn’t even know him. He continued, “It makes me sick knowing that all this was my fault in the first place.”

She tilted her head to the side. “What do you mean?”

“The reason that man and his lackeys kidnapped you is because of my father’s mistakes,” he sighed, “That bastard wanted to get revenge by hurting you, since you and I were close.”

She nodded, tapping the floor with her foot as she absorbed everything he’d said. That is what he alluded to before when they met in the hospital. She replied calmly, her tone so understanding it made him feel nauseous.“I see. Well, I wouldn’t exactly call that your fault. You definitely didn’t directly cause anything to happen, if anything it was your father. I’m not offended at all.” 

“It doesn’t matter what you think. It doesn’t make this anyone's fault but mine.”

“Really, it’s not your fault. You could have never predicted this,” she tried to say, but he just went on, words flowing out faster than she could argue against them. 

“It doesn’t matter. I knew that it was wrong to let you into my life. You would have lived just as happily if I’d have ignored you and let you meet some son of a baker, get married after a year, have a bunch of kids, shit, I don’t know,” he cursed. She could tell he was breaking down feelings he had been harboring for a while, and she pushed past him into his apartment, walking right under the arm he was resting on. This wasn’t something to talk about in public, out in the open. “I knew that if you were with me that you would never live a normal life, and I still let you fall in love with me, all because I was too selfish to put my own feelings aside.”

“Love shouldn’t be suppressed like that. You did what was natural.”

“Yeah, and look where that got us. Look where that got you, Y/N.” He waved to her bandaged legs. “You’re never going to remember me again, so it doesn’t matter if I rekindle our relationship, does it?”

She took a seat on the edge of his bed to rest her tired legs. He seemed so angry with himself, so much self hate radiating from his person. He was hurting so badly, and she just wished he would let her comfort him. 

For a moment, she wondered if he would let her hold him like before, so he could pretend that things hadn’t gone wrong, even for a short time. Put his mind at ease if only for a short while. Y/N refrained from saying anything, though. Physical touch was probably one of the worst things for him right now, especially from her.

Instead, she meditated on what he said. She sat there fiddling with her fingers, trying to figure out what to say to him, anything that would make the situation easier for him. All she ever wanted was to make life easier for others, and if her way of doing so was being kind and thoughtful toward these worn shinobi, then that is what she would do. 

She leaned back on her hands and let out a soft sigh, words surfacing in her brain that might just do the trick. “Kakashi, do you want to hear something that might bring you hope?”

“Whatever,” he brushed off, not thinking anything she could say would make the situation better. He’d tried for a month to make things better and nothing was working. 

“I’ve been having dreams. Dreams of the past, dreams of memories that I have forgotten. When I look through photos, new images appear of people that I used to know,” she told him softly. “Tsunade says that means I’ll regain my memories with time, it’s just taking a bit longer than we had hoped. She thinks I can get everything back. The girl that you used to know.” 

He stood there for a moment, just processing what she said. He could feel his heart beat a little faster in his chest, and he lifted his eyes slowly to meet her own. She always had such soft, gentle eyes, even now. “Do you have any dreams of me?” He was hesitant to ask, but she gladly nodded. “What do you remember?”

“Well, it’s mostly just snapshots here and there of you and everyone else. Short little tibbits of what life used to be like. I know Yamato has wood nature jutsu because in one of my dreams he had summoned this ginormous tree. I know there is a younger guy with the most yellow hair I’ve ever seen. I know that you have a red eye under the headband, but I don’t know what it’s for,” she explained, listing off some examples of things shehad dreamed of. 

He hummed. “Firstly, you’re right about Yamato. He’s actually the only one alive who can use that jutsu.”

“Really? That’s interesting. Is that why he’s head of the...uh, that group? The ones with the animal masks?” she asked, feeling foolish at her lack of knowledge.

He let out the tiniest of chuckles, just a hint of one. “It’s actually ANBU, but good on you for knowing about them. And it’s not just because of his wood jutsu, he is also a very skilled and strong shinobi. He is a good team leader,” he explained. For a moment, he almost found it fun to listen to her struggle to remember things and then help her out. He noticed the way her nose crinkled when she was thinking especially hard about something, and god, it reminded him of before. He felt his heart thawing with each look her way. 

Kakashi shut his front door and walked over to the other side of his bed. He took a seat against the wall, kicking out his legs. He was beginning to relax. “And about the yellow haired kid? That’s one of my students, Naruto Uzumaki. He’s a handful, but also a very talented, determined shinobi.”

She mouthed the name to herself a couple times, trying to memorize it. It sounded vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t be too sure. A lot of things sounded like she should remember them, and she couldn’t exactly figure out which were right.

“And your red eye?”

“It’s a long story, and we won’t go into it. Simply put, this eye is called the sharingan. It’s a special dojutsu that only members of the Uchiha clan possess.”

“So you’re part Uchiha?”

“No. That’s the part I’m not gonna get into,” he brushed off her question. That was something that he really did not want to discuss again. He’d already told her the story once, he didn’t need to do it a second time, even if she had amnesia. When he looked over at her, she looked so familiar. Her eyes were filled with happiness, and he noticed that her lips were curled up into a sweet smile. “What are you happy about?”

She shook her head and turned her head to hide the upward curl of her lips. She was just so glad, her whole body felt warmer because of it. “Because you are being nice to me and explaining things. No one really explains things to me, they just skip around stuff usually,” she confessed as she tapped her heels together. 

He could only shake his head at that. “You deserve to know at least the basic stuff, just until you get your memory back.”

“Hmm? You’ll explain any of my memories? Like any of them?” she asked.

He nodded.

“Oh, yeah, well explain this dream I had.”

“Shoot.”

Her smile took a mischievous turn, and he definitely noticed the change. He could only imagine what she was about to ask. “I’ll give you a hint...I know what you look like completely naked,” she giggled, falling back on the bed and covering her face with her hands. 

“And you call me the pervert…” he sighed, crossing his arms behind his neck. Her laugh, it was like music to his ears. No matter what she could say, he was just relieved to feel her beside him, gleaming with a happiness he missed for nearly a month now. 

“I really had a sex dream about you the other night, but you can imagine my confusion. I was like, what the hell, I don’t even know the guy,” Y/N laughed, “It all makes sense now.”

He rolled his eyes at her sense of humor. Things felt so normal, like before. He felt his chest grow warm at the feeling. Kakashi’s  lips cracked into a grin under his mask, not that it mattered to wear the mask. She already saw his face in a dream, it seemed kinda pointless if they were alone. 

Maybe he would let things go back to normal. Maybe he would talk to her more, and let her visit when he was home. Maybe he could go to her store when she waved to him instead of running away like a coward. Maybe he could let himself be happy, despite his faults, despite what happened to her. The wounds could be mended, he decided. 

He just couldn’t help but be selfish and let her back in.

[spvce-cowboy]

reunion

ch. 3 of i’ll be here in the morning (the mandalorian x fem!reader)

previous-ch. 2: “gentle things”

next-ch. 4: “songbird”

rating: mature 

8k words

warnings: alcohol, drug use mentioned, jealous/protective mando, animal cruelty, descriptions of gore

summary: the luxurious rot of Canto Bight is enough to put anyone on edge. Mando is forced to ask for your help in finding a high profile quarry.

**

Mando leaves the fighting ring before the caterwauling nexu is able to deal the killing blow.

 He can still hear the sound of the gore spraying against the floor as he climbs the stairs towards the exit, the roaring jeer of the crowd obliterating the speakers inside his helmet. The inevitable outcome of the fight was clear from its onset given the state of the nexu’s opponent, some kind of sand-bear, who was already injured upon entering the cage-like structure.

This wasn’t the Outer-Rim fighting rings he was used to. This place has carpets and a fucking chandelier suspended right above the blood clotted, dirt floor of the pit. It has pipe smoke and dark liquor, the low rumble of voices that only rise in tandem with the progression of the fight. There’s a strange reserve among this crowd that Mando has never seen before, not in this context at least.

 The patrons still had that starved look in their eyes though—bloodlust, pure and simple. Somehow, all the tuxedos and hair gel makes it far more sinister than it normally would be.

Karga sent him here to gather information about the quarry, but after an entire day spent searching along with the past hour he’d spent floating around the fight hall where the informant was rumored to be, he knew to give it up before he wasted any more time.

Mando exits the underground arena, stepping into the late afternoon heat just as it begins its gradual descent towards an oncoming chill. Upon arriving at Canto Bight, he had learned very quickly to avoid the main streets. There were too many eyes and whispers for a bounty as high profile as this one for him to be spotted on his own like this, obviously searching for something. 

There’s something about this city that makes him absolutely revolted. It’s not the strongest testament to his resolve or his character, but, at the same time, it’s not something he can necessarily help.

Mando still has absolutely no clue what Karga was thinking, but here he is, regardless if it made any sense or not.

He returns to the Crest, deflated after a second unsuccessful day of trying to gather information about the quarry’s whereabouts. He is desperate for a lead, two of three informants proving to be completely useless and his patience growing thinner every second he has to stay on this forsaken planet.

Closing the ramp behind him, Mando heads straight for the cockpit, needing a moment to regather his thoughts. To brainstorm a better plan of action before it becomes too late to rendezvous with Karga’s third, and last, possible informant.

The problem was that there was absolutely no way he was going to be able to get into the racetracks on his own. Getting into the fighting pit—which was considered “seedy” by Canto standards--was already a total hassle, costing him far too many credits and straining what limited negotiation skills he had.

The second problem was that he’d rather take a blaster to the leg than involve you in one of his missions. But now that was kind of his only option.

Mando rubs a hand over the forehead of his helm as he paces. When that doesn’t work, he settles himself in his pilot’s seat, hunching over slightly against the weight of the beskar against his bones. Maker, he is fucking tired.

Swiveling his head to the side, he notices a pile of something on the console that he can’t exactly make out until he leans over it.

Resting on the command board is a leather string, a few palm-sized pieces of stained glass already fashioned to hang from it by smaller loops of the same material in varied lengths. It looks like you were in the middle of working on it when something else distracted you, several more discs of glass piled onto one another to the right of the unfinished project, and a few loose scraps of leather in a pile on the copilot’s chair.

Mando allows himself to admire it for a moment, rubbing his gloved thumb over the glass’s surface. By the time he glances up through the windows of the cockpit, looking at all the people milling about outside, his breathing has somewhat evened. It’s easier to think straight, at least.

He stands and climbs back into the hull, rounding the corner to peer into the space you’ve made for yourself.

It takes him a moment to see you over the pile of blankets you’ve kicked off your mattress. You’re asleep. Under the table. The kid taking a nap with you. Of course that’s where he expected you to be if you weren’t in the cockpit but—but.

You’re on your belly, head buried in your folded arms. You have one, bare leg hitched up over pillow. The length of your calf spills over onto the floor, socked foot delicately pointed. That’s not really what stops him in his tracks. Well, it is in part.

But you’re wearing one of his shirts.

It must have just been a mistake, he knows that. He’s seen you in one of your own that’s the same general color and cut, but he knows this one is his because of the hole in the elbow where it had caught on an exposed screw and torn a few days previous. He’d been too busy to mend it.

Mando tries to wake you before his thoughts could go anywhere else. He says your name quietly, then a little louder. It wakes the kid, who yawns and blinks up at Mando, making happy sounds up at him from where he’s snuggled into your side.

When that doesn’t work, Mando nudges your calf with the tip of his boot. You startle awake, a protective hand shooting out to automatically bring the child against your chest, blinking rapidly up at him.

“Oh,” you wince slightly at the light coming into the cabin but otherwise doesn’t visibly react when you realize it’s him. Your arm loosens from where it had wrapped around the kid. “You’re back. I thought you’d be gone a while longer.”

“I need your help with something,” Mando crosses his arms in front of his chest. It gives him something to do with his hands and how awkward they feel just hanging at his sides as you prop yourself up into a sitting position to listen to him, the loose material of his shirt pulling up to reveal little glimpses of your lower back and belly as you do. “I have to have a companion with me, to go into the racetrack. They won’t let me in if they think I’m looking for a quarry.” 

You nod, rubbing your eye with the heel of your palm, voice croaking and still hazy with sleep. “Yeah, yeah sure. I wanted to check it out anyway. Just lemme get changed and we can head out.”

You pick the kid up and place him back on the floor of the hull. He toddles over to Mando, nearly falling—your hands automatically reach out to hover over his sides--but he manages to catch himself on Mando’s pantleg, tugging the fabric in a determined up, now.

Your brow furrows. “What’re we gonna—”

“There’s a nursery. Karga cleared it,” Mando reaches down and scoops up the kid. 

“Gotcha,” your voice already sounds clearer. You reach out a hand for Mando to pull you up, he obliges. The blankets fall from where they’ve pooled around your lap as you do.

You pad down the length of the hull towards the fresher, your hips sway with the movement as you lift an arm to continue rubbing the sleep from your face. The shorts you’re wearing are a few sizes too big, you have them rolled twice at the waistband to keep them up. Mando looks away sharply once he notices. 

“Alright womp rat, how does some dinner sound?” Mando smiles to himself when the kid gives an impatient squeak. “Yeah, yeah okay alright. I’m the worst caregiver in the galaxy, I know.” The child keeps giggling as Mando makes his way into the cockpit.

Mando is running through some of the Crest’s vitals on the command board when he hears you climbing up the ladder.

“Do you think this would be okay, for the racetrack?” There’s a certain timid quality to your voice he doesn’t think he’s heard before. You have also literally never asked him for approval on something, so he’s already a bit surprised before he turns to look at you. 

The clothes you chose were simple, a fitted long sleeve and a pair of loose-fitting pants long enough to at least partially conceal your work boots. It shouldn’t have felt like much of a departure from your usual roster of outfits because it really wasn’t, but for some reason there’s something different about it that he can’t put his finger on.

You have your hair piled on top of your head in a bun. With it pulled back like that, all attention is drawn to the canvas of your neck, your delicate throat that gently eases into the soft planes of your face. There’s a nonchalant beauty to you that sucks all previous thoughts straight from his head.

“You might want to bring something warmer, a jacket or something.” He turns back to the command board, desperate to look busy and hide how long he looked for. “Temperatures drop on Cantonica as soon as the sun starts setting.”

“Oops—yep. Desert planet. I forgot,” you sigh. He hears the sound of your boots scaling the ladder back down.

He purposefully doesn’t look up when you enter the cockpit again, when you announce you’re ready he nods curtly, making brief but direct eye contact with you before setting a quick pace out of the Crest and into the streets of Canto Bight.

The nursery is tucked away, out of reach and notice, protection guaranteed. He leads you through a series back-street passages to get there, too nervous about the attention the three of you would get with the kid and the main roads. You carry him against your hip most of the way, occasionally adjusting the little hood you’ve fashioned to cover his most distinguishable features with every person you pass. 

The door is nondescript, positioned in the alleyway behind a semi-busy restaurant. Mando can sense your apprehension the second he steps up to press the buzzer. Within seconds, there’s the sound of a series of bolts unlocking.

A warm faced woman opened the door, wearing the clean white uniform of a nurse. “When Karga called in I hardly believed it,” her voice is light, but there’s a grating, nervous squeak to it that makes Mando scowl. Maybe it was just the day he was having, but just about anything was able to set him off.

Mando and the nurse exchange a few blunt words about pricing and care. He winces, slightly, at the cost, but it’s not anything either of you could notice. Right as Mando is about to turn to take the kid from your arms, you speak up.

“Is this… safe?” You ask again, holding the kid a little tighter to your chest. He realizes that it’s the first time since you’ve joined them that you’re separating from the kid, Mando thinks his anxiety is partially feeding off of yours. 

“Karga gave me his word. It’ll only be for a few hours.” Mando glances at the nurse, who was giving the two of you her very best customer service smile. “C’mon pal,” Mando nods towards the nurse. The child’s big eyes stare apprehensively up at you, then at Mando. One of his small hands unfixes itself from your shirt to reach out towards the bounty hunter. The nurse clucks her tongue, her hands on her hips.

“Someone seems like he’s already gonna miss his daddy.”

His stomach drops without warning. “I’m not his father.” The correction is biting in a way he doesn’t intend it to be. He’s vividly aware of your sharp inhale at his words. The nurse looks startled for a half second before blinking her eyes and retaining composure.

“Yes, yes of course,” she stretches out a hand as an offering of assurance towards the child, who has resumed clinging to the fabric of your shirt. “Hey little guy, c’mon. I’ve got a lot of friends for you to play with, and some snacks. You like the sound of that?” 

Mando catches your smile at the child’s ears flicking with interest, despite the fact that his hands are still firmly attached to you. Mando mutters something under his breath before taking the child from you, handing him off to the nurse and trying to push down the terrible feeling it gives him hearing the kid give a small whimper as the two of you walk away.

The racetrack is down a major boulevard, towering sandstone buildings line either side, their circular doors illuminated by bands of glowing yellow neon. The streets are a different kind of polished stone that makes Mando’s skin absolutely crawl for not discernible reason.

He thinks you’ve caught on to his worsening mood because you try to keep the conversation warm and light in a way he’s never seen you do before. Your eyes are fixed to a constant arcing movement, taking in as much of it as you can, but your mouth keeps moving about anything but Canto Bight. You avoidance just draws more focus towards the situation at hand, but he appreciates the effort.

When the two of you reach the racetrack, you stop talking completely as you scale the stands. You and Mando settle on two chairs pulled up to a tiny table, overlooking the standing room crowd below. Mando faces the crowds more than the track itself, however you angle your chair so that you can look at the racing fathiers with ease. Eventually you turn away, grimacing.

“What is it?” He asks, out of curiosity as well as a desire to fill the silence.

“They’re so beautiful,” you cast one more glance over the track as the group rumbles past to the sharp roar of the crowd. “But they look so sad.” You keep looking at the beasts for a beat longer before fixing your gaze to your hands clasped in your lap.

Mando finds his words slowly. “This planet… this amount of abundance. There is always a cost. They always make someone else pay.”

You wince, shifting your body so you’re only facing Mando and the expanse of the crowd that’s over his shoulder. You don’t look at the track for a while after that, purposefully keeping your body turned to keep your gaze away.

Mando finds fleeting solace in the fact that he was at least able to keep you away from the fighting ring, which is quickly replaced by guilt in exposing you to a similar cruelty in a less bloody form. He does his best to remind himself that you mentioned wanting to see the races previously, that the indecipherable emotion on your face was not entirely his fault.

 The wait spans an hour. The tension in Mando’s shoulders grows with each passing minute.

 “He isn’t coming,” Mando eventually grits out. “It’s… Maker I—”

 Jobs have started off way worse than this, he’s not sure why he’s allowing all of it to get under his skin. It’s this damn city, something about it makes him feel like there is a knifepoint digging between his ribs.

 You tap his hand lightly. Twice, with your index and middle fingers. It happens so quickly he’s almost able to believe he’s imagined it if it weren’t for the fact that you were still adjusting your hands in your lap after your hand had retreated. As if you didn’t know what possessed you to do that, either.

 “Hey. It’s fine. It’ll work itself out, yeah?” You maneuver your head to stare directly into his visor. For some reason that alone is infinitely more intimate than your brief touch. “We can just stay here for a bit longer in case the informant shows up, then pick up the kid, grab something to eat and hunker down in the Crest. Tomorrow’s a new day, or whatever.”

Mando looks you over, then nods.

 The sun is setting on the horizon, the tracks illuminated by the last vestiges of its light. This is the beginning of most everyone’s day, yet the drinks are already flowing, and have been for quite some time.

 There are far too many extravagant outfits, ridiculous little hats barely teetering on large skulls. The roar of the crowd grows with their drunkenness, the races becoming crueler the more the stands fill. Mando will never understand the value in any of this and he’s genuinely not sure what’s worse—the icy coolness of the fighting rink or whatever all this is.

 “Who’s the quarry?” You blink up at him. “If you don’t mind me asking.”

 “Tyreus Cavill. Some filthy rich kid who doesn’t know how to keep his damn mouth shut. He’s taunting the Gild to the point of insult,” Mando rubs his hand over the brow of his helm. “It’s been confirmed that he’s supposed to be at some kind of party tonight. That was just about the only information I could get.”

 “Was that why Karga mentioned deep cover?”

 Mando nods. “He said it would be my most viable option, which doesn’t make any kind of sense. Especially with no pre-existing contacts that could get me any intel on where he’s hiding.”

 You speak up after a while. Mando isn’t sure how long, too comfortable in the silence as is.

“You know my mother worked for the Alderaanian court?” You say it softly, quickly looking at the racetrack to avoid drawing attention to your words. You’re kneading the hem of your sweater, a nervous tick of yours he couldn’t help but notice. “I still remember all the things she had to teach me when we went to dinners at the homes of the survivors, the etiquette and everything. I’m positive it’s much of the same, here. All this,” you twirl your index finger in the air, gesturing to the whole of the track and presumably what lay beyond. “Seems very familiar. I could help, if you need it.” 

“Your mother?”

“She was the court singer--or, well, one of them,” your voice is tense. “My father was a professor. I don’t remember a lot, just that they loved me very much.” Your eyes are searching the crowd in some desperate search for something, he’s not sure what. Probably for any kind of distraction, or any reason to keep your eyes away from his. He waits in silence, patiently. “They moved to a different planet to have me, a few years before the annihilation, there were a few other survivors who were off planet when it happened. I remember my parents hosting them, and they us, on a few occasions. It was always a multi-day affair of trying to remind me what proper manners were.” You wrinkle your nose. “It’s all very stupid, if you ask me. But,” you turn your head finally and look at him evenly. “I can—”

Mando watches as your gaze floats to a space just above his left shoulder. Your entire body visibly tenses, lips parted in what he can only think is total shock. Your hands drop the edge of your shirt and hover in your lap, as if you don’t know what to do with them.

Before Mando can ask what is wrong, you’re getting up from the table and pushing through the crowd. It takes him a beat to register what has just happened before he is up and following after you, making considerably better time in catching up given the fact that the crowd seems to naturally part for him. He almost reaches out to touch you, but instead settles for aiding your pursuit by keeping pace and staying at your side, clearing a path for you with his body and an outstretched arm to motion people to the side.

“What is it?” He tries to keep his voice low enough to not be overheard, his head in a constant survey of the crowds before you. You shake your head and keep pushing forward, higher into the stands, swerving around servers with platters stacked high with strange looking drinks. “Hey—if we go any further we’d need clearance—" the higher in the stands, the richer the patrons get. They wouldn’t let either of you in without identification after the eighth flight, which you’d just swiftly pushed past. Mando checks over his shoulder and, sure enough, a server is murmuring something to a guard droid, pointing up at you.

You’re so far up by that time that you have at least a minute until the droid catches up with the two of you. You climb onto one of the raised platforms dotted with various aristocratic parties, dining over bright white table cloths, centerpieces of bizarre orange flowers bursting through the tables. You make a beeline for the centermost table, where a Twi’lek woman is dining with an Abednedo and a human male.

You approach the Twi’lek in three swift strides, grabbing her shoulder. “Febhana.”

When the woman turns, standing, there’s a kind of wide-eyed shock of absolute wonder that immediately turns into pure joy. The two of you leap into one another’s arms in a cacophony of ecstatic, indistinguishable sounds. One of some long awaited reunion.

The Twi’lek woman, Febhana, holds your face in her hands, yours slide over hers. There are tears in her eyes as the two of your chatter over one another in breathless delight. 

“I thought you—”

“I had no idea that—”

“I’ve tried to find—”

 You both cut each other off, staring into one another’s eyes before laughing again and embracing tightly.

 From over your shoulder, Febhana gives Mando one of the quickest, scathing once-overs he’s ever received. He can’t help but automatically have a little bit of respect for it, especially compared to the terrified, diverted eyes of her companions.

 “Who is this?” She asks, pulling away from your embrace slightly. You open your mouth to respond but she’s already babbling over your warmly. “Oh! No. Don’t tell me. Not yet. Let’s do this over drinks at mine—please. Please indulge me. Maker, look at you.”

 You let loose a laugh Mando doesn’t think he’s heard before. A certain tonal quality of complete release, familiarity. You nod as Febhana clasps your face between her hands again, in marvel. Mando doesn’t blame her, with that look of utter joy on your face he’d—

Well.

“Do excuse us,” Febhana swiftly addresses her dinner mates, they nod and mutter forgiveness, eyes still fixed to the ground. Mando knows for a fact that at least one of them has a fob on them by the tight anxiety exchanged in their brief glances towards one another. He ignores it for the sake of maintaining the moment between you and your friend.

 Mando trails behind the two of you by a few paces. As Febhana guides you through the crowds, she waves off the guard droid with an elegantly manicured hand.

**

Febhana’s apartment could be considered a house twice over by Mando’s book. She leads you and him through so many tall-ceilinged hallways and rooms to get to the… lounge, he guesses would be a proper term for it… that he genuinely can’t remember where the entrance is.

The room contains a bar stocked better than any cantina on Nevarro, a few odd pieces of furniture, and a large fireplace. Heavy, dark blue curtains hang from windows so tall he has to crane his head upwards to see the top. He guesses the luxury is communicated through the refusal to occupy the space with much else, despite the fact that it could be considered a small banquet hall.

Febhana makes you and her drinks while you settle on one of the sloping, white couches, scanning the room in the same way Mando has been, with a little more plain wonder in your eyes.

Mando hovers on the periphery, unsure of where to place himself until you motion him over to sit on one of the opposing chairs, equally abstract as the rest of the furniture. Febhana settles across from you on the couch, handing you your drink before leaning back and kicking off her heels.

The two of you are in a constant chatter that has so many names and dates and overlapping speech that Mando has a difficult time keeping up. What he does catch is limited and mostly inferred: the two of you escaped from the same warlord at different times, Febhana was able to scale the social ranks of Canto Bight with ease and an inherited wallet--most importantly, the two of your missed each other very much.

It’s been at least an hour since the three of you sat down when Febhana directly addresses Mando for the first time.

“And what are you doing here, Mandalorian?” 

Mando feels your eyes on him, burning, as you take a sip of your cocktail. 

“She saved my life,” he manages as a straightforward reply. “I’ve hired her as a medic.”

“Febhana,” you say. When you’re slightly tipsy like this, you have a breathless wonder in the way you go about describing things. “It’s… it’s been so good. I’ve been practicing all these languages and… Maker, all the places I’ve been. It’s just like you described, when we would tell each other stories to go to sleep. Everything’s so big and there are so many people.”

Febhana throws back her head in a laugh, nodding. “Well I know that, darling. Oh, stars, it’s so good to look at you again.”

You and Febhana go back and forth a while longer still, Mando happily settles into the rhythm of it. There’s the warm, familiar way women get so engrossed in one another that he finds completely novel, if not enviable. It softens something in him to see you so relaxed as you prompt Febhana to detail her exploits, the excited yip you make when she flashes you the wedding band strung on a series of thin gold chains looped around her neck.

Then again, the way the two of you seem so physically intimate occasionally makes something in his chest constrict uncomfortably. He isn’t sure where it comes from, all the little touches you give each other seem to come from a place of purely platonic joy in reunion. But there’s a little jolt in his stomach whenever he sees it happen. He doesn’t want to acknowledge it as jealousy, but… she gets to feel you. So unabashedly.

At some point there’s a lull in the conversation. You take this moment to stretch your arm across the couch, clasping Febhana’s hands in your own. “We’re actually here for a specific reason,” you say. “And I’m only asking you out of genuine, pure desperation—Mando… has a job, here. That’s gotten a little tricky. The bounty is on the head of Tyreus Cavill.” Febhana’s eyes widen considerably, but other than that she maintains composure. Taking a deep breath, you continue, “He needs to find him, Febhana—there’s intel that he’s supposed to be at some kind of event. Possibly tonight.” You glance up at Mando to check if you’re getting the details right, he gives you brief nod of assurance when you do. “Do you know anything about it?”

Febhana scoffs, shaking her head and withdrawing her hand from yours to grab her drink resting on the low glass table in front of you. “If you’re referring to what I think you are, it would be the Gathering of Rams, one of the most exclusive events hosted on Canto. I’d imagine that’s why he’d dare show his face, even with the price on his head. Unless you already have an in, you’re fucked, Mandalorian. That place is more fortified than a warship.”

You visibly deflate. “What do you mean?”

“It’s an old, and I mean old, money tradition. A dinner for just about every despicable person in the galaxy. I’ve only heard rumors about what goes on, definitely some serious cult-y type shit, oaths, rituals, the like.” She chews on a nail as she thinks. Something in her eyes lights up. “Wait. I think I… yes! Yes, I got the announcement a few weeks ago. Stars I think—” she looks down at the device on the inside of her wrist, tapping on it until—“Christ you two are the luckiest couple of bounty hunters in the galaxy, you know that? The Tagges are hosting the afterparty, tonight. The most eligible of all of Canto Bight will be there, and then some. I was invited a few weeks ago, I’d completely forgotten. With any luck he’ll be dumb and drunk enough after the Gathering to go.”

“The Tagges?” Your voice is filled with apprehension. You glance to Mando, then quickly back to your friend. “Febhana, there’s no way he can get in.”

“Hm, I’d think so too but there could be a chance…” Her eyes narrow, her face breaking into a toothy grin. “No, I’m a complete idiot. Maker, this is gonna be perfect--most of the ladies in waiting here dress their guard droids as glorified curtains. It’s a new thing if you get what I’m saying. If we go in together and disguise the Mandalorian as even more of a hunk of metal than he already is—” Mando grunts at the slight jab—“all one of us would have to do is get the target by himself with a little eye-batting and it would be a done deal.” 

You and Mando speak in unison.

“I am not going to be a honeypot.”

“She will not.”

 Febhana raises a brow, one side of her mouth pulling up in poorly concealed amusement.

“Oh I suggested no such thing, I’d happily volunteer. But I do need a wing-woman, for appearance’s sake. I am taken, you know,” she flashes the wedding band again, pulling the collar of her dress down a fraction to do so. “Would be unbecoming to go on the prowl in public like that without pretending like I was just assisting.”

Mando glances over at you, trying to gauge your reaction to her proposal before he came off as to overbearing. He didn’t have the right to, he knows that. But there’s some raw part of him that winces at the very thought of you and your safety getting involved in one of his jobs. Maker if you got hurt in any way—

Febhana’s voice breaks his thought before it can be fully formed. “Oh, this is going to be excellent.” She practically purrs, jumping off the couch and extending her hand towards you to help you up. You comply, giving Mando a raised-brow glance of well, let’s see where this goes.

As Febhana begins leading you across the room, Mando stands.

“Should I contact the nursery to let them know to keep the child overnight?”

“The child?” Febhana’s eyes flick between you and Mando quickly. “I’m sorry, what?”

You curse under your breath, pressing your hand against your forehead. “A kid we’re looking after,” you clarify for Febhana. “I’m so sorry Mando, I got excited so it completely slipped my mind. I…” you bite your lip. “If you feel like it would be safe doing that I… guess that should be fine.”

“My wife could also look after it,” Febhana regards Mando evenly for a moment. “If you’re worried about safety. Would that be sufficient?”

Your eyes brighten slightly, glancing at Mando, tilting your head in question.

Mando nods, addressing Febhana directly. “If she trusts you, I do. I can travel back and get him while the two of you get ready.”

“I’ll send a car for you,” Febhana throws the remark over her shoulder, already busying herself by flinging the double doors that lead into the hallway back open.

You inhale sharply as if remembering something, tapping your friend on the shoulder before she begins to walk down the hall. “Wait, Febhana—the car, is there maybe a taxi service you could call? With an actual driver? He… we don’t really ‘do’ droids, if possible.” 

“I have an ‘actual’ driver, darling,” Febhana playfully chides. Her eyes flick towards Mando. “I’ll ring him, he’ll be downstairs in a moment. You remember where the entrance is, right?” 

Your delicate rephrasing, that “we,” rings in Mando’s ears for the entire trip back to the nursery. 

Mando quickly returns with the child, slightly weirded out by the enclosed landspeeder Febhana sent for him. It’s unlike anything he’d seen before, more like a carriage than any hover-craft he’d ever set foot in. There’s a dividing curtain between the passenger cabin and the driver’s seat, which he has pushed away to make sure the silent man at the wheel doesn’t try anything. 

The driver has a stony demeanor that seems very similar to Febhana’s—she clearly wasn’t one to suffer fools, and the people she surrounded herself with seemed to reflect that. Thinking back to the way you initially interacted with Mando, he could potentially see how your shared history with Febhana could have informed that. The characteristic briskness, the unflinching resolve. 

The child spends most of the returning trip chattering in relief, little hands reaching out to touch Mando’s beskar in a continuous greeting.

“Right here, kid. Always right here,” he affectionately rubs the corner of the child’s ear. There’s a heavy guilt that had settled itself in the bottom of Mando’s stomach since dropping him off.

He wants to apologize in some way, to blame it on his mood or the mounting anxiety surrounding the job, but he doesn’t know how to phrase it in a way that wouldn’t make him sound like a complete jackass. So he settles for bowing his helm to bump foreheads with the kid in a small display of reassurance. It seems to settle something in both him and the child almost immediately.

Mando glances up sharply, nearly forgetting the parted dividing curtain. The man, a wiry looking human male, glances back at the two of them through the thin pane of the rearview mirror, then returns to chain smoking while wildly maneuvering his way through traffic. 

The hover-car’s abrupt stop breaks him from his thoughts. He glances out the window, recognizing Febhana’s apartment building. The entire block is in a similar style as the boulevard you both had walked down earlier, circular doors outlined by bands of glowing yellow light. The only difference were the towering, wrought iron gates in front of each building and a set of tall stairs made of the same sandstone leading up to each house. The driver gets out and opens the landspeeder’s door for Mando and the kid, then steps forward and unlocks the gate, holding it open for the two of them.

“Sir.” The driver’s voice is more of a growl. If it weren’t for the enhanced settings of Mando’s visor, it would be too dark to see the mass of scar tissue that formed a jagged line across the man’s throat. The old wound is only partially concealed by the lapel of his coat pulled up against the drizzling rain. He’s abnormally tall, so thin that it looks as if his skull is actively attempting to escape his face. “Febhana’s apartment is the third buzzer. The service droid will let you in. She told me you should follow it.” The cigarette balancing against his lip bobs as he speaks, his heavy drawl disrupted only in part by his eviscerated voice box.

Mando’s lip curls slightly but he nods, thanking the driver, ducking out of the hover-car and climbing the steps leading to the apartment’s door.

Just as the driver said, the front door of Febhana’s apartment is opened by a droid. Mando stiffens despite the fact that the thing just barely reaches his knee. It gives off a series of little sounds before turning away and maneuvering down the front hall. Muttering something unsavory about Canto Bight under his breath, Mando follows it inside.

When he arrives at the threshold of Febhana’s dressing room, she’s only just started pulling out dresses for you to try on. He deflates slightly, really hoping that the two of you would have gotten this part over with so he could begin scoping out the Tagge mansion as soon as possible.

Mando accepts his fate and seats himself for the time being, placing the kid on the ground to let him toddle over to you. You lean down immediately and scoop him up, lifting him in the air with a happy: “Hey, stinky!” The child giggles as you snuggle him to your chest, pressing kisses all over his face in reunion. 

You keep gently playing with the kid as you and Febhana resume your conversation: wiggling your fingers over his face for him to grab, tickling his tummy, gently pinching his socked feet. It’s something you sink into so naturally Mando can’t help but be mesmerized by it. It calms something in him, to see both of you like that. He pushes the implications of that feeling away for the time being, as he always does.

Febhana gives the kid a bit of a once-over but looks overall disinterested, turning her attention back to rummage through her closet. “So it’s supposed to be a formal dance, but if it’s anything like the similar things I’ve gone to, that shit quickly disintegrates. But it’s still weirdly important for them to keep up the illusion of appearances, even though most rooms with closeable doors are occupied by people railing lines or fucking. Or both. Usually both.” The Twi’lek woman plucks out some kind of red, silken shift, holding it in the air then shaking her head and returning to her hunt. “I’ve been to enough Tagge parties to be a familiar face, we can play you off as an old friend of mine, some kind of lady-in-waiting thing or whatever. Crowds like these don’t tend to prod too deeply into personal histories, and with tits like yours I don’t think they’ll be interested in asking too many questions.”

Mando clenches his jaw so hard something starts hurting. You give a bit of an embarrassed laugh, quickly diverting the conversation. “So how do we get introduced to Cavill?”

 “Honestly? The easiest thing to do would be getting you to snuggled up with one of his friends. He runs around with a group of bachelors who are not… pleasant company by any standards. Snotty rich kids,” she makes a face. “But if that’s not an option I could try to push some of my contacts there to get us into their circle. Seriously, darling, with men like this involved it is probably going to be one of the easiest bounties he’s ever going to collect.”

The strain being placed on every cell in Mando’s body in response to this conversation alone says the exact opposite.

Febhana continues pulling out dresses, layering some over a bench and discarding others all together.

“Febhana, will they know?” You ask it suddenly, your tone—not tense, necessarily, but definitely controlled, as if you were expecting an answer you didn’t want to hear but were willing to take regardless.

“It’s the Tagge family, so of course they know what happened to that fucker, but I don’t think they would care,” she waves off your fearful tone with a shake of her head. “Just as long as we make a bit of an effort to conceal your identity, for formality’s sake, it’ll be fine.”

“What happened to who?” Mando asks. Once he does, all the air is immediately sucked out of the room.

After an extended moment. “You didn’t tell him?” Febhana’s head cocks, you visibly swallow.

“I um…” your nostrils flare with the sharp inhale you take as you search for the right words. “When I escaped…”

Febhana interrupts. “She stabbed the shit out of the warlord who owned us. All his wife found was pulp. Didn’t take it well, the cunt. Nearly catatonic. The rest of us were able to practically waltz out of there because of this one. Owe this gorgeous bitch my life. All of us do.”

You smile at Febhana, reaching out to squeeze her hand. She winks at you, covering it with her own before turning to go rifle back through her closet. You keep your gaze to your hands when she does, lips pressed together. Mando doesn’t remove his eyes from you as Febhana continues. 

“So it might be a little difficult getting her in there, but to be honest the Tagges hated him anyway. Rival business type stuff, though, not the whole holding women captive or worker’s rights violations and debt bondage thing,” her voice drips with a kind of contempt that Mando prays he’ll never have directed his way. He notices your hands tighten slightly from where they lay in your lap, your arms loosely looped around the kid who now sits upright in your lap. “I know someone who can forge some papers well enough to present to the guards, he owes me some favors anyway,” Febhana continues. “They’ll be ready by the time we have to leave. Doll you up enough and I’m sure it’ll be fine—ah!” It is only then that Mando looks back over to the Twi’lek woman. Her eyes are lit up, fanged mouth pulled upwards in a triumphant smile. The dress in her hand is a deep plum color, fabric so thin he cannot make out what it actually looks like without a form to fill it. You reach out to it, rubbing the dress between your thumb and index finger.

“Perfect.” You and Febhana say it in unison, your widest smile of the night parted up at her. There’s a delighted, mischievous tilt to your mouth he’s never seen before.

Mando swallows, despite the sudden tightness in his throat. 

He waits outside while the two of you change, sitting on a strange tufted seat pushed against the hallway’s bay window. It’s piled with an obnoxious amount of silken pillows—it seems the longer you’ve been with him, the more surfaces his beskar encounters that it never would have otherwise. A part of him is able to find the humor of that, despite the discomfort of feeling wildly out of place in your friend’s luxurious home. He settles with his legs slightly spread, back hunched to brace his elbows against the tops of his beskar-clad thighs.

After about thirty minutes, a woman comes down the hall, absentmindedly cleaning a pair of large-framed glasses with the corner of her sweater, a thick, leather-bound book tucked under one arm. She looks as out of place in this hallway as he does—more like a Galactic librarian than a resident of an apartment like this. She puts her glasses back on and stops in her tracks once she sees him.

“Who are you?”

Mando clears his throat. “A friend of Febhana’s.” 

“No you’re not.” 

“Yes, I am--well. A friend of a friend.”

Her eyes narrow quizzically. “I’ve been married to that woman for five years now. I think I would know if she had a Mandalorian as a ‘friend of a friend.’”

As if on cue, Febhana emerges from the beaded curtain suspended over the entrance of her dressing room, barefoot and wearing a blue gown. She pads over to the woman, something bulky tucked under one arm, the other carrying the child in a sleeping bundle. Febhana places him in her wife’s arms delicately. “Lovely, we’re just getting ready for the party. Don’t mind her play-thing,” she tilts her head towards Mando without directly looking at him. “He’s just here for decoration.” 

Mando physically bites his tongue.

Febhana’s wife glances at Mando, before leaning up to gently kiss Febhana. “Alright, I’ll be in the study. Wake me when you get back.”

Febhana cups her wife’s face gently. It’s such an intimate gesture that Mando looks away, feeling as though his presence alone is an interruption. The couple talks quietly for a moment, then her wife exits through the same door she came in from.

“Here is the guard’s uniform. The measurements should be right,” Febhana stands in front of Mando, handing him folded pieces of dark fabric, and then a helm. It’s two halves of a black metal shell meant to fit and tighten over the face of a droid. There’s a thick pane of darkened glass cutting through the middle of the mask, presumably to not disrupt a droid’s sensors but it will render Mando’s absolutely useless. This night just keeps getting better and better.

The whole thing is not something Mando has ever seen before, though he was never one to frequent circles like Febhana’s. The only distinguishable features are symmetrical dips cutting severe cheekbones into the object’s silhouette. Two fixed pieces of gilded metal form a swooping triangle that hovers just over where his nose will be under the helmet’s featureless surface. Looping, thin chains dripping from the decorative structure to partially conceal the mask’s lower half. When he holds it up in the low light of the hallway, their movement creates glinting waves of light.  

All of it is purely flare, for the most part. At least the tailor made plenty room for armor beneath the--as Febhana put it--glorified curtains usually meant to conceal a droid. He heaves a sigh, taking the uniform from her. “This is the only option?”

Febhana shrugs. “Unless you want me and your girl going in by ourselves and trying to lure him out to you--which is certainly an option--yes.”

“She isn’t ‘my girl.’”

“Oh, trust me,” her smile is biting. “I know that.” She tilts her head towards the dressing room. “C’mon, the pretty one is almost done. You can use my room to change.”

When he enters, you’re seated at Febhana’s vanity. All the air is sucked out of his lungs.

The dress is really nothing more than a series of gauze-like drapes that spill from your body and pool onto the floor. The expanse of your back is completely exposed, the dress only resuming to cover you right above the base of your spine. One long piece of fabric serves as the illusion of sleeves, cinched at the swooping neckline by delicate, medallion-like embellishments that rest at the dip of both shoulders. The sleeves’ near-transparent fabric are fixed to ovular gold rings you have on the middle fingers of both hands.

Mando watches the fabric shift over the bend of your arm as you use said finger to swipe a little pigment on your lips. It glistens in the mirror he looks at you through. In that initial moment of deep focus, you have the severe look of a high official’s wife. Utterly untouchable. The most beautiful creature he’s ever witnessed.

His entrance breaks your concentration, you smile up at him, warmly, through the mirror.

“I’m almost done,” your voice breaks him from his stupor. Your other hand dips a small brush into a pot of powder. You dab it under your eyes and then stand, going to a crystalline bar cart and spraying some kind of perfume on your neck.   

Febhana steps into the room behind him. After a moment Mando finds his voice.

“And you said she isn’t supposed to be the honeypot?” It’s hard to keep the pain out of his voice as he says it. At this point it’s like the two of you are actively trying to kill him.

Febhana laughs, and the smile you give him is expansive yet strangely private at the same time. As if you and him were in on some secret, some inside joke. You cross the room and pat him lightly on the shoulder twice, before moving him aside in order to link arms with Febhana.

The two of you leave the room, picking up whatever conversation you were having before Febhana left to give Mando his things. He stands there until his heartbeat steadies, then moves behind the wooden room partition to put the uniform on.

It’s going to be a long night.

**

a/n: mando, babes, u don’t even know the half of it

jokes aside i am so excited for the next chapter you guys have no idea how much fun this is to write !! love a good ol’ fancy party w a bunch of degenerates. 

tag list: @im-the-nerdiest-of-them-a11  @walkingthegrounds @roseallisonparker @kaitlyn2907 @dinsbeskar​

please let me know if you would like to be added/removed!

[solangelover]

"Look Both Ways First, Kids!”

Submission Prompt: Hello…I just thought of this prompt and love the way you write. Will is an elementary school teacher as a side job and his classroom habits slip out while talking to Nico and the others. Like when they go out in a group, Will is like: ‘Okay now everyone hold your buddy’s hand.’

A/N: I’m going to tweak the prompt a bit since like, elementary school teacher is not a side job LOL. So now we have a mortal AU with teacher!Will, grad student!Nico (not that it matters), and they’re hanging a mix of friends (I always do Cecil and Lou Ellen so I’ll try to mix it up more haha). (YO I’VE HAD HALF OF THIS WRITTEN FOR AT LEAST A YEAR SORRY)

 Read on AO3 or FF.Net

“Bye, Mr. Solace!”

Will enthusiastically waved goodbye, his last student filing out of his classroom. Man, second graders were really just adorable. Also, very messy. Will turned his gaze upon the desks covered in glitter and paper scraps and sighed. Nico did tell him that this particular art project was a bad idea, but how else was Will going to teach the kids about the states in the US if they couldn’t cut them out and color them?

Will began the arduous process of cleaning up, humming lightly to himself. He had to actually get his gum scraper (yes, he always had it on hand even if gum was not allowed in school) to get glue off the desks. After vacuuming as much glitter out of the carpet as possible, Will dusted himself off and headed to a faculty meeting.

He came back to his room to find his boyfriend wiping down his desks. He let out a noise of surprise, startling slightly in the middle of the doorway. Nico looked up, a slow smile spreading across his face as he stood up from where he was leaning over a desk.

“Hey, Sunshine,” he greeted. “I see you went ahead with the glitter.”

Will rolled his eyes but didn’t respond to the jab, electing to walk over and throw his arms around the dark-haired man. “What are you doing here?”

Will leaned back to see Nico’s face as he started speaking. “We’re going out, aren’t we?”

“It’s like 4:00! Isn’t it kind of early?” Will untangled himself from his boyfriend after giving him a quick peck on the cheek.

Nico shrugged. “Jason said I should just get you from school. You know how he’s like an old man now and he sleeps early.” They both laughed in agreement. Jason got some government job out of college that fit his regiment of rising early and hitting the ground running. While he used to be able to hang with everyone late into the night, starting his career flipped his “adult switch” and he became “less fun,” in Leo’s words. Piper doesn’t mind much since Jason’s routine has helped steady her often turbulent schedule. She had started a small fashion company in college that really took off in the past year, meaning she had meeting after meeting with various people and often had no consistency between her workdays. Jason and Piper’s daily lives were drastically different, but they did good to balance each other out and keep each other grounded.

“Did Leo say he was coming?” Will asked as he began putting things away and shutting his windows.

“Yeah, I think so. And he’s bringing Calypso too.” Leo’s small mechanic shop had a few loyal customers, which was enough to make Leo content with his life. Then, as he tells it, a beautiful goddess waltzed into his garage covered in grease and dirt smudges, claiming to have broken down nearby and was in need of help. Leo said she gave him a decent rundown of what she found wrong with her car and was ecstatic to find that she was spot on. He was in love and, while it took a bit of charming and annoying, Leo convinced her to go out with him a few months ago.

“Oh, that’s good! I like her,” Will replied enthusiastically.

“I can’t believe she puts up with him,” Nico said in a flat voice.

“Don’t be so mean, Neeks,” the blonde said as they made their way out the door. “They’re good together and you know it. Besides, she teases Leo just as much as he does to everyone—“

“Probably why he’s whipped,” Nico cut in.

“Oh my gosh,” Will rolled his eyes as he grabbed Nico’s hand, swinging it between them.

They continued to talk and joke as they got into the car and drove downtown, where they were meeting their friends for dinner.

Once they parked and were getting out of the car, they heard a shout behind them. “Looks like the love birds finally made it!”

Nico rolled his eyes and replied without even turning around. “Don’t even talk, Pipes. You know you’re the queen of sappy romance.” Will could see the smirk on his boyfriend’s face as he rounded the car to stand next to him.

They turned in time to see the Piper’s offended expression as she strode up to them. “Excuse me,” she scoffed. “How dare you make such an accusation against me when we all know Jason is the mushiest one and he’s standing right here.”

The aforementioned blonde only sighed exasperatedly, knowing he never wins this argument. Then, a shameless grin grew on his face as he snaked his arm around his girlfriend’s waist, tugging her toward him. He shoved his nose in her face and crooned, “And don’t you forget it.”

“Woah, Jason, where’s my loving embrace?” an indignant voice cried out to their right. Will turned to see Leo walking hand-in-hand with a beautiful girl, her caramel-colored hair blowing back lightly in the breeze. Her cheeks were tinted pink as she giggled, watching her ridiculous boyfriend ramble on about being Jason’s first love and how no one cared about him around here.

Jason, ever the gentleman, immediately turned to Calypso to introduce himself, prompting everyone else to do the same.

“Leo’s told us a lot about you,” Will said politely. “It’s wonderful to finally meet you.”

“I’m glad to be here,” she said good-naturedly. “Leo’s told me many stories about you all, though I feel like they were a bit… embellished. I know for a fact that he isn’t a smooth, suave hero at all times.” She shot Leo a look that caused his cheeks to darken, even as he placed a hand on his chest in mock exaggeration. Nico was right—he was whipped.

“Oh, don’t worry. We have an endless list of embarrassing things Leo has done. We’ll fill in the gaps he probably left out,” Nico cut in. In all honesty, getting back at Leo for anything and everything he’s ever done to him was probably what he had looked forward to most about this dinner. Will couldn’t hold him back if he tried.

Before things could escalate any further, Will gestured toward the road. “Let’s head toward the restaurant before we spend the whole evening insulting each other in a parking lot. I like to have food with my entertainment.” He winked at Calypso, who laughed as she nodded in agreement.

The group mingled together, conversing loudly as they made their way toward the edge of the lot. Nico had clearly considered jaywalking across the street to the restaurant, but one stern look from his boyfriend had him pivoting to the nearest crosswalk.

Will pressed the crossing button and turned toward the group as they waited. They all continued chatting, not really paying attention to where they were going. He glanced at the crossing sign, hoping everyone could at least look forward when they stepped into the street.

When the sign lit up and his friends hadn’t moved, he spoke up on instinct. “Everyone, grab your buddy’s hand; we’re crossing the street!”

The chatter stopped, and Will blinked as all eyes stared back at him. “Um…” He glanced again at the sign, which was now counting down their seconds. Technically, you weren’t supposed to enter the road at this point, but the timer was still high. However, none of his friends seemed poised to move, so maybe he’d have to hold them back before they ended up sprinting across the street. “Are we—?”

A loud snort to his right cut him off. Will turned his head to see Nico doubled over in laughter. “You—” he tried to start, but he couldn’t hold his laughter in long enough to even form two words.

Soon enough, the others started laughing too—Leo and Piper, rather loudly, and Jason and Calypso, a bit more politely, the latter holding a hand over her mouth as her shoulders shook. Will continued to look confused, part of his mind still preoccupied with the light they were missing.

He replayed the last few minutes in his head, then promptly turned red as he groaned. His friends only laughed harder when he buried his head in his hands.

“I just want to cross the street,” he lamented through his fingers.

“But, Mr. Will,” Leo exclaimed. “You forgot to tell us to look both ways first!” He had tears gathering in the corners of his eyes from how much he was laughing. Honestly, Will thought they were all overreacting.

“Oh, come on! It wasn’t even that funny!” he cried.

“Will,” Jason started, in a consoling tone that the teacher did not think was warranted in this situation. “You didn’t hear it like we did.”

“You used your teacher voice!” Nico finally caught his breath enough to speak, though Will kind of wishes he hadn’t. “It was all high and cheery and—” He wiggled his fingers in an effort to express Will’s tone.

The blonde man turned back to see the light had changed, the red hand now mocking him and preventing him from leaving this conversation.

“You’re a teacher?” Will found Calypso looking at him with genuine curiosity in her eyes as the other four calmed down from their fits of laughter.

“Yes,” he sighed heavily. “And we had a field trip the other day. And I came straight from the classroom today.” He gazed at the others around him. “I guess I forgot I wasn’t dealing with second graders.”

Calypso carried on over the noises of indignation from the others. “Aw, second graders, how cute! Tell me about it!” Bless her, this saint of a woman, engaging in conversation and pushing Will’s slip-up away. It was a kind gesture and Will ran with it.

He quite literally turned his back on the others as he described what his day of geography and glitter was like to the woman.

In the next minute, when the light changed and the crossing sign lit up once more, he felt a hand slip into his. Nico was staring up at him, a grin on his face. “I call you as my crossing buddy.”

Will rolled his eyes. “Yeah yeah.” He looked to his other side to see the other couples also holding hands and smiling at him. The teacher rolled his eyes again and, before he stepped off the curb, brightly called out, “Look both ways first, kids!”

[druidx]

Family Treasures

Fandom: Thunderbirds Are Go (2015) Context: A friend linked me a TAG fic with the most perfect description of Lasagna I have ever read. I then got carried away and read nearly every fic she recommended to me... and then I figured I should watch the 2015 version of Thunderbirds (having only seen fragments of the original ‘60s show as a kid)... and then this happened. I’ve also been leaning heavily into the subtext thing still, so constructive criticism, with subtext in mind, is welcome on this piece. Words: 1700 CW: Injury mention, worried people, minor maudlin thoughts Tagged: @viawrites-andacts​​ @strosmkai-rum​​ @scribeofred​​ Read on AO3

Kayo paces. Her sleek leather boots sink into the plush carpet of Tracy Island's lounge. She has been grounded by injury, left to recover while the Tracy boys are out there doing what they do best. She trusts them; knows they know what they're doing, knows they can handle themselves... But it doesn't help. Her fingers itch to activate the comms, but she doesn't. The boys don't need her micromanaging, and she trusts John to forward anything if he thinks she can assist... But still, the ache remains.

Those leather boots softly tap as she reaches the parquet flooring, and Kayo finds herself standing in front of Jeff's desk. It's a big, sturdy, mahogany thing. Impish sunlight glints off the polished surface, winking and laughing. It makes her think of Virgil. The sun drifts behind a cloud, and the laughter vanishes. She turns away.

Her steps lead her to the portrait of Thunderbird One, and the nicknacks beside it. Her eyes slide over the portrait – seen a hundred times before – to an antique barometer on the shelves. And there is Scott: Quicksilver in a glass; carefully controlled vim and daring. She pictures him in freefall, madcap laughter stolen by the rushing wind. The thought of his pack failing at fifty thousand feet is enough to have her leaning against the wall, head reeling like she's nosediving, seconds before the impact that has left her arm in a sling, and Thunderbird Shadow a pile of scrap.

Kayo huffs out her indignation at her weak and maudlin thoughts, wrenching back from the wall. She pinwheels away, her boots marking out time on the parquet as she passes in front of the vast window. Outside the sun glimmers off the swimming pool. Bright. Cheery. Such a laughable contrast to the storm inside. She wishes it were raining, dark skies and tempestuous winds. The bowl of forget-me-not blue is almost mocking in its temptation. She closes her eyes, breathing deeply, and brings herself back to ground level.

Kayo finds herself in the far corner of the lounge, at a kitschy '60s coffee table tucked into the fold of the room. On its surface sits a porcelain pug, which reminds her of Sherbet – and, by extension, his owner. It appears delicate – a dainty conversation piece; but her foot knows it is sturdier than one might think. Her eye catches on a woollen beanie, abandoned next to the pug – and she scowls; Lady Penelope has Parker to keep her from serious trouble. Kayo's brothers are up there without their usual safety net.

She turns back, pacing towards the piano. She plays only a little; her mother insisted, to start with. But after a year of tantrums and sword fights, Mama Kyrano gave up. But the island is empty – even Grandma Tracy is on the mainland – and the house is too quiet.

Kayo sits down at the piano and raises the lid, leaning absently to the side as a small, spring-loaded, plastic frog sails over her shoulder – the latest victim in the ongoing prank war. Her fingers wander over the ivories, and she settles into picking out Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star in the upper third. As the sweet notes fill the air, Alan comes to mind – bright, lively, graceful; effortless as the rising music. Kayo lifts her head as if she might somehow see to the edge of space; see Thunderbird Three shimmering with star-stuff as if picked out in the silver, gossamer notes she plays. She dismisses the fanciful thought with a twitch of the lips, finishing the refrain.

As her hand falls still, she looks across the room, gaze drawn back to Jeff's desk. She remembers the moment he asked her to become his head of security – when Papa Kyrano retired. She'd not long returned from her last field stint with Mossad when he'd called her to the desk. His lips had asked her to help him protect the world; his eyes had asked her to protect his boys.

Kayo sighs, the guilt of disappointing the indomitable Jeff Tracy laying heavily over her shoulders. She closes the lid and turns on the stool, intending to resume viewing life through the plate-glass barrier, when her foot nudges the plastic amphibian, abandoned on the floor. She picks the thing up, lips quirking at the cartoonish features – the bugging eyes and wide, red grin – and is inexplicably reminded of Gordon. Kayo places it on the piano, where it wobbles, brilliant green out of place on the ebony-silk surface. Three birds, two star-men, but only one squid-boy. She purses her lips and tries to tell herself the unease this thought causes is about lack of process redundancy. Perhaps she should expand her skillset in an aquatic direction...

She stands with purpose and walks over to the nook in which sits Goron's transport chute. But as Kayo reaches over to activate the chute, a flicker of something catches her eye. Her free hand is already fumbling for her stun-gun when the interloper reveals itself: a long-legged tropical spider has found its way into the aquarium. It flails and panics, and she wonders if it might drown. But even as she watches, it's already hoisting out of the water and building a complicated nest in the corner of the tank. Kayo watches it work, watches its ingenious use of resources in an unfamiliar environ, watches it engineer a refuge... and thinks of Doctor Hackenbacker. Distracted from her previous thought, Kayo turns away from the chute access, making a note to tell Gordon about the spider. She doesn't think it's a threat to the fish, and the lid is a four-handed affair. Besides, knowing Gordon, he'll want to coddle the thing before he releases it.

Instead, Kayo climbs to the mezzanine. Somewhere in the aether, a stack of security reports grows ever larger, but she is unable to read them, to even consider distracting herself with them at a time like this. Worry still fills the well of her stomach, bilious and vile. There are too many close calls, too many near misses. Too many times she's snatched one of her brothers from certain doom. She's so useless here. Idly, she picks up a blown-glass paperweight. Does John ever feel like this? she wonders as she stares into its nebulaeic swirls. Drifting high above them, like a flame-haired malāk – a messenger of God – with his brothers so far from his grasp, does John ever feel powerless? She wonders how he does it: how he can stay so removed from the action, remaining so calm. She wonders how he manages the silent panic that maybe this is the mission someone does not come back from.

The glass has chilled her hand, chasing phantom skeins of cold and fatigue through her body. Kayo carefully replaces the paperweight and makes her way back down the stairs. She settles into the sofa lining the conversation pit, a hand falling to her side as she allows her body to sink into the plush stuffing. Something rough touches the side of her hand, and Kayo fishes out a blackened cookie from where someone – Gordon or Alan, most likely – has stuffed it between the sofa cushions. Kayo screws up her nose, making a noise of revulsion. It's been at least a week since Grandma Tracy tried baking again. Mouth still in a down-curve of disgust, she leans to put the cookie on the table but finds herself pausing as the light sluices across its dark, oleaginous, undulating surface. It reminds her of the Iceland mission and the pictures of cooling magma Doctor Hackenbacker proudly showed off – and his lecture on igneous rocks. Created by fire, he'd said, melded and reforged into something tougher. Used the world over – even here on the island – as foundations. Unshakable and resistant to all the world could throw. It makes her think of the island's second foundation, of all Grandma Tracy has been through, and yet still stands firm and loving despite it.

She wishes any of her extended family were here, now. Like that spider, Kayo feels out of her depth, could do with someone strong, cheery, soothing; a solidity under her feet. But they are not.

Kayo is a woman who knows when her limits have been met. The island is empty, there's no one around to witness the break caused by cracks of worry, pain and fatigue. Her lip wobbles, vision growing hazy with tears. She gives a small sob, then another, allowing herself the luxury of a little cry.

"Kayo?" She sniffs, swatting at her eyes, and looks up to see Alan's hologram looking down at her, eyes pinched with worry, tone edging towards frantic. "Kayo, is everything okay? John-" "John," comes the even tone of the auburn-haired man who appears next, "should be more careful about what side remarks he makes while on comms to his worry-wart little brother." He rolls his eyes. "Sorry to disturb you, Kayo. But your telemetry did do something unusual a few moments ago-" "Kayo? Alan pinged me. What's your status?" Scott cuts in, as if they are in the sky and all is normal. Before Kayo can say anything, Lady Penelope appears, the picture of decorum and class as usual. "I'm sure it was nothing. Isn't that right, darling? Just a little wobble, eh?" her Ladyship says. "'Wobble'?" asks Gordon, from where he and Brains cluster behind the pilot of Thunderbird Two. "What the hell does- Hey!" Kayo's lips twitch in amusement, as Gordon rubs his head from where Virgil has given him a brotherly love-tap. "It means: keep your nose out, squid-boy," Virgil tells him. "Is everything okay, Kayo dear?" says Grandma Tracy. "John asked me to- Oh," she adds, looking at the packed comm channel. "Well, it looks like you all beat me to the pinch." She smiles and rubs the back of her neck. Kayo looks over her family with a swift, critical eye. Apart from Gordon's head, they all appear healthy and uninjured. Relief floods through her, loosening tense muscles. Her wry amusement turns into a full-blown smile. "I'm alright," she says. "Like Penny said, it was just a little wobble. Everything is F.A.B."

[pertinax--loculos]

Absent That Night -- Excerpt

In which Nox has called Agent Latrell to a crime scene, and Latrell discovers something which will change the direction of the case... and, quite possibly, his life. Wordcount: 1129 CW: death (this is a murder), quite a few mentions of blood/bloodstains *** Nox made his way unerringly through the nonsensical layout, through a door that led to a six-by-eight foot attempt at a hallway, up a narrow set of stairs, past the impractically sharp edge formed by the acute angle outside. By necessity the walls narrowed to a tiny hallway past that bit; just beyond it, they opened up into a room that appear to take up most of the second floor.

Window to his left, on the front of the building. Paintings to his right, covering every square inch of wall. Wet bar against the opposite wall, pale marble with dark metal stools.

Dead body in the centre of the room.

Nox stopped just in front of the window. The rising sun cast him mostly into silhouette.

“Usually, I don’t return to a job site.” His voice was even, measured, but far from casual. “But I thought doing so might be prudent given what happened last time.”

The body was male. That’d give the Headees a bit of a thrill, changing up of the victim profile. No doubt they’d find some way to spin it, even if they currently were leaning pretty heavily on the idea that Carrie had somehow surprised Nox during the last theft. From the doorway, Latrell couldn’t glean any more details.

“How long were you away for?” he said, taking a couple of steps forward.

Nox shifted with him; when Latrell glanced at the movement, he realised it was in order to keep his face hidden in shadow. “About three hours.”

“Huh.” The word did nothing to encompass the thoughts spinning around Latrell’s head, or perhaps it was the only word that would. Three hours was not enough time. Whoever had done this had to get the victim here, get in, kill him, get out, all without leaving a scrap of forensic evidence. And that wasn’t even accounting for finding out that Nox was supposed to be doing something tonight, and then finding out the actual location.

“Yeah.” The gravity in Nox’s tone suggested he’d had similar thoughts. “Professional.”

“Association?”

“No,” Nox said, with such confidence that Latrell didn’t even bother to question him. Even if he disagreed, Nox clearly wasn’t going to discuss it.

Latrell walked the perimeter of the room first, trying to get a broader view before he closed in. Like Carrie, the man had been left facedown, one arm stretched in front of him, feet towards the door. Didn’t look like a gunshot this time, though; not enough trauma. Stabbing? That would make more sense, given that Nox was prone to leaving his signatures with a knife.

He stopped in front of the wall of paintings, trying to make out an obvious gap. They were so haphazardly placed it was impossible. Latrell glanced back over his shoulder. “What is it you took?”

Nox lifted one shoulder, let it drop. “Few gemstones. There’s a safe behind the Clarkeson in the centre.”

The only reason Latrell was able to identify the Clarkeson was because Nox had stolen one before. He stepped closer, peered around the frame, getting as close to the wall as he could without touching it. The safe was well-concealed, likely state-of-the-art.

“‘A few gemstones’?” he repeated, stepping back and swivelling to see both Nox and the body.

This time there was the hint of a smirk in Nox’s voice. “About three carats of untreated gem-quality tanzanite.”

Latrell huffed. Again, his gemstone knowledge came exclusively from Absens Nox, but that was enough to tell him the value of the stones. “Unbelievable.”

“I am very good at what I do, lawman.”

Perhaps too good. Having memorised his zoomed out view of the crime scene, Latrell moved forward for a closer look.

Something about the body niggled at him as he did. He wasn’t sure what it was at first; maybe some forgotten cop sense telling him something was off, that perhaps the body had been moved into position afterwards, or that it didn’t have the marks of a professional killing. But there was an extended bloodstain beneath the body, just like there’d been below Carrie’s, and for a victim to have been killed in this room without any obvious signs of struggle, the murderer had to at least be proficient. No, it was something else, something twinging his memory as he got closer and closer.

It was the precise moment he stopped at the edge of the bloodstain that he saw it.

The tattoo, darker lines stretching down the dark skin of the man’s forearm. A fluid, wavelike pattern that Latrell had admired for the way it evoked the sea.

The world tilted sharply on its axis. Latrell felt the ground move beneath him, shifting and heaving, and he knew he was gonna end up on his knees. Straight down and into the pool of blood, still soaking into the off-white carpet, forming an inexorable admission that he’d been there, that the Headees would use, on top of this, to prove that he wasn’t the accomplice he was the fucking prime suspect—

“Whoa, agent.” Nox’s voice, from very close and yet very far away. Something grabbed his arms, pulled him backwards, away from the pool of blood and the tattoo and the body.

The body.

Kelly.

Nausea clawed its way up the back of Latrell’s throat and he forced it back down, savagely, swallowing again and again and again. He couldn’t throw up, not here, not now, not in this room with the young man he’d argued with only a week ago lying bloody and cold and dead directly in front of him.

Oh fuck. Oh fuck.

“Lawman? Agent Latrell? You with me?”

Latrell decidedly wasn’t, but Nox’s voice pulled him out of the quagmire of his mind, just enough to process that he was, indeed, on his knees, one hand pressed to the ground in front of him, the other covering his mouth. Nox was near enough that Latrell could see him out of the corner of his eye, though he didn’t lift his head.

“Thought you’d seen your share of dead bodies,” Nox said, casual.

Latrell was pretty sure the comment was intended to rile him. He didn’t really care, because it worked. He shoved off the floor with his hand, bringing himself up onto his haunches. He wasn’t quite ready to try standing.

“Not many of them have been people overtly threatened in public,” he said.

Nox’s face flickered. Too many emotions for Latrell to parse. Likely he didn’t know him well enough to do so even if there weren’t. This man was a stranger. This man was a criminal.

And he was the only ally Latrell currently had.

“That’s… not ideal,” Nox said, slow, cautious.

Latrell laughed, the sound bursting out of him, too close to hysteria. “You think?”

[i-do-trash-fanfictions]

Thera's Journal Entry #61

(This one isn't as good as the others, but at least I posted something.)

I flipped a dagger of light in my hand. I sat at the base of a tree, under the shade, as Crow stood in the clearing in front of me, showing off by shooting the painted targets on the trees.

It was nice, being in the sunlight again.

Crow finished. He had hit a few bulls eyes, but a few did not quite make it. They were close though, so I had to give him some credit.

"Alright. Your turn." He said, walking back to me as he tucked his gun into his holster.

I stood up and unsheathed the Ace of Spades. I didn't bring it out to the field a whole lot, but I still brought it out to practice every now and then. I spun quickly, shooting each target. Every bullet hit its mark, the red circle in the center, in just a quick minute.

"Show off," Crow muttered.

I only shrugged and went over to him, my hand held out.

Crow sighed and deposited thirty glimmer, which I put away into my pocket. We had been going for quite some time and had a bet over who would hit the most bullseyes.

"Come on. Let's go for a walk." I suggested as I slid my gun into my holster and nodded into the forest.

Crow caught up to me and we walked side by side. Eventually, he reached over and took my hand. He seemed nervous, though I could tell he was trying to hide it.

"No one's out here if that's what you're worried about," I told him.

"I feel like someone is out here." He said. "I know it sounds crazy when you say it aloud, but it's just that feeling that I'm being watched. That we're being watched."

"No one ever really goes out here. I think we're alright."

"I sure hope so."

We walked for a while after that, until suddenly Crow stopped. Glint appeared after sensing his Guardian's worry.

"What? What is it?" I asked, looking around as one hand reached to my hand canon.

Crow was staring off into a part of the forest. Finally, he said something. "There." He pointed. "Someone's over there, sitting on that rock."

"A Guardian?" I asked.

"They have a cloak, so maybe it's a hunter."

"Do you have your mask?"

"No. I left it on your ship."

"Stay here."

I let go of his hand and walked over to the person. They never once turned around when I approached.

"Hello. I'm a Guardian from the Last City. Who are you and what are you doing out here?"

"I call myself the Ranger nowadays. And as you can see, I'm sitting on a rock."

The person Rouge had told me about.

"Why are you sitting on a rock?"

"It's a nice rock. High up too. And if you stare out there," They pointed. "You can watch a few squirrels while they get their breakfast. Or lunch. Or maybe brunch."

I stared at them. They had a helmet on so I couldn't make out any features.

"I hope I'm not being annoying. I don't mean to be. Just here to enjoy the view."

"One of my friends. They saw you out here before."

"Ah, right. Rouge, I think her name was. I don't think she liked me very much, with me being on her terrain and all. I left pretty quickly after she went off. She was a bit scary."

"Rouge can be sometimes. But what are you really doing out here? And are you a Guardian? If so, why aren't you going to the Last City?"

"I'm only out here to enjoy some scenery, as I was saying before. And I do still consider myself to be a hunter."

"You didn't answer my last question."

"I don't want to."

"Alright then," I said with a sigh.

"Hey, aren't the people working with the Fallen now? Mithraks and his gang?" The Ranger asked.

"Yes. How did you know that?"

"Just do. Hey, found a skiff way back there. Crashed." They told me, standing up and gesturing to another part in the forest. "Down below a cliff. You and your buddy might wanna check it out. I best get goin. Ain't gonna do me much good to stick around here. Whatever shot down that skiff might still be lurkin around." They jumped off their rock.

I looked towards where they had pointed, and sure enough, I could make out a bit of smoke coming from that area. I went to turn towards the Ranger again, but they were gone. I ran back to get Crow.

"It was this person called the Ranger. They said there's a Fallen skiff back there. We should check it out."

"Can we trust them?"

"Not sure, but I know a friend who's met them before, and they seemed friendly enough."

We began our way towards the smoke from the skiff, then leapt down the cliff, doing another jump just before we hit the ground as to not break our legs. Crow started to run towards it and knelt down. I walked up behind him. Many dead Fallen littered the ground around us. A few were burned from where the fire from the ship had enveloped them.

But many, many were around the area, as if they had begun to run. They had not died from the crash, but something else.

I went to one and rolled it onto its back. I gasped as tears welled in my eyes. Clutched in its arms was a child, also dead. Both were from bullets in their heads.

I didn't realize Crow was behind me until I heard him mutter a curse, and then stomp off. We both knew it had been Guardians who did this. He was going off to say more choice words, and he didn't want me to hear.

"Sometimes I wonder if the Guardians are even good guys, Scout," I said to my Ghost.

He gave a sad whirr. "I can't believe it was Guardians who did this. If I could, I would say anything to give us the benefit of the doubt, but it is far too obvious. No one else would be around here to attack them except maybe other fallen, but I highly doubt they would attack their own kind. Many Guardians do fly their jumpships out here from time to time. That is probably how they shot the skiff down." He spoke solemnly.

"Thera? Thera come here!" I heard Crow say with a sense of urgency in his voice.

I ran over to him. He stood, holding something in his arms.

"Look." He turned it over to me and I peered at it.

Four tiny eyes peered right back.

"Oh," I looked around and spotted two dead Eliksni, very close to each other. "Oh, no. The poor thing."

"What will we do? We can't leave it out here." He stated, staring at me as he waited for an answer.

"No, of course not. Here, let me see it." Crow handed the hatchling to me and I held it in my arms.

"I have a friend. An Eliksni of House Light who already had a child of her own. Trildir. We can go to her."

Crow scouted around for a bit, with the hope there may be other survivors. I went to the ship, and he came soon after. I handed him the child as I took control of the Queen of Hearts. In no time, we had returned to the Last City, covered still in darkness.

We transmitted to the Annex and (after Crow put on his mask, just in case) then went to the hidden area of the City where the Eliksni stayed. I walked past many Fallen and went straight to Trildir's home. It had changed since I had last been there. We had visited many times in the past few days.

A banner with the House Light symbol hung on the wall, and there was a nice carpet on the floor. It was only a single room, and a cot was in one corner, with a nest of blankets on a crate. For Ralis, I was guessing.

Trildir was in there, luckily, and was startled when we arrived.

She took a single glance at the child in Crow's arms and motioned to the futon in the room. Trildir then pulled a curtain to close of the doorway from prying eyes.

"Where did you find her?" She asked immediately. Crow passed the hatchling to me.

"You- you wouldn't want to know."

"I do. Yes, I do."

I sighed. "A skiff, shot down from the sky. All the other Eliksni were dead. She's the only survivor."

"I do not mean to seem... oh, what is the word?" She clicked for a moment. "Rude. But, was it light-bearers?"

I sadly nodded. "It could be no one else. And I have no idea which ones did it either, otherwise, I would be going after them right about now."

"I want to believe that someday we Eliksni and you can live in peace, but Guardians such as those make it so hard to do. Here, let me see the child." Trildir held out her top two arms and I put the child in them.

"Yes, definitely a girl." The hatchling clicked at her. "And most likely hungry."

Trildir went over to a shelf and produced what looked like a meat scrap. The child ate it quickly and Trildir gave her a few more.

"I will take care of her." Said Trildir with a few clicks.

"It won't be a problem? You already have one child-"

"I know of mateless mothers like myself who have six hatchlings. I believe I can handle two."

Trildir's mate had been one of the Fallen to die when their skiff crashed.

"Thank you," I said to her.

Trildir began to give the hatchling a liquid I could not name.

"She will need a name. Would you like to pick one?" She asked, looking at Crow and I.

"Um, I don't know of any Eliksni names," I told her. I didn't want to pick out a name that would seem silly to the other Eliksni.

"You can choose human names. Misraakell's daughter was named after an old friend of his, an awoken."

I thought for a moment. I looked at Crow to see if he would suggest anything but he only shrugged. I turned back to Trildir.

"Would Sora be a good name?" I asked.

"Yes, I think it would suit her well."

Sora had fallen asleep in Trildir's arms, so she laid her in the crib of blankets to rest. Then she went back to Crow and I.

"I hope you don't mind me asking, but where is Ralis?" I asked her.

"Oh, she is with a sister of mine. She does not have a mate of her own but loves hatchlings. She will gladly take care of any if it is needed." Trildir explained. Her gaze shifted to Crow. "You have not introduced me to your friend." She stated. "I am Trildir, but I am sure Thera has already told you this."

"My name is Crow." He introduced himself.

"It is very nice to meet you."

A dreg suddenly pulled back the curtain and chattered something in Eliksni. Trildir spoke back, and the dreg left. She then turned her attention back to the two of us.

"Sora will be in good hands. Because of your visit, I have forgotten what I was doing. I must return to my job, and I will leave Sora with my sister and Ralis. Thank you for coming to see me."

Trildir took Sora in her arms and went out of her home.

"I know she'll be safe," I told Crow as we stood up.

"I like her." He stated.

"She's very kind, and not like the rest of the Eliksni. She isn't afraid of Guardians."

"Crow, Crow where are you? Why are you not in the H.E.L.M?" Came from Crow's comlink.

"Is that Osiris? Oh sh-" I exclaimed.

"You're with Thera aren't you? Get back to the H.E.L.M, now."

"Yes, I'm headed there now," Crow responded, giving me a look. We both knew we were in for it.

"And bring Thera too. If she keeps sneaking you out-"

Crow shut off his coms.

"You're going to get in more trouble for that," I said with a laugh.

"We both are. Now let's go so we can get that lecture over with."