#because they both come from awful homes and are 'rescued' by being brought into a rich and loving environment

[timbourinedrake]

Drawing parallels between Bruce's grief over Jason and Heathcliff mourning Cathy. The destruction of self and everyone around them, the guilt of feeling responsible for their death and being haunted by it every waking moment.

The same comparison can be made with Cathy and Jason if you really dig in to it, the two being complex characters who are so full of life and passion that they can't help but leave a lasting mark on everyone who meets them. Despite the pain Gotham caused Jason, he still loves it and is drawn to it and is almost the very personification of the city, much like Catherine has the very spirit of Wuthering Heights within her.

'Why am I so changed? Why does my blood rush into a hell of tumult at a few words? I'm sure I should be myself were I amongst the heather on those hills' Jason's return to Gotham almost reflects the same sentiment as this, he's trying to return to the person he once was, return to a time where he was happier without the anger and trauma he carries now.

Both stories show how easily love and hate can get twisted, how love isn't always positive, that sometimes it can be a destructive, obsessive force. It would be better for them to let the love go and move on, but instead they'd rather watch the other burn, because love is misery and if they do not suffer- is that really love?

[nimata-beroya]

For day 1 of @bahrynfestival I'm sharing an idea for a fic that I want to write someday, and fulfills the prompt of "In another life".

So here it goes. Imagine this:

Everything happens pretty much the same except for a small, but very important detail. What if Zeb was not only a captain of the Honor Guard, but also of the Royal Family of Lasan. Being a distant relative of the queen (like third cousin or something), he was so down in the line of succession, that in his youth, he never imagined he could sit on the throne. Neither did he have the desire to do so. The only way he could do that, however, was if his entire family die… and then the Siege of Lasan happened.

He still escaped his home planet and eventually joined the Ghost Crew. He never said a word about his royal status. But the day the crew rescued Chava and Gron, he's forced to face the fact that he's the sovereign of his people when Chava started babbling about the prophecy of "The king, the warrior, and the fool". He managed to keep the fact hidden by admitting that he had been an Honor Guard, but taking advantage of his unwanted position, he forbade Chava and Gron to tell the others anything else. Chava was not happy about it but recognized he wasn't ready for taking the responsibility as king, so she kept her mouth shut, for a while. Besides, the prophecy came true, Lira San was found.

Every time she brought the subject up in the later years, Zeb always had the excuse of being fighting the Empire; that it was his way to serve and protect his people. Not entirely untrue, but once the war is over, it wasn't a good excuse anymore.

You might be wondering where was Kallus in all of this, well, he still was a bastard ISB agent: he and Zeb still got stranded on Bahryn; he still became Fulcrum, and eventually defected from the Empire. And of course, they both were stupidly in love with each other, pining each other endlessly, making everyone around them wonder when they'd kiss already. It happened on Endor, during the celebrations after the second Death Star blew up.

The first months after that were a true honeymoon, until Zeb started to be a ball of constant stress, and Kallus asked him what was going on. It took some serious encouragement, but Zeb finally confesses that the group of Lasan survivors along with some Lira San natives wanted to reclaim Lasan.

At first, Kallus think Zeb is upset because they'll be apart for a while, which he'd understand, but when Zeb he'd have to stay in Lasan because he's their king...

"Excuse me, you're their what?!"

Zeb asks Kallus to go with him, because he can't do it alone, he doesn't know how to rule, he doesn't want to. Kallus refuses at first. He's terrified of offending other survivors with his presence. It was already hard to accept Zeb's forgiveness, but others wouldn't be so gracious. But in the end (and with the help of Chava, using the prophecy as an argument) Kallus goes with Zeb.

A few Lasats weren't too happy about his presence, but for the most part, they saw Kallus' help to restore Lasan as his atonement for his participation in the siege. He was giving them back part of what he took away from them.

During all this, Chava had a side scheming going on. She never told Zeb and Kallus that there was a second part to the prophecy, which said that the King and Warrior would lead their people to a golden age. As part of their coronation rituals for Zeb, whoever was destined to become the consort to the sovereign would find a branch of a specific, very special tree that later would become the royal scepter. She left those finer details out of the explanation when she asked Kallus to help her find a branch for Zeb.

Zeb was surprised and flustered when he saw Kallus coming with the branch in hand knowing its significance, especially because there a bunch of people around who also knew.

"You didn't tell him, did ya?" he said to Chava, who had the smugest grin.

"Tell me what?" Kallus said, scared that he did something awful.

Zeb explained and ended up asking him to mate with him, awkwardly because it's in front of everyone.

So that's how Alexsandr Kallus became Prince Consort to King Garazeb Orrelios of Lasan. And both restored and led Lasan to a golden age, just like the prophecy said.

The End.

[morbiderotica]

may i request a fic where the reader comes back home late and matt and mello get worried, oh and matt, mello and fem!reader are in an established relationship.

─ ★ kitty cat rescue ... gn!reader

the clock was ticking and matt's leg was bouncing with anxiety. mello was equally as anxious but he was just better at hiding it. "what if-" matt began desperately before mello cut him off. "what if you didn't make dumb scenarios in your head." he was snappy, he was angry, and he was worried. matt nodded timidly like he was just nodding to try and appease mello.

the creakiness of the door alarmed both boys, their heads instantly shooting up. low and behold, you and your apologetic smile were standing there, your hands behind your back. "it's late." mello's voice was stern and you were almost scared. "i know, sorry." you tried to smile again but mello just rolled his eyes. "where even were you?" matt was more concerned than angry, unlike mello.

you smiled awkwardly again. "so, don't get mad." both of their minds started to race and think of all the dumb or awful things you've down. "what did you do." mello was almost afraid to ask. you brought your hands from your back to in front of your chest, holding the cat that seemingly came from nowhere to your chest. matt and mello stared at you dumbfoundedly for a moment. "so, you were like 2 hours late and didn't call or anything because of a dumb cat?" matt was a little angry now.

"i said don't get mad! i wasn't planning on being late, i was trying to find her owner. i lost track of time, but can we keep her?" you explain and then flash puppy dog eyes towards the boys. "no. absolutely not." mello was the first to respond. "oh, come on! please. I'll take care of her, you won't even notice she's here." you begged. "no. tell them no matt." mello looked at matt for support but he wasn't paying attention.

"we can keep her if we get to name her mario." matt bargined. "deal!" you chimed excitedly. "i literally did not agree to this!" mello spoke to practically no one as neither of you was paying attention at this point. he sighed when he noticed matt had walked over to you and you were both playing with the cat. he walked up behind you and left a kiss on the top of your head to let you know he was happy that you were safe, even if you did drive him crazy for two hours.

[5sosfanfictioncatalogue]

Sick!Ashton Masterlist

A Sick Christmas (ao3) - imjusttryingtolivemylife G, 16k

Summary: This is a large story, with multiple parts, that I spent a whole month writing for Christmas. I hope you Enjoy! It switches from the household of One Direction, and the household of 5 Seconds of Summer multiple times.

Detached Sickness (ao3) - MichaelTheMicrophone luke/ashton G, 2k

Summary: Luke and Ashton are so close that, when they go on holiday away from each other, they get sick.

Five Times Calum Makes Ashton Soup and One Time Ashton Tries to Return The Favor (ao3) - JessJ7890 G, 8k

Summary: Pretty much what it says on the title - Five times that Calum was a good friend and helped Ashton out plus one time that Ashton does his best to return the favor.

Hold Me Close (ao3) - LunaT2345 luke/ashton G, 5k

Summary: "Okay, you need to get upright." Ashton scrambled out of bed and helped Luke sit up.

Luke took a rattled breath before doubling over and hacking again. He brought a hand to his chest, his expression pained. "Can't - breathe -"

"I know, I know. You're okay, Luke, it's just the congestion," Ashton assured in the calmest voice he could muster, trying to radiate confidence.

-or-

Five times Luke and Ashton took care of each other

i don't run away when your face says "achoo" - @sup3rbloom (haveufoundwhaturlookingfor) ot4 T, 2k

Summary: Ashton gets sick, and his boyfriends come to the rescue to take care of him.

I Feel Awful (ao3) - babybam luke/ashton G, 2k

Summary: Ashton gets sick and Luke is there to take care of him. Ashton being stubborn he insists that he is fine to play their show the next day. But maybe he should've listened to his bandmates.

Lower Left (ao3) - MichaelTheMicrophone G, 1k

Summary: Ashton gets appendicitis while only his sister and brother are home. Lauren calls his bandmates and they come over with Michael, who also has appendicitis. They are taken to hospital by their bandmates.

Now I’m holding on for dear life (ao3) - lightsinthefloors luke/ashton, michael/calum G, 2k

Summary: Ashton knows he doesn’t feel good. He doesn’t know it’s this serious

Sick Day (ao3) - TylerM ot4 G, 4k

Summary: The one where Ashton gets sick on the WWA tour and tries to keep it from his band, and fails miserably.

A sad excuse for a tooth rotting fluffy one shot about how Ashton hates getting sick and his band mates worry too much. Including big brothers One Direction, just to add to the fluff. Because honestly why not?

Some Things Never Change (ao3) - LunaT2345 G, 4k

Summary: When traveling be careful about where you eat.

Or

A bad batch of sushi takes the whole band down.

Touchy - @daydadahlias​​ (cornflowerblue (daydadahlias)) ot4 7k

Summary: Ashton has eye surgery and the boys take care of him.

Tour Mishaps (ao3) - JessJ7890 G, 4k

Summary: Somewhere through their South America tour, Ashton falls victim to a stomach bug and has to deal not only with protective bandmates, but with a chronic illness that makes an unexpected reappearance.

when the party is over (ao3) - no_clue_who luke/ashton G, 1k

Summary: Ashton sat next to Luke as he started to get themselves ready for the party, regretting that he had gotten a cold. He watched as Luke put on his foundation, watching in fascination as they applied it. He’s always loved watching Luke get ready, back when they were both dumb teens straightening every piece of hair on their heads or even when Luke got his quiff, Ashton watched him with fascination.

Luke leaned over and kissed his cheek before righting himself and starting to go through the rest of their makeup routine.

or how not to go to a party

When the World Leaves a Scar (ao3) - Anonymous T, 1k

Summary: “I care about you so much, and I want you to be okay. I'm glad that you reached out to me. I want you to continue to do that when you need to or if you can’t contact Michael or Calum for whatever reason.” Luke states, grabbing the other’s hand and squeezing it. “We’re all here for you like you’re here for us when we need it.”

Ashton’s shoulders slump like a child being told off by their guardian. His bandaged arms cross over his chest in frustration. Externally, he would make himself ill if he was to cry yet again. Internally, he wonders if the environment he’s known for so long will turn against him.

(Or where Ashton falls, but Luke is there to catch him.)

[redkardinal]

An account of my family’s current situation:

This is a very VERY long story, but I feel like I need to share.

Back in the middle of June, I got married to the love of my life. My partner (J) is the most kind, caring, intelligent, and goofy person I have had the pleasure to have a part of my life. Between the two of us we have two amazing children (R) and (K). (Not sure if it’s actually relevant to what I’m about to say, but R is actually a young adult now, but I met R when they were a teenager.) We all moved in together soon after the wedding and are working on building a beautiful future together.

However, J’s family situation has never been the greatest. They were living with their parents, first out of personal necessity, but then it eventually became clear that J’s parents depended on both J and R. This is due to two factors. J’s father, (D) is… how do I describe it… hopelessly addicted to scams. This man has lost everything to his name because he falls for any and every scam put before him, and this lifetime driven by both greed and stupidity has brought us to where we are today…

Let me go over some of the things I’ve experienced since meeting J, R and their family. D had this very nice truck that he’d taken great care of for years. But when a scammer asked him for 6 grand, D claimed he didn’t have the money to give. The scammer (Whom D called his financial advisor) said that he could get that money by selling his truck. It would be okay to sell because he would get that money back and more soon. Heck, he’d have enough to buy ten trucks! So D sold his truck, legitimately, and gave every cent to his “Financial Advisor.” Lo and behold, that money is gone.

A few months later, I get a call from J, telling me that D has been arrested. For what, we don’t know. We kept asking D what had happened, but D refuses to say. So J decides not to bail D out, but somehow, days later, D is back home. We do not know who bailed him out, just that someone did. We don’t discover why he was arrested until months later (This past December to be exact… He was arrested well over a year ago.) Turns out, he was arrested because that truck I mentioned earlier… he tried to sell it twice. Or maybe he sold it and his “financial advisor” also sold it to someone else. We don’t know the whole truth on this still.

I don’t remember if it was the sale of the truck when this happened or sometime before, but J did file for power of attorney. Yet, things did not improve. D continued to somehow lose his money to scam after scam after scam. It is weighing heavily on J, and R is getting angrier and angrier at the situation as D constantly has to come to them for cash to pay bills…. Cash that he ought to have already but, you guessed it, he stupidly lost.

So let me say that D is a very despicable person. He will be so fake kind to people to try and get on their good side, (like he has never been awful to me, but I have seen how he treats J, R and his own wife [G]) There were many times when I was visiting J at home and would hear D across the house, screaming at either R or G over nothing. (I recall one time he straight up screamed at his wife for a ridiculous amount of time because he lost his own cell phone and was blaming it on her….)

On the day J and I got married, I think that may have been the final straw. We got married on the 5 year anniversary of the day we met. It became a tradition of ours to return to the place we met every year, and since we were going to be busy with wedding things the rest of the day, we decided we would meet first thing in the morning. We go, and not ten minutes after we meet up, J gets a call from R. R is crying, with clear distress and I can hear them screaming through J’s car radio, despite being in my own car. I can also hear D pounding on R’s door, yelling incoherently at them. I hear R desperately cry out “LEAVE ME ALONE!” And J and I know what we have to do. We go back to J’s house to rescue R. We get there, and I collect R into my car and J goes to confront D. D, thinking it’s R approaching says with so much venom “What?” But upon seeing J changes his attitude to be all smiley and non-confrontational. He claims that he and R were having a minor disagreement over sodas. J, who is furious at their father, slaps him. D fights back and knocks the lens from J’s glasses. He is promptly disinvited to the wedding and we all leave. J never slept in that house again.

This did not stop D from calling J over and over saying he needed to pay the water bill (which BY THE WAY is under D’s name and therefore his responsibility, but since the dumbass has no money he relies on J to pay it.) Eventually J just pays it and doesn’t tell D until he calls again, to which J answers “I paid it.” And hangs up. We think at this point that we are just going to cut J off and have nothing more to do with him. Boy do I wish that were the case….

So about a month after we get married, it’s J’s birthday and I’m really excited to celebrate with them. But I have to go to work. At lunch time, J calls and I’m looking forward to chatting and wishing a happy birthday, but am met with. “D sold the house.” Fuck. I call my boss and leave work. I hurry to J’s former home and J is there with R and D and the new homeowner who bought the house at a lowball price in order to flip and resell…. Oh, but where’s the money that D got from the house? You already know what I’m going to say. It’s gone. To the pocket of a scammer. I should point out…. We’re 98% certain that it has been the SAME GOD DAMN SCAMMER THIS ENTIRE TIME!!!! From the moment I met D and all the god damn nonsense that he’s put J and R through, it has been the same people he’s been willingly giving all of his money to in the blind, stupid hope that he’s somehow going to become a millionaire. So how is this resolved? Well, the new homeowner, bless his motherfucking soul, is way too kind and allows D and G to basically squat there for a while until they can be placed somewhere.

I’m sure you’re wondering why the hell J hasn’t just turned their back on D and been done with him. This is entirely because of J’s mother G. She is a very kind woman. Probably the main reason why J is as sweet and caring as they are. I love this woman. I am thankful for her kindness. But she comes with her own giant garbage bag of issues…. And I do mean garbage bag almost literally. G is incredibly mentally ill. She is, as far as I know, paranoid schizophrenic, and so lost in a mental fog that she doesn’t even know what year it is. This poor woman has not been to a doctor in over 20 years. This poor woman rarely changes her clothes, wears multiple heavy coats even in the heat of summer, and takes J’s old shoes when he buys new ones, even though J is not her size. Yes, J has bought her new shoes too. This woman also ties random objects, like plastic bags, old underwear, rubber bands, all over her body… making her look twice as big under all the coats. She would “sleep” in a heap on the couch. (I’m not convinced she actually slept.) she would hide garbage in every nook and cranny in the house. She would often urinate on herself because she was possibly too scared to go to the bathroom (that is my guess anyway.) Ands what’s worse, is D treats this poor, clearly unwell woman as a servant. And I don’t know how reliable G’s word is, but she has told me that D has been violent toward her. (Which I can totally see.) But she is constantly worried about D and his wellbeing over her own because in her own head she thinks if D is appeased, it will help everyone else.

So J keeps helping because of G. And I completely understand and support this. We have tried getting APS to help, but they haven’t been the most helpful. They’ve gone out for visits and everything but haven’t really given us much as far as getting them placed anywhere. Plus G won’t leave the house. Meanwhile D is still giving whatever money he’s getting from retirement to his “financial advisor.” This is putting so much stress on J, and I’m doing what I can to keep J’s spirits up. I at least take heart in knowing that J and R no longer live there and that R is not constantly being mentally abused by their grandfather.

So let’s cut to December. J keeps getting calls from their old neighbors that D keeps falling, and screaming his head off for G to pick him up. (I should point out if I’ve forgotten to at this point that D is 74, has Parkinson’s disease and Diabetes… all of which J drives him to all of his appointments and we’ve made detailed schedules on how he is supposed to take his meds) J leaves work to handle the situation and D is taken to the ER. He’s then recommended to have PT to get his strength back, which he can do at a nursing home, which hopefully he can get permanent lodging in. OK! Great! That’s one parent potentially out of the house they no longer own. Except, no nursing home will take him because his insurance is shit and they have nowhere to discharge him to once the PT is done. Great…. So J somehow manages to get him placed somewhere for PT, not sure how, but J now needs to apply for Medicaid for D so he can fucking STAY at the nursing home… otherwise it’s going to be $175 A DAY for D to stay there. But there is a problem that J discovers…

D, on top of all the money he’s given away, has opened up at least 3 (that we know of) bank accounts with other banks, which have all had suspicious deposits sites and withdraws from several different states… none of which D resides in. (Or has ever even been to…) it all screams money laundering to us, and D is just the dumbass caught up in the middle of this. J has been busting their ass trying to get these accounts frozen and/or closed, whilst also trying to get statements from them to file with the Medicaid application which some places are being very difficult about despite J having POA over D. There’s so much fraud going on, it’s going to be difficult to get D approved for Medicaid.

Meanwhile, all this time that D has been gone, G has been alone at that house. And honestly? She seemed to be in much better spirits with D gone. (Go figure…) She even told both me and J that she hopes D never comes back… He won’t G, he won’t… but then again, neither will she. A couple weeks ago, the new house owner finally needed to take possession, so J and I had to figure something out to get G out of the house for good. APS had scheduled a doctor to come visit her in house, but it wasn’t going to be for another month. We needed G out NOW. So what can we do? Well, we convince G that she needs to go to the hospital (which regardless of the rest of the situation, she absolutely does… her leg is red and swollen.) So we manage to get her to the ER. And G is basically a ghost in the system. There is next to nothing on her medical history… DUH! She hasn’t been to a doctor in 20 years! But they manage to schedule a psychiatric evaluation for her the day we bring her and she didn’t want me or J in the room with her because she thought we were lying about things that happened to her in the past. (Well, mostly J… I was basically there to remember dates within the last 5 years…. I can’t account for a full lifetime like J can.) And somehow the hospital told us that this woman doesn’t need assisted living…

That was about two weeks ago at this point… I think their opinion has changed. Because they managed to get all the things she had tied around her body off of her, but when they left her alone and came back, they found that she had gone through the garbage to wrap more things on her body. They managed to cut off the ties she had around her fingers and found that they were wrapped so tight that it cut nearly to the bone on one of her fingers. Yeah… she doesn’t need assisted living….

As of now, she is still in the hospital, no longer in the ER, but she has a constant sitter with her to keep an eye on her. She has everything detached from her body that wasn’t supposed to be there… i think her leg and hand have healed considerably, but there aren’t any current plans for placing her anywhere at the moment I’m not sure what’s going to happen with G at this point. But if she does end up placed somewhere, we want to make sure it is not the same place as D…. So, more Medicaid and more money…

D has also been trying to ask J about our new house… our address, how big it is and stuff like that. J says “Oh, staff knows where we live. And I have a room for myself and RK, a room for R, and a room for K, and we don’t really have room for someone who has lied to me his entire life and squandered away everything he’s ever owned.” A bit harsh? Maybe. But honestly after the life D has put J through…. D deserves it. Plus I will NOT have D in my house. I will not subject my partner to that man again. I will not subject my stepchild to that again, and i will not subject my birth child to that either.

As for J and myself, we will be working with a lawyer to try and get the Medicaid applications squared away. It’s going to be expensive, so we will be taking a rather hefty financial hit…. But hopefully once we have J’s parents squared away, we can finally breathe easy again. We have a hard, stressful time ahead of us… but we’ve been dealing with this stress for a while now.

If you stuck with me to the end of this, thank you. It’s kind of helped to air this out a bit. I do feel like there is an end in sight to all of this, i just hope my family can get there without losing our minds….

Thanks for listening…

~RK

[ghostie123]

Link (top row of both slides) with his full older sister and his full littermate brother. I’m so grateful that his sister’s mom saw Link, his dna and where we live and put together that she probably has his sister. We emailed Embark to run a relative test to confirm and confirm they did

Link was found as a stray so for nearly 2 years I’ve known nothing about who or where he came from. But I even have a few pics of their parents now. Unfortunately the people these dogs come from are pretty awful and sell a 5 week wolfdog pups to anyone who shows up with money, no questions asked. They’ve also sold pups with Parvo, who died days after being brought home. I scoured my state for breeders trying to see where my dog was from but as it turns out, they don’t have a website, they only post their puppies on craigslist, nobody knows their names or exactly where they live because they only meet up to sell the pups in public. After his sister was bought, her owner said she saw several people on craigslist trying get rid of the pup they recently bought bc they couldn’t handle them, one sister even ended up at a rescue. So it makes sense why I couldn’t find his family on my own, and why I found a 6 week puppy on the side of the road. I assume he was bought and a week in his buyer realized they werent able to deal with, or werent ready for a wolfdog, since he was found dehydrated and full of worms and ticks. But not starving, luckily

And man am I lucky that the puppy I didn’t know was a wolfdog for the first few months we had him (though we quickly grew suspicious) is generally a great fit for our family of his humans, our other 2 dogs and the kitten. And we’re a good fit for him 💕

[iliveiloveiwrite]

Fluff #13 and next door neighbors AU please with Azriel!

Feelings of Importance || Azriel

Fluff 13: “You’re important to me.”

AU 9: Next door neighbours.

a/n: apologies for the absence everyone! sickness combined with low mood has not helped me in the last week or so, but I am determined to post. word count: 657

warnings: dates, feelings, next door neighbours, cute.

Another failed date. Another evening filled with awkward silences rather than brimming with conversation. Another evening where you had spent your time making up life stories for the other patrons in the restaurant as your date sat there in utter silence. It wasn’t as if you hadn’t tried to draw them into conversation; asking question after question about their life, but it all dwindled into nothing after the starters were finished and the mains brought to the table.

Letting a pained groan escape your lips you let yourself into your home, toeing off the shoes that were making your feet ache and settling yourself into the couch. All the while knowing it would be mere minutes before Azriel would be joining you.

Your next-door neighbour arrives right on time; silently letting himself into your home, pausing only at the kitchen to grab you the drink you neglected on your way to your current position on the couch. From the very moment he had moved in next door, you had thanked the cauldron for bringing such a being like Azriel into your life.

Silent and brooding to a fault, but a male with a sense of humour so wicked you felt your skin begin to flush with even a single thought of it. The friendship was forged naturally, so effortless on both sides. It was as if you knew each other from past lives; souls recognising each other from the minute you knocked on his door to welcome him into the building.

He was your best friend.

“How did it go?” Azriel asks in lieu of greeting, passing you your drink before sitting down on the sole armchair in the room.

“Awful,” You explain after a large drink. “We sat in silence from the end of the starters to the end of the meal.”

“Why didn’t you make up an excuse?”

“I wanted to try and stick it out!” You cry, “I had hoped that something we could talk about might come up, but they didn’t offer anything, and I kept drawing blanks.”

“Why didn’t you call? I’d have rescued you.”

“Because I’m not a damsel in distress, Az,” You state, fixing him with a look that keeps his retort firmly behind his locked lips. “I just want to be important to someone,” You groan dramatically, leaning back onto the couch and pulling a cushion over your face to muffle any further complaints.

“You’re important to me,” Azriel responds quietly, a half-smile on his face.

The words don’t register with you at first; too busy suffocating in your self-pity to truly hear what Azriel was saying. You let the cushion fall from your face as you finally realise what the shadowsinger said. “I am?” You ask, sitting straighter in the chair.

“Yes, you are.” Azriel confirms, leaving his seat to sit beside you. “Any fae male worth their lot would be lucky to find themselves on a date with you.”

“Then why is it so hard?”

“They simply aren’t worthy,” Azriel explains bluntly. “They see you arrive, and they fall breathless, already enraptured by your beauty. They see the smile that grows on your lips as you greet them, and they lose all sense of thought. Then, when they get the full force of your knowledge and your understanding of the world, they’ve lost themselves entirely.”

Words form on the tip of your tongue, but none leave your lips as you try to make sense of the passionate speech delivered by Azriel. There had never been an inkling; an idea that he might harbour feelings for you. You had nurtured a crush on the male for a long while, but kept it all a secret, refusing to give the ancient male a sniff of your feelings for him.

“You sound as if you know from experience,” You eventually whisper, your voice hoarse with untold emotion.

“Like I said,” Azriel whispers, moving closer to you. “You’re important to me.”

[kiiiiiim]

she wanted a storm (to match her rage) - 20k - T - AO3 link

Ragestorm AU - Kara comes back from the Phantom Zone with a new set of powers and a whole lot of unresolved issues.

She dropped to her knees and braced one hand on Alex's shoulder, reaching for Kara with the other. The moment their fingers touched, Kara's world fell back into place. It felt right and natural and true and real and oh God, she's home.

“How… how long?” Kara had asked. Lena finally took the initiative, running velvet pads over Kara’s dry, cracked skin, her voice low and strained with barely held back emotion.

“Three months.”

The first time went unnoticed in all the chaos.

Her rescue had come without any forewarning, abrupt as a sudden change in the weather. One second she'd been in the Phantom Zone, and the next, Kara was being violently yanked backwards like a fish with a hook caught in its belly, disappearing into an unknown void that had somehow manifested out of thin air.

Colors swirled and muddled together inside the portal, an abstract painting that moved at the speed of light, constantly changing in its composition. It was both beautiful and terrifying, and just when Kara thought she would either vomit or pass out (or vomit and then pass out,) she landed in a crumpled heap on solid ground, neon purple light illuminated her pale, sun-starved skin.

It didn’t occur to Kara that she was back on Earth until a familiar body crashed into hers, pulling her into a desperately tight embrace as whirring machinery slowed to a halt in the background. Alex had cried as she stroked her sister's dirty, tangled hair, rocking them back and forth on the cold concrete floor of the Tower as if she were a lost child, safe and sound at last.

There were no windows on this floor of the Tower, and Kara took full advantage of the rare opportunity to hold her sister as tightly as she could without having to worry about breaking any bones. Kara's body ached for sunlight, but her weary, battered soul needed this even more.

My sister...

She was vaguely aware of others in the room, dim profiles and dark silhouettes respectfully waiting to approach with baited breath. Alex waved them forward with a trembling hand after a moment and then they all rushed her at once, forming a mismatched pile of limbs and leather and stray hairs in mouths and masks slipping crookedly on faces and everyone was crying as they enveloped Kara in the center. They did it. They found her, the vital missing piece that could never be replaced. They were all here in this room because of Kara, and Kara alone. She was the common denominator that had brought them all together in the first place, forming the family they had ultimately become. And now they were whole again.

All except one.

Lena stood separate from the group, near to where the portal had just dissipated. She was still as a statue, one empty arm cocked mid-chest, right underneath her heart. A complex and very expensive-looking tablet lay broken at her feet, the screen cracked cleanly down the middle and completely, entirely forgotten. She looked like she was in shock, as if she hadn’t expected her creation would actually work , yet here was the irrefutable proof right in front of her eyes. Their Kara. Her Kara.

Home…

Lena's chest heaved as all the air left her lungs in one harsh exhale. A single tear rolled down the ivory porcelain of her skin, her face breaking into a positively beaming smile of combined joy and utter relief.

Kara's heart skipped a beat at the awed expression on Lena's face and tried to extract a hand from the mass of bodies, wanting to reach for her, embolden her to come, come, come here…  Alex's strong arms and the muffled cries of her friends were convincing touchstones, but Kara couldn't fully accept this scene as reality until she felt the warmth of Lena's skin against hers after all this time.

Nia seemed to read Kara's mind and unsteadily pushed to her feet, wiping her messy face with a costumed sleeve before grabbing Lena’s hand and pulling her forward. She seemed to come back to herself then - that small jolt of recalibration between her brain and her heart was all the encouragement Lena needed to get her moving.

Lena took Nia’s vacated spot in the huddle, fumbling among various body parts until she wormed her way into the center. She dropped to her knees and braced one hand on Alex's shoulder, reaching for Kara with the other. The moment their fingers touched, Kara's world fell back into place. It felt right and natural and true and real and oh God, she's home .

“How… how long?” Kara had asked, her voice tight as a bowstring. The room instantly hushed, a stark contrast to the happy reunion mere moments ago as they exchanged uneasy looks. Lena finally took the initiative, running velvet pads over Kara’s dry, cracked skin, her voice low and strained with barely held back emotion.

“Three months.”

It was then that Kara noticed the tired lines that creased all of her friends’ faces, the dark circles underneath heavy eyes, the way they looked like they were about to drop from sheer exhaustion. She saw Lena’s impeccable cheekbones jutting out at newer, sharper angles, her skin ashy and wan, expensive clothes too loose on a body that was too thin. A cold shiver ran down Kara’s spine as she took it all in.

This was his fault. He did this to them, by sending her away. Three months of worry and despair and Rao only knows how many failed attempts to rescue her before today - three months spent entirely focused on pain and heartache and uncertainty when they could've been living their lives.

His fault.

Lex.

In the far distance above them, past the towering skyscrapers and into the beginning's of Earth's troposphere, a low thunder rumbled ominously.

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

The second time is written off as a fluke.

Alex had asked her to take it easy for a while, insisting that she replenish her solar reserves with the help of the intense sun lamps onsite rather than immediately taking to the skies after so long without her powers, even though the latter option would yield faster results in her recovery. Kara accepted without a fuss, recognizing that Alex needed her not to argue for once, that she desperately needed to make sure her newly found little sister wasn't going to disappear into thin air the second she was out of her line of sight.

So she lay under the lamps, still and patient for two whole days - and while her powers have returned, she still feels off, like she's only running on half a tank. It doesn't make sense - she shouldn't be this tired, this drained, when all she's been allowed to do is lay here like a lizard soaking up artificial rays. She's anxious and restless and trying not to think about how the Tower is starting to feel more and more like a cage with each passing moment that doesn't bring her closer to full strength. She doesn't have time for this... not when she’s lost so much of it already.

Alex and Brainy are off to one side, whispering to each other in hushed tones. They've been running tests on Kara for the last few hours, and from the way they keep glancing at her on the table, the impending results don't appear promising. They keep turning their backs so she can't read their lips, and it's starting to grate on Kara's nerves - like she couldn't just use her super-hearing to listen to every poorly concealed murmur. Her powers are weak, not lost entirely.

She's not helpless.

The stab of anger is fast and hard, like a punch to the teeth. She’s endured more in her life than either of them will ever understand, and has just survived a second impromptu trip to the Phantom Zone, reliving her worst nightmares on a loop for Rao knows how long. She's the Girl of Steel, damn it - hasn't her recent ordeal proved that she's anything but breakable?

" Stop talking about me like I'm not here and just tell me what's wrong, already!"

The words leave Kara’s chest in one sharp exhale, like a pin to an over-inflated balloon. Each word comes out louder than the last, rising in volume until -

The moment her lips close around the last syllable there is a mighty crack of thunder that rattles the walls of the Tower. A thick line of clouds the color of gunmetal suddenly rolls across the horizon, like a wave about to crash onto the shore. The sun disappears from view, tinting the city in shades of gray where moments ago there had been nothing but clear, bright blue skies. It's like God themselves flipped a switch without a hint of a warning.

Both Alex and Brainy visibly jump, startled by both the harshness of her tone and the unexpected sounds from outside, and Kara immediately feels guilty for raising her voice. She's also a little surprised at herself - she usually has more control over her emotions than this. She tries to rationalize: it's not their fault she's so frustrated, and she can't blame them for her own baggage, especially not after how hard they all worked to get her back. It’s not fair, and Kara knows she should be grateful that she’s even here at all right now.

"I'm sorry," Kara apologizes meekly. She clears her throat and tries again, gentler this time. " Do you know what's wrong with me?"

The sun peeks out and the clouds start to disperse, their ominously dark hues turning white as fleece and looking nowhere near as threatening as before. Alex's eyes flit from the open windows back to Kara on the gurney, puzzled and contemplative. Then she shakes her head as if to clear the farfetched thoughts from her brain - pure coincidence, surely.

They tell her the tests are inconclusive, that they can't explain her fatigue despite being exposed to two days worth of enhanced solar light. Alex tells her to take it easy, give it some time, her body will readjust before she knows it - all the things Kara doesn't want to hear, but she nods in agreement anyway.

She's finally allowed to leave the Tower and Alex insists on her taking a cab home rather than risk flying, which immediately puts Kara off. She thinks about protesting, but the thought of her earlier outburst and the pleading look on Alex’s exhausted face keeps her quiet. It’s the least she can do, after all.

When Kara finally finds herself at her front door after a very bumpy car ride that she most definitely could have done without, she hesitates, clutching her set of keys. She’s suddenly anxious and jittery, which is ridiculous in more ways than one - it’s not like she’s getting ready to dive into battle or face off against some new unknown threat, it’s her apartment for God’s sake. She can’t count the number of times she wished she could be here, back when she was there, so what the hell is wrong with her?

She fumbles and the keys clatter to the floor, unusual for someone with Kara's superb reflexes. They feel uncharacteristically awkward in her hand. It should be a mindless, simple task - she’s done this thousands of times, usually without even thinking about it, and yet the practiced familiarity of the act of unlocking her front door is no longer there.

It takes two tries before she gets her shit together, slotting the key into the lock and pushing just a little too hard against something she could easily splinter into a dozen pieces if she isn't careful. The metal bends slightly, but not enough to get stuck, and Kara yanks it back out of the hole with a low grumble, turning the doorknob. She pushes with one clammy palm and the door squeals in response, begging for a splash of oil on its unused hinges, and Kara crosses the threshold.

It's the first time she's been home in three Earth months - however long that equates to in Phantom Zone time/not time, Kara doesn't know. Long enough that the cheery colors of her walls and furniture look too vivid after endless landscapes of black and gray.

Too long.

She slowly picks her way around the apartment with quiet, carefully measured steps. There’s no one else here, she knows this, but old habits are tough to break - especially habits that ended up being crucial to her survival while in the Zone. No super-hearing to tip her off turned every shifting rock and whistling wind into a potential threat. " Constant vigilance!" The reference to her favorite fantasy novels used to be funny, right up until a second round in the Phantom Zone made it no longer so.

Everything is exactly as she left it, down to the wrinkled throw blanket tossed carelessly on the couch and the open cookbook turned upside down on her kitchen island. That's right - Kara remembers wanting to test out a new recipe that looked fairly unintimidating, some kind of casserole, maybe? That was before Lex, before Leviathan, before being hit with the projector...

Kara picks the book up in one swift motion, slams it shut, and tosses it in a drawer. The thought of food right now makes her stomach turn, which is absolutely not like her at all.

She runs her index finger over the surface of the counter expecting a thick coat of dust, surprised when it comes away clean. She looks down: the tile floor of her kitchen is so shiny and polished she could eat off of it, and there are no signs of smudges or dirt on any of her windows.

So, people have been here while she was gone. They cleaned and kept the place up, preparing for her eventual (hopeful) return. And yet they’d touched none of her belongings, like a ghost had moved in in her absence, silently haunting the things she’d left behind.

A heavy, melancholy weight that she can't quite explain settles in the hollow of her chest. She’s not sure what she expected to feel - maybe relief? It’s what she should be feeling, isn’t it? She’s finally here, finally home after all this time, and yet it doesn’t feel like home anymore. Which is stupid, because it is home. Where else would it be, if not here?

She sinks to the floor and it feels less like the pull of gravity and more like something is physically pushing her down. Maybe it’s the aftereffects of being in the Zone for so long, or maybe Earth is just heavier than she remembers. Kara doesn't spend a lot of time pondering over it, finding that she doesn’t really care either way what the answer is.

She pushes two stools aside and settles in the space between them, her back pressed against the solid base of her kitchen island. She feels better, safer, knowing that no one can sneak up on her from behind even though she is fully aware no one is after her anymore. At least, not for the moment.

Kara bends her legs to meet her chest and rests her chin on the hard bones of her kneecaps. She closes her eyes, breathing steadily in and out, and tries to relax. This is home. I'm home. I'm safe, and I'm home.

She spends most of the evening sitting just so, perfectly still, as she disappears into a place deep inside and tries to convince herself that she's fine. And then she tries not to think about anything at all.

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

Kara is tossing and turning in bed hours later, unable to sleep, when the realization hits her like a baseball bat to the shins.

Time passed and the world moved on without Kara, without Supergirl. Things changed, yet her home remained untouched, fixed in a timeless capsule that preserved the life of Kara Danvers BPZ, “before the Phantom Zone.” Now that she’s back, the “after” can begin. It will begin, whether or not she has a clue what exactly that means or what she should do next.

And that's just it - she doesn’t know what to do next. It’s like she’s twelve years old again, looking at the Danvers’ house for the first time with a fully grown Kal-El standing beside her, not knowing what to think or do or how to be on this new planet now that her role as protector was no longer needed. Back then she had felt irrelevant, useless, like she had failed in her duty before she’d even been given the chance to succeed. Now she’s standing in that great unknown void once again, maybe not in the exact same place as when she was a child, but pretty damn close.

Her gut clenches and the first hot wave of panic washes over her. She screws her eyes shut and desperately starts to count prime numbers in Kryptonese, her tongue turning dry as sandpaper as she breathes deeply through her mouth, each inhale stuttered and halting.

What is she supposed to do now? Go back to work as Kara Danvers and pretend nothing is wrong, like she hasn’t been sitting in a cave in endless space waiting for rescue, unsure if it was even on its way? Is she supposed to put on her cape and boots tomorrow and find some bad guys to punch, put some actual criminals in a prison to make her feel better about being unjustly trapped in one? What do you do after coming back from hell for the second time in your life?

Supergirl has to come back, and sooner rather than later. She’s been gone too long as it is. How many cries for help went unanswered while she was missing? How many people trained their eyes on the horizon, waiting for Supergirl to save them only to have waited in vain? How many died because she wasn't there?

The idea of more failure creeps into her skin like a cancer. She failed to be Kal’s sole tie to his Kryptonian heritage as he grew up, failed everyone in her city whose cries fell on deaf ears these last few months - she’s already been exiled twice in her life, and the rule of threes looms over her like a shadow waiting to descend the moment she least expects it, like a Phantom desperate to get its hands on her one last time.

It’s not irrelevance she’s worried about this time around - it’s inevitability.

Kara throws back the covers and gets up, abandoning her counting in favor of movement - anything to keep the onslaught of dangerous thoughts from sending her into a full-blown panic attack. She's not there yet, but she will be soon if she doesn't find an adequate distraction.

She pads barefoot to the open-concept living room, intent on exiting the building from her window; maybe some cool night air will help clear her head. Then she stops, remembering that she promised Alex to take it easy, the way her sister had visibly sagged with relief when Kara gave her word. Damn it.

Kara sighs, clicking her teeth together once, twice, three times as she weighs her options - she’d never hear the end of it if she dropped out of the sky like a shot bird all because she couldn’t wait for her body to heal properly. And she really doesn't like breaking promises to her sister. Damn it damn it damn it...

She’s about to go back into her bedroom to try a different, less "superhero-y" calming tactic when she catches sight of her painting supplies scattered in the corner of the room. It’s been so long since she’s picked them up; the brightly colored tubes of oils call out to her, and the artist inside feels an unshakable urge to answer. It seems like ever since the Crisis, there hasn’t been a spare moment to indulge in anything that’s just for her pleasure. The world needs Supergirl more than it needs Kara Danvers, but what about what Kara Zor-El needs? She almost never asks herself that question.

Kara digs out one of her larger blank canvases and props it up on the easel, adjusting the height so that she can stand while she works. She squeezes a generous dollop of every color at her disposal onto a wooden palette and unwraps a brand new chisel-cut brush, dipping it into her container of turpenoid to soften the factory-hardened bristles. The instrument feels good in her hand, feels like possibility and promise and that maybe she isn’t on the verge of losing her Rao-damned mind.

Kara doesn’t think about composition or aesthetics, has no real concept in mind - she just lets the brush run wild. She paints abstractly, letting the medium build up in thick globs as she layers colors, using the fingers of her left hand to add texture and blend certain areas when the paintbrush doesn’t do the trick. From time to time she adds more paint to her palette, hardly stopping to see which tube she’s picked up beforehand. It doesn’t really matter what colors she picks when Kara’s not even sure what it is that she’s painting.

Fifteen, twenty, thirty minutes go by and she slips into a rhythm, oblivious to everything except the brush between her fingers and the smooth flow of her arm dancing across the canvas. She lets herself get lost in it, using her fingernails to draw jagged, sharp lines that criss cross and intersect with one another, her breath coming out quick and labored despite the fact that she has superpowers and isn’t doing anything remotely strenuous. All the while her heart pounds an erratic drumbeat, and no, she doesn’t know what’s supposed to come after the hell she seems to be constantly forced to endure, but all that matters is that she’s doing something and for once, it’s for no other purpose than the simple fact that it feels good.

Kara is just about to grab another tube of paint when her brain suddenly comes back online and she really sees her painting for the first time - and the planet stops rotating in its orbit. Her mouth goes dry, paint-stained hands hover in blank space and her eardrums go fuzzy, like she's been underwater too long and can't find her way back to the surface.

Black dominates the canvas, forming a canyon of towering rock formations that end in needle-thin points at their highest peaks. Some bend and curve, like giant hands ready to grab whatever poor unsuspecting souls might wander within their reach. Shadows fall at their bases, elongated and otherworldly - eerie, sinister shapes. The sky is an inky purple, almost black itself with no discernable light source, and the ground is a rubble of sharp stone completely devoid of color. She’s painted a wasteland, dismal and dark and desolate, a place of living nightmares, an endless void.

Kara stares into the Phantom Zone, her rendering such a vivid reflection of the image in her mind's eye that it feels like she's there, running scared, desperate to escape the fatal embrace of the chasm closing in behind her.

All the blood leaves Kara's face and spots bloom before her eyes. Her face and neck start to burn as the paintbrush falls from her fingertips, clinking woodenly on the edge of the palette before landing on the carpeted floor. The paint will undoubtedly leave a stain; oils do not come out of fabric.

Trauma too leaves its own similar mark, a constant, bitter reminder that the stubborn spots on her soul never seem to go away no matter how hard she tries; they only want to spread, like a dozen wildfires converging into one single, cataclysmic blaze, destroying everything in its path until there is nothing but ash left in its wake.

And just like that, Kara can no longer contain her fury.

An animal-like roar bursts forth from her lips as she grabs the canvas with both hands, her thumbs pressing into the schism between the rock formations as if she could bridge the gap with her own fingers. She rips the painting in half as easily as if she were shredding paper, stretcher bars and all. Wet paint splatters on her pajamas as she throws the two halves at the wall. One piece embeds itself into the plaster, canvas dangling from the broken wooden bar like a tattered flag raised in defeat. Kara whirls around and catches sight of the half-dozen finished pieces that sit on the floor, beautiful landscapes and still life’s and water scenes that are perfectly separate from the one she has just demolished and pose no threat - she lunges and tears them apart one by one, adding their carcasses to the pile.

She doesn’t even notice the way the thunder rages outside, doesn’t register the fact that each resounding boom coincides with the gutteral sounds of tearing canvas and wood and her own choked vocal cords. She’s too wound up to think about anything except how good it feels to have this strength running through her veins again, to be the one with power rather than one of the powerless.

She’ll kill Lex for sending her back to that hell-hole, for what he put her family through while she was gone. For everything he did to Lena, who only ever wanted to make the world a better place and be loved rather than despised because of her Luthor name. Lena deserves so much better than him - she deserves a brother who has the decency to die when shot in the chest, who stays in his grave rather than have the audacity to rise from the ashes just to wreak more havoc in all their lives.

Kara won’t even blink when she watches him drop from the sky this time.

Fire pools behind her eyes, hot and molten, but it doesn’t feel like a blast of impending heat vision. They begin to glow cyan, pulsing as her anger coils like a viper about to strike. The hair on her arms and the nape of her neck stand straight up. Her fingertips tingle. She balls her hands into fists and presses them to her temples, grits her teeth. This is not heat vision - this is something different, but she’s too lost in her rage to care.

Kara feels the thunder echo in her belly, the way it moves and grows to a rising crescendo, louder and faster and then -

A brilliant flash of blue lightning splits the sky, so bright that it illuminates the entire cityscape for one scant second before plunging back into darkness. Kara’s vision goes black and the loudest peal of thunder yet reverberates off the walls, dissolving into a series of smaller bangs, like fireworks, making everything in the apartment shake. Kara’s anger fades to fear as each boom vibrates under the surface of her skin; somehow she knows that this isn’t a random summer storm. It feels too personal, like the thunder manifested itself in response to her rage, the lightning born from her very body. But that can’t be true - her powers have nothing to do with the weather.

Kara’s vision slides back into focus and the thunder softens in its violence. She tries to get her heart rate back to a normal rhythm, glances out the window and feels her eyes widen at the sight. With each thud-thud of her heart, there is a corresponding double flash of lightning in the belly of the largest thunderhead as it rolls across the sky on a quickly accelerating wind. It's too precise to be a coincidence.

Kara superspeeds into the bedroom and grabs her phone, presses Alex’s name with cold, shaking fingers. She picks up on the fourth ring, groggy from what must be one of her first decent nights of sleep in months. “Mmmkara?” She drawls.

“Alex...” Kara sits on the edge of her bed and tries to keep the fear out of her voice - she can hear the wind picking up through the walls of the apartment, not quite a gust but getting close. Her leg bounces erratically and she claps one hand over her knee to still it, afraid of what might generate outside as a result of her nerves.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” All traces of sleepiness instantly vanish as Alex goes into full sister mode, and Kara hears Kelly’s concerned voice murmuring in the background. She’s too afraid to feel guilty this time.

“Alex, something… something is wrong with me. I don’t know how to explain it and I know this is going to sound crazy, but…” Kara pauses, fighting the tightening knot in her throat with herculean effort. She blinks and two tears trail down her cheeks in identical parallel lines, racing each other down the planes of her face until they merge at the curve of her chin.

“I think I made a storm just now.”

They hang up barely twenty seconds later and Kara changes out of her pajamas into the first items of clothing her hands land on, hardly caring if they're clean or go together or not. She pushes her feet into tennis shoes and chugs a glass of luke-warm tap water, replaying the last ten minutes in her head over and over again, trying to come up with another answer and ultimately finding none.

The thunder recedes with every second that fear replaces feelings of anger, and Kara does her best to think about things that make her happy: Sunshine. Potstickers. Karaoke nights at the bar. Ice cream tubs with giant spoons and dogs on the street and flying with the wind in her hair.

Lena’s smile when she says her name. Her hugs - the way she would rub Kara’s back in soft circles that always made her want to bury her head in her shoulder and purr like a kitten. How the memory of those touches got her through more than one depressive spell during her time in the Phantom Zone.

Kara holds on to that feeling, remembering those moments with pin-point focus as she takes a seat at her kitchen island, lays her head on the marble countertop, and waits once again for Alex to come save her.

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

More tests. Longer tests. Double checking those tests. The sun has been up for almost an hour now, and at this point Kara is almost certain she’s overreacted. She didn’t cause a thunderstorm - she had a temper tantrum and there just happened to be a little bad weather that coincided with it. Nothing to freak out over. She's fine.

She's not fine.

"We think the Phantom Zone may have exposed you to radiation that affects your ability to absorb yellow sunlight."

Kara's chest tightens with sudden anxiety and she has to take a moment before trusting herself to speak. She forces down a wave of oncoming panic and swings her legs over the gurney, intent on putting an end to this ridiculous nonsense.

"No, that can't - my powers are back. I am absorbing sunlight." Kara shakes her head, feeling like an idiot for freaking out over nothing. Now she just has to convince them that it's nothing before they make her sit here for another two days under those damn lamps, walls all around, closing in, suffocating her -

"We compared the results of tests previously recorded a year ago versus the ones taken today," Brainy says, hands clasped tightly at his stomach. "There's no mistake - your powers are currently 56.9% weaker than they were before entering the Phantom Zone."

Kara can see each knuckle bone stretching against the taut skin of his fingers, the way his jaw barely moves when he talks. He's worried, and also a terrible liar; so, it's not nothing, then.

She grips the edge of the bed, not without noticing that it should be rippling like melted butter under the amount of pressure she's exerting right now, but it’s barely showing the indents of her fingertips.

Kara sighs, accepting defeat. "Ok, so… so what does that mean? Is it permanent?"

"No, it's not." Lena turns a corner without warning and startles everyone with the suddenness of her entrance, Kara included. She's immaculately dressed as always, even at six in the morning after four hours of running tests at Alex's plea.

Kara watches the slight sway of her hips as Lena approaches and her brain conjures a scene that is entirely unbidden, but not repellent in the slightest: Cooking breakfast for dinner in her apartment, sizzling bacon and a stack of pancakes, Lena wearing nothing but a thin tee and boy shorts and swaying those hips to a song on the radio, and Kara reaches forward and lets her fingers rest in the hollow junction and slowly tugs, turning the stovetop off with a flick of her wrist, "Kara, I thought you were starving!" Soft nibbles on her neck that turn a laugh into a moan, licking the spot of pancake batter on her jawline as Kara mumbles, "I am..."

Kara’s cheeks turn red as sin and she prays no one notices, hoping the low lighting in the Tower will hide the worst of it. Lena comes to stand beside her, swiping furiously on a (brand-new) tablet. Her hair is pulled back in a sleek ebony ponytail that drapes over one shoulder, and when she leans in, the ends brush against the side of Kara’s neck with a delicious tickle that echoes all the way down her spine. She can't suppress a shiver in time, but Lena is too engrossed in her findings to notice anything amiss and points to a series of images taken from her bloodwork. Kara tries her absolute hardest to pay attention to the screen and not the delicate fingers holding it.

"There was no sun in the Phantom Zone, but its atmosphere was apparently made up of elements that are very similar in composition to the kind of radiation that Kryptonians can absorb, like our yellow sun that gives you your powers on Earth. After your solar reserves depleted, long-term exposure to those atmospheric elements essentially replaced those reserves. For lack of a better term, let's just call it 'Phantom radiation.' Now, you didn't gain powers in the Zone, but you absorbed that energy all the same and instead, it lay dormant in your body. Then when you were exposed to yellow sunlight again, it triggered a reaction,”

Lena swipes again and points at two images side by side. She leans closer, and Kara’s stomach flips in a way that has nothing to do with her medical dilemma.

“This slide shows your cells full of yellow sunlight from tests stored in the DEO’s databases from last year. And this one is from the sample we took a few hours ago.” Lena points to the second picture, and Kara doesn’t need to be a genius to be able to see the differences. The image shows dark purple outlines around each rounded yellow cellule, with tiny vein-like cracks traveling to their epicenters.

Kara points, “These areas are white, like the ones in my normal bloodwork.”

Lena nods. “That’s the result of the reaction that took place when you were exposed to yellow sunlight again. Your Kryptonian physiology wants to take in what is familiar to it, but can’t absorb enough sunlight to overpower the Phantom radiation - which explains why you've been feeling so out of sorts.”

Kara nods. It makes sense. “Ok, so, what do I need to do to get rid of the Phantom radiation?”

Lena pauses, uncertainty marring her delicate features. “I’m not 100% sure, but my theory is that if you solar flare, the force will be enough to expel the residual Phantom radiation and allow your cells to replace it with yellow sunlight again.”

Alex steps forward, gesturing with one hand to stop her from going on. “Wait, back up. So... this Phantom radiation is what’s causing these new powers to manifest, right?" She turns to look at her sister. "And you said that you think they were triggered when you got angry?” Kara nods her reply.

“Then she can’t solar flare," Alex's face hardens, even though her eyes betray  worry. "A solar flare only happens when Kara pushes herself to her absolute limit. Remember Red Tornado? You were so angry when you faced him and you didn’t have to hold back because he was a machine, but now…” She looks at Lena somewhat desperately. “There’s no telling what would happen if she let loose like that with powers that are tuned to her emotions, powers we know next to nothing about. It could tear both her and the city apart. There has to be another option.”

Lena works her jaw back and forth, and Kara can hear the grinding of teeth behind cherry-red lips. Her next words are slow and hesitant, as if she has to unwillingly drag them from her chest, one by one.

“There’s… a possibility that the radiation could dissipate on its own. I compared the results from tests we took the day we got Kara back to today’s tests, and the percentage of Phantom Zone to yellow sun radiation is… slightly less than before. Slightly. ” Lena emphasizes.

There's a beat of silence. “How long would it take for all of it to leave my system naturally, without solar flaring?” Kara asks quietly.

Lena’s gaze softens as she turns her head, her voice a low murmur. “It’s hard to know for sure. It could be days, weeks even, but that would mean - "

“It would mean that I have to keep my emotions in check until it does.” Kara finishes.

Lena worries at her lower lip, her teeth leaving slight indentations that Kara has a wild urge to smooth in a very un-platonic way. “Yes, but Kara, the toll that would take on your mentality, especially after what you’ve just gone through - it’s too much to ask of anyone, not to mention how unhealthy that is.” Lena’s eyes pointedly linger on Brainy, who hesitates for half a second before exhaling deeply, and he inclines his head in a small nod of agreement. They share a silent, unspoken moment before she shoots a challenging look at Alex. “Right?”

Alex pauses, turning to look at Kara directly. She speaks lowly, but not without warmth. “How did it feel, when you got angry last night? That storm - would it have hurt anybody if it got out of control?”

Kara sighs, buying herself time before answering. “I...” She rubs a slow circle on her thigh with her fingernail, not meeting anyone's eyes. “It was mostly thunder, a little lightning in the distance - I think I realized what was happening before it had the chance to escalate. Really, it was no worse than any regular thunderstorm.”

It’s not the whole truth. Alex didn’t see the wreckage in her apartment when she came to take her to the Tower last night - Kara had met her downstairs in the common area instead. She didn’t tell her about the painting, the way she’d destroyed it and several others in her fit of rage, the swell in her chest as the thunder crashed and how good it had felt to let loose. All Alex knew was that Kara had had a rough night, too lost in thought and had let bad memories get the better of her. As far as Kara was concerned, that was all the information she needed.

Besides, she knows the look Alex is giving her right now - she's seen it a hundred times before. It’s the pensive, tortured look Alex gets when she has to weigh the choices presented to her, trying to decide which is more critical: keeping the city and all its denizens safe and in one piece, or choosing to prioritize Kara over everything else… and all the potential outcomes that choice could lead to.

Kara takes the decision out of her hands, knowing what is expected of her, what would make things easier for her older sister even if it might not be what she wants or needs for herself. Alex has been through enough, worrying herself sick over Kara's safe return. This is how she can make up for all the sleepless nights, the constant fear and despair, and the dozens upon dozens of hours it took to bring her home. This is what heroes do.

Kara jumps down from the gurney, forcing the others to make space. She places her hands on her hips and makes a stance, the picture of a force to be reckoned with, and tilts her head playfully. She makes sure her voice comes off sounding strong and confident.

"Well, If I'm going to be quarantined, you all better tell me what shows I missed while I was gone." Her smile is bright, though her stomach feels sour and queasy at the thought of what lies ahead of her. It's almost worth it when Alex gratefully pulls her in for a hug, whispering that they're going to keep researching, there has to be quicker ways to rid her body of the unwanted radiation, and Kara squeezes her shoulders gently in response.

"I'll be fine." She whispers, because she has to be. What other choice is there?

She catches Lena's gaze and tries another tentative smile, but this time there is a wobble in her lips that she can't hold back, betraying her true feelings. The look Lena gives her in return is full of quiet tenderness, with a glint of something that looks like fight in those emerald eyes. She opens her mouth, possibly to argue with Alex further, but Kara shakes her head right to left in a silent plea before a single syllable can come forth, begging her to understand.

Lena's parted lips close without a sound.

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

The first few days are fairly easy.

Kara hasn’t had a real vacation in years, probably since her Midvale days - and while lounging in her apartment doing nothing but watching tv, eating junk food, and waiting for otherworldly radiation to expend itself from her body isn’t exactly her ideal getaway - hey, at least it’s not the Phantom Zone.

The world hasn't seen Supergirl in months, and (apparently) Kara Danvers has been on assignment with none other than Cat Grant herself. No one outside of her circle of Superfriends knows she’s back yet, and as long as Kara keeps a low profile, no one will. When she does return to work, however, it seems that she won’t be going back empty-handed.

On the morning of day two, Kara gets a mysterious email with the words, “for Keira” in the subject line. She opens the first of several attachments to find a five-page single-spaced final draft of a thoroughly impressive-looking article; the byline reads, “by Cat Grant and Kara Danvers” and written in the body is a short, terse message that almost brings Kara to tears: This will never happen again. Worship the ground Nia Nal walks upon, for this is the only freebie you will ever receive from me. Consider it recompense for your years of loyal servitude.

Kara focuses on this act of kindness when other, messier emotions start to seep in. Distraction, she’s discovered, is key to keeping those emotions from taking over. She cleans the already spotless apartment top to bottom, scrubbing every nook and cranny at human speed, rearranges the furniture in her living room, goes through a pile of unread books that have been collecting dust for God knows how long - but by day four, Kara starts to run out of ways to keep herself occupied.

She doesn’t even consider attempting to paint again, and shoves the whole box of oils and brushes into her hall closet so she won’t have to look at them until this is all over.

She hopes she can look at them again once this is over.

She binges a few shows, mostly comedies to keep things light, but after a while the constant pre-recorded laugh tracks grate on her nerves and she switches to documentaries instead. She learns a lot about dolphins and their affinity for seaweed toys, strange-looking birds with even stranger mating dances, watches a parade of flamingos march back and forth across her screen, and becomes just a tiny bit obsessed with pangolins with their little curved arms and the adorable way they waddle across the savannah.

Kara had assumed that most of her time would be spent in isolation, and the thought of trading one cell for another initially filled her with dread - but so far that hasn't been the case. Everyone has made an effort to check up on her, and in all honesty she hasn’t even really been alone in the apartment for very many extended periods of time. Not that she's complaining. At all.

Nia has been juggling a heavier workload at Catco, picking up extra articles that usually would have fallen to Kara had she been around to take them. Despite that, she's been consistent in her thrice a week visits, giddily catching her up on workplace gossip - who's dating who, minor drama between departments, new hires and retirement parties and the time someone called Andrea “Cat 2.0” behind her back and wound up with two weeks no pay as punishment.

In the middle of a story about the tech guy and a round of very persistent hackers, Nia suddenly breaks down crying and tackles Kara in an impromptu hug that nearly bowls her over into the couch cushions. She sobs into Kara's shoulder, saying how happy she is that they found her and that she’s home and alive and she missed her so much , and Kara pulls Nia onto her lap and lets her cry it out. She rocks her back and forth and makes soft shushing noises into the crown of her head, and Kara fights back tears as she tells Nia how much she missed her too.

J’onn and M’gann teach her ancient Martian meditation techniques to help ground her during times of anger, how to address the negative emotions without allowing them to take root in her mind. Afterwards, M'gann pulls Kara aside and tells her that J'onn's strength of spirit and love for her held them together when despair darkened their eyes; he would have spent the rest of his life searching for her, if that was what it took.

Brainy comes over every morning to take blood samples, diligently tracking the downward ratio of Phantom radiation to solar energy. He quietly tells her every day shows improvement, but the percentages are still very subtle. Kara tries to keep her outlook positive and bright in his presence, shaking off the dismal numbers and insisting that she could do with a few more weeks of R&R. She doesn’t want him to dwell on the fact that progress is so slow, knowing that he tends to err on the side of guilt. He tells her about he and Nia's time traveling adventures, and when Kara asks if this Earth's version of teenage Alex is just as scary when angry, Brainy's eyes go wide and he nods without a word.

Alex comes over every evening without fail. They watch movies and eat popcorn and wrap themselves up in blankets on the couch, snuggled into each other’s sides like little kids.

"I missed you so much," Alex says for the hundredth time, laying her head on Kara's shoulder. "It felt like a part of me was missing, every day you were gone."

Kara fights back tears as she nods, mutters another quiet I missed you, too… and hopes the tv drowns out the soft, low rumbles of thunder high in the atmosphere. It boils her blood to think about her sister sinking into despair over her, how all that pain could have been avoided if Kara had just been a little faster, a little smarter, a little stronger. She doesn't tell Alex how every day in the Zone felt like a week on Earth, how many times she went to sleep wondering if when she opened her eyes again, it would be to rescue or madness.

They talk about everything and nothing, but they don’t talk about the Phantom Zone. Alex won’t bring it up and Kara doesn’t divulge any details, knowing why Alex stays silent. She doesn’t want to risk saying anything that could end up triggering the storm inside Kara, putting both her and the city at risk. Kara understands - the last thing she wants to do is hurt anyone, too. So they avoid the topic, and Kara tries not to think about how hard it’s getting to keep the thunder quiet with each passing day.

Nights are the hardest time for her, when Alex can’t stay over and Nia has an early day in the morning and J’onn is monitoring several potential threats from the Tower and trying to stay on top of them at all times. That’s when she feels loneliest, curled in a ball in a bed that feels too big and pillows that are too soft. She thinks maybe having a warm body next to her might help, but this only exacerbates her loneliness. She doesn’t have a warm body, is so far from the idea of a relationship that the notion might as well be back on an untouched Krypton while she reaches for it from Earth with strained, outstretched fingers.

So, naturally, it’s the only thing she wants, which is its own special kind of torture that not even the Phantom Zone had been capable of doling out in the end. The irony is not lost on her.

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

Day fourteen is bright and sunny and beautiful - a perfect day to do just about anything, the kind of day where you feel lucky to be alive in this particular moment in time and nothing can get you down no matter what life throws your way.

It’s the first day Kara feels overwhelming depression start to creep in.

She’s home and surrounded by her friends and family and she feels a tiny bit stronger every day that her cells drink in sunlight and expel radiation, but it’s been two weeks and Lena still hasn’t been over to see her once.

Kara has spent most of the day staring at her phone, writing dozens of meticulously crafted texts that she only ends up deleting before she can press “send.” She’s drafted about ten differently worded, breezy, ‘hey if you wanna hang out you know where to find me!’ messages, a couple ‘Miss yous,’ and dozens of attempts at humor that all end up coming off sounding like she’s trying too hard. With each failed attempt at contact, her frustrations rise and the beginnings of smoky gray storm clouds gather outside her window.

Kara sits at the kitchen table, one cheek resting on the surface as she slumps in her chair, tracing idle patterns with one finger. Her phone lays dormant, the black screen taunting her with its blank stare. A low rumble echoes outside and Kara huffs, blowing a strand of long blonde hair out of her eyes.

“Oh, shut up…” She mutters, turning her head away from the window. Kara isn't mad at Lena for staying away, she's mad at herself - because even though she has missed Lena terribly for months on end, the thought of taking that first step towards repairing the damaged threads of their relationship scares her shitless.

She's already screwed things up almost to the point of no return once before, and hurting Lena again is the last thing she wants to do. In fact, Kara understands why Lena is probably keeping her distance. They’ve been on the outs for the last year, had only just started mending the rift between them caused by her secrets, and with everything going on right now it’s probably not the best time for a heart to heart. Kara doesn’t want to push Lena if she isn’t ready.

But God, she wants to see her so badly. It’s like a fist is squeezing her heart and she can’t make the ache go away no matter how hard she tries. So much of her time in the Phantom Zone was spent wishing she could talk to Lena, tell her everything she should have said when she had the chance, how much she regrets the choices she made that led them here and that she promises she will do better, she will be better. Maybe they can’t go back to the way they used to be, but, if Lena is willing, maybe they can be something more than the sum of their past mistakes. Stronger. Together, in every way possible. And she means every way.

How maddeningly ironic that the moment Kara realized she was finally ready to give all of her heart to someone, it was while trapped in a endless hell-scape with no way to get back home after royally fucking it all up beforehand.

Another rattle of thunder shakes the windows and Kara sighs, rising from her seat. She rubs the indentations of the table surface out of her cheek and grabs the remote, unenthusiastically plopping down on the couch and wrapping a plush blanket around her body like a cloak, head included. She knows she probably looks ridiculous, but who’s here to see? No one, that’s who.

She’s halfway through Lilo and Stitch, her comfort movie, when a knock at the door interrupts her.

“S’open.” Kara calls out languidly. Alex wasn’t supposed to come over today, but maybe she and Kelly changed their plans. She hopes if they did go out that Alex brought dessert from whatever restaurant they went to - she could really go for a slice of raspberry cheesecake. Half a pound of sugar sounds like just the kind of balm she needs right now.

“Kara?”

Oh. That’s... not Alex.

Kara flips the tv off and turns her head so quickly she would’ve given herself whiplash, had she been human. “Lena!”

She tosses the blanket and runs a hand through her tangled hair, suddenly very embarrassed to be seen in the baggy sweatpants and ratty tshirt she’s currently wearing, while Lena closely resembles one of those commercial models advertising flawless skin and satin-soft hair. She looks unreal in a pair of simple blue jeans that probably cost more than her monthly rent, and Kara…yeah, Kara has definitely looked better.

Kara stands and self-consciously crosses her arms over her belly, then drops them an instant later, worried that the pose might read as too aggressive. Her heart is pounding in her chest because it's Lena and she's here and all of a sudden the apartment feels like home again, which doesn't really make sense because Lena has never lived here, it's never been her home - but Kara finds herself desperately wishing it was.

“What, uh, what are you… what’s up?” God, she hates how awkward she sounds - hates how far they are from where they used to be. The familiar rhythm of their friendship is all out of whack - lunch dates and movie nights and "promise? always.." feels like eons ago, like the memories belong to a completely different Kara. She wonders if Lena feels the same.

Lena takes a few steps forward, clenched hands hidden in the ends of her long-sleeved shirt. They look like little mittens, or paws, and Kara feels her heart warm with tenderness. “I know I should have called before coming over. I can go, if you're busy…"

Kara shakes her head vehemently, perhaps a little too much so, but the last thing she wants is for Lena to feel like she’s not welcome. “No, no, it’s ok! I mean, I wasn’t doing anything. Do you, uh… do you want to sit down?”

She gestures to the couch and yanks the blanket before Lena can answer, sending stale crumbs flying through the air like tiny catapults that might as well have sound effects attached to them. Kara flushes and clears her throat, brushing the seat of the couch cushion clean and patting it stiffly before letting Lena sit down.

A few agonizing beats of silence pass before Lena breaks the mounting tension. “I’m sorry I haven’t been to see you.” She says quietly. “I wasn’t avoiding you. I want you to know that.”

Kara feels a lump in her throat because yes, that’s exactly what she thought, but she shoves it down. “It’s ok,” She replies thickly, plucking at a stray thread near the hem of her shirt. “I’m sure you’ve been busy.”

Lena quickly shakes her head, fumbling over her words. “No, I - I mean, yes, I have been busy, but it’s not… I’ve been working, well, researching, trying to help you. To get you out of here.” She sighs, exasperated. “But I’m afraid I haven’t come up with any promising leads.” Lena looks defeated and drops her head heavily. “I’m sorry, Kara…”

“Hey,” Kara says, scooting a bit closer. She wants to put her hand on Lena’s back, comfort her, tell her how grateful she is that she’s even willing to try to explore other options - but she’s afraid of moving too quickly, scaring Lena off before they’ve even had a chance to start over. “You don’t have to apologize.”

Lena chuckles lightly, a low rumble in her throat. “Oh, I think I do, actually. For… for so much.” She hesitates for one brief moment and then the words start spilling out of her, like she's been holding them in the cavity of her chest for too long and no longer has the strength to keep them contained.

"I'm so sorry - for what Lex did, for what he put you through, sending you back to that place - I'm sorry for the part I played, sorry that it's my fault everything went as wrong as it did, for letting my anger drive me to follow my worst instincts, for wanting to hurt you the way I was hurt - I'm so sorry, Kara, for everything ." Lena takes a shuddering breath that nearly makes her lose her composure and she averts her gaze, but not before Kara hears the soft whine in her throat that only she can detect.

Kara doesn’t think as she reaches out and takes Lena’s hand, the motion so natural and familiar that it’s like breathing. She knows it’s probably too soon for physical contact like this, but Lena’s warm fingers close over hers and the way her heart rate picks up is enough to make Kara want to be brave.

“Lena,” Their eyes lock and she’s struck not for the first time by how stunningly beautiful this woman is. She might be the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen in all the galaxies combined, all their stars and constellations nowhere near as breathtaking as the dark eclipses haloed by Lena’s jade irises.

“I forgive you.” Kara says without hesitation - because it's true, and because Kara has already decided that she will do whatever it takes to mend what’s been broken between them, because… because she loves her. It’s as simple and as complicated as that. There has been a void in her life for as long as she can remember, and she wants to either fill the space with Lena or with no one at all. It might be terribly naive, but Kara can imagine no greater love than what she feels for her, cannot even fathom the idea of loving anyone else this way unless it turns out that Lena does not want her back - and maybe not even then.

Which is entirely possible, she supposes, but Kara refuses to think that far ahead right now. They must remember how to walk again before she can ever hope for them to run someday.

Lena sucks in a breath and shakes her head, already preparing to ignore her calm acceptance and spew forth more desperate apologies. “Kara -”

She gently cuts her off. “When I was in the Phantom Zone, I spent a lot of time thinking about everything that happened between us. Everything I did, everything you did - and I realized that while there was a chance you all would find me, bring me home… it was also likely that you wouldn’t, and I wasn’t about to spend eternity holding on to the pain of our mistakes.” She shifts a little closer to Lena and feels emboldened when she doesn’t shirk away.

“I would really, really like to be your friend again, if you’ll have me. If you’ll have… all of me.” It’s dangerously close to a confession and takes all of Kara’s willpower not to expand further into territory that they are most certainly not ready to cross over into yet, no matter how much she wants to.

"I know we have to talk about it. I want us to talk about it, but for now…" Kara's voice wobbles and it takes a few stuttered tries to get the next words out. "Can I just… can I hug you? Is that ok?"

Lena pulls Kara into her arms with one fluid motion, as if she'd been waiting for this moment just as long as Kara had. She’s warm and soft and wonderful and when her hands start to rub slow circles through the thin fabric of her shirt Kara almost loses it. Somehow, she keeps from turning into a blubbering mess and curls her legs up underneath one another, molding her body to fit Lena’s embrace and it feels like this is where she was always meant to be.

And maybe this isn’t one-sided and Lena feels it too, because the next thing she does is something she’s never done before in the five years they’ve known each other: Lena cradles Kara against her heart, one hand lightly cupping her cheek as she wipes steady tears away with her thumb - and then, without hesitation, she gently presses her lips to the crown of Kara’s head for one long, drawn-out moment before pulling away, igniting a ribbon of molten fire that flows straight down to fill every single nerve ending in her body.

“I forgive you, too.” Lena says softly.

Kara squeezes her eyes shut and just barely manages to hold back a relieved sob. She hadn’t realized just how much she needed to hear those words until they’d been spoken, and the steadiness in Lena’s voice convinces her that they hold nothing but truth, the same as her own.

Kara doesn’t pull back, doesn’t look to see what’s going on in the sea of Lena’s eyes or gauge her reaction. Instead, she inches just a bit closer and reaches across Lena’s chest, letting her hand rest on her shoulder blade with a shaky exhale - and when Kara feels Lena place a second kiss against the bare skin of her temple, it honest-to-Rao almost makes her whimper with longing. She wants to tilt her head, angle her lips to slot against Lena’s more than she’s wanted anything in her life, but after the uncertainty of not knowing if she would ever see her again, this moment with Lena is more than enough. For the time being, it has to be enough. Walk before we can run.

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

It’s quiet outside, and for the first time in hours, there is no thunder to be heard.

Kara isn’t quite sure when they fell asleep, but the soft rays of golden morning sunlight on her skin tell her it must’ve been quite a while ago.

She wakes with her head on Lena’s chest. The gentle rising and falling of her breath reminds her of lazy waves on a lake shore, rhythmic and calming. She wills herself not to make a move, drinking in Lena's scent like the elixir she so desperately craved every single time she opened her eyes to the deafening silence and overwhelming loneliness of the Phantom Zone. In the silence, Kara re-acquaints herself with the steady cadence of Lena’s heartbeat until she’s positive she could pick it out of a crowd of millions without a second’s worth of hesitation - not that she had ever forgotten.

She knows all the unique patterns of each of her loved ones' hearts, can distinguish between the soundtracks of their bodies just by pulse - and while Alex's solid heartbeat is the rock on which Kara has built her foundation, Lena's is the anchor that keeps her from drifting into dark, dangerous depths. It centers and guides her when she feels lost and always leads back home, better than any compass or North Star ever could.

Every heartbeat on this planet is a song, beautiful in its own way, but Lena’s is different from the rest. The notes of Lena's heart are more than just a simple combination of beats that take up one or two measures on a sheet of music - for Kara, it's nothing less than an entire symphony.

Lena shifts, her fingers brushing over Kara’s arm in a way that is almost too tender to be performed unconsciously, but Kara can tell that Lena is still deep in sleep and doesn’t know what she’s doing. She can pretend otherwise, though.

A few more minutes pass in blissful silence until a blaring car alarm breaks the spell. Lena starts to squirm, ready to join Kara in the world of wakefulness. Kara quietly pulls away and readjusts herself on the opposite end of the couch, where it's cold and unoccupied. She tells herself this is where she slept all night, not in the crook of Lena’s arm thinking dangerous thoughts that must be curbed for the time being. Waking up on the same couch with your newly rechristened best friend is one thing, but waking up a hair’s breadth away from the woman you’re in love with who doesn’t know yet is... entirely another.

Kara keeps her eyes shut for a few more seconds, feigning sleep and missing three vital signs that would prove her theory of unrequited feelings wrong. She doesn’t see Lena’s eyes flutter open, confused as she looks down at the empty space below her - nor does she witness Lena touching the warm place on her chest where the weight of Kara’s head had rested mere moments ago. And finally, she doesn’t catch the way Lena’s eyes melt at the sight of Kara’s curled body, a tiny smile lifting her lips for just a moment before Kara stretches like a cat and turns her head to greet her.

And that’s when she hears the sirens.

Kara jolts to an upright position and immediately hones in on the scene nearly a mile downtown. She’s picking up at least five, no, six police vehicles blaring down the street at full speed, taking advantage of the lack of early morning traffic. She listens closely to the voice on the scanner, picking up bits and pieces as the signal stutters in and out of range: Rogue unidentified alien - significant structural damage - twelve injured - proceed with extreme caution -

“Kara?” Lena is next to her in a heartbeat, eyes wide and completely devoid of all traces of sleep. “Kara, what is it?”

“Trouble,” Kara replies, standing up and tossing her blanket aside. A quick burst of superspeed takes her into the bedroom, where she exchanges her pajamas for the first pair of jeans and t-shirt she can get her hands on, and then she's back in the living room with Lena. She whips off her glasses for the first time in months and her suit materializes out of thin air. Kara would have smiled with joy over this moment if she wasn’t so focused on the cries for help reverberating in her skull.

“I have to go.”

Lena grabs her arm, and this motion is the only thing that could’ve stopped Kara in her tracks. “Wait, Kara, your powers… the radiation - ” She trails off, mouth opening and closing as she searches for the right words, ultimately coming up short.

Kara shakes her head, her expression pained. “Don’t ask me to ignore people who need my help just because of these new powers. I can’t sit here and do nothing, Lena, I can’t .”

“No, that’s not what… that’s not what I was going to say.” Lena hesitates just a moment before wrapping her in a brief, tight embrace that is over almost before Kara can register the warmth against her body. “It's not your new powers I’m worried about, it's the old ones. You’re still not at full strength - please, just… be careful .”

Kara could kiss her right then and there, seriously considers throwing all caution to the wind and giving in to her base desires, but she just squeezes her hand in response and smiles, hoping Lena can see everything she isn’t saying in that one look. Then she takes off in a burst of superspeed, and before Kara knows it she’s outside in the open air above her city, weaving through the sea of skyscrapers like it's second nature and oh, it feels amazing.

And so short-lived.

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

Kara knows it's going to be a fight the moment she lands. The street is an absolute wreck, thick slabs of asphalt rising and falling like ocean swells frozen in time. Debris covers the cracked sidewalks and several cars lay overturned, like turtles stuck on their backs, creating a field of barricades that are making it difficult for civilians to maneuver through. No one even notices that Supergirl is standing right in their path after months of unexplained absence; all they're concerned with is finding safety in the midst of chaos.

Kara pushes a car out of the way, widening the bottleneck path for those looking to escape, and smoothly leaps onto the back of an abandoned semi truck. She uses the added height to her advantage, diligently scanning the area for the cause of all this panic.

It doesn’t take long for her to find it.

A huge, hulking figure steps into view, brandishing a thick pole in its massive claws like a club, as shop windows shatter in a wake of destruction. Glass rains down on the terrified people inside, screaming as they duck under tables or shield their children from stray shards.

Kara launches towards the creature without preamble, without a shred of a plan in mind except stop him, save them -

She catches the pole with one hand and rips it out of the alien's grasp in an expert maneuver, using her other fist to land what should be a devastating right hook. The blow bounces off him like rubber, and the slight stagger from the impact seems to come more from surprise than any actual damage.

Kara doesn't expect the speed with which he retaliates, and a backhanded swing catches her completely off guard, sending her somersaulting into the air like a rag doll.

She lands hard, the breath knocked out of her lungs as she fights for several agonizing seconds to recover. She uses the distance to get her first good look at the creature, which reminds her more of a giant mechanical beetle than any alien she's ever seen. It's covered in thick, blue armor, which is… different… and Kara has a feeling the two curved antennae-like protrusions on its back have more of a purpose than for just mere decoration.

She makes a second attempt, this time choosing to keep her feet planted on the ground and utilizing her super-speed, zigzagging her way down the pavement in varying patterns hoping to confuse him. The Phantom radiation is definitely slowing her down, but Kara is still quick enough that she only resembles a blue/red blur to most naked eyes, alien or not.

Kara shifts into hyper-speed once she’s close, planning to release a volley of punches in the few seconds of frozen time granted - but her arm unexpectedly stops moving before it has a chance to connect. Her eyes go to her fist, poised in midair a few inches from the alien’s chestplate, and she's shocked to see that one previously clawed appendage now has fingers , firmly clasped over her own in an unforgiving vice-like grip. The other claw morphs before her wide eyes, pieces and parts shifting in a slow-motion mechanical dance that is almost graceful in its intricacy. Kara recognizes its new form a second too late.

Hyper-speed fades and Kara returns to real time; her few precious seconds have run out. A white-hot beam of energy hits her straight in the stomach, throwing her backwards once again to collide with the side of the semi. The metal bends around her body as easily as tin foil and she pulls at the folds keeping her trapped, struggling to pry herself free as the beetle’s cannon recharges for a second shot. Her fingers are shaking almost uncontrollably, seeds of doubt beginning to root themselves in her mind: She’s rusty after months of inactivity and hasn’t been hit this hard in a long time. Kara doesn’t know how to beat this thing, she doesn’t know, doesn’t know, doesn’t know what to do next -

Kara!

Kara’s hand instantly goes to her ear, then remembers that she isn’t wearing her comms device. She’s picking up Alex’s voice from across town, and she doesn’t need to see her face to know that beneath the distraught undertones, Alex is pissed .

Kara, I know you can hear me. There’s a news crew in the air. I can see you right now and I’m telling you to get the hell OUT of there. J’onn is a few minutes away - let him take over. I’m begging you to listen to me -

Kara falls to the ground as the last bit of twisted metal comes loose, landing on her hands and knees in the rough gravel. She’s far from complete invulnerability right now, and the sharp sting of black rock biting into her palms is terrifyingly familiar. The blue beetle starts barreling towards her like a runaway train, and for a split second Kara sees dark towering crags in the background behind him where bright silver skyscrapers should be. A wave of debilitating panic crashes over her and she clenches her eyes shut until she sees stars, hardly caring that she’s about to endure another massive blow.

No… She’s not back there. This can’t be another Phantom-induced torture vision - it just can’t. She clings to the feeling of seven pairs of arms wrapped around her and each other in the Tower, drinking in the wonderful warmth of yellow sunlight for the first time in months, Lena’s lips on her skin... it can’t have been a lie. It’s too real. If she opens her eyes now and finds herself back in that cave, Kara will lose all sense of sanity. There’s no other way this scenario will end, paragon of hope or not.

The hit is hard and solid as the alien uses his cannon arm as a bludgeon, knocking her sideways into a destroyed coffeehouse window. A mahogany counter explodes from the impact and shards of wood fly in all directions. Kara touches her forehead and groans, dizzy and unprepared at the sight of blood staining her fingertips, a thin stream trickling down the side of her face.

Alex is yelling at her from miles away, but Kara hears every word as if her sister was holding a megaphone just a few feet from her eardrums. She's not pissed anymore - she sounds positively hysteric.

Kara, get out of there now! That thing is going to kill you! You’re not strong enough to handle this and your powers are too unpredictable right now - please, run away just this once. I can’t -

Kara pushes to her feet, gritting her teeth so hard that her jaw muscles twitch, and for the first time in her life Kara willingly blocks out Alex’s voice. The silence that follows is abrupt, like her sister has suddenly disappeared from the face of the Earth, but she feels no guilt over this act of defiance - not even a shadow of it.

All Kara feels is rage.

The skies turn black and thunder rumbles overhead in varying levels of intensity as Kara bursts out of the rubble, flying towards the blue beetle as fast as her weakened body is capable of. This time she doesn’t bother with punches; Kara tilts her shoulder and uses the force of her whole body to lift him clear off the ground, slamming into a thick brick wall nearby.

Run away. As if those words could ever exist side by side in her vocabulary. As if she could abandon these people without a second thought after failing to be there for them all this time.

Fat raindrops hit her skin and a gusty wind whips her cape into the air, snapping like a flag caught in a hurricane.  The alien dodges a blow meant for his head and rolls out of reach, too gracefully for something covered in so much armor. He lifts his arm, aims the cannon, and releases another energy charge that brings Kara to her knees. She folds in half as her face hits the ground, paralyzed. She can’t move, can’t do anything except brace herself for the armored boot that connects with her stomach and pray she doesn’t lose consciousness.

Not strong enough. How many times has she been knocked down by someone, or something - stronger than this creature? How much has she endured in her life that proves the very opposite of that statement? She’s taken on an Anti-Moniter with her full arsenal of powers and stopped gunmen on Earth using nothing but words - she can take this thing down at half-strength. She is strong enough, damn it. She’s not helpless, not powerless, refuses to be the victim in this story any longer.

Never again will she be that woman in the dark cave, crying bitterly on her hands and knees waiting for someone to save her.

Kara spits out a mouthful of blood and forces herself to her feet, swaying slightly. The thunder is louder and more constant now, lightning flickering across the darkened sky. It’s hard to tell what expression the beetle could be hiding as he waits for her next move, but Kara doesn’t care even if he’s laughing underneath all that armor. He won’t be for long.

Her face contorts into a look of pure fury and she screams, blasting him with an intense beam of heat vision as another peal of thunder crashes in response, her own personal audience. Kara feels the rising swell in her belly and pours more energy into her efforts, relishing the way every nerve ending pulses with hidden electricity. She knows what's about to happen, knows how potentially dangerous of a gamble this is - but Kara doesn't care. A solar flare might be the only thing that can stop him, and if it expels the rest of the Phantom radiation at the same time - well, that's just a bonus. And she can't deny how good it feels to let this out after weeks of dutiful silence. Just a little bit more, and then this can be over .

The heat vision seems to have done the trick. The beetle stumbles, stunned from the blow - but Kara doesn’t let up. She grabs him by the neck and pins him to the ground with one knee, squeezing the unyielding metal; he won't get the upper hand on her this time.

She pounds into his armored face, ignoring the way her knuckles throb with each desperate and increasingly sloppy blow. The heavy downpour plasters Kara's hair to her neck and blinds her vision, yet she doesn't relent. Every dull thud of flesh against metal forces another unwilling memory to the surface: the rocket, Krypton, her parents, Lex, the Phantom Zone, three months gone and I’ll never get them back. My friends, my family, I will never get that time with them back. All those people I could have saved, who died waiting for me - because I wasn’t strong enough to stop him.

Kara lets out another roar and raises her clenched fist, ready to deliver the final blow, when suddenly -

A massive bolt of brilliant white lightning cracks the sky, and no human eye could see what Kara sees as time slows to a crawl; she watches the thin beam descend from the heavens, running parallel with the diagonal path of her arm like it's a part of her, an extension of her own limb. There is no contact between them, but Kara can feel the heat of it pass over every inch of her skin, lifting the soft hairs on her arm with residual static just before striking the beetle in the center of its chest.

The resulting force throws Kara backwards and she lands in a pile of rubble, disoriented from the sizzling impact. It takes a minute for her twitching muscles to recover, but Kara can already tell that she hasn't flared; she feels none of the overwhelming fatigue that usually comes afterwards, the way her vision dulls and the world goes blessedly silent, how everything fades a few degrees and loses its intensity for just a little while, just long enough for her to hold someone tightly in her arms and not have to worry about breaking a bone or three.

The bitter taste of yet another failure fills Kara's mouth as she struggles to her feet. She braces her palms flat on the hood of a nearby car and is stunned to see that each of the fingertips on her right hand are burned, black as Phantom Zone night. She inspects them one by one, comprehension slowly dawning as her frazzled mind resets:

Kara didn't just call down the storm, she directed it with nothing but her own will as the driving force - like she's become the all-powerful god everybody always imagines her to be.

Something groans nearby, snapping Kara out of her stupor. She prepares herself for round two, but the blue beetle is nowhere in sight. In its place, Kara is shocked to see a young boy, maybe fifteen or sixteen, curled up on the ground in lingering smoke clouds. He’s bare chested and wearing nothing but tattered, filthy jeans, muttering to himself with his eyes tightly shut. Kara takes a few wobbly steps closer and a flash of moving color on his back catches her eye.

Attached to the boy's skin is a blue scarab, deeply embedded in the triangular-shaped space between the nape of his neck and shoulder blades. Kara has just caught the last bit of its stick-thin legs slowly retracting into the oval-shaped torso of its body before going still and silent. The surrounding flesh is puckered and inflamed, suggesting that the bond between boy and beetle has only just been formed - and so far, it's been a less than symbiotic relationship.

He's… he's just a kid. He wasn't in control.

She does a full body scan, but aside from a few bumps and bruises he doesn't appear to be seriously hurt. The armor must have protected him from most of the damage, only retreating into dormancy after the lightning struck it. Was it the result of a defense mechanism? Or something else?

Kara places a gentle hand on the boy's trembling body, but this only makes him scream out in pain as if he had been branded by her touch. Kara immediately pulls back, watching helplessly as the boy curls tighter into himself, wincing and vehemently shaking his head almost as if in reply to some silent, unseen entity.

Kara stares in horror at her lightning-burned fingertips and bile rises in the back of her throat. She feels a queer sort of detachment from her physical body, unmoored as the storm that was born from this chaotic scene.

Oh, Rao… I did this. I could have killed him. I didn't know…

An ambulance wails nearby and rotating blue and red lights light up the immediate area, bouncing off Kara's deathly pale skin. She hears car doors open and slam shut, muffled voices steadily gaining in volume as panic grips her by the throat like a fist; it's only a matter of seconds before she's discovered.

The news crew hovering over the city has probably already gotten plenty of shots that will either make or break the return of Supergirl. They have the power to paint her however they want - as the hero who stopped a rogue alien attack, or the villain kneeling over an unconscious teenager in the dirt. Kara knows this business - it all depends on which headline sounds more enticing, which one will sell more papers and online clicks, whether it's the whole truth or nowhere near close to accuracy.

She should stay and talk with the paramedics, give a quote or two about how the situation really unfolded. It could make all the difference, should the media decide to spin their own story in response to whatever leaked photos show up on tonight's news. It's what she should do.

And then the first EMT rounds the corner with the stretcher, wheels clacking across the asphalt and Kara just can't do it. She can't meet this person's eyes and let him see the guilt written across her face like the damning evidence it would be. She's told a thousand lies over the years, each one a tiny knife twisting in her gut upon the telling, but there's no way she can tell these people this isn't what it looks like.

Because pleading her ignorance doesn't change the fact that Supergirl attacked a minor, no matter what kind of armor protected him from the brunt of her wrath.

It's cowardly, and she hates herself the moment she takes to the sky in a rush of wind - but there's no going back once she's made her choice. They will take care of him, she reasons. The boy is safer with them than he ever was with her - her, and her recklessness and stubbornness and determination to prove that she was ready, ignoring all the blatantly obvious signs that pointed otherwise.

She flies straight up, past the blanket of clouds already breaking in the aftermath, up into the atmosphere where birds, planes, and the fearful eyes of man cannot find her. Up, where it's silent and solitary and no one can hear the strangled sounds of her lungs gasping for air, the way her heart throbs against her chest like a little bird in a cage, throwing itself at the bars in a desperate effort to be free.

She floats in the thin area between Earth and space; there's barely enough oxygen in this layer of the atmosphere to keep her conscious, but this is the least of Kara's worries. She almost longs for her pod, and the endless slumber that came with it. All those years drifting in the dark, unaware of anything or anyone, where nothing could hurt her.

Where she herself couldn't hurt anyone in return.

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

Hours later, (she's not sure how many, but judging from the sun's position she guesses it's just about noon) Kara finally descends, drained and beaten in a way that has nothing to do with her diminished powers. She stays high above the city skyline, concealing herself in the now white, cottontail clouds so as to avoid any wayward eyes below. She doesn't want to be seen, even from this great distance where expressions cannot possibly be perceived - doesn't want anyone to look at her and witness the shame that feels permanently etched into her face, least of all the person she knows is waiting for her at home.

The thought of facing Alex right now is almost unbearable.

Kara hovers above her apartment building for a few minutes, working up the courage to touch down. The temptation to turn around and hide somewhere on the other side of the world is tantalizing. Somewhere warm and peaceful, with a thundering waterfall to help drown out the incessant sounds of a world that has never felt more alien than it does right now.

All that time isolated in the Phantom Zone, mind numbingly homesick and lovesick and missing everyone so much it became a physical, tangible pain - now, Kara wants nothing more than to be alone.

She closes her eyes and lets out a shaky sigh, honing in on the specific song of Alex's heartbeat. Kara's stomach churns with heightened anxiety as her suspicions are confirmed - she's down there, all right.

But Alex isn't alone.

"-can't believe you just let her go."

"What, like I could have stopped her even if I wanted to?"

"What do you mean, 'even if I wanted to?' You should have wanted to! She wasn't ready to be back out there, you know that!"

Kara's heart rate picks up and her mouth goes dry as sandpaper - Lena. And Alex. Fighting. About her .

"It was only a matter of time before a cry for help came that Kara couldn't ignore, and it's just going to keep happening. You know it will. If we had just tried my hypothesis right from the start - "

"How many times are we gonna keep going over this? The risk is too high. We don't know what could happen if Kara solar flares - "

"You know, Alex, the only way to find out if a hypothesis is correct is if you test it out ."

"Don't you dare patronize me. I'm just trying to keep her safe."

"That may be so, but no amount of movie nights and take-out can cover up the fact that you asked Kara to continue to put her life on hold after the hell she just went through. It's not fair, Alex!"

"You know why she has to lay low - what happened today only proves that! Until the Phantom radiation completely eradicates itself, Supergirl shouldn't be put in situations where she might lose control."

"What about what Kara needs? She can't go on being cooped up in this apartment. She should go back to Catco, have at least that part of her life back."

"And what? Start a thunderstorm every time a lead doesn't pan out? When an interview gets testy? Don't you think people would notice?"

"You're not giving her enough credit."

"And you're thinking with your heart instead of your head. She's my sister, Lena. I've had to watch out for her my entire life, and I know what she can and can't handle. She wears her heart on her sleeve, and I love that about her - but in this situation, it's a danger to both herself and the people around her. The radiation is dissipating on its own - we know that for a fact. She just needs a little more time."

"You and I have both seen the numbers. It's going to take a lot longer than a couple of weeks before Kara's cells are back to normal. I've been working day and night for two weeks, trying to find another way, but the 'fact' is, there isn't one. Kara needs to solar flare, Alex. Otherwise, she's just going to keep throwing herself into danger. It's the only option we have left. We… we did not save her from a prison just to put her right back into another one."

Kara knows she shouldn't be eavesdropping like this. It's a complete invasion of privacy of both her sister and her best friend, but she can't seem to make herself tune out. She's transfixed by the vehemence in Lena's voice, the way it cracks like broken glass at the end of that last sentence, the way she's fighting Alex so hard - fighting for her.

Alex takes a deep breath, her voice choked and strained as she softly replies, "I'll think about what you've said. I promise. In the meantime… you'll call if she shows up?"

"Of course I will." Lena sounds relieved, then a bit flustered as she adds, "Will you… can you let me know, if - when, I mean… when she comes home?"

Alex must nod her reply, because Lena lets out a soft, "Thank you," and then the door squeals open, shuts, and all is quiet once more.

Kara watches Lena leave the building, stepping down the sidewalk at a speed unthinkable for the size of those Louis Vuitton heels, and Kara is so tempted to go after her - to thank her for voicing such concern over her well-being, to defend her sister's overprotectiveness - or just to scoop Lena into her arms and confess that she's irrevocably in love with her, and damn whatever consequences may follow.

In the end, however, she does none of these things. Kara lands on the rooftop with barely a sound and slips her glasses into place. Her hands tremble as the nanite suit dissolves into thin air, putting her back into the hastily chosen street clothes from this morning. Kara would rather go into this impeding confrontation wearing her suit, if she was being perfectly honest - but it's not like she can just walk down the hall of her building in full costume. And besides, no cape or mask or alternate persona would do any good with Alex anyway. She never could hide from her.

She's never wanted to until now.

Kara takes a deep breath and pushes the rooftop door open, her footsteps echoing down the worn, paint-peeled stairs. Time to face her sister. Anything else with Lena will, unfortunately, have to wait.

The apartment is eerily quiet as Kara enters, her fingers shaking as they turn the cold doorknob. Alex sits at the table with her head in her hands, breathing deeply, not acknowledging the new presence in the room. She doesn't have to.

Alex knows Kara's footsteps the way the Kryptonian knows the cadence of her heartbeat. Years of sisterly instinct is ingrained in their very DNA, despite the fact that they share no blood ties and literally come from different worlds. Their bond is based on fate, unthinkable circumstances forcing the two of them to live out their formative years together, until neither one could imagine ever being apart. It may not be as tangible as hard genetics, but what lies between them is no less real by any means.

Kara has never had trouble reading Alex, until now. She doesn't know what reaction she should brace herself for: fury, tears, anguished relief? Kara isn't even sure which reaction would be the least painful to witness.

"Alex?" Kara ventures.

"The boy is stable," Alex says without preamble. "He's been transferred to Star Labs. J'onn and M'gann are with him now - they think they can shed some light on the thing attached to him, maybe even safely remove it. But the bottom line is, he's ok."

Kara lets out a sharp exhale and feels tears spring to her eyes at this unexpected news. Relief floods every inch of her tightly wound muscles as Alex's words repeat over and over in her head: He's ok, he's ok - Oh, thank Rao…

Kara tries to focus on taking calming breaths, flushing out the last few hours of gut-wrenching anxiety. "Alex, I didn't…I didn't know it was a kid in there. If I had… please, you have to believe me."

"What were you thinking." Alex asks - not a question, but a simple statement. She still hasn't turned around, hasn't so much as glanced in Kara's direction, and it's starting to unnerve her.

Kara fidgets with her sleeve guiltily. Here we go... "I… look, I know I should've played things differently. I shouldn't have rushed in without a plan, but the situation was getting out of control. They needed me."

"I told you, J'onn was en route to the scene." Something is off in Alex's voice, like she wants to say more but won't, biting back her words into clipped, short responses.

Kara swallows heavily and crosses her arms in a gesture meant to be protective rather than threatening. She's about to respond when Alex suddenly stands in one fluid motion, turns, and looks at her for the first time.

Her face is expressionless, devoid of emotion, like she's completely checked out. There are no tears in her glassy, unfocused eyes, no sign or inkling that she's anything but indifferent to this conversation when she quietly says,

"I think it would be a good idea to temporarily relocate you to the Tower, where we can keep a closer eye on the downward progress of the Phantom radiation."

Kara stares, uncomprehending. "Re...relocate?"

"Temporarily." Alex repeats, a tiny hint of warmth breaking through the cold exterior. But it fades quickly, almost within a blink of an eye; even Kara's have trouble catching it. "Just until you're better."

"You and I have both seen the numbers. It's going to take a lot longer than a couple of weeks before Kara's cells are back to normal."

"Until I'm… better?" The words are slow to form on her tongue, thick and awkward and tasting like milk unexpectedly gone sour.

Alex starts talking faster now, more animatedly, but it feels fake and forced - like a parent attempting to coerce their toddler into eating tonight's vegetables, with the vague promise of candy hanging over their head.

"You could work from home. Lena said she would ask Andrea to give you a lighter load for a while, maybe focus less on journalism and be more of a… a behind the scenes consultant,"

Her voice is several octaves higher than normal - it sounds less like Alex is trying to convince Kara it's a good idea and more like she's trying to convince herself.

"You worked under Cat Grant long enough to know that place inside out. It would be so much less stressful than going out, finding stories, chasing leads - and then when you're better, everything can go back to normal."

Kara's legs feel weak as she grips the back of a chair and hunches over it, her stomach roiling. She sounds so sure, so optimistic about the whole thing and… it's a lie. Everything coming out of Alex's mouth is a blatant, prettily painted lie .

Alex touches her hand with ice cold fingers, gently, barely making contact. "Kara, I… I know this has been hard for you, but you have to understand. I'm just-"

"Trying to keep me safe?" Kara finishes her sentence through gritted teeth. "Or trying to keep me under control?" The wooden back of the chair bends and creaks under her fingers, and a soft roll of thunder that only Kara's ears can hear echoes across the distant horizon.

Alex's voice goes flat again, robotic, although her eyes betray the pain clearly hidden underneath. "Of course not. I… I'm in a difficult position here, I have to consider all the variables - you know how hard that is."

Through the façade Kara sees just how exhausted her sister is. She can only imagine the number of hours Alex has put in with Brainy, running their tests, patrolling with Nia in Kara's absence and acting as co-head of the Tower with J'onn - all while coming home each night to Kelly, finding time for normalcy in the midst of the completely chaotic world they live in. Kara sees all of this in the wan face of a person she loves so fiercely, and despite everything, Kara can't help but feel like she's still getting the short end of the stick.

Because 'normal' is the one thing she wants back in her life, the familiar and the boring and the old routine of an existence that makes fucking sense again, and no one will let her have it - not even herself.

" You're in a difficult position?" Kara says, exasperated. "Alex, you don't work for the DEO anymore! There's no 'job' you have to do, no boss making the rules - don't you understand that you're not responsible for this city anymore?"

Alex pulls her hand away as if she's touched a live wire and her voice shakes with slight undertones of indignation. "I'm just trying to do what you would do - you, who is the most selfless person I know, who always puts the world over her own needs -"

"Well, maybe I want to be a little selfish for once!" Kara yells, and a louder crack of thunder shakes the windows in their sturdy panes. Alex flinches at the sound, but it only spurs Kara on. "You think you've had it rough? After everything I've been through?"

"Kara -"

"But, then, you don't really know what I went through, do you? Because you haven't even asked ."

"I didn't want to make you talk about it if you weren't ready." Alex says lowly, trying to reign in her emotions, and this continuation of lies makes Kara even madder.

"No, you didn't want me to get upset and lose control over these new powers. It's why you're trying so hard to hide how mad you are that I didn't follow orders today. You're scared of me now, just admit it!"

Alex quickly shakes her head, her reddening face proving Kara right. "No! No, Kara, never -"

"It was hell , Alex. Every fear, every painful memory came to life right before my eyes. I watched you die in my arms thousands of times, as real and solid as if you were actually there. Everyone - J'onn, my mother, Lena…" Kara's voice cracks on a whimper and the chair breaks in her hands. She can't stop seeing those images in her head, can't scrub the stains clean any more than the lingering paint on her carpet, a constant reminder that just won't go away. She can't ignore it anymore. It's too much.

The wind picks up and everything goes dark outside; not a single ray of sunshine could break through this cloud cover. Kara tosses the broken shards of wood from her hands, sick to death of everything crumbling around her, from this damn chair to her rapidly deteriorating grip on her own sanity.

"You can't keep the world from me. And you can't stop me from feeling my emotions. Don't you understand? It's killing me, Alex."

"You said you could handle it!" Alex finally breaks, points her finger at Kara and sobs wretchedly. "You looked me in the eye and said you would be fine."

"I LIED!" Kara roars, thunder responding in kind. The lights in the apartment start to flicker, and when a bulb above the stove bursts, Alex is the only one who jumps. Kara doesn't so much as move a muscle.

"Just like you did, just a few minutes ago." Kara says, her lips barely moving. "You didn't ask Lena to talk to Andrea, there's no 'behind the scenes' job waiting for me at the Tower."

"I - not yet , but -" Alex stammers, trying to keep up and regain control over a situation that has gone completely off the rails.

"And you didn't just lie to me, you lied to Lena, too. 'I'll think about what you've said.' Bullshit."

Alex winces at that and looks away, realizing now that Kara heard every word exchanged between her and Lena not ten minutes ago. Her face finally breaks into something that shows how upset she really is, how much the guilt of the last few weeks has affected her.

Good , Kara thinks. Feel something at me. It's sick how badly she wants Alex to hurt right now, for her to experience just an ounce of the pain that has kept her up every night since coming through the portal, when it should have ended the moment she fell into the safety of her sister's arms.

It makes her so angry - angry enough to take matters into her own hands whether Alex approves or not.

Kara whips off her glasses, the thin plastic earpieces bending precariously under her fingertips, shaking with rage. Her cape materializes on her back, flowing to the floor like a crimson train, and the fabric has never felt so heavy, so restricting around the tight muscles of her shoulders.

She has to shed this weight before it crushes her.

Kara walks towards the open window, long sheer curtains whipping in the wind brought on by her outburst. They slap against her arms and she wants to grab them in two thick fistfulls, just to hold something that won't turn to dust in her hands. She almost cracks at the pained sound of distress Alex makes, her heart wrenching in her chest, but then -

"Kara, please - you can't do this."

It's the worst thing Alex could have said. You can't. Like they've gone back in time, back to Midvale, where her life suddenly revolved around new rules and new powers and new people making choices for her. Don't do this, don't do that - Eliza and Jeremiah bending down to her level, saying that she must listen to her new sister - you'll be safer if you just do what she says.

Kara isn't that child anymore, desperate to fit into a world that doesn't make sense, putting on a brave face, like she could just put a cap over her emotional bottle and ignore the mounting pressure building up inside. Because it would be easier for her Earth family if she just… didn't feel so much.

Screw that. She's tired of being protected, of having every choice torn from her hands to ultimately be made by someone else - from her parents putting her in that rocket, to Lex blasting her back into the Zone, ripping her away from everyone she's ever loved.

This time, it's her turn to choose - and no one, not even Alex, is going to take it from her.

Kara barely turns her head and her voice is strained when she says, "I won't let you put me back into another prison."

And with that, she's gone, exiting the window like a torpedo leaving nothing but a rush of wind in her wake. She flies at breakneck speed past the steel skyscrapers, through the smoky city fumes, until a sea of pavement seamlessly transitions to one of water. The National City Harbor, black as her mood, fades to deep blue the further she flies out to sea, and Kara wonders - could she outrun the tempest before it has a chance to form, or would it simply follow her like a dust trail to the ends of the Earth and back?

Kara is tired of running, and she's not going home until this is over.

She comes to a halt somewhere in the middle of the Pacific, under a skin-searing sun and gently lapping waves. There are no human heartbeats for at least a hundred miles in all directions; Kara is completely alone.

She hovers several meters above the water, transfixed by each rising and falling peak, watching as they grow in size, highlights dimming with the increasingly thick cloud cover forming overhead, converging from all directions to greet Kara like old friends.

She feels a stab of anger towards Alex, hundreds of miles away. Her negative emotions combat the eternal love she feels for her sister, two opposing forces that refuse to meet in the middle. The rational side of her wants to go home, make things right. It's the right thing to do, she knows that.

But that would mean shoving her feelings back down again, and look at where that's gotten her.

The world goes blurry and Kara lets herself cry, utterly done in by the constant barrage of emotional turmoil. She's finally reached her limit - even the girl of steel has a breaking point. Let whatever happens next just… happen. She's too tired to fight it anymore.

Rain pours down in stinging sheets as the thunder intensifies, drenching her in seconds. Wind yanks at her hair, slapping wetly on her cheeks.

Lightning bounces off the water and she thinks about Krypton exploding in a burst of white, everything and everyone she ever knew wiped from existence.

Thunder crashes, relentless, so similar to the aftermath of a planet imploding from within - reverberating in her skull as everything goes dark.

Dark. Darkness. The crushing bleakness of a landscape made of nightmares, a complete lack of color, joyless. The first time she merely floated in the Zone's orbit, blessedly asleep with only occasional dreams to haunt her when her pod got close to the surface. Not so lucky the second time around.

Kara clenches her fists as painted crests rise, smacking her with a force that would drown any human with just a couple swells. They look like mountain peaks, white-tipped and foreboding in endlessly shifting formations.

More than once Kara was sure the towering crags in the Phantom Zone would close in, trapping her in the chasm - or the cave she found refuge in would eventually swallow her whole. And if the terrain didn't, her loneliness undoubtedly would have.

The rain turns to hail, icy balls the size of quarters pelting her body like stones. A whine escapes her throat that has nothing to do with physical pain.

Kara was never meant to be alone, and yet so much of her life seems to be destined for solitude. Decades in stasis, months in purgatory, and even now that she's back home it feels like the threat of an increasingly lonely existence looms overhead like the storm she's created. She has friends, family, a life - but if all of that can be taken away not once, but twice , who's to say it won't happen again?

What if next time, it's not Kara who disappears, but someone else? Someone she can't possibly live without?

Like Alex. Or Lena.

What if she loses Lena before she's ever had a chance to have her?

The unfathomable and yet not altogether implausible thought latches onto her brain like a parasite. She clutches at her skull, panic lodged in her throat. If she could rip the images of a broken and bloodied Lena straight out of her head, she would - and suddenly Kara realizes what she expected coming home would feel like:

Escaping the Phantom Zone was supposed to be the end of her nightmare. Now, Kara isn't sure if she'll ever be truly free.

Thunder rages in the pit of her stomach, electricity flowing through her veins. The storm inside has transformed, a rapidly building crescendo, and Kara knows instinctively that it must reach its zenith or else she will surely burn up from within.

Her long red cape snaps in the wailing wind, malevolent and relentless. She can smell the sharp, charged scent of ozone burning in the air. The sky splits with jagged spider veins of lightning, and the following peals of thunder reverberate against the hollowness of her chest as she braces, static lifting every tiny hair on the back of her neck.

Get out. Get OUT. GET. OUT.

Kara unleashes an ear piercing scream, channeling everything she has into this last ditch effort to rid her body of the unwanted poison in her cells. Her vision goes white and instead of fire, lightning flows from her eyes in two intense beams, sizzling any water and ice in their trajectory.

There's a moment where time freezes. Rain and hail hang suspended over tumultuous ocean waves turned stationary, the wind ceases it's howling cries and it's so silent Kara thinks she's gone deaf. Her vision comes back with startling clarity just in time to see sparks crackling at her fingertips, heat pooling in the pit of her stomach and it… it feels good . Like coming up for that first breath of air after being submerged, like warm liquid going down her throat on a wintry day,

Like the thought of her daydreams becoming reality, waking up next to Lena every morning and going to bed with her every night. Becoming each other's permanent homes after being so cruelly ripped away from ones that turned out to be tragically temporary. Promises, and always.

It feels like that .

Purple lightning exits her body in one swift surge, so powerful in its release that it takes Kara's breath away. It hurts , worse than any kryptonite ever has, but thankfully the pain only lasts seconds. Static flickers and glimmers in the air like remnants from fireworks, almost pretty against the dark backdrop, and then…

Time starts moving again, and with it, so does Kara.

She plummets to the depths below, hitting the water with a painful smack. But as water seeps through her costume to wet her skin, something wonderful happens, both internally and externally: the swells calm, rain and hail cease to form, the wind dies down to naught but a gentle breeze, and Kara… Kara feels exhausted in the best way possible.

It's over.

Kara watches on her back, barely able to keep herself afloat, as the sun burns through the dissipating clouds, shining brightly above in all its glory. Her hair drifts in all directions, a golden mane worthy of a god, and she closes her now vulnerable eyes from the intense rays. A slow smile grows on her lips as she basks in the warmth - it will be a full twenty-four hours until her cells start drinking in yellow sunlight again, and Kara has never been so relieved to be powerless.

Except, maybe being stranded in the middle of the ocean without superpowers could have called for a bit of preparatory forethought.

Her eyes fall closed as both emotional and physical burnout ensue. Each limb aches with fatigue, and it's getting increasingly difficult to stay conscious in this state, even though she knows she must or risk drowning. If she can just… hold on a little longer… somebody will come for her. Somebody always comes for her…

As if on cue, a shadow passes over her face. She squints at the haloed silhouette hovering in her line of vision and goes limp as a pair of strong, muscular arms scoop her out of the water with infinite care. Kara presses the side of her face into the warm body, right at the intersection of a dark red 'X' and deliriously mumbles into his chest,

"Dad…"

The arms hold her closer, lips press against the top of her damp head and a low, familiar voice rumbles, "I've got you, my girl. I've got you."

Kara sighs softly and relaxes, her muscles leaden and tired. A lazy smile pulls at her cheeks as J'onn takes off with a burst of speed - so this is what it feels like, to be on the other side of a rescue carry. No wonder so many people seem disappointed once she sets them back on solid ground. It's nice.

She drifts to sleep then, finally giving in to her body's base desires. And for once, her dreams are nothing but sweet and peaceful, with not a single Phantom in sight.

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

When Kara wakes, it's with the satisfying feeling of someone who slept like the dead and has now come back to life.

She's in her own bed, lying on top of the duvet. Someone has covered her with a light quilt she recognizes from her college days, and from the look of the unwrinkled, nearly pristine fabric, Kara suspects she barely moved during her slumber. She stretches languorously in the evening sun - God, what time is it?

The bedroom door opens slowly, cautiously, and Alex’s face appears in the two inches of golden light. When she sees that Kara is awake, she throws the door the rest of the way and is at her bedside in three long strides. Her head falls onto Kara’s chest, crying as Kara’s hands rub comforting strokes across her back.

“I’m so sorry,” Alex sobs, hot breath warming the fabric of Kara’s shirt. “Kara, I never -”

“I know.” Kara replies, cupping Alex’s face to wipe away her tears. Her sister looks so wretched it’s breaking her heart. “I’m sorry, too.”

Alex shakes her head back and forth and hiccups, “No, you have nothing to be sorry about. This is my fault. I did this to you. You were hurting and broken and all I could think about was keeping you safe, because I didn’t want - I didn’t want to risk losing you again,” Alex sniffles, wipes at her runny nose with the back of her sleeve. “Can you ever forgive me?”

Kara smiles gently, rises to a sitting position and pulls Alex into her arms, squeezing her tight. “Only if you forgive me, too. I know you weren’t trying to keep me trapped, I just… I panicked. Anywhere you are, in any world, is never a prison.”

Alex smiles, eyes wet and mascara running two dark trails down her cheeks. She kisses the top of Kara’s head and they hold each other for a few minutes. All siblings have ups and downs; the two of them are no exception to that unspoken rule. But it’s what happens in the aftermath of those disputes that solidifies each link in the neverending chain that bonds them, and theirs is nigh unbreakable. El Mayarah.

“Is everyone out there?” Kara asks.

Alex shakes her head. “They were, but you slept almost 18 hours. Once we were sure you were ok we talked them into going home to let you rest, but they didn’t go willingly. Nia and Brainy only left about two hours ago, and J’onn went to do a quick patrol before he said he’d be back. Kelly is on a food run for you.” She pauses before adding, with the tiniest of smiles. “Lena is still here, though.”

Kara swallows, averting her eyes as her cheeks color. She smooths the neat covers with damp palms and clears her throat, wanting to be nonchalant but ends up croaking. “Oh?”

“Do you want me to send her in?”

Kara nods, not trusting herself to speak, and also because she can’t keep the dopey grin off her face and really doesn’t want to see the way Alex is probably looking at her right now, like she’s a little girl with her first crush.

She doesn’t expect it when Alex hugs her again, leans in, and whispers, “Tell her.”

No other explanation is needed.

Alex leaves and Kara runs her fingers through her hair, frizzy from dried rainwater and hours of comatose sleep. She doesn’t have access to a mirror and hopes she looks somewhat decent, but the minute Lena walks past the threshold all thoughts of her own physical appearance go straight out the window.

Because Lena is looking at her like no one else on Earth exists, like the world has only just started turning again with the tangible evidence of her safety verified with her own two eyes. It takes Kara’s breath away.

Lena closes the door without turning, without tearing her gaze from Kara’s, and slowly approaches the bed. Then her gait changes without warning, and suddenly Lena is climbing on top of the covers, heels and all, and Kara’s legs instinctively open underneath the quilt to provide a space for her to kneel and then Lena is crushing her against her chest, arms looped underneath to wrap her hands around her shoulder blades, her fingers splayed across as much of her as she can reach. She rests her forehead in the soft juncture where Kara’s arm meets her clavicle and lets out a long, drawn out sigh of pure relief that very nearly breaks Kara’s composure.

“I thought I’d lost you again.” Lena whispers. Her thumbs move back and forth, pinching and smoothing the thin fabric of Kara’s shirt with agonizing slowness.

Kara takes a chance, tucks a strand of hair behind Lena’s ear and hears her shuddering breath in response. She lets her hand linger on the curve of her neck, trying to control the quiver in her voice as she answers, “I’m yours.”

Lena lifts her head, tears rolling down her cheeks that Kara catches with shaking fingertips, smoothing them away as her palm gently cups her face. She says it again, this time a little more steadily. “Lena, I’m yours. ”

Kara brushes lips against her forehead, lingers, misses the way Lena’s eyes fall shut but not the way she leans closer into the touch. Kara drops an inch, kisses her temple, rests the side of her head against hers, “If you’ll have me.”

Lena whimpers, a sound so soft and pure and beautiful , and Kara thinks she’s forgotten how to breathe, how to take in, take it in, because all she wants to do right now is give and give it all to Lena, every breath, every heartbeat, every molecule.

Lena’s hands are cool and wonderful and it feels like Kara has waited a lifetime to feel this way, to love so deeply. She thinks never will she want someone the way she wants her, in a thousand years no one could even come close.

God, Rao, please, please want me back.

Lena kisses her, gentle and slow, arms wrapping around her body like vines desperate to find purchase, reaching for the sun. Kara holds her hips, runs thumbs over the sharp bones and squeezes the tender skin, euphoric as Lena’s breath hitches in her throat. She pulls away for air, rests her forehead against Kara’s, eyes bright and lovely and full.

“You’re mine.” Lena says, kisses her once, twice, pulls at her lower lip in a move that nearly sends Kara back to space. “You’re mine.” She repeats, stronger, cups Kara’s face with both hands and holds her gaze. Her mouth opens, closes, opens again and her voice breaks like glass,

“...Love you, I love you. Loved you for so long,” Lena wipes a tear from Kara’s eyes, smiles like she hung all the stars in the sky. “ So much…”

Kara threads their hands together and draws her closer with the other; it’s absolutely killing her not to take this further, because Lena. wants. her - but Alex is in the other room and this is not how she wants her sister to find them. When Kara gets her hands on skin she’s only dreamt of touching, she doesn’t want anyone else to hear the effects.

Kara kisses her once more, and Lena matches her grin as they giggle into each other, trying to mask the sounds. A door opens and closes further down the hall and the delicious scent of various Chinese foods waft through the apartment; Kara’s stomach rumbles loudly, and Lena chuckles against her neck.

“Hungry?”

Kara squeezes, groans as Lena’s lips leave a trail of kisses down, down, down… “God, yes…” She says harshly, inhaling so hard it hurts her lungs.

Lena smirks and pulls her out of bed, laughs as Kara’s sleepy legs buckle and stumbles into her arms. “Food first. You need your strength. At least,” She looks Kara over head to toe, an appreciative gleam in her eyes. “ Enough strength.”

Kara might be the only journalist who has ever lost their entire vocabulary over two words spoken by Lena Luthor.

Kara dumbly follows Lena, hardly feels Kelly embrace her with a tearful smile, whispering, “Oh Kara, sweetie, we were all so worried. Thank God, you’re ok…”

Later - much later, when Kara gets her words back (but maybe after she loses them again once or twice) she’ll sit down with Kelly and ask her about therapists who work with the alien population in National City - maybe someone who specializes in PTSD. She may have escaped the Phantom Zone, but trauma doesn’t leave just because you ignore it and pretend it isn’t there. You can’t outrun the storm. Kara thinks she’s finally ready to turn around, face the chasms that threaten to close her in, and fight like hell to overcome rather than let them overwhelm.

Kara catches Lena’s tender gaze over Kelly’s shoulder, the way she gently bites her lower lip and turns pink until she has to look away, uncharacteristically bashful as her face splits into a grin that illuminates the room brighter than any star ever could. Yeah, Kara is ready - for all of it.

She finally knows what comes “after.”

[cielrouge]

YA SFF Books by Black Authors 

A Song Below Water by Bethany C. Morrow: About the strength of black sisterhood set in Portland, OR, best friends Tavi and Effie discover their true supernatural identity when Effie starts being haunted by demons from her past, and Tavia accidentally lets out her magical siren voice during a police stop.

A Chorus Rises (A Song Below Water #2) by Bethany C. Morrow: Teen influencer Naema Bradshaw is an Eloko, a person who’s gifted with a song that woos anyone who hears it. Everyone loves her — well, until she's cast as the awful person who exposed Tavia’s secret siren powers. When a new, flourishing segment of Naema’s online supporters start targeting black girls, however, Naema must discover the true purpose of her magical voice.

A Song of Wraiths and Ruin by Roseanne A. Brown: Inspired by West African folklore in which a grieving crown princess, Karina, and a desperate refugee, Malik, find themselves on a collision course to murder each other, despite their growing attraction.

Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor: Sunny Nwazue, an American-born albino child of Nigerian parents, moves with her family back to Nigeria, where she learns that she has latent magical powers which she and three similarly gifted friends use to catch a serial killer.

Akata Warrior (Akata Witch #2) by Nnedi Okorafor: Now stronger, feistier, and a bit older, Sunny Nwazue, along with her friends from the the Leopard Society, travel through worlds, both visible and invisible, to the mysterious town of Osisi, where they fight in a climactic battle to save humanity.

Bad Witch Burning by Jessica Lewis: For fans of Us and The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina comes a witchy story full of black girl magic as one girl’s dark ability to summon the dead offers her a chance at a new life, while revealing to her an even darker future.

Beasts Made of Night by Tochi Onyebuchi: After he eats the sin of a royal, Taj, a talented aki, or sin-eater who consumes the guilt of others whose transgressions are exorcised from them by powerful but corrupt Mages, is drawn into a plot to destroy the city, and he must fight to save the princess he loves and his own life.

Beasts of Prey by Ayana Gray: Two Black teenagers, talented Beastkeeper Koffi and warrior-in-training Ekon, must trek into a magical jungle to take down an ancient creature menacing the city of Lkossa, before they become the hunted.

The Belles by Dhonielle Clayton: In the opulent world of Orléans, where Beauty is a commodity only a few control, Belle Camellia Beauregard will learn the dark secrets behind her powers, and rise up to change the world. 

A Blade So Black by L.L. McKinney: A whimsical and butt-kicking Alice in Wonderland retelling featuring a black teen heroine who battles Nightmares in the dark and terrifying dream realm known as Wonderland. 

Bleeding Violet by Dia Reeves: 16-year-old Hanna reunites with her estranged mother in an East Texas town that is haunted with doors to dimensions of the dead and protected by demon hunters called Mortmaine.

Blood Like Magic by Liselle Sambury: Set in near-future Toronto in which, after failing to come into her powers, 16-year-old Black witch Voya Thomas must choose between losing her family’s magic forever or murdering her first love.

The Bones of Ruin by Sarah Raughley: Set in Victorian England, African tightrope walker Iris cannot die; but soon gets drafted in the fight-to-the-death tournament of freaks where she learns the terrible truth of who and what she really is.

The Cost of Knowing by Brittney Morris: A gripping, evocative novel about Black teen Alex Rufus, who has the power to see into the future, and whose life turns upside down when he foresees his younger brother’s imminent death.

Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi: 17-year-old Zélie and companions journey to a mythic island seeking a chance to bring back magic to the land of Orïsha, in a fantasy world infused with the textures of West Africa.

Children of Virtue and Vengeance (Legacy of Orïsha #2) by Tomi Adeyemi: After battling the impossible, Zélie and Amari have finally succeeded in bringing magic back to the land of Orïsha. But with civil war looming on the horizon, Zélie finds herself at a breaking point: she must discover a way to bring the kingdom together or watch as Orïsha tears itself apart.

Cinderella Is Dead by Kalynn Bayron: 16-year-old Sophia would much rather marry Erin, her childhood best friend, than parade in front of suitors. At the ball, Sophia flees, hiding in Cinderella’s mausoleum. There, she meets Constance, the last known descendant of Cinderella and her step sisters. Together they vow to bring down the king once and for all.

The Cost of Knowing by Brittney Morris: A gripping, evocative novel about Black teen Alex Rufus, who has the power to see into the future, and whose life turns upside down when he foresees his younger brother’s imminent death.

Crown of Thunder (Beasts Made of Night #2) by Tochi Onyebuchi: Taj has escaped Kos, but Queen Karima will go to any means necessary--including using the most deadly magic--to track him down. 

A Crown So Cursed (Nightmare Verse #3) by L.L. McKinney: Alice is ready to jump into battle when she learns that someone is building an army of Nightmares to attack the mortal world, before she learns of a personal connection to Wonderland.

Daughters of Jubilation by Kara Lee Corthron: In Jim Crow South, black teen Evalene Deschamps finds her place among a family of women gifted with magical abilities, known as jubilation - a gift passed down from generations of black women since the time of slavery.

Dread Nation by Justina Ireland: The Civil War is over, but mostly because the dead rose at Gettysburg—and then started rising everywhere else. Fighting the undead is a breeze for Jane McKenne, an Attendant, trained in both weaponry and etiquette to protect the well-to-do. But the fight for freedom? That’s a different story.

Deathless Divide (Dread Nation #2) by Justina Ireland: After the fall of Summerland, Jane McKeene hoped her life would get simpler. But nothing is easy when you’re a girl trained in putting down the restless dead, and a devastating loss on the road to Nicodermus has Jane questioning everything she thought she knew about surviving in 1880’s America.

A Dream So Dark (Nightmare Verse #2) by L.L. McKinney: Still reeling from her recent battle (and grounded until she graduates) Alice must cross the Veil to rescue her friends and stop the Black Knight once and for all in Wonderland.

Early Departures by Justin A. Reynolds: Jamal’s best friend Q is brought back to life after a freak accident … but they only have a short time together before he will die again.  How can Jamal fix his friendship without the truth?

Fate of Flames by Sarah Raughley:  Before they can save the world from the monstrous phantoms, four girls who have the power to control the classical elements: earth, air, fire, and water must first try to figure out how to work together. 

For All Time by Shanna Miles: Tamar and Fayard, two Black teens, are fated to repeat their love story across hundreds of lifetimes, from 14th-century Mali to the distant future, as they struggle to break the cycle.

The Gilded Ones by Namina Forna: Inspired by the culture of West Africa, a feminist fantasy debut traces the experiences of 16-year-old Deka, who is invited to leave her discriminatory village to join the emperor’s army of near-immortal women warriors.

The Good Luck Girls by Charlotte Nicole Davis: The country of Arketta calls them Good Luck Girls--they know their luck is anything but. Sold to a "welcome house" as children and branded with cursed markings. When Clementine accidentally kills a man, the girls risk a dangerous escape to find freedom, justice, and revenge.

Kingdom of Souls by Rena Barron: Set in a West African-inspired fantasy kingdom, Arrah comes from a long line of powerful witchdoctors, yet fails at magic. When Arrah trade years off her life for magic to stop the Demon King from destroying the world—that is if it doesn’t kill her first.

Legacy of Light (The Effgies #3) by Sarah Raughley: After Saul’s strike on Oslo—one seemingly led by Maia herself—the Effigies’ reputation is in shambles. Belle has gone rogue, Chae Rin and Lake have disappeared, and the Sect is being dismantled and replaced by a terrifying new world order helmed by Blackwell. If the Effigies can’t put the pieces together soon, there may not be much left of the world they’ve fought so desperately to save.

Legendborn by Tracy Deonn: In this King Arthur retelling, Black teen Bree Matthews infiltrates a secret society of powerful magic wielders to find out the truth behind her mother’s untimely death.

Mem by Bethany C. Morrow: In alternate reality Montreal (1925), a young woman’s personality is the result of a startling experimental procedure, leaving her to struggle with the question of who she really is.

Miles Morales, Spider-Man by Jason Reynolds: But Miles Morales accidentally discovers a villainous teacher's plan to turn good kids bad, he will need to come to terms with his own destiny as the new Spider-man. 

Oh My Gods by Alexandra Sheppard: Half-mortal teenager Helen Thomas goes to live with her father—who is Zeus, masquerading as a university professor—and must do her best to keep the family secret intact.

The Opposite of Always by Justin A. Reynolds: After falling for Kate, her unexpected death sends Jack back in time to the moment they first met, but he soon learns that his actions have consequences when someone else close to him dies.

Orleans by Sherri L. Smith: Set in a futuristic, hostile Orleans landscape, Fen de la Guerre must deliver her tribe leader's baby over the Wall into the Outer States before her blood becomes tainted with Delta Fever. 

Nubia: Real One by L.L. McKinney & Robyn Smith: When Nubia’s best friend, Quisha, is threatened by a boy who thinks he owns the town, Nubia will risk it all—her safety, her home, and her crush on that cute kid in English class—to become the hero society tells her she isn’t.

A Phoenix First Must Burn: 16 Stories of Black Girl Magic, Resistance, and Hope edited by Patrice Caldwell: Filled with stories of love and betrayal, strength and resistance, this collection contains an array of complex and true-to-life characters in which you cannot help but see yourself reflected. Witches and scientists, sisters and lovers, priestesses and rebels.

This Poison Heart by Kalynn Bayron: In this contemporary fantasy inspired by The Secret Garden, Black teen Briseis has a gift: she can grow plants with a single touch. Up against a centuries-old curse and the deadliest plant on earth, Bri must harness her gift to protect herself and her family, when a nefarious group comes after her in search of a rare and dangerous immortality elixir.

A Psalm of Storm and Silence (A Song of Wraiths and Ruin #2) by Roseanne A. Brown: As the fabric holding Sonande together begins to tear, Malik and Karina once again find themselves torn between their duties and their desires.

A Queen of Gilded Horns (A River of Royal Blood #2) by Amanda Joy: After learning the truth of her heritage, Eva is on the run with her sister Isa as her captive, but with the Queendom of Myre on the brink of revolution, Eva and Isa must make peace with each other to save their kingdom.

Raybearer by Jordan Ifueko: In a West African-inspired empire, Tarisai is raised by The Lady and sent to kill the Crown Prince once she gains his trust. Tarisai won’t stand by and become someone’s pawn—but is she strong enough to choose a different path for herself?

Redemptor (Raybearer #2) by Jordan Ifueko: For the first time, an Empress Redemptor sits on Aritsar's throne. To appease the sinister spirits of the dead, Tarisai must now anoint a council of her own, coming into her full power as a Raybearer.

The Ravens by Danielle Page & Kass Morgan: The sisters of Kappu Rho Nu share a secret: they’re a coven of witches. For Vivi Deveraux, being one of Kappa Rho Nu’s Ravens means getting a chance to redefine herself. For Scarlett Winters, a bonafide Raven and daughter of a legacy Raven. When Vivi and Scarlett are paired as big and little for initiation, they find themselves sinking into the sinister world of blood oaths and betrayals.

Rebel Sisters (War Girls #2) by Tochi Onyebuchi: Though they are working toward common goals of helping those who suffered, Ify and Uzo are worlds apart. But when a mysterious virus breaks out among the children in the Space Colonies, their paths collide.

Reaper of Souls (Kingdom of Souls #2) by Rena Barron: After so many years yearning for the gift of magic, Arrah has the one thing she’s always wanted—at a terrible price. But the Demon King’s shadow looms closer than she thinks. And as Arrah struggles to unravel her connection to him, defeating him begins to seem more and more impossible.

A River of Royal Blood by Amanda Joy: A North African-inspired feminist fantasy in which two sisters, Eva and Isa must compete in a magical duel to the death for the right to inherit the queendom of Myre.  

Slice of Cherry by Dia Reeves: In Portero, Texas, teens Kit and Fancy Cordelle, daughters of the infamous Bonesaw Killer, bring two boys with similar tendencies to a world of endless possibilities they have discovered behind a mysterious door.

Siege of Shadows (The Effigies #2) by Sarah Raughley:  After Saul reappears with an army of soldiers with Effigy-like abilities, threatening to unleash the monstrous Phantoms, e-year-old Maia and the other Effigies hope to defeat him by discovering the source of their power over the four classical elements, but they are betrayed by the Sect and bogged down by questions about the previous Fire Effigy's murder.

The Sisters of Reckoning (The Good Luck Girls #2) by Charlotte Nicole Davis: The blockbuster sequel to an alternate Old West-set commercial fantasy adventure.

The Sound of Stars by Alechia Dow: Set in the near-future, in which a captive teen human and a young alien leader—bonded by their love of forbidden books and music—embark on a desperate road trip as they attempt to overturn alien rule and save humankind. 

War Girls by Tochi Onyebuchi: Set in a futuristic, Black Panther-inspired Nigeria, sisters Onyii and Ify, separated by a devastating civil war, must fight their way back to each other against all odds.

Vessel by Sarah Beth Durst: When the goddess Bayla fails to take over Liyana's body, Liyana's people abandon her in the desert to find a more worthy vessel, but she soon meets Korbyn, who says the souls of seven deities have been stolen and he needs Liyana's help to find them.

The Weight of Stars by K. Ancrum: After a horrific accident brings loners Ryann and Alexandria together, Ryann learns that Alexandria's mother is an astronaut who volunteered for a one-way trip to the edge of the solar system.

White Smoke by Tiffany D. Jackson: Black teen Marigold and her blended family move into a newly renovated, picture-perfect home in a dilapidated Midwestern city, and are haunted by what she thinks are ghosts, but might be far worse.

Wings of Ebony by J. Elle: Black teen Rue, from a poor neighborhood who, after learning she is half-human, half-goddess, must embrace both sides of her heritage to unlock her magic and destroy the racist gods poisoning her neighborhood with violence, drugs, and crime.

Witches Steeped in Gold by Ciannon Thomas: In this Jamaican-inspired fantasy debut, two witches from enemy castes—one seeking power, and one seeking revenge—will stop at nothing to overthrow the witch queen, even if it means forming an alliance with each other and unleashing chaos on their island nation.

Within These Wicked Walls by Lauren Blackwood: An Ethiopian-inspired Jane Eyre retelling in which an unlicensed debtera, or exorcist, Andromeda, is hired to rid a castle of its dangerous curses, only to fall in love with Magnus Rochester, a boy whose life hangs in the balance.

Yesterday Is History by Kosoko Jackson: Black teen Andre Cobb undergoes a liver transplant and as a side effect winds up slipping through time from present-day Boston to 1969 NYC on the eve of the Stonewall riots, delivering a story that is part romance, part gay history, and part time-travel drama, exploring how far we have and haven't come. 

[dienamights]

A Reverberate Lullaby | K.Bakugou

✎ The echoing howls stalk you, a ghost hunched on your shoulders, wailing like a child calling for rescue, who cries with no tears. Chanting for a hero that is willing to pick up the pieces of its soul and being, yet it is only left to wither. For the ghost has lost faith that such others exist and can only be cured by finding them, for you are the ghost of your world and love is the only true exorcist.

✎ Protagonists: Katsuki Bakugou x Fem!Reader.

✎ Word count: 4.1K

✎ Category: hurt/comfort, Implied Mature Content MDNI, Prohero!au, Established relationship!au

✎ Caution(!): Implied Mature Content MDNI, mention of depressive state, toxic family, toxic coping mechanism, mention of reader’s weight gain and thoughts about self worth. Please keep in mind while every person’s reaction to depression is different, don’t belittle anyone’s battle when you don’t understand it.

✎ Author’s notes: Hello! Hope everyone’s taking care! Still on hiatus BUT I’m here to post my contribution to the Mental Health Awareness collab by @doinmybesthere​ ! This has been in the works for a while because I kept scarping ideas for triggering me lmao. This piece is very personal to me and I’m glad I am able to share my experience with you all, I hope that it might help anyone out there in reaching out and asking for help because I know how difficult and scary it might be! Please check out everyone’s contribution that they worked so hard for! kisses kisses take care!

OOH ALSO! Thank you so much for 900 followers aaaaaah! You’re all so amazing and if anyone has suggestions for an event to hold in June lemme know! I’ll also think of some ideas

» Masterlist | Requests | Taglist

The morning sun barely rises and peaks through your blinds, sunshine starting to kiss at your cheeks as you squint at the light, the room welcoming the warmth that is being brought into it after the evening’s chill that made you curl tighter in on yourself, clasping whatever heat you could muster than to turn around and find it in the heating pad of a body that lays next to you. 

An alarm only just rings before quickly being shut off, followed by the creaking of the bed when the person behind you shifts, shifts again, another time, before getting up and stalking to the bathroom, after letting an elongated sigh when they sit at the edge of the bed, not acknowledging your presence accompanying theirs. The door clicking closed before the trickling of water fills the quiet room.

Your clock reads 5 am when you squint at it, and you blink at the time before you go on with your routine, setting up breakfast while your boyfriend gets ready to go to work. 

Oddly enough, you don’t really quite remember when you started working on the food, all that you could see in front of you is nothing but a scene that looks like it’s out of a broken TV - there’s just so much static. The voices are distorted, as if they’re coming from a defective radio.

“Listen, this ain’t about me, this is about you and how you-”

“What about me? Huh? That you see me as nothing but a burden? No, you can say it-”

“You wanna hear me fuckin’ say it then fine! This is about you sitting on yer ass all day obsessing over her while she wouldn’ give you the time of day y/n. When will you fuckin’ realize that?”

The scene blurs and sways, and you feel your mind run at a speed you didn’t know it could muster, and you’re unable to keep up with it. The knife in your hand shakes vigorously and barely misses your fingers when you bring it down to cut the vegetables.

The sound of the bedroom door shutting closed alerts you, straightening your back when you hear the drop of your boyfriend’s gauntlet by his chair at the dining table. Katsuki approaches you with careful steps, his still ungloved hand circles your waist before pressing his lips to your temple, a gruff greeting of a whisper laced in between.

“G’morning.”

The familiar scent of caramel mixed in with his aftershave welcomes you, wraps around you and cradles you, promising everlasting safety and happiness. Yet, your heart wrenching sobs and muffled crash of your laptop against your floor that rings in your ears tell a different story, shrieking at you, roaring about your failures, mocking your entire existence.

“Made gohan, should be ready in a minute.” you mumble back, posture stiff at the close proximity of Katsuki and you feel the curl of his lips in displeasure pressing into your temple from both not reciprocating his greeting and your choice of meal for the morning. “You don’ eat gohan,” 

“s’why I’m making it.” The quick retreat from your figure is like a slap to your face, and you barely stop yourself from reaching out and forcing his arms back around you. Because it's the bite in his voice that halts your movement. 

“You’re still going?” you finally turn to take a look at him, the garnets in his eyes shifting, bleeding from hurt, betrayal, confusion, you really weren’t sure. And by God you had no energy left to try and figure out. “Yes I’m still going Katsuki, they’re my-”

“Yer really listenin’ to the bullshit spillin’ outta ya? This isn’t about em being your family y/n, we’ve been through with it already.” the space between you two feels like endless miles, pieces of the broken bridge you both worked so hard to build the only evidence of it ever being there, the rest crumbling into the valley in between your bodies.

“No, you’ve been through with it, I just wanna make things right, m-maybe I can fix it”

“It ain’t yours to fix y/n, when will you realize that?”

“No!” there you go again, sobbing pathetically. “W-why can’t I have a family, huh? Why- why can’t I, fuck, have a family that just loves and supports me a-and just doesn’t- ” your voice croaks, not failing to notice how Katsuki stepped away from the wreck in front of him. Probably having had enough of you, had enough of how troubling and bothersome you are, probably wondering how he got roped with all your shit and got dragged into your mess of a life.

His hands feel like scolding fire when they’re placed on your shoulders, halting their shaking as you cry into the palm of your hand to muffle the sobs, a habit Katsuki has been working so hard on to help you overcome, saddened to see you try and hide your vulnerability from him.

“Because they never made an effort, so why should you?” The tugging at your heart burns, the swallowed sobs feel like needles prickling at your lungs, making breathing feel like an impossible chore. You can’t help but feel restrained whenever you’re presented with the truth, especially unfiltered and unsugarcoated like right now, you know he’s right, you’ve known he was right a long time ago, but admitting it out loud just felt borderline impossible. 

So you do what you do best, push him away, all the strength you can muster barely budges his figure, the meal forgotten on the counter as you run and lock the bedroom door on yourself.

Your footsteps feel heavy, dreading the topics and scenes you’re bound to relive. The grip on the strap of your shoulder bag tightening as you push the glass door open. A sigh escapes past your lips again as you enter the restaurant, half-heartedly smiling at the hostess before making your way inside to look for them.

It’s always the same scenery, the kind that always makes you want to run away to the other direction instead of being dragged down into whatever hell this is. And you pause to question yourself, again, why you actually agreed to put yourself out there.

There they are, seated in the four person table, with two empty seats, one for yourself and the other for the sibling your mother always hoped to have instead of you.

Your mother’s pursed lip could be seen from where you stand at the entrance, the clicking of her tapping foot sounding as bad as grinding metals in your ear, you hate it, despise it

It’s the same clicking you learned to memorize, to anticipate, to fear, when she passed by your room, the clicking that made you smother your face in your pillows and swallow your sobs, because the sound of you crying brought her more distress and annoyance than concern for her daughter.

With another tug at the hem of the shirt you’re wearing, you approach the table, hugging your father when he stands up and nodding to your mom when she eyes your figure.

“Good morning mother. It’s good to see you.”

“What’s wrong with your hair?”

Here we go, you breathe out before tugging at a strand of hair, spitting out your words “nothing’s wrong with it.”

“Then why does it look awful like that?”

There are times like these where you are left to question your reasoning for accepting whatever invitation you received from your parents to have brunch with them after all those months, a moment of weakness deceiving you into believing it was better than to spend it in your empty apartment, with the silence that ate away at your sanity every second. The only evidence of life in it other than yours was the recently cleaned dishes and the note thanking you for the meal, the promise of cuddles and movies tonight making you gain just a little more patience, barely.

You refrain from answering, your response is to lower your head, drag the dining chair before plopping on it, a dreary sigh escaping your lips as you scoot your chair closer to the table. Your mother never changes, it’s been a while since you were able to move out of her home, and while your father tries to tell you that these brunches are a way to reconnect with them, you yourself know that it’s merely a chance for your mother to nitpick at everything you ever did or are doing since you left.

“How have you been y/n.” your father smiles at you, both of you ignoring the sound of your mother kissing her teeth when her attempted jab at you is ignored. “Uh, I uh I’ve been good, I just wrapped up with my exams and so far things have been-” 

“How is your hero boyfriend?” 

For a second, you contemplate whether to ignore her question and keep conversing with your dad, dreading the questions that are to be pushed your way regarding Katsuki, of which will be used as bragging material for when she meets whatever group of friends she associates herself with, but you know better than to ignore her with the way she gets when she isn’t fed with attention. 

“He’s uh, good.”

“Why isn’t he here today? What, too good to meet us?” your mother nags, and for the love of God, would that fucking clicking ever stop?

“No, he’s doing his job of, you know, being a hero.”

“Is he now? Well, what about you, hm?” She cocks her head as her nails tap the table. ”Did you think your father and I wouldn’t figure out you got fired?”

“How-” the gritting of your teeth is deafening at this point, your jaw clenching so tightly as you and your mother stare each other down. “Your dad pulled some strings, it isn’t that hard. So tell me, you like leeching off of him after you were done with us?”

“This isn’t, I just- I was- I, I had a lot of university work piling up a-and I couldn’t make time for my shifts and I just, it was just so hard for me to get out of bed these days and I.” why are you doing this? Why are you explaining yourself to people that don’t deserve it? Why are you feeding off of their acceptance, knowing damn well you never got it, and that thing was never gonna change. 

“Oh, I don’t wanna hear about you not getting out of bed, you’re here now aren’t you? This is all in your head y/n. You need to stop talking nonsense, what’re people gonna say about you, about me, when they hear you?” 

It feels just like yesterday, your figure standing and facing your full length mirror, your reflection eyeing you with identical vacant eyes. Fingers running through your bed head, a wince escaping you at the movement. Bringing your hand up and catching a glimpse of a slight swollen purple bruise along your wrist and the dried blood on your knuckles, the skin stretching upon rotating your wrist and causing notable pain.

Alas, that pain paled in comparison to when your mom barged into your room, blaming you for the way you were acting and belittling your reasoning. Beckoning your father over to replace your broken vanity and for your house maid to disinfect the space, the place sparkling clean and void of any evidence of what had transpired the day prior. 

The shattered glass was picked up and thrown out, the splatters of blood were wiped clean, and whenever you brought up, what your mom refers to as ‘the temper tantrum’, you’re ignored by both your parents as they continued about their day, fearing the shame it would bring upon their name if the event was to catch others’ attention. 

“Good morning! I’ll be your server for the day. What can I get you?” the foreign voice sounds more comforting than your own mother’s, and you almost laugh at the irony of it, but you only return her smile and take a look at the menu. Lighting up a smidge at the name of one of the dishes, while your parents place their order.

“Can I please get the soufflé pancake?” you look up to catch the horrified look on your mother’s face, followed by her clicking her tongue and shaking her head as if your choice of food was shameful. 

“Certainly-”

“Uh, no she won’t be having that. Get her the Honzen Ryori,” your mother eyed your figure -whatever was visible to her from across the table- before turning to face the server again “maybe cut down on the rice, God knows she doesn’t need the extra calories.” and waves her off, disregarding your protests and tapping her nail against the table top, her annoying method in demanding your silence, which you subconsciously react to, snapping your mouth shut when the sound reaches your ears.

“What was that for? You know I like having sweet breakfasts,” was fuming even close to what you are feeling? Probably not. “Yes I can clearly see that, you’ve let yourself go as well. Do you think that boyfriend of yours will stick around when you start putting on even more weight?”

At a loss for words, you turn to your father, who has been quiet this whole time, for any sense of support when it comes to his wife. But the way he presses his lips together tells you all you need to know, how just because he isn’t bad as her, doesn’t make him that great of a parent. That standing by while you have been bullied your entire childhood and well into your adulthood is just as bad as being the cause of it. 

“God forbid he realizes how much of a train wreck you really are and throws you on the side of the street, because you know damn well we won’t be here to pick you up.”

It began as a whispering in the air. The day had been beautiful -well, as beautiful as it can be with the kind of day you’re having- and the sky was like a dome of plasma-blue. The clouds had looked like airy anvils drifting under the gleaming disc of sun. People quickened their pace as the clouds began to gather in the sky. The postcard-perfect sky started changing. The beautiful cocktail-blue shade merged in with the flaming orange and mesmerizing purple as the sun sunk deep into the horizon, before beginning to darken into gravel-grey. Large pillows of cloud start to form, blocking out the old-gold color of the sun.

The first splatter of rain hits you when you’re halfway across the street, dismissing the need to take shelter under the roof of the buildings like some passersby are doing, hoping to see out the shower. Droplets of moisture begin to drip onto your head, sprinkling onto you like a gardener’s hose. It was well after your meal with your parents, and you had spent the last few hours walking aimlessly through the streets, making sure to avoid those covered by your boyfriend during his patrol. Hoping, praying, that something will clear your head, will help your poor jumbled mess of a mind forget about this entire nightmare of a day.

Should’ve listened to him 

The rainfall intensifies, the drops drumming against the hood of the cars that you pass by, there is so much rain that the sound blurs into one long, whirring noise, reminding you of the blades of the fan that you stuck your finger in, that one time when you were left alone in your house when you were only five years of age. Eventually, they fade into a musical chime as you push your drenched hair away from your face and feel the vibration from your phone as it rings the ninth, maybe tenth time. 

He told me so. 

Tall apartment complex building; you couldn’t see its end from where you stand. You shiver as you approach it, the doorman - bless his heart - running and placing his umbrella to futilely shield you from the rain, and you just laugh and tell him that you’re already drenched and just waiting to go back home.

God forbid he realizes how much of train wreck I am

Not wanting to dampen the people at the elevator and make them uncomfortable, you take the stairs up to your shared apartment, you usually don't mind the exercise but with how heavy you feel after the rain and day spent up on your sore feet, all you think about is locking yourself in your room and discover what kind of new façade could you try and fool Katsuki with when he reaches home.

Just how I trick him into thinking I’m not with him to leech off of him

Eventually and with a struggle, you make it to the door, dreading the sight you might come to face, almost hoping for a black hole to emerge and swallow you whole.

What would people say about me? Do people think I’m crazy?

With a forced exhale out of your lungs, you fetch the key from your bag to unlock the door, but it’s wrenched open before you have a chance to insert your key.

“Where the hell have you been?” 

Your eyes meet the beautiful rubies of Katsuki, and despite his anger that always overcompensates his worry, you smile and throw yourself on him. The shivering ceasing when he wraps his warm arms around you and that loving caramel scent engulfs you, in spite of how your hair is drenching his shirt and how you sniff against his neck.

“You need a shower, you’re shivering.”

“Take one with me?” you look up at him through your lashes, and he blinks at your uncharacterized boldness but agrees nonetheless, helping you out of your clothes and turning on the hot water before stepping in with you.

It is a struggle to help you clean up when all you do is grab at him, whether they’re your hands on his shoulders to lower him to kiss you, wrapping your arms around him and pressing your breasts against him, or palming his hardening cock as the poor man tries to shampoo your hair.

“Would ya knock it off? I’m tryna help you here shitty woman” you frown and squint your eyes when the shampoo gets close to them. “I wanna have sex.” 

“Yea I can fuckin tell, just lemme-” you bring his arms down and press his palms to your boobs, letting go of his wrist when he starts squeezing at them. “Do you not want to?” he gulps, his dick twitching at the feeling of your soft mounds in his hands, your nipples covered up by the suds from the shampoo, as your finger traces the underside of his cock. “Yeah, I uh, fuck, I do, just- you need to wash up so you don’t get sick, alright?”

“Do you not think I’m pretty anymore?” you pout childishly, tears threatening to escape your eyes, and they burn as you close them when he washes the product out of your hair, a deep frown on his lips when you open your eyes back again. “The fuck you on about? That rain really fucked with ya?”

“Are you gonna get rid of me when you realize how much of a mess I am?” you whisper, your voice muffled under the sound of the shower above you, and you keep quiet as he helps you scrub your body, but your boyfriend is observant, he isn’t fucking dense.

“What do you want, right now?” he lowers himself to your level when he’s done, his hands stroking your cheeks as he eyes the way the water droplets cling to your lashes, but still not missing the red rimming around your eyes.

“I just wanna for- I uh, I wanna have sex.” you mumble, a plea hidden underneath your words, a plea to help you forget, to help you bury this day behind you and pretend it never happened.

What you don’t expect is the way that Katsuki pulls your naked wet body out of the bathroom and drops you on the bed, feeling your bodies dampening the bed as he hovers over you, no words are spoken between you as he kisses and nips at your skin. Marking it up and down as he all but worships your body, strands of his hair tangle between your fingers when you run your hands through it, arching your back at the feeling of his tongue tasting your slick.

He doesn’t let up until you cry out, and not in pleasure, your sobs far beyond those he loves to hear when he’s denying you an orgasm. No, they’re sobs that wreck your whole body, kicking away at his shoulders as you curl in on yourself and wail into the sheets. Sitting on his haunches on the floor, Katsuki’s eye soften at your figure, the way your shoulders are shaking and how -yet again- you’re trying to muffle your cries with the sheets this time, pressing your face against the mattress in an attempt to lower your noise, as your mother would call it.

“Hey, look at me” you feel his lips grazing your ear as he kisses it, pressing his lips against your temple, fingers unwrapping your fist against the sheet and digging into your hands and pressing kisses against the nail marks in the palm of your hands. “There she is, there’s my girl.” you hear when you lift your head from the bed, sight blurry from your shed tears but still easy to distinguish Katsuki even between billions of people.

You sniff when he kisses at your lids, groan when he chuckles and calls you ‘snot the naught’ when you wipe your nose with the back of your hand, beaming when he hears you let out one weak chuckle at the way he teases you. Still pressing his lips against any surface of skin he can reach.

“You don’t have to talk about it you know, to me at least” he mumbles to you when you’re both dressed in your sleepwear and are cuddling on the dry side of the bed, opting to change the sheet the next day. “Maybe, maybe we can get someone who can help you, you know.” you press your face deeper between his neck and shoulder, shuddering when his warm palms rub your back from under your shirt. 

“I can make some calls, get in contact with someone.” you lift your head. “But I can’t afford-” he tuts and frowns at you “None of that.” 

“Remember what I said when we agreed to move in?” you do, you just love the sound of his voice when he says it, feels like he’s making all these promises all over again. “Tell me.”

“Told ya I’d be whoever you want me to be, whoever you need me to be. I’ll be yer mom, even better than that bitch, I’ll support and love you unconditionally.” you sniff and tighten your hold against him as he presses his lips against your cheek. 

“I’d be better than yer pussy dad, you can rely on me any time and I’ll live up to all your expectations. And callin me daddy is always a plus” he tangles his legs with your own when you wiggle away from him, laughing and giving you no chance of escape, not that you are even thinking of it. 

“I’d even be yer genius fuckin nanny that taught you to tell yer mom to go fuck herself when you were four,” your suppressed giggles lights him up and he can’t help but chuckle as well. “I’ll be anything and everything you’ll ever need, baby. I’ll be your goddamn hero.”

The sun comes out again, casting slanted beams of light across the buildings. Steam rises slowly from the greenery. It rises up eerily and drifts mist-like towards the molten-gold sun, right before it escapes into the abyss. The image is so vivid that it stays with you for as long as you remember. Because on this exact day, the shrieking that follows you everywhere you go, haunting you and mocking you, suddenly is nowhere to be found. And all you can hear is the comforting sound of Katsuki as he hums you a lullaby to sleep.

aaaah I hope you like it!

[emerald-chaos]

Insomnia

*gif not made by me, credit goes to the owner*

Hi Everyone! So it's been probably like...10 years since I wrote my last fic lol. Watching TFATWS has rekindled my undying love for Bucky Barnes and I just couldn't help but start writing again. I had to get my feelings out! I hope you guys enjoy this as much as I enjoyed writing it. I've been considering writing some more parts...so tell me if that's something you'd be interested in! I appreciate any and all constructive feedback or just feedback in general! Much love.

Pairing: Reader x Bucky Barnes

Word Count: 2533 (lowkey popped off...oops)

Warnings: Just in case...vague allusions to a dark past, struggles with mental illness, explicit language, and some suggestive conversation. Oh and some really bad jokes lol. Fluffy and angsty.

No matter how much you tossed and turned, how many sheep you counted, or how much you prayed and pleaded to any higher power that would listen – the release of sleep just wasn’t going to happen. You’re not sure why you were surprised, it’s not like this was the first time. You let out a heavy sigh and toss off the covers. This has been a nightly occurrence for as long as you can remember. When you were trying to rest, when there was no noise to block out the images in your head, it was a battle. A battle which you have always lost.

You flip on the bright florescent lights of the bathroom as you trudge in, dragging your feet in exhaustion. It takes a minute for your eyes to adjust to the harshness of the light as you place your hands onto the countertop. The cool marble feels good against your palms as you close your eyes and lean your head back, another sigh leaving your lips. You twist your neck from side to side, trying to release some tension and maybe get a satisfying pop. No such luck. As you open your eyes and gaze upon the person staring back at you a small laugh tumbles from your chest.

Jesus, she looks awful.

The dark circles that permanently reside below your eyes appear more pronounced than usual. The corners of your mouth hang low and you just look…tired. Like you were rode hard and put away wet.

The bottle of melatonin tucked away on your counter catches your eye. You pick it up and twirl it as you inspect the writing. “Sleep Support” you read, “may help promote restful sleep”. What a load of shit. You place the bottle back down and inspect the orange one next to it. The pills inside were about as useful as the melatonin. Nothing seemed to quiet the voices or stop the scenarios that plagued your mind. You splash some cold water on your face and grab for a towel to pat it dry. Your eyes drift to the mirror again, as if though the water was going to wash away the dead look in your eyes.

Yeah, fat chance.

Before you know it, your legs are carrying you through the compound. The only sounds present are the whirring of various appliances and the soft patter of your feet against the tile floors. The moonlight casts shadows over the various pieces of furniture and lights your path. Your fingers curl around the handle as you pull the sliding glass door open. The crisp outside air kisses your skin as you step out and close the door behind you. You find yourself settling down in your usual spot on the balcony and you sink into the comfort of the chair.

Many a sleepless night has been spent out here, admiring the way the moonlight gleams off of a nearby pond. Before the compound and the balcony, it was a fire escape and a bottle of bourbon. You kind of missed that coping mechanism a little bit. You were thankful, of course, to call this place your home. Thankful to feel safe for once. Thankful to be a part of a team that felt like more of a family than any sorry piece of shit who had been in your life before. Not that you were bitter about that or anything. A little baggage builds character. However, life hasn’t always been kind to you and your stupid brain had a cruel way of constantly reminding you of that fact.

In all honesty, Tony rescued you. You absolutely hated to allow him to relish in that fact, but it was true. He took a chance on a royally fucked up kid out of college who managed to skate by and earn a mechanical engineering degree. If you were to ask him, he would say it was because the first words you said to him were fuck off. Apparently, something about that translated to, “hey, I would be a great addition to your tech and development team”. Although, you were pretty sure you just really meant that he should fuck off. I mean, the guy’s reputation does have a bit of moral gray area to it. Somehow, some way, your tenacity made an impression on the billionaire. Now here you were - living at the Avenger’s compound, sitting on a balcony at 3:30 in the morning because you couldn’t turn your brain off long enough to find some peace and sleep. What a life.

Even as you were sitting here in your special spot, reminiscing about some actual good memories – your brain still tried to drift into the darkness. Glass breaking; voices, thick with hate, engaged in a screaming match, and the cold nights spent trying to find a safe space to eat and lay your head. Your fingers gripped into the arms of the chair as you felt the heaviness in your chest increase.

“God damn it,” you cursed through gritted teeth.

The panic attacks were a second nature at this point, but you still really hated when you lost control. Your eyes closed tight as you tried to rack your brain to remember the bullshit your therapist had told you earlier in the week. Something about 5 things you can see?

“We gotta stop meeting like this, Doll”

The voice ripped you from inside your mind and back to reality. Your eyes opened and were met with a beautiful pair of cerulean ones. You blamed the skip in your heartbeat on your fading panic attack - although, you knew better than that.

“Well, it seems to me that the only logical conclusion is that you’re stalking me, Barnes” you quipped as a grin spread across your face.

“Could say the same about you,” Bucky retorted as he sank into the chair beside you, “besides, been doin’ this a lot longer than you’ve been around”.

You rolled your eyes, but the super soldier had a point. Almost each and every time, aside from the ones that happened when the team was away, you two would meet like this – here on the balcony, both searching for something to replace the sleep that neither of you could find.

“Yeah, we get it, you’re old” a laugh fell from your lips as Bucky snorted at your remark, a grin remaining ever present on his lips.

The familiar silence took over as he leaned his head back against the chair, closing his eyes. Meanwhile, yours were hungrily taking him in - tracing over the stubble on his chin, the soft pinkness of his parted lips. Recently he’d gotten his hair cut and even though you much preferred the long hair, you would rather die than actually admit that to him. Your crush on the 106 year old grumpy ass was one of your best kept secrets. At least, you thought you’d kept it from being painfully obvious.

The man sitting before you, he had a tough exterior and a horrific history, but you knew him better than that. You knew about the way his nose scrunched up when you made him laugh and the way his eyes looked as he listened intently to every story you ever told him. You knew the sweet melody of his laugh and the far off stare that meant he was also held captive by his own thoughts. This late-night rendezvous had become somewhat of a routine for the two of you and you would be lying if you said it wasn’t your favorite part of the day.

The first time it was a short nod and typical white person, thin-lipped smile as you left to find a different spot to suffer alone. Shortly after, it developed into cohabiting the balcony – staying on your own separate sides of course, only occasionally sharing words. Then, before you knew it, the two of you would be sitting beside each other, shooting the shit like you’d known each other for years. Just two, incredibly fucked up individuals, trying to make each other feel a little more human.

Bucky had always given off the quiet, brooding energy. Typically he kept to himself, other than with close friends like Steve, choosing to stand in the corner and listen to the conversation rather than be a part of it. Occasionally he would give a quip during a meeting that would catch people off guard, but mostly he just sat there and stared. The Bucky you had come to know was nothing like the person that others wanted to make him out to be. Sure, at one point he was a masterful assassin who killed like he got pleasure from it – but that wasn’t him. The Winter Soldier and Bucky Barnes were not synonymous.

If only the world could meet Bucky at 3am.

“What’s going on in that empty head of yours over there?” Bucky’s voice once again brought you back to reality as you laid your eyes on the familiar grin plastered across his face.

“Please,” you huffed, cheeks tinted a light shade of pink at the thought of him catching you staring, “which one of us has a college degree again?”

His laugh was a symphony to your ears. Your smile mirrored his when he opened his eyes and turned his head to look at you.

“So, what is it tonight? That nightmare again?” he asked, voice dropping an octave as his facial features softened in a way you really hoped only you got to see.

“Mm, not quite” you responded, your voice a broken whisper.

Bucky wasn’t the type to pry, but with you he wouldn’t even have to. Talking to him, sharing your deepest secrets and fears, telling him about the nightmares that kept you awake at night – it all came easily. Too easily.

“This week it’s...it’s that image of my stupid mother. Standing there with her black eyes and busted lip, telling me that it was me that was the problem. That it was me who...” you swallowed hard, the heaviness creeping back into your chest and tears fighting to wet your eyes. God you hated that you let this get the best of you.

Just as your mind started to bring you back to that dark place it was interrupted by the feeling of warmth spreading over your body. You looked down to see Bucky’s large hand resting right above your knee. When your eyes met again, he gave you a soft look that made your heart scream.

“I’m sorry,” you could tell he meant it as he gave your knee a soft squeeze.

A small smile flashed over your face and you had to resist the urge to reach out and cup his soft, stubbled cheek in your hand.

“Hey, we’re all a little fucked up, right?” you joked.

“Some more than others,” he replied, those beautiful wrinkles appearing around his nose as he scrunched it up with another laugh.

“Thanks, Buck... I’m sure you’d rather be doing anything other than listening to my sob story,” you reluctantly broke eye contact and looked down at the hem of your shirt as you fiddled with it in your fingers.

You were all too aware at the loss of contact as Bucky drew his hand back and leaned back into his chair.

“Doll,” he started as he leaned his head back and closed his eyes again - you could swear you almost saw a grin on his lips, “there are very few things I’d rather do than sit with you on the balcony at 3am”.

At that moment it felt as though time stood still. Sure, you had flirtatious banter back and forth occasionally and made a habit out of spilling your deepest regrets to each other during the wee hours of the morning, but this felt different. This felt like a confession.

You’d be lying to yourself if you tried to convince yourself, or anyone else for that matter, that you didn’t have a thing for him. I mean - who wouldn’t? The guy was a gentleman; he was soft spoken and caring, he was a dork who loved to crack jokes at the most inappropriate times, the type of person who would give you the shirt off of his own back if it meant you were taken care of.

He....well, he was Bucky.

And god damn it if you didn’t love him.

You’re unsure of how much time has passed, but one minute you’re sitting on your chair, chewing your lip and droning on about the man in front of you in your head. The next minute you found yourself on his lap, knees seated on either side of his waist as your legs straddle him and your hands connect with the skin they so desperately craved to feel. Bucky’s eyes opened slowly and met yours as you let the pad of your thumb gently run along the curve of his bottom lip. The uneven breaths leaving your chest hitched as you felt his hands grip your hips softly. Refusing to break eye contact, Bucky gently pressed a kiss to the pad of your thumb. You dragged his lower lip down briefly.

“Well,” he began. His voice was barely above a whisper but it’s thick, lustful tone made you shiver from head to...well, you know, “are you gonna kiss me, Doll? Or do I have to do all the work myself?”

He barely finished his sentence before your lips captured his. It was messy, almost all teeth and tongue. It was needy, as if it was the last time either of you would ever kiss anyone again. It was fucking incredible.

Bucky’s metal arm snaked up your back and found its way into your hair, curling his fingers gently around the strands at the back of your head, as his other arm wrapped around your waist and pulled you closer to his form. He was intoxicating. This whole situation was something you had briefly imagined months ago, but ultimately pushed out of your mind. There was no way that he would ever be interested in someone like you. Yet, here he was, tongue fighting for entrance into your mouth.

You aren’t quite sure who pulled away first. Both of you were gasping for air, chests heaving up and down as you both stared into each other's lust-blown pupils.

“You kiss pretty well for someone who hasn’t had a girlfriend since 1940,” you teased, laughing as he rolls his eyes at the comment.

“You just don’t know when to shut that mouth of yours, do ya?” he practically growled, ever so slightly tightening his grip on your waist, and you almost lost it from just the sound of his voice alone.

“Why don’t you make me, Barnes?” you leaned in close, warm breath fanning over the shell of his ear.

A yelp escaped your throat as you were suddenly jerked up to a standing position, locking your ankles behind his back as he effortlessly held you up by your thighs.

“Oh Doll,” he chuckled darkly into your neck, almost making you pass out from the sensation, “I thought you’d never ask”.

[dameronology]

rescuer {din djarin}

summary: din djarin rescued you - and then you rescued him {for @drinksomecoco !! i hope u enjoy}

warnings: brief mentions of torture, swearing

this is like....4k words?? it got a little out of hand, i won't lie to u.

- jazz xx

It wasn’t often that The Mandalorian found himself becoming attached to bounties.

Twice. He’d done it twice.

The first time, he swore to himself that it would be the last. Adopting his little green surrogate...frog? Son?

Okay, adopting his little green surrogate Grogu had brought enough tension into his life. It had gotten him back onto the radars of both the Empire and the New Republic; thrown him into some weird form of fatherhood that he wasn’t quite ready for and tipped his entire way of life upside down. Despite all that, he never stopped to question if all the exhaustion was more trouble than it was worth, because he loved his kid. Completely and entirely in ways that no parenting book or fairytale could ever quite describe. It was an intense form of love and attachment - and Din knew it was going to hurt when he would eventually have to return the Child to his own people. That was a little far off though, because he couldn’t investigate any further til he had the means to do so. Money and resources weren’t limitless and even The Mandalorian had to find means to an end.

Going back to the Bounty Hunter’s Guild wasn’t ideal, especially not with the kid in tow - but did he have any other way? Din didn’t know any other way of life, let alone another way of earning money. Besides, he figured it would only be a quick few months. A couple jobs here and there until he had enough in savings to travel far enough to find where Grogu really came from.

But it was two bounties; two bounties that he would find himself becoming attached to. Grogu was the only one.

It was through that decision to return to the Guild that Din Djarin would find himself stumbling across the next one. He was offered five pucks - the first four were easy. Standard jobs, really. Runaway criminals and Imps who had crossed people so many times that trying to work out their loyalty was head-ache inducing. He found them all in a matter of days, really. They were good at hiding but it didn’t count for much when The Mandalorian was good at finding.

Then there was you; the fifth puck. The one he thought was going to be the easiest.

Finding you wasn’t a problem. Tucked away in a corner of rural Tatooine - maybe twenty, twenty five minutes shy of Mos Eisley - you were hiding in plain sight. It would have been enough to protect you from anyone else but Din was an unrelenting expert in finding those who didn’t want to be found.

He never quite knew what to expect when he closed in on a bounty. Sometimes they ran and sometimes they hid. A few of them had tried to appeal to his humanity; to try and connect with the man they hoped was behind the mask. Because aside from the husky voice that occasionally escaped the helmet, there was no proof that The Mandalorian was anything other than a very convincing droid. That was, until, someone would lay a hand on his son or ship and suddenly, a wave of pure human rage would burst out from beneath the beskar.

You couldn’t have hidden from him or run away, even if you wanted to. Not because you were scared, but because you were chained up; wrists and ankles in shackles, keeping you tied to the walls of a filthy docking bay. From the sand piled around your feet, it was clear that you had tried to kick up a fuss at some point.

But based on the way that you looked at him - with tired eyes and a hopeless expression - that made Din realise: you’d lost the will to fight. He knew that you weren’t going to wriggle away or try to engage in combat.

“Are you…” The Mandalorian trailed off. “Are you alone?”

“Probably,” your eyes flicked up from the ground, unknowingly capturing his gaze. “I think I’ve been left for dead.”

He sighed. “I’m looking for a...Kan Durant. Is he here?”

“No,” you shot back. “He left me here for dead about a week ago. Probably knew that a bounty hunter was going to come after him at some point.”

“Do you know where he went?”

“I’m chained up,” you said. “Isn’t the answer to your question a little axiomatic?”

“Maybe,” he replied. “But if you know anything, it might be helpful.”

“Try Corellia,” you muttered.

Corellia. That was...doable. Not too far and not too hard to search. That would be his fifth and final puck and then Din could set off for the sunset in search of his kid’s home planet. That’s what this whole thing had been about.

But...you. You’d been left for dead - and based on the bruises around your eyes and on your limbs, that was the least of what you’d gone through recently. What kind of man would it make him if he left you? A fucking awful one, obviously, but what was he supposed to do?

Din slowly leant down, pulling a thin tool from his belt. He fiddled around with your cuffs for a moment, until there was a low hiss. They fell from your hands and onto the sandy ground - he expected you to get up, or to run, or do anything but sit there and stare at him with gaunt eyes. Maybe it was foolish of him to think that merely freeing you of your restraints was doing his part for the greater good.

“Is there anywhere around here where you can go?” he asked. “An inn? A cantina?”

You snorted. “No. I’ll die.”

“You can get food and medicine out there.”

“Mos Eisley is swarming with Durant’s men,” you explained. “The minute I step foot in any town or port here, they’ll know.”

Maybe being with Grogu had softened him, or maybe The Mandalorian genuinely couldn’t find it himself to leave you. But, he found himself doing the unthinkable: sticking his hand out to you, lifting you up, and leading you out of the docking bay and back towards his ship. He didn’t know what he was going to do or how he was going to do it but really, he hadn’t thought that far ahead. His main focus had been on keeping you alive until you were within the safety of the Crest.

You stumbled slightly when he put you down, tripping and falling towards the control panel to shut the loading bay doors. At least you were intuitive.

With that, you fell back to the ground. It was becoming clearer and clearer that you were in a bit of a state - how long did you say it had been? A week since Durant had left - so that was at least seven days without proper food or water. It was a miracle you were alive. Din had got there just in time.

“Why are you helping me?” you asked. “What do you want?”

He glanced over in your direction. “I don’t want anything.”

“I don’t believe that for a second,” you shot back.

“I wasn’t going to leave you there,” Din replied. He paused for a moment, before turning to face you. “I’ve heard Durant’s name before. I know what he does to people.”

“Aren’t you more worried about finding him and getting the bounty?” you pushed.

Truth be told, Din wasn’t that bothered. He had enough money from the last four pucks to get him where he needed to be. The fifth had just been a little extra, so he had an easier time letting go of it. He certainly wasn’t the only hunter going after Durant’s ass and worst case scenario, Karga would give him a little bit of shit for not completing the job. All of that was a lot more manageable than living with the guilt of leaving you in the dark to die.

“Someone else will get him. I’m sure.” Din muttered. He reached for a ration pack stored away on a shelf and tossed it in your direction. “You should eat this. I’ll get us in the air and find some bacta-”

“- you really don’t need to,” you cut him off.

“Eat,” he pushed again. “You’re weak. You’ll need it.”

--

Over the next few days, you would come to find that forceful-but-caring demands were The Mandalorian’s main language.

He didn’t talk much - or at all really. He didn’t need to, not when you kept to yourself on the lower deck of the ship whilst he dealt with everything else. He didn’t seem to mind that you weren’t helping; after all, you’d been in a weak state when Din had found you and standing up had been hard, let alone maneuvering around the flying hunk of metal. You were beginning to feel a little more spry, thanks to the food, water and bactaspray. The combination was hardly an elixir of life but you’d found yourself feeling a little more human.

Sleep was the hard one. A combination of confusion - at the situation, at Din, at where you were going - and nightmares made it hard. Every time you closed your eyes, you found yourself hurtling back in time to when Durant had first captured you. You’d been a test dummy for all his weapons and experiments and really, you were just lucky to be alive and in one piece. It didn’t count for much though, not when you couldn’t get a single fucking second of shut eye.

You would have been a fool to think that Din hadn’t picked up on it.

He was observational by nature and even more so by craft. A man who was constantly looking over his shoulder and straight ahead; a warrior who had been raised to keep a weapon by his side at all times. Of course he was going to notice your insomnia, and the way your eyes seemed even more sunken and dull than when he’d first found you.

You were sitting in the hull when he approached you. Not a lot had been said, other than the occasional eat this or put this on your bruises. Again - all a little forceful, but with a sense of genuinity behind the words. You still had a hard time believing that he was legitimately just a man who wanted to help you.

“I find that noise helps.”

You glanced up at him. “I’m sorry?”

He cleared his throat. “When I can’t sleep, and when I have nightmares, I find that being in a room with white noise helps distract my brain.”

“Oh, right,” you gave him a small nod. “I s’pose it is pretty quiet down here.”

“It’s noisier up there in the cockpit,” he replied. “We’re going to be in hyperspace for a while so if you want to get some sleep, I’ll stay down here.”

“Thank you.”

For the first time in days, you finally showed a glimmer of emotion. It was just a smile - and one he figured was a forced one - but still, it was a good sign.

Din’s eyes followed you as you stood up, heading for the ladder up to the cockpit. You stopped in front of it for a moment, palms wrapping around one of the rungs. At first, he thought you were just pondering, or taking a moment to rethink your actions, but then a light bulb went off in his head. You were too weak.

Moving slowly, The Mandalorian positioned himself behind you.

“Is it okay if I put them here?” he quietly asked, large, gloved hands hovering over the side of your hips.

“Uh, yeah,” you replied. “Thank you.”

With Din’s support, you were able to grab onto the hatch above and pull yourself up, boots hitting the ground of the cockpit. He followed you up, guiding you over to one of the pilot’s chairs. The lights of hyperspace were flashing by, illuminating the entire room in a white-gold glow. It felt odd to be up here after so many days of confining yourself just to the hull - forbidden, even with the invite from The Mandalorian himself.

“How did you know that I get nightmares?” you asked, turning around to face him.

The helmet tilted slightly. “I get them too.”

“I’m sorry,” you softly sighed. “Thank you again for your help.”

“It’s okay,” Din brushed it off as though it were nothing. “We have about four hours til our next stop. I’ll wake you up before we get there.”

“Is that where I get off?” you asked.

“No,” he firmly replied. “It’s not safe there either.”

You had more questions that you wanted to ask - now more than ever that he was finally talking - but you were far too exhausted to even try. Once you’d fallen back against the chair and been handed a blanket out of nowhere, the noise of the surrounding machines practically dragged you out of consciousness.

---

One question you had wanted to ask Din had been about the duration of your stay.

How long were you supposed to stay on board? How long did he want you there?

You were almost scared to ask, for fear of the answer. After all, you barely knew him. He could get up at any moment and demand that you left, and you wouldn’t have been able to argue. All of this - this looking after you, this roof over your head, this care - felt too good to be true. Like it was all part of some elaborate ruse.

But it was funny, because you were even more scared that it wasn’t. If Din - or The Mandalorian, as you knew him - was truly just a nice person with pure intentions, then that was about to be dangerous territory for you. The minute that you started trusting him, and the minute you started to see him as someone who could protect you, would spell trouble. You had never intended to become attached, but it was only natural. You hadn’t had a single person look out for you - not once in your life.

Every time he made you food, or helped you up into the cockpit, you felt yourself slipping that way. A six-foot pile of beskar should not have been a sign of comfort, but the helmet came to symbolise...something. You didn’t know what. Attachment, maybe? A little inkling of affection for whoever the hell was below those inches of steel?

A few weeks passed and the tension slowly began to falter. It was probably the proximity more than anything, but the time proved to you more than anything that Din was genuine. He was helping you because he wanted to - there was no personal gain for him, nor monetary. He actually, honestly just wanted to do good.

And doing good, he was. Whilst he still kept his distance, he looked after you. He made sure that you ate enough to recover from your periods of deprivation and once a day, he would clear out of the cockpit for you to get some rest. He still helped you up the ladder every time -and even when you told him you were strong enough, he still stood back and watched just to make sure.

Because, truthfully, The Mandalorian was beginning to see something in you. He couldn’t quite put his finger on what, but he was intrigued by the way you were slowly beginning to show him parts of yourself. Where your eyes had once been gaunt and lifeless, they now had a spark in them. You were quiet when you’d met, but now you spoke to the kid and you hummed to yourself. It was like the life that was sucked out of you was slowly being breathed back in, day by day and bit by bit.

“Do you wanna get some sleep?” Din asked you one day.

“Yeah, sure,” you glanced up at the Child, giving him a small smile. “When did you last sleep, Mando?”

Another helmet tilt. “I get enough sleep.”

“I don’t believe you,” you thinned your eyes at him.

The Mandalorian sighed slightly - normally, that would have been a sign to literally anyone else to drop it. But with you? Nope. You saw that as a sign of progress; that the little, tiny display of emotion meant you were beginning to chip past those godforsaken layers of beskar.

“I get nightmares about Durant,” you continued. “Every time I panic and wake up in a cold sweat, I remind myself that I’m safe, because I know that you and the kid are here.”

“You do?”

“Yeah,” you admitted. “You can tell me anything and I promise I won’t judge you. You’ve never judged me.”

He pondered for a moment, before releasing another deep breath. “I can’t sleep alone.”

“Really?”

“Last time I did, I woke up and my parents were gone,” Din explained. “So I wait til the kid wants to go to sleep and I just go with him, so that I’m not alone.”

Your heart dropped a little at that - partially because he’d opened up to you, but also because the Child rarely ever slept. If Din only ever waited around for their exhaustion to coincide, it must have been months since he’d last got a decent night’s rest. It was the least he deserved.

Nodding, you stuck your hand out towards him. “C’mon.”

“What?”

“I’m gonna sleep and so are you,” you replied. “You need it and if I’ve done everything that you’ve instructed so far, I think I should have the same in return.”

--

Din didn’t want to admit it to himself at first.

It being multiple things: the fact you were helping him, the fact your presence on his ship had made the place seem better, the fact that his heart skipped a beat every time you brushed past him.

Bar his surrogate son, Din had never been close with anyone before. He’d never even slept in the same goddamn room as anyone else, even. That was a fucking mammoth step for him, but when you took his hand? It felt like a baby step. Just a tiny hop from A to B. Not a massive milestone, or a moment of personal progress. You had made it seem so simple.

Maybe that was it.

You never over-complicated anything. Your intentions were always clear and simple - there was no moral ambiguity, no moments where Din had to question whether or not he could well and truly trust you. He just knew. It was funny, because it was the exact same situation you’d had with him - questioning why he was helping you, trying to work out what he wanted. This whole time, Din had been helping you solely because he thought it was the right thing and it’s what you were doing for him too.

Din liked when you sat close to him. There was a little wave of warmth he felt every time you shuffled a bit nearer to him when you both crashed on the floor of the cockpit, and a tiny swarm of butterflies that flew through him when you stuck by his side in busy towns and cities. It was clear that you found comfort in him after so many years of going without it.

In turn, he found comfort in you. Not just in the way you unintentionally looked after him, but just...everything. Your presence had been a little odd on the Crest at first, but now it felt weird to be without it. Hearing you single quietly in the shower and have one-sided conversations with the Child filled a hole in his life that he hadn’t even realised had been there.

It was as though he’d had a missing puzzle piece his entire life; a gap between all the interconnected parts that hadn’t been integral, but certainly inconvenient. And now that it was filled, he could take a step back and finally look at the bigger picture that had been forming. All the pieces were finally there - you and the kid and whatever odd family unit that made you - and the galaxy didn’t seem so nonsensical anymore.

A little over two months after he first found you, word got around that Durant had finally been captured. Not by Din, but that hadn’t mattered - because killing the man who had hurt you, even after everything, would never amount to everything he’d done for you.

The relief didn’t last long for you, though - because as soon as you realised you no longer had a reason to hide, it dawned on you that you no longer had a reason to stay with Din. Or, at least not one you were willing to share with Din. Begging to let you stay just for the sake of being near him didn’t seem like a very convincing argument - at least not from where you were standing.

But from where Din was standing, it was a little different. You were part of his life now, even if you had no idea. That wasn’t your fault, though. He wasn’t exactly the best at vocalising it. Admitting it to himself had been hard enough, let alone to you.

“So,” you spoke softly, clearing your throat. “I suppose you’ll drop me off at the next planet?”

You were both sitting in the cock-pit; the Child was asleep downstairs and the Crest was soaring through the last stretch of hyperspace before Nevarro.

Din didn’t want to drop you off. He didn’t want his ship to be silent all over again or to sleep without you by his side. The thought alone of not having you around anymore was enough to make him a little watery-eyed beneath his beskar barrier. You’d grown on him, and in return, he’d kind of, accidentally fallen in love with you.

“You don’t have to go,” he said.

You peered over at him. “If you can think of a reason for me to stay aboard, please do let me know.”

“I want you to stay,” Din replied. He gently reached out a hand and took it in his - it was the first time that he’d given you such a vast gesture. “Isn’t that reason enough?”

“Yeah,” you smiled. “It is.”

--

Staying aboard the Razor Crest was one of the best decisions you’d ever made.

Not only because it meant you were well and truly safe, but because Din’s direct request was a sign to you that you weren’t imagining things. Whatever attachment you felt to him, he felt it too - but it ran deeper than that. There was a mutual concern and respect for one another. Something born of two lifetimes spent on their own, finally coming together in one.

Things had been a little slow before then; the way that you danced around each other, like two magnets that were meant to come together - just with a little hesitancy. There had been a lot of late nights and long trains of thought about the signals that the other was giving off; about whether you’d misinterpreted the way his hands lingered over yours, or the way you’d practically passed out on his shoulder.

But, after that - after Din had openly asked you to stay, and you’d happily agreed, things began to move a little faster. Where you’d once been slowly walking down that hill and towards each other, you were now slipping, tripping and falling.

With each passing night, you inched closer towards each other. God forbid you ever found out, but Din even found himself pushing the pilot’s chairs closer to each other when you weren’t in the room, just so he could properly feel you next to him when you dozed off. He enjoyed your presence at the best of times but it was those dark, quiet moments when he genuinely and fully needed you.

It came to a head one night when you’d laid down with the Child beside you - not upstairs in the cockpit, but in the tiny cot in the hull of the ship.

There wasn’t room for one person, let alone one person and a tiny creature. Even worse, for two people - one in a beskar suit - and the creature. It just didn’t work. It shouldn’t have worked.

But where there’s a will, there’s a way, and the moment that Din saw you dead to the world with the Child in your arms, he was certain that he was going to make it work. Maybe with a bit of reshuffling there, and if he just moved the kid here - and that was when Grogu bit him pretty hard on the finger.

Disregarding his reshuffling plan, he knew there was only one option left.

It was something he’d never dreamt of doing before, simply for how terrifying and exposing it was - but he took one glance at you, and once glance at his kid, and he knew it was going to be worth it in the long run. It was merely a necessary step to getting closer to you - physically, mentally emotionally.

You stirred slightly at the sound of metal clattering to the floor - not enough to wake up, but enough to be a little more aware of the room around you. A moment later, there was a quiet hiss, and then everything went black.

In your sleepy state, your brain reacted a little slowly - but then the mattress beneath you dipped, and you felt someone’s skin against yours. Not just skin, but stubble against the back of your head as he pressed a kiss to it, and warm fingers tangling with yours.

“The armour,” you murmured. “You took it off.”

“It was the only way,” he softly replied. “It’s okay. Go back to sleep.”

“Okay,” you let out a sleepy hum. “Good night…”

“Din,” he quietly said.

“Good night, Din.”

[wienerbarnes]

A Certain Romance (2/6)

Pairing: Bucky x Reader

Word Count: 1,685

Warnings: not rlly anything

A/N: a lil bit of a deeper dive for these two’s relationship👀... enjoy!

MAIN MASTERLIST | A CERTAIN ROMANCE MASTERLIST

Your apartment is nice. Very you.

Sam invited him out to some restaurant, but after the last one he suggested, he decided to pass. And when Sam asked him what he was doing instead, if he was seeing you, Bucky lied and said yes. It made Sam happy and got him out of going to another ridiculous restaurant, so he saw it as a win-win.

Once Sam left, though, his thoughts did drift to what you were doing.

You two exchanged numbers at the pizza place after your date, but you two haven’t texted much. He texted you making sure you got home safe, which you did, and a day or so after, you texted him a picture of some advertisement with an awfully cheesy pick-up line written on it, which even he agreed was awful.

But that’s about it. So, he texts you.

Hey. What are u doing?

About to make dinner. Y?

Told Sam I was seeing u. Wanna hang out?

Come over.

Simple enough, he thinks.

You two haven’t had the most meaningful text conversations, clearly, but it’s still nice. No flirting, no typing and retyping messages in order to hook, line, and sinker, no ghosting. No relationship texting.

It was a dream for him. To have a new friend. He’s made plenty of friends, both in New York and in Wakanda. But it’s all under the same… umbrella. Always an agent, a fighter, an analyst of some sort. Someone to train with, to fight with, to fight for. Never someone like you. Someone that works a mundane job and lives in a mundane part of New York where her weekends are filled with going on mundane blind dates or otherwise cooking dinner for one.

It’s a breath of fresh air to not talk about fighting or missions or press or media or anything else he has to hear about at work. The only connection you have with Sam is that you met in a coffee shop a few years ago that has since closed down. He was one of your first friends here.

You could care less about Captain America, too. Which hurts Sam’s ego, and in turn, makes Bucky smile.

So, he goes over to yours.

He’s not sure what you’re making, but he brings a bottle of red wine as a courtesy. You are making dinner after all. Besides, women love wine, right?

Your apartment is nice. Very you.

Enough going on to show that someone does indeed live here, but also enough to show that you’re not exactly swimming in riches, like most people that live in this city.

The place smells like garlic and basil, and he’s glad that he brought the wine.

Shoes discarded at the door, he helps chop up the rest of the ingredients while you put a pot of water to boil. He chops up mushrooms, onion, pancetta, eyeing the bottle of vodka out on the table and tube of tomato paste next to his hand.

It's an understatement to say he’s excited. Most of the pasta he makes is from a bag of precooked noodles and a jar of tomato sauce.

Basic small talk floats through the air as the two of you dance around one another in the kitchen. Even though you’re “dating”, you don’t know much about each other. This isn’t too uncommon from how dating was for Bucky when he was a teenager; you’d marry women knowing very little about them.

Your favorite color is orange. You played violin in grade school. You had a childhood dog named Chowder. Bucky tells you his favorite color is green. He played a little bit of piano when he was younger, but did boxing in his late teens and early twenties before the war. You poke fun at him when he can’t remember the name of his own childhood dog.

“He’s probably rolling over in dog-heaven.”

“Good boy; he’d deserve a treat.”

You laugh.

Easy conversation continues on the couch as bowl after bowl of pasta is eaten and replenished. As fun and seemingly simple questions are asked, like each of your favorite movies or whether or not you pour the milk before the cereal, the room that’s left is used for deeper questions.

“What’s your most embarrassing moment?” You ask him.

He thinks for a moment before opening his mouth, only to close it again. “One time when Princess Shuri was fixing my arm it wasn’t secure completely, so it flew off while I was playing with some of the children.”

“That’s not your most embarrassing moment. I know it’s not, now you have to tell me what it really is.” You tease him.

He’s never been the best liar.

“You’re right, it’s not my most embarrassing moment. My actual most embarrassing moment is just kind of… sad. And I didn’t want to ruin the mood or anything.” He explains, hoping you’ll accept that but instead you give him an encouraging smile to hopefully give him some comfort that whatever it is he wants to tell you is safe in your apartment.

“Okay, uhm. So, in the 40’s, after I was rescued by Steve, but before we shipped out again where I was recaptured for the second and final time. We were all holed up in this little dance club, all the soldiers and their gals. And in walks Peggy Carter in a pretty red dress,” He begins, only glancing at your eyes periodically as if to make sure you’re still there.

“I know she’s Steve’s gal, he told me all about her. I wasn’t flirting with her because I wanted her, I was flirting with her… to make sure I still could. I mean, after being held in that… place… they injected me with stuff, told me things that weren’t true, I mean Steve told me I was repeating my number over and over again when he found me, I didn’t even remember doing that. I felt… violated, used, not like myself. I felt like I wasn’t me anymore.

“So, when Peggy walked in, I thought about how everyone always called me a ladies man, how good I was with women, I mean, I’d take girls out about every damn weekend, you know? I wanted to feel normal, so I flirted with her, tried to get her to dance with me. And she completely ignored me. She never even took her eyes off of Steve. It’s like I was invisible. And it just sort of felt like the nail in the coffin for whoever James Barnes was before the war. It was a realization that I’m never going to be that person again. And it was embarrassing for me.” He explains.

He hasn’t looked up at you again, but he heard your fork stop moving around your bowl a minute or so ago. He feels a lump in his throat thinking about that time, how he knew he’d never get back the man he was, even before knowing what was in store for him after falling off that train. How he used to be this man that wanted a long, happy marriage, six or seven kids running around a big backyard, a white picket fence surrounding a big two-story house in a neighborhood of identical homes. He wanted the cheesy life, at one point. But the same man that wanted that life died falling off a train many years ago.

All of that’s forgotten, though, when you open your mouth, and seem to say the perfect thing to make him feel better.

“One time in the third grade, this girl pulled my skirt down in front of my crush, and I wasn’t wearing any undies.”

A snort escapes his throat as you, somehow, after he’s shared something so deeply personal, something he never even told Steve or Sam about, still found a way to make him laugh. Which is what he wanted, he realizes. The comfort of moving on from that confession and not having to wallow in it like other people would try to. His hand leaves his fork to cover his face as tears threaten to leak out from how hard he’s laughing.

He took that secret to the grave, even if it wasn’t his own. He told himself he’d never tell Steve about how he felt in that situation, and he never did. He never told Steve that he didn’t enlist, either. He couldn’t imagine how Steve would’ve felt knowing that the army would’ve rather taken men that didn’t want to go to war, men who were terrified to go to war, had too much to lose and wanted to be selfish and stay home, than men like Steve who would do anything to enlist. Including lying on the damn enlistment form.

He wonders if Steve is looking at him now. Watching over him as he shares something that he never did with his best friend, with you, a girl he’s met barely a week ago, on your couch over bowls of pasta while he points out leftover sauce on the corner of your lip.

“What’s your greatest fear?” He asks you next.

“Dying alone. Actually, no. Getting kidnapped, probably.”

“Oh, mine’s spiders.” He shares.

It’s so easy to laugh with you, he finds. He jokes with Sam a lot, all the bickering and teasing all in good fun at the end of the day, and it’s mostly pretty funny. But laughing with you. He feels like a teenager again. Somehow, everything is funny; he doesn’t remember the last time he’s laughed so much, especially about things that aren’t even that funny.

It’s raining at the end of the night. Early morning, rather.

“You can take the couch, if you’d like.”

“Nah, I don't mind a little rain, and I like the ride home.” He fed Alpine before he left, but he imagines his cat misses him, even if she’s probably busy licking herself to even notice he’s left.

“Suit yourself.”

You don’t push him. A simple pleasure that’s more of a luxury for him. There’s no pushing or convincing or Are you sure’s with you.

Certainly a luxury, you are.

[chibsytelford]

Requested by anon - Hear me out. What about a fic where the reader is related to one of the sons (maybe chibs or tig?) And they broke up with her long-term boyfriend and had to move into a clubhouse dorm but since hapoy recently patched over , they spend alot of time together and things happen between them(if you get what i mean😏) and eventually she sleeps in his dorm almost evey night but they keep is secret from the others because they dont know how to approach the situation then one day one of the sons burst into his dorm and are like "hap something happend we need you to- OH COME ON REALLY?". Then they have to explain to the sons shes related to how long its been going on? You can choose how it ends.

A/N - I tweaked the story a little bit, I felt like I would have to write 10k words just to include everything. I hope you still like it nonetheless!

If you want added / removed from my taglist let me know 😊

The thought of having to explain again that you and your ex had broken up had your stomach churning. This was the only one of your boyfriends that Chibs had liked, and you thought it'd be the relationship that you'd have for the rest of your life. Oh how naive you were. 3 years you wasted, thinking that he loved you, that he wanted you, but it turned out that he was doing a pretty good job of faking it all.

As you pulled up to Teller Morrow you gave yourself a quick once over in the rear view mirror. You ran out of tears 4 weeks ago, but you hadn't slept much since the break up 2 months ago, and your eyes were proving that. Your boss was also your best friend, so when you told her you needed time off, she told you to take as long as you needed, and she even suggested you come to Charming for some 'healing' is what she called it. She told you that visiting Chibs - who you called 'Uncle Chibsy' ever since he rescued you and your car 6 or so years ago - would be good for you, and that night you had headed off to Charming and here you were.

Grabbing your suitcase, you locked your car and headed for the doors of the clubhouse. Before you could even reach them you were stopped by a Scottish accent you were oh so familiar with. "Y/N?" Chibs shouted from across the yard. "Is that you?" You turned around and he smiled, holding his arms out for you. You dropped the suitcase -not caring if anything in it broke- and sprinted towards him, jumping into his arms and nearly making him fall backwards.

"Surprise!" You smiled back kissing his cheek as he spun you around. "I've missed you Uncle" you admitted as he finally put you down again, lazily draping an arm around your shoulder.

"What's brought ye here?" He asked, picking your case up for you and holding the door open, as he always did. Chibs led you to a table, grabbed you a beer and plopped himself down beside you.

You had no intention of hiding the breakup from him, you just didn't want to keep talking about it. You had told most people back home over the course of the last few weeks and having to repeat it just made you tired. But you knew better than to keep anything from Chibs. "Dale and I broke up" you shrugged, picking at the label on the bottle. "It is what it is" 

Chibs looked at you, raising his eyebrow and giving you the look. The look that had your walls crumbling, leaving your insecurities on show for him. He was always good at that, knowing when you were hiding something, knowing when you wanted to say something but couldn't. "He told me he didn't love me, that he never did, and never will" you sighed wiping some stray tears away. "3 years" you laughed bitterly, "I'm an idiot". 

"Hey love, you're not an idiot" Chibs said, pulling you so you were now flush against his side. He placed his arm on your shoulder, using his thumb to draw circles on it - a gesture he knew calmed you down. "He's the idiot, and he will be a headless idiot when we are done with him" he said causing you to laugh out loud. The sound made Chibs smile. 

Just then some of the other men came bouncing through the door. You recognized them all from when you had visited Chibs over the years. Juice came through first, followed by Tig and Jax, and then your eyes landed on Happy's. "Hey guys" you said greeting them with a small smile and wave. The men nodded at you and smiled back, but they were too busy grabbing beers and lighting cigarettes to come and speak to you, except Happy who was hovering halfway between you and Chibs and the bar. You pointed to the empty seat at the other side of the table and Happy silently padded over, accepting your invitation. You pushed your beer over to him, inviting him to take a drink, which he did so, before wiping the rim and giving it back to you with a small smile.

"How you been?" Happy asked, genuinely curious. "How's Dale?" The name fell from his lips like venom from a snake. 

"She was just telling me about that asshole" Chibs piped up. "The twat broke up with her" you could have sworn you saw a slight smile grace Happy's face, but you couldn't be sure. "I was just telling Y/N about how we were going to find him and cho-" 

"Chop his balls off?" Happy finished, glancing at you briefly before looking at the Scotsman. 

"I was gonna say head, but balls work too brother" Chibs answered giving Happy a high five, making you laugh and shake your head at the action. 

Dale was soon forgotten as Chibs, Happy and you spent the night laughing, drinking and telling each other stories, which ended up being more embarrassing for you than the other two. 

"I'm going to bed now I think guys" You announced. You had no idea what time it was but a quick glance at your phone told you it was 230am. Time goes fast when you're having fun, and that saying was true for tonight. It was the most fun you had in ages. Chibs stood up to let you out and you bent down to give him a kiss on the cheek, doing the same to Happy too. He already had his cheek waiting for you, you noticed. 

Grabbing your case you headed for Chibs' dorm. The room you always crashed in when you came to visit. Chibs didn't mind sleeping on one of the benches in the clubhouse, or sometimes he even crashed in Tig or Juice's room. You quickly changed the sheets, brushed your teeth and then put one of Chibs t-shirts on. You slipped under the covers and sleep welcomed you quickly, which was the first time in 2 months that had happened.

You had now been in Charming for 2 weeks, and every day was a different day. You started helping out Gemma a bit in the office and you helped to tend the bar. It was the least you could do since they were letting you stay there. You and Happy had developed a strong bond over the last few weeks. After your first night, every night after that was spent with Happy. You guys played pool, drank beer, listened to music and one night Happy even had a go on the karaoke after you begging him constantly. You found yourself intrigued by the man nicknamed The Tacoma Killer by his brothers. 

You hadn't thought or spoken about Dale since the first night you got here. Your thoughts were slowly being taken over by Happy, and you were surprised by how quickly feelings had developed for him. You didn't expect to have feelings for someone so quickly after your last relationship, but you welcomed the feeling. And you knew that Happy felt something for you too. You noticed how he always went out of his way to bump into you, he always asked how you were, he made sure you had everything you needed and he also made you a cup of tea every morning and left it outside Chibs' door. In the 3 years you were with Dale, not once did he make you a cup of tea. 

"Need anything love?" Chibs asked you as you dried the glasses and placed them on the rack behind the bar. You looked up and noticed he had a crow eater on his arm, and you knew his intentions. 

You shook your head. "No, I'm fine thanks" you smiled. "Take your room tonight, give me 2 minutes and I'll change the sheets". Before Chibs could protest you had already left and changed the sheets, returning in a few minutes with your bag. 

"Where will you sleep?" He asked. 

"She'll sleep in my room" Happy said, suddenly appearing behind you, making you jump. "I'll sleep on the floor" he added before Chibs could shut the idea down.

Chibs looked at you and you nodded shyly, agreeing to the proposition. "Night love" he said leading his companion for the night to his dorm.

"Thanks Hap" you turned around and noticed how close Happy was to you. "You didn't have to do that" you smiled.

"Well I did" he said matter of factly. "You ready for bed now?" You nodded, placing the tea towel on the bar and wiping your sweaty hands on your jeans. 

"Lead the way" you murmured, getting slightly nervous. You followed Happy and he showed you where everything was. He pulled out a t-shirt and handed it to you, pointing to his bathroom so you could get changed. The t-shirt covered your thighs and ended at your shins, so you decided not to wear any trousers underneath. As you excited the bathroom, Happy was just finishing up making the bed. He pointed for you, telling you to get in and you did what you were told. 

He was mesmerising. A man who hardly said anything, yet the way he moved had you in awe. He took his kutte off and placed it over the end of the bed, leaving him in his vest and jeans. He took the jeans off too, not caring that you were clearly staring at him. 

Happy grabbed a sleeping bag out of the wardrobe and went to make his bed on the floor but you stopped him. 

"This is silly" you admitted "the bed is big enough for both of us, don't you think?" You had no idea where the sudden confidence came from, and you even caught Happy off guard with it too.

He blinked a few times, looking at you like you had suddenly grown three heads. "Yeah?" was all he could muster, and you nodded encouragingly, patting the space beside you for good measure. 

Happy's movements were slow. He maintained eye contact with you, looking for a trace if regret or hesitation but you didn't give him any. Instead, you curled up under the covers and waited for his warmth. A few seconds later he joined you in bed, switching the lamp off and you were both engulfed in darkness. Neither of you said anything, scared of breaking the silence.

"Goodnight Y/N" Happy whispered eventually. 

"Goodnight Hap" you replied contentedly. 

You were woken by some banging on the door that didn't seem to stop, even after you put a pillow over your head. 

"Happy? Happy? HAAAAAAAPY!" you recognized the voice as Chibs and he sounded like he was in a hurry or needed something urgently. 

You turned around and saw Happy was dead to the world. He looked peaceful but you knew if you didn't wake him up that Chibs was about to burst the door down. You poked him once on the chest but he didn't move. You poked him on the chest again, a bit harder this time but again it was no use. You then turned your poking into nudging and soon you had managed to wake him up. "If you don't let Chibs in he is about to break your door down" you laughed pointing to the door.

Happy huffed and clambered out of the bed. He unlocked the door and yanked it open, coming face to face with Chibs. 

"Finally!" He threw his hands up in the air exasperatedly. "What took ye so long?" 

Happy shrugged. "Y/N had to wake me up".

"Ye don't look like a man who slept on a hard floor all night" Chibs pointed out. 

"That's because he didn't" you said. Chibs poked his head around the corner and raised his eyebrows. "What?" You innocently shrugged "the bed is big enough for 2 of us". 

Chibs held his hands up, not saying anything else. "We can continue this discussion later" he said aiming that comment at you. "Jax needs us" he said to Happy. 

Happy nodded and shut the door, grabbing some clothes from his drawers and putting them on quickly. "Sorry" he mumbled "duty calls".

"Don't worry about it. I'll be waiting for you to get back" this time Happy kissed your cheek and you welcomed the feeling of his lips against your skin. 

"I'll look forward to it" he smiled, and walked out, but not before giving you one last smile. 

@rebelwrites @everyhowlmarksthedead @mayans-sauce @yourwonkywriter @pancakeisreading @mrsmarvelous1995 @encounterthepast @starrynite7114 @trulysuccubus @shelliechen @frightfulnite @scuzmunkie @blessedboo @jadesamhart @fangirlingaesthetics @i-love-scott-mccall @deeandbobbymcgee @gemini0410 @thisishowdynastiesareborn @meteora-fc @withmyteeth @est1887 @justjuiceyboy @destynelseclipsa @rocketqueen @lovebishoplosamiguelgalindo @queenbeered @lauraashley93 @talicat713 @jasminee97 @multiyfandomgirl40 @sadeyesgf @anangelwhodidntfall

[lenle-g]

Oh absolutely! <3333

Scott, making his way up to their Father's desk ready to slide his completed mission report into the holo-records, has no idea that his astronaut brother is even home until he discovers a pale, John-shaped lump sprawled limply in the middle of their circle of sofas.

“What the…?” Scott’s breath catches, his eyes blow wide. His heart does a funny, sharp twisting thing in the middle of his chest that it's probably really not supposed to, and there's a beat or two of pure, unacceptable shock in which Scott's world just tunnels in on the presence of what is clearly blood smeared across John's lax, waxy face.

Big brother's chest attempts a hitched, stunted thing that can only be called breathing in the barest sense before Scott is sprinting across their living space and bellowing into the Comm watch at his wrist for help.

“virGIL?!?” Scott trips down the step and into the circle and, in an action his patella will regret later, crashes hard to his knees at his unconscious brother's side, yelling his head off for the most experienced medic in the family as he does so. “VIRGIL! GET IN HERE, NOW!"

The ‘on my way’ is instantaneous - Scott’s tone had clearly sparked a need for speed. No time to do anything but pull up the GPS location and run because there's a messy line of blood leaking from the astronaut’s nose, similar splotches of red pooling in his ears and an awful jagged slash scabbing across his forehead. John's breathing is light and shallow, his skin tone verging on grey and, perhaps most worryingly, he hasn’t responded at all to all the shouting Scott’s been doing and that’s just strikingly wrong. John's always first awake, first to respond - the young man has to be up and about in an instant if any of Thunderbird Five's alarms sound and so he’s trained to spring awake and into action at the slightest thing. They have to be careful not to walk past his room at night, for goodness sake, in case the sound of feet in the corridor wakes him.

This is not right.

Scott takes a sharp breath, the air like glass and his heart racing with terror as he reaches a fearful hand toward his sibling.

"John?" He tries, his fingers bumping against a hard chest. He lays his palm flat over his brother's heart and gives him a shake. "Hey Johnny, come on, wake up." John’s head lolls limply with the motion, and Scott feels a little sick at it, but gets no other obvious results.

"Ok.” He says aloud to himself, trying to think past the rising gorge of panic in his throat. He feels like a deer in headlights in a way he never would on a rescue. "Think Scott!" He slaps a palm against his own forehead, starting to get angry with himself now. "Patient non-responsive. What do you do?" Try and wake them up seems like the obvious answer, though that's failing so far.

Should he roll him into the recovery position, or should he not move him at all? Should he pinch his nose shut or might he choke? Should he...

"Come on John." Scott taps his brother's cheek softly, then a little harder, getting desperate to stir some kind of response now. Scott has to make a conscious effort to avoid getting blood on his fingers from the sheer amount of it that’s smeared across his brother’s face, still leaking sluggishly from John’s nose and spotted on the cushion that's supporting his head from where it's dripped from his ears. There's blood on the astronaut’s fingertips like he'd been trying to stem the flow before he'd passed out.

Hell. That’s not a sign of anything good.

A hundred horrifying scenarios come to mind. There’s so much that can go wrong living in space, and it can go wrong so quickly that you don’t even know you’re in danger until you’re dead. John could be dying right now in front of him and Scott doesn’t know what to...

"Scott! What's going…?" Virgil, skidding into the room with slippery socks against polished wood, trails off as he goes through a similar process of discovery shock to Scott’s, his eyes wide as saucers. “Jesus.” He says before he can stop himself. “What happened?” 

“I don’t know.” Scott can barely breathe around the anxiety. His whole mouth tastes like it's crammed full of fizzy static terror. He scoots around the back of the sofa, leaning over it to give Virgil, who's had the sense to grab a medkit from the wall, more room to work. “I just found him like this.” Scott explains, “How can I help?” He's kept his palm against his brother’s chest the whole time - the feeling of John's heart fluttering beneath his fingertips is the only thing keeping him from freaking out right now. 

Virgil’s knelt at John’s side, his fingers pressed to the pulse at his brother’s wrist. There's a deep, worried furrow between his thick eyebrow.

"Oxygen?" Scott suggests, loitering nervously, but Virgil shakes his head.

"Wait till the bleed stops. His BMP is a little fast. Help me roll him on his side so he's less likely to choke." Scott, complying, nearly kicks himself for not doing that earlier. It's hard to ignore how limp and silent their brother is as they do so - there's something incredibly unsettling about just how floppy he is - like a dead thing washed up on the beach.

Virgil distracts Scott by handing him a pair of latex gloves, snapping a pair on over his own fingers to match. He guides his brother's hand to pinch John's nose hard around the cartilage, clearly hoping it'll stem the bleed. Scott grimaces like he's just been asked to chop the man's leg off, but, to his credit, he holds on tight.

"What's brought this on then, hmm John?" Virgil asks, busy wrapping a pressure cuff around a limp forearm. "Some kind of sudden onset space-related injury?" He muses, inflating the cuff, honey brown eyes glued to the numbers, "Something must have gone wrong with re-entry.” 

He guesses, “A change in pressure in his head from being back on the planet could have ruptured something." 

And John's just been up here bleeding, alone, for who knows how long.

“Ah, his blood pressure is sky high.” Virgil reports the result grimly, noting them and his other readings down holographically at his wrist. "Barotrauma makes sense." It also means that this isn’t going to be a quick fix, John could be out of action for weeks. But what’s happened has happened and all they can do now is treat the symptoms. 

“Right. Let’s get him patched up. Astronauts typically lose ten to fourteen percent of their blood volume while up in space,” Virgil explains, ripping open a packet of steri-stips with his teeth and fumbling to peel one from its backing with his big fingers. “It usually takes a day or two home to regain it, so keep holding his nose while I patch up this cut. John can’t afford to lose much extra right now.”

Virgil pinches the gash together and works on sticking a neat, clean line of steri strips along it to try and keep it from bleeding.

"He's had long enough to get changed out of his spacesuit." Scott points out, he's been thinking about this while he watches his brother work. "But he didn’t flag anything up with us. It must have happened pretty suddenly." Only that doesn't quite add up because the angry red scrape at his temple that Virgil’s precautionarily sticking back together suggests some kind of earlier accident that they should have known about. “The way he’s hit his head looks like he collapsed, but there’s nothing hard to hit it on here.” There's anxious sweat, sticky around Scott's collar at the puzzle of it all. “Why wouldn’t he have called us?” His fingers ball into tight fists, his nails digging hard into his palms. Both rows of perfect teeth press hard against each other, grinding on his rising anger.

"I don't kn…" Virgil starts, but then stops, abruptly. Scott nearly drowns in a wave of terror that John's just died or something, but then he notices the same flutter of ginger lashes that his brother clearly has.

John’s coming round.

"John?" Scott prompts carefully, leaning further over the back of the sofa in a way that has Virgil worried that he's going to end up on top of them. "Hey, can you hear me, bro?" There's a pinched, pained scrunch appearing on their sibling’s forehead, tugging at the new plastic stitches. Slowly, the fluttering turns into blinking, but it takes a minute or two for hazy blue-green eyes to work out what focus is.

“John.” The relief in Virgil’s voice is almost palpable. “Do you know where you are? Do you remember what happened?”

It seems a bit early for interrogation. John is blinking glassily at Virgil, his breathing a little hitched. He’s clearly just as confused to be there as the rest of them are. Scott lets up on pinching his nose and both hovering brothers are relieved to find the bleeding seems to have stopped.

“H-Happened?” John eventually asks, blearily. He’s... not sure. All John knows for sure is that he hurts very badly, all over. His head is pounding and the world seems distant and fuzzy like he’s viewing it through a veil of gauze. His brother’s voice sounds muffled and warped, like he’s listening from underwater. "I... I don’t know…" John's mouth shapes the words, though they taste coppery and strange and the vowels sound wet. One of his brother’s presses the hard plastic of an oxygen mask over his mouth and throbbing nose and that doesn't much help his comprehensibility either.

"It’s ok, I should have expected you’d be confused." Virgil smoothes a calming hand the size of a dinner plate gently over his brother's hair, the fine ginger strands slippery between his fingers. "Give it a minute or two, ok? It looks like you hit your head.”

While he waits, Virgil finds a sterile wipe and begins ever so gently cleaning rusty red from John’s skin. A horrific amount of colour leeches out into the fabric as he does so, the stain spreading through the wet fibres and creeping up toward his fingers. John sinks into silence again - staring blankly to the side, blinking lots like he's dizzy even though he’s lying down.

Last thing John really remembers clearly he’d been in the Space Elevator, making his way down from Thunderbird Five. It’d been a rougher ride than usual, but nothing that had screamed imminent danger. Though… if he thinks harder about it, he realises his head had started feeling floaty around halfway down, and there’d been that warning bleep on the 02 readings that he couldn’t explain. He remembers a brief, strange spill of red pressure readings onto his holoscreens, a warning error message, or several, but he would swear they hadn’t felt significant at the time. He’d just felt… floaty and distant. Which should have been a warning sign all of its own.

From the way his head is pounding now, John realises that the craft must have been depressuring around him without him even noticing. It’s a lucky thing that the Elevator is so fast from orbit to Earth. A cold, horrible realisation slithers up John’s spine that, had it been any slower at it, he probably would have died.

"I… the readings were wrong." John manages, though as he does so Virgil notices flecks of blood on his lips and teeth from where it's trickled down the back of his throat. “I think the Elevator was venting atmosphere and I didn’t…” He blinks again, slow and sluggish. “It felt off, but not… I didn’t think anything of it.” He adds. “I… My head hurts.” He squeezes both eyes shut again, his face noticeably growing paler.

“Hang in there J, I’ll give you something for the pain and to lower that BP in a sec,” Virgil promises, his voice considerately much quieter. He lays a palm against his brother’s forehead to feel the heat of it, and is relieved to find it warm but dry. No fever. “We’ll get Brains to check the Elevator over before anyone goes near it again,” Virgil promises, from somewhere above him. “Do you remember hitting your head?”

“I think… uh, I think I fell down the stairs.” The astronaut decides promptly without even opening his eyes, surprising neither of them. “I remember being at the top after getting changed in my room... but I’ve got no memory of anything after that…” 

Scott’s got an awful mental image of his brother dragging himself semi-consciously to the sofa before he passed out and feels sick about it.

“Jesus John...” Big brother echoes Virgil’s sentiment from earlier, then trails off, not knowing what else to say. Virgil clearly sees right through him, recognising Scott’s indecision and wallowing fear as something that really won’t help John right now, and shifts into his all-business-get-things-done-mode.

“Right.” The bigger man says, clear cut, “I want to get a brain scan to check everything’s all right in there.” He imagines there’ll be some cerebral swelling and he’ll have to go through all the cognitive and hearing tests, but John seems much more lucid now than he’d anticipated and that’s a good sign. “And we’re having a talk about your platelet count when you're conscious enough to process it." Virgil promises, narrowing his eyes at John, who, to his credit, at least has the decency to look sheepish about it. “If you’re feeling ill from re-entry… more ill than usual,” He corrects himself, “You need to let us know.” There’s a sigh and then Virgil’s voice goes a lot softer. “You shouldn’t feel like the world has to end before you stop working, John. You shouldn’t be working like this at all. If you’re going to live up in space for such long stints you need to…”

“Take the proper precautions. I know, I know.” John rubs a weak hand over his throbbing eyes. He clearly thinks now isn’t the time for a lecture either. “NASA trained, remember?”

“Oh, I remember.” Virgil isn’t letting this one go. “Sometimes you need to remember it too.” He adds, pointedly. “Right, let's get you to bed for now. I'll have to do some scans and a blood test and monitor your pulse and breathing, but I don't see any reason that can't happen in your own room - clean sheets, blackout blinds, the works." He knows the signs that John’s got a space-induced headache from a mile off, and this must be a particular cracker of one, no pun intended. “I'll have to get some saline and glucose in you to bring your levels up to something acceptable." He adds, apologetically, because that means an IV, which John hates, but really it can't be helped. “We'll have to sit with him in shifts.” His focus shifts to Scott. “If he throws up, check for blood and let me know.”

“I’m not gonna throw up.” John tells him, but he doesn’t sound convinced. “Let’s go...” He shifts his bodyweight, his head wobbly and weak and, with both his brother’s diving to provide support, he makes to sit up. The world shutters abruptly into black and white static but, somehow, John remains sitting, waiting for it to pass.

“Hey Virg…” After a few moments, a weak hand curls its long fingers around his wrist, and Virgil finds his bloodied brother looking guiltily up at him. “I… Sorry about this.” There’re flecks of paint at his brother’s cuffs like he’d been interrupted while painting. He turns to his older brother and makes a note of the fear still there. “Scott, I… thankyou.” John breathes, in a rare, awkward moment of vulnerability. “I don’t…” He can’t actually imagine what might have happened if they’d not been there - if he’d been alone like he usually is.

“I’m just glad you’re ok.” Scott presses a warm hand to the back of his brother’s neck, “You sure scared me there, little bro, I thought...” He trails off, leaving Virgil to hum something agreeable in his place as he scoops a thick arm around John’s back.

“Right.” Virgil says again, focusing himself and his brother’s firmly away from the what-ifs, “Time to get you to bed.”

[pikemoreno]

lucky

pairing: marcus moreno x gn!reader

request: from @chibi-liz05​ “Can I request a Marcus Moreno fic (or ficlet, or drabble) where either Marcus or reader gets hurt (not seriously hurt) and end up in a med bay, kinda woozy from pain meds and they have a funny and/or cute conversation when the other one goes to check on the one hurt? Please.”

warnings: mentions of blood, injuries, death. it starts out pretty darn angsty, but gets silly and fluffy i promise. these two are hella married.

word count: 2.7k

a/n: honestly this is nothing like you asked for until the end? but this lil drabble idea inspired this whole one shot so i hope you enjoy what you helped my brain create? i loved this, needless to say.

i love this himbo and i’m so happy to write for him.

And thank you for the medical advice to @disgruntledspacedad! Thanks for helping me choose the right drug! 😆

wanna join a taglist? | masterlist

This was Marcus’s least favorite part of his job. 

As the newly deemed Director of the Heroics, he was the one to decide who went out on what mission when and with who. Normally it wasn’t too tall of an order. After all, he was chosen as director for good reason. He was perfect for the job. He was smart, organized, resourceful, and tried in everything to understand people-- whether that be in their personal habits or in their superpowered strengths. He was often commended for his ability to form the perfect teams for whatever job arose; and it came pretty naturally, it really did. 

That is, until emotion got involved, until personal bias compromised his decision making.

He was determined to not let you go on the mission, absolutely not. The band of powered individuals the team was going after were incredibly dangerous and unpredictable.They’d been a problem for months and this mission was all or nothing. The high stakes and vulnerable position made him incredibly reluctant to make you a part of the team that was heading out under the cover of night to apprehend them. When he didn’t name you among them, he was immediately countered by the rest of the heroes in the room about the choice. 

By all the accounts they were right. Given the tactics of the mission at hand, your teleportation abilities were perfect for the job. And if he was being even a little more honest, he’d agree with Miracle Guy that not sending you with them was a “disservice to the team.” It was and he knew it. In a very un-Marcus Moreno move, he was making the completely wrong choice and he wasn’t going to let the sound judgement of anyone else change his mind.

“Psion is not going and that is final,” he boomed. The room became deathly silent. “Now, go get ready. You leave in 20.” But no one moved, no one could. They were glued to the floor, watching their unflappable leader become uncharacteristically flapped. 

Marcus was the one to stomp out of the room first and you followed him without hesitation.

“Marcus,” you called, nearly running to keep up with long strides. “Marcus!” 

He didn’t even deign to turn around.

In a blink you were now in front of Marcus, hands out to stop him from continuing on without talking to you.

“No teleporting outside of work, Psion” he snapped lowly, but he still obliged your silent request and remained in front of you. You blinked at the small outburst.

“Mind losing the ‘tude so we can talk like adults?” You countered. Marcus lowered his head and whispered an apology. At that you stepped closer to him, your hands coming to rest on his tense shoulders in a soothing manner. “What’s bothering you, love? You know you can talk to me. This isn’t like you at all.”

When his eyes met yours again they were pained.

“It’s too dangerous,” was all he could get out at the moment. His exhale was unsteady as he leaned in, his forehead meeting yours in a much more “Marcus” gesture that brought you both back down to earth.

You sighed, fingers carding through the short hairs at the nape of his neck. “Of course it is. It always is.”

“Not like this,” he countered, biting his lip. “These guys are no joke.”

“Neither am I,” you grinned, tapping his nose with your own before pulling back to look at his face in full. He laughed a little, but it wasn’t whole-hearted, you saw it in his eyes.

“And I trust you. I do. I know you’re capable. I just--”

“Worry?” 

“Yeah, that.” His eyebrows were furrowed. You softly ran a thumb across the harsh lines it made, smoothing them and making him smile.

“I’m not going to lie to you and say nothing is going to happen. Because it might.” He winced at the words, not wanting to think too hard on what “it” could be. “But I’m prepared and so is the rest of the team. We’re gonna watch each other’s backs like we always do and getting everyone out safely is going to be our priority over completing the mission. It’s going to be business as usual and it’s going to be OK. I’m going to be OK. You’ve gotta let me go. They need me out there tonight.”

“I know,” he sighed. “Just… Be careful. Be ready in 10.” You sighed in relief.

“Thank you, Marcus.” You kissed him. “It’s gonna be fine.” He kissed you. “We’ve got ‘em this time. I know it.” One last kiss, strong and lingering. You tilted your head, an invitation-- no, a plead-- for a deeper kiss, which he obliged before being the one to break it. 

“Go,” he murmured, “Or you won’t make it before they leave.” You nodded, taking a deep breath. “Be careful. I love you.”

“I love you too.” You smiled through the sudden onset of nerves before turning and walking down the hallway to join up with the rest of the team.

***

That had been hours ago. Now Marcus was in command with a skeleton crew, the late hours of the assignment sending most of the support and technical team home. He quickly decided that was probably for the best. The sweet little interns did not need to see their mentor so stressed and antsy. No, he had to be “on” for them, he had to be the Marcus Moreno. And he couldn’t be that right now. Right now he was an anxious husband and teammate. 

“Where are they now, Connie?” he asked the poor woman at the comms desk behind him for the upteenth time that hour.

“Trackers say they’re still in the hanger, sir. Last update was that they had the grunts and were waiting for the ring leader to respond to their distress call.”

He wasn’t responding. It’d been two hours. And that was a major cause for concern.

“Tell them to just bring who they have back here and we’ll keep searching for him. This is still a win as far as I’m concerned.”

The man who was on comms moved to press the talk button to speak to the team, but the comm crackled to life before he had the opportunity. 

“It’s an ambush!” Miracle Guy yelled from the other side, “We’re sitting ducks out here!”

Marcus’ heart dropped into his stomach. 

“Go! Go! Get back to the-” He heard your panicked voice call out, the sentence interrupted by a cry of pain. 

The room spun. Marcus knew he was yelling but he couldn’t hear a word of what he said. It all just sounded like white noise now, mixing with the jumbled thoughts in his head and the ringing in his ears. He must’ve said something right though, because everyone was working. One was arranging a rescue, one was calling out the vitals of the team via the trackers on their wrists-- everything seemed fine by the tone of voice, but Marcus couldn’t be sure. He couldn’t grasp a word that was said to him. He was totally on autopilot, only able to respond in vague nods of yes or no. 

“Hey,” one voice next to him cut through the fog and he looked up to Lucas, the man who ran comms, “They’re going to be ok.”

Marcus’s response was non-committal, not wanting to pull the young man down to share his current state of mind, but not allowing himself to share in his confident optimism either.

The next hour went by in a whirlwind and the next thing he knew, Marcus was downstairs in the medical wing waiting on you and your team to arrive. He’d been in this position before and the thought of it made his throat close up. The images flashed through his mind of a gurney and too much blood and a confused little girl and black clothing on a rainy day in April. 

He closed his eyes harder as if to block it all out. 

No, it couldn’t be like last time.

It was then that he heard the distinct sound of the sliding doors opening and the murmur of a small group of people. His eyes shot open and, though he stood to his feet, he felt that he could collapse in relief. There was no gurney. Minimal blood-- just a couple of cuts on your face. You were hobbling in, arm around Miracle Guy as he helped you keep pressure off of your left leg. Your face was pained, which probably should have concerned him more, but he was just too happy to see you upright… Breathing. As long as he had that, you could get through anything else together. 

He watched as the medical team surrounded all of you, asking questions, prodding delicately at injuries. Marcus could vaguely hear your voice cutting in and out through it all. 

“Super strength… Kicked… Broken.” 

They had asked you a couple more unheard questions that you responded to in a simple yes or no and then they were leading you to sit on one of the beds. He watched as you went, noticing the way you were looking around for… Something.

Oh.

He smiled.

You were looking for him.

In all his panic and then relief, it hadn’t occurred to him that you would want to see him just as badly in your current state. His heart warmed at the way your tired eyes lit up when they met his. He all but ran to you. 

“Hey baby,” he cooed, leaning in to capture your lips in a deep kiss. He’d never been more in awe of you, that you were real, that way you were his, that he could kiss you freely. When he pulled away he observed your injuries closer. Head wounds were always scary amounts of bloody, but he could see that all of the cuts were minor. He brushed a strand of hair away from where sweat and blood had plastered it to your forehead. “What happened? How are you feeling?”

“I’ve been better,” you hissed as a stab of pain surged through your leg. He looked down to observe it. His immediate diagnosis wasn’t a good one. It was terribly hard to break a femur, but he was certain this was exactly what it would look and feel like. “Some super-strength asshole kicked me in the thigh to knock me down and--” You winced again. “They think she broke my femur, and I would have to agree.”

“I have to say I’m thinking that too,” he sighed. “I’m so sorry.” He kissed your forehead in between the cuts.

“What are you sorry for? You’re the one that tried to keep me from going. I forced you to let me go.”

“I should’ve stood my ground and had you and the team be mad at me,” he said completely seriously. 

“You’re ridiculous.” You side-eyed him, but smiled through the words. One of the medical staff returned at that moment, bringing over supplies to clean your cuts and asking if you’d like something for the pain while they got prepped for surgery. You nodded eagerly. 

“I’ll take this over,” Marcus said, hands open to take the first aid kit, “If you want to go get that?”

“Oh, sir I couldn’t ask you to--” The young woman gawked, slightly unbelieving that her boss’s boss’s boss would volunteer to do her job.

“You’re not asking me, I’m asking you.”

“A-- Yes, right away.” She handed him the kit and seemed to flee his presence to get an IV ready. You sat in silence a few moments as he prepared everything. He seemed lost, even in this small task. It took him longer than it should’ve to get his ducks in a row.

“Someone’s a little edgy,” you prodded, watching as too-intense eyes focused on cleaning dried blood from your forehead. He shook his head, eyes softening, but maintaining their focus. The whole endeavor was very clearly an attempt at keeping his hands as busy as his mind was. 

“I’d thought I‘d lost you. I thought...” His jaw tightened-- and it wasn’t due to the effort of wiping up blood. You stopped his hand from continuing its ministrations, lacing your fingers together.

“That it was all happening again?” you whispered. 

“It was like deja vu, baby. Everything was just like before.” The last word almost came out like a whimper. 

“But it’s not. I’m right here. I’m ok.” You brought your forehead to meet his comfortingly. The cuts stung just a little at the touch, but you remained there with him, feeling a deep, grounding breath fan lightly across your face.

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

You kissed his nose and pulled away as you heard the medic return with the Versed for the pain. Marcus stayed right by your side as you were put on the IV, a hand staying firmly on yours. Which more for him than for you if he was honest. It brought him back to reality and out of his head. He no longer had to imagine the worst, because the best had happened. You were really there. It wasn’t a repeat of the aching horror of seven years before, the day that still had you shaking him awake from unspoken nightmares. You’d made it home to him and Missy-- but he was going to be hard-pressed to go against his better judgment again, no matter how much the team needed you.

“Alright, you’ll start to feel it in just a few seconds. We’ll be back soon to take you into surgery, ok?” the medic explained to you as the IV was in place. You nodded. 

“In the meantime, let me keep working on this,” Marcus gestured to the bandages in the kit. As he got to work, he watched the look in your eyes totally change, the Versed taking effect. 

“Are you alright?” he asked, covering the cut that just barely grazed your right eyebrow.

“Yeah, I’m good,” you sighed dreamily in a total demeanor change. The whole room lit up in his eyes. Marcus grinned at the way your posture slumped just slightly in relaxation. “And how are you?” you winked. Oh, this was going to be fun. He really needed to keep you talking.

“I’m doing great. Happy to be here with you, sweetheart. Now, sit still while I take care of this last cut,” he cooed. 

“Ok,” you giggled. “What a charmer.” 

“I try my best, darling.” He played along, enjoying the way the Versed had turned you into a starstruck girl with a crush.

“Oh noooo,” you squeaked suddenly.Marcus panicked, checking you over quickly for further injury. 

“What is it? Are you ok?” 

But you only grabbed his left hand, holding it up.

“You’re married!” 

Marcus blinked. What was in that stuff they’d given you? You put your face in your hands and Marcus tried to contain his laughter at the way your voice was muffled by your fingers. “You’ve been so nice and caring! I wanted to ask you on a dateeee. I’m so sorry if I came on too strong.”

“Baby,” he called with a sweet lilt to his voice-- still trying to hold in a laugh. 

“You shouldn’t call me that,” you sighed sadly, pouting, “You’re married. We can’t be together.” 

“Of course I’m married,” he held your left hand up now, “I’m married to you, you goof.” You blinked at the silvery ring on your finger. 

“Oh!” you practically yelled, “That’s so cool!” Marcus’ heart warmed at the way your eyes lit up at the realization. Even drugged out of your mind you were excited to be with him. He couldn’t help but feel likewise.

“I agree,” he smiled, “It’s very cool.” He intertwined his fingers and yours. 

“I’m so lucky,” you grinned toothily in response. It was so unlike the smiles you usually gave him: too exaggerated and, in a word, dopey. But it held the same affection. 

“No, I’m definitely the lucky one,” he countered. Your grin faltered slightly as you grew sleepy-- another possible effect of the Versed, he guessed. “Now, go ahead and lay back for me ok? I’ll see you as soon as you’re out of surgery.” You nodded in agreement and then right off to sleep.

Oh, he could not wait for you to get out so he could tell you about just how “lucky” the two of you were.