#but at the end i get beautiful and poetic! and hopeful and soft its great | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

latte-fairytaekwoon · 4 years

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𝓣𝓱𝓮 𝓓𝓲𝓪𝓻𝔂 𝓞𝓯 𝓙𝓪𝓷𝓮 (𝓨𝓪𝓷𝓭𝓮𝓻𝓮!𝓚𝓪𝓷𝓰 𝓨𝓮𝓸𝓼𝓪𝓷𝓰) 𝓡𝓪𝓽𝓮𝓭

𝑃𝑎𝑖𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔: 𝑌𝑎𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑟𝑒! 𝐾𝑎𝑛𝑔 𝑌𝑒𝑜𝑠𝑎𝑛𝑔 (𝐴𝑡𝑒𝑒𝑧)/ 𝐴𝑐𝑡𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑠! 𝑅𝑒𝑎𝑑𝑒𝑟 (𝐹𝑒𝑚𝑎𝑙𝑒)

𝐺𝑒𝑛𝑟𝑒: 𝐴𝑛𝑔𝑠𝑡, 𝐹𝑙𝑢𝑓𝑓, 𝑆𝑚𝑢𝑡, 𝐻𝑜𝑟𝑟𝑜𝑟/𝑃𝑠𝑦𝑐ℎ𝑜𝑙𝑜𝑔𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑙 𝑇ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑟, 1930'𝑠 𝐸𝑟𝑎.

𝑊𝑜𝑟𝑑 𝐶𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑡: 4.3𝐾

𝑊𝑎𝑟𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑠: 𝑌𝑎𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑏𝑒ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑖𝑜𝑟 𝑠𝑢𝑐ℎ 𝑎𝑠 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑙𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑜𝑏𝑠𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑜𝑛, 𝑠𝑒𝑥𝑢𝑎𝑙 𝑓𝑎𝑛𝑡𝑎𝑠𝑖𝑒𝑠, 𝑝𝑠𝑦𝑐ℎ𝑜𝑠𝑖𝑠, 𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑜𝑖𝑎, 𝑔𝑜𝑟𝑒/𝑏𝑙𝑜𝑜𝑑𝑦 𝑠𝑐𝑒𝑛𝑒𝑠, 𝑠𝑢𝑖𝑐𝑖𝑑𝑒, 𝑑𝑒𝑎𝑡ℎ, 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑑𝑒𝑟 𝑖𝑠 𝑟𝑒𝑓𝑒𝑟𝑟𝑒𝑑 𝑡𝑜 𝑎𝑠 '𝐽𝑎𝑛𝑒'.

𝑇𝑎𝑔 𝐿𝑖𝑠𝑡: @hanatiny @yunhofingers @multidreams-and-desires @aixy-hpsa

"𝐴𝑠 𝐼 𝑏𝑢𝑟𝑛 𝑎𝑛𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑝𝑎𝑔𝑒, 𝐴𝑠 𝐼 𝑙𝑜𝑜𝑘 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑤𝑎𝑦, 𝐼 𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑡𝑟𝑦 𝑡𝑜 𝑓𝑖𝑛𝑑 𝑚𝑦 𝑝𝑙𝑎𝑐𝑒, 𝐼𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑑𝑖𝑎𝑟𝑦 𝑜𝑓 𝐽𝑎𝑛𝑒..."- 𝐵𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝐵𝑒𝑛𝑗𝑎𝑚𝑖𝑛

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The dark and eerie dense fog that shrouded around the somber and serene graveyard felt as cold as the lifeless bodies that now layed under the soft brown earth. Sculpted angels, white crucifixes, and even bells served as ornaments for some of the tombstones and burial grounds that were meticulously scattered throughout the cemetery. Underneath shadow of the clouds that darkened the daylight, with only slight slivers of rays from the sun piercing through slight cracks as his guide, the handsome male with skin as pale as death itself and a face that seemed to be sculpted in heaven took slow and heavy steps, ignoring all other distractions around him, including the rustling of leaves, a tiny woodland creature scurrying past him or even the distant noises of the groundskeeper......or body snatchers.

None of that mattered to him, his gaze was only focused on the magnificently sculpted stone that he was now standing in front of. He let out a heavy sigh, tears held back as his hand gently grazed upon the letters that had been beautifully engraved into the hard block.

Jane Bryan~ 1917-1939

Sinking to his knees, he stared at the cold hearted reality that he was now living in, unable to feel anything but a hollow and aching void inside his body as his dearly beloved soulmate had been merciless torn apart from his side, before he ever got the chance to confess his deep love and admiration for her.

Reaching into the inside of his dark grey trenchcoat, he pulled out a crimson red journal, the sides of the pages that had once been white, were now more of a light beige color that had come as a result of time, the once smooth pages now somewhat wrinkled up from the constant use it had been given. He skipped all the meaningless first entries, having already read and re-read them many times in the sanctuary of his and comfort of his home, it wasn't anything that most of the public didn't already know. The motivation and driving force of why she chose her career path in the first place, the struggles and poverty she faced at the beginning, and finally her sudden breakthrough and rise to fame. Although many would argue that had it not been for that, he would have never found out about her and would have never even spared a glance at her.....

But Yeosang knew that was all blasphemous accusations that had absolutely no foundation. From the beginning, probably even before his own birth, he already desired and yearned for her. He was destined to be with her....

But alas, fate was cruel to strip him of his hope and chance at happiness, with nothing more than a few pages to help him endure these past days that were nothing but a torment to him.

Finally, coming to the section that truly mattered, he began recounting all the events and scenes that had elapsed over the past year......

One that ended in tragedy.

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"My lady, these just arrived for you."

Looking at her sharply dressed maid through her vanity mirror, the diva smiled and gesture for her to place them on the dresser next to her. After dismissing her maid, the girl put down the hairbrush that had been thoroughly combing through her [insert color] hair, the locks at the very end slightly turned outward from the previous curling session they had endured the day before. Scanning through the series of letters and gifts her charming and adoring fans had sent to her, a bright smile was plastered on her face, enthusiastic about getting to open them and read their comforting and heartwarming words they had to say for her.

As she came across the last stack, her heart dropped when she felt the familiar feeling of the yellow parchment envelope that she had been so used to receiving by now. As per custom, two rose buds had been carefully tied to it, one pure white and the other crimson red. Her thumb brushed across the seal that had the letters "KY" imprinted on it, waiting to be broken off so she could peer into the nearly poetic phrases of adoration that would often spill out from the page.

Taking a deep breath, and against her better judgment, she broke off the seal and with shaky hands, she held up the paper and began reading it aloud:

"My dearest Jane,

You looked absolutely ethereal in your latest film. As soon as it was released, I was sitting in front of my television, watching in earnest every little detail, every wave of your hands, every step your feet took and every smile you had. Words alone cannot fully describe how incredibly beautiful and mesmerizing you are..........

In short, to this day I still remain your most loyal and greatest admirer.

-KY."

It would have been nothing more to another love letter to her, had the postscript at the bottom of every page not sent shockwaves coursing down her spine.

"P.S, have you considered wearing more light blue? The chiffon blouse and skirt set you wore last week while walking through the gardens looked ethereal on you love."

Her hands dropped the paper, letting it fall directly onto the marble floor. With shaking pupils, her gaze wandered across her room, inspecting every nook and corner, delusion setting in as she felt as though she were being watched by a pair of eyes she could hardly make out. Cautiously standing up, one of her hands wrapped around the yellow silk robe she was wearing, fingers delicately tightening the belt that held it in place. Through dragged out steps, she went to the large and lonely window that looked directly out into the grounds of her enormous house, the many rose bushes and apple trees could still be seen from the moonlight cascading down on it.

As she looked out into the night view, her eyes scanning around for any unusual sightings. She could swear there was somebody moving across the fields, slowly getting closer and closer towards her......she was certain she could make out a slim yet powerful silhouette of an unknown male charging straight at her, hands soon to be pressed against the cold glass....

With a sharp gasp, she quickly drew the long curtains to cover the window, nearly falling backwards onto the floor from how fast she backed away from the window. Through shaky breaths, she quickly pulled back the covers and practically jumped into the mattress of her king sized bed. Tucking herself under the warm embrace of the cotton blankets, she looked over at the lamp by her bedside table. Hesitantly, she reached out to turn it off, but then decided against it. Instead, she opened the drawer in the dresser and pulled out her most trusted and confidential friend, accompanied by its black inked partner. Opening up to the next blank page, she began scribbling down words in an effort to calm her mind and hopefully ease her into a deep slumber.

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The snowy haired male writhed around in his bed, tossing and turning constantly, eyes shut tight with a burning desire to drift off into one of his many dream escapades so he could see his beloved soulmate once again. It was the only thing keeping him sane during the days he had to spend locked up in his home, unable to go wander off into the great estate and spend his day accompanying his beautiful lady as she strolled through her gardens, often attending to the flowers herself because she couldn't trust anyone else to treat them with the tenderness that she meticulously bestowed upon them.

Letting out a pained whimper, he turned his head and coughed slightly into his mouth. His throat was sore, chills running through his body and a tiny trail of mucus sometimes needing to be wiped off his nose, all a result of the the nights he spent outside her window, watching it intensely until the light inside turned off, and even after that, he'd still stay an hour or two more, just in case she was awoken by another one of those terrible nightmares that often frightened and terrorized her, unwilling to let her rest.

He was in agony, he hadn't seen his love in 4 days and it was excruciatingly painful for him not knowing any news about her. Perhaps it was the hours without sleep he had gone through, perhaps his fever was making him get a lucid dream, or perhaps his mind was drifting off in vivid imagination, eyes finally closing......

The cold feeling he had endured was suddenly replaced by a warm body laying next to him, gentle fingers running themselves through his soft hair, earning a groan out of his lips. Opening his eyes, he was blessed by the sight of the most dazzling eyes known to mankind, plump and luscious lips curled into the most breathtaking smile that was aimed for him and only him.

"Jane......my dear Jane..."

One of her fingers pressed against his lips, hushing him quietly.

"I've missed you so much my darling." She admitted, eyes looking sad as her mouth formed into a tiny pout.

Cupping her face, he brought his own face close to hers, his nose nuzzling against hers, foreheads pressed against each other.

"I've missed you too my love."

Unable to hold back any longer, his lips hungrily sought after hers, his body shifting so that he was now hovering above hers. Her hands grasped at his neck, mouth parting to allow his wet muscle entrance inside. Once having been satisfied with that, he moved to her neck, planting wet and desperate kisses across her jaw, down her neck where a chain of purple blotches began to take form like one of the many chokers she was often donning. His hands kneaded at her soft and tender breasts that were covered by her silk nightgown, the pale blue color looking ethereal on her skin. In a rather flimsy manner, his veiny hands pulled the straps off her shoulders and began to remove the article of clothing from her body, the nightgown getting lost somewhere underneath the blankets covering them. He looked backed down as his eyes beheld her in her most beautiful form, completely bare and nude, nothing hidden away from his eyes that were practically ravishing her body already.

Stripping himself out of his own garments, he leaned back down, elbows resting on each side of her head as he sought out her lips once more, faint moans and gasps getting caught in his mouth as he slowly began to enter her, her walls stretching out to accommodate and welcome his thick length into her warm and velvet sanctuary.

"Yeosang..."

He let out a soft groan everytime she mentioned his name, prompting his thrusts to get faster and have her chanting his name over and over like a mantra until she was spilling herself all over his cock, his own sticky release following soon after, leaving them both in a state of bliss and ecstasy.

"I love you so much." His deep and husky voice whispered into her ear.

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Holding up the torn off page, his other hand lit one of the corners with the lighter he had brought with him, watching it slowly become engulfed in flames until it was nothing but nothing but another blackened ruin that now layed on the dirt underneath him, surrounded by many other companions that had been blazed up by the same fate. He let out a sigh and looked back at the tombstone in front of him.

"Why didn't you tell me? Why hide all your pain and suffering from me?........"

He stilled before speaking out the last part.

"And why could I not see it?"

He who watched over her constantly and studied everything about her, how did it never cross his mind that his sweetheart was living in constant fear and agitation from some unknown force that seemed to haunt her inside the walls of her own home? The very place where she was supposed to feel protected and safe? It made absolutely no sense. No matter how many times he read over the last few pages, he could not find one clue or detail alluding to the cause of her phobia.

"The place I once called my haven, has now become my hell, my place of torment. I can't eat, sleep, lounge around nor do any other activities without feeling trapped......I see them....hear them... even as I drift off into the night, the times where I can sleep for at least an hour or two, I can feel their very presence, watching over me. It's truly frightening..........

Where are you? And what do you want from me?"

He cursed himself for not seeing it sooner. Maybe he could have done something to help her, the lord and devil himself knew he'd do anything and go to any lengths for her. He'd live for her, die for her and even kill for her..............

And that was not mere talk, it was the honest truth.....

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"Miss Jane, I have drawn your bath and even added a few drops of the lavender scented oil to help you relax."

The old woman gently touched the girl's shoulder, her touch almost motherly like.

"Please miss....you haven't looked well lately...." Her maid was practically begging at this point.

Realizing she was right, the young woman got up from her couch.

"Thank you Grace. I'll be in in a minute." She assured her.

Her maid excused herself, dreading having to leave her alone for a few hours due to having to go out and fetch a few items for dinner. She was particularly apprehensive about leaving the dear girl alone given how fidgety and anxious she had been, her stress making her more and more agitated as the days went by.

Once she heard the front door shut, it seemed to resonate through her ears, realizing she was all alone.....

And yet she wasn't.

Stepping inside her luxurious bathroom, she untied her bathrobe, letting it drop onto the floor. For a moment, she had been refusing to bathe completely bare, uncomfortable at the thought that someone watching her. So she slowly dipped her foot inside, followed by the other, allowing her expensive nightgown to become soaked inside the bathtub. The lavender scent seemed to relax her body slowly as each minute passed. Her eyes started to get drowsy, all those sleepless nights finally getting to her as a deep fatigue took over her body, making her mind shut down immediately...

She woke up with a sudden gasp, eyes flying open. She was still inside her bathtub but for some reason, the water was all gone and she was completely dry, as if she had never taken a small soak inside.

Her home felt off, it was chillier than usual, and a very dark ambient seemed to be surrounding it. Cautiously slipping out of the tub, she walked out into the corridor and headed straight to her bedroom. She was about to go lay down on her bed, but something made her halt her steps and walk back. Turning her head, she looked over at her vanity dresser. Her eyes furrowed in confusion as her mirror no longer had the glass in it, it was nothing but a mere frame with wood where the reflective material should be.

"That's odd..." She thought to herself as her fingers touched the panel.

Reaching inside one of her drawers, she took out her hand held mirror and discovered it had been tampered with in the same manner as her vanity mirror. The glass was also missing.

Feeling a surge of panic at her home being invaded, especially after all the fretting about someone watching her at all hours of the day, she bolted out of her room and began ransacking through every guest room, bathroom and corner, but all the other mirrors in them were completely removed. Running down the stairs, she nearly tripped from how fast she was coming down them. Going towards the front door, she tried opening it, but it was bolted shut, the door handle wouldn't budge. She began to mercilessly pound on it, screaming for help as tears began fall down her face.

She felt a shadowy presence loom over her.....

Not daring to turn around, she started running down the other corridor that would lead her into the living room where she'd usually attend to her guests. Slamming her hands on it, it opened with absolutely no resistance. As she stepped in, she noticed all the missing mirrors were all placed around the room. Walking closer and closer to them, she inhaled sharply as she stood in front of them.....

And her reflection was nowhere to be seen at all.

Her hand came up to touch her cheek, then forehead and other facial features. Her hands traveled down her neck then to her shoulders as she made sure she was definitely there. Her hand reached out to touch the mirror, confusion overwhelming her as she did not understand why there was no reflection of her at all.

"Don't worry, you may not see yourself, but I see you....and you're extremely beautiful."

She whipped her head around, trying to figure out where the voice came from.

"Who..who's there?" She demanded to know.

"Awww my dear little flower, do you not recognize me? After all the letters I sent you? I am after all your most loyal and greatest admirer."

Hearing those words sent her into a frenzy, nearly knocking down one of the mirrors when she stepped back so abruptly.

"Still don't know? Let me remind you..."

From out of the corner of her eye, she thought she caught sight of some figure moving through the room, reflected only by the mirror beside her.

"So nice of you to help the injured bunny that was in the garden, you truly are a kind hearted soul."

Her heart dropped as she recalled those words from a letter she had received months ago.

"Remember the necklace you were so sad to have lost while out in the gardens? I found it and am returning it to you."

Her body swiftly turned as she felt a gusty of wind past behind her, but there was nothing except the same mirror with both reflection of her, but instead a hand holding up the lost item that had been sent back to her along with the same two roses that were always sent.

"Is your wrist better now? I saw you pricked it while attending to your rose bush."

She let out a yelp when she felt something scratched along her skin. Looking down, she trembled as she saw blood pouring out from her wrist, much like the time she had accidentally cut herself, only this time the wound was deeper and the liquid pouring out was not red but instead a black color that had her turning pale.

"Stop! Leave me alone!" She cried out, making way back towards the door only to find that it wasn't there anymore, she was trapped inside that room of mirrors that still reflected nothing of her figure, but had a shadow silhouette pass through them from time to time.

"Remember when you actually wrote back to me? I still have the letter, your handwriting was so delicate, I could faintly smell the scent of that perfume you always wear."

"Shut up!" She begged the voice, feeling frantic as she began pushing over all the mirrors, letting them smash to pieces on the floor.

"You wrote 'please let it be the last time you write to me such contents.'......I couldn't imagine it, you actually wrote to me! To me, directly from you! The very first love letter you replied to me!" The voice let out a tiny giggle.

"Well then let this be the last reply! I hate you!" She declared.

There was silence for a brief moment, then the voice let out a tiny chuckle.

"Honestly? I don't mind if you say this love is the last time-"

"There's a fine line between love and hate, don't you get it?!" She cut them off, before her hands reached above her head, clutching her ears as she didn't want to hear anymore.

"As I said....I don't mind....I like that." They seemed to taunt her, their voice dangerously close to her now.

Whimpering in fear, she shut her eyes tightly, hoping to wake up out of the nightmare she was living.

"So now I'll ask....do you like that?" She felt someone's breath right on her skin.

"No!!!!"

Yelling as loud as she could, she punched her fists into the mirror in front of her, slicing more cuts into her skin as she shattered the glass in front of her, but not completely ruining it. Wheezing harshly, she looked up and saw a reflection in the mirror, but it wasn't her own.........

It was someone else's figure behind her, face as ethereal as an angel, but his eyes looked void of any emotions. Lips curling into a slight smile, she gasped as he wrapped a hand around her neck.

"I like that."

Before she knew it, a cold blade was swiftly dragged across her throat, slicing it open with blood splattering all over the mirror and onto the floor underneath her. She could no longer feel anything, her breath being taken right out of her....

The man's eyes were the last image she ever saw....

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Not being able to take it anymore, Yeosang managed to pry the window lock open. He was thankful that it was spacious enough to allow him to easily crawl inside. Landing with a soft thud, he ignored the pain on his right hip as he stood up, carefully looking around hoping to spot his dear beloved somewhere. He had neglected her for far too long, his illness consuming him for nearly a month and he was restless to see her again. Walking through the corridor, he went inside what he discerned to be her bedroom, already familiarized with the outside structure of the house. He did not find her there, but stumbled across a crimson red book that was placed on top of her dresser. Picking it up, he turned to the first page and immediately realized what it was. This was it, her most treasured secrets were now in the palm of his hands. He was about to start skimming through the first pages when he noticed the adjoining room's door was left ajar. Curiosity getting the best of him, he peeked inside and noticed it was a bathroom. He briefly scanned inside, not particularly amazed by anything...

Until his heart dropped when he saw familiar hair and an arm poking out of the bathtub.

He nearly busted the door down from how harsh he pushed it open. Dropping the diary onto the floor, his arms scooped up the frail and colorless body that was submerged inside the now cold water.

"Jane! Jane!"

He desperately called out to her, his hands shaking her rather forcefully, but to no avail. He looked at the woman he was holding with despair, his heart breaking as he realized she wasn't going to wake up anytime soon.

"No.....no my love!"

He cried in earnest as he held onto her lifeless body, unwilling to let go for a long time. His hand caressed her wet hair, lips placing small and gentle kisses across her face. He just couldn't believe that the love of his life was now gone...forever.

Hearing the front door open and her maid calling out, he looked back at his beloved one last time, placing a desperate and longing kiss first and last kiss on her lips.

"I love you.."

He whispered those words before letting go of her. Making sure to not leave the diary behind, he quickly snuck out of the window, carefully landing on the grass beneath him, running out into the woods surrounding her home and waited....

Waited to see what would happen next.

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His brown eyes looked over the newspaper article that was published not long after that horrible day:

"Famous celebrity actress found dead in her own home by her maid. Investigators say victim fell asleep in her bathtub and accidentally drowned. No foul play is suspected."

Tearing the article apart, he threw the ripped shreds onto the ground before picking up the torn pages he had removed from the diary. Burning the last of the pages he didn't want in there, he stood up and looked back at the tombstone in front of him. Placing the diary on top of it, he turned it to the last page and placed one of his favorite photos of her, followed by one of his own.

Finally now, he had a place in her diary.

Closing the diary, he finished by placing a white and a red rose, bound together with a black ribbon on top of it. Stepping back, he fell to his knees in front of the grave, his eyes glassy from the tears he was holding back. With no hesitation, he reached into his pocket and took out the revolver he had brought with him, specifically because he could not live without his Jane any longer.

"If I have to, I will put myself right beside you.."

Holding up the barrel next to head, he kept a calm and collected stare as his eyes never left the name engraved on the stone.

"Would you like that?"

Saying those final words, his finger pulled on the trigger..........

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kayr0ss · 3 years

Text

Hands that Remember [AO3 Link]

[Horizon Zero Dawn, Elisabet Sobeck Lives, Found Family, Mother-Daughter Feelings, GAIA is recovering, Ereloy]

Summary: Aloy saw the recordings, felt their grief over the death of their culture - the loss of their identity. Ted Faro had blown away the light meant to guide humanity through darkness - but she was willing to risk it all to take it back. To bring APOLLO back. It wasn't the first time that the world asked her for a miracle, but it bargained with a miracle of its own: This time - she didn't have to do it alone.

[Wherein Elisabet Sobeck returns, GAIA is recovering, Erend is done waiting around, and Aloy discovers a family she's never had before to help lift the weight of the world off her shoulders.]

---

Chapter 1: Resurfacing

It was endless.

The dust and sand reminded him of the canyons north of Meridian—but it seemed harsher. Endless, expansive. Flat. He’d lost sight of All-Mother Mountain days ago and soon even the icy northern peaks of the Cut had fallen behind the horizon. All that was around him were rocks and packed earth.

Clouds of dust rose from under his footsteps, caught in a wind swooping over from further west. He wondered if they would reach the end of the world before the end of this desert. Did it just… stop? Was there an edge where everything ceased to be, a void down below ready to consume anything unfortunate enough to travel just a bit too far?

He grunted at his thoughts. Way too poetic. Been hanging around too many Carja these days—and not enough ale to drown out all the needless chatter.

What was Aloy doing out here anyway?

Still, he pressed on with gritted teeth, pulling up the fabric of his scarf above his nose. There was shelter up ahead. The faint purple glow he was following led him straight down its path: a ruin of the Old Ones full of rusting metal and crumbling rock. There were a few trees in the vicinity, tall and shooting straight up from the ground as though they were arrows.

“Must’ve taken shelter here,” he grumbled to himself.

It was a short trek to reach the threshold of the ruins. There was an archway holding a dilapidated sign, looking as if a strong kick to the base would be enough to knock it over. For a minute he entertained the thought, but what for?

A pile of metal junk lies near the perimeter of the building—one of those rectangular containers, similar to those dumped by the Old Ones in the scrapyard near Free Heap. The building itself was covered in vines and… flowers? That’s when he noticed the grass by his feet. It was lush and green, much like in the Embrace, and where plant life thrives it means—

“Water.”

He picked up his pace, falling into a jog. The journey had taken a toll on him. He was glad to have kept some empty water skins on hand—a fresh refill and his store of dried meats would be more than enough to last him the walk back. It was a small comfort against the mounting restlessness that clawed at the back of his mind, the feeling that he was never going to catch up with her at the rate he was going. He wondered if he’d tracked Aloy down this far west only to have her meet him on the road—already on the way back.

At least he hoped she was. Coming back, that is. He shook his head. Not the best time to think about that.

Further inspection revealed no machines in sight. Odd. Did Aloy clear the way already? Or was there something else, something that kept them away? The thought was unnerving, but he kept his hammer stowed away at his back. Couldn’t pick up any threats, anyway. No mines either, he nodded to himself. Stalkers could be ruled out.

He looked up towards the building. It was worn down, only the haunting twisted metal of its skeleton left standing, rubble littered at the base. “Probably fed a whole thunderjaw into a forge to build this one.” He chortled. “Great. Now I’m talking to myself. Right. Water.”

He followed the way to a patch where the growth was thicker. “Huh.” He paused, frowning. There were purple flowers arranged in a triangle too perfect to be natural. Some sort of stone seating structure was in the center and—

“Fire and spit!” he sputtered out, war-hammer pulled at the ready while he awkwardly regained his footing after nearly tripping. For some reason, even in the heat of battle he decided he didn’t want to step on the violet blooms that seemed so dainty and beautiful.

Was that… a person?

His frown deepened, brows knitting together as he looked over some sort of machine suit. It reminded him of the material Aloy had crafted over standard Nora leathers. He gently prodded at the suit with the end of his hammer’s grip. No movement. The overgrowth consuming it was an indication that it’d been sitting there for, well, a while.

He stepped in a little closer, laying a hand along the suit’s shoulder to dust it away. Cold. He recoiled.

Cold as death.

For a second or two he considered scavenging the strange machine-suit for parts, but quickly dismissed the thought when he realized there might be someone… inside. He stepped back, putting down his hammer. Oseram were delvers, not grave robbers.

I should probably go. He rubbed at the back of his neck, feeling intrusive and out of place, but one last look over the suit made him shake his head. Was this their home? He tried to imagine what the ruins might have looked before. Like Meridian, perhaps?

The person looked peaceful. Content. But it looked like a lonely way to go.

“You, uh…” he set a heavy gloved hand on the suit’s shoulder. “Have a good rest.”

The stillness didn’t last for very long. As he lifted his hand a cloud of cold, frigid gas began to leak from the small slits along the suit’s shoulders and joints.

The focus Aloy gifted him began to buzz, in sync with the deep onset of frantic panic at the pit of his stomach. By the forge did he break something? He stumbled backwards, hand coming up to tap his focus. Purple lights sprung to life—a spattering of odd blinking symbols and words that were enough to disorient him. Circles of light hovered highlighted portions of the suit, bringing up numbers and flashing words—counting down with urgency.

[WARNING: Ultraweave Terrestrial Suit Atmospheric Seal Compromised]

"Seal?" What was that supposed to mean? He frowned. Too sober for this.

A disembodied voice buzzed into his ear—eerie and inhuman, like how the Shadow Carja’s god HADES sounded, except not quite as threatening. A woman’s voice.

[Ultraweave Terrestrial Suit Oxygen Supply—Depleted. Ultraweave Terrestrial Suit Potable Liquid Tank—Depleted]

There was a chilling pause.

[External Personnel Detected. Assessment: User of FAS Standard-Issue FOCUS Unit Number ZERO-ONE-ONE-THREE - Assistance Required. Please attend to personnel within UTS Unit Zero-Alpha-Psi.]

“What am I—?!” He looked around in a panic, feeling out of his element. Was it talking to him? This was the sort of thing Aloy was good at! “What am I supposed to do?!”

[Please attend to personnel within UTS Unit Zero-Alpha-Psi.]

“You already said that.” He grumbled back, frustrated. Does that mean this thing—this…Old One—was still alive? Upon closer inspection he could see it: frost crawling out of the vents. Cold. Still as cold as death.

He couldn’t believe it. Frozen in time.

[Stand-by for assisted reanimation.]

He reached out towards the blinking lights across the rectangular badge on the suit’s odd chest plate. It responded to his touch with purple lights blinking into living words floating across his fingertips. He gasped.

He recognized that name.

[Disengaging Cryostasis Protocol. Stand-by for assisted reanimation. Projection: ninety-three minutes to thermal homeostasis.]

“Captain, what happened?”

Voices. Too far away. Or were they nearby? Damn. She couldn’t tell. Couldn’t even open her eyes. It was cold. So fucking cold—colder than Nevada had any right to be.

“Get blankets! Anything! Beladga, got any shirts you can spare?”

Why was everyone in a panic? Had she fallen asleep in the control center? Huh. She didn’t recall Travis sounding nearly as gruff as that.

Travis? The others—

She… she had a job to do. A mission. What was it? Everything felt distant—disconnected. She vaguely realized she that she was shivering but why? She tried to call out but realized that she was physically unable to speak, her throat feeling dry as sandpaper. Coughing erratically, she noticed that she was partially intubated with a sort of breathing apparatus.

[Seventeen minutes to thermal homeostasis. Please prepare for disengagement of auxiliary respirator.]

An automated voice was buzzing into her ear through her focus. She could feel her senses turning, along with the slight mobility of her limbs. It seems she was being carried—or rather, being laid down onto something soft. There were footsteps. Movements. The voices were hushed, secretive and confused. There was a soft yellow light through the ambiguous blur of color that swam around her vision.

[Auxiliary respirator disengaging.]

The machinery abruptly detached the mask from her nose and mouth. The sudden brightness made her recoil, her face feeling exposed. She fell into a fit of violent coughing—as if she had forgotten how to breathe. It was painful. God, it fucking sucked.

“Take it easy now,” said the voice from earlier. It was a man. He—He was speaking with her through his own voice. How is that possible? No one could survive out here without a suit. The atmosphere was too—

A sudden wave of nausea overcame her.

Memories of her last excursion came flooding back: the bunker door failing to seal. Her last transmission to the Alphas. Project Zero Dawn. GAIA—the Swarm!

Coming home.

Dying.

I’m supposed to be dead.

“I—” she rasped out, voice hoarse and jagged. Panicked.

“Whoa there,” there was a steady hand on her shoulder, helping her turn to her side. She felt something press against her mouth almost forcefully. “Drink this.”

“We got to get her out of that suit, captain.” There was another voice, female this time.

“I think—” the captain, she assumed, replied “—I think we need to wait a few more minutes. The device is telling me that—”

Everything was fading into black again.

“—else to go follow her trail, or just hope she comes back. She has to… she needsto see this. I just… Oh. She’s awake, I think.”

There was some shuffling. Once again, she was offered water. It was sweet this time. Did they mix in sugar? She tried to ask but she was so, so tired and…

Sobeck Journal, 1-27-66

I wasn’t going to see any of it anyway.

Best I can do is hope, I guess. The landscape is barren now – I’m kind of glad the other Alphas don’t have to see it this close up. Stings. I’m half-expecting to hear Patrick patch me in via holo, asking why I haven’t dragged my feet to the conference hall for the scheduled status briefing. He’ll take good care of the younger kids, him and Charles both. ZD and the Swarm seem so small and faraway now that I’m walking away from it all. Quite literally. Hauled my ass all the way to Nevada.

Glad mom isn’t around to see the ranch like this. When I close my eyes I can almost imagine it: the tall pine trees, the grass. Maybe I’ll get to see things the way they were before on the other side… wherever that might be.

I’m tired.

Time to rest.

She woke up with a jolt.

“Hey.

He was still there, sitting on the ground across from her and looking just as confused as she was. Her vision was clearer now—and every detail she managed to catalogue drove a spike of panic and confusion deeper into the hollow of her chest. They were in a leather tent lit by a small gasoline lamp in the corner. They seemed to be in the outskirts of an encampment, faraway enough to not be disturbed.

“I’m guessing this is freaking you out a little.” He scratched at the back of his head, unable to meet her eyes. He pointed to a waterskin laid down beside her bedroll. “Maybe get some more water in before you speak? I’ve got some dried meats too. I’m guessing you haven’t eaten in… a while.”

On the matter of guesses, she had a vague idea what might be going on. It was equal parts terrifying and exciting and a hundred percent something she did notask for.

She had an unfortunately stellar track record for hypothesizing, though. Chances of her guess being wrong were dreadfully slim. The cold. The scenery. Even the clinical tone and instructions of her Ultraweave Suit’s reanimation module—a system she helped develop herself, back when the prospect of sleeping through the disaster was considered an option.

It wasn’t. Not consistent enough to use en masse—not enough foresight to secure species continuity.

She took a drink of water, willing to steel her nerves before panic caught up with her executive faculties. She needed to orient herself with wherever it was she woke up in. Hell, forget where, the real question is—

“When… is it?”

He blinked. “Uh, today?”

“What year is it?”

The man’s expression softened—a look that didn’t quite fit with the rest of his character. He was big. Towering—even while seated on the floor—with broad shoulders and a figure strong enough to walk around with enough steel to build a car door, apparently. “You sound so much like her.”

“I don’t follow.” She pinched the bridge of her nose, feeling a headache coming along. She needed to eat.

“Sorry I—” he scratched at his beard. “It’s the reign of the 14th Sun-King, Avad the Liberator.”

Kings? Again?

“I’m Erend, captain of the King’s vanguard.”

He paused.

“You’re Aloy’s mother, aren’t you?”

fin

A/N: I'd like to acknowledge Tototops for doing an amazing job beta-reading this! It's always a pleasure, and my writing is always pushed to grow better with every suggestion and correction you help me with. x) And to my friends Sleepy, @theguardiandragon1, @saltypyrotato, @tanuki-pyon and Fridge for listening to my HZD manic fever ramblings and helping me make sense of the plot I had in mind.

Just finished the game about two weeks ago and read a bunch of fanfic. I consumed Writerly's Second Dawn (which is absolutely amazing!!!!), which is my foremost inspiration for even attempting to write fanfic of this wonderful franchise. I base a lot of my characterizations and format of story telling in this fic from their work, and hope to do so in a way which is still true to the unique plot I've set for it. I am very excited to be trying something new and to learn and get better along the way. Hope you all enjoy. :)

#Horizon Zero Dawn #HZD #Ereloy #Aloy #resident evil #HZD GAIA #Fanfic #Found Family #Elisabet is Mom #Elisabet Sobeck #Erend #Erend Vanguardsman #Adventure #Erend x Aloy

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zodiyack · 4 years

Text

In Letters

Requested by @imaginesbymk: Oh gosh hi! Could I request a imagine w/ Eugene Sledge falling in love with y/n and when he returns home he surprises them with flowers and asks y/n out on a date? Hope this was ok!

Pairing: Eugene Sledge x Female!Reader

Warnings: Swearing, fluff, mentions of war

Words: 1,795

Summary: (See Request)

Note: So I got a little carried away and I’m not too proud of the ending, but I tried my best and I hope you liked it :D

Taglist: @matth1w, @redspaceace-writes, @fandom-puff, @darling-i-read-it, @simonsbluee, @sebastianstanslefteyebrow

Masterlist | Joe Mazzello Masterlist

My dearest Gene,

The nights seem quiet, deafeningly so. The room feels lonesome without your presence. Although it pains me to admit it, it’s not just my chambers that are haunted with such sadness.

I feel goosebumps rise from my skin as I lie in bed, similar to the ones I’d get when you wrapped your arms around me. The hairs on my neck rise just as they did when you whispered in my ear each night, assuring me that nothing could hurt me, for you were there to fend off whatever creatures dwelled in the night. But alas, these are not from you this time. My body reacts in such ways to a frightening feeling, one I almost forgot having never felt it after the first night you snuck into my room, and the nights prior to your descent. With you away, I have no soldier to protect me whilst I rest.

My words, melancholy yet true, shan’t bring you down... I hope. Please do not assume wrongly of my intent; I am indeed very proud of you. So much so that I simply cannot help but worry.

What has my worries, you may ask?

Well, my soldier, it’s you. Whether this letter will actually find your soft hands at all, I know not, however, you told me to have hope, so I will. Before you set this parchment aside and go out to your tasks, I ask one last request.

Take your advice, and have hope. When the nights become too much, think not of the horrors, but of me, of this letter, of the nights back home wherein you protect me like you are now protecting us.

You’re so strong and brave. I find it mandatory that you know that and believe it, not just hear the words and brush it off as a compliment. Eugene Sledge, it is a fact. You hold others up as though you are Atlas and they are the world that you carry upon your shoulders. Even now, you carry a burden and you march forward nonetheless. It amazes me. Inspires me, truly.

To end this letter, I’m unsure. Do I make up some falsehood to fill you with delight? No, no, I cannot do such a thing to you, even if I wanted to. I can try all I want, but anytime a lie is formed on the tip of my tongue whenever I talk to you, it rolls backwards rather than out like I want it to.

What ever are you doing to me, Eugene Sledge?

Y/n

Darling Eugene,

You didn’t have to send me the necklace. You know that, right? Nonetheless... I have yet to take it off since I received it. It smells like you. Before the war. Your scent lulls me to sleep as though you are lying with me once more. I’m too overjoyed to remind myself of the reality. I hope you received my gift. And I hope it gives you the same affects yours does unto me.

I try to cling to the hope that you may return safe and unharmed. Any type of war is never easy, I know that, I really do, and I know you won’t be the same person you were when you left. However, you will always be my Gene. With that being said; I will never turn my back on you the way you wrote, the way you feared I would.

Lest you too lack of sleep more than before, I have included a gift of my own. See to it as...a gift to make things even. It’s only fair, seeing as you sent me an accessory you crafted. If you haven’t seen it yet- open it.

A locket can be seen as a feminine accessory, yes, but in truth, it’s attached to no sex. I do hope you like it. I’ve also debated on sending you one with a photo of us both, but settled on purchasing matching necklaces. One for you, which holds my photo, and one for me, which holds yours. Before you lecture me on spending money on you- I spent it for both my sake and yours.

I’ve read every book you gifted me throughout the years and still, you are not yet in my arms nor beside me in the study. I try to imagine, but it gets harder as time goes on. I miss you.

I hold strong aversion to the time it shall take for your return. Nothing pains me more than the suffering you must be going through, and the suffering I too am experiencing. Though my pain is less than yours, it is still great in its ability to affect me. Life without you is dull, meaningless, gut-wrenching and awfully depressing.

Have you made any friends? Other than “Peaches” and “Snafu”, whomever those men are. Perhaps you can introduce some of them to me when you’re home, I’d love to meet the men who kept you company. Any friend of yours is a friend of mine. (Peaches is quite an interesting name though. I mean no ill-will behind my curiosity, but...is “Peaches” his real name?)

In reference to my previous question; I myself haven’t made any new friends. To be completely honest, I rarely leave the house. Whenever I step foot outside...it feels...well...pardon my language, like I’m entering a shit show, stepping into hell itself. I’d rather be in hell than live in a world without you.

Think not of my prior comment. Merely bask in the positive parts of this letter. For me.

All my love,

Y/n

Eugene,

I heard you boys are coming home? I do hope the news is true. I fear I cannot face yet another disappointment, nor much longer without you. As time has gone by, nights spent without you beside me, days awfully bore...your face seems to fade as though it plots to abscond.

Funny. It’s seldom that I think of anything else, and it still rebuffs all my attempts to conjure your image into my brain. Whilst I have photographs to assist in my efforts, I can’t quite see your beauty in full, as though the photo is faceless. I miss your charming features and I loathe myself for having struggled to remember them now, even if it happened against my own wishes.

Albeit my words, which were truthful, I still see you in my dreams. Only, when I wake, your face abates until it’s lost in the nothingness, lightyears away from my grasp.

My sincerest apologies for the briefness of this letter and its majority of sorrowful content. I would write you a thousand joyous letters if only I had the strength to tell you falsities.

Awaiting your return,

Y/n

Each letter he received from her warmed his heart and never failed to put a smile on his face. Despite being in a literal warzone, joy never left his heart. The nights where he couldn’t sleep due to the things he had to see, the things his imagination conjured up, or just due to the lack of Y/n. It was the last one more often than not.

Snafu teased Sledge with each letter he managed to catch a glimpse of. Despite the man’s suggestive teasing, the two in question were only friends, inseparable since childhood. However, he wasn’t completely wrong with his jabs. Eugene felt his heart long for her like hers did him, but his longing wasn’t purely platonic. Since his teen years, he felt an almost magnetic-like pull towards her. Her letters only amplified the harshness of the tug on the invisible rope.

His hands shook as he wrote back to her, the first few lines seeming very unlike himself, but the rest so poetic and beautiful, even Snafu was speechless. The words were there, but they only really flowed onto the paper after he let go of control and wrote from the heart. Honest and sincere, he told her as much as he could.

The only thing he didn’t include ever, was a confession.

It took almost all of his strength to prevent himself from giving in to the urge of being lovesick-fool. But as her letters grew more desolate, as the war became more intense, as his time to write shortened...he couldn’t bring himself to confess. He couldn’t bring himself to push that onto her- a confession during the war, forcing her to live with his last letter being a question he could never fulfill.

...

He underestimated himself in so many ways.

The second he returned home, he bought flowers and rushed to find her, not even caring to make sure he looked his best. It was the first thing on his mind. Despite being ever so tired, his eyelids begging to drop for a little while longer, his feet sore beneath him- he powered through.

His fist rapped against the door, a quiet hiss leaving his mouth through his teeth at the feeling of his skin coming in contact with the hard wood. It creaked open, half of a face, an eye mostly, coming into view slowly before it widened and the door swung open.

“Gene!”

She surged forward, wrapping her arms around him as she leapt into his grasp. The two chuckled for a moment before her feet found the ground again and they stood in silence. Drinking each other in, all they could do was smile.

“Oh!” Eugene exclaimed once he’d returned to reality, holding out his hand to Y/n. “I uh- bought these for you.”

“Thank you.” She smiled sweetly, accepting the gift with teary eyes.

“But...not as a friend gift, really.”

“Well of course not, we’re best friends!”

“No, no... I mean it as a step above best friends. I mean them as a gift and a question.” Her brows furrowed and she tilted her head, visibly confused. “I know I just came home- I haven’t even changed my clothes for fucks sake, but I need to ask. I’ve wanted to ask for so long.”

Y/n’s eyes darted around, even more confused than before. “Ask what?”

Eugene cleared his throat, finally meeting her eyes; “Would you be interested in joining me for a meal...or, more specifically, a date? It doesn’t have to be today-”

“Yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yes.” Y/n bit her lower lip and giggled. “I would love to. Tonight, after you get some rest, I’ll meet you at your place.” Y/n placed a hand on Eugene’s cheek, smiling at him. Then, her lips replaced her hand. She turned and walked back inside, closing the door with a smile.

The soldier outside, who had faced and won two wars around the same time, stood outside, hand where Y/n’s lips were, and a matching smile upon his lips. He was undoubtedly glad he didn’t confess in letters.

#eugene sledge x reader #eugene sledge #eugene sledge imagine #joe mazzello #joseph mazzello x reader #joseph mazzello imagine #imagine eugene sledge #joseph mazzello #joe mazzello x reader #joe mazzello imagine #zodiyack #x reader #reader insert #all readers #imagine #the pacific #the pacific x reader #the pacific imagine #i hope you liked it!

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cherrynojutsu · 3 years

Text

Title: Like Silver

Summary: A companion series for Like Gold.

Sakura misses him so much. She misses the faint smell of woodsmoke and sage, and mismatched eyes captivating in their intensity and unfathomable depths. The Rinnegan is beautiful, soft lavender ringed by hypnotizing layers of circle and tomoe, but flecks of silver dance in his right, tiny asterisms bewitching in nature, if one gets close enough; she’d first noticed it when they were children at the Academy. She knows they're Itachi's now, a slightly different scattering of luminaries aglow in the deep pitch of obsidian, but they're still as enthralling to her as they had been back then. She dreams of that silver sometimes, recalls it any time she sees something similar in color or reflet.

Blank period, canon-compliant, Sakura-centric, some expanded plot points from Like Gold, fluff and pining, eventually becomes a smut fest with feelings.

Disclaimer: I did not write Naruto. This is a fan-made piece solely created for entertainment purposes.

Rating: M (eventual nsfw-ness)

AO3 Link - FF.net Link - includes beginning/ending author's notes

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Chapter 1/?: An Introduction to Electrocardiography

Sakura gazes out the window of her office, a pile of paperwork set aside for a poetic sort of procrastination, trying to indulge for once in a Konoha spring, though she's finding it arduous.

As pretty as it is this time of year, all she can manage to feel is wistful.

Hanami has come and gone already for the most part, though there are a few stubborn cherry blossom trees lingering at the tail end of their blooming. She can see one here from her window, up on the hillside that slopes towards Hokage Rock, clinging to the uneven land. She’s sure its roots have to be all twisted, a labyrinth of gnarled wood clinging to any scrap of land it can wind itself around as its branches and petals try against all odds to reach upwards into the open sky that she can’t take her eyes off of.

There’s a metaphor in there somewhere, but it’s one she doesn’t care to unpack.

This year was her twentieth viewing of her namesake, though Sakura obviously doesn't remember the first few. Her parents take great pride in the retelling of tales from those first few years of her life, the ones she was too little to remember. The highlights come up annually on her birthday without fail, how she grasped at the petals like they were something precious, clutched in her sticky little hands the entire day.

A framed photograph is perched on one of the built-in shelves of her parents' living room, of her and her father on her first birthday. He was holding her up on unsteady legs, ridiculously proud and pointing towards the camera where her mother had been trying to get her to look. Her short pink hair was flying absolutely everywhere, matching the fluttering petals and in-bloom cherry blossom tree in the background, chubby hands grasping upwards. Strawberry cake and frosting were smeared all over her cheeks. They’d had a picnic for her, at the park nearest to their house.

“We came home and cleaned you up, and then your father helped you water your tree for the first time, in the little pink watering pail you unwrapped earlier. You were so cute.” That’s what her mom says every year. Sakura has the sentence memorized at this point, could recite it on cue, if she needed to.

Her parents had planted a cherry blossom sapling in their backyard a few days after they brought her home from the hospital as a newborn, so the tree is around the same age she is. She used to spend time under it often, as a kid, and some of her earliest memories involve sprawling beneath it to study the heavens while her mother gardened. She would also sneak berries from the patch when her back was turned. Sometimes her dad would join in her pilferage, and they would sit beneath the tree like a couple of bandits with stained lips, though those first few years she can remember he barely fit underneath it, as tall as he is. Many a tickle fight had been had, shaded by those branches. She would read books there on nice afternoons, when she was a little older.

The tree is fully grown now, also on the final cusp of its blooming for the year, floriferous wood expanded outwards to drape her childhood stomping grounds in a sea of soft pink. They have a picnic under it every year, in her family’s backyard, when they celebrate her birthday together. Her actual birthday has come and gone, but her birthday dinner is two days from now. Her parents swung by her apartment on Sunday afternoon for a bit with outlandishly large cupcakes, but her mom had mentioned they’d do dinner and a gift on their usual night, Thursday, since it works so well with their schedules every other week.

“We have to have your picnic, under your tree, like always. It’s a tradition! My beautiful girl. I can’t believe you’re twenty. It seems like just yesterday you were only yay high,” her dad had told her, gesturing below his knees before hugging her too tightly, ruffling the hair she'd inherited from him before they left. The cupcakes were strawberry with cream cheese frosting, one of her favorite treats. They’d left her with four extra to enjoy between then and Thursday, one for each day if she wanted it, turning her birthday into more of a week-long affair than a one-day celebration.

She and Ino had demolished two of them while watching some of the terrible movies they love to hate together, later that evening. It had been a smorgasbord of strawberries, really, because they'd washed them down with strawberry daiquiris, sugary sweetness topped with ridiculous amounts of whipped cream. They'd sat on her balcony, after, sipping a little tipsily and just looking.

"You should try to enjoy your namesake more this year, Forehead. You're so busy that I'm not sure you've realized, but you've really grown into it," Ino had said, beckoning vaguely towards a Konoha beginning to bloom, renewed with a warm breeze, spring ushered in by a fluttering of pink petals. Ino likes to give compliments in roundabout ways, she’s learned over the course of their friendship; crass as the blonde can be, she does have her moments. Her words meant a lot to Sakura, so she’s trying to take them to heart, to stop and smell the cherry blossoms, so to speak. It won’t be long before Konoha crescendos into the sweltering heat of the summer.

She loves her parents and her friends. She really does.

But birthdays are weird, Sakura thinks.

Last year, Sasuke had sent her a letter on her birthday. She’s reread it so many times that she has it more than memorized; it’s stitched into the muscle tissue of her heart at this point, or maybe scarred into the lining of her aortic valve, sempiternal markings adorning the tunnels that sustain her, causing her breath to catch every time.

Sakura,

Hanami has come to the wilderness in the Land of Honey. Bees are awakening and foraging for the first pollen of the season, with which to begin again. Cherry blossom petals are everywhere, lining the pathways and floating on the water.

Happy birthday.

-Sasuke

It had been short, simple, and even a little poetic; she had cherished it, as she does all of his other letters. She’d cherished the pressed flower with it just as much; a cherry blossom, neatly flattened with a precision that screamed Sasuke, near exactly the same shade of pink as her hair.

Sakura had started crying when she unfolded the paper to reveal it sitting atop his words. His hawk had waited patiently at her office window for a response to be written and tied to its leg, perched atop the windowsill and watching the goings-on of the village below, absolutely no concept in its predator brain of how much she delights in seeing it fly, a graceful tether to the boy - now man - she has been in love with for ages.

Cherry blossom petals are everywhere. Is there a hidden meaning there, or is she making a mountain out of a molehill?

She’s tried not to read too much into the letters. She's not sure if he sends any to Naruto or not; she's too afraid to ask, because she'll either get a heart-pounding hope if he doesn't get them, or a soul-crushing disappointment if he does. She can't imagine him sending a yellow flower to Naruto, but he may very well have sent him a different gift for his birthday.

Maybe he just thought she would like a flower, which she did - it’s pressed for safekeeping, along with all of his other correspondence to her, sporadically and chronologically throughout a book she keeps on her nightstand, An Introduction to Electrocardiography. It is her take on an album of small things she holds close to her own heart, things she wishes she could read in his. Sakura didn’t want to buy an actual album for such a thing; that felt too formal, for something as ambiguous as her ties to Sasuke, overflowing on her end as they may be. So she’d settled on a book about deciphering the heart’s tells based on science only, electrical impulses and repolarization, the sizes and positions of the chambers, how to diagnose conditions utilizing one’s findings. It’s one she doesn’t need access to anymore, extremely familiar with EKGs after years of study. She’d wanted it to be something no-nonsense, all hard facts and data on how to read activity plotted over time.

Evidence-based. Are letters evidence, though? She’s not sure that would hold up as empirical proof in any of the scholarly journals she’s studied or submitted work to since beginning her research. She thinks wryly, though, based on what she has witnessed get published, that scientific verification doesn’t always matter if you know the right people.

She’s thought many times sifting through it that perhaps it is too optimistic, too hopeful of a book subject for such a thing. Sakura has agonized over it, frankly, wondering whether it was an inappropriate choice.

...But now that they’re in there, it might ache worse to move them somewhere else.

It’s the last day of March now, and she didn’t get a letter this month, which is unusual, because she’s gotten one near each month in the time that he’s been away. She’s paged through the book a few times over the past several days, rereading and admiring the preserved sakura blossom, frozen in suspended animation indefinitely on a page about precordial leads.

Sakura hadn’t really expected anything from him for her birthday, other than a monthly letter like he usually sends... but this year she didn’t even get that. She’s trying really hard to not be disappointed. She has so much to be thankful for, in the grand scheme of things...

...But the petals of the cherry blossom from last year have faded over time, she’d evaluated yesterday, sitting in her bedroom. It might be like her, always pressed in a book, fading whilst stuck indefinitely between the boundless teeth of academia. There is always more data to record, more evidence, with which one can prove or disprove their findings.

No letter this month, though. Nothing to record, no new evidence.

It might be time to move the letters somewhere else, she thinks pensively. Maybe a place where she’s not tempted to look at them all the time; their placement in the book, small scraps of paper that stick out in only a couple of places, makes it easy to go back and reread them. She’s pretty sure she has an empty shoebox in her closet that she could move them to, in a pile rather than catalogued between pages rife with information and a fragile sort of hope. Maybe she’ll do it tonight, put it up in the far right corner of the upper shelf, shoved towards the back so she can’t reach it without the stool, so she’s not tempted whenever the next bout of heartsickness slams into her like one of Tsunade-shishou’s fists used to. She needs to go by the library after work first, to return some things, but maybe when she gets home, she’ll do it. She could eat a cupcake, too; that might make it a little easier.

She dreams of that silver sometimes, recalls it any time she sees something similar in color or reflet. There’s an extremely unique necklace in an antique shop she visits with Ino and Sai from time to time, and occasionally on her own, over on the northeast side of town. It’s a salt-and-pepper diamond, dark grey with inclusions, dainty and set in what must be a hand-fabricated setting. It hangs from a silver chain, towards the back of a display case filled with other vintage and distinctive pieces, but it’s the only one she ever finds herself drawn to. It is so similar to his right eye, dark smoke near black, speckled with beguiling silver startling in its clarity. The bevel cut reveals new flecks dependent on the angle at which you view it.

Sakura studies it closely on each visit, because it is so hauntingly breathtaking and it reminds her of him.

Ino has said it’s not her color, and that she should stick to warm tones and gold, for which she is better suited; Sakura has not confessed to her why it catches her eye so much. Sai has agreed with his girlfriend on the coloring note, sensitive as he is to such things, but the way he studies her every time she tears herself away from it makes her suspect he knows exactly why it captivates her so. It’s been sitting there for years at this point; she has to mentally talk herself out of buying it on each visit. It’s beautiful, but she would spend far too much time gawking at it, and it might hurt more with extended study than the gentle tugging at her heart she experiences when she’s in that old building throughout tiny fragments of lackadaisical afternoons.

Sasuke has been gone for a long time. She hopes he's finding the peace he's been seeking, that he's seeing the world with new eyes just as he'd imagined. She thinks of him every day, sends out little orisons like petals in the breeze in the hopes that they’ll find him, wherever he is.

I wonder where he is now.

Try as she does to enjoy the breath of spring Konoha is right now, and her namesake as Ino said, all she can seem to do is shift her vision to the sky, hoping against hope for a glimpse of a familiar bird-of-prey that will stay an ample amount of time for her to craft a response, before it abvolates away for another month.

Sakura smiles, then, close to laughing at the absurdity of it all, because she is so predictable. She loves this village despite its many flaws and challenges, despite the things about it she and Naruto and Kakashi-sensei and Ino and even Tsunade-shishou, off in the Land of Wind, are trying to change, but even after so many years, she’s still pining for something beyond it, something in the wilds of the sky just beyond her reach.

There’s always next year, she supposes, pupils drawn again towards the outstretched branches of the cherry blossom tree on the hill, before trailing her eyes along further. She can grow a little more to try to reach him. When she was little, she had wanted to grow tall so she could try to touch a star, like the branches of the tree in her backyard did when she and her father laid beneath them on balmy summer nights. He would tell her ridiculous stories about all of the constellations, things she knew had to be untrue, even at the ripe age of five. Precocious, he’d always called her, but in the loving, joking manner he had.

Her gaze follows the horizon, leisurely taking in the rest of her home. It really is a lovely day, despite her yearning. Spring is here again, and today's is a gentle sunset, one last little bit of sunlight with which to conclude March. The temperature is already spiking, unusually warm for early spring, but summers in the Land of Fire are always hot. She really should finish her paperwork, but it’s hard to find the motivation just yet.

Something possesses her, then, to turn her neck more, take in more of the skyline's continuation. She wants to see all of it.

And then Sakura’s eyes fall on an achingly familiar figure cloaked all in black, perched only a roof away and observing her, and she thinks she must have nodded off, because she has to be dreaming.

She subtly pinches herself in the millisecond of time that follows, but she is very much awake.

The words are blooming out of her throat before she can even process what’s happening, exultation sinking into her every vein. “Sasuke-kun!” She moves to crank her window open the rest of the way, and he hops from the neighboring roof down into her office, all nimble legerity that she still thinks has to be a mere mirage conjured from her memories. When he straightens to his full height, she muses that he has to have grown taller. The mere sound of his footsteps on the tile flooring, as familiar a refrain to her as if he’d just walked out of the village yesterday, are a treasure beyond price.

“Sakura.” His voice is a rich timbre that she has desperately felt the absence of; hearing him say her name almost makes her want to cry. She smiles wider instead, to the extent that it almost hurts, and her gaze latches hungrily onto the very eye she was just daydreaming about. A storm of soot and silver, beveled into countless fragments like some kind of dark, rustic diamond, and so staggeringly beautiful that she’s pretty sure she’s blushing just from beholding it. Gods, it's not fair for someone to be so handsome.

“When did you get back?” She asks, utterly overcome with joy. This is better than a letter or any birthday gift she could have received, brighter than any star she’s beheld.

“Just now.” He’s smiling, a small and subtle upturn of lips that is so characteristic of him. Then his words hit her, and her face must be getting redder.

Just now? As in…

“I’m sorry I missed your birthday,” he adds before she can simmer on that for too long, and she has to blink in bewilderment, because that is the absolute last thing she expected him to say. Sakura wonders how much heat can creep into one’s face before they spontaneously combust.

Then she realizes she should probably respond, as humans tend to do in conversations. “Oh! Um… it’s okay.” She folds her hands in front of her shyly, grinning like an idiot. “Thank you for remembering.”

There is a lengthy moment in which she just soaks him in, hoping he can read in her eyes how much she’s missed him. He is still so beautiful, prized eyes and aristocratic angles that have solidified a bit more into the face of a man in the time that’s passed. His hair is different now, covering his Rinnegan eye. His cloak is a little more threadbare, too. He’s tall.

His expression, normally unreadable, is calm. Content, even.

There’s a question nagging at her that she knows she needs to ask. She tries not to bite her lip as she asks it, braces herself for the possibility of not liking the answer.

“Are you… just back for a little while?”

Did you find what you were searching for?

He gazes at her for so long that she thinks he may be glimpsing her soul, peeking into her ventricles to see his own words immortalized there, seared into her core to be felt each time her blood pumps.

“...For more than a while.” And she smiles the biggest she ever has. Oh, this is so much better than a letter or a gift.

“Well, welcome back, Sasuke-kun. It’s… very good to see you again.” It feels as if a piece of her heart has been returned to her, something of the divine stitched back into her chest and full to bursting in omneity.

There is a pause, and then he’s reaching his hand out towards hers, initiating physical contact with a touch that is feather light, so gentle she thinks she is going to start sobbing.

She can’t help it; she pulls him into a hug, tinged with elation. She hopes he doesn’t mind too much; he stiffens for a brief moment, but then settles, wrapping his arm around her and settling his head atop of hers, and she could die happy right there, embracing him with feelings momentarily set free from where they’ve been whelved into her chest.

He smells faintly like sage and smoked cedar, just as she remembered. She can hear his heart thumping, a strong cadence, and it grounds her. Oh, she’s missed him.

“...I’m home, Sakura.” Soft words float above her head, and she can feel the vibration of them through his chest, right by her ear.

Oh, she’s crying.

Sasuke lets her embrace him for a long time, for which she is so grateful. She knows he’s not one for physical contact; it’s a privilege to be allowed into his space even for a single second, let alone for an extended period.

She draws back eventually, glancing up at him again through the tears still collecting in her eyes. Her face blazes when he reaches to wipe them away tenderly with a calloused hand, careful and with a lenity that she’s always known was there, hidden under the surface.

She could just stare at him for hours, she thinks as he lowers his hand. He’s still looking down at her with one of the softest expressions she has ever seen him wear. She really hopes she’s not dreaming.

It’s tremendously hard to get it together, but she tries, because she doesn’t want to spend the entire time crying, not when he's finally back. There are so many questions she’d like to ask him that she’s finding it a challenge to pick one with which to lead.

He surprises her by speaking first, quietly. “I… had something made for you.”

It takes a moment for the words to compute.

Made for me?

Her processing speed must be exceptionally slow, stuck in the utter mush her insides have become, because he adds, “...For your birthday.”

Sakura blinks, and furrows her brows in confusion. “Made… for me?”

He nods. “...I’m sorry it’s late.” The way he speaks it is cryptic, like the apology weighs more than one needed for a tardy gift. Doesn’t he know she doesn’t care? He could have showed up in July with something for her, and it still would have made her knees weak and her heart thump furiously in her chest.

Made for me? She’s still stuck on that sentiment as he breaks eye contact and turns to rummage through his satchel, beneath his cloak.

Sasuke pulls out a medium-sized flat box, a simple white, and she doesn’t know what she expected, but it wasn’t that. Something that comes in a box is a lot more formal than a pressed cherry blossom, something more… permanent.

She reaches out to take it on autopilot, and is stupidly distracted by the way his hand brushes against hers, a small spark that makes something in her quake. She wonders if he felt it, too.

Sakura clutches the box with both hands like her life depends on it, murmuring softly, “Thank you, Sasuke-kun.” She’ll wait until later to open it, after he’s left; whatever it is, she doesn’t want to embarrass him, and she also isn’t sure she can tear her eyes away from him just yet, anyways.

Is it just the lighting in her office, or are his ears a little flushed? She didn’t notice that before; maybe he’s had a drawn-out journey back. She wonders how much ground he covered today, if he’s still winded. He might need to rest.

But then he mumbles, voice husky with what she assumes is disuse, “...You should open it.”

His words echo in her head again. I… had something made for you.

“Okay,” she answers in a hushed voice, so she doesn’t scare him away, shifting slightly to set the box on her desk carefully. Suddenly she is very nervous, anticipation settling into her gut.

When she lifts the lid, she swears her heart ceases beating.

The most exquisitely intricate uchiwa fan she has ever laid eyes upon is placed in the box before her.

It’s carved into a likeness of a cherry blossom tree, branches twisting lissomely into bamboo framework, impossibly fine. A different set of words is reverberating in her head now.

You should try to enjoy your namesake more this year, Forehead. You're so busy that I'm not sure you've realized, but you've really grown into it.

Made for me?

“O-oh.” Sakura is not sure what she expected, but it wasn’t this. She fights back the tears, biting her lip and wide eyes soaking it all in, enjoying her namesake in a way that is entirely unprecedented in its sheer severity. The amount of time it would have taken for someone to sculpt and bind and sew is unimaginable; every detail is finely wrought, flawless down to the silk and stitching, lacquered and carved pale wood shifting effortlessly into eighty slivers of bamboo, intricately webbing silk together with the lithe grace of gossamer. It’s a cherry blossom tree, petals and all, pearlescent thread shifting slightly, gorgeously in the light, unimaginable detail. She has stitched people back together countless times over the course of years, but even her expert dexterity would look like a child’s first embroidery stitching in comparison. The stamen within the petals are nearly more detailed and finely milled than an actual, real life cherry blossom, plexure sutured in a fashion so baronial that it’s impossible to believe human hands were even responsible for it.

The silk. Oh, the silk. The color shift bears a striking resemblance to the Uchiha insignia. This is not a gift one gives to a teammate.

Oh, she's crying.

This has to be a dream, some kind of paracosm her heart thought up to give her brain the high of a lifetime. Hope burgeons and unfolds in her chest cavity, bleeding into her extremities like the pale pink shifting into red before her eyes. She’s never, ever going to forget this, not even if she lives to be one hundred years old.

Made for me?

She picks it up with disbelieving hands, grasping it more carefully than she’s ever held anything in her entire life, as if she’s going to wake up at any moment and it will dissolve into synapse, lost in the hazy juncture of morning the way one tends to lose awareness of the contents of a dream upon coming to lucidity. To her absolute bewilderment, it stays solid in her hands, a finery made even more unbelievable by touch. The grooves of the carving are as gentle as his hand had been on hers earlier. She thinks it would have had to be commissioned at least a few months in advance, outlandishly expensive. She’s never seen silk like this. She doesn't know; she's smart, but she's no artisan. Maybe she should ask Sai. She's crying.

She adores it.

Tears won’t stop welling in her eyes; she thinks they may be escaping from a tender spot inside her chest that’s been reserved for him since she was a child, a leak in a metaphorical dam. She takes a steadying breath, blinks, almost has them conquered. Get a grip, Sakura.

Then Sasuke’s hand is on hers, gently turning the handle over.

Her name is carved into the pale wood, on the back in formal calligraphy, Sakura daintier and more perfect than she could ever write it, as if it had just been uncovered in one of the inner layers rather than whittled there manually. Sasuke presses her fingers to it before loosening his grip, and in that second it feels as though his lost hand is in the wood, caressing her from split atoms in the grooves from the other side.

The tears spill over her cheeks - she admits defeat - intricacy of the entire thing blurring out of focus but still somehow burned into her retinas for all eternity.

Made for me, made for me, made for me-

Her voice finds her after a few more tears fall. “It’s beautiful.” Her voice is barely above a whisper, overwhelmed with complete and utter awe, trying desperately to choke down a sob. “Thank you, Sasuke-kun. I… I’ll treasure it. Always.” She cradles the fan closer to her chest, her heart - maybe An Introduction to Electrocardiography wasn’t a poorly-chosen book, after all; there is much to be read from something this precious - and regards him with watery eyes. She wishes she wasn’t crying; the distortion of the tears is making it hard to see the silver she’s loved and missed so much.

His hand lifts to her face after a moment, and to her surprise, he wipes away her tears again. She barely catches the something-more in his eyes, then, through the waterworks, precious metal flashing and pouring into the words scarred into her ventricles to live there forever, fortified in silver, but he is looking at her so -

“...Always,” he agrees, voice a little breathless, sparking scintilla near hypnotizing her in their luster, and he seems so happy -

Then he leans down to press his lips gently to hers, and this is better than her heart stopping, like when she opened the box. This time, her heart soars, and she touches a star she’s been dreaming of for eons.

#naruto #sasusaku #ssfanfiction #cherry writes #like silver #fanfiction #i'm really out here with just hundreds of pages of fanfiction in my google doc drafts huh

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orionsangel86 · 4 years

Note

your bare minimum post is great and I am totally with you on ever thing you said but what about the absolute most ? what if you had every thing you could want ? what would that look like ? do you have a check list ?

Since I now have two asks asking me the same kinda thing I figure I might as well write out a wishlist! Though bear in mind this is literally my absolute fantasies and not anything I actually expect will happen okay!

Disclaimer: Reading this may make you want things from the ending that Supernatural will never ever give us. Do not get your expectations up based on this post. This is not meta. It is the futile hopes of an emotional woman who just wants these boys to be happy goddammit.

Bare Minimum post referred to here

Supernatural Series Finale Wishlist

Castiel narrates the episode. We get his POV, explaining how his love for Dean grew over the years.

Dean rescues Cas from the Empty in a huge call back to how Cas rescued Dean from Hell.

Dean has to go into Castiel’s mind to wake him up and he sees how Cas falls in love with him and has to convince him to wake up by confessing his love back.

Cas chooses to give up his grace and be human.

It is revealled that Cas has a human soul.

The Empty gets sent back to sleep. It is confirmed that Cas will never go back there even after he eventually grows old and dies. His soul will go to heaven.

Sam finds Eileen, and we get domestic scenes of them happy together.

Sam gets to keep the dog.

Sam’s happiness with Eileen is what triggers Dean finally opening up to Sam. We get an emotional brother heart to heart where Dean finally admits his feelings for Cas, and Sam reveals that he has always known but didn’t want to pry.

It is revealled explicitly that Dean is bisexual (not just Cas-sexual or “gay for Cas).

We get backstory to Dean’s bisexuality - maybe a confirmation that the thing with Lee WAS more than friendship.

Confirmation that Dean hid it from John, and supressed his sexuality for fear his father would reject him. (any chance to get a dig at John in there)/

Sam is the most accepting, wonderful, loving brother ever and gives a speech that makes us all cry that’ll go down in history kinda like that “you can breath now” speech Simon’s mom gave him in Love, Simon.

When trying to convince Cas to come back with him from the Empty, Dean’s “i love you” confession speech is another tearjerker, and is just as beautiful, poetic, and heartfelt as Cas’s was. Bonus points for “you said you couldn’t have what you want... but you’ve had me all along.”

Once Cas is saved and they are both back from the Empty, Dean cradles Cas in his arms and they hold each other tightly, and then share their first kiss. It’s passionate. Bob Singer uses the drone. We zoom out. Sam is standing awkwardly in the corner. It’s hilarious.

SOFT EPILOGUE

No Seriously. My biggest wish is a soft epilogue montage of the brothers growing old with their respective partners, with scenes along the lines of as follows:

Sam decides he wants to travel/go to college/leave the bunker basically. With Eileen. Dean realises that he can’t stay in the bunker without Sam. They all pack their bags and turn off the lights. They go their separate ways.

The brothers say goodbye and drive of in separate directions.

Dean and Cas find a house by the ocean. They do it up and build a life together.

We see them happy. We see them watching cowboy movies together.

We see them in bed together. Naked, sweaty... soft focus cliche sex scene like those old hallmark movies.

We see the morning after, sunlight pouring in through the window. Dean wakes and looks at a sleeping Cas. (Mirror to the scene with Lisa in 6x01)

We see them through the kitchen window. Making breakfast until a song comes on the radio. Dean takes Cas in his arms and they dance. (mirror to the scene with Garth and Bess in 15x10)

We see Sam and Eileen as well. We see them also sharing a happy life.

Sam graduates from college.

We see Sam propose. We see their wedding.

Dean and Cas dance at Sam’s wedding.

Sam and Eileen have kids. The boys are going grey.

Dean and Cas are sitting watching the sunset over the ocean. They are content and happy. Dean says it’s been 10 years since the events of 15x19, when they defeated Chuck.

Sam, Dean, and Cas meet up to commemorate the last 10 years. 10 years of peace and freedom. Turns out you can have both. There are fireworks.

Jack appears. They all hug. Cas narrates that even though the story is over now, it doesn’t really end. So long as you know that they lived, they loved, and they were happy, but most importantly, they were at peace.

Carry on wayward son plays. We all break down in tears.

Other things I’d like to see but couldn’t fit into the above:

OG Charlie returns

OG Bobby returns

We get confirmation that heaven has been restored

Did Jack bring the angels back from the Empty? Confirmation of that too please

Jack and Cas get a heartfelt conversation where Cas gets to tell him how proud he is.

Now if anyone comes into my inbox telling me that this is so perfect its gonna ruin the actual finale for them don’t say I didn’t warn you. :P

#destiel #spn endgame #spn endgame wishlist #my dream ending #asks #Anonymous

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bitchwhoreofastorm · 3 years

Text

i could never be fucked to finish this one by giving it a proper intro also it’s about barfok and half of the dialogue is in dovahzul and no i’m not providing translations. in which kagrenac and barfok have a “conversation”

Bthamzel falls with a single note.

Kagrenac is not a warrior, and yet she had studied the phenomenon set before her extensively-- and so, when she heard of the siege of Bthamzel, she was well-prepared to take advantage of the singular opportunity she had been afforded. Though she is not a warrior, and has never seen battle, she arranges an expedition: she hires an emissary, a Dwemer who speaks the coarse tongue of Aldmeris, she gathers up her tools, and she sets off to greet the Nordic Warlord who’s been singing Veloth into ruin.

[...]

She is not how Kagrenac expected her to be. First of all, Kagrenac, for some reason, expected her to be beautiful, but this isn't the case. The woman who comes to Kagrenac that day is homely, though by no means plain: she's thick of limb, ruddy-skinned, with pale grey eyes set wide in her face, and large, uneven teeth exposed unabashedly by her cheerful grin. Her dull yellow hair is pulled away from her face in a low, loose knot, unbraided; her clothing is plain to Kagrenac's eyes, but she must suppose that the white bearskin cape and engraved leather jerkin beneath it are considered elaborate, to the northmen's simple tastes. She is unaccompanied by any guard, Kagrenac sees at once-- she's entered the stronghold alone.

She's barefooted, too, Kagrenac notices. Her toes are black with ash and leave prints on the smooth stronghold floor.

She doesn't seem to notice Kagrenac at first; she's busy looking around herself, taking in the stronghold with her wide grey eyes and her toothy grin, pink tongue peeking out from between her uneven teeth. It's only when the emissary says something in the uncouth tongue of Aldmeris that she jerks her gaze to Kagrenac, and Kagrenac watches her thin eyebrows twitch upwards.

Kagrenac speaks no Aldmeris, but she's already instructed the emissary on what to say: the usual titles, accolades, praises, the primitive words needed to make a Nord understand what an honour this meeting is. In truth, it's a little embarrassing that such an introduction is necessary, but Kagrenac's willing to take no risks, and the last thing she'd wanted was to make their guest feel insulted; however, as the emissary prattles on, she begins to feel more and more like she's wasted his breath. The Tongue is still looking around the stronghold, her toothy mouth hanging open and her silver eyes wide with curiosity. Kagrenac's eyes dart down to her bare feet again. Her grubby toes are curling into the shiny floor.

The emissary finishes off his spiel with a question, and though the language is foreign to her, Kagrenac knows what he's asked. She knows, too, what it means when the Tongue looks to him, her slack mouth widening into a broad grin.

"Barfok!" proclaims the Tongue, slapping her chest hard with the flat of her hand.

Barfok.

The emissary begins to prattle something else, and Kagrenac digs her nails into the hands which are clasped right behind her back. This is the part, she supposes, where Barfok will deliver her own titles. She supposes that Tongues will have titles, lofty and numerous titles. But Barfok seems content to be simply Barfok; she stands with her arms crossed, seemingly not listening to the emissary at all. Her gaze, still curious, now rests squarely on Kagrenac’s face, and Kagrenac cannot resist the challenge of staring into those pale silvery eyes. Barfok has brownish eyelashes, thin ones, and Kagrenac wonders whether the ashfall gets in her eyes.

“I’ve asked her where she’s from,” the emissary explains to Kagrenac, switching back to smooth Dwemeris. He says something else, in Aldmeris, to Barfok.

Barfok glances at him, and replies in the same tongue. But then-- quite unexpectedly-- she ends her sentence with three familiar tones, “Laa laa laa,” sung out with a cheerful smile.

“She says she is the ‘Jarl’ of ‘Narsis-hold’,” begins the emissary in Dwemeris, “She--”

“Leave us,” orders Kagrenac.

The emissary is startled, but when Kagrenac speaks, the Dwemer obey; he bows and departs, leaving the two of them alone in the hallway.

Barfok stares at Kagrenac with her unsettling grin. Kagrenac gestures at her to follow, and escorts her to her study.

Kagrenac’s study in Sturdumz is a simple, temporary thing, but Barfok appears delighted nonetheless: the moment they enter it, she gasps and rushes forwards, running around the room and taking in everything with the wonder of a child. She says something in Aldmeris, excitedly, but Kagrenac, not knowing the language, pays her no attention; while Barfok runs about the study with an unabashed wonder that’s frankly perplexing to behold, Kagrenac pretends not to behold, and wanders to a nearby shelf.

“Daar los?” The question catches Kagrenac’s ear, because that is certainly not Aldmeris she’s just spoken. When she turns around, Barfok is holding two tuning-forks, staring at Kagrenac with her unsettling grin.

“Tuning-forks,” Kagrenac replies in Dwemeris. She walks over and gently takes them from Barfok’s grasp.

“Kagger-Shond,” Barfok repeats the Dwemeris word clumsily. She meets Kagrenac’s eyes, then, and, with an enthusiastic smile, points to Kagrenac’s chest. “Ahrk wo hin?”

Kagrenac does not understand this question, so she remains quiet.

A brief flicker of displeasure crosses Barfok’s expression, but then her eyes widen and she nods, her lips curling back into their perpetual smile. She takes a step back, extends one of her hands, and, with great gusto, smacks her sternum, creating a resounding thwack against the leather. “Zu’u los Barfok!” she says loudly. Then she points her finger at Kagrenac’s chest. “Wo los hin?”

“Kagrenac,” says Kagrenac slowly.

“Kagrenac!” Barfok repeats after her, clearly pleased. Then she reaches up and tugs at one of her own blunt ears with one hand, and with the other thwacks her chest again. “Zu’u los bron. Koraav? Bron.” Then, quite rudely, she reaches out and pats Kagrenac on the chest. “Hi los Ogiim.”

Kagrenac manages to refrain from reacting-- she might have been offended, had this not all posed a tempting little puzzle. She nods, slowly, and points up to one of her own pointed ears. “I am a Dwemer,” she says. “I am an… Ogiim.”

“Hi los ogiim!” Barfok agreed enthusiastically. She points to herself again. “Ahrk zu’u los?”

Even in a foreign tongue, it’s a good question: what is this strange creature, this force of nature prancing around Kagrenac’s study?

“A roaring snow-throated King of Mora.” Kagrenac answers. She uses the poetic term for a Tongue, knowing that the foreigner would never be able to pronounce the Dwemeris.

Not that it deters her. “Kemmel Mule Shond…” Barfok begins, and then a broad grin splits her face once more. “Aka! Geh, Aka! Zu’u Aka? Aka los?”

Kagrenac frowns, and, at a loss for other words, raises both hands and mimes a crown over her own head.

This makes Barfok laugh, a loud indecorous laugh that causes her shoulders to shake and her eyes to crinkle. “Jun!” she says giddily, “Hi mindok aka los jun? Fah mu, Aka los dovah. Aka los bormah-se-alduin!”

Seeing that Kagrenac is evidently lost, Barfok extends both arms in a pantomime of two wings flapping. “Aka! Dovah! Haha, mu los dovahhe, ahrk zu’u los zok dovah! Yol!’

She sings the last word, and a small lick of flame erupts from her thin lips at the sound of it.

This time, Kagrenac cannot help but shudder and step back. The words are gibberish to her, but she recognizes the tone of the word Barfok just sang, and its meaning is clear enough: fire. Before this the Tongue has seemed unrefined, foolish; now Kagrenac is reminded that Bthamzel, and all the people within it, has been vanished into thin air.

Kagrenac closes her eyes as she steels herself, and when she opens them again she finds Barfok staring at her, frowning now. Kagrenac takes a deep breath-- looks to the shelf-- when she looks again, Barfok has not moved, and is still staring at her with her head cocked to the side. Waiting for Kagrenac to resume their game, no doubt.

Kagrenac’s study contains many interesting objects, curios brought to her by aspiring acolytes hoping to earn her easily-lost attention. Kagrenac walks a slow circle around it, making a show of examining her collection, and all the while she feels Barfok’s gaze boring into her back.

She finally stops, selecting a glass eye from a shelf. This, said the apprentice who gifted it to her, was the eye of an Ayleid mage, pried from his resurrected corpse, bearing strange magic. Kagrenac holds the glinting blue object aloft and asks, in soft, careful words: “Daar los?”

Barfok laughs aloud in delight. “Miin!” she replies. She points to both of her pale grey eyes, then, pulling down her lids to create a frightening expression. “Miinne. Dii miinne.”

“Your miinne,” Kagrenac says to herself unthinkingly.

“Thu’um?” asks Barfok, surprised.

“Thua miinne,” Kagrenac corrects her. She points to her own eyes, and says, in slow, clear, Dwemeris: “Duum minne.”

“Miiniil,” Barfok adds with a laugh, pointing to the glass eye in her hand.

Kagrenac places the eye down, and then takes from the shelf a small statuette, depicting a wolf. Plundered from the tomb of a Nordic king, if its original owner’s boasting was anything to go by. “Daar los?” she asks again.

“Grohiik,” replies Barfok. She uses her hands to mime a wolf’s jaws snapping open and shut. “Grohiik… du… hin!” At the last words she shoves her hands forwards, as if the wolf in her creation were devouring Kagrenac. Kagrenac does not flinch.

“Daar los?” This time Kagrenac picks up a single white bone.

“Qeth,” Barfok says.

Kagrenac takes a small Dwemeri device from the shelf. “Daar los?” she asked, with the ghost of a smile.

“Vomindok--” Barfok begins, but then Kagrenac turns the key of the music-box. A cascade of airy notes tumbles out, light tinkling music running up and down a minor scale.

There’s an expression on Barfok’s face that Kagrenac recognizes, only in theory, as religious rapture: this is no longer a game, and the Tongue’s expression is thoughtful, mesmerised, her eyes resting only on the music-box in Kagrenac’s hand.

The tune ends after a moment. “Daar los…” Barfok begins softly. “Daar brii! Ah, tinvaak-- Daar lovaas.” She pauses. “Nid, nid-- lovaas los-- Lovaas los lovaas. Laa laa laa. Fahliille nid lovaas.” She shrugs and fixes Kagrenac with an apologetic grin. “Daar lost?”

“Music,” Kagrenac says. Her namesake.

Barfok’s eyes widen. “Kagren? Hi los Kagren-Aka?”

Kagrenac nods. On the shelf is another Dwemeri device, a small listening-frame constructed of thin ebony beams, and she picks it up, takes away the damper that stops it from soaking in vibrations. It begins to hum noiselessly in her hand and she places it back down.

Barfok crosses her arms, watching Kagrenac walk to the desk, where sits her most treasured possession: a small array of bells, fifteen in all.

She strikes the first violet bell and a single clear tone rings out across the study.

“Daar los?” Kagrenac asks above the lingering sound.

Barfok’s expression is unreadable, and her answer is slow: “Dibela.”

Kagrenac strikes the second bell, brass.

“Stuhn,” replies Barfok.

The third bell. “Tsun,” Barfok says.

The fourth, scarlet. “Fus.”

The fifth tone, amber. “Qoth.”

The sixth, crimson. “Sahqon,” Barfok says softly, and Kagrenac glances towards the listening-frame on the shelf.

The seventh note. “Fey.”

The eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh; rose-gold, amaranth, rust and gold in dazzling array. “Shul,” says Barfok. “Feim, tiid, yol.”

The twelfth tone, ebony; Barfok’s expression becomes grim. “Sos.”

The thirteenth tone is white-noise, and difficult to hear, but Barfok inclines her head and answers, “Od.”

The fourteenth tone, ocean-blue, heavy and liquid in the air. “Herma-Mora,” Barfok names it.

Kagrenac strikes the final bell, sky, and Barfok closes her eyes briefly. “Kyne.”

A heavy silence descends between them, in which Kagrenac places down the rod she’s used to strike each bell. She walks over to her listening-frame and goes to replace the damper, but, to her surprise, Barfok cries out a word she doesn’t catch, halting her.

Kagrenac turns to face her guest, as Barfok looks around the room. Agitated, she walks to Kagrenac’s desk and then, with the flats of her palms, strikes the desk hard, as if pounding a drum. “Ok qethsegol,” she says, bewildered. She strikes the desk in a slow rhythm, like a beating heart. “Mansedaan,” she says to Kagrenac, turning to her again, now striking her own chest a few times in that same rhythm, over the heart. “Mansedaan.”

The sixteenth tone, Kagrenac thinks.

“Shor,” Barfok says, with a thin smile.

Kagrenac nods, and reaches for the listening-frame-- only for Barfok to walk over and grab her hand. Barfok has broad hands, the palms surprisingly soft, with short chewed fingernails and a small tangle of scars over the fingers like lace. She leans forwards, placing her lips near the listening-box, takes a deep breath, and sings out: “Meyz feim Shor.”

Reality shudders around them, and then ash begins to fall. Kagrenac looks up and sees that the roof is gone from above their heads, as if it was never there all; indeed, as Kagrenac stares up at the grey sky, she finds it hard to imagine that there was ever a roof on the stronghold, so perfectly has it disappeared.

Barfok squeezes her hand and steps back just as the alarmed emissary barges into their study. He begins yelling about their missing roof, but Kagrenac silences him with a gesture; Barfok, still wearing her cheerful expression, has skipped back and is standing near the wall.

“Tonal Architect!” cries the emissary, as Kagrenac replaces the damper on her listening-frame. “Our stronghold roof-- it’s utterly disappeared-- how dare that Northman!” And then he shouts something in Aldmeris at Barfok.

Barfok only laughs at him, and then turns to Kagrenac and bows. “Wuld na kest,” she sings out-- and with that she vanishes entirely, leaving the apoplectic emissary and Kagrenac standing in the steady fall of ash.

“Meyz feim Shor,” Kagrenac murmurs to herself. She looks to the Emissary. “Are you finished?”

“The amount of time it will take to repair the Stronghold--” says the emissary, flustered.

“We’re not repairing it,” Kagrenac says. She lifts the listening-frame from the shelf and places it securely into one of the deep pockets of her robe. “I’ve obtained what I needed here. Have Sturdumz placed into hibernation; we shall depart for Vvardenfell tomorrow.”

#yeah we irritating #barfok #fic

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lazaefair · 4 years

Text

Has anyone done the Disney Princess AU yet

Part 1 - written by me, @poemsingreenink, and @iwritesometimes

poemsingreenink: Like, if anyone has big, soft innocent eyes it's Marwan who I swear to god looks near happy tears in most intense scenes. I at one point during Aladdin in theaters thought "You know Jafar's maybe just not had a great life. He's really having a day here." BECAUSE OF HIS BIG SOFT EYES.

lazaefair: LUCA MARINELLI HIMSELF SAID IT

sarah: HOWWWWW DID HE EVEN GET CAST AS JAFAR LIKE THOSE ARE DISNEY PRINCESS EYES

lazaefair: I...I need somone to draw Joe in a Disney Princess dress

sarah: but WHICH PRINCESS i feel like belle's off the shoulder gold ballgown has promise

lazaefair: Ariel’s pink gown would really drive the point home, though Although you’re right, Belle is a literate, dreamy brunette who loves poetry, so she’s closer as an archetype

sarah: i'll be honest: i was mostly thinking of getting his shoulders nude

lazaefair: Nicky is Ariel. Big blue eyes, otherworldly, utterly uncivilized.

sarah: YES

So imagine: Prince Yusuf, who had a giant statue of himself gifted to him on his birthday, and who hates it because his best friend (and immortal general of the army) Andromache is NEVER GOING TO LET HIM LIVE IT DOWN.

Also imagine: feral merman siren Nicolò who bites off fishheads and communicates through weird clicking noises, when he’s not singing men to their deaths. He’s not one of those useless pretty koi mermaids, no. He’s a motherfucking creature of the deep. Lamp eyes that are used to distract fish prey. Claws and pale fins and an intense stare and fangs.

Now imagine: Prince Yusuf going overboard in the storm that hits his royal yacht. Struggling, swept away, half-drowned and losing hope fast when an unearthly song fills the air, low and sweet and compelling. He’s swimming towards the singing before he realizes it, delirious, until something closes around his ankle and drags him under. The thing under the water kills him quickly.

And then kills him again, when it doesn’t take. After the third killing, Nicolò’s on his way to being well and truly mystified (“Okay, don't panic. They all die eventually, maybe...maybe I’ll just need to do it again?”) and gives up after the fourth and fifth killing. He drags his (attempted) prey to a little sheltered island he knows about, kills it one last time just to make sure, and then watches, resigned, as the flesh heals up and the lungs push water out until it’s coughing its way back to undeniable life.

“You rescued me,” is the first thing Yusuf says to him. “Your song – it is the song of my heart. My soul.”

Nicolò...has no idea what to do with this, coughs awkwardly in reply, and leaves before he can think too hard about the warmth in his chest answering to the warmth in the human’s expressive, grateful eyes.

(He doesn’t tell Yusuf the truth about their bloody first meeting until years later. It’s too goddamn embarrassing, to be perfectly honest.)

Of course he comes back within a day, almost shamefully quickly. Unable to help being fascinated by this gorgeous, well-spoken, kind and generous human who cannot die. He starts bringing things to Yusuf: at first just fish, then interesting-shaped fragments of rock and coral, and then bits of treasure he’s collected over the years, just to hear what new poetic turn of phrase Yusuf will spout on the spot when he’s given something.

“...this is my family crest on this treasure chest, Nicolò. How strange.”

“It is the chest you said your great-great-grandfather lost,” Nicolò says, the words coming out dry and halting from long years of disuse. Watching Yusuf’s hands as he traces the elaborate lines engraved on the lid, now blurred with rust and coral.

“That’s amazing. Truly. I am at a loss for words,” Yusuf says, smiling.

“No, you aren’t,” Nicolò says, and keeps watching so he can see the moment when the smile turns into a laugh.

Another day, he brings to Yusuf what Booker had told him was called a ‘dinglehopper’ and was what humans used to keep their hair in order, as they did not have the ocean to spread it out like beautiful seaweed in the waves. Yusuf takes it, mouth twitching in a way that makes Nicolò doubt the accuracy of Booker’s explanation. Yet Yusuf does not correct him, but in fact solemnly thanks him before offering the dinglehopper back and asking him to help untangle his riot of curls.

And so it goes. Days pass. Fascination becomes infatuation, turns to desire and then into love, until neither can imagine living without the other, and yet—

Eventually, Nicolò has to give Yusuf up. The prince is too noble and good to just abandon his people indefinitely. And because Nicolò loves him, he goes out and once more lures a ship in with his song, but not to dash it to pieces on jagged rocks this time. He leads them to the island. Watches from a distance as the astonished shouting begins, then back-pounding hugs and joyous celebration as Yusuf boards the ship and sails away. Watches Yusuf turn back more than once to scan the beach, clearly looking for Nicolò, but Nicolò does not follow. Instead, he watches until the ship is lost to his sight and he cannot feel the ship’s current or smell, and then he dives deep and goes to visit Merrick.

Meanwhile, Yusuf arrives back at the capital, where his other best friend, Quỳnh (immortal admiral of the navy) feels terribly guilty about the prince going overboard on his birthday. Which is why she uncharacteristically doesn’t give him shit when he comes back babbling nonsense about mermaids. Or when he spends the next few weeks moping around, writing mermaid poetry and drawing mermaid pictures.

To be fair to him, the particular mermaid he sketches over and over does look pretty striking. Otherworldly and all that. Good cheekbones. Nice pearly scales. “Fucking...giant anglerfish eyes,” Quỳnh mutters while she and Andy look over the latest pile of sketches Yusuf’s left abandoned on a library table. “Our prince has been fucking bewitched by a fucking fish.”

“Mm,” Andy agrees.

So when Nicolò arrives at the palace one fine summer’s day – naked, his fangs smoothed away to look perfectly human, a giant emerald in one hand and a silver fork in the other – and walking, on legs, it causes a bit of an uproar.

“You still smell like the sea,” Yusuf says hoarsely into Nicolò’s neck, the two of them wrapped around each other as closely as two bodies can be.

“Oh, fuck,” Andy says, lowering her axe. Quỳnh looks more closely at the dirty naked wild man their prince is embracing as if his life depends on it. Angular face. Skin encrusted with salt. Absolutely enormous piercing blue eyes. Naked, did we mention naked.

“Oh, fuck,” Quỳnh says.

“You get them separated,” Andy says. “I’ll go...get them a bath.”

The price Nicolò paid for his new human shape:

His siren song.

His immortality.

What he gets in return:

Yusuf teaching him what a dinglehopper is actually called, and what humans actually use it for.

Yusuf teaching him how to read and write his native tongue, and a few other tongues besides.

Yusuf reading poetry to him or sketching next to him on long lazy afternoons in the gardens.

The immense pleasure of intimidating the fuck out of any remaining would-be suitors for Yusuf’s hand in marriage who are still hanging around the palace for some reason.

“I am Nicolò di Genova,” Nicolò replies to the marquis’s indignant demands – predator’s smile still frightening even without endless rows of needle-sharp teeth. “You have seven days to leave this place forever. Get your affairs in order.”

Friendship with Andy and Quỳnh.

“Holy shit. Did he just—”

“—stab the marquis with a fork, at dinner, in front of the entire court? Yep.”

“...”

“New best friend.”

“Obviously.”

Yusuf writing poetry about him and to him. Nicolò likes them all. He wouldn't know a good human poem from a bad human poem, but nothing Yusuf touches could be bad, so ergo it's good.

Sightseeing throughout the kingdom with Yusuf’s strong, gentle fingers twined around his.

Yusuf breathing blissful curses into Nicolò’s ear, exactly like he used to do on their island, as they move together on his enormous bed.

Yusuf. Yusuf. Yusuf.

(Booker is also there. He insisted on being turned human, too, and coming along to make sure Nicolò doesn’t totally fuck this up, but he’s really mainly there for the entertainment. And the booze. Andy asks him at one point about losing his immortality. He shrugs. “Look, if we die, we die,” he says, then offers Andy another pour of fine French brandy. The two of them get along famously.)

It’s all going great until one night on the beach, while they’re walking along hand-in-hand under the stars and idly discussing human and merfolk constellations. Someone approaches them, dressed splendidly and moving with arrogant grace. He is also angular, also fair-haired, also possessed of unsettling eyes. And he has Nicolò’s siren song, gently humming from the shell that adorns his neck.

“Merrick,” Nicolò hisses as Yusuf’s eyes grow glazed and blank, and he tightens his hand on Yusuf’s, afraid for the first time. “Our deal—”

“He can’t bear the idea of living forever without you, can he? And so he hasn’t proposed,” Merrick says, smiling cruelly. “You’ve missed your chance. He’s mine.” And he extends his hand out to Yusuf—

Who stirs, suddenly, and turns to Nicolò. “Limpid, or shimmering?”

“What?”

“Shimmering,” Yusuf decides, peering into Nicolò’s eyes. “Yes. Limpid would be too pretentious, I think.”

And that’s pretty much that – we don’t actually get the plot with Merrick the Sea Witch because Yusuf only has eyes for one weird-looking white guy. Also, his one artistic failing is that he's tone deaf.

They do eventually kill Merrick because true love wins out and we are all about those happy endings, Grimm’s can suck it, etcetera, so Nicolò gets his immortality and his siren song back. He’s also back to being a merman, but Yusuf does not care. “I could paint your beautiful tail for the rest of my life, my love, and still fail to capture the luminous iridescence of you,” he murmurs, stroking said tail with tender fingers. The last person to touch Nicolò’s tail got his hand bitten off. Here and now, Nicolò runs his claws through Yusuf’s hair, clicking deep and happy in his throat.

(“This is weird, right?” Quỳnh asks from where she and Andy are busy scraping evil kraken guts off their armor, a prudent distance down the beach from the lovers. “I’m not the only one who thinks it’s weird?”

Andy says nothing, just offers Quỳnh the rest of her bottle of vodka. This is why Quỳnh loves her so.)

(The wedding is a nightmare, at least according to the palace chef charged with cooking the wedding feast. “What is this, this, abomination? What in heaven’s name have you brought into my kitchen!”

“Tubeworm,” Booker says. “Considered a fine delicacy among our people. Don’t worry about it.”)

#the old guard #joe x nicky #immortal husbands #kaysanova #disney princess au #by lazaefair

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sdottkrames · 4 years

Note

Hiya friend! I l.i.v.e. for Ironfam christmas! From the December prompts do you think you could write a little something about Peter and the fam with Ornaments and Christmas Lights? Fluff,H/C, wherever you wanna take it my dear!

For you, my dear 💜 thank you thank you for sending this ask! It was so freakin fun to write! I absolutely love writing for people, so this made me very happy. It’s all fluff, because Christmas and comfortember make me soft and fluffy! I hope you enjoy!

The Stark house was full of boxes.

Red boxes with green lids, overflowing with garland and tinsel and lights and fake little Christmas trees filled nearly the entire living room. Tony hadn’t realized when he married Pepper how much she loved Christmas, but since it had never really been a huge Holiday for him, enshrouded as it was in hurt and grief, he had honestly been excited to make better memories surrounding it. A few years and many, many shopping sprees later, the Starks had collected enough Christmas decorations to open a small store.

Tony loved decorating the lake house, especially once Morgan got old enough to appreciate trimming the tree. He would never forget her face as she watched with wide, wonder-filled eyes as the lights turned on and glistened serenely from ornaments and tinsel.

This year, he got to enjoy it with both his children.

“Peter Benjamin Parker, get down from there right now!” he heard Pepper yell from outside.

Maybe Peter shouldn’t be decorating, after all.

Shaking his head, and letting out a groan, Tony stood to go investigate.

Peter was grinning as he hung from the gutter by his sticky feet like some kind of curly-haired bat. The cutest bat ever, but Tony would never admit that out loud.

“Kid, you’re going to give everyone a heart attack,” he admonished, rolling his eyes as Peter flipped down, landing easily in a graceful crouch.

“Someone’s gotta put the lights up, old man.”

Tony shoved the boy’s shoulder, scoffing playfully. “Yeah, but I would do it without the theatrics.”

Peter raised his eyebrows.

“Oh, don’t give me that look, Mr. Parker.”

“Then don’t pretend that you, Mr. ‘I am Iron Man’, Mr. ‘I waxed poetic last week because Peter ate the last donut’, Mr.-”

“Okay, okay, I get it!” Tony interrupted with a laugh.

Peter laughed, too, and Tony was pretty sure he’d never heard a better sound.

“Alright Pepper, go ahead and light ‘em up!” Peter called.

The sun was just starting to slip below the horizon, painting the sky beautiful reds and yellows on its way down, and the Pepper plugged the extension cord in to light the house in beautiful reds and greens.

“Nice work, kid,” Tony said, slinging an arm around Peter’s shoulder. Peter cuddled closer.

“Thanks. It really was a lot of fun!”

“I’m sure. And again, I fully expect you to foot the bill if Pepper ends up with a heart condition like mine.”

“Uh-huh. Whatever you say!”

The two headed inside to help trim the tree, the last of the decorating for the day. They joined Pepper who was fluffing up the branches of their tree. After having Morgan, Pepper had opted for a fake tree to avoid the hassle of cleaning up falling pine needles and the worry of the little one eating said needles.

“Hey, Peter, would you plug this in to see if they work?” May asked, handing him one of the long strands of lights she was untangling.

“Sure, May.”

He helped check a few strands, and once Pepper had deemed the boughs sufficiently full, they set to work stringing the lights. It was all fairly easy until they needed to get to the top. The tree was one of the tallest trees available, and even Tony couldn’t reach that high.

“Here! Give me the lights,” Peter said, and Tony handed the string over. Peter jumped up to the ceiling and crawled over to the tree, carefully wrapping the lights until the branches were equally covered.

Peter stayed on the ceiling as Pepper handed him ornaments to place on the higher boughs, too. She directed him on where to put them, while Morgan helped May and Tony decorate the bottom portion.

“Now for the star,” Tony announced. “And of course the youngest one gets to put the topper on!”

Tony scooped Morgan up, tickling her a bit to make her giggle. before swinging her up into Peter’s waiting arms. Peter gently hung her over the top of the tree so she could place the star topper just so.

“Got it? Great job, Mo!” He cheered, and swung her back and forth a few times, making her laugh again.

May was less amused.

“Peter, someone is going to get hurt!”

“I’m literally sticking to her!” He complained, but handed Morgan down to May, who gently placed her on the ground and Peter flipped down to join them.

“Alright, ready to light her?” Tony asked. “Fri, honey, lights at 10%.”

“Wait, Tony!” Peter said, and Tony didn’t miss the slight blush that darkened the kid’s cheeks, piquing the older man’s curiosity. “I, uh, actually have one more ornament.”

“You do?”

Peter rummaged through his overnight bag.

“It’s in the right side pocket. Wrapped in one of your socks,” May called.

“Oh! Found it!”

And he came bounding over to Tony with a small, wrapped bundle.

“It’s for me?” Tony questioned, and Peter nodded.

Tony peeled back the paper layer by layer (he was honestly shocked someone didn’t make a comment about “not saving the wrapping”) until he got to the present inside and felt unexpected tears wet his eyes when he saw what was underneath all the white paper.

He held a flat, circular ornament, personalized with a picture. It was him and Peter from last Christmas. Peter had gotten Tony an ugly Christmas sweater, hot rod red with an iron man mask outlined in black right in the center, reindeer antlers adorned with Christmas lights sprouting out the sides. Peter himself was wearing a matching one, except it was a deep shade of blue, and it was his own superhero mask outlined in red in the center. They had arms tight around each other, their faces lit up with matching grins.

“I love it, kid, thank you,” he finally said, crushing Peter in a hug.

They hung the ornament in a choice spot on the tree, close to the snowman Morgan had painted him when she was three. It was more a snowman shaped slop of colors (like most crafts from toddlers are) but he treasured that ornament and definitely didn’t still cry when he looked at it. Nope, definitely not.

“Alrighty, Fri,” he said once it was situated. “Light her up!”

And then the lights turned on, and they all let out little gasps as the dimly lit room was illuminated by the magical soft glow of Christmas lights. The lights reflected off the ornaments, further adding to the magic, and everybody felt the peaceful happiness the sight brought.

“It’s beautiful,” Peter murmured.

“It’ll look even prettier with presents under it!” Morgan declared, making everyone laugh. “One for daddy, and mommy, and Petey, and me! And May, and Happy, too.”

Eventually there would be presents for everyone (more than one, of course) but for now, with everyone they loved all together and safe, it was beautiful just the way it was.

#mine #thanks for sending in a prompt 💜#Christmas fluff!#irondad and spiderson #iron dad #spider son #moon 🌙

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dagoth-menthol · 3 years

Text

I posted 283 times in 2021

10 posts created (4%)

273 posts reblogged (96%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 27.3 posts.

I added 52 tags in 2021

#important - 17 posts

#interesting - 8 posts

#:) - 7 posts

#damn - 4 posts

#tag game - 4 posts

#lmao - 3 posts

#art history - 3 posts

#jäger - 2 posts

#cute - 2 posts

#or sth like that - 2 posts

Longest Tag: 108 characters

#ok so now i know the name of the person that is responible for me still being able to sing some of his songs

My Top Posts in 2021

Got attagged by @grain-crain-drain . Thank you! It was a pretty interesting quiz! :D

I got: Clay Writer

“Please, take time for yourself, too. You work hard, so hard, and you follow your heart to the deepest caverns into the wildest mountains. Your heart got broken, but you took all its pieces and molded them into something brand new and beautiful. You’re a beautiful human being, and I’m really proud of you. Sometimes you fall, but every single time you get up, and it’s hard, but you go on, you build everything again. Life made you taste how bad it can be, but you decided to remain kind. It takes courage to be soft, in this would, and I really admire you. You’re the gentle writer, poetic words and agape love personified. Your stories have an angsty aftertaste, your words don’t hit the reader violently, but they caress their cheeks and whisper in their ears words that will leave them. In you there’s the strength of wild streams, and the patience mountains have. The world is lucky to have you.“

I attagggggggg ... @steamclouds ( there is no escaping ;)c ) and @titan-wolfdog ( go and tag some of your friends ;D )

2 notes • Posted 2021-07-19 18:23:57 GMT

There's at least five feet of snow here

Heyo, here is the submission for Day 18 of the Siegemas Event 2021! Erc-7 couldn't make it for personal reasons, so I'm taking over and I hope you enjoy the fic! I wish all of you good and calm holidays and hope you all have a good start into the next year! "We should go on vacation." Dominic burst out, his sparring partner stopped and looked at him in confusion.

"We have been together for one year, don't you think we should celebrate that? And I think we both need some time-off." He continued while still breathing heavily from the exertion.

"Oh, that sounds great! I really need some time to relax." Elias smiled brightly at that idea, already fantasizing about all the good food and sauna trips. His body was seemingly relaxing as he indulged in those thoughts.

"Then, vacation it is!"

"Yeah, but we still have to convince Harry to let us go, too." The shield bearer breathed out loudly through his nose, the other man placed both his hands on his hips and shook his head in disbelief.

"Hmmm, I will talk to him tomorrow."

Elias just cocked his eyebrow.

~*~

A few days later they were able to discuss their plans. It was Elias who was able to convince Harry in the end. Who knew what Dominic had said again...

Their plan was simple. They would drive from the airport in Munich with a rented car to the Alps, stay in a cabin in a holiday village for three days and get home the same way they came. Simple, easy, foolproof.

A few weeks later, the week before Christmas, they set out on their journey. Dominic pushed the car and they made their way to the Alpine holiday village in about two hours. They got their stuff into the little cabin and settled down for a bit, planning what they should be doing next. They still had a whole day ahead. Elias suggested going skiing, he said it would be fun. Until it wasn't. Dominic spent more time lying in the snow than actually skiing and Elias laughing his soul out didn't help either. In the end they managed to make it down one slope.

"God fucking damn it! I have enough, let's go home!" He rammed his ski sticks on the part that unlocks his shoes so violently that Elias thought he would break the parts.

"But we haven't even spent two hours here and paid quite a sum for this day ticket, too."

"Listen, I really have enough, everything hurts and I am freezing. Please let us go home. I will even give you the money back for the card." The man sounded more desperate than anything else, no anger was there anymore, just exhaustion. Someone could feel sorry for this poor man. And Elias did, but seeing his boyfriend in this kind of state was hilarious to him. The soggy clothes that clearly showed how good he was at skiing. The pleading look. He just looked like a wet cat waiting to be let inside. A glorious picture he would have loved to take, but getting his phone out would be too obvious right now.

"Elias, please…" Dominic insisted, there was no motion from his boyfriend, except the big grin.

"Yeah, yeah, I will set you free from your misery." Elias winked at his love, got off his skis and made his way to the exit. Dom happily walked next to him. His stride was already his usual confident and cool self. Good, it would have been a bad thing if he would still have been sulking. Elias slung his arm around his boyfriend's shoulders and squeezed it, flashing him a bright smile. Still, the day couldn't be better.

Before they went back to their little cabin they went grocery shopping. They weren't so fond of just getting take-out because they wanted to cook together. And frankly, not many places offered take-out anyways. After they finally arrived at their "home" they set out to make themselves something good to eat. They made some simple pancakes, one more sugary than the other. In the end they were only able to roll onto the small couch to take a break and watch the fire in the fireplace that they had lit up upon arriving. Elias was sitting and scrolling through his phone while Dominic laid down as best as he could on his back. His boyfriend's thigh served as his pillow and soon he fell asleep. The sounds of the cracking wood and the slow and calm breathing helped to ease any tension he had. Soon Elias began to caress his lover's hair absentmindedly.

No one would have ever thought that this grumpy and closedoff man would ever be together with the social butterfly. It warmed Elias' heart even more than any fire ever could when he just thought about how much Dominic trusted him to fall asleep not just next to him, but having his head on his thigh while Elias caressed his hair. He couldn't be happier. This was all he ever wanted. Being together with the one he loved. In a safe place where they both could let their guard down. A place where it is just them and no one else. With a fond smile on his lips he drifted into sleep, the phone still in his one hand, the other still placed on his boyfriend's head.

Upon awakening Dominic realized that there was something warm placed on his forehead, he slowly opened one of his eyes to get a glimpse of what it could be. It was the hand of the person he adored the most. His stomach felt like butterflies were trapped inside it. The love he felt for this man was so incredible and faceted that he couldn't describe it entirely. All he knew was that it made him the happiest that he has ever been and that he would do anything possible, or even beyond his capabilities for this one person. Slowly he reached for the hand that was gently placed on his head into his own. He held it softly, moving it so that it was resting on his chest. Above his heart; fingers intertwining. There was only a soft snoring to be heard. The fire was out apparently.

After a while Elias awoke, too, and they decided to take a bath together. It was obvious that Dominic had more or less fallen down the mountain, judging by the bruises everywhere on his body. They both agreed they should go to bed, where they wouldn't be so crammed up. Before Dom fell asleep, he watched the little snowflakes fall from the sky. He hoped that it would snow on Christmas. He yawned and nestled closer to his boyfriend, who was already asleep, basically spooning him.

~*~

Morning came way faster than anticipated. Groggily Elias looked around the room, his eyes squinted shut because of the brightness. They had forgotten to close the window shutters before going to sleep. Disgruntled, he turned on his other side to shield himself from the light. Maybe he could fall back to sleep, but Dominic was already stirring, his face already grimacing at the light that shone directly onto his face. With a groan the grumpy man turned to his other side, stretched and got out of bed. Elias could only hear his boyfriend walking into the bathroom. As he began to drift back to sleep, he could hear loud swearing.

Loud steps approached the bedroom, the door was pushed open.

"Elias! There is no fucking water! Have we forgotten something at the check-in? We paid, didn't we? That was the right cabin, or am I losing my fucking mind?"

"Hmmm…" Elias only managed to answer, he was still too sleepdrunk to say anything. His mind began to push him to get up. His extremities were still stiff as he followed his boyfriend to the bathroom. And indeed, there was no running water. That was unusual.

"I'll take a look at the fuse box, maybe we somehow overdid it with the bath yesterday?" Dominic said as he watched his boyfriend pressing the light switch. Nothing happened. Elias looked back, shrugged.

"Good idea, let's hope that we can find the reason for that."

Dom turned around quickly and walked out of the door.

"I think we have another problem. A bigger one." He said, as he stepped into the living room. Dom walked to the next best window and looked outside.

See the full post

3 notes • Posted 2021-12-23 19:12:19 GMT

Autumn This or That

Thank you @titan-wolfdog for tagging me! <3

pumpkin or apple // cocoa or cider // halloween or thanksgiving (not American) // leaf piles or apple picking // hay ride or corn maze (never had those, but a maze sounds like fun!) // woolly sweater or furry slippers (omg, I hate slippers so much xD) // pumpkin carving or knitting (can’t knit for the life of me) // squash or sweet potato // black cat or bat (you really want me to choose, huh...) // skeletons or witches // fake blood or fake spiders // mashed potatoes or stuffing // orange or black // apple pie or maple donuts // marshmallows or candy corn // vampire or werewolf // fireplace or cozy nook // spiced wine or craft beer (sorry, but I have enough of the first option ^^”) // candied apples or s'mores // big scarf or oversized hoodie (both, because I won’t choose a side)

NOW IT IS YOUR TURN @r6shippingdelivery , @grain-crain-drain and @thefishychicken MUAHAHAHAHAHA Have fun! ;)

9 notes • Posted 2021-11-08 19:02:47 GMT

Thinking in the rain

Marius sat in the workshop fidgeting with his pen, while trying to focus on the blueprint in front of him. He tried to work on this project since the finale of the tournament where Eliza and Jaimini had their big fight. Even a rock could see that everyone was more on edge these days, than ever before.

This fight tore apart the whole team Rainbow. Everyone was now subconsciously sorted into seperate teams, each of them supporting either Eliza or Jaimini. It was natural that discussions would be happening and some of them would grow into more heated ones. Gustave and Harry had more work than ever.

For the most part Marius was able to get around the conflicts, but it made him lonely in the process. A precaution he wasn't willing to take, but necessary.

His frustration grew by the minute and there was no way of stopping it.

And that was how time has been for the past month. He never imagined that he could work uninterrupted all by himself in the workshop. At first it was refreshing to work focused on everything, but after a week he grew sick of it.

He missed Dominic dropping by to discuss one of his creations or to just have a chat. And now the prankster wasn't really hanging out as much as he used to.

Monika was also more or less doing her stuff alone. Most of the evenings he would drop by her room and they would discuss her own gadget improvements or her new stories. This reminded him about the last time she read a snippet to him. It ended with a cliffhanger. How will the story proceed further? But now she wasn’t feeling up to writing more.

Now he realised how stressed Elias was lately. Always trying his best to keep the Germans together. Their breaks were always spent together to eat in the mess hall, but now everyone just dropped by, when they felt like it. It was tiring to see how much Elias worked against his team falling apart slowly. He would just like to know the words to console everybody and to get everyone to work with each other as they did before. But how could he do that, when he didn't know how to help himself?

Marius was frustrated, these thoughts were circling in his head all the time when he started to work on his Magpies or on any other side project. They kept him from being productive. And many of the usual suspects in the workshop realized that this man had his head more in the clouds.

When he figured that it was impossible to concentrate on his project anymore, he got up from his chair in the workshop and decided to go for a walk. See what the others have been up to. So he walked around the workshop to look at the projects of the ones who were there at the moment. Only Shuhrat and Mark were, both of them focused on their work and not caring about Marius taking a look at their stuff.

Since he didn't want to disturb their concentration, he silently got out of the workshop.

As he got outside, it was as if he was finally coming out of the water. The air in the workshop was so heavy of all the metallic stenches from furious welding and soldering and any other chemicals that were used during their creative processes. Now the engineer was greeted by the smells of nature.

Body stiff from all sitting in the wrong position while tinkering, made it crack at any movement. In order to get his body into a better shape, he decided to take a small walk outside. Also he befriended the idea of skipping his workshop projects in the evening, because he didn't want to exhaust himself because of the upcoming squad training the next morning. He knew himself so well that he could anticipate that if it weren't for the training, he'd stay there to tinker into the night.

It was a relief for him to finally be out of the tight space in the workshop, allowing himself some time to breath and settle his mind. So, he briefly went inside again to get himself a chair and a cold drink for sitting outside. Surely he seemed to be at peace for an outsider, but it was quite the contrary for him. The thought of their practice tomorrow made him a bit anxious. Who knows what they would be fighting over again? People are stressed and there was no way he could see to stop those tensions. His best option was to lay low, was it?

____________

The next morning came faster than anticipated. Being outside for so long, mulling over everything and nothing left him quite exhausted the following day.

Tiredly he moved his body to get his morning coffee and decided to not eat, since stressing himself with sports and having a full stomach didn’t sit well with him. Also the engineer felt a bit nauseous when he woke up.

The German quarters were already deserted, so he figured they had gone to eat breakfast in the mess hall. But they obviously chose to not wake him. Or maybe they tried, but he was still in a deep slumber. Yeah, that sounded more likely.

Still, or already exhausted, he walked to the mess hall by himself. As he finally reached the mess hall, it was already quite empty. What time was it anyways?

The clock said 9 am sharp. He better hurry and eat his breakfast. After he wolfed it down, he left with the last ones to go to the training exercise. They had a rough day ahead that included many exercises and mock missions.

______________

Fuck them honestly. FUCK. THEM. Marius threw his helmet to the ground in anger, right beneath the feet of his team. He was so sick of everyone. Apparently it was his fault. Sure. His ADSs were the only gadgets that were protecting him, Dominic and Alexandr, who were the only three being "alive" to begin with. And if it wouldn't have been for Shuhrat who was the only one left on his team. Then they made the mistake of staying in the same room. And then they lost. Death by Matryoshka.

Rookie mistake. Apparently one of Marius' Magpies had been destroyed already, so there was no way in hell that they could have protected them all at that moment. But sure. It was all his fault…

Dominic and Alexandr were now arguing loudly about how and why they had failed against one single opponent. Meanwhile Marius calmed a bit down from his outburst and collected his helmet. It didn't mean that he wasn't angry anymore, but not in the mood to jump at everyone's throats at least.

Angry because of the accusations against him, he went out of the training area by himself. On his way back to the facilities, he made a stop and went outside for a bit. He hadn't realized that it was already this dark out. Sadly the stars were covered by thick clouds, preventing even the moonlight from shining through. Time flies when you are not having fun and work endlessly without any long pauses to even get a glimpse of boredom.

The exhausted engineer put his helmet lazily under his arm and just looked at the sky.

It was raining. Nothing unusual for England. The droplets were running down his face, cooling down his temper even more. Easing all the tension that was built up inside him.

He allowed his thoughts to drift away.

Why was he here? What led up to it?

See the full post

16 notes • Posted 2021-08-02 10:37:07 GMT

@titan-wolfdog Thank her for this beautiful edit xD

76 notes • Posted 2021-06-24 17:13:36 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

#my 2021 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review #fuck yeahr here we go xDD #that pretty much sums up my year #hehehehehehehehehe

2 notes · View notes

omgrachwrites · 4 years

Text

Falling Stars (Sequel to Tell A Tale of You and Me) Chapter Three

Pairing: Dean Thomas x Reader

Summary: In the midst of a brewing war you fall for one of your classmates, a boy that you used to know. When you have the chance to fight against evil, you fight for what you believe in.

Chapter Summary: Dean seems to open himself up more to you when he takes care of your injury. An explosive Quidditch match kicks off the new season and the Gryffindor team dwindles in its numbers.

Warnings: fluff, swearing, mentions of blood

Words: 2584

Disclaimer: I haven’t read The Order of The Phoenix in ages so the timeline may be wrong!

A/N: Hope you guys enjoy this part! There is a huge plot twist at the end of this fic so I’m gonna subtly start putting some parallels in! Also, I think that Dean doesn’t play Quidditch till the HBP but for the purpose of the story he’s on the team. I also forgot that Malfoy was on the Slytherin team 🙃 please let me know what you think and let me know if you would like to be tagged! I love you all! xxx

previous part masterlist prequel next part

Chapter Three- Liars and Keepers

The loud, teatime chatter in The Great Hall sounded muffled in your ears, almost like you were underwater. You ate some of your soup, though you could barely taste it as your stomach gave another nervous lurch and you pushed your food away, trying to keep it down. The opposite of butterflies were raging in your stomach and you wondered what the opposite of butterflies would be. Everyone was laughing and chatting with their friends but you just couldn’t bring yourself to join in.

You tried to be brave – Harry had been brave – surely it wouldn’t kill you. Had a student ever been killed in detention before?

Astoria must have noticed your leg bouncing anxiously because her soft laughter filled your ears, “it’s gonna be fine, Cass. It’s not like you haven’t had detention before and I know Umbridge is a bitch but really, what is the worst that she can do to you?” your friend smiled kindly as she twisted the ends of your hair between her fingers.

You kept your mouth shut for a moment, you didn’t want to tell her what had happened to Harry, “yeah,” you let out a nervous little laugh that sounded high and false to your ears, “I should probably get going,” you gave her a quick hug and got up from your seat.

Harry stopped you as you walked past the Gryffindor with a rueful smile on his face, “I’m sorry that you have to do this, Cass. I feel like it’s my fault,” over Harry’s shoulder you saw Dean looking at the both of you with an expression of interest on his handsome face.

You shook your head and looked down at the scar on the back of Harry’s hand; you felt a flicker of anger. Umbridge really was a monster, “it’s not your fault Harry, I couldn’t stand by and do nothing when I realised that she had been practically torturing you.”

Harry laughed as he pulled you into a tight hug, “well, thank you for defending my honour. I bet that Sirius is really proud of you,” you felt a thrill of happiness at his words, “and, remember that Murlap essence works the best for it.”

You nodded, attempting a brave smile, “see you, Harry,” your eyes met Dean’s and you offered him a small smile as you turned around.

“Cass?” he asked, curiosity and something else that you couldn’t place filled his voice. You hesitated, all you wanted to do was run to him but you shook your head and left The Great Hall. You had enough to worry about at the moment and you weren’t exactly friends with him anymore.

You were scared; you had to admit it to yourself, everything in the castle that once filled you with happiness and light, now looked dark and menacing. It was like a dark cloud covered your head as you walked down the candlelit hallways, almost as if you were in a trance. You had been so brave in Umbridge’s office only yesterday, after you had seen Harry in so much pain you were determined to make her pay for her cruelty.

Into her office you had marched with a fizzle of both courage and fear bubbling away in your chest. You knew that she would give you detention, you had no doubt about that, she handed them out like they were sweets. However, in that moment you didn’t care, Harry was your friend, your friend who had suffered through so much and he was only fifteen. Though, you wished right now you could be as brave as you had the previous night.

Gathering up your courage, you knocked on the office door which was promptly opened and Umbridge was standing there in her frills and her pink bows. She smiled at you like you were a particularly juicy fly. You had never seen someone look so thrilled, it made you feel sick.

“Right on time, dear, please come in and sit down,” she said in her high false voice as she gestured to a small desk.

You swallowed as you stepped into the office, crossed the room and sat down at the desk, keeping your eyes on the pink quill that was resting on the thick sheaf of parchment. The office stank of dried and dead roses; the walls had been painted a hideous shade of pink, much like the shade of pink that Umbridge wore. On the walls there were ceramic plates with kittens on them, the kittens looked at you and meowed. It looked like Umbridge was a crazy cat lady – and yet she hated McGonagall – that thought almost forced a laugh out of you. Almost.

“Do you know why you’re here?” Umbridge asked you as she sipped from a pink teacup.

You glared at her, “because I spoke up for my friend.”

Umbridge’s lip almost curled, “you’re here because you and that horrid boy are spreading awful lies,” she snarled before composing herself, “so, you will write, ‘I must not tell lies,’ it’s quite poetic really,” she tittered.

You remembered that she had forced Harry to write that too. You didn’t dignify her with a response, the quicker you got this started, the quicker you could go. At first, you couldn’t feel anything and you felt a burst of relief. The relief was short lived however, because in the next moment you felt a great pain on the back of your hand, like someone was cutting it open with a dull knife.

You glanced at your hand and saw the bloody words fade as you stopped writing, but as soon as you began writing again your hand was cut open all over again. You didn’t make a noise of pain; you didn’t want to give Umbridge the satisfaction. It was dark outside and your hand was a bloody mess, leaving streaks of blood across the smooth parchment when Umbridge stopped you.

“I’m sure that will teach you not to spread nasty little lies, off you go dear,” Umbridge smirked at you with relish.

The scathing retort died in your throat as you retreated from the office; you never wanted to step foot in that office or go through that pain ever again. You winced and hissed through your teeth as you closed your hand and felt a searing pain that almost made your knees buckle as you inspected the open wound on the back of your hand. You tried to mop up the blood with the sleeve of your robes but it was no use, the blood soaked the material, leaving it useless. There was too much blood.

“Cass?” you sighed and glanced up when you heard the familiar – unusually – gentle voice and saw that Dean was striding towards you. His face was hard to read. Though, his gorgeous eyes grew wide when he caught sight of your bleeding hand, “Jesus, you’re bleeding!”

“It’s nothing,” you tried to be nonchalant as you hid your hand from view but you couldn’t hold back the wince that wracked through your body. Dean raised his eyebrow as he looked down to where your blood was dripping all over the floor, creating a small dark puddle on the stone floor.

When Dean looked back up at you, it looked like he was wrestling with his inner emotions and he threw up his hands in defeat, “fucking hell, Cass. Come on,” he jerked his head to the corridor behind him.

Dean’s face was closed off but his eyes were unusually soft and gentle as he regarded you. You had missed that look in his eyes and you never thought that it would be directed at you again. So, you followed him down the corridor without arguing.

“Wait here,” he murmured at you when you reached the Gryffindor common room. He came back barely a moment later with a bowl of liquid and a strip of cloth. You followed him down a deserted corridor and sat down on the stone bench.

He took your hand in his warm one and he placed it in the liquid as gently as he could, the liquid instantly went bloody. You cried out in pain as tears pricked at your eyes, it was like pouring salt over the wound. Dean shot you an apologetic look and you vaguely wondered why he was doing this.

“Jesus, Cass,” he grimaced, “what happened to you? It looks like words have been carved into your skin.”

“Umbridge has this fucked up quill that forces you to write with your own blood, it doesn’t come with ink. It carves the words you write into your skin, she tortured Harry with it, so I had a go at her,” you huffed out a pained laugh, “she gave me detention, I hope it won’t affect my Quidditch performance.”

“That was a really stupid thing to do,” though, he sounded impressed and his hands were gentle as he attended to your wound, “do you have a thing for Harry or something?” he raised an eyebrow nonchalantly.

You hid a smile, why was he so interested?

“Merlin, no!” you stared at him in horror, “we’re just friends. Kind of. You don’t have to do this you know,” you muttered.

Dean dimples made an appearance as he grinned, raising an eyebrow, “I know but I’m a good person.”

“I’m sorry,” you whispered as the pain began to dull, “I’m sorry about last year, it wasn’t me. I should have been a good friend.”

Dean shook his head as he wrapped up your hand in the cloth gently, “we don’t have to talk about that,” he tucked a strand of your hair behind your ear as he smiled, resting his knuckles against your cheek. You felt tingles at his touch and your heart almost fluttered when you realised just how beautiful he looked in the shimmering candle light.

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

Slytherin had the upper hand in this game, at least they did at the moment, Cass was a remarkable Keeper and Dean’s gaze lingered on her for a moment too long before he turned back to his own game. Gryffindor was a lot less lucky with their Keeper, it seemed as though Ron was extremely nervous. He’d accidentally broken Katie’s nose with the Quaffle about ten minutes ago. Now the Slytherins in the stands – and on the team – began jeering and singing a cruel song. Angelina was yelling at Harry to concentrate on the game.

Dean caught a couple of the lyrics, it seemed that Slytherin was celebrating Ron for fumbling and letting the Quaffle in. Dean momentarily wondered whether Cass was joining in. He got his answer when the Quaffle was passed to him and he soared to the hoops. Cass was smirking at him, with the wind blowing through her hair and she winked at him, eyes sparkling with the promise of a competition.

“Come on, Thomas! Give me a challenge,” she teased but Dean wouldn’t let her distract him. He scowled at her as he threw the Quaffle, putting a lot of spin on it. Cass’ eyes widened as she dived for the ball and caught it with the tips of her fingers. The relief was plain on her face as she threw the ball back onto the pitch and one of her teammates caught it, “try again next time, Deano!”

“Fucking hell, Cass,” he chuckled as he shook his head and turned back to the game, soaring through the cold air as he tried to take possession of the Quaffle again.

Cheers once again erupted from the Slytherin stands as Ron let another goal on, panic on his freckled face. Dean glanced at the scores and his eyes bugged out, Slytherin were leading 40-10. Dean prayed that Harry would catch the snitch soon; it would be their only hope of actually winning the game.

Dean soared around the pitch, trying to get possession of the Quaffle as he noticed Harry diving, unfortunately, the Slytherin seeker followed him and it seemed that Slytherin was going to win. It seemed that the gods were smiling down on Gryffindor today because Harry managed to catch the snitch and Dean felt a great burst of relief go through him.

“Gryffindor wins!” the commentator called out, making a shiver go through the sea of red and gold as they cheered, and Dean heard the roar of the lion hat that Luna Lovegood wore. Dean grinned as he looked over at Cass who was looking put out as she flew over to him.

“Congratulations, I guess. It was amazing stroke of luck that Harry is such a good Seeker,” she pouted, making Dean laugh as they landed and walked across the pitch. Dean didn’t know what had changed but he didn’t feel the same anger or bitterness that he’d once held for her. Though, that didn’t mean he was ready to be her friend again.

“You played well, the fact that we won doesn’t really reflect badly on you. You’re right, we’re lucky to have Harry,” Cass smiled at him as she lightly punched his arm, her cheeks were flushed from the cold and her hair was tangled.

As Dean and Cass approached the team, Dean noticed that Malfoy had come onto the team with his cronies and he was sporting a smirk. He said something that caused George Weasley to lunge forward to try and punch him but Harry held him back. Dean and Cass exchanged shocked glances as they walked quicker to see what was going on. Malfoy smirked and said something to Harry that was too low for Dean to hear. Although it seemed that Cass had heard because she grew tense and Dean could tell she was ready to run over there and join in.

Harry’s face drained of colour as he let go of George and punched Malfoy before chaos ensued. Dean threw out an arm to stop Cass from joining in, “let me go Dean! You didn’t know what Malfoy said! If you heard him then you’d want to kick his scrawny arse too!” she glared at him, a fire in her eyes as a muscle fluttered in her jaw. Dean didn’t want to admit it but she looked exceptionally beautiful when she was angry.

“Madam Hooch will break it up,” he laughed in amusement as he nodded at Hooch who stormed over to the fighting boys. As she successfully broke the fighting up, Dean and Cass walked up to their friends who were bruised and bloody.

Dean opened his mouth to ask what had been going on but before he could get the words out, there was a high pitched giggle that sent a horrid chill down Dean’s spine and he heard Cass swear beneath her breath.

“Never in my life have I seen such childish behaviour,” her gleeful face contradicted her words, “I think those three boys,” she nodded at Harry, Fred and George, “should have a lifelong ban. They need to be punished.”

“What about Malfoy, Professor? He was fighting too,” Dean glared at her and Umbridge threw him a careless glance while Harry looked at her in horror.

“I think Mr Malfoy was acting in self-defence, it was Potter who attacked him,” she giggled before walking back across the pitch. The three boys looked crestfallen as Angelina Johnson yelled at them; she would now have to find a new Seeker and two new Beaters.

“Well, shit,” Cass breathed out a laugh.

“Shit, indeed,” Dean agreed, Quidditch would be a complete shit show this year.

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

@approved-by-dentists @thefuturelawyer @a-miserable-hufflepunk @firelordmillie @seriouslysiriuss @sleep-i-ness @play-morezeppelin @pregnant-piggy @sleepingalaska @blisfvlll @rexorangecouny @findzelda @wangmangagavroche @hxrgreeves @ghostofstudentspast @they-write-once-in-a-blue-moon @my-unique-mind @im-an-angel-of-the-lord-you-ass @kashishwrites @fific7 @blackbirddaredevil23 @siriusblackspam @mads-bri @lilulo-12fanfiction @golddustwoman3 @tinymalscoffee @ur-riddikulus @obsssedwithjustaboutanything @ourloveisforthelovely @wheezyreads @artemis1orion @sushiims @aspiringsloth20 @queenl04 @smiithys @elayneblack @amelie-black

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smileforsmilez · 3 years

Text

List of Tunnels Mech songs and dances, etc

- Carry the 'Axe. A mining shanty that's common among the Ice Mechs as they mine frozen energon crystals. It entails that as one should work with all the spark while being cautious and the final verses encourages the miners to always return home.

- Song of Fire. A lullaby sung across the forges of Core Smiths to their young. (Among all the songs in the forge, this was Rodimus' favourite.)

- Remember Jack. This is more of a short nursery rhyme for young Sea Jacks. Reminding them to mind their manners, watch over one another and to be brave no matter what.

- Stockades Song. This song was written by a poetic Sea Jack named Jetstream who suffered empurata but still had the confidence to write. This song being the most popular for its playfully catchy tune yet grim theme. It's sung regularly among fellow Tunnels Mechs to honour the ones lost to the Stockades merciless ways.

- Ravine Chant. Written by the same Sea Jack, this song has the same playful tone and entails the more optimistic side of being trapped in a deep ravine that's surprisingly rich in wildlife. Sung often during travels.

- Arisen. A very old song said to have originated from the earliest days of Cybertron. They say the song talks of the Tunnels Mechs rising to the surface when the stars call for them. The song is more of a marching song sung while walking.

- Home Once More. Is a song dedicated to a family of Ice Mechs who'd gone missing during an ice wave, leaving the grandparents of the family all alone in their large home. They reminise the days their home would be filled with noise. The three younglings playing around, the soft spoken carrier who cared for them all and their only son, the sire who helps them whenever he can. The song beckons them to return and make their house feel like home once more in soft gentle tones.

- Dream Together. The traditional Core Smith proposal song. For the classiest of mecha to make their move. More modern versions have been made to be shorter and precise but nothing beats the original dramatic flare.

- The Tunnels Path. A dance and song written by a surface mech who fell in love with a Tunnels Mech. He wrote the song in his beloved's point of view, painting her as an enchanting beauty straight out of a fable. Much like an elf to a human. The dance formed around the instrumental song contained moves that would bring out the best of any mech regardless of frame type, practically dedicated for mixed couples. The dance is easy to learn and is performed solely by mixed couples. It represents unity among them and bonds that go beyond the boundaries of the tunnels.

- Flickering Waltz. A dedicated and dramatic dance designed by a Core Smith choreographer out of spite against a surface mech colleague that may resemble the dancing flickering flames. Known by both the surface and the tunnels as a difficult form to master and smugly designed to be much easier for speed frames, especially those who worked in the forge. This dance is a choreographed to say " Kiss my aft." in the most flashy way possible.

- Ribbon Dance. This dance is performed by Ice Mech youths during festivals. Each mech would have a white ribbon with their name written on it. They would hold each other's ribbons in pairs, often switching partners and exchanging ribbons. The ribbons would be returned by the end of the dance and are then commonly given to the mech of their interest. (Optimus would always hide away as soon as the dance ends.)

- Does it matter?. This song talks about how people should be minding their own business. Sometimes the lyrics are changed by the singer to fit the situation but the chorus remains the same. " What does it matter to you?" The tone is more casual and often a little melodic with much sarcasm. ( This song is a favourite for private or quiet mechs)

- Impossible Quarry**. Veiled as a two tales of two different groups of four hunters each, hunting down a legendary beast but ultimately failing in their respective hunts is actually a warning to those who have ambitions to hunt the impossible and is split into two parts :

The first part told of a beast that is described as extremely agile, escaping traps and making its own to get back at the hunters. With a slim frame that's as green as emeralds, described with a faceplate white as ash and locked in an everlasting smile. The beast was said to be a prize many had sought and attempts to kill or capture it have always ended up in failure. The beast was cheeky, always taunting its hunters and was always just out of reach. Until for the first time, it was caught. The hunters had placed a very clever trap, making the beast realize that they weren't playing, not anymore. It made its escape as soon as the hunters let their guard down and the never ending hunt continued for their impossible quarry.

The second part entails of a different beast hunted by a different group. The beast was described as a great calamity as it had slain every hunter who dared crossed its path, a designated sign of bad luck upon the sight of its energon coloured armour. The hunters dreamed of hunting down the great beast to show their clan how strong they were. The beast was extremely strong, it was intelligent to know when to finish a fight or when to run. The first choice usually being the case. But at the time, the beast had been hibernating and was peaceful enough to befriend a small, kind, avianoid. The black robotic bird was then caught by the hunters to catch the beast. The beast, having just awaken from hibernation, allowed himself to be captured. The leader had been close to kill the beast in front of his clan, or so it had seemed. The song ends with the leader of the hunters scarred horribly and the beast continues to live free with his avianoid friend close by his side. And so, no one else dared to hunt the impossible quarry.

**This is written as both an easter egg and a teaser for two of Minecraft's greatest all time players. I watched a few videos and could only sum them up as the impossible quarry. I hope you can guess who.

(If you have any more suggestions you can comment below)

#tfa au #transformers #tfa underground city au #transformers animated #tfa optimus prime #tfa rodimus prime

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