#but just imagine him being able to sense that she’s claimed another amplifier

[marvelmusing]

What if these two moments are happening simultaneously?

[katnissmellarkkk]

General #7

Hiiii! Okay, well I bet you thought I forgot about this! Or, more than likely, you forgot you even requested this back in Decemeber. But never fear, my child. I remembered and have been thinking of this fic and what to write for months. 

And so I’m so sorry, I’m a total perfectionist and I started and discared like 3 ideas for this before deciding on this oneshot sooo if this sucks, I’m at least comforted by the fact that I accomplished something in writing this itself? That sentence made zero sense but... I’m tired 🤷🏼‍♀️😅.

Prompt : General # 7 :

“Is that blood?” 

“Yes but that doesn’t matter right now, what does matter is-” 

“You are literally bleeding.”

Anyways, thank you for the prompt and here we go! 

Whispers Of Light

I don't know exactly how I got roped into this. How exactly Delly Cartwright, Peeta's best friend—and alright, my friend now too—managed to convince me to help her and Leevy and about three dozen other members of the community with sorting boxes.

Sorting boxes. Organizing contents. Decorating with "found treasures".

The type of activities Prim loved doing with our mother. The type of activities I refused to do after my father died, to punish my mother for her depression.

The type of activities I now kick myself for walking out on, that I'll never be able to take back. I'll never be able to get those moments back with my sister. I'll never know what those hours between her and our mother entailed, because I chose to exclude myself, just so I could hold onto my petty anger for something that was out of all our control.

Maybe that's why I agreed to help Delly and the others with sorting through boxes upon boxes of debrief, of the items that scarcely survived Twelve's bombing almost two years ago. Maybe I only agreed out of guilt, both for never doing this type of endeavor with my sister and for being the direct cause of the bombing itself.

But whatever my reasons were, I agreed to help nonetheless, and I always follow through my promises. If there was one part of me forged in the war, if only one minor aspect of me was amplified in the smoke and haze and blood of revolution, it was the importance of keeping your promises, against all odds.

The dire consequences of a broken promise has long lasting aftereffects, beyond anything either Haymitch or I wish to dwell on.

"Katniss!" Delly calls, holding up an old, half-ripped paper book that is completely void of a front cover. "Look! I think this book is from the old Apothecary Shop!"

I squint at the dusty, decimated item, not entirely convinced. "I don't think so?" I murmur, unable to even decipher the words on the now melted, conjoined pages. "I'm pretty sure my mother kept the only apothecary book in her family?"

Kanon Bagley turns to inspect the battered item in his girlfriend's hands as well. "I don't think this is a medicinal plant book, Dells," he says sheepishly, a small smirk playing on his lips.

She gives him an incredulous look. "What do you mean medicinal?"

I peer up at him too, not comprehending his meaning any more than Delly. "What kind of plants do you think are in here?" I ask, taking the nearly destroyed object myself and flipping through the worn pages again, seeing odd herbs that neither of my parents ever mentioned or had on hand. "These don't look like the poisonous ones my father told me about?"

Kanon bites back a laugh now and I can't help feeling a little perturbed. As kind and soft-spoken as he usually is, I'm foreign to the feeling of him laughing at me. "What?" Delly snaps at him before I even can.

He still chuckles though, in spite of both our nasty glares. "You guys, it's a book of plants that'll get you high."

It takes a full minute for the meaning to dawn on me. Long enough that Leevy and a couple guys I used to go to school with come over to inspect the book as well. Long enough that they confirm Kanon's assessment just as I realize we're talking about plants that'll make you feel akin to how the morphling made me feel while confined for I killing Coin.

While everyone else snickers—and Delly full on chortles—I pass the book back to Kanon, sliding out of the crowd and moving towards a brand new box of savaged items.

It's not that the mention of plant-based drugs is a trigger for me. It's not something I ever truly gave any thought to before, to be honest. My father likely knew of them but it's not like he was about to bestow that kind of knowledge on his eleven-year-old and my mother perhaps felt it was inappropriate to mention.

No, it wasn't the subject in itself that hit a sore spot for me. But like so many times before, it's where the subject led my mind. It's where the topic took me back to.

Snow's Execution Day. The day I chose to kill President Coin instead. Being thrown back into my old tribute room. Getting high on the morphling.

Trying to forget all that I'd lost. Trying to forget my little sister becoming a human torch before my very eyes. My district engulfed in flames. The ambiguous loss of my best friend.

The connection between me and Peeta that I believed then would be permanently severed. That I believed then to be irreparable.

I suppose I believed then I was irreparable too.

And I miss Peeta suddenly, even more than I already did. Because he always knows what to say when my thoughts turn dark, when I'm suddenly triggered out of the happy, every day events and suctioned backwards to a war torn bird with her wings clipped.

But he's not here to talk me down or scare away the ghosts haunting my mind. He's not here to comfort me or even shoot me a supportive glance. No, he's at his very busy business today.

Peeta's bakery—the Mellark Bakery—has only proven to withstand the test of time these past few months. Since someone accidentally burned down the place, with nothing more than a croissant and a fancy Capitol toaster, the rebuilt bakery has been nothing but a success.

And also extremely time-consuming, I grumble internally, as I begin to pull out stuffed toys that once belonged to dead children.

"If any of those are still intact, we can donate them to the community home," Leaf John says as he opens the box across from me.

"And what exactly are we supposed to be use as decorations from these boxes?" I murmur, peering into another cardboard container, full of half-charred papers and cloths.

The general idea of today, as Delly had pitched it to me last week, was to help the community of Twelve finally sort through these boxes, donate what we could to those in need and decorate the new Justice Building with the leftover contents inside.

Somehow though I can't imagine pinning up terrible drawings of plants that'll inebriate you or headless teddy bears is going to bode well with the district.

Delly rolls her eyes in my direction—a whole new kind of response that I never thought I'd be receiving from the girl who skipped through the town square until she was fourteen years old—before nodding towards boxes on top of the ladder. "We're decorating the Justice Building with the surviving photos from those boxes, Katniss."

"Oh." Then why am I sorting these grimy, dirt-covered playthings? Why didn't anyone give me more clear instructions on today?

And why has it taken almost two years for Twelve to get a group of people together to organize the surviving items from the bombing?

I have no idea how Peeta's managed to get two bakeries built in the time it's taken for thirty-eight of us to come to the Justice Building and look through fifty cardboard boxes. And if I'm being honest, I have no idea why I'm even still here helping. I'm clearly not contributing much to the event. There's definitely more than enough volunteers without me.

And, of course, I could be at the bakery right now. Without a doubt, I'd be of more service there than I am here, digging through dusty knickknacks. I could be helping Peeta and Thom and the other part-time employees, exerting more knowledge and authority than I have here.

After all, Peeta did say the bakery was partially mine. In his mind, at least.

The ulterior motive of getting small, fleeting moments with my boyfriend, of basking in the feeling of safety with him beside me, of the occasional stolen kiss or hand squeeze when no one is looking, runs through the back of my mind.

And sways my decision immensely.

I open my mouth to tell Delly and the others that I'm about to head out, that they clearly have it covered here and I'm just in the way, when at the worst possible second, Leevy kindly murmurs, "Katniss, do you mind starting on the box on the ladder? Seeing if any of the pictures are in decent enough shape?"

I hesitate for a long moment, realizing immediately my predicament. It'd be rude to leave right after someone just essentially assigned me a task. I did agree to be here today, to help out with this tedious project. Leaving right now would only come off as rude and inconsiderate.

This is the reason I never did enjoy group assignments in school. The longer I'm here, the more I'm rediscovering this fact about myself. The division of the workload, the bore of the standing around, not knowing if you're doing the right or wrong thing, the lack of total control.

But I still nod after waiting a beat too long and agree with the nicest flare in my tone I can manage.

I'll go through the one box at the top of the ladder and then subtly make my exit afterwards. The image I unintentionally conjured up of Peeta and the bakery is still pulling at me, making me anxious to get back to him, to see him again even though we were together only three hours ago.

Since we officially became a couple a few months back—though Haymitch scoffs at that notion, claiming we've been together since Peeta first started sleeping over in my bed—I've found myself growing far more clingy to him than I ever could have anticipated. I hate when he leaves for the bakery in the mornings now, even as I still revel in the solace I find inside the woods. I look forward to his return home every night. More than even look forward to it, I'm usually at the bakery around the closing hours, helping him clean and inventory, asking him when he's coming home. Maybe looking somewhat unconsciously flirtatious as I say it.

I grab the box sitting on the ladder's top stair and pull it open, easily maintaining my balance one rung down, the same way I maintain my balance on a tree branch while hunting.

Inside pours out a plethora of photographs, mostly of Twelve's now past citizens. Near the top of the pile I see images of Greasy Sae's daughter, Dolly. The mother of her granddaughter. The daughter who died of croup a few years before the war.

Those photos must belong to Sae, I realize. Which means more of her items are probably scattered throughout the boxes here. And despite the fact that I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that she'll tell me not of be impractical, that if she's made it two years without these things she doesn't need them now, I still make a mental note to return her lost items. If nothing else, I make a mental promise to give back to her the photos of her daughter.

I know better than anyone what kind of comfort photographs of the deceased can provide.

As if in line with my thoughts, as if I alone manifested it somehow, the next image that catches my eye is one I entirely do not anticipate.

It's a shiny photo, on the kind of glossy paper my family could never afford. In the image is a blonde man with broad shoulders and a tall build. Wrapped in his embrace stands a petite girl, with long blonde curls and mascara accentuating her already long lashes. The couple both have eyes that match the color of the sky and are dressed up in some of the nicest clothes in all of Twelve. A white dress with lace. A gray suit with a black vest. The pretty girl wears jewelry and lipstick and there's a familiar glint in the male's eyes and I find myself mesmerized.

And I can't pretend I don't see my boyfriend in both of their faces. I can't pretend Peeta isn't the spitting image of both his parents.

He has his mother's smile, I realize with startling assurance. I never saw the witch smile personally, at any point in my life so I suppose I wouldn't know where he got his charming, sweet grin from.

The mannerism looks so out of place on his mother. The kind smile Peeta has, the one that could light up a blackened sky, doesn't bode with the woman in the picture, even on her wedding day. The charming smile doesn't fit with what I know of the woman's character. With what little about her Peeta chooses to share.

But I'm even more surprised to find how much Peeta has come to resemble his father. How much Peeta has grown to favor the now deceased man.

The last time I saw the baker—the original baker, that is. Haidon Mellark—before the Quarter Quell, I resented the fact that Peeta wasn't as tall or as broad as his father. I privately believed if he'd inherited those traits, he'd be even more likely to win the games again and I could worry about him less.

Peeta was always taller than me and was always remarkably strong, after working in the bakery since childhood. But his father was a whole different level. Haidon Mellark, I'd forgotten until now, had a body that could only rival my own father's.

And as it turns out, Peeta did inherit Haidon's physicality. He just also happened to be a late bloomer. Like his mother, I imagine, staring at her tiny frame in the picture.

The change in Peeta's form occurred so gradually I barely even noticed until a couple months ago, when I woke up with my head against his heart and abruptly realized just how broad he had become. Until I couldn't even reach to kiss his jaw on my tip toe. Until he started laughing at me and had to lift me up in order to properly embrace the way I like.

"Katniss?" I hear Delly beckon, trying to bring me back to reality. Trying and failing, that is. I hear her but only in a vague, distant sense. My mind is still stuck on the image in my grasp. Still stuck on the novelty that I managed to find a remembrance for the boy who still at times questions if his memory is full of lies.

"I still cry about my family and somedays I can't even remember their faces."

I never even considered the possibility of finding a token of Peeta's departed family here. It never occurred to me, the potential finds in this box at my fingertips, that I could take home to my boyfriend. I never imagined finding him something to hold onto when the inevitable dark day came again like a storm cloud, full of thunder.

I'm so entranced what this could mean for Peeta, so lost in my own little world, that I'm barely even hanging onto the ladder. I'm definitely not as steady as I should be, standing near the top rung.

And I'm definitely not steady enough to hang on when Delly gives it a rough shake, trying to catch my attention.

/

The boxes break my fall. Sort of. Kanon and Leaf John had taken the liberty of placing the empty cardboard, already looked through and emptied, beneath the ladder.

Falling headfirst into a large, void box is better than falling plainly onto the filthy, concrete tile floor. But not ideal. Not as helpful as falling into a box of surviving clothes or toys would have been.

Delly apologized profusely for shaking the ladder. She'd even begun to cry when she noticed the blood seeping from my forehead.

Thankfully Kanon was there, as I didn't have the energy to console her much. I don't even know how I managed to cut my head at all, but it stung a fair amount and it provided me the excuse I wanted minutes prior, to escape the group project and head for the bakery.

Even after the fall, my mind still was cemented on the newfound treasure. My first instinct was still to show this memento to Peeta as soon as possible.

Kanon though, like a good friend, insisted on walking me home, despite my many protests that it was unnecessary, that I was just fine, that I could walk home blind if I had to. He insisted, foiling my intention to walk directly to the bakery and not wait for Peeta's return home, which still remained hours away.

Kanon was surprisingly stubborn when he felt strongly about something and I chose to relent, to give in and allow him to accompany me back to what used to be Victor's Village—where he now resided with Delly, inside Peeta's old home—without much fight.

Fighting for your independence and autonomy doesn't exactly present you as rational when there's a bloody gash in your forehead.

"Doesn't that hurt?" Kanon asks as we make out way up my porch.

I look up, maybe a little startled, from Mr. and Mrs. Mellark's wedding photo. "My head?"

"Yeah," he says carefully, looking at the blood like it's a mutt in an arena.

I shrug, doing my best not to indicate how dizzy I actually feel. Either from the fall or the blood still dripping out despite my attempt to plug the wound up with old cotton rags someone sorted into the trash box. "I've had worse."

He chuckles, a little sardonically. "Yeah, so have I."

I thank him for walking me home—for it was as inconvenient as it was sweet—and close the door slowly behind me, before leaning my ear against the wooden frame, waiting. Waiting for him to climb the steps down from my porch and make his way back to the Justice Building. Waiting for him to be far enough out of sight that I can sneak back out without him also trying to accompany me to the bakery.

It's not that I don't appreciate Kanon and Delly and all of my other friends' concerns. It's the fact that I wish to bestow a likely loaded item upon my boyfriend and I really don't need an audience to do it.

It's not the easiest feat, to slyly time it so Kanon won't hear me opening and shutting my front door again. And it's probably not my smartest plan, to walk alone along the rocky cobblestones and the uneven concrete, with a less than level head and body.

But I make it to the back door of the bakery still, just as I knew I would. It takes three times as long, but I make it there nonetheless.

Still clutching the photograph of his parents between my fingers too. Still with the same primary focus on my mind. To give him a token of remembrance, a token of the imperfect family he lost so tragically, that he still greatly missed, even when he can't say their names. Even when he can't conjure up their faces.

"You don't remember your family?"

"Sometimes I do... I'm not so sure other days. My memory isn't exactly top notch, if you know what I mean."

I push open the heavy-weighted back door, using all the energy my body can muster up. To my relief, Thom is already in the back room, sweeping flour off the floor.

"Hi, boss," he greets slyly as I walk in, barely glancing up at me. I shoot him an over-the-top eye roll, though I can't help smirking myself at the stupid nickname, when he beckons Peeta. "Hey, your girl is here!" He yells loudly. Too loudly to be packed with customers at the counter.

I take that to mean the daily rush has come and gone. Which would be very convenient, as it means I can present Peeta with my finding that much faster, without having to worry about his business—or our business, as he teasingly calls it—being held up.

I hear the sound of my boyfriend's quiet laughter from the front. The sound that I akin to my father's singing or my sister's squeal of delight. The last sound still alive that can make my heart do a flip.

But it dies out the second he peaks his blonde head into the back room. The moment his baby blues, the same color as both his parents', meet my silver ones and then trail upwards.

Almost as if remembering the gash in my head, I reach to my forehead, to ensure the makeshift cloth bandage is still in place.

"Katniss?" Peeta says, his eyes looking far more nervous than I anticipated. Which I can only take to mean the red liquid has seeped through the plain fabric. "Is that blood?"

I don't want him to focus too heavily on that fact though. Like I told Kanon, I've had much worse injuries in my life. Me and Peeta both have.

Just look at his prosthetic leg.

"Yes," I reply easily, before moving closer to him, pushing the glossy photograph towards him. "But that doesn't matter right now. What does matter is-"

"You are literally bleeding."

I sigh, feeling slightly perturbed now. "Peeta, look," I insist, thrusting the image of his parents towards him, waiting for it to take anchor.

And it does. It takes a beat longer than I expect, but it happens nonetheless. I watch silently as the image captives him, as the shiny photograph takes him back to a time when this exact location was the only home he'd ever known and this business was run by the two people inside the picture.

He touches the photo, as if to test it's realism, before looking up at me in disbelief. "Where did you find this?"

"The Justice Building today. Inside the boxes, with all the things lost in the bombing."

There's a long pause as Peeta process this. The silence makes me antsy, finding myself abruptly uncertain of what could be going through his mind.

Finally, he whispers softly, "I never thought I'd see this picture again."

And the awed, tender smile that spreads across his face swiftly encompasses me in its warmth.

And I suddenly don't even feel the gash in my head anymore.

/

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[prettywordsyouleft]

Bloodstone | Part 4

Summary: You knew all about the ring your grandmother had told you about and yet when the stone fell from it one fateful day, you weren’t truly prepared for its return, nor who it came back with.

Pairing: Kim Namjoon x reader

Genre: fantasy / romance

Warnings: none

Index: Prologue | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10

Yoongi pulled you aside with a heightened chuckle. “The hell is going on, Y/N?! You’re not just going to accept that this is all from the stone right?”

“Did you not see the glow upon his chest?”

“Yes but that could be multiple things. We don’t know anything about him. He’s spoken nonsense to you so far. Scams these days are getting more cunning, you know.”

“Out of all the people I know, I had pegged you as the guy who was the most open-minded.”

“I read comics written by people’s imagination, not moulded from historical events and far away places that exist outside of our knowledge.”

“Maybe it does exist.”

Yoongi cursed for the second time and ran a hand through his hair. “You’re crazy for being this calm.”

“Call me an idiot but I know that stone in his chest is the one I had within the ring.”

“It’s bigger than it was.”

“Maybe it changes shape out of the ring?” you offered and Yoongi laughed exasperatedly.

“Next thing we’ll be treating him like Ironman who can’t have it extracted or he’ll die.”

“I hope that’s not the case,” you replied solemnly, sighing as you looked back at Namjoon watching the world outside. “I think he’s genuine.”

“What are you expecting me to do then? I don’t even understand a single word he’s saying and yet you’re speaking normally and he’s grasping it well.”

“I think it’s because of the book,” you murmured, leading Yoongi into the study and picking up the text you had left behind earlier. Flipping to the page on the stone, you then held it up for your best friend to see. “At first it was all gibberish to me too, and then it flipped to this page and I could read it all.”

“This looks legit,” Yoongi breathed, taking the book from your grasp. He barely tore his eyes away from it to acknowledge your presence after several minutes of soaking it in. “Where did you get such a book?”

“From my Mum before she got ill.”

“Huh.”

You lost Yoongi to his examination of the page, knowing full well he would now spend some time looking it over.

Going back out to Namjoon, you smiled gently upon joining his side. “Yoongi’s just looking at the book.”

“He won’t be able to understand it. That isn’t a human book.”

“I could though, and I’m human.”

“Are you?”

“Well I’m certainly not from a country far away like you are,” you pointed out and Namjoon grinned slowly.

“Do you think I’ll be able to return to my home?”

“I’d like to hope so. You must feel lost here.”

“It’s interesting too. I have so many questions over what you house in this magical home of yours.”

You laughed then. “Magic? This is just a normal human’s apartment.”

“That houses a lot of ancient otherworldly texts,” Namjoon added on, his brows furrowing together. “Were you born into magic?”

“No, but my Grandmother was.”

“And that of your mother?”

“I believe she possessed some knowledge but I never really knew much about her, to be fair.”

“Why not?”

Moving over to your couch, you sat down with a sad smile. “She never really said much. I just felt she was shy all the time. I could feel her love for me and I never went without, but we just didn’t talk enough.”

“Sounds like my father. He would only speak to me when to warn me of trouble.”

“He seemed to care a lot about you from what I saw earlier.”

“In his own way, I suppose. His heart always felt cold, however.”

“Cold,” you repeated in thought, wondering why that triggered something in your mind. You thought back to the page on the ring. “Does everyone know of the bloodstone where you come from?”

“Only my father told me of it. He seemed frightened of it a great deal.”

“Do you think perhaps he saw it before you had?”

“What do you mean?” Namjoon wondered, and before you could propose your question, Yoongi appeared in the room, holding up another book.

“You seriously need to read this,” he mentioned and you took a look at the journal he handed you, glancing at Namjoon before you turned to the first page.

It was a strange cursive on the page at first when Namjoon peered over your shoulder. He couldn’t understand what you were reading so fervently and Namjoon wondered what Yoongi had said to garner all your attention like this.

Touching the side of the book, Namjoon pouted with his frustration of this land. He didn’t like not knowing anything about your world. He could be enamoured by all your fantastical trinkets but it still didn’t answer anything substantial about this situation the stone had travelled him to.

Namjoon was still none the wiser of why he was chosen by you for the bloodstone either. The book hadn’t explained that process to him upon reading it and he certainly hadn’t proclaimed a desire before seeing the stone to meet it.

Your question about his father returned to the forefront of his thoughts. He definitely seemed to know about its powers. Had there been a time where the stone had seduced him as well? Could his father, who hated humans openly, have travelled here before him?

Feeling his chest and pressing his fingertips into the lodged stone within it, he groaned. “I just wish to understand more.”

“Here,” you said softly, taking his hand with yours and pressed it to the book. “Does that help any?”

The words began to change before his eyes, familiar strokes of characters now apparent on the page. Namjoon looked at you incredulously. “How did you do that?”

“I don’t know. I just felt the urge to do something to help you.”

Now reading the diary entry, Namjoon took in the summary of events. The ring had lost its stone and the narrator of this piece was surprised to find a man within her home the next morning when she woke, claiming he was of a different place. The stone had embedded within the man’s hand this time, and as he read on, Namjoon mindlessly rubbed at his clothed chest.

He felt an ache for the man who had been in this position before him.

“I asked of his name and he said it to be Namwoo,” you read out loud, turning to stare at him intently. You could already see the astonishment upon his face. “Namjoon, is that your father’s name?”

“Y-yes.”

“This was dated from over three hundred years ago,” you murmured, looking to Yoongi and then back at Namjoon.

“Before I was born.”

Yoongi, despite not understanding what was being said, produced the page about the ring again. He tapped at the second part and you read it out so he could understand. You paused when you reached the part about a lost love and what it could do to the heart of the divinity.

Taking the journal from your hands, Namjoon flipped through to the last entry, his throat growing dry the longer he read.

His love was too passionate for a mere human such as myself to handle. The stone amplified Namwoo’s feelings to the point they suffocated me. I needed to break free. Despite the trials we had undergone together, I turned a blind eye to that love.

A mere mortal loving an entity should be a sin. My heart was unable to handle his affections and he disappeared from this world.

The ring appeared whole again.

“She broke the Triax,” Namjoon murmured, feeling a sense of grief for his younger father.

“Yoongi found the journal tucked in the book. I don’t know who Eliza is, but I am only guessing this has been passed down through the generations. I’m so sorry.”

“The ring claims it brings forth love, and yet this stone feels as if it causes sorrow. Does this mean that I too will face such a harsh conclusion?”

“We’re not the same as Eliza and Namwoo,” you mentioned, staring at the indent of where the ring must have once sat upon your finger. “For one, we’re not in love.”

“You’re right,” Namjoon pointed out; though this didn’t ease his mind any. He looked at you and then back at the information before him.

Turning back to Yoongi watching on quietly, Namjoon grew hopeful. “He seems to know where to find the next clue already, doesn’t he?”

“Yoongi, do you know what we should look at next?” you asked and the man sighed, disappearing from the room, only to return struggling to carry a stack of books.

Namjoon got up to assist him, his fingers grazing over the other man’s hand in the process.

Much as he had experienced before, Namjoon saw images of his past. Yoongi was always staring at you, and now as adults, Namjoon could sense just how that gaze had changed.

Someone was already in love with you.

_________________

Part 5

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[fridayfirefly]

Lost and Found [Part Seven]

Masterlist | Ao3

People always assumed that Adrien had a soulmate. After all, he was the sunshine child, the light of his parents' lives. He brightened up every room he walked into. His Mother always told him that one day he would get a soulmate of his own. He was still young, and age gaps in soulmate pairs didn't necessarily mean anything nefarious. But as he got older and older, his Mother's words felt more and more worthless. And then his Mother left. Without his soulmate, his Father grew cold and distant and no longer seemed to see Adrien as anything other than one of his models.

Adrien's sunshine faded. He didn't have a Soulmate. He didn't need a Soulmate. He didn't want a Soulmate.

To the media, his parents were a love story. But Adrien knew better. He remembered the day his Mother disappeared. He was eleven and his parents were screaming in the foyer after a dinner party. Mother yelled that she was taking the keys and leaving, and Adrien felt guilty that he was relieved that she wasn't taking him with her. She was a reckless driver when she was mad. The next morning, Mother wouldn't pick up the phone. Father called and left a message, saying every swear word ever invented in the process. But Mother never called back. The morning after Father called the police. It took them three weeks to find Mother's car. 100 miles south of Paris, abandoned on the side of the road, hidden by trees. A week later, his Father was already planning the funeral.

Adrien begged his Father to keep searching. But his Father refused. He put the household on lockdown, claiming that someone had murdered Emilie Agreste, someone who was targeting the Agreste family. He fired his personal assistant, a young woman named Hannah. Adrien adored her, because she treated Adrien like family, rather than like a job. Taking Hannah's place was Nathalie Sancoeur. She handled Adrien like he was a disobedient puppy, who needed to be trained to follow rules. She was an icy dagger to Adrien's heart, a reminder that all of the warmth in his life was gone.

It took months before Adrien finally started to fight back. With only one ally at his side, the only friend his Father had ever let him make, Adrien turned to Chloé Bourgeoise for help. Together they created a plan. It consisted of one major step. Adrien would be going to public school for now on.

The logistics were a little more difficult to figure out, but Chloé had never backed down from a challenge before. Registering Adrien for school without parental consent was difficult, but Collège Françoise Dupont was well known for the incompetence of their administration. It only took Chloé ten minutes and two threats of Mayoral intervention to convince the principal of Françoise Dupont to enroll Adrien, placing him into the same classes as Chloé. With all the pieces in place, the only thing Adrien had left to do was show up to school. Unfortunately, that turned out to be the hardest part.

The night before his first day, Chloé called Adrien to video chat. She made him promise that no matter what his Father did or said, he would try his hardest to come to school. Adrien made the promise. It would turn out to be a mistake.

Getting to school ended up being too difficult a challenge. Nathalie stopped him on the stairs leading up to the doors of the school, mere feet from freedom. "Adrien, I would advise you to reconsider. Your Father has made up his mind on this."

"But..." Adrien began a rebuttal, but it faded when he caught sight of an older man with a cane struggling to get to his feet. "One moment," said Adrien as he rushed to the man's side and helped him up. 

"Thank you, young man," said the man, who began to walk off in the other direction.

Adrien returned to Nathalie, who stared him down impassively. "Continue."

"I just want to go to school like everybody else. What's so wrong with that?"

"Get in the car." Nathalie's order was not a suggestion. As Adrien looked into her cold eyes he knew that there would be hell to pay if he disobeyed her. His Father's short temper combined with Nathalie's apathy would lead to nothing but pain. Adrien had already lost so much. He didn't want to lose the little he had left.

"Please don't tell my Father about all this," begged Adrien.

Nathalie sighed noncommittally as she held the car door open for him. Tears pricked the corners of Adrien's eyes. It seemed like everything in his life went wrong.

Adrien had always been eager to please. He would always be willing to do anything for the people he cared about. But in his efforts to please his Father, he hurt Chloé, and for one fleeting moment, Adrien couldn't remember what it was that was keeping him tied down to Earth. Why didn't he just leave, follow in his Mother's footsteps and abandon the world he knew.  It would be so easy to hop on a bus, to find some middle-of-nowhere town and disappear, to become someone else. Adrien had always hated modeling. He never wanted to be treated like a spectacle. Yet all those thoughts were brushed aside in the time it took Adrien to blink. He couldn't just leave. Not when he had Chloé waiting for him.

"You are not going to school," Adrien's Father snapped as soon as Adrien stepped through the door. "I've already told you this once before."

"But Father-" Adrien protested.

"Everything you need is right here, where I can keep an eye on you. I will not have you outside in that dangerous world."

"It's not dangerous. I'm always stuck inside, all by myself. Why can't I go to school with Chloé?"

"Chloé Bourgeoise has proven herself to be a terrible influence on you. I will not have you meeting with her any longer."

"But Father-" Adrien cringed back, tears pricking his eyes.

"You are my son, and you will follow my rules as such. Nathalie, continue Adrien's lessons." His Father stormed out of the entryway, and Adrien left to go to his room.

"Adrien, your lessons await."

"I'll be back downstairs in a couple minutes," Adrien mumbled as he all but sprinted up to his room. Slamming his door behind him, Adrien collapsed onto his bed with a groan. He had texted Chloé in the car, letting her know that he wouldn't be able to come to school after all. She was distraught, but at his Father, rather than at him. He couldn't even imagine how upset she would be when she learned that she wouldn't be allowed to come over to his house anymore.

Adrien: Chloé, I'm really sorry. My Father doesn't want you coming over to my house anymore. He thinks you're a bad influence on me. I don't think I'll be able to change his mind.

The tears started to fall immediately after Adrien sent the text. What his Father was doing wasn't fair, but Adrien didn't know how to fix the mess his Mother had left behind. As he lay on his bed, staring at the ceiling, he started to feel the ground shake beneath him.

The next half-hour passed by in a whirlwind. His life was changed irrevocably. Chloé was akumatized, turned into a monster whose only goal was to liberate Adrien from his Father's clutches. Adrien found a magic ring that gave him the thing he wanted most in the world - freedom. Along with the ring came Plagg, the world's most gluttonous God of Destruction.

"Now you can't tell anyone that you're Chat Noir. The Miraculous of Destruction is too powerful to fall into the wrong hands."

"Okay," Adrien agreed.

"All you have to do to transform is say 'Claws out!'" explained Plagg.

"Got it. Plagg, claws out!" The ring glowed green as Adrien began to transform. The transformation was nothing short of miraculous. It took only a few moments, but it felt almost devoid of time. Afterward, he felt completely changed. His human senses had been amplified, and the whole world felt different. Adrien glanced in his mirror and gasped. "What in the world?" He was now clad in a black leather bodysuit, with a black mask covering his face. His ordinary human eyes had been transformed into those of a cat. "This is so weird."

Another rumble of the ground underneath his distracted Adrien from his awe. "Oh, right. I have to go save Paris." He opened a window and without even glancing behind him, Adrien left the confines of his home behind. "Liberté, here I come."

——————————————————————

Adrien liked working with Ladybug. Despite Plagg's very limited explanation of Adrien's new powers and Ladybug's tendency to trip over her own feet when she got nervous, the duo freed Chloé from the akuma in record time. It broke Adrien's heart, seeing Chloé sprawled out on the ground, looking dazed and confused. His best friend had her life ripped apart, and it was his fault. All because Adrien didn't make it to school. All because Adrien wasn't able to disobey his Father.

"What's going on? What am I doing here?" Chloé asked.

Before Adrien could answer her questions, his ring began to beep. 

"We both need to get going. Our identities must remain a secret." Ladybug advised.

Adrien glanced over at Chloé, who was picking herself up off the ground, brushing grass stains off of her white pants. "I suppose you're right. I'll see you again soon, Ladybug." Adrien dashed away, his newfound abilities as Chat Noir allowing his to vault out of the stadium in three jumps.

He returned home, exhausted, and collapsed onto his bed. The transformation ran out before he could remember how to detransform manually.

"I demand camembert." Plagg flew around his room, throwing a tantrum the instant the transformation ran out.

"I'll go down to the kitchens." As Adrien walked down the stairs, he glanced over at the picture of his Mother. She looked so calm and reserved in the portrait, nothing like Adrien remembered. Emilie Agreste was a whirlwind. She lived every day like it was her last. She was the most impulsive person Adrien had ever met. Once, she dragged Adrien out of bed at five in the morning so that they could drive to Belgium to have authentic Belgian waffles for breakfast. Father was furious, but Mother didn't care. She promised Father over the phone that she would never do it again, with a smirk on her face that told Adrien everything he needed to know about his Mother's promises.

Adrien stared at his Mother's portrait, and made up his mind. Come hell or high water, he would be going to school tomorrow.

With a wheel of camembert cheese in hand, Adrien came back into his room ready Plagg to descend on him.

"Cheese!" Plagg cheered as he dove at Adrien.

Adrien pulled the cheese away from Plagg. "Not yet. You don't get cheese until you answer some of my questions."

"Fine," Plagg groaned. "One question, then I get the cheese."

Adrien already had a question in mind. "Did you only choose me because I don't have a Soulmate. That way I don't have any distraction, and I can't lose the miraculous."

Plagg's rolled his eyes. "You humans are so self-centered. You can't lose your miraculous because you don't own your miraculous. I'm just letting you borrow it for your silly hero duties."

"Then why did you choose me?"

"Because you have a good heart, kid. Because you know the difference between right and wrong. Because you're willing to go the extra mile in order to make things right in the world. There isn't any reason in particular, except that you're the best person for the job."

"Thanks, Plagg."

"Now give me my camembert before I take it from you by force."

——————————————————————

Adrien snuck out of the house that morning, having already resolved that he would be there for Chloé, no matter what. Unfortunately, he didn't even make it to his classroom before Chloé transformed back into Liberté. Adrien heard the screams as he walked down the hallway and broke out into a run towards the nearest empty classroom. "Plagg, claws out!"

Chat Noir and Ladybug had a much tougher time defeating Liberté the second time around. It took two exhausting hours before Ladybug resorted to using her lucky charm, which gave her a one hundred pound weight. "What do I do with this?" Ladybug asked, but Adrien could already see the wheels turning in her head. She quickly explained to him the plan: pulley the weight onto Liberté's scale in order to launch the book off, then destroy the book with Chat's cataclysm. Adrien was glad that he would be able to put his cataclysm to good use, especially after his mishap the day prior when he accidentally used it before the battle even started.

In only a few moments, the battle was won. Adrien held Chloé's book, the copy of Pride and Prejudice that her Soulmate gave to her. As Chloé's best friend, Adrien was the one person who Chloé had told everything about her Soulmate to. Adrien knew that Chloé was asexual. He knew that when she was twelve-years-old she gained a Soulmate who was already well into adulthood. He knew about the cigarettes and bullets and condoms she found in the beginning. He helped Chloé write her first note to her Soulmate. He was there when she got the book in return, an apology gift from her Soulmate.

Adrien walked up to Chloé, offering her a hand to pull her back up onto her feet.

"Thank you," said Chloé, staring at Adrien with realization in her eyes.

Adrien tried to keep his facial expression blank, though internally he was panicking. How could Chloé already have figured out that he was Chat Noir? "You're welcome, uh, Mademoiselle. And here is your book."

"Thanks." Chloé stared down at the tattered cover of the book like it held the secrets to the universe.

"I'm going to head home Ladybug, before I detransform," said Chat. In reality, he wanted to get  away from Chloé before she decided to confront him right then and there.

"Goodbye!"  Ladybug smiled at him, and in another world, Adrien would have fallen in love with her. But after everything he had been though, Adrien didn't particularly want to fall in love. He didn't want a story-book romance. He didn't want the love story his parents had.

Adrien wanted friends. Adrien wanted more people like Chloé in his life, more people who were willing to help him, no matter what the cost. But first, Adrien needed to talk to Chloé. He had promised Plagg that he wouldn't reveal his identity to anyone, but maybe there were some promises that needed to be broken.

——————————————————————

"Thanks for coming to school today," Chloé said. They were both in the library for third period when Chloé had grabbed him and dragged him to a secluded spot in the back of the library.

"My Father's going to be disappointed in me, but that's not much of a change. He's never been proud of me, no matter what I do."

Chloé hugged him, then whispered in his ear in a faux-serious voice,"I'll help you hide the body."

Adrien let out a laugh and then shook his head. "I know you would, Chloé. How are things between you and J.T."

"He sent me a note this morning." Chloé pulled a folded piece of paper out of her pants pocket. "Dear Soulmate. What's your favorite type of cookie? (I happen to know a very good baker who is currently taking requests)"

"I assume you told him chocolate chip."

"You know me so well." Chloé's playful expression turned serious. "I know you very well too. That's how I know that you're Chat Noir."

"I'm not-" Adrien began to protest, but Chloé cut him off.

"You don't need to argue with me. It's not going to work."

"But-"

"I'm not going to tell anyone. I just want you to know that I'm here for you if you ever need to talk."

Adrien blinked a tear out of his eye. "Thank you, Chloé. Thank you for always being there for me."

"You're welcome." Chloé stood up, then pulled Adrien up to his feet as well. 

"Now c'mon. I have this friend named Marinette who I think you would like."

Taglist: @fanboy7794 @mikantsume @hetalia-lover-is-here @howtoshuckatlife @you-will-never-know-how-i-think @redscarlet95 @derpingrainbow  @friedchickening @melicmusicmagic @beautym3 @kunstner1 @shizukiryuu @worlds-tiniest-spook-pastry @crazylittlemunchkin @black-streak @darkshadowguardian @mystery-5-5 @trubel43 @fandomfan315 @vincentvangoose @royalchaoticfangirl @mooshoon @drama-queen-supreme @kae690 @unabashedlyswimmingtimemachine @zoerayne2426 @littleredrobinhoodlum @lunar-wolf-warrior @dani-ari @sam-spectra @be-happy-every-day-please @xxmadamjinxx @interobanginyourmom @northernbluetongue @eliza-bich @romanoff-queen @scribblinggraveyard @dur55 @jeminiikrystal @sassakitty @miss-mysterys-blog @aegyobutpsycho2 

[seokjxnnie]

celestial (pt. 1) | kth (m)

genre: (future) smut, angst, demon au, incubus!taehyung x reader warnings: blood and violence, aloof asshole taehyung length: 5.3k

↳ her flesh and blood imparts immortality to any demon, but the incubus protecting her from the hunt requires something else of her body.

masterlist | part 2 ↠

a/n: let me know if you would like to be tagged in future updates! thanks!!

Everything was a little out of focus, but those piercingly red eyes were impossible to dismiss. Long, slender fingers unbuttoned her shirt. A heavy, aching fatigue paralyzed her, yet she still managed quiet mewls when a pair of lips cascaded tender caresses down the side of her waist. A scarce twinge of pain followed each stroke of a tongue, inspiring her to lightly squirm, but strong hands held her hips down. Eventually, with each kiss against her skin, she felt better, revitalized. Her vision gave to a slow fade.

She stirred in her sleep, rousing awake.

A dream. An inexplicable yet vivid dream. She wasn’t sure how long she napped for, but it must’ve been for too long if she felt this lightheaded. Sluggishly, her eyes opened, adjusting to the light as she stretched in silky sheets.

Her body suddenly went rigid, remembering she didn’t have silky sheets. A jolt upright and she found herself in a foreign environment. She was in a bed she didn’t know, in a room that wasn’t hers, wearing clothes that didn’t fit her. Before fear crippled her limbs, the door opened and revealed a kind face.

“Oh, Princess, you’re awake.” Soft eyes greeted her. “My name is Seokji—”

She flinched and tousled back when he approached and extended a glass of water to her. There was a throb in her head that elicited a pained exhale from her.

“Don’t move so suddenly! You’re probably still a little weak from all the blood you lost.”

An unearthly chill swamped her skin at such menacing words with inference she couldn’t grasp. Her heart thumped violently against her chest. Her throat tightened with the threat to suffocate. “Where am I? Who are you? Who changed me out of my clothes?” she assaulted him with panicked questions.

“Taehyung did. He had to heal your wounds and your clothes were soaked with blood. I’m washing them right now.”

Although he was seemingly speaking to her in an incomprehensible language, his words somehow brought on an ambiguous, fleeting series of images of her mind, bursts of what she could only hardly make out to be violence and gore. Even so, they were just passing visuals that failed to illustrate a coherent recollection.

Plagued with confusion and terror, her limbs quaked and her head pulsed. She darted her gape around the room in search of means of escape. “Please just let me go,” a frail, fractured voice pried from her quivering lips.

Seokjin swallowed, lips tautening into an apologetic frown. “Listen, I know this all might seem crazy and scary, but try to stay calm so you don’t overexert yourself.” Gingerly, he attempted to extend the glass of water to her once more, “I can explain everything.”

Her breaths fell as tremoring wisps before she contemplated whether it was idiotic or in her best interest to believe in the sincerity the stranger projected. She peered down at her foreign attire, finding herself in basketball shorts and a Spongebob t-shirt – both of which were too generously sized for her. The harmless image of the apparent pair of men’s pajamas she was in seemed to suggest something far from a hostile kidnapping. Then briefly, her gaze shifted to the drink stretched out to her, recognizing that her pounding head was begging for it.

“It’s safe, I promise. I’ll show you,” he insisted, bringing it to lightly touch his lips before he took a gulp in hopes of evaporating any of her apprehensions of it being contaminated. “See?”

Wary hands reached out to accept it. Reluctance quickly turned to eagerness when she felt how good it was to soak her dry tongue and quench the dense throb in her temples.

She’s never had a hammering headache in this magnitude before. She’s also never ‘lost of a lot of blood’ before which, according to him, was why she was feeling the way she did. All over again, she was swathed by a haunting uneasiness.

Hence, in spite of his warm smile and seemingly benevolent efforts, when his hand extended out in offer of taking away her quickly emptied glass, she instead tossed it at him. In the distraction of having him fumble to catch it, she made a hasty lunge off the bed and a beeline for the bedroom door – the alternative of the bedroom window was unhelpfully high and would’ve instead made for a slow and clumsy escape. Veering around him and his wide blinking eyes, she threw open the door and sped out, her bewilderment readying her to weave through whatever she has to in order to make it outside and scream for help. Unfortunately, it was a swift transition from the bedroom’s doorway into a face-first collision with a broad chest of another unidentified figure. Dizziness returning in an amplified form, she stammered back.

“Jesus, take it easy,” a tongue clicked before big hands claimed her shoulders and held her upright.

She peered up to find familiar eyes – the same eyes from her dream. They didn’t have the same red quality, but the matchlessly penetrative glance they delivered couldn’t be mistaken. Was her mind so inundated that it had fabricated a dream of the man now standing in front of her trailing his lips down her side?

Taehyung, she recalled Seokjin’s mentioning earlier. The visual prompt of his familiar face suddenly made for an enrichment of her memories, triggering another barraging flash of bloody imagery. Nausea settled down on her and her sights started spinning again.

He caught her when her knees submitted to a buckle. “You’re not supposed to be up and about yet,” his criticism resonated with a deep voice. Arm swinging around under her knees, he picked her up. A quick nod at Seokjin reassured the older that he can handle it from here.

She would’ve struggled if she wasn’t entirely crippled by fatigue and anxiety. However, as he began carrying her down the hall, she was suddenly confronted with a strong sense of nostalgia. The humble and rustic walls looked as if she’s been acquainted. It wasn’t until he sat her down on a couch of a living room that she then taken back to an amicable elderly face eight years ago.

“This is the town shrine,” she mumbled to herself after the fragments of reminiscence assembled to refine a certain memory.

For as long as she could remember, the girl could see supernatural beings. In childhood, they had never bothered her more than a brush of curiosity. And so, as a kid she had even called the things her imaginary friends, being that apparently no one else was able to see them and she was consistently being dismissed as having a wild imagination. Approaching adolescence, she began to recognize the eeriness in their ghastly looks, becoming increasingly concerned that she wasn’t growing out of her ‘imaginary friends’. Her developing maturity allowed her to find the fear in seeing things others couldn’t.

As a result, at 12 years old her parents took her to a shrine seeking advice from a gentle-faced elderly monk. There was a brightness behind his crinkled eyes when he smiled, and a cosiness played in his voice whenever he talked. He assured her parents that it was nothing to worry about, that all her visions were the product of a creative mind. Nonetheless, he still imparted her with a bead bracelet, assuring that as long as she kept it on it would protect her. Her parents appreciated the monk’s white fib in an attempt to help her feel better. Although it didn’t dispel the monsters, she felt an attachment to the bracelet and kept it on till present day.

Now in the same shrine eight years later, she blinked at and fingered the same beads around her wrist. Their original dark brown colour was now tinted a deep red. Before she even had the chance to add to her amassing puzzlement, she stiffened as five other strange men joined them in the room.

“Oh, the Princess is awake!”

“I thought I heard voices.”

Seokjin followed, entering and setting down her folded clothes on the table in front of her. “I managed to get the stains out,” he greeted her by her name with a lively grin, “but I’m sorry I couldn’t do anything about the rips and tears.”

Her eyes broadened, terrified, when she held up her shirt with a monstrous bite taken out of its side. She gasped and jerked back in retreat when she at last remembered the earlier pain that had thoroughly conquered her body. All too vividly was the reminder of the demonic face of the child that clamped its teeth onto her ribs. All the overwhelming emotions from the entire day suddenly barraged her, provoking her to shake uncontrollably. Stinging tears welled up in her eyes.

“How do you know my name? Who are you guys?” she whimpered through a broken and frail voice, sinking into the couch to increase her distance from everyone.

__________

The day was eerie from the start.

The walk from her dorm room to campus was darker than usual. It wasn’t due to gloomy weather of any sorts – it was actually a sunny morning, perfectly characteristic of the budding summer season. The shadows were actually casted by the blankets of monsters that spread, hardly leaving any landscape vacant. Two-headed cats hung on trees, three-eyed foxes sprawled across garden beds, double-ended snakes spiralled around stair railings, crows two feet tall enveloped benches and stone sculptures. It was routine to see them often, so much so that it was often hardly a chore to walk on through as if she didn’t see anything, to pretend as if she wasn’t stiff with anxiety and fear. But today was different. Their presence has never been so ample. While none of them flocked to her, she could feel their hungry stares searing into the back of her head, as if stalking her as prey. A chill snaked up and down her spine.

“What are you staring at?” A classmate joined her side and reeled her out of her troubled daze. Their paths often overlapped, heading to the same lecture.

She had long ago given up on talking about the things that she could see. “Oh, nothing, just thinking about the lengths I’m willing to take to get out of that argumentation assignment due tonight. If I asked you nicely, would you hold a knife to my throat?”

The classmate snorted. “Christ, relax! It’s your birthday tomorrow! You get it done tonight and won’t have to worry about it when we celebrate.” Excited pats warmed the girl’s shoulder. “You think I’d let myself forget and let you off that easily?”

With such an uncanny start to her morning, even she forgot.

She tried not to act distracted and insincere when she thanked her peer.

While eager to find distance from the horde as she entered the school, she instead found dismay in her lecture. Windows lined the side of the class, and lining the windows were an abundant layer of more demons. The students carried on as if the room wasn’t dramatically dimmed by the obstruction of the copious densities of the monsters, as if they didn’t see the multitude of brutish, ghastly faces glowering at them – at her.

She sank into her seat. Not only the horror, but the loneliness has never felt as smothering as it did now.

What’s going on? Why was today as unusual as it was? She didn’t know, and will probably never know. It’s been this way of her whole life – no one around her could ever answer her questions about her experiences with anything other than a look of concern. Nonetheless, she swallowed the fear accumulating as a swell in her throat and reminded herself that she’d just have to carry on and hope that the strange themes will curb on its own by the end of the day.

So, once she finished her classes, she found refuge in a deep, quiet corner of the library away from the windows to finish her assignment due at midnight. Hours bled into the tedious clicking and typing of her laptop, and although mind-numbing, it adequately served as a distraction from the eeriness that lurked a just a few walls away. So much so that the anxiety of the supernatural gradually dispersed to instead make room for the fatigue of her studies.

The library was completely silent – it was now late and the occupants must’ve cleared out. She, however, just had a couple more paragraphs to refine before she could leave too. Eyes strained and dry, face stretched by frequent yawns, and mind dazed from the droning of the past few hours, she remembered submitting to the droop of her heavy eyelids.

Just for a minute, she promised herself, just to rest my eyes.

Regardless of what she insisted, the brief moment of ease and tranquility was mesmeric. So much so that when she finally did bring herself to stir and scarcely open her eyes, she found the time to be 11:42pm with no accomplishment of additional work from when allowed herself the break an hour ago. The panic surged through her, bolting her upright with consciousness and playing her fingers in a hurried and tireless employ.

It was 11:59pm when she clicked on “submit” and a green checkmark responded on her screen to inform her of a successful submission. She threw herself back in a slump with a sigh of relief. Stretching in her chair, she relished in the release of tension in her body to accompany her close-call victory.

Happy birthday to me, the girl quietly tittered to herself when the time on her laptop blinked midnight.

Packing herself up, she was drawn from the excited thoughts of being engulfed by her bed when she heard a childish sobbing coming from another corner of the library.

She froze, stiff and cold. What was a child doing on a college campus at midnight? The catalog of horror movies she’s watched could provide some ideas, none of which too kindly for her. Pulse thumping so rapidly that it seemingly burned a hole in her throat, she remained unmoving, waiting to see if the cries continued. Maybe she was so worn out that she was hearing things, she tried to rationalize. She remembered a psychology article she read, outlining something along the lines of the mind tending to fabricate false stimulations to the senses amidst a backdrop of paranoia, which was easy for her to develop in the dark and isolated environment she was in now. Although she might just be desperately reaching.

A rigid breath of distress pushed past her gritted teeth when she heard the whimpering continue. She wasn’t imagining it.

Prompted by the sliver of concern that it was actually a child in the need of help, pale and clammy fingers dug for her keys before wedged them between her knuckles as a makeshift tool of defence. Then, she cautiously made her way towards the sound. An attempt to console herself came with the reminder of her phone’s function of a blaring SOS alarm. She thumbed the power button in preparation to hold it down and trigger just that if necessary.

Up ahead, she saw a little boy sitting at a table with his back turned to her, whines and sniffles produced from the face that rested down on folded arms. The child’s shoulders quivered up and down as he sobbed. Gingerly closing their distance, she didn’t see any other company.

Someone’s visiting little brother? A staff member’s wandering son?

“Hey, are you alright? Are you lost?” she asked, employing a soothing and reassuring tone before reaching out a hand to tap his shoulder.

The kid spun around to reveal a demonic face – pale blue skin, eyes beady and red, teeth jutting and serrated, far from the anticipated face of innocence and vulnerability. Gasping, the girl would’ve lurched back if the thing didn’t latch onto her shoulder with its claws, breaking skin and drawing blood. She cried in pain, only wailing louder when his jaw widened and protruded to clamp down onto the left side of her ribs. An agonizing ache thundered throughout her entire body and forced her to her knees. It felt like the monster child had started lapping at the blood he drew from the wound he created. Then, it felt like his robust set of jaws was curtly removed from her side. With her senses blurring towards a deterioration from the sudden trauma that rendered her faint and close to unconsciousness, she was losing the ability to perceive reality as anything other than indistinctive and uncertain.

Her pale face dropped to the floor when she lost control of her movements over the immense pain. Under hooding eyelids, her hazy and departing vision managed to dimly distinguish a set of legs that straddled and knelt down on the demon’s chest. Vaguely, she watched as its thrashing and resistant body abruptly drop to a limp when a fist brutally landed on the creature’s face. Puncturing through its skull, a gaping hole was left when the hand retreated.

Everything dulled to a black.

A dream. A stir awake. A jolt upright in a bed she didn’t know, in a room that wasn’t hers, wearing clothes that didn’t fit her. The door opened and Seokjin entered with a glass of water.

__________

It was just past 3am, she learned. She had been unconscious for three hours.

A man named Namjoon was seated next to her on the couch, a wary distance away in consideration of her comfort amidst a disorientation. Next to him, Seokjin. Across from her on the other sofa, they introduced themselves as Yoongi, Hoseok, Jimin, and Jungkook, who was perched on top of the backing of the couch. Taehyung remained leaning against the frame of the living room’s doorway.

Her eyes were darkened with exhaustion and dewed with distraught. Hoseok had reached out to offer her a box of tissues. Soon, fibres of the damp and crumpled napkin in her hand produced a speckled and velvety texture on her fingertips.

Although still on edge, she’s decided to submit to cooperation. She couldn’t fight back anyway, burdened by not only the physical stress and wear, but also by its allied emotional strain when complete recollection of tonight’s dreadful events returned to her. Or at least for what she was conscious enough to record.

Moreover, this group of seven men might’ve been strangers, but they were strangers who promised answers to her confusion. For the first time in her life, she just might be able to finally understand… everything. Her fear of them had grown less aggressive – if they wanted to hurt her, they would’ve done so by now, as opposed to all keeping a sympathetic distance and projecting similar looks of concern from their eyes.

“When you visited the shrine as a child, the monk knew exactly why you could see things others couldn’t. But, you were still a kid, you weren’t ready to understand yet,” Namjoon spoke softly, prudently.

Jimin, foreseeing her overwhelming plunge into a reality different from what she’s known, moved mindfully not to further rouse disturbance within her when he departed and quickly returned with a hot cup of tea to soothe. She took the mug from him with a timid thanks, deciding to trust the gentle qualities reflected in his consolatory smile. It came as a reward, the hot sips calming the sharp strikes to her temples and dissipating the bloat in her airways.

“What wasn’t I ready to understand?” her voice came out feeble and splintered by a stubborn sniffle.

He replied, “You come from what our people consider a line of royalty.”

A loaded statement. A challenge to process. She only registered the first half of it. “’Our people’...?” she tentatively repeated.

“Demons,” Yoongi uttered the word she’s been waiting to hear, “the kind you’ve been seeing since you were young.”

An indecisive gaze trailed over their faces, unsuccessful in realizing any severe differentiations. No one had colourful skin, excess limbs or features, barbaric and unearthly characterizations, none of what she was used to seeing.

“But you all look human.”

Demons come in different forms, they explained. The stronger ones were able to suppress their demon traits and resemble humans, with the trade-off of being able to be seen by them. They’ve blended in, even walking among society, undetected and only perceptible to other demons.

It all sounded like an exert straight out of a supernatural young adult novel. It only escalated from there when she questioned the latter half that addressed her relation in all of this.

Every century, a human is born with the blood that can prolong a demon’s life if consumed after the ripening of adulthood. Devoured in its entirety, the celestial flesh and blood granted immortality. That celestial being was her.

The hammering in her head resurfaced. An apprehensive throb in her chest imitated the same pattern. Denial was the overpowering emotion in this instance, however. The girl scoffed a slight laughter of disbelief that accompanied the shake of her head. “That’s ridiculous. That can’t be. It… I can’t be…”

Except it would’ve explained why a mass of monsters stalked her yesterday morning. They were waiting. And right on time, at the stroke of midnight that marked her 20th birthday, the demons that mainly left her alone her whole life suddenly wanted to make a meal of her. Most of all, it would’ve explained why she was the only person she knew that could see the supernatural element.

Tautness abruptly overcame her once again when she made the connection that the seven men in front of her were also demons, possibly with the same intentions. Had they only brought her here just to surround her and have her all for themselves? The tips of her digits drained pale by the deathly anxious grip she had on her cup.

Jungkook realized the brewing fright and unease in her silence. With wide eyes, he threw his hands up in defence. “Woah, wait! Not us though! We don’t eat humans,” he exclaimed.

“Not all demons have desires for immortality and intend to hurt humans. But, we are here to protect you from those that do, Princess,” Jimin added, a trustworthy look glossing over his irises to complement his promising words.

She grimaced, “Don’t… call me that,” she muttered under her breath.

“Most of us have been under the monk’s care since we were young,” Seokjin explained. “He knew what would happen when you turned 20, and he wanted to protect you. We all grew up knowing that. When he passed away a couple years ago, the seven of us took over the shrine as well as the responsibility of making sure you’re safe.”

Her shoulders deflated at the solemn news, reminiscing the elder’s kind eyes that had comforted her many years ago. “So,” her wilted gaze reluctantly flickered up at them, “that demon earlier… it was you guys that stopped him?”

Hoseok nodded, “Taehyung did. If he had come any later, you would’ve…” he shivered at the thought of it.

She swallowed, disturbed as well by the recollection of the grisly red eyes and the agonizing pain that came with the sinking of its jagged teeth, how she was likely seconds away from being reduced to an indistinguishable pool of blood and guts. Her eyes stuttered in their peer up to Taehyung, who had remained quiet and still by the door the entire time. He was stoic and difficult to read, but she had been deprived of the resilience necessary to look at him for longer than a blink. This was because she was uneased by the idea that he had been the one to undress her from her red-stained and tattered clothing earlier. Whatever he did though, the claw and bite marks no longer marked her skin.

Stammering fingers traveled to graze her side, acknowledging the lack of an anticipated ache upon contact. “H-How did you…?”

Namjoon gestured to her wrist. The bracelet that the monk gave her, he also gave it to Taehyung. He was apparently faster and stronger than any of them. Wearing the beads simultaneously for a long interval formed a bond between the two of them. Taehyung was her familiar, was the term Namjoon used. It was a bond that meant Taehyung’s duty protect her overpowered his instincts as a demon. It was what provided him the ability to close her wounds and prevented him from personally gaining vitality from her flesh. They had scented the beads with his blood, Namjoon continued to explain, which will come as a warning to other demons. They shouldn’t be bothering her anymore for the most part.

Dwelling in such a prolonged stage of bewilderment was exhausting. Being awake in the middle of the night after just barely recovering from a penetrative pain that spilled her blood was exhausting. Wrestling between knowing to believe and wanting to deny such outlandish fables was exhausting. She sat still, quiet, numb, tired, fingering the bracelet around her wrist, now understanding why they produced their red tint.

“Someone’s going to tell her, right?” Yoongi blurted.

She looked up. What now?

Namjoon sighed, eyes dropping as if he was about to disappoint her. “Taehyung is…” he paused, clearing his throat and shuffling a nervous hand through the hair at the back of his head, “an incubus.” The air surrounding them seemingly tightened. “Which means—”

“I know what that means,” she deadpanned, stopping him before he had to embarrass himself— embarrass her any further, and before the red tips of her ears spread to blot more of her face.

A reminiscence of the elective mythology course she took during freshman year reminded her that incubuses gained life energy through sex. Incubuses were also supposed to be nothing more than a myth, but how could she be surprised when monsters and familiars and immortality-granting blood were a factual aspect in her reality?

No longer being able to stand emotionally smothering herself, she leapt to her feet.

__________

While finally in her own bed, in her own room, wearing her own clothes, she was restless. In spite of her relentless tiredness, she couldn’t sleep. Swaddled in an uncomfortable warmth prescribed by the summer heat and a fidgety apprehension, the ensuing sticky layer of sweat that draped over her skin made for a painstakingly long journey until the state of drowsiness.

She had politely asked to leave. She had thanked them for their care and for their explanations, but she was in dire need to be alone in her state of exhaustion and disorientation. They didn’t stop her, however Hoseok and Jimin insisted on walking her back to campus residence at this time of night. She declined and asserted her request to be unaccompanied. Again, they didn’t stop her, perhaps out of sympathy and condolence.

Alone at last, the girl was lost in her thoughts and it kept her up. While her eyes idly traced the uneven patterns of her ceiling, her mind tirelessly ran several trains atop numerous winding tracks that overlapped, each one trying to make sense of her situation, trying to assess how she was going to handle the disarming truth she had still so desperately sought for. Most rails ultimately ended in collision.

The sun was already beginning to rise, peeks of radiance generously filtered in through her opened blinds and made for an unaccommodating setting for sleep. A huff of frustration sat her up and trudged her towards her window to drop close the shades. Already a crack open, her fingers first wrapped on the underside of the window’s frame to open it further in hopes of it catching a heavier breeze. She had just started to lift the glass pane when a tall, dark silhouette came into view.

She gasped and recoiled backwards, her release of the window allowing it to fall. Her hand hadn’t retreated far enough yet, she realized when her finger got caught in the panel’s drop. Pain surged up the length of her arm when the frame slammed down on her index. Yelping, she dropped to her knees before wrenching her digit free, finding a bloody trench framing her nail.

She didn’t have more than a second to grimace at her injury when the complete opening of the window required her immediate attention. Clambering back, fear seized her lungs when the shadowy figure that was suspended on the tree branch immediate to her window had climbed in. Before a scream managed to pry her throat open, their closing distances allowed her vision to sharpen the facial features of the stranger.

“Jesus, you humans scare so goddamn easily,” Taehyung huffed, sitting on the sill with one leg hovering above her bedroom floor and the other swinging five storeys above ground.

Anger surfacing, she exclaimed through gritted teeth, “Were you there this entire time?”

“Yeah,” he replied, curt and without a shred of shame or penance. “I actually followed you the entire way home, but I guess humans are inattentive too.”

She would’ve clenched her hands into fists in resentment if she wasn’t met with an immediate aching jolt from her fingernail. “I told you not to,” she instead spat an irritated murmur, which promptly transitioned into a hiss of discomfort when she wiped the blood from her finger.

Her scent flooded his senses. “Yeah, well look how easily you hurt too. How your species has survived this long completely escapes me.” After a patronizing scoff, he leapt down from the window and slumped down onto the floor next to her, legs folded in front of him. He captured her wrist with the injured finger and brought it close to his face. She resisted, face contorting into a scowl, knees withdrawing to her chest, and hand tugging back in response. He reinforced his grip. “Just relax. I’m trying to help,” his tongue clicked with impatience.

The girl swallowed, eyes locking with his unwavering, assertive gaze. The echoing reminder that the supposed ‘familiar’ had healing abilities prompted her to retire her defences, although she was unsure of how it was exactly going to unfold.

Another sharp inhale dropped open her jaw, stunned when he plunged the tip of her finger into his mouth. “What the fuck are you do—” she began to shout before wrenching herself free from his lips, only to reveal undamaged skin that made her abruptly pause in disbelief. Rotating it in view, she confirmed that her finger was no longer bleeding, the nail was no longer cracked, and the likelihood of bruising was no longer promising.

Is this how he does it? She only briefly pondered. But just as quickly, her eyes dropped closed when disrupted by the recollection of her supposed dream of him running his lips down her shoulder, down her waist, before she had woken up suddenly unscathed.

This is how he does it.

And that wasn’t a dream.

Taehyung interrupted her silent stupor, “A ‘thank you’ will do—"

“Get out,” she lowly rasped. A series of troubled and shuddering winces debilitated her upon remembering the unintended mewls and whimpers he had drawn out of her in half-consciousness. “Get out!” her snarl escalated to a roar. She reached behind her before hurling a pillow toward him off her bed.

He jumped to his feet, his tensed lips sputtering a string of frustrated profanities and curses at her apparent unexplained outburst, especially after his kind deed. “Fine!” he barked. Spotting his basketball shorts and Spongebob tee slung on her computer chair, he snatched them up. “And I’m taking these back!”

The incubus leapt out her window and disappeared, which she firmly made sure of with her own eyes. The girl threw herself back flat on the ground, flustered, burying her face in her damp palms when she couldn’t strip herself of the lingering sensations of his tongue against her skin.

[parab0mb]

I live!

So... yeah, after about 3 and a half months of complete silence, I’m back. I know taking forever to upload anything new is a pretty common occurrence for me, but the whole summer is admittedly long even by my standards. Despite recently graduating I think a combination of career-hunting and depression siphoned any motivation I had to accomplish anything these past few months. I’m still busy with work and looking for a career but I’m at least feeling slightly more motivated now, at least enough to attempt to get back into a drawing mood, even if it’s nothing substantial.

Anyway, since I’ve had my OC Lilian on the brain for a while now, I figured I should draw her alongside the rest of the core cast for her story. Originally I was considering making a reference sheet for all of them (and I still might someday) but the aforementioned bout of depression combined with my usual laziness kept that from going anywhere, so instead I decided to draw them all together, so that I can have their designs all down on paper (this is also a personal ref for me to help remember their heights). Can’t say all the names/designs are set in stone but it’s a start.

Now then, wall-of-text character description time!:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~ Lilian Liao - An eleven-year old tomboy who seems to attract paranormal activity like a magnet, Lilian was hoping that moving to a new town would bring a sense of normalcy to her life. However, she quickly learns from her new neighbors (who happen to be a family of witches) that she is a medium who is fated to attract all manner of weirdness to herself no matter where she goes. On the other hand, while she may not be able to "turn off" her powers, she can learn to pacify and resolve the issues of the various supernatural entities she regularly encounters.

Impatient, ill-tempered, and a bit of a bully at times, Lilian's bad attitude tends to clash with her powers and she often makes a bad situation worse for herself because of it. Fortunately, with the help of the witch family next door, a wannabe conspiracy theorist, and a possessed talisman, Lilian may yet learn to control her powers (and temper) and find peace in her hectic life.

      ~ Ling's Talisman - Given to Lilian by her new witch neighbor Medea, the Talisman is an artifact of unknown origins capable of siphoning and amplifying magical power. However, upon receiving it Lilian quickly discovers the Talisman houses one other secret: a lingering fragment of its previous owner's soul. This previous owner, known only as Ling, was a medium just like Lilian but seems to have forgotten much about himself after lying dormant inside the Talisman for hundreds of years.

Ling is (understandably) bitter about his current, body-less state of being, and is apparently just as stubborn and hotheaded as Lilian, meaning the two are constantly butting heads with one another. Still, believing that Lilian's powers may be the key to exorcising himself from the talisman, Ling reluctantly agrees to teach her better control of her powers for their mutual benefit.

       ~ Devin Liao - Lilian's older brother; presents himself as a rebellious and edgy punk but isn't quite as deep as he thinks he is. Him and Lilian don't get along very well, and regularly belittle and argue with each other. While Devin is one of the few normal humans in Lilian's life who actually acknowledges all the paranormal activity that surrounds her, he does little to actually help her deal with it and will even complain if it begins to inconvenience him (even though she has little control over such things).

Still, in spite of their frequent bickering Devin does genuinely care about Lilian and will help her without a second thought should she find herself in legitimate trouble. And even without any supernatural powers of his own he proves himself to be surprisingly adept with confronting the paranormal (when forced to do so).

      ~ Hui Liao - Lilian’s and Devin’s father, Hui does his best to strike a balance between his demanding engineering career and being a reliable single parent, to which he is mostly successful. Hui has an almost unwavering levelheadedness and rarely ever grows impatient with his children's antics and bickering (while still knowing when to put his foot down and keep the two from tearing each other apart). He also does his best to support his kid’s interests, even if he doesn’t always understand them or unintentionally embarrasses them.

Unfortunately, Hui’s demanding career leaves him little time to physically be with his family, and despite his efforts to support Lilian and Devin he clearly does struggle to relate to their interests or help resolve their personal issues.  Lilian in particular is distressed by her inability to prove the existence of the paranormal to her dad; while he would never scold her for claims of ghosts and monsters being real, as a man of science and reason Hui struggles to accept her seemingly baseless claims and chalks it all up to her simply having a vivid imagination.

      ~ Wally Peskon - A wannabe paranormal investigator and the closest thing Lilian has to a non-magic friend, 11-year old Wally quickly gravitated towards Lilian due to their like-minded fixation on proving they aren't crazy to the rest of the world. And at first Lilian was actually elated to meet a regular human who's observant of the paranormal, but her mood quickly changed when she realized he's a hack who gets caught on bogus conspiracy theories and completely overlooks real supernatural activity happening right in front of him. Not to mention he's frantic, clumsy, and a busybody, making just as much of a headache as the supernatural beings that are always bothering her.

Fortunately, Lilian and her unwanted paranormal company helps Wally improve his perception of what is and isn't real (somewhat), and he slowly begins to get better at recognizing and even helping Lilian resolve supernatural phenomena. He also has a habit of buying or cobbling together seemingly useless pieces of anti-paranormal equipment that sometimes end up saving the day. Sometimes.

     ~ Wednesday "Wendy" Cauldrison - Lilian's new neighbor and the 8-year old daughter of Medea Cauldrison, Wendy is a hyperactive and spontaneous witch-in-training who’s obsessed with all things cute and glimmering. Heavily sheltered from non-magic culture by her mother, Wendy quickly takes a liking to her new neighbor Lilian, who offers her a chance to hang out with normal humans and partake in non-magic activities. Unfortunately, while Wendy usually means well, her overambitious nature combined with the haphazard use of her magic often exacerbates Lilian's paranormal problems, and as such Lilian (at least initially) isn't exactly eager to let Wendy tag along with her.

Like her mother, Wendy's magical expertise mainly involves brewing up potions, powders, and other concoctions to cast spells. However, her lack of experience means a lot of her brews don't come out quite right and have unpredictable effects, while the few brews she actually does have a grasp on are only good at making things prettier or making them explode violently, with no in-between.

     ~ Medea Cauldrison - The mother of Wendy Cauldrison, Medea is a coven-less but highly experienced witch living in plain sight within Lilian’s new neighborhood (although she hardly has to try to keep it a secret). Despite appearances, she's over 600 years old and has traveled a good portion of the multiverse. And yet, in spite of her vast experience with all things magic, she knows surprisingly little about the culture and technology of humans, as she has a bit of a superiority complex towards them and tries to avoid interacting with them when possible (even going so far as to forbid Wendy from experiencing most of the human world for herself).

While Medea may not hold humanity in high regard, it can’t be denied that she’s still fairly knowledgeable of all things magic, and she’s highly understanding of Lilian's plight and (usually) willing to help her out. Combined with the fact that she's competent enough in her magic to ward off many of the more threatening paranormal creatures out there, she's certainly one of the more reliable personalities in Lilian's new neighborhood. Medea’s magical expertise revolves around nature and potions; she can not only conjure and manipulate plants but with the right ingredients can brew up all manner of potions and powders to suit any situation.

[builtoutoflove]

No Happy Endings

The oppressive weight of mental isolation never quite goes away when there’s no one who can relate to your issues. If you have a crush or miss your mom, people will listen to you pour your heart out. They’ll sympathize with you as you cry and tell you how to get through it. But when you’re a 20-something bisexual woman in a scarily-perfect relationship with a man who you’ve been with for your entire life but you don’t know how you’ll ever live without experiencing loving and being loved by a woman and fully immersing yourself in your queer identity, you sit in your dark living room at 2 a.m. and cry. There isn’t anyone to talk to. There is no one who will guide you and tell you everything will make sense one day. I suppose you could go to therapy, but that would require money or health insurance, neither of which your entry level 20-something job provides. So it’s back to the crying. 

It’s really dark in my small living room. No moonlight is reflected in the clean space. It’s a new moon tonight, and it amplifies the loneliness. Sometimes I imagine the moon knows. She knows the challenges I’m facing and the answers to them. She provides me with the proper reflections that get me to a better mental place. But tonight I sit, cold and truly alone. It’s so quiet, too. I feel like I’m in a sensory deprivation tank. It’s a shitty night to be deep in my gay woes. My brain is the only thing moving. 

My only way to cope with these feelings essentially gets me nowhere. I come to no conclusions, but I do escape my intrusive thoughts. It helps me to make a list of everything I feel, starting from the most immediate to the more latent. Right now, I feel sad that I’m never going to be able to touch a woman lovingly. My fingers will never cup a breast or explore another woman sexually. I’ll never kiss a woman. I’ll never have a wife. She’ll never wake me up in the morning with breakfast and I’ll never take her dancing. We won’t start a family or go on picnics or buy a house because she doesn’t exist. That life doesn’t exist for me. 

Here is where the crying generally starts. Just a slow tear or two pooling in my eyes, like my body knows to hold back for the heavier stuff. It only gets more complicated from here. 

From there I recognize that I feel guilty. The love of my life is upstairs sleeping peacefully. He’s resting in our bed, in our room, in our apartment that we share a lease on. We patiently waited for the day when we would have a home of our own where we could start our lives together. We have that now, and I am so grateful. I am unfathomably thankful for him and our animals and our life. He is truly different from any other man I have ever encountered. He is gentle and warm and loving and soft and caring. He carried me through my worst depression. I would not be here without him. Why should I want any more than this? I love my life! I love him. I’ve seen myself marrying him for ten years, and that has never changed. I hate myself for wanting...not necessarily more. Not more than him. Different than him. Different than what he can give me. He satisfies me in every way that he possibly can in our relationship. I love doing the same for him. And I feel wretched inside knowing that despite all of this perfection, my heart yearns for something else as much as it yearns for what I have. It’s not fair to him. 

More tears come, forcing themselves out of the corners of my eyes. They fall quietly down my cheeks. I am still. 

I also feel worried that I don’t actually know myself. I’ve only ever been with him. He was my first everything. I’ve only been out of the closet for two years, and I’ve only been with him since. I know that I’m attracted to mostly women. I could never see myself with another man in a serious way. I could only ever imagine sleeping with maybe three or four other men, and all but one of those men is a celebrity. I often wish that I were a lesbian, and then I worry that I am a lesbian. It would make perfect sense, and really the only evidence I have to support the idea that I’m not a lesbian is my current relationship. So I’m worried that I’m misunderstanding my identity because of the love I have for a man I’ve been with since I was 14. I’m worried that if I am a lesbian, twenty years from now I’ll ruin our marriage because I can no longer be fulfilled with what I have. 

That thought really gets the tears flowing. The idea that I could ruin everything I’ve ever wanted with him all because I might not understand myself now is excruciating. I don’t make a sound, but I’m having to blink through the tears. I wipe them away a few times, hoping to move on in clarity. 

I move on to feeling a fear, however fleeting it may be, that I have invented bisexuality and everyone else is correct. Several people in my life, both gay and straight, invalided my identity when I came out as bi. I was told that such a thing doesn’t exist, that I’d choose eventually. I never thought that was true. But at moments like these their words invade my insecure headspace. I move on from that fear quickly because obviously bisexuality is real and anyone who says otherwise is a biphobic dick, but it’s hard to ignore the idea that perhaps I’m justifying staying in my relationship despite my overwhelming attraction to women by claiming I’m attracted to my gender and other genders. I scoff at myself at this stage. 

The tears don’t last very long. I’m not really a crier, and I need to move on to more hidden feelings. I dry my face and relax. My cycle is almost finished.

At this moment, I believe the only other thing I feel is contentment. I have so many things I never dreamed I would have. I share a dwelling with my partner and our pets. I just got a new job with better hours and more money. My mother just came to visit me for a week, and that breathed life into me. I’m healthy and so is my family. My bills are paid and there’s food in the kitchen. Life is more than okay. At this moment, everything is more than okay. 

I feel relief.

Until tomorrow.

[vrepitsorrynotsorry]

Lay Your Hands on Me

This is my gift for @floranna2 for @monstertronexchange 2019. I kind of combined two separate things on your prompt list, and I hope you enjoy it.

I’ll probably post to AO3 later after I get home from work.

Title: Lay Your Hands on Me Rating: PG-13ish? It’s sort of NSFW but not graphically so. Pairing: Lancelot. Featuring Näkki!Lance and Sort-of-Incubus!Lotor Warnings/Spoilers: Set shortly after Lotor and Allura went to Oriande together in an alternate reality where everything didn’t end like canon. One character assumes another’s consent is dubious. It isn’t, but if you’re very sensitive to that kind of thing, be aware. A/N: The title is stolen from a Bon Jovi song. Lance is assumed by me to be at least 18 at this point in the storyline. I will never be able to look at the spelling/pronunciation of “naked” as “nekkid” the same again.

Lance had a secret. Okay, he had more than one--who didn’t? Lance had one really big secret. Well, Hunk knew, but he was Lance’s best friend and former roommate, so how could he not know? His family also knew for obvious reasons. Lance had one really big secret that almost nobody else knew: he wasn’t human.

Throughout his childhood, it wasn’t difficult for him to hide it. Maintaining a human form was almost effortless, and he never had any compulsion to assume his alternate form, so for all that he rarely did anything connected to it, he may as well have been an ordinary human.

There were many names for what he was, as many as there were peoples who told stories of them his mother had once told him, but his personal favorite was näkki. He loved the water, was an excellent swimmer, and he had a natural gift with music. Most of the time, it didn’t seem all that unusual.

He had done a little research at the local library once, after his mother kept telling him she would tell him more about it when he was older. Some of the stories were pretty dark.

“Do we really like drowning people?” he had demanded of his mother later. 

She gave a long suffering sigh and took a walk with him out to a nearby stream. Water always helped to soothe and calm him.

“We are like any other group,” she had patiently explained. “A few are bad and do terrible things, but most don’t. A few are also very good and have done great things, but most don’t. People remember things that frighten them, so is it any wonder that the stories the humans have passed along are about the bad ones? You are responsible for the choices you make in your life. I can hope that you’ll make good ones, but it is you who must live them.”

During puberty, his abilities spiked and then settled out again at a stronger level than they had been before. Now he had to be more careful to intentionally sing worse than he was capable and he didn’t play instruments for an audience anymore--it would be too easy to accidentally put someone under his thrall.

At that point, he also developed two additional skills.

First, if someone near him was feeling anything particularly strongly, he could tell. Beautiful music would spring into his mind to fit that mood. He somehow just knew that if he played the music for them, it could amplify good emotions and soothe negative ones. Every once in awhile, if the emotions were especially unsettling, he would hum a little under his breath, just to take the edge off.

The second new talent helped him identify other supernatural beings. They weren’t very common, and it seemed like the majority of the time, they didn’t even seem to know about it, if several really awkward conversations with strangers were anything to go by. It worked a lot like the emotional sense, only it was like he could feel a pressure and power radiating off of the individuals. His hypothesis was that maybe they had diluted supernatural ancestry. It turned out to be correct, but he didn’t find that out until they met Allura.

If the power he had felt from others before was like a gentle push against his own abilities, Allura’s power was like being hit by a bus. He eventually realized it wasn’t just that she had a lot of power, and boy did she ever, but also that she didn’t have the best control of it.

Looking back he wondered if some of his infatuation with her was finding someone else who was different from most others in the same way. Maybe just a little. She had lots of things going for her. Unfortunately, one of those things did not appear to be the ability to recognize Lance’s own innate power.

When Lotor appeared on the scene, Lance could sense right away that he had some kind of latent power, so he was probably the only one who wasn’t surprised when “the Mark of the Chosen” appeared on the newly instated Emperor. 

Lotor’s power wasn’t like anything he had ever felt before--more of a pull than a push. Lance couldn’t help but wonder if that wan’t part of what drew Allura to him, and it was a large part of the reason Lotor irritated him so much.

When the pair of royals had emerged from Oriande, it had also been obvious to Lance that it had affected both of them, no matter what Lotor claimed. Allura’s power had been amplified, but fortunately, she had also been granted greater understanding and control. Whatever Lotor had had been dialed up to eleven as well, and even if no one else seemed to be able to sense the change, Lance could tell the other man was aware now that he had some kind of ability, but he seemed almost afraid of it.

Lotor began to withdraw from everyone, especially Allura, speaking to them only when absolutely necessary and minimizing in person meetings. When they had to be in the same room, he always stood as far from everyone as possible, and it wasn’t subtle, which was very unlike what Lance had come to expect from him.

It was also affecting Lotor physically. The guy had always been lithe, but now he seemed to almost be wasting away right in front of them. Before, there was a light of intellectual curiosity and even a bit of mischief in his eyes that had become a dull, haunted shadow.

Lance was already trying to plan some way to broach to subject with Lotor when Allura had come to him with a surprising request.

“I know you are not fond of Lotor-” Allura had really been working on her diplomacy “-but I am becoming increasingly worried about him. Oriande changed him in some way, and I don’t think I’m going to be able to get him to talk to me about it.”

“Really? Aren’t you two, you know...together?”

Allura sighed, and smiled sadly. “No. I thought perhaps that might be where we were headed, but it’s clear to me now that Lotor has changed his mind. He’s still a dear friend to me, and our alliance, if only political, is still vital.”

“Well, what makes you think he’d talk to me? We’re not exactly friends, like you said.”

“Why, because you also have magical abilities.”

Lance was taken aback. She said it like it was really obvious, but Lance had convinced himself that she must be unaware that he was different.

“You also seem to have admirable control,” she continued, “and I’m still working on mine. I think he might be afraid that he’ll hurt someone. Perhaps you could help him?”

Lance had been thinking along the same lines. Both he and Allura had grown up knowing they had magic in them. Admittedly, Lance had never really had to struggle to control his, but he’d always known it was there. He couldn’t imagine what it must be like to suddenly be granted a strong power that he had no idea how to use.

“I’d be happy to try, but I’m not sure how to get him to listen.”

Allura smiled at him. “Oh, I’ve taken care of that. Well, mostly. Lotor is going to travel to speak to a planet we would like to bring into our alliance. I insisted that at least one Lion should accompany him, and Red is the logical choice, given the distance and necessity of speed.”

“Wait a minute, what would you have done if I said ‘no’?”

“I had a feeling you wouldn’t,” she answered with a wink. Then her expression became more serious. “I know you care about everyone’s well-being. It makes you a great team member and a true paladin. You’ll do everything in your power to help, and that’s all I really need to know.”

How could anybody turn down that? 

The date of the diplomatic mission crept up faster than he would have liked, but he was totally a master of improvisation! He just had to wait for inspiration to strike. It still hadn’t struck before they left the castle ship in the Red Lion in heavy, awkward silence. He’d done some of his best school assignments the night before they were due, though. He had this--no sweat.

It was the longest trip he had ever taken because Lotor somehow avoided every single attempt at conversation, and Lance was great at talking, okay? Like, amazing even. He could have a conversation with thin air. There may have been a little mild sweating by the time they were getting ready to land on the planet.

Lance’s luck finally started to turn, however, when he spotted a small lake not far from where they would be staying. There was a small group of musicians at the welcoming ceremony, and one of them let him borrow an instrument that was close enough to an Earth guitar that he could make it work. A plan was coming together just like he knew it would all along.

The trickiest part was luring Lotor. Lance knew that in theory he could play a song that Lotor should find beautiful and irresistible, but he’d never actually tried calling someone to him with song before. In the past, he’d always just had a feeling the music in his mind and heart would be right, but he’d never actually tested it. He really needed this to work, and he was hoping that desire would be the little bit extra he might need for his first on-demand performance to succeed.

He probably didn’t have to be naked for it to work, but that was how many of the old stories went, and he figured it couldn’t hurt. He dug his bare feet into the cool, damp sand of the lakeshore and let the tiny lapping waves calm him down and set a natural rhythm for the song. He closed his eyes, opened his mouth, and let his voice join the strumming of the not-quite-a-guitar. It was a song full of the emotions he’d been picking up from Lotor: loneliness, unease, and a deep hunger for something unclear. He got really into it--so much so that Lotor’s voice just about gave him a heart attack.

“You’re quite talented.”

“Thanks,” he managed to stammer even though his mouth was suddenly as dry as a desert. “I wrote it for you.”

Lotor raised one snowy brow. “Why would you write something so lovely for someone you hate?”

“I don’t hate you.” Lotor laughed bitterly at that, and Lance reminded himself that getting into a fight was the opposite of what he was trying to do. “I don’t. I know I always give you a hard time, but...”

“But?”

This was hard for Lance. He was going to have to lay bare some of his own insecurities to get Lotor to open up, and he was not looking forward to it.

“I was jealous, okay?” There. He said it. Lotor was just staring at him, so it looked like he was going to have to elaborate. “I like Allura, too, but she’s never seen me as anything more than a friend, a teammate. Then you came waltzing in, and how was I supposed to compete with a handsome but extremely suspicious prince with amazing hair?”

One of Lotor’s hands slipped up to grasp a lock of that hair that Lance might actually kill for the secrets behind. It was possible that he imagined it, but Lance was ninety-nine percent sure Lotor blushed a little and he definitely looked away. “Handsome?” he murmured under his breath.

“Well, yeah. I mean, you’re looking a little rough recently, but you can’t expect me to believe you don’t know you’re attractive.”

“That’s easy to say for someone who as far as I can discern meets all your species’ standards of beauty.” 

Lance had to think about that for a minute for a couple of reasons. First off, whoa! Lotor thought he was good looking? The Galra man had only ever seemed interested in Allura, which was understandable because she was amazing, but maybe Lance just hadn’t noticed any interest cues toward himself because he’d been so determined to dislike Lotor. Second, he felt a little dumb for not considering human standards did not apply to all alien races.

“What, uh, if you don’t mind me asking, are Galra standards of beauty?”

“Size, strength, resilience. Obvious battle scars are quite in fashion.”

Lotor was quite a bit taller than himself, but Lance realized that he was shorter than most other Galra he’d seen him around. He wasn’t bulkily muscled, and he didn’t seem to have any readily visible scars. By all accounts, the closest thing to a genuine Galra hottie he’d come across was probably Sendak.

“As enjoyable as it has been discussing my shortcomings, I think I’ll leave you to your...music.”

This was not going according to plan.

“Wait! I used the song to call you here because I want to talk to you about something.”

Lotor looked genuinely confused by that statement. “You called me?”

“Yeah, it’s a thing I can do. I’m not a regular human. I’m a creature called a ‘näkki’.”

Lotor seemed to find this claim highly dubious. Lance carefully set his borrowed instrument down and changed to his other form. It looked like a beautiful, if kind of shaggy, white horse. Now Lotor appeared suitably impressed, so Lance changed back to his human form and pulled the instrument back into his lap. He was pretty sure Lotor hadn’t blinked for over thirty seconds, and the staring was making him a little self-conscious.

“Anyways, I can feel strong emotions from people around me, and I know you’re having a hard time after-”

“I do not wish to discuss my feelings.” Rude! Lotor just cut him off and turned away. Guess it was time to cut right to the heart of the matter.

“Oriande changed you.” Lotor visibly tensed, but he turned back around. “That’s another thing I can tell--when others have magical power, I mean. Something happened to you in there, and you’re letting it eat you alive instead of dealing with it. Everyone can see it, even if all of them don’t understand.”

Lotor’s eyes narrowed. “Did Allura send you?”

“I would have confronted you anyway, but yes, she’s worried about you, too.”

“You’re all safer far away from me, Allura especially.”

“Why? Because you feel like we’re safer? What about you? Are we all going to be safer if you die or self-destruct from this and we have to deal with whoever takes your place? I want to help you, but I need you to tell me about what’s going on with you. Maybe I can help you control it.”

Lotor sighed and took a seat on the shore. “If I tell you, you might no longer wish to help.”

“We won’t know until you do, so spill.”

“Orainde was supposed to be place of great alchemical knowledge. I never doubted that Allura would be welcomed, but I didn’t expect that I would be able to enter.” He absently brushed the fingertips of his right hand over one of the spots on his cheeks where the Mark had glowed. “There was a test. At least, I thought it was a test, and that I failed it. Oriande looked deep within me to determine my desire. I was certain all I wanted was knowledge of that part of my history kept from me, my Altean heritage. That isn’t what the guardian found, and it’s not what it awoke.”

Well, that sounded ominous... He was about to ask, but Lotor continued.

“I thought I had buried the part of myself that longed for affection and admiration. I told myself I could never truly have it. I started to believe it was possible again when Allura seemed to care for me, and that is what Oriande amplified. Whatever this thing it gave to me is, it hungers for the love and desire of others. I’m afraid it can’t be satisfied, that it would take and take until there was nothing left to give it, and that’s not what I want.”

“So that’s why you’ve been avoiding Allura. You’re afraid you’ll suck all the, uh, ‘love’ out of her?”

“Partly,” Lotor admitted with a shrug, “Allura is too tempting. Her power is too strong and pure. This beast inside me woke up starving, and I can’t trust myself to let it near her. It might take more than just emotional energy.”

“You have to give it something.” Lance wasn’t sure how he knew that, but he was certain. “The longer you starve it, the harder it’ll be to keep it from taking over. You’re making things worse by denying that part of yourself.”

“I’m fairly certain my ability requires intimate physical contact. Are you volunteering?”

Was that what he was doing? He had to admit, he wasn’t entirely opposed to the idea. In fact, behind the not-guitar, he was getting pretty interested. A little part of him wondered if Lotor’s ability wasn’t egging him on a little. He squashed that thought, though. It was unfair.

His opinion of Lotor had been slowly but steadily shifting since even before Oriande. He hated to admit it, but they’d been pretty hard on the guy, and he put up with it with patience Lance couldn’t even dream of having. He should really work on that...

“Yes.” Starting tomorrow maybe. “I trust you to do your best to control it. It’s always been a part of you, you know. It’s just stronger, now.”

Lotor scooted closer and moved the instrument out of Lance’s lap. His eyes raked up and down Lance’s naked form and he couldn’t help a little shiver. Lotor froze.

“I’m not afraid,” he insisted. “It’s just been awhile since, well, anybody but me.”

“You can still say no.” There was a wild gleam in Lotor’s eyes now, but Lance believed him. He could call this off right now, and Lotor would walk away. Walk away and keep suffering alone because he was too proud or scared or whatever to let somebody help him with this.

Lance didn’t say “no”. 

He closed his eyes as Lotor’s hands began a slow and studious exploration of his entire body. He paused in any area where he got extra responsiveness. Probably making mental notes like the giant nerd he was.

Without visual stimuli, Lance could focus on the feel of the energy radiating off of Lotor in waves. Waves. Lotor’s power was like water. It swept over Lance, flowing into every nook and then receded, drawing a little energy with it. Now Lance definitely wasn’t afraid. Water had always been a friend to him.

When Lotor finally, finally took him gently in one hand, it was over embarrassingly quickly. It had been awhile, remember? Totally not his fault. Powers were involved and stuff. 

He was suddenly very tired. Just before he nodded off, he could swear the Mark was glowing on Lotor’s face again, and so were his eyes.

“Thank you.”

Lance woke up clean and tucked into his bed in the rooms the planetary government had given them during their stay. He didn’t feel drained at all. In fact, he felt great! Lighter somehow. Until he thought about how Lotor probably had to drag his naked butt back here, hopefully unseen by all.

Lotor was much improved as well, as far as Lance could tell, anyway. Guy was pretty stoic. He didn’t look like he was going to keel over any minute at least. Mission accomplished. Oh, they also got the planet to agree to join the coalition. Double mission accomplished.

Everything should have been resolved, but Lotor kept shunning everybody. He came to meetings and that was it. It wasn’t like Lance expected him to arrange slumber parties or anything, but he thought Lotor understood his, “you don’t have to avoid everyone” message. Apparently, he was wrong.

Upon reflection, he wasn’t sure he’d actually said anything like that. He did imply Lotor shouldn’t let things get that bad again, though, and he seemed headed in that direction again, even if he still looked pretty healthy.

Lance confronted him after one of their meetings. He made sure everyone else had already left first. He could be tactful when he wanted.

“Have you been feeding the beast?” Direct was usually better, though.

“I haven’t felt the need.”

Lance could have cheerfully strangled him. “The point is not to wait until it’s a need, man! You want it to get out of control again?”

“It’s not like I have prospective partners beating down my door, you know.”

“You could ask me.” 

“Really?” Lotor asked skeptically. 

“Well, sure! I mean, I don’t know about you, but I had a pretty good time. No lasting side effects or anything, either.”

“You’d be willing?”

Geez, for a tactical genius, this guy could be extremely dense! “I was willing enough last time, wasn’t I?”

Lotor’s jaw clenched and he looked like he wanted to hit something. Why was he angry? Lance was extremely confused. Lotor closed his eyes and took a deep calming breath.

“Follow me.” He turned on his heel and took off toward the docking bay between the castle and his personal ship. When Lance didn’t take after him immediately he called back without even turning around, “Are you coming or not?”

That was a loaded question if Lance had ever heard one... He had to jog to catch up.

“Where are we going?”

“My quarters.”

He sure didn’t sound excited about it. Lance had to be missing something here, and he racked his brain for anything from their previous encounter that would have been upsetting. He decided it must be that he fell asleep right after. Lotor never even took off any of his armor, and he probably didn’t get anything out of it other than the emotional energy. Lance did not want a reputation as a selfish lover, even if it was only with one person who probably wasn’t going to say anything.

Lotor scanned open the door to his sleeping quarters and immediately began stripping off his armor. 

“Listen, if this is about last time-”

“Of course, it’s about last time.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t return the favor, but I think the energy drain must have worn me out, and-”

Lotor snorted. “It wasn’t about that for me at the time. My only interest was in ‘feeding the beast’, as you so colorfully put it.”

“Then why are you so mad about it?” At least Lotor finally let him finish a sentence. Question. Whatever.

“If it weren’t your duty, if you didn’t have an obligation to preserve everyone’s safety, would you have ever considered a physical relationship with me?”

“I dunno... Maybe?”

“That’s not good enough for me.” Lotor had finished disrobing by this point and sprawled across the bed like some kind of big cat or something. “If you want me to believe that you’re more than just accepting an unfortunate task, you’ll have to prove it to me.”

“Um, okay. How?”

“I want no less than enthusiastic consent. If you truly find me desirable, get over here and take the initiative. Show me what you like. Our anatomy is similar enough. Unless you don’t really want this?”

Did Lotor just call him a chicken? Oh, it was on now! He began taking his own clothing off a little more recklessly than usual.

“Remember,” Lotor cautioned arrogantly, “enthusiastic. If you’re doing this purely as an answer to a challenge, I’m fairly certain I’ll be able to tell.”

“Seriously?” Now Lance was getting a little peeved himself. “You really think I would offer myself up as some kind of sex sacrifice? I may not have the greatest self-esteem ever, but I’m not that big of a martyr!”

Lotor’s face was deadpan.

“You want enthusiasm, buddy? Well, that’s what you’re gonna get!”

That’s what he said, but once he was standing at the foot of the bed, he paused to take in Lotor in all his glory.

“Has your bravado deserted you so soon?”

“No. Last time you got a real thorough look at me, and now it’s my turn, so shush.”

Lotor obligingly closed his mouth, even if it still wore an infuriatingly smug smirk.

The first thing to catch Lance’s eye was a virtual encyclopedia of scars normally hidden by Lotor’s armor. There were big ones, little ones, faded and almost invisible ones, a few that looked like burns of some sort, and even one that he was pretty sure was a bite mark. He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised; Lotor was a Galra warrior after all. He’d seen him in action both as a pilot and on his own against Zarkon. Off the field of battle, though, it was easy to forget. The young emperor acted far more like a scholar than a soldier.

His skin was covered in silky fuzz, and Lance wondered if it would feel as soft as it looked. It wasn’t time to touch yet, though. He was still looking his fill. 

After a few more moments, he gently grasped one of Lotor’s ankles to move the other man’s legs apart so he could climb up onto the bed between them. As soon as his hand made contact, he heard Lotor gasp and felt his power pull at him gently. Had he done something wrong? He pulled his hand back and snapped his gaze up to Lotor’s face to find his pupils dilated and his expression one of surprise.

“You really are attracted to me...”

“Duh.” Hadn’t he already told Lotor he thought he was handsome? Then again, maybe this went deeper than just the purely physical. “Can you pick up on emotions with your power?”

“Only if we’re touching skin to skin. You- Affection? Why?” 

It took a ridiculous amount of effort, but Lance kept himself from laughing. It wasn’t every day Mr. Suave over there was at a loss for words.

“It kinda took me by surprise, too. I really did try to hate you for a long time, but you care. About Allura, about the future, about changing the Empire into something better, about all of us, and that means a lot to me. I’m not going to lie, the fact that underneath all the front you put up there’s somebody who’s got some of the same insecurities as me also goes a long way.”

Lotor closed his eyes and let out a soft scoff. “Right. You said you can pick up on strong emotions.” When he opened his eyes again, the confrontational bluster was gone. He looked a lot younger when he allowed himself to be open like that. “Have I ruined the mood?”

“I’m game to keep going if you are.”

Lotor answered by voluntarily making room for Lance at the foot of the bed.

He knelt between Lotor’s knees and tried to decide where he wanted to start. He leaned forward and let his fingertips glide up along Lotor’s ribs. The other man flinched away slightly and snorted. Ticklish, huh? You’d better believe he was going to remember that for later. He’d also discovered that Lotor’s downy fur was just as soft as he could have possibly imagined.

He walked his hands along the bed closer to Lotor’s shoulders and lowered himself so their torsos were in full contact and it felt amazing. Lotor was warm, and the auras of their powers pressed and played against one another as well. Lance let his nose run along Lotor’s neck to the back of his jaw and just below his ear, planting an open mouthed kiss there. He could feel the other mans rapid pulse under his tongue. 

Lotor moaned in approval, and Lance could feel it not only with his regular senses but his magic as well. Knowing Lotor could feel something similar from him, he focussed on sending just how much he was enjoying himself to the forefront of his mind. It was a feedback loop, and it was Lance’s new favorite thing ever.

Without any of the urgency of their first encounter, they simply rocked against one another, enjoying the contact and slow build.

Afterward, Lotor got up briefly to fetch a warm, damp cloth to clean them up. They lay side by side, staring at the ceiling in comfortable silence.

“You’ve got a lot of nerve, you know.” Lance couldn’t keep himself from bringing up the conversation from earlier, though. “Making me out to be a martyr when you were gonna let yourself waste away instead of just getting some. Jerk. Isn’t this way better?”

Lotor chuckled, and Lance could feel the vibration along the line where their bodies touched. “Indeed. It would seem we’re two of a kind.”

Lance could live with that.

[cancerianprincess]

“Wicked Coronation” (vampire! T’Challa)

Warning(s): None

Recommend Listen/Song Inspo: “Stranger Things” ~ Joyner Lucas & Chris Brown

A/N: This was just a little something I decided to crank out before spooky szn was officially over after being inspired by this photo (which ALL credit for goes to @persephone​ ). Happy Halloween, you guys. Enjoy 👻🧛🏾‍♂️🎃😈

______

“Unbelievable.”

Reyna scoffed as she headed back to her car, shaking her head at the vast level of tardiness her date was displaying tonight. She couldn’t believe that after willingly putting herself out there, he had the nerve to be late.

As a result of listening to her best friend, Talia, Reyna had put on her best outfit, a crimson colored velvet bodycon dress that was to die for, a pair of dazzling single dangle earrings and single matching bangles on each wrist, and her best heels which were a pair of sleek black stilettos that would have any man or woman eating out the palm of her hand. The twist out was on point, matte lipstick was popping, and her glitter red acrylics still looked fresh as can be.

So imagine the amount of irritation Reyna felt bubbling inside her upon realizing she had been stood up while looking like a full course meal.

After be more than courteous enough to wait forty five minutes past the agreed meeting time, Reyna was now heading back to her car while tapping away furiously on her phone.

‘It’s been almost an hour and he didn’t show sooo guess who’s leaving 🙃’

Reyna began fishing through her black clutch while awaiting Talia’s reply, knowing she was hovering over her phone in expectation of every last detail.

Wifey 🤗💋(2)

‘Excuse me 👀 you said what now??’

‘Do I need to make a trip that way?’

A light but warm chuckle escaped Reyna’s lips in response to the ride or die aura her girlfriend was exuberating. “And yet she loves to claim that I’m the crazy one,” Reyna thought to herself.

‘Pipe down girl, it’s all good lol. If he can’t act right then he can certainly get left’

“And he if think shit sweet next time I see him, he got another thing coming.” This time Reyna had spoken out loud, but despite the rhetorical nature she still received an unexpected response.

“Oh, entle,” a baritone voice cut through the dark. “You don’t really mean that, do you?”

Well, partially unexpected response, at least.

Reyna folded her arms across her chest after stopping halfway down the alley just a few feet short of her car. “You’re late.”   

She glared intensely at the man posted up against said vehicle who was dressed in a spotless all black suit, and yet still managed to stand out in contrast to the dark of the night. The first few buttons of the matching onyx dress shirt he donned underneath had been left unfastened, leaving the fabric to hang open exposing his defined pecs ever so slightly. There was a red pocket square in the front of his jacket, and as if to accent the accessory, he held in his hand a single red rose, inhaling its scent right before his eyes cut to his other half.

“Forgive me, my love,” her boyfriend apologized. “I’m afraid I let time get away from me while I was...tying up some loose ends.” He pushed off the Lamborghini to approach Reyna, but for the two steps he took to be in arm’s length of her, she took a step back.

“Uh-uh, T’Challa. Using your ‘voodoo magic’ is not going to get you off the hook for this so don’t even try it,” Reyna reprimanded him. “What ‘loose ends’ were so important that you had to keep me waiting for nearly an hour, on tonight of all nights? It’s not like we have all the time in the world!”

Since the night Reyna had accidentally ended up in the wrong Halloween party to say the least, T’Challa turned rescuing her from a group of savage gargoyles into a tradition of treating Reyna to a night out on the supernatural side of town. In the past four years since that fateful encounter, it was fair to say that the two had fallen for each other, regardless of the vampire/mortal dynamic that frequently posed as a challenge for them. But, nevertheless, Reyna adored her other-worldly beau and accepted him wholeheartedly, fangs and all. If anything, the true nature of his origins fascinated her.

Which is why T’Challa had finally decided on what to grant his lover with as a reward for finishing up graduate school. And what better gift was there than making Reyna a part of his world rather than just a frequent visitor?

“Well, usana, not that I need use of my powers to get you to forgive me, which you and I both know,” T’Challa stated. He quickly stepped in closer perimeter of Reyna before she had the chance to retreat any further, placing the lone flower in her hand.

“But I suppose you have waited long enough for your surprise,” he went on, a devious smirk playing at his lips. In the mere seconds that Reyna had become distracted by the gorgeous creature’s charisma, he had circled around his girlfriend like a vulture as she closed her eyes to sniff the rose.

Burying his face in the crook near Reyna’s collarbone, and running his hands along her amber skin until they were wrapped snugly around her waist, T’Challa spoke seductively into her ear, “Time to get a taste of what we’ve been missing out on.”

And with that, before Reyna even had an opportunity to utter a syllable in protest, T’Challa bore his pearly white fangs, and bit directly down into the right side of her neck.

*******

Whatever pain had hit the new grad student from the chomp in her flesh went away as quickly as it came. The second Reyna felt the teeth sink into her vein she could have guessed correctly what was happening, but of course there was no time to fully analyze the possibility. Because the moment her eyes had snapped open just as fast as they’d clamped shut, Reyna found herself standing in the VIP section of the same forbidden nightclub she’d stumbled into over four years ago.

Perched on the overlook she could see the entire dance floor below packed and lively beneath her feet with every fictional creature one could think of when it came to spooky season. Their forms collided together rhythmically in time with the music blaring through the speakers, while the colored strobe lights flashes different hues of red and purple creating endless shadows against the walls.

Moving closer to the railing, Reyna noticed that her body felt different; that it felt...strange. A good kind of strange. Her chocolate color orbs now glowed the same shade of scarlet as her dress, and all her senses seemed to amplified ten times over, including her ability to easily detect a lingering presence hanging over her shoulder.

“Enticing, isn’t it?” T’Challa asked from behind her. “You see, since the minute we met I detected there was something special about you, however I failed in putting my finger on it right away. Still I longed to know more of you anyway, despite it going against my conventional practices.” He drifted to Reyna’s side, continuing with his thoughts while watching over his subjects along with her.

“But with the passage of time, I was able to uncover at last what it was that inevitably drew me to you.” The demon turned to Reyna, cupping her chin in his grasp to direct all her attention to him.

“It was your passion, Reyna,” T’Challa confessed while staring into her newly colored irises. “Your captivation with the unknown, the way you’re enthralled by mystery; it was in your eyes the first night we met. Instead of turning away from me in fear, you allowed your fascination to learn more about my world guide you. I knew then, that I could trust you to be mine.”

The two were now inches apart, giving the demon leeway to close the gap by pressing his lips to hers. Reyna melted into the kiss, finding herself more attracted to her boyfriend as ever due to his observation of her. She moaned lightly into his mouth, only to let out a slight whimper when he broke away.

“Now done with school, you have no more immediate obligations holding you to the mortal world permanently, but if you still choose to walk away, then I possess a potion that will reverse the bite I gave you if consumed before sunrise,” T’Challa muttered, stroking her cheek with his thumb.

“But, neglect to take it by then, and your days as a mortal will be over.”

The vampire began backtracking slowly to the center seat that served as his throne until seated back upon it with one foot placed across the opposing knee.

“So, what do you say, my love?” His eyes blinked closed briefly, glowing blood red when they opened again as he made his final offer. “Will you join my world? Lead along with me as my equal in ruling over these heathens?”

Reyna stood and thought for a moment, remembering that she owed her good friend details about how the ‘anniversary dinner’ had went once it was finished. Knowing she would get a kick out of spinning this one, she could barely contain the smile spreading across her face.

“Darling,” Reyna started, running her tongue across her freshly obtained fangs while stalking over to her soulmate seductively. “It would be an absolute honor to call you my king.”

But that conversation would have to wait until later, because right now, Reyna was about to become Queen of the Underworld.

~~~~~

~Tags 🖤~

@iamrheaspeaks @princesskillmonger @eriknutinthispoosy @brianabreeze @wheredidallthedreamersgo @halcyonscry @okoyesbabe @mareethequeen @marvelpotterlove @muse-of-mbaku @chaneajoyyy @another-imaginesblog

[thirstresponsibly]

Loose Ends (2/?)

Pairing: Bucky x Reader

Summary: Y/N thought she had left her past with Hydra behind, just as Bucky did, but when it comes back to haunt her, she is consumed.

A/N:  Part two of Loose Ends! I don’t know if anyone is following the story, but I promise I will update more frequently when the semester is over! 😓 (I haven’t seen Infinity War because of finals, so this is clearly assuming those events never happened) The next chapter will be more of a background for the reader/flashbacks. Please feel free to leave comments/feedback/ask to be tagged!

Read Part One

Tag List:

@papi-chulo-bucky @diinofayce 

(I edited the post so I can fix the tags - I’m sorry if you got re-mentioned!)

Word Count: 2100 (Ended up being longer than I thought haha)

Warnings: Mentions of violence, like one use of explicit language

Silently, the team took their positions around the perimeter of the Hydra base. The plan was to infiltrate and gather intel, while keeping casualties to a minimum. They were to capture as many operatives as possible, using lethal force only when necessary. Another thing you had to adapt to. Keeping people alive was dangerous in this line of work. Every person spared is just one more loose end.

But you weren’t an assassin anymore; you were an Avenger. And Avengers had a certain reputation to maintain. Killing when necessary is one thing, but parading around as a band of merciless vigilantes is a dangerous potential spiral that inspired the Sokovia Accords in the first place. The armory was stocked with non-lethal weapons to make the transition easier, but you were rather attached to your knives. They were a souvenir from darker times, but you knew how to wield them. The balance, the grip, the weight - the fit was so natural, they may as well have been welded as extensions of your arms. While you weren’t a stranger to firearms, you recognized that there was a certain degree of control that the knives offered that guns never could. You knew exactly how to tread the fine line between a fatal and a crippling blow. You knew exactly how much pressure to apply and which areas to target. Bucky often teased that the semblance between his arm and your knives was the real reason you were attracted to him, but he would be lying if he didn’t admit that he was in awe of someone who could not only match his knife skills, but exceed them.

Even so, you  grabbed a handgun from the rack as you stalked down the ramp of the quinjet. Like second nature, you unloaded the chamber, counted the rounds, and reloaded the gun, switching the safety on for now. 15 bullets. Knives were your weapons of choice, but it would be naive to pretend that they could be enough. It was best to prepared.

Just in case.

The team split into pairs, slowly inching towards the base, careful not to attract any attention from the guards patrolling the perimeter. Natasha and Peter were charged with taking out the guards on the north end of the compound. Steve and Wanda took the west end, while Sam and Tony took the east. You and Bucky circled around to the south gate, keeping a steady pace but careful not to arouse any suspicion.

“In position,” Bucky murmurs into his earpiece. As the rest of the team confirmed their positions, you let your eyes sweep the immediate area. You spotted two cameras facing the entrance, just as the intel suggested, and three guards lumbering in close vicinity to the guard tower.

“What do you see, (Y/N)?” Bucky crouches next to you, looking through the scope of his rifle. The serum did away with any real need to have to use his scope, but, like you, Bucky was careful.

“Two cameras. Three on the ground, but there could be more in the tower.”

“Cameras shouldn’t be a problem,” Tony chimed. You could imagine the smug look on his face and smirked. He had been tinkering with a device for the last few days that would knock out both the external cameras and any broadcast system within the base.

“Cameras are down. Take out the guards and wait for everyone to clean up before heading in. It’s better to go in all at once,” Steve cautioned.

“Ready, soldier?” You teased, relishing in the soft smile that crept onto his face. Bucky trailed his eyes across your face, taking in the smallest details of your face. It was his ritual before a fight; he claimed it reminded him of what he wanted to come back to. You stood silently and extended your hand to him, never letting your eyes wander from his.

“Always,” he winked. He took your hand and turned the safety on his rifle off. You reached behind you and drew your knives.

<hr>

Taking out the guards went smoothly. Bucky distracted the three guards, while you slipped into the guard tower. With Tony’s device in place, the commotion outside the compound went undetected and you quickly knocked out the two Hydra operatives you found lingering in the tower. As you finished tying up the unconscious guards, Bucky dragged in his own victims. While you stripped them of their key cards, Bucky fiddled with the security console, bringing up the surveillance footage from within the compound. At this point, the others were ready to move into the compound and waited for Bucky to give the all-clear. Slipping the last key card in your pocket, you hesitated before taking their radio devices apart as well. Just in case.

“From what I’m seeing, most of the compound looks clear. There’s a few stragglers, but it shouldn’t be a problem. Nat should be able to get in easy and retrieve the files while we sweep the building.”

You peered over Bucky’s shoulder and scanned the panel of footage. The agents were armed, but seemed unconcerned. Most of them had their weapons slung across their backs or tucked haphazardly into their belts, choosing instead to keep their hands free.

“They don’t seem to be expecting anything,” I muttered.

“I guess Stark’s device really worked,” Sam said, almost with a reluctant admiration.

“And why would you assume otherwise?” Tony retorted indignantly.

You had been with the Avengers long enough to recognize that the exasperated sigh that managed to penetrate the banter belonged to Steve. Bucky smirked, tongue prodding at the wall of his cheek. Catching the glint of amusement in your eyes, he shook his head and chuckled softly.

“Alright, Cap. Whenever you’re ready,” you relayed, wiping the blood off your blade on an unconscious guard’s uniform.

“Resourceful,” Bucky commented, nodding his head in mock intrigue.

You rolled your eyes, handing him a key card in case you guys got separated. Tightening your grip on your knives, you followed Bucky back outside and crept to the entrance, waiting for Steve’s word.

“Alright, guys. Head in. Remember the plan.”

Thanks to your meticulous planning, navigating the south end of the compound was a breeze. You and Bucky stuck together and tackled one room at a time, careful to keep tabs on the number of hostiles you encountered. Tony’s gadget may have worked, but this wasn’t the time to let your guard down. So far, the mission had gone seamlessly. Aside from the occasional grunts and string of expletives hissed through the earpiece, everything seemed to have gone flawlessly. So much so that you began to get suspicious.

Bucky sensed your anxiety and nudged you gently with his elbow, keeping his rifle aimed ahead. You shook your head, signaling that something felt off. When you looked up at him, you saw his eyes had lost the shine they had back in the guard tower. He felt it too. You were suddenly hyper aware of everything around you. You cringed, hearing the distinct, but slightly muffled sound of your boots padding against the floor.

“Nat. Peter. Where are you guys with the files?” You asked under your breath, wary of your voice reverberating through the compound.

“Still looking. Peter’s clearing out the next room, but I can’t find anything on these computers. There’s nothing on them. Unless anyone’s interested in a quick game of solitaire.”

“That’s impossible,” Wanda said, in between breaths. “We cleared the entire west corridor, there’s nothing here either.

“Stark and I are coming up empty too. None of the guards are giving anything up either. Something’s not right,” Sam cautioned.

“Yeah, we’re getting that too,” Bucky muttered, his deep voice amplifying with the acoustics of the building.

“Hey, guys…” Peter trailed off, leaving the comms to pick up the unmistakable sound of fingers flying over a keyboard.

“What’d you find, kid?” Tony urged. The tension was palpable and the silence loaded with uncertainties. You hadn’t realized you had stopped walking until Bucky beckoned you over to the last door with a slight nod of his head. You let go of the breath you were holding, hoping Peter’s voice would soon fill the insufferable silence.

“Mr. Stark…”

You backed away from the door, nodding at Bucky as you got into position. You bent your knees slightly and shifted your weight onto your right foot, ready to lunge forward.

“Come on, kid. Use your words.”

“I think…”

Gun in one hand, Bucky swiped the key card with the other and pivoted out of the way to let you rush the guards. The doors slid open and you stormed through the opening, only to be met with a rank of of Hydra agents with their weapons directed straight at you.

“I think it’s a trap.”

“(Y/N)!”

Before you could register Bucky’s voice, you felt a flesh arm yank you back into the corridor while a vibranium one deflected a bullet destined to pierce straight through your heart.

“Fuck!”

“(Y/N)??” Wanda yelled, panic seeping through her voice.

“Everyone get out now!” Steve commanded.

With Bucky in tow, you began sprinting through the corridors, navigating the mental blueprints of the building in your mind. You knew every inch of this place, in theory. You knew where every camera was mounted, where every turn would lead. Even now, in the midst of rapid gunfire and frantic yelling in Russian, you could imagine every possible escape route you could take. But this? The ambush? This shouldn’t have happened. This wasn’t part of the plan.

You sheathed your knives, reaching instead for the handgun tucked away in your belt and flipping the safety off. There were too many for you guys to attempt to take on, even with a serum-enhanced soldier at your back. The only option was to follow Steve’s orders and get back to the quinjet. You had 15 rounds. Discretion was no longer an option; you were shooting to kill.

At this point, you could hear the same commotion echoing through the rest of the building. The others were dealing with the same situation and there was no telling how outnumbered they actually were.  You and Bucky worked like a well oiled machine, trading off shots as you rounded corners.

Fourteen.

Thirteen.

Twelve. You missed. A waste of a bullet.

Eleven.

Bucky laid down cover fire while you struggled to get the door open. Rifling through the key cards, you swiped one after the other only to be met with a blinding red light mocking you. Hearing the unsettling click of the rifle’s empty clip, you immediately took Bucky’s place, shoving your cards into his hands and buying him time to get the door open.

Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven.

The door whirred as it slid open and Bucky once again called your name. You nodded in acknowledgement and fired off a few more shots before following him into the last stretch of the building. You heard frantic chatter in your earpiece, but it was eclipsed by the ringing in your ears.

Six. Five. Four.

As you slid through the door, Bucky grunted as he smashed the key card console, dragging out the wires, hoping it would deter the stream of hostiles. For good measure, he dragged a desk from one of the rooms and barricaded the door.

Taking a second to catch his breath, he relayed that the quinjet was on standby.

“Nat’s already there and Peter’s helping Steve and Wanda make their way there. They’re just waiting for  us, Stark and Wilson.”

“Actually, just you guys now. What’s your status,” Tony inquired.

“Almost out of the building. Bucky’s out of ammo and I only have four shots left.”

“Make them count, kid,” you heard after a brief silence.

“I always d-”

You were interrupted by the sound of Bucky’s makeshift barricade succumbing to Hydra’s soldiers as they slowly funneled in. You and Bucky picked up your pace with you turning around every once in a while to slow the enemy down.

Three. Two.

The next time you turned around, you felt your heart plummet and your legs fail, leaving you trailing behind Bucky. Among the crowd, you caught a man with his sleeves rolled up. A prominent, jagged scar traced his forearm and carved into his elbow. A face from your past, one you never thought you would see again, was staring at you with pure malice and a grin as he savored the effect he had on you. It was him. Someone you should have killed a long time ago. He lowered his gun, but the others rushed forward. You snapped out of your stupor and shot the one closest to you.

Three. No. Two? Two.

Your eyes never once wavered from the man’s as you shot the guy behind him, saving him for last.

One.

Realizing you were no longer paralyzed, his grin faltered. You aimed at his head and pulled the trigger with conviction.

Click.

The shock was plastered across your face, reviving his malicious grin once again as he raised his own rifle.

[postedbygaslight]

You’ll Be the One to Turn - Part 22: Kylo

Someone on AO3 asked, joking, if there would be another chapter today, because I posted the other one early. I sent a cheerfully nihilistic response, thinking it was true madness to suggest such a thing. And then I actually did finish the next chapter, so, I guess, enjoy. :)

The past had died.

Or part of it had. The part laced through with venom and pretensions to legacy. The months since he’d tracked Lor San Tekka to the enclave on Jakku had seen the collapse of his foundations. One by one, what he’d once viewed as essential pillars of what it meant to be Kylo Ren had been smashed apart, and most of it had been done by his own hand. The murder of his father, which had exposed Snoke for the pestilence he was. His inability to harm his mother, which had reminded him of what it was to love and be loved. His defiance in saving Rey from death, which freed him from the yoke of his decrepit master. Because the bastard would not have her, too.

But there had been nothing that had ever approached what happened the night before. And as Kylo sits in the chair in his meditation chamber, letting his mind settle on the memories of what were, he is visited by the stark collision of feeling that assaults him: revulsion at what he’d witnessed; adoration for the woman who’d been there to catch him as he fell.

He’d been certain Rey was mistaken about the cure for her issue with the kyber crystal. But, in the moment just before their two halves touched, his mind had cleared, and he could feel the Force anchored in the crystal halves aching to rejoin what had been broken. And the vision that had dragged him away from her had seized upon him with such mirthless intensity he’d been sure that he would be drawn into the morass of bitter cruelty into which he’d fallen, abandoned to suffocation. What he had seen was a gift from the Force. Like the vision he’d seen on Ahch-To, he knew what he’d seen was the perfect truth of the past, unadorned by the decay of memory. It was a vision of death and horror, a view of the slow erosion of humanity inside a husk that was once a good man.

Kylo sits across from the mask of Darth Vader, infected by the sensations that linger from his vision. When he’d first realized whose life he was seeing, his reaction was one of disbelief, even though he knew the Force had merely been showing him what it was to be Anakin Skywalker in that time and place. He had spent so long elevating the deeds and accomplishments of the mask on display that he never stopped to consider the man beneath it. Now, having lived in the bone strewn furnace of Anakin’s mind and soul as he transformed into a deformity of spirit, the mask has adopted a different shape: a blot of darkness accented by the scorching threat of revenge.

Kylo accepts now that his grandfather had been fooled and seduced by the poisons of a man not unlike Snoke. He could sense the miasma of toxins pluming around Palpatine the moment he’d commanded Anakin to murder his prisoner in the throne room. But the monster on the throne had only represented the path to darkness. Anakin had chosen, one fateful decision after another, to stride confidently into shadow. And Kylo knows, just as he knows he will walk under this plague shroud no longer, that were he confronted with the same choices, he would not have fallen to the depths that claimed his grandfather.

Thinking of it sends a crawl of cold slime retching in his throat. Watching as Anakin cleaved and stabbed smoking plasma wounds into the flesh of terrified children. Watching as Anakin stalked and thrilled in the slaughter of those who’d welcomed him as an ally. Watching as Anakin Skywalker ignored the frightened pleas of the woman he claimed to love, reveling in his fury as he choked her into submission.

Grandmother. Padmé Amidala. A queen. A senator. A woman of pride and accomplishment. Laid low and murdered. By the man who’d sold his soul in the vain quest to shelter her from death. How her strength had reminded him of Rey. How he’d wanted to shatter the illusion of the vision, wrest control of the man whose actions had doomed her to a miserable end, and cause him to fall on his saber blade, or to attack Palpatine, or to cast himself into the lava flow at Mustafar. She had deserved better than the death she suffered, and the injustice of it screams in his soul as he imagines himself confronted with the visions that afflicted Anakin.

He can sense Rey now stronger than ever, and it’s present in her strength and her calm, her essential goodness, the grace and beauty of her bearing. The glow of her light now resides within him. The constant lantern at his side has now become a comforting warmth that swells in his chest. And where there had once been an emptiness suffused with doubt, he is now bolstered with courage, raised up by the foundation of her resolve. He is finished with this pointless charade. His place is with her. He’s known it for a long time, and only now has he clarity enough to recognize it.

As the comm at his private terminal starts sounding an alert, Kylo accepts that the events ahead will carry him forward to the destiny he is meant to find. And ceding control to whatever cosmic power brought he and Rey together has freed him to do what he could not before. It isn’t too late. And he knows what he has to do. He stands up, taking the mask in his hands, and places it in his waste disposal unit. Without ceremony or pause, he closes the lock, pulls the release, and walks away, not even bothering to watch as its contents are ejected into the void of space.

***

The war room aboard the Finalizer is much like those in other First Order warships: a long black table ringed with high backed chairs, flanked by banks of windows that amount to viewing platforms for the entire vessel. The table, fitted with inset holo-projectors, stretches the length of the room, and is now populated by severe men in black officers’ uniforms, all waiting on the arrival of high command.

Kylo strides into the room, taking stock of the emotions of the officers. Fear is high, and there are surges of confusion and anxiety as his presence is acknowledged. But, rather than use the Force to amplify their unease, Kylo makes a simple gesture before being seated, and everyone else follows suit.

“Supreme Leader,” General Hux salutes.

“What’s the situation?” Kylo asks without looking at him.

A display of the Tarisian star system springs up above the table, and the zoom function of the projector zeroes in on the third planet from the star, a tawny orange ball spiderwebbed with artificial lights. Kylo was well aware of Taris, as it had long existed as one of the most densely populated planets in the entire galaxy. Some even said its  colossal cities existed before Coruscant’s, but such were tales left to legend. The boutiques and salons of the upper cities didn’t concern him. The matter at hand, he knows, will be decided in the mangled collapse of concrete and steel that exists on the surface.

“The Star Destroyer Volition followed up on intelligence we received several days ago about a possible Resistance presence on Taris.”

“I’m guessing that presence is below the smog line.”

“Yes, Supreme Leader,” Hux continues. “We’ve learned that there is a munitions cache of some considerable size housed in a facility beneath a derelict rail terminal.”

“What kind of munitions?”

“Small arms, though it seems they are of the rarer sort.”

“Meaning?”

“Ion disruptor rifles.”

Kylo stops a moment. He is unused to being genuinely surprised by anything. But this is a true shock.

“T-7’s?”

“And a few T-8’s, so far as we’ve been able to tell,” a lower ranking general chimes in.

“You’re sure this is Resistance,” Kylo presses. “Collecting weapons that were outlawed by the Empire.”

“Desperation will drive even the noblest men to questionable means for their ends,” Hux opines, and is met with nods of approval.

“If the Force is with us, who can be against us, eh?” The voice was from another ranking officer on the other side of the table. The quip elicits some choked and guarded laughter as everyone else waits for Kylo to react. And while his eyes do dart to the smug officer, whose face has drained of blood, he stays his hand, and continues on.

“Tell me about the facility.”

Hux clears his throat and continues the presentation.

“It appears to be a two-level subterranean compound with a main entrance here, and an escape tunnel here. The area has been shielded, and will withstand orbital bombardment.”

“Of course. Where’s our landing?”

“This airdrome tower seems ideal,” Captain Eskat, of the Volition, adds, his image beamed in from the bridge of his vessel. “Multiple landing pads. A variety of insertion points into the combat zone.”

“Good,” Kylo says, folding his gloved hands in front of him. “Anything else?”

“The weapons are reportedly kept in this bunker here,” Hux says, adding what Kylo interprets as a proposed course of action. “Apart from the principle of the matter, Supreme Leader, these weapons are valuable and rare commodities.”

Kylo turns slowly to face the general. He does nothing to disguise his contempt for the man. He can sense Hux’s fear like never before, a glacial contortion of terror and cowardice twisted inside this small, tired despot.

“Want one for your personal collection, Hux? Planning a disintegration or two?”

“While I’m told the experience of watching death by ion disruption is singular,” Hux says with a snide grin, “I understand the smell it produces is less than desirable.”

The thought is repellent. Kylo had never seen a disintegration before, and he’d never sought one out. Ion disruptors were among the most vicious infantry weapons in existence, capable of downing spacefaring craft with a single bolt from a shoulder fired rifle. But, beyond that, the mechanism inherent in the disruption field produced by the bolts caused living tissue to slough away with a relatively gradual outward spread. That meant a target struck with a disruptor blast would be killed, but would experience an excruciating death by melting over the course of minutes.

Hux’s obvious enthusiasm for securing the weapons distracts Kylo for a moment or two, and he combats the urge to lash out at the general, just as he’s still resisting the urge to punish the officer on the other side of the room for denigrating the Force. But the warmth within him brings him back to a place of calm, and he presses on.

“Have we intercepted any Resistance response?”

“We’ve received actionable reports of an extraction operation already underway. We expect enemy units to be in the vicinity within thirty minutes.”

“And?”

“They’re being led by the girl.”

“The Jedi.”

“I assume.”

Kylo knows now what this is. A trap. For both of them. And he knows, just as he knows that Hux will spring to betray him as soon as he steps foot off of the ship, that he’s been outmaneuvered. For the time being. What’s important now is springing the trap, and smashing it apart.

Kylo stands from his chair. Everyone in attendance does the same.

“If they aren’t already, muster the troops in the main hangar. Infiltration units. No heavy weaponry. I’ll lead the mission myself.”

“Yes, Supreme Leader.”

As he turns to leave the room, Hux positions himself in his path.

“Supreme Leader, allow me to apologize for yesterday’s impudence. I trust exacting vengeance against this criminal will set things right.”

“I’m not interested in whatever it is you’re planning or doing,” Kylo says through his teeth, drawing to full height. “And I’m not at all interested in your apologies.”

The fear that had twisted within Hux explodes outward in an icy blast, and Kylo wants to punish him for what he’s done. He wants to punish him for what he’s going to do. But, most of all, Kylo wants to hurt General Hux. To make him suffer. For arranging this ruse. For aspiring to power he is unworthy to wield. And most of all, he wants to hurt him for putting Rey in harm’s way, and using that as bait to try to seize a throne for himself.

“It won’t happen again,” Hux stammers.

Kylo steps toward Hux, his eyes dark and burning with rage.

“See that it doesn’t.”

And Kylo can feel the fear, so potent and sharp in the general’s heart, harden to pure hatred as he makes his way for the lift, en route to the main hangar.

***

Kylo stands at the head of the company of stormtroopers and reviews them in formation, ready to board transports. He makes his comments brief.

“Once we hit the ground, fan out. Eliminate any enemy targets you encounter,” he says, calmly, with deliberation. And then his tone hardens, and each word is a knife, meant to cut each and every man present in the room. “But the girl is mine. Anyone who brings her to harm will answer to me.”

The troops salute and file into the waiting vessels. Kylo boards his command shuttle and orders the pilots to make for planetfall.

He still feels the warmth and comfort he felt from before. Even as he knows he’s walking into a trap. Even as he knows that Hux is waiting to betray him. Even as he’s descending into a wrecked and blighted war zone, knowing that somewhere down there, Rey is in danger. Because he can feel her the moment his command shuttle breaks atmosphere. And he is made strong by her strength. And he knows that whatever light remains in him is greater than just an ember as the blue-black of the starfield above dips out of sight, and the windshield of the cockpit is swallowed in a haze of gold and brown.

[olboypacman]

3. A Story to Tell (Trigon, the Benevolent)

A/N: This one’s going to be a bit of a divergence. It’s background on this version of Trigon. Still don’t own Teen Titans. Or Batman. Or Doctor Fate. Or Zatanna.

“Mr. Nelson!” a secretary calls out.

The older gentleman, answering the call makes his to the receptionist’s area. “I imagine he’s ready for me?”

“Yes sir! Mr. Wayne will see you now.”

Taking that as his cue he makes his way around the reception’s area to the automatic glass doors. Just before they part for him he sees in white bold lettering:

BRUCE WAYNE

OWNER & CHAIRMAN OF THE BORAD

OF WAYNE ENTERPRISES, INC.

Passing the threshold, he makes his way toward the ordinate, expansive desk made of some indiscriminate wood. Behind the desk he sees Bruce Wayne, alter ego of the Batman, leaning back into a large black leather chair. He’s wrapped in a black suit some with a white shirt and a black tie. Likely of some designer ‘s or another’s brand. Tailored exactly for him I bet.

Bruce has his eyes trained intently on a dark-haired woman leisurely sitting on the desk, who’s speaking to him. She’s wearing a dark blue suit jacket with a similarly colored pencil skirt. Her look his completed with nylon stockings and black flats.

“Kent.” Bruce says now training his eyes to The Sorcerer Supreme.

Upon acknowledging their new guest, the woman turns to face Kent. Zatanna.

“Oh Zatanna, I didn’t expect you to be here.”

“That makes two of us.” Say Bruce, cracking a smirk.

“Oh, shut up!” She responds to Bruce as she leaves the perch of the desk to greet Kent Nelson properly. “Call me curious. I wanted to know what exactly we could be dealing with.”

“Well, we might not be having to deal with anything.” Says Kent.

“How can you say that!? This is Trigon, the Terrible we’re dealing with! I don’t…”

“Zee,” Bruce interjects, “We’re not here to argue, Kent just tell us what we need to know. Just how powerful are they?”

“Well I guess I’ll start with the weakest of the bunch, though to call Arella Roth weak would be gross underestimation of her abilities.”

“She’s just a human, right?” Asks Zatanna.

“Yes, though her proficiency for the arcane leaves me questioning her lineage. According to Trigon, who was her first instructor, she took to the mystical arts faster than any being he’s ever seen.”

“Trigon taught Arella?” Inquired Bruce.

“Well, yes. He mated her and as powerful as Trigon is even he can’t be everywhere at once to protect his love and his progeny.”

“Love? Don’t make me laugh!” Zatanna said indignantly. “Demons aren’t capable of love.”

You’d be wrong I’m afraid, my dear.

“You’d be surprised what love can do.” He looks to both Bruce and Zatanna knowingly. “Anyway, Trigon had mostly taught Arella spells and magics designed to protect herself from the members of The Church of Blood. While not the most mystically inclined of people, outside of the Bloods of course, they would be a handful for any regular human. But her second teacher taught her most of what she knows now. Her second instructor was none other than last high priestess of Azarath, Azar.”

“Hmm, so that’s where he took her after she left my protection.” Says Bruce.

“That would be correct. Under Azar’s tutelage Arella developed into quite the little sorceress, I’d she can rival your abilities.” He finishes, gesturing to Zatanna.

“OK,” says Bruce, “tell me about Raven.”

“Ah, the apple of her father’s eye that one. Gods help anyone foolish enough to threaten her. The one even more fool hardy to lay a hand on her,” Kent shutters, “I wouldn’t wish such fate on the worst of people. Raven’s curse is her gift. Much of her abilities are tied to her soul-self and/or her emotions, and her level of calmness or emotional distress can dampen or amplify her already potent abilities. Her soul-self, as its name implies the physical manifestation of her soul. Once manifested it can appear physically as a black raven in an energetic state, incredibly cold to the touch. It can also project itself from her body as a blast of dark light, she can use it for short range teleportation, shield generation for herself or others, flight/levitation, and she can completely separate the soul-self from her physical body for as using it for astral projection, possession and for scouting if necessary. I’ve also seen it encompass objects as large as an eighteen-wheeler yet concentrated enough to cover a penny. Furthermore, she’s an empath, able to sense and consume the emotions of others. Plus, she’s got a healing factor, expected of one of demonic heritage and she’s also able to heal others by taking a bit of the damage unto herself. I currently don’t know the limit to her healing or any of her abilities for that matter. Not too mention her competence has a sorceress, she has the potential to surpass her mother. Azar even. She may even surpass Trigon one day.”

“I shutter to think of two demons that powerful running around.” Said Zatanna.

“Empathy…” Mutters Bruce. “Isn’t that a genetic trait? An Azarathian trait?” he inquires.

“Exactly. Which is another reason why I’m skeptical of Arella’s parentage. To build on your point Bruce, empathy is an Azarathian genetic trait passed on maternally most of the time.” Answers Kent.

“Hmm… Tell me about Trigon. What is he exactly?”

“A simple yet, complicated answer. Let me preface by telling you: the path to hell is paved with good intentions. Trigon was once an Azarathian who’s name has been lost to history. He was the progeny of an Azarathian man and the Arch Demoness Lilith, the Impious.”

“Self-proclaimed goddess of lust and seduction, I’m familiar.” Says Zatanna.

“Yes, well that aside, the first Azarathians* had the arrogant notion that they can purge all the negative emotions from themselves. Being a pacifist society, certain emotions can be interpreted as aggressive. Anger, hatred, jealousy, etc. were practically thought of as atrocities among the ancient culture.”

“But it’s impossible to permanently remove emotions from yourself!” Cried Zatanna.

“A lesson ancient Azarathians learned the hard way.”

“Where did the man that became Trigon play into all of this?” Asked Bruce.

“He volunteered to be the vessel where all the purged emotions would be contained. And when emotion is given physical form it basically becomes energy, in this case of negative sepctrum. It also exacerbated the situation that those Azarathians are as mystically inclined as they are today. It was said that when all the negative emotions where given corporal from, it resembled a great roaring inferno. Suffice to say, when the unnamed Azarathian was bestowed the emotions it amplified his already demonic heritage. It tore his physical body apart in a hellish firestorm. His skin, bones, muscle and sinew became atomized dust scattering to the winds. But, oddly enough where his body once was, that inferno still raged on. The Azarathians acted quickly though, banishing the burning hatred personified to a dimension between not exactly this one, but not the next either. It was an infinitely dark and abyssal dimension Trigon has since claimed as his own.”

“Do you know how he eventually gained the physical form he has today.” Inquired Zatanna.

“That I’m not sure. I theorize that the soul of the nameless Azarathian remained bound to the personified flaming emotions when they were ejected from Azarath. I’d imagine there was a period where eventually the soul regained sentience and using it’s demonic power and the magically infused influence of thousands of Azarathians to gain or create a physical form.”

“How powerful is he?” Requested Bruce.

“Incredibly.” Kent simply responds. “Raven inherited his healing factor and like I said I don’t know the limits of hers. He has a soul-self much like Raven’s, but it’s not hindered by his emotions. Though carrying much of the same abilities as Raven's, Trigon's soul-self manifests itself in the form of a serpent when released from his body. It can be deathly black like Raven’s and cold as the most frigid of tundra; to as blue and hot as the hottest stars in the universe. It can amplify gravity in a given amount of space, can manifest solidly as any object Trigon desires and can even project copies of other beings, though the copies themselves are under Trigon's control. The soul-self can also connect any two points in existence, making interdimensional travel child’s play. Also, much like Raven's it can envelop objects, however Trigon's has the potential to envelop in his own words ‘anything my senses can encompass’, leaving its potential for destruction completely up to the imagination. And let’s not forget the mystical influence of the emotions that led to his origins. That left him with enough magically capcity to make the spirt of Nabu’s brow sweat.”

“Do you know type of spells he prefers?” Zatanna asks quietly.

“He prefers his own demonic power, but I’ve known him to use spells that summon familiars and pyro- kinetic spells.”

“Any weaknesses?” Requests Bruce.

“Being a demon, he’s subject to spells, objects and weapons designed to counter-act his kind. But unless created by an incredibly powerful sorceress or sorcerer, I doubt those would slow him down for long.”

“Would you be able to stop him if it came down to it?” Asked Zatanna.

“I wouldn’t,” said Kent. “Nabu has been bound to much more powerful sorcerers than me, and at those times only managed to fight him to a standstill. And at no great consequence to my far-flung predecessors. Trigon’s the main reason why it was decided a lord of order such as Nabu was commissioned to take action.”

Bruce and Zatanna stare ahead at nothing, dumbfounded by this info dump.

Breaking the stupor, Bruce asks, “What I don’t get is what caused him to abandon his destructive ways?”

“It’s like I said Bruce, you’d be surprised what love can do.” Kent answers.

“You don’t mean, Arella do you? I heard he stopped conquering centuries ago you don’t mean…”

“He does love Arella, no doubt. But it wasn’t her who changed him.” Kent stands reaching inside his coat pocket, pulling out a picture. He throws it on the desk. He takes his leave, heading toward the automatic glass doors of the office. “Bruce, Zatanna, you have my best,” he waves lazily as the doors open.

On the desk sits the photo, the image of a woman. Thought that’s not quite right. It’s a picture of a painting of young woman. A woman that looks scarily similar to Arella…

Check out this and my other writings at: https://www.fanfiction.net/~olboypacman

[blucmoon]

━  ☾ ⊹  ( kim chungha, cis female, she/her ) say hello to KWON YENA, the TWENTY FIVE YEAR OLD that seems to have a lot in her hands with HER job as an ART TEACHER! beyond that, they seemed CREATIVE AND DEDICATED upon first glance. i heard someone say they’re sort of RESERVED AND IMPRACTICAL though. she seems to live in a 2 BEDROOM APARTMENT in SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA. anything else to add? oh, yeah! she’s also A SINGLE MOM OF A FIVE YEAR OLD GIRL!

– basics

full name: kwon yena

goes by: nana

birthdate: feb 02, 1996

age: 25

gender: female

ethnicity: korean

religion: atheist

spoken languages: korean, english.

current living conditions: 2-bedroom apartment on the 18th floor of her building. decent sized and 15 minutes away from the college she works at and a 10 minutes walk from sooah’s elementary school. 

occupation: teacher at k-arts in the school of visual arts.

– relationships

father: kwon chanyoung (alive) polite.

mother: kwon kyungmi prev. seo kyungmi (deceased) good terms.

older brother: kwon namhyuk (alive) close, good terms.

aunt: seo hana (alive) really close.

– physical traits

height: 161cm

weight: 50kg

eye color: dark brown

hair color: currently dyed black, long.

tattoos + piercings: has her daughter’s birthdate tattooed in roman numerals on her ribcage, peonies on the left shoulder.

– personality

mbti: infp “the mediator”

moral alignment: true neutral “the undecided”; act naturally, without prejudice or compulsion.

strengths: idealistic, seek and value harmony, open-minded and flexible, very creative, passionate and energetic, dedicated and hard-working, loyal, devoted, sensitive to feelings, caring and interested in others, values close relationships.

weaknesses: too idealistic, too altruistic, impractical, dislikes dealing with data, takes things personally, difficult to get to know, sometimes loses sight of the little things.

yena is a true idealist, always looking for the hint of good even in the worst of people and events. she likes searching for ways to make things better. while she might be perceived as calm, reserved or even shy she has an inner flame and passion. she’s guided by her principles, when deciding to move forwards she will look to honor, beauty, morality and virtue, being led by the purity of her intent, not rewards and punishments. fantasy worlds particularly fascinate yena. she can often drift into deep thought due enjoying contemplating about live overall. she relies more on intuition and is more focused on the big picture though she can be particularly meticulous when it comes to her students’ art or her own.

she places emphasis on personal feelings and her decisions are more influenced by these concerns rather than by objective information. When it comes to making decisions, she likes to keep her options open and tends to delay making them just in case something about a situation changes. she experiences a great depth of feelings but she largely processes these emotions internally. yena has an incredible sense of wonder about the world.

– background 

1st momentum  

the kwon family was highly renowned in the business world, not only for how perfect the family seemed to be, but also because the head of the family, kwon chanyoung, was an extraordinary business man with a love for charity and helping others as well as other social reasons. he was a firm believer that the moment to change the future was now. yena was the second child in the family, younger than his brother by 3 years. despite the age gap, both kids always enjoyed one another’s company, that and the mischiefs they always managed to pull with their family and friends. yena was a well-behaved kid despite this, following orders most of the time. those rare times she didn’t were due they not making a lot sense or being correct in her own books. since young, she’s always questioned every single thing and wondered out loud the reason to do this or that. her parents always fed her curiosity with the answers she sought, fully knowing that it was better to let that inquisitive spark live than having a girl without her own criteria.

2nd momentum

as they grew up, the siblings became even more inseparable even when they weren’t in the same school or years. as for yena, she started to show her love and talent for arts and her parents enrolled her in a high school with a prestigious art program which allowed her to experiment different mediums and techniques to find out that she was extraordinary when it came to oil painting and sculpting. there she met her first love and dated him for around 2 years before breaking up. high school helped her to get prepared for college life in both, the art department but also in the entrance exam, which she successfully passed and enrolled in the korea national university of arts.

3rd momentum

college. the place where one truly finds themselves. this period in her life made a huge difference in who she was going to become in the future. upon arriving, yena noticed how competitive and extremely ambitious everyone was when it came to their art… which further motivated her to excel in every aspect. soon, yena managed to become a hot topic as someone labelled her as a “freshman prodigy”. her artworks proved to be top quality and exquisite, minimum details and corrections were pointed by her professors, but what marveled everyone the most was how it seemed like the title didn’t get to her head and she always remained humble and kind to anyone who asked her for help. this caught the attention of several guys who wanted to have at least a date with her. at the end of her first year, she started going out with someone from the design department. no one knew how or why it happened, but it did and yena was completely head over heels for the guy. he was kind, polite and liked to go full-on nerd mode when it came to topics that interested him, which was utterly endearing for her and so they dated for around a year and a half before everything changed.

4th momentum

suddenly, at the end of her sophomore year things went downhill. desperation took the form of mascara tears running down her cheeks as the two lines in a cheap pregnancy test, which she got in a haste from a convenience store, confirmed her fears. she was pregnant at the age of 19. yena was well aware that it could potentially change her relationship with her boyfriend and family. still, she decided to keep it a secret until she visited the doctor to confirm the results. 

when telling her boyfriend about it, he acted in a way yena never expected him to. he was surprised, to say the least, and didn’t want to believe he was the father as he was always careful to bring protection with him. yena explained that it wasn’t a 100% effectiveness rate… and then he accused her for cheating, claiming that he wouldn’t take responsibility.

heartbroken, yena decided to go home that night to also tell her parents the truth whom were extremely disappointed. nonetheless supported her when she decided to keep the baby. their relationship, though, wasn’t the same as it used to be. her father was cold and drew a line yena knew she’d never be able to cross and her mother constantly looked at her with what she recognized as pity and disappointment.

not being able to take it anymore, she decided to move with her aunt, who completely understood the situation as it was similar to what she went through years ago. her parents didn’t stop her and other than paying for her college, only because it was something they didn’t want her to leave unfinished, they rarely talked ever again. yena was able to finish the following semester but decided to temporarily leave school as her last trimester approached.

5th momentum

in march, her baby was born and she named her sooah. thankfully, both of them were healthy. yena became a single, 20 years old mother. despite her young age, she matured as her baby grew up and became completely devoted to her without dropping school. with the help of her beloved aunt looking after the baby in the mornings, yena picked up her education and managed to finish in time after cramming a whole semester. after that, she decided to get a masters degree so she could become a teacher. all this while taking care of her baby and having a part-time job to support them both. her parents noticing how hard she was working to give sooah a better life, decided to help her for a little bit until she got back on her feet, but it was also because they little sooah won both of their hearts in their very first meeting.

now, at the age of 25, she’s a renowned teacher at her alma mater while sooah is in kindergarten.

– her daughter

full name: kwon sooah

birthdate: 27/03/2016

age: 5

gender: female

personality: sooah is smart, creative, and unconventional. she is also laid-back, disorganised, and non-judgemental. out of chaos comes genius, but due to her lack of organisation she often has trouble applying her energy and finishing projects. she is quiet, reserved, and a thinker. prefers to stay at home rather than go out and make friends. has a rich inner fantasy life and is a fan of science fiction and fantasy. prone to eccentricity. she is polite, compassionate, and thoughtful. goes out of her way to help people, and is sympathetic to the plight of people she has little in common with. does not mind a messy environment. she is quiet and does not make friends easily, but she cares deeply for the friends she does make. she is emotional and anxious. her imagination can work to amplify her fears, because she considers all the ways in which things could go wrong. she is strongly affected by horror films. sooah is hard to get to know as she is shy and sensitive. she naturally prefers to be alone or to have just one or two friends, and her tendency to be anxious and afraid makes her nervousness around people more intense.

[kristie-rp]

Responsibly Questionable

Original by @cassandra-rp / @coloredinsanity

PREVIOUS

Giselle can hear an argument, or at least two people talking. She can’t really tell what it’s about, and she doesn’t care – wouldn’t care without the downers she’s taken, and definitely doesn’t care with them, letting them ease her back to sleep. 

It takes some time for the pills to wear off, but as soon as they do, her eyes fly open and she shoots upright, taking a startled breath of impossibly warm air. She’s never seen the place she’s in before, and the disorientation of just waking up is amplified in her confusion. Her glasses are dirty and cracked, and they’ve been undependable for a long time; she can sort of read through one particularly large uncracked section, but that’s about it. Her instincts and common sense allow her to make sense of the fragmented words she can read in context, but out of context, it’s anyones game; the place around her is blocks of color and, for some reason, a pile of soft blankets that have fallen into her lap. She’s staring around as though the hazy walls will provide an explanation when she makes the mistake of meeting the gaze of a woman who is peeking around a wooden doorframe. The woman offers a warm smile before approaching Giselle, and Giselle’s immediate response is to recoil into the couch, away from the danger of a stranger.

“W – who are you?” The stress in her voice spikes to the sound of two male voices, voices that must be coming from another room. She’s been abused and used countless times, and this wouldn’t even be the first time a woman lulls her into a feeling of safety before tricking her, and her heart rate picks up as her anxiety grows.

The woman lowers herself as Giselle watches, bringing herself to a similar height to the girl on the couch. She’s trying to seem less threatening, and with the motherly aura, the one Giselle has only ever seen from the sidelines, it’s almost working. “My name is Melina,” she says, her voice deliberately low and soothing. “Please don’t be afraid. You’re safe here; it’s just my husband and my son upstairs talking. They’re harmless.” Melina sighs internally, not surprised to see confirmation that the girl in front of her has been through a lot. Scars are visible beneath the dirt and mud set on her skin, telling a story of being hurt so many different ways. Melina slowly gets to her feet when she feels Giselle isn’t going to have an anxiety attack at her doing so. “How are you feeling?”

Giselle might not want to shriek anymore, but she still hesitates, curling her fingers – being able to move them without any stiffness is such a novelty for her, she could marvel at it if she wasn’t inclined to suspect something bad about to happen – into the filthy scraps of her trousers. She swallows down nothing, mumbles out the words “What does it matter?”. She’s trying o be defensive, but she’s not in any shape to keep it up; her voice cracks on the words. Tears sting at her eyes and she ducks her head, hunching her shoulders and wishing she could hide.

Melina hesitates herself, her heart going out to this scared little girl. She sits on the couch slowly, out of reach of the girl. “Your name is Giselle, right?”

Giselle should change her middle name, if she has one, to hesitation, because she does it again, before nodding stiffly. “How do you know that?”

“I’ve been looking for you,” Melina says, knowing full well how it sounds. “Well, my husband and I have been. How much do you remember of your childhood?”

“Enough to know you’re not my mother, if you’re trying to play that card.”

“Of course not. I meant – do you remember your brother?”

Giselle’s body language shifted instantly, startled by the question. The tears are still burning in her eyes, but she’s a little less on edge with distrust for this woman as she reluctantly looks up. “Sorta,” she mumbles, swallowing hard enough to make her dry throat ache. She slips her hand into her pocket to run her fingers over something Melina cannot see, squeezing it tightly for reassurance.

“Well,” Melina says, “That’d be my son. We adopted him.”

The first thing Giselle experiences is disbelief, blinking uncomprehendingly at the woman. Melina smiles slightly, and Giselle has no idea when the woman moved closer, but she brushes against her back with a light touch and she’s still got that soft smile. “I drew you a bath. You’re freezing cold; it should warm you up. I can help you with your hair, if you want, and then we can all talk and have dinner. I don’t know what you like, so I made Cethin’s favorite.”

Giselle choked on nothing, the name warranting a physical response of some kind – it was familiar, of course it was, she knew her own brothers name. She nods slowly, though, her defences falling. She wants to see her brother almost more than anything she’s wanted before, it’s all she’s wanted for years, but a warm bath sounds fantastic, and she agrees to it quietly.

It takes a while. The water had to be drained and refilled several times, with Giselle too shaky to manage a shower instead, and even with Melina’s help it takes what feels like an eternity to work the snarls out of her hair. She doesn’t know what the stuff Melina pours into her hair is, but it smells like fruit perfume, and it makes it soft and shiny for the first time in Giselle’s memory. In warmer months, her hygiene isn’t as bad as it is right now – there are fresh bodies of water in the woods on the edge of the city that are easy and fairly safe to get to, and there are showers at the beach if she needs something quicker. In winter, though, it’s too cold to chance the fever the cold will give her.

“Isaac,” Melina calls suddenly, startling Giselle, “can you get Cethin’s old glasses? He should still have them in his desk.” She’s been examining Giselle’s belongings to check whether anything obvious needs salvaging, and the glasses are marked as cheap reading glasses that can be bought at a gas station. Cethin’s will be stronger, though there is no way for Melina to know if they’re anywhere close to the right prescription. She has brought clothing with her and lets Giselle dress herself. Her own old clothing proved much too large, something she realized once she’d seen Giselle’s incredibly underweight frame in the bath; even sweatpants that hadn’t fit in years with the drawstring tightened as much as possible would probably slide right off.

Luckily, the McKinley’s are hoarders, and she is able to dig some clothes from Cethin’s past out of storage in the basement. Her son has been small all his life, constantly built as though his body is still preparing for them to be unable to feed him, the way his biological parents couldn’t. She is able to provide Giselle with long gym shorts that stay up on narrow hips, and a sweatshirt decorated with Pokemon graphics, a relic from when Cethin was obsessed with anime (he still is, to some degree, but is less likely to wear such obvious references now). She asks Giselle to sit on the edge of the tub once she is dressed and proceeds to sort through the medical kit kept in the bathroom cupboard.

Giselle recognizes some of it, but others are completely unfamiliar to her, either never used or never heard of. She listens to Melina murmuring to herself, frowning; she hasn’t realized before how badly infected some of the cuts to her feet and legs have become, with constant numbness brought on by Port Lyndon winter blocking out the pain. The bandages itch as Melina applies them, but she sort of trusts the woman to know better than her what she is doing. She swallows as she watches some strands of hair fall to the floor, nervous to have any sort of potential weapon so close to her. She can’t see what’s going on, not with Melina flitting in and out of positions that block the mirror and no glasses either, but she’s resigned herself to playing a doll as the woman who raised her brother attempts to fix the mess of her hair. It’s a lot of work: she hasn’t cut it in years and she has never allocated money for a real brush, settling for running fingers through it to yank terrible knots out after soaking in a river. Melina isn’t a hairdresser by any stretch of the imagination, but she has raised a son for years; she manages to create something that passes for an unstylish home job of a haircut instead of a mess of evidence of a hard life.

Giselle flinches as someone taps on the door. “She’s dressed. It’s alright.” An older man moves theatrically slowly, clearly trying to help put Giselle at ease. He crouches beside her, and it takes so long that she wonders how big the bathroom she can barely see actually is. He slides something made of cool plastic onto her face, and as she blinks an uncertain smile comes into focus. Her eyes widen as she looks down, staring at her fingers before looking around. She cannot remember the last time she saw anything this clearly. It’s a little off, not quite strong enough, but it’s so slight and such an improvement from what she is used to that she cannot complain, even if she wanted to.

She insists on helping Melina clean the bathroom, despite the woman claiming that it isn’t necessary. “I – I know how to do this. I did it for a man for a while before,” she explains reluctantly, trailing off as she scrubs at the dirt on the edge of the tub.

Melina collects her clothes in a plastic bag, trying very hard not to seem as though she is offended by the intense odour. “Anything you want to keep, dear?”

Giselle’s eyes widen and she takes the trousers, things more like rags than anything else. She reaches into the pockets, sending a small array of pills scattering across the floor. Melina frowns, assuming that’s what the girl is after, until Giselle instead produces a small duck plushie. It looks like the kind of toy a newborn would be given, and Melina already knows that at some point it was yellow. It’s been ages since then, apparently, stained black and brown from exposure to filth. One of the legs is hanging on for two threads – one, in fact. A slight smile pulls at Melina’s lips, something sad to it. “Cethin’s still got his,” she says, voice soft. “I believe it lives on his desk.”

Cethin, meanwhile, has been lingering in the living room. He’s cleaned up the couch, taking not-so-bafflingly dirty blankets to the laundry in the basement, and cleaning what he can off the cushions. It’s the dirt has come off her clothing, what little hasn’t been trapped by the picnic blanket. With as much as he can get at out of the way now, he has been staring at the DVD and game collection he’s examined countless times in the past, listening to what he can through the wall. His mothers voice is soft, though, and apparently Giselle’s is quieter still; he can barely make any of the conversation out.

The bathroom door opens, and that’s about all he’s been prepared for tonight. He hesitates near the shelf, swallowing at the sight of his mom with a bag of clothing to trash, and then, more pressingly – the girl who tucks herself into the space behind Melina, like she’s hiding. She had been in the tiny bundle he’s accused his father of abducting, apparently, though he didn’t see her before. Judging by what he has cleaned off the couch, she must look entirely different now. He hears Isaac react to exactly that somewhere behind him, in the doorway to the kitchen, and though Cethin doesn’t know it yet, she looks like an entirely new person. What draws his eye, though, is the spot of dirt in her hands, a filthy toy he first thinks of as a rag, which confuses him, because Melina would only let that remain if it was a source of comfort. He stills as he notices the face, something he describes now as derpy, and his eyes widen as a memory comes, unbidden, to the forefront of his mind.

(“Quack.”

Giselle smiles, the blonde hair on her head a mess that their mother couldn’t manage and their new – temporary – guardians cannot, either, not without risking her wailing. She places her tiny duck toy on top of the one her brother has, the identical twin, the second part of the set. Cethin grabs his out from under, sits it on top of her head as gently as he knows how and grins. “Quack!” he says back. The two, toddlers at the time, don’t understand what the point of this game is, but it brings a smile to their lips nonetheless, a spot of fun to the string of uncertainty that is their lives.)

Cethin has always known that the almost impossibility of seeing his little sister again would make him emotional, but he doesn’t expect the tears that immediately spring to his eyes. He will not remember moving, but the next thing he is aware of is his arms surrounding her, rubbing her back and holding her close. Giselle begins to cry in earnest, too, sobs and laughter mixing together as she tangles her fingers in his jumper.

Melina and Isaac share a look over the teenagers heads, swallowing down guilt. It’s a heartwarming reunion, but it’s one they know they are majorly responsible for creating a need for. If they hadn’t split them up, choosing Cethin instead of a sibling set, then this wouldn’t have had to happen. Would it really have been so bad to have had a daughter to raise alongside their son?

It turns out that Cethin’s favorite food is something called paella, something devoid of the meat Giselle expects. Melina dishes it up with an array of pills she calls supplements, giving them to the guest, too, much to her confusion.

“Mom’s paranoid we’re all going to end up deficient and die of malnutrition,” Cethin explains. He is sitting beside Giselle at the round table, probably closer than necessary, and keeps bumping his knee against her leg as gently as he is able. He’s checking to make sure she’s still there. She’d be doing the same thing, if he hadn’t already started before she worked up the nerve to try.

Giselle is immediately worried, squinting at the pills dubiously. “Die of... what?”

“Isaac is the only one of us who eats meat. Iron deficiency – lack of it – is a very real problem. It can cause – ” Isaac cuts her off with a fake snore, and Melina swats at him with a laugh. “Oh, fine. Just take your vitamins.”

Giselle watches closely as Cethin swallows the pills with a glass of water, and hesitantly copies him. The water is cool and feels odd in her mouth; it’s been a while since she started taking the downers dry, and this is – something else. The water isn’t cold enough to burn, and her hands aren’t shaking. It’s bizarre. She’s waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“Come on, try the food,” Cethin is urging. Giselle doesn’t need to be told more than once; it does smell delicious, even if it is entirely vegetables and rice. She makes a face when she accidentally claims a forkful of mushroom, the utensils awkward and unfamiliar in her hands – but she brightens as she swallows and starts shovelling it in.

“Slow down,” Isaac advises, but he’s laughing, too, probably relieved that the repercussions of what Cethin insists is abduction haven’t started up yet. “You’ll make yourself sick.”

It wouldn’t be the first time, Giselle thinks, and she’s seriously concerned they’re going to take the food away, change their minds and just not feed her. It wouldn’t be the first time. But they’re all giving her such earnest looks, and Cethin lets his knee bump hers again. She glances at him, as if asking for confirmation.

“C’mon, you’ll like it more if you can actually taste it,” he says, laughter in his voice.

She blinks at him, before sighing and obligingly slowing down. It’s probably the nicest thing she’s eaten in ages, possibly ever, if she’s honest. It’s such a surreal experience, like something out of a dream.

She wonders how it’s going to end.

[swans-and-pirates]

The Art of Remembering (2/?)

Summary: Killian hasn’t seen Emma in months, not since she ran off in the middle of the night. But when he receives a call from the hospital informing him that she’s been in an accident he rushes to be by her side. Nervous and anxious to see her again he’s not sure what to expect—but he definitely doesn’t anticipate that upon waking she would have no idea who he is. Modern au

Word Count: 3,000

Rating: T

Also on: ff.net, ao3

Catch up: one

a/n: I was blown away by the response this got! Thank you to everyone that read, reviewed, liked, rebloged, commented etc. I hope you enjoy this next chapter

Disoriented doesn’t even scratch the surface of what Emma is feeling right now. To wake up in a hospital bed barely able to move and not knowing how you got there is one thing. Being told that there are actual years of your life you can’t remember is another.

So no, disoriented doesn’t even cover it.

Not to mention that she suspects that whatever painkillers she’s on are starting to wear off. Moving even an inch sends bursts of pain blazing through her entire body, especially her torso.

She does her best not to move too much and spends who knows how long staring at the ceiling trying to recall the last thing she does remember. But everything is too fuzzy in her brain at the moment to pinpoint an exact memory, and thinking about it makes her head ache.

Huffing in frustration she decides that maybe it’ll be easier to focus on what she doesn’t remember instead. She doesn’t remember the accident. But she thinks that’s pretty common, and that even people who don’t have amnesia sometimes wake up in hospitals and don’t know how they got there.

What’s not usual though is that she doesn’t remember ever living in Boston—well that’s not entirely true. She did live here for a brief two months in one of her foster homes growing up, but that hardly counts.

Besides her current situation, she also is quite certain that she doesn’t remember the handsome stranger she woke up to.

No. She’s definitely certain she doesn’t remember him. She can’t imagine forgetting a face like that.

Except she did, apparently.

Killian. That’s what he’d said his name was. And from the way he’d looked at her—with those stormy, ocean eyes—she got the feeling that maybe she was important to him, or perhaps he was important to her. He’d certainly seemed devastated when she didn’t know who he was.

But it’s been an hour at least since the doctor talked to her, and if she were important to him wouldn’t he have come back by now?

Not that she cares. Technically she doesn’t even know him.

The nurse comes in just then, interrupting her thoughts. The woman is kind as she asks how Emma is doing and checks her vitals. Thankfully she gives her another dose of painkillers and promises that she should feel relief soon.

It’s just as the nurse is finishing up that Emma hears a quiet knock at the door. Looking up she sees Killian as he takes a few slow and cautious steps into her room. He stands off to the side with his hands behind his back and waits as the nurse completes her tasks and leaves the room.

The soft click of the door shutting echoes through the quiet room, amplifying the silence between them, but Emma doesn’t want to be the first to say anything. Because what do you say to someone you’re supposed to know but don’t?

Killian fidgets back and forth on his feet for a moment before he finally breaks the silence. “How are you feeling, Swan?”  

The way his accent wraps around each syllable sends tiny butterflies to her stomach that she does her best to ignore.

She gives him a small shrug and a wry smile. “Oh you know, like I got hit by a truck or something.”

His eyebrows lift and he chuckles without humor. “Aye, well that’s fairly accurate I must say.” He takes his hands out from behind his back and fiddles with a phone for a few seconds before he hands it to her. “I went and got your phone replaced. I figured you’d want it. Unfortunately your old phone was shattered beyond repair in the accident, but this has your old number and contacts and everything.”

He scratches behind his ear and looks at the floor before sitting in one of the chairs against the wall, looking for all the world like he has no idea what to do with himself.

“Thank you,” Emma says, eyeing him curiously. “And is your number in here?”

“It is. You can call or text me for anything while you’re in here.”

She raises an eyebrow at that. “Who says I’m going to call you?”

Killian smirks at her, his eyes teasing. “You obviously haven’t had to eat the food here yet. You’ll be begging me to bring you a grilled cheese and onion rings in no time.”

The easy way he mentions one of her favorite meals as if its common knowledge between them catches her off guard, and she finds herself staring at him with an open intensity. Willing herself to just remember who is.

But no matter how hard or how long she stares at him nothing comes.

“Who are you?” she finally asks.

“My name is Killian Jones.” He says it with such sadness that Emma can’t help but feel her chest ache at his words.

“No. I mean who are you to me?” she clarifies.

“We’re friends.” He gives her a small smile that’s anything but happy and Emma finds herself wishing she could remember who he is just to get rid of the sorrow in his eyes.

“I don’t usually have a lot of friends, and not ones that I could say actually know me very well… but you seem to.” She tries not to, but she narrows her eyes at him, sensing that there is more to this than what he’s telling her.

Killian sighs and rubs his hand back and forth along his scruff. “Aye, love. I know you quite well.”

“And… I know you well?”

He answers with a brief nod and Emma looks away, suddenly feeling vulnerable.

Because the thing is she doesn’t know this man and as far as she can remember he shouldn’t know her. And it’s unsettling because she doesn’t do this. She doesn’t let people get this close to her. But here is a man that had looked at her with such warmth and such affection when she woke, that it’s near impossible to dispute that he is as close to her as he claims to be.  

And to her that’s even more confusing than the memory loss.

She has a million other things she could ask him, she feels like he’s all she has to connect her to this life she’s woken up to. That maybe he can tell her who she is here, and what her life has led to in the time she seems to have forgotten.  But she doesn’t get the chance because he suddenly stands and makes his way to the door.

He turns to her before stepping out into the hallway and she finds herself wishing he would stay. If anything just so she can figure out what the hell is going on in her life.

“Get some rest, Swan. I’ll be back tomorrow.” He’s halfway out the door when he stops and turns to her again. “And don’t forget to contact me if you need anything. And I mean anything.”

“Okay,” she whispers so quietly she’s not sure he even hears, but he gives a curt nod as though satisfied and makes to leave again. “Killian—” she calls stopping him again. “I…I just wanted to say thank you… uh for the phone and everything.”

The corners of his lips lift and she finally sees what a real smile on him looks like. “Of course, Swan. I’ll see you tomorrow.”    

~

It doesn’t take long for Emma to discover that lying in a hospital bed is without a doubt one of the most boring things she’s ever done. The ten channels they have on the tiny television in the corner never have anything good on and despite how exhausted she is she doesn’t have much success sleeping.  

She spends most of her time alternating between trying to rest and scrolling the internet on her phone, which is only appealing for so long.

It’s not even noon but she already finds herself wondering when Killian is going to show up for the day. He’d said he was coming but he never specified when, and she’s dying to talk to someone other than the nurse.  

She considers texting him to ask when he’s coming, but then worries if doing so would be weird. Except he did tell her she could contact him about anything and they’re supposedly friends, and friends text each other, right?

It should be no big deal, but it still takes about ten minutes of internal debate before she summons the courage to open up her contacts and find his name. It takes another two minutes of just sitting there with her thumb hovering over his name before she finally touches it and presses the send message button and types out quick text.

Emma: You’re right. The food here is horrible…

She feels nervous, which is ridiculous, but that doesn’t keep her from quickly putting her phone face down on the bed beside her just to keep herself from staring at the screen to see if he’s started typing out a response.

The buzz from her phone vibrating happens not even a minute later and if anyone was in the room with her she’d be embarrassed by how fast she picks it up. When she reads his reply she finds herself smiling in spite of herself.

Killian: Ah I told you, Swan. The jello not to your liking?

Emma: I mean I can save you some if you want, but I believe I was promised a grilled cheese and some onion rings.

Killian: Hmmm I don’t recall promising such a thing but I guess I can manage swinging by somewhere to pick you up something ;)

Emma snorts at his use of the old emoji and types out a long snarky response only to delete it and go with something much simpler instead.

Emma: Good.

He doesn’t answer again and she deliberates just letting the conversation drop, but she does still want to know when he’s coming.

Emma: When do you think you’ll be here?

The three dots at the bottom of the screen appear and disappear only to appear again. It repeats this pattern two more times before his answer pops up.

Killian: Miss me already?

Emma rolls her eyes. He’s not lacking in the self-confidence department that’s for sure and she files that piece of information away with what little else she knows about him.

Emma: Nah. Just hungry.

Killian: I’ll be there in about an hour, love.

Emma: Okay, see you then.

—-CS—-

“What’cha smiling at Jones?”

Killian looks up from his phone to see Will Scarlet stepping off one of the boats at the harbor and onto the docks. He begins tying the boat to one of the cleats, but he keeps looking at Killian with raised brows as though waiting for an answer.

Killian shakes his head and puts his phone in his pocket. “You’re bloody infuriating, you know that Scarlet?”

Will just shrugs off-handedly and double checks the knot he’s tied before standing up and brushing his hands off on his pants. “That looked an awful lot like an Emma smile to me mate, and I ain’t seen one of those in months.” The man gives him a knowing smirk and Killian just rolls his eyes.

“You’re way too nosy for your own good.”

Will shoves his hands in his pockets and bounces a little on his heels. “Ah so it was Emma.” He grows somber then, and gives Killian a sympathetic smile. “How’s she doing?”

Killian sighs and rubs a hand along his jaw. This whole ordeal makes his chest ache and his heart heavy. It’s not just that she was in an accident and has to deal with the pain and burden of her physical injuries healing, but she has to deal with a type of healing that’s going to be way more taxing on her emotionally than anything, and it’s a type of healing that no one can know for certain how long it will last.

He can only try to imagine what she’s feeling and what she’s going through at the moment.

“She’s much the same. Doctor says it will be a few days before she can leave the hospital.”

Will nods in understanding and looks off at the boats bobbing in the harbor for a moment before he turns back to Killian. “Ever think that this accident might be a good thing?”

Killian narrows his eyes and feels his fingers twitch before he gives in and curls them into fists. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” He has to spit the words through his teeth and he hopes Scarlet can hear just how dangerous the territory he’s treading on is. “She could have died. She almost died! And now on top of that she has no bloody recollection of anything from the last year at least. Please, Scarlet, enlighten me on how this is a good thing.”

He must have taken a step forward without realizing it because Will takes a couple of quick steps backwards, his hands coming up and his palms facing outward in a placating motion. “Whoa there mate. All I meant was perhaps this is a good thing because it brought her back into your life.”

Killian stops advancing forward but he doesn’t relax, every single one of his muscles tensed as he tries to keep his anger in check. “This is hardly the circumstances I’d wish for her to return in.”

“I know. But I mean she’ll get her memories back eventually, right? And then she’ll be here and maybe you can get some answers, get some closure about why she left. And bloody hell you need it, Jones. You’ve been nothing but a miserable sod since the day she left.”

“Yeah, well…”Killian murmurs, shoving his hands in his pockets. He deflates as the anger leaves him, pierced by the reminder that she left in the first place. If he wasn’t good enough for her then, who’s to say that’s going to change now? “I’m not expecting anything out of this. What happens when she gets her memories back is entirely her choice. Should she choose to leave again without any closure as you put it—I’m going to respect that.”

“That’s a bit of a grim way to look at it, innit?”

“I’m doing this because I…I care about her. Not because I expect anything.”

“You’re a good man, Jones.” Will squeezes his shoulder, and though it’s a gesture that’s supposed to comfort him, Killian can’t even smile in return. Will must sense Killian’s need to change the subject because when he continues speaking there is a little more pep in his tone than is usual for the man. “You’ve got a tour coming up in bit. I’ll help you get Jolly Roger ready.”

Killian releases a frustrated breath and runs a hand through his already mussed hair. A tour. He completely forgot.

“Uh actually…” Killian slings an arm around Will’s shoulders and begins walking the man towards a completely different ship than his beloved Jolly Roger. “You have a tour in a bit and you’re not taking the Jolly.”

“Oh no, no, no. I actually don’t.” Will counters, pulling to a stop and ducking out from under Killian’s arms. “I took your last tour. This one’s staying yours, mate.”

Killian sighs. “I promised Emma I would be at the hospital in an hour. I need you to take this one.”

With an exaggerated groan, Will throws his head back and starts walking backwards towards the ship he had just barely tied to the docks mere minutes ago, pointing his finger at Killian as goes. “You owe me, Jones. Now go be with your lady friend.”

In all honesty, he really could use an hour or more out at sea. Let the wind and the salt clear his head and lift his spirits. But he knows if he went his heart wouldn’t really be in it. Not with Emma lying in a hospital bed.

So Killian raises a hand in thanks before he turns and begins the short walk to his car.  

[drugoftime-blog]

This post leads on from last week’s on antagonists, but is aimed a slightly more specific type of antagonist - the villain. In this, I’ll be looking at some of the most famous antagonists from fantasy-adventure works - the ones who genuinely strike fear into the hearts of our protagonists and are a real threat; the ones we remember long after the story is finished. Villains like Lord Voldemort, Darth Vader, The Witch-King of Agmar, and even the White Witch from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

It should be noted that all of the suggestions I give in the post come in tandem with last week’s post. You should not forget as you read that your villains, like all antagonists, need real motivations, arcs and faces to be interesting.

That being said, how can you write a fantasy villain that inspires that deep sense of fear, power and gravitas?

What Not To Do

Tell, rather than show.

Please don’t write: Lord EvilMan, the most powerful and scary man in all of EvilTown, walked in the room. He looks at the people and says: “I’m so powerful. I could kill every single one of you. Don’t cross me!”

Okay, my example is a bit exaggerated, but the point stands. There is nothing less impressive than a villain telling you how powerful he is, or you simply telling the reader that he is very powerful and scary. More than most things, these traits need to be shown to be effective.

So how do you show these things? Well, here are some ways to consider it:

Reactions and Fear

One of the things that make all the above villains so ominous is the way that other characters react to them over the course of the story. When we discover who fears them, we discover a lot about how dangerous the character is.

Sometimes, it will be the way they react to their presence, for example when Darth Vader enters a room, people will cower and look subservient without him really needing to say anything. Film, of course, has the added benefit of being able to throw some great music and sound design onto this as well, but what is important is that you are capturing the tone in your writing. You should be trying to capture this in your prose and one effective way of doing then is describing how people - especially strong and important people - react to them.

This is even more impactful when the villain isn’t there. Consider how we are introduced to the White Witch in CS Lewis’ wonderful The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. The beavers are extremely scared when her name is mentioned. Tumnus is so scared that he actually betrays his new friends, just because he is worried what will happen to him if he doesn’t. By making the characters do things that are out of character and against what they would usually do at the mere mention of the villain, without the villain actually being there, tells us a lot about their power.

The most obvious example of this working is Lord Voldemort. The fact that before we even meet him people are too scared to say his name in public has a huge effect on our perception of him as a reader. It’s a very clever narrative trick.

This is amplified by the fact that even after he has been defeated people are still too scared to speak his name. They actually flinch when others do it. This helps paint him with all the danger and gravitas that he deserves and means that when we do actually see him rise again at the end of The Goblet of Fire, it becomes one of the most memorable scenes in modern literature. This is because of how Rowling has set him up using others reactions.

I’m not saying that everyone needs to be scared to say your villain’s name. That would be a bit too on the nose and bit too similar to Rowling, I think. But do consider other ways that you can have common and normal people react to discussing or mentioning the villain. This really helps build up their danger.

While having common folk fear the villain is a good thing, sometimes this is even better demonstrated by someone very powerful fearing the villain. In the Lord of the Rings, Gandalf is set up as being an extremely powerful wizard, so when he becomes afraid of the Balrog, we know things are getting serious. This happens again later on where Gandalf is used as a narrative tool to indicate that the Witch-King of Agmar is someone to be really scared of, as he has no desire whatsoever to fight him.

If you can have otherwise powerful and competent heroes suddenly become quite afraid of something or someone in particular, this contrast will really help develop the villain’s sense of strength and danger.

Stories and Mythology

Real worlds and cultures have stories and myths built into everything. Don’t forget about this when you build your world. In The Name of the Wind, the Chandrian appear in fairy tales and songs sung by children. They are very much an old part of the world and that lends them a certain gravitas.

Imagine if your character is walking through a town and their one claim to fame is, “one day Lord EvilMan stopped here to stay the night. Up there is the house he stayed in, they say no one can stay a night in there without going mad.”

This is a demonstration of how your villain becomes part of the cultural tapestry of your world. Name things after them. Have stories, apocryphal or true, told about them. Make people scared.

Real Power and Threat

Your villain needs to pose a real threat to your protagonist. A real threat. There are two things you need for this to be the case.

1. Have them actually do something

Please don’t make your villain all talk and no action. Good examples:

The Chandrian murder Kvothe’s entire family at the start of The Name of the Wind.

Darth Vader orders the destruction of a whole planet. Then he fights Obi Wan and kills him. Then chops off Luke’s hand and throws him down a shaft.

Give your villain some real gravitas and don’t wait until the second half of your story to do it. If you want us to be intimidated and threatened by them, give us reason to be.

2. Imminent Threat

Great villains work well if the protagonist feels like they could be killed at any time. The threat feels very imminent. For all that I love the books, and the villains, my mine gripe with Rothfuss’s Kingkiller Chronicles is the fact that the Chandrian appear so violently at the start and then basically disappear for the rest of the books. They stop feeling like a threat and lose all of that great fear that was built up at the start.

There are many ways of creating an imminent threat. The White Witch is a constant and imminent threat because she has Edmund captured and is slowly turning him against his siblings.

3. Have them far more powerful than your protagonist

Nobody wants a villain who is easily defeatable. The best protagonist / villain relationships are ones that are hugely unbalanced. Our villain needs to be a real threat. Our protagonist should be the severe underdog in any conflict.

Consider Lord Voldemort - apart from some other clever narrative tricks like having the same wand, Harry doesn’t stand a chance. If it was a normal magical duel with no extenuating we all know that he would be dead. There’s no question of the matter.

What power does Frodo have to defeat the Witch-King of Agmar or Sauron for that matter? None, except for the possibility of destroying the ring. But in one on one combat they are a clear and impossible threat.

The White Witch even kills Aslan, our great hero and saviour, without much of a fight. (I know, I know, he comes back, but at the time it has a lot of impact).

A great example of this actually comes from Brandon Sanderson’s YA novel, Steelheart. I think Steelheart is a great villain precisely because he is so completely unstoppable. When they do stop him, it isn’t because the protagonist is stronger or more powerful, but because of another narrative twist.

Conclusion

If you want a really scary, memorable and intimidating villain, consider doing the following:

Show how scary they are by using reactions of other characters, both big and small.

Make them part of the cultural and narrative tapestry of your world.

Make sure they act early on, and don’t just talk about it.

Make them an imminent and real threat and make them far more powerful than your protagonist.

Discussion

This post is designed to both help inspire, but also be a springboard for discussion.

What do you think makes a great villain?

Do you disagree with any of the above?

What are your favourite villains in stories and what makes them work? Do you have other good examples for us to pick apart?

*

(without wanting to make this about self-promotion, if you found any of this interesting, feel free to check out www.binge-writing.com - there will be updates every Thursday.)

As much as I strive to post once a week, next week I will be away in Sri Lanka, so may not be able to.

If I am unable, then the week after I will be writing about how to construct individual scenes and chapters and what goes in them.

See you in two weeks, probably.